| This is why our document QA process is working at an incredibly glacial pace. |
[Oct. 26th, 2009|08:32 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | The SITP Skype meeting. | ] |
Patto: Mmm, sausages.
Brett: What?
Patto: I just got told that sausages are ready.
Semps: My sausage is always ready for you, Patto.
Patto: ...Thanks, Semps...
...This is typical of most SITP meetings...
-Mmaster |
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| Sister Psychic, can you tell me, does it ever get better? |
[Sep. 27th, 2009|09:35 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  irritated | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Sister Psychic, Smash Mouth | ] |
Today my "It sucks to be me" hat came in handy. As did my "I don't work here" shirt.
I had some uni work to do. On a weekend. Self-inflicted injury, but still not one to improve my mood.
Since the Internet at home is busted (I think I hit the cap again), I went in to Uni to do stuff there.
Things going okay till 6. Suddenly no website not connected to UTS or Google was accessible. Since I was supposed to be having a Skype meeting at 7, this was a little inconvenient. There wasn't much I could do about it, though, so I just connected as best I could. Eventually Skype died permanently, and they forwarded the call to my mobile. I think I now have no Skype credit. *sigh*
I caught a cab home. The cab driver was listening to 2GB. The evening shock jock was suggesting that we should ban people from walking the Kakoda Track, since people keep dying. "Maybe soon we'll even have schoolchildren walking it! Where's it going to end? It's not like you're experiencing what the diggers did! They had bullets shooting past them!"
...This irritated me. The attitude seemed to be, "Why take let people take risks?". I think that if they're suitably prepared and wish to go, they should be able to do so. ...Not my scene, but I know others who are interested.
So, I asked the cab driver to change channels. He switched to 2UE. It was The Psychic Hour, or whatever they call it.
"Hi Cherine. Do you think that if I move house, it will be better for my health? I'm having trouble with the stairs in my current home."
...Lady. If you're having trouble with the stairs in your house, then move. You don't need a psychic to tell you that.
...I may dislike Dad's radio in general, but at least it's better than the alternative...
-Mmaster |
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| This isn't the first time this has screwed me over, either. |
[Sep. 17th, 2009|04:49 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  blah | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Push, Smash Mouth | ] |
PROTIP:
If you're trying to use FTP, and you receive this error message:
Timeout detected.
Could not retrieve directory listing
PORT command successful
Error listing directory '/'.
But it seems to have made the handshake okay, it's just failing at the directory listing?
Your sysadmin probably hates FTP and kills the port with fire.
Signed,
The person who spent maybe an hour or so sporadically trying to connect, assuming it was on the webhost's end, before plugging in to the CompSoc port and having it work first time.
...And no, before you ask, they don't support SFTP as far as I've seen.
-Mmaster
EDIT: Or maybe it only works with passive FTP connections, whatever that means... |
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[Sep. 16th, 2009|03:23 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  amused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Don't Stop Believing, Glee | ] |
In the database tables I'm migrating, "UK" means "Unknown".
One of the departments listed is "USA", and there's no map as to what it translates to.
...It's vaguely entertaining to map "USA" to "UK". Most people think it's the other way around.
-Mmaster |
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| Of course, I've been here longer than anyone. |
[Sep. 7th, 2009|09:50 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  tired | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Hip Shop, Paul & Storm | ] |
I want a tshirt that says "If you don't hate Uni, you haven't been here long enough."
-Mmaster |
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[Sep. 1st, 2009|02:38 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | amused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Mother And Child Reunion, Me First And The Gimme Gimmes | ] |
Has the definition of "Comma Separated Value" changed while I wasn't looking?
It seems that Excel interprets CSV files as tab delimited by default, even though I can't see any uses of tabs in the entire document.
Sigh...
-Mmaster |
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| Don't worry, I renamed it "@StringLength". |
[Aug. 26th, 2009|04:18 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | amused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Callisto, Tom Smith | ] |
Naming an integer variable "@MagicNumber" is probably a bad idea, right?
-Mmaster |
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| One more for the footpath, then we walked home holding hands. |
[Aug. 12th, 2009|08:15 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | tired | ] |
| [ | music |
| | To Absent Votes, The Lucksmiths | ] |
Today felt incredibly long. I'm having trouble even remembering what day it is; Wednesday, right?
Plugged my new 1TB hard drive into my hard drive enclosure (with intent to let it format the drive while I was out for the day), only to discover that either the drive or the enclosure is busted and I have very little in the way of finding out which. Sigh. Anyone got an enclosure I could borrow?
Nine o'clock SITP lecture, that didn't really tell us much we didn't already know. Except when / where to meet our tutor.
Ten-thirty tutorial that kind of went in circles as we realised that our respective schedules were hopelessly incompatible.
Two hour brainstorm with SITP team mates that also went kind of in circles, but slightly more productively.
Fifteen minute break in the ProgSoc room chatting to Rob, who was looking very dapper for an interview.
Two hours standing in the photo lab trying to catch up on the stuff that's due Monday. Nothing worked, and then I managed to scratch my negative. :@. Great.
Dropped my photo gear off at ProgSoc, then headed to McDonald's for a quick bite of lunch. By this point, it was nearly 4pm.
Headed to work to complete something Fabian wanted done. Two hours later, finished and headed out the door.
...Also? Still coming off a cold. Just to make the day even better.
...*collapses*
-Mmaster |
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[Aug. 11th, 2009|11:25 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | blah | ] |
| [ | music |
| | We Are Not Alone, Karla DeVito | ] |
Access is... uh... interesting. I don't think I've heard of anyone else use "-1" as the default value for "True", though I suppose it's just a creative interpretation of "0 is false, everything else is true"...
-Mmaster |
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[Jul. 28th, 2009|10:24 am] |
| [ | mood |
| |  accomplished | ] |
| [ | music |
| | World Falling Apart, Bowling For Soup | ] |
Everything is fast for small n.
I have a macro that was okay for small n (300 rows - maybe 5 minutes; not efficient, but if you're only going to run it once, it isn't a big deal), but got awful at an n even a little larger (1000 rows - I'm estimating, based on as much as I could stand to watch of the process, 10 hours).
So. Optimisation time!
Step 1A: Toss in the standard "Don't refresh the screen" instructions everywhere.
Step 1B: Discover that the script is still slow, funnily enough.
Step 2: Toss in lots of Print statements to figure out what is taking time that shouldn't. Answer: the macro consists of a set of four sub macros, each of which performs a similar set of operations: empties a series of cells and then inserts updated values. Both steps were unreasonably (and untenably) slow.
Step 3: Change the way the first half of the script operates. Its previous implementation was a loop that goes from i to n and changes the value of three cells in the row to empty to a set of three "Empty this column between x and y cells" operations. Each iteration of the loop (for n iterations) was taking 4 seconds. So this brought this particular step down from a theoretic hour-long task, to a less than one second task. And that type of thing was happening four times! (Hooray for modularisation!)
Obviously, Step 3 had cut out an awful lot of the time taken for the macro to run; but the second task for the script was harder to optimise simply: it's another set of loops (at the most vicious level, three nested loops - two of which are decrementing rather than incrementing), and there's no included functionality that will perform the same sort of task built-in, as far as I know.
So, how to improve the second step?
Step 4: As the macro doesn't rely on progressively updated values (unlike some of my other ones), I simply disabled automatic cell recalculation (and then re-enabled it at the end of the script). Suddenly my multi-hour script takes less than a second. Whoo! Go me!
Bow before glory! ...I detect lack of bowing!
-Mmaster |
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[Jul. 14th, 2009|05:20 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | accomplished | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Blog Like It's The End Of The World, Tom Smith | ] |
Whoo, Uni results are apparently out early. They're supposed to be released tomorrow.
Results:
Database Programming: 85 (High Distinction)
Project Management: 75 (Distinction)
Photography, of course, hasn't finished, so its results haven't been released.
I calculated a quick overall average for subjects I've taken thus far, which amounts to a high credit (73-74.5, depending on whether SDP counts as one subject or two) but not quite a distinction.
I'm pretty happy with that. Not sure if I deserve it, but that's a worry for another day.
-Mmaster |
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[Jun. 22nd, 2009|03:25 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | amused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | The King Of Wishful Thinking, New Found Glory | ] |
Amusement! I was checking the syntax of VBA's constants, and this was the first link to come up:
http://www.mrexcel.com/forum/showthread.php?t=285380
"Is there any way that I can change a constant in VBA?"
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
-Mmaster |
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[Jun. 5th, 2009|03:26 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | accomplished | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Sunshine, Evermore | ] |
Whoo, my numbers now agree with each other.
They may or may not be the right numbers, but at least they're now the same numbers!
-Mmaster |
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[Jun. 2nd, 2009|01:46 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | amused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | The Sun Is A Mass Of Incandescent Gas, They Might Be Giants | ] |
Interesting...
The class received an email from the Photography teacher:
<snip>
Could you please bring with you a small paint brush size 0000 or 000 or 00.
Whatever you can get your hands on. We will be looking at retouching images
along with dodging and burning next week. Also, if you can get yourselves a
bottle of ink for retouching this would be helpful as the university doesn't
provide ink. It lasts a long time, you could go half with someone and share
it. Again, Vanbar stocks them. A basic black and basic grey is what you
need.
<snip>
I went to Vanbar, checked it out, and found out that they no longer stocked it. So I sent her an email asking if she knew any other shops that might have it.
This was the response.
try teds or foto riesel maybe ring them rather than go there. also try oxford art supplies 93604066 is there no. i think. or eckersleys
Interesting jump in grammar!
-Mmaster |
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| Acronyms, he doesn't speak them. (Also, apparently, innuendo.) |
[May. 28th, 2009|03:04 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | amused | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Sand, Da Vinci's Notebook | ] |
The DBP assignment involves a system named the Financial Settlement System. Laurie refers to it as "FFS".
We have to make a package.
...Yes, that is what it's for!
-Mmaster |
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[May. 27th, 2009|10:45 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | accomplished | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Title Of The Song, Da Vinci's Notebook | ] |
One assignment down, one to go. The second has barely been started, and I want to finish it before the weekend - I have other things that I really need to be doing this weekend. This could be a fun few days...
-Mmaster |
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| Whee... |
[May. 26th, 2009|01:39 am] |
| [ | mood |
| | tired | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Sunday Morning Coming Down, Johnny Cash | ] |
Home just before two AM, and we didn't even finish. It's a good thing it's due Wednesday.
I can has sleep tiem naow?
-Mmaster
EDIT: And then I forgot to disable my 7 o'clock alarm... *whines* |
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[May. 20th, 2009|07:01 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | working | ] |
I have a feeling that when I say "My strong English skills sometimes lead to extraneous complexity in written and verbal communications", it's a self-proving statement.
-Mmaster |
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| We all enjoyed the brutal youth; we'd like it back to tell the truth. |
[May. 7th, 2009|02:25 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  stressed | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Mandy, Me First And The Gimme Gimmes | ] |
I think part of why I'm tired is that I'm fairly stressed. Yes, stress is a part of life, but that doesn't mean I have to like that it is.
Work is chaotic, too many things to do, too little time, sometimes too little communication between the people that want things.
Databases is frustrating; I'm not terribly good at it, and this seems to disappoint the lecturer ("I can't believe you only got 85%!"). Also the fact that Semps got 94 and spent the entire evening whining about it didn't help; or the fact that the other guys got 100 and 101 respectively. Also also that when I try and go to the tute to work on the tasks, he's much more interested in chatting with those who already know how to do it about random stuff instead of helping those who are struggling (though I probably could more actively ask for help). Oh, and the next assignment is supposed to be a group task that those three have banded together for. Whee!
PMP, on the other hand, is typified by the following:
Chris S: PERT Charts are wonderful and useful and brilliant! There are only two reasons that they aren't used any more: One, that they're too big to print, and two, that Microsoft Project does them so badly!
Student: If MS Project can't do PERT charts, what can?
Chris S: I have no idea.
Student body: ...
I've found an open source alternative to MS Project that claims to be able to create PERT charts, which I'm hoping does as well as or better than MS Project. Assuming I can get the damn thing to run - it installed happily but then complained I didn't have some specific version of JRE installed (which doesn't strike me as a good sign).
I get it, planning is good. I have a feeling I'm going to commit murder before I finish the assignment, since I really can't translate it at all. Most of it seems to be database definition.
Does anyone have Visio? Aman sent me his translation of the PERT process, but unfortunately it was a bunch of DOCX's accompanied by a couple of Visio diagrams. I found a copy of Word 2007 to open and print the DOCXs, but now I have some Visio diagrams sitting there taunting me...
Meanwhile, having already done the content Photography is covering, I'm doing well in that - but they do things ever so slightly differently to what I was taught, so I have to resist the temptation to run ahead. Sigh.
And now to play around with that open source app for a bit then maybe try and do some DBP without screaming. I make no guarantees.
-Mmaster |
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| My typing is screwed tonight. I'm guessing exhaustion. |
[May. 4th, 2009|10:22 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| | tired | ] |
| [ | music |
| | Poison, Alice Cooper | ] |
Today felt long. Probably longer than it actually was, but what can you do?
First stop, Basement Books. I was wandering around, trying to find a gift for Jeremy Allen; in all honesty, I don't know him all that well, which made picking something somewhat more difficult (though I had vague recollections of him saying he had a very fast reading speed, which were later backed up). I wound up picking 100 Selected Stories by O Henry; never heard of the author, but I couldn't find any books of quotations, so I figured short stories would give plenty of opportunities to choose. And "classics" are considered good by at least someone.
While I was there, I missed a phone call from Fabian; it turned out that the meeting for work was actually in an entirely different location to where he'd told me previously. I wandered around lost a little, and finally called my father in desperation.
Attended a three hour meeting. Cue varying amounts of arguing about a number of topics.
Had dumplings for lunch with work people at some noodle place on the edge of Chinatown.
Caught a cab over to SVS with work people.
Went to the AH department; since it was quiet when we arrived, I took the opportunity to duck out to visit Jeremy. Spent a half-hour or so chatting with him.
Headed back to AH and helped people with ABC till around 6PM.
Wandered over to one of the pubs near SVS for an after-work drink. Once Aman joined us, we shifted for dinner to the French restaurant across the road.
Unhurried dinner, chatting etc.
Managed to catch a 437 home with no wait.
Got home at 9.30ish to discover the Internet is still capped. Semi-patiently loaded pages, read through them, etc.
It's now quarter to eleven. I'm going to bed.
-Mmaster |
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