James & Georgie

So, over the last six months I was working (for free) at a small engineering company around two hours from my house. We were taking part in an international robotics competition to make a robot that could autonomously travel through a maze and tag with a laser some stationary red bins and walking people in red overalls. The objective was to have three robots that were capable of this; and this is how it all went down.

Up until the last two months, everything was so relaxed. They eventually figured I wasn’t too bad at maths, so I was in charge of almost every mathematical task in the robots’ programming. When that was done, I helped make cables, and do some rudimentary machining tasks.

The guy running that place was retarded. Some of his ideas included:
-redesigning the chassis of the robot literally seven times over (the last amendment being a week before the contest date). At the end it was still…a rectangular box.
-coating the rubber tyres in Teflon to ‘reduce friction’. Hello, that’s how wheels work? And besides, I don’t think tyres can stand 400 degree C heat. The worst part was he made one of us call up a Teflon company, and when he was told it was a stupid idea the guy laughs and goes ‘Well, maybe we should’ve researched it a bit more”
-tried to make me sweep the floor because he had nothing for me to actually do (but I couldn’t leave early). I swept around one square metre before leaving

etc.

Finally, the day of the contest crawled around. It was a Saturday, too. The dad of the guy who ran the place turned up to help out, and we were using cable-ties to secure some plastic sheeting to posts we had driven into the ground; this would serve as a barrier. One of the cable ties his dad put in were upside down, and I had to state it five times and pull it out in front of him before he was convinced.
Like father, like son. Eh?

The government people (it was a govt run competition) turned up on the dot, and we were still scrambling to set up the maze, and some people were trying to…fix the robot. It didn’t move. At all. It had to be driven with some hastily written code controlled with a big fat Cat-5 cable running to a laptop with a guy walking behind it. Not impressive.
The reason why this was, was because we had never tested this robot because we simply ran out of time. Ironic, considering how laidback he was the first few months. Pathetic.
So our evaluation started four and a half hours late, and I got home at a quarter past eight.
Yay.

Hargh. So, there’s this internship I have to do as part of my degree. I was able to find a small robotics place roughly two hours away, and I have been going there for roughly three weeks now. Nobody tells me what to do so I generally go around trying to help people, and I hate that.  We’re trying to build a series of autonomous robots that’ll go around an obstacle course; many other interns have been going at it before us and all they’ve got is basically a big remote controlled car. But it’s not my fault; all the tasks I get are so mundane that they have very little impact in the first place.

It’s quite a depressing atmosphere; a lot of work gets done, for sure. Many things are printed, people mull over screens and type a lot, but not much progress is made. The remote control car is still, alas, remote controlled. The one intern who bosses everyone else around whilst doing the minimum amount of work himself, still does what he does unchecked. I can not wait until this is over; by the way. Did I mention this is all unpaid? Gah. I’m never taking this train line again when this is over. EVER. Hahaha

I like it when I’m alone. It’s nice, and quiet. You don’t have to think about what other people want without seeming like a callous asshole, and you have time to reflect on your own wants and needs. What I don’t really like is when people ignore me when I actually have something to tell them. I had to overhaul a small part of the company’s website, and when I was done I told the company’s manager (it’s a veeeeery small company). Turns out he didn’t even pay attention to me/believed me when I told him; he asked someone else how the website was going soon after I left. I hate that, more so because of the way he’s rather nice to me when I am there.

Every day I have to leave an hour earlier or so, in order to take the last bus from my station home. I turned up at the station near the company a few minutes late; I was wet from the rain so I sat next to a man staring into a bottle in a brown paper bag.
“They got you stuck in work, mate?” It took me a second to realize he was talking to me. I started talking about the internship and the things I didn’t like about it, and he would complain about his failing career and the fact that nobody would hire him even if he promised to stop drinking. He was smelly, swore a lot and had wild, crazy eyes, but he also said some things that didn’t really suit his appearance like ‘Hahah, look at me, talking to a foreigner. You’ve been here since the gold rush, and they still call yous foreigners. Pretty fucked up, eh.’ and ‘That psychic chick in Minority Report; she could’ve been Shakespeare. Yeah, Shakespeare.’
We talked about life in general, and everything before he shuffled off the station when my train arrived, unlit cigarette in hand.
I sat on the train with my iPod in my ears turned off, thinking ‘That was the first proper conversation I have had with anybody down here.’ It was. It really was the most fulfilling face-to-face contact I have had with anyone in that part of the…world. In four minutes it felt like I’d known that dreamy alcoholic more than the people I’ve been working with for nearly four weeks. It took me twenty minutes of sitting there thinking that over, until I realized the iPod was still off. I didn’t take it out, or turn it on until I was on the bus an hour and a half later. I really just didn’t feel like moving; I guess I was a bit upset about the…isolation, if that’s the right word.

Well, that’s all.
I believe I can see the future, ‘cos I repeat the same routine… D=

Fuck Christmas. I wish I wasn’t Catholic so I wouldn’t have to celebrate it. Christmas is fucking nothing when all everyone ever does is treat you like shit.

I’m sick of being treated like shit, and I’m very close to deleting every trace of me from the internet. All I ever come across is rude, fucking shit and slack people, who assume things about me and are just rude behind a fucking screen just because they can. So fucking bring it. You can go hide behind your screen and get all hardcore with your keyboard because you don’t even have a fucking identity. You’re just a dastard minion with nothing better to do than to harass people on the internet in the hope of making someone talk back to you, because you have no friends.

It is unbelievable how many rude people I come across online who have the fucking nerve to be so rude just because no one is going to physically get them.

If I ever disappear from the internet, be glad you know why. It happened to Rhiannon.

Well, what a week.

My friend bought a new computer for himself, and asked me to build it for him. Neither of us knew too much about computers, so we pooled our knowledge together and pulled it off, learning quite a bit in the process. For those of you who are into this kind of thing, its specifications are as follows:

Power: Corsair TX 650W
CPU: Intel Core i7 920, 2.67 GHz
RAM: 4 gb DDR3
GPU: ATi Radeon HD 5770
Storage: Seagate SATA 500 Gb
Case: Antec Nine Hundred
OS: Windows 7 Home, 64-bit

It’s an incredible setup. Really. It boots in a bit under 25 seconds, shuts down in a bit under 15. The fans are a bit loud, but that’s because there are five of them.
Anyway, what happened was that his house was hit by a power surge which blew a fuse in the old power supply that was in before the Corsair. We lugged it over to the store where he bought it and managed to refund the old one because the warranty covers this kind of thing. After buying the new power supply, he let me keep it at my place. He didn’t seem too happy about the whole thing; he was very enthusiastic about ordering the parts, but when they arrived he seemed kind of deflated as if they weren’t what he had in mind. However, he had the heart to carry on with the building with me, just because I was very excited about building it.

I don’t know how long the computer will be at my place, but it’s got all my peripherals plugged into it and I’m really beginning to like it. Maybe he’ll sell it to me for cheap, I’m hoping. Besides, he’s got his eye on an even more intense one, with more grunt than I’ll ever need for probably the next decade. I think it looks pretty ugly, but it sort of suits him and his Transformer fantasy. They’d look cute together.

Today at work was pretty mediocre; I pulled in eight hours of work. Three horrible things happened:

1. Some guy I work with slammed down a crate of milk between us as we were filling them. One of the bottles had no lid and we both got friggin soaked
2. A box of mozzarella fell on my head
3. Someone accidentally hit my pregnant boss in the stomach with their trolley

Ahhh, life. I just wish these fans would shut up. The only gripe I have with the case is that two fans are at the front. They’re necessary (and quite good looking) but the noise output is quite high for a ‘quiet’ case.

End transmission. *frog*

OH MY GOD A COCKROACH CRAWLED ON MY HAND. Yeah, it was hiding on the back of a chopping board. So I flicked it onto a bench while freaking out, and shot a rubber band at it which broke off a long, hairy leg. Unfortunately I couldn’t finish him off because the force knocked him a few metres across the kitchen and under my mum’s computer desk.

Today, I wore my luckey holey shirt. It’s a cheap, raggedy shirt with holes in the front and back that have grown there over time. I’m very fond of the shirt, and it’s cool and light in summer. It’s all in all a very good shirt. Wuggs doesn’t like it, humof. Nobody does. They can’t understand just how damn comfortable it is, even today in the very hot weather I still felt okay.

You can eat my dog, you can eat my truck
But you eat my shirt, then you’re out of luck

Kill Zoidberg! Goodnight!

Hmm, today  I was driving to the shops, and listening to something on the radio about how kids are losing their ability to effectively communicate with each other.
Damn, I thought. They’re right; it’s so obvious but I somehow missed it. I finish early on Wednesdays, and drive home past the local primary school I used to attend, when their lunch break is just about to end. When I went there, there’d be kids running around the oval, playing on the swing set, kicking a ball, chatting and everything. Last week, everyone was huddled in the shade, and they were all either on a phone, a Nintendo thing or another, or watching someone else on one. As the car slowly idled by I just thought how stupid it was. Fat, pasty kids. It really upsets me; I used to be borderline obese. It took and takes quite a bit of effort to change and maintain that, and looking at them it was hard to say if they’d have the motivation to do something like that themselves. Wii fit? What difference does it make to do…pushups without some electronic board anyway? Craning your neck up to stare at the animated you doing pushups on your big-ass plasma TV probably wouldn’t be too good for your neck, either.

The point is, kids are screwing themselves over pretty hard. No imagination. No activity. Fat food and candy and ‘Chippees’ . I don’t know. It just really annoys me how people can let themselves go. Especially when you’re at a red light and the dick next to you has his fat son leering at you, with some sort of bar in his hand he’s eating. Wanker. I hope he chokes. Hahaha

I went to the shops today, to buy a new drill I’ve been eyeing. I went to two hardware stores…twenty minutes apart. The first one had one with an average battery pack, for $200. Fine, I thought. I picked up some goodies I needed, then I went on my way. The second store had a similar drill, with a better battery pack for $159. Awesome, I thought. Then I looked at the top, there was an extra battery pack taped on top. Two state-of-the-art battery packs (each sells for around $40 anyway), for that price! I bought it on the spot; turns out it was leftovers from Fathers Day Sale ’09. What a bargain.
It’s got a nice hard carrycase, two charging stations (but only one wall adapter, which I found rather counter-intuitive), and the carrycase has room for an extra battery. Hahah, and the drill itself has a little screen on the back that tells you remaining battery capacity, and a small LED under the head which illuminates whatever you’re drilling. The best thing is I don’t have to worry about flat batteries. Worse comes to worst, just slap the other one in. It’s fantastic; I was thinking of replacing the old batteries in the old drill’s cartridge, but that would have cost me $90 for far less quality than what I got today.

While I was in the great concrete yonder, I also bought some groceries and a roast chicken. The guy at the counter was seriously, no more than 14, 15 years old. Amazing; it sort of reminded me what was happening to me at my own job. On Sundays we get time and a half, and they used to give me a seven hour shift every Sunday, until they gave it to this sixteen year old. Jerkbags. Pfft. And they call me on almost every Sunday morning, going ‘Ah are you available today etc etc’ because they know he won’t get the job done. Too bad, I mean, I got stuff to do at home and for study. If they assigned me the shift I’d be there, but that’s just crazy.

Jesus that was long

The rest of her body is under the shirt; it’s only her head and neck turned to the camera. But it’s quite cute :)