Infinite State Automaton

Ah, Power Rangers. I can remember when they were still cool, which was, if I recall correctly, for the first five minutes of the first episode. This kind of cheesy thing is burned in to the brains of my brothers and I. "Alpha, Rita's escaped!" and other such lines are the trigger point for all kinds of madness and hilarity.

Santa, a powerful demonic force?

Santa <--> Satan. Discuss.

He knows if you've been bad or good.
He breaks into peoples houses and bribes them with objects of material value to teach them that it's OK to be just good enough to get what you want.
He teaches children that if they are good they DESERVE a reward...
Both are fans of wearing red.
Both seem to have an excessively long life span.
One lives in the North Pole. The other is destined to an eternity of burning torment. (After centuries of living in the arctic, a million degree bath might not be so bad...)
Way too friendly with children and the sitting-on-the-lap thing.
Nobody should be that happy all the time.
Somehow, Santa suits always look better on women.

"Alpha, Santa's escaped..."
There was those creatures called 'putties' that, if you hit right in the chest plate, would explode. This kind of thing is hilarious.
So when Shane said, "You have to hit Santa in the sack to make him explode", he obviously meant the sack full of toys, and not some other sack that he might have had. Right? Right?

So. Santa. Powerful demonic force.

There's a reason small children fear him.

On an unrelated note, I knew this day would come. Gym.

Last night for the first time I had my first case of feeling totally inadequate.
Here I was heaving and puffing to lift two three kilogram blocks up and down and up and down and up and down...three sets of twelve.
Next to me some guy was casually hoisting...well, it looked like about 160 kilograms. I don't know. I didn't want to look too closely, because that would mean he would look back, and see me straining to lift these two tiny blocks, while he was...well...you get the picture.

Actually he did say hello to me, and not unkindly said, "you have to start somewhere." So I guess he could tell I was feeling embarassed about it.

Last night I didn't finish rowing for the first time. Normally I row first. That leaves my arms trashed. So I decided to do the weights first. What do you know! That leaves my arms even MORE trashed. After 1200 metres I developed some kind of painful thing in my side, like a stitch. I pushed on but it got so bad, I just curled over and died at the 1420 metre mark.

I read that 'The harder you train, the more recovery time you need, the less often you have to train'. I didn't know. I don't plan on becoming some big meathead, but in between fencing, gym, and tennis, I might finally get rid of this bowling ball on my stomach. Ugh. There's a photo of me at the Morialta falls walk up on Dasi where it looks like I have a kitchen board up my shirt. Seriously. My stomach looks square. It just aint natural.

Warcraft:

The guild on Surumar packed up and desintegrated over the Christmas break. Ian said it was because they couldn't get 25 mans happening, and some of the members started to run with other guilds that could. So when they didn't even have enough members to run Karazhan anymore (which was on farm status) they realised the group was in negative growth and pulled the plug. From the original guild, only six decided to stay together.

I heard an interesting thing on WoW Radio (yes I am a nerd). They said 'People always say guilds break up because of something in the game. For some it is changing from 5 man content to 10 man content, or 10 man to 25, or some change in the game or even over a ninja'd piece of loot. But the truth is, good guilds progress through these difficult times because they enjoy playing with each other. Guilds that are only sticking together for progress are the ones that will break, because if the guild is not moving forward, the members feel that their time is being wasted and they grow frustrated. It becomes a powder keg and the first small thing that goes wrong - a bad pull that causes a wipe - becomes the spark that allows people to be assholes to each other without feeling bad about it.' Well, I don't know if that is true, but I saw Ian was upset so my feeling is that it wasn't really a break up in the way he said. So if I do decide to play with them, I will need to be cautious about not getting too involved.

The new guild is "Terra Australis" on the Oceanic server Nagrand.

Today I bought the ret PVP shoulders. I thought that gladiator gear was a big waste for me, and these shoulders really are only a tiny upgrade. But there simply isn't any non-heroic shoulders available except for the T3 shoulders from Laj in Botanica. Then I noticed that they had two gem slots and no resilience - all the item value was put in to +stats and +spell damage. Mal has over 500 defence now (any more than 490 is a waste) so I decided to grab the epic shoulders for the increased stats, spell damage, and extra 400 armor. I think if I juggle around some gems and lose some defence, I can probably sneak in another 500 or so hit points and break 300 spell damage. I'll be pretty happy if I can make 12500 hit points unbuffed.

The only small sadface is that I just burned up all my holy dust to get nice exalted shoulder enchants for my heals, retribution and protection sets, and now I will need to do it again...

I have been getting a number of requests from people that I have been pugging with to join their guilds. The main reason that I don't want to do it is that I want to reconcile with Relic and I will feel like I am just using people if I jump ship as soon as a spot in Relic is available. When I said this, most of the people have said that is fine, they just needed a tank so they could do extra content. Well, I enjoy playing with others (because solo is so boring) and I enjoy learning more about the instances. I enjoy using line-of-sight pulls and using the environment to make the Paladin more effective.

Goals;

Eating has been so-so. I have a problem with my brother not eating the food I make. He only eats the meat. It's not my responsibility to look after him but I feel bad about it. I bought fast food twice because I didn't plan ahead far enough, once yesterday before gym (Rocking up to do my exercise while chowing down on some french fries, kind of is the wrong image to project) and another on the weekend, but that was OK because it was a party.

Saving: Well I don't know what is going on here. I spent too much this week already, but I am at a loss to say where. I am going to have to keep track of what I am spending on so I can fix it. I don't have anything to show for $x00 missing. It used to be that I would spend so much money on fast food. Well, that's not the case anymore. So where is it going? I haven't bought anything except new headphones today. The only thing I splurged out on so far was the Baneblade, and that was last year. Somehow I am letting money slip through my fingers and I need to find it and stop it or I will never save up anything.

Work: This week hasn't been so productive. Also, today I don't know. Shraga has assigned me a really strange task. He wants me to do research on a topic, but the nature of the topic is that you need security clearance to do it. So I have been given contact details for some fairly important people to talk to about it, but Shraga already said "They won't be able to tell you anything." How do I call this really important and busy person without any information on the project and no authority to ask about it? I will look like an idiot. So I didn't do it yet. Next week the expert in security gets back from her trip so I will approach her about what to do.

People make decisions about a situation based on the information they have available. If they have the wrong information, or even the right information presented in the wrong way, they can make a bad decision. That same person would have made an entirely different decision if they had known different information.

My ex-girlfriend showed me this. She would never tell a lie. Instead, she would say an incomplete truth.
“Did you get home before 10?” her father would ask. “Yes,” she would say. The father obviously meant 10 pm at night for her curfew. In fact she got in at 11 pm or later, but since her father had not explicitly asked ’10 pm’, her answer was technically correct – as she had gotten in before 10 am the following day.
While technically truthful, it was a lie. Her parents sometimes caught her out in a lie, and she would explain the reason that it was still the truth. This taught me to explicitly state all of my questions to her so that she was unable to lie to me. Her parents didn’t do this, and instead just stopped trusting her.

The other thing she would often do would be to dodge a question. Two of her favourite ways were to ask “Why do you want to know?” or by changing the conversation, “Why would you think otherwise?” If the person could not provide a reason for it, the question was implicitly considered to be true, even though it was a lie. The last was the famous “Look, a UFO!” where she would simply disregard the question and talk about something else. In her head, she was being completely honest and open, but everybody around her thought of her as fickle and untrustworthy.

Because of this and many fights I had with her, I became very good at spotting this kind of behaviour. Most of the time it’s best just to remain silent and let the person think that their lie has been accepted. If you catch a person lying and say it, the other person will avoid you because they are ashamed that you have exposed them, while all the time acting outraged and offended that you could say such a thing. Instead, quietly decide if this person is a good person for you to have in their life and wonder for the reason for their deception. Liars will often accuse those who exposed them as the liar. They can’t help it. It’s easier to blame somebody else than to accept responsibility for their behaviour. It’s too hard for them to turn around and walk back through that shameful path. Instead, they lie more and more to protect themselves and to try to convince others that they are trustworthy. This is the meaning of the saying, “What a tangled web we weave, when we practice to deceive.” Watch out for people who act irrationally and can’t speak honestly to your face. Those people need help and forgiveness.

Why do people lie?

The lie itself is usually not nearly as important as the reason for lying. People don’t always lie for a selfish reason. But a person who never lies does not have to remember the lies that they have told and never has to worry about being exposed for it.

Some times a person will lie to protect another from information that is harmful to them. Sometimes a person will lie to protect themselves – the truth is dangerous or embarrassing to them. But another case is when somebody lies to deliberately mislead a different party. All lies are shameful, because we as humans know it is wrong to deceive, but the lie that is made to deliberately give somebody the wrong impression is the most dangerous, destructive lie of all.

A lie can be made to protect information. Some information is secret. Some information is private. What is the reason for the lie to be told to protect the information? Secret information must be protected because it can be dangerous to others, for example, the plans of the army. Private information is protected because it can be dangerous to the individual if released, for example, your address or credit card details.

A lie can also be made from withholding critical details of the information. A person may be pressured and unable to say “I can’t reveal that information”, or, posed a yes/no question where “I can’t answer” also gives away the true situation. “Did you steal xxx?” Instead, that person will lie to protect their privacy or the privacy of others. Private information is private. It can be embarrassing for everybody to know. This is the meaning of the saying “Airing your dirty laundry”.

When you decide to lie, what is the reason? Either you can’t trust that person with the true information, or you want that person to do something that you can’t honestly ask them to do, or because you can’t honestly respond without being harmed or harming another. But be sure that when you lie and are discovered, the person that you have deceived may be very, very angry with you. Not that you lied to them, but what is the reason for the lie? Discovering that you are not as respected by somebody as much as you thought you were can be a very painful experience for everyone.

People make decisions based on information. Information that is not necessary for them to know to make their decisions is not considered. Information that would help them make their decisions that is withheld is called “pulling the wool over their eyes”. It means that a person or group are being manipulated by an individual or other group who are feeding them some information that does not accurately represent the larger body of information.

Is that a lie? By the strictest definition, no. But by withholding information, you are giving an incomplete truth. By giving an incomplete truth, you deceive others. When you deceive others, you are not respecting them. When people are disrespected, the result is that they do not trust you. There is a saying – “When you curse, two pits are made.” This means that not only do you harm the other person, but you also harm yourself. When you lie or treat the other person with disrespect, the result is that they trust you less.

Trust is linked to respect. Another word for respect is love. Depending on the context, they are interchangeable. These are two very important things that define the basic foundation of society. A child trusts and loves its parents. The parents trust and love each other. The parents trust and respect their neighbours, who in turn have their own respect and trust of one another. These groups band together in times of need because they trust each other to look after one another. This is the meaning of Aesop’s Fable, that one stick is broken easily, but ten sticks bound together can’t be broken. Even in the Bible, God said (re: the Tower of Babel), “When they are united like this, who can stop them?” (Well, God can and did >.>). The Japanese character for ‘people’ is made from two people supporting each other.

Consider the effect on a family when the parents stop trusting one another or feel that the other has stopped respecting them. Consider the effect on a group when people gossip secretly to each other and make snide comments behind others backs. Consider the effect on friends when one decides not to trust or respect the other.

That is the reason that lying is a sin.

WARNING: This post is all about Warhammer.

Today I fought a 15,000 vs 15,000 point Warhammer Apocalypse battle. There were three players per side - my Dark Angel Space Marines, my brothers Blood Angel Space Marines, Jason's mix of *cough* Tyranid, Ork and Space Marine super heavies, versus Williams Tau, Lawries Guard, and Lance's Ork and Eldar allies.

Normally Shane and I aren't allowed to play on the same team because, to be an arrogant tool, we're crazy good. We have a lot of experience working together against random enemies. Our most enjoyable times are "Everybody puts everything that they have on the table, versus everything that we are able to field."

Also, we have a lot of tanks. Sooo many tanks. Normally you can only field three tanks at a time in Warhammer. However, in Apocalypse, you can field anything you want.

So for this reason we fielded my brand new Baneblade, seven vindicators, a predator annihilator, a predator destructor, three whirlwinds, and three land raiders, a vanquisher tank hunter, and nine dreadnoughts. Our ally Jason had forgotten to bring any infantry (...) so our already tank heavy army was suddenly bolstered with a super heavy thunderhawk, on Orkified Baneblade (Skullhammer?), TWO Stomba Mekka-gargents, some kind of Tyranid bio-tank, and some kind of battle fortress of a type I'd never seen before.

And before those of you who come here from the Warhammer 40k link accuse me of fielding an unbalanced army; I fielded a whopping seventy tactical marines and related officers. Shane took twenty tacticals, forty assault marines, death company, and fifteen terminators stuffed in to the land raiders.

Our enemy had also stacked on the tanks. There were two enemy baneblade super heavy tanks, three Leman Russ types, a hellhound, a hydra flak tank, two Valkyrie fighter bombers, and four chimera APC's in the guard forces. The Tau had two Hammerhead tank destroyers, two skyray missile gunships, some devilfish, and a few bunches of a new kind of flyer called a pirahna that I hadn't encountered before. William had also taken four of the highly annoying remora stealth fighter flyer drones. The ork and eldar vehicles were quite light, with only a falcon, a wraithlord, some warwalkers, and some ork buggies and a battle waggon.

The battle went very badly. We deployed second and the enemy went first. My forces took massive casualties; I have won almost all of our group tournaments so naturally I was targetted first for elimination. Of course I anticipated this so kept most of my best units a short distance back from the front lines so that they couldn't take such heavy damage, however this meant the bulk of my forces - my tactical marines - were almost entirely wiped out. Firepower that was supposed to have been levelled at my largely resistant tanks exploded my infantry rather easily. The ones who I had deployed in cover survived to some extent, but honestly from the first turn the casualties were too high for my infantry to play any effective battle from that point on.

However, because they focused on me, they left my brother - and Jason's super heavies - largely unscathed. Shane lost four assault marines in the first turn. Jason didn't lose anything. I lost almost four full squads of tacticals, over half of my infantry in the first turn!

This was the first battle for any of the Baneblades that were playing today, and every one of us wanted to be the one who was first to destroy a Baneblade...and none of us wanted to lose theirs first. I had taken the tank hunter Aphrael to keep my Baneblade protected - Aphrael is effectively a tank sniper and I had counted on my opponents wanting to attack the more threatening Baneblade and leave Aphrael unscathed. Unfortunately this didn't work and Aphrael was exploded in turn two without achieving anything. Very sad.

Aside from turn one, all of our firepower was surprisingly ineffective. Usually you would expect massive megadeaths in Apocalypse, but all day everything was bouncing off of the targets armor, or failing to hit at all. My Annihilator smoked a Leman Russ, but was unable to destroy anything else despite having a clean line of sight the whole game. My Baneblade managed to get a couple of good shots off at the core of the Eldar army, trashing the wraithlord and a number of very strong units - at the time it seemed inconsequential, but in the long run it won us the game.

Everyone tried so hard to blow up everybody elses super heavies. The Ork Stompas were damaged so heavily, they were both immobilised and all of their weapons were destroyed except their lowest machine guns. My Baneblade took extensive damage - it's main cannon was knocked out and the vehicle was immobilised. We managed to knock a few structure points off of the enemy Baneblades, but we weren't able to kill any.

So, the trophy for the first Baneblade kill remains up in the air.

We took a lot of damage, a lot of casualties. If the game went on for a few more turns, I would probably have been wiped out - however Jason had largely remained unscathed. The Eldar and Ork army was almost entirely destroyed (as was mine), while the Tau were annoyingly almost untouched throughout the game. Not for want of trying! William's units are extremely tricky to trap and destroy due to their fire and forget/shoot'n'scoot nature. I had fielded artillery pieces (the whirlwinds) to deal with this, but by the time enemy came within range the whirlwinds had been disrupted by the enemy basilisk and were ineffective. One of the surviving whirlwinds later claimed the objective in that part of the battlefield, though.

In the end, out of six objectives, I held two, Shane held one, Jason held one. William held one, and Laurie held one. We had four, they had two. Despite the massive mauling our forces had taken, we were victorious.

It felt like a hollow victory, to be honest. When I looked at the battlefield, the enemy force still looked very strong, while most of our units were heavily damaged and destroyed.

I made some silly errors.
A) I had taken the Masters of the Chapter detachment, not realising that the officers had to remain in the same unit. I prefer to distribute my officers throughout the entire army so that their abilities are more utilised by all, instead of concentrated in one position. In the game, this highly expensive and dangerous unit didn't accomplish anything. Even so, had I been able to split them up, the level of firepower directed at my forces probably would have been too much for even them to survive.
B) I used the dreadnoughts in place of the officers to provide fire support and assault resistance throughout the ranks. This was a mistake - dreadnoughts, although highly durable in assault, aren't very effective in it if on their own. I would have been better off to have deployed the Dreadnoughts in two or three groups and allowing them to operate on their own.
C) I forgot to use my orbital bombardment!!!
D) I didn't coordinate my timed bombardments with my allies effectively, and this meant that on the last turn I accidentally friendly-fired Jason's carnifex detachment. Fortunately they were able to shrug off most of the damage, but it was still very embarassing.
E) I didn't write my army list until after midnight, which meant going to bed at 3 am, and subsequently getting up at 6 left me unable to brain.

There's one thing I am trying to figure out. Every Apocalypse game has done the same thing so far:

Turn 1: My army takes HORRENDOUS MASSIVE CASUALTIES. I do barely anything in return.
Turn 2: My army takes some damage. I make some kind of good response.
Turn 3: I take a small amount of damage. My opponent gets smashed to little pieces.

It's completely different from a normal game of Warhammer, where the balance of power is largely even until near the end of the game, where the result of careful strategy and planning finally is revealed, and it can often come down literally to the last throw of the dice. This kind of tremendous turn around just does not happen in normal games. It's only in the Apocalypse level, which is simply a normal Warhammer game that is 3-5 times bigger than normal.

I take great pride in my Space Marines and I go to great lengths to protect them. I don't throw their lives away, nor do I leave them isolated and undefended. So if I can find out the reason for my army suddenly becoming so strong, even when it had taken such a massive beating, maybe I can work out what I can do to avoid the massive beating in the first place.

So I am going to nap now...

Today's gym
Ah


.
....
...
.So.
Gym intructor, "OK bud, you know how to use the machine, now it s time sofr htso.

Sorry. My brain is blocking out the bad memory.

I remember...
Red? Suffering? Yes.

Then I was driving home. I had to avoid hitting a small dog.






So, weights. Ow. Oh my God, how weak and useless are my arms.

33.25 kilograms. THAT'S ALL. And when it was the single arms only 5 kg. I didn't even make it to ten lifts.

Ican't move. Im totally, totally trashed.

On the upside I ddi lift 80kg with my legs. That's kind of good.

Also I ran 10 kmph for 10 minutes. Thats good too I think.

@_@

Well I have to build the baneblade tonight or I can't use her tomorrow.

My hands are shaking so much. I don't wantto ruin such a beautiful model. But I need those guns on the field...

Today was a good karma day, if you believe in that kind of thing. I absolutely do, but not in the 'every good you do will be repaid three fold' kind of thing. I enjoy doing helpful things for other people. It's kind of a left over from my time as a boy scout, and these days a lot of people automatically look for some deeper selfish motivation behind any good act. It's unfortunate, but it's very difficult for people to accept an obligation free gift these days.

Today I helped an old friend get a job. Today I helped a person who used to be my lecturer find a person she needed. Today I saved my business from losing money, an embarassing situation, and wasted time.

For some reason, people at work have the impression that I work long hard hours and am an efficient person. This is not really the case. In fact I even took Monday off >.>;; But I have been overhearing comments and people are saying encouraging things to me. It's good for my confidence, so I will try not to discourage these rumours, and also try not to let it go to my head. Even with two promotions in the future, at the moment I am still the lowest ranked person, and if I don't get my degree...well...that's bad.

So far January has been kind of bad for me. Stress, not sleeping well, some problems with friends, all added up to make a not very fun time. I stuck to my guns so far quite well. Today I recieved my first full time pay check again (I have been on half pay since holidays started) and I will be catching up on my savings. The other area (food) had been pretty good. I only bought fast food twice this whole year, when previously, I was buying it just about every day.

Well it's 1:30 am, I should sleep. If I want to bitch about not getting enough sleep, I can't expect any sympathy when it's my own fault :)

I'm exhausted.

I submitted the assignment. It looks good. There were some parts that didn't work. I never did find out why I couldn't touch or read from the matrix stack, the foundation of all OpenGL functions. But I had many successes, too. Textures. Lighting. Animation. Colours, materials, controls...all of it was there in some way or another.

Like the camera from the other assignment, the matrixes were crucial to this one. The relationship wasn't quite so dependant, but not having the operations I needed to do meant that I was forced to hand calculate a lot of the math and write up the code. I wasted a lot of time. Whereas all the other students could go:
gl.glMultMatrix(some matrix)
To do everything, I had to keep track of every camera movement and backtrack them. It added considerable overhead because not only did I have to track what was going on, I had to notify each part of the system each time a change was made, and in changing a part of the system I had to notify the rest of the system that such a change was made. It went around in a big circle. It's terrible, terrible programming.

But it works. Dammit, it works.

But is it good enough?

I didn't do everything I wanted to.

Somehow, even though I budgetted so much time for this, I still ran out in the end. I wonder why? It's not that I didn't stick to my schedule. Somehow, the time I had at the start seemed to go past without me really achieving anything. In this last week I almost doubled my work output. If I could somehow reach in to the future and pull out these quality hours, then I would have this problem again.

I wanted to finish well. Not like this. Not just barely sliding in to the finish line, and maybe not even making it.

Now, I am done. I am worn out, exhausted, burned. I have put off a lot of things to get my work done, and now it is done, I don't know what to do. I need to reorder my life.

But not today. Today, I need to relax and unwind. Tomorrow, I will start again.

I'll see you then.

I didn't want to write on my blog again until after my assignment was done. But I had a bit of a bad dream last night and I want to get it out. It was about feelings of being abandoned, of being left behind, because I took on responsibilities that the other people didn't. Because I was burdened, I was weighed down, and could not go so fast. So the other people would always move forward without me.

Without going in to big details, there was a human virus that was transmitted by radio frequency. Anybody who heard it would go insane. So, there was a nuclear war. Around me and the group, people were going crazy while driving their machines or aircraft. Thousands of people died around me. A plane dropped out of the sky next to our group and just exploded. From the wreckage I found an infant whose parents had died.

Because I was carrying the baby that they told me to leave, they left me behind. I didn't have any mothers milk. I didn't have any small, soft food to feed it with. I didn't even have food of my own that I could chew up into soft mush to give. So the result was an obvious, terrible end.

I didn't like to wake up with that horrible sense of death and failure, but I did.

Today my lecturer finally sent me an e-mail to respond to my problem.

I got back late from the gym and have to jump right in to my assignment so just a short one this time.

Rowing: 2k in 9:58.
Jumping Weight Machine 40kg 1 x 12 set, 1 x 25 set
Arm sideways weight thing 30 kg 2 x 12 set
Arm forwards weight thing 30 kg 2 x 12 set
Arm lifting weight thing 30 kg 2 x 12 set
Arm pushing weight thing 30 kg 2 x 12 set
Stretches 30 seconds each
Suspicious stretch 30 seconds
Sit ups 8 >.>;;
Running: 10kmph for 2:30 at level 5. I would have gone for longer but the gym suddenly closed.

Today was very strange. I didn't finish appreciatebly faster on the rowing, but I wasn't anywhere near as destroyed as I was last time. I was able to do all of the weight brackets, although the last two on the final set were brutal. Everything seemed so much easier than the last time.

It's only my third try, so I don't expect any actual improvement. But it was very strange. Also, whereas last time I did the exercises I was in a lot of pain, this time the muscles went numb instead. Because of this, I was able to do a lot more continuous excercises.

Driving home was suddenly difficult. Somehow, even though I could lift all these weights, trying to turn the steering wheel was really hard. I didn't have any upper arm strength. Then when I got home to peg my washing up, wow, I never realised the clothes line was so high...

Today Ben, the resident photographer and also my tea officer managed to chalk up another mark under the "Sky may be homosexual" column by suddenly asking the group, "Hey, let's have a tea party." Ah, so we did. Unfortunately there was no china cups or pink fluffy anything, just four men sitting at a table discussing various machines for war (it is a Defence faculty after all) while drinking tea.

For the record, I had Earl Grey.

I've had a bad evening on my assignment. I am baffled by a small bug; when I resize the screen the shapes are supposed to scale (increase in size/decrease in size to match), and sometimes they do. But most of the time, they stretch and warp. If the shape is rectangular, my spheres look like squashed tennis balls.

It may not be my fault. I downloaded a couple of other programs that were supposed to be flawless and ran the same test; it's the same effect. It's possible my video card can't handle this version of OpenGl I am supposed to be using. But I don't know for sure.

So I skipped this step (I have also skipped the transform step) and moved on to the user interface. I ripped the code from my work and spent the last half hour plugging it in to the new code, then when it dinged 11 pm I went to play Warcraft. Every second Tuesday night, World of Warcraft is turned off so the servers can get maintainence and some down time. Somehow, it always catches me by surprise. Ah well. So I am ranting on my blog for 20 minutes, then going back to coding. All the extra time I put in justifies going to the gym tomorrow after all. Damn :)

At the moment I can still get 90% of the marks so it is not a tragedy, I will just move on to a different step each night. I am currently on 60%, and every feature I get working from now on adds +5%. I managed to work out what they were asking in the transforms section, but I was unable to get it to work. I don't know why. I still didn't hear back from my lecturer on it, maybe he's not back from holidays. Maybe I just won't hear from him. Provided I don't run in to more than three OH NOES situations, I should still pass.

My decision was not to get in to a relationship until after I had finished studying. That did not change. It's only one more week, right? Some young lady has been checking her calendar or something. I didn't say anything to her since July last year, so this was out of the blue. Awkward phone conversation!
Girl: "Hi, how are you?"
Sky: "Oh, good thanks!"
Girl: "I haven't seen you in ages. Are you busy in the evening next week?"
Sky: "Ha no, I don't have any plans, I usually just play warcraft or something."
Girl: "Oh, you must not have a girlfriend."
Sky: "Yeah, that's right, because I-"
Girl: "Ok so lets meet up for dinner on *rattles off time, day, location* See you then bye" *click*
Sky: "..."

I'm not interested in this girl at all, and I will maintain that I am not good boyfriend material right now. Hey girls! I am not tidy or clean! I have repressed issues! I play with small model tanks and hang around with nerds! I watch cartoons for girls! I have poor dress sense! I don't know how to dance! Seriously, avoid. You don't want this.

Well, sometime soon from now, maybe. I know this girl is looking for a relationship because she has said it to me before. I've gone to great pains not to flirt with women (since I am not on the market so to speak) since I made this decision. Sometimes I fail. But I never flirted with this girl so I am confused as to why she is interested in me.

Somehow I want to get more experience spending time with/understanding women in a relationship sense but I don't know how to go about it. It's not like I can go up to some girl and say "Hey, I'm not interested in a relationship with you but I want some practice. Can I buy you dinner? How about a car?" *pulls out toy car from pocket* Ha, yeah. Oh, but when I was dating Rachel, she got me to read those Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus books. Kind of helpful, but sometimes I wonder if it did more damage than good.

Really, I don't know what to do. There are some other reasons I am not interested in dating right now, but the not being good boyfriend material is the easiest one to explain without hurting feelings.

Work is going well. Today I found out the result of the demonstration.
I don't understand the make-up of the research facility very well. I thought that Stephen had absolute authority over everything, but apparently we are actually funded by the government (or atleast the project I am working on is Government funded). The man who came to watch the project is from the driving committee that decide which projects get money, and which ones do not.

From June 2007, the project I was working on had been marked to be scrapped. After seeing my demonstration, it's being federally funded again.

Yesssss...

I am being paid the maximum amount that I can get for my qualifications. Today I found out that as soon as I graduate, I will be promoted to reflect my qualifications, and then a second promotion immediately after that because the Director was really, really happy with the demonstration.

I don't care if it will be any significant pay difference but I am just elated to get a double promotion. After five years of Games Workshop, after four years of Donut King, I NEVER got a promotion. There was nothing, IS nothing for me to show for those nine years of net work. And now, nine months in to this job, I got two promotions. I made over a million donuts for no difference. I wrote maybe a couple thousand lines of code and made more impact on this world than I ever did before.

Very sobering.

Well if they say the terrible spaghetti hack that I used, the game is over. But if it's stupid, and it works...ah...is it still stupid? >.>;;

Insects: Since deciding on their extermination, I have been keeping a closer eye on their behaviour. There are two different types. A long type that DOES look like a cockroach, and a short fat type that looks like...umm...I don't know. I'll take a photo of them (thanks mum!). I've watched where they like to live, and I've also noticed odd little black dots that look like eggs. When I go shopping on Thursday, I'll grab some roach traps and pop them down in the frequented areas. I plan to spend most of next week scouring the house and cleaning it up. So, if I start to see little roach eggs/poop in some places after I've cleaned it, it will let me know of any bases that I missed.

Ah well I should get back to coding. Bye bye!

Those little bastards.

They ate my onions. My ONIONS.

I'm putting the bugs on notice. After my assignment is done, a campaign of insect extermination will begin on a scale not seen since Starship Troopers.

The enemy are desperate and running out of hiding places. I need to scour the entire house and remove any sign of untidiness, seal away all food, clean every surface so not even a speck of resources remain for them to survive upon. Being a little cleaner is not enough; it has only shown me this vile menace exists in greater numbers than I had first imagined.

Make no mistake. This is genocide. I will burn their habitat and destroy their supplies. I will give them no place to survive or hide. I will scour them all from the face of the earth, and I will do it without pity or regret. I do not need to know their name or race. Any that stay in my abode from this Monday, will face a harsh vengeance.

Assignment: I am about 80% done and have picked up 65% of the marks so far.
Fooding: Still good for now. Have cooked dinner every night. Made some work towards lunches, too.
Gym: I really should go to the gym again Wednesday. I want to see how my assignment progress goes tonight and tomorrow first. Although the situation is looking good, I don't want to ruin it by being overzealous.
Warhammer: Notice went out today of the next Apocalypse scale game for two weeks from now, on a Saturday. It's 5000 points. It will be the first time for my new Baneblade to go to war. She won't be going alone; I'll be fielding a Leman Russ Vanquisher (aka 'Sniper tank') to help defend her against enemy armor. I may field some other Space Marine tanks with them, but lots of infantry with good officers is my usual style.
Warcraft: I saved up enough honor and marks to buy the epic shield. It's really tempting to buy it, but if I save up a little more I can get that crazy mace. If I can get a group of four more players, I can get another great shield from half an hours work, so, it's probably better to skip the shield and save for the mace still.

Ok, back to work.

Sometimes my dreams solve problems for me, but most of the time they are just random trips through the warp. This dream was a weird conglemeration of Donut King, Tanking, alcohol, my trip to China, and wanting to fly again.

I am driving a Donut King tank. The dream is from the outside perspective, so even though 'I' am driving the tank; my view is as if I am watching a movie. My brother Warren is also in the tank. Through careful application of rum, we are able to make the tank fly. At that point we believed us both to be hallucinating, but later events show that it really happened. We fly the tank from Ireland to an odd island named 'Blue 5'. Then we fly it back again. We land in the middle of some medieval Pagan festival. The tank and Warren promptly vanish. I follow a dark haired girl who is showing me around the village. She shows me the two tanuki that my Auntie Dianne had given me years ago. What are they doing here? I had given them to an English girl named Jesse ten years ago, who had needed the luck more than I did. I fall over. I wake up in the Sydney airport with the people who went to China with me, minus a few faces that I didn't like, and a few new random people to replace them.

My passport is stamped with so many places that I haven't been in RL, most of them signed by the Director of the facility at work, and some by my brother Warren. Blue 5, of course. Ireland. Polynesia. China, again. America, again. Some other places I can't remember.

I go outside of the airport and, oh wait, I am actually in China already. I have forgotten my phrase book so I wander the streets of Wuhan looking for a phrase book shop...never mind that I don't have money to pay for it. As I am walking down the street, I encounter a small group of Chinese girls who are in strange foam animal costumes selling some...thing? Of course I am self conscious (they are cute!) and I realise I am wearing trashy clothes, haven't shaved or combed my hair etc. I say so, the girl says "It's ok, we sell pants, you need pants right?" Of course I need pants! Pants are required at all times, especially when out doors. I know how to say "how much does it cost?" and "I don't understand!" and many other things in Chinese, but not "I don't have any money" so I am lured in to the store.

Aside - you can really piss of Chinese people by greeting them in Japanese, and presumably vice-versa. It's really dangerous for a foreigner to think "Oh that person is Chinese" by looks alone. Always try to listen to them speak first to know for sure.

The store is filled with animals. It's clear that the store doesn't sell pants, it sells clothes made from animal fur (not skins). They have a video of a baby koala (so cute!) growing up and then they - seriously - carefully give the koala a hair cut and use the hair to make the clothes. The Chinese girl is arguing with her manager, but I can't understand what it is about. They ignore me as I wander about the store, and find some children teasing the snakes.
The signs are written in several languages including English.
"Warning - venomous." Over each snake are the species name. "Tiger Snake. Taipan. Cobra." Each of these are, truly, venemous and nasty, angry creatures. So it is with some distress that I am watching children putting their hands in and gleefully being bitten. One of them is walking around with some form of sea snake draping out of his pockets.
A mother of the children happens to walk past and scolds them angrily for misbehaving, blissfully unaware of the mortal danger her children are in. She places her hand on the top of one of the glass cages and the taipan bites her on the hand. I help remove the snake from her limb (it got jammed somehow), then tell them to get to a hospital, and then I wake up.

Anna and I talked briefly about PVP gear in Warcraft last night. She is playing battlegrounds! Awhile back, Kim, Anna and I had some plan to play in the Arena but due to one reason or another *coughexamscough* it never happened. It's really a big cooincidence, but I had just started talking about it yesterday, too. Part of the problem for my character is that there is no PVP reward items for tanks. WoW PVP is focused around doing as much damage as you possibly can in the shortest amount of time while limiting the damage you take. My Paladin can take ridiculous amounts of melee damage, but barely any spell damage and has one of the lowest damage outputs of all characters. If I want to play seriously in a team, I need to change him around a bit. Unfortunately respeccing costs in-game gold. After I finally buy the netherwing mount, respeccing more than once a week becomes viable, but until then I am sticking with protection spec. I enjoy tanking and people always need a tank. I am enjoying being the battlefield medic, too. Even my limited healing ability has turned the tide, and some of my attacks actually work better when I am in 'heals mode'.

Ian from work talked to me more about his guild on Friday. He asked me to transfer my main character over to their server, but I declined, explaining I planned to rejoin my old guild on Area 52 eventually. I said I would roll a new character on Suramar and asked what their guild needed. "Heals and DPS" he said. After some more discussion, I decided on a Shaman. I said I wouldn't start playing until after my assignment was done. More than damage and heals, they need people. They want to run 25-mans. They have finished Karazhan and made some runs in to Zulaman, but he said Zulaman is far too hard without the equipment from Gruul/Serpentshrine Cavern/Magtheridon's Lair to make any appreciatable progress. They did down the first boss so there is some argument that they could farm it for gear, but they don't want to waste the whole guilds time just so one person can get one item once a week.

Well, I should do my assignment. I'll write more later. Bye!

OK, back.

Simple spheres is the result of my assignment. No, it's not finished yet, I still need to add more shapes and the user interface. However, that is showing that my light sources, materials, and polygons are working. I still didn't get the transforms working yet.

I have been taking my camera to work. During the Morialta bush walk, I borrowed my brothers camera. I managed to spot a kangaroo on the way and took some photos. Apologies for the size.

Kangaroo 1
Kangaroo 2
Kangaroo 3
Kangaroo 4
Kangaroo 5
Kangaroo 6
Kangaroo 7

Last Thursday was spectacularly hot, and I spotted a family of magpies taking a break under the shade of a table.

Magpie Family from left to right, mother, baby, and father.

Shot 2

Magpies 3

I also came across this teenaged plover. It's an older version of this little fellow. He was so hot he was trying to hide under some columns, and eventually he gave up and went into this tree.

The photos aren't of very good quality because I am not a very good photographer. I hope with practice, and Ben's advice (for he is a very good photographer) it might improve.

Next time I will photoshop pictures down to a more manageable size.

Some people have said they can't see the kangaroo in those pictures. He is right in the middle of all of them. If people still can't see it, I'll circle him.

Ah I went to the gym again today.

Oh boy. Ouch.

The first time I only did half a work out. This time I did the full work out, but only half of it. What?

The full set is:
15 minute run
2k metre boat row
2 x 12 30kg weight lift
2 x 12 40kg jumping thing
2 x 12 30kg weight sideways thing
Some stretches
Sit ups omg hate
Very-suspicious-looking-stretch x as many as you can do.

The first time I did all of those things, only half as long as I was supposed to because the trainer was trying to teach me as much about the equipment so that I could go on my own.

So! Today I went on my own.
I did: 2k metre boat row; 10 minutes 23 seconds.
After that, I was trashed. Completely. I was panting and sweating and making sad pathetic 'somebody save me' sounds with 500 metres to go. I made it to the end, then I sort of collapsed on to the ground and just stayed there for a bit.

Then I got up and tried the weights. Last time, I could do it. This time...I don't know, maybe my muscles were tired or something. It was really hard. REALLY hard. I made it to the end and then had a minutes rest. Then I did the second set and ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch. That was the end. My hands and legs were shaking. When I tried to move around, I was staggering and had some trouble walking.

I remembered the advice from the instructor. "If you get wiped out, just go to the cardiac machines." I guess he knew I would go all out and destroy myself and be unable to do anything more complicated than walk. So I went over to the strange power armor walking machine and played on that for ten minutes. After then I was having some trouble even just walking in that so I decided to call it quits for the day. I had only been in there for 25 minutes but man. I really went all out.

My first gym goal is to survive to the end!

Food: Still going well so far. This morning I went to make breakfast, though, and vermin had destroyed all the breakfast cereal. That's a real shame. We've had a big problem with ....well...I don't know what they are. I want to say cockroaches but I don't think that is what they are. They are little thin things about half a centimetre to two centimetres long with strange markings on their back. They are cockroach shaped but they die far too easily to be true cockroaches. They climb real well, even up the outside of glasses and so on, and they get in to any unsealed container. If you leave food out - like a plate of meat - to defrost, if you don't seal it airtight in plastic when you come back to it there will be these little buggers all over it.

Saving: I am still on 50% pay due to the holidays so I won't make my target (again u_u). I should be able to stay above the emergency threshold but no extra bonus unfortunately.

WoW: I am not playing it much due to the study, but I ran an instance with Kimi, Jeff, and some pugs today. It was good fun and it went real quick. It was nicely timed, too - I had been headbutting my wall on a roadblock in the assignment and having something to distract that was fun and with my friends really helped. I am not sure if I am going to collect the Season 1 Gladiator gear. None of it is really useful for Protection spec, even in pvp (like it is supposed to). Instead, it looks like their is gear for Shockadin, Retribution, and Holy.

We aren't running arena yet but the reality is I will probably have to respec Mal to play arena. I would like to have a play with him in Protection mode but if we want to play seriously I know what has to happen. However, I did blunder across the best healing mace in the game - better even than the Hand of Eternity - in the S1 arena gear, and so I'm saving up for that. It's so good, it's even better than my current tanking weapon. I need another 10k honor.

Assignment: I am maybe stuck. I have all weekend to try and figure it out and if I don't get it, I will ask the lecturer. Rather, if I can't figure it out, I will go on to something else (since I can skip this part and come back to it) then ask the lecturer on Monday. The way the assignment is structured is that you code the infrastructure first, then the OpenGL drawing, and then the User Interface. Do that for 75% mark. Then the remaining 25% is a number of things that you can choose to do, each worth 5% - make 5 of them work and you get 100% for the assignment. 4 of those are trivial. I can use the Interface I built at work for the assignment, and I've got the OpenGl working. I just need to sort out the infrastructure.

"For the Group object, add code to the draw() method to:
i. Apply the transformation in the transform field of Group to the model
transformation."

As I understand it, this means that I should be taking the Group Transformation and applying it to the objects within the group; however the Group Transformation is specified as the identity matrix:
1000
0100
0010
0001

And transformations have to be specified as an x, y and z translation/rotation/scale. I know you can use a matrix against a vector to modify all the points within the object, but I'm not sure why I have to do it this way. The Group object ALSO includes the x,y,z paramaters that must be plugged in to the matrix. But OpenGL comes with it's own glTranslate/glRotate/glScale commands that can use the provided xyz to do the same thing.

I don't know why the assignment needs me to do it this way. If I can understand WHY there is a difference, then I can figure out what I am supposed to be doing with it...

I went to the gym. My arms and hands are burning so. Short post.

Tuesday night was fail. I took a half hour nap and woke up five and a half hours later. Crap.

http://www.myspace.com/sky_paladin

^^ I now have MySpace. It looks bare and ugly because I didn't do anything with it. Maybe this weekend but probably not anything major.

So, gym. Well. I barely broke out a sweat. I still have some energy left. But damn, I worked hard. I have that dull, burning ache in almost all of my body, and the strenght is gone. Tomorrow will be fail. It's good. I finally went to a gym. Major, major victory.

Right now steaks are cooking for dinner. They are still a little bit frozen. The normal chops thawed out overnight. My guess is the higher quality meat of the steak has more density and therefore needs longer to thaw. But I put them on the hot plate anyway.

Goals...

Well so far I didn't do a great job. I would rate myself about 65% satisfaction. But I still have a good feeling because, even though I didn't accomplish everything, I still accomplished SOME things. I can't expect 100% right off the start. It means, this is working. I am doing things.

Next is. Continue to cook food for dinner, not buy take out. Gym again Saturday. Cleaning Saturday. Two hours study tonight. Three hours tomorrow. Three hours Friday. 12 hours on the weekend.

Once I learned and got good at the basic things, the foundation of a good, healthy lifestyle, I can make some plans for building on it.

Ah, whoops. Looks like my steaks are extra, extra well done.

First things first. I've joined up the local Zest gym. It's kind of pricey, but it's in a good location and the people seem friendly and not scary (much). I have two weeks to decide if I like it and want to stay, so over this time I'll try to check out another gym or two just to compare it.

My original plan was to look for gyms on Saturday. I was kind of antsy because I didn't get to do any study Friday evening, and with my brother over I didn't get much sleep. So I decided to swap my Saturday and Sunday plans around. It was a great idea, up until I went to the gyms on Sunday afternoon to find they closed at noon...oops.

The place was absolutely packed. I found out that Monday is the worst time to go, so I am coming back Tuesday evening, and have a gym instructor on Wednesday who will teach me how to use all of the different machines and sign up for different circuits and so on. It has a swimming pool, too, but I forgot to check for a saunta. There's also a massage parlour right next door. Very handy!

Food: This is going so-so. I had one fail on Sunday when I realised I forgot to buy food for lunches too. So we bought take out that day so late in the afternoon I didn't have dinner. On Friday night, when I came home, there was pizza already there! So that meant I pushed my Friday night dinner to Saturday. I still have to cook dinner for tonight (it's 8:30 pm). I kind of ruined my sleep schedule over the weekend so I am trying to push my staying-awake-ness up til around midnight to fix it.

Study: This is going well. I actually found myself yesterday not wanting to stop (I have a deadline at 11pm) which is a good sign! I'm interested in doing it and after this blog post is dinner, then study. I am not making the three hour study today, and I probably can't manage it with the gym at all, so I won't be doing too much of that just yet. I failed to do two six hour blocks on the weekend and only managed one block.

Cleaning: This is doing poor. The basic housekeeping is good (dishes, laundry) but other important things like sweeping and mopping still have to happen more regularly. That is, they actually have to happen. Also, I really need to think about ironing my shirts.

Saving: Epic fail. I don't want to talk about it.

Goals for this week:
Go to the gym tomorrow to play with some machines.
Go to the gym on Wednesday to talk to the gym instructor and find out what I should be doing.
Three hours study Thursday and Friday, and five hours split between Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Six hours Saturday and Sunday.
Have absolutely zero take out food bought this week.
Sweep and mop the house at least once this week - make it Saturday.

Well, I think that's about it. I'll write up more after the gym on Wednesday, assuming I don't have a heart attack and die on the spot first. It was kind of reassuring that the guy who was interviewing me plays Dawn of War...

So far so good. I've had too many good starts that ended with a tragic nose dive, though, so I won't be gloating til my assignment is done.

Shopping: Tick.
Haircut: Tick.
Washing: Tick.
Cleaning House: Ti.....mmm...well...I did SOME. More work to do.
6 hours of study: Fail. The haircut and shopping took a lot longer than I planned it to. However, I made up for it somewhat today when I was supposed to be working >.>;;

Shopping went well. I did something I never did before - I took an inventory of what I already had, so that I didn't wind up buying things I didn't need which subsequently went off and had to be thrown out. Surprisingly, I actually had a lot of vegetables. Taking Warren's advice, I bought wholemeal bread. Um. I ate a piece and now I am kind of addicted to it. I just eat it straight from the packet. Bread, hand, mouth, gone. Probably I should put some jam or something on it first but, uh...well...

Today was my first day back at work. It was dead! There are about four staff total, which quickly went down to three when Gerry locked himself out of his own office. Nobody was available to let him back in, so he went back home. A cunning strategy. I'll have to remember it for myself next time. I also took my new camera to work on the off-chance more baby birds were around, but nothing remotely cute showed up today.

The DOORS server was offline, which meant I wasn't able to work on the tools task at all except for moving bits of paper around and putting different colored post-it-notes on other pieces of paper. The rest of the facility are under the impression I designed this system and then started programming. In actual fact I didn't know any of the capabilities of the programming language, so hacked up something first and then retro-designed it around what it could do. It passed the inspection last December by some miracle, but it needs a lot of work to save it from being an endless blackhole of spaghetti code.

The Director has made some indication that they are prepared to send me to the US to get some training in the DOORS program. I expect I will have to pay a big chunk towards it so I am starting to save now.

After I hit 'publish' on this I am going to cook dinner. It's a low quality bachelor meal, just lamb chops, some pasta and boiled vegetables, but it's a hell of a lot better than the usual crap I eat. My eventual goal here is to get in to the habit of cooking dinner, and then I can start to play around with the fun recipes people have been sharing with me.

It's really an active, interesting time for me. I hope I can keep this up. I seem to have a lot more free time than I remembered having, and am feeling more capable and independant. It's only been a few days.

Another thing that I want to share - I am watching an interesting anime series called 'Ghost Hound'. (This is where Anna rolls her eyes, sighs, and says something about watching tv shows for little girls.) Prior to meeting Anna, I was actually part of two clubs - one was AJAS, literally an anime watching club, and the other was JClub, which was supposed to be about Japanese and Australian students doing fun things together but gradually became an offshoot of AJAS. At this point I left it. After my assignment is done, I'll have to invest more effort into looking further than just anime.

Ghost Hound is an interesting one because, on top of the usual supernatural storyline, there is another, normal-human story. The rural village has a brewery and the main character, Tarou, is the only child of the couple that own it. His older sister was supposed to inherit the brewery but died in suspicious circumstances (that are linked to the supernatural storyline). There is a great deal of pressure on Tarou to inherit the family brewery. It's clear even at this early stage that he doesn't want to do it, but feels some great loyalty to his family and will abandon his own (unspecified) dreams to meet his obligation to his family.

At this point in the series, Tarou's Aunt has taken over the brewery, having left her own job to take up the family business. Even people unrelated to the family make comments - a reporter who observed Tarou and his aunt automatically assumed and stated Tarou would be taking over the business when he was old enough, and everybody (even the aunt) agreed.

Shortly afterwards, the aunt and Tarou were talking about yeast and from this conversation, the aunt told Tarou he was never going to be the master brewer (in a polite way).

I'll be very interested to see the next stage of this story.

I'm well aware that tv is not a good way to learn about another culture; but right now I can't devote enough time to do it the right way.

So. I reached my time limit. It's time to make dinner. See you next time.

--EDIT
The television made this sound: *CRACK* then the picture went all funny.
Then the ominous smell of smoke, closely followed by actual smoke.
So Shane turned the TV off. Somehow he broke my TV with just the power of his mind. Very impressive. I'd be angry, except he gave me that TV for my birthday. What he hath given, he can also taketh away...

So, this is 2008. So far it's just been unbearably hot. My little unit doesn't have air conditioning. The closest thing we have is when Shane leaves the fridge open too long. He just stands there, staring into the empty vastness of it all, his soulless eyes black and devoid of hope. We have some milk in there that expired a week ago. I haven't had the heart to throw it out, because while it's been there, it looks like the fridge actually has something in it.

It's time for a big shopping spree. I actually went shopping a few weeks -

SUDDEN NEWS FLASH

- Shane tells me that he bought new milk. IT IS ACTUALLY IN DATE!

...
Anyway.

Some person said to me my goal of finishing my assignment isn't steps to a goal. It's better if I say "I will invest x hours per day" towards the assignment. Because, right now, the assignment is my excuse to not do anything - for example, not going out at New Years. Well, I never thought about it that way, but they were right!

I have six weekend days, today, and one holiday tomorrow. I also have 12 week days left.

I think a good amount of time to spend is six hours per weekend/holiday, and three hours per week night. That's a total of seventy two hours to work on an assignment that is supposed to take fourty hours, and I already did all the book readings and started on the programming. I will re-evaluate this time allotment Monday 7 to see if I am sticking to the time allotments, and if I will actually finish in time. The reason for this time division is to force me to have a definite time block that I will be working on my assignment - I can then add in time around that block for other things. Such as shopping, tidying the house, getting a haircut, etc, etc, as well as having some fun time and meeting and talking with friends.

Gym - the 'objective met' part of this was to find some gyms. I found six. The next step is to actually visit some of them and pick one or go to some of the free trials they have. I am going to put down for Saturday from 12-5 as 'visit at least three gyms'. One of them is at the aquatics centre, so I'll make sure to go there and have a swim afterwards.

Also, I really need a haircut. I am going to do some shopping tomorrow so I will see about getting a quick trim then.

For today, I am going to work another two hours on the assignment, then stop for dinner, wash my clothes, then sit down and chill out for the rest of the evening.

Well, it's 2008. Welcome to the New Year everybody.