Rubenerd

Another quick Optus fail to talk about this morning, this time to do with being disconnected after not paying a bill. Problem is, I did pay it! Budda-boom!

So here's the situation: last week I had an overdue bill which I couldn't pay not because I didn't have the money but because my Aussie credit union Visa debit card was being rejected. I used internet banking and confirmed I easily had the required balance to make the transaction, but Optus kept informing me otherwise.

After several days of trying I gave up and used my Singaporean bank card which cost me extra in foreign exchange fees but it did the job. I thought it was all over, but as of today my iTelephone is telling me I don't have a data account with Optus which I've been told means I've had my account suspended.

According to the Optus website, I don't have any outstanding payments due nor do I owe any late fees or other fees of any kind, and yet a full business day after I make the payment they disconnect me. Makes perfect sense!

I originally went with Optus after going to Telstra and Vodafone because the people at TeleChoice (an Optus retailer) were the most down to earth and honest, but I'm starting to regret the decision. I had a Vodafone account last time I lived in Australia and aside from not being able to use it when I went into rural areas on trips it was fine. Now that my 12 month contract with Optus has expired it might be time to move.

This originally appeared on the Annexe, back when I recorded daily puzzles.

This originally appeared on the Annexe, back when I recorded daily puzzles.

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

Uneven and slightly browner on one side, but very tasty :)

This post originally appeared on the Annexe.

Just arrived :)

As an addendum to my K-On! 05 episode review post thingy, I felt it necessary to divulge that while I very much Akiyama Mio, I really like her house. Can I have Mio's house?

Hey, now I have something to show Mio!

It's ironic that I often blog about nonsense and fun stuff when I'm madly studying; perhaps its a coping mechanism or something of that nature. Whatever it is, it works!

Having given K-On a break for a month or so I especially felt the need for some light hearted silliness this evening, so I started up again from episode 5. The Blu Ray versions are pretty spectacular, my aging 2006 era MacBook Pro can barely run them without dropping a few frames a second but they're still worth it! Now if only I had time to track down a scaling algorithm that didn't suck since I moved up to Snow Leopard…

We're not a club, and we're out of cake!

Having come back from their weekend training camp whatsit, in this episode the girls continue to prepare for the school festival while dealing with a few teeny small little insignificant problems such as not having a supervisor, not being a legitimate club, not having any lyrics in their songs and not having a lead vocalist! Yeah I'm going to start a SQLite club, we have no computers, no source code and our lead programmer only does COBOL. We're set!

This is why I unabashedly love this show so much, the characters are real human beings that get distracted and worried about regular stuff. Say for example a certain light music club member who forgot to lodge the form to start the light music club even after getting four members because… she was distracted by eating cake. Happens to the best of us, don't sweat it. Anyone feel like making me a cake? Anyone?

I can tell you're all fascinated by my epic story, right?

What is particularly shocking and shocking (did I say that twice?) in this entire episode though is we learn our beloved sensei who's so sweet and nice turns out to have been… a guitarist for a rock band! I know, crazy and intense stuff! To appeal to a guy she liked who claimed she was too quiet (a quality I'm actually looking for not trying to discourage!) she became a wild, loud musician with crazy makeup and clothes; unfortunately she was photographed as such and the K-On girls find the evidence. Oh no, her cover has been blown!

Any other volunteers…? Come on… anyone…?

This is an especially cute episode, there seemed to be a disproportionately (what a verbose term) higher number of stills and frames existing just to show the characters in various teardrop uh-oh and whoops moments. If my sis watched it no doubt she would have said "awwwww!" a few times.

What I love is the… timing. Get it? Ah never mind. I love the timing because we get epic shots of Yui for example, then the camera pans to someone else who mutters something disparaging, and a humorous scuffle ensues! People claim K-On is just a moe-blob show which it may be, but at least it doesn't take itself too seriously; there are plenty of shows that would do such scenes on purpose without any sarcasm. Not that I would admit to watching such things mind ;)

Consumerist otaku fools! Mua har har!

This is also the episode with that infamous scene with Mio attempting to write lyrics as she listens through her expensive audiophile headphones that otaku across Japan rushed out to buy as soon as they saw her using them. I had no idea anime had that much of an impact; did people who watched Code Geass end up eating pizza as much?

And now if you'd excuse me, I have to go and drink several litres of black coffee because this episode was just too sweet ^_^.

Heh whoops, our bad!

40 years ago today John Lennon and Yoko Ono asked the world to give peace a chance, and here we are in 2009 and not a damn thing has changed. If people of my generation play our cards right many of us will still be alive in the [20]60s… and I'll bet we'll still be at war over something.

In the hippy spirit of my groovy late mum Debra Schade and John Lennon, both of whom were taken away from us far too soon, peace out.

Little tip for Mac users who take their laptops out with them while forgetting there's still an optical disc spinning and vibrating in a drive that they don't have a case for, there are two quick things you can do!

Tip the First: simply fire up a Terminal and enter:

# umount [-f] [volume name]

Tip the Second: go to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility.app, select the optical drive and click Unmount. In either case, the optical disc will stop spinning which will make your laptop quieter and save battery life, but it's still protected from not being taken out of the drive without a case.

Just like that Mercedes Benz radio advertisement in Singapore, it's not that we don't know these things, it's just sometimes we need a little reminder :).

Today was another extremely stressful stuyding and family related problems kind of day, so I decided to step away from the computer again for an hour or so and bake some more bread. Anyone who has ever been a roommate of mine knows I can't cook, but bread is forgiving enough that even if you mess up the recipe and/or cooking time its still a lot of fun and still ends up tasting great.

For my second attempt I increased the amount of flour, milk and the cooking time from last time by a third, though this time I think I dusted too much flour when I was kneading and folding so there were some pretty deep cracks where the dough hadn't stuck together properly when it baked, but with a tiny bit of cream and some generous dollops of raspberry jam the end result tasted great, as I eluded to in the first paragraph of this overly long post!

For my next attempt I might use the sugar, butter and salt even more sparingly than this time; I'm already using far less than most of the recipes I've found asked for, but it still tastes great without, as I've eluded to three times now.

In any event, such exercises have been a ton of fun and a great distraction from life which has been valuable in and of itself. Plus I get to eat nice tasting home baked bread :).