May, 2004

Righto, whats the deal… I dont get it…

Melanie would prefer to walk round and round and round a shop looking for something instead of simply asking the people who work there, but wait… it doesnt stop there…
She (we cause im with her when she does these crazy things) walks round and round, doesnt find what she is looking for, so leaves. Week or so passes and back to the same shop we go, walk around and around and around again, and walk out with nothing.
Is it just me and my boy thinking to consider it a lot eaiser to walk in and ask “do you have any of these such-and-such?”, wait for the response and depending if the person says yes or no, continue on?.

Thats not the only thing, after walking round and round and round the shop looking for somthing, not finding it, and starting to walk out she says somthing like “Gee i wish i knew where i could get such-and-such a thing”, and im like “why not ask the people if they have it or know where to get it?”, to which she replies “blah blah” (some silly excuse).

I dunno what it is, but its weird…

To illustrate this further, i have constructed the following simple algorithms to show how a melanie goes about these things and how a brett goes about these things.
Firstly, ill set the scene. Say we need something from a shop. We arnt sure if the shop has the item, but we would like to buy it.

A Melanie way:

1. Walk into shop, staying away from friendly sales assitants and wander round looking
2. Make some comment about not being able to find somthing
3. Wander round some more (usually back tracking or taking the same path as before)
4. Make a weird screwed up face look like you are in pain cause you cant find the thing.
5. Continue to walk round
6. Get annoyed
7. Walk out, staying away from friendly sales assistants
8. Make some comment on the way out like “i wonder where i can get….” or “why cant i find ….” etc

A Brett way:
1. Walk into shop, as we know what we want, walk straight up to desk and ask for help
2. Ask sales person “Do you have ….”, Get “yes” or “no” response
3. If “no” – go to step 5
4. If “yes” – follow the person while they show you where it is, take it and buy it.
5. Leave shop
6. At this point you either have the item or you know the shop doesnt have it so theres no point looking there again, try somewhere else.

The conclusion from each of these is as follows:
The Melanie way, you leave the shop annoyed cause you cant find the thing your looking for and know you should go back there within the next week just incase you find it next week.

The Brett way, you leave the shop with a definate answer, they had it and you bought it, or they didnt and you know if they are getting any in or arnt likely to get any.

Now please – tell me, which way is more logical?

Is she just doing it cause she wants to browse? in which case why doesnt she say “I just wants to browse”.
OR
Is she doing it to try to make me go insane?

You cant tell me boys are illogical….

*sigh* Girls are weird…..

NOVEMBER:
Has a lot of ideas. – hrmmm id say so
Difficult to fathom. – At times
Thinks forward. – Not really, live for the moment and all that
Unique and brilliant. – *shrugs* who me?
Extraordinary ideas. – may be this part comes when i hit 30
Sharp thinking. – hrmmm
Fine and strong clairvoyance. – iva had a few dreams that came true – yeah
Can become good doctors. – If this means i dont faint at the site of blood – then yes
Dynamic in personality. – umm, depends on the people im around i guess
Secretive. – can be
Inquisitive. – sure
Knows how to dig secrets. – what does that mean?
Always thinking. – yes, every second of every minute etc etc etc
Less talkative but amiable. – fo sho!
Brave and generous. – havnt had the opportunity to test my braveness, generous – maybe
Patient. – yes – not as much as i was though
Stubborn and hard-hearted. – umm dont think so
If there is a will, there is a way. – yup!
Determined. – i guess
Never give up. – not true
Hardly becomes angry unless provoked. – true, im a lover not a fighter, yeah baby!
Loves to be alone. – uhh huh. I enjoy being alone.
Thinks differently from others. – I guess
Sharp-minded. – Sharp as an axe
Motivates oneself. – yeap, i can find things to keep me occupied – dont tend to be bored
Does not appreciates praises. – yeah, thats true, weird, but true
High-spirited. – hrmm yeah i guess so
Well-built and tough. – well built? heck yeah im built like a brick shithouse
Deep love and emotions. – hrmm they are in there somewhere…
Romantic. – Not as much as i used to, amazing what a heart breaking girl can do
Uncertain in relationships. – uhhh huh, What am i meant to do? wheres the manual?
Homely. – yup, i like being at home
Hardworking. – I try to be
High abilities. – dunno
Trustworthy. – yes
Honest and keeps secrets. – yes
Not able to control emotions. – not true, i can hold myself together i think
Unpredictable. – ha! you can read me like a book

What does your birth month say about you?
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SubEthaEdit
XCode
iChat
Launchbar
Proteus – version 4 is waaaayyyy cool

Been busy… PHD stuff – bleh. Got my confirmation due next Thursday, its already a bit overdue but all is good. I should get it done in time. Have to go to the library tomorrow to get some books out for references and info – should be exciting *riiiiight*

Started working on my PHD coding stuff, building a cool window manager using X11. Its really interesting and way better then the dodgy report stuff i have to do at the moment. The X11 toolkit seems pretty cool, and getting a basic window manager working seems straight forward (using the examples from the book). So ill probably jsut read up on that and add to it. No use reinventing the wheel so they say.

Had tea at Melanies supervisors place tonight – mmmm lasagne!. They are nice people, it was cool.

The calendar app is stalled till i get my PHD report done, but once im done the app should roll out pretty quick.

The website is on hold as well, the people are cool about it cause they understand im doing my PHD as well, so yeah.

This weekend will probably be spent writing the damned report

bleh, thats enough for now…

Been reading over my old blog archives on blogger, its fun. Reading stuff i wrote a few years ago and remembering…

Taken some amazing sunset photos the last few days, ill have to put em up… hrmmm i should make a photo blog, that would be cool. I wanna take more photos with my digital camera – developing them is free so i may as well

yep, i think i will … hrmmm off to find some photo blog software…

Installing MySQL = Install a squirrel in your computer

*sigh* She is a maths person – thats her excuse

So im reading this book i got on sale at BigW, not too bad. I realise im a bad procrastinator… so ive gotta try stopping that.

Nice quotes:

“Inspiration, readiness, and the like, are not necessary feelings for moving ahead and getting a job done. They are artificial impediments to completion.”

This is so true, i make so many ‘im not motivated, im not ready, i dont feel like it” excuses every day.

If the task is set by others and a deadline is involved, procrastination occurs. The intense anxiety involved in facing the task can be overwhelming and can be avoided by delay. As the deadline nears, dread increases, and at some point activity begins. Because so much time has been wasted hiding from a fear of failure, little time is left for a good effort. The job is pulled off at the last minute and does not represent a best effort. You are left then with some sense of failure – which you started out to avoid. You also have a sense of relief. Its over. You’ve scraped by again. Because you have in one sense succeeded, you are very likely to repeat this destructive unfulfilling pattern again”

gotta stop that

From:

http://computertimes.asia1.com.sg/news/story/0,5104,2292,00.html

Seems microsoft wont have anything in XP service pack 2 to detect priate copies of the OS, like it did have in service pack 1. Seems microsoft decided:

“that even if someone has pirated copy of Windows, it is more important to keep him safe than it is to be concerned about the revenue issue.”

*cough* riiiiight, Thats so kind of them. Whats going on microsoft? Not interested in revenue? Call me paranoid but somthing just dont add up.

Need to know what methods and classes exist in a private framework (or any framework for that matter)?

Class Dump

Run it from the terminal with a framework as an argument and it spits everything out. This might make figuring out the CALCore framework a tad bit easier

Seems its possible to use the private ical framework in System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/CALCore.framework to access ical and do stuff with it.

This post on the Cocoa mailing list archives has info about it and some code.

So far ive managed to add to it and can get single event info. The event date structure is giving me headaches though, cant figure out how to access the info in it, but ill work it out or die trying.

e.g.

doing somthing like:

[anEvent summary];

returns the event summary info, and this works for uid as well, but date doesnt work. If i output the entire event object:

NSLog(“%@”, anEvent);

I can see the following fields in an event object:

DTEND, DTSTAMP, DTSTART, SEQUENCE, SUMMARY, UID

Like i said summary and uid are easy to get, but the DT items (which relate to the event date) are harder to get. It looks like each of them is a mutable dictionary, but hrmmm, im not sure.

So yeah, thats where im at.

Setting the scene:
9:30ish at night, Brett and Melanie go to the video store to hire out some dvds. We are the only two people there along with the two people that work there.

Melanie says in a normal tone voice:
“Brett, lets get this DVD, it was good and you can copy it for me”

Brett almost dies – waiting for the feds to bust through the door and slap a $50,000 fine and a few years imprisonment on him.

Copying DVDS is bad… mmmmkay

Photos are up, at the moment theya re in a temp location but they will stay there for a while till i get around to reorganising stuff.

Wedding Album Pics
Africa Honeymoon pics