The Dark Prince

It has been some time. Some time since I’ve written anything on here, and for those two or three people that actually read this less than interesting ramble, I apologise for not wasting more of your time. For the last month or so I have been overburdened with university assignments.

Unfortunately these assignments were group assignments, which roughly translated means: I had to do them entirely by myself. To be honest, one of my groups (of seven, seven) people is very good, they are competant, sensible and plucky enough to say what they think, yet reasonable enough to actually listen to others. Well, except for one of these who thinks he’s better than everyone else, despite his huge lack of understanding anything at all. I digress, my remaining teams of 3 (myself included) are, to be honest, completely hopeless and should never have been enrolled in the course.

This of course brings me to the point of todays meandering drivel, better. Even when you are young, you know when you are better or worse than someone at something. It’s undeniable, you can see it, they can see it and it’s silently acknowledged. So why is it so damn rude/arrogant/nasty for me to just point out the obvious. I am better than these people, they have no idea, so it’s not really giving me any credit, it’s like saying that a piece of land is higher above sea level than the earths core, the comparison means little and no-one would deny it.

Yet somehow, for me to get up, stand on a table if I must, and declare that I am at least as good if not better than most people in my course you immediately think, “snob”. Don’t tell me you didn’t. I know you did, I can see the words forming, there’s the ’s’ now. The fact remains that the reason software engineering “..is in crisis!!!”, (look at any textbook on software design to obtain a similar quote), is not because of poor planning, lack of diagrams with strange shapes on them or lack of a proper SRS. It’s because, (and I speak only for my university, which admittedly is a nest of pretension), almost the entire collection of undergraduate computing students SUCK!

Maybe it’s because I had to do three persons’ work of a two month project over a week…twice.. Maybe it’s because when I read the newsgroups to try and discover any new information on assignments there are pages of idiocy written by the same moron trying to impress people. Maybe it’s just the fact that there is a stupid guy who has a perpetual smarmy grin on his face that makes me want to hit him over and over again, (hearing him talk makes matters even worse), but I just can’t get over the amazing lack of any redeeming feature, academic or otherwise of pretty much everyone in my course.

On another note, I have to thank a few of my friends, all of whom know who they are and if they don’t then they’re stupid anyway. I have had a really rough time getting through these projects and I couldn’t do it without you. Anyone who I asked for advice or support should know that I don’t think the same of them, it’s just very depressing to know that these people will be unleashed onto some hapless software that people will buy and expect to work.

A Beginners Guide

Over my many, many years at both university and school, I have noticed that questions need to be asked. Clarifications, if you will, of the content being described by the lecturer (or in school’s case, teacher). However, often these questions just make the asker look utterly stupid. The skill is to remain cool in appearance and yet learn information, as this pamphlet will show, the best result is simply not to ask and wait for someone else to.

For example, in one of my lectures, a rather boofy geeky type asked a question about logic which clearly showed that he wasn’t listening. It went something like this:

Lecturer: So the simple way to prove that all crows are black is to find all crows in existence and show all of them are black, or alternatively to find all non-black items and show that none of them are crows.

Questioner: But aren’t you taking the problem to another level and ignoring the fundamental properties of the crow? (Or something like that)

As the question was carefully phrased, it seems that this was an attempt to seem deep and learned. It resulted in him looking very stupid, although he was clearly so stupid he didn’t realise this, and five seconds later did a not-so-sneaky peek to see if he had any ardent admirers. He didn’t.

Unfortunately, there are far worse than these. I have three question askers in my engineering class. Of these, the worst is known as The Boofy-Haired Dickhead. His special ability is to repeatedly ask the same question over and over again if the answer isn’t exactly what he wants. This can happen during lectures or afterwards. If it happens during lectures most lecturers will try to gently let him down, whilst the rest of the class wants him dead. There are the rare and very pleasurable moments though when a lecturer finally caves and tells him where to go. After class, he can be seen hurtling towards a clearly dreading lecturer to ask the same question again. Clearly he has not studied the subtle art of question asking and we can safely conclude that he will never understand anything.

There is an advantage to not asking questions. If you don’t ask duiring class, you can always e-mail. Thus, if you are asking something redundant, you are safe from ridicule, whilst, if you ask something sensible, your name will be in the glory of a mail forwarded to the rest of the class, you can’t lose!

And finally, there is also the ability for entertainment. If a lecturer makes a glaring mistake whilst writing something down, many minutes of subtle laughter at the professors expense can be had whilst he furiously tries to figure out where he has gone wrong. So, don’t correct him, enjoy the moment of your lecturer stumbling about his own work. After all, he probably laughs at your exam write-up.

and the small matter of a failed exam

Well today heralds good and bad things in the land of somewhere. I have finally gotten all the bits of my computer to talk to each other after what seems an eternity now, but is most likely around two weeks. Unfortunately, this has resulted in my Linux partition not working, but it never really did to begin with.

As well as this, all the good work of me doing quite well in yesterdays exam has been removed by me doing appallingly in todays exam. Since they are both for the same subject this is really unfair, as I’d rather go well in one subject and fail horribly in the other, thus qualifying for special exams and having at least one good mark to my name

Aside from the usual mundane failures of my life, today I got thoroughly annoyed with the tram system. Now, I know that it’s unlikely that such a system will work perfectly all day and everyday, but it really is quite bad. Nearly every tram is late, and when you finally get the chance to get on a tram you can’t because everyone and everything has decided to get on the tram before you and are practically hanging out the windows, so you have to wait. And wait. And then you wait a bit more until you come to a tram that has room on it.

Now, you would assume that this would be it, but unfortunately, your way will invariably be a woman with a double pram (evil evil things), a large derro who looks as though all of his skin has been replaced with sandpaper that has been left in the sun for two weeks after being crumpled repetitively, or a large group of socialising Malaysians.

If you do decide to force your way through the lowest humanity can offer you, looks of annoyance will be received from your quarry, I can almost understand the first two, but why is it that Malaysians talk so loudly, (or should I say: tok so high larrrrrrr), their accent irritates me at the best of time, but this look as though I have done something wrong by wanting to get through their wall of indifference just makes me want to do something very bad with a lot of magnesium strips, matches and the offendees core body temperature measuring point.

This wall of slowly moving, really really loud, and highly irritating Malaysians occurs everywhere, actually. In crowded shops is, where they seal up entire sections because they have decided to tok about something incredibly inane whilst several people get really pissed off trying to get through, cues at fast food places (where they merrily annoy the hell out of everyone else by not ordering), and other places where generally you are forced to go out of necessity.

Enough about Malaysians. This story is about trams. Or something. Anyway, I had an exam to go to (not particularly pressing, granted), and this tram decided to just sit there for about 10 minutes. Needless to say I was nearly late, but what’s worse, is exactly the same thing happened to me on the way back from failed exam. I suppose this is what the %10 increase in ticket prices was to ensure, less reliability and more bullyish tram inspectors

Well, after a hard working weekend, or more precisely, a hard working Sunday night, I have handed in one of my overdue assignments. This leaves one remaining, but as I now have two days to study for two exams and much procrastination still to be done, I shall avoid this report until after that.

Anyway, despite this rather pressing deadline, I am quite relaxed about my situation. I have been to most, if not all, of the relevant lectures for these exams and I have studied a reasonable amount for them. Plus, if I fail, I simply try again, no questions asked. Seriously, though, I will definitely study. Soon.

On things unrelated to the shady and depressing side of my life that is university, things are not wonderful, but not bad either. I went and visited my old computer store, (where I got my computer originally), only to find that the part that I’d ordered had been sitting there for two weeks and they just couldn’t be stuffed telling me. Customer service and the computer industry seem to be mutually exclusive or perhaps inversly proportional. Either way, I got the part, smiled politely and quietly called them a bunch of arseholes, because they are.

My new, soon to be old, computer store has been really nice however. I took the box in for the card that didn’t work today and hopefully soon my computer will be back and functional. Maybe I’ll give them a bit more of a chance, but then again, maybe not.

And the ground beneath your feet’s reaction to it

Well after an exhileratingly horrible couple of days before the weekend I have managed to remove all assignments in my way with the exception of two. Normally this would be something to be happy about, except for the fact that both these pieces of work (although another word could equally well be substituted for work) are about three weeks overdue.

Combine this with the fact that they are about %10 each, and you have something that is too big to ignore and too small to really want to spend time on. Also consider that the work will take hours upon hours of painstaking analysis and you can begin to see why this is not such a wonderful situation. But I will somehow get them done, somehow.

As well as this exciting plethora of overdue work I have recently taken my computer into the shop whence the stupid IDE expansion card came to convince them that their card sucks. They took one look at it, and pronounced it fixed, to my great surprise and happiness. Then I took one look at their proof (they showed me that my computer now registered 3 CD devices and a zip drive), and realised that this particular bunch of retailers were, (as we say in academic terms), completely fucking stupid.

There is a program, a wonderfully useful program, called Daemon Tools. Most people who need something like it know about it. As I am sure you have already guessed, oh intelligent reader, this program gives you a thing called a virtual drive. Why is it useful? Apart from copying DVDs or CDs raw onto your harddrive to play at a later date in the virtual drive, it also allows you to check if an image you are about to burn works. Sure enough, the clever-clogged people at this store had mistaken my virtual drive for my DVD burner.

So, I did the only thing possible, I quietly disabled the virtual drive in front of them and watched their looks of satisfaction drown in a tidal wave of incomprehension. I think it is time, yet again, to find a new computer store.

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.

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.

Well, as I write this, I should be doing research. I really should, I have a pathetic little essay of around 1200 words to write on why the intercity railway is better than intercity air travel, (within Australia). Not really fair, as I don’t believe this for a second. However, my argument will rely on weather conditions, cost and environmental impact. Still I need some actual figures, or quotes from people who spend their life looking at pictures of trains to base my flawed and pointless arguments upon.

Aside from this rather strange sort of assignment for an Engineering degree, I also have:

• Three laboratory reports
• A group control assignment (which I have no group for)
• A mechanics assignment on vibrating things, (to which I say: hmm)
• Another mechanics assignment on a complex little thing called Finite Element analysis, although this should be good, because it involves programming
• Yet another bloody laboratory to sign up for
• An as yet unknown thermodynamics assignment
• A year long research assignment
• A semester long design assignment
• An impatient person who needs to be visited.

Thus it is safe to say that at this point my life should consist of study, day, night and anything in between. Naturally, I’m playing computer games, randomly browsing the web and sleeping.