My biannual week of torture is upon us. Next week Saturday I write my first of 5 tests within a 7 day period. Yay! Or not. Either way it means long hours and little sleep, well less than I am currently getting. With a pile of reports, practicals and home work to be completed till next week Friday, it seems there isn’t much time to study for Saturday’s Control Systems test, but time will have to be made.

Either way, it’s a break from classes, 5 tests later I’ll be off to Durban to go visit my sister for the week, and then it’s back to the grindstone for the last long haul before november exams and the oh so long December vacation. 4 weeks of which I’m required to work. I’ve applied for a job at the Mercedes-Benz factory in East London on a friend’s recomendation, but don’t know when I’ll hear back from them, so may end up going back to work for Silas Valley who I worked for in June and where I learnt a fair amount. Either way it will be good to do some work again.

I’m now also officially on the lookout for an XBox 360, still need to decide whether to pickup and old one second hand, buy a new old model or wait for the new 360s to come out in October. We’ll have to wait and see. Also need to get my Truck Driver’s licence done at some stage, hmm…

As usual my list of things to do is getting longer instead of shorter. My good friend hackaday popped up with this today. It’s a tiny circuit that you plug into the “bulb” input of your Canon (o Nikon apparently) DSLR nad it allows you to take photos at set intervals of your choice.

I have thought about doing something like this for a while, although all my ideas would have been much larger, and would have been externally powered. This one is tiny! Like seriously small and it drains a tiny amount of current from the camera itself. So now it’s just to get my hands on the items. The author claims the parts cost him less than a dollar, although I expect to spend a fiar bit more than that here in SA.

… and effort I finally got hold of a tablet for myself.

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As you can probably see I haven’t had much practice with it, But I figure the only way I’ll get better is to practice, as painful as it may be.

In any case I’m not disheartened, as I didn’t get the pen to write with, but rather to draw. That is my intention in any case. I’ve always wanted to be able to put more natural curves into the graphics and minor photoshopping I do on the PC, and the mouse movements my hand is capable of has always annoyed me.

That led me to eventually hunt down a Wacom Bamboo Pen from Expansys. The way Expansys works, I later found out, is that they have branches throughout the word which source products as cheap as possible, and then import them from that branch. Something which isn’t very clearly indicated on their website.

In any case, after a few days I get an e-mail form them saying they’ve sourced my Pen from France, and that it should arrive in SA after 20 days or so. Fine I though, I’m in no particular hurry. So slightly more than 20days go past, and no news. I send them an email and they tell me there’s been a delay and they’ll opnly be receiving it the following week, it’s then an expected 10days to deliver it to the Cape apparently.

So it was with quite some surprise that two days later I receive an e-mail with a tracking numberfrom Expansys. Great, I think, and my package is duly collected from the post office. Before Iget home that evening however, I receive an e-mail telling me not to open the package, as they’ve sent me the wrong one.

So I ge thome and open the package anyways, and lo and behold, they’ve sent me the more expensive, Bamboo Touch & Pen. Anyway, they basically sent me this product, and another dude who was supposed to get the Touch & Pen mine. So a week later, we both have our respective packages and I’m happy.

In unrelated news, my Absa Debit Card was declined on Saturday for the first time ever. I was extremely embarrassed, even more so after the second time I tried it. My only saving grace being my Credit Card, which luckily had some extra money left on it, and which decided to have mercy on me.

I was very taken aback at this. On teh lady at Spar’s teller, DECLINED, shows up in nice big letters on a red background, and I had no idea what to do. After the second time trying, I knew I had used the correct pin. I had drawn money that mornign, and knew I had more than enough money in my account and my daily limit was also no where near being exceeded.

The lady behind the counter looked annoyed at me wasting her time, and could not give me any information as to why my card had been declined. Her computer just told her my card doesn’t work. So after paying with my credit card, I left Spar and headed straight to the nearest computer with an internet connection.

After several recent card skimming scams and things happening in the nearby Somerset West, and the fact that I’d used an Absa ATM that morning, i suddenly feared for my money sitting in my account, including my recently aquired wages from my past 4 weeks work.

After finally getting onto my online banking, I was relieved to receive my SMS notification, and to see all my money sitting happily in my account. I then relaxed a bit and decided to give ABSA a call, to see if they could tell me why my card had been declined.

It boils down to no, they couldn’t. I even gave the one operator my card number but he couldn’t get very far with it. The other one told me if I wanted to check the status of my debit card I’d have to register for telephone banking, something I was in no mood to do. I actually still don’t know if my card works. One of the operator’s mumbled somethign about the Point of Sale system not having been working at some stage on Saturday, so I have taken slight solice in that.

But I was still so shocked to see that Declined showing up on the teller, and can’t believe how self-conscious I suddenly felt. I like it even less when I know it was in no way an event that I could control, I felt like I wanted to explain to the people behind me in the queue that, no, I have money in my account etc.

But anyway, for me, after 3 weeks of vacation, 4 weeks of work and a weekend, I’m back in Stellenbosch. My roommate is in China till Sunday, so I’ve got a single room. It’s nicely peaceful as I jot away on my tablet.

To the beginning of a new term.

I’ve always had an issue with people at major events who sit in the stands tens of metres away from an object they are desperately trying to caputre a photo of. Watching the opening of the Olympics or any major event, all you see in the crowds is hundreds of flashes going off the whole time. Flashes which try in vain to reflect off something with photgraphic worth. but alas.

Anyway, this comic reminded me of the issue and I couldn’t agree with him more.

This is also a reminder to myself to upload some documents here which I can never find and am always looking for.