Metrogaine 2006

Was gonna blog last night but I was wayyyy too tired...

And we won! Team 'Top Gun' consisting of Justin Yoon, 'Guai Loh' Pete and myself were joined by this other girl called Yarni (spelling?) at rego and the 4 of us set off for Metrogaine 2006. I must admit I wasn't sure it would go ahead after it was pissing down rain on the way to CCC but God showed who was in control and it didn't rain at all during the race but turned out rather sunny.

The whole thing felt more like pre-season footy training since we pretty much ran the majority of the race. I cramped up at the last part of the race outside the Museum of Contemporary Art and is nursing some sore calves at the moment. Hopefully I'll be right for basketball tomorrow night. There was this one challenge, 'Cyclone Relay' where 3 of the 4 team members had to run to a soccer ball 10m away, place one hand on the ball and run around it 30 times! It was absolute dizziness (and madness). Pete was crawling the last ten while I staggered like some drunk guy. If only I could get video footage of that challenge :P Perhaps some of the Metrogaine organisers can put it on Youtube?

Winning is good but bringing glory to God is more important and I hope we did that rather than focusing too much on winning the race.

Team photo coming soon...

Everything Basketball

Yahoo! Fantasy NBA
Over for another season in which I came third behind Ethan and Poy but probably only because I was playing right up to the last day whereas some people stopped ages before. Seriously, that stuff is ADDICTIVE.

NBA Finals
Is now underway and the first match of each of the first round series have been played. Not too many surprises except Indiana's win over New Jersey. New Jersey won 14 in a row at one stretch during the season but there is still a long way to go in the best-of-7 matchup. My tip to win the championship? Detroit will prolly win it.

RICE
Basketball starts again this week after a two week break and there are now two RICE teams (White RICE and Fried RICE? I dunno...). One in the Monday C division and the other remaining in the Thursday D division. I'm in the Thursday one and we are hoping to improve on last season's result (eliminated in the first round of finals). Oh, there's a team called 'Team Chuck Norris' in our division. Hahahaha...
Tip off this Thursday @ 7pm

(Long) Easter weekend

Thursday
Took the day off from uni (normal tut cancelled and not worth going in for an 1 hr lec) and went to the Blue Mountains with my cousin visting from Canada. First stop was the Leura candy shop and we spent about $25 all up on rock lollies, coke laces, various gummies and youghurt sticks. Yum! Then we continued driving to Jenolan Caves. I guess as a first timer there it was pretty interesting going into a bunch of caves. We did the "Chiefly" cave walk which took about 1 hr and it felt like going to a geography excursion! Here's what I learnt: Stalactite, an icicle-shaped mass of calcite attached to the roof of a limestone cave looks like dripping snot :P

Had lunch after the walk and then drove home. I was so buggered by the time we hit the M4 I was micro-sleeping.

Good Friday
Spent the day at home and started on Tele Systems 2 assignment (due Sunday). Had to review one paper and analyze design principles of one Internet protocol so it wasn't too bad...except I haven't been listening in class so had to skim over lecture notes to read up on design principles. Then at night our church had a movie night - 'Luther'. For those who haven't seen it, it's about a 16th century monk (Martin Luther) who challenged the political and religious authorities that began the Reformation of the church. Interesting movie but for me, it's one of those films I'll have to watch a couple more times to get a better understanding.

Saturday
The plan was to get a guitar tuner and new strings because my old ones snapped. However when I got to Turra music, it was closed :( Went home and worked on the assignment but fell asleep (must be reading in bed hehe) so got nothing done. Went out to dinner with relatives at...Blackstump! Haha go the coupons :) Saved ourselves about $70 but boo to the public holiday surcharge ($20 all up) :(

Easter Sunday
At the Easter Sunday service/evangelistic we had Greg Prosper talking on "How do you know if you're right with God" and it was fantastic to see 4 people commiting their lives to Christ afterwards. Praise God! Went home in the arvo and submitted my assignment and then went out to the NSW-ACT Super 14 game in the evening. NSW were pretty flat in the first half but kicked ass in the 2nd half and ran out 37-14 winners. We sat behind the goal posts and got to see all but one of the NSW tries :) Oh, and one word to describe Wendell Sailor: crap. He looks crap in a 'Tahs jersey and plays crap too. Harsh I know...

Monday
Woke up around midday, went to Albert's place and we finished reading 1 Timothy. Went to buffet dinner at night and as usual, stuffed myself fully...

More Project Management ramblings

What's with girls who we have never seen before coming up to talk to us? Happened to Jono after one of the lectures a couple of weeks ago and it happened to me yesterday before the start of tut. Haha so random...

Project Management cashflow

Just finished Project Management homework where I had to do a planned cumulative cashflow for the demostration project which is my thesis topic. I found out that:

1. I'm a Micro$oft Excel n00b.
2. The project expenditure is roughly just under $60k for a 20-week program. Of course it is a very rough guesstimate but either way, the punks are getting around $80/hr (including overheads) to sit around napping whilst doing experiments! (see previous post)

Thesis progress

Been going to uni the last two Saturdays to work on thesis (Saturday-->not many people around-->less signal interference-->more accurate data). Here are some shots of my thesis partner and I in action today (pics courtesy of Lui's phone):


Data collection is like watching paint dry...

A good idea but can't have the neck in that position for too long...

A better idea!!!

Since for each point we have to collect data with the laptop/pda pointing at 4 different directions, might as well make ourselves comfortable...Well Jono did :P

As you can see, data collection is not the most exciting job at times...

The exciting part of today came right at the end when I was doing the last point. With the battery running ultra low (<5%) I was desperately hoping to collect the 12mins of data we require and save it. In the end, I just managed to save the data before the laptop went 'beep...beep...beep' and shut itself down. *long sigh of relief*

Talk about timing...