Saints Sail to Six Straight

Good news: a solid win from the southern Saints over the northern mob after a bit of a scare. Some quality footy and some absolute crap was played which saw a 21point southern win to take the tally to six-zip in the traditional north v south grand final footy match.

Everyone was falling like flies in the last quarter with heaps of people cramping up. Scott van Tuil was seen on crutchers at various points since the win and Keith van der Schoor is nursing a broken finger.

It was certainly a tighter contest than the afternoon's onslaught, but that was almost not the case as Justin vanderVelde dominated the first quarter with four goals. The coach deserves a shellacking for moving him out of full forward.

The G-Train was very smooth in his transition to the Australian football code with some strong marking. Rick Laning was a handy inclusion, having just returned from the USA. He toiled away in the ruck all day. Jono Haynes was a late exclusion, having come down with a flu on the morning of the game. He never seems to come away from these footy games unscathed.

Anyway, looking forward to next year now.

Instruments

I heard back from David Temby - the guy who made my soprano sax. He called to say that he received the instrument and that even when he played it, it was out between the octaves. So he's changed the neck and tuned it a bit and it is now in tune.

He strongly recommends that I get a new mouthpiece for it though, which means that I need to head north to the big Melbourne smoke to try it out and make a purchase.

Exciting times - and I feel a bit relieved to know that it's not just that I'm a really crap player that I was so far out of tune.

I tried Nick Mollison's French Horn the other day too. Very cool. He looked very perturbed when I took to playing it out of the side of my mouth rather than the front. I played a bit of didgeridoo and I play that out of the side of my mouth, and the technique is similar - except meant to come out of the front of the mouth. I, of course can't cope with all this change.

Feeling inspired to learn trumpet now.

New world of words

Last night I was very stupid. I got inspired to write. So I wrote, and it was 1am before I shutdown the old (new) laptop and lay down my weary head.

But the true moment of enlightenment came just now whilst reading the Australian Standards Online (No, I'm not a completely sad bastard - I was doing it for my honours), anyway, I came across the word "frangible". Cool word, I thought. It turns out that it is from the old French, and means breakable, or fragile.

It's kind of interesting the thought of designing stuff that has to be easily broken. Like those "Break glass in case of fire" panels.

I spent the summer designing stuff so that it would break really easily. Not many people aim at low breaking points, so it makes the task that much more difficult.

I remember trying to perform a destructive test where failure should have occurred when I applied 30kg. I gave up at 150kg. It was kind of funny - it was all held up by al foil (120 micron, rather than your usual 10-20 micron stuff). The pics tell the story I think... In each of those little boxes were 10kg of ball bearings. The big buckets were full of water - 20kg each. All held up by bending around some al foil...

Anyway, the stuff, quite simply, was not frangible enough.

Saturday Shenanigans

While I should have been hard at work, I was out umpiring the Old Scholars Grand Final. It was a great day, marred only by the fact that a number of the umpires appointed to the match really didn't want to be there, and that Hutchins won by a considerable margin (and the fact that I ran out of puff in the last quarter). So we've got those negatives out of the way... the highlights were: It was a grand final. Grand finals are always fantastic, no matter who's playing. There was a decent crowd. Had a few close calls which made my job difficult. Actually, to say it was challenging puts a better spin on it, so we'll say the close calls made it challenging.


Then we had the dinner afterwards. I ate very well - there was a carvery which I really did take advantage of. I was already feeling under the weather from the game that afternoon, so I was unable to properly appreciate the fine beverages on offer. But it was nonetheless enjoyable. My lack of dancing ability was again brought to the fore... or to the floor... or whatever the expression is...

Justin won a Sherrin, so that means that we have a footy with which to practice our throws over the summer. So that's good.

And I got my end of season review: Not as fit as in previous seasons, but have one of the best throws. I'm not relaxed enough when I run. I think that was about it. "Over the summer the key for you is to get a bit fitter so you can tackle the top 3 spots again." It takes a lot of motivation and mental something or other to spend a summer getting fit... but when you get to that day in September and have made it to that top spot, you do have that large sense of achievement of having achieved your goal. And I won't, God-willing, have uni to worry about next year, so I may even be able to retain some fitness over the course of the season.

Anyway, if you're not involved in umpiring, then you probably have no idea what the expletive I'm crapping on about... you'll get over it.

The grind... 5 weeks and counting... brown pants...

The grind continues - just submitted an intelligent systems assignment - it's all a bit stupid really - stayed at uni til 4:30 Wednesday morning but got it submitted 27mins early. So a nice relief - only to stay at uni again til 11 last night and I'm getting myself set for a big night tonight. And my honours project hasn't been looked at since last week...

My footy grandfinal is on Saturday - Hutchins v DOSA. And then the umpires dinner after that - not sure how energetic I'll be. And then the North v South game and AFL GF the week after. It's all a bit of a worry considering I really should be getting work done on Saturdays. But as the Maccas ad says: "Mummy, I don't want to go to school today." "Why's that?" "It's Saturday." That punchline just doesn't work on me anymore...

The Big Game Promo

The big footy game is shaping up.
Come and see the Christians at the Arena: Southern Saints take on the Lonnie Reformies as the Saints try to maintain their unbeaten record.

10:30am opening bounce at North Hobart Oval on September 29th.

Well, I'm stressed. Not much has changed on that front. I have an intelligent systems assignment that I need to do for Wednesday that I can actually do. Only problem is that the software I need is not on my laptop, so I have to go to uni to do most of it.

Then I have a thermo assignment that I was meant to do on Friday with the guys. That was all very nice, except for the fact that we forgot. So I got a message at 9am yesterday morning saying "are we ok to meet up at 1pm today". Wasn't a happening thing with the wedding and all...

Then there's the thermo lab and the numbers really aren't pretty, and we couldn't get hold of the lecturer, so that's been stalled, despite being due tomorrow. And there's another lab report that I haven't yet started for that subject.

Then there's the honour's project which is all too slow. I've got some stuff that I'm doing, that is possibly not the best use of my time in the short-term, but could be useful in the long-term (doing the cad modelling of the chain).

Between that and the final week of umpiring followed by the north v south game, it's all happening. So I'm looking forward to a holiday. I can barely keep my eyes open and it's only a quarter to one in the afternoon... It's worrying.

The wedding did go very smoothly yesterday and was a lovely occasion. The bride was resplendant and the groom was smiling from ear to ear.

I was quite proud of my speech - I didn't use any jokes from internet speeches, just hope I didn't offend people too much...

Now I should get moving again...

The Wedding

The wedding's tomorrow. My first run as best man... (or co-best man). Have way too much to do. Trying to model a bike chain in a CAD program called Inventor. It's a bit of an epic task. Haven a big intelligent systems assignment due Wednesday too. And I've heard bad rumours from Lonnie about their lack of willingness to fill a footy team for grand final day.

I could have sworn there were other things that were worrying me, but hey, I can't be that stressed if I can't think of them...

It's a list as long as my arm...

I got the official GHD rejection notice.

You've heard about all these rejections, but you've probably never seen one. This GHD one is a ripper:

Dear Jerome

Thank you for your application for graduate employment with
GHD and attendance at the interview. Our program is a very
popular one and unfortunately we are unable to offer you a
position.

However we recognise that you are a high calibre individual
and would like to keep your details on our internal
database to be reviewed as opportunities arise. We also
encourage you to monitor our website for future advertised
vacancies that match your skills and interests.

We thank you for your interest in GHD and wish you well in
your career endeavours.


Yours sincerely





Diane A Chisholm


People Manager

Not depressing at all...

mid week post

Hmmm. The cascade of posts has eased. But the ones that I have been doing have been like tsunamis.

I got another rejection yesterday. Hydro sent me the official rejection letter. Despite being impressed with my experience, they couldn't offer me a job. Hmmm. I have no experience. Mixed messages I tell you. Mixed messages. But only one that matters: BUGGER OFF. It's pretty depressing to think that I couldn't even get an interview with them though. Oh well.

At least I finally got the official word to tell me what I already know.

That's right, I had work to do, and it hasn't gone away. Damn.

Joshy May

It's been four days since my last confession...

Since then there has been a lot of time spent doing work. On Thursday night, I left uni at about 2am Friday morning... was driving along almost home. I could almost smell dinner. And all of a sudden I see these flashing lights. Normally brown pants are required when I see them, but on this occasion I was too tired to care. The cop comes out and says "Can I see your licence?" "Sure." "Had anything to drink tonight?" "Nope." He does the licence check walks around the car, gives me back my licence and says "Have a good night?"

The next morning I was fast asleep at ten to ten and my mobile rings. "It's John Muir from Muir's Winches. Can you come in today for a chat?" "Sure. I can come in... before lunch." It had to be before lunch cos I was umpiring the engi law footy game and I still had to go in to uni to submit the assignment. "What time specifically" John asks. "Uh, 11:30." "Ok, I'll see you then."

I get there to find that it's an actual job interview. They want somebody who's an absolute gun on CAD. The guy says, "Oh, it's pretty glamourous industry, so we don't actually pay much. It's a good job though." So, that's a good thing, I reckon. It's better to be on bugger all living in a nice place doing interesting work (bugger all being still an acceptable wage) than on oodles living in a hell hole stoking a fire. The guy who interviewed me said he was impressed with me, so that's nice. Not sure what that means though.

Engi v Law footy game was after that - it was my first attempt at field umpiring. I umpired with Quentin and Justin. We're all engi boys and we still couldn't get them up... It was so cold that after the game Justin couldn't even button his shirt. And my joints were in pain. But it was lots of fun. Beer at half time always makes things a little more amusing. Gee field umpiring is easy (running-wise). Especially when you umpire three-umpire system, the game is so slow and you aren't trying to impress anyone.

On Saturday I was back on the boundary in the SFL Premier League 2nd Semi Final. Glenorchy v Clarence at KGV. There were three of us running the boundary - I was ranked third out of them, so I only did two and a half quarters. I tried to run hard. After the game the coach comes in and shakes my hand. "Well done mate. You gave it 100%. The other two guys are obviously fitter than you, but well done." So I was happy that he realised that I had run my guts out. We all knew that the other two are a lot fitter than me, so I didn't have any problems with that comment - but it does help to reinforce some sense of perspective.

After that, I had curry night. It was all very nice. The curries did lack a bit of kick - you know, that lovely hot vindaloo. Oh well, it still tasted good. Had about 30 people rock up - half FOCUS, half OCF. We all got on really well, and we were all keen to mingle. Another cool thing was the number of engineers there. There is a large contingent of Christian engineers. I think that it's fantastic... but I suppose the challenge is to live that out in our faculty - some would say we don't get massive opportunities to do so, so I suppose it's a challenge to step up to.

Today was/is Sunday. Father's day. Unfortunately/fortunately, I was really tired so I wasn't real chirpy. Not helping me was the fact that I was on music, so I had to be up early. Oh well. So it went well in the morning with my beloved clarinet. In the evening, however, it was drama upon drama. I pulled out the sop for the first time in a service. In practice it was a case of even me being able to tell I was out of tune. Anyway, Cath and I fiddled about a bit and found that in my bottom register I was close enough to being in tune for it not to be a problem. However, in the middle register I was generally a semitone out, and in some cases a full tone out. So I'm a little bewildered and concerned by this and will have to shoot an email off to Melbourne. So I just made sure I played in that bottom register, playing as subtly as I could... people are nice, so they didn't give me any grief about it - not yet anyway!

And then Mottram tired. That was a little sad. And the Croat chick couldn't get the world record in the high jump...

No classes this week - only have to do a whole freakin honours project and a couple of other assignments. Pray for me if you would. I'm scared.

Anyway, it's late. I need sleep. I'm going to bed.