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The most infuriatingly broken link...
Posted Sep 13, 2004
...to go with my entry on the most infuriatingly absent posting on hootoo.
In "The Fabric of Reality," Oxford University physicist David Deutsch describes a simple experiment offering proof that a parallel universe exists.
All that's required is a red laser pointer, a pin, and a piece of paper.
Read Original Article>> (Broken link here! 
)
Discuss this Journal entry [68]
Latest reply: Sep 13, 2004
mmmhaw!
Posted Sep 13, 2004
Well now to describe my weekend, 'coz I'm /sure/ you're all dying to know... 
Job, you can safely skip this journal; there isn't much in it of substance...
Friday... um. Friday? Ohyes! Friday! I went with J & R to see L's show (I can't remember who I've named and who I haven't, but I should probably get used to using their initials instead... doesn't help when they all have the same initials... or the same names! 
Anyway...) L's show was great; it was really funny. I was laughing almost the entire way through it, it was so well done. After the show R had organised for L to meet us in the lobby for a few drinks with the rest of the cast, which unfortunately included R... er. Hm. Ah screw it. Rob. (So you know whether I'm talking about 'R' or 'Rob') Rob is L's ex-boyfriend; he's the @$$hole I mentioned who kept cheating on her and had two other girlfriends at the same time, until one of them called her to say "Are you going out with Rob? Do you really think he's monogamous? Well actually you should probably know..." So she broke up with him... and then got back together with him... and then broke up again...
Anyway, it was interesting to see the dynamic between them; his body language was saying "Hey, baby," and hers was just like "F*ck off."
But that was okay, we had a good half-hour or so, and the drinks were cheap so J and I had a beer or two, and L had a few glasses of wine (Red. Marlborough shiraz. 
She's certainly got good taste...)
And then the four of us went back to J & R's place. We thought about getting some more alcohol but were about ten minutes too late for the bottle store, so we decided to reenact our student days (in my case still going) by pulling out all the alcohol in the house (except for the cooking sherry - we've learnt not to drink that, now! 
) and sharing it out. We were tempted to act even /more/ desperate by using straws, but we couldn't find any...
So the tally by the end of the night was: J, L, and R had one-third of a $7 bottle of wine, each (I almost never drink wine); we all had a quarter of a bottle of cheap cider; and half a can of some kind of vodka premix stuff. And J and I had one of those baileys shots things each. So nobody was at all drunk, but we were on a 'good-vibe' buzz.
Eventually we decided to pack it in and attempt to sleep, on the agreement that we would go to the bottle store first thing in the morning and start again. Well hey none of us had to be anywhere...
J & R went to bed... L and I talked for a while, and then... um. Failed to avoid not sleeping.
Unfortunately there are no curtains in J & R's spare room, so we got woken up after only an hour or so of actual sleep, by the sun streaming right into our eyes. I walked with L to her friend R's place, not far away. (Er. Oh hell. I'll just call this one R2, 'coz she has the same name as the other R. First /and/ last names, actually. How cool is that?! 
) Hung out with R2 for a while, and then she gave us a lift back to the theatre so L could pick up her car. L drove me back to J & R's, and then left again. She promised to stay in touch this time, so I hope she actually does. At least I have her number again now. 
Hung about J & R's place for ages on saturday, trying to work out whether I was going to make it home sometime... J convinced me to walk with him up to the bottle store for a few beers and then back to their place to drink beer and play video games, before going back to the bottle store again to pick up supplies for R and C's party that night (Buggerit this one will have to be R3, 'coz she has the same name /again/!)
Party was good. No scrub that, it was great. It was a random mix of types of people, so I was thinking there might be some politics in some places, but no! everyone was in a really good mood. (Which is even better for me, being an empath.)
About the only uncool thing was another friend, D, who was trying to find someone to sleep with, since she'd broken up with her boyf about three weeks ago, but since he was /also/ there that wasn't the best plan. It also didn't help that her flatmate, also a friend of her ex, chose that night to tell her that he's in love with her. 
So there were about five or six of us trying to keep an eye on her to make sure she was okay and didn't do anything she'd regret, but at some point I lost her and found out later that she'd been around the other side of the house being sick from drinking too much, and too much stress, so it could have been worse. And Reg (not his name, but at least it's better than 'R4'!) was looking after her and holding her hair back and so on... pity he was also trying to convince her that she wanted to try a threesome with him and me, sometime... Gee this is sounding more and more like a 'Good idea, bad idea' kind of a story...
Apart from that, though, it was a really good night... as I say everyone was in a really good mood, and I met some really cool people. In some cases I met them again, not having cought up with them for ages. R... um. R3? I think? Yeah R3 - the hostess - wasn't feeling too well as she'd spent the week moving house, and not being able to sleep, and being on medication which wasn't working for her, so after she went home - and C left soon after too - a lot of people started drifting away so it got kinda quiet there... but the flatmates stayed, and interestingly Reg and J2... no wait he can't be J2 /I'm/ J2! Let's call him Jack... well the three of us were sitting on the sofa beside the firepit on the lawn outside and... dodgy stuff happened... but didn't really go anywhere 'coz Reg is kinda like me in that he /greatly/ finds women more attractive, so it kinda fizzled out for everyone eventually... but never mind it's all good.
Um. Oh I forgot to mention I got a call from R (who had stayed at home, deciding she wasn't up to going out that night) to tell J that his brother had randomly turned up in town, and wanted a place to stay. Along with three friends.
R bought them all to the party so they could say hi, and then took them into town (because they wanted to. Weirdos! ) and then R came back again and hung out with us for a while at the party... she seemed to enjoy herself too, so that was good.
Reg came back to my place after Jack disappeared (aparrantly fell asleep in front of the fire in his lounge!) and we discovered we were the last ones there... my place was about a third the distance to travel compared to his place, so he chose to crash on my couch instead... which was cool and it meant that he cooked breakfast in the morning 
, but meant that I couldn't laze in bed 'coz I had to get up and be a good host instead... We did a bit of training... realised that nobody else was going to turn up for it... wandered over to R3's new place to see how her head was... Reg went home from there... I went home again soon after - for ten minutes - and then went into town again to meet my parents for dinner. Went home, watched the Chronicles of Riddock, went to bed, woke up, came to uni, had a test, came online, and keep missing phone calls.
Right, we all up to date? I hope so... I'm sick of writing now. Hope you're not all bored.
Discuss this Journal entry [327]
Latest reply: Sep 13, 2004
Well THAT was embarrasing...
Posted Sep 10, 2004
Dropped off my essay; good thing I gave myself an extra hour spare because I just spent twenty minutes trying to find the SEd office... I'm so amused. 
Writing out the cover sheet I managed to scribble my name so badly it looks like I spelt it wrong, and so I wrote over it again to make it clearer, and of course that just made it WORSE, so I gave up and posted in the assignment box. And THEN noticed the notice which said "Please fold your assignments lengthways..."
I wonder what manner of moron they'll think I am...
And THEN I almost walked into a glass door on the way out... I'm glad that nobody was watching, but I'm vaguely amused that the smiley would have been appropriate...
Still, my essay's handed in... I can forget about it... I'm amused... and I'm going to Loretta's show tonight. Still hoping that's a good idea. I'll let you all know when I find out.
Discuss this Journal entry [46]
Latest reply: Sep 10, 2004
Hrm...
Posted Sep 9, 2004
Well, I've finished my essay. Sort of.
It's one of the worst essays I've ever written, but that's okay I don't care. It's only a 1500 word essay anyway, and what did I really expect for two hours' work?
Perhaps I'll print out a second copy and go through it again tonight, just to see if I can polish it again before tomorrow. Pity I don't even know if it's due in at 9am or 4pm.
I just found out that I hadn't yet added Logicus, Job, or Blackberry to my friends list! I thought I'd added them ages ago! 
I vaguely wondered why they never seemed to add a journal entry... Never mind, problem solved now.
I seemed to have a few hours of impotent rage this morning; a couple of posts in particular seemed particularly vohemient, even to me. I hope nobody's taken offence at all. The problem is that the stronger I feel about a subject the less lucid I seem to become, and when the subject is war... well, say no more.
I still think there should be a stronger smiley than . Perhaps would do the trick...
Discuss this Journal entry [34]
Latest reply: Sep 9, 2004
Profound. Or prophetic. Take your pick.
Posted Sep 8, 2004
I'm sure I had some profundity to express here. I remember thinking of it last night and telling myself that "I must remember to post those thoughts in Hootoo; that would make a good conversation topic."
Of course I can't remember them now.
Perhaps I'll remember them when I get home. Of course, by then I'll be an hour away from a hootoo posting, but perhaps this time I'll have a pen handy. Probably not; Murphy's annoyingly reliable like that.
I really like Arisztid's entry on Bela Lugosi. I wish I had some depth of knowledge on, or could be bothered researching, something cool like that. I've half-started an entry on the seven wonders of the ancient world, but I probably should have waited until I have everything together first; at least until I'd finished the entry on Invader Zim, or perhaps I should have created the Smiley Zoo first.
Either way, it's currently just yet-another vehicle for procrastination. I don't even know if my essay's due in friday morning or friday afternoon, but I've still barely started it. I figure I've had a lifetime's practice at proctrastination; I might as well stick to what I'm good at.
The problem is that I'm not even a little bit motivated to do it. And the lack of motivation is caused by a lack of passion. And the lack of passion is caused by... not having anything to be pasisonate about.
The people I care about are all too far away to visit. The things I enjoy doing, I can't do. The things I hope for, will probably never happen.
Being an expert at procrastination goes hand-in-hand with being an expert at self-distraction, but there's only so many ways I can distract myself without there being anything I'm at all passionate about, which leaves me just twiddling my thumbs and feeling more and more frustrated at my own inability to do what needs doing.
At the moment I'm just telling myself that if I finish this assignment then I'm closer to finishing this paper... the closer I am to finishing this paper then the closer I am to finishing my degree... the closer I am to finishing my degree then the closer I am to... what?
Truth is, I have no idea what I want to be doing in ten, five, or even two years. In one year I'll still be studying, but I already know I'll be sick of it before then. I'm already tempted to take another six months off, but there's always the danger that I'll never make it back again.
There is a certain appeal in being the kind of non-conformist intellectual who drops out of university and goes on to create the coolest, most world-changing product in history or something, but I'm trying to tell myself that there's even more appeal in being the kind of non-conformist intellectual who pisses off people by knowing what I'm talking about, and then later to piss them off even more by letting slip that I have a bachelor's in computing and mathematical science, majoring in artificial intelligence. It's already an interesting anthropological excercise to watch people's faces when I tell them that's what I'm studying.
But my point is that there doesn't seem to be a point at all. Without passion of some kind, I'm really just wasting time until my own death. Which may come sooner for the depression that comes of abject failure and lack of enthusiasm.
So the question /really/ is: What have I got that I can be passionate about? Or, Where can I find something to be passionate about?
At least enough that I can get enough motivation out of it to cope, day by day.
Discuss this Journal entry [83]
Latest reply: Sep 8, 2004
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Jerms - a Brief flicker and then gone again.
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