MMMmmmMMMMMm.... 21sts, LANs, and the infinite universe

Wow, I haven't blogged since... friday!

Thats quite a while. I must have been doing things.

Friday night was Lisa's 21st. Alex gave me a ride. It was a fairly average 21st I rekon. Probably because I hardly knew anyone. It was supposed to be a 'cocktail' event. That is, we were supposed to wear something a little more formal than a t-shirt. Nobody even drank anything though. I think there was a total of about 3 people who actually drank a drop of alchohol, myself included. It felt so weird... Almost every girl there was wearing a black dress. I think quite a few of them were the same as well. Oh well, it was different, I guess.

We ended up going to pancake palour afterwards. Sat around to 'have a chat'. There were no cards involved. A rare moment to not have cards out on the table when Terence is at pancake palour.

Saturday night was Joce's 21st. I drove, so there was no drinking for me. Not that I would have anyway, since there was no alchohol tab :) I'm always a sucker for free stuff. I didn't even know there was free food for like.. half the night. So sad :( I think I met two new people. I can't even remember their names. I only know one now because he gave me an invite to his birthday, which so happens to be the same as Jane's. Now I have to decide which one to go to. I'm leaning towards Jane's, since I've actually known her for more than 2 hours. The theme for hers is 'Gods and Goddesses', and I don't know if I can be bothered dressing up. I don't have anything! There was just the possibility of going with a lightning bolt strapped to my forehead, but I don't think that'd work. Ho Humz. Free food and drink at both parties. Ho humz, yeah probably Jane's, even though its like in woop woop.

Sunday night was spent at Soh's house, having the LAN session we finally got around to having. Didn't really do much actually. We only played CS, a bit of broodwar, and some warcraft 3. There was the usual bit of leeching, but wasn't really that fun. Decided to come back home around 7:30. Went to go grab a maccas breakfast with Eric, then came home to have a nap.

I've decided I'm quite sick of both lounge/bar birthdays, and LANs. They're both fairly boring, especially the parties if you don't know anyone. The loud music at parties makes conversation almost impossible. I was having one of these 'conversations' with Michael and Grace (the med dudes) at Joce's 21st, and I think I was just nodding and saying "Yeah" to whatever they said because I couldn't understand what they were saying. I thought it was going to go on for like the whole night, but luckily, I had to sign the card, so that saved me. I thought I'd find someone I knew further away from the blaring music.

The fact that I'm not really much of a conversation starter makes these parties especially boring for me. Not only do I not understand most of what people are trying to say, I don't usually make a very conversational response to the parts I do understand. So theres a lot of awkward silences. Remind me not to do something like the typical 21st for mine (that is if I actually end up doing anything).

LANs on the other hand involve too much leeching. Half the time is spend transferring warez, pr0n, or illegal movies and songs. Not that I'm against such stuff, its just that I was under the impression that LANs were about gaming. No such luck. I don't even have any games to play anymore. I don't even see why I bothered. I did, however, manage to grab a copy of some BBC documentary on space. I think I'll go watch it.

So whats kept me too busy to write blogs?

Quite a bit actually.

Well firstly, there was the SAD exam. I don't think I went THAT well... since I ran out of time. Everyone else said they ran out of time, well at least the people I talked to. Running out of time isn't the best experience to have in an exam, especially when you're used to finishing them really early. It wasn't that we didn't know our stuff, we did. Its because they gave us more stuff to do than we had enough time for. 5 questions, the last 3 worth 3/4 of the marks. So thats half an hour each. Now if you were going to design functionality of an entire system in half an hour, I'd say.. errr... good luck. Its basically a folly. You'd end up with something so shithouse, that it wouldn't even cover most of it. Guess what my 35 minute job ended up like. Not pretty.

Went shopping afterwards. Again, shopping isn't really my thing, but I didn't really have much else to do, and there was a sale on. Didn't buy much, just a couple of shirts for work. But it was good to socialise I guess.

I borrowed some books from Terence on the way home. They should keep me occupied for quite a while.

Sam came over to leech some stuff. Got some music from him as well. Looking forward to expanding my musical horizons.

As for Thursday, didn't do much either. Read about a quarter of 'The Da Vinci code'. Its pretty interesting so far. I also went with mum and fi to deliver some more bao. We even went to pancake palour afterwards. Hmmz... yeah.. and thsa bout it..

Oh I got HL2. Fun :)

Back on track, almost

I spent almost the whole day out yesterday, so thats why no post.

I was supposed to go into uni to study, and I actaully did for a little while. Actually it was more like Fi wanted me to take her because she had an exam, and she convinced me to go to the SAD review lecture. But yeah, anyway, we went. I spent about an hour doing productive study, then headed off to the lecture.

It was such a waste of time. They didn't say anything I didn't already know. It was really packed as well. I'm guessing because for most people, SAD is their last exam so they went because they had nothing better to do. Oh well... I guess you can't have everything, and I guess its meant to be for people who are on a borederline pass. The thing is, if you knew how to do the assignments, you should be fine for the exam. Almost all the assignments were group assignments, so I guess it doesn't mean everyone who passed the assignments would would be looking at a sure pass in the exam. Damn the freeloaders.

So after that, came back home for dinner, then headed off to Terence's for the poker night. It turned out quite enjoyable actually, except for maybe Sam and Lisa, who didn't reaaalllyyy know what was going on. Alex is still funny though. His poker face is completely unreadable. No abnormal expressions there at all. He even does the hongky slap down of cards thingy. But yeah, after we figured that out, we figured he was bluffing every single hand, so after that, he went down and down and down.

We also had pizza and lots of junk food, so that was kind of unhealthy. But hey, all in the name of fun.

My social life seems to be back on track as well. After two weeks of sitting around on my arse, I finally have things to go to. A few birthday parties, poker nights, and even the movie the other day. I even got a mailed invite to a birthday party! Woah thats a first. Not only did they send an invite, they also mailed it in a handwritten envelope. I feel special :)

Some of you might be wondering what I'm doing up so early as well (if this is early). I actually got a phone call from someone other than my mum. It was someone from Hudson's recruitment agency, looking for people for telesales. No thanks. Plus, they have assesment day tomorrow, which is my exam.

If my sleeping pattern wasn't already bad enough

Even after working last night, and carrying lots of stuff up and down stairs, I still had trouble sleeping till very early in the morning. Tossing and turning in your bed isn't exactly the best experience in the world. So in the end, I gave up and read. I'm reading this book about the WW2 Normandy landings. Its quite interesting. I'm quite into all those military thingys, so that kind of makes sense I guess.

I used to think that the British only had one plan of deception to make Hitler think that they were going to land elsewhere. Now I found out that they had quite a few. There were deception plans in place to make them think that there were going to be landings in places like Finland, the south of France, and even in the Balkans. It makes me wonder how you could move a whole army from Britain to the Balkans without anyone noticing. In today's world, that'd be impossible. Satellite surveilance would have it covered the whole way.

Not only have intelligence gathering techniques changed dramatically during the last 60 years, military tactics have as well. Most of the time, air superiority would pummel any standing army into the ground. It was fairly silly of Saddam to think that he could win a conventional war against the US during the first Gulf war. He should have learnt from the communist victories in Korea and Vietnam, and with the benefit of hindsight, from the current Iraq war as well. The only way to beat a standing US army is to hide in the population, to be able to use your advantage of numbers and force them to make close combat.

So some advice to any nations thinking of standing up to the American military machine. Stay home.

Me no CEO

Today I got up late as well. I think it was only about 1 or 2 o'clock. Not too bad :)

Sat around for a while, and went to work. It wasn't that busy today at the restaurant. There was however, a lot of heavy lifting to compensate for that. Its good to know I still have some strength left after sitting around on my arse for so long. Nice to get a little exersise in as well.

My revelation for today is that I'd probably never be one of those CEOs of a big corporation. My reasoning is that since big corporations have a lot of politics involved, and that I don't like getting involved in politics myself, it'd never work out between us. Personally, I don't really like the idea of having to backstab people to get to the top. It goes against my principles. Having to backstab someone that you don't like is pretty bad to start off with, and then having to backstab someone you work with is even worse. Maybe I just don't like to have enemies. They're usually a bad thing.

I'd only like to maybe own my own business. I wouldn't want to have it listed on the stockmarket or anything, or even take on partners, unless I was ultra sure that nothing bad would happen, which is highly unlikely. Shareholders just make everything worse.

I think I found something to write about!

Yes I did. Two things actually. And before I forget, firstly, there was yesterday, and secondly, there were all the comments that I only got around to reading today.

No, I haven't finished exams yet. I've still got one on Wednesday. It should be fairly easy, I think I'll study Monday/Tuesday. Should be okay. It does seem like I'm on holidays because I think I already am. My holiday mode seems to have punched in a bit early. Remind the exam guys not to put my exams more than a few days apart or else I won't study till the last day. Also, there isn't much to do. Its not really an exam about how much you know, its more like how well you can do something, and I can't be stuffed practicing.

Yesterday, apart from getting up quite late, I actually went out. I haven't actually been 'out' as such for a few weeks at least, so this was quite a welcome change. I went to see Collateral, starting Tom Cruise. It was okay... not too flash, but not exactly bad either. Basically its about this hitman who takes a cab. An accident happens, and the cabbie gets involved.

Actually before the movie, we went to have dinner. It was meant to be this japanese place, but as usual, they didn't actually have any japanese people in the place. The ramen was spaghetti, and the food wasn't very filling. By the time I got home that night, I was starving, I had a two packets of biscuits and a couple of tins of tuna on the side (to give them some flavour). I had this dish called 'Volcano Ramen', which was basically hot spaghetti. MM... not exactly the best in the world... but oh well... I was hungry, and it tasted alright at the time.

Alex forewent his traditional standup. Normally he just stands up straight after we finish eating to leave. We managed to get him to stay sitting down to stay and 'have a chat'. Turns out we did have a nice chat... Funny guy Alex is.

After dinner, we went to the casino and spent about 2 hours losing $30. Actually, it was more like Eddie, Marcus and Alex lost $30 and the rest of us just stood around laughing at them. Hohoho. Grace actually won $5, cashed it in, and ran :) So smart. Then some people got some Boost juice, and we saw the movie. (Read above if you missed the movie part)

As we were leavin to head off, I saw some people that looked familiar. But they were all dressed up and stuff... so naturally, I thought that no, it couldn't have been people I knew... particuarly not on a Thursday night at crown. Or is that asian night at next blue? Anyway, turns out they did know me. after shouting my name a few times, they finally managed to get my attention. It was Dot and her shanghainese friend... damn I forgot her name... ahahah... ah crap.. she better not read this. (somebody just tell me what her name is again, I think it started with a 'S')

Going home was a bit of a bother. Since Alex had driven us everywhere from uni, and Terence's umbrella was in Eddie's car who was driven by Marcus to the casino, we went with Marcus to Eddie's car, took Eddie's car to my car, and the finally went home. But no... my night didn't end there... there was naruto to watch. Interesting development, next week's episode looks to be interesting as well.

At about 3:30 in the morning, we got a call from the security company. The alarm at the grocery went off, so dad and I went to check it out since I was still awake. No harm seems to have been done. Possibly just a very curious cat looking for something to eat. Not that those cats don't have enough... greedy bastards... they get all the scraps anyway.

time for something substantial...

I think its about time for writing something which has some value. So for today, its cereal.

Whats in a humble box of cereal? Usually, wheat. Lots and lots of wheat. Perhaps lots of wheat extract.

In some cases (e.g. rice bubbles, coco pops), they look like rice. Although it puzzles me to see how those bits of stuff could actually come from rice. You know.. this isn't really going anywhere, I think I'll start again.

so bored

I had my exam yesterday, and I'm already really bored.

All I did today was play games and eat. *sigh*

Played some broodwar with terence. First time in a long time. Just those comp stomps. Oh well, fun while it lasted.

Okay so I did actually do some study today, since my exam IS tomorrow after all.

But notice the word some. *sigh* I'm still having motivation problems after all this time.

So what did I do instead? The usual. Sit around, play Rome, watch Alias, eat, sleep, umm... yeah thats about the extent of my life.

Again with the nothingness

Sorry... didn't do anything today either... but woke up a little earlier... like.. 2pm. Good effort yeah?

On a sidenote...

I just remembered that yesterday, when I was checking the current temperatures on the bureau of metetrology website... that the relative humidity was like 97%. I think thats really quite silly, since it was raining. I always thought it measured the amount of moisture in the air... but REALLY...

Bored?

I know the last few posts haven't been very interesting at all. Hey perhaps maybe every post I've ever written hasn't been very interesting. Well... since I've been writing crappy and boring posts, I've felt kind of crap. My life doesn't seem as interesting as it used to be a few weeks or months ago. Today wasn't any different.

I watched a lot of alias season 1... played some Rome: Total war (I can't get enough :) ) and umm... went to work. Yes... work.... but for my parents. Heheh... oh well.. at least I'm not in debt to them anymore, assuming that they don't hold those school fees and meals against me.

So... about tv shows. I think I've figured out how a lot of the tv shows I watch keep me watching. Firstly, episodes have conflict. Now this conflict is usually never very simple conflict. Its almost always complicated e.g. the OC. Now there is hardly ever a simple situation in that show, and even I can't think of a simple solution. Secondly, these conflicts are usually long winded, taking at least a few episodes to build up enough suspense and tension to bring it to the forefront of the show's plot. This is particularly evident is shows such as Naruto, and Alias. They keep you wanting more for a long time.

Not only do these conflicts happen, but they happen simutaneously. So as one sub-plot gets finalised, another springs into its place, which was lurking in the background for the few episodes that the previous one was getting closure (love that word). Its like a continuous flow of conflicts. You just can't stop watching. Its great if you've got the entire series on DVD or ripped from somewhere, but if you have to wait till next weeks episode, with those damned commercials, it gets quite frustrating (although watching an entire season in one sitting isn't that great either).

I just thought I'd break the monotony a bit =)

I woke up so late today I had a headache. It must've been like 3:30. That didn't really leave me enough time to do anything productive. So guess what I did?

Played games... watched next episode of OC.

Oh and I finally got alias season 1... haven't actually seen that in its entirety, so watched a bit of that.

Disappointed.... no chidori vs rasengan?!

For those of you who watch Naruto, I thought it was quite disappointing. I mean, I could see it coming a mile away, but still. It would have been interesting if it did happen. Oh well, can't have everything you want.

I was actually meant to get up a bit earlier today to go to uni and do a bit of cramming before the exam. But, seeing as getting up early isn't exactly my strong point, it didn't end up happening. Instead, I just left at around 12:30 and crammed in the car while I waited.

The exam itself went okay. Too many itty bitty things I missed out on I think. Even though it was all multiple choice, some of the questions were kinda crap. Hopefully I should do alright. I think its the only possible H1 I can get. Actualyl we don't even have our assignment marks back. I could have done really crap :( Hmm.. oh well, done now, no need to worry about it anymore.

I think I really need to get out a bit more. I've been sitting at home doing nothing. Terence's poker idea sounds pretty interesting actually. I rekon we should use money. Like, everyone puts in a maximum of $10 for the night, and it gets converted into mahjong chips. So whatever happens at the end, we just go out to PP or something and they shout =) Its kind of like the relatives version of mahjong, cept I'm sure they'll have a bit of cash left over to keep.

Anyone feel like doing anything tonight? I'm bored...

Its true...

Getting up early after sleeping really late can sometimes be good, and sometimes make you feel like crap. Today was probably leaning towards the good side. After only about 4 hours, I got up to go to uni and study. Yes 4 hours. Why 4 hours? Because trying to sleep when you haven't done anything sucks. I think I was up till at least 4:30 trying to sleep. *sigh* When will I ever learn?

So anyway, went to uni and studied. Mainly did a lot of legal and ethical frameworks stuff, but also did some networks as well. I probably don't know enough to do really well in the exam, but oh well. I really can't be stuffed this semester. Not really sure why either.

I had KFC for lunch again. Saw Garry, but he didn't see me. Looked a little busy, so I thought I shouldn't disturb him. Thats not the real reason of course, just one I made up then. Good enough though.

Studied some more, came home, ate, sat around. The next episode of Naruto hasn't come out yet, which is quite strange actually.

You know what? I forgot to say that I had an exam yesterday. If anyone is wondering, I think I didn't go TOO badly. That is, I don't think I failed...

Today was another one filled with nothing. I got up really late, again. I only just started studying then. I read through most of the lecture slides, had enough, and sat down to write this blog.

I'm downloading more stuff, watching anime, and just sitting around for the most part. Some more episodes of anime are just about to be downloaded. Yay. I'm hungry too.

Jeez this is really unstructured. I need to find something to talk about, seriously.

Oh by the way, for those of you who don't know. Homestar Runner is really cool. Yeah thats about it really. Nothing to say again.

woah

Yeah its been a while. I haven't really written anything because not much has been going on. Plus I was meant to be studying, so no blog creates the illusion that I was actually studying. Sif :)

So what have I been up to I hear you all ask. Well a couple of things. Watching the OC, playing more Rome: Total War, and errr... trying to study.

The OC is really addictive. After watching like the rest of the season, I went back to the start and the episodes I missed. After watching those, I just kept going and going. I think I'm up to episode 12, again. Heheheh. The end is quite sad actually. Everyone is unhappy, people leave, people cry, etc. I almost cried too :~(

I also got the first episode of season two. Everything is all happy again. Except for Teresa, but she can stay in Chino.

Ah... cbf writing anything tonight.

My second client?

I got woken up again today. Silly Fi. I was just going to bum the whole day. Actually, I did bum the whole day, but I was planning on sleeping for a bit longer.

She woke me up to take her to Heidelberg. Then 2 minutes later, she doesn't need me anymore. So I just started to play games...

Mel called. Now her computer was stuffed. Actually, it still is kind of stuffed, since it won't actually turn on, but the urgent problem is out of the way. So that was the problem. I think the motherboard is stuffed. She said the last time it half-turned-on successfully it made lots of funny noises... I don't think its the power supply because the motherboard LED turns on when you plug it in.

Mel had something due in a couple of days, so instead, we just kind of took the hard drives out of the computer, used Adrian's computer as an organ donor, and copied the files across. Hmm.. that isn't a very good analogy. Okay so we just replaced one of his hard drives with Mel's one with work on it, and just copied it over.

So Age, if you're wondering what all Mel's stuff is doing on your computer, umm... yeah. Plus, your case is really really really dusty. You should clean it one day.

I got paid in cake. Very chocolately and eggy cake, but still cake all the same.

Bummed around for the rest of the night. Paul just came over to grab his parking permit, the legal textbook and initial d. Also dropped by series 1 of OC while he was at it, which means I don't have to get it from Andrew, but they're his things anyway, so I guess I'll have to give it back eventually.

Going to uni tomorrow. Need to study. Yeah.. lots of study =) Hopefully it will be productive.

studying!? mmm nah

Last night, we had our first box hill night in a long time. It was China bar, and Sam filled us in on recent events in his life. See his blog for more info :) Poor guy. Don't worry about it, you'll be alright, just forget about it.

I got up fairly early today to go to uni and print off stuff and study. Got there around 10ish, printed stuff off till about 11ish, sat around trying to study till about 1:30ish, got really really bored and had a headache, and went home to eat and stuff. lol. So much for studying. I should really do some actual study I rekon, but I can't be stuffed.

So what did I do instead? Watched the Melbourne Cup, sat around, played more Rome, sat around some more.

I've got really short posts lately. I think I need something to talk about.

Too much procrastination, not enough work. Thats usually what happens in my life. Its also particularly accurate today. Again I slept till really late, sat around playing games the rest of the time, and just ate dinner. Quite boring really. I think I'm going to go to uni tomorrow to sit around and study. Also to use up all that print quota I have at IS to print out all my lecture notes.

Ho humz. Looks like its going to be a fairly boring night.

My first client! kind of .. and Eewwwwwwwww

The day started off in a rather boring fashion. I woke up, and my room was boiling, so I went out into the sitting room to sleep on the couch. Then I moved to my parent's room when they left. My room is always the hottest in the morning. It doesn't help that I close the door when I go to sleep.

I didn't really wake up until Mel's uncle called again. I was helping him fix his net connection over the phone. It didn't really help much. I had him reformat his P4. He had to come over to get the XP cds and stuff, and I walked him through a little of the install. Its quite a handful to give tech support over the phone. I guess I'm a little glad that I didn't end up getting that tech support job at the ISP a while ago.

You'd think it'd be okay if you just format and put everything back the way it was. We even tried to use system restore, and setting up connection sharing manually. No such luck. Firstly we couldn't open the network properties of his internet connection, secondly, the system restore wasn't even working. All it was giving us was a message that said we couldn't restore. Gee thanks microsoft, I love your error messages, so useful.

So we decided to format. That didn't solve the problem. Spent ages trying to get it to work using the home netwokring wizard and stuff like that. No such luck. Cutting 5 hours short, we just decided (because I brought my modem just in case) that we'd give my modem a go. It worked like a charm. Not only that, it also lets him share the net without any computer being on. Handy huh.

Also, it turns out that there was something with his iBook settings as well. That wasn't actually the main problem, as his iMac seemed to have the same problems. So I gave him my modem, picked up a modem on the way back home from Wilson (and some maccas while I was at it), and yeah. Done.

So I got home, ate my maccas, and sat around. Fi was feeling really shitty. I just found out why. There was seriously 2 kgs of vomit in the bathroom. Talk about ew. I was dry retching just from standing there. *shudder* It was so bad. I think I'll just leave it at that.