VII
Mar/100
So it’s actually very hard to write a blog and skype at the same time!
Seven months is hardly any time at all.
I saw Adam Hills in Melbourne. Not like a show, like on the street. I nearly went up to him, but what would I say? Dude, you helped me score? Hey Adam, I met (not really) my girlfriend at your show. Dear Mr. Hills, I saw you on May 1 and nearly four months later I was in a relationship.
It’s a funny story.
I saw Tripod in Melbourne too. In a show. They were excellent. I’d really like to see a show where they just play their songs though. I imagine it would be excellent.
Happily, everyone who came along to the show on my recommendation loved it. I have excellent taste, you know.
Apparently both my cricket teams (as in, I played about four games for each of them) lost their grand final. It does mean that in three seasons, I’ve had four teams in the grand final.
Not a very good success rate, admittedly. 1 win from 4. 1 from 2 in the games I actually played in.
In the end, it was probably the best season ever.
Probably the best year ever.
Sydney on Friday. Very keen. This month hasn’t been unpleasant by any means, but I’m ready to come home.
Six
Nov/090
- I am so very tired.
- This has resulted in me being easily irritated today. Specifically, regarding the fact that I purchased some (unhealthy) products, but my brother just ate them without telling me. And I bought them with my money, and wanted to eat them during my break from making that money.
- I got angry/annoyed. This is because I’m tired, and mildly irritated, and because I haven’t been angry in quite a long time. It didn’t last very long, I know some people who are quite nice to me.
- AT THIS POINT MY POWER DIED
- My laptop still had power, but then later on (with this blog finished and open in my browser still) it decided to freeze and make me restart it. Blog lost.
- The whole point of the title and the numbered list was to make some mention of what happened exactly six months ago. This effect is somewhat lost by posting it the next day.
Regardless, some dates stick in the mind. Especially when they ultimately result in dates.
On May 1, I saw Adam Hills perform. That night has brightened my life to a degree I scarcely believe possible.
Brett Lee is my new Shane Warne
Oct/090
… and other short thoughts.
Cricket’s a long game. I like it, I love it, but I can’t just sit down and watch it endlessly. Often I’ll have some manner of distraction in front of the TV, like my laptop.
But when Warney was bowling, he had my undivided attention. It was magic, and always worth it. You constantly felt that something could happen, no matter what the state of the game.
Brett Lee is the closest thing I have at the moment to a replacement for that. It’s a different sort of appeal: less guile, more grace. Always interesting, always dangerous.
I’m watching the end of the Somerset innings… it’s about all I have to blog about.
Not entirely true.
I feel like noting that today was really fun. I didn’t wake up alone. We got work done. I am still pretty good at Rock Band. I ate dark chocolate in front of cricket on the TV. I currently have a cat rubbing her head against my laptop screen.
I am pretty tired though. Also my head hurts a little. The champagne: not such a good idea.
Current plan: Finish Blackadder season four then sleep.
My hair is ridiculous.
I’m generally getting things right at the moment. This is excellent, because it’s never been more important.
Oh look I’m doing it again
Sep/090
I’m about to write something about how much I procrastinate and then make a meta reference to this act of blogging which in itself is just more procrastination. OH the irony. I’ve done this before. I really should have a procrastination category… or just rename uncategorised to procrastination, they might be the same thing. If it’s not about something in particular, it’s likely to just be an avenue of distraction.
Currently having issues with motivation and delayed gratification and other things. Most of the time.
The problem is largely that I don’t have a ‘real’ job, in that I never have to go anywhere to work. I’m not currently an employee of anyone. I’m a partner, and a sole trader. I work from home, basically. Home is also where I play, and sleep, and drink, and eat, and generally do many things which are not work.
It might help if I studied at home, which would presumably create some association between being at home and effort. But I don’t study. Assignments are a pile of nonsense left to the last minute. Exams are for the exam period.
I’m typing this fairly quickly, at least. I’m very conscious of the work I need to do. I’m also conscious of tonight’s meeting – when I want to be there, and when I need to be there. It was the same with the PMP assignment – I wanted to get it out of the way before the last minute, so that the final day could involve less work and more play. That was successful… or at least, I achieved the aim. Did I reduce the integrity and quality of the work by trying to get it out of the way? Probably.
In terms of the work I’m doing, and aiming to complete quickly, is my motivation providing additional focus, or is it inspiring least-possible-effort and short cuts?
But the work won’t get done by blogging.
XXI
Aug/090
It’s that time of the year again. I amused myself by ticking off things. Last time I’ll brush my teeth as a 20 year old. Last time I’ll try to solve the cryptic crossword. Last homework: PMP. Last meal: Subway (Disappointing). First SMS as a 21 year old: made me smile.
It’s actually pretty crazy how much of the equivalent post from last year I could just copy paste in. Scary, even.
I’d really love to not repeat some of the subsequent posts though.
No one at cricket mentioned the weight loss, but that’s due to both the fact that I’ve actually only returned to where I was at the start of the last season, as well as there not being anyone from last season at training, just new guys and people who I’ve seen since the final anyway.
Losing weight was the race I mentioned in the last post, btw. I had it in my mind that since I was born in 1988 and also it’s about what I got down to last year, that 88kg would be a good weight to be by my birthday. I’m not there yet, but I have more muscle and feel better than I did last year, so it was still pretty win. The trick will be to keep it off this time.
Probably looking at socks again.
Protected: And
Aug/090
5 days
Jul/090
So, there are just five days of work left in this placement. I’m looking forward to the end, I guess. There’s a lot I’ll miss about the place, but most of it was not the work. The people are really nice. The ferry trip in the morning is fantastic. I love the crossword lunches, which also feature the ritual reading of the quiz (when those level nine bastards haven’t pinched it) and lately, foosball.
At the end of the day, what have I left? A monitoring tool which is apparently useful, a configuration database, some magic deployment tools and some silly applications I made to amuse my friends (a countdown timer, an XKCD mass downloader, a crossword tray application).
They’re all pretty cool things which do make people’s jobs easier (or make their procrastination more subtle…), but there’s not really five months’ worth of effort.
Because I didn’t put in five months’ worth of effort. They didn’t demand it, and I never pushed for it.
I don’t particularly want to be content with apathy, but I am good at it.
Five days to go, featuring a hopefully awesome presentation, some sort of party at the end, and maybe a few hours of work in the middle.
From five days in the future to a 5 day retrospective. Segue!
Pretty quiet week, actually, right up until the point at which it got very loud. Turns out, one of my friends does a real university course, and only just finished exams this week. Celebration was required; giant schnitzels were vanquished. The Bavarian is always fun, as is the Redoak.
At work, we finally got our (REDACTED), which is part of our big project to make (REDACTED). It didn’t work at (REDACTED) but I think it got fixed because it’s been fine since. It’s pretty cool that I’m one of the first people to have a (REDACTED).
It’s still secret, obviously.
To celebrate, they handed out some tshirts and caps. The tshirt says “I helped build (thing)” but is missing the footnote “And all I got was this crappy tshirt”. The cap is white and boring, but I wore it backwards to be ironic. I can do that, you know.
Last night was fun too. I went to the Pumphouse with Steve (not that Steve, the other Steve) and met his girlfriend (it now feels like the previous qualifier was unnecessary). Note to self : Redback Cristal is meh.
We’d planned to meet up with Ciaran and Mickey at Scubar, but decided that didn’t actually sound like something we were in a hurry to do, and had a curry instead. We met up with them at Bar Broadway instead, had a couple of drinks and then went to Purple Sneakers.
That was fun.
At midnight I went to find a friend on the dancefloor, and then didn’t see my other friends for the rest of the night. Whoops?
Sneakers is not what I would normally call my sort of place, neither was save FBi. I had a surprising amount of fun at both.
It’s nearly 1pm and my ears are still slightly ringing, 10 hours after I left. Loud music that almost completely prevents conversation isn’t actually the worst thing for someone who doesn’t talk all that much anyway.
Sleep is quite difficult to achieve after what must’ve been at least six jaeger bombs. It’s one of the few things that can get me dancing, though. (Actually, several things need to coincide for me to dance, possibly including a full moon. Seeing me dance is like seeing a yeti: rare. Also ungainly and with quite a lot of hair).
The taxi ride home cleaned me out. I literally poured everything out to pay the driver, but he was good enough to return my key. I needed that, and presumably it’s not a very good tip anyway.
The fare was reasonable, it’s just that I’d spent the rest on alcohol.
On the plus side, I’d withdrawn the exact right amount from the ATM earlier in the night.
On the negative side, I thought I’d withdrawn enough to cover several days.
I’ll admit to feeling a little bit hungover. I need food, and/or a stomach pump. Worth it, even though Red Bull tastes like oblivion.
I need to try and stand up now. I have a beer tasting to attend!
Hat-trick
Jun/094
So I’m 3/3. Or, from a more accurate perspective, 0/3.
It’s been a year since I was writing this. I remarked a few weeks ago to Steve that it would be pretty interesting to see a graph of post count over time, and how it related to what was happening in my life.
And holy shit, it is pretty revealing. Clearly I’m an angst blogger.
(an aside: I really love how Office 2007 makes graphs look acceptably presentable)
Also, since this blog is a year old, it has been given a theme (as promised in the first post) and upgraded to 2.8
I had an exceedingly interesting week. Some of it was recounted in the last post, so I’ll skip to Tuesday. I thought I’d have to go to Australia Post on work related secret business, but apparently not. It was a shame, as I had actually been looking forward to wandering up to Lane Cove in the middle of the day. It was one of the small joys I had in the second half of last year, in that semester of pain, penury and strife. It’s nice to have the freedom to walk about in the middle of the day, even if I allowed myself only the time required (35-40 minutes) to go directly to the sushi bar and return.
That actually makes it sound like I was exceedingly diligent in my time keeping and habits, which is such a massive whopper. Anyway…
I didn’t have to go to Australia Post, so I instead went straight to Bulga to ’study’ with James. We actually did pretty well, for about two hours. By that stage, however, we were entirely bored with the subject, and the remaining four hours before the exam were occupied with football, food and Xbox. On the whole, this struck me as an ideal balance.
Then the exam: harder than I had been lead to believe it would be. Such is the inevitable result of hubris. I still did fine, though. I was the last (of the three of us) to depart the exam. I’m blaming the invigilator, and my lack of a timepiece. I was sitting there for 20+ minutes, waiting for the time at which I would be permitted to leave. I was expecting it to be more like 45 minutes, so the difficulty was definitely a blessing.
After the exam, we went for one beer. That sentence accurately captures our intent, but is in fact as big a lie as the one suggesting I had a work ethic. We drank several beers, and then several schnapps, and then had about as much fun as you’re allowed to have at QVB Stand C. That evening was in no way a sensible idea, but it turned out to be a most enjoyable one.
Wednesday: interview/assessment day at Optiver. I was hungover. I have no idea how I did the initial programming quiz, and especially no idea how what I wrote convinced them that I should be interviewed.
Optiver has the coolest office I’ve ever been in, and the whole day was quite an experience. I was damned lucky that I’d chosen DS&A for my elective this semester. It’s the first step taken towards being the kind of programmer they actually want there. It is also the only step I’ve taken towards that path, and it’s not certain in my mind that I want that path. I still don’t know what I want from my career. I think it actually needs to be more rounded than just being a developer.
I’m getting sidetracked…
I thought it went well on the whole, but it was clearly going to come down to how much they wanted to trust in my potential. To skip ahead somewhat to Friday: not enough. They will not be offering me a position.
There was actually some interesting feedback along the lines that they didn’t think I was passionate enough, weren’t sure I truly wanted to be a developer, weren’t sure I wanted to work there. I guess they read me pretty well, better than I even knew myself. I had doubts about working there, and I didn’t bother to address them before the interview. I should perhaps have gone in with a plan, or at least a conscious effort to play the interview game.
What’s the point though? They interviewed me, a nearly completely honest version of me, with limited garnish. We weren’t a fit for each other. That’s fair enough, and possibly saved a lot of trouble later on.
Wednesday’s meeting was unremarkable, I guess. The chicken katsu afterwards was nice (when it arrived). The sang chow bow spring rolls were not quite as good as I’d hoped for.
Thursday was not a heap of fun. The question posed on Sunday was answered, in the negative. Over email, so I was trying to appear sufficiently busy at work whilst also retreating into my head and composing a reply. One day, someone will say something to my face. One day, it might even be an affirmative response. Being in a different city is a pretty good excuse for the former, though.
The usual suspects were suitably generous in their consolations.
Even more so than last time, I’ve surprised myself with the generally philsophical response I’ve had to the happenings. I think things generally work out. When I’ve got my ego up a bit, I usually extend this thought to ‘things generally work out to my benefit’.
It’s pretty weird, writing obliquely about someone whom I know reads this blog. (p.s. hi)
Then again, I’ve basically been doing that for a month. I wonder if you realised.
Yesterday (although it was still today when I started composing) was a better day, but mostly only at the very end. Three very cool things happened. One was getting out the SMH Friday cryptic crossword. Even if it took four other people and we spent nearly 90 minutes, it’s a pretty sweet achievement. DA (the Friday compiler) is an utterly devious bastard, and normally quite inscrutable.
The second thing was going out for a sneaky 2:45PM Friday beer at the Redoak. (ssh!).
I chased Optiver, and finally got the news they had promised would be delivered sooner. When you don’t hear something positive right away, it’s often fairly safe to assume the negative is on it’s way. (This was not the third cool thing, this is:)
I then chased my manager, who had been saying that he wanted to talk to me for over a week. He’d quite like me to keep working there, and said some rather ego boosting things. I definitely ended the week in a good way.
It’s funny, though. Without making any effort to curry favour at ING, or indeed trying very much at all, I’ve still managed to impress people. Yet another analogy for the benefits of just being yourself?
It’s a nice offer to have, but I have no desire to work full time next semester on anything which is not for Three Ring Solutions. I also consider that the offer from IBM has benefits that go beyond just a place to work. Assuming that offer is still on the table, it’s where I will be next year.
On the bus, on the way home, I finished Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I really liked it, but I’m not sure whether it was the P&P or the &Z which was most entertaining.
I actually intended for this post to just be a couple of graphs, possibly with captions, and now I have in excess of 1200 words.
mostly to scale.
One outlier bucks the inevitable trend, vs the goal
Sample data available for one flow only.
Whoops, 2am.
Long weekend
Jun/090
Long weekends are awesome, never more so than when they involve time off work. The best part is that it’s not even over. I have an exam today and an interview/assessment day tomorrow. I always quite liked exams – I think it’s because I’m lazy. An exam is always quicker than an assignment. Plus, you know… I’m Captain Ego.
Oh, and the fact that it’s 35 multiple choice questions in 3 hours, the lecturer has promised not to be brutal and I’m sitting on 99% so far doesn’t hurt my confidence either. Doesn’t feel like they’re really trying. I should be less conceited though: I’m very fortunate in my ability. I should celebrate finding an assessment easy rather than complaining that it wasn’t hard enough.
I can barely believe I wrote that.
I’m still going to wear my special examination tshirt though. And I’m still writing this instead of studying.
No idea what to expect of the interview thing, or if I even want it. But you have to at least try and take the opportunities, right?
Kinda feels like another occasion for short thoughts.
It’s pretty weird when I’m the most prolific blog writer of my friends, but also nice.
I’m capable of the most ludicrous thoughts.
I’m kinda angry at myself for not being myself. I like me is not just an amusing quote on a tshirt from a pretty geeky source, I thought it was one of my main philosophical tenets. I forgot it a little.
I may, on occasion, drink too much.
I should stop assuming I know what people are thinking.
Plans suck. Monday was essentially unplanned, and better for it.
Just quietly, Night at the Museum 2 was ok.
Dr Horrible was excellent. I want my gloves back.
I may overuse elipses… (You can’t tell in this post, because I’ve refactored. And that one doesn’t count because it’s ironic)
I have theories about 13 months, about graphs, about the cyclic nature of time. And occasionally some sensible ones as well.
I actually had fun for every minute of this weekend, even when I didn’t.