Infinite State Automaton

Now is a good time to play catch up, and also to respond to Sarah, below.

The last cast of the die has been made. Some time soon I will find out if I have finally graduated from University, or if I am doomed to once more spend six months of my life redoing subjects that I already should have passed. I'm desperately hoping for the former. My last exam was last night.

The last weekend was kind of rough for me. I quit my Warcraft guild. You could compare it to leaving, say, a sports club - that is the same kind of emotional attachment I had to it, except there were some people there that were good friends of mine. Leaving the guild makes it much harder to play with them, as I already saw tonight. Running around areas solo where normally I would have good companions leaves a bitter, hollow feeling in my heart. Already there have been numerous offers from people to have me join their guild (since my character class is kind of useful) but I think I'm going to stick to playing solo for a week or two.

The prototype for the tools task is due Friday. After this is done, magically all my time comes back to me, and I can start doing this -> having a life. One of the first things I need to do is go to a dentist. For some reason, this last month my gums have suddenly started receding. I brush my teeth every day (twice most of the time). My breathe is fine, my teeth are white, but something is really wrong.

Stan tried to pursuade me to go sailing with him some Wednesday nights. Actually, I admit it looks kind of fun, but he chose some poor footage - a 17 foot yacht in four metre swell, where the crew were being thrown around all over the railings - to demonstrate it. Coming in to the office limping and complaining about all his bruises didn't help. This is 'fun'. Later he showed me some footage of a pod of dolphins that came to play with them though. That was kind of neat! There was even a little baby dolphin, maybe fifty centimetres long. So cute!

Stan also tried to cure me of ever wanting to fly again, demonstrating some military aircraft accidents.
Don't fly in:
An Osprey.
A Caribou.
Any kind of aircraft being crash tested against a reinforced steel wall.

I think that's about it. Yep. Other than keeping my head down and focusing on my exams, I didn't really get up to much lately. Oh, I did a big clean up of the house and my room on the weekend. It sure is nice being able to see the floor.

There was some problems with the report so I nuked it. I intend to put a revised version up at a later date.

"Where's the content?" Sarah asked. If only she knew how prophetic those words would be.

So, what is this thing up above my text? Well there's nothing there now because it was causing people on dialup to go in to road rage and kill people. I can't have that on my soul. If people are dying because of me, I want to be personally doing it.

But you can visit here instead.

It's a fun little personality thing that Dani or Kimmy found (I can't remember who, please feel free to correct me). I'm looking forward to seeing The Golden Compass; and if you know me you know I enjoy reading and I enjoy both fantasy and science fiction.

One of the main reasons I wanted to make computer games was to create a universe in of my own understanding, to design people and characters to portray and live out things that were important to me. It's kind of selfish, really, maybe you can empathise - have you ever been reading a book, and 'felt' like you were the main character(s) and wanted them to do things differently?

Anyway, lately I've been a bit too self-centred in my online group and I'm trying to be more thoughtful of others. It's difficult because I don't get any feedback unless I make a big mistake. But that's normal in real life too, right? Friends don't come up to you and say, "Great job, person xxx! You're really acting like a normal person lately!" The people just stop contacting you or inviting you to places or avoiding you.

(See, that's my problem! Always having to 'act' normal, or 'act' mature.)

I like to be around people, but I also know lately I have been a bit of a grouch and snappy and spiteful to people. I'm not entirely sure of the reason. I'd like to blame it on not so much sleep or relaxation time, but then if the situation is the same after my exams are done I have no excuse. I have some other ideas, so, I will try to 'act like normal' for a little longer.

Anyway, I work in a two story building that is in a big U shape. I work at almost the very bottom of the U. On Monday, I heard plaintive chirps coming from directly above me. After some investigation, I discovered a baby bird had somehow fallen through the corrugated iron roof and been caught in the insulation partition in between the roof and the interior ceiling tiles.

The roof in my office doesn't have these tiles, so it's impossible to break through the ceiling to the bird. But the outside corridor did. I lifted up one of the tiles (think Jurassic Park, when Dr Grant and the children are escaping from the raptors through the ceiling right before the Tyranasaurus appears) but couldn't see the baby, I could only hear it. I slipped the roof tile back so there was a few inches of light piercing up through the loft, then put a cardboard box on top of the ladder.

A few minutes later, the 'cheep cheep cheep cheep cheep!' became very loud. I walked out, and lo! The baby had leaped to freedom.

We deduced that the baby had come from the roof, so we organised for some of the security services guys to take it up to the ceiling where the babies parents were surely going nuts. Well, a bird did attack, but later we discovered it was unrelated to the baby. So we contacted animal welfare who came out and picked it up.

Seems the baby is a plover, a bird that lives near lakes and other bodies of water, and feeds off of grubs and worms it can find from the land. The babies are supposed to be able to fend for themselves after a few hours of hatching. The University has an animal barn thing where some animals are kept and initially the bird was going to be kept there, but later it was decided that it would be better to look after it until it was big enough to survive safely and then be released.

The next day, there was another baby! This one started at one side of the U and walked all the way around down to my office. We could hear it chirping softly for half an hour or so as it made its way around. It must have been a marathon for the newly hatched chick. I don't know why my office is popular for birds, maybe they know I am helpless against baby animals.

This one also fell for the 'leave a big gap in the ceiling' trap, only it missed the box and fell about two and a half metres to the ground. Amazingly, it got right up and demanded attention, with no apparent damage. I had Rusty's camera for this one; so I'll post an image of it later. It really was tiny, both birds were essentially small balls of fluff with two legs and a beak sticking out.

I took it over to the welfare office. The official result for the two birds is they are being kept in an incubator until they are big enough to fly (so they aren't auto-meat for the first cat that sees them) and they are getting the best grubs and worms that the officers have on hand. Some of the girls in the office were really sad to see the birds go away (they already named them 'Cedisc' and 'Dasi', after the two research groups where I work) and I have to admit I was :( :( :(. They really were too cute for words.

Anyway, I should be studying for my exam on Saturday...