all in a day's work...

Not bad for a less-than-24-hour trip to Victoria, huh?


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(yeah, your RSS reader isn't lying... jas has posted again for the first time in about a year!)

Why I hate uni.

6 months or more ago:
I decided to withdraw from a unit.

I logged on to the enrolment thing, dropped the unit, and all was again well in the world.

Or so i thought.

Behind the scenes, something much more sinister was afoot. The online enrolment system was being broken again, and didn't actually un-enrol me.

4 months ago:
I get an email "please complete the online evaluation for this unit".

Me: "Huh? What? I dropped that."

I check the enrolment thing again. Lo and behold, it still appears.
And as it's now past the academic penalty date, I can't drop it online, I have to go to student central. *grumble*
So I do so and make sure I'm dropped.

2 months ago:
Yep, i do have an academic penalty *grumble*

Okay, fill out an appeal form, attach a copy of my enrollment change receipt from 6 months ago, a letter from my lecturer saying that I spoke to him about dropping the unit, and a letter from the academic counsellor i spoke to about dropping it.

1.5 months ago:
Me: "Hi student central, i haven't heard anything about my appeal, can you tell me what's going on?"
Them: "we're busy with them, we'll get to it eventually, bye."

1 month ago:
Me: "Hi student central, can you tell me what's going on with my appeal?"
Them: "Call Assessments"

Me: "Hi Assessments, can you tell me what's going on with my appeal?"
*someone actually bothers to look it up*
Them: "Yeah it's in the fees office at the moment, someone should get back to you within a week"
(No idea why it was in the fees office but that's beside the point. It had nothing to do with fees)

Zero months ago (i.e. today):
Me: "Hi Assessments, i was told a month ago that i'd hear within a week, i haven't heard anything yet, what's the story?"
Them: "Okay my computer says it's come back from the fees office, let me go have a look for you"
.... on hold for 12 minutes ...
Them: "I've looked through all our files, everyone's pigeon holes, and everyone's desks and i can't find it. unfortunately you're going to have to lodge it again at student central and start this process again before we can do anything. now if you want to ask them to mark it as urgent they might be able to do that which might speed it up a bit. Thanks for calling, Bye"

Amongst other things...

I managed to get a nice cut down my arm (emo cracks are already old, so just don't) today from a tyre.

How skilled am I?

In case you were wondering...

For the forseeable future, you're only getting short posts... whatever fits into my Blogger widget.

Blogger has kindly decided that I Really Want To Upgrade To New Blogger So Much That I Shouldn't Be Able To See My Old Blogger Dashboard Until I Upgrade. I tend to disagree, hence my stubborn non-upgrading... as well as the fact that WordPress doesn't play nice with New Blogger... not that it plays nice with the current games either.

If anyone can tell me an easy way of exporting my blog out to WordPress with the way it's going at the moment, please let me know.

There's nothing quite like the feeling...

... of lying in a bed wearing nothing but a hospital gown, and having tubes, wires and whatever else attached to you in such a way that you can hardly move at all without something getting caught, tangled, or beeping because you pulled it. 

Yes, the rumours are true, I was in hospital this weekend. Anyone who wants to know more can ask me, because I'm not putting the details online.

Six things...

Well I was tagged by Paul, so I'm now obliged to share six weird things about myself:

1. The first car I owned was a Hyundai Excel that ran on LPG. It was nice back in the day, having to spend almost nothing to fill it up.

2. I don't tan in the sun. I burn, peel, and go back to the same colour (cue: "White and Nerdy"). This leads to plenty of jokes from steve about the amount of sun that I don't see. Related to the this, I have a birthmark near my left ankle which is the only part of me that tans. Given that it's usually covered by a sock, it doesn't see much sun, so it tends not to be hugely different.

3. I remember weird things. For example, I can name (almost, I missed one when I did it the other night) every train station on a Melbourne train line I've been on maybe 3 times in my life. I reckon I could do it for two others as well.

4. This memory doesn't extend to useful things, such as how long it takes to get places. I'm continually optimistic about how long it takes to get somewhere, and thus chronically late.

5. I have 3 units left to go to complete my uni course, but I'm doing 5 just for the fun of it.

6. I was going to try and have my new Wordpressised blog ready especially for this post. I didn't, but I figured I probably better do this now before I forget about it.



And now....

John
Tony
Mark
Angus

You have been officially tagged. Get to it.

Possibly one of the better pieces of news I've heard recently

http://www.news.com.au/entertainment/story/0,23663,21009741-10388,00.html

(Thanks to Angus for the heads-up)

Church Annoyances: I'm taking up my cross

So this is my occasional segment on things that have annoy me about church or associated events. If you're one of those people who would prefer to not read such things, you now have two choices:
1. Get over it.
2. Stop reading.

Now that that's been said, today's annoyance comes as i visit Paul's church. Nothing at all to do with his church, it just reminded me of something i saw at an event a month or so ago...

The song "Pick it Up", actually not an entirely terrible song (apart from the bridge which makes me cringe every time i hear it, mostly because it was ripped off a song done in WA 4 or 5 years ago which was also cringe-worthy). Sometimes i wonder if we even remember what we're talking about when we sing it though. "Yeah! I'm taking up my cross as i jump up and down here at the front completely ignoring everyone else!" Be interesting to see how our lives would look if we really did. I think sometimes in our church culture we make it really easy for it to think we're "taking up our cross" and "following Jesus" because we turn up at all the events at church, and help out at some "awesome" events, and make sure we put lots money in the offering to support "God's work". Nothing wrong with any of this, but it seems a fair way away from what Jesus seemed to be talking about.

Anyway I'm getting off track. At this event I was at a while ago, they did the aforementioned song, including the chorus to the effect of "I'm taking up my cross, laying down my life...". They then went into an instrumental bit where they did the "Planetshakers thing", where the worship leader turns to the bass player and says something to the effect of "[insert name here], are you taking up your cross?" and the bass player follows by doing a fancy bass solo. Lather, rinse, and repeat for guitarist and drums.

Now I've got no problem with people having impressive musical abilities (and maybe I'm just jealous :P), but am I the only one who sees the problem with "yeah, I'm taking up my cross and laying down my life by making everyone think I'm cool because I'm in the spotlight doing a solo on my instrument"? Surely there's a better message we can be sending about what it means to truly take up our cross.