We are currently in the sixth house we have built and lived in. In fact, for most of my life we have been building. At the moment my parents are doing the usual dance before their next build; Looking at homes to buy under the pretense that if they find anything cheaper and better than building, they’ll buy it (which never happens).

This morning we woke up early to check out a house that was scarily across the road from our second built house. The house had not really been lived in for years, and was built around the time we had built our first few homes.

Opening the door was like breaking open a time capsule of my life. The inside was pink. Not pink as in “I’ve got colour and I’m not afraid to use it” like today, but pink as in “maybe if I just make everything hospital pink no one will notice”. Throw out your colour wheels; This was the age of federation interior design where one colour rules supreme.

Walking through the house there were old intercoms, 486 computers, dot matrix printers, more VHS machines than I’ve seen in my life, a dolby pro logic system and (oh, the horror) a shelf of store-bought video cassettes.

The bathroom. Grab a bucket, think I’m gunna spew. You see, federation bathroom tiles of the early to mid-nineties only came in one variety. They had large cream (not just off-white) octagons with the federation colour of your choice (dark green, maroon or light blue) tessellated squares in the middle (think this, on every surface of a small confined area). Having the cold, maroon pattern under my toes, I was rushed back to a time when I handled far too many of those plates as a child. Prestrung together in pattern with a fiberous white netting on the underside, I would flip through trays and trays of them in the showroom, trying to listen to other customer’s conversations and just generally misspending my youth while my parents made the actual decisions.

Discussing in the car afterwards I tried to explain what was so upsetting about the house, the best I could do was say “But you have to live in that!”

Thankfully, my parents gave me free reign with my current bathroom, so I can have a shower without getting a headache.

Aside from uni work, I’ve been following every link given to me. As a result, I’m looking for people who use Twitter to give me something else to distract myself with. For those who don’t pore over the slightest internet geek news, Twitter allows you to see at a glance what your friends are up to. If it means just one less “Hey. Whatcha doin’?” in MSN per month I’m very happy. That is just in case my blog doesn’t already give you the gruelling details of my life, now you can be keep up to the minute. Click on the image below to go to my twitter page and add me.

Also, I’m starting to get a little pressed for hard drive space over my four or so hard drives (I know, it’s insane), so I was grateful to discover Mozy now has a mac client for their free 2gig encrypted backup service. Even if you’re just backing up your photos folder, it’s absolutely worth the (zero) cost. The software does the work for you, and getting your files back again is totally free also. Use the link above and we’ll both get a 256 meg bonus.

In other news, I am waking up far too early tomorrow morning to go look at a house. Afterwards, I should know more about where on earth I’m moving to in a matter of (eek!) weeks.

Last night was the kick off for Big Brother 07 (although it was quite strange being so heavily edited and quite obviously NOT live), so we packed up our kits and headed over to Adam and Gregs for a bit of a BB shindig. We had the event on the projector, which just served to amplify each one of the housemates grating personalities. It all got a bit pantomime when Greg started boo and hissing the Young Liberal.

We were joined by Phillip who is in town for a week or two from Melbourne.

Phillip bolted after dinner and the show and left us to relive old blog times with another Magic Muffin cook-off! A kick-off and a cook-off in one night - gosh were we busy!

After several hours of taking portraits, our attentioned turned to projecting sex doll documentaries on the wall and taking photos of people (ie. Me), interacting with it. Natch’!

Tonight I’m off to rehearsal where I have to work with these people. It sickens me, really.

Catch more photos in the Flickr photo set.

I’m on the injury bench* tonight, sporting a torturous tooth, a malevolant molar if you will, but I’m counteracting that with a night in, left over indian takeaway and chocolate icecream. Okay, so apart from the icecream this is an ordinary night for me. I’m going to have an early shower and bring down the mood by attacking some uni work I’m not exactly on track with.

I’m hoping that with some good sleep, my demonic dentures** will reside.

* Ooh la la, a sports analogy!

** I love me some good alliteration!

Yesterday was the show-down between me and my previously reported systems tutor. It was a face off, not unlike the film Face/Off, but without the forward slash. I haven’t worked out which is doing the John Travolta role. Probably me, because I’m not very fond of Nicholas Cage, and John Travolta is friends with Oprah, and just imagine the christmas haul you’d get from her. An Angel Network truck would probably deliver it. Woah.

Anyway, it was my turn to present the solution to a question to the class, who by this point were thoroughly uninterested and had already packed up their bags after the lecturer said “Well, I just told the other class they could leave if they hadn’t done their work.” As I stood up, I asked for a white board marker, but it would seem that there was none to be had. I was presenting a process decomposition diagram (with data flows!), and stood up to declare I would simply talk through it. The tutor, seemingly eager to criticise my work said “I’ll go get a marker for you”, and it wasn’t long before she came back offering me the tool of my own destruction.

I drew the parent process symbol and labelled it in the most perfect cursive writing you’ve ever seen. I continued the way through my graph, explaining it as I went along. My straight lines got a little interpretive and some of my child process symbols were a circular, but I finished it up and stood next to my piece of artwork awaiting my comments.

The tutor looked at the diagram. And looked. Mouthed closed. Flicked a few pages in her textbook. Read. Looked. Flicked a few more pages. Read some more. Looked. I eventually asked her “Is that okay?” Through her gritting clenched throat she managed a gutteral “Mmm hmmm”, nodded and I took my seat knowing that this battle was mine.