From the Brain of Matty

where it's at (24.11.04 2:04 pm)

How do I hate Centrelink?

They restrict your every action to a set of ~~rules~~ guidelines, which are spelled out somewhere in a series of ~~volumes~~ documents, bound up by red tape and ~~hidden~~ conveniently placed in a ~~dingy sub-basement~~ public record house somewhere. And then when you inadvertantly break said guidelines (or they are changed without you being aware), you are severely reprimanded.
Apparently one may only receive payments as a full time student for two semesters more than the minimum length of your degree. Since I will take 3 semesters more, I will have to go to Centrelink on December 2, apply for a different type of payment (that is, unemployment / job seeking), then apply for some sort of temporary waiver because I am currently undertaking full time study that will improve my employment options. Why the f..hell they can't just give me the extra 6 months with what I'm on, while saving several trees and a lot of heartache in beurocratic bullsh..poo in the process, I don't know.
The letter I received said something along the lines of "Your Youth Allowance payments have been cancelled because our records indicate that you haven't completed your course in the specified time." So of course I freaked out. Apparently the letter wasn't meant to be sent yet, or if it was, it was meant to mention that it doesn't come into effect until December 1.

So there, that is part of why I hate Centrelink.

The Great CD Debacle

Apparently the CDs were picked up by a woman who works at Woolworths in the shopping centre on her way to work. She tried most of the evening to phone Sanity to tell them she found some CDs but couldn't get through. When she finally did get the message to them, they called us and said she'd drop them at the store on Saturday afternoon when Woolworths closes (5pm, an hour or two after all the other stores in the centre). We arranged to go into Sanity on Monday morning to pick up the CDs. When we got there, there were no CDs. So we went to Centre Management, but they had no idea. We went to Woolworths, and no one there knew anything about it - including the store policy/protocol that lost+found items are written up and kept in the receipts office. So the woman 1) didn't drop the CDs into Sanity on her way into work, which would have been just as convenient, 2) didn't drop them off at the time she'd arranged to, and 3) didn't do what she was supposed to by Woolworths either. How screwed up. And Sanity shouldn't have arranged for us to come in and pick them up until they had the CDs in their hands.

Other Stuff

I have my first exam tomorrow. Again, Dmitry the Mad Russian has given us his guarantee that "if you sit the exam you will pass, unless you are asleep". So I'm not too worried about that. Besides, the whole thing is about drawing pictures. I can make up pictures.

My next exam, on Monday, is for CP2002 - Operating Systems. It's the subject I failed last year because I didn't meet the minimum attendance, so I'm not too worried this time around. I went to all the classes and payed attention so I should do fine. Plus it's the only subject I've done any study for.

The final exam is CP3050 - Algorithms and Complexity. I'm scared pooless about that one. It's open book, which means I can take the textbook and my lecture notes in. Which means the exam is going to be horrifically difficult. And it's a subject where, when Bruce (the lecturer) explains it, everything is so simple and makes perfect sense, but when I attempt to do a question by myself, I don't even know where to begin. So I'm packing it. I just hope I don't fail, or if I do that everyone else does too so the bellcurve gets shifted. That's next Wednesday. I have one week to learn how to write algorithms. Gods help me.

I'm not dead.
Matty /<

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