Archive for May, 2006

Had a 9am exam this morning and it was the dreaded SY. It went ok though. I think I will have solidly pasted as I had little problems with 2 of the 3 questions I answered (except for Booth’s algorithm which sucks as I did it right and got the wrong answer). After a month of Michelle constantly moaning she was going to fail it she now recons she may have got a 1st.

Afterwards we went to the Quilted Lama for lunch (after stopping by the market) then had some drinks randomly around the union all afternoon. I now feel crap though so I left about an hour or so ago and I’m about to go to bed.

1 down, 5 to go! Yep, I have 6 exams this semester which sucks but after tomorrow I will be 2 down, 4 to go which is decent enough. And we end on programming which will be nice and easy.

So yeah, today I had a databases exam which was straight forward enough. The SQL section didn’t pose much of a problem, I think I will pick up all the marks there, the other section was a bit sketchy but I did well enough to pass I am sure.

SY is the real challenger tomorrow. 9am as well, how sucky is that?

Me, Michelle and Maths Chris are all re-applying for university halls next year but none of us had heard anything despite being told that we would get a decision between mid-March and mid-May (there was a date in May, I think it was the 15th which was two days ago). So myself and Michelle went down to accommodation services today to ask them about it.

They had a check to see what was what and I was informed that I had been allocated room 20 in Ellerslie which is awesome! I’ll go on about that a little later when I’ve talked about what is happening.

Michelle hasn’t got a decision on Henry Price yet as the warden who manages it is out of the country. As she is an international student she is guaranteed accommodation anyway though.Maths Chris is applying for Bodington again and apparently they handle all their applications internally. But we were told they have mailed out rejections so if he hasn’t got a rejection he will pretty much have a some kind of offer on the way to him.

So yeah, I’m in Ellerslie. I haven’t been given a price yet though, guess I will get that when they mail me out all my stuff which apparently they are still waiting on. The cost is anywhere from £3,800 to £4,500 so it could be anywhere although I asked for one of the cheaper rooms.

Room 20 seems like a good number depending on the floor plan. Being on the 3rd floor at Bod means it is more secure (not that there are much security problems at Bod as it’s miles away) although it does mean I have to go up a lot of stairs. Room 20 might be first floor if they have a lot of ground floor rooms which I’m guessing they will do if it’s the main building. First floor would be cool as it’s not many steps. Also room 20 sounds a decent distance away from the entrance, which if you are right next to it’s a killer as everyone knocks on it as they go past when getting home at 3am.

It’s going to be absolutely sorted next year though. Living on campus means I don’t ever have to worry about making sure I don’t miss the bus. I can do whatever I want and not have to think about the fact that if I miss the 3:10am bus I am screwed.

Although I guess that means everyone will be hanging out at mine :P. But then Michelle will be living on campus too and she has a big living area in Henry Price, albeit with 9 other flatmates to share it with. But yeah, it’s going to be really cool, The Terrace will be my local and it will be really easy to organise stuff, none of this timing buses as I go past Michelle’s as we will be able to see each others buildings :D. Sarann really needs to move closer, it’s just inconsiderate of her to be so far away ;).

It’s going to be a different exeriance to Bod I think, in some ways. There will only be 120 of us there compared to 1,200 at Bod so it’s the kind of place you can almost know everyone. Although within Grant House I know pretty much everyone so that’s basically a smaller version of Ellerslie. The difference will be at meal times and such. I think that will be good as I should be able to go for meals at any time and have someone to sit with as I will know pretty much everyone :D.

Funding this is going to be the real problem. I really need to get a job over summer. To the point where I recently applied at Subway. I submitted it to the Albion Street store though which said it would be reviewed by the store manager so I wonder if I should go down and talk to the other stores or something.

But I can worry about the later, after all I have exams to worry about now. I have my first one starting in just under 2 hours. Might do a bit more revision between then and now but then I know it all really. I would be better off doing SY but then I was worried I might loose my focus on DB if I did that.

So yeah, next year will be cool. It should also reduce going out costs if people want to crash at mine as then they don’t have to taxi it home. I dunno how many people would want to, Fonze crashes sometimes as it’s cheaper to bus it back to Bod and go home next day, and if you can walk a minute down the road from the union to crash, even better. I’m never going to get any sleep or work done – it’s going to be awesome :D.

Think of the extra time I will have as well. No having to get up at 7:30 for 9:00 lectures. I will be getting up at 8:50, 8:55 if I want to sleep in. Seriously, I will be able to get up 10 minutes before a lecture, how cool is that? And no having to spend an hour travelling home (ok it’s not that long but it’s still journey time) in rush hour.

Plus Bod meal times are starting to annoy me. If I’m at uni I need to head home at 6, get back about 6:30, have dinner then get back to uni to go out at 7-7:30 meaning I’m back for 8. Which is a two hour block of time taken up for dinner. If I can just run home in 5 minutes it will be much easier. I miss a fair few meals at Bod because other activities get in the way of me getting home but if I’m on campus it shouldn’t be such a problem.

That kind of situation comes up quite a lot really. Well, not that specifically but the whole travelling to uni and back and later travelling to town and back to go out. I could really down to cut that time out it would free up several hours per day in my schedule which is absolutely loads of time if you think about it. That’s like the same amount of time I spend in lectures!

So yeah, I’m set for accommodation next year pretty much. Just need to sign and return the contract when it comes. Oh and find a job to fund it. I will save on bus passes which is cool although there is an £80 internet connection fee thing. I need to win the lottery, that’s a cool career.

EDIT: I want to add some more stuff. Just saw the post for the first time, I know I rambled on a lot (for like 20 minutes or so lol) but I didn’t realise I wrote that much!

Anyway I’m just looking over the photos and the rooms look huge. That is probably the annexes, which Jersey Matt is in and he does have a pretty huge room, I dunno what they are like in the main building but if they are anything like that I could fit loads of people in there.

Michelle suggested I go round to Ellerslie and find out who lives in room 20 and ask if I can have a look round :D. I was temped but it just seemed freaky. I would ask Claire to take me I guess but then it would spoil the suprise in September.

Thanks to the fact that the DB11 exam is currently in session, all of the School of Computing computer labs are currently taken up with people sitting the exam so I have been forced to resort to using an ISS cluster!

Bring back Colossus, then we would have space. Presuming they continued to split the exam into two groups as they have done now and not put people in Colossus. That would be stupid as they would still need to have two groups at two times so they might as well leave Colossus empty for other people to use.

Anyway yeah, I’m in the first section of Bragg cluster off Red Route. It’s horrible! I logged on, went to open Firefox – it isn’t there! I’m forced to use Internet Explorer because they don’t even have Firefox installed. How am I supposed to open up new tabs? I’ve already tried once. Before I gave it a thought I hit Ctrl+T to open a new tab before realising I was using IE.

The screens are tiny too, we have massive resolutions in our labs, these are pathetic. Plus, they don’t even have chairs! They just have stools. Sure they spin around but it’s just poor quality all round.

There are civilians in here too. No nerds here. I need to be with my own people, it’s just scary. We need way more labs in SoC, even if it’s just called “backup emergency lab so you don’t have to resort to ISS.’

While I’m ranting about ISS I should also complain about the latest issue I am having with them, it’s started rejecting most of the emails we send out from film making society because there are two many recipients. What is going on there? That’s well BS. I mean, it’s mail coming from their own servers! From their own domain. It’s a joke.

Apparently “Dick Clark Productions, Inc.” has filed a digital millenium copyright infringement complaint against me. Be fighting this one probably.

Ok, I’m going to take the time to blog now as I don’t really have time but I need to do it and I may never have time. I’m going to get up at 8:30 tomorrow, maybe earlier to get to breakfast and grab a much needed shower before heading into uni to meet Michelle and do some revision before my first exam tomorrow afternoon.

So yeah, jumping back to yesterday. Me, Michelle and Rachael went down to Fab Cafe, eventually to be joined by others and move on to Bondi. By the end of the night we also had Lunn, John, Fonze, Claire, Norm and Izzy.

It was absolutely mental, probably the best Mental Monday I’ve had. We just kept dancing all night, they had downstairs open from 10:30 and we danced until 3:30. Normally I can’t keep going all the way through and I didn’t really have any more caffine in my system then normal.

It was reasonably packed, not completely packed but it stayed like that. Normally Bondi begins to thin out about 1 am, it didn’t really start thinning out until 3 last night!

Lunn managed to pull twice, firstly with a drunk girl named Lydia (who spent the night trying to pull Rachael) and secondly with Izzy. I think I need to learn his mysterious ways.

After it ended, myself, Michelle and Rachael walked back to hers via Bragg cluster so they could use the bathroom and via Eniac so I could make use of my keyfob. We got back to Michelle’s about 5, sat around for an hour then I got the 96 home at 6 and ended up getting to bed about 7.

Finally got myself out of bed at about 1:30, to get the bus back into town to meet at Wokmania for lunch at 3 which included guest appearances by Sarann and Graham. Finally we finished off the evening watching Just Married and a load of Firefly episodes back at Michelle’s.

Ok, so day done, all I need to do now is update my websites, sort through my 88 unread emails, find some way of sending an email out to the film making society and a few other things before I can get to bed and get in a decent amount of sleep to be able to meet Michelle at 10:30 tomorrow.

Wow, I actually got to use my keyfob! Yep, I’m in Eniac at 4:30 in the morning. I had a wicked night at Bondi which ended at 3:30 and the last bus was 20 minutes before that so we were walking home and I decided that now was the best time to make use of my Eniac keyfob.

We also took a short trip into Bragg to see what it was like. Not that I would use it because it’s ISS but it’s good to know it’s there. So yeah, I have lots to blog about Bondi but that can wate until later today. Unless I decide to hang around. Probably won’t. Student buses are crap, they all start running at like 7 except for the 96.

I wonder if I have used this title before. Anyway, I’ve remembered why The Offspring are my favourite band. I stuck Conspiracy Of One on because I couldn’t really find anything I wanted to play on (which is silly given the size of music collections we all have but maybe we are just spoilt for choice).

And I found myself singing along to it, which I do normally but not like every word at a relatively high volume and also singing all the guitar rifts and drum beats on top of that. Offspring rule!

There is no information on this! Well, that’s doubtful, but none that I could find. I googled it on Google, Yahoo and MSN, none of which came up with any overly helpful results.

So what are you supposed to do when someone says “I like you” and it isn’t recipicated. I’ve spent the last hour or so brainstorming ideas for a friend. Personally my favourite is…

I’m Encorian and only interested in dating other Encorians

But I can see why others might not be so big on the idea.

We came up with many reasons like “I’m seeing someone” or “I’m busy with exams” but I class these as delaying excuses which are not a good idea – because you could find yourself in the same situation at a later date.

The trick is to be honest but not harse. As tempting as it might be to emotionally destroy them :p. Well that’s my 2c at least, I know some people are quite into the emotical destruction, and when most of us, including myself, are actually in the situation, being honest is one of the hardest things in the world to do.

So as tempting as it is for me to do, I’m not going to sit here and preach about the about how it’s the right thing to do to be upfront and just come out and say “I’m not interested” because I’m sure I will do that next time I’m in that situation.

I am quite a fan of the added commentary appropriate though, it makes me feel better to add it in. “I’m not interested” becomes “I’m sorry I can’t work out a way to say this that doesn’t sound harse but I’m not interested,” or “I really don’t want to sound patronising as I know it sucks when people do that so I just want to let you know I’m not interested.”

Oh and one final thought. Imagine how hard this was when we played the game face to face rather than texting each other like the cowards we are ;).

So yeah, turns out I don’t have my second set of bedding at uni. Nuts.