Looking back, last week was actually quite good. In fact, really good. The previous week (Starting 15th August On the Civil, Islamic and Hebrew calenders, Starting 16th August for those who follow ISO 8601. Did you know that New Years Day CANNOT fall on a Sunday? That's right meaning no new years party will be on Saturday night and be on the correct day - Whoever made it was really against weekend partying. - I'm talking about you Gregory.) I had attempted to attempted to set lots of goals about uni, work and social commitments, all which epicly fell through, so I was pleased throughout last week, where everything went a lot better than I expected it to go.
Monday started good as all my lecturers were cancelled due to illness, which is bad cause it was the first time one of my lecturers had ever cancelled his lecturers, but it saved me the embarrassment of walking in late. Guess I could still be getting there
Walking in late to a lecture goes like this:
You walk in to a room full of students and a lecturer that all turn and look at you.
This causes the recorded lecture to have a dramatic pause, and everybody listening at home two hours before the exam is going to begin, goes WHAT HAPPENED TO THE AUDIO? And frantically start turning up the volume, you on the other hand remember walking in late and hang your head in shame even though it was several weeks ago
The lecturer then tries to continue with what he was saying, he'll let out maybe two words which causes the people at home to freak out and fall off their chairs at the sudden noise.
However, this distraction you caused has made the lecturer loose his train of thought so he goes silent again. The listeners at home turn the volume up again and everybody in the lecture looks at you again and you hang your head in shame, or sometimes stare back if the reason for being late is better than sleeping in or losing track of time.
The lecturer regains his composure and begins halfway through his sentence, not only do you have no idea what he's talking about the listeners at home have again fallen off their chairs.
It's one of the most embarrassing things ever, only just beating turning up on time but forgetting to put on pants. (Your talking to a veteran here.) It is very embarrassing, that is.... (Of walking in late to lecturers, not walking into lecturers without pants.) until the next person walks in.
But instead of going through that ordeal I rushed into a totally empty classroom before reading the note on the door. So I went to the library and ICT347 LECTURERS AND LABS ARE CANCELLED DUE TO ILLNESS. Caps lock impact loses it's effect when a whole message is capitalised. Just sayin'. That goes to all you people who THINK your message is important and chose to capitilise it all. Capitilising is like highlighting, YOU DON'T HIGHLIGHT AN ENTIRE BOOK, A WHOLE SENTENCE CAPITILISED LOOKS LIKE YOU DON'T KNOW HOW A BUTTON WORKS. THE CAPS LOCK BUTTON IS A TOGGLE, PUSH IT ONCE, IT ON, PUSH IT AGain and it's off. That's better.
My 339 lab was still on and was good as we all just talked about the election. Which I am not going to talk about because apparently people are happy with slow internet, only being able to get wireless, internet cut outs, copper cabling that's now over 100 years old and think that the occasional boat full of people fleeing their country is going to put our entire society into disrepair. And due to that, we now have this but that's okay cause it means for five minutes I can watch bits and pieces on Australia from different news shows from around the world, see social media being affected by real world events... Then being eclipsed by more important issues.
It gave me the chance to submit some 339 work so I felt like I had actually been doing things in those labs, so that was nice, then I went home early and had a leisurely day.
Tuesday wasn't very major, just a day at work then I came home.
Now, I work for... Um... Let's just call them "The department." Now I work at a sub-branch of the organisation, one of it's many fine "Facilities." Recently, over a period of time now extending to a couple of years, a selection of other people who work for "The department" have been using social online mediums to interact with friends during their day to day activities, however, content of these interactions has been somewhat, erm. "Not in the best interests of the department." Such as two intoxicated females actively exploring their sexualities in a display of strong public display of affection. The physical evidence of this act, published without proper privacy controls, or being shared and reposted through friends until it got into the public domain. But it hasn't just been drunk chicks making out that has been causing unrest with the department, it has been the meer act of these interactions occurring during scheduled work time. And rightly so, your are being paid to carry out a set of functions, and if the progress of those functions is hinded by the processional of non-fiscal (Hands up who only knows this word because it was over used during the election campaign!) driven personal gains, then its understandable. But when the department suggests to not mention any staff, the interactions of a day to day basis, eventful or otherwise, on such mediums which could be easily accessible to people who might want to take those statements out of context for personal gain or defamation of others, it makes me a sad panda. So hence, I cannot really discuss what goes on at work.
Wednesday the week got interesting again with a meeting of my IT Project guys then went really well, I'm stuck with stereotypes that IT projects never really get off the ground and there's constant conflict, none so today as we started laying the groundwork for our first submittables. At least from a documentation side, as well as a planning side, the project looks like it could come together as well as an A-Team job... Only with unfortunately less explosions. I've been given the task of librarian, a task which I have accepted with more gusto than I probably should.
The task is the management of ALL produced documents and their document versions. I find it interesting not to read official documents, but the document revisions, it's interesting to look at how much work went to an article to get it right, and version numbering has always interested me I don't know why, I blame my sister who worked in archiving for years and has a degree in it. The couple of times I've done software clean outs, I just can't throw out old versions, but I keep them for prosperity. I watched a 15 minute video of someone unboxing of Windows 3.11 and found it some of the most interesting footage to see what promotional material has changed over time. I like having multiple versions of Nero (v4 - v9), Windows (All the way back to MS-DOS 5), Fedora (Down to Core 2), Intel Chipset motherboard (I don't have all, but I have the accompanying CDs of 8 different chipsets. I'm just one of those people which believe these things should be preserved.
So anyway, I get to manage documents and be aware of all the changes, so far we've only done one document but it has been enjoyable that everyone has gotten along so far, but I believe we need to change our numbering standard, the first document went from v0.1 - v0.9 and luckily, that was the submittable version, we might not be so lucky with future documents, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
So, document written up, client communicated with and overly long lecture on Project Management cancelled (But instead replaced with a FOUR HOUR horror this Thursday. That's right, he's expecting us to come to a four hour lecture during the break, and when an entire team hasn't shown up since lecture 1, he's very optimistic...
Yes, Mum..
That's all well...
and good...
OKAY, I'll go
Sheesh.) Okay this brings us to Thursday, which my 339 lecturer was better enough to continue our lectures on encryption, now everybody in the computing world finds encryption a difficult topic, but I'm feeling brave, so I'll try and explain some of it to you
Today I'm going to teach you about cryptography.
Okay, so Alice wants to send a message to Bob. It's kind of personal so she wants to encrypt it i.e. Make it only readable between her and Bob. She decides to use the basic Symmetric Protocol to send it.
- Alice and Bob agree on a cipher (The scheme in which they are going to use to encrypt a message.)
- Alice and Bob agree on a key (A once only use code that will determine how the cipher will encrypt the message.)
- Alice encrypts the message and sends it. It's here where it gets a bit complicated.
You see Alice has a crush on Bob, and unbeknown to her he has recently started going out with Eve. Now Eve is the jealous type and has been listening in on their private channel and although she can't actually read the message, she is good friends with Alice and thinks that this message could be her admitting her undying love for Bob, and is so disgusted, that she quickly contacts Bob promising that if she sees her now that she will let him get to third, to which she has been denying him, but not before Bob has the time to decrypt Alice's message and realise that he too wants to be with her so he has sent an encrypted message to her returning her love, before, quite rudely, joining Eve, because hey, she was immediately there, and he'll proceed to break up with her after this afternoons main event.
Now Bob's encrypted message is being sent to Alice, but on it's way it get intercepted by Mallory, who, although a friend of both Bob and Alice, has unfortunately spent the past 5 years fantasising about Alice. Being friends with both, Mallory knows the block cipher scheme they use and after interpreting the patterns she successfully opens the message, the contents of which enrage her, so, being of sound mind alters the message pretending to be Bob to explain to Alice that he is currently seeing Eve and, therefore, cannot be with her and sends the message along.
Bob then goes to Alice's place after leaving Eve in tears for a very painful, very quick break up, to find Alice in tears, with Mallory comforting her, who proceeds to push Bob out for "the terrible way in which he broke the news to Alice."
Bob goes home a broken man, confused and alone, but on his front step he sees Eve. Mallory had forgotten to re-apply the encryption key, so Eve just saw a plain text message and she walks up to him and whispers in his ear
"I know how to help, get over Alice." She said "Now Alice is gone, but I'm still here you know I've been waiting twenty four years..." and Bob's frown disappeared... He said "I don't know why she's leaving, or where she's gonna go, I guess she's got her reasons but I just don't wanna know, now I gotta get used not receiving clear text from Alice..."
And although Bob is now happily with Eve, and Alice will eventually be turned by Mallory (Oh come on, she was going out with Bob, who we all know was only there cause Alice was in denial. I knew it, she knew it, Diffie-Hellman knew it.) but this whole debacle could have been avoided if they'd used an Asymmetric encryption scheme using a public key exchange.
Alas, this will in my next post. Maybe. Originally this had an ending where half the people killed themselves but I was forced to re-write it, happy now?
Okay now onto Friday... When I worked... At the... Workplace. Oh screw it. Okay, Thursday night Mum calls and talks to me about how my weeks going and then ends on "Don't forget to get up early to go to work." We all know what's going to happen next, so I head to work at 9:15 rather than 7:30, okay day at work, the server had been down since midday Thursday and wasn't up until a guy came out and fixed it. Dodgey configuration, I won't go into it, I've bored you enough with encryption algorythms, it just pisses me that I went in late and couldn't work out how to fix it and be a hero. Ah well, you get that. I did get rid of another unrelated error that had been occurring so that was nice. But, still no feeding my hero complex.
It's here where my week got un-normal. I actually went out, straight from work to Perth. To wonder round the city and hang out with some guys I hadn't hung out with since Mandurah. My expectations of a night out are already 20 years older than me, which is unfortunate. I like a nice dinner, some walking around, some window shopping then home by 9:30ish. Not so, I didn't mind, my spontaneity still continues to surprise me - Well surprise me in the way that it seems not many other people seem to have it. May all those nights along in my bedroom with one hand on my mouse the other on my joystick have gotten to me, and my body is willing to do anything to do different.
What? I like flight sims.. and porn
So, in the end, did have nice dinner with mate and his boyfriend, then we ran into more mate's friends, Mate's boyfriend proceeded to head back to restaurant with Mate's mate... The last thing he remembers is sitting down, but we'll get to that in a moment.
So meanwhile Mate drags me to geek bookshop to talk with different mate. So we hung out there for a couple of hours, just talking... She was selected at birth at a clinic with the best gene's her parents could come up with, and as a result is perfect... Aside from the fact that her bones are very brittle and have over the course of her life bean replaced partially with Titanium, along with various possible cell mutations solved through gene therapy. So we all know where this is going, me trying to find the right words to screw up any chance of future social interactions when fate decided to be nice and give me a distraction
The route shown is pretty simple, 850m, somehow, completely unassisted a completely inebriated Mate's boyfriend managed to traverse it, before amazingly running into us and immediately falling to his feet moaning and vomiting. This was proper drunk. In fact, first proper drunk I'd seen, unable to crawl he sat against a wall, not wanting to move and proceeded to vomit. Pieces of barramundi still very visible amongst the bile. This person, was a classy drinker, though, getting smashed on a delicious 2008 Chardonnay, with the aroma and the chucks of South-Western fish, I hate to admit that this was the third time in my life vomit made me hungry. Now, don't get me wrong, vomit has on many occasions grossed me out and disgusted me, but a couple of occasions, one particular time I had a bug and my macaroni cheese didn't want to stay down, when I was cleaning it up, I was so close to.. Ya know, just a taste, I mean it was an annoying bug cause I was starving but immediately re-saw whatever just went down. But I didn't, I kept my cool as 50% of the passes by were disturbed by the sight (Annoyingly mostly females in such a state that I could tell THEY WOULD SOON BE IN A SIMILAR POSITION. Seriously, hypocritical bitches. Bet their output wouldn't be half as attractive with the 3/4 empty bottle of Jim Bean they were sharing. A nurse came along (As they do when they see something and know they should do something.) Helped us correct our attempt at our recovery position.
Then the female took charge and we discussed our options, my hero complex bubbled up again as we realised I had the only car in Perth and a taxi or train did not seem possible. It would of been perfect had I not got lost.
City blocks are hard to drive around at the best of times, but when a carpark exits onto a different road than you think it does, you end up at Trinity College before confessing, yes I'm lost and require 10 minutes more driving, on top of the already 15 minutes, to get back to the person who needs it. A stern talking to later and the unconscious (But still breathing.) passenger was loaded into my backseat with a completely empty tank. I got into gear and watched her walk away, I'm not sure if it's good or bad that I didn't call out after her that she "could hold me like that anytime I needed to vomit onto the footpath." Alas, I'd met a science experiment but got choked up, but I know where she works.
Dude, she bossed you around and saw that you couldn't do as your told or look after a friend very well.
Thank you voice of reason, tell that to my medial orbitofrontal cortex, or Amygdala or even my Hippocampus I'm sure it'll love to hear that. (Woot, three tiny sections of my brain wanting me to have sex, you'd think with how loud they are they'd have cooler names.)
So anyway, then my Mate crouched on the back floor of my car keeping his friend alive while I drove home we got him inside, and although his complaining was loud when we lifted him above a metre we continued to push him into our shower.
It's here where interesting point 4 (I hope you've been keeping count) happened of the evening. My house mate saw the spectacle and proceeded to help by saying "Good luck with that" and going to bed.
Now, he has since explained that this was his reaction because he doesn't know how to handle situations like that. He was actually terrified and said the previous not with as much sarcasm as I believe he'd had when he said it. He then apologised that if I got into that kind of situation he hoped other would be around, and complimented on the fact that it was handled nicely. Bah, I'm sure if he ever is the only one able to help something primordial will kick in and he'll save me. Or kill me for being the Alpha male. Ego-high-five!
After 15 minutes of being washed by his beloved, he became more human enough to walk around, use the toilet on his own, and then proceed to question which house he was in. Now the last thing he remembers is sitting down waiting for the other guy to arrive and being presented with wine, he doesn't know if he made it, if he paid, how he got to Hay or how he got to my place. After consuming sandwiches, responding to the 38 voicemail messages (I'm not joking. Thirty Eight.) left by concerned and loving parents. and staying another 36 hours, he returned home fine and looking forward to next Friday.
After only 9 hours asleep I was up and having coffee with my parents who then proceeded to take me to Ikea and tell me to meet them at their place at 8.45 the next morning at there place ready to take Ikea purchases to my sisters house. So then I get invited to go out for dinner. And then invited out clubbing.
You'll notice that this is the first post up in a couple of weeks. Not much happens in my life. When I get invites that sound crazy I take them, so that when I look back over my life in 10 years when the infected are breaking down my last barricade, I can at least tell myself, I occasionally lived.
So went out for tea and watched house mate have a fudge sundae. For tea. And that's it. I know he's not annorexic in the way that he doesn't eat a lot to be thin, he just doesn't eat a lot. It's just.. Seriously? No substantial meal? I cleaned up a fish and chips (Seriously that nice smell was with me 24 hours later.) and picked up my cousin and some friends (including her lesbian friend that I believe I've spoken of before.) and headed out. My cousin was already extremely happy by the fact that she was pleased to see me for the first time in years. So we went to The Court and I watched my cousin and one of the people I hadn't met before drink. Meanwhile the sober amused each other with dancing styles (I now know how fun pole dancing is. Seriously it's a challenge and an ability to vent crazy and apparently a fitness option. To those females who do pole dancing to get fit, I know it's been an option for a while, but admit that you are venting sexual frustrations and I believe we can move along as a society.). Midnight came quickly and as we'd acquired another passenger there was now six that needed to be taken home in my car that can only fit five at best. So for the second time that weekend I performed a traffic violation and one of them (Almost too eagerly) climbed into the boot. And she was one of the perfectly sober ones. She decided to amuse herself by being my guide and shouting GPS directions whilst tolerating bumps and a couple of repeated spins round some roundabouts. Although she got out fine and seemed all there I still apologise for the unintentional beating I gave her.
My cousin decided to kick me one more time emotionally before venturing into her house to sleep. "If she wasn't gay, you'd make a cute couple." A relationship she had befriended me over, and avoided me at all costs because of, she saw could go to the next level. She could finally see why we kept meeting and chatting behind her back, we're totally different, yet can talk. The person in question decided to retort this indefinitly "If Hitler wasn't a bastard, he would of made a wonderful dictator." I shared her opinion, the one thing in my life I'm currently looking forward to the most can't be spoiled yet. And now she's moving for ten weeks away, so I can't party hard with her any more, no more photo bombing competitions.
Dude, what the hell...?
What?
You're missing her, don't do anything stupid to try and get her attention.
I won't, and plus, she's been in my boot, once a girl's been in your boot, there's really no further you can go with a girl, anything now is just back tracking.
Fair enough, I just think you should get obsessed about someone else so you don't screw up a good friend.
Noted. And plus we didn't meet good enough.
Meet good enough? Is that proper English?
I meant, the way we met wasn't good enough
So let me get this straight, you don't want to be in a relationship with a person you met in a boring way?
Yeah.
You met on Facebook, bitching at her cousin, on your cousins' wall.. That's up there with weird.
Yeah, but not crazy enough, first question your asked when you get into a relationship, and I would like it if the story I get to tell people is "Lachlan appropriate"
"Lachlan appropriate"?
Head smacked in with a baseball bat by best mate. Lachlan appropriate. Falling off a road attempting to do a corner in third. Lachlan Appropriate. Buying an Xbox 360 to aid in hitting on a girl. Lachlan Appropriate. Pole dancing in a gay nightclub. Lachlan appropriate.
So, you mean moronic.
Kind of. Just a little bit crazy, not necessarily unique. Hitting on the only female on a message borad, Getting friended randomly on Facebook after hearing my name once, buying the same type of cheese, rescuing her from the top of a building site being patrolled by a gorilla who keeps ditching barrels at me.
Hmmmm... And here's me thinking the most important thing in a relationship is that you love each other
Who wouldn't love a girl stuck at the top of a construction site being patrolled by a gorilla who keeps ditching barrels.
Good point.
Now can I finish this post?
Okay
Good. (Not long left now.) So on Sunday despite getting to sleep at an unreasonable hour, I managed to get myself to my parents place only five minutes late, to find that they weren't ready to leave yet. Saw sisters new place and envious because I'm not sure where I'll be at the end of the year and I'm pretty sure it won't be that nice. Although it wouldn't of worked out cause theres no aerial connector in the bed room and no cat 6 cabling pre-installed, and its a lot metal so it would absorb signal. Although there is a phone connector in the bed room, so I could use that as the modem and wireless in there, but then I wouldn't get it in the main room or on the deck. And I'd have to get out of bed to answer the phone, but I could get a splitter. Nope. Without network coverage on the deck the outside is wasted. Ah well, scrap that and build a new place.
So there it is, one of the few weeks that was, drunk people, car driving, pole dancing, no desperately hitting on anyone and no time to do my 339 assignment. But for that week at least I have an excuse. I was enjoying myself, and why would I want to ruin that week with doing assignment work.
So it's now 10:00PM on Monday the 30th August 2010. I have no plans and that means 339 will get done and I should get to work on time tomorrow. It means I've run out of things to say and have no graffiti of the week, now that I do regret not obtaining from nightclub toilet - Ah well, something to look forward for next time. When will next time be? I have no idea what you'll be reading all I can say is I look forward to you company, goodnight God bless, Keep Calm and Carry On. So until I get banned from the network, Good Bye.
