Sydney’s covered in a dust storm this morning and everyone’s talking about it. It’s pretty funky coloured and unprecedented in recorded history. Tori says Thank God in her new blog (at least, that’s the blog’s focus :)) — others say more amusing things. Here’s a sample.

““UFO?” — my brother, “no, dust storm” — me. He looked upset.”

“[name] proudly welcomes you to Sydney Ranga Day. You can’t see us, but you know we’re out there.”

“[name] would hate to be holding a climate change deniers press conference in Sydney today.”

“Apparently you shouldnt go outside if u have asthma” [sic] — stating the obvious award

“[name] wonders if, due to global warming, jesus will return on a cloud of orange dust?”

“[name] is wondering how he got inside a sepia photo?!”

“[name] wants it to rain so she can make a mud pie on her car”

“Hey guys i had this big bag of red dust that i left outside, but how [sic] can’t find it. Would anyone know where it is?”

I wish this weren’t just Vista being special!

I’m telling you this in case I get fat and more pale and grow my hair slightly-too-long-to-have-gel-in-it and then use gel anway, or, alternatively, go bald, and grow a seedy goatee and end up working there. Heh, retail geeks, sif ;-)

Nah, they’re generally really nice, just occasionally (too often) a little clueless. And there’s certainly a basis for the stereotype delineated above, if what that place looks like on your average lunch time is anything to go by. Although there were a disproportionate number of female customers in the store… and there was a female employee there, even! Shock! Mind you, she is asian, so I suppose that’s permissible.

Anyway, stop me if I exhibit any particularly gratuitous nerdishness.

He’s usually something of a slob… lying around, eating, and occasionally walking (at a decidedly moderate pace), and doing nothing more. Until about twenty minutes ago. Some red thing went flying around the backyard at a speed un-naturally fast, apparently in the mouth of our dog. Cool! Haha, it appears even the DOG is trying to assist my procrastination: maths? Pfft… throw the red thing, throw the red thing!!!

I’m excited. Not as excited as the dog, though. :-P

Perhaps when iiNet bring their iiSLAM’s to Kensington, NSW… and if they keep the “testing” unlocked backchannel enabled!  Haha, symmetric “A“DSL — Got to love it.

In other news, I’ve decided that I probably won’t be bothering with mod_rewrite on this iteration of the website, because I think it’s going to get dumped sometime in the near future anyway… that said, Google actually seems to be indexing down to my permalinks without any difficulties anyway!

I’m currently failing to see the benefit of using my own news/blog script over something more advanced, and would prefer to invest time in other projects (specifically, to enhance and extend the content management system to better support CSS, XHTML, semantics and improve authentication and user management, amongst many other things) rather than re-doing what’s been done before, and better, without seeing any real tangible benefit for it.  And yes, I do know there are better, more advanced, more usable (open-source) CMS offerings out there.  Integration of features offered by those products is something that is being explored, but until that is feasible, development of this one will continue…

Despite whatever nasty things people might have to say about WordPress, the more I see, the more I like, so nyah.

At the minute, design and standards are something I’m far more passionate about, anyway.

Yeaaah.  Anyway.  As you’d probably guessed from the title, I’m liking this new thing.  There are so many potential points of failure in my audio setup at the minute, but it seems like (at least on this line) that was the only thing wrong with it.  So bad were the connections, in fact, that it was actually increasing impedence across the circuit to a noticable extent (audibly, even when the connector was “working”).  And this one does stereo without dropping out, so that’s nice.

I have no idea what I did to that last adapter, but it was seriously dead.  It’s been relegated to my in-tray, which sits about 15cm high at the minute (no, not joking).  That of course means that I’ll likely never see it again, as I haven’t scheduled myself a reminder to dispose of it.

Annnnd the modern essay is finished, for those who hadn’t guessed.  I’m not happy with it, but screw it.  Left another assessment too late.  The only one of this batch I theoretically haven’t screwed up was one which required no study and was a gift.  Haha, the irony is, I dropped that subject ;)  I’m told I went well, but the rumour is yet to be confirmed with official sources, and I don’t care to myself, so thinking I got 28/30 is good enough for me.  Those two marks are going to nag me, though…

No, I still have no idea what the maths test I may or may not be sitting tomorrow is.  I think I am throughly screwed.  I have first period in studyhall to work it out.

And this is take two, as Mozilla crashed.  Actually, why am I typing this in Mozilla?  Konqueror has nice spell checking and stuff!  I’m normally pretty good, but a second opinion can’t hurt, now can it?  *switches browsers*

Ah, that’s better.  Haha, “Mozilla” is showing up in red text… no, we’re not anti-competitive ;)

Yay.  So, about… life.  Seminar presentation.  I’ve already bitched to half the world (so it seems… half my world, anyway… probably more!) about how poorly I thought it went, but hey, for the other part of my world (the purely-connected, non-“Met” half), I’m ranting here, too.  Feel free to ignore me if you think I just need to STFU and get over it.

Yeah.  This seminar was meant to go for ten minutes.  Mine went for fourteen.  I’ve never been great (read: utterly hopeless) at timing things, especially of this nature, and brevity has never been a strong point either (phonecalls should be billed in 30 minute blocks, not per 30 seconds!).  This, however, was appalling.  As I said, it went for fourteen.  That isn’t too bad, in and of itself…

Had I finished.  Knowing full well that my timing was probably way out, the seminar was prepared with designated “exit points”, for use in a scenario such as… oh, say, the one that occurred.  Essentially, there were premature conclusions which wouldn’t appear premature should I have to use them.

All that is based on the presumption that I actually DO think to use them… oh, yes, that old “thought” thing.  Evidently too much.  So I hit a break in presentation, and asked how long I had gone for: they said 14 minutes.  I thought I was perhaps just over 10, 12 at the most.  It shouldn’t have been panic inducing, but then, I’d just endured a pointless 30–45 seconds of DVD footage due to impossible cueing (my frog, the buttons on the front of those things are fiddly.  Give me a remote anyday.), and knew I needed to make up for that somehow.  I don’t know.  I basically forgot that nice conclusion which was glaring fiercely up at me from the sheet I held less than a meter from my face.

That, of course, isn’t the thing which annoys me most.  If my stupidity doesn’t affect the overall quality of content delivered, then that’d be no problem.  Unfortunately, without my use of an appropriate conclusion, the whole thing falls down somewhat.  The study of ONE appropriation, no matter how in-depth or well presented that may be, does not constitute “a range of” other contexts.

I looked over the presentation again, and I’ve estimated that were I to run the full length of my prepared content, it would have gone for approximately 25 minutes.  Damn, my timing sucks.  I say “prepared” content because I should have liked to go longer… perhaps I’m not a public speaker for a reason? ;)

Despite all that, I continue to agree with others who have described this assessment as one of, if not the most enjoyable assessment they’ve ever undertaken.

But it’s over.  So that probably means I should stop working on it, and focus on myriad other assessments building up, hey?;)

Oh, it’s not so bad.  A moderately huge business thing on Monday, which I’m a tad nervous about, an English listening task on Wednesday, which I could care less about, but not by much, and a Modern History essay which is due Thursday.  Then a week?  Maybe two?  I don’t know… until yearly exams.  Bleh!

And a certain Herr Goldrick is trying to convince me to do HSC stuff.  I’m uncertain why.  Apparently is shall “reassure” year 12.  More so than paid staff shall?  Bleh.  I don’t see why a certain person continues to be employed.  It’s funny, seeing he’ll be present for their rehearsals, and yet Goldrick is convinced that I need to be there because I was there for the trials.  Yes, well, certain others who shall be witnessing aforementioned rehearsals WEREN’T there for the trials, because they had better things to do with their time.

Grrr.

To go off on a complete tangent, my parents are going to New Zealand tomorrow evening.  (YAY!)  This’ll probably mean a several-hundred fold increase in productivity, for various reasons (namely that there is no pressure to “appear” to be doing work of any particular kind — time management CAN occur unheeded, thankyou very much).  The lovely LCD device is going with them, in the hope of attaining a tax break… I don’t know how all that stuff works, so I won’t speculate further…

That’s the last few days in a nut-shell.  Today was a write-off.  Absolutely.  Apparently Heath is upset about the en mass desertion of his school, but given that they’ve never had an established “Bring your school books and work in case it rains” policy, I don’t think he has any right to be.

I left it too late to escape, and subsequently lost a day which could have been spent tending to assessments.  St. Andrews Cathedral School embraces academic achievement and efficient time usage.  What a joke.  Six hours of absolute nothing.  Sure, we did work in physics, the one subject I’m adamant about dropping.  Wonderful.  Other subjects?  Oh, I’m sure I could have worked, had I come prepared with BOOKS.

I’d like to take this opportunity to extend my gratitude to the administration of the school for their astounding short-sightedness in dealing with this situation.  Duty-of-Care and truancy is one matter, actively refusing parental permission to release students so that they may possibly make some use of their day is quite another.

Apparently he is angry.  Well, so am I.  I value my time more than that.  I was looking forward to this carnival, but I can cope with it being cancelled — I’d like to be able to get work done in it’s place, though.

“Normal school day” was a fond catch-cry of administration.  I certainly hope you don’t consider that normal.  This isn’t like broadband, there is no such thing as a “fast churn” process between schools.  Not that I’d really consider moving, anyway — I do love SACS, despite all its capricious oddities.  This sort of thing does irritate, though.  Yes, the situation was unavoidable, but the response left much to be desired.

Hah, the male parental unit is a source of much amusement.  In the morning, whilst hopes of escape still dwelled in the echelons of the imagination, I called the parentals in hope of them calling and ensuring some means of ess-cap-ee.  He was in a meeting, but sent a TEXT message as a permission to leave.  You have no idea how hard I fought not to fall off my chair laughing.

“I give permission 4 josh 2 go home now that the carnival is cancelled”

No joke.  I haven’t laughed so hard because of a text message EVER!  Mrs. Earle found it just as amusing, hehehe.  That element of humour made the day lastable, methinks ;)

Anyway.  I’m off to compose an essay.  Or something.  Hooray for ridiculous SMS messages!

So I think I’m going to be ditching a text.  Dammit.  This is so uncool.  AHHHHHHHHH.  Pfft.  No, I’ll go overtime.  Screw them.  The Matrix stays, dammit.

LALALALALA I CAN’T HEAR THAT OVERTIME BUZZER

If it’s engaging enough, maybe they’ll forget.  But that’s assuming a certain standard of work, of course.  Yep, I’m screwed.  BLAH!

For those who hadn’t guessed/been listening to my inane rantings, I’ve got an English seminar presentation to give tomorrow.  I’m so thankful we have 10 minutes, because that’s way more than what they’d usually give us, and from a logistical point of view, that makes sense… however it doesn’t stop me from wanting more.

Haha.  And if they do make me want to stop?  The irony will be, my presentation shall end not with a bang, but a whimper ;)  You’d have to be there…

A whole heap of people became Christian and a whole heap more were encouraged by that and by each other!  Wow!  No matter how long I try to write, I can’t capture how amazing this is on paper!  My favorite passage that we studied over the last four days is this:

Philippians 3:7–11

But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.  What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things.  I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ  and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ–the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.  I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

It’s kinda chunky, but hey — so incredibly cool!

It was absolutely great, you could see God at work in the lives of people there so clearly — Ashley Kurrle being one amazing example which I know of, as well as others in other year groups.  Thanks SACS ministry team!  God is using you to change lives!

I’m rambling a little — I’d better stop, or I’ll loose more cookies, and then problems happen!  Haha.  What else?  Ben’s 17th birthday was yesterday!  Happy Birthday Ben!!!  Soo… I guess that means Nikky Webster is also seventeen, as of a few months ago? ;)

J.