Thursday:
2 x Standard Mug (1 Point Each) = 2 Points
1 x Shop Coffee (1 Point Each) = 1 Point
1 x 75%ish Travel Mug (1.5 Points Each) = 1.5 Points
1 x 90%+ Travel Mug (2 Points Each) = 2 points
Total = 6.5 Points
Samuel
6 comments October 6th, 2005 at 08:48pm
As some readers may know, I recently applied for a job with 2CC, I will put you all out of your suspense, and inform you that I didn’t get the job…I came close, but I was beaten by somebody with more experience.
My SNAP (School based New APprenticeship) position in IT support expires next week, so negotiations are ongoing for future arrangements. I have enough “points” to finish year 12 early (which would be nice…mainly for the stress releif) and still gain a year 12 certificate, which makes it possible for me to get a better paying school assistant position, which would probably be less paperwork for everyone.
My voluntary (and eventually paid…eventually) newsreading position with Australian Independent Radio News remains stable, currently on Saturdays.
Samuel
7 comments October 6th, 2005 at 08:41pm
I can really only describe today as being long, considering that I was unable to sleep last night, it has been very long indeed, here is a fairly accurate summary of the day.
Midnight: Still at computer, reading emails and some websites, I had a cup of tea during this time.
12:30: This is when I went to have my shower.
1am: By this time I was in bed and seemingly unable to go to sleep and found myself listening to New Day Australia with John Kerr.
2am: Sometime around here I heard a noise downstairs and went to investigate, it turned out to be Nattie’s doggie door which I think may be developing a squeak, I fixed up a couple things, re-covered Nattie with her blanket and wrote an email to John Kerr in which I stated that I don’t email or call him nearly often enough.
3am: Still awake and in bed, it was around this time that John Kerr read my email and seemed quite pleased to hear from me again, he agreed with my statement that I don’t email or call enough.
5am: After dozing off briefly one or two times, and having had to get out of bed a few times (hourly) to turn the clock radio back on, I was still awake. By this time the “real” New Day program had ended and it was time for the 30 minutes of light news and information which is the last half hour of New Day which has replaced the 5am half hour of news. I still find it laughable that they have a sydney traffic update in the middle of this, they almost always say that “it’s not very busy at the moment”…they must be geniuses to work that out (or would that be genii???)
5:30: The 5:30 news arrived, and I promptly got up to make myself a cup of coffee, I went downstairs and covered Nattie with her blanket again (she actually does like it, she just can’t pull it over herself after going out to the toilet). I finished making my coffee and sicovered it was overfilled, so I had a few sips before going back upstairs and entering my room just as James Creegan was finishing the weather (in this case I am guessing at spelling of names), and I got back into bed humming Mike Jeffreys’ opening music. During the next half hour I enjoyed my Coffee, listened to Mike and noticed my curtains gradually getting lighter, this brought back memeories of work experience in July where it was still pitch black at 6am…not like October!
6am: After the 6am news I got out of bed and went downstairs, performed a number of household duties, and then had breakfast…which became a long and drawn out affair, I was in no real hurry.
7am: Well, I had only just started eating breakfast at this stage, and was doing that whilst listening to the radio and checking my email. Not long after 7am the Chief Minister made some curious comments about CCTV Cameras, it seemed to me that he was saying “We put in all these cameras, and now we have had a review and actually know how many cameras we have and how they work.” Just after his comments I got up (nearly finished breakfast) and tried calling 2CC but they had to talk to Jason Morrison (well, replay the call from before 6am anyway), so I called again during the 7:30 news and had a chat with Mike Jeffreys about the CCTV Camera comments and something he had spoken with Jason Morrison about…I think it was phone bugging in Indonesia…I think.
8am: At about this time I took Nattie for her morning walk, and then returned home, and decided it was such a nice morning that I would walk to work. I had a quick look for two A4 envelopes and discovered I was out of them, and I would “borrow” some from Dickson College. I eventually left home (knowing I was running late) at 8:35. I set a target of reaching the Ainslie shops by 9am, and at about 7 to 9 I realised I was going to beat that, in fact the Ainslie shops were almost out of sight when 2CC informed me that it was 9am.
9am: On the walk from the Ainslie shops to Dickson College I remembered the last time I walked from Ainslie shops to Dickson College, this was late last year when I caught a bus which was running late and spotted my normal bus with my bus driver friend just behind us. Unfortunately my getting off at Ainslie shops was mistimed as he drove by as I was getting off, and I had to walk, on this occasion I listened to George Moore on the way to Dickson College, today Lawsie was there.
9:15: I arrived at Dickson College, and to my astonishment was the first person, so I sat down and had a hard earned coffee. It is probably worthwhile noting here that National Walk To Work Day is tommorow, and I think I know why it is on a Friday. Most employees are less productive on a Friday, and they sure as heck don’t feel like working after walking to work, so having it on a Friday produces minimal differences in work outcomes, whereas my Thursday excersise made me somewhat opposed to the idea of doing much all day.
9:30: My direct boss who doesn’t have a key to get into the building arrived around this time, we stood around and chatted for a little while.
9:40: A person with a key turned up and we all entered, I requested two A4 envelopes and got them, then it was on to upstairs for the commencement of the work for the day. We (my direct boss and myself) went up to the IT office and discussed the work that needed to be done that day and I enthralled him (my boss) with stories of my journey to Erindale, and he read bits of this blog while I placed the letters and photographs for the various presenters in the appropriate envelopes and realised they are the lickable envelopes…so I got out the sticky tape as I dislike licking envelopes.
10:30: It was probably around this time that we went to do our first bit of work, which failed due to a poor computer case design preventing the installation of a new ZIP drive. The next bit of work involved me putting a couple programs on that computer, reading my emails again, and installing Windows XP on a computer while my boss and I discussed the working conditions of Australia compared to India. We also discussed briefly something which may or may not have been done by a junior employee (I’m a pretty junior employee myself, but I outrank this person, and in the scheme of things I’m not fulfilling a very junior job), as my contract is up for renewal I kept right out of that conflict.
11am: The direct boss left for a few minutes at 11am so I made a phone call to make lunch arrangements, which involved me walking to North Ainslie Primary School at lunch time.
Midday: After virtually no more work being achieved, I left for lunch at about 12:15 and arrived at North Ainslie at about 12:30, after spending some time their seeing that the IT people were having fun trying to get certain programs to work, the majority of us went to lunch in Dickson. Generally travelling in a car filled with people around my age would violate my personal safety policies, but this particular occasion didn’t because:
A) The driver is a close and highly trusted friend of mine who I believe to be a good driver.
B) It was a short journey.
If it had been a long journey I would have deemed it to be in violation of my personal safety policy.
We all spent a very long time in Dickson.
2:15: This is roughly the time I returned to work and and monitored a program installation while checking my email and writing for this blog…and had a cup of coffee.
3pm: At 3pm I left the college and went to catch a bus to Mitchell so that I could deliver the letters and photos (which I previously forgot to mail and decided mailing would now be inefficient), this also would allow me to catch up with some of the people at 2CC, so I made my way to Northbourne Avenue to catch the bus.
3:30: This is roughly the time I reached the nearest bus stop on Northbourne, and dicovered that the buses coming soon weren’t exactly soon or useful, but I ended up catching the first bus to come along anyway as it got me to Flemington Road, leaving me with a 10-15 minute walk to 2CC, I got there just before 4pm. I met the receptionist outside and had a small chat, after which I went upstairs and left the envelopes at reception. When I got upstairs Mike Welsh was in the middle of an ad break just before the 4pm news, so I leaned in the studio door and said a quick hello (I had previously emailed him to inform him that I would not be able to make it out to Ngunnawal to see him, and would be dropping by the studios this afternoon). I met up with a few of the people out there and had some good conversations before eventually leaving the air-conditioned comfort of 2CC for the outside world and a bus stop on Hoskins St, Kane Bond wasn’t there which was a pity as I wanted to say hello to him too. At about 4:20 my bus arrived and I got on and went to Civic on it, before walking home and arriving just before 5pm.
Since then I’ve had another coffee, and dinner, and a shower, and done various other things, and I’m now tired, so I’ll be going to bed shortly.
Anyway, that’s my long day, which involved far too much walking…I don’t have to work tommorow, so no walking to work for me…
Samuel
7 comments October 6th, 2005 at 08:24pm
The other day I stubled across Google’s personalised homepage thing, and realised I could customise it with live feeds from most Google services, and any RSS/Atom feed on the web. But I noticed one small omission, I couldn’t receive updates from Google Groups, which annoyed me, so I emailed them about it…this was Tuesday.
This morning when I went to check on Google Groups I noticed something very nice indeed, Firefox was reporting to me that Google Groups is now available in RSS & Atom feed formats, which enables me to:
A) Put it into my live bookmarks in Firefox, and
B) Add info from Google Groups to my Google personalised homepage.
This all goes to show that Google are listening, thanks guys!
Samuel
October 6th, 2005 at 02:50pm
This morning as I stumbled around the house in a semi-tired state (after not being able to sleep last night and hearing most of New Day Australia with John Kerr…including Sydney traffic at 5am where “the roads aren’t very busy”) preparing breakfast and various other things, I had a bright idea. I had just spotted the toaster with one bread slot unused and at full power, and I thought to myself “Why not insert a sensor in the toaster that detects if there is bread in the slot, and if there isn’t, doesn’t try to cook the empty slot”.
I decided to walk to work today, despite the fact that Walk To Work day is tommorow. It was a pleasant stroll on a pleasant Canberra spring morning, but as i passed the Ainslie shops I discovered this entire new bunch of wooden poles had been erected around the grassland at the front of the shops. Not only do these poles serve absolutely no purpose whatsoever, they look stupendously ugly and detract from the pleasantness on that nice area.
It took me 40 minutes to walk from my home in Reid to Dickson, which whereis.com.au informs me is roughly 3.9km, so I was walking a bit slower than usual, but that is acceptable when carrying a semi-heavy bag in one hand, and a radio in the other.
The interesting thing about this journey is that I left home at 8:35 and was supposed to be at work by 9am…I arrived at 9:15 and, to my surprise, was the first person to arrive, so sat down and had a cup of coffee which I was in need of, and continued listening to a rather amusing call on the John Laws show where a yelling match took place…a NSW government minister came on straight after this call and said “he was as hot as an oven” or something to that effect. I guess you would have had to have heard it to grasp the amusement factor.
Anyway, at 9:30 my direct boss arrived, and he didn’t have a key to get in, so we waited another five minutes and somebody with a key turned up, and two minutes later someone else turned up.
Effectively I had spent at least 20 minutes thinking about how late I might be, only to find out that would be the only person to ever know the true story, until I posted it here that is.
This afternoon the fire alarm was tested, and I was in a vacant room (excluding myself of course), the notice for testing started with a giant cracking noise over the PA system, which, as it sounded like it was coming from the roof, made me jump. This was followed by an ear piercing noise show as various noises eminated from the fire alarm loudspeaker which was far too close to my ear….thankyou to whoever was running it, I will send you the bill for the hearing aids I may now require….
Samuel
1 comment October 6th, 2005 at 02:42pm
I appear to need to fit two days into one post, so here goes.
Tuesday:
4 x Standard Mug (1 Point Each) = 4 Points
1 x Shop Coffee (1 Point Each) = 1 Point
Total = 5 Points
Wednesday:
3 x Standard Mug (1 Point Each) = 3 Points
Total = 3 Points
Samuel
2 comments October 6th, 2005 at 07:46am
According to an email I got from one of the LCA organisers, the speaker notification procedure has now actually begun. Here is what Mike Beattie wrote:
Hi folks, just a quick note to let you know that we’re currently in
the process of organising the presentation streams, and will begin notifying
you of the status of your submission shortly – notificatioins will be
staggered and some will be happening within the next few hours.We do apologise for the delay in this process!
Thanks for your patience,
Mike.
Well thankyou Mike for finally ending the agonising wait, and I mean this, thankyou.
The upshot of all this is that I should know in the next 48 hours or so whether any of my submissions have been accepted or not. I’ll keep you up to date as more news comes to hand.
Samuel
October 6th, 2005 at 12:20am
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