Linux workstation, yes. Coffee machine, no chance.

I just crashed the coffee machine at work. Yes, just a bog standard coffee machine. And I crashed it.

The HIVE and The TOILETS

I had my first go in The HIVE today. This is a HIVE:

a.k.a. a Highly Immersive Visualisation Environment. This was cool, because it was like having three seven foot tall computer monitors put next to each other, and really useful for doing correlations on. It was also uncool because it means I still have work to do Though I’m still a week ahead of schedule…

On a similar line (as in, also in my building in Sunbury), all the toilets have a sign saying “Please leave these toilets like you’d wish to find them” on the back of the door. I can see what them mean – flush it, don’t leave toilet paper everywhere, don’t sprinkle the seat. But is that really all you can want in a toilet? Personally, I’d like to open the door and not only find a nice clean toilet that doesn’t smell, but also a nubile young lady offering beer, chocolate, widescreen TV, and other services. I can imagine that being many mens’ fantasy. But to be honest, I don’t have any spare nubile young ladies laying around that I can leave in the toilet for the next guy, and even if I did, I doubt they’d return the favour.

The flip side to this is that other people will have different ideas about what they’d like to find in a toilet? Men – not my thing, but a good percentage of the population would like that. Sheep – even less my thing, but again, certain type would like that. But there’s worse – a quick google image search for anything at all will come up with some godwaful websites for, putting it politely, fans of bodily functions. Now that isn’t my idea of a pleasent toilet visit in any way.

So perhaps I should suggest that the sign should be replaced. Perhaps with a list of things that the toilet should be like, with a note at the bottom saying that nothing else will be tolerated. Because as much as I would like to find nubile young ladies and beer in the cubicle, the risk of sheep or worse just isn’t worth it.

And finally, given my new found love of listening to online things:
Douglas Adams lecture asking “Is there an artificial god?”

Internships and such…

This weekend, I had the misfortune to spend an evening in Slough. However, it wasn’t all bad as I spent the Monday being dined, not wined but given free non-alchoholic drinks all day, and interviewed by BP’s graduate recruitment team in the lovely setting of Durdent Court.

The interview was split into two parts: Technical (seismic line essentially); and Competency (chat about all the amazing things you’ve done). I’ll write more about these when I have time, but I’m rushed off my feet at the moment. Anyways, to cut a long story short, it turns out that myself, Ana, and Alana have all been offered places, making it a clean sweep for Cambridge and making me very very very bouncy

Oh yeah, and other things have happened in life since I last updated AGES ago, but more on that later…