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Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Saturday 6 September 2003 (Day View)

Tue 2 Sep | Wed 3 Sep | Thu 4 Sep | Fri 5 Sep |   Sat 6 Sep   Sun 7 Sep | Mon 8 Sep | Tue 9 Sep | Wed 10 Sep |

06.09.2003 – Saturday 6 September

Day

• I’m annoyed. The internet is very slow and at times not working. It seems to be a generalised problem, at least in Australia, and not just my ISP. I have had a bad computer day. Originally, I was on the internet, doing normal things, and everything was working. Then I noticed my secondary monitor had a few red and green tyre track things on it, and a few random pixels, which usually means its graphics card has gotten too hot. I opened all the windows and cooled it down a bit. Then the internet died. I was getting some phenomenal amount of packet loss. I needed to find bus times to get to the mars viewing tonight, but I couldn’t access any web pages. Then, after rebooting to see if I could get the internet to work, and wasting another 22¢ connecting, my CPU fan alarm went off. The fan had dropped from its normal 6000 rpm down to 4000 rpm. It then went up and down in speed as if it were a variable speed fan. It’s rather alarming to see my processor temperature increase 5 degrees in about five seconds just because the fan has slowed. I pulled the side of the case off and fiddled with the fan but it seems fine. It kept going up and down and the internet wouldn’t work, so I disconnected and watched “Sudden Impact” instead. It’s not such a bad movie for its age – I quite enjoyed it.

Mars

• After the movie, I tried connecting to the internet again and managed to get enough packets through to find that my train left in quarter of an hour, so I ran, showered, ran, dressed, ran, shoed, ran, jumped on the train, and arrived at South Brisbane station with no idea what bus to catch. After asking two drivers who didn’t know, I found one who gave me a short free ride and dropped me off at another bus stop where the Mt Coot-tha bus departs from. Unfortunately, it doesn’t run at night, so I had to ask another bus driver, who guided me to another bus stop where I could catch a bus to Toowong, near to where I wanted to go. This driver kindly drove me to a roundabout near to the Sir Thomas Brisbane Planetarium and let me off there, so it was only a short walk. There were tons of people, and something rather obvious but which I hadn’t really thought of – it was dark. They’d put garbage bags over the lights, leaving just a few red ones so people could develop a bit of night vision, and it was really hard to see anyone. A few people from uni had been talking about going, so I’d wanted to see if I could meet them, but soon realised there wasn’t any point looking in the dark. I did manage to bump into Raymond and two of his friends, and went around with them. We waited in line for ages to see the moon magnified 94 times through a 100 inch high telescope, which had a 20 inch mirror making it an f5 telescope, or something like that – I know nothing about them but that sounds similar to what the guy managing it said. The moon was impressive, looking the same as it does in photos, but Mars wasn’t at all impressive, looking like a white circle – I had a look at it through a few telescopes and wasn’t impressed at all. All four of us caught a taxi, letting me off at Toowong and taking them back to uni. I caught the train from there home.

Home

• I went online and watched a political discussion (read “argument”) in #BITS, which, coupled with my being alternatively disconnected, lagged, unable to reconnect or receiving the argument in large bursts, made it entertaining for about half an hour. After that I began to realise no one had a clue about anything, and they are all dim-witted, brainwashed, and arguing for the sake of it. I tried saying the silliest things I could think of that slightly fit in with their argument, but I couldn’t think of anything sillier than what they were already saying and I had a bad feeling I would appear the same as them to an outsider, so I left.

Comment by DM – Sunday 7 September 2003, 10:19 PM

  I had been wanting to go along to the Planetarium last night, but my hopes relied on my brother also going along (he could give me a lift there). In the end, he decided that he had too much uniwork to do, and by the time he told me this, it was too late to organise alternative transport. Ah well, can't always win.

Comment by Ned – Sunday 7 September 2003, 10:52 PM

  I saw martians!