Technically Brunette

Need i say any more?

Sometimes i really wonder how certain doctors come to qualify and be allowed to practice. It has got to the point where going to the doctor is like a cash transaction at the bank, with an extremely long waiting time. Now days it seems when you are ill and you go to a doctor instead of checking you out and offering you valuable advice, or even just asking questions, certain doctors are simply taking your money in exchange for a medical certificate and some pain killers, no questions asked.

I cant vouch for anyone else but i tend to go to a doctor when i am ill and i want to be healthy again, not for a quick fix with painkillers or to just get “certification” that i was legitimately ill (even though the doctor didn’t check me out). So why is it so hard to find competent doctors to do their job properly?

I’m going to bed with some ice. If anyone can point me into the direction of a compitant doctor that would be much appreciated.

Ok people it is that time of year again, Thursday this week happens to be Eat A Tasty Animal For PETA Day, and I am pumped!

For anyone who doesn’t know who PETA is they are the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals. These are the people who have those wacky protests on animal rights (normally naked). Granted that the protesters tent to be young attractive European or American females however if you ever stop to talk to one of these girls you will soon find that there looks and there determination to save little fluffy things is really all they have. In fact I am pretty damn sure that the lack of meaty goodness in their diet has slowly killed the connections to their brains.

(mmm, grain  fed, them some nice cuts. I’ll take mine blue and kicking)  

In fact I not only encourage people to participate in Eat a Tasty Animal for PETA Day I will suggest that EVERYONE check out this site.

So this Thursday dust off the gas cylinder, fire up the BBQ and cook up a meaty storm. I personally will be eating every animal available legally on the meat market, from A - Z… mmmmmm

And finally here’s a fantastic message to all those PETA extremists…

What is this country coming to? Aren’t we Australia, the land famous for meat pies with tomato sauce? All i can say is that i am ashamed, ashamed that it seams that you can no longer get free sauce with your pie. Not only that but the sauce you now get is in tiny one serve packets which contain more plastic then sauce and you are charged between 35c - 60c per sachet!!!

So what is the reason for this disgusting un-Australian charging for sauce when you buy food? The logical answer would be that the price of manufacturing sauce has increased considerable and this increase has been passed on to the consumer, well is this the case?

Funnily enough the only statistics i could find on tomato sauce prices was from California, so here it is:

As you can see from this graph the real price for tomato sauce has actually decreased since the nineties (the days of FREE sauce with food). In-fact it has gone from just under $17 (USD) per carton to just under $11 (USD) per carton that is a whopping 35% decrease from the earliest recorded price (1990). Australian figures may be slightly different to this and i will continue to search for them, but until then i will assume they are similar. So why is it that cafes and other places are now charging for sauce when the cost price has actually decreased?

My assumption is that it is a very sneaky way of getting in that little bit if extra dosh. I feel that it is simply a ploy to take advantage of us poor Australians who can not and will not eat their pie, sausage roll or chips without a smothering of that salty goodness we call tomato sauce. It is disgracefully that any business would take advantage of this weakness and charge for sauce when you are already buying their pie for $3 - $4 when you could really just duck into Coles, get a hot pie for $1 and buy a bottle of sauce.

So i am calling on all you sauce lovers, don’t fall for this revenue rasing scheme, boycot all places who insist on charging you for sauce when you buy food. Togerther we can win, together we can get back free sauce with food.

FREE SAUCE FOR ALL!!!

MORONS!! They are everywhere, and i mean every where. From the shop attendant gazing blankly into space chewing gum at an amplified volume to neighbours who have massive domestics when you are trying to study for an exam. Then there are those poor excuses of people who mistreat there animals and let’s not forget the people who treat there animals way to much, taking them to the beautician every week to get perms and painted nails.

Oh and what about those people who talk in a faked American accent, say like every second word and use a acronyms like “TTYL” and “FYI”, argh that gets on my nerves…

So here is a message to all you morons out there:

Ok i feel allot better now i’ve had that rant.

I would like to draw to your attention that according to the Sydney Morning Herald Pot is No Longer Hot. In-fact a NEW poll taken of “The Young” (being students under the age of 30) found one in three regard smoking weed as unacceptable. The media and researches seem to be sticking to the view of how good this is that pot is going out of fashion like Cigarettes as appose to the fact that where it was once cool to be seen as Mr Dillon says:

A gang of guys who sit around smoking a bong, eating a pizza and watching television

Which is a seemingly harmless even (excluding the the psychotic effects experienced by some). It is now cool to be seen as young an successful, and snort excessive amounts of coke at “Business Meetings” or go to raves and take E, drink excessive amounts of water and kill yourself… hmmm I guess we need to be optimistic.

Arrrh procrastination, an art-form of which i am very familiar. In fact i must admit i am procrastinating at this very moment. But why is it that people see procrastination as so bad and evil?

During one of my many “procrastinate from my exam study sessions” I came across this article by some Hara Estroff Marano bird, who stated that:

Procrastinators sabotage themselves. They put obstacles in their own path. They actually choose paths that hurt their performance.

Now to be honest is this a fair statement? I personally think that i not only learn some great facts and skills through my procrastinations but i also get things done around the place. For example if my procrastination gets really bad i will actually resort to cleaning the house, going for a run, or posting on the web. i feel that each of these things are vital to ensure i have a balanced life.

If i didn’t procrastinate, my life would be dull, I would spend 18hrs a day doing maths, Dynamics, curriculum programing (they always choose the most boring tasks), etc. But as a part of my procrastination i not only learn a number of new skills, I socialise, and i actually get things done around the house (washing, cleaning, etc - you know those silly hygiene things….)

Anyway as a celebration of the art of procrastination i would like to dedicate the following OUTRAGEOUS film clip to Bungalow J. Wombat, esq. Who is the true king of procrastination:

Good-luck in the BAR Exam mate, we all know you can do it.

xxx

After using the Samsung X20 for over a year now i have a few words to say about it. Well when i first got this notebook i was over the moon i had found a thin, light and rather attractive laptop which also managed to do what i required, which at that stage was not to much and it was to be my first laptop. This laptop came with a measly 256MB memory (which i upgraded) and shitty graphics but as i didn’t really do much but word process and crunch data i didn’t need much more.

I have now had this laptop for a bit over a year and i have to say i am extremely disappointed, but not so much with the computer itself but instead with how it is made. I do understand that laptops get a lot more wear then your standard computer and for this reason they do need to be well built. So when it comes to about 2 weeks before your 12month warranty you really don’t expect the entire thing to konk out. I just wish it was as easy as the entire thing konking out before the warranty expired as then i would have had no choice but to send it back. However instead this is what happened.

I do a fair bit of marketing material (ie; websites, CD’s, promotional material) so when it came to burning a CD about 2 weeks before your 12month warranty ran-out my computer decided that it just couldn’t do it, that is was too hard, and judging by the rings burnt into the CD, what ever was going on was not healthy. So being late at night i lost my temper, shut the computer down and went to bed, the next morning i turned it on again and thought i’d tackle the CD burning issue again so i tried burning another (this time it worked, however it was very slow). So i was content, until that evening when i attempted to play a CD and the CD drive decided to not exist! That’s right once i closed the CD drive with my CD inside it decided to shut down and send no signals to the laptop so my computer basically insisted on telling me that there was no CD in the drive, well it was actually telling me that there was no CD DRIVE. So after using the emergency realise hole i shut the computer down and started again (as this does more then often solve all your problems when running windows), sure enough it did exactly the same thing. My computer had totally rejected my CD Drive.

Now at this stage i should have returned the computer however i had 2 problems:

1. I bought it in Canberra and i was now living in Sydney
2. I had a major programing exam and i had no means of being able to code on another machine to prepare for the exam

So not wanting to fail my exam I contacted both the people i purchased the Laptop from and Samsung and explained my problems both said it was fine and that they would record the problems and we could sort it out after my exam.

Well that was a relief I could study, pass my exam and get the CD Drive replaced. If only it ended there, a few days later i unplugged my computer after it had been charging and brought it to my tute. Once at my tute i attempted to turn it on, it wasn’t going to happen, so i plugged it in and then switched it on, which worked. At this stage i thought that it some how hadn’t charged properly, well that was wish-full thinking. After taking my computer back it turned out the whole charging circuit was @#%&ed and it would cost me more then the Laptop was worth the fix it (as it had just passed the warranty). I thought it very funny that they were happy to replace the CD Drive outside the warranty but not this even though i did also contact them about this issue before warranty had expired.

So I now have a light notebook which is advertised as a “mobile adventure” which has to be plugged in to work…hmmm

My rating? well out of 5 beers:

I give it 4 empty and the warm, flat dregs in one.

Well after finally totally destroying my last mobile phone on a number of different occasions, including:

• Jumping in a pool with it tucked in my pants
• Allowing it to fall out of my bra while horse riding only to have it slightly mashed between my horses hoof and the gravel road
• Dropping it on an hourly basis
• throwing it on to the road at-lease once a week while hailing a taxi
• and yes even dropping it down the toilet

I decided although my phone was still technically working i could no longer cope with the screen blacking out on me every second SMS i wrote and the fact that the speakers had become extremely temperamental (especially on Mondays) and would occasionally konk out all together. Then there is the vibrating mechanism which would start out OK, only to slow its self down so produced a movement similar to those crazy beach balls with a sand bag in them. Needless to say the time had most defiantly come for me to get a new phone.

I had also decided that i had passed the age where i needed pre-paid and that i should move on to a plan, meaning i also had a wider choice of technology.

After cruising the shops and searching on-line i found myself falling in love with a very unexpected phone. See i have ALWAYS been a Nokia girl, they are practical, durable, have all the goodies of the time and also look pretty. But i fell for an LG!

That’s right an LG, the LG KG800 (AKA the LG Chocolate - no this is not why i got it) to be exact. This phone is honestly the most sexy phone i have laid eyes on, it’s orgasmic!

Now although i have read and heard mixed reviews from users, reviewers along with just general LG critics i have to say that i myself am extremely impressed with both the simplicity and how absolutely stunning of this phone.

So what is it i like about this phone, well to start with the mix of the slide phone in a simple one colour design (in my case white) along with the innovative touch-sensitive navigation keys under screen give it a very futuristic feel. The size of the phone (length, breath and width) is perfect for my hands, the phone sits both comfortably and stably in my hands while i operate it. I also love how intuitive user interface is even someone who has used Nokia for years can still easily write a SMS without any drama (something i am still yet to achieve with Ericson and Motorola) along with the wide variety of customisation options meaning i can truly make it MY PHONE and not have to deal with the “factory setting”. Then there are the added bonuses an MP3 player and fairly decent camera, oh and did i mention the fantastic sound quality?

Granted i have heard from a number of people, none of which are actually users of the phone them-self, that the touch screen causes allot of problems when you are talking on the phone. After using the phone i have to say that this is absolute bollocks as while you are on the phone you cannot hang up using the touch pad, you actually need to close the phone or press the disable button on the side of the phone, and i could not come up with any way the touch screen caused any problems during the call. To be honest the only problem i have found with the touch screen is when playing games (which frankly i am pretty sure i can deal with).

However now the real test comes will this phone last me the entire 2 years of my contract? Given my history with phones i took out a two year warranty, just in case. So let the test begin!

Breasts, knockers, noom-nooms, titties, jugs, bazookas, norks, bristols, mams, the boys, milky lunch, tits, headlights, two bald guys with a cherry on top, cahoonas, fun bags, lallies, watermellons, the troops, mamaries, bazoombas, rack, puppies, puppies in a sack, twin peaks, jubblies, jelly on a plate, gazongas, tits, fun bags, flotation devices, the ladies….

They have so many names and so many bizarre effects in your everyday life. Especially in the Faculty of Engineering and IT. That’s right it’s an interesting world when you’re a size 10-D, who has a love for lip-gloss and low-cut tops, studying Mechatronic Engineering.

I will never forget the first meeting i attended for the Computer Programing Society, i was greeted once i sat down with “Sorry this is a Computer Programing Society meetting, what room were YOU after?”. I was definately lost for words and simply replied that i was aware that this was the Computer Programing Society and that i myself am a member of this society and had indeed intentionally come to the meeting. I mean what could i say? I had entered this room - full of programmers completing Computer Science, IT or Engineering Degrees - dressed in a short skirt, fluffy boots, low-cut top, lips plumped up with strawberry flavored Oodle-Kaboodle lip-gloss and smelling of the David Jones perfume counter. It was not just the fact that i was a female who was interested in computers and programing but it was also the fact that well i like to dress up and “show off” my qualities. These boys did not expect a female to be interested in their wonderful world of computing languages and geeky gadgets and they definately did not expect a female made-up from top to toe to attend their meeting.

According to the advisory group Women in Science Engineering and Technology, females represent approximately 12.5% of all engineering students. So lets look at that in figures (please note that this percent was taken in about 2002 so the figure would be slightly higher now, however this is the most recent figure I can find):

Now these figures are not taking into consideration the ratio of woman to men in each separate degree along with the fact that i am at one of the bigger universities with a larger population of females then most. And i can tell you now that this would effect the figures greatly. For instance at my university the proportion of females in chemical, civil, aeronautical and mechanical is much greater (well over four times) then the number of females in mechatronics, and the space related degrees (Mechatronic Space, Aero Space, Mechanical Space).

So given these figures it is clear to see why these programmers found it so hard to believe that a female would be interested in being an active member in their society, there just aren’t many of us out there.

But why? The female mind is perfect for programing. The region of the brain that controls the ability to multitask (the prefrontal cortex) is larger in women, and women are better at integrated thinking (possibly because the two halves of a woman’s brain are more strongly connected), our organisational skills and general neatness tends to be superior to that of our male counterparts and we have a fantastic skill when it comes to thinking outside the box and problem-solving. So why is it that females don’t utilise these skills and take the wonderful world of programing to the next level?