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Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Tuesday 23 September 2003 (Day View)

Fri 19 Sep | Sat 20 Sep | Sun 21 Sep | Mon 22 Sep |   Tue 23 Sep   Wed 24 Sep | Thu 25 Sep | Fri 26 Sep | Sat 27 Sep |

23.09.2003 – Tuesday 23 September

Uni

• I am not happy. Today began normally, with me missing my train and having to catch the later one, then needing to run to get to my lecture in time for it to be of any worth. In the evening Nick, Matt, Kieran, Marcus and I all went to our stupid “Computer Organisation” practical and essentially wasted time. We’re now supposed to be proficient in programming our AVR microcontroller in its AVR assembler language, as well as using C – which we’ve had no support in learning. The tutors don’t really help, we asked them a few times and each time their response was similar to “this is wrong” – decidedly unhelpful in a learning sense. If that wasn’t bad enough – when we do manage to complete something, we have no way of knowing if it’s right or not. I am greatly disillusioned with university – it is not a place of learning, light and truth. It is a place of abominations, UQUnion (same thing), and lacklustre courses designed “in participation with industry”. The scary thing is that UQ has a reputation of being less TAFE-like than many of the other universities around, yet it’s still much too “industry orientated” to actually be of much use. Still, they give out degrees, so I guess that’s all that matters.

Shopping

• I hopped out the station before mine and walked back via the shopping centre, where I bought some ice cream, cream, cheese and milk to satiate my craving for dairy. It was nearly dark by the time I got home, and strangely, the woof was scared of me when I came in. I checked around and everything seemed normal – perhaps it’s the first time she’s seen me in my black Microsoft tee shirt.

Mum

• Mum can’t reply to emails. There’s absolutely no problem – she just can’t reply. It took me two hours to figure this. She insists that when she presses the “reply” button “nothing happens”. That is inexplicable, as I discovered when trying to explicate it. I became rather fed up with her, especially when I found out she was saying “nothing happens” when many things were happening.

Fire

• Joe arrived home and got me offline so he could phone triple zero for the fire brigade. He’d come across a burning industrial estate on his way home. I have no sympathy for people who do things like that – if they’re underage then they’ll have less of a debt to repay to society, so there’s less loss when they’re incinerated. I bet a few public incinerations would drastically reduce the arson problem, and if it didn’t, then we’d be able to reduce some of the filth passing themselves off as people – it’s a win/win situation.

IRC

• The #BITS channel that I frequent has some strange people. I’m not quite sure why, but unfortunately one of them has decided to pick on me, and the sheer illogicality and incessancy of his arguments just isn’t going down well with me tonight. I can usually ignore him – I just know he’s going to disagree with anything I say (regardless of how obvious it may be that I’m right, or if there’s even a possible alternative to what I’ve said), and try to prove his polemical nonsense with monumental amounts of unmitigated absurdity. Then, when everyone else has minimised the channel window and gone off to do something else, shaking their heads, he’ll state, “I rest my case”. It used to be funny but the novelty is fast wearing thin and I’m afraid I’m going to end up publicly executing him if he doesn’t stop – which I’d rather not do. There’s also another person who says rude and hurtful things to me, seemingly randomly – but at least he doesn’t take an hour to say them a few words per line.

Disclaimer

• I am uncomfortable, unhappy, upset, disappointed, stressed, sore and angry – not to mention awake at three o’clock in the morning.

Comment by DK – Thursday 25 September 2003, 6:27 AM

  <--- hugs Ned (hope you are feeling better!) ;)

Comment by Ned – Friday 26 September 2003, 2:08 AM

  Thanks. Unfortunately, though, I'm not feeling much better. This assignment is getting to me, as I don’t seem to be able to do it – along with it being hot and several other things.