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Year View| Summary| Highlights| September 2004 (Month View)

May ‘04 | Jun ‘04 | Jul ‘04 | Aug ‘04 | Sep ‘04 Oct ‘04 | Nov ‘04 | Dec ‘04 | Jan ‘05 |

01.09.2004 – Wednesday 1 September – Day On

• Today is supposed to be my day off, but I have so much assessment due, that I can’t take the liberty anymore.

2:47am

• I go offline.

11:54am

• I go online.

12:46pm

• I go marking COMP1501 assignments.

4:18pm

• I come after marking COMP1501 assignments for three hours, thirty-two minutes and three seconds.

4:56pm

• I go to uni. I complete COMP2502 code.

1:01am

• I go online, at home.

2:01am

• I go sleeping.

2:15am

• I go asleep.

9:14am

• I come after seven hours, twelve minutes and thirty-eight seconds sleeping. It is now tomorrow.

9:14am

• I go to uni. Don’t forget that it’s now tomorrow.

11:02pm

• I go online, at home, tomorrow night.

02.09.2004 – Thursday 2 September – Warped, Time

• Remember to see yesterday, for what happened today. Then, see the day after tomorrow for an explanation on how I can so easily see through time.

Night

• There were two boys stuck in the lift, a fire truck, four firemen, four policemen, and one train. The police, having got sick of pulling faces at the boys stuck in the lift, were checking tickets.

03.09.2004 – Friday 3 September – Study, & The Beginning of Woe

• Clint and I spent all night in the labs, doing COMP2502. I’ve found that if I get a bottle of cola and sip it all night I have no problems staying up indefinitely. In fact, we went pretty well. Kieran came down a few times, and together we all got a lot done – except not together, collusion is bad and so forth. The main difficulty with this assignment was figuring out what to do. Seeing Kevin the other day cleared that up, so there’s really nothing complex left – it’s all just a matter of time now.

04.09.2004 – Saturday 4 September – Insanity

• I caught the first bus out of uni, and the first connecting train home. I then slept.

4pm

• I woke up, and headed back into uni. The train driver had a sense of humour, producing such hilarity as “Which Bank? Sunnybank”, when we got to that station. That’s probably not funny unless you’ve seen any of the Commonwealth Bank’s “Which Bank?” ads – and even then, it’s probably not funny, but I sure am.

Night

• Clint and I did another all-nighter finishing off COMP2502 and learning how to see through time (it’s not that hard).

Midnight

• Marcus mentioned Rembo, the boot manager used in the labs, and less than a second later, all the machines in the lab rebooted and re-imaged. This is hilarious at midnight after a litre of cola. Then again, so are gas-lift chairs with wheels – they can go sideways and around at the same time.

Later

• Clint and I climbed onto the rooves of as many high buildings as we could find, making interesting observations like “bats, bats everywhere”. I want to climb the crane at the building site near GPS but it is locked. I also want to put a red rubbish bin on UQ’s main flagpole.

05.09.2004 – Sunday 5 September – The Insanity Continues

• While drinking 2 litres of L.A. Ice Cola and finishing my assignment, I thought of some questions:
  Why do people sleep at night?
  Why does time bend, and how does L.A. Ice let me see around corners?
  Why does Coles close at 5 PM on Saturdays but 6 PM on Sundays?
  Why do the lab machines, for an hour or more after they've closed all the stuff I was working on by automatically re-imaging and made me wait half an hour while they re-image, prompt for a password for “ntadmin” when logging on, and refuse to find my roaming profile, reverting to a local one instead?
  Why, a few hours after automatically re-imaging, do all the lab computers sing, and their login prompts automatically login, then logout, and the “ntadmin” thing goes away? And how come they all do this at different times?
  Why do I always leave my assignments until the last possible moment?
  Why 42?
  How come pressing the air-conditioner button in the lab turns off all the lights, except for two seemingly random ones?
  Hmm, it's light outside now. I must go visit the GPS shower and exercise my toothbrush.

Morning

• I caught a bus into the city. There’s very little open early on a Sunday morning, so I had to settle for a Hungry Jack’s veggie burger. I went and wandered around the inaugural King’s Square Markets for a while, and then caught a CityCat back to uni, and went back down to the labs. I have to be careful because my reaction times may, or may not, exist at any given time. I need to avoid traffic, and walk in straight lines – slowly. I want to get a hat with a flashing orange warning light on top to match Clint’s “train station” witches hat.

Midday

• I spent the rest of the day in the labs working on my COMS3200 assignment. It looked really hard to start with, but after a bit of research, I’ve figured out how to do the networking primitives – or at least, I hope I have. It’s all communicating now – the client sends messages to the server, which receives them and replies. I haven’t written any of the processing stuff, so the messages don’t actually do anything, but that should be trivial. I’m a little worried about how I’ll handle concurrent messaging in the client, but that’s something to worry about tomorrow.

Evening

• Clint eventually woke up, and we walked down to the Ville for food. I felt as though I needed something healthy, so I purchased myself a cheese and salad sandwich. By the time we got back from the Ville, Marcus had arrived, so I went and saw him for a little while, giving him his swipe card back, before heading home. I also have a USB key-drive that someone left in the labs. The journey home was interesting. Large gaps got lost. I think I need to sleep less – there has to be a limit that I can manage, some minimum sleep level without becoming wrecked. Sleep is such a waste of time.

1:04am

• I am supposed to get up at 7 AM, so going to bed right now would be an excellent idea. Oh, and in other news, fullboar.org has, finally, been transferred over to me.

06.09.2004 – Monday 6 September – A day that wasn’t

• I am of two minds whether this day really occurred. Logic and past historical events tend to indicate that it did, but I don’t believe it did. I am not entirely sure when what is, or what was when, anymore.
  One thing that didn’t happen today: I didn’t see a man walking across the train station carrying a very large chainsaw, and he didn’t tell me to stop staring at him. I wisely stopped, as he didn’t seem to be in the greatest mood.

07.09.2004 – Tuesday 7 September – A normal day for a change

• I pretended the world was round and that today was just another day, and headed into uni. I attended my COMP2801 prac, during which we planned how we are going to try to do our COMP2801 assignment, and after that, I repressed all thoughts of assignments. I even came home in the evening. What a normal day.

08.09.2004 – Wednesday 8 September – Not my day off

Morning

• Jan the cleaner apparently comes on Wednesday’s now. This I know because she came today.

Midday

• I headed off to uni, to complete my COMS3200 assignment. This I did faithfully do, all evening and all night. I considered coming home, and heading back early in the morning, as I’d say this is a more efficient way to manage my time, but knowing me I’d sleep in, so figured I’d better get my assignment done while the going was good. To do this required a trip to Coles, a bottle of L.A. Ice Cola, a block of peppermint chocolate, a bag of black jellybeans, a can of Pringles, and a packet of potato chips. This is a highly successful formula.

Tomorrow Morning

• Marcus and I left the labs just before dawn broke, and headed to his place. Ironically, I couldn’t sleep and was still awake when Hollie got up and left for work, and had only began to doze when Cassie got up and left for work. I think I then got an hour or two’s sleep before Marcus’s alarm went off and he woke me up.

09.09.2004 – Thursday 9 September – Day is Night

• Marcus and I arrived at uni some time around ten o’clock and I headed down to the labs to finish off my COMS3200 Instant Messenger assignment. Several hours later and I submitted my COMS3200 assignment, about two minutes before reading something in the newsgroup that made me realise I had a bug that I had to fix. I then resubmitted it. I believe I should get 100% for this. I sincerely hope I do, after messing up the first assignment, and then putting in an all-nighter to do this.

Evening

• I left uni for home early – before dark, that is, although it was dark when I arrived home.

10.09.2004 – Friday 10 September – In Which I Do Very Little Study

Early in the Morning

• I had planned to get up early, and get to uni before eight o’clock. This seemed to be a good idea last night, as I have more things to do than time to do them. Peculiarly, though, this didn’t seem like such a good idea at six o’clock this morning. I ended up arriving at uni not long before nine o’clock.

Not Long Before Nine O’clock

• I made my way straight to the GPS computer labs, after buying a veggie roll from the main refectory. Seeing as I’d slackly slept in, when I had too much study I needed to do before now, I hadn’t another minute to waste. Then I met Clint, just leaving the labs as I arrived. He had stayed up all night completing one of his funny political rants and now he was hungry. He urgently needed to go to Hungry Jack’s in the city.

Almost Midday

• It was almost midday by the time we got back from the city, and I’d done no study at all. With this in mind, I headed down to the labs to panic-study. I had hardly had time to check the newsgroups for trolling opportunities, sign on to IRC (strictly as a study aid), and check my email, say hello to Lachlan and Jervina who happened to be there, and it was time to go to a COMP3502 tutorial. Considering that the COMP3502 mid-semester exam is what I’m supposed to have studied for all morning, I figured attending its tutorial was a justified study-break. Directly following that tutorial, was a COMP2801 tutorial, and as this was the other thing that I was supposed to be doing, I decided it might be a good idea to attend it as well.

Not Yet Late in the Evening

• After my tutorials, I wandered past Kieran’s over to Clint’s, on my way to study. It ended up that Sméagol was there, and they were just about to drive down the Ville, so I had to go down there too. After I got back, I had to help Dom, and then talk. Then it began to get late, and I realised that I might actually have to go study, or I would fail this mid-semester exam, so I did.

Late in the Evening

• A quarter of International House got into the same bus as I. Three quarters of International House then got onto the same bus as they, and I. The first quarter apparently dislikes the other three quarters, which isn’t that surprising considering their condition. They had, according to one fine member, been “sculling goon”, and proceeded to enjoy themselves on the way to the city. Enjoying themselves involved some rather amusing, highbrow political jokes along the lines of “Howard Sucks”, “Latham! Latham! Latham!”, “You’re only saying that because your Visa application was turned down!”, and so on until it would go full circle and revert to the usual sexual innuendos – without the innuendo. It did make for a much more interesting than usual bus trip, although not conductive to study.

After Dark

• The train arrived at Central Station, all six cars of it, and promptly turned off. Interestingly, when turned off, no one can open the doors, so everyone was trapped inside. It took several minutes until the orange-vested train-fixers could fix it, and then the doors opened and engulfed us all. The strange thing is that, when I got off at my station, the train was only three cars long. Somewhere along the way, it had lost the other three cars. This has never happened to a train that I was on before, and I didn’t even notice it happening.

After After Dark

• I threw on some washing, and went and did some power relaxing (synonymous to power napping, but without the nap). I then put the washing on the washing basket, with the heater blowing through the holes in the basket. This is supposed to make it all dry in time for me to pack for Sydney.

• I can’t remember exactly when – I think it was sometime after leaving Clint’s room, but my lung hurt again. It’s a quarter past one now, and it’s still sore. It worries me and I don’t like it.

Comment by yj – Saturday 11 September 2004, 10:11 PM

  you may or may not realise it Ned, but quite a decent portion of your fan base is at International House (and i'm not joking). There is a good chance that at least 3 of the loud bigots in your bus trips are avid readers of your site. I'm not sure what the moral of this story is - perhaps you can work that out for yourself. Best wishes.

Comment by Soph – Tuesday 14 September 2004, 1:45 AM

  But Howard does suck and so does LAtham. They all suck. Btw, study sucks, and yeah, just thought I'd add that. And since you read my journal, I thought I'd read yours. :P Silly me. Anyways, slacker!

Comment by Mum – Friday 17 September 2004, 5:26 PM

  Gah! Bah! Excuses, excuses. (Ever noticed what a strange collection of vowels and consonants "excuseseses" am?) Hardly seems as if it could be a word in the Ingriss lingo, but guess it am. Plenty need for it., especially with upcoming political crap. Politics, Scrub ticks, neuro Ticks, hysteri Ticks,................gah ,bah, all the same to me.

11.09.2004 – Saturday 11 September – Sydney

• When I was figuring out the train times to get to the airport, then from the airport to uni in time for my exam on Monday, and so forth, I made a mistake. Unfortunately, I didn’t notice the mistake until this morning. I had calculated the times from Dutton Park to the airport, and set my alarm so that I’d have enough time to catch the train from Dutton Park. This is remarkably unhelpful when I live three quarter’s of an hour from there. I had to jump up and run straight for the train, which got me to the airport just under half an hour before the plane left.

10am

• Virgin Blue flight 222 departed on time. The Boeing 737-800, with three seats either side of the aisle, was almost entirely full. I had an aisle seat roughly in the middle of the plane, and the flight was uneventful – which is how they should be.

Sydney

• I caught a train from the airport to Circular Quay, and a JetCat from there to Manly. The wind, and it was quite windy sitting up on the top deck of the cat, was quite cold. Once in Manly, I walked down the Corso, had a quick look at the beach, and dropped in at the police station to say hi to Greta. She, along with her police partner, drove me to her place to drop off my bags. We then went and picked up another policewoman and dropped her back at Greta’s to pick up her car, which she had left there the previous night. I then got a quick tour of the northern beaches on the way back to the police station, which is rather cool in a police car.
  Once back in Manly, I went for a walk to Queenscliff and had a look at the rock. It used to seem so large when I was young – and take half an hour to climb. Now I can climb it in seconds. The stairs up to Pop’s seemed shorter than before too – I remember them as something of an endless staircase. The wind along the beach is icy cold.

3pm

• I met Jim at the Steyne, and we chatted about things geek for half the evening, before heading off to a small restaurant near the wharf for dinner. I had “Voodoo Vegetarian Vegetables with Sizzling Curry”, which literally sizzled – and was very nice. It began to sprinkle a little while we were eating, but had largely stopped by the time we finished. We then headed back to the Steyne, where I met some of Jim’s friends, and we all chatted for a few hours, heading down to the Old Manly Boatshed to watch a band around ten o’clock. The music was good, the atmosphere was good, the ratio of women to men was something approaching two to one, everyone seemed happy, and a good night was had. Then, to top off a great night, I got a free, personalised, bus trip home.
  Around half past one, just after leaving the Boatshed, I asked the first bus that stopped which bus I should catch to get as near as possible to Greta’s to get a taxi, as I’d forgotten how to get to her place. The bus driver said that an appropriate bus wouldn’t be along for ages, and he’d drop me at some stop further down, which would be a bit closer and I’d be able to get a cab from there. As there was no one else in the bus, I stayed up the front chatting to the driver about today’s youth, their lack of discipline, and various other things. He must have decided I was a nice kind of chap, as he offered to drive me home – pointing out that he’s not allowed to do this. He turned off all the lights, and dropped me as close as I could remember to Greta’s, and didn’t charge me anything. This was great, and certainly unexpected, but still left me with a small problem – namely, being stuck in a suburb I didn’t know, at two o’clock in the morning, and not knowing where I was or where I should go.
  Fortunately for me, two of the undisciplined youth that the bus driver had been complaining about came along, angry and arguing. One had just dropped and smashed a bottle of something and the other was throwing his bike around and swearing. These seemed like the ideal people to ask for directions, when along in a dimly lit Sydney street at two in the morning, so I did – and as it ends out, the street I was searching for was right along the way they were going, so they took me there, and I had a lovely sleep.

Comment by Reubot – Wednesday 15 September 2004, 6:51 PM

  When?
  
  :)

Comment by Ned – Thursday 16 September 2004, 12:54 AM

  Very soon!

Comment by Mum – Friday 17 September 2004, 5:32 PM

  Good karma

12.09.2004 – Sunday 12 September – Sydney & Pop

• I woke up latish, and chatted to Greta for a while. I phoned Pop and Greta booked a shuttle bus to the airport for me tomorrow morning. I then caught a bus into Manly, popped into the Steyne and said hello to Jim, and walked up to Pop’s. I chatted to Pop for a while, and then walked back down to the Steyne, but Jim wasn’t there. I bought some lunch from a small Indian place, ate that, and walked back to the Steyne. I spent the evening chatting with Jim and some of his friends.

7:50pm

• Sadly, I’ve only the weekend down here, so I had to leave. I caught a bus back to Greta’s place. She was on-duty, but Sean arrived shortly after I did and we watched “Behind Enemy Lines”, before heading to bed.

13.09.2004 – Monday 13 September – Back to Brisbane

5am

• I woke up, packed, and waited outside for the shuttle bus, which arrived around a quarter to six. There were three ladies already in the bus, who were laughing and joking. The driver was great fun, cracking jokes and grinning. We picked up another girl from nearby and a backpacker from further afield, and then headed out to the airport. The driver pointed out the “Giraffe Houses” that ventilate the tunnels, and the whole trip was great. The entire weekend has been great. It’s almost surreal – everything has gone amazingly well, everyone was happy and smiling, and stuff that would normally go wrong, went right. I got a free tour of the area in a police car. I had a great night. What could have been an expensive taxi ride turned out to be a free personalised bus trip, which is in itself pretty cool and unusual. What could have been a nasty (and rather cold) situation with me lost, turned into a short walk and pleasant chat. What would normally be a boring trip to the airport, ended up being quite hilarious. All in all, it was an excellent weekend.

Brisbane

• Back in boring Brisbane again, I began to think about my upcoming COMP3502 exam. I even went as far as thinking about reading the lecture notes on the train home from the airport. I had about an hour at home to unpack, shower, read my email, and all those other vital things one must do, before catching the train back to uni again – and this time I actually read my lecture notes.

Uni

• I attended my COMP3502 class test, which was multi choice, and in which I achieved 14 out of 20. I am not at all happy with these results, but as both Kieran and Marcus did worse, I did almost no study, and I’ve not seen any class averages, I shall hope that this is above average. I had planned to spend all night at uni finishing off what I needed to do for COMP2801, but decided that I’d die if I did that, and went home instead.

Comment by Helen – Monday 20 September 2004, 8:31 PM

  Awww! I quite miss "boring Brisbane".. :)

14.09.2004 – Tuesday 14 September

• I was at uni by eight o’clock, which isn’t much fun, to attend my COMP2801 practical. We were supposed to have completed our individual parts of our group assignment by now, but only one of us had actually done that. I felt guilty for over two moments, but then I got over it. I then managed to spend the rest of the day adeptly avoiding COMP2801. I tutored, which went well, and attended my COMS3200 lecture, which made me very sleepy. I drove into the city with Sméagol, Clint and Kipps, to drop Kipps’s unwell LCD monitor at a repair place, bought food from the Ville, and generally did many non-study things. I did end up staying late working on COMP2801, catching the second last bus out of uni, and arriving home quite late (and angry).

12:12am

• I have just arrived home. I am very, very angry. The train home was, for some reason, rather busier than usual. It was one of the new style trains, with fewer seats due to their wheelchair accommodation. I was sitting, along with several other blokes, towards the end of one carriage, on the bench seats parallel to the carriage wall. Several Samoan types, along with an aboriginal man and woman, and a white boyfriend of the aboriginal, were also sitting there, discussing, among other things, wanting to “do over” some particular service station. Just before the train stopped at Woodridge, they got up and surrounded a young bloke – probably eighteen or younger, and the white boyfriend of the aboriginal woman stole his bag, and jumped off the train. No one was paying particular attention to them – I had, almost subliminally, assumed they knew the young bloke and were teasing him. It makes me very angry that I – along with several other people, were sitting within a few seats of all this – and could probably have prevented it. We got the young bloke to go talk to the guard, as the trains do have closed-circuit video monitoring, but the chances of anything coming of that are, I suspect, very slim. I guess this is a good lesson or warning – I haven’t expected anything like this to happen under such circumstances before. There are always circumstances where one is wary – but I have never considered this type of thing happening on a well-lit, semi-crowded train before. He obviously didn’t steal the young fellow’s bag for the money, as there was a businesswoman and several other obviously better targets sitting nearby. The whole suddenness and confidence factor – and probably fear, must have prevented the young bloke from saying anything – as he didn’t call out or do anything at all. Everyone was asking after, if something had actually happened, as it seemed somehow surreal. After, on the walk from the station back to here, I got talking to another young bloke around my age who had been sitting in the next carriage down. He asked me what had happened, and was as disgusted as I. Interestingly, he said the person he’d been sitting next to had been worried, as he’d been in a similar situation, with the same people, before. Apparently, he’d been on a train, and sat near these rejects while they talked about their various illegal activities, and then been followed to his father’s car. People like that deserve to have their legs broken, and if I see something like this happen again, I’ll do my best to ensure they do.

Comment by Cassie – Wednesday 15 September 2004, 12:29 AM

  I agree. D*ckheads.

Comment by Maz – Wednesday 15 September 2004, 12:32 AM

  count me in. some people should accidentally find themselves in front of speeding trains.
  give em one for me.
  Maz

Comment by Kipps – Wednesday 15 September 2004, 12:37 AM

  As someone of aboriginal origin, I am offended

Comment by seed – Wednesday 15 September 2004, 8:37 PM

  is it just me or should all the people of aboriginal descent be sent to the centre of austrlia and set free? i mean they don't really belong in the cities as they get hooked on the alcohol and drugs and as a result they do things like this. but then again, i am a synical bastard with short tempter and lack of respect for anyone else who is not me.

Comment by to seed – Wednesday 15 September 2004, 8:55 PM

  Haha, learn to spell "cynical" you idiot

Comment by martin – Wednesday 15 September 2004, 9:08 PM

  While obviously this was a terrible thing to happen in a train I think Seed's comments are racist and insulting in the extreme. Notice that some of the assailants were samoan and one was white. Do you think white people should be sent to the centre of australia, or maybe back to where they came from (europe)?

Comment by Matt – Wednesday 15 September 2004, 10:37 PM

  It should be quite clear that the white fellow was under the influence of his aboriginal "friends" and did not want to take part in the theft, it just kind of happened.
  
  So no. Seed is right.

Comment by Ned – Thursday 16 September 2004, 2:33 AM

  I saw no evidence that any aboriginals were involved. The person who stole his bag was Caucasian, and while his girlfriend was aboriginal, assuming that she caused him to steal is far-fetched. Whether or not he was attempting to impress his friends does not change the fact that he was the sole instigator and assailant. I am unsure whether his friends intentionally assisted by surrounding the young bloke, or whether that is just how it ended up. Obviously, they are partly to blame in that they did not stop him (and assisted, at least indirectly), but inferring anything further than that would be baseless given only my description.

Comment by Reubot – Thursday 16 September 2004, 12:10 PM

  Glad I'm not on Beenleigh line...

Comment by seed – Saturday 18 September 2004, 8:16 AM

  in case you haven't noticed...there was a little bit of sarcasm there and who needs to know how to spell anyways?

15.09.2004 – Wednesday 15 September – Tim Passes On

• Tim passed on last night.

• I slept in considerably, going to uni in the evening via Govinda’s, as I don’t currently have any food here at home, and attempting to complete my individual portion of the COMP2801 group assignment.

16.09.2004 – Thursday 16 September – Not a particularly good idea

• Having arrived home around midnight, I then proceeded to stay up until three o’clock. This was not a particularly good idea.

6.43am

• I headed off to uni, bright and horribly early, did all that studying stuff one does at uni, and some reasonably busy tutoring.

3.06am

• To sleep, I go.

17.09.2004 – Friday 17 September – Assignment Submitted

10:23am

• I headed off to uni to complete our COMP2801 assignment. I am supposed to have gone to uni earlier, but, for some strange reason, I felt quite sleepy when I woke up and didn’t want to go. I had to rub references to Perlboy’s website from half the whiteboards in GPS, in-between proofreading our COMP2801 assignment, making a few minor changes, and then submitting it. It’s a grand total of 42 pages, and should definitely get us a pass, if not better.

9.30pm

• I’m home early for a change, and am not even going to think about my next four assignments until Monday.

Comment by Reubot – Tuesday 21 September 2004, 9:47 AM

  The new Kewn?

Comment by Ned – Tuesday 21 September 2004, 7:52 PM

  A one-man Kewn, proudly supported by the ultimate language, Perl.

18.09.2004 – Saturday 18 September – Some Kind of Monster

• I re-seated the CPU heat sink, as the processor was sitting on 70° no load, due to the warmer weather. It’s not running around 55° with no load, heading up to 60° with a bit of load.
  I went and saw “Metallica – Some Kind of Monster”, a documentary about the band, at the Dendy. It was actually quite interesting, although there’s no telling how stage-managed it was.

19.09.2004 – Sunday 19 September – Amanda & The Terminal

• I phoned Amanda, and, after watching about half of “The Bourne Identity”, caught two trains into Indooroopilly (not at the same time) and saw “The Terminal”. We’d originally planned to see the “Shark Tale”, but it doesn’t open until tomorrow. I wasn’t sure how “The Terminal” would be – but it’s actually not bad. The plot is unusual, but they’ve managed to turn it into quite a watchable movie.
  I spent the evening after the movie at Sonder’s place watching TV, before heading back to Amanda’s for dinner.

20.09.2004 – Monday 20 September – Sick & Woeful

• Amanda dropped me at Ferny Grove train station, from where I made my way to uni, via the city and a bus. I arrived just before my first lecture, with enough time to buy a coffee milkshake for breakfast. I have a sore throat, and feel terrible – but looking on the bright side of things, there’s a door in the whiteboard in the lecture theatre. It’s actually built into the whiteboard – or the board around it is probably a more accurate description. I hadn’t noticed it before as it has sliding whiteboards that would normally cover it, but a door within a whiteboard almost sounds like something out of the Chronicles of Narnia.
  I skipped a tutorial to complete my COMP3502 tutorial. These are “peer assessed”, which means we complete them, email them to a randomly picked student, and see if they bother to mark them and return them. Not surprisingly, they often don’t, and when they do, they often as not mark them incorrectly. I disagree with the entire process, as we’re getting fifteen percent of the course’s mark from it, but there’s little I can do apart from whinge, make my tutorials hard to mark, and then resubmit them for remarking if there’s even the slightest doubt about the marks. Anyway, due to going away over the weekend and generally being slack, I hadn’t done my tutorial yet, and it was proving harder than normal. I’d managed to complete all bar the last question when Marcus arrived, logged on, and found the marked solutions... This made it considerably easier to figure out how to do the last question, and also allowed me to check my answers before I submitted them – I’m pleased to announce I only have one wrong (because I didn’t have time to figure out how to do it). It’ll be interesting to see how I am marked.

Evening

• I learned about asymmetrical encryption and something else and something else in two hours of COMP3502 lectures. I had planned to stay until nine o’clock working on an assignment, but felt too sick, so went home shortly after six.

Comment by seed – Tuesday 21 September 2004, 8:29 AM

  it is that time of the year where we do not sleep or socialise in order to get all of the work done. it sucks, but that's uni for you. i only have a month left, yay!

Comment by Ned – Tuesday 21 September 2004, 9:00 AM

  Verily - with woe.

Comment by ascian – Tuesday 21 September 2004, 5:00 PM

  If you spent less time procrastinating, you would have more time for sleeping ;)

Comment by Ned – Tuesday 21 September 2004, 7:53 PM

  Sigh.

Comment by Mum – Thursday 23 September 2004, 6:10 PM

  A door? In the whiteboard? Beware the jabberwock, my son.

21.09.2004 – Tuesday 21 September – Sick

• I attended my eight o’clock COMP2801 prac, at great risk to my health. I’m still feeling sick and terrible. We made up a list of a few things to consider for assignment three – re-factoring the code (an obvious and generic choice), adding print functionality, adding colours, documenting the code (another generic choice), and adding a tip of the day module (which Flash has already written). This doesn’t sound like much, and isn’t very exciting, but it should fulfil the assignment criteria. Adding colours, if that’s a plausible option, would involve quite a bit of object-orientated nastiness, as changes would cascade across stacks of classes. The print option should, hopefully, be plausible and shouldn’t be too hard to add on without modifying too much existing code. Flash has gone home for the holidays, and the rest of us have other assignments due sooner, so we’re giving them a higher priority.

22.09.2004 – Wednesday 22 September – Still Sick

• This is my day off, which I don’t get off anymore because I’m too slack. I left for uni shortly after lunchtime, stopping at Govinda’s on the way to get lunch. The idea was that I’d do a lot of work on COMP2502, but that didn’t happen. I can partly blame being sick – I feel crappy and can’t think straight, but it’s mainly slackness. I did do a bit of research, and I think I understand the basic concepts of what I’m trying to do now, so perhaps I’ll be able to code it without any problems when I actually get around to doing it. I also got my marks back for the first COMP2502 assignment – one hundred and five percent. I’d be interested to see what the average marks were, as it seems to have been marked quite leniently.

23.09.2004 – Thursday 23 September – Harold and Kumar go to White Castle

12:40pm

• I am not overly happy. In fact, I have decided that everything sucks – people in particular. Someone else must have agreed with me, as they ended at Indooroopilly railway station, forcing my train to appear on the wrong platform. Or perhaps they were an annoying Linux bigot and got pushed – who knows.

• I have time-management problems. Basically, I can’t do anything. I have spent the last three days doing no work at all on my COMP2502 assignment. This morning I had to get up unreasonably early to get to Prince Charles Hospital by eight o’clock. It’s quite big, and they must have paid someone a lot of money to get the place organised – everything went quite smoothly. I was given a ticket and a list, and had to take the list around to different departments, each of which would then give me another ticket, do various tests, and check them off the list. Once all the tests were done, I would take the list back to the main desk, and await the calling of my ticket number. All the tests went into some kind of database accessible to the doctors. It all worked quite well, but my doctor’s registrar was away, hence the doctor was bogged down and my appointment was late. All the efficiency and organisation in the world, and it’s still let down by the human factor. I ended up having to annoy the receptionists until they moved me up the queue, and I still missed the first half of my tutorial.
  Once I’d finished tutoring, I made the mistake of visiting Kieran, then Clint. I should have gone straight to the labs and worked. Clint convinced me to come into the city with him, and that we’d be quick. We weren’t. First Clint spent an hour talking about immature college antics until I got sick of it and headed off to the labs, but the thought of an icy Cold Rock Super Shake soothing my sore throat made me change my mind, so I headed into the city and bought a falafel roll for dinner. By the time we got back it was too late for me to begin any serious study, although Clint decided he had to study for his exam tomorrow – despite it being pass/fail, at 3 PM, him completing the practice exam in two minutes flat, and even if he fails, he gets another two attempts at it. That’s confidence for you.
  With nothing much else to do, I saw “Harold and Kumar go to White Castle” at Indooroopilly. It was quite busy, and I was late and the queue was horribly inefficient. Fortunately, though, I’m about the only one that likes sitting at the front, so I still got to sit in the second row, right in the middle, which is about the best seat in the cinema. The movie itself treads the thin line between incredibly stupid and dumb, and incredibly stupid and funny. I quite enjoyed it – and with a full cinema laughing there was a nice atmosphere, but I’m not sure there’s really anything of worth in the entire movie. Still, a crude and overtly racist film can’t be all bad, particularly if you don’t attempt to think while watching it.

• It seems I’m 185 centimetres tall, weigh 82.5 kilograms, have a lung capacity estimated at 73 percent of that expected for my height, age and weight, but normal gas transfer. The end prognosis was a qualified “I don’t know”. Doctor Zimmerman suspects that the pain could be caused by small recurrent pneumothoraces. The plan is that I’ll go see my local doctor and get a form, and then attempt to have another CT scan while I’m suffering from a potential recurrent pneumothorax. This sounds like it could be hard, or impossible, to do but I’ll try. Then, after checking that, I’ll do a full stress test at hospital by riding a bike that becomes gradually harder and harder until I can’t anymore. If I pass that, then the idea is that I’ll be confident (and probably safe) to do anything else.

Comment by Reubot – Friday 24 September 2004, 11:15 AM

  Maybe it was that Energex dude.

Comment by Maz – Saturday 25 September 2004, 2:15 AM

  Design an array based implementation of the cinema lines to increase efficency. Or better yet, a binary tree, because in that case you will have started 2502 at the same time. "Up here for thinkin'. Down there for dancin'."

24.09.2004 – Friday 24 September – Null Pointer Exception in Title

• I woke up to go to uni, and decided that I didn’t feel like going to uni, and went back to sleep. I then woke up again later, and went to uni. Such an exciting life I lead. I should probably have worked on my COMP2502 assignment, but I didn’t feel so inclined. I actually arrived home before dark, for the first time in a long time. Hmm, this music, speeded up fifteen percent (and lowered a semitone to compensate), is quite exhilarating – even boring music sounds much better.

25.09.2004 – Saturday 25 September – Zatôichi & The Spider

Night

• I awoke shortly before the sun went down, and went and saw “Zatôichi” in at the Dendy (after getting a Cold Rock Super Shake, of course). I guess I needed the sleep – at least psychologically. “Zatôichi” is a traditional Japanese style Samurai film, complete with spurting blood, unrealistic sword fighting and a nonchalant sense of exigency that Hollywood can’t match.

4am

• It was 4 o’clock Sunday morning. I was sitting at my computer chatting to a friend, just about to head off to bed. He’d just said “I pulled out the folder with all the records in it this morning, and a honkin’ great spider crawled out,” when I looked to my left and less than a foot from my head was The Spider. I grabbed my camera to take a photo, but the battery went flat after the first flash, and by the time I’d changed batteries, The Spider had run behind my computer. It then swung down my phone lead, jumped onto the floor, and ran towards my feet. I don’t normally mind spiders. When they stick to doing spider-like things, such as crawling, I find them reasonably harmless and not too scary. But spiders oughtn’t to swing down phone leads, jump, and run – they’re supposed to just crawl. I ran and got my torch so I could take photos of it in the dark, but when I got back, I couldn’t find it. I shone the torch around looking, and finally found it – less than a foot from my foot! The Spider then ran towards my bed, so I ran and got a broom to head it off, but by the time I got back it had jumped onto the side of my bed. I fought with it, via the broom, but it won – hiding in behind my bed. I had to drag the bed away from the wall and fight it with the broom again. I eventually got it behind the door, and went back to tell my friends online the good news. When I got back to have another look, The Spider had once again disappeared. I found it running down the hallway at high speed, just before it vanished into another room, where I suspect it still is.
  Spiders are okay, but large spiders within jumping distance of my head, or hiding in the dark where I put my feet, or hidden away in my bed, aren’t okay. They’re even worse at 4 AM directly after talking about spiders.

26.09.2004 – Sunday 26 September – Taxing Times

• I awoke quite late, did very little, had dinner (Singaporean noodles that Joe ordered) with Joe, Michelle, Tonya and Dave, built a shopping cart thing for COMP1501, and then filled out my tax. Unfortunately, I can’t actually submit my tax until I phone the scary people at the taxation department tomorrow and convince them I’m actually me. Dave’s car broke down out in the semi-middle of semi-nowhere, and he was held up at knifepoint, and his wallet, a watch and various other things from the car stolen. The criminals were subsequently caught when attempting to steal petrol from a service station while an unmarked police car was behind them, so he got most of his stuff back. I wish I had a concealable weapons licence – that would be fun.

Comment by Someone – Monday 27 September 2004, 11:30 PM

  Edited: Offensive, stupid and unqualified – strikingly similar to the poster, I suspect.
  Rough Translation: “You, Ned my dear friend, are a genital-brow.”
  
  

Comment by Mater – Friday 1 October 2004, 7:30 PM

  The word "criminal" comes from the word "crime". A criminal is one who commits a flamin bloody mongrel crime. If anyone does not know what "crime" means, well.....poor fellow you. Try sashaying down some dark alley at midnight or worse. When I were a choild I could sashay down any alley and there was never ever ever any worry ever at all. There was not even anything to worry about and no one would have thought any thing unusual or worried us with dire warnings. Feel so sorry for all you new blokes, girls, try to be happy and not paranoid. Get out into the bush and get away from perverts and aggros.

27.09.2004 – Monday 27 September – Cat Woman, True Lies & Negative Affirmation

• I’m not quite sure what happened. Last time I looked, it wasn’t that late, but now it’s nearly half past four – in the morning. I’ve just watched “True Lies”. It’s such a good movie – one of my favourites. I’ve also decided to rank movies as I watch them, but instead of giving them stars or something boring like that, I’ll fractionise them against other movies, with “True Lies” being the starting point. In other words, a movie twice as good as “True Lies” would be worth two “True Lies”, while one only a quarter as good would be worth four sixteenths of a True Lie – or roughly nine cat women.
  Speaking of cat women – I saw the movie this evening. It sucked. The only possible redeeming feature it could have had would have been the cat woman herself – but no, they used Halle Berry, so it had no redeeming features at all. So, as I said above, it takes thirty-six cat women to make one true lie – not a good recommendation. There was one good thing about it all though – I discovered a good new way to get to the movies. Negative affirmation. It works wonders. Being driven to uni by Dave and then spending the evening there discussing the marking criteria for COMP1501’s second assignment, chatting about the IT degree (or lack thereof) with a previous lecturer, and building and modifying a shopping cart example for COMP1501 made me hungry, so I headed into the city to eat. After a nice meal at Govinda’s, I thought I’d try something new, so I bought a super shake from the Cold Rock. I knew that “Catwoman” was showing at ten past seven, and that it was theoretically possible to get to Indooroopilly in time to see it if everything went well. I also knew that not everything ever goes well, and that’s how the negative affirmation started. I left Cold Rock and began walking towards Central Station. The city was busy, as usual – the tail end of peak hour. Each time it looked like I was going to be hemmed in by people, I’d think to myself “oh well, I’ll get stuck behind them”, and a pathway would open up. As I began to get close to the first street crossing, I saw that the happy man was flashing green, which reminds me, how come they have a green man for go, but a red woman for stop? Anyway, I figured it would turn red just before I got there, and all the banked up traffic would go for ages, and I’d be stuck – and I affirmed this to myself, quite negatively. The angry red woman came up just after I got there, and I walked across unhindered. Breezing effortlessly through the crowds, I got to the next road crossing, negatively affirming that they would remain red. It went green just as I got there, and I could walk straight across. I knew that there wouldn’t be a train, I’d have just missed one and by the time the next one came, it would be too late. I affirmed this to myself, very strongly and negatively, and there was a train departing just a few minutes after I got to the platform. Unfortunately, I forgot to think about how crappy and terrible the movie was going to be, or it might have been brilliant, but at least I got there.
  Oh dear, now it’s a quarter to five. I’m sick of natural gummy snakes and I’ve run out of chocolate. I need to do stuff today. I can’t afford to sleep in all day. I have assignments due and a movie to watch. What’s with gummy snakes anyway? I guess they’re better than gummy worms, but why couldn’t they choose a nice, cuddly sort of animal? Gummy pandas or jelly dolphins? Perhaps I should look for a career in marketing.
  I have a bit of a problem now. Firstly, I’m not actually sleepy – but I know that if I do lie down, I will sleep. Secondly, I know that if I do sleep, I’ll want to sleep for more than two hours. I’ll end up sleeping all day. By the time I wake up it’ll be too late to do any work. Worst-case scenario, I could even sleep in so much that I missed my movie. But, on the other hand, if I don’t sleep at all, I’ll get so sleepy later that I’ll have to sleep, and then I’ll miss my movie. Either that or I’ll just be stupid and hyperactive and not get any work done, then not be able to sleep tonight, and wake up terribly late tomorrow and have all the same problems then. Oh dear, what a quandary – I think I’ll sleep on the matter and see if the solution seems any clearer when I wake up.

Comment by IO? – Tuesday 28 September 2004, 9:44 AM

  You need sleep or you will be IO.

Comment by Ned – Tuesday 28 September 2004, 3:26 PM

  Yes ;-(

Comment by io – Thursday 30 September 2004, 8:14 PM

  Oi, io doesn't stand for Input Output as you have marked above. Well not necessarily. I'm io.

Comment by Ned – Friday 1 October 2004, 12:17 AM

  What does it stand for?

Comment by Matt – Saturday 2 October 2004, 6:28 PM

  The square root of nine is plus or minus three

Comment by Mater – Sunday 3 October 2004, 10:56 PM

  Oly oly oly, oh, Oh IO, dunka dunka dunka, oh IO, dah dah (insert much manic IOrish music) Oh, IO, oly oly oly, oh IO, oh IO, " let them free", oly oly oly , oh IO, oly oly oly, oh IO, let them free (etc, ad infinitum...courtesy Wolfe Tones) ............the real meaning of IO (with tin whistle)

28.09.2004 – Tuesday 28 September – The Moon & Jeux D’Enfants

• I went to uni, via Govinda’s for lunch and a Cold Rock super shake, in what’s becoming a habit. Once there, I actually did some work on my COMP2502 assignment. Not much, but it’s a start. I then caught a bus into the city with Igor, and another bus to the valley, where I managed to become lost and had to ask for directions to the Palace Centro, where I saw the hauntingly disturbing “Jeux D'Enfants” (“Love Me If You Dare”) – a so-called “comedy” that’s entirely too dark to deserve the name. I’ve a feeling I won’t be forgetting it in a hurry – which is the definition of “hauntingly” I suppose. It’s incomparable with a movie such as “True Lies”, but as I must rate it, I’ll give it six cat women.
  I had an interesting train journey home, for reasons I can’t really say. One bloke who got on had a pushbike modelled as a fat boy, low rider sort of thing. It really stood out, although I’m not sure how useful it would have been. The walk from the train station to here has made me pensive. It’s such a beautiful night. The moon is bright and racing clouds, the air is crisp – and it really sucks being stuck in the middle of a city. It’s nights like these when one should be out in the wild – or at least sitting on some beach or mountainside stargazing and pondering life, and definitely not inside sitting under the harsh glow of a fluoro light, in front of a computer monitor. This whole career/money thing sucks, to be honest.

Comment by dog – Friday 1 October 2004, 3:47 PM

  very profound, Ned. After I complete typing this message i'm going to incinerate my computer and become a hermit. Thank you Ned. Thank you.

Comment by ned martin – Sunday 3 October 2004, 11:23 AM

  ned martin tries to be funny, but fails

Comment by Ned – Sunday 3 October 2004, 2:35 PM

  This is an entirely serious entry – it is not meant to be amusing in any way.

Comment by Mater – Sunday 3 October 2004, 11:22 PM

  The road was a ribbon of moonlight. God hath ways into our soul, ghostly galleon, the moon doth shine on you and me alike. Think upon the rainforest a'glimmer and drag self away from monitor and look at Joes garden. Same moon. A galleon, in full sail. Perhaps a little less glimmer due to leckertricity, still the same Majestic Lady Galleon. Hare.

29.09.2004 – Wednesday 29 September – Recursively Parsing & Somersaulting

2:49am

• I go to bed.

1:58pm

• I go to uni. Uni is looking grim – so much for days off. I have three assignments due this coming Monday. In order to get them completed, I must forgo sleep. So, with this in mind, I spent all day and night at uni. I completed my COMP2502 assignment – a recursive descent parser that builds an integer expression tree, evaluates it, and prints the expression and its answer. It is perfect, handles all possibly valid input, prints all sorts of informative error messages on invalid input, and is generally good. I shall be most upset if I don’t get full marks for it.
  I also saw “Somersault” at Indooroopilly with Maz. Despite being quite pretty and artistically filmed, it didn’t seem to have much substance. I’ve a feeling it might mean more to women, but to me it didn’t amount to much. I’ll give it a grand total of four cat women. Spending all night at uni is sort of interesting. I go through stages where I become sleepy and totally unproductive, and then later on I wake up more. The worst part is probably between six in the morning and around nine – before I’ve had time to wake up and get into the day.

30.09.2004 – Thursday 30 September – And again...

• Maz dropped me at Toowong station in time to catch the first train into the city and hence home, where I promptly went to sleep.

3:32pm

• Having surprisingly woken up, I unsurprisingly headed back to uni, where I proceeded to stay – all night. This COMS3200 assignment is terrible. I’m trying to code a peer-to-peer client and server thing in Java. It doesn’t have a great deal to do with networking. I guess it has in a way, but there’s far more string parsing and semi-complex data structures than networking. Just understanding the specification is all but impossible – I am really not impressed. It’s just too complex given its intended purpose, and is not suited to mass black-box testing.

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