My life’s not working out at the moment as I had planned it to be working out right now. Most of it is coming along nicely, however, there are a few aspects of it that I thought would’ve been different.

My job, primarily, is what I’m talking about. To put it bluntly: I’m not enjoying it. Or even more bluntly: it kind of sucks. It’s a glorified tech. support role. It was sold to me as something else. I was told it would be tech. support and development work. I wasn’t really sure at the time what that meant: I suppose my naivety was to blame. Yeah, sure, there’s development. There’s plenty of opportunity for me to brush up on my Microsoft Access skills supporting five-year-old database applications. There’s plenty of opportunity for me to write annoying little VBA snippets that semi-automate behemoth Excel spreadsheets.

Initially I took the challenge as it was: a challenging learning experience. While I haven’t learnt all there is to know about Excel, Access or the whole awesome Microsoft Office experience, I certainly know enough now to be handy in writing solutions based on Microsoft’s Office suite of applications. Hell, I wrote a fucking share portfolio snapshot graph application in VBA on top of Excel. I think that’s something, don’t you?

The problem with that last project wasn’t so much the difficulty of the algorithms as it was the difficulty in understanding exactly what the fuck I was meant to be writing, who it was for, how the output was intended to be presented, and so on. My boss is a nice guy, but he’s the only boss I have. He runs the whole show, and he’s shit as an IT manager. He comes up with ideas with no concept of what it takes to implement them, but expects them all to be done yesterday. So, you can imagine what kind of awesome fun I had with this guy while trying to develop software for him.

But, you know, I rolled with it. I learnt something there about how to deal with adults who want things they can’t have and don’t understand why. It doesn’t change the fact that it’s stressful and at times downright intimidating to have that kind of thing hanging over your head. You never knew when he was going to have another flash of inspiration and decide to triple the complexity of your application.

Not that I was writing anything super-complex. I haven’t even graduated uni yet, though. While I am capable of researching things and solving problems all of my own accord, I don’t yet understand how I’m meant to determine what’s appropriate in the eyes of my employer in terms of the problem solving process and the various metrics associated with it. Time, complexity, depth, breadth; you name a metric, I don’t know it. This is why big business run graduate programs. I should be doing one I suppose.

Though, that’s another thing I don’t know if I can really get into. Big business. I hate the corporate scum-sucking that goes on. Everyone runs around in pretentious outfits wearing ridiculous strangulating ties, black long slacks in the middle of summer with long-sleeve shirts, and uncomfortable non-breathing leather shoes. They sit at a desk in an office, push paper, answer phones, and generally do … what? I don’t know. I hate the image, and I hate looking at myself in the mirror when what I see is myself becoming some corporate bitch. Though it makes my parents proud to see me all grown up and shit, but I suppose that’s the era they’re from.

You know what, I have a theory. I reckon people work better when they’re comfortable. I’m talking about all aspects of comfort: environment, clothing, seating, computer, whatever. When people are in a good mood they do good work. Stuffing everyone into the corporate mould and spitting out oddly-shaped people stuffed inside uniforms of drab pale shirts and standard-issue black or grey pants is not a way to raise the spirit of the people.

I think people should have a sense of self-importance about themselves simply for the sake of maintaining their own self-esteem. On top of that, people should respect themselves and dress appropriately. I do not think that everyone should be limited to dressing in the same 70-year-old combination of slacks, button-up collared shirt, overcoat and tie. Hey, chicks can wear what they like. Why can’t guys?

If you’ve read this far, good on you: seriously. There’s a lot of angst in this post, and I haven’t even gotten to the good part yet.

The other night I got totally trashed on Jim Beam Small Batch - though I asked for it. Didn’t eat all day, chugged it down like it was water, and expected an hour or so later to be sweet for a night out in the Valley. Turns out I actually spent an hour or so lying on the floor of a bathroom in my own vomit, alternately crying and yelling about how much I was sorry for ruining my friends night and laughing my brains out about how funny everything was. I was in another world. I’m not eager to do that again but jesus that Small Batch is good shit. I had mine with Coke but you could easily drink it straight from the bottle its that smooth.

Anyway, that wasn’t really the good bit. Did I trick you? Haha. The good bit is I will soon be under the employ of the man behind Dependable Technologies; (let’s hope he doesn’t get any hits from my blog and reads the above paragraph) which is a one or two-man outfit that specialises in, well… you can read it all for yourself on the single page website. This is exciting because as you may or may not know, I am all about that kind of thing. Doing intelligent support work for clients who have real problems, not replacing batteries in wireless mice for people who are too lazy to do it themselves (because “that’s what IT is for”).

I think I’ve said enough now. Oh wait, no. I’m trying to do my tax using the Governments’ super e-tax programme, and it wants to connect to the internet and download my Medicare info, but consistently fails with the helpful message “Unknown exception, please contact the IT helpdesk on… ” At least this year the website is compatible with Firefox. I couldn’t believe that this time last year their website had the audacity to tell me that my browser was out of date because its ident/signature didn’t match exactly that of Internet Explorer. Oh wait, yeah, no, it’s the government. Of course I can believe that. At least things are better this year ’round. Still no Linux e-tax application though.

Sorry, enough ranting. Carry on with your lives. I mean that sincerely.

I love Windows and Microsoft and all their awesome wonderful software beauty. This is what happens when I install Windws on one of the machines at work and try to activate it.

1. It activates “fine” but doesn’t allow me to login. Why? Well, I login, it says “you must activate Windows to continue” I click OK, and it says “Windows is already activated” and then logs me out. When I log in again, the same thing happens. Infinite loop. Sweet.
2. It doesn’t activate at all. When it goes through the steps, and attempts to generate an installation ID that I can pass onto Microsoft, the space where the installation ID is supposed to display is blank. Yes, blank.

These are both fucking catastrophic failures. Infinite loops and no user feedback? Hey, infinite loops and no user feedback during Windows installation causing installation to fail?! From the worlds largest software development company?! What the fuck is wrong at Microsoft?

So, I have been scouring the internet for a day and a half now trying to figure this out, and while there are reports of both problems occurring elsewhere before, none of the available solutions seem to work. I have formatted and re-formatted the machine probably eight or nine times now. Always the same problem. At the moment, I’ve got the blank installation ID issue. It’s been that problem for the last three or four formats.

Things I have tried:

• manually editing the registry to set the timer for activation to some far-distant future time
• copying the files used by the activation process (wpa.dbl and wpa.bak) from the installation CD into the %windir%\System32 directory manually after installation
• installing the drivers for all of the hardware in safe mode so the activation process can reliably generate an installation ID (it’s based on the product key and hashes of your hardware info) (did I mention this requires further registry hacks to enable software installation in Safe Mode?)
• tried various cracks and hacks from the ‘net to disable activation without any success
• been on the phone to Microsoft tech support for an hour without any success

Oh and I’ve done all this using three different Windows CDs, two with SP1 pre-packaged and one with SP2 pre-packaged.

HOW SWEET IS THAT?!?! LIKE SRSLY MCRSFT I <3 U SOOOOOOO MUCH RITE NOW!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi everyone,

A headsup for some of you: there are a bunch of sweet gigs on over the coming months, and I’m inviting you to attend them with me.

First up is Birds of Tokyo, whom I don’t know much about, other than their frontman is the very same who leads the very entertaining and very awesome Karnivool. Although I haven’t seen either live, the latter’s full-length release, Themata, is a favourite in my collection. Anyway, check out The Birds’ MySpace for more on them. Date is September 5th, cost is $27.75., venue is The Arena.

Next up is heavy-metal favourites, and awkwardly-pronounced, Meshuggah. While I’m not particularly fanatic about their style of music, I can appreciate it in small doses. Let’s hope their performance on October 12th at The Arena isn’t too large a dose! (at a cost of $53.50 + booking fee)

Next up in the metal section (although arguably with less throat-destroying lyrical talent) we have Disturbed. I’ve listened to a lot of their stuff over and over and over, with their album 10,000 Fists taking a special place in my collection. They’re touring with old favourites P.O.D., the up-and-coming Behind Crimson Eyes, and Alterbridge. We can catch them at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre on the 2nd of September at a cost of $89.65.

Changing genre completely, let’s think about Dukes of Windsor. They scored well with their hit The Others showing up in a remix on a recent Ministry of Sound album. You’ve heard it, and you liked it. Trust me. Anyway, they’re touring with the awesome Sneaky Sound System, and I reckon we’d be stupid not to miss their show at The Tivoli, on the August 16th, especially for a cost $53.50 (plus booking fee).

Keeping the electro/dance theme, though moving down in the popularity ranks, we’ve got a relatively unknown group by the name of Grafton Primary. They reached realtively huge popularity on TripleJ last year with the slightly nerdy but ultimately funny (and fun!) Relativity; and they’ve also created many awesome remixes of other popular artists, including remixing the tired and overplayed This Heart Attack by none other than Faker, which in my opinion is as good as the original, if not better. They’re supported by The E.L.F, who are busy doing lots of wierd things on their MySpace, and the first group I ever saw play live: Christopher Robin, whom are not the same you will find on MySpace. They’re a small two-piece electro pair who seem to occupy themselves more with drinking than playing music, but they’re oh so good at it! For a cost of $12 and a trip to the Valley, what more can you ask for? (at Rosie’s)

Second last on this by-no-means-ordered list, we have Canadian crackpots, haters of vowels and all-round funky dudes, MSTRKRFT. They’ve a few releases and a lot of remixes, and they’re all hella-sweet. Accompanied by Ajax and a few other DJs I’ve never heard of, we can catch them at The Arena on the 2nd of August for a cost of $35-$45 (plus booking fee).

Finally, we have two bands actually: PNAU and Operator Please; both huge on the Australian charts, with the former being a veteran of the dance scene and the latter barely out of highschool, you’ve no doubt heard tracks from both, with PNAU’s “Baby” featured on recent advertisements for milk, and Operator Please having many of their songs played on mainstream radio. We can indulge in their alternately funky and rocking sounds (quite a contrast) for only $44 (plus booking fee) at The Tivoli on the 7th of August.

So, if you’re interested in seeing any of these gigs with me, please let me know. Some of them have been on sale a while, and are due to sell out soon, so we need to get in quick! A comment, SMS, e-mail, phone call or face-to-face conversation are all good ways of engaging my attention.

If you want to find out more information about any of the gigs, you can check out the bands’ respective MySpace/websites, or you can visit the awesome Triple J gig guide, which helped me to compile this post.

Yeah yeah, you know it. The World of Warcraft servers are down for scheduled maintenance which means I haven’t much to do. Sad really, isn’t it? Still, I’m not addicted. I don’t think about WoW while I’m supposed to be doing other things. I don’t talk about WoW all the time to people. I certainly don’t dream about WoW.

Yeah, I post a lot about WoW, but that’s only because I know you expect me to, and I couldn’t go letting down my avid readers now, could I?

The next post is going to be about something interesting. As soon as I figure out what that is, I’ll let you know.