In The Navy

It's Spring. New things happen in Spring. Like no Ballard, who leaves on Tuesday for the Air Force. I don't like that new thing.
I do like my Spring theme thing though, and that's new.


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If you met yourself from the future, what would you ask your future self?
What if they wont tell you anything?


All Dressed Up and Somewhere to Go

I've noticed an interesting trend in holidays that end with a public holiday monday.
There's been a few over the years, an extra buffer day between a dreary sunday and a mournful morning where you realise A) your holidays are over again and B) you've wasted them terribly.
Those Monday's are always sunny. Blue skies, sunshine, warm air, bird's chittering. Even when it happens in the middle of winter. It's like time is mocking me; ensuring that the last memory I have of the holiday before I return to the daily grind is that of a beautiful, care free day that, given the nature of my holidays, I've spent indoors furiously working on assignments I've had all holidays to work on.
What's also good about it this time is that when you cram your entire week of classes into the first two days, getting Monday off is pretty sweet.

Off to Air Force

I first met Sam "Fish" Ballard in 1998. It was in the earliest of days during High School and, with both of us being shy, introverted types, we didn't exactly talk. He was Andy and Tim's friend.
I met him for the second time around the next day or so. I swore at him in german/gibberish as I left my German lesson and he entered his.

Ballard offically stopped being "Sam" around about 2001, at a time when MSN Messenger was in fashion but having crazy display names was not. Ballard was the better Sam and changed his name to Ballard. I have spent much time during the last 8 years with Ballard. We walked together a lot. Originally we used to both walk to the train station from school in the afternoons, and that then merged into walking home. I think the main reason I like Ballard is that he has never, ever done anything wrong by me. Which makes me feel kinda bad for the bad things I did to him, including the time I accidently broke his arm. Especially when all the times I was hidesouly drunk he actually looked out for me.

Ballard is joining the Air Force now, and all the jokes I made about it being the Navy haven't prevented this in any way. I will write him every day. I hope he finds it rewarding and that it is easier for him than finishing uni and getting a real job.

You are free, Ballard. Free.

gl;hf


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Weathering the Storm

I have been inside ALL day. I haven't even gone near an open door. It is assignment time and today was the kind of day that only makes your head hurt.
Yesterday… yesterday was much better.
Fantastic things first, I have to go back to uni after the break. Knowing my tendency to be particularly lazy when I'm in form, I set my alarm 10 minutes earlier than I normally would to make sure I got to uni on time for my demonstrating. I then conceded 10 more minutes of sleep because I knew I had to fill my car up with petrol on the way there.
Morning drops by and I'm awake… I'm awake I promise.
I shower, have breakfast and check the weather. 29 degrees: Oh yeah, t-shirt time. I pack my bag for uni and walk up to my car smiling in the sunlight.
"Why does this always happen to me?" I think, "I have two weeks of holidays and the day I finally have to go and sit inside for a whole day of classes it's sunny as. Why can't I spend more time outside?"
I sit down in my car, and it doesn't start. It's not going to start. It's making a bad noise. Nature obviously has a sense of humour.
I spend the next 30 minutes enjoying the sunshine as I steam up to the train station and then sit around waiting for a bus. I eventually get to my lab 30 minutes late and quite sweaty. I spend the rest of the day trying to do assignment work and thinking about what the hell is wrong with my car.
Ryan gives me a lift home and I call the RAA, who take 2 hours to arrive. He pops the bonnet and I fear the worst, this is not the first time this scenario has occurred and usually it costs me at least a quarter of a grand.
He decides to clean and replace a $5 battery terminal, tells me to start the car and it roars to life. This is good news, and I get in my car to go for a drive for 30 minutes to charge the battery.
I cruise around town, my window down, enjoying the dusk and the warm evening air blowing into my car. This is relaxing. Then I head over to Woolworths to buy some coolant because it needs topping up. There all my old friends are working a very big load due to the public holiday and I am not. I smile to myself as I re-enter the warm air with my coolant and decide I will hide from my assignments down at the beach. Even after midnight when I got home it was still a beautiful night, and my assignment worries had melted away like the chocolate and orange gelato I ate at the beach.

I guess my point is: why did the weather break my car if I could have enjoyed it just as much whilst driving in it?

I got the internet going nuts

Still Tippin' on four fours, wrapped in four fours
Tippin' on four fours, wrapped in four fours
Tippin' on four fours wrapped in four fours
Pimping four hoes and I'm packing four fours

I was listening to this Hollertronix EP that had a Diplo mash up of Britney Spears 'Toxic', a song I've loved ever since I got the Fashion Channel, with the lyrics of some song by Mike Jones. I had no idea who Mike Jones was, and after some quick Googling no one knew who Mike Jones was. So I downloaded his album: 'Who is Mike Jones?'

This guy is the most hilarious rapper I've heard since Shaq. Every second line in every song is either about Mike Jones or about Hoes. And when you consider that Mike Jones rhymes with 'Hoes', that's a hilarious problem.

I had two assignments due on Friday and another one due Monday morning. I was on track to finish all of those by the due date and right now I should be either playing cards and talking shit or passing out somewhere. Instead I have finished none of them because all of them got extended for, like, no reason. What the hell!? I wasted valuable time procrastinating just so I could have more time to procrastinate.
So instead I've spent my entire Saturday indoors listening to Mike Jones and creating a Conceptual Class Diagram. And after all that I still don't know who is Mike Jones?

I hate Homework

Friday Night: Kick shoes off
Monday Morning: Untie laces, put shoes on

Fully Charged

I recharged my phone credit today.

After I broke up with Lori I vowed never to date someone just for the sake of dating them again. This is probably the kind of time management skill that comes naturally to most people but I was probably slightly naive at the time.
It was an amusing break up (for me), where I called her and my phone ran out of batteries half way through, just as she started crying. As the phone beeped mournfully over her tears I told her I would call her on the home phone real quick to finish her off. So I ran to the kitchen and didn't bother to turn the light on, just sprinted towards the phone. In my zeal I knocked it out of the charger and it plummeted towards the linoleum floor and smashed into about five pieces, which I had to then find and reassemble. This took about 10 minutes and when I finally did call her back she was still crying and I think the main point I made was that I would drop some of her stuff back at her house later in the week.

The next day, before work, I bought a recharge card to put $30 credit onto my phone to replenish the $50 I’d spent in the last three months communicating with her - after all, she wasn’t that bad a girl. At that point, however, as I waited for the voice to confirm that my service balance had been updated I was gifted with an idea. From that point on every time I started dating a girl I would buy $30 credit for my phone. If, by the point it was almost time to recharge again, I didn’t really feel like there was a reason for me to continue being involved in the relationship I would use the remaining credit to call the girl and break up with her.

This was a good strategy, and it was particularly effective because if the girl was too clingy for me and SMS/called me too often I would use my credit up faster and the whole process was more efficient. It worked for a while, and it just confirmed that feeling things was not for me. A month ago I purchased credit when/and then started hanging out with Tegan. And today it came time to recharge again. So, yeah, I doubt I’m going to see Tegan any time soon... But only because she has Bronchitis or something at the moment... I already miss her...

G.O.B.: My God, what is this feeling?
Michael: You know the feeling that you’re... that you’re feeling is what many of us call "a feeling."

And Then my Teeth Fell Out

Fully Charged was a slightly ironic title for yesterday's entry given the nature of events today.
I got about five hours sleep last night, and woke up slightly early and feeling pretty tired just before 10am. I showered and ate breakfast and then approached my car which, despite being charged by the RAA last night, had a flat battery. After getting a jump start from my friendly neighbour I got to uni 10 minutes late. My two hour lab dragged on excessively but thankfully my Data Mining tute was thirty minutes shorter than usual. This gave me the opportunity to have a power nap on the grass for half an hour, basking in the sun.
Then I went to English and did the E-Publishing exercise. That finished early too, so it was back to the grass for me but this time with a curry pie and Ryan instead of a nap.
After the SE2 tute I went to start my car and my battery was flat again. Giving up, I called the RAA and got them to come to uni and give me a new battery. I got home before 6 and sat down in front of my Data Mining report, due Wednesday at 5pm and 3000 words short of finished. It was going to be a long night. I yawned and decided it was time for another power nap. So I passed out on my bed for an hour and then got up and drove to the store, for recharging.
I wanted to buy like 8 Red Bulls to help pump me up for the night. Except on the side of the can it said "do not take more than 2 within 24 hours". The V things said the same thing, as did this crazy "Wild" drink. So I said fine and just bought 2 of each of them. Stupid restrictions.
Armed with those drinks and a packet of M&Ms I set about giving myself energy and completing the report that had been charged to me. This involved drinking a lot of energy drinks. It's 7am right now, and I still haven't slept. I also haven't finished my report, but I've just got a conclusion and proofreading to do so I think its ok for me to go to sleep now for a bit and then I’ll have some more Red Bull’s and finish it.
The Red Bulls were supposed to help me concentrate, because I get so distracted when I'm trying to do homework. The first one worked pretty well but by the time I got to the second one I'd had two V's, a Wild and the M&Ms and therefore was already pretty jumpy. So it didn't focus me quite as I hoped. Still, I played FreeCell like a motherfucker possessed and in about 20 minutes I won 24 lost 2. Which coincidently corresponds to the amount of time I’ve spent awake and asleep in the last 26 hours.

Concluding

It's 4:34am and I have just completed my last assignment for a while. And by 'a while' I mean for the next week. I swear, in the last three weeks every time I've woken up I've either had to start an assignment that day or I'd smacked my face on my keyboard after passing out staying up all night working on assignments.

So I've written lots of conclusions, and come to a lot of conclusions. Tonight's: Recharge by Sprite is shit and I have none of the associated energy or nausea that drinking six red bulls provided me the other evening. Of course when I say "evening" I of course literally mean "morning", but oh well. Mark, if you stumble upon my ramblings while marking my essay next week and you read this, please keep in mind: my essay was thought out and well researched and the only reason this might make it seem like a last minute job is because I just needed to put some final touches on it before handing it up and I spent most of the night winning basketball and then watching Gus, Benno, Jimmy et al playing basketball competitively for the first time since Primary School and then laughing about it. (Team members listed in order of commenting on my journal).

Also tonight, in other news, I was checking out the Internet archive and I decided to see if any of the last eight months of this site had been archived:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://bradism.com

Only to discover that for a fair while a couple of years ago some other guy called Brad has this domain registered. It was some scary stuff there for a moment; like going down into your basement to find some photos of last Christmas and discovering the corpse of some native Indians.

Brad, if you're reading this, I laughed a little bit about the concept of your cat pooping itself into nothingness over two days.

Sundays

For the first day in weeks I had nothing planned. I mean, obviously there are assignments due in a few weeks that I could be doing but... just why start now? Especially when I could be programming random junk all day instead.

Last night I went to a few places, the best of which was Benno's 21st. I saw so many people there from High School. Gus (who was pleased to have been mentioned on Thursday), Jimmy, Benno (obviously), Chow, Cheezel and some other people from Woolworths and stuff. But there is one person who I really have to mention I met. Hang Ten! He was sitting at the bar as part of a different group and he recognised me and I recognised him sort of (you know...) and we had a good chat. Oh man. And then Chow talked to him and I was so happy.

Later, Josh climbed up multiple stories to the top of a crane after jumping over the barrier into a construction site. From the top, he peed off it. That was pretty hilarious too.

I Can't Believe I Haven't Got Rid of this Colour Scheme Yet

I got out of bed in time for ITP and slid my pants on, then found a shirt.
Later, during breakfast, I was preparing to reach over and grab a pair of socks when I felt it: warmth. This caused trepidation. My foot was already at the right temperature, I was comfortable. By putting on socks I would be increasing that temperature. That could lead to discomfort.

I looked down at my legs, beacons of denim. I glanced at my shoe drawer, then at my calendar. Mid October... ‘Dare I’... I hesitated... ‘Dare I wear thongs?’

Oh, I wore thongs. And Jeans. This just exemplifies me. I'm proud enough to be stubborn and support my decisions, but I'm also grounded enough to learn from my mistakes and adapt. My tutour later heard me say this to Ryan and I think he rolled his eyes, which was pretty impressive...

Later tonight, while eating tea, I decided to take those jeans off and wear shorts instead. That was even after the sun had gone down. Yep, summer is on its way. Like I couldn't tell by all the freaking bugs.

I Am Sorry, Sam

This is me pointing at you in my mind as I drive past you waiting at the Bus Stop.

If I had seen you earlier and been in the left lane I would have pulled over and picked you up. Instead I was watching some old dude pulling an unwilling child across the road at the pedestrian crossing and wondering if he was the kids Grandfather.

Then I used my awesome traffic light reflexes to accelerate as soon as it went green because today when I woke up at my normal time I pressed snooze even though I shouldn't have and I had to have a quick shower. My quick showers aren't exactly quick, they just involve less standing around trying to wake up than most mornings. Time was of the essence!

But anyway, why did you have to stand there, leaning against the bus stop looking both apathetic and forlorn at the same time. You must have seen me stopped at the lights. You could have run up to the car and jumped in. Instead I'm sitting there in my car the whole way down the hill to uni thinking about you still standing at the bus stop and feeling bad.

If it makes you feel better, I was once leaving Uni and saw Dave sitting at the bus stop near the car park and he saw me driving. I slowed down as if I was going to give him a lift, but when he went to stand up I just shook my head sadly and drove off.

Updating in my Sleep

My dreams often have B Plots

Everytime I watch Deal or No-Deal the Guy Always Loses Badly

I slept 12 hours, today. This might explain why for the first time in a month I have nothing to add to my journal.

I would say that I will never mix banana with porridge again, except I discovered that at about 1am. Sorry to let you down, Internet. Let me just test a theory that there is a certain length of journal entry that is optimal for receiving comments. I should Data Mine this...

(note to self: implement :raise: smiley)

I'm on so many Drugs

I think I'm getting procrastination down to an art.
I set today out to be completely wasted on homework. This starts at midday when I get out of bed. The next six hours are spent with a near blank word document open while I do anything but homework. Play FreeCell, watch whatever cricket is on TV, browse Internet. Once or twice, while I wait for something to load usually or possibly during an ad break, I will add a little note or structure heading to my "assignment". Eventually dinner will occur and I'll watch a TV show for 40 minutes while I eat that. Soon it's getting late and I realise that I've spent the whole day doing nothing. This planned sin then guilts me into spending the next few hours writing madly, paragraph after paragraph, until I reach a stage where I'm happy with my days output after all. Then I go to bed.

This also helps me conserve petrol.

I can't smell anything, I can't taste anything, my ears are blocked and playing 'Drop the Pressure' only helped the tiniest bit. I feel sick. At least my eyes are still working.

Why do I always get awesome FreeCell runs on days I have Assignments?

Still sick.
I blew my nose so often and so hard that it started bleeding.
I filled up with petrol today for the first time since Ballard left. One tank lasted 20 days. That's pretty good!

At the moment my 4000 word ITP report only has one reference, and it's from my first year psychology textbook. Of course I've only written 1000 words so there's still plenty of room to find more references, perhaps I'll cover first year Modern History sources and first year Creative Writing readings when I discuss integration issues for new information systems.
It's pretty bad considering this topic alone has three relevant textbooks assigned to it. Of course, I haven't purchased a textbook since first year when I was naive. Tomorrow I think I will have to bite the bullet and go to Uni Books during my break and read some of them in the corner and write down page numbers for references without paying for them.

In The Bag

Writing a 3000-5000 word research report for only 10 marks is such a lame thing to do. Especially when you feel spastic because you can't make any information come out of the internet about it. I've lost my ability to use Google properly, probably because my brain is struggling to conquer the myriad of diseases I'm subjected to. I think I have bird flu.
It's not like it helps that the keywords for my report are about the most ambiguous words ever:
"System, implementation, issues, computer - I wonder if I'll find anything about that on the Internet...”
So with a half done research essay with a desperate need for some research (and by research I mean references) I had to resort to going to the library.
The library makes me feel sad. It's full of so many books, and seriously, who is ever going to read this stuff? It's so boring! I just scan for bits that back up what I made up in my report at 2am the night before and jot them down.
Nevertheless I hired three books, and as I walked out of the library I remarked to Ryan "Don't panic, this research report is in the bag".

Also I might need to purchase a new bag soon.

Working

I'm getting used to making information systems that no one will ever use. I knocked this up so far in like less than 8 hours of work.
But today wasn't a totally nerdy waste... I also downloaded some episodes of Earth 2.
Oh yeah, only test with Phillip Banks and Will Smith.

Edit: And record how much time you test it for, I will use that for the WBS.

You Haven't Done Something Unless You've Done it Twice

I made that saying up today, and apart from that I did a lot of work... and a fair bit of coughing too! I think I'll see my doctor tommorow.

So to make up for the lacklustre day, here's a summary of my normal life, both online and in the real world:

Clicky



Mess with some dudes.



Awkwardly interact with opposite sex.


Is Breakfast the Most Important Meal of the Day?

They say Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and usually I agree. Since Passions stopped airing I haven't been quite the breakfast man I once was. But I still eat breakfast every day of the week.

Not today though, there was no time after I didn't get to sleep until 0630 due to assignments. I only got five hours sleep and woke up with just enough time to shower before I had to go and demonstrate. So, I skipped breakfast.
Despite not eating for thirteen hours I was actually very alert and didn't notice the hunger at all. To boot, I also wrote a 1200 word summary report for my ITP assignment during the lab at a pace that my home assignment work would lust after. So this raises some serious scientific questions!

My first bite of the day eventually came after 3pm when I grabbed a ham and cheese roll from Coles. But this was no ordinary roll. It was like, half hot-dog half pizza and it was totally worth $2. Respect!

Receiving a Large Sun

Six months ago my meteorologist recommended I put some daylight away into savings for a while. I was initially against this, as it was turning May and daylight was starting to be in short supply in the Brad household. Nevertheless I heeded his advice in lieu of arriving at events an hour early for six months.
Last night I made the call and said "It's time to check on my investment".
Boy has it gained interest! It's 8pm and there's glare. Summer is on its way and I have almost shaken the following diseases: conjunctivitis, tonsillitis, it degree, acute sinusitis.

Ah Shit

"Alright Bradley, you think you're so much smarter than the rest of society, you can do this".

This is what I told myself as I attempted to drain and flush the coolant system in my car. Did it need fucking around with? No, no it did not. Does it need fucking around with now? Yes, yes it does.

There's still grease on my hands though, I feel both more masculine and stupid despite the whole event. I suppose that's appropriate really.