(no subject)
Holy shit. What a week. Slept two or three hours on Sunday night, due to butterflies about starting work the next day. Induction was on Monday, and it was uber-bureaucratic and yet vaguely touchy-feely at the same time. Started processing census forms at the end of Monday afternoon, and had a whole day of it Tuesday. We're basically making sure the forms are as ready for scanning as we can make them, balanced by throughput considerations. Nothing gets removed, just fixing things like texta marks that have soaked through the page, or making note of cranky letters to John Howard, or whatever. More forms on Wednesday, and then some more training yesterday on the next step - tweaking the ###REDACTED### percent of characters that fail the character recognition process.
(side note: I'm trying to get my hands on a copy of 'IBM and the Holocaust' because I figger it'd be a cheezy thing to be seen reading in the lunchroom - and the irony of a giant data matching excercise being facilitated by software designed by IBM in Israel: http://www.haifa.il.ibm.com/ - I'm sure by the next Census we'll all have RFID implants anyway, Or The Terrorists Will Have Already Won)
It's kind of fun playing the 'repair' game: the system generates a page of characters it's 'pretty sure' is 0s, 1s, 2s etc, and then you look at this Matrix-style page of similar characters and decide which ones are what the computer thinks they are, and which ones ent. Flagging anything you're unsure of places it in gradually greater context until you are in no doubt as to what the entry is. At the moment I'm just learning the first few steps of this process, so I go over and over and over it again -- prompting me to tell one of the supervisors that "this is the worst game I've ever played, I've finished 9 stages and I still haven't found the princess." oooo/ LOLLERSKATIN' oooo/
Of minor concern was the moment on Tuesday at the end of the day when I felt the 'stormclouds gather' as my anxiety and paranoia (about falling behind the performance of the others in my cell) started to grow and then feedback on itself. I don't think I need to return to medication or anything like that -- it's just the culture shock of being in our second-largest city every day, interacting with new people every day, and having to concentrate on a particular task for 50 minutes at a time. (Every hour we get a compulsory 2-3 minute excercise break, followed by 7-8 minutes smoko so as to observe a safe OH&S routine ... fucken' awesome. The exercises remind me of the warm-ups at Judo, and I have to resist the temptation to leap into a few breakfalls just as everyone's walking off towards the kitchen.) This is of course a giant contrast from living and being trapped in the Moreland Bermuda Triangle - the 100 square meters or so enclosed by the local supermarket, Centrelink, and home. And all it took was dinner at Emily's place and a short chat with her mum, who worked as a Census collector this year and tipped me off about the work coming up at the DPC.
On Wednesday night I went to see three plays at the Dancehouse theatre in Princes St Carlton, one in particular: pandacave's comedy debut, 'Banana Muffins'. How do losers ever find love? With other losers. There's hope for me then, at least ;) (the last time I was there was twenty years ago, attending a Blue Light Disco with one of Grade Six's finest, Lisa Williams. Dad drove us there in the Sprite - total class. His wasn't quite as shiny but you get the idea. 80s pop and soft drinks, awkward side-to-side sway dancing, and Mas Salt stole a policeman's cap. I think.)
I saw 'Thank You For Smoking' on Thursday night with Bi and Emily and ... uhh ... fuck ... Emily's friend. It was at the Nova, as a fundraiser for the Sustainable Living Foundation, and it was pretty damn funny. We had tea at Papa Gino's on Lygon St, which was cheap and cheerful. Haven't eaten there since a Squidly (secret men's business) night a year or so ago.
Yesterday while at lunch I suddenly remembered that Bill and I had made vague plans to hook up for lunch in the city once I started - and when I texted him today he quickly summoned me to Collins Place and ushered me into Kenzan, where he treated me to the best sushi and sashimi I'd ever had. Made my week.
Last night I bought some new sneakers, to replace the No Sweat Chuck Taylor lookalikes I bought at 2005's Sustainable Living Festival, as they were falling apart and not quite rainproof anymore. Just some crappy black Converse one-stars. I WASHED CLOTHES which may come as a surprise to some of you, had a quick bite at AB's Pizza while they were still swirling around in the Raytheon-manufactured washing machines, showered, and then headed back into town for Belfast 14, a 'retro' dance party at the Metro. And really enjoyed it. Didn't dance quite as much as I'd liked to, but by God I enjoyed perving at the stupid fluffy gaiters some womenfolk occasionally wear at these kinds of events. There's something about a girl spazzing out, feet shuffling this way and that, with those damn things on that transfixes me like ... like ... like a cat flushing a toilet. Maybe I'm some kind of closet Furry, maybe I'm a foot fetishist, or perhaps a combination of the two - I don't care. o/` o/` Go them furry, furry feet, keep on movin' to the beat! o/` o/` . Didn't pick up, neither was I picked up, although I did have a brief chat with a couple of girls - but one of them smoked, and neither of them had furry feet. :(
All of this was a great help taking my mind off the fact that the supervisor at work is a hawt chyxx0r ... I am fairly smitten yet shall keep a lid on that shit for the time being. At least until the point where I become more useful around the place, or a sleazy work drinkies event arises, whichever comes first.
I've been keeping myself down and out for, well, years -- the cork's out of the bottle and the genie is out. Please excuse the monster post but I'm making up for lost time. It's well past my bedtime, as it's 8am, and I'm still in the city. I'm babysitting, well, minding my half-brother at his place in ten hours ...
(side note: I'm trying to get my hands on a copy of 'IBM and the Holocaust' because I figger it'd be a cheezy thing to be seen reading in the lunchroom - and the irony of a giant data matching excercise being facilitated by software designed by IBM in Israel: http://www.haifa.il.ibm.com/ - I'm sure by the next Census we'll all have RFID implants anyway, Or The Terrorists Will Have Already Won)
It's kind of fun playing the 'repair' game: the system generates a page of characters it's 'pretty sure' is 0s, 1s, 2s etc, and then you look at this Matrix-style page of similar characters and decide which ones are what the computer thinks they are, and which ones ent. Flagging anything you're unsure of places it in gradually greater context until you are in no doubt as to what the entry is. At the moment I'm just learning the first few steps of this process, so I go over and over and over it again -- prompting me to tell one of the supervisors that "this is the worst game I've ever played, I've finished 9 stages and I still haven't found the princess." oooo/ LOLLERSKATIN' oooo/
Of minor concern was the moment on Tuesday at the end of the day when I felt the 'stormclouds gather' as my anxiety and paranoia (about falling behind the performance of the others in my cell) started to grow and then feedback on itself. I don't think I need to return to medication or anything like that -- it's just the culture shock of being in our second-largest city every day, interacting with new people every day, and having to concentrate on a particular task for 50 minutes at a time. (Every hour we get a compulsory 2-3 minute excercise break, followed by 7-8 minutes smoko so as to observe a safe OH&S routine ... fucken' awesome. The exercises remind me of the warm-ups at Judo, and I have to resist the temptation to leap into a few breakfalls just as everyone's walking off towards the kitchen.) This is of course a giant contrast from living and being trapped in the Moreland Bermuda Triangle - the 100 square meters or so enclosed by the local supermarket, Centrelink, and home. And all it took was dinner at Emily's place and a short chat with her mum, who worked as a Census collector this year and tipped me off about the work coming up at the DPC.
On Wednesday night I went to see three plays at the Dancehouse theatre in Princes St Carlton, one in particular: pandacave's comedy debut, 'Banana Muffins'. How do losers ever find love? With other losers. There's hope for me then, at least ;) (the last time I was there was twenty years ago, attending a Blue Light Disco with one of Grade Six's finest, Lisa Williams. Dad drove us there in the Sprite - total class. His wasn't quite as shiny but you get the idea. 80s pop and soft drinks, awkward side-to-side sway dancing, and Mas Salt stole a policeman's cap. I think.)
I saw 'Thank You For Smoking' on Thursday night with Bi and Emily and ... uhh ... fuck ... Emily's friend. It was at the Nova, as a fundraiser for the Sustainable Living Foundation, and it was pretty damn funny. We had tea at Papa Gino's on Lygon St, which was cheap and cheerful. Haven't eaten there since a Squidly (secret men's business) night a year or so ago.
Yesterday while at lunch I suddenly remembered that Bill and I had made vague plans to hook up for lunch in the city once I started - and when I texted him today he quickly summoned me to Collins Place and ushered me into Kenzan, where he treated me to the best sushi and sashimi I'd ever had. Made my week.
Last night I bought some new sneakers, to replace the No Sweat Chuck Taylor lookalikes I bought at 2005's Sustainable Living Festival, as they were falling apart and not quite rainproof anymore. Just some crappy black Converse one-stars. I WASHED CLOTHES which may come as a surprise to some of you, had a quick bite at AB's Pizza while they were still swirling around in the Raytheon-manufactured washing machines, showered, and then headed back into town for Belfast 14, a 'retro' dance party at the Metro. And really enjoyed it. Didn't dance quite as much as I'd liked to, but by God I enjoyed perving at the stupid fluffy gaiters some womenfolk occasionally wear at these kinds of events. There's something about a girl spazzing out, feet shuffling this way and that, with those damn things on that transfixes me like ... like ... like a cat flushing a toilet. Maybe I'm some kind of closet Furry, maybe I'm a foot fetishist, or perhaps a combination of the two - I don't care. o/` o/` Go them furry, furry feet, keep on movin' to the beat! o/` o/` . Didn't pick up, neither was I picked up, although I did have a brief chat with a couple of girls - but one of them smoked, and neither of them had furry feet. :(
All of this was a great help taking my mind off the fact that the supervisor at work is a hawt chyxx0r ... I am fairly smitten yet shall keep a lid on that shit for the time being. At least until the point where I become more useful around the place, or a sleazy work drinkies event arises, whichever comes first.
I've been keeping myself down and out for, well, years -- the cork's out of the bottle and the genie is out. Please excuse the monster post but I'm making up for lost time. It's well past my bedtime, as it's 8am, and I'm still in the city. I'm babysitting, well, minding my half-brother at his place in ten hours ...