IMPORTANT: The following journal is intended for the use and viewing of approved persons only and may contain information that is confidential, privileged or unsuitable for overly sensitive persons with low self-esteem, no sense of humour or irrational religious beliefs. Any dissemination, distribution or copying of this work is not authorised (either explicitly or implicitly) and constitutes an irritating social faux pas. Unless the word ‘absquatulation’ has been used in its correct context somewhere other than in this warning, it does not have any legal or grammatical use and may be ignored. No animals were harmed in the creation of this journal and a minimum of Microsoft software was used. Those of you with an overwhelming fear of the unknown will be gratified to learn that there is no hidden message revealed by reading this warning backwards.

Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Thursday 23 September 2004 (Day View) – Prince Charles Hospital

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

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'."