You see how easy it is? Don't blog for five months, then blog thrice in one night.
This one is important; I am still at the same contract, the rate sucks, it is a tad more than half what I used to get two years ago, before the Depression brought the world to its knees, but in my week off work (oh, yeah, I took this week off) I have found a way to increase the rate by almost fifty percent. Just need to get it to happen now.
Friday, October 7
Google Sucks
Okay, that's official, Google is even worse than Microsoft. In fact I strongly suspect that the CEO of Google is a genetic fusion of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
I was going to post a question on how to get the new system to function as well as the old, or how to get the old one to function at all, but a total lack of realistic help options combined with several forums that were mostly full of customers complaining that despite Google's promise of a reply within 24 hours they had not been contacted in over a month does seem to indicate that Google is just another evilness in a world of evil. So I will see if any independent forums have anything of use.
Seriously; to read those forums is to be convinced never to become a paying customer.
I was going to post a question on how to get the new system to function as well as the old, or how to get the old one to function at all, but a total lack of realistic help options combined with several forums that were mostly full of customers complaining that despite Google's promise of a reply within 24 hours they had not been contacted in over a month does seem to indicate that Google is just another evilness in a world of evil. So I will see if any independent forums have anything of use.
Seriously; to read those forums is to be convinced never to become a paying customer.
Like a Light Sabre
Wow, I cannot believe that it has been so loooong!
1st of May to 7th of October; five whole months!
This time, (almost) needless to say, has been bad, well, in the sense that it started bad and I just didn't want to talk about it and then it got to be a habit not to blog anymore. In fact, to be more precise the bad time was really the bit before I stopped blogging.
So no, just to be sure that I don't have any medical issues, I am going to ease into this slowly. And stop here for now...
Okay, edit, the new 'blogger' interface sucks; it drops line breaks and paragraphs and it refuses to publish from the old interface.
Nice one.
Sunday, May 1
Here We Go Again
Once more, dear friends...
I am once again falling into infatuation with a girlie band.
My friends are not surprised.
Last weekend I came across them when I refined a you tube search gradually down into 'Japanese girl rock band', I came up with about half a dozen that I quite liked, as in their music was good, we are not talking about their looks at this point. But one kind of grew on me during the week, and yesterday I checked out their fan sites, official websites, downloaded a few albums, ordered a few albums on eBay, and stripped off mp3s from the videos that I downloaded both then and last weekend. And then spent the rest of the evening watching and re-watching their clips and interviews, and then retired to bed to listen to the mp3s.
Good music, cute girls, spunky image. What more could I ask for?
I am once again falling into infatuation with a girlie band.
My friends are not surprised.
Last weekend I came across them when I refined a you tube search gradually down into 'Japanese girl rock band', I came up with about half a dozen that I quite liked, as in their music was good, we are not talking about their looks at this point. But one kind of grew on me during the week, and yesterday I checked out their fan sites, official websites, downloaded a few albums, ordered a few albums on eBay, and stripped off mp3s from the videos that I downloaded both then and last weekend. And then spent the rest of the evening watching and re-watching their clips and interviews, and then retired to bed to listen to the mp3s.
Good music, cute girls, spunky image. What more could I ask for?
Friday, April 22
Disappointment
Specifically, Portal 2.
An extremely clunky and buggy serve that was.
A few maps / puzzles / rooms that were a tad too obtuse so I had to google a walkthrough. Amazing that within a couple of days of release there were good walkthroughs, GamesRadar being the one that I used. But such a clunky game that alt tabbing out to check the guide and alt tabbing back in usually meant it killed my computer. Not just crashed the game, locked the whole cpu. Had to reboot my machine about three times. And all of that for a game that was not appreciably any better, or even equal, to the first instalment. Graphics were not noticeably better either, so more of a Portal 1.2 rather than a Portal 2 if you ask me. Still have to try the multi-player, but we shall see.
Contract is going slowly, not my work, just that this is the most 'yes ministery' government department that I have ever contracted to. Seriously, you could fire half the staff and still get twice as much work done. I am testing a new application, I am meant to be user testing, not testing the system or design, I make a new journal, there is no save button, task cannot be completed. Did none of the programmers even look at the screen to see if it was complete before dumping it on the finance team to test? Not just one example, there have been dozens of similar events. The shoddiest programming that I have ever seen.
This is the Easter break; the harvest was brought in during Spring, yes? I am not too sure about how these things work in the Northern Hemisphere, but Winter is when things grow here, Summer is dead, maybe in Europe the crops are planted in Spring? Either way, lots of work in the fields during Spring, the full moon lets peasants work late, the full moon after the Spring Equinox is called the Harvest Moon, again, yes? I am not too sure about all this old Northern Hemisphere stuff. The Harvest Moon lets the peasants get the harvesting finished, and the next weekend is party time! And xians call it Easter.
Typical, steal a good old pagan festival and re-badge it with some daft xian mythology.
But here ANZAC day comes soon after, very soon, in fact this year they run together and we get a five-day weekend. Not good for shopping, this being Adelaide, they shut the shops at the slightest excuse. Five days of shut shops. Lovely.
Okay, not strictly true, they are letting them open for the Saturday, and half the Tuesday.
I have been play Fallout 3 a lot lately, a HUGE game that is. So big, and the story just kind of goes on and on and on, that one does tend to get quite bored with it all.
Shogun 2 out recently. I have played it through a few times, have completed four clans now. It did take my two or three tries before I worked out how the mechanics work for this one, how to plan ahead to make sure that I get enough regions before the time limit runs out. But a good game, quite enjoy that one.
Did get all of the Dawn of War 2's, well the three out so far. Kind of so-so on that one. I don't really like the lack of base management. I do like that I can play the Guard, took a few extensions before that came along though, didn't it. Am looking forward to playing the co-op campaign with friends.
Other than that, life still really sucks.
Work, game, sleep.
That's my life.
And working just to clear my cards for now. Since lovely, little old Adelaide is so the arse-hole of the civilised world it is so slow to recover from the recession. The BIG recession, the Great Recession, aka the GFC, but remember; the markets fell further than they did in the Great Depression, more people lost their jobs than during the Great Depression, it is taking longer for Adelaide to crawl out of it than the Great Depression. All of which adds up to my rates being half what they were before the Great Recession. So it will be quite a while before I clear those damned cards.
I so regret returning to this place.
I so regret having left Singapore.
I was so much happier there, this has been a very salutary lesson for me.
When I get back it will be with a lot more dedication.
An extremely clunky and buggy serve that was.
A few maps / puzzles / rooms that were a tad too obtuse so I had to google a walkthrough. Amazing that within a couple of days of release there were good walkthroughs, GamesRadar being the one that I used. But such a clunky game that alt tabbing out to check the guide and alt tabbing back in usually meant it killed my computer. Not just crashed the game, locked the whole cpu. Had to reboot my machine about three times. And all of that for a game that was not appreciably any better, or even equal, to the first instalment. Graphics were not noticeably better either, so more of a Portal 1.2 rather than a Portal 2 if you ask me. Still have to try the multi-player, but we shall see.
Contract is going slowly, not my work, just that this is the most 'yes ministery' government department that I have ever contracted to. Seriously, you could fire half the staff and still get twice as much work done. I am testing a new application, I am meant to be user testing, not testing the system or design, I make a new journal, there is no save button, task cannot be completed. Did none of the programmers even look at the screen to see if it was complete before dumping it on the finance team to test? Not just one example, there have been dozens of similar events. The shoddiest programming that I have ever seen.
This is the Easter break; the harvest was brought in during Spring, yes? I am not too sure about how these things work in the Northern Hemisphere, but Winter is when things grow here, Summer is dead, maybe in Europe the crops are planted in Spring? Either way, lots of work in the fields during Spring, the full moon lets peasants work late, the full moon after the Spring Equinox is called the Harvest Moon, again, yes? I am not too sure about all this old Northern Hemisphere stuff. The Harvest Moon lets the peasants get the harvesting finished, and the next weekend is party time! And xians call it Easter.
Typical, steal a good old pagan festival and re-badge it with some daft xian mythology.
But here ANZAC day comes soon after, very soon, in fact this year they run together and we get a five-day weekend. Not good for shopping, this being Adelaide, they shut the shops at the slightest excuse. Five days of shut shops. Lovely.
Okay, not strictly true, they are letting them open for the Saturday, and half the Tuesday.
I have been play Fallout 3 a lot lately, a HUGE game that is. So big, and the story just kind of goes on and on and on, that one does tend to get quite bored with it all.
Shogun 2 out recently. I have played it through a few times, have completed four clans now. It did take my two or three tries before I worked out how the mechanics work for this one, how to plan ahead to make sure that I get enough regions before the time limit runs out. But a good game, quite enjoy that one.
Did get all of the Dawn of War 2's, well the three out so far. Kind of so-so on that one. I don't really like the lack of base management. I do like that I can play the Guard, took a few extensions before that came along though, didn't it. Am looking forward to playing the co-op campaign with friends.
Other than that, life still really sucks.
Work, game, sleep.
That's my life.
And working just to clear my cards for now. Since lovely, little old Adelaide is so the arse-hole of the civilised world it is so slow to recover from the recession. The BIG recession, the Great Recession, aka the GFC, but remember; the markets fell further than they did in the Great Depression, more people lost their jobs than during the Great Depression, it is taking longer for Adelaide to crawl out of it than the Great Depression. All of which adds up to my rates being half what they were before the Great Recession. So it will be quite a while before I clear those damned cards.
I so regret returning to this place.
I so regret having left Singapore.
I was so much happier there, this has been a very salutary lesson for me.
When I get back it will be with a lot more dedication.
Wednesday, March 9
A Long Dry Spell
Yes, it has been a long time, and there is a very good reason for this; I have been through what is probably the worst three months of my life.
The basic problem was my decision, undoubtedly the stupidest decision that I have ever made in my life, to leave Singapore and return to Australia almost two years ago. What I came back to was a total mess, a nation wracked by the Great Recession (a.k.a. the 'GFC'), and in particular a state (that is to say; a city) brought to its knees and still incapable of getting off them. Unfortunately the expense of returning and setting up was so great that it precluded me just turning around and heading back to SG as soon as it became obvious that this had been a very big mistake.
So, this mostly centres around the lack of work that there is in Adelaide. I have had interviews over the last couple of months and been asked to start the next Monday with the job then not materialising. But in the last three days I have had three calls from agencies asking if I was interested in a position, and one interview. Does this finally mean that the drought is over? Because as soon as it is I start my countdown to returning to SG, and this time with no intention of ever returning to AU. (Family visits aside.)
Okay, update that, I just took a call from one of the agencies and I start on Monday - a six month contract with a probable three month extension.
Anyhow, the main point is that I did not want to blog whilst I was feeling near suicidal from the voidness that is my meaningless existence.
The basic problem was my decision, undoubtedly the stupidest decision that I have ever made in my life, to leave Singapore and return to Australia almost two years ago. What I came back to was a total mess, a nation wracked by the Great Recession (a.k.a. the 'GFC'), and in particular a state (that is to say; a city) brought to its knees and still incapable of getting off them. Unfortunately the expense of returning and setting up was so great that it precluded me just turning around and heading back to SG as soon as it became obvious that this had been a very big mistake.
So, this mostly centres around the lack of work that there is in Adelaide. I have had interviews over the last couple of months and been asked to start the next Monday with the job then not materialising. But in the last three days I have had three calls from agencies asking if I was interested in a position, and one interview. Does this finally mean that the drought is over? Because as soon as it is I start my countdown to returning to SG, and this time with no intention of ever returning to AU. (Family visits aside.)
Okay, update that, I just took a call from one of the agencies and I start on Monday - a six month contract with a probable three month extension.
Anyhow, the main point is that I did not want to blog whilst I was feeling near suicidal from the voidness that is my meaningless existence.
Monday, January 3
I Hate Life
I have been going through a rough patch. Basically suicidally rough. Funny thing just now is another stuff up with Steam. Start with that, shall we?
My desktop has been dead for a month or two. Turns out that somehow the CMOS had reset its clock to zero, not sure I see how that stopped the box from running, but at least it is running again. My laptop has died as well; it was running like a dog, the fan and thermal bridge were not getting the heat away from the graphics chip. But then it started blue screening (still is) with an iastor.sys message. I have stuff on the damned thing, but I got off my finance assignment, which is the most important thing as it is due next week (managed to send to a flash drive on a rare two minute period before the blue screen). When I moved on to trying to install windows seven (which won't install from disc unless windows has already booted, which it won't, so w7 won't install) I decided to play something on the desktop whilst I waited. My steam password has been reset since the last time the box was running (and what a battle that was) and that password was on the laptop so I tried to reset the password when I started steam on the desktop. This requires you to answer a secret question and was where I seemed to have trouble last time, now I know; the steam secret question does not work. True; both times I got the answer right (after the reset I had to set a new question and answer), neither time did steam take it, end conclusion - steam doesn't work.
Oh, naturally Steam on the desktop has to reconnect via the net before it will run and naturally the Steam servers are drowning (due to Valves total lack of service provision for their customers).
Can I rehash something old? Coming back to Australia was probably the single stupidest thing that I have ever done in my life. I got all antsy because they wouldn't pay me anything near what I got here, but I come back here to find that Australia (most particularly Adelaide) has been totally killed by the GFC and not only is my rate usually about HALF what it was three years ago, but I can only get contracts for less than HALF my time; so I am on less than a quarter (annually) what I got before, and half what I would have gotten in Singapore. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.
There is a very thin line of hope that I could grasp; it means returning to SG, but with some dedication this time, i.e. taking what I can get and casting off AU for good. If I can pull that off then I can clear the mountain of debt that returning to, and setting up in, Australia has cost me. This time I need to find a job in SG from here, before I go there.
I have talked about this with almost everyone that I know; their question usually boil down to where was I happier (isn't that sweet of them) but they all then acknowledge that I was much happier in SG than here. Even sweeping streets I would be happier there.
My desktop has been dead for a month or two. Turns out that somehow the CMOS had reset its clock to zero, not sure I see how that stopped the box from running, but at least it is running again. My laptop has died as well; it was running like a dog, the fan and thermal bridge were not getting the heat away from the graphics chip. But then it started blue screening (still is) with an iastor.sys message. I have stuff on the damned thing, but I got off my finance assignment, which is the most important thing as it is due next week (managed to send to a flash drive on a rare two minute period before the blue screen). When I moved on to trying to install windows seven (which won't install from disc unless windows has already booted, which it won't, so w7 won't install) I decided to play something on the desktop whilst I waited. My steam password has been reset since the last time the box was running (and what a battle that was) and that password was on the laptop so I tried to reset the password when I started steam on the desktop. This requires you to answer a secret question and was where I seemed to have trouble last time, now I know; the steam secret question does not work. True; both times I got the answer right (after the reset I had to set a new question and answer), neither time did steam take it, end conclusion - steam doesn't work.
Oh, naturally Steam on the desktop has to reconnect via the net before it will run and naturally the Steam servers are drowning (due to Valves total lack of service provision for their customers).
Can I rehash something old? Coming back to Australia was probably the single stupidest thing that I have ever done in my life. I got all antsy because they wouldn't pay me anything near what I got here, but I come back here to find that Australia (most particularly Adelaide) has been totally killed by the GFC and not only is my rate usually about HALF what it was three years ago, but I can only get contracts for less than HALF my time; so I am on less than a quarter (annually) what I got before, and half what I would have gotten in Singapore. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.
There is a very thin line of hope that I could grasp; it means returning to SG, but with some dedication this time, i.e. taking what I can get and casting off AU for good. If I can pull that off then I can clear the mountain of debt that returning to, and setting up in, Australia has cost me. This time I need to find a job in SG from here, before I go there.
I have talked about this with almost everyone that I know; their question usually boil down to where was I happier (isn't that sweet of them) but they all then acknowledge that I was much happier in SG than here. Even sweeping streets I would be happier there.
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