Graduation

So I finally graduated with my lovely girlfriend. Some penguin also graduated, He had a stealy gaze and I couldn't get much more out of him. It's weird, It isn't often I'm the one pulling the least silly faces. Although I did do a wide eyed stare at the camera as I was coming down the stairs. I didn't realize it was being beamed on stage for the entire audience. But that makes it better I guess.

I never had much patriotism for Massey until yesterday. If it wasn't for Becky I probably wouldn't have gone. I'd have been content with just a degree in the mail that I could just use as a fancy paper plane. But I'm glad I went after all that.

One thing I don't understand is why people were so paranoid about getting our gowns wet. I mean, 100 years ago they wore those things all the time, and now we're worried about getting them a little damp and losing our bond on them. What are they made out of now? Paper mache? I was also throwing around the idea of just keeping the whole thing and letting them keep my sixty dollar bond. I think that's a pretty mint deal. In five years time I'll just take another set of photos and pretend I graduated again. And next time there's a Harry Potter themed event I'll totally be ready.

The Chancellor told me I must have some friends in the crowd, due to a few cheers which were real appreciated. I said yeah, 'spose. Turns out he said the same thing to Becky. I'm not a special snowflake after all. Wish I'd taken the opportunity to tell him to not be stupid and close the design department in Auckland instead like I was planning on doing.

I think if we wore all this junk all the time at uni people would have had a different mindset towards the whole endeavour. I feel like a lot of people just saw Uni as High School 2.0 with added alcohol. Before we went out the door in the morning Mum reminded me that thousands of people get degrees these days so the whole process is just a big watered down conveyer belt. I thanked her graciously for belittling my achievement as much as possible. It was a point which was enforced later by one of my peers who's got a pretty mint design job now even though their final project was a carbon copy of an existing brand.
Remember kids. C's get degrees! Also it isn't what you know, it's who you know and whether or not they're willing to give you a job in return for a blowjob. It's why they're called blowjobs. Because that's what they get you. Handjobs constitute manual labour. And if you're giving out anything more than that then you have already found your new work.

I'm actually laughing at something pretty hilarious, I'd tell you about it but I don't think you deserve to know. That, and I can't actually remember what was so funny.

I've been thinking I should probably start writing my humble opinion about design and the things I've learned. Not because I think I'm better than everyone else (because I definitely am not), but I know I would have wanted to have read about someone (and I did) who had made it through the other end of the system and made it out alive. Also it's probably the closest I'll ever get to any sort of academia ever again. Which is a little bit of a shame, since I actually found all that stuff quite invigorating when I wasn't forced to memorise it and shit it out the other end in a presentable fashion for my lecturers.

I wanted to say that this was the conclusion to a big part of my life. But I'm pretty sure I've already beaten myself to the punch in that regard when I properly finished uni ages ago and got stuck into having a job that pays for expensive fish and chips. Seriously, I got 29 dollars worth of fish and chips for just myself (Don't worry, it was only enough to feed one person, not three families like it usually is). I've shocked myself with my wanton abandon when it comes to buying food now. But screw it. I work such long hours I deserve to clog my arteries in any way I please. I didn't come this far to just continue living like a student.

~Final score~

Bachelor of Design With Honours

Second Class Honours(Division 1)

First class honours was for chumps anyway.

Snow: Episode 37

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This weekend blew by. I can't even remember Friday now. I can try though... And by remember I mean ask Becky. Oh ok, yeah, I worked late and then we went and picked up her new Nexus 4 from the illustrious +Josiah Spackman. He's a real gent in hooking us up. They always talk about Apple Acolytes but no one ever mentions the Android Avangelist who'l go out of his way to hook you up with a sweet deal. Seriously man, it's changed her life and mine. She hasn't talked to me in five hours due to a gameboy emulator and a Pokemon Leaf Green emulator. I'm telling her forcefully to buy the full version so she can play the game at a million miles an hour and enjoy the game at the spastic pace I enjoyed Pokemon Blue at on my NO$GMB back in the day. Did anyone else split screen that and share a keyboard? Good times.

Saturday was spent at The Postmans Leg having "photo times" for +Quin Polderman's going away thing. This was my personal highlight.

Snow: Episode 36

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I'm very disappointed in you guys. No one told me that the last episode featured an unbearded version of Aaron! What an embarrassment.

My own personal theory into why Hero is so damn strong is that all he ever eats is steroids and strong people.

I hope you've all had a rocking Easter! Yay, the first non offensive thing you've read about Easter on the internet. Now there's a curveball. I think offensive humour is something that should take you by surprise, zombie Jesus jokes are to easy. Mixing ironic casual racism into a criticism of anti-gay protestors however is a lot harder. Trust me, I tried it over lunch yesterday and it went down about as good as a helium balloon in an anti gravity chamber.

I'd like to take a second to do a shout out to people who have been kind enough to shout me out or use my thingies elsewhere on the web. Fidgetfu is using the Dwarf Fortress font on his DF Mac plugin hosted on github. I haven't got a Mac to try it out, but I'm sure if you play DF then it will be a handy plugin.

Another dorfy type dude got inspired by me apparently, and you should also check him out! His writing is quite good and so is his other pixel stuff.

Snow: Episode 35

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I came down with a bit of something, so took the free time I had to cram one of these out. Matt went easy on me when he wrote this one. Although I don't think he realized that drawing people arm wrestling is harder than drawing talking heads.

It's weird writing for the Snow posts, I generally presume that people that read this probably are skipping through just the Snow posts and are missing out all the other random garbage I plonk on here. This thread of posts almost exists on its own time continuum. Just an odd thought I had.

People watching in the city is a fantastic past time, I'd recommend it if it didn't come as a passive occupation to everyone anyway. There are the easy people to watch, like the crazy guy in front of St Matthews whos new persona is that of someone from a rap video. He pelvic thrusts, grabs his crotch, and goes "HA HAaa!" at passing cars. And then there are the slightly harder people to spot. Like the Asian dude trying to kiss his (I hope) girlfriend, who really really doesn't like public displays of affection. Poor guy, he's just trying to kill some time as he waits at the lights! Cut him a break!

Free Game With A Good Game

To be honest EA, you mostly expect to just get away with it.

I got Simcity a week after it came out, so I haven't experienced any of the heartache that went along with the release. I was getting some rollbacks on my city tonight however on the Europe East 2 server, losing only about 5 minutes of progress. After that happened a couple times I jumped onto Oceanic 2 and started a new, much better planned city, that didn't involve a cluster eff'd bottleneck at the very gateway to my city. This latest one is still only a few hours old. The lack of super super fast mode still not being put in really bites, and is the only complaint of the things they've temporarily stripped. BUT, until the 25th you can get a free game as long as you don't mind it being on Origin. You can get Simcity for 80 or so bucks from the Warehouse at the moment, and with the addition of Mass Effect 3 or Battlefield 3 getting thrown in there complementary I think it would be totally worth your while.

It really killed my poor machine taking the picture below, but it looks awesome. I really need to get a new graphics card so I can practice my voyeurism some more. The Sims crawling around on the streets are a strange breed of people. They go to the closest job they can find in the morning. And go home to the closest house that isn't currently occupied. It wouldn't surprise me if they used the same first in first serve process with spouses either. I imagine raging swingers parties where they throw their keys in a giant 40 gallon drum. Grab another pair of keys out, steal someone else's car, go to a house that they've never been in before, and then screw and make kids which are instantly adopted by the single guy next door cause he had a couple spare rooms left over.

I've deemed the giant public outcry about the lame launch as a positive thing. If people hadn't shat the bed over it Maxis wouldn't have gotten onto fixing things so fast and EA wouldn't feel obliged to give away a game. To be honest I was a little surprised that there are so many fans of the franchise. When mentioning this game to my friends I'm generally met with quizzical looks before they return to their conversations about chest high walls, cutscenes and endings. None of which happen to exist in Simcity. Well maybe chest high walls do.

I actually dig the online element of the game, and I'm a bit disappointed I started my first city in an empty region.

A cool aspect that I hadn't known about till I started playing was the local government stuff you could do. As your city swells in size you can upgrade your town hall with City Departments which unlock new features for you to add to your city. The thing that kind of hit my worldview in the face was the ability to add a department which allowed me to tax different wealth brackets of sims separately. "Why would I want to do that?" I wondered, "everyone should be charged the same percentage."
Oblivious to this my sims went about their little meaningless socialist existances, unaware I had just unlocked the ability to drop Godzilla into the city.

P.S. the game doesn't always look like a crime noir, grungy thing. Just one of the many in-game filters.

Office Shenanigans

On one of my early days working I was asked politely by someone who shall remain unnamed to go fetch an icecream for him. One cannot imagine the heartache and grief that can come from such a casual arrangement. The situation has now spiralled into what can only be described as the cries of a petulant child, which is quickly followed by everyone else going "Izak! Quickly! Mr Whippy is here! GO GO GO!"

Andre has noticed the success of this scheme. So now when I run down to catch the van, he demands that Cinto go to Queen Street quickly and bring him some Carls Jr. Thus far Cinto has stood his ground and not budged, he's seen what happens when you give your co-workers an inch. 

I've had my second dentists appointment this morning. It went without a hitch. Two more teeth are cyborgs now. Three more are nearing their end and are getting ready to be filled with bog.

The air in the office sits like in a stagnant pile, unmoved by our feeble attempts to shove it around. Tim got us a new fan, which I quickly said was my own personal fan. I got told to learn my place. But my place is beside the fan, and I will not be told otherwise, so I labelled it as such. Also my fan thinks I'm sexy, as a fan should.

As a way of documenting my day I've started taking photos (When I remember) of the beverages that pile up on my desk in the evening. As a warning, Chocolate beer is disgusting, as I'm sure you can assume by the name. It's bearable(pun) if it's really really cold however (And you have no other choices).

Samuel Adams Noble Pils is probably one I won't be touching again (Quoted as tasting like squashed crickets), but the Boston Lager is fine. Boundary Brewerys flying Fortress is aight. Carlsberg is totally fine by me, same goes for Asahi. With a beer you really just need to find one that offends you the least, much like energy drinks.

Pictures of the Times

It was the census recently. I thought this bit was a little silly. But I guess some people have jobs that aren't described entirely by their title. The marriage section was a real F fest due to every sort of pairing being taken into consideration. It shouldn't be so bad next time. On Wednesday the second reading of the gay marriage thing will get pushed through and then words like "husband" & "wife" will be rubbed out of all official documents except for a bunch of oddball sections like the Tuberculosis Act & Cook Islands Act, whatever those entail. Oh Well, Karl Pilkington always said we need less words.

One of my jobs every day is to check the stats for some of the App stuff we do at work. I decided that the graph was boring, so this is what I sent to the boss. He was suitably impressed.

I was asked if I could do a series of these. But it may be to much like giving away trade secrets in a festive manner. Subverting boring stuff could be quite interesting though. It's about all I have time for any more.

I did however get a PS3, which my brother is getting the most out of going around in circles on Gran Turismo 5. I got it right in the middle of a console war, as you may have heard the PS4 is coming out soon. So I felt the need to take this photo for everyone on the other side of that line.

Oooh take that internet. Although the internet kicked back over the week and totally bombed Simcity. I'm going to rest the entirety of the blame on EA. Maxis can ride this one out with the browny points they've amassed with me over the years. I'll still be getting Simcity whenever I find the money to afford it. Unfortunatly at the moment I need to melt my money down and shove it into the gaping holes in my teeth. I've done one filling so far but I have five more to go. For the price it's costing I could have gotten at least 3 more PS3's.

I tried telling the dentist about my theories of teeth. Surely we're getting to the point where we can just paint enamel onto our teeth. Let's stop screwing around with AIDS and get onto rectifying all the damage coke has done to us over the years. I was telling him I wish we were like Rats, which constantly grow their teeth out and just wear them down by chewing through solid cement. Or like sharks, who pretty much crap teeth on a regular basis. We'd have to go to the dentist to go get our teeth worn down all the time, a bit like hair. I figure that's totally the way to go. On the form I had to sign before I could go in it asked me a list of questions, "do you have any medical problems, allergic to medication etc". At the bottom was one last question which asked "Do you have any problems with your teeth." I wrote down "Holes everywhere." I wondered how many people write "No, I just came here for a free toothbrush and a bit of hand to mouth action."

My bus goes past a sign every morning which advertises free meditation classes. I can't imagine being silently ignored by an old wizened Indian gentleman to be that exhilarating. But to be fair, a bit of peace and quiet would be good. There's no rest for the wicked and I'm apparently Hitlers therapist saying "No no Adolf, don't commit suicide, find a hobbie, something to keep you occupied. You like playing Warhammer right? Why not try it on a bigger scale?"