Saturday, April 29, 2006

Grab a shovel, you're in deep shit

I seem to have a way of making easy situations difficult. At the same time, I get more satisfaction from eventually extracating myself from my perilous predicaments.

University: I have done it again. Missed another mid-semester exam. It was for my crappy ultra-boring Economics unit. I did one piece of assessment for that course, got fed up with being bored and didn't go back since. So I've also missed a heap of those little assessments and 1 little presentation. So long as the mid-sem isn't compulsory I should still be able to make a fist of the subject, beginning with completing an essay due in 2 days to turn the assessment weighting in my favour. Mean time, I also missed a class response last week but was able to have that rescheduled and have a presentation in 2 weeks. Lots of work to do, all very soon. Gl hf. Also I had a mid-sem last week, it was pretty terrible. After wasting away the 2 weeks of study time, I studied for a day and a bit, and my nose dribbled like an open tap for the hour of the exam - colds suck.


Soccer: Womens team have had a break over the last few weeks. Called off a few training sessions due to public holidays and their opposition for the first of 2 non-competetive trial games pulled out. Back to the mill last thursday night which was a fiasco. 7 teams on 2 fields makes no-sense in any universe. Plus lots of my gear had gone missing. To compound disappointment there was a fantastic turn out to training, which mean lots of unhappy players. Tomorrow is the last hit out before points go on offer with our season start next weekend. I had to just go and fetch the nets (6.30pm) because the ANU sport and rec. assoc. closes at 7pm on Saturdays and only opens again at 9am on Sundays. Too late for me to swing by inorder to grab the nets and have them up at Kaleen for our 9.30am kick-off. Oh well.

Mens has been bizzarre. First game in, after a romping preseason with lots of wins and bags of goals (our only defeat coming 3-2 with no subs against a team 3 division above us), we got SMASHED. We were poor all over the park, mainly in midfield, and couldn't deal with long, aerial balls at all. 5-2 was the score line. Today was not much better in the bottom line, but the performance was both shameful and encouraging in that order. 20 minutes of madness began 38 seconds into the game when they(RMC) scored... from halfway. A lofted free-kick, air-swing, mis-communication, and then bouncing past our keeper and in! Second half however, we bossed play and exploited our wings to good effect and very almost pulled off an unlikely result. In the end it finished 6-4 against. But the performance should spur us on to points next win to kick off our season proper.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

City of Heroes vs WoW

Julian says:
geyness. im at home to 'study' hehe
mroc says:
you still coming up this way this afternoon?
Julian says:
played CoH till 5 am lols...
Julian says:
yah, ill put them glasses in me beg
mroc says:
yay
mroc says:
and lol at CoH
mroc says:
sounds like a wow addiction
Julian says:
its gettin that way, started doing missions more like wow instances and i was puller
mroc says:
haha
Julian says:
but was reading the manual and got a bit disinterested in "blaster" class - all the diff types of blaster have virtually the same power... except mine was the gayer variety
mroc says:
owned
Julian says:
now i've got a "scrapper" which is a rogue i spose. high accuracy, -defense attacks. +defense myself with super reflexes
mroc says:
*goes to read up on CoH*
Julian says:
differences in game are kinda coo - no.1 best thing about CoH over wow and others is the charachter generater is SOOO complex. takes me like an hour each time i make a new toon cause im making hundreds off diff costumes!
Julian says:
but the power trees are distinclty less complex than wow, but the game play is simplified so you never need "heal spec druid" or something
Julian says:
and most missions are mini instances in "dungeon" style, so the maps are slightly diff each time and the difficulty is scaled both by how many peeps in your party and you can choose to increase difficulty too
mroc says:
Well wow would be more simple if you just removed the 3 hybrid classes
mroc says:
interesting
Julian says:
also there is no loot in CoH in a good and bad way.. there are "enhancements" instead, which are like the "mana ball" things you used to put on your armour and weapons in final fantasy if you've ever played that
Julian says:
but you put them on your spells/powers instead. one good thing about that means instead of going hunting for "fire res" gear with good stamina - u just put 2 slots onto the power u want to upgrade and go find those particular enhancements u need (so you could have any upgrade you wanted)
Julian says:
i upped the gfx to max cause they are a bit simplistic, then it starts to look a bit better quality - but my comp shat a brick because the viewable environment in CoH is huuuge wheras WoW they've designed it so no ones gpu gives up the good fight - so i need roughly another 512mb ram and probably motherboard/agp with more bandwidth
mroc says:
so basically half a new computer
Julian says:
yah dang it
Julian says:
i guess i can live for t he moment with "performance" graphics... if you call that living
Julian says:
hey did u see the evil easter bunny video adam sent? ROFLMAO HAHAHA! its great
mroc says:
yeah just watched it, so funny
Julian says:
i thought it was gonna be an ad or something. really well made though hehe
Julian says:
i love when he's in the lift hahaha

Saturday, April 15, 2006

Happy Easter

So apparantly you aren't supposed to eat meat on Good Friday. What's that about?
Woody said it's a Catholic thing, and my Dad's wife Jo is Italian and therefore probably Catholic - she told me too.
I'm not Catholic, and teh meat was yummy :)

For easter we combined a poker party with an impromptu birthday party for Mike O'Connor. Nick Strauch, Woody, Luke, VJ, Me, Dave Tulloh and Mike O'Connor came along. Hawkins dropped by to say g'day before he went down the coast. Had a pretty fun day, played poker, played sing star, drank, ate meat, mike brought along electro-shock laser tag and played some Pro-Evo too.

I still haven't done any study yet. But there is a chance I will... but probably not this weekend! Now I'm off to play some City of Heroes which is pretty fun :). Also picked up the C&C Generals Expansion and played through 1 of the 3 campaigns so far.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Food Depletion is Imminent

Quick update. What's new?
Men's team is winning, Girls' team is drawing. Uni is breaking :D, games I am playing. Working is earning, cars are no longer crashing.

Finished final selection for mens. Not 100% happy, but more than 66% happy as the defence and attack are brilliant. Mid field is an issue, but if I had it too easy I might get bored! ;)

Womens drew in their final pre-season comp game, but we still have another 2 'non-competetive' games because of the draw. Things are looking up.

Uni break is on. It's TWO WEEKS long! yahooo! One week better than a one week break if you ask me! :) Must endeavour to catch up and be ready to finish uni with a flourish... haha... maybe.

Bought City of Heroes with Adam Au. Thinking of what my super-me is gonna be like... seriously... how could I be any more super? This is tough.

Workin a bit, but not too much. I recognise the need to get some study done and that's difficult enough with uni (regardless of if i'm actualy attending) and then having work on alternate days. Leaves me pretty beat after soccer on the weekend and other activities. At least i'm no longer dirt, dirt poor. I am still balance sheet insolvent, but narrowly avoided equitable insolvency! (I've learnt something from Bankruptcy Law! - ironically I'm also doing Insurance law...)

Fuel is expensive. Little birdy tells me it's gonna get even more expensive! Good thing I finally have money for food again, because between food and fuel... how am I gonna pay for my games?! Priorities are important young one.

Speaking of food. I am almost out of food. Since my brother moved to Gong for uni, mum cooks enough for 2 people. Which is not enough for me. Esp. with soccer and work keeping me physically active. Mum has run off to Malaysia to spend some time with my Chinese Grandfather who is on his sickbed. I don't know what from. Something pretty fatal it appears. Forgive my callousness but I don't really know much about him except that he's on the the crazy side of eccentric, lived above a bakery and hat rats/mice, and smacked my bum at least once I think. I certainly remember Andrew got smacked more, I wonder if he remembers.

So back to the point. Mum is gone. I promptly ate all the food in the house. I am also dangerously low on clean dishes and and consuming my supply of clean clothes at an alarming rate also. Think I better invite some of my female friends over and lean on their domestic aptitudes ;)

Monday, April 03, 2006

Perfect Timing

And on the other hand, sometimes things just fall into place if you let them.
I've been giving my men as long as possible to prove themselves. Tonights training game against Sash's 6's secured the place of 4 players, leaving only 1 place completely empty.

Coaching a team to a big win over better fancied opposition feels quite good. At 1-0 down things were going to script. A few goals later and we were 3-1 up. The goals kept flowing until we called time at 6-3 or so.

I was ready to call it quits a year early with womens coaching. I'm not going to put in the extra effort unless the rewards are there this time. And I don't mean results. Last year I achieved a lot with players who don't understand the game half as much as they think they do. But at the end of the day I enjoyed finishing Grand Finalist Runner Up and Second in the league far less than leading a group of committed and enthusiastic players off the bottom of the ladder. At any rate, my work is going to be cut out for me if I continue with Womens. Mid-table is a high goal unless squad changes work in my favour. Mens on the other hand will be at the other end of the table, and ought to provide me with a contrast of coaching challenges.

Flaming wrecks

Jenson Button coming into the home straight while coming 5th. Parked his flaming wreck 100m from the finish line to retire and get a new engine without penalty for the next round.

Sometimes there's nothing you can do. You just do the best with what you have. My women's team had 8 players last weekend, 13 players for the first match on Sunday then only 9 for the second. We have leaked 13 goals (4.33 per game).