I promised a while back that I would post pictures of the PA system I got for Rationalist Week. Now I’ve finally got my phone transfering Bluetooth files again here they are. The first two are obviously one of the speakers (with a 500ml coke bottle for size reference) and the other two are the mixing deck and amplifier.
Friday night was The Riley’s which are the unions awards for societies. Having burned it down to Bretton Hall and back to see Claire’s cool art displays we almost made it back on time. A-Soc was shortlisted for only one of the three awards we were initially nominated for (how could we not be shortlisted for best society?!?) and we ended up losing to Bretton Music Society (is anyone else thinking who?) so that was a bit of a bust. We were sooooo robbed.
Afterwards we headed into Fruity after picking up a John and proceeded to dance the night away in Stylus. It’s been ages since I’ve been to Fruity and so it was good to finally get another one in as it was a decent night in the end.
Having met Joanna who works at the chaplaincy during Rationalist Week I decided to take her up on her invite to come down to Skeptics Anonymous on Friday. It basically consists of having lunch and sitting round chatting about religiously biased philosophical topics. There was quite an interesting range of people there, indeed there were quite a few Christians. As seems to be the way with these events, the audience generally seems to be slightly eccentric postgrads rather than undergrads.
The conversation mostly followed the lines of going round the circle with each person saying where they stand. As points came up we would then drift off and discuss a point more in depth. All in all it was a slightly strange but never the less fairly interesting event and I think I will probably drop by again.
I’ve been running around the banks all day. Went down to Halifax to transfer my student account over from HSBC to Halifax for the bigger credit limit. They turned me down. Apparently my credit score wasn’t high enough. I was told that there were no actual problems, there just wasn’t enough there.
That’s kind of strange given I have two credit cards, I’ve previously had another and I have a student overdraft as well. She told me to phone Halifax up as they don’t get much information in the branch. When I phoned them up they told me that basically what the employee in the branch had said didn’t make any sence and they couldn’t actually do anything but contact the credit reference agency (they claimed Halifax used Equifax, the branch earlier today claimed they use Experian).
So now I’m waiting for my PIN number to arrive so I can check my online credit report. Of course if that hasn’t arrived by the weekend it’s going to be the weekend after that I will be able to get hold of it.
I also tried to close my old current account down but they told me I couldn’t do that without my cheque book.
So it would have been a completely wasted trip if I hadn’t also have gone home to vote although frankly that doesn’t really make me feel any better.
I then headed over to HSBC to ask them to raise my interest free overdraft limit. They raised it to £1,250 which is close to half what Halifax is offering and stopped short of saying that should have automatically been done for me in September though it was reasonably obvious it should have been.
I also sent off my application for a Lloyds TSB credit card today which I’m assured by the letter is “guaranteed.” It will be interesting to see if they actually give me it as it comes with a minimum credit limit of £1,000. I already have two credit cards but I’ll be cancelling my existing second card down if I get this one.
As for the rest of the day, I went in to the ARC and Kay apparently isn’t going to be in until next week, I’ve lost the invoice for a product I need to return, my laptop is about to die and needs to go back leaving me with no way to do anything as all my applications are on there and can’t be re-installed and the circle may well be about to be plunged back into hell again. Perfect.
It took me 5 hours to get to sleep last night. 5 hours!
I realise that most of you are like full time insomniacs that take 5 hours to get to sleep every night but it normally takes me like 15 minutes so proportionally, based on it taking 5 hours to get to sleep normally, that’s like you lot not being able to sleep for 4 days (4 days and 4 hours to be exact).
The weekend saw another weekend of work (fun) especially as on Sunday night Gary had overspent on labour so Martin randomly picked a handful of people not to work and they all happened to be on the night sheet – we finished filtering at 1:30 in the morning (normally you know you’re behind when it isn’t done by 8pm). Got out at like 3:30, bit more money though I guess.
Went down to the banks on Monday to move money around and try and move my student account – I’ve got a meeting to sort that out on Thursday. Went to Sarann’s for dinner which was really nice, it ended up getting gatecrashed to twice the size of the original invite list though lol. Phil was there from the start then B was brought followed by Kieran turning up and finally Matt and Kat.
Then today we had a faith and culture assembly – or so I thought, turned out it had been cancelled (nobody told us, though what was I expecting from the union?). We tried to pull together a quick committee meeting and had a main A-Soc meeting too to sum up Rationalist Week. Finished as usual with a trip to The Old Bar.
Something strange is going on. My laptop thought it was May. This might be something to do with the time syncronisation as the same thing happened with my desktop. Strange.
Anyway, I last blogged on Thursday morning. Afterwards I went home and slept before getting up ready for my next all-nighter on SE24. In between getting up and coding I went down to a nice French restaurant in town which I haven’t a hope of spelling for dinner. I wore a shirt and everything, how fancy is that? It was well expensive although the food was fairly nice (not amazing though).
I then spent the night in Eniac and we finally got it finished about 8:30 or something and then headed off to lectures. I finally got to bed just after 3. That evening I crawled out of bed at about 10:30, went to the pub for a few hours and then crawled back into bed and slept some more. It was a facinating insight into what B’s life must be like :D. It’s a really good system to be honest, I might have to try it on a more regular basis.
It’s well past 8 am and I’m still in DEC-10. Myself, Gaz and Kieran have just spent all night working on GI21 coursework 2 which is due in, in about 37 minutes. Fortunately I’ve now submitted my coursework so I don’t have to worry about it anymore. Time to go home and get some sleep before tonight’s all nighter on SE24 I think.
Today (or rather yesterday by now) was the Atheist Society EGM in which we approved a number of constitutional changes. Nobody bothered to read the new constitution though so the change of aims to “world domination” went unnoticed even if I failed to push through a change of name to World Domination Soc.
On a serious note, we’ve made some important changes today. We’ve expanded the committee to a total of 7 people (4 of which places are actually filled lol) as well as making some other key changes, making sure we got nominated for a few Riley awards and planned out the events were are going to round off the year with.
Congratulations to Norm on his election as secretary and Sarann on her election as social sec. It’s been a long and hard race for election and all the candidates have been desperately battling it out to get the votes they need but in the end these two simply led the best campaign trail. It’s the little things like nominating yourself for election which really show through.
Since then I’ve been coding away in DEC-10 on my graphics coursework which is due in on Thursday. I’m finally getting somewhere with it though I think I am going to have to drag my ass out of bed tomorrow morning and go speak to my lecturer to get some issues I’m having with it, resolved. I have it down to a to do list though which is always a sign that you’ve reached the final stage. That said, “the final stage” in this coursework is the hard bit.
I had my 8 month performance review at work yesterday. It’s depressing to think I’ve worked there for 8 months already but on the plus side I scored another 5 (aka “outstanding”). Suck on that Neil. More importantly though Martin told me to start the application process to get promoted to Training Squad.
It’s ironic really that such a promotion is going to look fantastic on my CV especially when I word it as “I am responsible for staff training in the restaurant and upkeep of procedures” given that my CV is a document I hope never to have to use again. But at least on the short term it will result in a bit more money (providing they get it through before I hit 21, which is again depressing).