So I have just managed to survive a rather stressful day at work today. That said, it was also somewhat amusing and entertaining, so it wasn’t all bad. I randomly ran into Boshra, which was cool (if I didn’t know better, I’d swear she was stalking me …). And it was very amusing to hear my manager describe one of the guys organising an upcoming conference when the latter called to ask, “hey, we need you guys to create 25 generic accounts for us, in the next ten minutes please, if not sooner”. I think that was a case of what HR-buzzword types call a lack of direct and effective communication.

On the topic of my job, let me just say that the Ascent 2000 Building Automation System, which is the i386 program running on QNX that controls every electronic lock on the UWA campus, is quite seriously teh suck. You’d think, being as it is a computer system, that if I said “here’s a bunch of students that have access to Door In This Building, and I now need them to have access to Door In Other Building” that you could just copy across the list of students, set the door you want, and be done with it. But no, the Ascent 2000 system is way too cool to allow something like that. Instead, you have to print out the first list of students (on a form-feed printer, no less), then tick off the ones that already have access, then MANUALLY TYPE THE CARD NUMBERS IN ONE BY ONE. And guess who got that job?

Meh. To conclude, I might continue with what I’ve just decided to be a trend for random state political commentary. I was watching Stateline tonight, as one does when one is sitting in front of a TV on Friday with insufficient energy to think, and there was a debate between our esteemed Health Minister and his Opposition counterpart. Now Jim McGinty is a pretty cool guy — I got to shake his hand not once but three times (IIRC?) way back at my high school graduation. He was, however, totally outclassed by this Liberal guy. Poor Jim looked like he was hiding behind a barrage of statistics (hang on, he has the health portfolio … of course he was), while Dan Sullivan looked lucid and on top of things. Intriguing, particularly since (as the presenter pointed out lots of times) the Gallop government did get in largely on the promise of Fixing The Health System ™.