Neon tubes like these. And loads of stainless steel and cool illuminated push buttons.
In other late breaking news, I'll be off for another jaunt around the world in a couple of weeks. Firstly for a bit of unpleasantness in Toronto and then on to perhaps a few days in London, and maybe somewhere in Asia for a couple of days on the way back.
Uni started this week. And, as per usual, I see some 1st year students making some very big university culture mistakes - here is my guide to get you up to speed
1. Just because you are at university, it doesn’t mean that every sentence should start with "Uni is SOOOO much better than high school because…" If you feel that you must express how much cooler University is, make sure you only do so amongst your 1st year peers. The rest of us already know how awesome Uni is, and are quite sick of hearing about it.
2. Craccum. Only first years read Craccum religiously. Although the idea of an unbiased student media is appealing, it quickly becomes apparent that the same people who ruin the "real" media ruin student media. One saving grace of Craccum is Alec and Stian’s attempt at intellectual writing and poorly composed photos. While not able to be enjoyed in public for fear of embarrassment, it is acceptable to read this part Craccum when you are alone, on the toilet for instance – but only if you use it to wipe your ass when you’ve picked through what’s worth reading.
3. This one is mostly for the girls – Just because you are physically going to town, this does not mean that you need to dress like you are going clubbing. You *must* dress appropriately for the occasion – at university, I do more sleeping than clubbing, so I dress like I’ve just got out of bed. Work out what you do most at uni, and dress for that.
So now you are at University, you want people to finally treat you like an adult. And they will, as long as you can keep up the pretence of not being 1st year. As long as you relax, and don't act like your friends, and follow my excellent advice, people will be asking you for directions in no time.
So I gave T4W their 1st final mixdown of their EP last night. At the gig tonight, I got some feedback. And I quote - "It sounds like ass" and "It needs alot of work". Thanks guys. I wonder what they think I've been doing.
Green Day, Simple Plan and Sommerset at North Shore Events Centre, 5th March 2005.
One hell of a gig. Sommerset were alright - their sound was fairly messed up and they had next to no stage presence. Simple Plan were a bit better - their sound still sucked but they had a bit more energy. Green Day were.. awesome.
From the second they hit the stage, they were working the crowd. First Tre came out on stage in a bunny suit and chugged a beer, then they all came on. The sound was tight, they knew what each other was doing and what was happening; everything ran perfectly. Billie Joe had complete control over the crowd. He stood, centre stage, with his arms raised and everyone went insane. He put his fingers to his lips and there was absolute silence. He pointed to the bleachers and they got up out of their seats - every single one of them.
The set list was wicked - they definitely know what songs their fans like, from old & new albums.
They were on stage for roughly two hours - with a less than five minute break for Billie to change his shirt after Minority. There was fireworks, and pyro special effects galore.
They brought 3 guys on stage to take over from them.. apparently the drummer was some guy from Big Band last year that could never keep time. The bassist was awesome - his name was Mike also and he was wearing a Led Zeppelin shirt, that guy was born to be onstage. The guitarist got pulled out of the pit from right in front of me, got onstage, took all his clothes off and promptly made out with Billie Joe. And as if that wasn't cool enough - the guys got to keep the guitars. Then Billie got the bassist to do a stage dive.
At one point, Billie cracked out a couple of beasty water guns and was hammering the crowd with them (it made a refreshing change from the roof dripping with swear). One thing I probably wasn't expecting was the level of passion he has behind this latest album. He introduced the band - "Ladies and Gentlemen, the best bass player in my life - Mr Mike Dirnt!!" and "Ladies and gentlemen, a mand who needs no introduction, so fuck him! Tre Cool!" and finally "And, I'm George W. Bush. Otherwise known as Asshole!" There were constant references to "those rednecks" and we got a pep talk at the end about us being the leaders of tomorrow and whatnot. He definitely believes in what he's telling you.
Anyway, that was the concert. It was fucking awesome, I'm bruised as hell but I enjoyed every second of it.. I think anybody else who was there will agree with me.
...Alyx...
PS: You weren't supposed to be able to get cameras or camera-phones in.. but some people are always breaking the rules. You can check some photos out here.
Dom: I asked you to go to the Green Day concert. You said you'd never heard of them. How cool is that?!!But I bought a new guitar amp! An awesome Marshall JCM 900 to be exact! It’s the amp I’ve always dreamed of. At the same time, I picked up 2 rack-mount graphic equalisers, so I can pretty much get any tone I want with the flick of 62 EQ bands.
Alrighty, so as most of you probably don't know, the LTSA made a mistake on my learner's license.. they made my year of birth 1982 which would make me 22 years old. The correct info should be 1989 making me 15 years old. Of all the things to fuck up?? Makes you wonder.
Anyway, because the Enrolling to Vote people check for unregistered voters in the LTSA records, they saw me, at 22, being an unregistered voter. So they sent me a form. I've filled it out and posted it, and I'm waiting to see if they register me. I entered my correct year of birth on the form, so if they miss that, then I'll be 15 and registered to vote in New Zealand.
CONTACT FRONT! 50-AXIS-ENEMY IN BUSH-RAPID FIRE!
Hey Hey Hey
Who would have thought that we would get till 3.00pm in town today? So I have a little more time to fuck around in little old Blenheim. I'm in a Japanese Restaurant (the place I was at last time is closed.....big surprise some tourists fucked up one of their comps).
Things are still on a hair pin, but I just try and deal with it, not much else you can do eh? I really miss listening to T4W on the weekends and shit, I mean fuck, they DON'T EVEN GET THE ROCK DOWN HERE!!! Thats pretty fuckin' arse I can tell you, luckily my CD's keep me kinda sane. (GO SOUNDGARDEN!!!!) Luckily most of my mates are into rock so thats pretty sweet. The other male AEOP (There's me, the other guy and two chicks, one who I catually kinda know through hockey) is a MUSO!!!! Who would've thought eh? He's an awesome vocalist and also plays guitar wickedly been in a band, played at BDO, kinda fills in for the T4W gap in my life at the moment, but damn I could do with a beer. this is the eighth week without alcohol, freakin' another 5 weeks to go, AHHHHH!!!!! Sorry I shouldn't complain, I put myself here:-) Funny, my Dad was talkin' to me the other night and he asked if we were allowed beer, because he was allowed beer on his Recruit course after 6 weeks (that was 1975 though......the Air Force has changed in those 30 years......30 years?!!)
Good thing is that most of the academic tesats are out of the way now, we got a whole week shooting down in West Milton in Christchurch next week, no cell phones, so thats unlucky. Hope I can pick up the Rock though on my Cd Walkman. After we qualify (hopefully, I'm a pretty shit house shot!!) then its two more weeks on base then our big field exercise at Dip Flat then if I'm still here, and not kicked out for being shit - GRAD WEEK!!!!.
We had a one night taster of a camp out on Tuesday night and that was pretty sweet. We did a bit of combat patrolling which was cool (hence the title) and cooked up rat packs and shit. Best part of Rat packs = sweetened condensed milk, its Oh sooooo sweet. Almost as good as sex in the bush, but not quite;-) (Not that I'd know but anyway) We were patrolling with blanks so when we fired it went bang and sounded almost like a real war, but no blood. Thing is your not meant to fire them closer than 30 metres because you still get fragments flying out as shrapnel and stuff. Got back on Wednesday morning after trying to shave in the dark and clogging my razor with camo paint. On inspection a few of us got mailed for having cam paint still on our necks and in our ears (yep - you cam IN your ears as well!) The stuff sticks like flies to shit!
If your wondering (and if Dom and Justin put this bullshit up as news!) AEOP stands for Air Electronics Operator. (The UT = Under Training) Basically, if and when I pass my Recruit Course, I'll become an acting CPL, then after I (hopefully) pass my training to survive, escape and evade, kinda know how to fly planes and operate all the radar, sonar and electronic warfare gear on the P-3K Orion's that our Air Force has, I get a brevet saying I'm air crew and get to fly all over the world doing fuck all:-)
Haha still ages to go and a lot of tests I can still fuck up on before I get there in the middle of next year though, so I really shouldn't jump ahead to much. Heck, I'm still a grade- A fuckwit Recruit! Its cool to catch up on the website with all the news going on back in Auckland. Even though we're all pretty good mates here, we all still miss the mates we have at home, and man, I miss shooting the shit with you guys and being able to DRIVE! Man you sure take things for granted when your bumming around at home I'll tell you that, I know I did.
I know this is a frigging huge news item, but I feel I'm spillin' my guts for the past few weeks, so IF your still reading here's some other shit. We had a 9km run on Tuesday morning before we went camping. The dude who came first is also the only dude who's faster than me in the run test. We finsihed the race 5 seconds apart! I just couldn;t pull out the winning effort, know wonder I suck arse! Weird thing is it only took us 34mins25secs to do it which was weird, I was doing 6.8km in around 30mins at home. Bought a 500gm back of M & M's the other day...along with about 2kg of ther jumk food. Man, we eat soooo much shit down here its not funny. I reckon I'm gonna be a diabetic when and if I graduate!!! We've got the Army Battle Efficiency Test (BET) coming up soon too. Its a forced pack march for 12km in les than 1hour 45 minutes, more pain, hurrray! PT's a bit weird, somedays it will be sweet, then other days, we'll get our arses kicked severly. WEe had a pool session this week that left me almost crawling from the showers (only 30secs to have a shower, or else you get your arse raped by the CPL's (Corporals).
Oh well, enough of my complaining, I better let you guys get on with your way more exciting lives. Man, somdays I'll be falling asleep in class with the CPL yelling at me to wake the fuck up or else I'll be wearing his boot in my arse (seriously one CPL loves the thought of putting his size 12 boot in anyone's arse) and thinking of how you guys are doing at UNI, and going on to careers that'll actually make a difference, hanging out in town and shit and well......yeah I miss it, and I guess a pussy as well........anyway, better go walkiong past all the pubs I can;t drinkl at eh? Hahahaha
Hope you enjoyed this SITREP, maybe I'll send another next weekend. Cheers for your support and everything its a huge moral boost!!!!
"This is Air Force Cadet Adult S. Unka, OUT"
Edit: The image was causing problems with some versions of IE, and has been removed. The album cover is here if you want to see it.
I fly out to Toronto via LA. It's going to be a long day considering after about 20 hours of flying I will be arriving in Toronto about 2 hours after I left Auckland.
Still, I'm quite excited about getting up there to do my bit and then head on for a whirl wind holiday in London and then Honolulu on the way back. I've been putting in some serious hours the last couple of days getting everything ready to make things go as smoothly as possible, but then I still know that I'm going to feel excellent next Thursday when I fly out of Toronto and leave the site work behind!
Might try and and drop in every now and then to check on what's happening here, and maybe do some updates on my webshyte too, maybe. But in any case, see you all in 3 weeks.
Now behave, ok. And somebody please draw a comic! ;-)
| Astronaut | Cosmonaut |
| Send us up | Best you've got |
| Once I'm out | Way too far |
| I'll beam you shots | From the stars |
| As long as you | Promise to |
The musically inclined will notice the awesome on-beat/off-beat swap.
Tell me if your getting tired of shithouse news from a dumbass recruit! Yep, its Unka again, and as I noted in the last news item I submitted, we've just had a week of shooting down in Christchurch. Good thing was, its an Army facility and so, it was dirty as shit. Hence every morning, you'de wake up and smell the beautiful dead sheep that had died in the barbed wire fence down by the range, hmmmmm what a way to wait for breakfast haha. But the trip wasn't to "demanding" haha. No bed packs to make, just manky sleeping bags which were WAY to warm.
Anyway, apart from that the trip went ok. I actually qualified on the Steyr rifle, so I was pretty happy I guess. I got 36 shots out of 50 so I qualified for a "first class" pass. The next up is marksman, and the lowest is second class, then of course. a FAIL. Funnily enough, the best phase of my shoot was the standing, unsupported at 100m (No supported shoots for the airforce Chris, then again, no 300m shoots either haha. We had the prone ans standing at 100m, and the sitting, kneeling and prone at the 200m), I got 9/10 for that so that was a surprise, it just felt good that morning. We also got to live fire the C9 LSW or Minimi (M249 SAW for you american orientated people) machine gun, 60 rounds (same calibre as the steyr though, 5.56mm)!! Oh man that was pretty sweet. Don't know if any of us hit the target, most of us just went for it as you do! We also did a night shoot, and again, for some reason my double taps are doing ok, of course none of us could see the freakin' target, some guys even hit the mound! (the bit below the targets) So yeah, thats all the live firing over for this course. We fire with blanks from now on at Dip Flat (the LAST HURDLE - 7 days of pain - gulp!) Thats happening in a couple of weeks.
We also went to the Airforce Museum, which was pretty cool. Some good exhibits on aircraft and stuff. Most people though looked like they were going to fall asleep. We did heaps of that on the bus down and back.
Funnily enough there isn't that much more to say, it was a relatively quiet week in Christchurch. Week coming is going to SUCK though, we got pack marches and heaps of shit, ahh I guess I'm just a pussy!
Really starting to miss all you guys and girls back in Auckland, after hangin' with the same guys for 9 weeks it gets a little tedious. Hopefully I can pass this course (Still got lots of hard shit to go and 4 weeks without a cold beer AHHH!) and catch up with all you hard working uni people, at least your doin' something that counts haha. Nah, like I said, its cool to have your guys support and look forward to shouting you guys at the bar if I'm good enough to pass this course:-)
"Sierra Echo, this is Uniform November Kilo Alpha, OUT."
The last week has been interesting way down here in Blenheim. I'm going to the Omaka Airshow after this and it looks pretty cool. However, if I buy M & M's from the supermarket before I go there, I'm pretty sure they aren;t gonna last the trip to the airfield and back to barracks aka "home". Howvever this moral debate can wait.
Yes, this will be my last news item for a while. We go to Dip Flat next Friday, and hence don;t get next weekend off, we'll be in the bush, shooting blanks (not that kind guys, not that kind...) and eating rat packs and finally the best part, living off 4 hours of sleep a night! Yes it is the last big exercise before graduation, however, you can still be kicked out at any time, as always. I'm a pussy, and fuck, Dip Flat sounds hard......so yeah, I gotta get my arse into gear hopefully not fail miserably at the last hurdle, although they'll probably find something to kick my arse about and maybe kick me out. Here's hoping they feel good and pass me!(Doubt it....:-))
Anyway good to hear all you guys are doing awesome at Uni, and getting into it. Really missing the social aspects of life at the moment i.e. Beers and chicks. We have chicks on the course (22 in fact) but most of them are taken or have taken a shine to each other (I'm not kidding.....GET THE CAMERA!!) we'll see at the end of course function, if I make it. Yes, stress levels are high as we enter this critical last phase of the course. Funnily enough we get Easter Monday off (probably cleaning...so not really) but we didn't get yesterday off. We had assessments.
They were quite cool actually. We had a VCP (Vehicle Checkpoint) Assessment, yelling HALT! and all that good stuff, searching the car for dangerous items, the challenge/searching people procedure and also SAR searching in blacked out buildings with blindfolds. Actually got to drive a car yesterday as part of the VCP assessment, first time in 10 or so weeks, fuck it was wierd, I just wanted to get out on the highway!!!
Haha, we also had a drill assessment on Thursday, which consisted of us in groups of six or so marching around the "drill square" or parade ground doing all sorts of drill procedures like ground arms, take up arms, turns on the march.......you know, walking round looking like idiots!
By some bizarre twist of human nature or not, (maybe because it was a public holiday) I managed to pass everything "GASP'. Anyway everyone here is just looking to get by and hopefully not "fuck out" as it were. Excuse the language, thats waht you get for being in here....even Christians go bad, my bed space mate is a good christian (no offence to you guys out there, I'm serious) and he's become quite liberal in his language of late, and quite vindictive and cynical....hehe thats what you get for living in a dorm for 10 weeks with 3 more to go! Actually this is the second to last town leave I get. As I said, we are in the bush this time next week, and also, the weekend after that I'll be back here for my last town leave......I graduate (hopefully......fat chance but I can always dream!) on the Thursday so yeah...to far away yet though.
Not really that much for me to waffle and bullshit about.....although I've managed to fill up a fair bit of Internet space with crap...so yeah, good luck for your terms tests guys and girls at Uni I know you guys will kick ass wickedly. Keep on drinking and keep on shagging, you only miss it when you don't have it!!!!
Have a good one guys, might just be able to type again in two weeks time, unless the obvious happens and fuck out occurs (hope not...)
'Sierra Echo this is Uniform November Kilo Alpha OUT..."
Deja vu, anyone?
I was reading through old news items, and I read the one I posted last year, about Easter. It's funny, because it's almost a year later, and none of those sort of beliefs really hold any personal significance for me anymore.
I guess it just intrigued me to see that in less than a year, I'm a whole different person. This year, I don't give a fuck what you believe. I won't post lyrics at the end of my post, and you can think about chocolate all you like. Easter this year is 5 days off and an English Assessment.
Enjoy.
So I've been experimenting with AVR programming. And it turns out I am a god. It told me so! I'm building a Guitar Effects Controller, that is 1 rack unit, that can optionally include up to 4 different effects, and send 4 sepertate control signals, with 4 programmable patches, an assignable control signal inverter, and a lead booster. *deep breath*.
