University Life – Page 5

Lock Your Door

March 4, 2003 by HB

Lock Your Door
It is your responsibility to ensure that you lock the door to your
bedroom whenever you are not in your room. If you do not lock your
door, you risk having your personal property stolen. Even if you leave
your room for “just a minute”
LOCK YOUR DOOR

I just saw this sticker stuck on my door today. It was stuck on
every single door in our halls. It’s sad that living in a community
does have some bad elements as well. Personally, I’ve only been shafted
twice and only once was from my room. I am notorious for not locking my
room when I go out, partly out of a belief that people are generally
honest and partly because I hate having to dig though my pockets for my
key when my hands are full.

I’ve had a fridge stolen two semesters ago, but that wasn’t from my
room. I had stored it in the common room as required by the regulations
when I went back for the mid semester break and when I came back, it
was gone. The resident advisor’s records showed someone claiming to be
me checking it out and moving out. Oh well. I guess I’ll have to store
my Marquis reagent in the common fridge from now on. I’m kidding of
course. No, I’m really kidding so don’t go rooting around the fridge.

Anyway, the second time was when I left this really nifty A$24.95
can opener in the common sink. When I came out to wash it, it was gone,
and I thought that was the end of it so I got another cheaper one. A
week after it disappeared, it mysteriously appeared again at the same
place again. So I guess this qualifies as “borrowing” but he/she could
have at least asked me. What am I supposed to do with two can openers?

The third time was when someone took cash out of my room while I was
taking a shower. My room was right beside the shower then and my door
creaks distinctively when it’s opened. While I was taking a shower, the
door creaked and I shouted “I’m in the shower, I’ll be out in a sec so
just sit around a while” coz the walls are thin and they can hear me
from my room. I thought it was a friend, but the person didn’t answer
me and soon after that, the door creaked closed again. I returned to my
room to see that the A$10 I put on my keyboard to remind myself to get
a calling card was missing.

The guy rummaged around a bit too coz my room was messier than
usual, but he didn’t find my wallet so I think the most he got away
with was A$10 and some change that was on the table. Heh. I don’t think
it was done by a ressie (resident) though. Must have been someone not
from the halls. Oh well, it’s just A$10 so that wasn’t that big a deal.
But I did lock my door after that, although I’ve gone back to the habit
of not locking my door again.

I believe most ressies are honest people anyway (me = idealist), and
these things don’t happen all that often. I wonder why the management
decided to stick this new sticker on everyone’s room…I didn’t think
theft was such a big problem here.

Stuff like single serve ice creams, dairy food, yogurt, juice and
beer have a mysterious habit of disappearing from the community fridge
though. 🙂

Ba Kua

March 1, 2003 by HB

This is the first time I’ve ever seen ba kua (rou kang) in
Melbourne! It’s at a small store at the south entrance of Springvale
Shopping Center. Guess how much a slice costs? A$2.50! Personally, I
haven’t seen ba kua going for RM5 in Malaysia so that sounds steep to
me. It’s pretty good though.

Do you feed your cat yogurt for breakfast?

February 24, 2003 by HB

Apparently, there is a specially formulated yogurt meant for pets. I
took this photo at the local Coles pet food department. It’s yogurt.
For cats and dogs.

I went to the Asian grocery with Adrian today to get some instant
noodles, fishballs, beef balls, prawns, and crab sticks (love that
stuff). It’s an easy meal if you chuck a bit of everything into a rice
cooker and cook it. That way, you only have one thing to wash (the rice
cooker bowl) although it won’t taste as good.

Proton Satria sighted in Melbourne.

Death in the family

February 22, 2003 by HB

My Athlon 750 killed itself yesterday afternoon, may it rest in
peace. The fan somehow fell off the CPU, which resulted in it
overheating. It happened in a couple of seconds, which raises questions
about how hot the CPU was running. My theory about what happened was
that the thermal glue was transfering heat to the surface of the chip,
but with no fan to dissipate the heat, and thus it burnt. I couldn’t
get the computer to restart after that, not that I expected it to,
considering that there was the smell of burnt electronics eminating
from the case.

Christopher’s Indomie Pien Nuk

Well, I woke early this morning to get the motherboard and CPU
replaced. Adrian came by and we went to Christopher’s place, where he
was eating breakfast – pien nuk (basically wonton) with Indomie flavor
packets. He swears it tastes good…I gotta try that someday. We went
to three places – IT Computer Supermarket, I.T. Warehouse and
e.Computers. Very convenient, since all of them are in Clayton. After
comparing the price lists, I found IT Computer Supermarket to have the
cheapest prices. I have to say that e.Computers has the nicest cat
though. Look at it! 🙂 It was lounging around the shop when we went
there. I think it belongs to the owner. Very cute cat and it touched my
hand with it’s nose when I went up close. Furry, furry cat.

🙂

Anyway, we went back to IT Computer Supermarket and I got:

AMD Athlon XP 2200+ A$210
Gigabyte GA-7VA VIA KT400 A$158
Kingston 256MB DDR PC2700 A$134
80GB Maxtor 7,200 ATA133 A$195
Sparkle 64MB GeForce4 MX440 SE DDR TV Out A$98
Omni Black USB+Audio P4 See Through Case A$105
GA 008 PS/2 Keyboard A$5

Total: A$905

IT Computer Supermarket

I can’t say that they have good service, but they have some of the
cheapest prices in Melbourne. I got a discount on top of the total
price, so I only paid A$850. I didn’t actually need the hard disk, but
Windows XP can be really anal at times and refuses to start if the
system configuration changes drastically so I got one to be safe. I’ll
enjoy the capacity anyway. I didn’t really need the case as well, but
it has a clear side panel. With lights. And a fan. And front USB ports
and headphone jacks.

I’ll have the 2 piece chicken meal please

Anyway, after getting all that (except the GeForce4, more on that
later) we went to Coles to get some grocery shopping done and then to
KFC. I have to say that KFC really sucks over here. The chicken is so
fatty and soggy that I can barely choke it down. Does Australia use a
different recipe for KFC? It’s a franchise so that’s unlikely, but it
sure tastes like it.

Push down and outwards

Well, after all that, I went back to assemble everything. Getting
the heatsink and fan mounted (haha) on the CPU really took a lot of
effort…until I read the manual. It turns out that I’m just supposed
to align one side and press down and out with a screwdriver tip to
connect the other side. I tried doing that as well but I still couldn’t
get it to connect. I poured over the diagrams. It said “push down and
outwards where it’s circled”. WHAT CIRCLE??? Damn manual should have
never passed Quality Assuarance. After a lot of attempts I finally
realized that I should push at the top groove, not the bottom one…

Don’t look at me! I’m naked! 🙁

Well, after that the RAM went into the motherboard, the case got
disassembled, the motherboard went into the case, the cables went into
slots and the screws got screwed. I looked at the power button. PUSH.
Nothing happened. Puzzled, I looked around the case. Ah, one of the
power supply cables were not connected. That’s it! I connected and
pushed the power button. Still nothing. My monitor says it’s not
receiving a signal.

Note to self: Edges are sharper than they look

I removed the graphics card (GeForce2 MX – my previous card) and put
it into my old motherboard with the dead CPU. It detected the graphics
card but of course couldn’t boot up due to the burnt out CPU. I put the
card back into the new system. Still nothing. I called the shop – they
were closing at 4:30 pm and it was nearly 4 pm so me and Adrian went
over again to get the motherboard replaced. I thought it was a
motherboard problem, until I read “This motherboard does not support 2X
AGP cards. Only 4X-8X AGP supported”.

Stuff that matters

My old GeForce2 MX is 2X AGP, so that was where things went wrong.
It’s a good thing I read that before I went back home because if I
didn’t, I would have been without a computer the whole weekend coz the
shops all close on Sunday. That would be BAD because I have IE stuff
due next week. Well, long story short, I got back and put everything
together and everything worked! 🙂 Thanks to Adrian for helping out
today. I’m pretty tired now coz I didn’t enough sleep and was running
around Clayton most of the day. So that’s it for today. Yay, everything
runs so much faster now. It’s like my PC had several points of meth and
it’s now raging, eager and helluva tweaked out. Naughty boy.

All riced up and ready to go!

Oh, and if my spelling degrades noticably today, it’s because I haven’t installed spell check yet. 🙂

The Third Peak

February 19, 2003 by HB

*puuuushuuuuuuuuu* (sound of a balloon deflating) I just got back
from the code review. I’ve got a list of 23 odd things to fix with my
code before Monday. It’s mostly minor stuff though, so it’s still okay.
Our supervisor has selflessly sacrificed a good chunk of his after work
time to go through our code and my group mates and I spent several
hours in his office while he went through the code with a fine tooth
comb.

Anyway, I’m pretty tired now so I’m going to sleep early tonight.
I’ve gotta wake up early tomorrow coz it’s the last day I’ll be able to
work on my Neural Networks assignment. It’s due by Friday 12 noon. The
above picture was taken tonight on the Pakenham train I take to get
home. It’s not very clear, take a train in Melbourne and you’ll know
why. It’s not exactly smooth sailing.

I took two photos actually, and the second one was when the train
was stationary so it should be clearer. Unfortunately, the second one
mysteriously disappeared from the memory card. I’m going to file that
under mysterious mysteries. I think I may very well be the only one
that finds myself funny. =D Anyway, I’ve noticed that there are three
peak hours for trains. The first two are logical – the hour before
office hours and the hour after office hours.

However the carriages are always full from 8:30 pm – 9:30 pm too.
I’ve thought about this and the best reason I could come out with is
that the passengers are people who went out for a drink and to catch up
with friends after office hours instead of going straight home. The
fact that night trains are truncated might have something to do with it
as well. The trains after 7:30 pm are not full length ie some carriages
are removed because it’s supposed to be off peak hours. Truncated
trains. 🙂 I alliterate.

Will write help files for marks

February 17, 2003 by HB

I’ve been writing the help files for the WIER project my group is doing for Industrial Experience. Here’s a snippet:

Adding Times

Adding times to the Task/Time Tracker is done by clicking on the subtask you want to add to.

The first button in the upper right hand corner is then clicked.
You’ll know you have the right button when you hover the mouse over the
button as “Log Time Under This Task” shows up.

When you click on the button, the Log A Work Session screen comes up.
Here is where you add the times and descriptions. The date can also be
changed by clicking on the Select Date link and selecting a date from
the pop up calendar.

After everything is filled in, clicking on Log Time will enter the times into the database.

Editing Tasks

The tasks should be updated periodically as the project goes on to
reflect the correct initial estimated hours and current estimated
hours. This is done by clicking on Edit This Task in the Task/Time
tracker upper right hand corner.

Clicking on the button will navigate you to the Edit a Task screen.

The Edit a Task screen is where you can update the Current and
Initial Estimated Hours. In this screen, the Current Estimated is being
updated to 50 hours instead of the original 150 hours after finding out
that the task is nearing completion and would not require as much hours
as previously estimated.

What do you think? I know I got confusing at times, but oh well…

I’ll be free-er (if there’s such a word) this Friday. The summer
subject I’m taking finishes for good on Friday 12 noon after I hand in
the last assignment. I don’t know why the assignment due date is after
the final exam but it just is. These couple of days are gonna be busy.
I’ve got to go to the Clayton labs tomorrow to work on the Neural
Networks assignment because the program we need to use is only
installed in the labs. Then we’re going to have our IE presentation on
Tuesday 2:30 pm and then we’re going to move all our code to the live
server on 5 pm on the same day and then we have a code review (also for
IE) on Wednesday 5 pm onwards till God knows when and then I’ll have
one last day to finish up my summer assignment and hand it in on Friday
12 noon. Phew, someone pass me the meth…no sleep for the wicked.

WIER

February 13, 2003 by HB

This is the Industrial Experience project my team is working on.
It’s nearing the end and the coding part is basically done, except for
some bits and pieces. The project is coded mainly using PHP (with a
tiny bit of Javascript) and it uses an Oracle database that is located
on a different campus, which requires us to be frugal in making
database calls. WIER stands for Web Industrial Experience Resources and
it’s a project management system that’s going to go live in 2 weeks.
Crunch time, baby!

Mmm…chicken

February 12, 2003 by HB

What I like about these chicken packs are the vegies inside them.
They look like leaves and taste like them too. 🙂 There’s quite a bit
of variety inside too, there are broad green leaves, reddish branches
and stuff like that. Anyway, I’m feeling uninspired and amotivated
today. Still have to work on my stuff for tomorrow’s supervisor meeting
though. I’ll go pop some bubble wrap…

Link of the Day: Perpetual Bubble Wrap [urban75.com]

I could do this all day. There’s just something very appealing about
popping bubble wrap. I can’t stop myself from pressing the round
thingys on drinks from McDonalds too. It’s those round raised things
with labels like ‘Diet’, ‘Other’ etc. Those things are so compulsive…

Someone please wipe the drool off my chin

February 10, 2003 by HB

I’ve just watched this NTU (Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore) Halls of Residence cheerleading video from last year that
Daniel kindly FTPed to me. The pictures are pretty blur because I had
to photograph the monitor. I can’t seem to grab screenshots of MPEGs in
Windows XP. It’s some kind of interhalls competition and I was
surprised that some of the routines are really good. There was one that
particularly stood out, I can’t remember which stairway it was but they
had the Moulin Rouge Can Can snippet which lead into Offspring’s
Original Prankster. I liked the intro where they lifted this girl high
up and she waves and did the arms-folded-trust-drop that cheerleaders
do. It’s a really good video, if you’re inside the Monash network I’ve
got it shared under killuminati in Direct Connect (Hub: davo).
Otherwise, bug Daniel [mailto:] to send a copy to you. 🙂

Anyway, as I was walking to the dining hall today, I passed by a
possum rummaging around in a rubbish bin. I didn’t see the little guy
until I was right beside him and in a caffeine induced jitter, I jumped
a little. Well, I think I scared the possum more than he did me,
because he jumped even higher and scrambled over several rubbish bins
and flinged himself into a wall! Ouch.

Link of the Day: A Frightened Boy [rathergood.com]

I’ll have two of whatever he’s having. Oh, and if anyone knows the
title of the song used in the flash animation, give me a holler. Thanks!

Curious George

February 5, 2003 by HB

I didn’t do too well in the exam today, but I should be able to
pass. *fingers crossed* I only got 1 hour of sleep last night. Wanted
to sleep at 2:30 am but couldn’t so I laid in bed doing jack shit until
5:30 am before I finally decided against sleeping and got up and
studied some more. I thought about crunching up a couple of Valiums
(legally prescribed) and getting some sleep, but that would not be such
a good idea considering there’s no way I would be getting 8 hours of
sleep. Diazepam makes me feel really scattered if I don’t sleep for a
decent amount of time after taking it.

Anyway, I did finally sleep for slightly more than an hour at 8 am.
Woke up feeling strangely refreshed and got some serious studying done.
I always tend to cram a few hours before the exam. George picked up the
shovel and started digging into the ground. The tree has been there for
more than 7 decades, but good things must come to an end. He digs, one
shovel at a time, one rock at a time, one pebble at a time. The
children crowded around him, peering curiously at George. Curious
George.

Sleep beckons me.