mazzanet's Lair

I have more time to blog during the term than the holidays. Now that's just crazy.
Haven't gotten up to much the part few days. Mainly spent my time at work either doing minor work on the new planetarium, IRCing, eating or explaining that someone is trying to rip them off (note: 12 port LAN switches don't cost $350).
During my recent lunch breaks, I discovered the perfect hotdog. From Donut King, I've given up totally on Wendys. Donut King uses real cheese grated infront of you and tomato paste with real tomatoes (shock horror). Best of all, it's only $5 (with a 600mL coke) (with discounts :P).
I also found out that Mike got told off/is to be told off because he is spending too much money. Heck, yesterday he went ahead and bought a full garden light set from Mitre 10 for some $40 in hope of using them as ambient lighting in the planetarium yet we had all had a discussion beforehand on our ideas and plans. I also had to explain for the fifty billionth time that all the components inside a computer are NOT live 240v and I won't kill myself. Geez.
Today, I discovered the usefullness of a cigarette lighter. We found one caught in the message tube exhibit and now I'm using in for basically anything, from heatshrinking to bending plastic. It's like a mini blow torch. And they're only $1 from Safeway.
On other notes, I think I've worked out why work's ADSL keeps dropping out every half hour - the line *might* be going through the Commander PABX system, which is 50 years old and known to cause trouble... I also found why the LAN upstairs and in the planetarium is so slow, they're only running into a hub which is getting collisions every 3 seconds. The old sysadmin had offered to get a switch put in but for $300, so everyone just puts up with it.
No one was home at the time, so for tea I had pizza. Dominoes - large BBQ chicken pizza, 1.25L coke and garlic bread for $18 delivered. It was really nice. The delivery guy told me this was his first night on the job and had trouble finding me. And to top it off, I paid the $18 in 50c coins. Poor kid.

I think I'm quickly reaching the stage where I just can't be bothered to write posts, like many other people. But I will prevail as long as possible.
Well after months of work, the planetarium re-fit is almost complete, like magic. I spent most of the weekend putting it all together by myself. Theres a few more things to be done (I've got a nice long list of what to do) and it will be all complete.
As of Friday I'm now on holidays - a whole 3 weeks worth, yay. Most of which I will spend at work... I have planned to spend a day or two down in Melbourne though.
It may seem like an odd thing to observe, but after numorous incidents I have worked out that young people involved in the food retail industry need a hell of a lot more training and common sense.
Today I was getting my lunch at the marketplace, I went around to all the usual shops. Wendys seems to be the main offender here. Most of their serving staff are fine (*cough*) young girls (15-18), but like many other young girls (from experience) really have no clue about what they're doing.
Exhibit A: Today I was ordering my usual hotdog with sauce and cheese. So when I was served I say, "Hi. Can I have a hotdog with cheese and sauce please.", to which the girl replied with "Would you like a sausage?". *insert blank expression here* I was tempted to reply with a smart ass comment but decided to go with: "Of course I do." I mean really, what kind of person has a hotdog without a sausage (frankfurt/sausage, meh), if you do please tell me where you live so I can slap you hard.
Exhibit B: A few weeks ago while I was having my ice coffee I watched a girl at Wendys trying to make a milkshake. She had everything else in the blender but forgot about the topping. So she proceeds to take the lid off the blender and put the topping in, with the blender still switched on.
Good thing theres a glass counter infront of where the blender is and I was also a few meters away sitting down.
And you just have to have a money problem.
Exhibit C: The other week I was ordering my usual hotdog with sauce and cheese, which (with a 600mL coke) costs $6.00 (cheese being 50c extra). That day I only had a $50 note which I gave to the girl serving. She comes back from the till with $12 change. The other customers glanced at me and then at the change and nudged me. Being utterly confused at how you could possibly get $12 change for $6 from a single note, I calmly asked her if the cheese was gold plated. She looked at me funny but quickly noticed what she had done and given me my correct change.
This blatent lack of clue doesn't just stop at Wendys.
Exhibit D: A few days ago when I was shopping for my wireless gear, I went to Dick Smith in the morning. I asked one of the staff if they had any wireless network cards. She looked at me funny and said they didn't have any (who knows why a girl is working in an electronics shop anyway). I knew they had them because I called the day before and they said they did and there was also a notice on the window saying they were on special. I visited the store multiple times during the day, asking different staff each time. After being told no 4 times, I finally asked the boss (who I know) to which he said they have 28 of them in stock. One of the staff even asked me what a wireless network card was, but not one of them bothered to ask someone else or look it up. These unknowlegable people must start panicing inside when someone comes in who knows exactly what they want and use words that are more than 6 letters long.
Anyway, enough ranting from me.



Last editted: 23:52:29 Mon 27 Jun 2005

The title could taken two different ways, I got thumped a lot in the shoulder and there was a junior school social with thumping bass.
Yes, I also know I haven't been posting much lately, that's mainly because I haven't had time due to mega work load - I have 2 SACs due tomorrow, one which I'll have to do tomorrow morning (hope I remember...) and also because there hasn't been much to say.
Didn't do much on Tuesday, on Wednesday I spent a bit working on ripping a few segments out of a DVD for a friend but failed miserably. The DVD appeared in my DVD player as 1 hour 35 mins and the case for the disc said ~101 mins. But in all of the 3 DVD drives in my computers it appeared as 53 mins. I could only watch those 53 mins, but the start scene and the credits were there. Turns out that it had a curious form of copy protection that drops entire scenes/chapters in the middle of the movie. Curious indeed. There's a lot of curious things in life...
Today I had the Bendigo District Science and Engineering Challenge. 5 schools. 5 hours. And bunch of teams with different stuff to build or design. My team had to design and build a bridge that had the smallest mass and could handle the most. We had limited resources too - string, rubber bands, masking tape, icy pole sticks, drawing pins and a bunch of balsa wood. The bridge had to support an aluminium track over which ran a trolley loaded with weights. We opted for a suspension bridge design, which held the weight fine but was slightly bumpy and caused the trolley to derail, eliminating us from the competition.
It didn't matter much though, my school ended up winning the competition and now we're on to the state finals. The Challenged is organised by the University of Newcastle and runs all over Australia. It was quite fun.
On another note, tomorrow is the last day of term. Yay. Now I'm spending the next 3 weeks working and going places.

As kinky as it may sound, the title doesn't have anything to do with what some of you may be thinking, it refers to the fact that it was raining most of the day.
For some strange reason, it seems to rain the most/heaviest when it's starting to just get dark (around 5:30ish), which is when I happened to be walking home in. Naturally, when I got home I was soaking wet.
During the day I didn't get up to much, spent most of it in the hall focusing lights and scaring off little kids who whinged and whinged for me to turn on the mirror ball which I accidently turned on, all white extension lead spaghetti is a pain.
Finally, I got my home wireless link working (turns out I had to set the WEP key to either "off" or a proper key to get the card to turn on and start transmitting) gaining a range of about 70m down the street which the stock antennas (which are about 6cm high) outside in the cold.
My motivation for going back inside was that it started raining, again.

Oh ouch. I haven't posted for a while, time has been pretty scarce lately with work and my plays with wireless networking.
On Friday I got the rest of my exam results, 85% for REPD (they really liked my essay which was me rambling on about random crap), 73% for Business Management (the year level average was 70%, a lot of the stuff on it was unexpected), 87% for maths (lost most of my marks on the calculator-free section) and something for Japanese which I can't remember. My IT exam still hasn't been marked yet...
Overall, I think I did pretty well.
I didn't do much on Saturday, went to work and then to orienteering. After orienteering I begun my plays with wireless networking, which I've been meaning to do for quite a while. My task is to get another link going that covers the whole house, maybe a little down the street and as far possible in a 90 degree arc around the front of the house. Fact: Trying to get wireless networking working on a 2.4 kernel is painful and just not going to happen, which is why I upgraded tonight (after fifty billion recompiles after forgetting what my filesystem was and not compiling it in, forgetting bluetooth and wireless networking support and spending 20 mins trying to work out why my LAN didn't work anymore only to find my network interfaces got swapped around). Currently I'm borrowing the 3 wireless cards from work, one of which I'll be returning tomorrow because it's a piece of crap.
Today I also didn't do much, went to work to finish off the renovations with the sparky (sure I do a fair bit of mains stuff, but I'm not touching 3 phase with a ten foot pole) and to get some stuff ready from when a snake and a lizard come for the holidays which we're getting from a friends' work.
Speaking of the holidays, only one week to go! Yay.