camping

Alright, so I've been camping out at the SIT labs for the past week or so doing 10-20 hours worth of coding each day pretty much. Woke up about an hour ago after going home at 6.30am this morning. Spent 20 hours hacking away at J2EE. Assignment was due at 2pm today.

So let me share with you some pretty cool exciting stories that has happened recently:

1. At 12am, my lecturer sent an email saying we've got an extension till Sunday for the assignment. Schweet.
2. Our project is actually going pretty well I reckon. Things are coming together. Finally.
   
3. On Sunday I applied for a graduate position at Parson Brinckerhoff (engineering consulting firm) and yesterday I got a call from one of their HRs to ask me to attend a group workshop at their office next week. Schweet.

Time for me to get some breakfast now and then shoot off to the SIT labs once again. Think I'll have to start on my c++ assignment tonight.

New USB stick

So finally my 4gb Sandisk Cruzer usb stick arrived. Turns out that my university computer did actually zap both of my previous usb sticks. Found out the hard way though. Isabelle's usb got fried as well last week. After hearing about my previous experiences with fried usb sticks, I guess she immediately suspected it was a faulty usb port that's causing the damage. My suspicions were right after all when the lab dude confirmed it after inspection.

We both made our complaint to the university asking for a replacement and Isabelle got her 2gb Sandisk Cruzer Titanium while I got a 4gb one - titanium. I guess uni was on a budget with me. It's pretty sweet I must say as it has its own internal drivers and softwares which are pretty handy such as WinRAR, Skype, file encryption, anti-virus, photo viewing and so on. That means I can Skype from uni now which is pretty schweet!

Anyways, off to bed. Work and more assignments tomorrow. I'm starting to get a pimple :(

imma stressed

I really cannot emphasise enough how stressed I am with the amount of work load on my plate at the moment. There's a 10% assignment due tomorrow, a 30% project due next Wednesday, a presentation for the 30% project due the following Monday, a 7% security project due the next day, a 4% c++ quiz the day after, and finally a 12% c++ assignment due on the Friday (last day of classes). Oh, did I forget to mention also I've got a 12.5% assessment on wargames due before class ends.

Wait, there's more! I've also got a 50% security, 60% e-business, and 70% c++ exam during the exam period.

The 30% J2EE project is stressing me out the most. The entire course has been conducted very poorly and I've learnt hardly anything through the labs especially. Over the past few days I've been camping out in the SIT labs "trying" to learn J2EE through tutorials and various pages which Google spits out at me. Clock is ticking and the sand is running out.

Tick tock, tick tock. Pray for me :)

[edit] - 25/05/07

So I've been awake since 6.50am and its 10.04pm now. Went to work this morning and I've been at uni ever since. Finally managed to hand in my security assignment today. 1 down. Now I'm camping at SIT labs working on my shopping cart. It's been a while since I've done this much reading. I'm pretty hungry now as well and I think the kebab shop around the corner has closed. Haven't had dinner yet.

Ran out of time doing things today. Had a quick lunch with leftover rice, two fried eggs and soy sauce! Also didn't manage to make it to Wei's graduation which kinda sucked. Jess' 21st party is on tonight as well (in fact now). Ah well, hope she doesn't mind. At least I went karaoke-ing with her last week. Anyways, back to work. I'm going to collapse soon.

[/edit]

tired

So many assignments. Pretty much got one or two assignments due every week till the end of semester. Can't believe I'm so flat out with three subjects only. Its the busiest I've ever been in my whole university history. I guess that's what happens when you do three programming subjects.

Can't wait till this semester is over. Only a thesis remains that stands between me getting a very expensive piece of paper from university. No official contact hours as well next semester. Should be interesting.

Can't wait.

Skype Me!

So I went out on a electronics splurge today. Woke up at 9.45am after suffering from the cold night. I thought I had frostbite on my toes as I only had my summer blanket on (blanket with holes). Perhaps I should get out my dooner tonight. Weather's getting cold. Anyways, went out with Nath to get a 7-port usb 2.0 hub and a Philips VOIP 321 cordless phone. Cost me $145 all up.

Turns out that I need a telephone line connected to the base component for it to perform as a normal telephone as well. Thought I could call out normally through the usb connection. Guess I was wrong. Too bad that I've only got one working telephone socket at my place and the rest are duds. Hopefully Rach (my house mate) will go into bitch mode and hassle the real estate agent to fix it up.

The reason for the sudden splurge was that I wanted to try out this VoIP technology which I've been hearing so much of. I've also made a Skype account, so add me if you're on Skype as well! If you're a random, most likely I won't authorise you. I've already got 2 random people from China trying to add me on Skype ever since I put on my Skype widget on this blog.

Princess, I didn't know you made VoIP phones? Very impressive.
:)

[edit] - 14/05/07

Oh mad! Figured out how to make outgoing calls with my Skype credits and I don't need a telephone line. Turns out that I just needed to add the numbers I want to call out in my Skype contacts so that my phone can retrieve it.

People have said the sound quality is pretty good and it seems pretty decent to me as well. So far so good.

[/edit]

USB Ass Stinger!

Argh!!! My recently acquired usb stick died again, along with my important files that I forgot to backup (ie. resumes, cover letters, job application details etc.). The stick was brand new too! This is the second time my ass has been bitten by my stupidity of not backing up every single file. I bought an 320gb external hard drive a couple of weeks ago after my first ill experience. I suspect my university computer labs somehow zap my usb sticks with fluctuating higher than normal voltages as my usb stick felt hot after I plugged it in. My first one also died in my university computer labs. However, that's kind of dumb. Shouldn't usb stick devices have some kind of protection mechanism that stops higher than normal input voltages? Ah well...

Anyways, sorry I haven't been blogging much. I've been so busy with uni assignments/assessments and also recently went to CeBIT Australia 2007 at Darling Harbour since I work for the organisers. Will post pictures and all that another day. Just having my rant because of what happened today. Lucky my flip-flops are still intact.