Unholy-ness, not amounting to blasphemy

Today was unholy, weather wise. It was already in the high twenties
when I stepped out at 9 am in the morning and it just grew warmer and
warmer and the heat has not even fully dissipated from my room as of
now. Good thing I was at the campus labs most of the day, trying to
finish up my Industrial Experience project. “But you’ve just finished your exams!” you say. Yup, no rest for the wicked.

Anyway, I’m hoping that I’ll be able to finish my IE project early
and get it signed off before the client leaves for the holidays in
December. It might be possible, I’m going to try anyway. I’ll have to
fully commit myself the whole of next week and see what happens then.
If it’s nearing completion, I’ll try and push for a client review the
week after and leave one week for modifications and hopefully a sign
off after that. We’ll see. *fingers crossed* This is my last real
holiday, so I was rather hoping I could have a long 4 month one. That
is out of the question, but perhaps a 2+ month one is still within
reach. I wouldn’t want to stay here in summer anyway. From the way
things are going, it looks like it’s going to be a scorcher. I stayed
back 2 years ago and it reached 45 C at times.

CSE3002 Distributed Computing Systems Postmortem

Well I’ll be damned. The questions that came out today were EXACTLY the same
as the Semester 2 2000 one and the Semester 2 2001 one. I had read the past year exam papers, which
were actually removed from the past exams database and yet, available under a different course
code. By inferring and extrapolating, I had expected this year’s questions to be the same, and I
wasn’t disappointed. I would have done better though if I’d gotten some sleep though. It was hard
trying to recall facts that I already know and I’m sure there were some “cross-contamination”.
Cross-contamination is the phenomenon that occurs where you mix up the answers of one question with
another. The borders start getting fuzzy after a lack of sleep, you know. I might get a Distinction
if I’m lucky, but I’m going to be conservative here and predict:

Expected Grade: Credit

It’s off to bed for me. I haven’t had any sleep last night.

CSE3002 Distributed Computing Systems

My brain is absolutely saturated. I did not sleep last night to memorize the
prodigious lecture notes of this subject. It’s amazing how this subject has 80-120 (!) slide
lecture notes. Times that amount by 13 weeks. Plus, every slide has stuff to remember. I can’t even
type properly now coz I’ve archived the “language” portion of my brain to make space for the
“memorize and regurgitate” part. Quorum consensus method, Suzuki-Kasami’s broadcast algorithm,
Singhal’s heuristic algorithm, push push push, go into my brain dammit!

Segmentation fault…

Core dumped!

CSE2203 Information Technology Project Management Postmortem

Well…I didn’t do too well in this exam. I was rather appalled when I first
read the exam paper. I found out that I’ve been concentrating on the wrong stuff. However, I did
manage to rally up a bit and wrote what I feel was right, so I should be able to pass. The past few
year’s exams all had Gantt charts, which is like a free 11 marks, but it didn’t come out this year.
Bummer. Oh well.

Expected Grade: Pass

Anyway, the Doom III Alpha 0.02 (the E3 demo) has been leaked. I downloaded it
last night, but didn’t manage to unzip it until today. It damn near took 8 minutes just to unzip
the RAR file. It took another 2 minutes just to start and get to the new id animation with the
hybrid metal/flesh heart fusion loop. I tried bringing down the console and typed map
e3/e3_3
and waited for 25 minutes while my aging Athlon 750 w/ 128 mb RAM and a GeForce 2 MX
tried to load the demo, but gave up after that. It was an exercise is patience, and patience is a
commodity that has eluded me thus far.

This is an er…a screenshot of the Doom III alpha. =D

CSE3153 Network Administration Postmortem

Hmm…I found the paper pretty easy today. I was expecting more technical stuff and read up on
ASN.1 packet details and stuff like that. What came out was more general and abstract though, but
that’s just as well, it made things easy. I noticed that I haven’t held a pen since the exam last
semester. Heh. It seems that my course has a lot more to do with keyboard input rather than pen and
paper. The downside to this was my hands were cramped and sore after only 10 minutes of (hard)
writing. Lack of practice, eh.

Expected Grade: Credit

Anyway, I headed down to Chadstone after that with the intention to renew my health insurance
premium. However, I was told that I needed my enrolment statement and my passport to do it, so I
guess I’ll have to go back again after my exams. However, I did get some doughnuts from Donut King
for dinner. Mmm…sprinkles.

Beer bong, beer bong…don’t drink too slow!

The semester has ended. I’ve handed in my last assignment today and I have one
more week till my first exam on the 1/11. In light of that, I’ve decided to celebrate (legally) by
having a couple of beers. I leave the illegal stuff for Mr. Foaf, my uhm…friend. No, I wasn’t
going to say alter ego, dammit. I’m not that far gone. =D Anyway, as I was walking to uni today, I
saw a lot of men in suits with ear pieces at the research department car park. Found out later from
the radio in the shuttle bus that Premier Steve Bracks was present at the Ceremony of Reflection
and Respect of the Monash shooting victims. I also heard that the shooting victims have been
awarded honors degree posthumously. A nice touch, that.

Anyway, I’ve finally been reviewed at The Weblog Review. Wendy [twodolla.org], the reviewer, gave me a 2.5/5.0. It’s
not a high score, but she’s honest in her review and she said some positive things too, so I
can’t help but feel pleased. Here’s the review in it’s entirety:

Huai’s a student in Melbourne who started up his weblog
in April of 2002. Since then, sixthseal.com has been very consistently updated with the happenings
of Huai.

The site’s design is very basic. There’s a light blue table on the left with the naviagation
portion of the menu, which is very simple to use. And to the right is the weblog. The main page
features a photo of the day (POTD) at the top of the page. It’s not exactly a photo of the day,
however, but more like a photo of the week. That’s not really a major concern of mine, but I could
certainly see how readers could get disappointed with the photo not being updated daily like one
would assume.

The majority of the entries are simple to read updates of what’s going on in Huai’s life – dorm
life, his social life, how his classes are going, etc. It’s fun to read through the progress of the
school year and the entertaining mishaps that get written about.

A nice touch to this weblog was the introduction of posting pictures from time to time. While the
POTD might not be updated on a regular basis, Huai does a good job of peppering in pictures that
he’s taken with his digital camera throughout a good portion of his entries. Doing that breaks up
the constant text and gives the readers something more than just words.

Is this a site I’d visit again? Personally, no. Is it one I’d suggest to those in college perhaps
experiencing the same thing that Huai is going through? Certainly. And I’d even go as far as saying
you should at least check it out once – perhaps you’ll find the connection that makes you want to
keep coming back.

This site was reviewed on 2002-10-20 by Wendy.
They felt this site belonged in the Personal category.
Wendy felt that sixthseal.com deserved a rating of 2.5.

Or you can check it out here [theweblogreview.com]. Oh, and
my name is Huai Bin. You don’t truncate Chinese names like that. 🙂

Premium beer review
Beer #1 Witbier

frothy…had to catch the froth before it overflows from the neck of the
bottle
tastes urm, tasteless
very light beer taste
tastes like water actually
the head stays throughout the drinking session in the bottle
doesn’t dissipate
at 5.0 , gives a mild kick when downed on a semi full stomach
marketed as a premium (traditional belgian style – oh la di dah) beer
cost me A$11.99 for a 6 pack
the first bottle was agitated a little though
second bottle just had a nice gas escaping slowly and then a nice heady froth on top

Beer #2 Sapporo (Japanese Import)

frothed up something wicked when i opened it. no, i did not agitate it. it’s an easy to drink
and rather tasteless beer. i had it pretty chilled though. maybe a slight bitter aftertaste and
thats it. but don’t take my word for it, my tastebuds are screwed. the beer is easy to hold too.
slightly contoured (or is that tapered?) at the bottom, which fits the hand nicely. the shiny
aluminum conducts the cold nicely too. and there’s just something good about holding a large can of
beer. it’s twice the size of normal beer cans, and it holds 650 ml of 5% alcohol beer. i forgot
what i paid for it, but it isn’t cheap. its somewhere around A$7. take note that beer here is cheap
compared to Malaysia.

Beer #3 Redback

curses. i’ve already typed a review but accidentaly clicked no when it asked me whether i wanted
to save. anyway, i’m try to recall the best i can from my (foggy) memory. this local premium beer
(oh, la di dah) is made from malted wheat and brewed in matilda bay,western australia. it weighs in
at a dismal 4.7 % alcohol by volume. the 6-pakcs looks rather pretentious, with wood colored
packaging and stickers (with gothic writing, no less) over all the caps. it tastes strangely
“heavy” like milk or milo but did not have an objectionable taste or aftertaste. the beer seems
rather malty, but did not have a characteristic bite of malty beers. i’ve had malt milkshakes that
were much more bitter than this nice beer here. the heaviness is strangely pleasing and satisfying.
however, this thing here did not have a twist off cap. wtf? i thought twist off caps are standard
for local brewed beers. i tried twisting the cap off anyway, but that did not acheieve anything
other than give me bottle cap shaped grooves in my hand. i tried prying the cap off with my key,
but that’s going to take too long. luckily, i bought a nail clipper today and peering over, noticed
that it has a bottle opener. mmm…

Well….all that beer made me sprout this gem here:

Silencer® (9:45 PM) :
u hungry?
sixthseal.com (9:46 PM) :
nah i drank a lot of beer
burp

Thoughts about the Monash shooting and a Crown Casino terrorist attack warning (hoax?)

Ceremony of Reflection and Respect for the Monash
shooting victims
[monash.edu.au]

Venue: Robert Blackwood Concert Hall (Building 2 on the Clayton campus)

Time: 11am on Friday 25 October, 2002.

Hmm…the gunman is being charged in court and the 5 wounded are well on their way to recovery
so I guess it’s back to life as usual. It’s sad to think that two innocent students died though. I
actually saw the parents and sister (?) of one of the deceased today. They looked very sad, but I
didn’t know what I could say that would make them feel better so I just nodded at them. On the
other side of the coin, the gunman’s story seems unfortunate as well. He has an old mother to
support, and now that he’s in prison, what’s going to happen to her? And why didn’t he think of
that before he started shooting? The mind boggles. I heard stories that he’s under a lot of
pressure to do well in his presentation, and it’s quite a challenge considering he doesn’t know
English that well. I guess that can be pretty stressful, but hell, if every student started
shooting every time they’re stressed, I guess there won’t be any Monash students left, would there?
What he did was wrong, and yet, inexplicably sad.

You have received a message!
Pls forward:
For your safety dun go to crown these days
terrorist attack: a friend’s friend had found a wallet somewhere and he rang the owner and gave it
back to him, the owner of the wallet is from pakistan, then he thanked my friend’s friend and then
told them not to go to crown or any places which are these days as there will be something terrible
going to happen”

“Ths was written by a HK friend from eng. Just on the safe side dun go”

This is an ICQ message that’s been circling around lately. I got two of these from two totally
unrelated people (except they’re both Monash University students) within a 15 minute period. I
suspect it’s a hoax, but one can never be too careful these days. Just FYI.

Link: 7 deadly
weapons
[heraldsun.news.com.au] (He even had a 9mm
Luger)

Link: Professor sings praises of
murdered uni duo
[theage.com.au]

Link: Kung-fu instincts kick in as
shots fly
[theage.com.au]

Link: Modest
hero’s instinct takes over
[heraldsun.news.com.au]

…and the knee-jerk response:

Link: Howard to push for limited
ban on handguns
[theage.com.au]

Link: National
push to restrict pistols
[heraldsun.news.com.au]

It’s interesting to see that the gunman is said to be a member of the Melbourne Indoor Pistol Club [mipc.com.au]. I went there
earlier this year (read about it here [sixthseal.com] – 1/4
down the page) and it’s a pretty fun place where you can shoot with real handguns and live ammo.
They’re also an authorized Heckler and Kosh [hecklerkoch-usa.com] dealer. Check
it out if you’re interested.

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