The Irony of Slowing Down
14 Sep 2006is that, whilst doing so, you were jaywalking and consequently unable to beat the oncoming bus. I decide to have a week off between jobs and go slow on uni for a day to recover from a near-cold and end up with conjunctivitis and a course of anti-biotics. I generally avoid significant illness so its nice to get this out of the way now, before summer starts properly!
So this is week #2 off work, with a fair amount of uni also not-attended so far this week (I managed an impressive three hours yesterday afternoon, and a lecture for the grammar english course on Tuesday evening, and managed to deliberately avoid, sleep through, or decide against attending the rest). I’ve a decent attendance record in most courses so far this semester so I didn’t bother with certs for the first half of the week… but then I had to go see a doc this morning about the eye and I’m supposedly on these meds for a week now. So, assuming they work in appropriate time, I’d still be rocking up to uni with a notoriously contagious thingy for the first half of next week… which means I might even end up missing more class. Which is ridiculous. Anyway I’ve got a lull in assessment at least… I was trying to write a pres earlier this week between phlegm-filled breaths, and ended up giving it unable to really speak… it’s about Renaissance thought in early modern Europe; unfortunately there was no opportunity to work in any plague allusions ;-)
Speaking of early modern Europe, there was the annual bookfest at University of Sydney from Saturday through to yesterday (Wednesday) which was so awesome. I say speaking of early modern Europe because I now have a collection on the subject (sans journal articles, etc., but there’s always Gale/ProQuest et al.) on par with that of Fisher library. The uni gets rid of low-circulation books, and also sells donations from the box you’ve probably walked past a thousand times and not really thought much about (if you’re a USyd student who at least pretends to study) on the way into Fisher on the left. Everything is dirt cheap… I went with Selo and we both by pure chance spent exactly $33, which netted us two A4 ream box sized piles of books. The first few days are prices as marked, but Tuesday it’s $10/A4 box, and on Wednesday it’s down to $5! I really wanted to go and have a look at what was left but wasn’t quite up to it. Everything is put out on Saturday so the collection would have seriously diminished by Wednesday, but given the sheer scope of it (it’s in the Great Hall of the Quad, and imagine if you will the entire floor space in there covered about three layers deep in books and you have an approximate starting number) chances are there’d still be some gems for the uncovering!
Yeah… so $33 would normally buy me five books, less if they’re academic reference/not classics/M&B (kidding). Did seriously well.
In other news, I’ve spent my recovery time battling with Wine to little avail. I tried installing it a few times (insert alcohol related jokes here) and got increasingly no-where, or sort of did, but then ended up hitting a brick wall (passed out in a pool of my own vomit, so to speak). So I installed Steam and spent $9.95 (USD! Tim was wrong, or at least Selo quoting Tim was wrong… either way, my receipt says USD) on Counter-Strike (to which I have moral objections, because the idea of spending money — even $US10 — on a free mod is preposterous) for the MCE computer which kicks butt (well, kicks butt once I figured out how to check the blindingly obvious “Widescreen” box).
Then I bought HL GotY pack on eBay that comes with four CDs or something and will hopefully install on Linux fantasically without Steam. Or, sort of with Steam but in a less-dependent-upon-it kind of way that makes everything run slightly happier. Good fragging times ahead, hopefully. Worst case I buy a decent wireless keyboard + mouse (yeah, one of those five-button things, I’m sold!) and use the MCE box instead… it’ll just mean higher framerates at the expense of having to walk downstairs, and probably a better gaming experience (can you say 5.1 and 32″ screen?) anyway. But it’s on Windows, and… insert idealistic rant here. Sigh!