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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
Andrew's LiveJournal:
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| Monday, September 14th, 2009 | | 10:52 am |
| | Sunday, July 12th, 2009 | | 11:34 am |
| | Saturday, June 20th, 2009 | | 5:45 pm |
Game of chance
I like Bejeweled Blitz. I've been playing it quite a bit. Usually, my high scores take lots of work (and a chunk of luck). I aim to keep the speed bonus rolling, and hope that I can pull off a few lucky cascades to get my multiplier up. I'm usually concentrating too much on keeping the speed going to notice opportunities to create power jewels (let along hyper jewels) until just after I've made a different move that destroys those opportunities. However, sometimes I spot them fast enough, and sometimes when I do, the stars align to produce a result like this.  If only I'd managed to get the multiplier up higher first... Current Mood:  rushed | | Friday, January 2nd, 2009 | | 1:35 pm |
It's a brand new year
The sun is high. All the birds are singing... I'm home from the Beach Trip. I left early, and got back home last night. It's been good to read about other people's enjoyable new year's experiences. I may write about mine - there is much to write about and/or ponder - or I may not. After all, one of my goals for this year is to spend less time beating myself up over perceived failures. Current Mood:  trying to look on the bright s | | Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 | | 5:51 pm |
| | Sunday, November 9th, 2008 | | 8:32 am |
| | Thursday, May 22nd, 2008 | | 7:48 am |
Amusing moments at work
- I'm now recognised as having more than half a clue about computers. Me writing a short script to do automatically what used to take someone about 3 hours to do every time a certain type of job arrived probably had something to do with this.
- BLAN test marking has started. 15 new temps arrived yesterday to help with this, filling the room I inhabit (which previously only housed 3, and some boxes). All but one are female.
- I shaved my beard off last night.
- Point (2) was commented on at work yesterday, along with a comment along the lines of "..and Andrew has long hair, so could pass for a girl. Apart from the beard."
- Points (3) and (4) are not causally related. I'd already decided to do (3). The timing is still amusing.
- I'm looking forward to seeing the reactions when I arrive at work this morning.
| | Saturday, April 19th, 2008 | | 7:21 am |
Another birthday. Fun! I've turned thirty-one I look like a monkey Without a pink bum ... or something | | Tuesday, February 5th, 2008 | | 6:05 pm |
Alice? Who the %#&@ is Alice?
Despite work officially having a "no radios" policy, we have a radio in the back room. The station it's on varies, depending on who got to it first, but mornings it's usually on Cruise (they plug their website on air all the time), or another station that sounds pretty similar, as D starts an hour earlier than C and I. After D leaves in the afternoons, it tends to stay on JJJ, and in between, it varies depending on who gets left alone with it for long enough for them to be bothered getting up and fiddling with the knobs (it's old, crappy, and convincing it to find a station, and then play it without too much static, is a royal PITA). Fortunately, I can listen to, and enjoy, just about anything, so I don't mind, but sometimes I hear things that throw me. For example, prior to christmas, cruise threw on some carols every now and then, and in the middle of the boring ones, came Coventry Carol. That was totally unexpected (and it was sung by a children's choir too). Today, for the first time, I heard the original version of the song whose name titles this entry, and it sounded very empty without the extra lines (or the dance beat). I had to listen to the mp3 several times when I got home. | | Monday, January 21st, 2008 | | 6:27 pm |
Work can be fun!
What combines the joys of minor destructiveness and making machines go fast? I didn't know either, until I was asked to operate the burster at work. "Burster?" I hear you ask. "What's a burster?" Well, do you remember the sort of paper that printers used to use, back in the day before lasers and inkjets? Continuous fanfold perforated paper. If you have a large amount of that, and need to separate it into individual sheets, and also remove the perforations on the edges, then a burster is the machine you would want to have. You don't want to cut the pages apart. Your machine would have to have exactly the right length measurement entered for the pages, or your cuts would drift right across the pages as it ran. So, a burster "bursts" the pages apart. The joined paper is fed first through one roller (travelling at speed A) and then another roller (travelling at speed A-plus-a-bit), placed just over one page length apart. As soon as the first page reaches the faster roller.... yank! Off it comes, and out it is spat. Then the next page, and the next page, and so on. (Cutting is just fine for getting rid of the edges, though, and they are cut off before the paper reaches the bursting rollers.) The burster we have at work is an old machine, that had spent several years lurking in storage and gathering dust until we had cause to pull it out and dust it off. It is also quite fiddly trying to get it running smoothly. The thingies and doodads that are designed to guide the paper through the various bits all don't like to stay where they are adjusted to, so need continual tweaking. The edges don't always stream neatly off into the bin under the machine, and need to be prevented from getting caught up anywhere they don't belong (like wrapped around a roller). The bin needs emptying. New reams of paper need feeding in. The output tray needs emptying. The guides that encourage the separated sheets leaving the machine to land neatly in the output tray, without flipping over or becoming unsorted or anything, need to be adjusted as the tray fills up (if the output tray could be moved down as the machine ran, it would be much simpler, but it can't). And all this while running stuff through the machine as fast as possible. It's really quite fun trying to crank the speed knob all the way up, without having paper fly off. The knob goes up to 10, but the speed of the paper is not linearly related to the knob setting. 2 isn't much faster than 1, but 10 is quite a bit faster than 9. When I was first put on the burster, after a couple of runs to learn what the various adjustments do, I was able to push it up to 8 most of the time, and usually to 9, but going up to 10 would always cause something to go wrong within a few seconds, causing me to stop it and fix up the problem. So I could have just sat on 8 and got the work done reasonably fast. But where's the fun in that? Also, I wouldn't get any faster that way! Today, I was put back on the burster. And, I'm quite proud to announce that I have now mastered it. A full stack of ~250 pages, at speed 10, with every single page coming out in the right order, the right way up (at maximum speed, that takes a little under a minute). Burting paper may not be as much fun as playing with bubblewrap, but there aren't bubblewrap-popping machines that can be cranked up to unreasonably fast speeds, and possibly throwing a few sheets of paper across the room and having to put them back in order is a lot safer than driving really fast. | | Thursday, January 3rd, 2008 | | 8:40 pm |
Back in Adelaide
Left Canberra this morning. Arrived in Adelaide. Spent some time staring into space that wasn't moving past me. Now crawling into bed. I was hoping to see more of people before leaving, but it didn't happen. Ah well, next time. Also, if I don't say anything about SIV registration by the middle of next week, remind me that I need to talk to work and try to arrange time off. ETA: No time off, no SIV :( Silly silly me for not getting organised earlier. Even the week before christmas would have been early enough, but was I thinking enough to sort things out then? Noooo... | | Saturday, December 22nd, 2007 | | 8:18 am |
Vroom!
I'm on my way, from misery to happiness today (uh huh) Yeah, I'm on my way, from Adelaide to Melbourne today (uh huh uh huh uh huh uh huh) 2 days from now, I'm going to be in Canberra and this is getting silly, so I think I'll stop now I'll see some people today, some people later, and other people even later still! ETA: the "misery" was just because that's from the song. I wasn't really equating Adelaide life to misery. Really. | | Sunday, December 16th, 2007 | | 7:14 am |
Wanky legalese
Just when I thought that I'd seen enough pointless verbosity and circumlocution that it could no longer surprise me, I found this gem: The Within Lease No. _____ has EXPIRED by Effluxion of Time as Appears in Memorandum No. ____. It wasn't typed, or even hand-written. Someone had gone to the trouble of making up a rubber stamp to say this. How many times did they think they would use it? (I have only spotted one use so far, and my work has me looking through all the leases that would have passed through that office) Yep, the lessee did nothing to alter the time flux of approx. π×10 7 seconds per year through their property, and as a result, the lease expired. Probably just as well too. | | Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 | | 5:39 pm |
Random senseless
On the twelfth day of Christmas,  onceler21 sent to me... Twelve sopranos drumming Eleven snuggles piping Ten choristers a-singing Nine altos cuddling Eight sunsets a-roleplaying Seven choirs a-thinking Six mangoes a-reading Five bo-o-o-ooks Four sunrises Three corsets Two free hugs ...and a nihilism in a sexuality. I want more of most of them. Only 5 books? 4 sunrises? Eep, I didn't realise I was going to die so soon. Current Mood:  amused | | Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 | | 8:59 pm |
Musings
I type quite fast. Not lightning fast, but quite fast. However, I suspect that I have a different approach to typing than most people. For one thing, I taught myself to type before anyone else could teach me, so rather than learning to touch type "properly", I just use whatever finger happens to be closest to the key I want at the time. My hands don't roam as much as they used to - nowdays they rarely move more than a key or two from the standard positions - but they still move, and it seems almost as natural to type with my hands in strange places as when I keep them in the "right" positions. For another thing, I make mistakes. Fairly often. Standard theory of fast typing seems to be "Focus on accuracy, and only go as fast as you can without making mistakes. With practise, that'll get faster." I don't follow that theory. I've found that I get faster output by just going flat out as fast as I can, and correcting the mistakes that I make as I go. I would not go very well on a typewriter. I've tried the accuracy first theory periodically, for weeks at a time sometimes, but it never got as fast as just cranking the speed up to maximum, keeping an eye on the output, and correcting the mistakes as soon as they happen. Does anyone else do this? Am I wrong in my understanding of the "standard theory of fast typing"? Am I actually normal? Current Mood:  curious | | Wednesday, August 29th, 2007 | | 6:51 pm |
Have you seen my tux?
Last spotted about, um, a year ago, while I was still in Canberra. I haven't needed ( or looked for ) it since. Reward offered. Edit: To clarify, it's not a penguin I'm worried about. I can quite happily show up to a wedding without one of those... Current Mood: tuxless | | Friday, April 20th, 2007 | | 10:02 am |
LJ looks much better now...
on my brand new shiny monitor. I might even post here occasionally (but don't hold your breath) After my venerably 21" (19.7" viewable) sony crt died a few months ago, I had been using an ancient 15" crt that we had kicking around the shed here. 800x600 at 60Hz! Tiny screen! Pain! Now I have the twin joys of hugeness and lcdness. 22 inches of goodness, even. 1680x1050. I wasn't planning on quite such extravagence when I started looking, but it ended up costing less than I was expecting to pay for a 19" (I paid $385, if you're curious. Birthday money :) Current Mood:  ooh! shiny! | | Thursday, November 23rd, 2006 | | 10:29 pm |
To Canberra, to Canberra...
Because two friends are having a housewarming (and more!), and it's an excuse to visit them and others... I will be in Canberra from Friday 01 December (arriving at 16:30) to Monday 04 December (leaving on the 17:40 flight). Many thanks to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) naturalredhead and seagoon for providing somewhere for me to stay. Any and all wishing to catch up with me while I'm there are welcome to do so (in an organised or disorganised fashion). Current Mood:  good | | Thursday, August 3rd, 2006 | | 3:19 pm |
FAUCS is dead?
So, I'm starting to get settled in here. Most of my stuff is still in bags/boxes, as there is nowhere else for it to live, but the essentials (read: computer) are unpacked. I've half-sorted out Centrelink issues. I've applied for a few jobs. I've sworn at/redialed this stupid modem connection enough to finally get far enough down my list of "things to do online" to look up when and where AUCS/FUCS rehersals are. And I discover: They're both rehersing on Tuesday nights. I guess there are no FAUCS members any more... or one of them hasn't updated their website for a while ( The AUCS site looks mostly up-to-date, but the FUCS site looks like nobody's touched it for a while). Oh well. Perhaps I'll learn more when I show up to one of them next week. | | Wednesday, July 19th, 2006 | | 2:56 pm |
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