Three strikes, someone's out.

Sorry no posts this week, not much to tell and I always forget about it.

Monday I arrived at CPIT to find out that there was another strike and we had the day off, so went home again. Thankfully my video card arrived so I had more to do than online poker.

Yesterday they were still on strike but we had a class anyway, Steven the head of electrical took us for EMF that we started briefly last Tuesday. Was rather unprepared however so we spent the day reading through the book and watching videos.

Today was a bit better, Spent the morning with Neil finishing up drawing unit and starting to talk about capacitors. Then we finished at 12 so hung out with a mate from class playing xbox for the afternoon.

That was the uneventful week, managed to sum it up in less than i normally spend on one day. The tutors are still on strike until Friday at least at this point, they have a meeting then so hopefully sort this stuff out.

Just have to wait and see at this point.

Forgot to post yesterday.

Here it is another late post. Now just trying to remember what happened yesterday. Nothing terribly exciting except for the 4th assessment of the week, a practical one no less. Went well except for the fact that the station I was working on continued to fail to work. So me and another unfortunate student who shall remain nameless had to stay later than the rest of the first group doing extra testing and so on eventually passing. (well I assume the other did as I got to leave before him.) Then was done by about 3pm. That is all I can remember at this point, I think we did a bit more drawing and silly things like that but nothing else important.

I think we get to wire up some houses next week, hopefully get some practice first. Reminds me of a cool trick someone showed me yesterday of how to strip TPS, Going to try that now I remember. (Keep wanting to call it TVP but that is dodgy vegetarian food)

Unrelated stuff lately: my computer decided to be annoying again today, bought a can of compressed air to clean it but its still being annoying, need to get around to installing 7 and now I need to find more stuff to spray as the air can is great for pointing around like a gun. Also bought some CRC for tools at same time. Cheaper than air...

Group Projects.

Not a lot terribly notable happened today, as usual but in saying that I will probably still end up putting a lot in here as things come to me. Today as most Tuesdays was Rob day, big class one room and all that. We had a test in the second half of the morning which meant an early long lunch, went to subway got a sub of the day and a free drink for ~$4. (yay student deals) Test was ok, calculating resistance/current/voltage/power, slow to calculate but easy except for my short confusion where I ended up with 200 = 300 with seemingly no errors.

The rest of the day not a lot of work got done either. We started group project things which are good in theory, I really like doing work in groups when you actually get stuff done but most of the time in practice this is not the case. Nuff said although we did get a lot of foos-ball done  (not in the dictionary here but apparantly "Foots-ball" is)
 So most of the afternoon was rather relaxing.

Also was shown the best T-shirt of all time of current time:
http://www.604republic.com/prod/intoxicate_t_shirt
I wants one. will probably buy if my bank account does not have a big enough hole in it after bills are paid.

tests, tests and... too late to come up with something clever

Again I have left it until right when I want to sleep to  post, especially bad tonight as last night I got a total of about 2-3 hours sleep so I'll make this brief, we had 2 tests this morning, Flexible cables theory and testing theory. Did rather well in both i expect but the problem is the flexi cables needed 100% essentially to pass, i think most of us failed to do that as we weren't taught it properly. I was lucky with my 50/50 guess of which way around the phase and neutral pins go and that covered about half the questions or so (Yes, most of them were the same thing) and then there was colour codes which nobody was sure on either and 3 phase plugs which we were even less sure on so we will see what happens, probably mass resit and them learning to actually teach us what we need to know. Other test was pretty good tho, in fact it was exactly the same questions as the practice one we did last week so pretty well prepared for that. Otherwise afternoon was mostly boring so I can't be bothered typing about it. Had a new teacher for the last break who sounded a bit like the old guy with all the guns in hot fuzz, hard to follow sometimes. Anyway I think ive kept that to a minimum while saying a bit so I am going to catch up on sleep. Hopefully more time for blogging tomorrow.

Missing: Wednesday's post. No reward.

Forgot to do a post on Wednesday, and by that I mean I chose to sleep first for once. Then forgot to do it all today. Luckily not a lot happened on Wednesday, so this will be short. We had the morning in the big room with everyone again but when we started there was only about 1 class worth of people from all 3, quite a few missing but then over the next half an hour or so more showed up so in the end we had about 2 classes worth (quite a few missing from ours) To be honest though the people that didn't show didn't really miss out on much. We had Starr for the first time who has been teaching at that place for 20 years. That is quite a long time to those of you who might have thought otherwise and he seems like a good teacher for the most part. Definitely knows his stuff but doesn't seem to know what we have already done. So I spent some time drawing, half listening to what he was saying but hard to stay interested. His voice was somewhat interesting, reminds me of a news reporter or weatherman with the way his voice seemed to drone up and down.

Then after lunch it was slightly more bearable as I had downloaded a new game on my phone that a friend in class had that looked interesting and is rather addictive. Again we had Starr but in our smaller group now but still doing stuff we had mostly seen before so I spent a lot of time on phone game and putting post-it notes and smiley face stamps everywhere. Then at the end of the day we got to go outside and test earth stake resistance which is amazingly less fun than it sounds, at this point it was after 4pm on a Wednesday which is Friday afternoon syndrome for us and to make it worse we went right until 5 which is what the timetable says but this is the first time it has actually happened...

That is about all I can remember at this point, don't think I have missed anything important out as I'm sure it would have been more memorable on a day like that. As I said before I'm sure Starr is a good teacher just needs some more interesting topics that we haven't done before and practical that involves a bit more than just sticking pegs in the ground.

Either that or become a Weatherman

That time again.

Again, I have left it until the last minute to post. Got to get better at that as I enjoy the little sleep I get and can always do with more but anyway. Today was much better than yesterday, not as sick hurrah and had maths test in afternoon which to my knowledge I did excellently in. Went to plumbing shop on way home and they were suprisingly unhelpful but I now have a couple more possible leads. Otherwise not much else happened, found we have 2 more tests next monday so that should be interesting, might actually have to do some proper study. and lunch was excellent got a chicken wrap thing from the cafeteria place (need to come up with a nick name for that) was really good and others got chicken burgers that looked even better, chicken, bacon, egg... nom.

I also got into a bit of an electric themed pun spree on facebook after I was home (Nigel should be proud) as follows (if i remember to upload it before falling asleep):

that's all I can remember for now so it means I am allowed to go and sleep and get up in 6.5 hours woo. Have fun yall.

Down with the sickness. (Trying something new)

Today was good, for the morning anyway. Wal was off sick so we had Neil all day which was fun. Looked again briefly at flexible cables and circuit diagrams. Then in the afternoon disaster struck! I had had a little bit of a sore throat/cough yesterday on and off, nothing major with a slightly more major runny nose, thought oh no im getting a cold but first time in 2-3 years so not too bad then it calmed down yesterday evening and didn't rear up again today so thought nothing of it. Then, the cough came back and got worse fast and in about 10 minutes it was throat almost blocked from all the phlegm bad :( so after leaving the classroom a couple times to cough ferociously and spit up phlegm in the bathroom so i didn't suddenly suffocate I thought I better go home as rhino viruses are not something happily shared (see what i did there? managed to relate this to last week's post in a terrible pun way!) As I was then wondering where the nearest place was to unclog my throat I gladly remembered the cafeteria place there had throaties so I quickly rushed down there, glad to find it open and bought a pack. Then proceeded to suck them one at a time, one after another as any time I didn't have one in my mouth I started hurting and choking more. I finished all but 3 (out of 10) by the time class finished, getting more and more time for each as I was slowly wearing down the flood. (even had a large gaseous burp after a few consisting of what I guess was evaporated phlegm, nice.) Then had the last 3, one on the way to morgan's to sort out my bike charger, then one on way home and one while I was at the supermarket getting more and something more potent (yay lemsip) so it all worked out rather well.
Wow never thought I could make being sick sound so exciting, maybe not for others on second thought.

Otherwise moreorless prepared for tomorrow's maths test now and I have lost my train of thought as was just afk for about half an hour so I'll leave it at that until tomorrow where I will be hopefully less sick, or doped up on lemsip/throaties all day and hopefully not distracting everyone in test with coughs etc too.

So for now hope to sleep well too as it was not the best sleep last night and hope I don't choke on my phlegm in sleep.

some good luck and a bit of fun

It is that time again, where I can't be bothered writing this but I know I should, kind of want to kind of don't.
 The title is a bit of how I remember today I can't really remember why but I will try. It was a good day, the morning ride was a bit colder than yesterday but with my full thermal set up it wasn't bad (loving the goggles now they don't fog as much, but at one point on monday they did blind me with sun glare and almost run me into a traffic island) morning was very interesting considering didn't do any practical stuff, Andrew like Rob but in his own way makes things interesting. I am sitting here thinking they are different forms of interesting/funny but can't explain it, both good interesting people. talked about testing, different meters and methods of testing and stuff like that. Also explained how a transformer works which was very cool but every time he said the word I imagined robots too I must admit. He also kept mentioning (mainly to do with the transformers) the best name of a substance that has now become a kind of sci-fi catchphrase if we can remember it (Just remembered another one our first aid tutor had about "Peas, Carrots and Corn" concerning vomit. Good times) I have it written down here otherwise I keep forgetting it.

"Cold-Rolled Grain-Oriented Silicon Steel."

Makes us sound smart, and somewhat like a Judoon as we determined ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJ_pj31YdrY if you don't know what they are, or just like hearing them :D )

"Col-Rol-Grol-Orl-Sol-Col...Stolo"... Now I need to have fun translating other things into it...

Anyway, The afternoon was spent with Neil doing maths which was a bit more fun than it was last week, in the time we weren't trying to absorb his Scottish accent there were a few funny moments and some actual learning at some points...

Otherwise managed to get a top for my still today hurrah and hopefully will get the rest of the pieces tomorrow so then will just need the putting together and something to distill ( have some things to try )

For now I will probably sleep, lots to do in next couple of days, including but not limited to sleeping in.

The Bittersweet Tuesday

Again I have left it till I am tired at the end of the evening as I planned specifically not to do earlier but with cooking and cleaning and talking and watching the night got away on me a little. Today we had another test; Conductors, insulators, resistors and semiconductors. I was a little worried in the break just before the test but then getting into the test I realized I had nothing to worry about as all of the questions were rather easy true/false, put in the missing word or match a number from each list. I (and many others it would seem) took a double take as one rather simple question was in it twice, makes you doubt your own sanity and then that of whoever writes these tests. Otherwise it was a normal Tuesday which as the title suggests has aspects on each side of the interest line. On the one hand we have the whole day with Rob teaching which as you know is the best thing in education since the 18th century. (i think it was then, recently re-watched the QI where they mentioned when the written exam was invented) Other PTD people will know what I mean. (other classes will as well but don't have the perspective our class has having other notable tutors...) Anyway I am rambling a bit here, yes Rob is the good. However we also spend the whole day in one lecture hall with 50 other people (less intelligent / pleasant to listen to chat behind your head than PTDs) and it is also usually too warm due to the fact that THE HEATING IS CONTROLLED FROM MADRAS STREET CAMPUS! and a dozen electrical staff can't do crap about it. so yes Tuesdays are good and bad days, still much better than Mondays though.

Wow this late and I managed to get a decent sized post. I am also just realising reading parts of it that it may be hard to understand for some as it is a kind of direct line from what I am thinking (I guess the original intent of blogs and things) and sometimes may not make sense to minds outside my own. If this is the case let me know I may be able to translate (or not possibly.) The formatting looks terrible, I refuse to paragraph most of the time as my brain does not stick to such evil limitations. Ok time to slow down.

This is plenty for tonight but I will also add that my jug element arrived today woo so I can start putting my still together I think but I will still need a few more parts, if anyone knows of anything I could use for the dome top bit or a condenser let me know :)

that's all for now I need to get to sleep otherwise I will end up sitting here all night and that isn't good for my health or anyone reading this possibly.

Until tomorrow...

New week, more tests.

Another week of course and blog posts and unfortunately yet again I have left it until the last minute when I want to sleep, nothing much exciting happened today as it was monday which we spend with Wal. The highlight was having a test which I think I did rather good in, did not seem difficult and I think we have another tomorrow which should be interesting but for now I need to sleep, perhaps more details about today will emerge tomorrow when I am less tired.