Archive for the ‘Life’ Category

Just moved the next load of my stuff home and now have my desktop set up at home. I’m running somewhat of a wierd setup compared to normal as I’ve got my desktop sat on top of my desk (literally on the desk top) rather than underneith to reduce the amount of cables that need to come round the front of my desk (as it’s a fitted corner desk) – this way it’s just the network cable that runs from downstairs. I’ve also got my subwoofer on the desk to try to stop it vibrating straight through the floorboards and annoying anyone sat in the lounge below me.

I like to think I have my priorities right though. There is only a thin snaking path through my room with piles of boxes covering the entire floor and my bed is an even bigger pile which if you look at it from the top you cannot see any bed at all. But my computer is on, so all is well!

Damn.

Saturday saw the long awaited garden party hosted by Kieran/Matt/Kat/Heather. Having had a power cut on Friday night I was way behind with backing up my laptop (which has now gone back) so I wasn’t able to get there until 5 by which point the party was in full swing.

It turned out to be a really good night, we ended up staying until 1:30 in the morning (and some stayed longer) with good food, food music (of course as some was suggested by yours truely :D) and of course, great company. Congratulations on a well thrown party guys.

The last two Fruity’s of the year being free we decided to head down last night for a cheap night. It started off with drinks at Michelle’s before heading down at 11. They had the DJ on the stage in Stylus, interesting choice given that it wasn’t exactly going to be a busy night though it probably made the dance floor a bit busier and they wouldn’t have been that pushed for space. You could actually move and everything.

It actually amuses me (and saddens me at the same time) that there were still so many more people there than there would be at Wendy even though this is an exclusively student night and all the students have gone home.

We got dragged out at 1:30 to go find Graham who was lying in the middle of the road having lost his glasses. Turns out he was actually lying on the grass and already had a plan – to just kip down there for the night so didn’t actually need our help but it was too late by then :p. Sarann is now his all time hero for finding them. Kat had also had her phone stolen (technically it was robbed) which was a bit of a downer.

We headed back to Michelle’s at which point she cooked an impressive array of good food for post-clubbing consumption which was much appreciated. Let it never be said that Fruity isn’t an eventful night out.

I think I might be tipsy. I still appear to be able to write coherantly (ha, I guess I’ll find out when I read this tomorrow) and I seemed unaffected on the walk home though I’m getting that kind of delayed feeling type thing where everything seems to take a little longer to reach the brain.

It’s been a while since I hit Bondi and so having got exams out of the way it was time to pay another visit. Which worked out quite well with Rachael’s current visit to see Michelle. We hit Bourbon at 8 and then after stopping off at The D (at which Claire ate some food, mu ha, even if it was only 2 chunky fries) we hit Bondi and danced the night away. Well, for a bit, we left at like 2.

All in all the day made a bit of a recovery after this morning’s not so great start. I either slept through my alarm or turned it off in my sleep or something because I woke up at 1:03, having been supposed to start work at 1. My mum kindly gave me a lift so that I could make it in for 1:30 though.

It’s been quite a long weekend as we didn’t get out until 4am on Saturday and then 3am on Sunday. Indeed, we were still outside on Saturday when the openers turned up.

I also want to briefly discuss Bondi’s sound system. They seem to have plenty of speakers although their bass is disappointing. It sounds kind of over driven and while seems to handle the higher frequency of bass well, and the very low frequency that makes the floor shake, the low audible level seems fairly non-existant. I’m not sure whether this is just the quality of the audio they are using though as it all seems to come through a computer so they may just be playing MP3s as some songs sounded better than others. It was also interesting that they seemed to have floor monitors mounted to the ceiling.

As for the lighting rigs, they had two rigs of mainly par lamps which just had a coloured filter and turned on and off as well as one or two moving heads on one of them. They also had two rigs of scanners one of which had a large but disappointing strobe light on as far as I could tell. They also had two normal lights just shining onto disco balls. The point is, I recon we can match this system next year ;).

While most blogs contained this post like a week ago I unfortunately did not have that luxury. I finished my final exam yesterday, Principles of Corporate Strategy. I was annoyed by the exam, I got everything except one question which was really basic stuff that I should have known. Unfortunately I was missing a lecture or two worth of slides (I don’t know why I was missing the week 3 one was I turned up to that, the Rationalist Week one I genuinely missed) but even so, I’ve done SWOT analysis before, prior to my arrival at uni.

I’m a bit disappointed I don’t really feel any relief though, it’s not a “oh it feels so good for them to be over and done with.” I just feel like I always do. I suppose it’s because I know it’s not going to get any better. I am working in labs next week then at The D with double the amount of shifts (probably) the week after, then after that it’s back to full time so I’m not really having a break between exams finishing and working. Indeed, having finished my exams yesterday I am going to work later today),

Overall it’s been an alright exam period I guess. I’ve done well on 5 out of 6 exams but I’ve almost certainly failed one of them. While I scored highly on the coursework I need to mass the module because I need it for my third year program and also I got a 38 and a 44 last semester so I really can’t get any bad module marks as they need to drag everything up.

It’s been a while since I used to walk into a lab and it would be totally empty. The last time I can really remember it happening (though it’s probably happened since) was last summer when I would walk into Eniac in like the middle of July. While summer has once again returned it’s still June, term time June in fact. Having just walked into DEC-10 though I find I’m the only person here. These freshers are just rubbish :p.

It worried me how much my life resembles Curb Your Enthusiasm.

Ok so I went to place the order for my new computer with CCL last night. However it still had my invoice address set as Bodington Hall and you can’t change it online. So this morning I rang customer services. They updated it to my home address for me but because my card is registered to my university address they told me that I would have to phone sales up and order it manually.

So I phoned sales up and went through all the components over the phone. They told me they were having credit card problems and passed me through to accounts (as expected) who went through a few details with me and told me that my credit card was being declined and I had to phone Egg up.

I phoned Egg up who told me the reason it had been declined was the order was more than my available balance. Indeed the amount of the purchase was more than it was showing on my shopping cart.

Now I had a problem. I didn’t have enough money on my Egg card to make the purchase. I didn’t have enough money left in my bank account because I had moved it all over to my Egg card to pay for the computer though. It’s my sound system all over again. At least I didn’t think I had enough money in the account, I couldn’t check my bank account because my laptop is dead. At least it would allow me to take a photo of the error – or it would if my camera would let me take any photos but it won’t.

I phone CCL back and explain the problem and they eventually realise that it is because the over the phone orders use trade counter prices rather than internet prices and I have to order via the internet to get the discount price.

I eventually make it on to my bank account to find I have some money spare which allows me to make the purchase on my Lloyds TSB credit card but will need to move some more funds into my bank account as soon as possible to make sure it covers it. Also I was trying not to use my Llyods TSB card as I’m not sure the direct debit is setup yet and it means I will probably have too much money on my Egg card as they will probably take a direct debit payment anyway and there is no easy slash free way to transfer money back to my bank account from my Egg card.

After them declining my Llyods TSB credit card once they finally accept it and I reach the confirm your order screen which informs me that my invoice address hasn’t changed and still says Bodington Hall. I’m back on the phone with CCL customer services.

After 10 minutes on hold I decide to put my phone on speaker phone disrupting my speaker system so I have to turn it off. 19 minutes on hold and someone finally answers. They explain that whoever updated my billing address when I called before actually messed it up so it didn’t update properly. He sorts it for me and tells me to give it 5 minutes for it to update and then go through the checkout again.

So I give it 5 minutes and head to the checkout system again. At which point I come accross a server error preventing me from going any further. On the upside it’s now displayed on the rogues gallery on Server Problems Maybe?

Giving it 10 minutes to fix itself, I’m still getting. I take a closer look at the error and it seems to be a database fault. My suspicion is that when they cancelled my phone order they either also cancelled my basket order online or just wiped all the pending orders on my account or something. I log in using Internet Explorer, choose a new product in my empty basket and try to go through the checkout – it works.

So I go back to Firefox, open up all the product pages, empty my basket and begin adding everything again. I then refresh my basket. It’s empty again. I work out it’s because it has logged me out so I logged back in and it all re-appears. Finally it lets me go to the checkout. You have to appreciate that each step is taking quite a while because CCL is going strangly slow in recent times.

I finally click confirm, it should finally be all done!

It’s not. I get some ClickSafe registration from Llyods TSB. It’s non-optional. I go through this and open up my email client because it told me it needed email activation. No email came. However, I did get an order confirmation email from CCL so hopefully it’s finally gone through! And all it took me was 2 hours on the phone to people.

It’s been a long week. I had IS23 on Tuesday morning which went quite well, followed by GI21 yesterday which I probably failed (ha, probably, I almost certainly failed the exam which is worth 60% of the module so I’m screwed) then I had SE24 today which was a breeze. I found it slightly harder than expected but I think most people found it harder than expected (probably more so than I did) which is probably a positive sign. Just one more exam to go now!

I normally avoid swearing on my blog as I like to maintain an open audience policy but I think this is probably worth it. It’s a voicemail I found when I came out of work last night.

Come to Wendy, I can’t believe you’re at work! You, Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you! You suck! Come to Wendy now! Now! Now! You have no choice mu ha ha ha. I’m not drunk at (…). I’m drunk. I’m clearly very drunk. I love you really. I was going to say I hate you but I don’t, I love you to bits. Come to Wendy. Bye.

Last night I missed Wendy House for the first time ever :(. Well, since I started going. But since I first went in January of 2006 I had, had a perfect addendance record. 16 Wendy House’s in a row. More than anyone else in the circle by a long way. Not that the latter statistic doesn’t still hold as it does but my perfect attendence record is ruined.

It’s probably a good thing, I was getting slightly anal about it which probably wasn’t healthy. I couldn’t win either way really as it was ruin my Wendy attendance record or ruin my work attendance record, both which were perfect until last night. In the end though my responsabilities got the better of me.

As depressing as it is that I missed it, it’s even more depressing how little I care. The recent despondence has given me a lot of time to think and that’s never good. Ever.