"01" because there is a high probability of another post on this one.
Yeah, mid-terms are in two weeks.
Scary, I haven't done real serious study for so long and I want to get this right.
Only in one subject, the other does a couple of assignments instead, one of which I have just emailed to the lecturer.
If I do well at this, i.e. get distinctions or better for both subjects, then I will seriously consider taking on another subject. Not a day one - the two that I do are the evening ones - but an online one in another course. Currently doing the Masters of Professional Accounting (which always make me ask "is there a masters in amateur accounting?) and the other being the Masters of Applied Finance, the trading major, i.e. options, derivatives, rates arbitrage, etc.
The MAppFin has four core subject, and two other compulsory at masters level (since it has a nested diploma and certificate which also include the four core but not those other two) and four electives which can be taken from a shorter list of five each to get different majors. Those two compulsory subjects I could get status for from the MPA. So, with the MPA having eight subjects, and taking me four trimesters, then I could have four plus two equals six of the ten required for the MAppFin completed by the time that I finish the MPA, and thus need only two trimesters to finish it.
This in two years I could have two masters degrees.
The plan would then be to move back to Singapore and do the SMU MBA.
When I was looking at MBAs this one caught my eye due to its cosmopolitan nature. Australian MBAs make small talk about multiculturalism and globalisation and might offer one relevant subject as an elective, but the SMU MBA has things like 'communicating across cultures' as a required subject and a few like 'trading in ASEAN' as an elective. So more realistically a global (although specifically an Asian, and even more specifically an Oriental) education.
On to other things.
A contract has been signed, but the project still hasn't really begun and I have been on this contract for three months so far.
That is SAG for you.
(i.e. South Australian Government for anyone that strolls in from out of town.)
I was going to blog about this months ago, but here it is now because I have noticed the effect far more of late.
Used to be that Oriental girls here had long hair, there weren't many and they stayed within their cultural groups, but they kept that long hair thing from their culture. Then more Orientals were noticeable, and the girls started cutting their hair short and being more like Anglos. Now there are LOTS of Orientals in Adelaide, and a lot of them are short term (they are foreign students mostly now) and so do not take to the local culture. So their hair is longer, not as long as it was in the first wave though, and they are keeping the styles and fashions from whence they came.
The main point to this is that they tend to show a lot more skin than the local girls. i.e. mini-skirts and shorts. When winter started coming on they started wearing shorts with pantyhose underneath, so they could still 'show' more, but not be as cold (logical really). What I noticed was that after a few weeks the Anglo bitches started to copy this style. Maybe they noticed the lack of attention that they were getting. I found this very interesting.
Adelaide girls are probably the most boring in Australia, and Australian women are the most boring of all Anglo Bitches, and Anglo Bitches are the worst of all Western women, and Western women are the worst of all White women. You know the way this one goes, you have probably heard it from so many guys, especially middle-aged guys that are on better incomes and so have travelled and have some experience to make the judgement. Like me.
Interesting that they felt the need to change their appearance.
What do you think the chances are that they might realise that they have to change their behaviour as well?
Not going to waste too much time on the upcoming Australian federal election. The Socialists thought that appointing a woman as prime minister could save them, and it had some initial effect with female voters, but that has decreased a lot as women realised that this woman has nothing in common with the average woman and is not a champion for women.
Interesting though that my economics lecturer, who I would have pegged as a wet liberal, i.e. the typical type of Liberal Socialist that would have voted for her, pointed out in class that the Labor government was the most incompetent government that Australia had experienced for a long time. He illustrated this with such things as the 'alcopop' fiasco where they brought in a huge tax on low-alcohol drinks (vodka mixers etc) that kids were drinking, in an attempt to curb their use. As any economist would tell you, the result was that the kids moved on to something else, in this case hard spirits like Jack Daniels. Further he pointed out the mis-use of terms like 'super profit', which economically means a profit in excess of that which you would get from moving your investment into something else. In this case the government was using the term pejoratively against the mining industry which had come out of the GFC ahead of the rest of the country due to other nations getting out first (Australia typically lagged) and their demand for resources ensured that our resources industry made good profits. So the government automatically (as all Socialists do) decided to punish them for their success.
The lecturer didn't word it like that of course, but it is a standard rant of mine that our Socialist culture in Australia is always seeking to punish success and reward failure.
And yes, they spell it 'Labor', we don't in English usually of course, but that is how the party concerned spell their name.
Avcon was a bit of a fizzle for me this year.
I didn't enjoy last year that much either, it is kind of like it lost something in the move out of the Uni and into the Convention Centre. I don't mind the increase in focus on games (that is what the government sponsors are behind) but it has come at the expense of the anime/manga. For example, one of the theatres that would have been showing anime was used for a series of presentation on game design.
It's not that I don't want there to be a series of presentation on game design - after all, I attended a few myself - but I do not want there to be a decrease in the amount of anime being screened.
Also a lot, and I mean a LOT, of vendors have withdrawn. Less than half of the displays/booths/whatever were anime and manga oriented. There were a few game oriented, and there were a lot of government ones (TAFE, libraries, Trade and Development, etc.).
It's just not the same.
And just to finish off.
I left Metro 2033 unfinished somewhere half way through and moved on to a Spellforce that I had bought - it had 1 and the two expansions and 2 and its one expansion all on one disc. I started from the very start and am redoing Spellforce 1. Not using any cheats, but using a walkthrough for its map, i.e. where to find people, you know, when you have a mission to take this to that person but it doesn't tell you where they are and you can't remember which of the maps they were on. Playing as a necromancer, but currently in reasonably good armour, with a sword and shield, I am not using the magic so much. I was raising skeletons a lot, but I am getting to level 20, although my magic skills are still only at level 5 and so I am not finding the skeletons much use right now.
It was the first game to mix role play and strategy, and playing a necromancer is always way cool dude.
And it has a long story ahead for me. Weeks, if not months, of gaming.
Saturday, July 31
Wednesday, July 7
Metro
There was something that I forgot last night about Metro 2033, the installation process really pissed me off - I bought a disc and yet it installed via steam and took more than an hour, then it wouldn't play saying it was missing some PhysX thing and that I needed to reinstall.
You can imagine my screaming: if you need PhysX you fracken moron why didn't you install it dickweed???
Anyhow, I found a copy in my UT folder and copied it across, obviously the UT guys know how to package a programme...
It still splashes an error message about my Nvidia drivers needing updating (which my Nvidia control panel disagrees with) and that game play might be degraded.
What is degraded is that, like Stalker, I have to turn the graphics way down or else it is very jerky. Both my desktop and my laptop have high-end graphics cards (naturally) and can play any other game on its highest settings, but not the games out of Kiev...
You can imagine my screaming: if you need PhysX you fracken moron why didn't you install it dickweed???
Anyhow, I found a copy in my UT folder and copied it across, obviously the UT guys know how to package a programme...
It still splashes an error message about my Nvidia drivers needing updating (which my Nvidia control panel disagrees with) and that game play might be degraded.
What is degraded is that, like Stalker, I have to turn the graphics way down or else it is very jerky. Both my desktop and my laptop have high-end graphics cards (naturally) and can play any other game on its highest settings, but not the games out of Kiev...
Tuesday, July 6
Netscape
I am a grumpy old man. I know that, I acknowledge it, I even take some pride and joy in it. And I know that as I am getting older, I am getting grumpier.
Being old and single kind of adds to it...
I have just returned from an evening lecture. These are meant to be phone-free zones, but routinely three or four people have their phones on and each goes off a few times, quite a few times in one girl's case (and yes, all of those that I clocked were girls). They have them on buzz, not on ring, but it still makes noise, especially in said girl's case as she lets it keep buzzing as she finishes writing whatever. Bear in mind that this is a small evening class of twelve or so students.
But one guy at the front had his laptop open and on and spent the entire, and I mean the entire, lecture surfing for cars.
I will be extremely interested to know how he scores in the subject.
Young girl goes out drinking alone, gets picked up by three guys, follows them willingly somewhere lonely, gets raped repeatedly, only actually realises that she was raped the next day. Yes, I know that rape is a bad thing, but one of the crimes committed here was stupidity. In cases like that I seriously question whether valuable police time and resources should be wasted, she should just be told that stupid girls that go out alone and get drunk then go somewhere with strange men are going to get raped. She should count herself lucky to be alive. Where is the personal responsibility thing? Sure, in a civilised country blah, blah, blah, but she went with several guys from a not civilised place so what did she think was going to happen? That they wanted to play tiddley winks? You can say that she was drunk; she wasn't able to think at all. I will say; good girls don't get drunk, good girls don't go out alone, good girls don't go off with several strange men. Why is it that good girls are so rare now and we seem to have so many stupid bitches and sluts? In a word; feminism. Call it the rant for the day, though I don't think just one makes for a very grumpy old man, I should do a few more.
Played Wolfenstein last week. It wasn't as good as Return to Castle... Sure, it has weapons upgrades, but it has too many stupid boss levels and too much search every-fracken-where for intel, gold, tomes. Did not really enjoy it so much at all.
Steam was offline last weekend (as in the one before the one just passed), apart from the obligatory rant about what right do the wankers at valve think they have to take my hard earned money and then not let me play the games that I have paid for. Yeah, it wasn't just that the steam servers were overloaded and you couldn't download anything that you had just bought (though that too) but that fracken steam wouldn't run anything without fracken connecting to the 'cloud', which, of course, is just what it couldn't fracken do. So I put in a Stalker disc, only realised a few hours in that it was Stalker 1 - after my friend made some comment about it and I said that I wasn't playing 1, I was playing 2, but sure enough there was no swamp, I was in 1. Mind you 2 was heaps buggier. Eventually I bored out, took a few days, but eventually the lack of challenge, the lack of purpose got to me. Naturally I was refusing to go to Pripet (Pripyat, I think they write it in Stalker 1) and follow the game mission, and in 1 there isn't really the faction war to get into.
So I ended up buying Metro 2033, which is what I am playing at the moment. Kind of a Stalker thing (lots of Stalker references), with something like the Wolfenstein engine by the look (no damage meter, get blurry around the peripheral vision and hide somewhere whilst you regenerate). But some really fracken hard bits here and there, and no save option before one. Anyhow, it kept refusing to read the game pad part of my Zboard gaming keyboard, specifically the run button, which I eventually noticed when I had a bit where I was hand-cuffed and had to run or die. And as each failed attempt got me to have to reload the whole map section it was not retaining the changes that I made each time to the key bindings so that it would fracken run. So I found that quite tedious. Also had some issues with people giving me instructions, and vital details not being shown in the objectives list - I was to go where and do what? In Stalker, at least by Stalker 3, you can check your message log if the details in the objectives list is a bit vague, and you can re-read the whole conversation. I am not too sure about the guns, find versus buy etc, I suspect that it will take a few plays to get the knack of that. But, all in all, I am enjoying it, I enjoy the darkness, the Russian-ness, in this way I enjoy the whole Stalker series. And it seems to have some depth, I don't know how far through I am yet, but Stalker 3 was definitely too short.
So that is my life right now; I wake up, I work, two nights I have lectures, otherwise I play games. I do need to get some discipline about studying; dedicate Saturday morning or Thursday evening. And I need to do a bit more housework. Also I need to buy some food.
Being old and single kind of adds to it...
I have just returned from an evening lecture. These are meant to be phone-free zones, but routinely three or four people have their phones on and each goes off a few times, quite a few times in one girl's case (and yes, all of those that I clocked were girls). They have them on buzz, not on ring, but it still makes noise, especially in said girl's case as she lets it keep buzzing as she finishes writing whatever. Bear in mind that this is a small evening class of twelve or so students.
But one guy at the front had his laptop open and on and spent the entire, and I mean the entire, lecture surfing for cars.
I will be extremely interested to know how he scores in the subject.
Young girl goes out drinking alone, gets picked up by three guys, follows them willingly somewhere lonely, gets raped repeatedly, only actually realises that she was raped the next day. Yes, I know that rape is a bad thing, but one of the crimes committed here was stupidity. In cases like that I seriously question whether valuable police time and resources should be wasted, she should just be told that stupid girls that go out alone and get drunk then go somewhere with strange men are going to get raped. She should count herself lucky to be alive. Where is the personal responsibility thing? Sure, in a civilised country blah, blah, blah, but she went with several guys from a not civilised place so what did she think was going to happen? That they wanted to play tiddley winks? You can say that she was drunk; she wasn't able to think at all. I will say; good girls don't get drunk, good girls don't go out alone, good girls don't go off with several strange men. Why is it that good girls are so rare now and we seem to have so many stupid bitches and sluts? In a word; feminism. Call it the rant for the day, though I don't think just one makes for a very grumpy old man, I should do a few more.
Played Wolfenstein last week. It wasn't as good as Return to Castle... Sure, it has weapons upgrades, but it has too many stupid boss levels and too much search every-fracken-where for intel, gold, tomes. Did not really enjoy it so much at all.
Steam was offline last weekend (as in the one before the one just passed), apart from the obligatory rant about what right do the wankers at valve think they have to take my hard earned money and then not let me play the games that I have paid for. Yeah, it wasn't just that the steam servers were overloaded and you couldn't download anything that you had just bought (though that too) but that fracken steam wouldn't run anything without fracken connecting to the 'cloud', which, of course, is just what it couldn't fracken do. So I put in a Stalker disc, only realised a few hours in that it was Stalker 1 - after my friend made some comment about it and I said that I wasn't playing 1, I was playing 2, but sure enough there was no swamp, I was in 1. Mind you 2 was heaps buggier. Eventually I bored out, took a few days, but eventually the lack of challenge, the lack of purpose got to me. Naturally I was refusing to go to Pripet (Pripyat, I think they write it in Stalker 1) and follow the game mission, and in 1 there isn't really the faction war to get into.
So I ended up buying Metro 2033, which is what I am playing at the moment. Kind of a Stalker thing (lots of Stalker references), with something like the Wolfenstein engine by the look (no damage meter, get blurry around the peripheral vision and hide somewhere whilst you regenerate). But some really fracken hard bits here and there, and no save option before one. Anyhow, it kept refusing to read the game pad part of my Zboard gaming keyboard, specifically the run button, which I eventually noticed when I had a bit where I was hand-cuffed and had to run or die. And as each failed attempt got me to have to reload the whole map section it was not retaining the changes that I made each time to the key bindings so that it would fracken run. So I found that quite tedious. Also had some issues with people giving me instructions, and vital details not being shown in the objectives list - I was to go where and do what? In Stalker, at least by Stalker 3, you can check your message log if the details in the objectives list is a bit vague, and you can re-read the whole conversation. I am not too sure about the guns, find versus buy etc, I suspect that it will take a few plays to get the knack of that. But, all in all, I am enjoying it, I enjoy the darkness, the Russian-ness, in this way I enjoy the whole Stalker series. And it seems to have some depth, I don't know how far through I am yet, but Stalker 3 was definitely too short.
So that is my life right now; I wake up, I work, two nights I have lectures, otherwise I play games. I do need to get some discipline about studying; dedicate Saturday morning or Thursday evening. And I need to do a bit more housework. Also I need to buy some food.
Tuesday, June 22
Remember Me
So, the little "Remember Me" tick on this thing doesn't work, at least on XP.
On Vista I have so many damned things prompting me with stored passwords I wouldn't know if it was the Blogger site remembering, Vista, or the Asus.
I was offline over the weekend. I blew up my modem, well, I was setting up my desktop and moved the modem and the plug pulled out and when I stuck it back in there was a little blue flash and then the modem's lights went out. Turns out it only needed a reset, and there is a reset button recessed and hidden, not where the Telstra person said it was, but knowing it was somewhere I just kept searching, and it worked. But I need a new cable since that one has its little clicky bit broken off.
Why is it that most of the female project managers that I have had to work with are so forgettable? I am being polite; something more along the lines of "wouldn't want to work with again" would describe it more accurately. They just don't seem to make good leaders; don't have vision, can't form strategies, can't manage people. Sure, not all of the males have been that good; but 1) most were okay, and 2) few were as bad as most of the females have been.
Did I tell you about the time one was so bad that when our team was talking about who to ask to have replace her I suggested we use a teddy bear? Couldn't have been any worse. After the team stopped laughing and asked for a serious answer I pointed out the cute Chinese girl that was junior to everyone in the Finance area. All she had to do was be a channel for communications, take minutes, and do what I told her to do / say what I told her to say (to management) and she would have been fine. Seriously.
The number of times that I have been 'managed' by someone paid less than half what I get can't be counted. What do you expect when a project team is composed of subject experts brought in just for the project but the project manager is the person in-house that is not too busy with other stuff? It is not a bad thing, and most experts are so wrapped up in what they are doing that they don't notice, and really, the pm's job is mostly communication. Most of the time anyhow. People skills - that is what is important for a team leader. And everybody always says that women have people skills.
You know what I think that it is? The women that have all been good pms have been professionals, consultants, well paid. The women that have been bad pms have all been, shall we say, not so professional, internal, not that impressively paid. Maybe women panic when they feel out of their depth. (Hell, when they are out of their depth.)
Remember when I was at my last contract and I said that the largest consultancy in the state (one of the biggest in the country) had asked me to speak with them? Never heard anything more. I suspect that it was just a bit of bait to try and get me to wheedle them a deal from the inside. Chalk that up as a learning experience.
Here is something that hurts; when you take a new rental here you have to pay up six weeks rent as bond and two weeks rent in advance, then two weeks later you have to pay a months rent. So twelve weeks rent paid in two weeks. All this before you get your bond back from the previous rental. Ouch! Well done South Australia.
Odd thing; the SA Government body that takes bonds is very quick about taking your money, but rather slow about giving it back. Never thought that did you?
I was in the bank the other day, and the woman helping me felt the need to get quite personal, as in tell me her life story. Asian woman, went on about how she wants to be a good wife, loves her husband, wants to serve him. Later was saying something about being loving and subservient. The whole discussion (one sided) went on for longer than I really wanted, but I was intrigued by the thought processes that you will never see in an Anglo woman. Can you imagine an Australian woman (at least one younger than fifty) talking about being happy with her destiny to serve her husband? Kind of like the times Eastern European women have prefaced their expression of an opinion to me with "just being a woman, but...". It may be dead feminine, it may melt your heart and threaten to instantly enthral you, but it is definitely something that you will never hear from an Anglo bitch.
One thing about Rome Total War - Total Realism is that it does have a habit of corrupting the autosaves. Almost seems guaranteed to happen at some point in a campaign (they will last a few weekends remember). Must remember to save frequently, because it is only the autosave, which happens just after you press the next turn button but before it makes that turn. And the bitch only keeps the one autosave, so you can't go back to the previous one and only lose one turn (no big deal). No you have to go back to the last time that you remembered to save a few hours ago.
Doesn't seem to happen so much in the vanilla game, just the mega mod.
A friend was telling me that there is a baby boom amongst the foreign students. They come here, and away from their social structures they do a little more PDA, moves beyond just holding hands and kissing in public (but that next bit doesn't happen in public mind you). And they are having a higher pregnancy rate than they would at home or that native students do. Who is going to pay for this? Just as I don't believe that foreign students shouldn't get free bus passes like native students (I am not saying that they do, I wouldn't know, just that they shouldn't), I also don't believe that they should get free medical. Although emergency medical treatment is part of an international agreement, but this one shouldn't be, they should be sent home to deal with it there. But I have noticed how so many little dark-haired girls are holding tightly on to dark-haired boys around town. In a way that wouldn't be allowed back home.
My first thoughts were why the silly little things were wasting their time with a boy, he wouldn't be able to provide for them, he wouldn't have the experience or knowledge to make a good husband, he wouldn't have the maturity to be a good father. And if they went too far then they (the little girls that is) would be less desirable a catch to some man that would be a better husband. But there you go, just what you start thinking like when you get to be a grumpy old fart.
On Vista I have so many damned things prompting me with stored passwords I wouldn't know if it was the Blogger site remembering, Vista, or the Asus.
I was offline over the weekend. I blew up my modem, well, I was setting up my desktop and moved the modem and the plug pulled out and when I stuck it back in there was a little blue flash and then the modem's lights went out. Turns out it only needed a reset, and there is a reset button recessed and hidden, not where the Telstra person said it was, but knowing it was somewhere I just kept searching, and it worked. But I need a new cable since that one has its little clicky bit broken off.
Why is it that most of the female project managers that I have had to work with are so forgettable? I am being polite; something more along the lines of "wouldn't want to work with again" would describe it more accurately. They just don't seem to make good leaders; don't have vision, can't form strategies, can't manage people. Sure, not all of the males have been that good; but 1) most were okay, and 2) few were as bad as most of the females have been.
Did I tell you about the time one was so bad that when our team was talking about who to ask to have replace her I suggested we use a teddy bear? Couldn't have been any worse. After the team stopped laughing and asked for a serious answer I pointed out the cute Chinese girl that was junior to everyone in the Finance area. All she had to do was be a channel for communications, take minutes, and do what I told her to do / say what I told her to say (to management) and she would have been fine. Seriously.
The number of times that I have been 'managed' by someone paid less than half what I get can't be counted. What do you expect when a project team is composed of subject experts brought in just for the project but the project manager is the person in-house that is not too busy with other stuff? It is not a bad thing, and most experts are so wrapped up in what they are doing that they don't notice, and really, the pm's job is mostly communication. Most of the time anyhow. People skills - that is what is important for a team leader. And everybody always says that women have people skills.
You know what I think that it is? The women that have all been good pms have been professionals, consultants, well paid. The women that have been bad pms have all been, shall we say, not so professional, internal, not that impressively paid. Maybe women panic when they feel out of their depth. (Hell, when they are out of their depth.)
Remember when I was at my last contract and I said that the largest consultancy in the state (one of the biggest in the country) had asked me to speak with them? Never heard anything more. I suspect that it was just a bit of bait to try and get me to wheedle them a deal from the inside. Chalk that up as a learning experience.
Here is something that hurts; when you take a new rental here you have to pay up six weeks rent as bond and two weeks rent in advance, then two weeks later you have to pay a months rent. So twelve weeks rent paid in two weeks. All this before you get your bond back from the previous rental. Ouch! Well done South Australia.
Odd thing; the SA Government body that takes bonds is very quick about taking your money, but rather slow about giving it back. Never thought that did you?
I was in the bank the other day, and the woman helping me felt the need to get quite personal, as in tell me her life story. Asian woman, went on about how she wants to be a good wife, loves her husband, wants to serve him. Later was saying something about being loving and subservient. The whole discussion (one sided) went on for longer than I really wanted, but I was intrigued by the thought processes that you will never see in an Anglo woman. Can you imagine an Australian woman (at least one younger than fifty) talking about being happy with her destiny to serve her husband? Kind of like the times Eastern European women have prefaced their expression of an opinion to me with "just being a woman, but...". It may be dead feminine, it may melt your heart and threaten to instantly enthral you, but it is definitely something that you will never hear from an Anglo bitch.
One thing about Rome Total War - Total Realism is that it does have a habit of corrupting the autosaves. Almost seems guaranteed to happen at some point in a campaign (they will last a few weekends remember). Must remember to save frequently, because it is only the autosave, which happens just after you press the next turn button but before it makes that turn. And the bitch only keeps the one autosave, so you can't go back to the previous one and only lose one turn (no big deal). No you have to go back to the last time that you remembered to save a few hours ago.
Doesn't seem to happen so much in the vanilla game, just the mega mod.
A friend was telling me that there is a baby boom amongst the foreign students. They come here, and away from their social structures they do a little more PDA, moves beyond just holding hands and kissing in public (but that next bit doesn't happen in public mind you). And they are having a higher pregnancy rate than they would at home or that native students do. Who is going to pay for this? Just as I don't believe that foreign students shouldn't get free bus passes like native students (I am not saying that they do, I wouldn't know, just that they shouldn't), I also don't believe that they should get free medical. Although emergency medical treatment is part of an international agreement, but this one shouldn't be, they should be sent home to deal with it there. But I have noticed how so many little dark-haired girls are holding tightly on to dark-haired boys around town. In a way that wouldn't be allowed back home.
My first thoughts were why the silly little things were wasting their time with a boy, he wouldn't be able to provide for them, he wouldn't have the experience or knowledge to make a good husband, he wouldn't have the maturity to be a good father. And if they went too far then they (the little girls that is) would be less desirable a catch to some man that would be a better husband. But there you go, just what you start thinking like when you get to be a grumpy old fart.
Thursday, June 17
Forgotten Blog
Yeah, I kinda forgot that I had a blog for a few days. Too busy.
I have moved apartments. My old rental manager tried to cheat me out of another two weeks rent on the way out. I got the power and phone relocated, then to have Telstra drop me two days claiming that it is illegal to reconnect me so soon. And I got my power disconnected; as in I got it transferred to the new address, and then after the address was in my name it got cut because the previous tenants had moved out. I came home to a cold, dark house - had to go out for dinner, boo hoo, took a couple of calls but someone came around that night to reconnect it. I had to throw the main switch, apparently it is illegal for him to actually do the connection.
I had been reconciling two systems at work, well I was asked to check that one was in the other. I did a weeks worth of data out of one which checked to three days in the other (weekend thing) and asked my project manager if she wanted me to finish the next few days given that it wasn't going to add any value. She said it was okay. That was last week. This week it was "I asked you to reconcile the whole week, not just five days!" So I did the next few days. It did not add any value. What can I say?
My new flat is kind of nice. It has pros and cons. But I think that I will enjoy it more as I am closer to the 'busy' end of town. Lots of restaurants just steps away, the mall is just a few minutes, also closer to the river and gardens.
I had an Adult Friend Finder account three years ago, it was a one year pre-paid thing and then I closed it. They started billing my card every month about nine months ago, lasted for seven months. Unauthorised, in fact pure credit card fraud. Apparently it is legal in the US for US companies to commit fraud so long as it is not against US citizens. Anyhow, the bank closed that card, and it had only just been replaced. So now I am frantically changing all of my automated accounts, but not to the new card from this bank, remember, but to my new SingAir AmEx card so I get KrisFlier points. Both my new Westpac and my new HSBC cards are meant to have the zero or 1% on transferred balance offers, but I can't see that either of them has actually taken any of previous card's debt. I guess 'cos it was, coincidentally, just closed as they were opening the new accounts.
(The AFF account was meant to find me an Asian girlfriend in Singers before I moved there so that I could move straight into a relationship. I would have stayed with that sort of leverage to keep me there.)
As I come out of Hotmail I get the Singapore screen since I haven't updated MSN to the fact that I am (unfortunately) back in Oz, today there were lots of pics of Singers flooded by rainfall - it all made me so homesick!
I have moved apartments. My old rental manager tried to cheat me out of another two weeks rent on the way out. I got the power and phone relocated, then to have Telstra drop me two days claiming that it is illegal to reconnect me so soon. And I got my power disconnected; as in I got it transferred to the new address, and then after the address was in my name it got cut because the previous tenants had moved out. I came home to a cold, dark house - had to go out for dinner, boo hoo, took a couple of calls but someone came around that night to reconnect it. I had to throw the main switch, apparently it is illegal for him to actually do the connection.
I had been reconciling two systems at work, well I was asked to check that one was in the other. I did a weeks worth of data out of one which checked to three days in the other (weekend thing) and asked my project manager if she wanted me to finish the next few days given that it wasn't going to add any value. She said it was okay. That was last week. This week it was "I asked you to reconcile the whole week, not just five days!" So I did the next few days. It did not add any value. What can I say?
My new flat is kind of nice. It has pros and cons. But I think that I will enjoy it more as I am closer to the 'busy' end of town. Lots of restaurants just steps away, the mall is just a few minutes, also closer to the river and gardens.
I had an Adult Friend Finder account three years ago, it was a one year pre-paid thing and then I closed it. They started billing my card every month about nine months ago, lasted for seven months. Unauthorised, in fact pure credit card fraud. Apparently it is legal in the US for US companies to commit fraud so long as it is not against US citizens. Anyhow, the bank closed that card, and it had only just been replaced. So now I am frantically changing all of my automated accounts, but not to the new card from this bank, remember, but to my new SingAir AmEx card so I get KrisFlier points. Both my new Westpac and my new HSBC cards are meant to have the zero or 1% on transferred balance offers, but I can't see that either of them has actually taken any of previous card's debt. I guess 'cos it was, coincidentally, just closed as they were opening the new accounts.
(The AFF account was meant to find me an Asian girlfriend in Singers before I moved there so that I could move straight into a relationship. I would have stayed with that sort of leverage to keep me there.)
As I come out of Hotmail I get the Singapore screen since I haven't updated MSN to the fact that I am (unfortunately) back in Oz, today there were lots of pics of Singers flooded by rainfall - it all made me so homesick!
Monday, June 7
Why am I doing this?
I am moving house.
Fed up with my rental manager's total ineptness, replacing my fridge-that-was-okay-except-for-missing-door-shelves with a fridge-that-is-beaten-up-dented-scratched-has-cracked-plastic-shelves-a-much-smaller-freezer-and-is-as-noisy-as-hell-but-has-door-shelves and his entering my apartment without getting my permission to make this swap so I gave notice that I was going to give notice.
That was all mid last week, I enquired about five places, looked at three, and applied for two by Friday, and today, Monday, have been told that I was successful getting one - my preferred one too. All much quicker than I expected. So I gave written two weeks notice to the 'grand manager' after work and have just been online filling in disconnection, relocation, and new connection forms. I will still have to phone a couple tomorrow since not everyone will accept a cancel via the web.
I'm really buzzed.
The new place is in the old East End Market complex, an inside apartment so the balcony faces the quiet courtyard and trees and greenery.
My sister dropped off a few big plastic boxes (the wheeled kind) and I am going to start packing tonight (hence the title, I should be doing that now and not writing this). I will get a lot of packing done in the evenings, then finish Saturday morning, then move Sunday, then next weekend will clean the old place.
I am hoping that I can get the power on there in time, I use TruEnergy and they only take relocations by phone, and want four days, if I phone first thing Tuesday, then Wed, Thurs, Fri, will it by on for the weekend? Still, it is CBD so it should be easier. Phone won't be on until mid next week (Telstra...), broadband and cable TV follow it by a few days. And then Monday the week after I have everything cut here so that I have power and hot water for next weekend's clean up.
I had another little mishap with Australia Post; an eBay delivery was running late, so I emailed the merchant who swore that he had posted the item and gave me the registered post number, I phoned AusPost and lo and behold, it had been delivered a week ago, but they hadn't told me about it. Or perhaps more likely, the card had exactly the same info as for the last one (reference number '1', seriously) and naturally I thought that it was a second card for the first parcel. But then they moved it to the GPO, without me asking for it. True, I asked for the first one to be moved, but they never told me of this new event. Useless AusPost courier. He is an Indian of course (you know rings your buzzer saying 'please come down, please come down' [buzz buzz buzz endlessly] without saying who he is or why you should go down - something like 'Australia Post courier, please sign for a parcel' would work so much better). So is the new rental manager that is the reason why I am leaving this apartment. Do I foresee major 'cultural' difficulties ahead for Australia?
You do realise that over the last year Indians have become almost as much hated and despised as Muslims in Australia? They are more annoying, but have been committing less violent crime against Anglos (the nine year old girl being raped by one last week aside). But they have been blaming Australia for being racist for all of these attacks on Indians when we all found out that they were carried out by other Indians. Except for that guy that burnt himself trying to torch his car for insurance and then screamed that it was a racist attack against him. That wasn't 'another' Indian.
You know what all Australians are saying.
You don't like it here? Then fuck off back where you came from!
Seriously, when will Liberal Socialism gasp its last breath?
Still, if it did then I wouldn't be so keen on leaving here myself, would I?
All of this left wing humanist crap is a big part of why I want out.
That and the high taxes to pay for a plethora of useless public servants and welfare addicts, the government bureaucracies that strangle business ventures. And blah blah blah, I could go on for days.
But then you try to explain to a Singaporean how their one party Fascist state is like a breath of fresh air to us. They want to whinge about the lack of social services without accepting that providing them, and paying for the huge resultant civil service, will lead to crushing taxes. Which in turn will mean that families will not have the wherewithal to provide for their own family members and so will become even more dependent upon government handouts. By whatever deity you worship in whatever abode He/She/It resides in, your public transport system WORKS! Try finding one in Australia that does. (Admittedly, I live in Adelaide and it is worse than most AU cities in this regard, as in so many others.)
And seriously, do you want to live in Malaysia, where you know that you will suffer great persecution and oppression because of your religious beliefs, well Australia is a lot like that for those of us who follow traditional European beliefs rather than that false and foreign, indeed Asian, construct that most Whites profess to follow.
Speaking of which.
I just got a SingAir 'mail (KrisFlyer newsletter) which had a SingAir/AmEx card thing in it. (Well, a link thereto.) Two of the three cards were available to Singaporean residents only, and the third's best benefits were only available in SG. Kind of thought it was a funny thing for them to be sending out, but I guess maybe most of their members are Singaporeans. Maybe most Australians are members of QANTAS's club. Not in Adelaide of course, 'cos QANTAS doesn't service Adelaide. I have two best friends, that makes three of us, two of us have well paying jobs, both are KrisFlyer members, not QANTAS whatevers. I can only go on what I know; you know, it is a 'generation x' thing, we only trust anecdotal evidence.
Why do I use TruEnergy?
I made that choice years ago, but is it still valid? Maybe I should re-investigate.
Anyhow, big changes ahead.
Well, not really big, just moving home, but it seems big.
Fed up with my rental manager's total ineptness, replacing my fridge-that-was-okay-except-for-missing-door-shelves with a fridge-that-is-beaten-up-dented-scratched-has-cracked-plastic-shelves-a-much-smaller-freezer-and-is-as-noisy-as-hell-but-has-door-shelves and his entering my apartment without getting my permission to make this swap so I gave notice that I was going to give notice.
That was all mid last week, I enquired about five places, looked at three, and applied for two by Friday, and today, Monday, have been told that I was successful getting one - my preferred one too. All much quicker than I expected. So I gave written two weeks notice to the 'grand manager' after work and have just been online filling in disconnection, relocation, and new connection forms. I will still have to phone a couple tomorrow since not everyone will accept a cancel via the web.
I'm really buzzed.
The new place is in the old East End Market complex, an inside apartment so the balcony faces the quiet courtyard and trees and greenery.
My sister dropped off a few big plastic boxes (the wheeled kind) and I am going to start packing tonight (hence the title, I should be doing that now and not writing this). I will get a lot of packing done in the evenings, then finish Saturday morning, then move Sunday, then next weekend will clean the old place.
I am hoping that I can get the power on there in time, I use TruEnergy and they only take relocations by phone, and want four days, if I phone first thing Tuesday, then Wed, Thurs, Fri, will it by on for the weekend? Still, it is CBD so it should be easier. Phone won't be on until mid next week (Telstra...), broadband and cable TV follow it by a few days. And then Monday the week after I have everything cut here so that I have power and hot water for next weekend's clean up.
I had another little mishap with Australia Post; an eBay delivery was running late, so I emailed the merchant who swore that he had posted the item and gave me the registered post number, I phoned AusPost and lo and behold, it had been delivered a week ago, but they hadn't told me about it. Or perhaps more likely, the card had exactly the same info as for the last one (reference number '1', seriously) and naturally I thought that it was a second card for the first parcel. But then they moved it to the GPO, without me asking for it. True, I asked for the first one to be moved, but they never told me of this new event. Useless AusPost courier. He is an Indian of course (you know rings your buzzer saying 'please come down, please come down' [buzz buzz buzz endlessly] without saying who he is or why you should go down - something like 'Australia Post courier, please sign for a parcel' would work so much better). So is the new rental manager that is the reason why I am leaving this apartment. Do I foresee major 'cultural' difficulties ahead for Australia?
You do realise that over the last year Indians have become almost as much hated and despised as Muslims in Australia? They are more annoying, but have been committing less violent crime against Anglos (the nine year old girl being raped by one last week aside). But they have been blaming Australia for being racist for all of these attacks on Indians when we all found out that they were carried out by other Indians. Except for that guy that burnt himself trying to torch his car for insurance and then screamed that it was a racist attack against him. That wasn't 'another' Indian.
You know what all Australians are saying.
You don't like it here? Then fuck off back where you came from!
Seriously, when will Liberal Socialism gasp its last breath?
Still, if it did then I wouldn't be so keen on leaving here myself, would I?
All of this left wing humanist crap is a big part of why I want out.
That and the high taxes to pay for a plethora of useless public servants and welfare addicts, the government bureaucracies that strangle business ventures. And blah blah blah, I could go on for days.
But then you try to explain to a Singaporean how their one party Fascist state is like a breath of fresh air to us. They want to whinge about the lack of social services without accepting that providing them, and paying for the huge resultant civil service, will lead to crushing taxes. Which in turn will mean that families will not have the wherewithal to provide for their own family members and so will become even more dependent upon government handouts. By whatever deity you worship in whatever abode He/She/It resides in, your public transport system WORKS! Try finding one in Australia that does. (Admittedly, I live in Adelaide and it is worse than most AU cities in this regard, as in so many others.)
And seriously, do you want to live in Malaysia, where you know that you will suffer great persecution and oppression because of your religious beliefs, well Australia is a lot like that for those of us who follow traditional European beliefs rather than that false and foreign, indeed Asian, construct that most Whites profess to follow.
Speaking of which.
I just got a SingAir 'mail (KrisFlyer newsletter) which had a SingAir/AmEx card thing in it. (Well, a link thereto.) Two of the three cards were available to Singaporean residents only, and the third's best benefits were only available in SG. Kind of thought it was a funny thing for them to be sending out, but I guess maybe most of their members are Singaporeans. Maybe most Australians are members of QANTAS's club. Not in Adelaide of course, 'cos QANTAS doesn't service Adelaide. I have two best friends, that makes three of us, two of us have well paying jobs, both are KrisFlyer members, not QANTAS whatevers. I can only go on what I know; you know, it is a 'generation x' thing, we only trust anecdotal evidence.
Why do I use TruEnergy?
I made that choice years ago, but is it still valid? Maybe I should re-investigate.
Anyhow, big changes ahead.
Well, not really big, just moving home, but it seems big.
Saturday, June 5
Birthdays
Yes, there is one tomorrow, but rather than a 'present' I wired my sis a thousand. I know that she needs a hand at the moment and could use it, but somehow it doesn't feel 'right'. I have this thought that I should now buy some useless trifle and gift-wrap it. Odd. Emotional and not logical, I know. I get a tad annoyed at how my father always gives me a few hundred for my birthday, I think that I would appreciate a book (or something) more, even though it costs a lot less and even if I didn't actually enjoy it. But this is a particular situation.
Normally I would say it doesn't seem much, but at this point it is threatening my ability to pay my own rent. Financially I have been having a bad year. I could get really melancholic here...
At the moment my pet hate is cyclists.
The last few days I have been thinking of getting a t-short made up saying something like "When I drive a car I take revenge on the cyclists that make being a pedestrian so dangerous." Seriously, they are pissing me off. Riding on footpaths, blocking pedestrian crossing zones, shouting abuse at you as they cowardly ride off after they nearly run you over, thinking that no laws apply to them. Everything that cyclists like to whinge about car-drivers can be applied to themselves.
I am having a busy time right now. I lost patience with the new dick of a rental manager after the fridge fiasco and so have been looking for a new apartment, which will involve paying eight weeks rent before I get the previous bond returned. And I will soon be studying again and had to pay fees and buy text books. So kind of financial worries. At the point at which I am changing banks and starting new cards and have (still) to move my automatic deductions/charges to new accounts/cards. And Australia Post has been pissing me off all week not being able to give me something that they held at a post office ten minutes walk from me. Took nearly two weeks, eight interactions with them, and a total cost of about eighty dollars to me to resolve.
I have been playing Rome; Total War on this laptop, which runs Vista and the development console doesn't seem to work in vista, so the cheats available in xp are not. Given that the game seems to randomly hit hard with money lost to 'corruption', which you can't do anything about, like hiring constables or such, I resolved to use the money cheat to counteract it. But of course I can't get to it in vista, so I copied the save file onto a flash drive and tried to open it in a R:TW on my desktop (which runs xp), but that crashes the game. I had a similar problem with something else a while ago as I recall, cheats not working on vista. Seems to be not a gamer-friendly os.
Anyhow, I went out last night, Friday night, and walked down the road to the city centre. Initially planning to go to a text book shop in Renaissance Arcade (? I think, anyhow that same arcade that has the vegetarian place at the end near Pultney), but it wasn't open, wasn't open this morning either, sign (which I read at that point) said 9:30 to 4:30 Mon-Fri so obviously they don't want business. Ended up trying the new EB Games shop, not that it is 'new', rather that they have moved into a new store (not too far from Shin Tokyo). I am not kidding you, the only game I could find that vaguely caught my attention was Pharaoh! Marked to only thirty and then with a half price sticker on that. So old, but a fun game - I do not enjoy Children of the Nile, I bought it on Steam only because I forgot that it wasn't Pharaoh, forgot which was which. And every time that I would look through my steam list wanting to play a decent strategy game (an area steam is weak in) I would wish that it was pharaoh and end up playing a shooter. This says something for how weak on story line or original ideas games are lately.
I look at bioshock 2, but bioshock 1 was only a play-once game.
I looked at supreme commander 2, but nothing on the box indicated anything different from 1.
I was so desperate I even looked at civilisation what? 27 or something it is up to now? But I didn't like the first half dozen and couldn't see the latest being worth installing.
Remember when doom 2 was awe inspiring?
We could hookup the old co-ax and play TOGETHER!!!!
Oh, and then dune 2!
These two games defined us.
They gave us meaning.
Dare I say it? They made life worth living!
When fear 2 came out not too long ago my comments ran something like; the graphics are good enough to masturbate to but the story line is nothing much new and the weapons are no biggy, definitely it is not as frightening. Bearing in mind that fear 1 was the most frightening game that I have ever played. Seriously, when you saw that eight year old girl you just shit yourself! Started shooting at her whilst running backwards as fast as you could, knowing that you couldn't hurt her but hoping to slow her down enough until you fell out a window or something and so got away.
That was a fun game!
Normally I would say it doesn't seem much, but at this point it is threatening my ability to pay my own rent. Financially I have been having a bad year. I could get really melancholic here...
At the moment my pet hate is cyclists.
The last few days I have been thinking of getting a t-short made up saying something like "When I drive a car I take revenge on the cyclists that make being a pedestrian so dangerous." Seriously, they are pissing me off. Riding on footpaths, blocking pedestrian crossing zones, shouting abuse at you as they cowardly ride off after they nearly run you over, thinking that no laws apply to them. Everything that cyclists like to whinge about car-drivers can be applied to themselves.
I am having a busy time right now. I lost patience with the new dick of a rental manager after the fridge fiasco and so have been looking for a new apartment, which will involve paying eight weeks rent before I get the previous bond returned. And I will soon be studying again and had to pay fees and buy text books. So kind of financial worries. At the point at which I am changing banks and starting new cards and have (still) to move my automatic deductions/charges to new accounts/cards. And Australia Post has been pissing me off all week not being able to give me something that they held at a post office ten minutes walk from me. Took nearly two weeks, eight interactions with them, and a total cost of about eighty dollars to me to resolve.
I have been playing Rome; Total War on this laptop, which runs Vista and the development console doesn't seem to work in vista, so the cheats available in xp are not. Given that the game seems to randomly hit hard with money lost to 'corruption', which you can't do anything about, like hiring constables or such, I resolved to use the money cheat to counteract it. But of course I can't get to it in vista, so I copied the save file onto a flash drive and tried to open it in a R:TW on my desktop (which runs xp), but that crashes the game. I had a similar problem with something else a while ago as I recall, cheats not working on vista. Seems to be not a gamer-friendly os.
Anyhow, I went out last night, Friday night, and walked down the road to the city centre. Initially planning to go to a text book shop in Renaissance Arcade (? I think, anyhow that same arcade that has the vegetarian place at the end near Pultney), but it wasn't open, wasn't open this morning either, sign (which I read at that point) said 9:30 to 4:30 Mon-Fri so obviously they don't want business. Ended up trying the new EB Games shop, not that it is 'new', rather that they have moved into a new store (not too far from Shin Tokyo). I am not kidding you, the only game I could find that vaguely caught my attention was Pharaoh! Marked to only thirty and then with a half price sticker on that. So old, but a fun game - I do not enjoy Children of the Nile, I bought it on Steam only because I forgot that it wasn't Pharaoh, forgot which was which. And every time that I would look through my steam list wanting to play a decent strategy game (an area steam is weak in) I would wish that it was pharaoh and end up playing a shooter. This says something for how weak on story line or original ideas games are lately.
I look at bioshock 2, but bioshock 1 was only a play-once game.
I looked at supreme commander 2, but nothing on the box indicated anything different from 1.
I was so desperate I even looked at civilisation what? 27 or something it is up to now? But I didn't like the first half dozen and couldn't see the latest being worth installing.
Remember when doom 2 was awe inspiring?
We could hookup the old co-ax and play TOGETHER!!!!
Oh, and then dune 2!
These two games defined us.
They gave us meaning.
Dare I say it? They made life worth living!
When fear 2 came out not too long ago my comments ran something like; the graphics are good enough to masturbate to but the story line is nothing much new and the weapons are no biggy, definitely it is not as frightening. Bearing in mind that fear 1 was the most frightening game that I have ever played. Seriously, when you saw that eight year old girl you just shit yourself! Started shooting at her whilst running backwards as fast as you could, knowing that you couldn't hurt her but hoping to slow her down enough until you fell out a window or something and so got away.
That was a fun game!
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