Toadie's Ranthole on the InterBlag

The decision has been officially move my blog from here to... BLOGGER! Why? Live  doesn't have Atom/RSS feeds and that has been requested by certain numbers of people.. and  live integration is no longer very interesting to me. So, for all you Rantaholic blagathons, visit my new blog at -

NEW BLOG LOCATION

Thankeees for the views guys

The decision has been officially move my blog from here to... BLOGGER! Why? Live  doesn't have Atom/RSS feeds and that has been requested by certain numbers of people.. and  live integration is no longer very interesting to me. So, for all you Rantaholic blagathons, visit my new blog at -

NEW BLOG LOCATION

Thankeees for the views guys

The decision has been officially move my blog from here to... BLOGGER! Why? Live  doesn't have Atom/RSS feeds and that has been requested by certain numbers of people.. and  live integration is no longer very interesting to me. So, for all you Rantaholic blagathons, visit my new blog at -

NEW BLOG LOCATION

Thankeees for the views guys

I apologise beforehand if this blog update seems to be longwinded and overly wordy blogdate (see what I did there) but I have alot to convey  in a relatively short amount of time, and the only way I can see that happening without skimping is to go balls-to-wall Yahtzee on my keyboard while watching Minami-ke... and drinking water from a Ketchup bottle ( yes it is as ninja and awesome as that sounds).

Okay, just over 3 months ago, the announcement for the foreclosure of the ISP side of Hawk's Workshop (HAWWWWKS  WORKSHOP GIDGEGANNUP) was made and HAWWWWKS WORKSHOP GIDGEGANNUP gave me the notice, who in turn turned to the ISP Server owners and asked them to disconnect me.  That was February. By march, I still had no disconnection.In the meantime I approach another ISP, because obviously, beign the technologically driven maniac that I am, having no internet would be a "REAL BONUS" for me. Letting march turn into April FINALLY resulted said original ISP killing the connection. Unfortunately, this is where the REAL problems started (completely ignoring the fact it took a full month for the original to kill the connection in the first place). This new ISP didn't pick up the fact I wanted a connection, the fact the line was vacant (which apparently is because TELSTRA is slack), or the fact I had perhaps even applied ( even though I got my own reference number). So , numerous calls were made to their support.

I have to say that calling their support was alot like my 1 month play of WoW - On Hold constantly, costing me time and money I could have spent doing something else, and there was probably a few hundred other people out there that were getting a good laugh out of my failure to grind the queue. The first call I was in a queue for 2 and a half hours. Second call, an hour, and after that apparently they replaced the phone system so that there'd be a call back (it's quite a shit system because in the intervening months it's gone through about 8 nutjob reiterations). AFter getting a 3 day pingpong job between excuses and departments, I finally got my connection reattempt. 10 business days. My father, who as a side sort of runs some of his business from here at homebase , was not pleased ( as his sort of business dealings happen via online login).

I must be honest, my father has never really been one that has striked me as the bold loud type , which why when he lept down the phone I was like "JESUS CHRIST IT'S A LION GET IN THE CAR!".It was actually fairly impressive, because I'd long assumed my father was of the more meek variety(then again he served in the Navy so he can't be completely that way, in hindsight I guess he just hides his true power level well).They promised it'd be shorter- and it was( 8 working days rather than 10), but that wasn't the end of that, oh no. Earlier this week they killed the conenction because apaprently their accounting thought my details were wrong. Yeah, I can tell this ISP is just fantastic already and I'm sure that thsi solid flip-flop performance is an omen of things to come

Okay, I think a while back I said I'd comment on how my bridging course is and what I'm doing. It's about time I filled the details in, seeing as I'm 6 weeks in.
For what it's worth, my original vigour for this whole thing ( or stoic stiff upper lip as the case may be) is beginning to wear off.
Mondays are an afternoon of re-doing a maths course I quite happily passed back in High School (Applicable.. no wait, or was it GnT or intro Calc... I have entirely forgotten). It hurts so much, for contrary to everyone's belief from about high school onwards, I have never ever been a huge fan of numbers. Numbers, yes, patterns, yes. numbers and calculus shit me off to no end. I'm sure as most of you (the broader general English literate internet) know, maths jsut becomes pretty much those things. Numbers and formulaes. So, the story behind doing it is simple - I needed a replacement for doing parallel first and second semester units ( ditching the second semester one for something new) and it was either Maths or Economics. I chose the lesser of two very number-centric units, but it still makes me feel quite uninterested. It's repetition, with handouts. I know for certain fact that I'm not much of handouts. They are at best, mostly ignored by my brain. And the lectures are so skimpy, that they don't really feel like lectures, but more "I'm reading a couple of bullet points off the slide master okay nest slide."
Explanation is skimp and coming into the class 4 weeks later than everyone else, I was ALREADY down some comprehension. And so, by default the first test was a 0 (I wasn't in the class to attend it, so I failed it). Second test, on the day I entered the class, I was up against a really steep ask - Remember ALL of your maths from high school, and do it in your head without a calculator. It was like being asked to play Call of Duty 4 and veteran without dying, oh and by the way the drink you just had was laced heavily with rohypnol- it's pretty fucking impossible. And so I am down from chances of getting near ferpect to at BEST getting 60% pass mark. Oh and the lecture is in the afternoon. I f I have learned ANYTHING from ANY piece of education in existence, it is to put really fucking boring subjects in the morning. Why? the mind is meat fucking cleaver sharp. In the afternoon it's dull as a breadknife and by the approximate 5:30 pm time that my class is, I really didn't care anymore. In fact, about 4:30 I'm just not listening anymore. It is THAT bad. It's a wholly BAD combination, and is a serious gimp for me.

Now onto Day 2 of my week - Communications I (yes,Roman numerals are not just for festive hats anymore). What I thought might be something similar to communication units in my Cert IV in IT course, turns out to be a class on Academic Writing (hence communication.... I dunno, there must be a link somewhere). Originally I jsut sorta palmed it off, but then I realised that academic writing was one of the reasons I bombed so very hard out of the Acedemically Telented Program's English course- I couldn't write much more than two pages on just about anything (didn't help that my Dyspraxia and gimped fine motor skills make my HANDS cramp like shit after maybe a paragraph or two, which also gimps doing long timed essays in general) and my fiction jsut tended to be corruptions of blockbuster movies (several into some quite graphic revenge fantasy that which I am embarrassed to admit were VERY targeted. Fortunately I'm over revenge fantasies). So i'm actually learning from it. I've got my learning style down pat, and I'm a pretty decent time manager for the stuff in there. Now I just have to get over my irrational fear of essays and I'm set for a non-stop whirlwind adventure in it.

Day 3 - Information Design - another BADLY named course. I SHOULD be Desktoip publishing, or marketing. Anything other than Information Design. Toi be honest, the hard work of this course is jsut gettign to grips with Publisher 2003's occaisionally horrendous design. The course doesn't allow for much creativity in design when it comes to practical work, but I AM learning a bit about marketing (which is something I admit I probably need to at least understand to get anywhere in game development or the likes), which officially puts this just on the positive side of the ambivalent feelings line.

Day 4 - Programming -  it is what's on the box. It's actually pretty simple. The lecturer basicly lets us freeroam now that the curriculum and software got fucked up badly. The stuff being asked of me isn't that complex (it's VB .NET), and in fact, by the end of the fiurst day I was already looking for stuff beyond what the books wanted. So since then, I've been writing all sorts of mini-apps. I tell you as soon as I have the DirectX plugs and File input-output, I swear to god I will have champeened this relatively mediocre language.

That's my Bridging course week in a nutshell. I'm actually thinking about NOT doing the next semester. Why? A few reasons -
Firstly, I'm not learning anything that remotely is relevant to my interests.
Second - A carrot was dangled above my head that if I got a 70% pass mark over all 4 subjects, I would be forwarded into the Diploma section of the course.Of course since the maths course is at BEST going to be a 60% or
Thirdly, at 3 k a trimesters (like 1 and a half terms)  it is NOT CHEAP to do just the Cert IV, especially if you've got to pay for it yourself (Fee Help isn't available until the Diploma)
and lastly, My feet are not being held to the fire. I have a tendency to thrive under conditions of pressure or challenge. I don't know why, and it's a fairly bad trait, but I do. There is no challenge in what I'm doing. Period. I could cram most of what I've done in 3 of my 4 classes into 2-4 weeks of 9-4 lessons and lectures(depending if you're allowing for exams or not). It's far too casual for me and it's just not working out. Shit, TAFE was more tough and that was lazy as all.
Really, I'm just considering seeing if the Uni will straight accept me into an IT course. Sure, I may actually be at a bit of steep entry curve, but bottom line is I'll adapt. I'm a survivor in that way, and probably only that way.. Every other way I'm a pretty un-survivor.Very, in fact.

Anyway, that's the way things sit there. Now, onto the Job front. HJ's have been somewhat of a bastion of quasi sanity when I started this whole transition-y thing, however, there has been continual apparent querying about my use of an MP3. Now, up until February this year, this is the first I'd heard of it. It's a load of bollocks really. I mean, here we have here is grown in a managerial position unable to answer a simple question like " why does the cleaner get an MP3 player?" without resorting to the old de facto "blaming it on the cleaner because obviously he doesn't have enough shit shovelled on his plate.Here, eat some shit chips." And now, I've been forbade from using my music. The one small bastion of sanity and Reel Big Fish in this otherwise shit-tastic fuckup of a bollocks job.So naturally, my job once again is an empty desolate wasteland of creative death and too-much-time-to-think-resulting-in-rage. Result, I've had it with HJ's once again. However, I have recompense- by next weekend I may be not working there. I have a job lined up to go to , and by the end of the week I'll know for sure if I have it for sure. Upside, yay I leave. Downside, I haven't finished my parting gift. Sad. Oh well, like Paula pointed out, I can just deliver it when it's done. and I probably will.Just a matter of when :P


For anyone reading still a Gigantic TL;DR - CIC is bollocks and Hungry Jacks hates me and I hate it back. Rage ensues.


Also, winter is upon us, soon. Right now though ,it's just pretending to be winter, before summer kicks autumn in the nuts and all of a sudden it's warm again. Anyhoo, the number of overcast days in a week are growing, and so its that strange seasonal change I seem to have. Usually, it's a jump from hawaiian shirts to jumpers, but, like last year, it's going further. I want to imagine in your heads a Stalker from the game of the same name. The green-coated neutral kind  that hung around Cordon and Garbage. THAT is my new winter look. Do not ask why, but I really do enjoy walking around in my dark Khaki jacket and some fairly dated pants.Call it a "perennial casual cosplay". On top of that this year though, as some people IRL may have noticed, I finally allowed my sister to get her hands on bleach and colour dye and go nuts on my hair ( she has been aching to do it for at least 3 years that I can recall). The result- pretty neat, and with some gell and crap, I can have some fun with styling my hair in all sorts of crazy styles. Unfortunately that proves a point of conflict for me during winter- do I allow my hair to go back to it's normal part-and-comb look (which I must I have a bit of fondness for), or do I allow the winter rains to wash dye all over my face? It's a tough cool, because there have been varying comments that support both sides. Decisions decisions. tssk.
I know it's probably not very high on the ladder of important things I should be concerned about, and you are now offcially switching back to something thats borderline interesting, like Digg..  or HAAAWWWWWKS WOOORKKKSHOOOPPPP  GIDGEGANNUP.

OH! I have some GOOD reviews stocked up, so next post will probably be them

Also, while I'mkj here in the INTEREACTIVE section of this post, I thought I'd throw out a feeler to see what everyone's opinion would be to switching this to a slightly less obscure blogging... thing.. I could even possibly host it myself ( my computer's on for like most of a day anyway, so I could just set up my Miranda HTTP server and dyndns....)
YOUR THOUGHTS ARE AS ALWAYS APPRECIATED AND ENCOURAGED BECAUSE I AM AN OBJECTIVELESS SOUL IN A WORLD THAT COULD EASILY KILL ME.

Peace out,
Toadie.

Once again contrary to my repeated statements and promises I found once again I am back in the usual "whenever the fuck I feel like it"  habit for updating this small little self-deprecating pity hole I call my blog. It's not much, but eh, it makes me go over things once or twice more, which helps me cement my views.

A word in advance - Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six:Vegas:2 (yes indeed that it's full title,with added colons where dramatically appropriate) will not be purchased,played nor reviewed by me. Sad to say that the first game dashed my hopes, and from all looks the sequal ( being released less that 12 months after the original) willl be more of the same. Not a new game either, it is by and large, exactly the same as the first game, with a few minor art tweaks, some me-too-ist Achievements and points and twank. Vegas was the game that forced me to lower my bar on tactical shooters, thus allowing Counter Strike Source into my perceptive view of what constitutes a "Tactical Shooter".
Vegas 2 isn't worth the 100 Australian Dollar pricetag it has. They could have released it for 20 bucks or 50 bucks as an expasion pack and that would have been appropriate. Instead, for 100 dollars, you are getting what boils down to the first game, with a much shorter storyline, a game you have to unlock to get anything out of,  a shockingly organised port (knowing how bad the PC port of Vegas 1 was), and a couple of extra bits of gear.I am also willing to put money down that the netcode of the PC version will exude shit from every orifice, which is what killed the game for the only platform aside from the Wii that I'd consider playing a shooter on.

This rant's a two-parter, part 2 coming tommorrow.

Once again contrary to my repeated statements and promises I found once again I am back in the usual "whenever the fuck I feel like it"  habit for updating this small little self-deprecating pity hole I call my blog. It's not much, but eh, it makes me go over things once or twice more, which helps me cement my views.

A word in advance - Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six:Vegas:2 (yes indeed that it's full title,with added colons where dramatically appropriate) will not be purchased,played nor reviewed by me. Sad to say that the first game dashed my hopes, and from all looks the sequal ( being released less that 12 months after the original) willl be more of the same. Not a new game either, it is by and large, exactly the same as the first game, with a few minor art tweaks, some me-too-ist Achievements and points and twank. Vegas was the game that forced me to lower my bar on tactical shooters, thus allowing Counter Strike Source into my perceptive view of what constitutes a "Tactical Shooter".
Vegas 2 isn't worth the 100 Australian Dollar pricetag it has. They could have released it for 20 bucks or 50 bucks as an expasion pack and that would have been appropriate. Instead, for 100 dollars, you are getting what boils down to the first game, with a much shorter storyline, a game you have to unlock to get anything out of,  a shockingly organised port (knowing how bad the PC port of Vegas 1 was), and a couple of extra bits of gear.I am also willing to put money down that the netcode of the PC version will exude shit from every orifice, which is what killed the game for the only platform aside from the Wii that I'd consider playing a shooter on.

This rant's a two-parter, part 2 coming tommorrow.

Once again contrary to my repeated statements and promises I found once again I am back in the usual "whenever the fuck I feel like it"  habit for updating this small little self-deprecating pity hole I call my blog. It's not much, but eh, it makes me go over things once or twice more, which helps me cement my views.

A word in advance - Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six:Vegas:2 (yes indeed that it's full title,with added colons where dramatically appropriate) will not be purchased,played nor reviewed by me. Sad to say that the first game dashed my hopes, and from all looks the sequal ( being released less that 12 months after the original) willl be more of the same. Not a new game either, it is by and large, exactly the same as the first game, with a few minor art tweaks, some me-too-ist Achievements and points and twank. Vegas was the game that forced me to lower my bar on tactical shooters, thus allowing Counter Strike Source into my perceptive view of what constitutes a "Tactical Shooter".
Vegas 2 isn't worth the 100 Australian Dollar pricetag it has. They could have released it for 20 bucks or 50 bucks as an expasion pack and that would have been appropriate. Instead, for 100 dollars, you are getting what boils down to the first game, with a much shorter storyline, a game you have to unlock to get anything out of,  a shockingly organised port (knowing how bad the PC port of Vegas 1 was), and a couple of extra bits of gear.I am also willing to put money down that the netcode of the PC version will exude shit from every orifice, which is what killed the game for the only platform aside from the Wii that I'd consider playing a shooter on.

This rant's a two-parter, part 2 coming tommorrow.

Once again contrary to my repeated statements and promises I found once again I am back in the usual "whenever the fuck I feel like it"  habit for updating this small little self-deprecating pity hole I call my blog. It's not much, but eh, it makes me go over things once or twice more, which helps me cement my views.

A word in advance - Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six:Vegas:2 (yes indeed that it's full title,with added colons where dramatically appropriate) will not be purchased,played nor reviewed by me. Sad to say that the first game dashed my hopes, and from all looks the sequal ( being released less that 12 months after the original) willl be more of the same. Not a new game either, it is by and large, exactly the same as the first game, with a few minor art tweaks, some me-too-ist Achievements and points and twank. Vegas was the game that forced me to lower my bar on tactical shooters, thus allowing Counter Strike Source into my perceptive view of what constitutes a "Tactical Shooter".
Vegas 2 isn't worth the 100 Australian Dollar pricetag it has. They could have released it for 20 bucks or 50 bucks as an expasion pack and that would have been appropriate. Instead, for 100 dollars, you are getting what boils down to the first game, with a much shorter storyline, a game you have to unlock to get anything out of,  a shockingly organised port (knowing how bad the PC port of Vegas 1 was), and a couple of extra bits of gear.I am also willing to put money down that the netcode of the PC version will exude shit from every orifice, which is what killed the game for the only platform aside from the Wii that I'd consider playing a shooter on.

This rant's a two-parter, part 2 coming tommorrow.

Once again contrary to my repeated statements and promises I found once again I am back in the usual "whenever the fuck I feel like it"  habit for updating this small little self-deprecating pity hole I call my blog. It's not much, but eh, it makes me go over things once or twice more, which helps me cement my views.

A word in advance - Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six:Vegas:2 (yes indeed that it's full title,with added colons where dramatically appropriate) will not be purchased,played nor reviewed by me. Sad to say that the first game dashed my hopes, and from all looks the sequal ( being released less that 12 months after the original) willl be more of the same. Not a new game either, it is by and large, exactly the same as the first game, with a few minor art tweaks, some me-too-ist Achievements and points and twank. Vegas was the game that forced me to lower my bar on tactical shooters, thus allowing Counter Strike Source into my perceptive view of what constitutes a "Tactical Shooter".
Vegas 2 isn't worth the 100 Australian Dollar pricetag it has. They could have released it for 20 bucks or 50 bucks as an expasion pack and that would have been appropriate. Instead, for 100 dollars, you are getting what boils down to the first game, with a much shorter storyline, a game you have to unlock to get anything out of,  a shockingly organised port (knowing how bad the PC port of Vegas 1 was), and a couple of extra bits of gear.I am also willing to put money down that the netcode of the PC version will exude shit from every orifice, which is what killed the game for the only platform aside from the Wii that I'd consider playing a shooter on.

This rant's a two-parter, part 2 coming tommorrow.

Once again contrary to my repeated statements and promises I found once again I am back in the usual "whenever the fuck I feel like it"  habit for updating this small little self-deprecating pity hole I call my blog. It's not much, but eh, it makes me go over things once or twice more, which helps me cement my views.

A word in advance - Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six:Vegas:2 (yes indeed that it's full title,with added colons where dramatically appropriate) will not be purchased,played nor reviewed by me. Sad to say that the first game dashed my hopes, and from all looks the sequal ( being released less that 12 months after the original) willl be more of the same. Not a new game either, it is by and large, exactly the same as the first game, with a few minor art tweaks, some me-too-ist Achievements and points and twank. Vegas was the game that forced me to lower my bar on tactical shooters, thus allowing Counter Strike Source into my perceptive view of what constitutes a "Tactical Shooter".
Vegas 2 isn't worth the 100 Australian Dollar pricetag it has. They could have released it for 20 bucks or 50 bucks as an expasion pack and that would have been appropriate. Instead, for 100 dollars, you are getting what boils down to the first game, with a much shorter storyline, a game you have to unlock to get anything out of,  a shockingly organised port (knowing how bad the PC port of Vegas 1 was), and a couple of extra bits of gear.I am also willing to put money down that the netcode of the PC version will exude shit from every orifice, which is what killed the game for the only platform aside from the Wii that I'd consider playing a shooter on.

This rant's a two-parter, part 2 coming tommorrow.