Imagine Cup 2007

Posted by Skrud at Saturday, March 31st 2007 at 4:19pm

I came in 4th place and I’m going to the North American Finals in Seattle!!!

(Actually, I think I actually came in 5th … there was a mistake in the rankings chart. Brad was ahead of me by two points).

But before I get into the details, I’ll give you some context.

Last night was a party and a half. I’ve been meeting up with so many people here in Toronto: Linda and Brit who came down to visit from Waterloo; Erik (Rickster) who came from Fort McMurray, AB where he’s been for far too long; Alex and Trelaine and Chris from University of Ottawa that I met at CUTC this year; Mark from Waterloo; and Jackie from Infusion, whom I’ve run into and virtually every conference event this year, and Kurtis, CEO of one of the Infusion-related companies. Jackie recommended Madison Pub, so we went there.

Microsoft gave us all American Express gift cards with 125 “points” on them. 1 point = 1 US Dollar. It’s supposed to be used for the taxi cab to/from the airport as well as dinner. Well, a lot of places don’t take American Express – taxis included. Luckily, the pub did. So we all opened up tabs.

After the drinking (and lots of nerd talk), Jackie and Kurtis led Guillaume, Rickster and I to Burrito Boyz – which was packed. To add to the randomness, I ran into Bob and Jeff from McMaster there. They’re not even here for ImagineCup, they were just getting burritos. The burrito was delicious. And huge. I wasn’t hungry at all today and could barely eat breakfast or lunch. So much fun!

So I get back to the hotel at 4:15am, where I meet my roomate, Lucas, since my key card mysteriously ceased to function and I woke him up with my repeated attempts. Two hours later we wake up shower and head to breakfast at the MaRS centre.

Of course, nearly all the delegates from Quebec were hung-over. But that’s no problem, I’m used to coding hungover (thanks, CS Games). About a third into the competition, I had implemented the entire problem with the exception of the shortest-path algorithm, and jumped up to 2nd place. I then spent a lot of time researching Dijkstra’s algorithm, which I should know, and have definitely learned, but couldn’t for the life of me remember how to implement. Eventually I got bumped down to 5th place and kind of stayed there. At the end of the competition they announced a 4-way tie for 4th, and so there are 7 people in total going to Seattle in June for the finals!

So tonight, we celebrate!

Tags: 2007, competition, events, imaginecup, microsoft, toronto