Invisible Man In my defence, Officer… everyone else was doing it

Overdue blog post

* Yods must be due for a blogging
* jamhos agrees wholeheartedly
<Yods> Problem is, I don’t know what I want to blog about.
<Yods> Which is a lie of sorts
<jamhos> ah yes… i suppose that could be a problem
<Yods> I know what I’d like to write about, I’m just not sure that I like it going out on a blog
<jamhos> heh, fair enough
<jamhos> how about write it, then decide?
<Yods> cunning!

The above sums it up, I guess. I feel like blogging, or at least writing down my thoughts… but I don’t really want them on the Internet for all to see. So there’s either no post, or an ambiguous post, which has to be heavily laundered, as the CIA would say. (I’ve been reading Tom Clancy’s The Bear and the Dragon – not the best Jack Ryan novel, but adequate)

Since this post is overdue (well, there’s no deadline for blogs, but I was hoping to post more regularly than once every five days…) I suppose I may as well move chronologically through the time since my last post.

Wednesday: Web Services Development, final exam. Honestly, when I first looked at the paper I was swearing pretty loudly inside my head. The lecturer audaciously threw in some short answer questions, in addition to the 20 multiple choice questions – in stark contrast to the paltry offerings we faced in Applications Programming or Database Fundamentals (30 MC in 2 hours and 45 in 3, respectively). No big deal compared to the HSC – in fact, it’s occured to me several times over this past semester that the HSC was far harder. I often feel like a bludger, but my work ethic is a subject I’ll commit to a blog later on.

Anyway, I didn’t prepare nearly as much as I could have for WSD. It was a combination of apathy, burnout and the distraction I mentioned in my last post. I’ll end up with a good mark, perhaps even an excellent mark due to the lovely vagarities of assessment marking, but I could’ve done better. At any rate, it’s out of my control now, so I won’t write anything about it until the results come out!

Wednesday evening was when things got a bit interesting. It was excellent fun – free drinks! Even better, for someone who likes to pretend he has a modicum of standards in regards to alcohol, it was unrestricted free drinks – any beer at all. (Or wine, or spirits, but my first preference is beer and I know better than to mix between the three after a variety of messy experiences). I drank, I caught up with work colleagues, I convinced my manager that I didn’t have to return to the office until Monday. I reached the level of inebriation where you lose the ability to perceive subtleties but didn’t get to Dutch courage – basically, I remember everything that happened and was upright throughout the evening. In hindsight, I think not reaching the point of drunken bravery was fortunate – some things are better sober, I imagine…

I decided at this point that I wanted to password protect this post. To paraphrase Alan Shore from Boston Legal, I’m tremendously fond of my own intellect. I believe that my written expression is very good – an opinion magnified enormously by CITP and all the tourists attending UTS… but this blog post has already taken an hour and I’m not even past the first day. It’s not the act of writing that’s troubling me, it’s dancing around the things I want to say. My thoughts center around someone, and I don’t really want to give the game away by publishing them freely.

Wednesday’s events technically finished on Thursday, but only by a few minutes. I shared a taxi home with someone, which was just one of what I think were several pretty encouraging signs. At the very least, she’s not adverse to being around me. I hesitate to think – nay, to hope – beyond that because of the aforementioned drinking and a decently sized chunk of insecurity.

Thursday: caught up with some friends from high school, saw Get Smart. It’s actually pretty good, I enjoyed it a lot. We bailed once it got awkward, and went to my mate Steve’s house. (This one is a Stephen, Steven :P). We watched Serenity – Steve had just gone through Firefly and was desirous of more of the same. Who could blame him?

“I ain’t got no answers for you, Inara. I got no rudder. Wind blows northerly, I go north. That’s who I am. Now, maybe that ain’t a man to lead, but they have to follow. So you wanna tear me down.. do it inside your own mind.”
“I’m not trying to tear you down.”
“But you fog things up. You always have. You spin me about. I wish like hell you was elsewhere.”

I added the emphasis… this line from Malcolm Reynolds pretty much sums up where my head’s been since Wednesday night. Actually, where it’s been since about May… but moreso lately.

While watching the movie, I only drank one beer. I’d actually been feeling pretty sick all day, and assumed it was just a hangover – I’ve drunk a lot more in an evening, but hadn’t eaten much so I just figured that the alcohol was affecting me more than usual. However, the next day I was still feeling off, which means that I get to blame the food I ate! “Must’ve been something I ate” is the excuse given by everyone with a hangover, but I’m pretty sure it was actually the case. Total food consumption for the day: Large popcorn from the cinema. :/

Friday: Watched the first two Indiana Jones movies with Steven and James. We ordered pizza under the name which also serves as the password for this lengthy dump from my psyche and generally had an awesome time. Also fun: driving to and from Ultimo in the dark, and getting free parking as well.

Weekend: Not as much as I would’ve liked… I really needed to get some (website) work done, and it would’ve been a solid money earner, but I’m a lazy person, and a lazy person who’s been distracted at that. I did have a good footy-kicking session on Saturday and was informed that I do look thinner. I’ve been trying pretty hard over the exam period to a) eat less fast food / junk, b) drink less, and c) exercise more. I feel better, and according to the scales, it’s working.  I can’t deny that someone is responsible for the majority of the motivation in this area – but it’s really about being more confident in myself rather than a fear of not meeting her… standards? criteria?

<jamhos> probably be good to write, regardless of whether it goes on the internets
James was right! (Unsurprising)

I’m not going to force anything, but if I could have lunch with someone tomorrow then that would be excellent. And if we talk about Wednesday night, I can say that it too was excellent, and worth repeating.