I originally wrote this article for Volume 120, Issue 1 of mathNEWS.

In August, a first-year asked: “Where are the best places to eat on campus?”

In my opinion, the best places to eat are off-campus, but if you must eat on campus there are still some decent places to go to. You are only forced to eat on-campus if you have food dollars that lose buying power when you stop buying meal plans, and if you don’t have enough time or energy to go off-campus to eat.

If you are stuck eating on-campus, here’s a quick summary of various options for “food”:

• REV: Wraps available here; usually the employees are less stingy than the Subway in the Student Life Centre
• V1: Spicy / crunchy chicken wraps, open late
• DC: Food is bleh; closes early on Friday
• ML: Sweet potato fries
• DP (LIB on maps): Baked goods in the morning
• SCH (Festival Fare): Hidden on the second floor. Only open for lunch, but has amazing meals.
• Math C&D: 3rd floor MC; no WatCard, cash preferred (minimum purchase requirement for Interac and no credit cards IIRC) - limited stock. Usually cheaper than Food Services
• SLC: The chain food (teriyaki, pizza pizza, subway) has absurdly higher prices. Want a 5$ footlong? That will cost you 6$.
• Tim Horton’s: Cash or WatCard only; they don’t take Tim Card or Mastercard (although you can add funds to your WatCard with a credit card online). Found in DC (donuts + coffee only), SLC (full service), ML (full service), and SCH (somewhere in the middle).
• William’s - ENV3: I like to get frosted cinnamon rolls and white hot chocolate here. If you’re buying food, the William’s in the Waterloo Plaza (across from UWP) is “full service” (i.e. has more food options).
• CEIT: Has tasty grilled cheese sandwiches and french toast.

For official descriptions and hours, see the Food Services website at http://www.foodservices.uwaterloo.ca/locations/ the MathSoc website at http://mathsoc.uwaterloo.ca/RightAngleCafe and the FEDS website at http://www.feds.ca/commercial-services/.

So you know how you’re supposed to plug everything into surge protectors…

Last night, I couldn’t access my home server. I assumed the power was out; figured it just needed someone to boot it in the morning.

This morning: I wake up to this email.

Looks like almost all of it is toast now. :(

Granted most of the equipment at home is rather dated – Pentium 4s; 4:3 LCD montiors + 1 CRT montior; old keyboards and mice. My biggest concern right now is whether the 2TB HDDs survived to the point where I can plug them into a new box to recover the data on them. (Why didn’t I have more data backed up?) I’d been planning to replace the rest anyway for a while now; just hadn’t gotten around to it.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, lndr.me for Windows Phone 7 is now on the Windows Phone Marketplace.

I’ve been running this blog on GitHub Pages with Octopress for nearly three months now. Since Octopress is built on Jekyll, a static site generator, I’ve been thinking that there are other ways of hosting static files that may be worth experimenting with.

So, I’m hosting a copy of this site on nearlyfreespeech.net as an experiment. We’ll see how it goes.

Adapted from food.com

1. Place oven rack in the center of the oven. Place eggs on the racks.
2. Place a cookie sheet (lined with foil!) underneath the eggs… just in case one explodes, cracks, or leaks while cooking.
3. Set oven to 325 °F for 30 minutes.
4. Remove eggs from oven and place in ice-cold water. Peel as soon as they are cool enough to handle, then return to the water to thoroughly chill.

Tips and Suggestions

• How many eggs? About a dozen is about right. Too few (less than six) and you’re probably better off with a pot of water; too many (two dozen or more) and your oven will be a bit crowded.
• No ice? Instead, place the bowl in the sink, and leave the water running over the eggs.
• Too many hard-boiled eggs? Try making egg salad!