A slow day's travel

9:57pm 06/10/2008

I got through my Physics homework in less then an hour, which surprised me a lot considering I had 2 chapters worth of questions to answer. I went to bed shortly after, knowing that we were leaving the next day.

This morning was crap. I had to endure more yelling as we packed. To put it simply, Mum and Dad are getting more and more serious with their threats of chucking me out of the house. I really just want to know where I've gone wrong, and what I did to deserve this. All I've ever done is be myself and tried to have my own ways and my own opinions, and I'm being downtrodden and shunned because I'm not the "normal" my parents want me to be :(.

About 45 minutes after we headed off from Tuncurry, we hit some very heavy traffic that slowed us to a crawl. This happened 3 times before we got to Sydney, and it turns out it was caused by an overload of holiday traffic coming home after the Labor Day long weekend here in NSW. NSW drivers have no idea how to merge from 2 lanes into 1.

Once we got past Sydney (which happened about 4 hours late at about 5pm I think), we didn't have a problem with traffic. We made it to Gundagai just before 9pm and checked into the same hotel that we stayed in on the way up. This means we'll probably be home by about 3pm tomorrow. God I can't wait to get home. Right now I just need to talk to someone other then family to help keep me sane.

One more thing: I think I found a way of measuring my happiness while on holiday - look at the amount of photos I take in a time period. Wanna know why? I didn't take a single photo today. And when I got cut off from the person I was talking to on Saturday by my brother (he pulled out the mobile phone wireless card before I could say goodbye), I didn't take many photos for the rest of that day either.

On the way to Sydney

6pm 28/09/2008

Hey there. We've been on the road for 4 hours now. We stopped for McDonalds about half an hour ago near Glenrowan, and we're now heading on towards Albury, just across the Victoria/NSW border (Dad just said that we're 6 kilometres away). I'm using my Dad's laptop to write this. Me and my brother watched The Matrix earlier to pass the time. It was good to get the first one out of the way because I have to watch all three Matrix films for English. Well, that's not technically correct.

We're studying Future Worlds in English in the last few weeks before the exams. In the last two weeks of term we watched Minority Report and Blade Runner, and then we read the first chapter of 1984. And then, over the holidays we each have to watch a movie that looks at a Future World. And of course, being me, I had to pick The Matrix, which means I need to watch all three films, plus The Animatrix, to help understand the entire world of The Matrix.

We just crossed over the Murray River, which means we're now officially in NSW (for those who don't know, that's New South Wales, the state north of Victoria where I live). From what I remember, making the trip to the border in just over four hours is pretty quick (it's now 6:10pm, and we left at 2pm).

We're planning to stay the night at a town called Gundagai, but I'm guessing that depends how far we can travel tonight before we turn in for the night. Urgh, now I have motion sickness from staring down at a screen for too long. Lousy movie. Well, I guess I'll write more later. I should probably explain why we didn't leave until 2pm later as well :P. Seeya.


6:45pm 28/09/2008

We're just coming in towards the town of Holbrook, and we're about an hour and a half away from Gundagai. My Mum just booked us a hotel room, so I guess that's definitely where we're staying.


6:55pm 28/09/2008

We've stopped very briefly at a petrol station in Holbrook to clean the windows. I've switched from the Guest account to the Administrator account in Safe Mode so I can scan for wireless networks. I found a whole bunch as we passed through the town center, but most of them were password-protected and I couldn't connect those that didn't have any security.

We're on the road now, Dad was rushing us back into the car. All the wireless networks seem to of disappeared, we've already left the town. I'll keep trying to get some Wi-Fi as we keep going.

Now Mum's complaining about us having the CD player on the back seat. She's afraid it'll fly forward and hit the windscreen if we have to stop suddenly. So we ask her to suggest where else we should put it. “On the floor of the car” she says, and starts to grab things off the already crowded floor and chucking them on me and my brother's laps.

We're just 95 km's away from Gundagai now, which means it's about an hour before we stop.


7:50pm 28/09/2008

We're a quarter of an hour away from Gundagai now. We've been on the road for nearly six hours. I'm gonna shut the laptop down now because it's been on for over two hours. Just before I do, another reminder for something I need to write about tomorrow is the song Pork and Beans by Weezer. I'll try and get on again tonight if time and parents permit.

Oooh, just before I go, just thought I'd mention that Mum's trying yet again to understand how the GPS works. It's kinda funny sometimes :P. Anyways, see ya'll soon.


8:05pm 28/09/2008

So much for turning off the laptop. We're coming into Gundagai now. I've decided to keep it on so I can try and get some Wi-Fi in town so I can get onto Twitter, Gmail and Blogger quickly. We've just arrived at our hotel now, and Dad's gone to book in.

And what do ya know, the moment we pull into town all these wireless networks pop up. Trying to connect now.

YES! Just got some Wi-Fi, posting things now before we get out. See you all soon!

Before I go away...

To make sure everyone knows, I leave this Sunday (in about 30 hours from now actually :S) to go up to NSW for a vacation. So yeah, this is probably gonna be my last blog post before I go. I'll miss you all *hugs* and I'll try and get some Internet while I'm away. Otherwise I'll see you when I get back.

So what have I been up to in the last few days? Practically nothing. Literally all I've done is spend my time programming or at school in those revision classes for IT, which have got more and more boring as the week went on. I think we were all glad that today was our last class.

I mentioned that I've spent a lot of time programming. I'm actually making a program to remotely control the Xbox Media Center on my Xbox from my computer. Sure, there are already other programs out there that do it, but they're so limited in functionality or buggy, or don't work for me. So I'm writing my own program to do it all. So far it's going well, I think I'll have enough in it soon to release version 1 :P. Although, the odds of the people reading this actually using it are slim :P.

This afternoon I spent about half an hour wondering around Knox City with Nathan (Migit) and Tristan while I worked out what to buy my Mum for her birthday tomorrow. I ended up buying her a blue dressing gown (thanks for the suggestion Josh!). When I got home from that it was a quick bit of organising stuff to pack followed by heading over to Josh's house for a few hours. Turns out it was a suprise mini-party for my birthday on Tuesday, so that was really cool :). They got me a 4 GB USB memory stick, which was awesome, because I was actually planning to buy one of those myself. Funny, last year Josh got me a 2 GB SD Card for my digital camera, which I was also planning on buying myself :P.

Anyways, I now have a LOT of packing to do for Sunday, as well as a LOT of revision for my practice exams in 2 weeks time, and then I've also got to fit in homework for most of my subjects which is due when I go back in 2 and a half weeks time. I am sooooo snowed under. Anyways, I'll write an entry when I get home on the 6th of October. See you all soon, stay safe!!

On Holidays

Yes, I'm officially on holidays, as of last Friday. Although whether or not you can call these holidays is debatable. Sure, they go for three weeks, but in that time we have a stack of homework, as well as revision for practice exams for our Year 12 subjects in the third week, as well as revision classes all through this first week for our Year 12 classes. At least I'll get to go away on vacation for a week (I leave on Sunday).

Other then getting on holidays, Friday meant two tests. The first was a Business Management test for all of this term. Not only was it really long, it was also really hard. There were a couple of things on it that I simply didn't know >.<. And in our last class for the term, IT, we had our last SAC for the year. It was in the form of a written test full of short answer questions about IT Security, and I don't think any of us finished it, so we're going to finish it when we come in for our practice exam in the third week of the holidays. Saturday was just spent relaxing and talking to friends. Saturday night however meant heading off to an all-night movie night with Venturers. It was a bit of a fail, only 6 people turned up. But it was still fun. We watched the first half of Spaceballs, Anchorman, Cloverfield, The Fast and the Furious and 10000 BC. I fell asleep near the start of 10000 BC and woke up to Josh playing Xbox Live Arcade games on my Xbox 360 because everyone else was asleep :P. However, I did sit through all of Cloverfield. I'd heard a lot about it from other people: it makes you dizzy as hell when the guy runs with the camera, it has no plot, etc. Personally, I thought it was bloody awesome. It's one of the most amazing films I've ever seen. Sure, it was all filmed on a handheld camera (which is an amazing feat in itself) but they still had to set up every scene like normal, cue everything, do all the cinematogray, etc. And also, with the use of a handheld camera, all the shots were a lot longer then normal, making them a lot easier to screw up. So yeah, for me, it was an incredible movie. And personally, I think there was plot, it just wasn't obvious. Sure, it asked a lot of questions and didn't provide any answers, but some movies are just like that.

Once I got home, I put off the sleep for as long as possible, only to finally crash at about 2:30pm. I slept until about 7:30pm when my parents got home and woke me up to have dinner. Then I went back to sleep at about 11pm and slept right through until about 9am this morning.

Today wasn't terribly exciting either. All I really did was spend two hours in a revision class for IT, then come home again and work on the website I'm working on for my new web design job (I don't remember if I mentioned that on here before?). I officially hate all web browsers other then Firefox. Getting a page to look exactly the same in all browsers is practically impossible.

Anyways, I'll write more later, hopefully a couple of times before I go away on vacation. I'm still working on getting a laptop, and my outlook isn't bright.

Good and Bad News

Well, the last few days certainly have been exciting.

On Tuesday at lunchtime we finally had the Guitar Hero competition for Business Management that I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. It worked really well. We ended up getting through 12 games during the hour-long lunchtime, which is about what we expected. At the end of all of it, we made 55 dollars in profit, which was apparently the best takings for a video game small business to date. Me and Matt H, the guy I was working with, had a fun time keeping track of everything and watching everyone else have fun. I also have to thank David RS for helping us set up before lunch. Once everyone had gone at the end of lunch, me and a friend used the packing up time to have a go ourselves so we didn't completely miss out. There really isn't an experience like playing Guitar Hero with a massive sound system on a massive screen. Now we just have to complete our evaluation of the small business, and then we're done ^_^.

On Wednesday night at Venturers we had our long-awaited music night. It worked rather well. Everyone played something, whether it be just a short piece or two or three full length pieces. All in all it was a really fun night. Now I just have to get a hold of the tape from the night (we filmed all the performances), and I'll edit it a bit and put some of the footage of me playing up on Youtube. It's good to finally have a recording of some of my pieces that I played in my exam.

Today in IT I finally got to see the laptop that I would be testing for the school over the holidays. However, after it came in the techies at the school started messing with it and decided it was a no-go, and honestly, I have to agree with them. The keyboard was too messy, the mouse buttons were weirdly placed, they'd tried to fit a massive resolution onto a tiny screen, the battery life was too short, it was too slow because it comes with Vista Business when it's only certified for Vista Home Basic, and there was a myriad of other problems as well. It's only redeeming feature is that the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi worked well.

So yeah, while I'm glad that they've given up on a crappy laptop so the school will be getting some decent ones next year (hopefully the Asus Eee PC), it also means I won't have a laptop to take with me on vacation during these upcoming holidays. So, I've tried to convince my parents to get me an Eee PC 1000H model as a joint Birthday/Christmas gift, and I've even promised to chip in $100-150 if it helps my cause. I'm banking on getting it before we go away though. It's a really good laptop, and I think I kind of convinced my Dad that the Eee PCs weren't just toys when I explained about the 7 hour battery life :P.

One last thing before I go: for any fans of Metallica, make sure you check out the group Apocalyptica. My brother showed me some of their stuff tonight and it's just amazing.