| So the other day I get a message from Tegan stating that we had a feline visitor. She was in the kitchen, minding her own business, when out of nowhere there's a meowing at her feet! Standing there was a black w/ white patches cat with no collar who had found her way in though the open back door. Sarah (random girl that was originally renting place but is now leaving shortly due to immigration issues with her partner) is allergic to cats though and it's supposed to be no pets as I mentioned in a previous entry. Still hopeful on that one just quietly, as I know the last tennants had a dog so surely there is some way to change it.
Anyhoo, it was really friendly so Tegan hung out with it in the backyard for a while until she had to go out somewhere. Upon returning the cat had disappeared, never to be seen again. Until just now when we saw her again! :3 She was walking on top of the fence outside the study window and looked in at us, so we went to the back door and called her over (Sarah isn't here >_>). She sat with us in the warm study for a while before I put her back outside in fear of Sarah/the landlord randomly showing up. :P She is adorable though, here's some moofies!
Moofie 1
Moofie 2
We named her SK, for Suprise Kitty. :3
PS- The streaking effects in the 2nd one are cos my phone doesn't handle indoor light well, so I had the high exposure mode on. | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment   |
| Trin's Exciting Things You Should Know - Part XIV - Public Address To People Who Don't Get How Technology Centered Around Buttons Works Edition! *breathes*
28. Pressing the button at crowded intersections in the city is not necessary. Chances are high that at least one person has already pushed it, and subsequent pushes are not going to speed up the changing of the lights. Furthermore, pushing the button is only necessary at "pedestrian crossings", at actual intersections the man will turn green whether you push the button or not.
29. Pressing the "close" button as soon as you enter the elevator at work will not make the doors close quicker, regardless of the quantity and/or frequency of presses bestowed upon said button. The doors operate on a timer, and only after you've manually opened the doors (eg- to let a runner get in) will the button do anything.
30. ATMs are not hard to operate, and if you're taking longer than 25-30sec you should either go into the bank or wait until nobody else wants to use it! Maybe other banks are different but the majority of Commonwealth ones all have the same interface, so it's fairly easy to remember which buttons do what (I nearly always take out $100 at a time and do so in about 15sec, from card input to walking away). Also, using an ATM to check your balance and then withdrawing is incredibly annoying when you can check your damned balance on the receipt after the withdrawal. I'm pretty horrible at budgeting, but I still have a fairly accurate idea of how much money is in my account at any one time (not much >_>).
Aaaand that concludes this week's Trin's Exciting Things You Should Know - Part XIV - Public Address To People Who Don't Get How Technology Centered Around Buttons Works Edition! *breathes* (which on reflection was mostly just me venting) Stay tuned for next week's exciting episode!
PS- Read this entry and then check out my awesome comment further down the page. :P
EDIT: Fail at Roman numerals! | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| So I've officially moved out of Heidelbogan West, and am now staying with Andrew & Co in Preston. It's pretty horrible here to be quite honest. Andrew, Michael & Brad are fine, but Brad has no control over his 15yo brother who rarely goes to school and instead opts to stay up all night playing video games (at full blast) in the loungeroom, which is conveniently where my bed is because the shed I was promised turned out to be a massive letdown. It wasn't so bad for the first week as I was off work sick and was staying up late myself, but now I'm back at work so I'm sleeping in Michael's horrible excuse for a bed and he takes mine, seeing as he's quite the nightowl himself. Cannot wait to move out.
On that subject, the epic house search continues to not bear fruit. I took Tegan's advice (stolen from Emma) and searched Gumtree.com.au, but the total clusterfuck of listings made it barely worth bothering, with only the occasional item that actually listed the bare essential facts (eg- how many rooms, what facilities are there, THE ACTUAL ADDRESS). So instead I decided to make my own listing advertising what I was after, and paid $5 with my SHINY NEW MASTERCARD~ to have it stuck at the top of the list. It worked! I got close to 10 replies, only followed up on a few of them though as some were as bad as the ones that caused me to place the ad in the first place. An actual SMS I received- "Hi I have a room in a nice big house". Anyhoo, the best reply was about a nice 3br house that I've since been to for a visit (it was awesome). It hasn't been formally listed anywhere so there's no competition, fingers crossed that we can get it and then move in and have babies and stuff. >_> AND THAT MEANS YOU GUYS HAVE TO CROSS FINGERS TOO!! I should know by Friday what is happening.
In other news, miraculously avoided a fine on the tram this morning. I had a ticket with 3/10 uses left, but needed to make 4 trips before I get paid (I am 100% broke right now, yay!). I figured this morning was as good a time as any to be naughty and not validate it, despite the tram being full but not into-the-aisles full (which inspectors avoid as they can't move around), making it prime inspector prey. So about 3/4 of the way to work, a group of plain-clothes ticket inspectors get on. Son of a bitch. I had two options- pretend I only had my eftpos card (which the tram ticket machines don't take) so could not buy a ticket until I reach the city, or show them my ticket and act surprised when it was not valid and say that the machine must not have worked. Neither of these are likely to work mind you, but I went with the latter because it's better than flat out saying "I don't have a ticket". I don't know whether it was an honest mistake or the guy was just being nice, but he looked at my ticket, said "thanks mate" and walked on to the next booth. o_O Thank Jeebus for that, the last thing my bank account needs is a fine.
In other other news, more finger crossing dammit! I'm excited by the whole house aspect, not only because having our own house would be sweet but most importantly I can finally have permanent Teegles-time! :D | | comments: 7 comments or Leave a comment |
| So at work yesterday I decided that I hadn't seen Tom in a while and arranged to go there for the night for some drinkin'. Wanting to try something new, I found out how to make the Funky Cold Medina that was mentioned in Scrubs and was surprised to find that I already had the main ingredients. It was all carted off to Tom's, then we got a few supplies and the inebriation began! Here's the recipe for those interested-
30ml Absolut vodka (although I doubt it matters what brand you use)
30ml Southern Comfort
30ml Blue Curacao
Top with cranberry juice and some dry ice
Obviously we didn't have any dry ice so we used plain ol' frozen H2O, but I'm not a huge fan of carbonated alcohol anyway. There was much drinking and Rock Band-ing (which was mildly entertaining but certainly not worth the pricetag in these parts) and I got, for lack of a better term, completely shitfaced. We also tried it with some Orange Curacao that we got as a backup incase the Blue ran out, but it wasn't quite as good so we stuck with the Blue after that one attempt. I called a cab sometime in the wee hours, and as most of the alcohol was almost gone I just left the rest there for Tom. The Orange Curacao was still mostly untouched, so I poured it into a big bottle of mango & apple juice that was our cranberry backup and shared it with Tom while we waited for the cab out front. The juice had been left forgotten in the freezer all night so an alcoholic slurpee was inadvertently created, and to be honest it was probably better than the FCM! I'm drinking it now actually, but it was 100x better when frozen. The taste is very, very smooth, so smooth that Ghazeh would probably drink this and like it if nobody mentioned the alcohol content. :P
The highlight of the evening was when I saw something moving across the roof towards Tom's open window, then actually come through it. It was a small cat, and I was quite shocked when Tom and his brother weren't at all concerned with the uninvited guest. "Tom, there's a strange cat walking through your room!" I said, and Tom replied that it was his sister's cat and that he had told me this the last time I was drunk at his house and was tricked by the furry little bugger. The last time he mentions was when I went to go downstairs to use the toilet but spotted a strange creature moving around in the dark hallway. I assumed it was a possum because they seem to like Tom's house, and not wishing to provoke an attack I just used the balcony instead and went back to sleep. I told Tom about it in the morning and he said it was his sister's cat. :P
This morning I woke up at about 7am feeling fine, no hangover at all much to my amazement. Then I made the mistake of trying to get up and was promptly put on my arse by my good friend, Mr Gravity. :D It seems there was no hangover (yet) because I was still fairly intoxicated, so I'm guessing I didn't go home til a lot later than I first though. Woke up again at about 11am, then I was hungover. Still, I got off fairly lightly as all I needed was some food to fix me up. That food was the new beef flavour of Kraft's macnchee, which tastes pretty much identical to their regular macnchee when you load it up with tuna like I do. Still prefer the original though, 4/5.
For some useless trivia that likely only Ghaz will appreciate, I can now tick off another item on my "cocktails mentioned on Scrubs that I've had" list. All I have left is to get Zach Braff to hand me a daiquiri. :P
In other news, Fable 2 was leaked by the fine people at Kmart yesterday, almost a whole week before the street date. Unfortunately I was at work and then Tom's, so I had no idea until I read about it today and wasn't able to snatch up a copy. Or at least that's what I would've done if I actually had my Xbox, which I don't (still at step 3). This presents Microsoft with two options- A. abandon the street date and let everyone go nuts (common if it's only a day early), or B. get on top of it quickly and stick to the street date, with Kmart earning themselves a nice fine regardless of which route is taken. Microsoft have gone with option B, and on top of the fine have told Kmart that they won't be getting any copies of Gears of War 2 until after launch. Ouch.
Time to go browse me some internets, later!
PS- I've discovered that my headphones are fine, the reason everything was distorting is because my ffdshow audio codec was loading twice for who knows what reason, resulting in all video/mp3 sounds being amplified twice and causing the distortion. Hooray for not needing to spend money! | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul |
|---|
| Trinityjayone goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as a Dalek. | | aurora_black gives you 4 green cinnamon-flavoured pieces of bubblegum. | | blitzturbo gives you 6 white apple-flavoured pieces of chewing gum. | | buronzu gives you 15 red blueberry-flavoured pieces of bubblegum. | | ghazrat tricks you! You get a used tissue. | | jennymoon gives you 11 yellow watermelon-flavoured wafers. | | mouldeh gives you 12 purple passionfruit-flavoured nuggets. | | shmuxor gives you 15 orange coconut-flavoured pieces of chewing gum. | | silveria tricks you! You get a scratched CD. | | souless_raven tricks you! You get a wet rag. | | theiffy gives you 10 mauve tropical-flavoured gummy worms. | | trinityjayone ends up with 73 pieces of candy, a used tissue, a scratched CD, and a wet rag. | | Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern. |
I hope e-karma comes and bites everyone who tricked me on the arse. Especially Ghazeh, I don't want your damn cooties! | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| It's been a fruitless week for me, as every day I'm constantly checking my inbox for word from Microsoft, but nothing ever comes. There's a glimmer of hope every time the new mail sound plays, but it's always spam. I don't want to enlarge my penis, I want my damn Xbox! :@ Even more annoying is that ElPres sent his off the same day as me and already has his back! They must have some kind of "senior citizens first" policy, because only today did my status update to this-
"We have received your console"...and? Some more info here would be just super. With any luck it'll be sent out tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath. I swear though, if I miss the Fable 2 launch some poor customer service rep will be getting a call from me, at which point I shall use my insider call centre knowledge to get free stuff!
On a more positive note, I saw the cutest thing at Northland today. Outside Safeway there was one of those Labrador-shaped donation thingies for the blind (I think), and a very young girl was enchanted by it. She asked her mum for "some money for the doggie", then put it into the slot and quickly climbed onto the dog's back and latched her arms around its neck. When it didn't start moving, she turned to her mum and cried, "mum~, the doggie is broken". Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww! :3
I'm eating chilli and it's hotter than I remember. Ow.
EDIT: I was listening to music up loud earlier and I think my Sennheisers are dying (again). :( Probably time to get some new ones, these are god knows how old now. | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| So on Thursday night, something terrible happened.
( A picture's worth a thousand words )
In other news, Blizzcon '08 has just been and gone. There weren't really any massive announcements like I was hoping, although I'm sure the entire population of Korea is masturbating furiously at the news that StarCraft 2 is going to be a trilogy, one game for each faction. The Wizard class was announced for Diablo 3, and while it's not as...different...as I had hoped, the time slow bubble and a few other abilities look amazing. I was all psyched up to get into WoW again, but I'm not sure if I'll bother now. I haven't touched beta properly in over a month, and there's just nothing that really draws me into it. I'll probably still buy the expansion though, play it for a bit and if I don't find myself enjoying it then I'll just stop. Tegan should be coming down during the launch, and to be honest I'll be far more interested in her than WoW. :D | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | tetysk | | Subject: | Food! | | Time: | 09:21 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/neko/kaokitty/hungry2.gif) hungry |
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| Today I picked up some of the Lindt Creation 70% Intense Orange-
Normally I don't touch dark chocolate as I'm not much of a fan (Cherry Ripes are the exception*), but I thought I'd "splash out" and try some of this stuff as I liked the packaging. Much to my surprise, I really dig it! The unmistakeable aroma of cocoa had hit me before I could even break a bit off, but it seemed smoother that what I'm used to, more refined if you will. Now let it be said that the only thing I ever disliked about dark chocolate was the lingering aftertaste, which I usually find too bitter. This stuff, however, manages to mix that bitterness with the sweetness of oranges in brilliant contrast.
This is not chocolate, it is a ticket to flavour country, and I dare say the new no.1 on my list (previous champion, Cadbury's Black Forest block). My only complaint is that the individual bricks are quite large, far too big to melt in your mouth without breaking them first. :(
*Those double-dipped Cherry Ripes are the exception to this exception, too much chocolate
While reading anything & everything related to chocolate on wikipedia, I came across this!
Lindt has opened three chocolate cafes in Sydney, Australia. The first is located at Martin Place and opened in 2004, a second store in Cockle Bay Wharf (2006) in Darling Harbour and a final on George Street in 2007. A fourth store will open in Melbourne, Australia, probably in the prestigious end of Collins Street, in January, 2009.
The cafe is famous for its rich hot chocolates which are available in dark or milk. They also sell crafted chocolates, cakes and ice cream.
Ice cream flavours include:
Black forest: dark chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips and sour cherry ripple
70% dark chocolate
White chocolate framboise: white chocolate ice cream with raspberry sauce ripple
Sable cookies and cream: a sweet cream ice cream with soft cookies swirled throughout
Duo: hazelnut ice cream with chocolate chips
Almond praline
Vanilla bean
In unrelated news, I've discovered that when preparing ravioli, there's an even cheaper (and tastier) sauce than standard spaghetti sauces and the $5 ones they try to sell with the pasta- a 300g can of Heinz tomato soup that costs about $1. This is the same stuff that my dad (and now myself) used to make spaghetti sauce with, so I'm not sure why I never thought of it before.
Trin's Exciting Things You Should Know - Part XIII
27. In America they deep fry ravioli. WHAT THE HELL?!
Have you ever had this, Miss (soon to be Mrs ;D) Mooniepants? Is it as gross as it sounds? | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| My brother called for a chat yesterday morning, and I spoke to mum as well. She told me that she had been fired from her job a few weeks ago in fairly shit circumstances.
She was basically a receptionist for a panel beater place. Answered the phone, dealt with customers, did all the paperwork, the list goes on. She's been doing this job for as long as I can remember, although she's moved around a few times. The place she was at had a larger "rival" in a nearby suburb, although they sorta worked together as well because they were both RACV authorised. For the non-Australians, that means RACV (a massive car insurance company here) would send them work. Anyhoo, the powers that be decided that the 2 workshops were to be combined into the one entity and moved to a large warehouse location. This several-month process was only recently completed, and in addition to mum they had 2 other girls who did reception-y stuff, both originally from the rival workshop. One of these girls left at some point because they weren't happy with the change. Then on the day mum was fired, one of the bosses (mum's old boss resigned when they announced the changes) brought up some issues about quotes being wrong and a few other financial things not being right due to the shit new computer systems, and asked mum to fix it. He probably went to her because to be honest mum did a lot more work than her job entailed, which is why she had never been replaced despite turning 60 recently. Training someone new to do all the things she had learnt over the years would be too much effort. Anyhoo, mum was many things there but certainly not an accountant. I'm told the rest of the conversation went like this-
"I'm not an accountant"
"But can you fix it?"
"No, I'm not an accountant, and I didn't make the software"
"..."
"So what now, you're going to fire me?"
"How much notice do you need?"
"I'll leave today"
And that was it. Seems the place is really going downhill, as mum reckons they've been getting a lot of complaints and the RACV have already demoted them down several ranks, from the highest down to the lowest. If they get many more, RACV will remove their authorization completely and they'll be on their own. Mum also reckons that the last receptionist girl there was on the verge of quitting too. To put it simply, this place is so far up shit creek it's not funny.
So mum is having a bit of a break at the moment, and then wants to get a part time job somewhere. A lot of her friends do this, so she figures she can too. I thought she'd just retire at her age, but this way she'll at least be keeping busy.
On a more positive note, Teegles time on Wednesday! :D | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| So the past week or two has been fairly action-packed! And by action-packed I mean fairly standard with a few things happening differently.
First of all, Tegan went back home. :( Apparently she has a present for me but won't say what it is! So far I have ruled out the following possibilities- Teegles, a fully-functional Dalek battle casing, David Tennant. Damn, damn and damn! I miss her lots.
Secondly, I got the shinies I was talking about, hooray! It's a 24" Samsung LCD and it's huuuuuuuuuuuuuge on my desk. Huge and wonderful!
It has too many features to name, one of which is unfortunately not speakers, something which I shall be in the market for at some point. Thanks to Jeson for taking me to get it, which was an adventure in itself. I managed to leave my phone at home, which wasn't good because our meeting plans weren't very exact. I went to a phonebooth at Flinders to try and ring someone to pass on a message for me, but the only person's number I can even vaguely recall on the spot (that knows Jeson) is Ghaz, and I couldn't remember the first 4 digits. I went through about 10 different possibilities before giving up, but in the end it didn't matter because Jeson was waiting for me at the station gates. After picking up the monitor we went to Maccas, which took an unbelievably long time. Seriously, we could have gone to a proper restaurant and had lunch in the time it took. Not only were the lines huge and the registers clearly inadequate, they apparently make every burger "to order" now. This means that instead of them having X amount of every burger ready to go, they don't start making your big mac until you actually ask for it. Talk about retarded! At least the McNiggaAfrica didn't disappoint, they should use that sauce on more things.
Apart from the above, not much has been happening. Went to mum's over the weekend and installed XP on the PC there, which took fucking hours. My brother kept burning the XP image to disk using the Vista functionality, which wouldn't make a bootable disc. Several ruined CDs later, I figured it out and did it properly with some 3rd party software on there. Then along came hurdle number two - nothing fucking worked. Incase you don't remember, this thing was purchased at Harvey Norman and is set up with all this automatic restore crap built in, apparently removing the need for driver CDs! Normally this wouldn't be a problem as XP automatically detects most things, but nooooo, this piece of crap has everything onboard, including the network adaptor, so I couldn't even get online to download things. In a stroke of luck mum had actually gone and bought that Solitaire-playing laptop, so I was able to use that to download things instead. Ended up taking the better part of the day.
Finally, everyone needs to see THIS. I cannot stop watching. :D
EDIT: Oooh that's bigger than I remembered. Will cut if people complain. :P | | comments: 9 comments or Leave a comment |
| Today my brother called because mum wants my computer "expertise" (compared to their levels of computer knowledge) again. If you can believe it, she wants to blow close to a grand on a laptop so she can play Solitaire in bed. I'm not joking, and this is just the latest in mum's history of splurging on useless things that she'll bore of quickly (although by far the worst). Let's make a list!
-An exercise ball, NEVER used it.
-An exercise bike, same as above.
-Some other exercise thingy, same as above.
-A Wii. Rarely got used before, now is never used at all.
-A collection of 50 or so DVDs, most of which are still in the shrink wrap. Many of the opened ones are opened because I watched them while staying over.
Now I'm not one to tell others how to spend their money, but this is a bit much! I should tell her to give me the cash and I'll buy one for her. At the very least she better be planning to claim it on tax, which wouldn't be hard as she's at a desk all day.
In other news, I've ordered some shinies of my own. :D | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Two-hour team meeting at the pub right near the end of my shift + getting paid for it + free meal + $4 spirits = shitfaced | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | So remember the savings account I opened? Well after having interest calculated on the $5 for a while, and then an extra $100 for the last week, I earned 11 cents interest for that month. :D | | comments: 3 comments or Leave a comment |
| Work rant time, only for once I don't have something nice to say! Today I caught wind of what is one of, if not the, most amazingly retarded management changes that I've ever heard of. First of all, a few things about my work so that this all makes sense.
- At any one time we can be in one of 3 states on our phones- "available", which means we're waiting for a call/on a call; "aux", which means we're in the auxiliary channel and thus won't receive any calls (although we can make them); and "logged out", which means we're logged out completely. The time we were "available" (and on a call) + "aux" = AHT, or average handle time.
- We get paid a base rate of $18.40/hr, with commission of $2.50/hr total - $1.50/hr if your AHT is lower than 300sec for the pay period (fortnight), $1/hr if your quality score was over 87%.
- Quality is a score out of 100% we get if we were monitored that fortnight. You lose points if you didn't do things that you should've, such as not acknowledging the reason for the call, not IDing the customer properly, not listening to them, etc.. Certain things, such as not asking "satisfied" (see below), gave an instant fail and 0% quality. You get 100% by default if you're not monitored.
- "Admin" is what we log and then get marked off on our schedules when we were logged out and not taking calls because we were doing follow up work. Contacting other departments, fixing up errors, doing callbacks, etc.. Essentially it's when we're taking care of escalated issues.
- For the shorter after-call work, like making notes about why the customer called and what you did, you use "aux". We're only supposed to stay in aux for 2mins tops at a time.
Now I have nothing against our new project manager (see a few entries ago), but ever since he came along things have really started going to shit. In chronological order! (yes it's another list)
- We had to start logging every single instance where we were logged out, when previously you were only marked as late if you were logged out for 10-15mins or more. Furthermore, we were supposed to get approval to log out from a TL (team leader) before actually doing so, which often meant standing around and waiting (while you're in aux) if things were busy (often).
- We no longer write out credit slips (for logging things like admin, delayed breaks & large credits), we have to email them to our own TL. It was so much easier to just write them and give them to any TL.
- The "satisfied" question was removed because it was annoying. Previously we had to end every call with this "satisfied", which meant saying something like "are you satisfied with my help today". You could word it however you wanted, as long as the word "satisfied" was used and you were referring to your own customer service. Now we have to end every call with one of 4 phrases, and they have to be exact. "Is there anything else I can help you with today" is ok, "was there anything else I can help you with today" is an instant fail for quality.
- We're no longer allowed to cook popcorn because both the recent fire alarms have been caused by someone burning it. This doesn't really affect me, I just think it's dumb.
- We're no longer allowed to use the stairs, not even to go up/down one floor.
- We can't sit where we like anymore, we've been given strict areas to sit in based on which shift band we work in. This would be ok if our shifts were actually fixed and didn't change from week-to-week.
I'm not saying all of these are directly his fault/doing, I just calls 'em like I sees 'em.
Anyhoo, today I find out that admin is being phased out completely and very soon we'll be expected to do all our admin stuff while in aux. Keeping in mind how our commission works, this change is ridiculous! Why? Well there's two types of agents at my work- those who try their best to help the customer (me), and those who don't (my pal Frank). After a call, Frank will do minimal notes and then take another call. He won't follow things up, he won't fix dodgy orders, he won't call customers back. Pretty slack, yet because of this he takes more calls which results in lower AHT, meaning he gets his full commission with ease. I on the other hand, rarely get my AHT commission because I do things properly, meaning more time in aux/logged out and less calls taken overall.
Agents like Frank will be completely unaffected when this change takes effect. Agents like me will pretty much guarantee they miss out on full commission, because all the extra aux time is going to blow out their AHT. Quality is easy to get regardless, as they only listen to one call and whether or not you followed things up when needed is too difficult to monitor.
Given the choice of doing the right thing or getting paid more, I'm going to take the latter option. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| Went to the doctor today because I keep getting headaches and runny noses at the same time and it's really annoying. For some reason I actually like finding out what's wrong when I get sick, even if it's worse than I thought. Probably cos I hate not knowing things. Anyhoo, he reckons it's likely cos I never wear my glasses and looking at a computer all day is straining my eyes. He suggested I get my eyes evaluated and pick up some new glasses.
I don't have the opinions of high school people to worry about now, so wearing glasses wouldn't really bother me anymore (provided they're not the shitty ones I got in year 9). I won't bother looking at them until I have new monitor though! Why bother getting glasses if I don't have a pretty monitor to look at? But mainly the whole tax business, I really need to get onto buying the damn thing. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Tags: | shinies | | Current Music: | "Get Innocuous" - LCD Soundsystem | | Subject: | SHINIES!! :D | | Time: | 03:51 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/neko/kaokitty/happy.gif) happy |
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| Yesterday I brought home shinies!
At work on Friday I was throwing my phone (a Nokia 6234) up in the air and catching it, but then I missed it and it smashed onto the carpet, sending the back cover and the battery flying. I laughed (I don't really like it, have been waiting for a reason to upgrade) and reassembled it, only to find that the power button had gone all spongy and it wouldn't turn on. Still, nothing to worry about as I had a perfectly fine S-E v600i at home. After work I tried to get the front cover off, but it seemed to be attached somehow. I tried my best to get it off gently, but it wasn't happening so in the end I broke it off and as it happened there was a couple of screws holding it down. I found the tiny switch for the power, but it was loose and just rattling around inside the phone's main frame. I got it out then started poking around at the PCB with a screwdriver (I've got a tiny set for fixing PCs), and after a few mins I found the right connection and the phone vibrated to life! :O Of course it now looks like shit, the screen is completely unprotected and the keypad is an optional extra held on with stickytape, so I trundled off to Vodafone to see if I couldn't renew my (nearly expired) contract for a free phone.
"Yes, yes you can" said the salesperson, so now here I am with a shiny new S-E K850i.
It's really, really awesome! The camera is fantastic and has all sorts of ridiculous features for a phone. It's 5 freakin' megapixels for starters (FIVE), has more settings than you can poke a stick at, an automatic optical focus, outputs MP4 (praise the lord!) video @ 30fps, and has a flash that always seems to perfectly illuminate any setting instead of just being either flash or no flash. Example- I took this in a pitch black room, yet those who have been here will tell you that's exactly what my room normally looks like. That was with all the settings on "auto" too, fucking amazing. It also has a macro setting, which means it's picture time! :D
( I wanna see! )
Guess what I managed to do after calling you, Ghaz? I'll give you a hint, I've managed to do it with nearly every single other phone I've had within the first few hours of getting it. :P Not my fault this time though, cos I didn't get a new SIM and I haven't known the PIN for this one since I got it with the 6234 (they never told me what the default one was and the usual "0000" & "1234" didn't work). Vodafone have redesigned the website though (about time, the last revision was shit) and you can now just get the PUK code off there, handy for clumsy people like me. :P The only other annoyance is that S-E are STILL running with the 10sec limit on message tones. I WANT FULL MP3S TO PLAY WHEN I GET A MESSAGE DAMMIT!!
Also, fun times at Northland the other day when I visited the Foxtel kiosk redesigned to show off the HD+ service. I couldn't help but notice they had a plain ol' silver IQ STU under the TV showing Fox Sports HD, and it even had cables going under the desk plus a green standby light. Someone's obviously afraid of theft, cos I could've sworn the new IQ2 (the one that outputs HD) we've got at work has a sexy gloss black finish. >_> Hell there's a picture of it on the HD website, who do they think they're fooling? :P
The outside might look nice, but the UI is unfortunately almost identical to the current one, just in orange & silver and with a few extra tabs/options. Why couldn't they make something nice to match the STU? Take a look at Sony's XMB or the Xbox Dashboard, heeeeeeeeeeeeeaps better!
Anyhoo, it is now time for chicken kiev so that's your lot for the week.
EDIT: Stay tuned for pics, Optus are having some major issues with hosting right now and access seems to be very intermittent. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| 
Requested the relevant forms at work today for getting my pay split between the accounts, because I doubt I'd have the self-control to make regular deposits of my own accord. :P Only took 24hrs to be active after I did an online application, not too shabby! I gets 7%p.a interest calcamulated daily and I can only access it via netbank or phone banking (which I don't use), so there shan't be any spontaneous purchases using it. Sounds fairly me-proof!
Anyways, I put in $5 because I had a lot of shitheads at work today and I wanted to feel good & accomplished about something. :3 I anxiously await tomorrow when I will have exactly $5.000958!
Also, while writing this entry I found out I could personalize my netbank a little-
:> | | comments: 5 comments or Leave a comment |
| First of all, a really strange dream I had lastnight. It started with me getting a job as a pizza delivery boy. There was no formal training or interview whatever, I just started going around with the current driver. His name was Dimitri and he looked like one of my childhood friends, Beaver. I only actually remember us doing one delivery, and most of the time was spend driving back to the pizza place down a red-dirt road through a forest that had a lot of crests the car would get a bit of air off. I hadn't actually seen the pizza place at this point, all I remember is driving around with Dimitri.
The dream then snapped to me walking out of a successful interview for a train driver position with Connex. I was supposed to go to some other place for formal training and whatnot, but while walking along the platform (apparently they hold their interviews at train stations) I passed the driver's cabin of a train stopped there. In the open door stood a girl about my age who seemed to be talking at nobody, and she asked if I was the new driver. I said yes, and with a mischievous smile she invited me in to "learn by doing" as Turk would say. I spent the next few hours talking to this unnamed girl and driving the train, which required very little effort. The train managed its speed, waited at red signals and stopped at the required stations all by itself, all I had to do was operate the doors and tell it when to start moving.
Seeing as the train driving was so breezy, I decided that the pizza boy gig had to go. So I had Dimitri take me to the pizza shop, which was nothing more than a clearing in the trees occupied by a crappy wooden structure that would barely pass for a cubby house. It was basically a room with two walls and the roof removed, and one of the walls had a large window with a bench that two women in their 50s (the only other staff) were standing at. There were no utensils or even an oven, so where the hell Dimitri was getting pizzas from is a mystery.
After that I went to train HQ, which was very high tech, to get my first real shift with that girl. It was oddly between 8pm and 6am (our trains stop just after midnight), and there was a power outage right after I started so I just went to sleep in my train. Afterwards I went back to train HQ and got more shifts, no idea what happened after that. The only other thing I remember is being a bit confused when I woke up for work, as I kept waking up during the dream and then going back into it, so it seemed real at first. I soon realised I was just dreaming, but then if I wasn't a pizza delivery boy or a train driver, what the hell was my job? There was actually a few seconds of mental static before "Foxtel" popped up in my head. :P
In other news, someone made some promises today that they better keep!
Finally, does anyone know when the end of the financial year is, or more specifically the last day that would be included in the 2008 tax year (if they're somehow different)? I'm still looking to get a nice big widescreen monitor to play Xbox on for work purposes, and I want to claim it on this year's tax. | | comments: 9 comments or Leave a comment |
| So I was taking calls at work today, as you do in a call centre, and I had to give some guy a call back for some issue. Barely a minute into the conversation...
Me- "Blah blah blah work stuff, blah blah blah etc, so I'll need..." *loud emergency-sounding horn starts playing* "...you to...ummm..."
Customer- "Well that doesn't sound good"
Me- "Err, can you just hold on one moment......yes I'll call you back, sorry!" *click*
Then we all evacuated down the stairs (16 flights, bah!) and outside where some firetrucks were waiting. Unfortunately it only lasted about 20mins, but we were off the phones for nearly an hour as the building only had 3 elevators (the 4th was being worked on at the time) and 3-400 people had to get back up, so that takes a while when each lift only holds like 10 people and everyone is currently working on the top floors.
There wasn't any serious damage obviously, I'm told that the fire alarm was tripped because a fuse box on lv13 shorted out or something and made a few sparks, which made a bit of smoke.
In other news, GTA4 is fucking awesome.
Finally, it seems that Connex have pushed back the Epping/Hurstbridge line changes. I'm absolutely positive they were part of the April 27 rollout when I first read about them, but now they're saying November. Oh well, means I can enjoy a shorter travel for longer. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| So several DVDCrave customers have received their copies of GTA4 today, well before the Tuesday 29th release date. Apparently online stores have been sending them out as early as Tuesday to counter the fact that tomorrow is a public holiday here in Australia. Seemingly everyone but DVDCrave has sent the packages with a "do not deliver until..." message, but due to a "shipping error" a lot of the DVDCrave orders obviously had no such message. Their website has an apology saying that "three" customers "may" have received it early, but far more people have confirmed having it. DVDCrave have been in a frenzy today, calling everyone who ordered it and asking them to keep things quiet. Apparently Microsoft are already onto them, and I'm betting Rockstar/Take-Two will want to have a few words as well. I called up EB in the hope that they'd be selling it early, but no deal. :(
Speaking of games, I was chatting with our new project manager Russ some more today, who happens to look like David Tennant but a bit older and is also the coolest manager ever. He's so casual & friendly, plus he's a gamer! I saw him nearby reading an Xbox magazine, so I asked him if he was excited about GTA4 and we ended up yakking about the history of the series and games in general for a bit. I told him about my working more shifts now so I could take time off for the release, he laughed and commended my genius! He also claims I have "a lot to learn" because I let girlfriend find out >____> I believe he said he isn't getting it at midnight because his wife wouldn't let him. :P Did I mention that he got us a Wii for the lounge area? He also got excited when Ben said he may bring in his 360, "yeah do it!" were his exact words. I think I like him because he's a pretty good representation of who I want to be when I'm 40 - married, kids, decent job, still playing video games and looking like Doctor Who.
Two more days until Connex fuck with the City Loop directions. All this week the trip between Jolimont and Central has taken roughly 4 minutes, and Connex reckon it will take an extra 5mins with the new design. Ha! It takes a minute or two just to go from Flinders to Spencer because all the trains go so slow over the viaduct! Still haven't got the reply to my concerns that they promised either. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
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