Congrats, where congrats is due and some other stuff

My blog does not represent the views of Murdoch or any of its affiliates. All posts are NOT to be taken seriously and are written only for entertainment purposes. 


This blog now has very little control by Murdoch University. Expect all sorts of weird shit. Now with 10% more unprovoked slander!

Stop looking at me like that... I am a geek, I don't need friends... sort of

As a great man once said "In the end, the universe tends to unfold as it should." (Man that movie was awesome, just two stoned guys going to get food... Awesome..

Hey! Why are you revoking my geek status? No, I need that! It'll get me into Waicon!)

So anyway yes. The music person of the collective won the chance to work at a music place, after being encouraged by her friend, With this post here which won "Best assignment post which did not involve vandalizing a building with an unidentifiable sticky substance" So I am very happy that the person who won is going to use it to their fullest.

So with those plesentries out of the way it's time to describe what happening to me now. Ah... Well, the rest of my results got released.. Again, same as last semester 2 Credits and a Pass. It annoys me to think that I'm not "child prodigy" or "Exceptional" or even "Dedicated" to most things. I did brilliant work in Databases, but I believe I got over confident and stuffed up the exam. I know I left two entities of my ERD, but it was so good without them. Why would one have a database with skill sets listed?! Sorry I'm annoyed at myself for crapping up that unit cause I was expecting a Distinction due to my fantastic (IMHO.) assignments grades. I mean, it just annoys me that the reference I got from high school tells my potential employers that I was okay at Media (My other B mark, apart from Info Sys.). Apparently my English teacher thought I should be a writer/director/director of photography (The most-latter being my chosen past in year nine, until a PHP button changed all that.). But I will come out of this uni with the double major next year, somehow get into grad program (with my currently not so good GPA.) And just become successful and forget about other potential outcomes when I presenting my protocol to a TED audience, or on a team doing a large scale network upgrade.


Am currently jobless. Still. The time to get desperate and apply for Christmas casuals has long since passed. Now is the time to rediscover the wonderful benefits of 2 litre egg nog cartons.

And the blogging people wanted more posts. And it's still just me complaining that I'll never be happy.

HOWEVER, JUST BEFORE you delete my bookmark, you have some great posts to look forward to!:

1. This Saturday an old high school friend is going to try and find me (though his now very diverse connections) somebody new to stalk, which should hopefully be very enjoyable

2. Southbound: Something has to be worth posting about it, whether it be a streaker, a tent getting damp or just a very amusing port-a-loo (If this is the case, there maybe a "Not-so-safe-for-children-or-people-I-know" post.) it will be commented on.

3. Something good is happening in January, but in a vague attempt to get people to read this more, I will leave this a mystery.

Graffiti of the week comes from a public restroom in Toodyay which had no locks on either of the doors

"Breathe deep, live long"

"Or don't"

Very reminiscent of this:

Assignment 5 (Hey I got the number right!) - The end..ish post "Visions of a Brave New World"

My blog does not represent the views of Murdoch or any of its affiliates. All posts are NOT to be taken seriously and are written only for entertainment purposes.

So I took this little test here to see what type of thinker I am, where's me brain at  (Well at the moment off cause I've finished exams... More on that later.) and the email it spat back (Hey, no one was thinking and read my answers, sorry it's a computer program that just works with USE-CASE statements... Ignore the man behind the curtain, it's just code.) Said something along the lines of:

You're a visionary thinker - and an eternal optimist. You have a talent for finding opportunities in everything.

You're driven by the promise of leading the world to a brighter future and believe that by exploring different and original ways of thinking, you can make the seemingly impossible happen.

With your compassionate thinking style, you might like to use our course browse tool to find courses based around these personality traits:

• Creative and artistic
• Analytical and scientific

Actually, it said exactly that, cause that's a copy and I haven't even changed the font or removed the hyperlink. I find several interesting things here before I discuss what this email says to me, what 'Visionary means to me, some talk about exams and the future of this blog.  1stly, there's a comparision put online comparing the different fields of study for what results they have (Such as Law, Business or Environmental Studies.) From their tally ALL SCHOOLS EXCEPT I.T. are dominantly compassionate. 

I've got to choke back a giggle here. Seriously? 99% of the world CARES ABOUT OTHERS?! Okay, so Compassion was my second highest but out of the averages for IT, Compassion was last... Coders who had users who don't know what their requirements are other than "Easy to use", IT help desk people who have eaten their headsets because of people who JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND THAT...

Okay, I'm going to stop right there before this gets ugly with lots of profanity in l33t. 


Whoa... Analytical AND Creative... Hmmm. Bet they don't see that combo too often. I'm so epically individual. :D

So if you can read my images (That I've actually put on Flickr this time... You know, last post, wear a suit, make a big exit... More on that later.) You should be able to see that I put Visionary a couple of times on there, before I realised just how hard it was to write on a wall with chalk (and that the requirements did actually specify to do it on the ground.. Aw come on..).

A Visionary Person. What's the dictionary in my head got to say about that? Well, something about "Willing to see and implement concepts and process that are different to the norm, that they believe will make the world better." So let's break this down for all those folks who still believe I can't make an sentence. 

"Willing to see" - These are people see the world for it's problems. It's things that they don't agree with, they do not own rose coloured spectacles, and don't like people who can accept things for the way the are if they have to make compensations. Er.. Hm.. Sorry I meant compromises, I was thinking about... Something else.  

"and implement" - They are willing to force the changes to exist. Sometimes they know what they need to do, sometimes they don't... Either way, their willing to do it

"Concepts and processes that are different from the norm" - Good visionaries don't mind getting heckled when they have a good idea that they've fulling put themselves into. Einstein was laughed at by other Physicists, Galileo was said to be mad. When people have proof and drive.. They are like a cat with a laser, they will eat you if they cannot have the laser.

"That they believe will make the world better." - Now here's the hard thing to believe, visionaries have peoples' best interests at heart, they think the world will be improved with whatever they are going to do.

Wait, how is that anything like me??  Well, yeah, I don't like the way the world works, but I don't really have an ideas to make it better. Except my couple of  protocols like "Selective Host Interface Transfer" Protocol, the first protocol ever that you can't abbreviate. (Opposite to Better Approach To Mobile Adhoc Networking, cause EVERYONE wants that abbreviated.) So yeah, I have some visions that temporary adhocs and data transfer can be done better, but it pains me to know, that in my field I can make a difference, but I can't really make a difference to the quite literally billions of people earning lest then US$2 a day.. That makes me a VERY sad panda. And I don't feel good enough for the planet... That my Purpose (Sorry, saw avenue Q on Saturday and have been talking deep stuff ever since.) seems useless in the great scheme of things, then I realise this 

There are 6 BILLION people in this world and I know one of them, or the decendant of one of them will be visionary enough to make the REALLY big changes that will improve life on this planet... 

While me? I'll be waiting in the wings to give them internet for porn...

Exams: They happened... They were all pretty boring... May have screwed up one, maybe two, maybe all three. But after sex and death... SERIOUSLY... I can't think of any more beneficial advice I can give you apart from show up and skim the lecture notes at some point.

Sadly however, for some of you this may be the last time you ever hear of me, personally I'm thinking Johnathan will win, but all the other blogs are fantastic I really hope that people have gotten  lot out of them as much as we have writing them. But with 16 votes I must face the fact that I have a very niche audience, whom I hope to cater occasionally for, and looking forward to seeing what other Ethics comities Murdoch actually has. And how easily I can annoy them. But I won't be directly linked to Murdoch so they can't complain YAY!

I've had a few laughs and I'd like to take this moment to look back on some of these great posts that have made me so proud...

...

...

...

Who is proof reading this?! Seriously, no wonder it has no readers, it has no grammer. Or spell checking.

So I've wasted your time and I thank you so much for doing so. Please keep visiting irregulary for more disturbia.

Now, the staff running the competition have allowed us to decimate campus with chalk body outlines so as a special Graffiti of the week I decided that one of them should be a little more realistic...

 

 I guess whoever this was... (Takes off sunglasses) Knew too much...

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA....  Good night.

7 hours late, it will matter to this post, but it wouldn't to the job. Assign Three

My blog does not represent the views of Murdoch or any of its affiliates. All posts are NOT to be taken seriously and are written only for entertainment purposes. 


I apologise to a group of people nice enough to give me a job last year, before realising that was a big mistake.

Like statelines, banklines, and ABC's Lateline, Deadlines are imperceptible lines in the sands that humans make as an attempt to control the lives of the people around them in order so that the actions of the people around them are more controlled, predictable and trustworthy so that nothing may surprise them.


So I will rebel. I will write this post and submit it past the due date, making it appear before all the actual legitimate entries on the live feed.


What totally did not happen is I forgot that this was suppose to be in several hours ago. Totally did not happen.


It's kind of ironic, this was the post I was looking forward to most of all but after getting 218 in and having quite a full weekend, I now have no chance of attending some music event listen to a bunch of music I don't know, get bored, get out my Sansa and start listening to other music over 200 years old or their remixes. Sigh. Such is life.


After currently looking for a part time job for the past ten months, it's allowed me a lot of time to think about the actual job I wanted to do, but if you've been following this blog, or at least know me a little bit, you'll understand why I'm still unemployed. No mother, it's NOT cause I'm lazy... Okay well kind of, let me explain...


Ideal job description: Technical work, fun group of enthusiastic geeks, with some stereotype qualities, in dingy little basement, informal attire, LANs second Tuesday of every 3rd month, or whenever there's not a lot to do, must bring offering of movie, music and TV shows to apply. People who don't know Boxxy is need not apply.


Actually, I'd have to be allowed to kill Boxxy, but at least I know who she is. Okay actually, let forget Boxxy, she's had way too much attention given to her anyway, letgo with "People who don't know the origin or Caturday, or that the pool is closed or that for great justice they should launch of every zig."


I had a Technical support last year. A dream come true, fixing computers in a real business environment, learning actual business processes and what really happens in a IT department. But it was apparent after a short time that this would not be smooth sailing. It was the group of people I was with. I don't relly want to offend them, it was just me being a dick and thinking that they'd all have a similar background, and a lot of the time talk in meme's. Or at LEAST know the basics of the 802.16 protocol stack.. SERIOUSLY. Argh.

• They won't look at me confused if I ask them to do a barrel roll, or if they do are doing so to quote Tom Green.

They were from the real world. They had relationships, they worked hard, they only came to work to work, grab a job from the top of the list, go do it, rinse repeat...All the jobs were to similar. Go reghost this computer, go reghost that one... This isn't fun! This is work! This is repeditive! This is crap! This music is Metalica... ALL THE MUSIC IS GODDAMN MATALICA. ALL MATALICA MUSIC SOUNDS THE SAME!

•  indie\techno in background
• If there is a problem, fix it/determine it, rather than just straight reghosting the machine. I am aware this takes more time but, don't you feel better that you've solved it.

AH. To assume makes and ass out of u and me, but seriously, it made an ass out of me. From what I'd got at uni, IT seemed all about just socialising, the actual fact you were at a work place  seemed just an add on, computer problems were still there and you still had to go work on them (you just go that assume joke now, didn't you??)

• all calls made by users who can't be bothered calling the actual help desk, calls pick up after third ring
• There is a list on the wall of peopleusers who will treat you like crap

I wanted to know how the network was constructed. As my email signature says "I am a networking GOD!" and the one this I wanted to see was logical network topology map, partially cause I'd get a kick out of seeing an actual network topolgy map, partially so I could reconstruct it in Packet Tracer, find  vulnerability a perform a DDoS attack when I was dismissed. (Don't send an FU email to select members of management, you may THINK it'll make you feel good, but it makes you feel worse, and even more guilty that you're pinching a monitor.) But MOSTLY to REALLY know the system I was dealing with, to understand how it all worked, the few times I came over network issues, I'd wished that I could actually tell what ACLs were on the switches, and why the print servers were going slow, and what was that computer in the server room with the ascii art screen saver. That is awesome. In my last few weeks there I found out there was a linux server somewhere, I couldn't see it and that annoyed me, I know I wouldn't have access to it, but knowing it was that would make me feel more knowledgeable about the place I work and be able to apply what I learnt at uni to the real world. Those Cisco exams gotta get me somewhere.

• I wanna be told how my work, works.
• I would love to be somewhere a bit higher up than technical support

Sure it's fun fixing problems, but after taking  replacement keyboard somewhere, finding that the plug on the original keyboard is lose, cleaning the contact, reconnecting it, wiping down the keyboard, and trudging back to the office for the 20th time in 3 months, I just felt like when I wanted to solve a problem, I wanted to really be a big problem. There was a time during my time there, although I wasn't actually working that day, I found out about it, when the ENTIRE network went down. Now that's the problem I want to fix. The admins had there own special room, seemed to just talk alday and just watch the network from a higher level, doing cool tasks like managing GPO's and drawing on a white board, studying for some future upgrades. That's the place I want to be, an master of my domain (ZING! That works on like FIVE levels!). True Responsibility.

• A managing position, but not actually managing people, just the backbone of the organisation.

This job does actually seem to exist, Kind of..It's a sys admin. My dream job. Although the corporation would have to be damn sweet.

Money is not an issue (But it is nice to know the median sys admin salary is $90,000+). If the people were nice. The job not too serious. I'd happily put in extra hours for no pay, just to spend time, in  position where I have a huge resposibility, but not for people.

I'd just like to state that one more time. I'm not a very people person. I like to be in a management position, but I'm not one of those people that a large group automatically respects and trusts their decision.

Lastly as a sort of add on, Sys Admin's, although most of you won't believe this, get to be creative, now I'm no song writer, author or artist, but I do love to do my own thing (Try and find a structure to this post and you're doing well. Try and find a correctly grammatically structured sentence and you're doing even better.) Sys admin's get to problem solve, and find a solution that they think best, and that's the one that people adopt, people don't like you all of sudden, but you get authority that the choices you make have a background of prior knowledge to them and therefore they accept it as the best, even if it isn't.

"IS IT GOOD FOR THE COMPANY?" I don't know, but it amuses me the most. I probably a monarchist wanting to look down on people. Hey, 99% of the time PICNIC or PEBCAK! Please ask what the acronyms mean in the comments, I'd love some comments to my posts.

Oh and Sys Admins HAVE THEIR OWN DAY. Last Friday of July every year I'm so taking off...
and trust me, I will have earned it

Graffiti of the week:  

WEEEEEEE!!!

Another list... But I'm suppose to do this one :)

My blog does not represent the views of Murdoch or any of its affiliates. All posts are NOT to be taken seriously and are written only for entertainment purposes.


Oh just vote for this already! Just click here! It takes about 3 seconds. You won't regret it, I'll reward you with cake...

Well, as you can see, I have a total of 10 people who read my status messages on Facebook, MSN and Gtalk.




Ten things. Ten absurd things that you should know about Murdoch that you won't find anywhere else. That I love. 


Surely you think I can pull this off without annoying anybody. Well I guess I cooooould, but, where's the fun in that? Actually, this probably won't be one of those posts


1. I love the fact that there are rabbits (I could say a hundred other species, but I'm a big fan of vermin.) on campus, they only come out at night, and they freak out when humans are around.


2. I love that hidden on a Murdoch server is the BIGGEST dictionary of programming languages in the world. Seriously. No one else has done this. Yet it's not promoted anywhere, not linked on the Murdoch site, well, Diarmuid, finally your site can be revealed to another 5 people! CLICK THIS THING HERE AND IT'S ALL GOOD STUFF and with the type of people I get to visit this blog, it'll actually probably be used...


3.  I love the fact that when sitting an exam, I can only remember the unit code, not the actual unit name. Except of course for ICT218. If you forget that unit name, you really haven't been paying attention.


4. I love the fact that there are lots of vending machines on campus, in place purely for the purpose of supplying energy drinks.


5. I love the face that the security crew come in during the Murdoch IT Society LANs and sit and watch stuff.


6. I love the fact that I've met people with similar passions to me, I have an absolute love for things people don't even understand and there are others, in fact, HEAPS of others.


7. Sadly, I love the fact that I have access to a huge collection of digital books and journal articles, meaning I can work on essays at 3am without going to uni. And these databases cost literally THOUSANDS of dollars  for the uni to access, so seriously come here. ABUSE IT.


8.  The couple of times my TAFE housemate has joined me going to a LAN, he can't believe what the campus is like. A SMALL, FREAKING CITY. There's a bank and two ATMs, (Cause the Ref doesn't have EFTPOS ;) ) There's a health center that has REAL nurses (and a whole lot of FREE services) there's a library with 4 levels, heaps of computers and an inbuilt cafe. It is the largest campus is Australia (I think?) It has it's own private police, who stand with speed guns, giving me evils... It is daunting at first but, you get to know you Schools area and  feel in a community. 


Most importantly, it has its' own pub. You know you'll have to go there eventually.


9. Sort of building on the last point, Murdoch has it's own Ontology. Damn you ICT256 (But do it anyway. You learn interesting things about learning and how we as humans organise knowledge.). A language. An environment heated with opinions and intelligence. People who are there for the purpose of discovering and who, in certain situations, almost understand one another.  It isn't just a small physical world, it's a small society, if I say "ECL" to a person at a train station, they'll think I'm mad (although, if you say anything to a random at a train station they'll think you're mad.) but if I say it at Murdoch they'll understand I mean a series of buildings down the back that they'll rename to "ECLIT" if people didn't think that sounded like E-Clit, an electronic... Candle LIghTer.


10. The fact that I've scored 2 years worth of parking permit, meaning when I rock up late to uni it's still pretty easy finding a park, as they gave me the opportunity to start a blog and incentive to keep it relatively on topic , that a few people have enjoyed. And I've enjoyed writing. 


In fact recently I was questioned by someone, where do I get the inspiration for the humor I include on this blog, I gave him a rather poor answer that I'll repeat now. The fact is, all the humor in the post was discovered as I was writing it this isn't a very good example but my infamous assignment timetable post, was done during an assignment, on the fly. Coming up with various ideas on things I'd prefer to be doing than writing the assignment. Or things I wouldn't mind happening. The actual ideas behind blog posts have mainly jumped out when I've thought "If i were back at O week, all the way back in 2008, (OKAY, it's only a year ago but I wanna get nostalgic here.) what would I wanna be told by future me." (One day I'm going to get us all together and when going to have a party. The only snag will be that everybody knows the anecdotes.) Or chatting with my sister, who looks fondly back at her time at... Curtin (as if that's physically possible. Although my other sister has recently graduated from Murdoch, so a might have a few more stable topic ideas from her.) It's because she grew up with me. I kinda got what makes her laugh, and she was the one person I could easily force to read it, so, that being my audience is who I wrote it for. So yes Trudie, this is for you. But all the other readers who for some reason have stumbled on this after finding articles on "Apologies for animal cruelty." I'm glad that you have enjoyed it, but if you email me, you can shape the future of this blog by adding the humor you want, written by me.


11. It's appears that I'm not very enthusiastic about the current tread of this blogging voting (I'm concerned how the earlier clitoris joke will be taken (AH HA. I DID SAY IT!), but I must stop this sour grapes type complaining and just enjoy my audience while it lasts, so I'll embed a You Tube vid I did a while ago. Why is it the 11th thing I love about Murdoch? It gave me hope for a while, a few laughs, a concerned sister and caused there to be some traffic to the mits murdoch website (free quota.). It's a some memories which will always link to my AWESOME time at Murdoch, it's not advisable to ask the story behind it, but it's one of my few vids on You Tube, and seeing this blog is mainly about mocking my own incompetence, I thought this would be an adequate way to end this post.

Who is really thinking of the children, and what are we REALLY teaching them? An explanation into why a zombie apocalypse shooter game should be exempt from classification.

My blog does not represent the views of Murdoch or any of its affiliates. All posts are NOT to be taken seriously and are written only for entertainment purposes. 

Recently, the video game Left 4 Dead 2 or “L4D2” was banned in Australia. Due to the fact that we’re a protective society, we do not have a video game classification that can handle “Adult” games, the game in its full form is unable to be released in Australia, due to the ability to use a selection of everyday items as weapons and the fact that the “Infected” in the game can be decapitated, looking particularly brutal.

On one level, this is good, a control of the media flow allows Australia to be unsubjected to the violence and bloodshed of an interactive medium showing lots of gore. But on the other hand, what is banning this game really telling us? Putting for once second aside the commonly used debates that the majority of Australian gamers are actually adults and that this is just the government wanting to control the media we see (Hey, in my opinion, China is going better because of it.) and ultimately, our society, banning this is doing much more.

Under part 5B, Item 5 of the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Act of 1995, it states that “Software whose main purpose is for training, instruction or reference, as a manual, a lesson, an encyclopaedia or a guide” is exempt from classification. Left 4 Dead 2, should logically be entitled to this, here’s why:

Australia, as a country is very patriotic when it comes to standing behind fighters, even now, the ANZAC day tradition lives on, commemorating the braveness of ordinary people fighting for their countries, but more importantly, the comradeship when it comes to fallen soldiers. Veterans will often tell heart renching stories of the friends and the bonds created during the hell of war. L4D2 is a co-operatively played game, meaning when you play, under most circumstances, you are playing with 3 real other people, all people who want the group, not just their characters to survive under these gruelling unfortunate circumstances. I am not saying that we should look at a selection of gamers as veterans, but look as the game supporting people willing to help others survive during a hell on earth. During the game weapons and health can be either used by a player or given to someone else, and seeing you can only hold one “med kit” it does warm your heart to see someone willing to heal someone else, when they desperately need it themselves. In fact, it encourages this, notifying all players when another player stops a zombie hindering another person. One of the many achievements is healing someone when you have less than 10% health yourself, often people don’t know this and gain it performing a gesture, admitting that another player is better than themselves in some way, and would prefer them to survive rather than use it themselves. The words “A lesson” are a very interesting choice to use in these guidelines. A lesson is interpreted as a moral or an honourable principle people should uphold. It should be debated that companionship is a lesson. A lesson worth fighting for.



Another player perspective is the fact that some people are unfortunately, born violent. In our society, unfavoured tendencies such as these are, normally, suppressed through years of therapy, trying to get to the root of the anger and finding ways to avert it, however, when anger problems are identified, a person cannot immediately suppress such feelings, they need to be vented. Simulated environments can do such a thing. Left 4 Dead allows people to vent tendencies of wanted to divert their anger and be able to actually get the satisfaction making someone else feel pain, without actually hurting anyone in the process. Let’s take another example, the example of pornography. As you may or may not be aware, there are large collections of pornography which are drawn, simulating some of the more unusual nieces, such as paedophilia and bestiality, now if there’s a way for people that are “satisfied” with these sort of material, who unfortunately can’t really be “cured” then isn’t it fantastic that there’s a way for these people to vent their urges without any abuse occurring, isn’t that at least, something which should be supported as an alternative? Not if the Australian government has anything to say, if the leaked ISP website ban list is anything to go by as it lists several drawn pornographic sites as they depict such acts of abuse.

Desensitisation is largely classed as a negative thing, slowly degrading society by making more and more aggressive or distasteful tendencies accepted. However, there are such groups which require to be desensitised to violence as part of their job. The Australian Army is reported to be using the “Operation Flashpoint” game series to allow army officers to be calm in situations of battle, and be able to handle acts of aggression in a real world environment. Although “zombie apocalypse” might not be as a respected field to be able to handle, and the availability of weapons and ammunition on the streets freely is an unlikely scenario, this game does teach the act of management and working under pressure in a group environment, navigation and decision making intense situations. And aren’t they good qualities to have in any business employee?

So, are we, as a society, ready to learn something, in a place, everybody believes is a bloody environment which has been the apparent downfall of a generation?

I hope so.

There may be a test.



Note: I am perfectly aware that materials cannot be given an E rating when their content would give them a “M” but I believe that L4D2 is so, ahem, educational, that it should void that requirement

.

A very late post... with heart...

My blog does not represent the views of Murdoch or any of its affiliates. All posts are NOT to be taken seriously and are written only for entertainment purposes.

Before I get on with this weeks post, I understand, due to the fact that the sweet new micro site is up and I'm on said site I thought that I might get a few new visitors, eagerly awaiting my post to try and show that I still have what it takes to get visitors and not cause a fuss, I though I'd direct their attention to some of my most proud moments, answering such questions as

What do they mean "Leaving assignments to the last minute?"

and what about your advice about new bloggers?

All I've read is some advice for year 12 students about proper advice on how to use lampshades

Why do most of your pot have a discloser statement? Is that why they call you controversial? HEY? WHAT DID YOU DO?

Did you really compare exams to having sex?

Or Death?

REALLY? Your kind of creepy... How did you get this job again?

Troll through my archive, there's some stuff hidden there that even I've forgotten about. Like other things you can do with a pen during an exam. But if you find that stuff too offensive, vote for me, then you can send me complaints ALL THOUGH NEXT YEAR!

But now onto that task I was meant to do...

From Disorderly Accounts of Uni Life

So why this overly corny statement? Did you just copy the example? Weren't you suppose to post this on Flickr?

Long story, no, yes but I have a google account and I am using an alternative social photo sharing site.I do owe an explanation, and I'll give it to you.. IF YOU DO ONE THING FOR ME.

go to THIS SITE click the VOTE FOR ME  button, type in some details and click submit.

Have you done it yet?



NO YOU HAVEN'T... Try again.

Look, I know you have to enter in an email... But they don't send you spam, you know how I know?

Cause one of those two votes are mine... Look, c'mon, you know you want this good stuff to continue!! Well, good stuff LINKED ONTO THE MURDOCH WEBSITE STILL!! Yeah.

Blogger people.. I know I'm posting on the last day but please don't kick me out...

Okay, so I'd like to tell some background to this image. So there I was, after cycling through a new career idea every thirty seconds and driving both my sisters crazy and I'd finally settled on... Advertising. A major called "Marketing and the Media" and I was excited and I was all like Happycat.. I had my whole life starting to take shape. And it was all in MY CONTROL. I will admit that it was scary I've never been a good one with leading, even myself. I loved ads. I kept 15 Gigs worth on my hard drive, took some of my faves to school and was ecstatic in year 12 when I got to make an ad in Media. I had DVDs full of ads, memorised and created jingles in my head.

And then the TISC page loaded.

"Please enter in your unit choices in order of preference:" I rattled in the various marketing majors and I got all excited, then hovered over the submit button. down in the corner, a little notification bar said "javascript;" and I started thinking, "Oh great, a javascript base, that means less coding for error returns and very slow load times while the whole form is downloaded and rendered, although, the URL has https, so I guess I can take a small bit of comfort in knowing that it's being encrypted before being saved inside the SQL database, oh there must be a sweet backend connecting all these university created database look ups to return the course names, I wonder if it annoys the universities having to create one database... in... a... standard... format..." I could feel my heart slow down. My brain may not be the best wired in the world, but I could tell, I was about to make a mistake if I clicked submit then. I thought to myself, you know, I like I can reel of the ISO-OSI model much better then describing the Codes and Conventions of Media. I can tell the class of a network in terms of using a private addressing structure much easier then profiling someone into a stereotype. Hell, I don't even like profiling people into small boxes. I don't like manipulating people into buying something they don't want or need.  I only like ads which are clever, and more about telling a good joke or doing something cool rather than the product itself! I'd suck as an advertising account executive! And plus.. People in my generation swap careers after about 30 years, so I can do all that when I become a bitter young man when I realise that no matter how many hundreds of thousands of dollars I get as a CIO (about $130,000 is the media salary.)  an IT job won't probably get me a social life.

I LOVE FIXING PROBLEMS ON PEOPLES COMPUTERS. ESPECIALLY NETWORK ISSUES. I love my modems configuration and REALLY wanted to know what DMZ actually meant! How a firewall worked.

I HAD TO ADMIT IT TO MYSELF. I'M A GEEK AND DAMN PROUD OF IT. AND I WANTED TO SHOW IT TO THE WORLD. So I flicked though the TISC manual, changed some preferences and here I am. Two years later.

More or less... Happy. :D

So if you come to a point when you unfortunatly have to change course cause you just hate/not as good as you should be at what your doing. Forget how unhappy you THINK it makes you, and go for what your heart and your head are really set on. Even if it looks boring, it's what you secretly want to do, and that will make you happy. I was a bit iffy about my IT degree at first, it's a uni major, I could barely manage high school and uni is a lot more work, but somewhere deep down, I love it so much I put the work in where it is needed and somehow am passing.

Some may look at the pic I took and see a horrible purple wall with some badly torn pages. I see the wall in the room where I study (sometimes.) I see the font I love (Callibri, the new standard font in Word 2007, I like it, everybody else hates it, but I'm a geek so I like change :P ) I see one of the few abbreviations I actually do sometimes.I see a message that is rough around the edges, but clearly showing a message that is sweet and sincere. OH MY GOD, I just typed sincere without needing to spell check it. I see me. In pages. In place where I spend the vast majority of my times. It's me, in my place. Printed on my laser printer (IP: 192.168.126.250 )

That is me. That is my sort of story and moral behind it.

That is love. (Oh baby don't hurt me, no more..)

Yeah I should of stuck it up at the LAN party, but then people would of thought I was weird or something.

Wow, thanks... That was awesome.. I'm voting for you

Schucks, thanks... It means a lot

Hey just one question before graffitti of the week, that girl you were seeing, is it true she actually had a boyfriend all along and was too embarrassed to tell you cause she was scared how you were going to act cause you were being waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to clingy?

What are you doing with that bat.... You're going to hurt someone doing that, you know? Stop walking over here...

Graffiti of week:

From Disorderly Accounts of Uni Life

Real Mature Andrew, REAL Mature.

A very ego filled post from 2015 Try #2: The post I couldn't help but writing

My blog does not represent the views of Murdoch, Cisco Ltd., IBM, The Australian department of immigration or any of their affiliates. 

This blogs opinion of people of Irish or Russian origin or the population of Madison, Wisonsin are not actual views of the blogger and were exclaimed by a freind while he was intoxicated. Honestly.

All posts are NOT to be taken seriously and are written only for entertainment purposes.

Selections of text below may depict particularly graphic circumstances, but if you are alive enough to read this, chances are they won't be particularly interesting.

It's a beautiful Thursday, the sun is shining in a completely empty blue sky, I can hear the wails of the undead, stumbling around on the beach 12 stories below me, there's a dank smell of rotting flesh in the air and I can see the exciting scene all up close and clear through the scope on top of Dave's rifle.

Our new spot is awesome, hunting through the reception desk of this beach front hotel (unfortunately the name has since been stripped of the building by loiters, and replaced with a badly sprayed phallic.) we acquired the access card to the penthouse and have commandeered the several bedrooms and bathrooms as a fortress of solitude on which to kill time in.

This has been a very plesent week all round, as the emergency broadcast system has confirmed the crisis over, and we are now promoted from "Fighter's of the resistance" to "Clean up crew." Which means if you're reading this from a secure area camp, congratulations, your stay is almost up, and you have survived and soon will be returning the central city areas. Of course, I question what will actually happen when the populace returns, we were overjoyed to find in the building opposite that there is a collection of soldiers also doing "clean up" with the remaining walking zombies. We were even able to gain their attention and play a rather riveting game of charades.

I do feel happy about this all almost being over and are sad to hear; the large amounts of causalities that feel victim to the violent undead, the lack of sanitation of the over populated camps and the fact it will still be several months before I can order a pizza.

It's been an interesting couple of years, the explosion of infected dead persons, meeting different groups of resistance and the interesting tales of how they obtained their firearms. I would like to take this opportunity to mourn the dead, and for us to think about the work that now needs to be done to rebuild.

Thinking time is now over.

On the beach, Dave and Emma have now emerged from the beach front shopping center with the newest delivery of milk and long life food, Dave makes a pass at Emma. Emma hits him. You know, usual stuff. He should be more considerate, just because she's the only girl in the group doesn't mean he can hit on her, she knows how to use I rifle, you know. I'm considerate. I'm going to wait until a few minutes after she gets up here and settles back down to pitch my lame pick up line for the day.

Further down Curtis is trying to push the latest cannon fodder from last night into the sea while being ambushed by seagulls. They're after him now... he's fallen over... Oh bugger, I better go down and see if they're all right.. Nah, Dave's going

As for me, I'm sitting here abusing internet, writing junk and just loving the fact that I can just sit back and do nothing, a lot of people hate the idea of having nothing to do, they need to be getting energetic, not wasting the day away. Me, I'm glad I can just have this little bit of time to myself to sit back and relax.


But before I have my mid morning siesta, GRAFFITI OF THE WEEK:

That's Curtis' gun in shot, btw, dunno why he wanted to look so tough... he he... he can't even lift that mini gun we found.


Neither can I, but that's NOT THE POINT.

Until I get zombiefied myself, goodbye.

A very ego filled post from 2015. Try #1: All goes well, and I end up in a grad program I like.

My blog does not represent the views of Murdoch, Cisco Ltd., IBM, The Australian department of immigration or any of their affiliates.

This blogs opinion of people of Irish or Russian origin or the population of Madison, Wisonsin are not actual views of the blogger and were exclaimed by a freind while he was intoxicated. Honestly.

All posts are NOT to be taken seriously and are written only for entertainment purposes.

It's a beautiful Thursday, the sun is shining in a completely empty blue sky, I can hear the beach slowly coming in to the beautiful gold coast beach twelve stories below me, I can the salt water below is putting a, er, nice salty smell in the air, and the taste of this nutella straight from the jar is just that much sweeter knowing that I don't have work today, you'll find out why shortly. I could of actually laid in bed forever, staring at the celing had not Charlie started to play with my hair.

She's put on a bit a weight now, so she back to being quite healthy. Waking up and the first thing I see is someone else's eyes is no longer scaring me, but instead just a sweet reminder of how nice it is for the manager of my building to allow me to keep a pet rabbit in the apartment. Be able to say that my first home away from my parents has been this high rise apartment just a few streets back from the Gold Coast is a very awesome feeling, somehow, this place was in my budget when I was fresh out of uni and accepted into IBMs grad program for networking type stuff (you don't want to get me started on what I do, it is the reason I don't attend fancy dinner parties, all I'd talk about is layer two of the OSI model, which is of course the data link layer which encompasses all switching technologies and, you see? I'm terrible, I'm turning into one of those people who lives to work. But I love it.) which unfortunatly was only avalible in the terrible location of Queensland. As you've probably read in a post a fair while ago when I got this place, it's a 80's One bedroom apartment, but it is only a stone's throw away from the beach (although, if you do actually throw a stone, you've got a one in two chance of hitting a macca's.

It's interesting to think that it's now been 2 complete years since finishing my grad program, and it's already partway through this year, but I'm very glad I somehow scored a job here. I love the place, I love the people at work and I love the fact that I'm allowed to have very little social life apart from after hours on Friday (Unfortunatly, like IBM's latest spanning tree development, I'm not really legally allowed to talk about it without being hunted down and shot.)

and that brings us to the reason I contacted you all to read this (Mum, you can stop reading now, you know I'm alive and well and eating. Go.. Do something else now...)

Yeah, I have a hand in a cast...

Pretty much for the first time in my life I didn't just stick to the Midori's like I should of, and experimented with a few more interesting drinks. The guy's realising one of them could be exploited again (There is that other tale of Blake and some fun with a magic marker, which I have posted about several weeks ago at new years.) deciding to nicely walk me to my apartment decided to see if I could walk up my last flight of stairs unaccompanied soon saw me back around the landing they were on. With one of my hands on a very odd angle.

Thankfully, somebody managed to get me to the emergency room and everything got sorted out and I have a few weeks of. Without pay mind you. That sucks a bit.

But anyway, I feel pretty good concidering I can no longer give people the bird. But anyway. That's all that has happened in my very uneventful few weeks since my last post.

Grafitti of the week:

This comes from a toilet near the office I work in

Great advice...

Until I get banned from the network, or break another limb. Goodbye.

The Not-so-bad-bits and Murdoch after dark

My blog does not represent the views of Murdoch or any of its affiliates. All posts are NOT to be taken seriously and are written only for entertainment purposes.

Before I get on with this weeks post, I understand, due to the fact that the sweet new micro site is up and I'm on said site I thought that I might get a few new visitors, eagerly awaiting my post to try and show that I still have what it takes to get visitors and not cause a fuss, I though I'd direct their attention to some of my most proud moments, answering such questions as

What do they mean "Leaving assignments to the last minute?"

and what about your advice about new bloggers?

All I've read is some advice for year 12 students about proper advice on how to use lampshades

Why do most of your pot have a discloser statement? Is that why they call you controversial? HEY? WHAT DID YOU DO?

Did you really compare exams to having sex?

Or Death?

REALLY? Your kind of creepy... How did you get this job again?

Troll through my archive, there's some stuff hidden there that even I've forgotten about. Like other things you can do with a pen during an exam.

No I'm not linking that up, you have to find it yourself.

I think I'm going to chose option A for my next blog, might be up by the end of the day, may cram this list in again in an entirely different way.

Anyway, the Feature Presentation

Murdoch is one of the biggest university campuses in Australia, it's the biggest in W.A. anyway. It's got lots of grass (the unsmokable kind, for those concerned.), forrested area and places filled with sheep. Though normally filled with an excess of homo sapiens, it is when they all go home that you see the true nightlife of this place come alive and during an incident with a box of red bull during a MITs LAN I got to see the true campus at 4.30 AM.

The first thing that is noticible is the odd amount of lighting in the campus. It's all very ambeint, on bush court, a lot of the lights are yellowing with age. You can only just make out the rabbits maintaining the large amount of grass land, and run like crazy when you walk anywhere near them. It's a very dark an errie place, disturbed only by the flashing green of the ANZ ATM and the TV in the library showing that there is currently very little solar activity.

Is it just me, or is there some irony there? Largest solar grid in Australia, yet we still don't mind consuming energy with the computers left powered on in the library. I'm not talking just one or two, I'm talking all of them.

I know it is probably more hasle to turn them off, they probably take an age to boot up but there is such thing as getting the moniters to turn off automatically and.. SHUT UP LACHLAN. Look, I don't mean to cause any problems, it's just, I tells it like I sees it. I really do like Murdoch.. honestly.

But other then the library and select people doing all nighters in classrooms for projects and study sessions. It's a black hole. The sounds of crickets and birds just make the area seem so natural and beautiful, peaceful. It will definatly be one of the places I visit when all of humanity is wiped out. (No, I still don't know why I survive I just do, and NO I will not be setting my 2015 post during the zombie apocolypse even tempting as it may be... Should I? No. Better not. sigh.)

Oh and your sign is broke.

Lol.

See, Look how screwed up my phone's camera is from bright light in the middle of pitch blackness.

However, I do recommend during your time at Murdoch, after one of those all nighters in the library, get outside and watch and listen to the sun rise, it's warm, the birds get into their full swing and you're sick of watching episodes of Animorphs or Where's Wally? airing at the LAN. (Yes, you can become sick of these, no matter how awesome they look at 3.30 they look pretty bad at 5.30). It was worth staying if not for the Invader Zim, for that beautiful smell/sound and sights that Murdoch provide when no one else is around.

So yeah, if you were waiting for my 2015 post it'll be up sometime this weekend, and we leave you tonight, with this Grafitti of the week.

"I still love Steven." in ECL 3

Now I must go and kick this person off my couch

and wish that someone would do my 218 for me.

Underwhelming - To fail to interest; usually used in response to something that was presented as exciting

My blog does not represent the views of Murdoch or any of its affiliates. All posts are NOT to be taken seriously and are written only for entertainment purposes.

Yes, I wanted to put "Ask me about: A GOOD TIME" too.

Ho hum. 6 Hours of unpaid work. actually, did get a shirt, it's not too bad, it's got long sleeves, don't mind promoting Murdoch. Would of been like $25 at the Alumni building... Actually, quite worth it.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure that a lot of people got stuff out of open day, I'm sure parents were relieved to think that their son or daughter was looking at university (especially as one as cool as Murdoch.) And this post will not be ridiculing Murdoch, it's more about being pissed at I.T. and the way it's presented. I'm not really sure where to start, but a second disclaimer is probably a good idea.

A HELL OF A LOT OF ORGANISATION GOES INTO ORGANISING OPEN DAY. Lots of cleaning up, tables, advertising, volunteering, lecturers, signage, stickers and pamphlets have to co-oridnated to produce a good show of the stuff that is available at Murdoch. But in my confine of ECL, it unfortunately wasn't very evident. I did see the bunch of marquees in Bush Court with people talking about every course, directing new comers. I saw the live music, and the horrendous waste of custard.

But, it wasn't right.

At one point in year 11, I had my heart set on Marketing. I loved the idea of going into advertising, the way of creating a memorable lol or slogan for people to get stuck in their heads. But, instead I chose to go down the IT route when I realised how much of a sham it was. Companies mindlessly twisting facts and screaming slander to make their product better then the competition. It simply came down to the bottom line, rather then creating a short story adding the product as an after thought. I chose IT cause I didn't just want to be there to make some company money. I wanted to provide a service to make a company better compared to itself. IT can be actually perceived like that, improving software, security or a network, to make it simply... Better then it was.

Open Day, was well, trying to show that Murdoch was better then the other uni's. And although I love being a Murdoch blogger (although probably not for my longer. :) ) and promoting Murdoch's awesome IT Majors, the day itself was all a sham. I really don't want to post this, and I may be asked to take it down.

(I will, if emailed at 30788034@student.murdoch.edu.au you don't even have to supply a reason!)

Games tech, for example was promoted with a bunch of consoles showing Halo 3 and Guitar Hero (No, none of the games tech units do directly code for consoles, proprietary reasons, but you do pick up some of the language that works on them.), rather then students own work, a selection of PREVIOUS year's was on posters and one projector. Robotics was shown with a PhD students work from about 10 years ago and a few toys (although it did show two current very interesting research projects, one involving object identification and handling as well as movement systems in bipedal and climbing robots.) There was also a nice walk through of Game Maker, which is used in first year games tech. Then there were personality quizzes (a open day staple for the IT department.) and then four computers which had the two disk images from last semester's Cyber Forensic unit (Yay!!! Even though I only got a credit for it, it was still a lot of fun going through Miss Hill's HDD.) But I mean, there were a few of us explaining the sort of stuff that was made up of the Cyber Forensic unit, and the sort of things that were on the hard drive images. It just didn't feel.. Right. I'm sure that most people who left there were sure that the Cyber Forensic major simply had that course in (I know I did when I attended open day a couple of years ago.).

The day doesn't teach about the real student experience. I was too scared to even promote this blog, any of the other blogs, or even the blogging competition, because it didn't seem the type of student life that the open day organisers wanted to promote. They wanted rose-tinted, so I gave rose-tinted.

"Yes, I find the Cyber Forensic course easy and I quickly adjusted to the more difficult assignments given by university units."

They didn't want to about how sloth I've become, how I've enjoyed the MITS LANs as one of the best things at uni, that people should stay away from the cauliflower cheese at Carve-A-Roast (you don't want to know.). They didn't want to know that I gave up my time on Sunday which I should of used for an assignment due tomorrow (at the time of posting this) at 12pm, wish me luck for tonight!

I chose Murdoch because I loved the fact that they had a networking major there, that, when I asked at the open day I attended, they didn't mind admitting they had, and even one of the volunteers there showed me my first console window to a Cisco router. Another uni ( I won't say which.) were pushing for me to do computer science rather then their own networking unit. Another one didn't even really want to say they had an IT school. Sigh, I choose Murdoch, cause Murdoch seemed to want me. Mr Boddington (Cyber Forensics guy.) said last Sunday that more people need to get into IT, and he wouldn't mind if it became a more gender balanced field.

One uni is currently pushing that their Computer Scientists end up coding for the WA police force to stop cyber crime.

1. They don't actually have a cyber forensics course, so they don't really know what they are dealing with
2. WA isn't going to well with stopping cyber crime
3. Cyber crime won't be stopped by code alone, it needs actual police work
4. You can't just jump straight to coding for that, they aren't actually saying how good the coders they are churning out are, they are just making me more scared about how poor the fight against cyber crime is
5. Sorry, this ad REALLY needs to be taken off TV, it just pisses me off

I, personally, couldn't see the promotion needed at this open day.

I know in other fields its different, it may actually be a challenge to chose between universities (pick Murdoch anyway, it's got the biggest Campus in WA! Okay, so a lot of it is currently covered in sheep and their excrement.) but in my area, Murdoch was the best choice.

Some people may just see a uni and stick with it, meaning attending a open day just is pointless, they have their heart set on a particular uni, okay they may not like it in the end, but... This event just seems annoying. And redundant. I'm not saying stop it, there are people out there who don't know what they want to do, want to see what uni's are offering doing.

I'm just saying I wish they'd do it differently...

But what do know, I'm just a second year, average student with a blog and too much to say.

Yes, this was unfortunately a serious post, but if it got me annoyed, I'd hate to see what it did to someone who was actually wanting "a student experience"

My advice, for people wanting a student experience

1. Stay awake all night
2. Drink a red bull
3. Make your way to campus
4. Skip the lecture anyway

The truth hurts.

Grafitti of the week!

While we're on the topic of poor advertising a post it note, left on the back door of an ECL toilet:

"Lacto bacillus can improve the digestive system and reduce diarrhea ask you chemist for Blackmoore's Lacto bacillus."

It's one hell of a weird collection of students. I do hope you join us next year.