Infinite State Automaton

I'm at a crossroads in life.

It's been a long time since I've had to make such a difficult choice. It's also been a long time since I updated this blog. So, I will go through some recent history.

The most pertinent event is my contract at DASI running out at the end of February this year. Since then, I've been unemployed for getting close to three months now. I did do some minor work for a friend's badgemaking business, but nothing to live on.

I've been trying to decide if I should look for work in Sydney, or keep living in Adelaide. I do not have a partner or any financial obligations, and my only immediate relative living in Adelaide is my brother (there's more family in Sydney, actually).

The only thing really tying me to Adelaide at the moment is my friendship group, and lately, they have shown what valuable friends they are to me. I feel terrible not having any kind of real job. Not being able to do things because I don't have enough money is very painful and shameful. But for my career, the best place to be is Sydney...my choice is, essentially, do I move to get better job prospects or stay in Adelaide to be with my friends?

I haven't had proper friends like this for a very long time. What I want is to somehow have a good job and also keep my friendship group together. These things, they should not be mutually exclusive, right? But as time has gone on, the friendship group has started to splinter slightly. First, one moved to Canberra. Then, one of the couple's split up and the girl left our group. Then one of the guys is moving to Sweden for six months. Out of the original core group, there's just one couple, and myself. Sometimes I really do feel like a third wheel.

It's been a long time since I broke out of those endless circles I was spinning in. This is the first time that I need to choose. It's good. I really moved a long in my life.

It's my 30th birthday in a few weeks. I wanted to do something to honor my friends, to thank them for the loyalty and kindness that they have shown for me. I don't know if I will be in Adelaide to do that anymore.

I am not sad or bothered, just troubled. I don't know what my motivation to stay or go is. If I am honest with myself, I am looking for some kind of sign I guess. I want some reassurance from somewhere or something that I am making/have made the right decision. But really, I learned long ago that there isn't 'one true path' for everybody. Every decision is an opportunity to learn new things or better oneself in some way.

My friends have new jobs and new things to do. I have seen a great deal of them during our mutual 'holidays'. But this time is coming to an end. I have become addicted to spending time with people. It's not a bad thing, really. For somebody like me who spent so much time on computers, to want and crave other people around is a really great turn around. The fact that this blog hasn't been updated so frequently is another indication that my life changed dramatically these last two years.

I should move to Sydney, if I can find work there. What is stopping me is fear of the pain of losing my friends in Adelaide. Really, I will not be losing my friends. I will still keep in touch with them. But I got comfortable here. I enjoyed spending time with them, playing dodgeball, playing volleyball, watching movies. It seemed these timeless days could never end. One day, they must. Perhaps me leaving will be the event that precipitates it, or, perhaps James leaving to Sweden, or Cat's new job...what will happen after?

I can't wait for fate to hand me the last card left after everybody has already made their choice. Going to Sydney is the hard decision. In truth, if I could move to the USA, I would have done that instead, because that is where I want to go. Sydney is a stop in between goals. My reluctance is because it's not perfect, and I'm looking for an excuse, and that excuse is "It's not exactly right". I'm scared of finding happiness somewhere that doesn't line up with where I want to be, and being trapped there.

So, rationally, I already know what to do. I have learned a lot about living lately. It's the same situation as always. I love the convenience of the city, and the lifestyle of the countryside. How can I have two opposed things at the same time?

It is unexpected because I had lost my old blog password, and now it is found again. It's even more unexpected because I had not lost my password - I had lost my E-MAIL ADDRESS and had been trying to log in from the wrong one for...almost a year.

This fills me with unbridled joy. Unfortunately I am work, so this update will be short -

I am 30 in six months D: (So ancient)

Hello to Kimmyjo, Jenny, Bellwether, Tenebrea and Sami :) Also a howdy to Anna if she happens to come this way.

It is Christmas so I won't write much now, but look forward to the near future.

Warcraftfu:
10 man ICC is done. I got a handsomecat new shield.
I currently live on Nagrand in Relic. Ah, let me get the webcrawlers to do their stuff. Ahem:

Alliance Nagrand Australia Guild Warcraft Recruiting Tank DPS Heals

We're trying to step up to 25 man content. If you came here late 2009/early 2010, please pop on over to http://relicofnagrand.guildomatic.com/ and say howdy.

That's all for now, because I am at work and probably shouldn't be blogging...

Tonight I played beach volleyball. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. Our team was annihilated, as to be expected, although we stayed around and practiced afterwards so the next game will probably be less horrific. The sand was cold. So cold. It was like walking on ice and it was the only negative part of the experience. By the fourth game, my feet were numb and it wasn't so bad.

I have been neglecting this blog lately and I am sorry for it. There is a lot that I should write about and do, and I will try to make time to do it soon.

Today is my brother's birthday, so I will be calling him next.

I have been very sporty lately. Tennis, more tennis, dodgeball, walking with the work group on Wednesday's, and now volleyball. What the hell? My original plan was going to the gym twice a week.

Getting in to a group sport has been very easy. Playing in a social group - even though it surely isn't as good for me as the gym would be - is much preferable. For one thing, when there are friends, I actually do it.

My preferred option is to spend the night in and play Warcraft but that hasn't happened for a while now >.>;;

I have attended three lectures for masters, now. They are not particularly interesting however the course matter is. One of the first things we were asked to do was look up a disaster due to a system failure, eg the Challenger shuttle. This got me in to the Wikipedia trap and before I knew it a whole day was wasted just idly clicking. Somehow I always wind up on a page about tornadoes.

I am dead in the mafia game already. I was given a role where the best option appeared to be a heroic sacrifice to put together my group, however it seems my move was in vain. I won't know for another couple of days but I think my faction is going to be exploded quite soon. Oh well, you can't win them all.

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~