For the first two years of uni, straight after the ETSA days of 50 hours a week, rise at 6:45am, poo at work to conserve whatever free time you can, things were good. Uni provided a way of life that you could take advantage of, sleep in, stay up late. Get drunk every weekend and play computer games every afternoon.
In Second year things didn't change. It was still evident that only the barest amount of work, with a good dash of innovation, would not only provide passing marks, but admirable results for all subjects. Playing computer games all day got boring, but skipping classes and sleeping into the afternoon never did. Life was just easy. In every week there was usually at least one day where you woke up and you knew from that moment there wasn't a single thing you needed to do before you went to bed again.
By now, in third year, we're not just enjoying the system, not taking advantage of it. We're openly mocking it. Gone are the days of skipping the lectures, these days the tutorials are also passed over in favour of sleeping or just not driving the 10kms down the hill. There are people out there stressing about assignments and desperately trying to comprehend the course at the same time (lol Dave). Meanwhile I set my alarm for a lecture on the other side of my room loud enough to be heard from the far side of the house and it's not even completely tuned to the station and when I wake up I just go back to sleep with it on. I'm sure it's got something to do with the amount of practice i have at sleeping. I don't take assignments seriously, I just assume that they'll get done alright, do them half-assed at the last minute and get distinctions for them. I know I'm not a genius, it's because the whole exercise is laughable.
Tomorrow I have another day of nothing, and I'll try and enjoy it, because eventually the joke won't be funny anymore. And that moment is coming up way to soon.

Town is very different when you're completely sober. I might explain this tommorow when I'm not sleepy.

Today was a very productive day, which is probably related to the sober evening last night. It was a day where everything slotted in between each other. I actually was on the winning side in a sport today, finally. I think basketball, cricket and football have all been very dissapointing for me lately. It was only the obscure promise of Cowan's that I might make my triumphant return to mixed netball sometime in the near future that kept me believing I might one day enjoy victorious satisfaction again.
Before tonight the last win I had in basketball was against the white team on thursday night when they only had four. Tonight I was on a white team and we only had four, and we still won by six points. That was despite the other team getting a 20 point bonus as well. I was finally satisfied with a win.
It's holidays very soon. Like this time last year, I don't deserve them yet, I've barely started this semester. However I have about three assignments to finish before the 15th and I'm actually slightly afraid that the spree of assignments and then exams might extend from when I wake up tommorow until the start of summer. This is disturbing for me because I don't like doing work or having to think to hard and Summer doesn't start until halfway through November. (Academically obviously, not the actual season).

Hi Internet.
My fears have been confirmed. There are assignments to do. A stream of them. Bad times are ahead.
For the moment I am working on my Writing and Designing for the Web project. It's an English topic.

It's due on Friday, so if you have time click that link and leave any comments about the design or content, hey, that'd be cool. Not all the links work yet. But the most important one does, and that's the one called 'Titled Document' that leads to the final version of the crazy language educational tool I developed and boasted about earlier. There's now a secret, hidden game inside!

Today I did get down to Marion for a spare moment and I picked up 'Good News for People Who Like Bad News' for $13 and 'Antics' for $19. I've been listening to these CD's for ages, and they're both great. I feel it's only right to support the artists that I enjoy... when they're on special.

I haven't gotten a single comment on my journal all this month.
Thanks a lot everyone, the Internet probably thinks I'm a loser now.
I hope people are more receptive to the idea of saying a speech at my 21st on Saturday.
People should be talking about me!

Anyway today was a write off. I played basketball for about 30 minutes before twisting my ankle. Then I had to drive to the city and back. I'm thinking about converting my car to run on actual money because I think that would be cheaper than filling it with petrol at the moment.

Then the rest of the evening was spent fighting the distraction of cricket and ankle pain so I could complete my Invisible Flinders project. At least it's done now. It's kind of like a big journal entry :).

Stupid software just told me 'journal body cannot be blank'. What kind of loser wrote this thing?

Whilst procrastinating today about ITP assignments I played some FreeCell. Also this!

I think I've broken my wrist. It got hit on Saturday, and by Saturday night it got really swollen. However on Saturday afternoon I was on an extended diet of Panadeine Forte, Red-Bull, Powerade and then a lot of beer. This basically meant that instead of noticing the pain I just showed everyone I could my giant wrist.
Sunday afternoon I woke up and tested it, and it seemed fine. The next day I even went to the gym for like 2 hours and it was fine. But since then the swelling has got bigger, the pain has got more intense and putting ice on it makes it hurt (consistent with my other break). Me, I blame the assloads of homework and assignments I have typed up in the past four days.
You see Uni? You see what you do to me? I am not cut-out for this physical stuff.
All tonight I have been trying to download the season premiere of House. I've finally got it downloading, in Azureus of all things. I haven't used this client since last year.
It's so weird, not being able to download a show from the internet at whim. It feels like 2001 again.
I hope House is about some guy's sore wrist. It really, really hurts :(.

Typing this entry didn't help either!

I don't know if searching Google for articles relating to the Ethics of Data Mining for prevention of terrorism counts as much homework, but I did print off an article and put it next to my keyboard.
Later in the day I put my feet up on the desk and crumpled it. But I did read it!
In reality, the only productive thing I did today was add a "Use Yesterday's Date" feature to the journal. Before today it was either "Use Today's Date" or drop down boxes for day, month and year.
Half-arsed analysis of my journaling habits will reveal that this button will save me a lot of time not using drop down menus. Time that I can use efficiently to complete assignments... and will more than likely not use to complete assignments.

Arrested Development Season 3 started today.

The statistics are in.
Drop-Outs in Connection in past 48 hours: 960
Longest Period of Connectivity: 41 minutes

So having no internet for a week means my stats are up elsewhere:

Total:
Won: 177
Lost: 31

Streaks:
Wins: 29
Losses: 4
Current: 1 loss

That last line is, of course, what brings me here: writing a journal entry in Microsoft Word. An entirely different content management system to the one I wrote. It feels strange writing on this fake blank piece of paper instead of my Timmy adorned journal entry form. Not just because Word keeps telling me that things are fragments and I should consider revising.
The difference is that in Word it feels more like no one will ever read this. On the site I feel that people, or at least Internet, will read it. Seeing that I pretty much only use Word for short stories and writing Uni Assignments I suppose this feeling makes sense.
Unlike Word, which I am taunting with fragments now, Microsoft Visio is a fun program. Somewhere between games of FreeCell I have found the time to use it to make activity diagrams and some part of making flow charts truly appeals to my quaint instinct to make pretty, smart looking diagrams. So my life hasn’t quite been so sad and pathetic lately, with both FreeCell and assignments getting done. Not bad when you consider I’ve also won about 30 games of Minesweeper.

Progress on my Data Mining research report, titled “Roddick: You Made this Subject Up”, is also coming along nicely.

I think I might have fixed my internet. Yet another hardware problem on my system that can be fixed by just physically abusing the source of the problem. That's the reason that my router is dangling by it's cords off the side of my desk at the moment. Being closer to the cool, brick wall where it may experience closer-to-earth chilly drafts is helping it not over-heat, which apparently was the reason I was getting disconnected almost every 3 minutes.

My Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery research report is coming along nicely. I haven't actually written anything, but I have about 15 paragraphs cut out and put under different headings so it will pretty much write itself. What would be awesome is if I could write a data mining algorithm that would mine the web and produce research reports for me. That way I could do both assignments at once.

So yeah, my report titled "Roddick, you made this subject up" is not really real. It's actually about privacy and ethics or something. My research led me to this website that pretty much sums up what I feared about data mining.

Quote:
Data-mining is an untested idea that uses algorithms applied to massive amounts of data

It wasn't actually hard to find this page in Google, just search for "Data Mining" and click on the first link that isn't a paper written by Roddick

And by Christ I hope his constant data mining doesn't turn up this site. I'm now slightly pleased I didn't test to see if this site works in Safari.

Do not drive anywhere.

It was Martin's 21st tonight. Happy Birthday Martin.
There were free drinks. I'm going to feel sick when I wake up.
The price I pay to entertain my friends...
I guess I'm kind of like Jesus.

PS I am sorry that Tegan broke your chair.