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SeanRantsAboutStuffYou are on the archive wiki. The new wiki is here. Welcome to a small piece of my head, enjoy while it lasts.Greetings individuals. Maybe I just have too much time on my hands or my Fanboy-Fu is getting a bit much to handle, but either way it's time for some steam to be vented in random directions. (And I know the title needs some serious work, don't give me shit). Enjoy, or don't, because quite frankly this isn't about you (well, maybe it will be sometimes). This stuff is all top down. Human instinct says you read top to bottom and I reckon this should be read chronologically anyway. You wanna read it bottom up, be my guest. And now it begins... -15/08/03Today I decided to finally get off my lazy ass and really stick it to those issues that have been pissing me off tremendously over the last eight years (bitter maybe?) but I think I'll be a bit more contemporary. What the fuck is wrong with this world?!?!One expects that the people in charge of organising an Operations Management 'test' on Project Management and Planning would at the very least be able to make sure that there are enough seats in the booked venues to accomodate! OK, so maybe they're human and are a few seats short, but having the venues packed to twice the amount than testing conditions require and 'still' having roughly 100 people standing around doing various impressions of Rodin's thinker statue is off-sides! I reckon we should fire the goddamned course convener! How can someone who can't organise something as simple as an MCQ test possibly have 'anything' to lecture us lowly undergrads on? Shocking, I just love the commerce faculty. On the subject of the commerce faculty.Who is in charge of IT stuff and campus and how much are they paying him to be a moron? It shouldn't really be possible to have one faculty's servers and labs being royally fucked over by a virus while the other faculties laugh their asses off (cuz you just know they are!). On thursday (yesterday) morning I asked the guy the pay to sit at a desk in the alumni labs what was being done, and he said nothing until the commerce IT boys opened up the office. WTF?! Surely this is the kind of thing the coming in a bit early to sort out would be saving hours of pain in the ass later? But NOOOOOOOO, they get paid the same no matter how shitty the job is that they do. Nice. The fact that I'm writing this in SciLabD? helps me, but what about all the other poor shmucks doing pure commerce who actually need to do work? Just a little consideration is needed methinks, and a fuckload more brains in IT!! Scathing, but fair I think. TFTDI'll leave you guys with this thought for the day: PS: I promise to come up with some more meaningful stuff soon, it's just been one of those months. Sometimes things just go all pear-shaped... -16/08/03Isn't it really fucking strange that every time you reckon life can't get any stranger it usually doesn't. I hate that! Sure it's really surprising when things get more weird and so people make a whole big noise about it, but 90 percent of the time it really doesn't! It makes me sick, I wish my life could just be boring. I'd kill for boring! I have come to realise that half the reason I'm actully writing this is because I am very sure that only a minute part of the population will read/give a shit about what I have said anyway. So maybe I'll throw out a couple of comments from the far edge of my cynicism and get a touch scathing and see if anyone cares. If you're a tad sensitive about having strong opinions in your face, then I suggest that this is one installment you do not read as I'm not a happy camper today. So without further ado lets get it one mother duckers! First up today: I think a lot of people need to to do a shitload of growing up.Women as a species seem to me to be quite territorial as is, but recently the tendencies I've been seeing in the CLAWomen? have been rather remarkable. Not all of them, mind you, so this is by no means a blanket generalisation. Up until this point I thought that everyone who regularly haunt nescafe during the daytime (and most probably the night in the manager's nightmares as well) were the sort of people who were accepting and open to other friendly people. When did it become necessary for any new female entering the area to be a goddamned Nobel prize loreat?! As far as I remember we weren't elitist, and I haven't seen intellectualism being applied as a requirement for the guys (hell, you let me in didn't you?).
Which category do you fit into regarding the new appearance(s) in the CLAW circle? Prejudice (not in the racial sense) and self-fulfilling prophecies only cause kak my friends, never forget that. The gauntlet is down. This isn't as much a personal attack, but more a expession of disappointment so it would be nice if you guys could prove me wrong. Secondly: Student advisers, they exist right?Recently I've had a chat with some guys I know in the science faculty and they were going on about their student advisers and how they made life easier when sorting out their curriculums. What the hell is a student adviser? I'm doing a B. Bus. Sci. which is supposed to be pretty hectic, right? Surely this would warrant a certain level of support systems in place to assist people? As far as I know even the Actuarial people don't have advisers, not the ones in the commerce faculty anyway, and that in my opinion is the hardest degree there is! Have you seen the stats they've got to wade through?! Once again the commerce faculty lives up to it scintillating image of not giving a shit about students and making them deal with all the administrative fuckups the department makes by themselves. I remember last year when the whole of second year commerce doing Business Finance (BUS220?) were made to register for the course in the second semester, too bad that it DIDN'T FUCKING EXIST THEN!! It was first semester. But all of us lowly students had to fill in change of curriculum forms and take them to my good buddy Professor Simpson. That's a really efficient and fair way of doing things. Plus, they let 'word of mouth' inform the students, and so imagine the surprise of the 20 odd people who got their results and got DPRed? for a course the faculty had made them sign up for incorrectly. Nice one boys. Did I happen to mention that I LOVE THE COMMERCE FACULTY. Kinda big for a fridge ain't it?I'm back in the Com Labs again. Good to see those lazy ITS people finally decided the problem had gotten big enough to justify litfing their hands off their coffee cups and in the vague direction of the PC they supposedly use to "ensure" that us students get what we pay (or pray sometimes) for. Maybe they operate with brains whose functionality is base on the principals of superconductivity, which would explain why the labs are always FUCKING FREEZING! It's almost as bad as LS3B? (try it some time, seriously)! I suppose that's where all the money is going, into air-conditioning instead of employing ITS staff elsewhere apart from mental institutions and brain donor societies. The scary stuff, the L-word and the pillNot really a rant this, but i think needed. I don't hide behind deceptive names (created islead the reader as to hide identity) here in this rant because I believe that sort of thing to be dishonest, but I also think this is not an entirely complete representation of who I really am. Yes, I do a lot of bitching, but I'm trying to confine it to here instead of innocent bystanders who really don't deserve my crap as well as their own. As such I'm making a new page off this very spot which will perhaps key you in to the more serious part of my psyche. This will be stuff from the back of my filofax (in the section marked Stay out of here! It gets nasty!) as well as some of my more poignant margin-side madness. It'll get squishy, it'll get morose and it certainly will be raw. I'm putting the reference down here in the text so there is no itinerant rabble audience, only people who know if they should or shouldn't go there. ShadowVsMan will contain mostly clichéed (Enjoy :P -- SynKronos) poetry-type stuff an it will be hectic. My general advice is, you really 'do not' want to know. Take the blue pill, seriously! It's also pretty much only for people who know me personally, others can feel free to check it out but you might get bogged down in stuff you got no clue about. TFTDThe obligatory thought for the day, I guess I should at least try and keep some sense of format and consistency. Try this one on for a hat: Standard bank has intituted a policy where you can't withdraw the last R20 from your savings account. Take their millions of customers times that figure and work out how much money that is at 10% per annum interest... And in your traffic this morning... -18/08/03Although driving to varsity is a daily effort for me and no single day has really stood out as being particularly exciting beyond that of the others, I think today we talk traffic: Ill-mannered robots suck.Some of you know where I live, for those who don't it's just opposite rustenburg girls school on main road, in the complex next to the tracks. That little pedestrian robot must be the dumbest thing in the world. It is positioned so that anyone (and we are quite a few) trying to get onto main road turning to the right is virtually assured of not succeeding alive. They decided to put the robot opposite Chester Road which is a one-way road going towards the tracks and not on burg road (20 metres away) which leads onto main roacd and which would make life 10 times easier for everyone. Morons. So now when the robot turns red all the morons just queue up and block the way out of burg road anyway! To sum up: If it's green, I'm fucked. If it's red, I'm fucked. I reccommend anyone with a car wanting to live on the wild side to try this for a few days. Adrenaline can get kinda boring. Capetonian drivers eh?Nah, I don't think anything I can say here will do any real justice to the horribly erratic and insane driving I have witnessed these people doing on the roads of this crazy city. Besides, most of you know exactly where I stand on this topic: On the brakes to avoid dying most of the time! I think everyone has heard me crap on more than enough about this. Shallow commerce people take it again.I couldn't resist taking another stab at the commence faculty. Guess what, operations management is suddenly getting record attendance this morning (quite obviously not me as I'm writing this during the lecture up in the labs). It's amazing what the realisation that incompetent lecturers and admin probably know less than you do can do for people's sense of dilligence. If half of these dumbasses had done this before maybe the idiot lecturer would have realised his error earlier. It's all so damned circular and it makes me sick how I'm counted among these mindless sheep whose behaviour is governed by the highest bidder, which in this case is STUPIDITY! TFTDWhy do eggs come in dozens? Why can't you buy many cars without the "optional" air bags, do they even stock models without them? Why is there a large, unplastered and unpainted section of wall in Scilab D? Horizontal raindrops keep falling in my eyes -19/08/03That time of year again folks!I just love Cape Town so much, really I do. It's so non-conformist and alternative in the way it does things. Hell, not even the roads are straight in this town! So i guess it shouldn't come as a surprise when the precipitation is propelled by 4000km/h winds in a rather successful attempt to rehydrate my retinas! How exactly is a person supposed to walk on campus while looking to see if you're going to walk into anything but at the same time not getting rain in your eyes? I never thought I'd say this but I envy people who wear glasses, because they're immune, and I can't wear shades at this time of the day cuz that's fucking ridiculous! Maybe I could handle this in isolation if the weather were fine the rest of the time, but this "rain" that hangs around for a week, which is actually just a limp-wristed drizzle which doesn't have the balls to assert itself and do a decent job like its cousin up in jhb! Rain or don't rain MAKE UP YOUR MIND! Apart from being blindedAre they ever going to do something about that huge leak in zoology? Whenever there's wind and/or rain I take a shortcut through there in the morning to avoid it. So far the only "measures" I've seen are two chairs in the area of the worst leak and a singular "Caution, Wet" cone on the floor. Nice job guys. Perhaps you should think about actually fixing the problem so the whole goddamned floor isn't flooded like it was yesterday! Just a thought, use it, don't use it. Whatever. Assertiveness is not just a necessary management competency!To continue the theme of bitching about traffic, once more I have to say that Cape Town driving scare the living crap out of me sometimes. Turning out of my favorite road leading away from my humble abode I had the pleasure of waiting behind a red 320i. So I'm thinking that this guy's got some power to play with so he should get a gap quite easily. 10 minutes later I wasn't quite so sure about this. I'd seen at least 3 gaps that I could've taken if I were driving a firetruck! So when this plonker finally got the nuts to take a gap, he chooses one that would've had Michael Schumacher thinking (in german of course) "Woa, not sure I can make that one!". I was literally cringing in my seat in anticipation and had the car in reverse to back away from any debris that might come my way. There were only a few hooters and a brief scrubbing of locked up tyres on wet road, but no bits. Some people drive using skill, it seems people like this guy in the 320 have to rely on something else: luck. When people like him use it, it always lands up being people like me who get all of his bad luck spinning out of control towards me at 80. TFTDWhy do all space movies and TV series always have sound effects in space battle scenes? The concept of a vacuum obviously eluded them at some point. OK, so I'm really bored. Sue me punk. -20/08/03Still no feedback on the gauntlet I threw down a couple of days ago. This is one topic I really hope I'm not vindicated on, but it looks like that's what's happening. Big woop. The marvels of democracy astound...Operations management comes under the spotlight again I'm afraid. Today there was a total of about 20 or so students in the whole of Beattie lecture theatre, which I reckon can hold at least 600 people. So te lecturer proposes that the lecture be cancelled since we're two lecture ahead of schedule anyway. Not an unreasonable proposition. However, some plucky individual then suggests that we have the lecture and cancel friday's lecture. The idea was fine in concept except for the fact that all the people that would have come on friday will now miss out on the material based on the 'voting power' of about 2% of the students registered for the course. One expects students to be full of this kind of shit, but the fact that the lecturer thought this was a good idea shows just how much he doesn't really give a shit whether or not students have the opportunity to have the material lectured to them. Nice one buddy. Extortion in our own back yardsRecently I've been doing a study for PCU on the relative pricing of books at local stores to see if GAL Books has succeeded in dispelling the spectres left by the notorious Ikey Store when it did a spectacular financial belly flop from blatently irresponsible management (and sky-high prices probably didn't help either). Since I couldn't be biased in the actual report, I decided to do it here. Did you know that the textbook for Accounting 1A is R30 more expensive at GAL than at any other local bookstore that I could find that sold it? To top it off, they are the only people that are out of stock, which means they've been making a killing off the crapload of students who have to do the course and didn't bother to compare prices cuz GAL is closer and more "convenient". Fucking vultures! Even their service is the crappest I've even encountered. It took me 12 minutes (I timed it) to get the prices for 6 books that were out of stock. Looks like the traditions of bad management are being carried on well.
Brain check, isle 7. Brain check on EVERY STUDENT DRIVER!!Parking. The final frontier before the vast expanse of lectures, tuts and wabbing begin. Some call it the Dust-bowl, others Base Camp but to UCT admin it will always P6. To me it's a fucking nightmare. On a good day one can drive up the left-hand side and queue up behind other reasonable and patient people so that the place works on a first-come first-serve basis and anyone stupid enough to buch the system gets lynched. This happens about 2% of the time when the parking lot is full, and about another meager 3% of the time no-one is waiting cuz they've all given up. TFTDWhat exactly does the easter bunny have to do with Jesus Christ being crucified and rising from death? Just a tad tired and deranged... -21/08/03This laid back attitude is getting to me.Does anyone know the agony of doing 40km/h all the way from plumstead to rondebosch at 6:45 in the morning not because of traffic, but because of some PLONKER deciding now's a good time for his belated sunday drive? I do. How about 20km/h all the way up Woolsack drive to campus at 7:25 when there's almost zero traffic, but just enough to make sure you can't pass? I do too. I am am getting really sick of this goddamned town and its fucking shoo-wah attitude that I could puke on this PC right now. I won't cuz I'll get banned from Com Labs, but the principal remains! Anyone doing less than half the speed limit while sober should be shot in the head. Sorry, my patience is used up for these slow-asses fuckers, they must die screaming horribly. No takebacks, no weaseling out.Ah the good old grapevine. I just love watching the way things filter through to various people and how it gets changed and distilled. Sometimes even to something it is not, although in the case I have in mind that still remains to be seen. No snaking out of this, I don't do that. I said what I said and will not retract it because at the time I believed it was true and I still do, even though it might be a tad heavy handed. I think perhaps a reminder is in order. If it doesn't apply to you or is completely wrong then the fact that I mention no names and pointed out that it is not applicable to everyone means you found some truth in it which offends you. If you get insulted by the posting on the 16th, that most likely means guilt is present to some extent within you. Truth can hurt. Return fire, feel free. Like I said, if someone can show me the error of my ways go for it. Brain check Com Lab G...It's amazing how pervasive the pirhana-type behaviour I decribed in the last post really is! With computers it's worse because you can fit ten times the number of lurkers into the same space with half the number of available spaces to use. I really gotta say that I'm getting pissed off with people standing just behind me scanning the place for a PC and probably reading this too. Oi! Fuck off! YES I MEAN YOU IN THE BLUE SHIRT! Aww, he got all offended. I hate it when I'm right. Privacy is not just something one should have while having sex. TFTDWhat possessed people to come up with the imperial system of measurement? They decided it would be cool to measure stuff in body part lengths, I'm surprised the penis wasn't used instead of the inch (they were british). Besides which, what were they using stone age thinking like that for when they were using a decimal number system to record them with? A response, just for my new biggest fan: A rant is a rant.Idiot I may be, but I reckon it takes one to know one. Put 'em up whor(e). Oh, wait there's a "doeuvre" or something on the end of that too right, but I think the first part is more accurate to be honest. Think you can do better, show us punk if you're so great yourself. Those who think I'm a moron, get out in the spotlight and make a stand against me. Nothing worse than cowards who throw comments behind pseudo-names. Refreshed but not relieved -01/09/03I return from a marvellously bland trip up to jhb for the semster break (barring a few dramatic events) without internet access SoBig? (sorry for the incorrectness previously)What a lovely virus it is that denies the world access to my mindless drivel and rants for over a week. Since the PC I would have used to access the internet got royally fucked I find myself apologising for others' incompetence. It's actually quite funny how a large portion of the world's IT type people can be trembling about an upcoming virus and yet be able to do nothing about it. How did they know it was there and that it has a timer ticking down to a specific day? Surely that means they can find it and to a certain extent know how to stop it? I suppose I should be fair and say that by the time they found it, it may have already infected a lot of people already, but that would be trying to cut down on bias and slant. Not my style at all really. Cabin crew arm doors and crotch-check...Yes, I know it's usually cross-check but bear with me here. Let me just start off by asserting that homosexuality in any form is not a problem for me so long as everyone respects everyone else's sexuality. Into this category I put blatent "visual package assessment" of my person by another man with an accompanying "how you doing" smile. Airline stewards, how I love them so. Good service is one thing, but there really wasn't any doubt that my safety belt was fastened before take-off! It wasn't hidden away so that a long gaze was neccessary to ascertain the state of the belt. It takes a lot to make me feel uncomfortable, but any stranger (male or female) who does that is pushing my limits. Respect is all I ask, and the fact that I got fantastic service from the steward in question throughout the entire flight didn't really reassure me that this was how all customers get treated. And no, the extra sandwich did not help ease the pain. Trains, planes and AutomobilesYes, it's that time again. Having had a comparison of highway drivers in GP versus those in CP, I have to say that I really miss GP drivers. On the highway to pick up my bro from the airport I picked up this guy in a white Astra. Now we're cruising at 120 or so and I'm in the middle lane of the N2. Now there's no-one in the left or right lanes for about a kilometer behind and in front of me, so where do you think this asshole chooses to drive? About half a carlength from my ass! Pretty close right? (Those of you who have driven with me know what's coming next) So I give the brake pedal a gentle, loving tease so that just the brake lights come on with no actual reduction in speed. I have to admit that I could barely keep in my lane I was laughing so hard at the result. Tires smoking, the rear-end of his car shaking around like R&B dancer on speed, he snaked his way a tad further behind me than he was previously. After wrestling his car back into control (which took a while I should add) he then decided to drive up beside me and discuss the finer nuances of the word "fuck" with me while making eye contact. Yet another stupid thing to do at 120. all that was required was a meaningful pointed finger in the direction of the truck in his lane that was doing about 60 which he was clearly not aware of. More amusement. His double-take reaction was priceless, even more so than his previous effort! Once again smoking tires and loss of control of his car's rear end. Slagging revisitedAlthough I may have given whordoeuvre? a bit of a hard time, it left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. After reading his rebuttal, I find myself disappointed in his response for several reasons.
For you whordoeuvre?: I still see no rise to the challenge of naming yourself, and you are taking this into a more personal attack scenario by doing some homework. Even if I did know who you are, this is a public domain we're in here, and I wouldn't stoop as low as you have by putting it up for all to see. What you put up wasn't exactly intimate detail by far, but there's always a line and I reckon you've crossed it. At the very least I reckon you should put up equal stats to back up what you seem to think is your intellectually superior position. Superiority of morals and principals is far greater anyway. TFTDThey make you pay for plastic bags at supermarkets, but why don't they at clothing stores, bookstores or pretty much everywhere else? Not much today I'm afraid -04/09/03The bridges of belmont county...The intersection of Belmont and Main roads in Rondebosch is a particular favourite of mine. Being a T-intersection this means that it's possible to allow people coming from Claremont direction to go straight through while the people turning right get a flasher as well since no-one is able to turn in the other direction. Unfortunately this doesn't happen and those going straight are forced to wait while the column of traffic to their right stream past. Furthermore, fixing this completely needless problem would make sure that anyone geeting caught in the right lane wanting to go straight would be able to do so during the flasher cycle and prevent them from stoping the traffic to wait for the red light. This would require that the traffic department of CT use their meager supply of brains on this topic (instead of ticketing people at 10pm on an isolated road for "impeding traffic" as recently happened to someone I know) which is most likely not to happen. Having their cake and eating itJust down the road we have another curious occurence. The intersection just by the woolworths and steers etc. has had an extended pedestrian element in its cycle for some time now. The bottleneck this creates is sometimes quite nasty and backs up beyond Belmont on the odd occasion, which gets very messy. I understand that it might sometimes be very difficult to cross the road at peak times and that this might be necessary, but I have found that this generosity on the part of the traffic dept isn't enough. The number of dumbasses running across this intersection in the dying moments of the cycle is quite astounding since this is what the long pedestrian time is supposed to prevent! Don't get greedy people because I swear that one of these days I am going the break someone's fuckin legs to get the message across that the road is for cars when the little man is red and not blinking!! Consider yourselves warned pedestrians from all walks of life (shocking, I know, but I just couldn't resist)! Where is CLAW going?I recently recanted the tale of the loss of the CLAWroom to an acquaintance of mine and his reaction was inmpressively militant. He reckoned we should draw up a petition of all members to at least try and make our voice seem loud to some degree. This got me to thinking: Why the fuck am I sitting on my ass in Nescafe all the time and not doing something about this? It kinda feels like we've all just given up and accepted defeat these days. I know that's probably not the case in terms of efforts to find an alternative, but I'm talking about the general air about CLAW members. The rigidity that was there when I first encountered CLAW has been merged with a more loose, social gathering type feel. There's nothing wrong with that at all since in a way it was like that anyway, but I get the impression that while the identity is changing, it's not all good and we might be losing core elements of what CLAW should be. TFTDI may well be ignorant, but either i just don't encounter/see it or they do very little indeed. What does the SRC actually do? What exactly is the point? - 08/09/03 San:40/60From this installment onwards I think there are going to be some changes. Firstly, although the other page of mine has been ended, I'm going to merge at least part of it's spirit with this one. This is mainly because at this point it's a far better reflection of my current state of mind. Secondly, I was recently shown the way and the light that is Cthulu. Brendan is indeed a genius. This has prompted me to give people fair warning as to my current sanity levels before they read the day's ramblings. XPert? software indeed. I love you Bill.I recently changed my PC over to the scourge of the world known on the shelves as Windows XP Professional with its sidekick Office XP Professional. The only reason I did this is because my copy of Win98se is toasted and every time I reboot with my current install (if it didn't crash in the attempt to do so) I have to press any key to acknowledge that it can't complete setting up its files. Basically it was fucked, but I'm not entirely sure it was any worse. XP is so fucking user friendly that it makes me puke. Sure, you can beat it into shape by making it look 98esque and making its folders work properly, but the beast can only be masked and not tamed. That "helpful" system is always looking to make life "easier" whatever you do. Why the hell does it make that little message pop up in the bottom corner everytime it thinks you should wipe your nose? If there's anyone using this OS who needs their hands held 24/7 there should be an option during the install process. Put a checkbox in at the beginning: "Tick this box if you have no clue what you are doing". The options available to the user in the setup process are much more crucial than those it seems to think you need help with during operation of the software itself! WABI have an entire psychology research report due for tomorrow morning which I have not yet started. Why am I not giving a shit and doing the work instead of typing this drivel? It's because of one overriding factor: I don't give a flying fandango. This is mainly due to the fact that I have fallen into the trap of viewing all humanities subjects as less important than commerce subjects, just like the rest of the damned faculty. I also don't particularly give a shit about anything at the moment, but let's ignore that for a moment. How does this happen? A lot of these subjects are actually pretty danmned tough and lot more interesting than stuff like Weighted Average Cost of Capital or GAAP but the disrespect seems to be very ingrained. Almost like it's a part of the commerce culture to think "Would you like fries with that?" when we think BA. Yes, I am a hypocrite for saying this but at least I see me for what I am. This is me preaching tolerance (-2 San for me). TFTDUsing the word legacy to refer to anyone's PC is just plain insulting. Does Bill really think he can get away with that kind of slander on my.. I mean people's hardware?! International You Day -10/09/03 San:38/60Today I'm not feeling quite as cynical as usual, I think maybe I'm down to my last marble or two so I think I'll dedicate today to decent folks who actually do things right. It's gonna be a bit of a struggle to be positive about stuff but I'll do my best, and don't expect this to happen too often. I am not actually in a good mood. Praise be to IaAlthough not technically a rant, I really gotta say the Wiki is running much better with the new machine giving Fhtagn a hand so many thanks to ElfBoy and all others involved. The difference is quite marked and impressive, nice one guys. Alumni labs actually workWhile straining though the last painful moments of my psychology experiment report yesterday, I had a really great position from which to observe the printer. At one point there must have bee some assignment due for 10pm or something because a large and somewhat disgruntled crowd began to form around that area. I investigated to discover that at one point the queue had reached about 60 people! However, the system did not slow down and continued to churn out people's work quickly and efficiently until the queue was emptied. Considering the mess I've seen the Com Labs printers get into when anything exceeding 20 queuing print jobs this is actully very impressive. Faith in humanity is a scare resourceThis is just a quick thanks to those people who have shown interest and appreciation for the stuff I'm putting up here. It's nice to know that someone out there is entertained/appreciates what I'm doing here. In a way I wish that I could restart ShadowVsMan properly for those sort of people, those who would maybe appreciate it for what I initially intended it to be, but it got bogged down in my usual crap. The fact is I don't think I have the constitution to put my stuff out there like that cuz it's almost a part of me. 10 points out of ten for MoonFlakesPoetryCorner as far as I'm concerned, and I hope you guys keep it up. My stuff isn't good enough anyway, regardless of whether or not I've got the guts. TFTDFor anyone who has seen fallen, have you ever felt like that? Sort of expecting someone in the near vicinity to spontaneously start singing that "time is on my side" tune in a slightly twisted fashion? If you have, now is a good time to start worrying about yourself. It's all useless anyway. -11/09/03 San:36/60It's just one of those days when nothing goes the way it should and everything comes out of the cracks to bite you. I wouldn't be entirely surprised if I get chucked out of varsity for some of the things that went down today. Demons from the past and present lurk like pigeons in Cissie Gool Plaza at lunchtime and future ones begin to look a bit less indistinct on the road ahead. I see innocent people being made to suffer burdens they don't deserve but the world doesn't seem to care. I will be very thankful indeed if I make it through this one without losing my goddamned marbles! I can't remember where this expression-type thingy is from, but god does play dice, and not only that but the dice are loaded. Sinerest apologies if I go batshit at some point. PlagiarismWhen asked to write a one page executive summary on the data mining capabilities of a piece of software based on what is on the website of the company who made it, how do you not plagiarise? I understand that the university policy is quite strict on this sort of thing but this kinda feels like entrapment from where I'm sitting! You can only tread around technical terms for so long, but it's like bobbing for apples in a shark tank. Not fun at all. To sleep, perchance to dream...Is the dream world so unreal? TFTDWhy do cars get designed that can exceed the speed limit 3 times over? I may be one of the larger transgressors of the whole speed limit thing so I don't have a problem with it, but it does seem a little silly doesn't it? Cheapshot -12/09/03 San:36/60Quick one today. After my favourable review of the alumni labs, today I arrive to discover that the main bulk of the labs has been annexed for some kind of workshop and one of the side labs was currently in a tutorial. This left a total of about 35 functional PC's in the entire lab. Way to go guys, just as you were starting to build up confidence in me. So much for that plan. More randomly vented verbal violence... -06/10/03Professionalism in group communication.After spending a marvellous (entire) night getting really intimate with my PC in order to complete a 30 page report several things strike me as slightly odd.
The entire point of PCU is in the formatting and structure of the report one has written, neither of which were present in the random drivel I was given to "compile" and "print" when I "got the chance". HULK SMASH!! (now that I've gotten some sleep that is) Operations Bungling againI continue to be disappointed with the performance of the graduate school of business here at UCT. How the hell can they tolerate this braindead moron as a member of this organisation let alone have him lecturing the great minds of tomorrow! TFTDYou just know the Christmas advertising is about to pounce on us any week now. Be afraid! Printing etiquette for beginners -14/10/03
Now these might seem to be common sense to many of us, but apparently a lot of people don't understand. I've been in the Alumni Labs since about 8.30 this morning, and the amount of people doing this sort of thing is quite astounding! It does seem that the reading of screens over shoulders thing happens a lot less in this lab than the one upstairs, but I attribute that to the layout more than anything else. PCU stinksJust felt like saying it. TFTDWhy are there always "No U-Turn" signs in the most prime and 'convenient' places to do so? Chicken and egg scenario I guess... Ho Ho Fucking-Ho! 25/12/03What a crock of shit! Excess expenditure 09/03/04Ever since the knowledge commons has been upgraded a whole bunch of people have commented on how wonderful it is. On deeper inspection one realises that a hell of a lot of cash was spent on unecessary bells and whistles. The flagship of the fleet is the screens. 17" flat LCD screens were installed with each PC at the cost of about R3500 apiece. Given the current layout of the computers one notes that the space saved by monitor being flat istn't being used anyway! Also, the clarity on the screens is not so hot, so any flatscreen 17" non-LCD CRT would have better resolution in a sense for R2500 less per screen. This adds up to a saving of about R140 000 for the same, even slightly improved, user experience. I hope to find out who exactly has this kind of money to flush down the toilet when places like the Southside labs are horrendously equipped when it comes to PC's. TFTDWhat is is about the outfit traffic officers wear that says "Hit me, I'm begging you!", especially when they stand so bravely in the road to flag you down? The Not So Triumphant Return 13/09/04 San: 70/80New and improved! Now with increased sanity levels and fully integrated and upgraded cynicism for your enjoyment! Venerable studentsWhen one progresses further into university life and gets near the end of the tunnel (which you always suspected was a train and not, in fact, the end) youn see more and more older students, not-so-fresh out of school. One particular individual comes to mind from a stats/ecos crossover course i was briefly involved in. What caught my attention was the condescending manner in which questions and comments were directed in class. If this person asked a question, despite being completely fucking clueless, the beginning of the sentence would be "Sorry, you said {X,Y,Z,insert material here}. Did you mean {complete misinterpretation by questioning person} or is there a mistake on the slide?" Surely one could just say that you didn't get it and ask for a clarification? Despite this, the individual insists on nodding and maintaining a knowledgable/stroky-beard expression as if they were a peer of the lecturer instead of a learner like everyone else, while not knowing a damned thing about the subject. Once again the arrogance and stupidity of humanity astounds me and gives me enough motivation to avoid work by writing this entry. TFTDThe much non-awaited thought for the day returns. Unwanted, unecessary and completely irrelevant but I thought I make this a bit more painful just because I can: Marginalising Distributions 15/09/04 San: 65/80Having considered the nature of my degree and the honours stuff I do in statistics, I realised that many if not all commerce discplines need these skills to be able to operate efficiently. Marketing, finance, HR even accounting on occasion. However, this did not seem to be apparent to the lecturer of the 4th year Business Science course in Business Strategy (essentially an honours course) who didn't even realise that statistics was a valid aspect of modern business. This is the same man telling us that attention to detail is crucial and one needs to be plugged in to what's going on in your organisation all the time. How exactly does that happen in big business without data processing and analysis provided by operations researchers and management science practitioners? TFTDIf John's enemy's wife is his friend and that friend's friend's friend and flatmate is his enemy's friend where exactly does that leave John? What is aibohphobia? The 'Real' World 10/04/06 San: 25/80(The tentacles! The tentacles!!! Ha-ha-ha-ha-HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!) Yes! I have returned many years later to add to what I started. A year in the workplace has taught me many valuable lessons about human nature and the nature of stupidity (which appear to be close cousins). One hears many jokes about the incompetency and myopia of management and think that maybe they're exaggerating. Afraid not. The ability for management to consistently ignore long term, strategically important objectives while simulataneously highlighting them as ultra-priorities at strategy discussions astounds me! I'm supposedly doing R&D here at the moment but since we lost other people from the dept I've been sandbagged with routine crap and standard analysis, no freedom to do the groundbreaking stuff the future of the company depends on. The hiring 'process' has so far been going for over 6 months with no sign of an increase in pace or for that matter of any new recruits and I know for a fact at least 1 capable person has been interviewed. It really makes one wonder what it takes to be a CEO, possibly a severe case of Ed Zachary disease coupled with mild brain damage. More PowerDoes anyone believe this crap about the loose bolt screwing up the turbine in the Koeberg reactor? Isn't it a slight coincidence that a short while after they had to effect an emergency shutdown (because some fool shut off the coolant to the wrong reactor during mainenance) now there are serious mainenance issues with the one that got shut down? Is it not more likely that the damage resulted from this emergency shutdown? I'm not even going to get into the brainlessness of Alec Erwin who denies saying the word 'sabotage', lying fartbrain. Since the refuelling is coming I suggest much bracing for impact since winter causes much larger power drain so it's going to be rolling blackouts again more than likely. TFTDWhy did they use Natalie Portman in V for Vendetta? What is the need for producers to use americans (with horrible accents) in films set in the UK? GP vs. CA 24/07/06 San: 15/80I have made many comments over the years about Capetonian drivers and their quirks, but after being back up in jhb for a little while now I have to say that there is no going back. People do what you expect them to do, stupid or otherwise. Although it is amusing to play on the overwhelming awareness of crime and roadrage there is these days. Some punk cut me off yesterday so since he was going in the same direction as me i deceided to have some fun. It was mind-boggling to see how many back-road routes he was willing to take to skip one or two traffic lights on a 3-lane, high capacity road. The moment of realisation took him a while but it was well worth the wasted time and petrol, I didn't know a Corsa Lite could do 160 :D Power SupplyI like the way SABC has introduced the power meter thingy in primetime TV. A very cunning ploy indeed, they tell you to turn off your lights, stoves, heaters and all other appliances apart from the TV. It's not a public service however, since to know what's going on you have to watch TV and therefore you have to watch all of the primetime adverts as well. How much more would advertisers be willing to pay knowing they have a captive audience? Exactly. Capitalism at it's 'best'. Nescafe 90210It wouldn't be CLAW if there weren't issues. I was one of the worst perpertrators of this when I was around in CT so no blame will come from my side. It's just interesting to see how complicated and intertwined people's lives become, sometimes with happy endings. I suppose this is a question more than a comment since I don't understand why it happens. Is this unique to CLAW or small societies in general? Is there something about roleplaying that makes relationships (platonic ones as well) tend towards this sort of thing? TFTD"I am living proof of intelligent design - and yet i am puzzled why so many are trying to turn themselves into monkeys" - God Contact me here if you really want to. |