The thought crossed my mind “ha, serves them right”.  Then I paused and thought, “wait, why do I care?”.  I’m going to park unnecessarily close to them for what, the principle of the thing?  Why?

I realised that it’s not a worthwhile principle.  Regardless of whether I choose to view it as charitable or not, there’s just no reason why I can’t park over slightly more.

I’m pretty happy with myself.  Too often I get fixated on the principles underlying petty issues, and don’t apply a sufficient level of pragmatism.

The next weekend I made it further, up to the intersection of Stevens Creek and Foothills Boulevard. The hill just before that nearly killed me… it really felt like I was about to have a heart attack, though I still gave myself kudos for making it up there in one shot. I had to rest at the top for a good ten minutes before riding home.

And last weekend just gone, I didn’t ride anywhere. :/ The weather was sunny but cool – I don’t think it topped 20°. I can never understand that about here… anyway, that was rather a poor excuse, but, I consoled myself with the promise that I’d go to the gym on Monday.

See, Steve, Erick & I went to see ‘Penelope’ last… Wednesday? I dunno.. anyway, after that, while scoffing ice cream at Baskins & Robins – we’re going to have to start going to Saratoga cinemas more often, rather than Wolfe :D – we all reminisced about better days when we were super fit… *BRRRRP* well… pretty fit *BRRRRP* in decent shape *BRRRRP* slightly rotund *BRRRRP* bearing a striking resemblance to baby hippopotamuses.. *BING*. Right. So, we said, hey, let’s all go to the gym together starting on Monday. Done!

Unfortunately Erick didn’t know about the necessary orientation and intro physical that’s required, so, he won’t be joining us ’till maybe Wednesday night. But Steve & I went tonight. And it was good. The new machines are all fancy and shiny, and have TVs built in – so I got to watch most of an episode of Big Band Theory without sound :D – and best of all, I was able to do 90 minutes of low-level cardio without keeling over. That surprised me, especially given the aforementioned bike ride.

I’m a little sore as a result, though nothing that a good night’s sleep won’t rectify, and I think I’ll finally get back into the habit. At least for week days.

Alas it’s been so long since I used any of the weights machines, and they’ve all been upgraded to boot, that I can’t recall how most of them work. I’ll have to have a quick remedial lesson before I can get back into them.

It’s good to be back into it. Especially now that I’ve taken to keeping our lab stocked with Tim Tams and Mint Slice. :D

Also, those yellow banana shaped things. They’re apparently orange and peanut-shapped here, and called Circus Peanuts, though I’m yet to see them. I like them. :)

I’ll cheat for this warmup, and cover the whole weekend rather than just today. 😝

1. Finally got my bike, and used it! Photos forthcoming, but yeah, I’m glad I bit the bullet and just bought it. I then rode it down to Laz’s place, which is a fair ride – about 7.5km. Tomorrow it’ll get another run to uni and back. I’m pretty happy, all round. I’ve been pretty “relaxed” about exercising since I got back… time to change that.
2. Gave Sket a lift to the shops. That’s kinda cheating… we were going out afterwards anyway, but this introduces the real point I’m trying to make. Obviously, I took my time getting my license (and then a car), so I’ve accrued quite a bit of travel courtesy of others. I’m not stressing about it, or keeping close track, but I am working towards repaying that debt. I guess I need to balance my travel karma. 🙂
3. Chilled at Dracula’s, despite the best attempts of one of the waitresses. I’ll cover the details later, but the point is I didn’t let any of it get to me, and just continued to enjoy the night. I guess that sounds like a pretty trivial thing… but stuff like that seems to get on my nerves a lot, and might have otherwise darkened my mood. Not so this time, ah-ha! 😆

And yeah, I missed an entry yesterday… spent most of the day working on PRJ, the usual.

It’s been a slow weekend. Always is.

For those who are interested, you can download pdf’s of by the thesis and literature review from the file sharing area of my site, here. They’re both rather big. Sorry. Originals (Pages) available on [bizarre] request. :)

And yeah, I’ve skipped a day or two of these entries, I know. Had to focus on the thesis crap. :(

But I’m going to continue with this exercise nonetheless. So that’s my good deed for today. :)

This is one of those things where I just like getting the experience, in electronics. My practical experience is still far too limited, in my mind, for someone of my age and years within my Electronics Engineering course. I don’t want to graduate still not knowing the first things about practical electronics.

Or at least how not to blow things up…. although then again Tony’s been at it for years, and he still does that. :)

2) Spent some good time with Damien & Anton. Just chatting, having a laugh. All good. Damien came shopping with me – just to try and get “The Nightmare Before Christmas” from the video store – which was cool; he makes much better company when shopping than Laura.

I know it’s a bad time to rediscover basic social skills, thesis due next week and all, but it’s immensely useful stress relief. And I’d like to get some decent time in with my friends before I leave for summer.

3) Got myself a booking at the U.S. consulate, for my VISA application. Not that I have an offer letter yet, but given the waiting times experienced, I don’t think I’ll get in before I do get the letter – which hopefully isn’t more than two weeks away now.

It was annoying to do though – the U.S. consulate’s phone booking demands your credit card number as soon as you connect, and charges through the roof no doubt – while online booking is nearly as bad, requiring Internet Explorer 6 on Windows, with VBScript enabled. Gross. There’s no excuse for this kind of thing, especially given that IE 6 is a depreciated and EOL’d product, which should no longer be targeted by developers. sigh

2) Got up early and did a whole bunch of things before having to go to class (which was at noon). I rarely get up earlier than I have to these days, which means 9:30 or so… which is really bad; I used to get up at 8am at the latest, and seemed to survive reasonably well. These days I always seem to be going to bed earlier and getting up later… probably just memory playing tricks on me. :)

I’m still getting that feeling I’m not doing much with my life, if these are the daily highlights. :)

Although I should just say, I’m not after stress-head friends… obviously when I care about someone and they start stressing unnecessarily, that does still bother me. My mum’s a special case though – she’s tough enough to look after herself, so I don’t worry too much usually, plus she gets way carried away… I mean, all in all the visa stuff isn’t that big a deal – karma’ll see me through, one way or another.

2) More thesis work. I really wanted to use the power and eject buttons on the VCR front plate for the system, so I got out the trusty DMM and started probing for any pair of pins connected across those buttons… long story short, there aren’t any; there’s a couple of annoying diodes in there doing something-er-rather, which render an impedance test useless. I eventually reassembled the VCR guts and plugged it in (which I wasn’t too keen on doing, given the AC power supply is largely exposed, but I’m not dead, so it went okay), and tried testing for actual voltage changes across the pins… long story short, no go. It seems there’s either (a) an active element on the front PCB which is too complex for me to figure out this way, or (b) it’s some weird current-sensitive trigger… or somesuch. I dunno.

In the end I got impatient, got out some lengths of patch wire and just soldered them on across the buttons raw. Works like a charm. :) All that expensive, complex PCB layout for no reason. Silly architects. ;)

3) Got everything together for the VISA stuff and faxed it off. It wasn’t a Herculean effort to do so, but it did take a few hours, and at times tested my patience – finding mistakes in the forms after I’d printed them, stressing over what other mistakes I might have missed, etc. All the usual.

I even kept my composure when the service lady at OfficeWorks quoted $2.85 per page to fax to the U.S. I frowned a bit, all the while laughing sadly on the inside, and went along with it. $50 and 5 cents later, the sixteen pages were off. And yeah, I know that 16 x 2.85 is 45.6, not 50.05… I didn’t even bother asking. It’s done, time was of the essence – I wanted it done tonight so Darcy could get on it first thing in the morning (which, given she’s 14 hours behind, is around 11pm my time).

Anyway, all good. I think in the circumstances I had a pretty good day… despite being stressed and constantly busy, I hardly got cranky at all. :)

Despite my misgivings now, I’m glad that I garnered the resolve to get everything done, swiftly and directly. I too often procrastinate and delay things unnecessarily – not so this time, and that’s good. Generally. I may have just picked a really bad time to develop this new level of assertiveness.

2) More thesis work. I’m writing a good few pages a day at present, which isn’t too bad… I think I’ll be hitting a big crunch around this time next week, but with each day of productivity I lessen the blow slightly. I won’t go into details yet again as to why this is a good thing… see the past half a dozen entries I’ve fluffed up with “work”. :)

3) Composed myself, eventually. I really was stressing out about the flight tickets once I got home… I kept counting the days in which it had to be done, and Brett wasn’t helping by reiterating why I was an idiot (he didn’t say or mean that of course, but pessimistically that’s where it’s all going :) ).

I haven’t been that stressed in a long time… almost to the point of hyperventilating, or breaking down completely. I’m usually perpetually stressed a little, so I’m pretty good at hiding it or ignoring it. But this got on top of me for a moment. But, I managed to calm myself down, and am now feeling… well… calmer. Relative scale and all. :)

Strangely enough, the thing which really caused the turning point was when I started singing the Serenity theme song. It’s a beautiful song, with good music and heartfelt lyrics. Damien agrees with me on it’s strange catchiness. Just singing it a bit really did help. Ah, serenity… :)

I’m pretty happy as usual about actually getting some work done. I spent a lot of wasted time trying to extra some USB sockets and other components from a motherboard… I managed in the end, but only the USB ports survived the extraction process (which involved big pliers) intact… and then I had to have the stupid brain fart of thinking that I’d bent the tongues inside the ports – which I hadn’t – and so I tried to “straighten” them with pliers… snap. #$%! The plastic is broken, so they’re lose, but they’re still attached via the pins… I guess they’re still electrically fine, but I’m not too keen on using them anymore. D’oh.

2) Spent some time with the cats. Porsha’s a bitch, true and through, and Yoda’s the laziest bugger ever, but they’re both adorable. I kept them entertained a bit – walked outside with them a few times, played with Porsha a little.

I don’t often get time with the cats anymore, which is terrible, because I love them dearly. It really was fantastic stress relief just to be around them – to watch with amusement as Porsha once again attacked the hole in the ground where the old clothesline used to be… :) Temporary happiness, unfortunately, but welcome nonetheless.

3) Hardly got cranky at all on the ride back home. It went reasonably well for a Sunday – I managed to catch the tram straight off from Parliament, so there were minimal delays. Everything seemed to take ages, as it always does, but I amused myself with my iPod and my poor dinted Powerbook.

Despite all this crap with ticket infringements and whatnot, it’s still nice to just handle it all gracefully. Hopefully I’ll be long gone from here soon, and their silly fines will be the last cent they ever get from me. Ah, sweet, sweet dreams.. :)

Maybe I’m just too used to being pessimistic… I can’t seem to focus very well on the good things. I mean, I remember the overwhelmingly good things, but, those little moments where you think “aww, that was nice”… I know I have them; I just forget them easily.

But then, I guess the self satisfaction and contentedness is a long-term effect… in the short term, I guess I have to actually make the effort each day to do good things, things worth writing about here.

D’oh. Stupid absence of quick solutions. Curse this unfair world. ;)

2) Did some thesis work. I’m still really not happy with how it’s progressing, but I did work on it a fair bit today, instead of going out and partay-ing… well, not that there were any parties on – at least, not that I was invited to – but of course that’s completely irrelevant, right? ;)

No, really… I’m reasonably happy with how I’ve been working, I guess. I’m really not into this thesis, and I’m less and less happy about how much money I’ve put into it. Plus, the results are decidedly underwhelming, which of course is a big concern as it comes to marking… but of course not all research is successful in it’s original aim – the whole point is to either prove or disprove the original hypothesis. I think I’ve got that largely covered.

I always find it awkward talking to past employers… since all my work has been internships that they wanted to extend or follow on from, and yet I’ve never been back to any of them as yet, I always feel like I’m letting them down in some way. At NEC, for example, it always felt like they were hoping to snare me good and early, and possibly get me onboard as a real employee once I graduated. Who knows what will happen over a year from now – lord knows I could do far worse than NEC, which was a job I really liked.

There’s also the work I did at the Department of Primary Industries Research Victoria (or whatever they call themselves this month), which was really interesting – lots of genetics and biology, mixed with fairly hard-core software development. It was good to be applying my knowledge into another field, not just straight computing – variety and all. Still, I now know way too much about the mating habits of mice… disgusting little buggers. :)

2) Sorted out alternative arrangements for ARC examination, in so far as getting the lecturer’s support. Since I’m currently planning to leave here on the 12th of November, I’ll be gone before two of my exams are done. My ARC lecturer is really nice, and supportive, about it – he’s happy to provide me with an earlier exam, or some other such arrangement. My other lecturer, for DIS – who’s also head of the department – doesn’t seem quite so keen on it… I have to speak to him on Monday; one way or another it has to be wrapped up soon.

I’m mainly happy with myself for just doing it… I tend to avoid asking for favours from people like this, by my haphazardly shy nature. But it had to be done, and I eventually said “f* it” and did it. I’m disproportionately happy because I think I really need to be more assertive like that.

But the key in this context was getting the thesis back under way. I also wrote some more of the report, which is now at a grand total of 9 pages or so. Eep. I’ve got plenty to write, though, and a fair idea of what needs to be done with the hardware itself, so things are on track… the train may be late as all buggery, but it’ll get there. :)

2) Continued writing the report on the AUC conference 2005. I haven’t published the next instalment yet, because it’s not finished, but it’s underway. Unfortunately, it’s reminding me exactly why I started this journal – to get things down into pixels while they’re still fresh, before time has blunted my recollections of them. I’m having a hard time now remembering all those key details I so desperately wanted to convey in the report… sigh.

Still, I’ve been making the effort again, finally. Perhaps tomorrow will see me finish it.

3) Didn’t get cranky when the PRJ lecture was – as Nostradamus predicted – cancelled again. It’s the only class I have on Wednesday’s, a mere hour from noon. This is the second week in a row it’s been cancelled. But this week I didn’t get upset about it at all – I laughed a little, shrugged and started the walk home. It was a beautiful day – quite hot by the time I got home – and it was a pleasant walk, that went by surprisingly quickly.

It’s not just about the exercise this time, although of course that’s always a positive. It’s more about serenity… yes, I’ve been easily brainwashed by watching the TV show Serenity, but the theme song really does invoke something within me… it’s that kind of pointless happiness, that something that is akin to serenity… that feeling that when all is said and done, happiness comes from inside, and ultimately cannot be taken from us. That is serenity, in my mind. I’m not saying I’ve achieved perfect, monk-like sereneness… but just a small taste of something close. And these days, that’s a really welcome feeling.

Of course now I just have to worry about my thesis and electronics project. Since I only had a few hours sleep this morning, I’m not really up to actually turning the brain on today… tomorrow I’ll be productive, promise. ;)

2) Polished of the lab write-up for INS. This isn’t due in until Friday, which normally means I’d be putting it off until at least Friday, but today I decided to get it out of the way. Well, last night as well, actually. But anyway – again, this is the whole “good work ethic” thing I hear so much about. ;)

3) Groovy graphs. I don’t especially like Office in any case, although the Mac version is half nice at times, and Excel does have some good charting capabilities, albeit limited. I was brought up using Excel for graphs (sigh), and I’m yet to find anything else which is as good. Sure there’s Chartsmith and friends, and some crappy high-end scientific & engineering charting programs, but none can really hold a candle to Excel. And while Apple’s charting (in Pages & Keynote) is nice looking and all, it doesn’t have a facility for importing tabular data. I mean, duh. C’mon, what the hell? I’m not going to copy by hand hundreds – maybe thousands – of cells. So, Excel it is.

Anyway, I’m pretty happy with the charts I’ve done. I had to really fight Excel initially, over the last few days, to get it working at least somewhat the way I want. In the end I think it came out pretty well – and was well worth having persevered. I think the ARC assignment report will turn out pretty nifty, really.

Anyway, I’m happy to finally be doing all this, because I really need to get more hands on experience with electronics. Things like basic soldering and real-world circuit construction. There’s nothing difficult about the design I’m using (a bunch of op-amps driving some superbright LEDs), but there’s lots of construction to be done – which is the exact opposite of most of the work I’ve done to date at uni.

Of course, at some later date I hope to build a microcontroller system to drive it all, that’ll interface with my computers via USB, and get plugged into an iTunes visualiser… oooh. :) One day, perhaps… on day. :)

Hmm…. yep, another slow day. :/

I guess this is why you’re supposed to do this… because when you look back and realise how little good stuff you did in the day, it puts the emphasis on doing better the next.

As it turns out, the small print in getting a Californian license is that if you haven’t held a license before (from any country; doesn’t have to be Californian or U.S.) you don’t get a full license – you get a probationary one. And their probationary licenses are essentially the same as a Learners permit here… not much use to me. :(

I guess I procrastinated for so long because I kept telling myself I’m too busy, that it’s too expensive, etc etc… at $33 per 45 minutes it’s not too bad – not nearly as bad as I expected; I’d heard figures as high as $75 an hour from some people! But now it’s done; first lesson is tomorrow afternoon, and hopefully there’ll be many more in the coming weeks. I’ll have to book in for my test tomorrow, basically – VicRoads are apparently almost into November on their bookings, so if I want to stand a chance of getting it before I leave… yikes. All happening so fast. :)

I guess that’s pretty much it for today. Slow day.

1. I’m going to cheat to start of with and talk about something good I did last night. A friend’s mother suffered an aneurism several months ago, and was only released from hospital a few weeks ago. Only into a rehabilitation centre, though, not home. My friend has been spending what seems like every weekend – and probably some weekdays or nights – with her, keeping her company. If only I could say I’d been doing something like that – that’s truly a good deed. What I did do was finally tell my friend how much I admired her for what she was doing, how she was handling it. In her shoes I don’t think there are many people who could handle it as well as she is. I can only begin to imagine the stress the ordeal must be placing on her, and the rest of her family.
   
   I’m not very good at complimenting people…. or saying anything positive, really. I’ve been making an effort to change that for quite some time now, but I think I must still sound facetious or condescending or fake or whatever… :( Still, if practice makes perfect the trend at least is looking positive. :)
2. Silly little 3D cover art for my ARC assignment. The assignment was to build a fairly trivial cache simulator, and to analyse the results. An image for the cover art sprung into my head, of blocks sliding in and out of a “cache”… so I fired up good ol’ Bryce 5 and try to get my mental imagine into solid pixels. It took a while, but I’m reasonably happy with the result… couldn’t quite get the “glossy” appearance I wanted, but it’s nifty enough. Not worth spending too much time on.
   
   I’m happy about this because I like to indulge my creative side where possible, but it rarely is these days, what with work and school and other commitments. I think it’s important to have a creative outlet now and again, to help maintain a mental balance.
3. Spent most of the evening working on ARC (i.e. homework). I’ve been getting a little slack lately with school work, so I’m happy with myself that I committed to it and did spent quite a bit of time on it. Of course, I had wanted to finish it tonight, but it turns out my simulator disagrees with dineroIV, for reasons I don’t yet know… gah. I suspect dineroIV is bjorked… the readme and other paraphernalia mention a lot of naughty hacks which seem like plausible contributors to the discrepancies I’m observing. I’ve certainly looked over my own code, without finding anything obvious.

I know for myself that dwelling on negative events or emotions of course just creates more negativity – I think everyone can agree with that. I think the point of regressive psychoanalysis is to resolve outstanding issues. Perhaps some psychologists have lost sight of that. Thinking about negative events only has a positive outcome if you can resolve them, or have some sort of epiphany that imparts greater insight – perhaps the mere act of such epiphanies make us happier in their own right.

In any case, the underlying message is to focus on the positive, the future. One of the real stingers put forward by supporters of this “new psychology” is that humans are hard-wired to focus on negative stimuli, and to remember them for longer and with more emotional strength than positive ones. Something about hardship growing up… snow and lava and sabre-tooth tigers and all that. ;)

So, one “therapy” proposed is to keep a simple diary where you write down a few things (e.g. 3) each day that you think you [yourself] did well, and to reflect on why those things went well. Thus, I’m starting this. I’m traditionally pretty bad at keeping up little regimes like diaries and the like, so maybe this’ll peter out once the novelty wears off… still, I think I’m about over negativity at the moment, and could use a good change.