Darkscribes Blog for Dartz+IRL

Lab Work

November 8, 2007 | No Comments Posted

Well,

Two lab sessions, of equal importance, at the same time. I have to pick one to attend. Oh dear. I hate this shit sometimes, I really do.

In reference to my last entry...step Forward Honeywell Ireland and take a bow. They have notified me of an interview over a week beforehand, and gone to the trouble of actually organising it within the college. What nice people. Please buy their stuff.

Only problem is, If I get the job, I have to move to Waterford... Not that big a deal really, since I'm relatively familiar with that part of the country,

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 Fanfiction.

 I do still do this. Somehow I manage to find the time. Working on that SI fic of mine, and developing some sort of plan for it. I've got the following so far

The, 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th Angels will be somewhat different. Different choices lead to different outcomes.

It won't all be in First Person.

There will be a Fifth and Sixth Child.

One main character will die in an utterly pointless manner.

The fic, Grandfather, is still trundling along, and I have a few words written for that, along with a chapter plan. It's only finding both that are proving the problem, since they are hidden somewhere deep within the Windows partition.

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 Xubuntu....

 I think I've got the hang of this...sort of. It hasn't blown up in my face, even if it does mysteriously botch the occasional shutdown. I've got it doing everything I need.

 One thing bugs me though, and that's the massive power usage. I can't find any reason to explain it, but it's been like that from day one. Where XP reports two hours life, Xubuntu only reports just over 1. It gets around a minute per percent of battery.

That said, it hasn't escaped my notice, that the power estimates in XP are usually off by a good bit anyway.

So, couple of year old battery degrading then?

*Must find way to save power* 

Also, I installed Transmission, for torrenting, and, when I first tried it, it worked fine, but now, my ISP seems to be blocking any port it tries to access. I tried other torrent software, but, they could not get out either.

Even Foxtorrent, can't do it.

Damn You BTonline.

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Frustration.

It never rains, it pours. And Ive been stuck in a deluge these last too weeks. Maybe I should do something about it, with Finnish efficiency.

Until next

-Dartz 

 

 

Convenience

October 30, 2007 | No Comments Posted

I wonder why it is a requirement of companies interviewing for internships, to make it as bloody inconvinient as possible to do so.  I'm missing, and have missed, important coursework deadlines over it, and it's seriously pissing me off.

I get the feeling were being treated a little like slave labour, or that annoying relative you have to deal with, even if you hate their guts. They never even bother to ask if it's convinient, they just do.

I'm missing Important Lab's on Thursday for an interview, that could easily be held within DCU itself.

Welcome to the world of Work, someone said. They can go to hell AFAIC...

 -Dartz

Shocking...

October 24, 2007 | No Comments Posted

Apologies for the Bad pun...

So, it's looking like workers at the ESB's Moneypoint power station could be going on strike. Moneypoint provides about a fifth of the country's entire supply of electricity. So, could be some blackouts coming, especially considering the grid is already running above capacity.

There's the redline...then there's where we're running it.

Anyway, what's causing it, is a bunch of about 200 polish workers, sub contracted out for a construction project, who haven't been paid. All fair and good...if you're not getting paid go on strike... but it's not the Poles going on strike, it's the Irish workers.

Also, it's not the ESB who pay the bloody Poles, it's their own Polish company that the ESB has contracted the work out to.

But, Irish workers are going on strike, for whatever reason, to 'support them'. I wonder if this isn't just some attempt at extorting more money, while using the Poles as a convenient excuse for a strike. They're going to bollox up the grid, piss a lot of good people off, fuck a stuttering economy over for their own benefit and probably get just what they want.

Unions are a fucking Cartel in this country sometimes, especially when you consider the Tallest building in Dublin, after the Stiffy by the Liffy, is a Union's headquarters. (Liberty Hall)

And...the Poles still won't get paid, just quietly sent home.

Speaking of Poles...

Polish ambassador, or something. suggested we should begin learning Polish, since they're the largest minority here, and find it difficult to do business in an English speaking country.... Em...

When in Rome lady...

And next...the Chinese will ask..
And the Russians...
The Germans...
The Philipino's...
The Nigerians...
The Muslims...
The Brazilians...

etc..

What about us? Just because we're the majority doesn't mean we don't have a right to our own culture and identity too. Or is that racist?

Are they being racist by ignoring our culture?

It's a fucking headache. Common sense would save us, but PC killed it.Got an interview for a Job Friday morning. Fucked If I'm not already bricking myself...but I'm going for it. It's with an aircraft maintenance company.

And I've a fear of flying.

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I am offically breaking the Law.

Bought about a hundred quids worth of fireworks for Halloween (10 year sentence). Everybody does it anyway, it's like prohobition in the US. Anyway, currently living under an airliner flight path...

How many points for a loaded 747-400?



Seriously though... it's an Irish tradition to try shoot small aircraft out of the sky each October 31st. Be a shame to forget tradition now, would it... especially with a few doozy's that'd put your US M80's to shame.

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Steve Staunton got fired as Team Ireland manager. Good riddence to bad rubbish, I say.

But, I wonder, if any of us had been utter shite at our jobs, would we have gotten a sweet €1million Golden Handshake?

Oh well...

That's my ranting and ravings over. Don't be afraid to comment. Till next time.

-Dartz

Xubuntu'd

October 22, 2007 | No Comments Posted

Anyways... I downloaded Xubuntu there during the week, and finally got around to installing it on my Laptop yesterday. I must say, for something that cost my university 500mb or so of bandwith, and nothing else, it's pretty good. It installed easily enough, detected everything it needed to....(thank God for common as muck Intel Centrino)... and ran quite happily from the getgo. Different from Windows, that goes without saying. But not so different that it's impossible to use. Okay, so it'll take me a while to feeler it out, and I still don't know haven't configured it for my university wireless network. Hopefully that will be as easy as Plug'n'Play, like the modem was. I know it was a bitch at times with Windows, because it'd keep shifting between servers, each one needing a slightly different setting. Still a few little irritating glitches, minor, almost insignificant things that drive me nuts. But, that'll pass. It works with my external drive, but only so long as I remember to properly mount and dismount it whenever I use it. The Terminal is...powerful... It surprised me to find that I knew some of the commands from a software engineering class I'd done a few years back, mostly simple directory commands, nothing special. Makes getting firefox plugins easy, once you know the code, aswell as entire applications. For a free operating system, it is good. I just need to learn how to use it fully. I'd recommend it to anyone with older hardware though. I have 256mb of RAM, minus a chunk for graphics, and it runs extremely quickly, installed happily, though I did need the alternate disk, since I didn't have enough memory for the standard graphical. Well, I guess that means my computer sucks, doesn't it? *Note to self...buy more RAM* _____________________________________________________________ Um college...sucks. It's snowing me under with work. I'm drowning in a lake of white paper powder. Work...work harder.. work until your fingers bleed and your brain bursts. Till next time If anybody actually reads this... -Dartz

More ficcage

October 18, 2007 | No Comments Posted

Well.. That's that. Secoind Chapter of my Fic, Grandfather, has gone out to prereading. It's possibly the most popular thing I've ever done, bar nothing. After one Chapter...based on FFN... it is: Alerted by 29 people: Favourited by 9: Reviewed 18 times: C2'd twice: Read 786 times: Is 4588 words long. For anything I've written, it's a massive amount more than anything I've written previously, and it makes me wonder what's so different about it. I mean, I've done nothing different, that I don't normally do. I've done nothing strange or remarkable, done nothing overly original or complicated. It's just a straightforward 'Shinii back in time fic', specifically to 2004... Okay, so I've never seen anything like it, But it can't truly be orginal, can it? Nothing that simple can be. Anyway, it's no better or worse than most of my other fics, no better written or developed, and yet it's massively more popular. Even the plot depth is pretty standard. But damn, now I'm terrified of updating the thing, incase I bollock it up and kill the love. Also, why don't they seem to read my other stuff? That said....some of those who've alerted it, aren't really the brightest bulbs, if you get my drift. Oh well... look for an update during teh week. -Dartz