Settling into things

9/12/2008

Temp taxi calibrator

Week 2

Even in this job I’ve somehow managed to become an
office-bitch again – answering phone calls, taking bookings and some light
documents work. Ah well… it beats working in the sun or rain, though it gets a
bit boring. I’ve managed to put two printers out of action from running out of
toner and mechanical failure from printing manuals to be folded up. When I
tried to be proactive (having read a chapter about it from Covey’s seven habits the
night before) and asked for some alternative work (since the box of finished
manuals was getting quite densely packed), the response I got was that he will
use his own initiative to allocate new
tasks as he sees fit. Meh. But this is the same guy who delegates the refilling
of an auto-stamper to his manager.

At least 3 Indian taxi drivers from cars that I processed
have trained as chefs. I also had an interesting conversation with a veteran
driver (who wasn’t really dressed for work and seemed to have some alcohol
vapours in his vehicle) who advocated nuclear power for everything and
basically down with the green power movement.

Mobile telephony

After having a PDA for 23 months, I’ve finally bought a
converged PDA phone (on clearance of course). Some might call it the ultimate
phone, or at least I-mate marketing would like it to be so [I-mate Ultimate
8150]. It burns through battery like how an endurance laptop computer might,
but the screen is quite nice and handwriting/handwriting recognition is quite
doable on a 640x480 screen. I can remember running Windows 95 on that
resolution. :O

For those wondering… I bought it outright since a plan
really wouldn’t cut it for me… $12.08 over 116 days (of that, I-mate registration wasted $1.40 on international SMS services without telling me). Yea, I’m going to have
surplus credits at expiry. Perhaps I’ve been using smspup too aggressively… though
it is much easier to type replies on a qwerty keyboard. Maybe I’ll be more
inclined to reply to messages with all these input methods. Although my
preferred on-screen keyboard hides in the corner now since it was designed for
the old standard 320x240 screen and is now unusable.

Readings

A bloke called Bertrand Russell reckons that all physical
things are made up from a collection of sensations instead of atoms…. hmmm

Mosquito

They lasted about 5 days in the winged stage stuck inside
the jar. Froze them for 6 hours, followed by a natural thaw. One mosquito larva
was still good after all that.

Trains/transport

No citybound trains for 15 minutes from 7:45 to 8:01 from
Box Hill today – not even a stopping all stations service. There was barely
enough space to read my book whilst standing (without poking somebody in the
back). Even on normal days there’s really not much space to read a newspaper.
Taxi drivers also commented that business has been quiet with the downturn.