University Life

Elune save us! The Undead advance in waves!

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The halls external network connection was down practically the whole day!
I’ve only been able to get online at night, no problems accessing internal
sites in the day, just can’t get into any external ones. Never mind that,
at least I got some solid hours in Warcraft 3. I can’t really play
Warcraft when ICQ is on because it’s too distracting. It’s my pet peeve
when someone messages me while I’m in a game. =D Anyway, I’ve never
actually played the single player campaign until recently because I jumped
into multiplayer the moment I got it. The single player story is pretty
good, but a bit hackneyed. I’m at the Night Elves campaign now and damn,
the Archers look good. I am retarded.

Well, I got a pack of these egg puddings yesterday and lemme tell you,
those are EVIL! The sweet stuff (caramel?) on the bottom is all congealed
and shit and it tasted horrible. I sacrificed them as offerings to the
porcelain god 15 minutes after I ate them. šŸ™

Fatigue

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I am tired. I woke up early for an IE group meeting in South Yarra and I
just got back after 6 pm. Anyway, I’ve noticed that 7-11 now carries a
variety of calling cards. They don’t actually have the cards, but they
call a number and prints out a paper receipt with a PIN number on it.
Interesting.

Formicidae

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I have slept for 14 hours straight. It feels good. =D Anyway, spring is
out in full force now. One way for sure to know that the days are getting
warmer is that the ants begin their infestation again. In winter and
autumn, I can get away with leaving half eaten chocolate bars on the table
and it still will be there, unmolested after 1 week. Not that it will
retain much of it’s flavor after one week, but still, the option is there
should I choose to take it. Now, I can’t even get away with leaving
foodstuff on the table for an hour before the ants start trooping in.

And then?

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I had to attend a WIER research study today. It was held on the 7th floor
of S block and the view out of the windows is amazing. I could see right
to the CBD and Yarra River was visible too. That was not why I was there
though. I’ve been requested to attend the WIER research study to improve
the site. WIER stands for Web Industrial Experience Resource and it should
be noted that I am part of the IE team that is actually going to make the
modifications to WIER. I’m rather puzzled as to why we’re asked to attend
since there is a potential conflict of interest. We as the developers
would obviously like the features on the “To Be Added” list to be kept to
a minimum. Anyway, the study only took 30 minutes and it involves me
answering a couple of questions while a tape recorder was running and
doing a couple of tasks in WIER while a video camera recorded the screen.
I got A$10 for participating in the research. A$10 for 30 minutes…hmm, I
just realized that’s the highest wage I’ve gotten to date. Little known
fact about me: I worked part time for a short stint at a Chinese
restaurant last year. The wages are really shitty (below legal minimum
wage) but the upshot is you don’t pay any tax. I did not stay long though,
because I could not write any Chinese and all the cooks can read is
Chinese. My poor Cantonese didn’t help matters either. =D

Assignments galore!

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Well, I haven’t been updating much these few days. I’m actually
swamped by work but it should abate somewhat after this weekend. I’m
very looking forward to my mid semester break after Week 10. It’s the
end of Week 7 now, so it’s still two weeks away. I’m planning to go
somewhere. I saw this advertisement for a 7 day Tasmania holiday for
only A$300. That seems pretty cheap but I can’t afford to go on a 7 day
holiday while doing my IE project. Not just because my group partners
will kill me, but because I have other assignments due after the mid
semester break. Heh. Perhaps a 3 day holiday will not be out of the
question so I’m thinking about where to go. Somewhere near like Sydney
or Canberra probably. We’ll see. Anyway, I was doing my assignments in
the psychology faculty labs today and I passed by what they call a
Sleep Lab. There was a guy in there with electrodes all over his head
and a couple of students were reading off a monitor which is analyzing
his brain wave patterns. How interesting. Anyway, I’m going to catch
some sleep now. More updates tomorrow.

Little Miss Muffet…

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I hate spiders. There is this spider which is quite big sitting on the
ceiling above my head. That is very disconcerting indeed. I felt my chair
brush against my leg just now and I jumped 3 meters up, thinking it was
the spider. Disturbing. I hope it doesn’t crawl all over me when I sleep
later.

Anyway, I had to go to my uni this morning to work on one of my group
assignments. There seem to be quite a few people in the labs working on
assignments and such. Surprising to see such a crowd on Sunday. Of course,
it’s not as populated as weekdays, but there is a pretty good turnout.
Today was such a nice day too, all warm and sunny, which makes it even
more surprising that so many people would want to be holed up in the labs.
Anyway, it seems that a lot of restaurants are closed on Sundays, so we
chose a Thai food place called Derby Thai for lunch. It was one of the few
places that opens on Sundays. The food is okay but I really liked the
banana flavored grass jelly drink. Nice.

Shit, the spider just moved.

USB chargers and Tiramisu

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Well, my cell phone charger died on me again yesterday. At that time my
cell phone battery was really low and I needed to have it on to coordinate
my group projects so I decided to head out to the campus center mobile
phone shop to get another charger. Unfortunately, the girl there couldn’t
find a T-28 charger so she gave me a pen with the store’s number and told
me to call them at around 5 pm when the owner comes back. Well, I didn’t
want to wait until 5 pm because if it turns out that they don’t have one
in stock, I’ll be stuck with a flat battery the whole day. Thus, I headed
down to Clayton to see if the mobile phone shops there are still open. On
a whim, I went to a computer hardware shop first because it has come to my
attention that there are USB cell phone chargers out now. I was a bit
doubtful that the computer shop will carry any coz this is Clayton after
all and USB cell phone chargers aren’t very widely available anyway. Well,
guess what…they do carry a T-28 USB charger and it goes for only A$15.

What luck. Basically, USB chargers work by drawing the power from the
computer supply instead of a power outlet. I have one spare USB port on my
powered USB hub so this is good indeed, since my computer is on most of
the time anyway.

Anyway, I happened to pass by McDonald’s after that and I saw that the

New Tastes Menu [mcdonalds.com.au] has been updated again and this
time the country featured is Italy. I got a Romano Chicken Burger meal,
the Herb Bread and the Tiramisu dessert. I didn’t like the napolitana
sauce in the Romano Chicken Burger and the Herb Bread is pretty dismal
compared to the garlic bread available at Monash Pizza, an Italian run
pizza place 10 minutes from my halls. The tiramisu was pretty good though.
I ramble.

Best places on campus to sleep and take a dump

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I’m feeling pretty bushed now. I was in uni the whole day from 8 am in the
morning till 6 pm and I only got a couple of hours of sleep last night. I
did manage to catch up on my sleep today though and that makes me very mad since I really wanted to try out my new mattress from the labor day weekendĀ mattressĀ sales. I had no classes from 10
am – 12 pm and went to the library to take a nap. =D It’s pretty
convenient to sleep in one of those tables with privacy screens in the
silent area of the library. I fell into such a deep sleep, I actually
dreamt! It was a pretty weird dream, all jumbled up. The characters seem
to be people I saw on the way into the library but I’ve forgotten about
the dream by now. It was quite interesting though. Oh, and I drooled all
over my arm while I slept and woke up with a wet patch on my long sleeved
shirt.

The best place to sleep on campus

Anyway, I also found one of the best places to take a dump on campus. I’ve
always favored the S block toilets because they are some of the newest on
campus. However, I’ve found an even better one. The N block second floor
toilets are really something. Even though it’s rather old, it has a nice
ambience to it, courtesy of the clouded glass windows on one side of the
toilet. Furthermore, the furthest toilet even has a ledge on the side to
put your bag on. Nice indeed. Every time I need to take a dump while on
campus, I’ll be heading to the N block toilets.

Well, by the time I got back to Clayton, I was pretty much dead from lack
of sleep. However, I managed to spy the elusive security bus and got onto
it. Heh. It’s a bus that loops around the campus every half hour and it
stops right at the halls of residence. It actually takes longer to use the
bus than walk, so I’ve never bothered to get onto it, but I was so tired
today I appreciated not having to walk back even if it meant it takes
longer.

Anyway, it turns out that the book sale isn’t today after all. It’s on
Thursday. My bad.

“Fill a bag for only A$5.00”

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I missed the shuttle again today and thus was forced to take the
Huntingdale bus to connect with the Flinder’s Street Station train. The
thing is, the 12:40 pm bus gives you exactly 5 minutes to walk from the
Huntingdale bus stop to the train station. Normally this is more than
enough, but today the bus was delayed by this long ass truck who was
trying to back into a plaster factory right off the highway. The trailer
was so long, the truck actually had to go over the road divider to back
into the driveway of the factory. Thus, all four lanes of the northbound
traffic was down to a standstill to accommodate the truck. The truck took
a good 5 minutes to completely back into the driveway and thus, by the
time the bus got to the train station, the train was already pulling in. I
had to sprint to get to the train platform and the doors started closing
just as I ran noisily into the train, startling a poor old lady who was
about to doze off. Heh. I think only 3 of the 15 people on the bus managed
to get on that train. The next train is a good 20 minutes away and that
would make me late for my tutorial so that’s why I wanted to get on this
one.

A router in action

Anyway, I had my Network Administration lab today and there was this movie
being shown to explain the concept of the Internet. I’ve seen this one
countless times before, the movie is
Warriors of the Net
[warriorsofthe.net] and it’s made by
Ericsson for internal purposes but seems to have spread far and wide
because, truth to be told, it actually is a very good movie that explains
networking concepts in easy to understand terms.

A$5.00 per bag

Well, as I was heading back I saw that the bookshop is having a sale
tomorrow. It’s not your normal, run of the mill sale, but one where you
can fill a bag with as many books as you can for only A$5! Basically, they
provide you with a bag and you go around stuffing books into the bag until
you can’t fit anymore in and you pay A$5 at the counter. I’m not sure what
books will be available and what the size of the bag actually is, but it’s
a pretty good deal nevertheless. If you’re interested, that’s the bookshop
of the Caulfield campus of Monash University.

XO Sauce?

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I’ve noticed that the lineup of prepared meals at the Frank and Lily Lee’s Asian Grocery in the
campus center has improved somewhat. This is Fairy Calamari with XO Sauce on rice. Interesting.

Anyway, I’ll be going to the Grampians [grampiansrocks.com] early tomorrow morning.
It should be fun, but it also means I’ll be missing out on one “day” of my weekend. I like to
stay up late in the weekends but I have to sleep early tonight coz the trip leaves early
tomorrow morning. That makes me lose one “day” of my weekend – Friday night. There is a rave of
some sort going on at the dining hall of the campus center from 10 pm – 6 am and I would have
gone to that if I didn’t have to wake up early tomorrow. Too bad. Oh well, the Grampians would
be fun too and I’ll take heaps of photos and post them up tomorrow. Stay tuned.

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