bilious - not as bad as your mother promised

OMG a quiz! (The A-Z of Me)

2007-03-11T06:45:02Z

So I saw this on Melissa's LJ, I figured I'd take it on, with a little bit of a modification to make it more exciting.

The Letter A
Are you available?: Yes.
What is your age?: 22 years and two weeks.
What annoys you?: Irrationality and illogicality - a lot of misdeeds wouldn't happen if people stopped for a moment and reasoned.

The Letter B
Do you live in a big house?: It's largish for two people and has a fairly large lounge room.
When is your birthday?: 25th of February. I don't ever remember getting an elephant badge for my birthday :(

The Letter C
What's your favorite candy?: Mint flavoured stuff, like minties or XXX mints.
When was the last time you cried?: Can't actually remember, it would have been a long time ago probably.

The Letter D
Do you daydream?: In lectures I sometimes start thinking of other stuff. I dunno if it's daydreaming, but it's certainly not relevant to what I am learning.
What's your favorite kind of dog?: My two cute little doggies.
What day of the week is it?: Sunday.

The Letter E
How do you like your eggs?: As eggs benedict, with bacon instead of salmon, though salmon works as well but is more expensive.
Have you ever been in the emergency room?: No, I don't think so. I think I got stitched in my head at a GP.
What's the easiest thing ever to do?: This is an odd question. It is easy to breathe, and eat icecream. I also enjoy just chilling and chatting with friends.

The Letter F
Have you ever flown in a plane?: A wise woman once said, "Yes, and it's still very exciting to me." I agree very much - I still get a little giddy whenever I fly but I look all calm and collected on the outside, though I usually grin like a madman during takeoff and landing.
Do you use fly swatters?: No, I just keep the screens closed and food away.

The Letter G
Do you chew gum?: No, I prefer a mint over gum.
Are you a giver or a taker?: I consider myself to give out more (help, loaning of stuff etc) generally than I take in.
Do you like gummy candies?: Yes, if they're soft and chewy.

The Letter H
How are you?: Hot. Goddamned it's hot. According to a little research it is the hottest day since 14:25, 14 December 2004.
What's your height?: 165/170/175 I dunno. I don't measure myself.
What color is your hair?: Brown

The Letter I
What's your favorite ice cream?: Chocolate or caramel. If there was a raspberry icecream, that would probably win.
Have you ever ice skated?: "No! Does anyone want to take me?" Sure. Days like this one make me just want to fall over onto ice and never get up.
Do you play an instrument?: Trumpet, badly.

The Letter J
What's your favorite jelly bean?: Red. Sweet, sweet sugar.
Have you ever heard a really hilarious joke?: My uncle told me a pretty funny one about making a duck-caller from a bottlecap. You go through a whole heap of random actions on the bottle cap (flicking it, bending it, knocking it on the table etc to do certain things to it) and then you hold it up to your mouth and talk like an air traffic controller and say "Calling all ducks, calling all ducks". Works well when you're drinking (obviously) but now I've ruined it for anyone who reads this.

The Letter K
Who do you want to kill?: Nobody. I think there's nothing to be gained from it, except revenge which is the shallowest of all reasons for justice.
Do you want kids?: Eventually. I've been told I'd make a good father. I want to teach them justice and rationality and how to be good kids.
Where did you have kindergarten?: Here - I went there because it was a full day kindy/pre-school as opposed to Walkerston which was apparently half day.

The Letter L
Are you laid back?: I try to be, and I definitely think I've made gains in this respect in the last few years.
Do you lie?: Generally no. I try to avoid getting into circumstances where I have to lie.

The Letter M
Whats your favorite movie?: Lots. Latest movie I watched that I liked was Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
Do you still watch Disney movies?: No.
Do you like mangos?: Not especially, no. I find them to be too sweet and not really for me.

The Letter N
Do you have a nickname?: G, G-Man, bilious, bili (billy). There was someone at college who earnestly believed bilious was my surname, and my friends tend to call me 'bili' in public. They actually had the staff at Hog's Breath sing "Happy birthday Billy" on my birthday.
What's your favorite number?: 1 is a pretty cool number. It's special, it's also not prime.
Do you prefer night over day?: Day because nights are increasingly boring.

The Letter O
What's your one wish?: Big bags of money.
Are you an only child?: No, I have three brothers; one younger and two older.
Do you wish this was over?: Meh, I'm not doing much otherwise. Though I am editing it in notepad, so it's very boring. Maybe I should put pictures into it or something so that you don't lose your place.
Do you have at least one fear?: I should put something ridiculous in here so that a future stalker finds it and then like, tries to scare me somehow by trying to be dramatic and going, "So, Greg, I have a few ... COTTON BALLS! HAHAHAHA YOU'RE SO SCARED!" And I'd be like "What?" and s/he'd be like "Ah, damn I read that on your livejournal. Next time, Gadget. Next time."

The Letter P
What's a personality trait you look for in the opposite sex?: Intelligence, reason, unassumingness.
Do you prefer pencils or pens?: Pens.

The Letter Q
Are you quick to judge people?: Not really, I know you sort of need a little bit of time to judge people. On the street, etc you might need to make quick decisions though, so I might in that way.

The Letter R
Do you think you're always right?: I generally feel confident about the things I say, and unless it's of some importance (like, if we're driving in the right direction) or I am totally sure that I am right, I won't actually push the matter.
Do you watch reality TV?: Negative. I prefer engrossing TV shows like Lost and House.

The Letter S
Do you prefer sun or rain?: Rain. It's just so, cooling and refreshing.
Do you like snow?: Yes, I do.
What's your favorite season?: Winter; I really like coldness. And when I get sick of it, it's hard to cool down in summer, but easy to warm up in winter.

The Letter T
What time is it?: 15:59
What time did you wake?: 9:12am
When was the last time you slept in a tent?: Wow. A long time ago. Probably camping at Eungella mid-2004?

The Letter U
Are you wearing underwear?: Yes.
Underwear or boxers?: Presumbly it means "briefs" or boxers, since boxershorts are actually underwear. However, I wear boxers to bed, and briefs during the day.

The Letter V
What's the worst veggie?: Whichever crazy vegetable in Chinese soups that have bitter flavour when you catch a bit of it.
Where do you want to go on vacation?: THE MOON. But on Earth, China probably.
Where was your last family vacation to?: A long time ago, probably to Cardwell in 2003?

The Letter W
What's your worst habit?: Procrastination.
Where do you live?: Brisbane, Australia.

The Letter X
Have you ever had an x-ray?: The only x-ray I've ever had has been of my teeth for a cavity.
Have you seen the X Games?: If it's the games where people ride BMX bikes and hurt their backs, probably seen it in passing on TV.
Do you own a xylophone?: I am sure there's a xylophinist (that is an odd word, try saying it like zy-loff-in-ist) out there chomping at the bit to answer this question.

The Letter Y
Do you like the color yellow?: Not really.
Whats one thing you yearn for?: For excitement!

The Letter Z
What's your zodiac sign?: Pisces, though zodiacs are dumb. (see below)
Do you believe in the zodiac?: No, not really. The idea that 1/12th the world will share the same "Talk to your boss or business partner today to open lines of communication. Watch your money today, because a financial decision will arise that will require your attention. Take this opportunity to reconnect with your lover, or to be open to advances if you're single." Seriously, that's what it says EVERY DAY. For some people, I am sure it's reassuring to have someone pat them on the head and give them a little bit of sagely-sounding but ultimately hollow and generic advice as they run off to the bus in the morning. It's sort of like your mother telling you that she loves you and to wear clean underwear because she has nothing else to say.

How do I get this noticed?

2006-04-06T06:45:12Z

I know you're probably none too impressed with my recent performance on the journal. Last update FEBRUARY? What's up with that?

I do apologise, but there's been nothing to report. No one really cares about the state of my hard disk drives, or my ability to walk 500m to Uni.

Oh what's that? You do?

OK. Well, let me throw some words out there firstly for the search engines and hopefully the people who get suckered in by search engines to read this entry. I really do hope they do. Why? Because if someone gave me this advice three weeks ago, they'd have saved me about 36 hours of my life. Promise IDE Card and the error the file or directory is corrupt and unreadable has a cause. This has been a bane of my life since I got the Promise card, and now I finally know how it ticks. If you move the card to a different PCI slot, boot without it and then boot with it - or any other generally normal system building activities, it reverts to the Microsoft provided Ultra TX2 drivers. This doesn't work very well with newly flashed cards. Use the Promise provided drivers. Trust me. It'll change your life.

With that over, you may be interested to hear what happened to me: I obtained a new network card for my computer machine, and shuffled PCI cards to put it in. I moved my PCI IDE card, which I'm using to connect an additional few HDDs. I rebooted and stuff went haywire. The card started ruining all the file tables and stuff. I finally figured out the reason four days later, after a complete (and again, destroyed) restoration of files. Such is life though. At least I didn't lose my Uni work.

Everything else has been reasonably acceptable in life. A few assessment pieces have crept up on me an will be doing their best to defeat me in the next few days, but do not fear! I shall slay the beasts.

Also, my camera is coming out from repair in a week or so. FINALLY. It's been in since November last year. I am considering buying some sort of present for myself when I get it, a remote or wide-angle lens or filters. Who knows. I'll see.

OK, well, that's about it. If you're still with me you can have a present. Check out the webcamera in my room. It's very exciting and you might get to see me do such things as: Type on a computer, drink milk or sleep. Check it: http://bilicam.bilious.org/

Cheerio

Apple iPod, Microsoft Oddity

2005-12-26T15:34:44Z

So, in a lull in the Christmas festivities (read: visiting relatives without airconditioning) I decided to launch into an artistic project of sorts. Following in the footsteps of another Aussie iPod owner, and brushed my iPod. It looks good and means I can now remove the blue evo2 protective case I've had on it for the last year without fear of it getting much more flawed.

Now, much to my chagrin this afternoon, for some reason MSN Messenger blocks every message that contains any one of my photo gallery links. I'm exceptionally baffled at it. So, I figure I shan't forego a chance to bag out MSN doubly, and give you an image I made for no reason. MSN A-Patch (violate MSN's EULA in style). (Edit: Seems the URL has changed. Oh dear, oh my. I'm not updating the image, use this link instead: A-Patch)

Peace Out, etc

EXAM BLOCK!

2005-11-09T15:56:00Z

The magic of an exam block never really wears off. It's got all the slackery and vapid days of the semester, but with the added responsibility of getting up for your 11am exam. These surely are my glory days.

So my last few weeks have been spent in a daze, doing such things as:
- using my elite Adobe Illustrator skillz to prepare final revisions of no less than five different T-Shirts for college wings and auxiliary groups.
- hum-drum work stuff.
- eating far too much McDonalds.
- seeing to it that my desk is perfectly clean.
- burning DVDs.

The Friday before SWOTVAC started, my work shifted over a new college (International House) to its network, which makes it now the predominant network administration organisation for colleges at the University of Queensland. There were a few hiccups, but the beauty of college students are that they tend to help each other out and not whinge too much.

I had an Accounting for Decision Making exam on the newly introduced additional exam day. (Last Saturday, for anyone who isn't aware.) It seemed to have gone well, so here's hoping. I've been spending these days being lame and sleeping, eating and well ... nothing. It's a worrisome thought.

Tonight while checking my website stats, I noticed that my domain www.thisisnotatest.org had an inordinate amount of traffic. (Inordinate here is roughly 25mb in the last ten days. It's inordinate because technically all the site has is my happy little trashcan.) Turns out my Drama Llama image (see it here!) is doing the rounds at various forums etc. So I appended a little message at the bottom. Excitement!

One more week essentially and I'll be out of college for another year.

And that's that.

As you can see, the effect of Mama Cass is devastating

2005-10-05T14:43:47Z

Viewing my Audioscrobbler page, you may notice the abundance of Mama Cass. It was just one song, but boy was her wrath terrible.

This, kids is why you shouldn't leave 2m30s long songs as the only track in a repeating playlist while you sleep. It's just not a good idea.

Tired. Long-haired. Mackay.

2005-09-23T09:44:47Z

So I'm in Mackay.

I woke up at 05:00 and did the necessary preparations for leaving my room all alone (lock windows, then realise that I should leave a little gap open in the screened one; change my sheets; clean off my desk). Passport, check. Licence, check. Dollars, check. Bag, check. Camera, ipod, phone, keys, mints, water, Semper Floreat (pretty good edition, actually), check, check, checkity.

Wake up Schultz to drive me to the Towoong railway station. (Thank you very much Josh, you saved me like ... $20 in cab fare.) Take some photos of the railway station (I really like the first one). And I'm off to the airport. Wee. Watched an unfortunate guy pick up his comically oversized rucksuck at the International Airport only to have the plastic components of the arm-straps bust. Unlucky.

Get to the Virgin check-in area and see that there's tonnes of bewildered looking people milling around the self-check-in kiosks. Seems that they've taken the jump from having them just for individuals with hand luggage, and now we get to check our own bags. (The magic is diminished somewhat because you have to take it up to the counter to deposit it anyways, so meh.) I got chastised by the guy telling people to use the machines because I didn't bring a print-out of my flight itinerary (which has the bar code to do the self-serve). Seriously, what's the point of ticketless air-travel if you need to print your own ticket? One of the wonderful things about the Australian airline industry in the last four years has been that you can just rock up at the counter and give 'em your name. Easy as pie, no fuss.
And besides, didn't want to waste my printer quota.

Photos out of the terminal. I was waiting for a security guard to come tap me on the shoulder, but I suppose they just realised I'm a sad, sad geek and not a terrorist. Took photos on the plane. Nothing exceptionally exciting as the window really prevented that - it's not particularly reassuring to see hundreds of tiny stress fractures in your plane window, but above all else it ruins a photo.

I took one of the "Life vest" notice, because it's always concerned me for a long while that there could really be no life vest there. I mean, removing it probably doesn't sound an alarm, and an inventory on safety equipment certainly doesn't happen before every flight. (If you did, they'd want to pay someone a lot for wandering around in knee-guards checking under each seat and that cost just isn't represented in the ticket). So someone may have pinched your life vest. And you'll never know. Until you really, really need it. Just end up hoping there's a toddler who can't use his daddy-sized life vest sitting next to you. Or even better, that you plane doesn't ditch into the ocean.

Little brother and his girlfriend picked me up from the airport and we went to the Department of Transport so I could renew my Learner's License for the fourth year ... yeh. Drop in at my Mum's work to see the staff, check out the new entrance/education facilities/lots of high ceiling-ed echoey spaces, take some photos.

Get home, check out my Mum's new iPod nano. She's such a hipster. She bought a mini four weeks ago, and when the nano came out, she had to have one of those. So now she has two iPods and only one set of ears. Shame that. Set up ml_ipod to transfer music from her mini to nano. Very neat little plugin that.

Fell asleep for a few hours, and just had a splitting headache afterward.

And now I'm here, for your benefit.

Woo.

I'm going to have dinner.

Exhibits some forms of voodoo magix

2005-09-18T12:55:25Z

My goodness. Illustrator CS2 is the sex.
I know that the subject matter of my first foray into tracing isn't all that exciting, but it has the correct elements of linearity and realness to be appropriate. I have to say, that's a damned fine lamppost, made even better by the fact that it's definable by bezier curves. Take that raster.

In other news, I completed my Criminal Law B exam on Saturday. The result of that? Another post-exam photographic epiphany. I've also taken the opportunity to create a screenshot gallery

Oh, and the wasting of many minutes shouting at Rhett to make me some PHP galleries. Which is why they currently look all the same. (Because they are all the same.) I will be fixing up the galleries whose thumbnails contain those ugly grey sides soon enough.

And that's about it. I'll be on holidays in Mackay next Friday.

Fraudsters, shysters and thieves!

2005-09-07T04:26:31Z

This shouldn't excite me ... but it does.

In my August 25th entry, I mentioned I fired off an angry postal letter (50 cents and all ... but I've found that companies are much more likely to take note of snail mail) to the domain registrars Enetica over medicare.com.au. Well, as you may note, I've linked it as it's now a blank page. To their credit Enetica acted pretty quickly to pull the plug on the shameless scum drawing in witless users who just want access to information about their subsidised health care. (Scumbags.)

The reason we don't have the .com.au 2LD being overrun (generally) by charlatans is that in accordance with auDA's policy - .com.au is specifically limited to only commercial entities - with the important byline that they're registered with an ACN or throught a state. I have a good feeling that an ABN might also get you in the door. Regardless, it's for groups with evidence of commercial propriety.

No offence to Enetica, or any of the other AU 2LD registrars - but how frickin' easy would it be to have a mandatory field for ATO/ASIC identity number? All the databases for that junk are online and it would take about a second to verify. Newly registered business? Give them a two week grace and then recheck. If the scum-spammers are stupid enough to take this option, pocket their fee and kill their 2LD next month. (Though abr.gov.au seems to be updated daily. So, even two weeks is probably a wide-ass margin.)

It should be noted that if the TLD rules were applied in the US ... I wouldn't be on bilious.org.

But then again, nor would bilious.com

More photos

2005-09-04T05:49:01Z

Well, I sat my Accounting for Decision Making (ACCT1101) mid-semester exam yesterday. Afterward I wandered about the university grounds, with my camera at the ready. I've thrown some of the better photos up onto the web at my site.

Enjoy.

It's Hot In Herre

2005-08-27T16:28:04Z

Herre != Here... Try harder next time generic rap star.

Anyways, I'm sure Rhett and increasingly Clint will relish this post with a certain amount of glee.

I'm an OCAUer. Rhett has the impression that OCAUers worry about their temperatures. (Disregarding the fact that in reality they no doubt worry more about The Pub than their core temp values.)

So it's now my turn to show off >> my temp stats!<< Click at your own peril; beware of the awesome.

Note: X scale is not continuous. X is compressed to 0.5 regular during the period that data is missing. I think I switched my computer off and missed two valuable save points.

That's right mofos. I'm a boring geeban now.

I think I know someone who will enjoy this

2005-08-26T12:16:17Z

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ok_Soda

Update

2005-08-25T01:36:10Z

Well, lemme tell you. I've just ditched lj.net as my LJ posting program because, well, it's utterly terrible. Paste doesn't even work, which, in a text-based whinging journal, I very important.

But anyhow, moving along.

The week has been relatively interesting, or at least in the perspective of me. I blew up my LCD unit/fan controller by my fundamental stupidity. I have posted a letter to Enetica regarding a fraudulent registration of www.medicare.com.au (bastards are spammers using the Medicare name). Went on way too many Maccas runs. And formulated a political party in the upcoming UQ.union elections.

So, yeh, that's about it.

Oh, what? You wanna know more about my foray into politics?
It's nothing really! Over lunch, myself and a friend decided to create a Colleges' Party, and basically spam up the ballot paper with applicants. Well, we did and we have. I'm the Presidential applicant for the party. It is essentially a little fun in what is traditionally a One Horse Race. So, though Focus (goddamn lefty scum) will probably win, we'll have a little fun riling them up. Yeh, so ... woot for that.

Anyways, I'm gonna go do something over there. Bye.

A day in the life of.

2005-08-19T04:45:41Z

So I know what you're all thinkingg right now, "Greg, tell us what the hell you've been doing for the last week or so!" OK. Just for you, and because you asked nicely.

Well, the accurate answer is "Not much," but that wouldn't make for a good LJ entry, now would it? No, it wouldn't. So allow me to walk you through the boring minutae of my life in the last week, and we shall enjoy the ride.

On Thursday, I went to the GP and had my stitches taken out as they had apparently burst/reacted and got infected I was put on a course of Keflex, the off-brand alternative for which is called 'Sporahexal' and apparently doesn't do anything nasty with alcohol (score.) I also bought a tripod on Wednesday or Thursday, I can't remember which, but I have one of those now.

Friday saw nothing special, nor did the weekend. I can't even remember what I did it was that lacking in meaning.

On Tuesday I went to the Emmanuel At Home at the Carlton Crest in Brisbane. Not as good as last year's, but reasonable nonetheless. Not too many drunks, and if someone did get wasted they were quickly spirited away out of sight (out of mind).

The next day (Wednesday) while everyone was busy getting rid of hangovers or getting dolled up fhr the Students' Day Raceday - I went to Indro rail station to await my brother and co (probable future in-laws) to pick me up. We drove for about 2 hours and got to the Darling Downs Zoo. I have
photos up on my site, so enjoy them, including the hideous one of my brother looking somewhat like that goddamned Crazy Frog. Saw lions and tigers and jaguars (oh my) and filled my CF card to the brim. Awesome.

And then last night I went to Maccas. I have the feeling I know what the Desaparecidos felt like when singing Greater Omaha. (For reference, it's about a city getting lots of fast food restaurants).

Updating

2005-08-04T02:45:53Z

Well then, it's been a while hasn't it. Not much to update, well, there sort of is.

A week or so ago I went to the doc regarding a funny mole thing and he got me signed up to get it taken out. Huzzah. Just on Monday, a few hundred dollars (and three local anasthetic needles) later and I am now one mole down and anticipating a cool scar that none of you ever get to see (it's on my upper buttock).

Last weekend I went to the Gold Coast to visit my Mum who was down for a conference. So I got to stay in the Jupiter's Casino, drink a daquiri or two and (most importantly) took photos. I'm quite enamoured by the slow exposures at night, but that seagull was pretty cool too. Also bought a nice belt, but shush.

And now ... now what? Well, not much it seems there's not much to say - my life isn't very exciting, no. Dangerous? Yes.

Working on a new look for my main page, one that will incorporate my AudioScrobbler. Also, hopefully an update of the template used for the photo pages will be forthcoming.

And that, as they say, is that. I'm going to lunch now, as it has been 24 hours since I ate. Fun.

Cheers.

Harumph!

2005-07-20T09:27:17Z

Well, I'm back but they didn't move the woman out of my room even though they said they would. Oh well, what can I do? Bunk up with a foreign conference guest? No.

Anyways, they've got me in some far flung Busch wing room, where I cannot find the power points. It'll do, until tomorrow at least.

My flight was delayed by one hour or so because of bad weather etc, but I got a cheap taxi fare back to St Lucia.

Exam on Saturday, must study for that. Woo.

And that's it.

OMG ... bilious uses paste-test

2005-07-17T10:30:25Z

I'm sorry folks - but I know you all care extraordinarily about my power colour. I liked the way it can pick you with just five questions. Sort of like a horocope.

Your Power Color Is Lime Green

At Your Highest:
You are adventurous, witty, and a visionary.

At Your Lowest:
You feel misunderstood, like you don't fit in.

In Love:
You have a tough exterior, but can be very dedicated.

How You're Attractive:
Your self-awareness and confidence lights up a room.

Your Eternal Question:
"What else do I need in my life?"

What's Your Power Color?

bilious.org ... revisited

2005-07-09T16:13:37Z

Well, I did the major design work for bilious.org before dinner tonight.
I like to think it's a robust design that could handle as many as three (3) links.

Anyways, working on getting the wiki going, from where I'm not sure what I'll be doing there... It'll probably be registered users only, so that any mass defacement will get linked to somebody and I can delete you! Woot.

Photos will probably be slow to go up, since I'm on dialup atm. Also, a lack of stuff I might want to put up. Meh.

Enjoy folks

bilious.org

2005-07-08T05:37:22Z

I'm the newly proud owner of bilious.org* in addition to a new hosting plan.

Accept no substitutes. Especially not bilious.com

*Note, I'm waiting for the DNS to cycle, so until then you get the see GoDaddy's tripe.

Uni-Utility

2005-07-06T10:42:27Z

I've long had a game I play with myself where I try to find items which lack multi-purposeness. Ultimate of lack of mutplie utilities is the key.

So there's very few things that but one purpose. Yes, you can take individual components for things (eg, a resistor whose sole aim in life is to annoy electricity) but it's much more fun to find fully formed items.

To date my collection of uni-utility items is one.

The humble egg cup.

I was looking at Tic-Tacs today, but realised people eat them like a lolly. So damn. Join the hunt.

Results are up

2005-07-06T00:04:03Z

Well, I woke up at 07:40 this morning (thinking it was 10:00). I'm pleased I woke up then, and not at 10:00 since right now Si-net is moving at roughly the pace of an academic. The University staggered the release of marks, no doubt to avoid a bum's rush but frankly I don't expect Arts students to get up for their 05:00 release. So now the University's staggering with the release of marks. (Oh, I'm such a witty pun-maker!)
The only result I can look up on Si-net is:
"Java Exception error '80004005'
psft.pt75.beans.ado.ADOException: bea.jolt.JoltRemoteService(MsgAPI)call(); nested exception is: java.io.IOException: bea.jolt.JoltRemoteService(MsgAPI)call()
/uqsa76pd/UQ/vbs/comm_fu_func_utils.vbs, line 542"

And frankly, I love a smoking pile of server.

However, being the early bird that I am I have good news!

My marks, from what I might describe as "My bludgiest semester ever." are:
ECON2010: Microeconomic Theory: 4
ECON2020: Macroeconomic Theory: SP (sit a special in two weeks)
LAWS2004: Criminal Law: 4
LAWS2005: Constitutional Law A: 6

Woot is me. I'm quite pleased. No repeated subjects!

bilious @ 2005-07-03T23:49:00

2005-07-03T13:49:58Z

"... what chance did this toddler have of scaling a 150m vertical cliff surrounded by a cloud of angry bees?"

It's a little dramatic, but I just heard it on the tele. A TV show called "Going to Extremes" follows some British guy as he does wacky extreme adventures across the globe. And not your "OMG I travelled to New Zealand and rode a jet boat" extreme adventures, but things like trekking 5 days across deserts for the hell of it.

Sounds like the good life really... Where can I sign up?

Today was another day

2005-06-30T13:57:42Z

This is going to impress those of you who enjoy contentless posts... I'm going to update what I've done in the previous days. Woot.

Went driving yesterday with my little brother. Bought some large cupped earphones since I left mine in Brisbane, and they're sort of necessary. Went driving about, saw some piglets and visited a farm. Drove down to a quiet little camping spot off Town Beach and discussed proprietary interests with respect to squatters and Bristol Shire Council (I think. Frankly, my trespass is a little rusty.) Just before I went to bed I finished off reading "A Short History of Everything" which I have been 'reading' since February. I thought I was a long way from being done, but the guy has seriously over 100 pages of bibliography, references and notes. Seriously!

Today wake up at a reasonable respectable 8am. Hit some economics study since I have a special exam some time between 21-23 and then took Brendan up on an invitation to eat lunch with him and Brooke. (I think he's probably got some of the homeless lady's rocky road in his boot.) Came home, did some preliminary work on fleshing out a mockup of my phonebook. Looks good too. And now I am watching some Numb3rs, which is pretty cool but also drawing to an end now... [frowny face]

And now ... I'm going to bed. I hope you've enjoyed my update.

Time for a rant...

2005-06-28T08:12:22Z

I know that in my last update, I stated I'd done a pretty good job at mellowing out. In fact I gave myself 90% rating for mellowing out and no longer finding faults in stuff.

I think that perhaps my ability for not being to inexplicably angry and judgemental came from the fact that I had complete control over my sensory input. I listened to the music I wanted to (with the exception of hall-way spillover), I watched the movies and videos I wanted and managed to keep myself away from general crap.

Well, today I've been reinfected with the little anger-bug.

Today I've been re-exposed to Deal or No Deal. For those of you who have managed to avoid being struck over the head repeatedly until you're dimiwitted enough to watch - Deal or No Deal is a half hour long show where you watch someone eliminate briefcases holding certain incremental dollar values in the hope that the statistically calculated "bank offer" will somehow drag them out of lower class doldrums into the heady heights of sub-bourgeois. With a guaranteed sub-$200k win, no one's going home a millionaire and not the least reason for that being that all contestants are idiots. The next time I hear "Oh my it's just so hard," come out of one of the player's mouths I'm going to write myself an angry letter to Channel 7. This is a glorified game of elimination. The only way it could be hard would be if you suffered from some sort of short term memory loss, coupled with the inability to read the goddamn scoreboard. Weigh the money offer vs your risk avoidance levels and bam-o, I've just ruined your television show and assisted in avoiding the un-education of millions of Australians.
ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS PROGRESSIVELY TICK OFF POSSIBLE OUTCOMES AND MAKE RANDOM SELECTIONS! (and the computer system already does half the work for you).

I propose the show be completely worked by computer and for half an hour each day, we can watch a statistically perfect bell-curve covering all near-infinite possibilities of outcomes. I can tell that I'd much prefer it to watching some old woman whine about how her next random selection brings her great pain. You're an idiot.

I think I'll go take some valium.

Back to Mackay I am

2005-06-26T15:26:51Z

Well, I'm back in Mackay. I'm posting this after roughly 24 hours home. I have to find somewhere to sleep tonight.

Had a decent flight back on Jetstar (grr, they're so shit) ... lemme go on a tangent here: Jetstar have implemented a seat allocation system that is basically you scrambling like mad for a seat. The scramble's a little less tooth-and-nail than it might be thanks to the wonderful colour coding system and as much as I object, it does work. Well, it works when you idiots get it right. When an announcement says "Blue ticket holders please line up. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, SILVER TICKET HOLDERS SIT THE HELL DOWN OR WE WILL SUCK YOUR SOUL OUT THROUGH YOUR EYES. SIT THE F--K DOWN," they do not mean 'Get in the queue and act indignant when we tell you to stand off to the side to wait your goddamn turn.'
Hint: Your ticket is not silver. It's white - they don't care enough about you to even give you ink. Go away. Oh the joys of low cost air travel.

Righto, back on track ... came home and did some stuff and went to sleep. Then I woke up, did some stuff ripped some new CDs and went to Odey's to see some of the crew (Odey, BB, Brooke and Em). BB is recovering from chicken pox. We intend to infect all Mackay's children.

Probably going to go shopping tomorrow to locate some general stuff, including a pair of headphones. Man, I really need some headphones.

And that's about that. I will put here my objectives for the holidays:

Study for Macroeconomic theory. I have a special exam sometime between 21-23 July.
On that note, organise where I'll stay for 21-23, and book my flight.
Attempt to return my sleeping patterns to normal.
Go camping.
Not go out into the city to drink alcohol because the city is crap.
Do some geebaning and write guides up to using AVG (and other security stuff) through the proxy, and writing scripts for AVG.

Now, since I'm a stickler for self-punishment - here are my new year's objectives in mid-year review:

I intend to avoid: sit staring at my computer: 50% success Some might class it as a failure, I don't. I do still just waste time on here too much still.
I intend to avoid: sit listening to music at my computer 70% success My music consumption hasn't really decreased, but now it's incidental to my computer usage.
I intend to avoid: finding faults in things 90% sucess Seriously, I don't care much for bagging stuff out anymore. Some things just get out of hand (see above with the airport thing) when people just are stupid, stupid sheep.
I intend to avoid: chatting on the computer 30% success Damn you OpChat!
I intend to avoid: playing computer games 85% success I actually managed to avoid to not play computer games since uni week 1 through week 12 (excepting Easter holiday break where I clocked HL2). Then I discovered Ponitfex 2, a bridge building game that saps away your time by forcing you to build exciting bridges to a budget. SHUT UP. DON'T JUDGE ME. It's more fun than you think. The good news is, I'm a good bridge builder.

I will try to: observe the small, interesting things in life. 60% success When you've sat and stared at a gecko for 10 minutes it's not just procrastination, it's appreciation. Everyone needs to watch the small things every now and then. Also, I walked on grass in bare feet today. Down a mainstreet. I'm so alternative.
I will try to: read 10% sucess Probably my most hideous failure. I paused reading a book when I went back to uni, and am only picking it back up now. Terrible.
I will try to: study 50% success I think I did alright.
I will try to: travelling to new places 0% successNo luck whatsoever.
I will try to: meet new people and try not to make a twat of myself 60% success I don't think I've been that much of a twat. Haven't met too many people personally, but a lot more seem to know me for whatever reason.
I will try to: be as helpful and amiable as possible. 80% success I'm helpful, I'm nice. I have a job in tech. My clients love me.

Mr G, over and out.

Exams

2005-06-20T07:12:08Z

Quote: Please check your belongings for post-it notes and blank sheets of paper. If you do have any, hand them to an exam supervisor now. Failing to do so may result in allegations of attempting to cheat.

That's three levels of equivocality there. THREE.

Anyways, back to stuff.