geeky

Anything technology related.

LAME.

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7

The encoder, I mean.

I’m re-ripping and re-encoding my CDs today, rather than doing anything useful. Audiograbber is now freeware (and sans-spyware), so you may as well go nuts, I say.

I wish I knew where my freebie, collectable TISM CD giveaway is that I received from one of their concerts a few years ago is. It’s a decent piece of memorabilia. Damn it. Oh well.

Life’s a piece of shit (wo-wo-wo)
Open your vein and slit (wo-wo-wo).Words to live by.

My computer still smokes it re: some weird video function called upon by certain games. Thanks, GPU.

I’m going to save up and buy a digital camera, new (good) headphones and perhaps a suckPod. 60 gigs is too tempting. Why can’t the other brands have decent sized drives in them? I hate them all. Rar.

BAM.

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12

I went out with palmy, Joel, Ross, Heli and Krista last night. We did pretty well for ourselves considering we didn’t leave until 10:30pm on a Thursday. It was rather fun, including a lot of piggybacks, running arse slaps and fighting inside poker machine rooms. The major highlights included having a beef kebab from Istanbul on King (kebab run) and getting a Triple Buck on that Buck Hunter game. I was leading the scores by a big margin when somehow Joel pulled out his own Triple Buck (second one I’ve ever seen after mine) and beat me. Fucker.

We also watched Kung Fu Hustle and The Rules of Attraction. Both were fun. I’m a great reviewer.

I bought myself a Logitech Dual Action gamepad. Now I can slam dunk with the best of them in NBA 2006. It also means I’m free to swing around as Spidey whenever I feel like it. Exciting time ahead. I actually bought it last weekend but I just thought I’d mention it now as a surprise.

I hope I got paid last night. I should probably check the old Netbank. Give me a second. Yes, I did. Awesome. Now I can spend it all on my rent and bills. This is fun!

Last night we got our first noise complaint. I’m gonna blame palmy and say he had the TV up too loud. It took him less than a week. On top of that, Exetel just forwarded us an email from NBC alleging that he’s downloading a movie illegally. Strike two.

Oh boy.

Blacklist.

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15

I’m finally notorious, officially.

My images directory on our teamdot.com.au site is blacklisted by some Internet protection software, apparently. Now I just need to find out from which program it is.

Woohoo!

Talisyawn.

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14

Yeah I made a bad joke for my subject. Great. The joke is about this movie. I probably should have explained that first. The longest 73 minutes of my life. I even fell asleep halfway through it. I think that’s impressive. We’ll still keep the DVD.

tofu just told me he thinks furry porn is hot. For fuck’s sake. I’m glad he’s moving to Melbourne.

Christmas was alright. I got a video camera. Expensive, but bottom of the line for its type. Good enough for the amateur, annoying stuff that I want to record. I still think I’ll try and pick up a good digital camera in a few months. Particularly for when I’m travelling. I might get one in Japan.

I ate way too much food over the weekend and during the last day or so and the majority of it was (of course) junk. My diet’s been put on hold for the holiday season it seems. I’m still trying to resist but there’s just so much tasty stuff out there to eat at the moment. Mmm, piggy.

New year’s at the shack should be good. That is, of course, as long as people don’t soft out. It’s going to be a little weird anyway I think but I’ll make sure I enjoy myself and everyone else can either join in or get lost. That’s right. I’m playing hardball.

I’m disappointed that it looks like I’m going to need an iPod or equivalent before I go overseas next year. I’m not used to having a large assortment of music available that I actually want to listen to. I’m going to have to adjust.

Tea.

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25

Behold a different icon for once!

I’m drinking what I think is my first Earl Grey. With milk. No sugar. Is that protocol?

Tea isn’t my thing, really. I’ve never really been into drinking it. Sometimes I have odd cravings/curiosities about it, like today, so I drink a cup. I have to use coffee mugs as I have no teacups in my cupboards.

My highlight for today is that I don’t have to go to court tomorrow due to there being a guilty plea. The lady on the phone said I may need to still do something next Tuesday, but that’s alright. Whatever.

My highlight for yesterday is that the man from Mantech contacted me with a new job at the Australian Stock Exchange. It’s some kind of helpdesk position but it is 24/7 with weekend shifts, too. It could be real hard work but really fun, or at least interesting. “Mantech Mike”, as I like to call him, will take care of it for me, he said. Hurrah!

It’s started to disturb me that it seems 90% of the listed IT jobs are based in North Sydney. What’s the deal with that? I wouldn’t mind so much if it wasn’t such a bitch to get there from Newtown. If I get this ASX job it’s irrelevant, I know, seeing as it’s on Bridge street and all. Still, there’s clearly some conspiracy going on. I’ll crack it one day. When I care.

Tonight I’m meant to be going to a 20th at the Lowenbrau. I feel so old. Last weekend I went to a 21st so everything’s going backwards. Perhaps the world is letting me catch up for lost time. Or fate or destiny or some other guiding hand. Maybe it’s just because I have more younger friends these days. That could be it. Good thinking, old man Ollie.

The Electric Lady website is trickling along on the wheels of progression. I’ve been teaching myself PHP as I go. Most of what I’m doing is very basic but I suppose if you’re teaching yourself that’s how you start out. Jolly good.

I’ve just noticed I seem to have a weird habit of finishing my inane story paragraphs (ie, all of them) with some short sentence that almost looks like I’m talking to myself, or checking off each statement as I go. I don’t know if this revelation is important or not, even indicative. I don’t really enjoy reading over what I’ve written while I show this particular tendency, so I’m going to make a conscious effort to stop. Unless, of course, I realise that I have no other way to neatly finish off each paragraph.

See, that last one just feels like it’s hanging. I need my “full stop statement”.

Even that one seems cut off. Argh, this will be a challenge!

Just to show I’m not all class with my fancy pants Earl Grey, yesterday I finished off my last can of KB for lunch with some sickening Maggi noodles. I even whacked in a wee bit of sesame oil and soy sauce when I cookd them but I think the flavour sachet is what kills me every time. I’m going to throw the rest out if I can summon the courage/energy. I suppose I really should confess one more thing: I drank the KB out of a beer glass. Yes, I poured it out. That probably makes the whole event a little classier, unless it’s considered as a tacky action, seeing as it’s only KB.

I’m scared. I think my RSI-afflicted arms are going to haunt me forever. Pain is bad. :'( It hurts to use computers. How ironic. I think it’s irony. Let’s pretend.

By the way (I know none of you care, but I’ll mention it anyway), I made a last.fm account for myself. I left TISM playing overnight just to be stupid. I wanted to pump up their presence on the site. What a dedicated fan I am.

Warudo.

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25

Well, last week was certainly a busy one.

I went to that Mantech thingy. It was a recruitment company assessing me, after all. I had to do some weird 10 question written quiz to see what I knew. It was written for experienced workers but the guy said the client was looking for either “a graduate” or someone “with about 8 years experience”. It’s nice to know they really narrowed down the field. Anyway, I couldn’t answer most of the questions since they were basically experience-specific, but I did what I could. I haven’t heard back, but oh well. I don’t really care.

The same day I went to visit Ross and his Finnish friends Krista and Heli. Ross mentioned earlier that they might need a place to stay in the following week, so I said they could crash here. I also caught up with his neighbour Greg (another guy I went to school with) and Kerry, Ross’ wing chun instructor or something. Nice guy. Turns out he was doing the same major project course as I was this semester at Sydney. He recognised the group name “RailTech”. I felt like a C grade celebrity. Funky.

So, yeah, I saw Corpse Bride (or is it The Corpse Bride?) on Tuesday afternoon with Ross and the girls. I quite liked that movie, actually. Some of the songs at the start bugged me, but that’s normal for musical scenes in film for me. Whatever. After that Ross managed to talk me into attending his dance class. Now I know I officially can’t dance. I can sort of pop, though. Awesome? You tell me.

Continuing on, Wednesday included working then dropping by Ross’ again after work to say farewell before he left for Finland on Thursday afternoon. Somehow I agreed to let Andrew come around to the flat afterwards with his PC so we could work on a website for a friend of his who’s in a band. Electric Lady, they’re called. 2 points to anyone who can guess where that came from.

The site is sort of coming together. palmy’s done the pretty web page design stuff and I’ve been working on the backend database (although the design keeps changing). I’m going to have to whack out some more PHP goodness to act as an interface, too. I’m sure only about 2 people reading this understand/care about this paragraph, so I’ll stop now.

Thursday involved meeting up with Emmeline again when she came around on a break from work at “The Entertainment Quarter” (or Fox Studios if you will). I managed to convince both Em and Andrew that the chips at Jesters are supreme. I wish Jesters used an apostrophe. It looks stupid. Tools.

Friday was a boring old Friday. Andrew left when I had to go to work, without having showered once. Slick. Work was uneventful, as usual. I usually buy a couple of bananas on my dinner break from the local supermarket and I’ve decided to start a ritual. It’s only a primitive one but it pleases me so perhaps it pleases the banana gods, too. Basically I just eat a banana on my way back out through the car park and then dump the empty skin in the same spot as always. I’m getting a nice little pile of banana skins at various stages of decomposition. It makes me feel like I’m contributing to something, so it’s clearly “all good”. I made a little shrine with a banana skin on an abandoned chair near a bus stop once. It remained for a while until it disappeared along with the chair. :(

Saturday was pretty cool. Leola brought in brownies at work, so I munched on a couple. I have no idea if they were homemade or not but it didn’t matter. They had my required levels of chewiness and crunchiness and therefore were found to be satisfactory. Brownies are serious business.

Another friend, Johnny (or del or Johnny Hero as I like to call him [which has actually stuck]) invited me around to his place earlier in the week as he was going to have a mini LAN (or larn). I just rocked up for an hour to catch up with him and some other buddies as I really didn’t feel like dragging my PC around with me for half the weekend. I think I made the right decision, as they all looked very sweaty and expended after their big night out clubbing on Friday. Another small victory for me.

I went out on Saturday night with Lloyd, Frank and Byrne. Lloydie wanted to start somewhere around the casino, so we did. After 2 drinks we left. Nice. We cabbed it back to King street and spent a bit of time at the Marly and in Kelly’s then shuffled back up for what I like to call the “Istanbul on King experience” for some premium kebabs. Unfortunately I managed to get some barbecue sauce on my shirt in the 10 seconds that I wasn’t concentrating for the entire time I was eating it. Fortunately it wasn’t too big a spillage. I’m sure Napisan will come to my rescue, otherwise mum will have to.

It should be recorded that Lloyd actually stayed out with us the whole time and didn’t soft out and go home. Then again, he’d already planned to crash here so I guess he didn’t have much choice as to when he could go to bed. We stayed all up for about 2 hours after getting back. Most of this time was spent watching Frank reading through the SuicideGirls website. That sounds a lot dodgier than it was, I promise.

The only real highlight of Sunday was that we won netball, 20-14 I think. Woo! I was all pumped up on energy that afternoon. I’m not sure if it was due to chance or the high amount of kilojoules I’d eaten an hour or so earlier at Hungry Jack’s, but I was ready to run all night! Instead I only played 3 quarters. Oh well.

On Sunday night I found out Krista and Heli wanted to stay down here on Monday. That meant we had to frantically clean up (well, Scott did) all the shit that was lying around. The place hasn’t looked this good since we moved in, basically. We went to pick them up on Monday night and they made us the richest, most fattening chocolate cake you could ever imagine as a thank you. It’s basically milk, flour, cream, butter and two blocks of hazlenut and dairy milk chocolate all churned together. Man, it tastes awesome. I’m not sure if my body could handle another mouthful, though.

I ran up to the Marly again last night while the girls were baking to meet up with Benecke and Frank and their significant others the small celebration of praising Benecke for finishing his exams for the year. Somehow I managed to down about 3 schooners in about 50 minutes and steal two swizzle sticks before scooting back down to the flat in the rain. It was quite a new experience to enter the front door and actually be able to smell something had been cooking. Especially when that smell involves a chocolate cake.

I need to shave my neck. Hair sucks. Stupid itchiness.

P.S. if you made it this far, I pity you for not having anything better to do.

WINMAEN.

Posted by

19

This is the journal of one of the members of the University of Sydney’s top information systems project team for 2005.

Sup Accenture say we’re elite to the tune of $1000.

BOOYAH.

Whack.

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Computers don’t like me. How ironic. I think this one that I’ve had for about 18 months has been burning up my video cards on purpose. Maybe it’s a sign to stop playing games. It seems to be working. Bah.

Well, I finished my final semester of uni (for my bachelor’s at least) on Friday. There was no fanfare or celebration. I simply went home and got ready for work. Huzzah! Now I just have one exam to go and that’ll be that.

Saturday was spent working, then dinner and a movie with Lloyd and Eri. We saw Wolf Creek. Creepy and scary at first, hammy horror movie at the end. It certainly sticks to the Australian tradition of dropping off towards the end. It’s still worth seeing, though. I’d say it’s one of the better Australian releases in a while.

Sunday meant a sweaty sleep in on the couch because I’m too lazy to put my other bedsheets on. I cleaned the downstairs floor of my apartment and tidied up my room and everything, I just couldn’t be stuffed making the bed. Whatever.

After bitching about my PC being crap for a few hours I caught up with the gang at the HHH for about 50 minutes, chowed down an overpriced steak sandwich and then hit the netball courts to play a full game, only to lose 31-19 after our opponents again relied solely on 2 point shots to get ahead. We must be the only team in the comp without a range shooter. If only we could do some trades and deals. We need a draft!

Today is Munday. That’s meant to stand for mundane and Monday. I just made it up. The rest of you may use it if you like. I’m doing the washing. Yep. Pretty exciting news today.

I believe I’m going to a Melbourne Cup party tomorrow. It should be fun. Scott will be out at Randwick to have a punt. Well, more like take a few quizzes and exams for that air traffic control gig. Still, I bet he swings by for a flutter.