Best fight scene ever. From the movie, "Undefeatable". Warning, it's a bit gory.

Real life Simpsons.

I just found what appears to be a copy of a letter I wrote to a friend of the family who visited us from Japan. All I can say is WTF?! It's dated October 21, 1996 so I must have been in junior high school at that time. Maybe I had a fever that day because I don't recall drinking so young. I'll let you be the judge of that. Comments are in bold.

Guess who? What?! Michael Jackson??! No, no, no... It's Brian. Huh? No, I'm not trying to blackmail you. I'm responding to your letter not because I want to, but because my parents forced me. Just kidding. We had a really bad summer after you left. A hurricane completely destroyed our house, all our belongings burned to ashes when lightning struck our destroyed house, and we were forced to live in a treehouse in our backyard naked. Oh ya, and everybody in my family got typhoid from my mom's cooking (my understanding of viral infection was limited at this time). Excluding all that, we had a pretty good summer.

Remember when you made fun of my look in the picture at Niagara Falls? Well, you are a deleterious (harmful to body or mind), necrophilious (attraction to dead bodies), demonic (possessed by an evil spirit), half-witted Martian. Okay, maybe that is a little bit overly offensive. You are a subnormal dairy farmer. What do you mean you want to kill me? Fine, you are a esoteric......human being. Thanks a lot because it took all my energy just to type "human being" because we all know you're not.

So, how are you? I'm feeling terrible because I have to write this letter. I'm also writing on behalf of my parents because they are too busy right now arguing about who gets to watch Barney tonight (WTF?!). Okay, okay. No more stupid jokes (the footnote says "not"). The next paragraph is going to be really hard for me to write. Ready?

Thank you for the gifts you sent us especially the "tabi" for my mom. Come back to Toronto whenever you are free again. Just remember not to bring Yusuke because he might barf on my carpet again after getting drunk. Kidding again (I was such a kidder...)

Arghhhh!!!! Martian attack!!!! Got to run. Hope I don't get fined for public indecency for not wearing anything but rags. Oh, and say hello to Yusuke for me. See you next time, if I'm still alive.
B-Y-E!

P.S. Don't show this letter to Michelle because she might understand what I wrote.

I-beamer team video by Mike Tran


The I-beamers are back from the 22nd Annual Troitsky Bridge Building Competition held at Concordia University in Montreal. We went into the competition confident our design would beat all the teams. However, things were not meant to be. We finished a disappointing 18th out of 40 teams.

When our bridge tipped over at 80kg, we were in total shock. We were expecting something closer to 1100kg. Afterwards, one of the judges came up to me and apologized saying they just realized there was something wrong with the machine since the loading kept moving off center. Reza's team, who won the competition at Ryerson, failed at around the same weight as us. All bridges that were top loaded failed the same way; by tipping over, or twisting. In the end, of all things, a suspension bridge from Cegep Chicoutimi won.

After all the teams had their bridges crushed, we asked the organizers to crush our bridge again since it was largely unscathed from the first time. This time, we clearly saw the loader applying torque on our bridge, spinning and twisting it - something that's not suppose to happen.

We are going to fire off an e-mail to the Canadian Society of Civil Engineer (CSCE), who organized the event, detailing the problems with the crusher in the hopes the same thing won't happen again.

Meanwhile, if you were watching the Discovery Channel today, Reza's team was featured on the Daily Planet. I appeared for a brief moment in the background. I'll try to not let it go to my head.

• Official bridge building competition site with results