The Death of Innocence

Well after a couple of months in the blogging wilderness I'm back on the cusp of so called "Adulthood."

It's been an amazing couple of months in which so many things have happened.

The first was that I finished my Bachelor of Information Technology, so in May I'll be able to have the letters B.I.T. after my name. Exciting stuff.

After leaving Ballarat on election day I drove a truck almost non-stop (full-time +) until New-Years. This gave me some badly needed money to tide me over until I start work on the 25th of February. I wonder if O-week at work will be anything like O-week at Uni.

I also managed to spend at least half of the above earnings on a 3-day trip to Adelaide with Tiarnee. The money was spent on furniture for my flat that I was lucky enough to secure in a prime location just north of the city. It really is the perfect spot, only a 10-15 minute commute for me to work, a 5 minute (or less!) commute to see Tiarnee, and for her, is walking distance to her bus route to Uni. So because she is moving in later in the year, she wanted a say on the table and chairs, fridge, and Queen-Sized bed that I (we!) ended up purchasing. 'Discussions' were had, but the fact that we where still on talking terms for the trip home really did bode well for the future.

The last 2 weeks saw our family with an exchange student from NZ. Jacques was a Protea turned Kiwi who was really good to show around the place, and even came to Ocean Grove with us. That is where we've been for the last week. In Ocean Grove relaxing, playing tourist in Melbourne & did I mention relaxing? Oh, & cheering for Marcos Baghdatis.

In summary, those people that told me that "remember this time, school years are the best years of your life" where oh so wrong. I hated school. But I'm loving now. God is amazing to me, and I seriously sometimes wonder if it can get any better. Did I mention I'm turning 21 tomorrow?

It's so close I can taste it...

1 Exam to go. Only days away from having a tertiary education & letters after my name!!!! Woooooooooooo!!!! Can't wait. Friday afternoon sees the curtains draw on my University career. It is so exciting! It's just 1 of the amazing things that God is blessing me with at the moment! There's been somthing else kinda important happen in the last week or so as well, but I'll save that for another post.

Like it was yesterday

I remember the days when I used to have to do assignments & tests etc. at school and Uni. I remember clearly the nights when I would go to bed at 3 & 4am only to be up before 9 in order to make looming deadlines. I remember when I would watch episodes of [Scrubs] and 'How I Met Your Mother' in order to procrastinate and avoid thinking about assignments. I remember how about week 8-9 every semester I would freak out about the amount of work I had left to do and complain to Tiarnee about it. Yet every time I would get them all done and still manage to pass. (& often more!) I remember how God was with me every step of the way, even though I couldn't see him most of the time. I remember the time that I passed a subject, simply because my assignment partner was about the smartest guy in the IT School. I remember teaching myself C++ as I completed my assignments because I couldn't understand what was said in class. I remember comparing my marks & work to my classmates and wondering how I was there with them.

I remember handing in my last assignment and thinking NO MORE ASSIGNMENTS EVER!!!! I remember feeling relieved and happy that I've made it this far. But most of all, I remember being thankfull to God. Thankfull that I've made it in-spite of all that I do not know. Thankfull that I'm 4 exams away from a Degree in Information Technology. Thankfull that I've found a job that I can make a career out of. Thankfull that I really enjoy this job & that I'll always be challenged and learning from it.

Yep. I remember the feeling of doing assignments like it was yesterday. Hang on, it actually was yesterday. No more assignments. Ever.

Procrastination

What is lazy initialization? Does the Singleton class display lazy initialisation? Explain. If lazy initialization is not being used, modify the class so it does.

I think I'm showing some lazy assignment initialization at the moment.

That question and the 8 or so underneath it have been staring at me for at least the last hour. What does one do to make themselves study? Are there any effective ways of managing the whole 'overwhelmed cos of lots of assignments' feeling?

Oh well, I guess I'll get there in the end. I have for my previous 5 semesters. Besides, with God on-side nothing is impossible right?

Time on

I've just got back to Uni again for the final run home. I've just moved into Time-on in the final quarter of my University career. In 8 weeks & 4 days I should hopefully have a University Education. Which on a global scale at least, makes me very fortunate!

So here is the closing stages of the game by statistics:

• 8 weeks & 4 days to go
• 5 weeks of classes
• 1 week of swotvac
• 2 weeks of exams
• 5 assignments
• 1 presentation
• 4 exams
  
• 1 massive (or more) celebration(s)
• 1 Bachelor of Information Technology w/ approx 18 months experience @ IBM.
  

I have a lot of work to do!

Worlds Combined

It was great to have 100+ people join us at the Woolshed Hotel in Bordertown for our engagement party last Saturday night. Almost all of our close friends & family there to "Help us celebrate the excitement of our engagement."(as the invite stated) The food was also excellent. Naturally, I ordered the plate with the most types of meat in it, which happened to be the 'Stockmans Grill' which featured:

• A small rump steak
• A chop
• A prawn
• Chicken
• Rashers of Bacon
  
• 1 Sausage

The deliciousness of the above was complimented with fries and later on some delicious mud-cake made by my mum! Our different worlds did combine, with friends from home, Uni friends from Ballarat & Adelaide, together there with family from both Melbourne, Adelaide and SE of South Australia. It was a wonderfull weekend of seeing people & celebrating.

It was so much fun I'm thinking of having another big celebration (or two) sometime in the next year or so!

Final Stretch

I've had the most amazing couple of weeks. I think I'm the most blessed guy going around. I can't help but wonder what the future holds, as I contemplate just how great life is at the moment. The old saying is true. No amount of money in the world could buy what God has given me.

So I've had to pull my head out of the clouds a bit, now that I'm back at Uni for my final semester. After some messing around, I've managed to get my timetable sorted out. While I can't wait to start my new job next year, there are some things about Uni that I'm going to miss. My timetable as it stands, has Fridays off & only 2 hours on Mondays & Wednesdays. I somehow don't think my 'full-time' work will only consists of 15-16 hours a week.

Saying goodbye to Tiarnee still sucked majorly. But I think it's easier to cope with knowing that the long-distance thing is going to be removed from our relationship forever in about 16 weeks.

Friendly Competition

Aaron & I are quite good mates. We both started Uni & Res. life at the same time, both studying I.T. and more importantly, we are Christian brothers. These many similarities have lead to quite a bit of friendly, but high-spirited competition between the two of us. The best example of this, began at the start of 2006, when we took up playing squash against each other. For a start I was beating Aaron convincingly, as I'd played before a lot more, then over time he improved and for the latter half of 2006 we where both quite even in skill level. However, this year that all changed, me having won only 2 of our weekly encounters all year to date. I almost literally had to beat him, in order to defeat him.

But as this list shows, squash isn't the only thing we've managed to make competitive:

• Best PC - Me winning at present
• Best Uni marks - Aaron
  
• Football teams - Spoils shared here, with Essendon fairing better overall in 2007, but with Port giving the Mighty Bombers a shock loss a week or so ago.
• His bigger res. bedroom Vs not having to cook for myself as much.
• Call of Duty: United Offensive - Only just taken it up again after a long break, Aaron used to have the wood over me, but after some practice, I seem to be slightly better, for the time being.

This competition has now reached the online world. For quite a long while my blog was racking up many more hits than his, but over the last month or so the tide has changed. His overall count has almost reached mine, his counter being at roughly 700, & mine (even though it seems to have disappeared of my main page, not sure why) being about 770 at present. If current trends continue, he'll overtake me in the next 5 - 7 days. But as of today, we're both on holidays, so with the extra time on our hands, expect a flurry of activity on this blog in particular over the next 2-3 weeks. So it would help me out a lot if you could all check back regularly...

Say What?

This is an actual (part) question from my Windows Programming Exam today. If you think you wouldn't understand it anyway, substitute ".dll" for "potatoes." The effect is still the same.

How will you be able to use the .dll to use in your project?

I think I passed the exam, how well will be very interesting to see.

Achievement

I don't have an endless supply of expendable labour, so to get my 3 assignments done by the end of the week, I can look forward to screen-sore eyes, caffeine and not much sleep. Hopefully by the weekend I'll have some sense of achievement.

But then you assure me.....

It's amazing how God can assure us.

Anthony suprised me by showing up in Ballarat out of the blue on Friday night. He collaborated with another one of my good mates who is down here & we meet up under the attraction of Pizza and bowling. Which meant that instead of a weekend of dirty rooms, assignments and boredom I had a weekend of mates, movies, eating out and laughs. Despite my initial internal apprehensions, (& shock/surprise) it was the best thing that could've happened. (or second best anyway!) It interrupted the cycle of Uni, sleep, work, Uni, Assignments, Work etc. Also, instead of sitting in my room feeling guilty about now doing work of some description I was able to get away from it completely.

Sometime during the duration of the weekend I was also reminded somewhat of my (our) own self-worth. God loves me enough to give me mates that will take a weekend out for no other reason than to 'catch-up' or 'hang'. It was a huge encouragement to be reminded that with God I've got this far through Uni, and the with his help I can get through my final year. I have more Uni work now than I've ever had, but 2 years later I'm starting to learn to actually manage it. Don't get to wrapped up in the immediate stresses and work of life. Because then you lose your perspective on other areas of life. Not only that, but you become (as I did) introverted & self focused. This leads to guilt, selfishness and negativity etc. It seems that as Spiderman 3 (which we saw) showed, it's very often that the greatest battle lies within.

In Summary:

Sometimes I think that I'm not any good at all
And sometimes I wonder why, why I'm even here at all
But then you assure me

I'm a little more than useless
And when I think that I can't do this
You promise me that I'll get through this
And do something right
Do something right for once

More Than Useless - Relient K

Upstairs Living

Brace yourselves for the most controversial and insightful blog ever to grace the thisisjonny.blogspot.com/ domain....

Prior to now, I have not divulged to the blogosphere (I think that's somewhere between the stratosphere and the atmosphere) the fact that my room on res. this year is Upstairs. Not a major revelation, unless you are familiar with Res workings here at Mt. Helen. The units here consist of 12 rooms, 6 upstairs and 6 downstairs. In a mathematically perfect world this would mean 6 boys downstairs and 6 girls upstairs. But as those of you that've ever woken up before 8am would know, we don't live in a perfect world. So I'm living upstairs with 5 other girls. While I could say many things about living alongside the opposite gender, for the time being I wish to concentrate of the peculiarities of the upstairs bathroom. Now I know you're all expecting & waiting for one issue in particular now that I've mentioned this, but it really won't hurt you consumers to wait a moment for your fill of blogging gratification. That topic is last.

1. Hair in the Sink - I walked into the bathroom one day & discovered hair in one of the 2 sinks. Not unusual in my past, but as the only male frequenting this room, I was a little perplexed as to how this hair had appeared. You see, I had not shaved at that sink at any time in the past 2 days. (Any longer than that & it probably would've been cleaned)
   
My logical brain struggled for solutions:

• Underarm Hair? No girl would do that publicly.
  
• Facial Hair? Mine was still on my face.
  
• Arm hair? The day I see a girl with arm hairs that thick... I'll be scared.
  
• Leg hair? How is it possible to do that?
  
• Head hair? The smallness of the hairs would hardly warrant that much effort.

Answer: I learnt a few days later that it's possible to shave your legs in a sink if you sit on the bench. While it's not confirmed, this is the most likely explanation.

2. Splash back - Now we come to the toilet. No waitup, it's not that topic yet. But I generally go to the toilet standing up, whenever I can. So imagine my horror, when on one of those occasions when I'm unable to go standing up, I spot some droplets of.... liquid on the toilet seat. Again, mostly males get the blame for this, but I know for a fact that it wasn't mine!!!!!! My logical brain didn't even try to understand this one. Guys can misfire, but girls..... AHHHH!

Answer: I've since discovered that occasionally after flushing, some water will splash out onto the bowl. Again, this is the likely explanation. But there are others.....

3. Toilet Seat - Here you go, this is what you where all waiting for. Surprisingly, this hadn't been an issue until last week sometime. When a green sign with black writing appeared at about eye-level above the Toilet: "If you pee standing up, can you please remember to put the toilet seat down." Why? If the issue is touching the place that numerous people have had their bare bottoms, I have to do it to pee. It's fair that if they expect me to put it down, I expect them to put it up. I used to think that the issue was seeing whatever wasn't flushed down last time. But that isn't the case here, as there isn't a lid. Just a seat. So there is no resolution for this one as yet. Time for me to go make a sign of my own.......

Mash-up

"UPDATE your blog"
- Sus

My head is a mash-up of stuff at the moment. Probably one of the reasons that this is my first blog in week or so. Some of the many things floating through my head are as follows:

• I have no idea about 'predicate calculus' and can't seem to grasp this new concept in the previously mentioned AI.
• I regularly feel out of my depth in any social situation outside of my normal friends. I'm quite shy.
• Being this far away from Tiarnee sucks, I know it's for a good reason and this is where God wants us etc. etc. But a weekend every 2-3 weeks is never enough and it's hard and not getting any easier. (Over 2 years later....)
  
• I said that I'll lead some studies at 'The Empty Chair' our small group that I've been going to whilst I'm at Uni. I've never done this before, so I'm a little bit nervous.
  
• I need to start researching and applying for Graduate jobs now! That's way scary, not to mention time consuming.
  

They're the really serious ones, a couple of less important ones are:

• Australia won it's opening World Cup match by 206 runs. The second highest World Cup victory in history. That's pretty cool.
  
• I found the funniest blog ever the other day: "The Dilbert Blog." It cracks me up something chronic. It's written by Scott Adams, the guy who invented and writes the Dilbert comics. He humerously points out the faults in alot of attitudes and ideas going around.
  

Artificial Intelligence

One of the Units I'm studying this semester is called "Artificial Intelligence." It's probably the most difficult & yet interesting subject I've done while being at Uni. Basically we get given riddles, and we have to use our knowledge of "Predicate Calculus" (knowledge I'm still developing) to solve &/ or prove them using prolog (A weird type of programming.) One riddle we got in class to look at was the good old: "I'm my own Grandpa" song as follows:

I Am My Own Grandpa
by Dwight B. Latham and Moe Jaffe

Many many years ago, when I was twenty-three,
I was married to a widow as pretty as can be,
This widow had a grown-up daughter who had hair of red,
My father fell in love with her and soon the two were wed.

This made my dad my son-in-law and changed my very life,
For my daughter was my mother, for she was my father's wife.
To complicate the matter, even though it brought me joy,
I soon became the father of a bouncing baby boy.

My little baby thus became a brother-in-law to dad,
And so became my uncle, though it made me very sad,
For if he was my uncle then that also made him brother
To the widow's grown-up daughter, who of course was my step-mother.

Father's wife then had a son who kept them on the run.
And he became my grandchild for he was my daughter's son.
My wife is now my mother's mother and it makes me blue,
Because although she is my wife, she's my grandmother, too.

Oh, if my wife's my grandmother then I am her grandchild.
And every time I think of it, it nearly drives me wild.
For now I have become the strangest case you ever saw
As the husband of my grandmother, I am my own grandpa.

I'm my own grandpa, I'm my own grandpa.
It sounds funny, I know, but it really is so
I'm my own grandpa.
I'm my own grandpa, I'm my own grandpa.
It sounds funny, I know, but it really is so
I'm my own grandpa.

This is the riddle we need to solve for our first assignment:

A farmer along with his wolf, goat and cabbage come to the edge of a river they wish to cross. There is a boat at the edge of the river that only the farmer can row. The boat can only carry the farmer with at most one other of the wolf, goat or cabbage. If the wolf is left alone with the goat, the wolf will eat the goat. If the goat is left alone with the cabbage, the goat will eat the cabbage. The problem is to find a sequence of crossing so that all four of the part get across the river safely.

Telling me the answer to the above riddle isn't the point, so it's not plagiarism by me doing this. I already know the answer to the above riddle, just not how to represent it in prolog.

It's interesting anyway.....

FINAL YEAR

So, I'm heading back to Ballarat tomorrow. To embark upon my FINAL YEAR OF UNI! (How does that feel Prof-praccers?) Anyway, I have to say. Mixed feelings all around. It's good that I'm going back to see my Uni mates, it's good that I'm going to be doing something productive with my time & not wasting it. It's UNREAL that I'm a final year. So close to a real job, real money & a real life. At the location of my choosing. I can't believe all that is laid out before me & all I have to do is take it. The possibility of moving to Adelaide is one that is almost too good to be true.

Yet, every time I think of this possibility three very distinct things happen:

1. I think of how awesome being that close to Tiarnee would be.
2. I get this horrible taste of the remaining dregs of the Murray River in my mouth.
3. I remember a saying that I once heard "we make sacrifices for what we love." 1 Corinthians 13 sums that all up really.

The flip side to those mixed feelings is that: Tiarnee will be 600km away, holidays are fun and I hate packing. (& unpacking!) Oh & the Internet isn't free any more.

On Debut

Welcome One, Welcome all, to the blog of me. Jonny.

For some, this has been a long time coming. For most, nobody cared.

But alas, Jonny has finally sold out to join the online blogging masses, although I was too slow to become Time Magazines Person of the Year. Hopefully, I will be able to develop one of those 'blogging voices' over time. But we shall see. I think about stuff thats going on around me quite alot, but it's rarely the same thing that I mull over constantly. So don't be surprised to see blog posts that are somewhat random and venting in nature.

I'll sign off this debut blog with the explanation of the title. I'm about to commence my Final Year of a bachelor IT degree. Which is pretty exciting. I'm also sending this from my own PC on our own small home network on a farm in the drought ravaged Western Wimmera region of Victoria. I'd like to think this makes my perspective somewhat unique, in that I'm a proud owner of a Shooters Licence, a Truck License, an Athlon 64 3400+ CPU w/ 1GB DDR400 RAM & Battlefield 2. I hope you find it interesting, challenging, funny or in some other way a positive experience.

To quote the apostle Paul:

I hope you will put up with a little of my foolishness; but you are already doing that.
- 2 Corinthians 11:1