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First Day At Work

2004-12-06T12:28:17Z

Well my first day was alright. Got in a bit early. Had the tour. Met everyone. Started setting up my PC but the Tech guy started today too, so I couldn't do some stuff. Read through the docs on the product I'm going to be maintaining. Had a bit of a fiddle with a server running the software. It's an Internet Service Monitor if anyone cares, tracking response times and availability of most types of servers.

Parking isn't really available there (or at least not to newbies - like me), so it's $8 a day for city parking. I think I'll just stick with the train and CAT bus at least til March, when my concession expires. There's a nice looking food court nearby too, where a lot of the guys go to buy their lunch. Free juice and coke too =)

Stayed back for like 15 mins extra for a quick game of CS with the other guys ;)

"All I've ever wanted was an honest week's pay for an honest day's work" -Steve Martin

The End.

2004-11-24T14:33:25Z

Yup that's right. Unless I manage to fail something - which hasn't happened yet - my university days are now over. Except for graduation, which is in February. I had my last exam yesterday and my project's poster presentation this evening. I can't believe the four years has gone so quickly =(

Now I've got a week and a half left until I start work!

"It's over! ... Now is that a good thing or a bad thing?"

Work and Parties

2004-10-17T14:22:52Z

Which File Extension are You?

Well things are looking pretty good for me lately, uni is nearly over, I'm progressing fairly well on my FTP client/server assignment (just managed to send a file correctly) and I have a job starting in December! I'm going to be working to produce network management software that rather large companies use, like Citibank. Davina also has a job now, which she starts tomorrow. Working at Rick Hart, doing something with administration. She's happy about finally getting a job =)

Davina and I have been to a couple of 21sts lately. We went to Bomberman's like two weeks ago, for a Goths 'n' Gangstas party, which was cool. Dressing up as goths was almost too much fun ;) We also went to Richard's at the Sapphire Bar last night, didn't stay long because we didn't know anyone but the place seemed really cool - not to mention Subiaco in general. Going to Nathan's next week too, on Tanya's birthday because she's working all Saturday...

"There is only one video game, Minesweeper be thy name."

Aww I wanna be a *nix

2004-09-23T06:54:59Z

Which OS are You?

"Who the heck is Wince?"
"Nevermind, I get it. WinCE"

Avast! It be Talk Like a Pirate Day!

2004-09-19T04:41:31Z

Top 10 pirate pickuplines
10. Avast, me proud beauty! Wanna know why my Roger is so Jolly?
9. Have ya ever met a man with a real yardarm?
. Come on up and see me urchins.
7. Yes, that is a hornpipe in my pocket and I am happy to see you.
6. I'd love to drop anchor in your lagoon.
5. Pardon me, but would ya mind if I fired me cannon through your porthole?
4. How'd you like to scrape the barnacles off of me rudder?
3. Ya know, darlin', I'm 97 percent chum free.
2. Well blow me down?
1. Prepare to be boarded.

Aye Aye Net Are also in on the spirit =)

"Be ye' a scurvy landlubber or a swashbucklin' seadog?"

Still Here

2004-09-13T08:24:15Z

Well my posts on here seem to be getting more and more infrequent. Either I'm getting bored of LJ or I spend a lot less time bored in front of my computer. *shrugs*

I missed out on going paintballing again last weekend, minimum cost this time was $100 since we asked to play with just our friends. Sadly, I don't have $100 as the clutch on my car was recently fixed and I spent a lot of money on that. Went and visited Sheena and Philip afterwards anyway, told Karen to have a good 21st since she and Richard were there too.

Went to Courtenay's 21st (fellow SE from uni) after that. Imagine that, me going to not one place but two on a Saturday night. Spent a good couple of hours standing round and talking with the other guys from uni who were there. Court's friend gave a good speech about all the pain Court's inflicted on him over their many years of knowing each other. A very drunk cousin also gave a rather slurred speech (I forget about what). It was pretty cold that night, but we amused and warmed ourselves with a small fire (in a brazier type thing). I even had a couple of drinks - toblerone, Kaluha, Bailey's and slushy ice stuff - tasted really good. I'm told that drunk cousin emptied a whole bottle of Wild Turkey in there too at some stage.

In other news, uni is almost over for me. Just a couple more weeks to finish off and a set of exams to match. I've started applying for a job or two in Perth (and one in Redmond, Washington with M$), but not had any feedback yet...

"They have orange juice ads with lesbians and dildos!" - Eurotrip

Back in Two Weeks

2004-07-09T03:15:44Z

Lego Is Awesome

2004-07-06T15:11:08Z

Everyone and I mean EVERYONE should go and watch this short film immediately: http://www.spiteyourface.com/spidey.html It's an awesome take on Spiderman 2 using Lego characters =)

"Rubadubdub"

Is Green, Is Good

2004-06-26T13:57:01Z

Just been to see Shrek 2, was just as funny as the first. I love the giant gingerbread man =) Reminds me of how cool the Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters was. Ugh... Sneezing fits aren't nice...

"I've just realised: I can't be bothered typing..."

Funny Joke: Battle of the Sexes

2004-06-26T13:52:52Z

Let the story begin....

I never quite figured out why the sexual urges of men and women differ so much. And I never figured out the whole Venus and Mars thing. I have never figured out why men think with their head and women think with their heart. I have never figured out why the sexual desire gene gets thrown into a state of turmoil, when it hears the words "I do."

FOR EXAMPLE: One evening last week, my wife and I were getting into bed. Well, the passion starts to heat up, and she eventually says, "I don't feel like it, I just want you to hold me."

I said "WHAT!!! What was that?!"

So she says the words that every husband on the planet dreads to hear... "You're just not in touch with my emotional needs as a woman enough for me to satisfy your physical needs as a man." She responded to my puzzled look by saying, "Can't you just love me for who I am and not what I do for you in the bedroom?"

Realising that nothing was going to happen that night I went to sleep.

The very next day I opted to take the day off of work to spend time with her. We went out to a nice lunch and then went shopping at a big, big unnamed department store. I walked around with her while she tried on several different very expensive outfits. She couldn't decide
which one to take so I told her we'll just buy them all! She wanted new shoes to compliment her new clothes, so I said lets get a pair for each outfit. We went to the jewelry department where she picked out a pair of diamond earrings. Let me tell you, she was so excited. She must have thought I was one wave short of a shipwreck. I started to think she was testing me because she asked for a tennis bracelet when she doesn't even know how to play tennis. I think I threw her for a loop when I said, "That's fine, honey." She was almost nearing sexual satisfaction from all of the excitement.

Smiling with excited anticipation she finally said, "I think this is All dear, lets go to the cashier."

I could hardly contain myself when I blurt out, "No honey, I don't feel like it."

Her face just went completely blank as her jaw dropped with a baffled "WHAT??!!!"

I then said "Really honey! I just want you to HOLD this stuff for a while. You're just not in touch with my financial needs as a man enough for me to satisfy your shopping needs as a woman." And just when she had this look like she was going to kill me I added, "Why can't you just love me for who I am and not for the things I buy you?"

Apparently I won't be having sex again until sometime after pigs fly over a frozen hell while monkeys fly out her bum.

War is Hell

2004-06-21T03:17:52Z

Oh how I ache.

I was running around in a crouch all of yesterday, holding a fairly heavy gun and I had a rather large mask on. No I haven't joined a terrorist cell or started a string of robberies. I went paintballing yesterday! Along with Philip and his mates from work, Ashley, Davina, Sheena and Karen. We played against some other guys who were there in a heap of different games - like capture the flag, assaulting a fort, speedball (or speedflag), elimination, etc.

It was great fun, despite the other guys cheating a bit and being bad sports. I copped a couple of nice bruises: in my thigh, a pair in the top of the head and Ashley got me good on the back of my shoulder when I was on his team(!). I managed to get hit right in the mouthguard area of the mask. Paint doesn't taste nice. The paintballs themselves are rather hard to the touch, but you can manage to squish them with your fingers. They also move at 280 feet/second (about 85 meters/second), so you can see them coming.

It's fairly expensive though, with $55 to start out with 200 rounds, which go fairly quickly. I went through 400 or so rounds over the course of the day. A couple of guys went thirds in a box of 2500 rounds for $230 all up. I think next time we should get like 20 people together and then all buy boxes together, say in fifths (500 rounds each after your inital 200) or whatever people decide they'll need.

Now to wait out my exam on Friday...

"If paintballs are as scary as this, imagine what real bullets are like."

ACHTUNG!

2004-06-11T14:30:15Z

"ACHTUNG!

grim-one may actually be a spider-human hybrid

From Go-Quiz.com

Just a Funny Quote

2004-03-31T10:41:48Z

Copied from bash.org:

once upon a midnight dreary, while i pron surfed, weak and weary, over many a strange and spurious site of ' hot xxx galore'. While i clicked my fav'rite bookmark, suddenly there came a warning, and my heart was filled with mourning, mourning for my dear amour, " 'Tis not possible!", i muttered, " give me back my free hardcore!"..... quoth the server, 404.

http://www.bash.org/?120296

Late Nights Already

2004-03-26T18:19:31Z

Well semester hasn't even half gone and I'm up at 2:15am working on an assignment. Admittedly it's due in a fortnight. But it's bloody intricate.

DES Encryption and Decryption, involving a 64 bit key (which becomes 16 subkeys), arbitray data sizes (broken into 64 bit blocks), 16 cycles of manipulation per data block, each with LOTS of little steps. Go look up the DES algorithm and you'll see what I mean.

I've been going step by step through the WHOLE thing with Brendan, comparing our respective outputs at every stage. We've both had bits wrong and he JUST managed to decrypt something i encrypted. Now to see if I can decrypt something he encrypts...

"Q: Why do coders mix up Halloween and Christmas? A: Because oct(31) == dec(25)"

My Friends Page Looks So Sad

2004-03-24T13:36:13Z

Just so there's something on my friend's page (yes I'm on my own friend's list)...

Uni eats up so much damn time with final year projects...

"I can see many sleepless nights ahead - even before mid-semester."

Damn Timetablers

2004-03-08T00:16:13Z

Don't you just hate it when you have a one-hour day? I know I do...
And tomorrow I need to be at uni for 10am, but I work until like 9:30am =\

"<Insert witty quote here>"

Much Music

2004-02-08T09:31:50Z

Well this weekend's been fairly exciting compared to my usual stuff. I went to TWO concerts! Both free too!

The first was on Friday night at Joondalup, they had The Cat Empire (of Hello fame) playing at the night markets for some reason. They put on a really good show, dancing and jumping about while playing/singing and getting the crowd involved too - everyone there seemed to really enjoy it. I love their upbeat jazzy music - was very tempted to buy their album then and there, but cash is a bit short this week.

Last night I went to Wanneroo's Live'04 free concert to see Regurgitator - one of my all-time favourite groups. The whole thing went from 3pm til 8:30pm and I had no idea when the 'gurg was gonna be on. So to avoid missing them we rocked up at 2:30pm and hung around listening to the fairly amateurish Icarus and Extorshya (or something) in the Battle of the Bands. Then last year's BotB winner came on, with Downsyde after that. Got bored so we went home for like an hour and came back just as Downsyde was finishing. Ran into Brendan who had pretty much just turned up too.

Don't know what was going on but Regurgitator's performance wasn't that great. Their guitars were overpowering the vocals, and they were missing all the high pitched electronic type noises usually in their songs. They played a lot of new stuff, all seems to be guitar-thrashing punk rock. For their encore they did a version of Fat Cop, but they didn't know how to play it on guitar, so they ended up getting someone out of the crowd to play it. Then the vocalist goes and forgets the words halfway through?! Was a fairly big disappointment, but not a total loss, they managed to pull a few songs off well. I'm thinking maybe someone left the group who handled a lot of stuff, or they rely really heavily on after-effects for their recordings... **shrugs**

Anyway, today I've been coding up Java and JSP for the project at uni. Not really exciting stuff, but we're making headway on it. I've got a basic thing or two implemented and working now. =)

"Let's do a song we can remember the words to now..."

On Track

2004-01-23T14:15:22Z

Well my project at uni is going well. A few people aren't showing up as often as they should, but when we have meetings we get stuck into the problems at hand and come up with (good!) solutions. We've planned about another week of design to go and then we're moving onto implementation of the system. The actual phone side of things is still hazy about how exactly we can do it though. =\

Went to Mandurah for a few days and bummed around the Atrium hotel. Had a nice relaxing time of just doing very little and reading a heck of a lot =)

"Random Link of the Day: http://drivemeinsane.com/ - turn this guy's lights on and off over the web."

Another Short Set of Holidays

2004-01-07T11:00:51Z

Well after having the whole family here for Christmas and New Year's at Andrew's place, my holidays are basically over now. I've started work on a project at uni with a few of my fellow Software Engineers, which is pretty full-on. I won't say exactly what we're building for fear of spies tho ;)

I got a graphics tablet for Christmas! I've only really started colouring someone else's sketches so far tho, and that's turning out to be very slow going. In other news I'm moving away from my current gateway setup for the internet, having purchased a modem/router and a dedicated Linux box for file/web serving. Trying to get my PCI ADSL modem working was so much pain I've splashed out on a modem/router.

"You can't solve all problems by throwing money at them."

I Have A Knack...

2003-12-09T15:31:14Z

...for filling my holidays with unpaid work at uni. Had a handover meeting for the Motorola Resource Management system to a new group yesterday and met up with the head of Curtin Advantage and the Project Manager of Motorola's Perth site. I'm gonna be starting up a new company to develop software for 3G phones =) Just me and a fellow Software Eng. mate involved at the moment, trying to come up with ideas. So if you know any really useful ideas for a mobile device capable of video, audio, images (has a camera), text and 300kbps speeds on the internet: let me know ;)

Oh and I got a nice payout from the jewellery company who also won the Young Achievement Australia 'Company of the Year' Nationally. Yay!

"No holidays for Grim"

Strange Insect

2003-12-07T03:30:00Z

Was out in the garden (!!!) for a little bit this morning, when I heard this strange, loud, intermittent buzzing. Looked around a bit and saw a bug flying round the flowers nearby. Got a bit closer and saw that it was a blue bee. A big fat bee, with blue and black stripes and loads of pollen on its back legs. I've never seen one of them before. Mum suggested it was a native bee and after a quick google I came up with this: Blue Banded Bee (Amegilla). The picture doesnt show the blue bands too well (I guess because they're iridescent?) but they were a rather bright, light blue.

"How weird is that? Anyone else seen one?"

OK I Need Some Help

2003-11-27T10:25:09Z

This picture has me pulling my hair out. One minute there's 12 people, the next there's 13. Where the heck does the 13th guy come from?!?!

Arggghhhh!!

"Don't you have better things to do with your time?" "No."

Two Months Between Updates

2003-11-25T02:25:25Z

That's gotta be a record for me =\

End of Semester

2003-11-25T02:24:33Z

Well as everyone already knows (but I need to write about something, the obvious being the easiest) exams are over and the semester with them. One year left. Then I get to actually make some money (hopefully). Probably going to start a bit of a business up with the Curtin Advantage group at uni - developing third party applications for 3G mobile phones would you believe it? The lady in charge is in talks with Motorola and Hutchinson last I heard, negotiating for them to supply us with phones and support for their network respectively.

"Let the LANs roll!"

grim_one @ 2003-09-25T23:02:00

2003-09-25T15:02:42Z