The Dark Prince

Well, after a long session of writing, reading and generally not sleeping I have reduced my workload to the point where I am essentially at the same level as everyone else. So in celebration I slept. A lot. But I’m all good now and ready to avoid work with style.

Apart from that I may have forgotten to mention that I have been essentially officially approved to do my major in comp science, so this makes everything far more liveable.

That’s it for today sorry, there is nothing to speak of as such, and time is of the essence at the moment, so yeah, back to work, or avoidance of work, or avoiding avoidance of work or…

It has been some time since I’ve written some stuff here on this once regularly updated miracle of the modern building we call the internet. Well, if it was a building it would be filled with porn theatres and real estate agents, and don’t get me started on those bloody gnomes again.

I have been rather busy. Very busy in fact. Incredibly busy. I have actually almost finished that pile of work that I mentioned earlier, but not quite. At this point I have reduced this monstrous glob of paper wasting monotony to a mere 3 pracs, two questionnaires, one assignment and the usual yearlong stuff. It’s a monumentous achievement. Of course it meant that I had several 48 hour days and didn’t hand in yet another assignment that I was supposed to do, but in great battles sacrifices must be made.

My computer is still not entirely functional. I have to carry the thing into a small shop owned by a quiet little man who speaks English really badly but seemed more genuine than most shops. I am avoiding this task because of both lack of time and motivation, even though it would mean that I would have a fully functional computer. Still, more on this will be given as it developes.

What else has been happening, I hear you ask in an enthusiastic voice. Well dear reader, (and there is probably at most two people reading this, so perhaps I should say dear readers). Nothing. I have moped, lazed, slept, eaten (although not very much), and generally existed without soul or feeling, thought or enjoyment. The usual.

I did enter in the games competition at one of my more favourite sites though, but there are players far better than me and since I only started midway in this comp, my chances are less than small.

Anyway, since I have been hounded by requests to put a chatbox on this rather unused speck of personal dust in a storm of spinning crap, I have provided. I think it’s safe to assume that it will acquire a grand and total use of perhaps three comments, but it is there now.

Thus ends the lesson for today

Congregation: Thanks be to BOB.

I have a rather strange disease. It is a disease which is neither transmittable or hereditory, and it affects only one in a million. A disease with consequences so serious that I am forced to live in denial for the majority of my life. I have electrosensitive-negativity.

What is this terrible affliction? Why it is simple. If I buy any electronic or electric device it will invariably not work. Most of the time it will not work in some minor way, but I will still need to fix it anyway. This will result in other things not working and so on and so forth. Ironically, I love electronics. I love working with computers, sound, anything, but every time I buy something I have to thoroughly test it as I nearly always find something wrong with the damn device.

The latest to fall victim to this curse is a new IDE adapter which I just bought. This funky little device allows me to get my Zip drive to communicate with my computer again as I gave it’s spot on the board to my new burner. After carefully installing it and testing each component I put the machine back together and watched it not do anything. I tried changing the connections. Nothing. I tweaked just about everything I could tweak and it still fails to recognize the drive.

This seems quite trivial, I’m sure, if it wasn’t for the fact that a lot of my project work is sitting on Zip disks. As you can see, this is getting rather serious. The worst of it is, that the card is clearly not at fault. I know the card works, because all drivers are functioning and all programs are accepting the card. I know the zip drive is attached correctly to the card and it still works because when the machine is powered on the zip disk logs whatever is inside it’s mouth. I even know that the zip disk works because it reads and accepts disks, even if it can’t communicate with the computer.

Thus, there is some deeply hidden and essentially impossible to find problem within my computer that is causing some serious issues. And just when it was all going so well

In other news, university work seems to be going reasonably well. I have recently gotten a group for one of my worst assignments and done some work on one of the more pressing tasks. Still, there is a long way to go before I can safely begin procrastinating again.

Really, I have actually done some work.

Well, as you may have told from the heading and subheading, I have actually done stuff. Well, some stuff. I will now only have to look at the stupid parts of a stupid mechanism for a little longer and then I can look at them in an entirely different way. Ohh, the thrills.

Anyway, it appears that my lecturers feel that my workload was not impossible enough and have dumped yet another assignment on me, so time will again continue to bugger me. I vow at this point to remain as lazy as possible in the face of the adversity of work. Well, at least until I really have to do stuff.

In other news, I am getting rather sick of the amount of crap pouring through my mailbox every day. I always seem to get offers for hair salons with rather fetching females on them with about ten million colours all badly blended into their hair. I get offers to go to nightclubs, where it seems only extremely sleazy looking arshole males are let in as well as females wearing semi transparent shirts, because that’s what the ad shows. I get a really really bad paper written by a bunch of old farts clearly with nothing better to do, and this travesty is the subject of my hatred.

Don’t get me wrong, I admire old people. I admire their wealth of knowledge, their patience (where applicable) and other redeemable qualities. I do however hate their constant ranting, repitition and the need to just talk and talk and talk regardless of whether anyone is actually listening. That sounds like someone else, now that I think of it. Anyway, this particularly badly written newspaper is filled with columns written about politicians and how bad they are. Usually I would applaud this, but it seems to be ranting for rantings sake and nothing more.

I would write a letter into this pathetic mish-mash of slobber inducing crap, but even if it were published, these old obsessive bastards are so sure of what they write, I’d just get a repeat of the same article as a supposed rebuttal. Instead, I take pride in my lack of attack and silently hope that something really bad will happen to such a horrible person.

To those of you who I haven’t managed to speak to for a while, and you all know who you are, I am incredibly sorry. Things have been rather busy for me at the moment. I tried, rather unsucessfully to catch up on all the incredible amounts of work that I had to do, and sort of got some of it done, but most of it still seems to be beyond my reach.

Anyway, you might have guessed by the heading but I finally managed to get myself a DVD burner, something I’ve been longing to get for quite some time now. Combine this with the fact that I also got my hands on a CD that I’ve been hunting down for the last two years and you have quite a happy chappy. That’s were it ends though, my burner still hasn’t burnt a DVD yet owing to the abundance of new software required, and my CD has yet to be played.

I really don’t have anything else of interest to add, other than the fact that I am so worn down with all of this I really am sorry for not updating as much as I’d like. Sorry.

Well, if you have been readily reading my …(do I have to say it?) … blog, as avidly as you should be, (and by this, I mean that you should be updating your browser at least once every 5 minutes to see if I have anything new and interesting to say), you will notice that work is currently becoming a serious threat to my way of life.

That’s right, I can now no longer play games for 5 hours a day, followed by an extensive cooking session and then sleep. I was forced to cram, somewhere in this busy life of mine, time to study for the hellhole currently defined as university.

So, study I have. Studied studiously did I. More studiuos than a study full of students studiously studying the study of study I did study. Well, for at least two or three hours anyway. The upshot of this damn hard work, which I really shouldn’t be forced to do, it’s below me, is that now I have completed both one prac report, and my stupid essay on trains being better than planes. It’s just a matter of finding one or two trivial facts to back it up and I’m done. This leaves only two other prac reports and four assignments, as well as my ongoing yearlong projects, so things are slightly better than before.

If I keep this pace up, I may well survive the terrors of assignments and be ready to avoid study for exams. I really hope this to be the case as well, it is what I am supposed to do after all.

This week I was walking home carrying a rather hefty load of electronics and textbooks, when I was approached by a guy looking very worried indeed. Normally, I get approached by all sorts, most of which seem to have no money and require some for any number of excuses, A typical conversation goes something like this:

Beggar:Hey, I’m a backpacker from Sydney and I have no money, could you lend me a few dolalrs to help buy my some food for me/my family/my pregnant wife/my dying dog?

Myself: Why I’d be happy to help you out, but I have no cash on me, I can however buy whatever food you might need.

Beggar: But, the shop is a long way away

Myself: I have plenty of time, just tell me what we’re buying and lets go.

Beggar: Fuck off.

This suggests that perhaps the said enquirer was not being as honest as he or she could have been, it’s also a nice way of weeding out those who are genuine with those who are, to put it bluntly, hardened druggies beyond redemption.

Back to the story: The guy who approached me was not the normal type. He was clearly very very flustered, well kempt (but of a workers stature and clothing style), clearly neither drunk or drugged in any way. He explained to me that he was a flower delivery guy and his truck had broken down, he lacked the money to buy a gerry can so that he could finish his rounds and return home. He promised me that he would deposit any money that he got in my letter box by the next day.

Now, I was tired, and against my better judgement, I lent him $40, of money that I don’t really have. Needless to say, this money has not been returned. Was I stupid? Clearly he was in dire need of this money, for whatever purpose. Perhaps he put the money in the wrong box? Perhaps he has not yet had the chance to get the money back? Perhaps he was just buggering me the way everyone else manages to.

Regardless of all this, there are no gambling areas nearby, nor pubs, and as I said, he did not smell or act in any way without full control of his senses. I suspect he really did need the money, and I try to justify my loss by thinking that he needed it more than I.

Doesn’t give me back my $40 though.

Or a complete goose chase and waste of time?

Good evening children. Today we are going to talk about the internet. The thing that you’re using to get here. You know, that cable or card that you stick into your computer? Well that tiny little thing has the entire internet on it. Well, at least the useful bits on it.

Fun though it is to pretend that the internet is a wealth of resources, the fact is that the internet is rather like a second hand bookstore at a country fair. You can poke and probe and gentle turn things over and sound interested, but the reality is that you are *never* going to find what you are looking for.

Why is this? Well it’s simple. The internet is really lots and lots of little elves stuck in a box called Gerald and everytime a site like the infamous Goggle searches for something, they try and find it and give it to you. Unfortunately, this process is like asking a small child to get you an item from the shelf, they will look at what you want, ask what you want and get something that is vaguely similar, but completely useless.

Of course there are other elves in the box that is Gerald, but these elves are less nice. Not quite Orcs yet, but approaching it, they keep a box of pornsites handy and liberally sprinkle these references within the other elves carefully done work.

I know that this is true, because I read it on the internet.

Why am I ranting about this. Well, that stupid little essay that requires a grand total of 1500 sets of syllables wrapped together in a recognizeable fashion require me to have at least a couple of references. Now, really it should be a doddle to find the number of people various aircraft can take at one time, incredibly easy, right? Wrong, whether you type ‘aircraft seating capacity‘, or ‘aircraft size table‘ or ‘just please tell me what I need to know‘, the box of Gerald tries really hard but returns things which sound helpful, but aren’t. Bloody elves.

After what has seemed an eternity, (in reality a week), my cold has finally started to stop gallavanting about in my internals and attempt to find a new abode. I can only try and describe the amount of relief I have in regaining the ability to swallow without the feeling of having to inhale a screwdriver.

No, really. It feels amazingly amazing that I can actually consume liquid or food without this feeling. The real problem now is to avoid the inevitable temptation of swallowing said substances in large quantities.

On the university front, things have been interesting. I just discovered that I also have a survey to fill in, as well as the numerous assignments mentioned previously this may well be the proverbial last straw. Although it looks like it will take all of five minutes to write up

Life wise, things continue to be as usual. I am trying to get back into all the hobbies I cherished so much in singledom, and well, it’s great. Computer games, staying up late, eating really crappy food, life just doesn’t get any better.