Pacific Centre

Where the hell did this come from?? I've been living here 5 months and I didn't notice the huge shopping centre located halfway between work and home, right on the streets I walk/ride/bus every day?? 100 shops, some of which I'd previously traveled 30 minutes to get to at other centres?? Bah.

Even Amounts of Damage

• Two 2L bottles of coke
• Two cans of Full Throttle
• Two 300g bags of two-bite brownies
• Two personal pizzas from Pizza Hut
• Two roast beef and salad rolls
• Two small chicken pies
• Two small beef pies
• Four days of thesis work

Not bad.

Fort McMurray

We keep hearing about the labour shortage at Fort McMurray. I have no idea why.

Nasty Stuff

So yes, Wart Off is nasty stuff. Basically an acid, and when you're an incompetent like myself, you can end up doing some stupid stuff. Only click here if you want to see the evolution of an acid burn. It's almost like a textbook!

For what it's worth, I stopped the treatment after the second photo. The area is now almost healed, though I'm not sure whether or not I actually killed the wart. Damn it.

P.S. The photos were taken so that I could get 'remote assistance' from a nurse. I wasn't planning to blog them, but I think there's a few medicos reading who might be curious.

Brownies

When I get stressed I tend to spoil myself with food. Truly unhealthy food, like brownies. Now, by my calculation each bag of brownies from Safeway contains 1500 calories. I ate one whole bag yesterday, and I'm about to open the second one (2 for $6!!) now.

P.S. No trans fats! What are they anyway?

I Hate Thesis Work

Well, I've been taking a break from paid work to focus on my thesis. I'm already missing work. :) I miss my syntax checker and compiler errors. I miss writing stuff that will just blow up in your face when it's wrong. I even miss unit tests; yes, unit tests! Really, what I want is a plugin for Eclipse that will tell me "you haven't defined that concept", "you already said that", and "that proof is wrong". I just can't track all that stuff in my head.

I could do with a shirt that says "these hands are made for coding".

Turbo-Thesis

The guys at work are being uber-nice to me again and giving me a free hand to get my thesis done. I basically have a lot more free time, and I'm dedicating it all to thesis work. On a related note, the website for Full Throttle is downright embarrassing for a nerdy comp sci student. But the drink is my friend until mid-September. :)

Foon-da-da-da-BING!

Haven't blogged in almost a week. So where have I been? Busy, and stressed. Recent events in brief:

• Treated a wart on my finger. Ended up with a 2nd degree burn.
• Went kayaking. Formed a very large blister on my thumb. Broke it before I'd noticed. End result the same as just tearing some skin off.
• Did something to my back/chest area yesterday. Got up yesterday morning ... back in pain. Went home in the afternoon to lie down ... whole ribcage in pain. Got up this morning and went for an x-ray and bloodtests. Results next week. Most likely was nothing.
• Thesis now scheduled for completion in about 3 weeks. Will be travelling to Australia at that time. Thesis is not ready.

Right now my day is "go to work, come home, take a bath (the only relax time), work on thesis until midnight, sleep". Making weird noises seems to release stress. Hence the title. :|

Upcoming Purchases

My next purchases will be: a sleeping bag, a camping mattress, and a broomstick. I have a company retreat this weekend and I was planning to fly there.

Just kidding, the bag and mattress are for the retreat. The broomstick is for my balcony, where I recently accumulated a large number of leftover nut shells from someone on floor 3 or above. I need to start keeping my balcony clean, and then I might be able to use it.

I'll be travelling by car to the retreat, not by broomstick.

Taken Down

Had a visit from my landlady yesterday, asking me to take the flag down from the window. :( Will rearrange my bedroom to have the bed further from the window because, ultimately, my aim was to use it as a curtain. I do notice the difference because the sun reflects off my blinds and walls; they provide privacy but little reduction in light.

In a similar vein, I had another "take down" this morning. Appears that Java Lab reboots itself at around 1am every Monday, so the experiments I set running last night abruptly halted. Restarted them today.

All in all just a big 'bugger!'.

Update: It wasn't the landlady's choice - the building owner instructed her to enforce all the building rules. :(

Hot Coffee

I've finally started collecting data for my thesis. This isn't the real guts of my thesis, but I need pretty graphs to be taken seriously.

Now I could run lots of experiments on my own laptop, but the poor thing has already suffered enough stress (it once reached over 90C because the fan stopped working during an experiment). But no, I'll use 35 lab machines at my university; all slaves to my thesis work.

It's going to warm in Java Lab (Building 3, Room 229) this week. :D

Mmm, Banana

This is apparently a banana slug. Apparently the people who discovered it first were very hungry; it is the only explanation for someone to look at this and go "hey! banana!".

I sincerely hope they stopped and went no further.

Summer Ending

I feel like I've settled down now. I go to work, I come home, I work on thesis (sometimes...), I go to sleep, I repeat. Life moves forward, but it gets a bit mundane after a while.

We've entered the tail end of summer. At least, I think it is. I don't track the seasons here. Today it's cool and wet - enough for people to be bringing their jackets out again. I know mine never really went into storage. :(

Real Work

Can only be in awe of this guy.

Australian? Patriotic?

So after the World Cup was halfway over, and the Socceroos were out, the price of an Australian flag dropped 25% to $15. So I picked one up, and was going to hang it on my balcony, just for fun. Finding that I had no way to affix it to the balcony, I decided to attach it to the bedroom window instead. How was I supposed to know that it would light up at night? :)

Bonus: I'm sensitive to light in the morning, and my Australian flag doubles as a thin curtain. Bargain!