LTYER
Last thing you'll ever read…again
7 Days of Autumn Left
May 24th
From a totally meteorological perspective that is.
It’s going to be a rough 7 days. I have work on Wednesday, a dinner to go to on Thursday night (not sure if I should get out of it), 2 assignments due on Friday and then a 40% honours report due on Monday. I also realised that I need a credit in ALL my subjects to qualify to pass honours. Well, I should be getting a distinction anyway, but you know, the amount of effort I’ve put into honours is sub-par. Well so far I’ve been doing quite well in Parallel Computing and Network Security (ignoring the last assignment which I blame entirely on Alex =p I kid I kid…)
I’ve also been slacking off gym lately, going like once a week for like the past 3 weeks or so. Aye.
On a plus side, I managed to install my 80gb SSD into my macbook =) It now takes a mere 18 seconds to bootup. Yes I timed it. I also filmed it in fact. Although I cbb editing the video to make it play side by side like last time, was hoping that iMovie would support it but apparently it doesn’t. Sigh. Hmm maybe I’ll just get it to play PiP.
Okay, so I decided to do that instead, it’s uploading to youtube now 
Anyway, what else is new?
So I was talking to some people and was like “You know, if I get a pass for a subject I might as well as not bother with finishing off the rest of the year. Save myself $3k and graduate with Computer Science and Technologies (Advanced) which sounds better anyway”.
I’ll prob work more days and be more involved with some of club societies haha. Well, that’s what I would do if I get a pass which you know doesn’t sound too bad huh? I dunno, who would have thought “failing” would be such a positive.
Looked into some photography workshops today, there’s a 3 hour workshop for around $95 bucks. Seems kinda interesting, might considering doing it during the break.
Aye, anyway, here’s the SSD vs HDD comparison. I’m such a geek >.>
Give a little
May 23rd
So yesterday was a particularly interesting day on many, many levels.
Yes, this is one of those blogs. Read it or leave it.
Started my afternoon in a homeless shelter and ended my day leaving a posh French restaurant.
I haven’t done any volunteer work since High School and that was more or less “compulsory” not to say I didn’t enjoy it but I didn’t go out of my way to do it. So I basically I spent my arvo with 2 lovely ladies =) It was actually quite fun and time went by surprisingly quickly. Basically we were “waiters/waitresses” and picked up the plates/utensils and what not after they were done. We also cleaned up the tables. I treated it as more or less like a game. Haha, as soon as you spot a finished plate you rush at it. As I was doing it I thought “I can’t even pay Jade to do this, as if she’ll do it for free”. Haha. Yes, I mentioned you. Rejoice.
Um, yeah, it was nice. It’s organised by CASS (Catholic Asian Students Society) and they’re also having some sort of retreat in July, also found out one of my friends happens to be one of the leaders there. It’s like as if all the Asians in Sydney are magically connected in some intricate web. I’m actually rather piqued with curiosity as to what this retreat offers. No I don’t plan on going and coming out as a Jesus lover. Just curious that’s all.
That was more or less my afternoon.
Went to a friend’s 22nd at the Cross last night. Some French restaurant called Apres French Restaurant. Had my first experience with escargots, they didn’t taste half bad to be honest, texture was smooth as if eating abalone? Wouldn’t mind trying again haha. I made numerous excellent calls last night, just ask anyone at the table, I was on a roll! Ego++
So that’s it I guess, started my day in a homeless shelter, ended my day at some fancy French restaurant.
All in a day’s work.
I actually had a lot more to say but probably not the right moment.
I can see clearly now
May 20th
So like yesterday was another one of those strange days where the forces of nature were on my side. But yeah, it was a good day.
Ended up fixing a certain someone’s computer. Brought back memories. Though interestingly, it was the first time I was quarantining a Windows machine that wasn’t running on XP and to be honest, it was A LOT easier. Maybe the virus/malware wasn’t as malicious or perhaps it was UAC? Nevertheless I was thinking in my head “sigh, should just get a mac” 
I kid, I kid.
But yeah, it was surprisingly easy. Boot into safe mode, do some scans and cleanups, boot into normal windows, uninstall crap, do some more cleaning and voila, problem fixed. Also posted a hijackThis log to a tech support forum for the uber geeks to rummage through.
Yes, any who my plans from now till the weekend ends will be to install my ssd into my macbook.
So, tonight I will try and migrate my SSD to another HDD and then remove the SSD. Yup, sweet.
Tomorrow I will grab a dock off a friend and format my SSD to be MAC OS X compatible and then carbon copy my OS X partition to the SSD.
Then I will try and remove the HDD and put in the SSD. Simple! It will add 30minutes or so the battery life and make everything load faster. Seriously, loading word/excel/powerpoint documents is excruciatingly slow. Well it’s not that bad, but considering it takes less than a second on my PC it’s pretty painfully slow.
Once the SSD is installed my macbook will officially be better than my PC in every single way. Kinda depressing, kinda amazing.
On Saturday I’ll be going doing a soup kitchen thingo, which should be interesting. I’m such a good samaritan yes?
And on Sunday I’ll probably lounge around on my butt doing nothing.
So yeah…that’s more or less it.
I’m still in awe every time I put on my glasses, it’s like “whoa, holy shit that’s amazing!” Still not planning on wearing it consistently though, just wearing it during lectures, driving and at night when I feel like I should see people’s faces clearer.
Any who gotta go. Might blog later if something interesting happes ;p
It’s just the way I are!
May 19th
So this morning I hopped on a train to work and began going through facebook on the iphone. I should probably stop doing this as it’s killing my data usage and I’m not even stalking remotely attractive looking girls!
Anyway, facebook brings a face to what would be trolls on internet forums. I read one post that aggravated me. It’s one of those “Look at me I’m posting something that most people would have seen anyway AND I’ll add my own obnoxious opinion about it!” Then of course you’d have the minions that follow that go “oh yes, this is so true”. Fuckers.
Basically, the feed was regarding Portugal and same-sex marriage. That’s fine. We’re in the 21st century, if a man could be forced to marry a goat, I don’t see why a man can’t marry another man or woman with another woman. Fair’s fair. I do, however, have a issue with the statement that came after “…congratulations to another country far more civilised than our own.”
Excuse me?
Whether or not same-sex marriage is allowed does not determine if a country is “civilised”. It just shows that the Portuguese government has an open mind to these kind of things. Australia is great, maybe the technology isn’t up to date with the rest of the developed nations, maybe the transport system is a bit poor, maybe we have a government that promotes internet censorship, maybe we do have egg laying, duck like mammals with poisonous spurs, but honestly, every country has their problems and I think we can tolerate our problems. In fact, isn’t that why most Australian’s are immigrants in the first place, sick of the problems in their home country to come to a country with lesser problems? Hmmm.
Though I do not understand why there are so many rallies for same-sex marriages in Australia. Sure. Gays want equality. I understand that. I want them to have their equality. But maybe wait a generation? Think about the people in power right now. What era were they from? Thought about it? Do I really need to explain why they will never give in to your demands/requests? These are the same people trying to censor our PORN. Personally I think that the next generation of government will be absolutely revolutionary. Having said that…the generation after will be epic fail. The prime minister will most likely be some epic troll, trolling the entire country by adding rick rolls to his/her speech. I’m lolling just thinking about it. I can’t wait to troll my kids.
Any who, I think I’m done in terms of ranting. You can probably stop reading here as I’ll be talking about something else now.
I thought that my day would be slow, boring and tedious. But it wasn’t. Manager was away so I got to sit in the same row of desks as my team. Worked on a relatively simple problem that took the entire day to implement.
Basically I had to implement a form for uploading multiple files. Simple right?
Well…yeah…it is pretty simple but I wanted to do it elegantly and either there’s a gotcha that I didn’t know about or it’s just Spring being a whiney little bitch that it is. Basically I have 5 input fields and I wanted it to bind to a File array, except, it would only bind the first input field. Googled a lot, didn’t turn up with anything. So in the end I gave up and did it in a not so nice manner.
File file0, file2, file3, file4;
File getFile0()…
void setFile0()…
You get the gist of it.
In addition to that…because it didn’t bind properly I couldn’t use an index to look up the corresponding “description” that correlates to the file being uploaded.
So I had to do something like
if i == 0 getFile0()…
Yuck.
My manager arrived as I was about to leave so I showed it to him…the form that is…not the code and he was like “Perfect, that’s exactly what we want”. Well, just shows, as long as the end result satisfies the client’s requirements nothing else really matters.
So the day ended on a positive note.
Any who it’s taking me forever to write this blog >.>
Comment so I feel loved!
The Game
May 16th
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So I spent yesterday arvo over at Bondi-junction, checking out my potential investment apartment. Having doubts whether I should go with it. There isn’t too much financial burden since I’ll be living with my parents, the tenants will pay off the interest but…it’ll be better without having to not worry about all these things.
Also considering whether I should even do the grad position with Macquarie. I know I’ve signed the contract but…I’m still thinking of taking a year off to do my own thing. I wouldn’t mind working part-time and having a 4 day weekend to do all the other things that I want to do.
I’m having all these crazy ideas of what I want to do once UNI finishes. I want to take a course on photography, I want to do some volunteer work overseas, I want to go to Europe but will 3 months be enough?
I’m also slowly learning the guitar. Despite everything that’s happened, I’m still set on learning how to play “Hey there Delilah”. Once I’m good enough I’ll even buy myself my own guitar.
I also want to start on this iphone app idea which may or may not be useful. Then there’s coffeewithwong.com that I’ll need to start work on.
There’s also this idea for creating an “interactive home” which is just something I fantasise about but doubt it’ll ever take off.
I have a presentation tomorrow that’s worth 20% and I haven’t started. I bought a red bull which I’m saving for later. It’s funny how now that I’ve begun drinking energy drinks instead of seeing it as adding 3 hours to my working day I see it as “I can now bludge for 3 more hours without having to worry about doing work”. Yeah…it’s pretty bad.
What aggravates me about the “Research Methods” course is that it’s so damn stupid. Initially the idea was quite nice…have a course that helps you with the thesis, but now it’s just a course that doesn’t really help with anything. They have 10% of the course based on “giving feedback”. Then they changed the final assessment from being 60% on the literary review to 60% on some imaginary report that will never be used and cannot be used in the thesis. I may be wrong though.
What else can I do I wonder? Got any ideas?
Bah, I will do some work now >.>
Random stupid things and ramblings
May 13th
First, I’m sure everybody hates those stupid Q&A facebook apps that posts the following shit on your wall:
1:Do you think John Jiang is a virgin?
2:Do you think John Jiang is hot?
3:Do you think John Jiang is attractive?
4:Do you think John Jiang is cute?
5:Would you hook up with John Jiang?
Sigh.
Second, I really hate how I ask people that I meet “Oh so what do you do?”. I cringe when people ask me that question yet I do it myself. I find there is no “correct” response that I would like to hear. Even if they are doing something remotely interesting they’re probably not that passionate about discussing it.
I find I have absolutely NOTHING to say after hearing that someone is doing law. It just tells me they had a high ATAR/UAI and used their “points” wisely.
“Oh…um…that sounds great…law…another Asian…doing law”
Third, I fail at playing “Have you met John”. *shudders* Can’t believe I said what I said.
Fourth, I have an assignment due tomorrow and I don’t plan on finishing it properly. Instead I went to games night with chopsticks, got back home to write up another stupid blog whilst drinking the last “Pure Blonde” in the house. I also think I may have inadvertently given myself a reputation for drinking.
Fifth, I’m also sick of seeing the following crap…”X liked if he/she tells these lies, 99% chance they are cheating on you on Facebook and suggested you like it too.” Similar to how I don’t need a personality test to tell me about my personality I don’t need facebook to teach me life lessons. I’m sure life teaches me these things just fine.
Sixth, I think I’ve become extremely confrontational which may or may not be the smartest thing to do.
Seventh, remember back when my blog was hosted with MSN Spaces? God, that feels so long ago. Anyway, remember how it had a Windows Media Player plugin and I would put up songs that represented how I felt at the time or simply because I was really into it? I was on the train yesterday morning and “In the end” popped up. For some reason I thought about that WMP plugin.
Off-topic, thanks for the emperor puffs…well…the ones you thought about getting =D
Edit: 14/05/2010 12:03AM
I just thought of something else to rant about.
Jase, if you’re reading this, your friend is retarded. Okay, retarded is probably too harsh and I really shouldn’t be so worked up as I am. But she (yes SHE) turned a perfectly nice analogy into something that makes absolutely no sense.
Basically a friend of mine quoted a line from “When Five Fell” a video by Wongfu Productions and it goes like this:
“She tells me she wants to be a raindrop. She doesn’t mind falling, as long as she’s not alone. And raindrops are never alone.”
In which one of his friends replies with ”yeah… they drop like chopsticks… and chopsticks are always in pairs.”
Now if I actually knew this person…I’d rip them apart so hard. But since I didn’t I added a slightly “cheeky” comment. Okay okay, you’re probably thinking “Jesus John…take a chill pill, it’s no big deal!”. Fair enough, it may seem childish to get worked up at something so insignificant…but hey…this is entertainment for you right?
Any who, where to begin?
I tell some very bad analogies, but I usually do it on purpose…to be humorous and this is definitely not one of those analogies. This was just BAD. Raindrops do not drop like chopsticks. Chopsticks are not known to “drop”, you use them to pick up food and place it in your mouth. Even if they do drop, most of the time only ONE of them drops. Even if both happen to fall off the table you should have the reaction speed fast enough to catch at least ONE chopstick. Unless the chopsticks are connected (like those ones n00bs use) I don’t see them “dropping” in pairs. Not to mention the fact there could be ODD numbers of raindrops when it’s raining. Also, the original quote was an analogy for what she represented. You don’t turn an analogy into another analogy! Fail on so many levels. I know I shouldn’t take it so literally but it’s just hard to comprehend metaphorically. It makes little to no sense. When I read it my immediate reaction was “What the fuck is this shit? Girl are you trying to be deep cause it’s failing.”
Sorry. I’ll stop now.
Yes this is the douchebaggery that is me.
Interesting Statistics
May 13th
So the above are the stats for the “views” per day on my blog.
May 4th was the day after the Spirit jailbreak was released. I had over 200 views on my blog post regarding jailbroken iphone apps.
May 9th was the day I took down that blog post as it was irrelevant and that post was subject to a lot of attention by spammers.
May 15th was the day that people stopped visiting the jailbroken iphone apps blog entry. I more or less singlehandedly killed 50% of my page views.
Not that I care anyway.
This game is chess, not checkers
May 11th
Some people start playing chess young. Some are late starters and are stuck with checkers.
Poor naive souls.
How do you tell?
The kids kissing the teacher’s ass are all playing chess.
The kids working their butts off, keeping quiet, doing their homework are playing checkers.
People play to win. I play to win. You don’t get anything for losing, perhaps the sympathies of those around you…if you’re lucky.
Playing checkers is easy.
The ultimate goal is clear.
There’s always a clear winner.
Chess…not so clear.
I still have a rook, bishop and knight. I can’t see my pawns, blinded, but they’re there…sitting on the baseline. The offence is strong, my defence is weak.
Will my pawn reach the other end?
Staubach 1975
Just another dream
May 9th
I’m awake. Alarm hasn’t gone off yet. What time is it?
8:30am.
*Checks emails*
Nothing.
I should just go back to sleep.
What if…
Hey I wonder what happened…oh…wait…it was just another dream.
I know now how Cypher feels.
