Apr 21 2008

I always update this thing right guys?

Category: FTO, News, Personal, Play, Workoodles @ 10:46 pm

Yeah whatever. Been a while since I updated this, but after some coaching and prodding I decided I would. Ive had this thing for a long time now and Im not going to let it die.

For a start, I may as well start with the most interesting news which is that I crashed the FTO up at Falls Creek on Good Friday. I was taking a left hand bend which fell away fairly fast, and the tail let go. The FTO is a 60/40 front and rear weight distribution so when I took the corner it just had nothing to hold it down nor did it have any grip. I went into the guardrail at about a 30 degree angle, and by the time it hit I had already corrected it. the tail whipped back and tapped it as well, and I pulled it up about 20 metres down the road. I did get pics with my phone, here they are:

But this actually comes as a blessing in disguise, the insurance excess is $1200, 600 for driver age, 600 standard excess. Add to that I’m throwing on another 800 to have the entire car resprayed, the spoiler removed, all stickers removed, instead of just the left side. I got a quote from Jacob Body & Paint for $1450 to paint the parts I wanted, not withought removing the spoiler or even doing the entire car. Add to that Im sourcing my own front bar (aftermarket) and its going to only cost me $150 to have it put on. so all up, $2150 for a full respray, new front bar, spoiler removed from the boot and it all welded over the holes. This is the veilside front bar:

I like it a lot really. Don’t need to do the sides or tail imho, none of the kits look any good on it.

Moved out about a week and a half ago as well, moved in with a friend in the middle of Albury and I’m really enjoying it. A sense of responsibility combined with freedom basically overcame me after the first few nights. I have everything I need, and the move took me about 4 hours. Even better still that we have a shared love of cooking so the meals have been great. Only problem is the carparking, but I’m getting used to it.

To support the moving out, I got a new job at Charles Sturt University as the AudioVisual tech, and a member of the service desk. I handle videoconferences, teleconferencing, projectors and loan laptops, etc. Then on my other days I help students & staff with their minor IT issues. Im really happy there despite the job being so very busy. One thing I have discovered though is a company called Polycom. Whom I now await to unleash zombies from somewhere using a T Virus. This is the company logo:

That red logo and text comes on the screen every time you start a videoconference accompanied by deep brooding music. If anyone is going to replicate Umbrella Corp its these guys.

I can’t remember if I mentioned it here either but I bought a new laptop a little while ago. Its a Core2 7500, 256Mb 8600MGT, 3gb of DDR and a 320Gb HDD. I got it to take to lans and so far its been awesome. Heres a pic:

Oh yeah, I also got:

New mouse:

New screen: (Samsung 2232BW, 3000:1cd, 2ms, 1680×1650)

I think thats everything for now. Will try to update more often from now on.


Jan 13 2008

Oh yeah, I have a blog.

Category: FTO, News, Opinion, Personal, Play, Workoodles @ 1:45 am

Man, been a while since I’ve updated this sucker. There will be a ton of information, so here we go.

Where to start, well maybe the FTO is a good choice. Its currently in my local mechanics garage after she overheated for a second time whilst after some heavy driving. (I was driving it hard, so all blames lies on me if its something I did) The first time it overheated was on the Saturday before Christmas and needed to be towed. At that point I found out it was the heater hose which had cracked and was leaking all my coolant out the bottom of the car, dripping onto the exhaust and causing an awful smoke to come from underneath the car. The second time I was driving it sedately after a period of thrashing it through traffic and another small hose has cracked near the engine and was spraying onto the intake manifold. Was out of water, filled it up and drove to the garage and thats where it is now as I stated at the beginning of this paragraph. My awesome mechanic is going to replace every single hose in the engine bay, and I agree that this is a good plan as it seems with the heat that its just burning through the old original hoses damn quickly.

It should be fine, like the last time it overheated. I’m just scared that I may have damaged it as when I noticed the temp gauge it was in the 120’s, the far end of the scale. :\

Went to Melbourne for about 5 days just after Christmas, returned just before the new year. Saw the cricket, went shopping etc, and I’m now the proud owner of a new Wireless card and a yuppie Bluetooth headset. I need it for driving. The cricket was boring as hell though, I mean, I remember it being roughly 130 from 390 balls at one point, for the first 3 or 4 hours the run rate was less than one an over. I mean COME ON. HIT SOMETHING. Anything, hit the umpire with the stumps or something, anything. Thank god we’re members of the MCG as I could go back in the cool and get awesome food, and being in the shade was great too. (I still got burnt, gg skin)

As for the work front, I have more on Monday and Tuesday, at CSU again. The work is sporadic but I welcome any. I also have some possible work with another department within CSU so I’m trying to get onto that but so far have had no response from the number I was given. I will make some more inquiries soon. Nothing big I think, just tech support for a few weeks. I’m intrigued as to know what the payrolls look like in that place, I mean everyone seems to be a casual for some reason.

The reason I’m so happy to have work at the moment as well is that the moveout plans are still going ahead, I just need a small job to fill in the gaps in the bills etc. I’ve found some very nice places though actually, quite expensive but I would rather live on noodles and water in a nice place than takeout pizza in a slum. :P

I’ve also changed my favourite album ever in the last few weeks, to Audioslaves self titled album. That is absolutely awesome beyond belief. I’ve never thought before that every track was so so good. In other good music related talk, Daft Punk are ridiculously good live, they remix all their songs and they all come out great on different beats.

I’ve also been reading a new book I got for Christmas, Richard Hammond’s recollection of his Jetcar crash, and he went through a LOT more than he showed on TV. He was almost certainly in recovery during season 9, and even in season 10 he doesn’t look his full self when you see some of the pictures within the book. His mental state was so disturbed that they organised for a team of ex special forces men to get him and his family to Scotland away from the press as their presence could overwhelm him and he could regress. He couldn’t remember what had happened 3 seconds ago most times after the accident and they were afraid he would lose his eye it was that badly damaged. A good read.

I’ve ordered 6 new shirts too, all from Snorgtees, which has some actually hilarious designs for once. No more SplitReason for me after these guys. Hope the arrive soon, and then I have to organise the import tax or whatever it is when you import goods from other countries. I had never heard of it before though so I have no idea.

Seen a few movies lately too, those being Shoot Em Up, I Am Legend, StarDust, the awesomely named Don’t Be A Menace To South Central While Drinking Your Juice In The Hood, and Death At A Funeral. Overall the best out of this lot is Shoot Em Up by a long margin, with I Am Legend coming in second. Shoot Em Up is just what you want from an action film, that is, pointless hilariously cheesy action with one liners and a gritty chisel jawed hero kicking the crap out of the bad guys with reckless abandon. This movie would go awesome with booze. :P

I Am Legend would be a 10 from me if the ending and CGI had been better. Definitely worth seeing for the city of New York being completely deserted though. Don’t Be A Menace is a hilarious old black parody movie from ‘96 which I first saw with a mate in high school. I grabbed it just to laugh at all the things we laughed at so long ago. Its still funny. Stardust and Death At A Funeral are both okay, but not fantastic. Worth seeing if nothing else is around. StarDust actually bored me somewhat in places, and so did Death At A Funeral.

On the movies coming out soon front, the thing that absolutely dominates my calendar is Cloverfield. HELL YES MONSTER MOVIE. I’ve always loved giant monster movies and this shall be no exception.It has already been confirmed that you see the monster close up at least a couple of times so its not going to be like LOST with mysterious balls of gas and crap like that.Lets go a destroyed New York!

Well, I think thats about everything thats been happening of late, or at least the super short version. I hope to keep this more up to date from now on though.


Sep 04 2007

Damn softdrinks.

Category: Personal, Playoodles @ 4:57 am

I’ve gotta stop drinking them. After a couple of conversations with friends and this link I’ve seen how much I could be benefiting myself simply by stopping drinking them. I remember a little while ago I got very fit for a brief period and it really did feel a lot better than I was expecting. I think I’ll try to replicate the results I got last time and drinking a lot more water instead of cap like Pepsi (as good as it is) is sure to help.

In thinking about this, I also wonder about bottling companies, how do they get so much water to create all these drinks that are on supermarket shelves, and what happens to them all when they go out of date? I’m sure some stuff doesn’t get bought eventually, so the water used to create those drinks is wasted? Where does it go? Straight to the dump? In Aus today I’m surprised that this must still happen.

Still waiting on a refund from Umart on my soundcard as well, they don’t seem too eager to refund my money after I went off at them for not having the “In Stock” item in stock. Sorry if I missed something here Umart. Idiots. I found an X-Fi Extreme Gamer including postage for less than Umart listed for their without postage however so I’m going for that. Go go i-tech.com.au.


Aug 27 2007

Pool. I suck at it.

Category: FTO, Opinion, Personal, Playoodles @ 1:54 am

Really I do. I dunno I guess I just don’t get angles or something.

Also, the FTO is fixed! It wasn’t even the engine mount, but after adding Copper Paste to the bushes of the suspension, no more creaks and groans. Now its just my music which causes the rattles. So happy though, with the new engine mount the throttle response is great. Much more low down power and thanks to the suspension being fixed I’m enjoying the handling a hell of a lot more.

In relation to the sucking at pool note, being going out a lot more lately, mostly thanks to finally getting tired with gaming in general. When you’re getting consistent high scores I’m not sure how much more is there to be explored.

Oh, and I want this:

Miracle blade, motherfuckers.


Aug 22 2007

Time.

Category: FTO, Personaloodles @ 4:52 am

Engine mount for the FTO goes on today. Good god I hope that it is whats causing the creaking and groaning from under the car. According to popular opinion thats exactly what it is so I sure hope so.

I got over the flu as well, its taken me at least a week though and the only thing I can say about it is that I don’t think I had it as bad as anyone else, as the worst I had was a sore throat. I had the muscle aches and all but no crazily bad sickness which I’m thankful for. Might have been the immediate flu tablets and bed rest, but still.

I also saw a few movies whilst sick, those bing the Simpsons Movie, Redline and Fracture. The best of the three? Fracture. The Simpsons movie had roughly 2 or 3 actually funny scenes, the rest were merely amusing, and Redline has to be the worst movie using the best cars imaginable. Honestly I haven’t seen another movie which used such ridiculously expensive and fantastic cars in the worst movie I’ve seen in a long time. Acting, story, everything.

Fracture on the other hand had Anthony Hopkins playing a cool & calm killer and it was just as good as his other performances such as in Red Dragon or Hannibal. It’s worth seeing.


Aug 02 2007

On the subject of disappointments

Category: Personal, Playoodles @ 6:52 pm

The ‘if it sounds too good to be true it probably is’ line certainly applies.


Jun 24 2007

I was sick.

Category: Personal, Playoodles @ 11:35 pm

So I missed the party. Fucking sucks as it was something I really did want to go to. Even worse was when people got back and told me it was good. Bah. Here’s a short clip of some fire twirling from it though:


I also found a sweet clip of some F1 racing:


Rare to see them actually racing, instead of just doing laps at 300km/h. :P


Jun 23 2007

Argh, sick.

Category: Personal, Playoodles @ 5:26 am

I have a party to go to tonight and at about 1am thismorning I started feeling really crappy, immediate sore throat and muscle aches. I got super cold though when I went out for dinner and I think that just gave the sickness an invitation. Bah.


May 24 2007

Employed.

Category: FTO, News, Personal, Play, Workoodles @ 2:20 am

Got a small job at Uni of all places beta testing software. I don’t really care, its a job and I’ll take it and it should bring in the funds I want to improve/fix the FTO. In other news, I’ve been doing some voice acting for a DJ on bassbyte.com, Mic-E. When the mix comes out on the site with me in it I’ll link it here. He fiddled with the pitch a little bit but aside from that I like how it turned out.

My sleep patterns are back to what seems to be a normal schedule as well. For some reason I woke up every day at 5am or earlier for about 5 days and that made me sleepy enough at about 11am to crash. Then it just got back to normal which is handy having this job now and having to get up at 7:30am. I haven’t been gaming much lately as well, mostly CS:S if anything, otherwise I’m watching shows or crashing on my bed due to my new sleep schedule, which is kicking in right now. :P


May 14 2007

Algebreic!

Category: FTO, News, Personal, Play, Studyoodles @ 10:46 am

I have no idea if that’s how you spell that word, if it even is a word.

I’ve currently got the worst sleeping schedule / pattern possible, whereby I sleep all day and am up all night. Over the past few days, I’ve been waking up at 5-6:30pm and then going to sleep at 10am or later, repeat. On Thursday however I woke up at 5:30pm and stayed up throughout the night until 6pm on Friday. Surprisingly I was very alert throughout the day until I did some physical activity. During the day on Friday however I found two very good Mothers day gifts, both at the last moment too so it was a real bonus. I gave them to her today and they went down a treat. :)

Along with a mates recent blogging about crappy stuff happening to his car, I had a kinda bad day on Friday for the fact that someone threw chewing gum on my bonnet, and I found white car door marks either side of the FTO. I can tell people don’t like the way I drive, but why attack my car, cant people have the decency to confront me about it instead of going after my car? This doesn’t encourage me to change my driving style, this tells me that people are cowards. I also found scratches on my mirrors, so now I’m going to fold them in everywhere I go and park. God I hate people as a whole.

After Saturdays LAN I’m also considering ceasing Lanning altogether. There’s barely a point anymore when nothing but DOTA gets played. It’s absolutely ridiculous now how badly its taking over the LAN. I finished PREY, the entire game, in the time it took for the rest of the guys to do 2 DOTA maps. All I hear from them while they’re playing it is complaints, annoyances, and provocation. All it does is piss people off and for some reason people haven’t realised that this doesn’t happen in other games anywhere near as much. Oh well. Lanning is now almost unnecessary to me nowadays. Nobody has anything good to share and there’s not going to be anything worth playing at them for some time. At the moment I’m doing it purely for a social aspect.

Going to the V8 Supercars next weekend at the moment, I just hope my sleeping habits are somewhat in the norm by that stage so I can get up at the right time. I heard on the radio this morning that Brad Jones (Albury’s local V8 Supercars driver) will be retiring after this year, so going to go see him race will be a good thing to see, he probably won’t be in the next season at this rate.

I’ve also been thinking about my career and future for a little while. With my extreme distaste of Uni, I’ve been thinking about going back to TAFE and doing more in the way of a career as a Chef. Computers and IT are alright, but they kind of bore me with their possibilities. Chef’ing however has almost unlimited possibilities and that’s what interests me. So now I have a conundrum whereby I choose a) a job which I know I can do in a repetitive environment in comfortable working conditions, or b) a job which has bad working conditions but could almost never become repetitive due to the flexibility of the job and career paths available. I dunno, I’ll have to think long and very hard about it.

Better sleep, its 10:45am and I’m going to get up at 2pm. :lol:


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