Infinite State Automaton

It was pointed out to me previously that I mispelled 'victorious' in the title of the preceding post, but I couldn't see where the edit button was to fix it. Oh dear >.>

I've got my new internet set up with minimum fuss and faster than expected. Now to make up for lost time~

(>'o')> Go, my little Kirby modem~ Suck down all the Internet! MWahahaahaaha~

Sunday: Dodgeball. Monday: Tennis. Wednesday: Denist, then more tennis.

The new racket (or raquet?) is coming along well, really starting to feel quite good. Last night we managed to scrape another victory. It was bitterly cold.

I'm having a problem with my Internet.

I was originally with Optus for my phone, mobile and Internet. I did not pay the phone bill for a long time, so they suspended my phone service. This is fine. This also meant my Internet was unavailable. Annoying, but fair. However when I tried to access my e-mail from work, I couldn't get in. Curious. I called Optus and learned that they had (allegedly) destroyed my Internet account.

My Internet, however, was paid for up until the end of July. It's true that because I didn't pay the phone bill I couldn't use my DSL, but the related services (eg e-mail) should not have been interrupted, let alone destroyed. I asked Optus to undo this, and when they refused, ask them to explain why. They could not give me a satisfactory reason and so I switched my phone to Telstra. They then insisted it was impossible to have an Internet connection through any other phone provider than themselves. To me this sounded like "We really don't want your business" so I have changed ISP's too. I'll be changing my mobile later also.

Surprisingly I got to keep my old home phone number, but my e-mail address is probably gone for good.

I won't have reliable Internet access for anywhere between 10-20 days. Probably I'll use this time to clean my room or learn a new language or something.

Recently I've discovered the joys of Skype. I've been chatting with a lovely young Chinese girl and spending more time talking to normal people than I have been playing games.

Right now I am at work late. I should be working, but I am procrastinating. I'm demonstrating the latest version of SRET to the client tomorrow and I was asked to draw a diagram to show which features are implemented.

Man I sure am hungry :/

Finally we finished off the last of House Capulet, and those nasty Citizens and Watchmen too. You can see it all over at my Bacon and Ice Cream Cheesecake blog, although outside the context of the game it probably won't make much sense.

Since I was in charge of the house, the mafia in game 6 were under the impression I was somehow responsible for our victory and subsequently made sure I was the first to die in the next game. Oh well~ You can't win 'em all.

Paradox, and math = Science!
- I've never heard it explained that way, and you've captured in your second paragraph the essence of what I feel, but lacked the intellect to say. If you don't mind, I'll be using the spirit of what you've said there for my next inevitable confrontation with those dastardly nay-sayers.

Goals:

Food - has been so-so, but improved of late. Tins of soup, bleh :/ I can't stand it much more. I think I'm gonna have to make lunches in the morning or something.

Health - Pretty damn good. Dodgeball is a lot of fun and it keeps me fit and agile. Next dentist appointment is about two weeks away, and then we have the 'So, your wisdom teeth' conversation I've been dreading. After last week tennis finished up for two weeks, so we aren't playing THIS week or NE...oh. Did I forget a week? I'd better check. Anyway, Catherine's team needed a fill in this week so I got to play Monday instead of fencing. 6-0 loss, tiebreaker loss, 6-2 loss = Annihilated!

I am really happy with the improvement in my tennis game. I make a lot less stupid errors and it really feels like I have some control over the ball. I still do make stupid errors, just not so many. Catherine hasn't had to punch me for a few weeks now, so. That's good, right?

I also filled in for two other teams at dodgeball. The first team I played for was largely outclassed so we were kind of curb stomped into the ground. The last game I played with the rest of the team was astonishingly a success, kind of an upset actually. We walked out 45-18. The last time we played this team was the grand final last year, when we were crushed. So this was an unexpected, but pleasant, turn around.

Money - I finish paying off my car this week. It's amazing how a car that was labelled as $11,000 in the car yard somehow wound up costing me nearly $18,000. That compound interest is a killer. Well, I learned this lesson the hard and painful way.

Special - I have to do a photoshoot of me putting together a tin foil hat for the next mafia blog, www.baseunderacat.blogspot.com - I'll put the results up here, but I don't think I'll be sharing that blog publically. Right now it is predominately a giant wall of rant, so...

Right.

The cheesecake is made of ice cream. It has bacon on top of it, similar to this one.

So I want to say, "I ate the delicious (bacon and ice cream) cheesecake".

Defenders of Dessert - this is the secret super hero action group that Kimmy and I have formed. Our super powers are the ability to put common foods together to create unique and powerful new desserts, capable of protecting the earth while bringing joy and hope to everyone. And, now that I think about it, probably a diabetic fit.

In hindsight, the main appeal of bacon is when it is served hot, so a bacon and ice cream cheesecake is not for the faint hearted. Oh no. That crispy, juicy and steaming hot bacon, served on a smooth bed of rum and raisin ice cream, wrapped in hand pressed pie crumbs, is a battle! Each perfect morsel is a blend of fire, ice, earth - and just a hint of something mystic.

If you've tried fried ice cream and loved it, then you'll know - bacon and ice cream cheesecake is your final destination.

Until next time~

--Sky

I've been very busy with most of my spare time playing the Mafia game over at MegaTokyo.com. I have a sister blog up at http://www.llamalavalarvae.blogspot.com/ that is currently hidden to all but the authors; I'll link to it here with my role in the game and make it publically available when the game ends, somewere around Wednesday next week.

I've really missed being in an online community, I've met a lot of fun people that I'm hoping to introduce to my original group. Having a large group to play around in has given me some perspective in the previous very small community.

I haven't been playing much Warcraft lately but I will be getting back in to it when the Mafia game is done. I'm really unsatisfied with the guild I am currently playing in. When I started playing in it at the start of April there was two Karazhan runs going, we were making attempts against Gruul, and there was even a Serpentshrine Cavern run. So I'm at a loss to explain why, only three months later, they can barely scrape together enough to run a single Karazhan run, and some weekends can't even do that.

I've got a number of places that I can go to but I would prefer to go somewhere that I have friends. Ideally I want to be playing in Serpentshrine Cavern as I have been buying the SSC/Black Temple smithing recipes and at great personal cost overgeared myself from Karazhan and ZA.

End of Warcraft babble.

The other thing that has been taking up a lot of my time is that I have several different social groups and all of them want to do things on the weekend. I enjoy going out and spending time with other people however these things do overlap occasionally. If I am lucky, sometimes it's the social groups that overlap - last night I had my Golden Key friends, some of my Sarah's Group friends, and some of my dodgeball friends all in the same place.

I even met a couple of new people and helped connect them with some others. It was a fairly quiet night, although I unexpected ran in to Caroline, my ex-girlfriend from about two years back. We broke up on very good terms because in between two jobs and University, I wasn't able to dedicate enough time to a relationship. We realised this and just moved on with minimal fuss. So when we ran in to each other by surprise yesterday, we just talked and reintroduced ourselves with no problem, which was a relief for both of us, I am sure.

I am down to the last $600 of my car. This thing has been the biggest financial millstone around my neck since I started Donut King, and is 50% of the reason I was trapped there for so long. Paying it off at the end of this month will be immensely satisfying.

The last big expense I am looking at is the dentist. I went for my second-to-last set of fillings last week and they casually mentioned 'Oh yeah, we are going to have to take your wisdom teeth out'. Shit :/ I remember when Rachel had hers done she was pretty much useless for a whole week.

Work is going reasonably well, but I have been somewhat lazy. They took the SRET system to the INCOSE conference in Amsterdam and showed it to the Viatech guys to see if they wanted to buy the IP. I haven't been told what the result was, however my boss was happy with the demo and subsequently my contract will PROBABLY be extended in August, yay! They are also looking at paying for me to do Masters because I can't do some of the things they want me to do, namely, write documentation.

Oh I can write documentation, but it's not done to a certain standard, and I don't know the buzzwords and acronyms that real engineers use. It's really quite annoying, I have scientists on one side saying "Computer scientists are not real scientists" and engineers on the other saying "Software engineers are not real engineers". We're lambasted by everybody as not being 'real' because I don't get my hands dirty screwing around with a soldering iron or a tit pipette. I'm even told that when I've finished at DASI and get myself a real job, I'll be set for life. Huh? I thought what I was doing at the moment was a 'real' job?

What is real anyway? Do I have to always be pursuing goals other people set for me? My preferred goal is to sleep another half hour~