A New Month
We’ve past the halfway point this year, and this also means a few things.
The GST (Goods and Services Tax – 10%) came into practice nationwide today. It’s pretty ridiculous… you now get train tickets and receipts from McDonald’s labelled “Tax Invoice” and the harbour bridge fare is now $2.20, meaning you have to scrounge around for extra loose change (some tollways are $2.50… does that mean they are now $2.75?).
It also means that Session 1 for uni has finished, and I have completed my 6 month industrial training period at Aspect. Holidays!!! No more 6am wake ups or long hours (I scheduled uni next session so I don’t start before 11am on any day :).
While I can’t say working at Aspect was a tremendous barrel of fun (full time, no pay), I can say it was a great learning experience. And it did have its moments. Like the evening they took down power to the building to do maintenance on the phone system. We decided then would be the perfect time to install a new server, since without power, no one would be logged on to the network anyway. At around 6pm I was sent up to tell everyone to log off, and then we waited a bit. About 10 minutes before power came down, someone had a sudden realisation that if power was going off – so too would the lights. Since rackmounting a server in pitch black isn’t something that is recommended, we just went home. And the time when the “Iloveyou” virus got on to the network. We’d controlled it, pretty much, but one computer on the network had let it loose. The tech services team got together to track who did it. Guess who? None other than the MD :) Everyone makes mistakes hehe. And I managed to pick up a few freebies there:
Yes, that is a Palm Vx they gave me at lunch yesterday :). Which means I now have two of them. I think dad wants it. There’s also 5 mugs, a bundle of writing pads and a stackload of courseware (plus an el cheapo sports bag which has since been misplaced).
8:00pm (GMT +10.00) 
