Wednesday 24 Oct 2007 by Orphi the AweKid.

I hate my job.

During some audit, there was a finding that some security feature or other was turned off. Apparently turning it on conflicts with some other software which is why it’s off. But we can solve it by running the other software on a separate laptop. So I was asked to source some cheap laptops.

Well, you try getting hold of Pentium-I laptops that have serial ports. It’s virtually impossible!

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Tuesday 23 Oct 2007 by Orphi the AweKid.

As you may recall, I’ve just taken delivery of 5 “identical” PCs. Well, it turns out they have a few minor differences between them.

The case has a red LED and a green LED. On one unit, the green LED is the power light, and the red LED is the HD activity light. On another unit, these functions are transposed. (!) And on a third unit, the green LED is the power light, and the red LED never ever lights up. There is no HD indication at all. Goodness knows what the remaining two units are configured as…

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Monday 22 Oct 2007 by Orphi the AweKid.

I just took delivery of 5 brand new PCs. Each one is equipped with a socket AM2 AMD Athlon X2 4000+ CPU and 512 MB RAM. The motherboard is an MSI K9N6GM, which clearly uses some kind of nVidia nForce chipset. Indeed, it claims to be providing an on-board GeForce 6100. Whatever… all I know is it’s like Christmas here! I’ve got a big stack of modern, powerful PCs next to my desk, and I can’t wait to throw out a few 500 MHz AMD K6 systems!

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Monday 22 Oct 2007 by Orphi the AweKid.

# This was a triumph.
#
# I'm making a note here:
# HUGE
# SUCCESS.
#
# It's hard to overstate my satisfaction.
#
#
# Aperture Science.
#
#
# We do what we must
#
# because
#
# we can.
#
#
#
# For the good of all of us.
#
# (Except the ones who are dead.)

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Friday 19 Oct 2007 by Orphi the AweKid.

I guess I’m not too much of a mindless automaton. I have no trouble taking a block of text and Huffman encoding it using only pen and paper. But I’m really not comfortable with being asked to do things where I’m not sure exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.

For example, somebody says to you “write about X”.

I recall that during my degree, I had to do a “research project”. This essentially consists of

1. They give you a topic.
2. You do “research” this topic.
3. You write a vast tome describing the results of your research.
4. (They tell you how wrong you did it and attempt to destroy your self-confidence.)

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Tuesday 16 Oct 2007 by Orphi the AweKid.

0
1
10
11
100
101
110
111

Some people evidently pride themselves on being able to count fluently in binary. (”There are 10 types of people…”)

I managed to go one better. I can count fluently in the Church Booleans in SKI combinator calculus. o_O

KI
I
S(S(KS)K)I
S(S(KS)K)(S(S(KS)K)I)
S(S(KS)K)(S(S(KS)K)(S(S(KS)K)I))
S(S(KS)K)(S(S(KS)K)(S(S(KS)K)(S(S(KS)K)I)))

Yes, there is a one-up from counting in binary. (!)

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Tuesday 16 Oct 2007 by Orphi the AweKid.

On Sunday, my mum phoned me up, demanding that I have Tuesday off work so I can come and spend the day with her moving furniture around. As it happens, when I asked on Monday morning, it turns out there’s a big site meeting that I might need to be involved with. I told my mum that and she gets all stroppy at me. (Er, hello? It’s not my fault that some contractors arranged a meeting in a way that’s inconvenient to your life. The world doesn’t revolve around you!)

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Saturday 13 Oct 2007 by Orphi the AweKid.

Yesterday I played Portal, today I played HL2:EP2.

The original HalfLife 1 was an awsome game. Quite deservedly showed with accolades. Back in those days, I never used to play computer games. HL1 is basically the game that showed me how much fun it could be! It makes Quack II look really cheesy and lame by comparison. (Odd when you consider it runs on the same game engine…)

Anyway, then along came HL2. (After a delay of… oh, a few years!) And my God, when I played it, my mouth dropped. HL2 is technically superior to HL1 in every imaginable way. Sadly, as a game it was very dissapointing. HL2 is basically just like HL1, except with all the cool stuff taken out. The weird aliens, the secret underground labs, the bizzare machinery… all gone. And all that’s left is a drab city to explore. Great. (And yes, the game is far too short too.)

Then I played HL2:EP1. This took the graphics up a notch again, but otherwise it was more of the same dissapointing gameplay.

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