Omegle - The bottom of the Internet

So I figure it's time to put this on my Blog. It's something I wrote shortly after my other pieces that can be found below.

So in March 2010 when I was getting drunk with my friend/housemate every night ($3-5 bottles of Red, most nights it was 2 bottles each would get us fairly gone) we found something in our drunken state - omegle.com, I'm sure a lot of you know what this is, but for those that don't; in a nutshell you get hooked up with a complete stranger anywhere in the world via video chat.

I've never seen so much penis in my life, we thought it was hilarious, video stream after video stream lasted 1 second as you saw something you really wished you had not seen, but for whatever reason - you keep clicking. I'm sure a lot of you know how bad this site is and chatroulette I'm told is worse, but man I have no idea why I didn't close this site down instantly, it is the absolute pit of the internet. If you picture the internet as a ladder system; then omegle.com is right at the bottom. It is the hell of the internet.

My housemate decides to go to bed and I give it a few more clicks before a female appears on the screen, we start chatting. She's an Indian girl and looks gorgeous, but of course that doesn't really matter because it's not like you can hook up over omegle.com, I ask her where she is from - "Australia" she responds.
Me: O cool, I'm in QLD, you?
Her: Me too!
Me: O ok, I'm on the northside, in Boondall
Her: ?? I'm 2 suburbs over, 10 minutes away.

What was going on? Not only was she not male, not masturbating, she lived down the road from me. What were the odds? Seriously what were the odds, and even more remotely - we were getting along. Turns out she had just turned 18 and I'm a few months away from being 26, it doesn't seem to phase her though.

Before not too long I was really really tired and had work the next day, it felt like moments had passed but we had been chatting for over 2 hours. I didn't want to stop talking to this girl, when I closed the browser she would be gone, at the risk of sounding like a freak who just wanted a random hookup I explained to her that I was tired and asked for her number, she agreed and gave me her number, I quickly sent her a quick SMS to give her mine back and went to bed.

I remember laying in bed thinking about how crazy it was that I just gave a girl from Omegle my number, the next few days we text a little and I ask her if she would like to go see a movie and meet up, she agrees and we head to Chermside cinema. I got there just on time and I ring her to see where she is, I see this small Indian girl, long black hair with a cute dress approaching me with her mobile - the whitest teeth with the biggest smile she could produce, she says Hello and I say hello back, then she did something I wasn't expecting, she latched onto my hand with hers with a firm grasp - she wasn't going to let go.

We were early for the movie she wanted to see so we went down to the pub below for a chat before hand, she never let go of me the entire time as we talked, I couldn't believe I was with this gorgeous girl.. she was A LOT younger then me but there felt like there was no age gap at all, I explained in person about my situation with my house and that I owned it with my ex and it didn't phase her. We went up and watched the movie.

I want you to imagine the worst chick flick you have EVER had to see - double it. This movie F*&king SUCKED, I can't even remember it's name, it was bad. And we watched the entire thing. Worst movie ever - but the company was great.

The movie was over and I had offered her a lift home but the thing was I had a company car at the time and that particular weekend I was stuck with the work van, this thing looked like serious serial killer status. So I explained to her my situation, a nervous laugh breaks out. I can't blame the poor girl, she gets in and we start driving, this thing is a beast, it revs like crazy and feels every bump in the road. She explains to me she doesn't want to go home yet and wants to hang out with me, so we go through the new Clem 7 tunnel which was free at the time and just go for a drive. We start to laugh at how bad the car is and decide to go through maccas drive through in it - we get a soft serve cone.
We agree to go back to my house, by the time we got there it was fairly late, I give her the tour of the house and introduce her to my housemates cat and I drive her home, she leaves still smiling - I think I make a good impression.

The next day I ring her and ask if she would like to go down to the Gold Coast with me sometime, she agrees and we go on Sunday. We make conversation for the entire drive and there's never an awkward moment, the weather is perfect and the beach is amazing, we lay on the sand for a while talking and eventually go to a local cafe to get something to eat. We go for a walk, she still has my hand and we eventually kiss, not bad! We have a talk and decide to start "Seeing each other" ... but, theres a catch.

So shes Indian and born in Australia.. but her parents aren't, they are fairly traditional. Her family knows about me but has decided that I can't date her for 2 reasons.
- I'm not Indian
- I'm too old

But she explains to me that she has feelings for me and she still wants to try, maybe her parents will come around.

In hindsight... I should of called it quits then, but for whatever reason I didn't and kept persuing it, I agreed to see where this journey would take us.

So I'm now dating a hot 18 year old Indian girl whose parents don't approve. Sounds good.

It's also important to note that this point in time was 4 months after I broke my arm and my arm was still useless, it was pretty much a dead weight attached to me that got in the way, driving that van I was talking about earlier was not easy for me.

So we go on our 3rd meet - I agree to go bowling with her, because I love bowling. So we rock up to the bowling centre and we purchase 2 games, I put on the shoes and go up to the lane. It only then dawns on me... You F*&king idiot, You can't bowl. You can't lift the balls... it's a disaster, I start freaking out. I tell her I can't and that the ball is too heavy, she laughs it off and I use the kiddie ramp things that make the ball go down. That was embarrassing, I couldn't be happier to get out of there as quickly as possible, we went back to my place and watched a movie after and I took her home.

From then on in - it was everything you would expect from a new relationship, constant phone calls, constant texts, the "lovey dovey stage" if you will.

We have many many great times together, we go to a few parties, we have a few weekends away, football games, she comes and watches me play indoor soccer, we become comfortable.

Fast forward to 2011 - I get the news about the police force - its a dead end, she tries to cheer me up but no words really make me feel better, then I found out about Western Australia and I tell her about what I'm thinking of doing.

She appears flustered, stunned, her brain switches on and eventually spits out some words - "That's really good ... and really bad".

She was hurting, but eventually she tells me that if I want this bad enough that I should give it a go. I do want it bad, I want it really bad, I buy a plane ticket to Perth in July to go give it a look and see. I watch Celtic play the Perth Glory, I go visit the academy. I don't get goosebumps very often but as I walked up to the big monolith sign that said "WA Police Academy" chills ran down my spine and every hair stood up on my body. I knew at that second I had to try it.

So I went home and let her know, we agreed that long distance would just be way too hard and she couldn't come with me because she still lived with her parents who didn't approve of me anyway.

We spent the next few months with each other as much as we could. The last few days with her were incredible, we had an amazing dinner date that I will never forget, she watched me as we held hands, tears flowing down her eyes, happy tears and sad tears all at the same time.

She spent the last day with me, we had lunch together at our favourite takeaway - Nandos and then a cafe dinner near the airport, she drove me to the airport and stayed with me right till I boarded the plane, tears streaming from her face - they were sad tears this time. I didn't cry, I gave her a hug and smiled at her as I left through the gate. I took my seat on the flight and tears rolled down my face, lucky she never saw it.

Physical Test

What a day, today was physical day. The requirements for the physical can be found at: http://www.stepforward.wa.gov.au/pdf...0specific_.pdf

Before I get into today, I want to talk about the week leading up to it.

Training, training, training, I had been practicing and training this regime for a year, once a week minimum.
This close into it, I stopped all my other workouts. I wanted to dedicate to this.

My schedule was this:
5AM - Go down to Park and do entire physical test.
7AM - Be at work.
5PM - Go down to Park and do entire physical test.
7PM - Start other job that I do from home.
10PM - Sleep.

Rinse, repeat.

I would not only do this, but I would do the beep test with a fully zipped up hoodie, and I would move the markers to 21 meters instead of 20. From what I've read this is a bad thing because it can stuff up your timing, but I wanted to make it that little bit harder and it worked well for me.

On Saturday/Sunday I may as well have wrapped myself in cotton wool, I tried to do as little as possible, everything hurt and I'd been training myself to complete exhaustion twice a day. Once again, this is a bad thing and considered overtraining, but I know my body and I know how to listen to my body, and I knew I could take it and I wanted this more then anything, and I wanted to be sure I gave this absolutely everything.

So I did virtually nothing, Till Sunday night just as the sun was setting, I was just so eager I went down to the park and I practiced the agility test, over and over, swearing at myself yelling at myself to go faster, I think I was there for over 3 hours, going over it, and over it, and over it. I went home, had a shower, ate 2 huge bowls of wholegrain spaghetti with kangaroo mince, put on my 2XU leggings and went to sleep.

I woke up at 6AM, had my oats and protein shake, hydrated and prepared myself.
I arrived at the recruitment centre and took a seat, others quickly started coming in, a few familiar faces from the testing phase and a few non-familiar.

Around 30 of us were walked across the facility to the gymnasium.

Now, I had been training in a hot Perth outside environment. I was now in an enclosed air conditioned gym. Another thing was the markings of 20 metres seemed so much shorter, this is due to the enclosed environment rather then then middle of the park.

2 Personal trainers introduce themselves, and around 5 police officers with clipboards sit against the wall.

This is where the differences to my training and the real thing start to kick in. My warmup in my testing had been a light jog for about 5 minutes, then high knees for 2 minutes, 2 minutes of butt kicks, then 2 minutes of starjumps, followed by 30 pushups.

The real test? A light jog around the basketball court, half a court of high knees, the other half buttkicks and then some pivot turns followed by some static stretches. I was in shock, where was my warmup?!! That was too easy! I wasn't puffing at all, in fact it was too cold in this room!

They had us put on some bibs and allocated into 2 groups, I was in group 1 and we had to start the beep test immediately, once again another change form how the website described it. We are given a 2 metre "safety" marker on both sides, if we don't reach the line, no big deal, just have to hit those safety markers, also, don't have to be fully over the line, just 1 foot, I did the entire thing with a smile on my face till I looked over and it was just me and 1 guy still going, already well past the required 10.1 level. Knowing I had to save some energy for the battery of tests still to come and knowing I had passed and this guy wasn't showing any signs of wanting to stop either, I let him have his glory and walked off the court. I was sweating a bit and had a quick sip of water. We had to wait for the 2nd group to do the beep test and we all had to come back in again.

It was then time for the Glock firearms test, we had to rack the firearm and shoot 10 times, then hold the glock in a racked position for 4 seconds 3 times over. It wasfairly straight forward and I did it with ease, I saw some of the girls struggling with the movement and not sure if they eventually got it or not. The push/pull machine was next, where I had to push a machine in with a 20kg suspended weight and Arc around the machine 6 times, then same with Pulling the machine. I did it on first attempt. 1 more obstactle to go, the dreaded agility test. Which is a Modified Illinois Agility test of 9.14 metres, to be completed in under 17.0 seconds. I was able to successfully get this about 75% of the time, you would have 2 attempts. So I turn around to look at the course. on the website in the diagram it is shown as a Square, but the cones were so much closer here in a rectangular fashion, almost cutting the course in half of what I had been practicing. They called out our names 1 by 1 and we got into position.
APPLICANT READY. START, The first guy forgets to weave through the markers twice, we all see it and grit our teeth. He is told he was unsuccessful.
The next person gets up, and starts to do it, as shes coming back I yell out "DONT FORGET TO WEAVE BACK" she does it, and on the final sprint home I yell out "COMON SPRINT IT HOME!" she sprints as hard as she can, looks over at the instructor and a "Ok" and a nod is given. every person after that, me and a group of guys direct them through the course at every manuvoure, encouraging them to really give it everything they have. Some make it and some don't.
My name is finally called. This is going to sound soooo silly, but I really psych myself up, I'm going to sprint this as hard and as fast as I can. As I get into position, I pretend I'm Vegeta from Dragonball Z, That sort of furosity and energy is what I want to posess, I will go as fast as I possibly can, I have trained for too long, too hard and want this too hard to fuck this up. I'm 17 seconds away from beling a Police officer, I am 8 markers away. I can do this.

START! I blast off, I grit my teeth as hard as I can and i mean GRIT them, I give every drop of energy into every leap, I pivot the turns and then I bring it home, and I mean I really give it every bit of juice I have, I look over to my right to the instructor, "OK" *NOD*, "Next Applicant!"
I pound my fist in the air, I can taste blood in my mouth and I'm panting like crazy, the blokes congrats me and we all shake hands, We shout encouragements at the other applicants,some don't make it and I really feel for 1 guy who must of been so close.

The people that remain all have smiles on our faces, we joke about eating some junk food and going to the pub and we leave. 1 bloke who didn't make it I saw outside. I let him know he did really well and must of been so close, I give him my phone number and let him know that if he wants a training partner I'm happy to meet up with him and train with him and get him over that line.

So that's it, I'm done. I find out in 6-8 weeks if I'm in or not. I can finally rest, even if I don't get in, I know I gave this my all now, there wasn't 1 thing I could of put more energy in, and I won't walk away from this saying "Oh gee, if only I tried harder" so I'm happy now, regardless of the outcome, in my mind, I've been successful.

Tales of the Ghetto

I’ve finally made the effort to put my “Tales of the Ghetto” forum thread from OCAU onto my blog, this entry also being placed into “The Pool Room” and having just under 9000 views, enjoy!

Hello all,

So time for a funnier less serious story from me   Enjoy!

I'm here to tell you a story of a place that seems to unreal to be real, but rest assured - this place existed and I lived through it to tell the tale.

I'll start right from the start, I was 17 and an avid gamer, on the first weekend of every month we would attend "CQGL" a once a month LAN that was the highlight of my existence, 50+ gamers would gather and we would play computer games. I loved it; I loved it so darn much that I would practice all month round just to appear next month to show everyone how much I had improved.

It wasn't just the games, it was the atmosphere, I was with people who loved this stuff as much as I did.

I was just finishing school when my grandfather passed away, my mum moved to New Zealand quickly after to look after my grandmother, who had never been alone her entire life. My mum told me and my older brother that we could stay living in the house; we would get 3 other people to move in (5 bedroom place).

We got 3 friends to move in all around the same age and I started going to university. Before anything else though - we partied. Many 18th birthdays were occurring around that stage and every night there was a different party to attend to. We were out of control, no parents to tell us we were staying up to late and no rules - I was living the dream.

But we always made sure the first weekend of a month was available - it was CQGL weekend, I let nothing prioritize itself over CQGL weekend, I would be there no matter what.

One CQGL we decided that 1 day of LANing just wasn't enough; we invited a few select people we liked from the LAN back to my place to keep LANing, an ingenious idea. There was only 1 problem - we never stopped.

Those people that came decided it was easier just to leave their computers hooked up at my place with cat5 flying everywhere, have a sleep and come back refreshed after a sleep.

We were gamers from there on in, fulltime. There was always a LAN game of something going up, the news quickly spread and more people asked if they could join in, more and more computers, more and more people came flooding in, even those we only kind of knew, 20+ people were now LANing at one point in time at all times day and night. We ran out of tables - which was no problem, we got a screwdriver and took down all the doors and set them up as tables. Extension cords were everywhere, spaghetti of cat5 flowed everywhere up and down stairs.

The electricity bill went through the roof - we were poor university students and this was a serious problem. We invented "LAN tax" a gold coin donation per day was required for those that wished to keep their computers at the place permanently.

Another problem arose - the mess was out of control, it was impossible to keep such a place clean, as a laugh someone mentioned "Man, this place is The Ghetto!". The name stuck, from then on in my house was called "The Ghetto".

The popularity grew, more people. More electricity - we had to carefully consider the power layout to not trip the power.

There were other problems - my dog, a beagle became a popular attribute to the house who loved getting among the cords and letting people know he was around by running in between the cords, she was a crowd favorite.

Years passed, many nights without sleep, the gaming continued, CQGL was considered an interruption from our normal LANing routine where we had to unplug all our computers and coordinate how we were getting there - a hassle, we would rather LAN at the ghetto.

We acquired a server rack and used CQGL's gigabit switches to power our network, we put RJ45 ports in every room, laying the cat5 in the walls rather then up and down stairs.

One particular night I will always remember, we were all gaming and all of a sudden for no reason, the power goes out. The beagle is barking out of control and we know someone is in the backyard. We were in the middle of a highly intense Turret Defense game - who the F*&K just turned off our power, we run outside to see some kids jump the fence and run for their lives. Turns out some newbies from CQGL had heard about the ghetto and thought it would be funny to jump into the backyard and turn the mains off. Problem is kids love to talk and brag - long story short -we found out who it was.

There were moments where we didn't LAN though, we partied and partied a lot, we would light a big bon fire in the back yard, drink till we were sick and play music so loud that til the neighbours called the police. One night we had the fire brigade turn up because we threw an entire couch on the fire over a laptop, quickly followed by the ambulance to treat a friend with alcohol poisoning and then the police turning up over noise complaints, we were happy - all 3 emergency services, what a great night!

A few months later the phone rings, my mum wants to visit. She has no idea this is occurring, she thinks 5 guys live here who are going to university and studying hard. Oh shit. We are F*&Ked, jigs up. We have one thing on our side - an army of LANers, we order everyone who wants to stay to clean, clean everything, all doors have to be put back on the walls, everyone needs their computers gone, and we need the place spotless. We clean for a week, solid.

My mum arrives and we pick her up from the airport, upon arriving at the ghetto I quickly say "Oh by the way, sorry, we didn't have enough time to clean".

We got away with it, I still can't believe it. haha.

My brother eventually gets a job north in Townsville and moves out, which starts to signal the death of the ghetto, we've been LANing none stop for years, I was tired, really tired.

Eventually, the phone rings again and mum want's to sell the house, so the end of an era is upon us, we tell the housemates and the LAN regulars who all find arrangements to move out, time quickly passes by though with settlement tomorrow - I still have so much rubbish to get rid of, with no ute or means to get it to the tip, I can think of only one solution.

I grab a shovel and I start digging in the back yard, I seriously just started digging till there was a huge hole in the back yard, I’m talking monstrously huge and I pile all the junk into this hole and fill it back up, the dirt creates a mountain because the rubbish is underneath but I don't care, I’m tired and out of time. It's time to go.

I stay at a friend’s house that night before flying out to Brisbane, I have my last CQGL where I am presented with a mug which I have this day which says "Honorary life time CQGL admin".

Hope you all enjoyed the read.

My older brother steps into the conversation:
He left out so much,

There was the TAFE desk we had set-up (won 30 desk from a TAFE auction)
The caterpillar night
Chicken o'cloak
Midnight movie screenings (BTW I found the news paper article from the opening night of attack of the clones)
The house could take 23 computer with CRT monitors, power gave out and would trip the safety circuit (no hard limit was reached with LCD's we ran out of space)
You forgot about LAN CAT - and all his stories (Jeff's mince is my favourite)
NERD stickers
Milk bottles on the roof.
Vomiting cold Milk (everyone should try this once in their life)
Scrub marathons
Jeff getting kidnapped by the gay guy from the clubs.
The cone saga.
The guy who had the bag of hair.
The guy who burnt his guitar.
V8 super cars and all the rage it generated.
The house putting forward national competitive gaming teams (UT2K4 and BF Vietnam)
Walking down to the exchange and begging for the DSL to be fixed (and the telstra guy fixing it)
Road trips for LANing to Townsville Mackay and Gladstone.
Jo raging at Alan and his paint-ball gun
3AM Spoons
"anyone up for generals"
I'm sure there is more but each one of those is story in its own right.

Me Responding:
Your right eathos, I knew there was so, so much more, but I tried to keep it relatively short just to give people an idea of what this place was like, if anyone wants to continue reading, let me elaborate on some of those headlines that eathos talked about:

Please keep in mind, we were young and stupid at this age and didn't put much thought into what we did before we do things..

There was the TAFE desk we had set-up (won 30 desk from a TAFE auction)
Furthering on on the table department, even pulling the doors down didn't cover enough tables for the house, we ventured to a TAFE auction and bought 30 of these big massive desks for some stupid crazy price... like $2 a table, we were well equipped now!

The caterpillar night
I used to walk around in a sleeping bag sometimes to keep warm, I sort of looked like the hot water bottle from Johnson and friends, some of the guys at the house thought it would be hilarious to pin me down and strap me up with my hands in the sleeping bag with belts and rope, they then picked me up and put me into the ute and drove me to this field about 1km away, it was pitch dark, they threw me onto the grass and drove off back home to continue LANing, a few hours later I caterpillared up the stairs, covered in wet soggy grass, asking to be untied... They put me back into the gutter.

Chicken o'clock
So if you want to be a LANer, you have to eat like a LANer, about the same distance as said field away there was a Caltex Service station who sold this KFC chicken rip-off, you could grab 2/3 pieces of chicken and shitloads of chips for a really small price, we pretty much lived on this, I don't mean that in a we got it all the time sort of way, I really mean, we literally, lived off this stuff.

Midnight movie screenings
If you want to be a nerd, you have to do nerdy things! Star wars attack of the clones was released at midnight, we were there, first in line, waiting hours to see it, we had made up light sabers from car neon lights and batteries, they were "awesome" haha.

You forgot about LAN CAT - and all his stories (Jeff's mince is my favourite)
I can't even really remember LAN cat, I know at one stage we had a cat... and people called it LAN cat, but sorry - I don't remember this one.

NERD stickers
???? Maybe I missed this ?? Is this where when people were sleeping we wrote stuff on their faces?

Milk bottles on the roof.
Ok.... so this is disgusting, but as something funny to do, I put milk bottles on the roof of the house just to "see what would happen" I totally forgot about them and never got them off, till I would say 6 months to a year later we were installing an antenna on the roof experimenting with putting the ghetto on a 802.11b network because of space/power limitations we were experiencing, so we put up the ladder and a mate jumps onto the roof, finds balls, usual roof type junk you find on a roof of a 2 story house, at this same time another housemate pulls into the driveway and walks upstairs, the guy on the roof finds this bottle of milk and without even thinking, he throws it at me right next to this guy’s car, I just dodge this milk but it lands right at my feet, exploding instantly the smell was HORRIBLE I run upstairs screaming going FUUUU^%$$$K haha, and I decide its funny to say "Oi mate you left your window open in your car and this milk is all inside it!" he gets PISSED this was a guy with serious anger management issues hahahaha, he runs down the stairs, only to find out I was kidding. "COOkie you ASSHOLE" hahaha, good times!!

Vomiting cold Milk (everyone should try this once in their life)
So you know those labels before Jackass that say don't try this at home? Yeah, we ignored that, we all got together and decided to try and drink 4 Litres of milk in 1 sitting. It isn't easy, it really isn't. So we are all there struggling,1 person after another starts vomitting, we are all there just sick as vomitting, and my brother comes up to us "What are you idiots doing?" We explained to him, he instantly grabs 2 x 2L of milk and just chugs it down, seriously just without breathing. "That's how it's done" fast forward 1 minute, all 4 litres came straight back up. haha. Good times!

Scrub marathons
??? I can't remember this

Housemate getting kidnapped by the gay guy from the clubs.
So one of our housemates went out to the clubs 1 night by himself and decided to walk home, absolutely drunk off his head this bloke pulls up and offers him a lift home, Sure! he says! 5 minutes later he realises they are going in the wrong direction, he tells the guy who just nods, they pull up at this Hotel and for whatever reason, my housemate thinks it's all good and he will go inside with him, the guy offers him a drink and he says sure no worries! He offers him to play some games on his playstation, they start to load it up and my housemate suddenly clicks where he is and what's going on and how weird this is. He instantly calls my brother and whispers "help meeee, I don't know where I am but I need you to come get me right now" It's like 4 in the morning by this stage, so my brother gets him to find out where he is and gets him home, he runs upstairs and unplugs EVERY electronic device from his room and locks himself in. He wakes up the next morning hungover wondering why all his shit is unplugged, we to this day still don't know what was going on there.

The cone saga.
As silly teenagers my housemates decided to go hunting for all kinds of roadwork stuff, Traffic cones, blinking lights - whatever. We had an entire cupboard full by the end of it they drove half way to yeppoon made this entire road block and left... Silly silly boys.

The guy who had the bag of hair.
Picture the most disgusting guy you know, double it. That was this housemate, we eventually kicked him out for being too disgusting (and keep in mind this place was called the ghetto) he never cleaned his room when he left so I had to do it. I found a plastic bag, full of human hair, it was horrible, just horrible.. maggots, everything. Yuck.

The guy who burnt his guitar.
WTF? I missed this one, apparently someone burnt a guitar, rock on!

V8 super cars and all the rage it generated.
We did what?

The house putting forward national competitive gaming teams (UT2K4 and BF Vietnam)
Nothing massive to report but when both these games came out EA had online tournaments, being relatively new games without an established competitive scene we used to prac like crazy, I think placing top 4 on both occasions.

Walking down to the exchange and begging for the DSL to be fixed (and the telstra guy fixing it)
Going off that top 4 placing, was actually in the semi-final, our internet went to Hell, and I mean seriously BAD, and it wasn't just us it was my entire suburb, everyone noticed it and it was horrible, we rang our ISP, we rang Telstra both claiming everything was fine - it wasn't. This almost bought the ghetto to its knees, without stable internet was like a house full of crack cocaine addicts being given flour instead of the real shit - it wasn't working. I got so fed up, so angry that I walked to the local Telstra exchange and started banging on the door. A technician finally opened the door and asked what was going on, I told him my story and he said "oh yeah, hmmm come on in", he pulled out my cord and put it onto a different rack saying it should fix the problem. It did, I was amazed and the internet addicts thought of me as a hero as we celebrated!

Road trips for LANing to Townsville Mackay and Gladstone.
We lived and breathed LANs so it is no suprise as well as going to CQGL we went to as many other events as we could, Gladstone, Mackay & Townsville all received regular visits from everyone who participated regularly at the ghetto. This stuff really did engulf our entire existence, I'm not over exaggerating.

Housemate A raging at Housemate B and his paint-ball gun
So at one stage we had a housemate that LOVED his paint-ball, so much he had his own gun, his own gear, went to tournaments the full deal, he would sit on the veranda and fire blank after blank just because he got off on the sound it made. Eventually Housemate A lost the plot and screamed her head off at him to STFU, it wasn't too long before he moved out.

3AM Spoons
???? Sorry, I don't remember this. Not that there was anything odd about being up at 3am though?

"anyone up for generals"
All day, every day, after C&C Generals came out, there was ALWAYS at any time, crying out for a game to go up, there was always someone playing this game, so much so that "anyone up for generals?" became a quote that makes us chuckle looking back at it.

eathos repying to the few items I couldn’t recall:

Chicken o'clock
We also had a mate who worked at KFC, and did most of the late night shifts, and most of those shifts they would over cook, and the leftovers generally made their way to our place - about 2 shopping bags full of KFC

You forgot about LAN CAT - and all his stories (Jeff's mince is my favourite)
HOW COULD YOU FORGET LITTLE LANNER (I still have the cat it sleeps on you when you visit) He was brought as a kitten and grow up in the house, used to love jumping on CRT monitors and batting the screens and as the PC's where mostly lined up, would walk along peoples keyboards. he general had his run of the house, and would find the lap with the most pats and sit himself there. One day he managed to find his way into one of the fridges, and pulled out a 1KG bag of mince and devoured it, he was so full he could barely walk, he made it about 6 meters to the top of the stairs, and just laid down, The said owner of the mince (same guy with the angry management issues) found said cat, who recovered very quickly and ran for his little life.

NERD stickers
They were placed all around anger management housemate room the day DAN left for WA, they wrote nerd on mucking tape and put there everywhere, they were still finding them 12 months later.

Scrubs marathons
The day/week you and AMH (anger management housemate )discovered the TV show Scrubs the next 2 weeks of your life was watching them all

The guy who burnt his guitar.
He was one of the guys who applied to live in the house when we advertised for a spare room, He had travelled down from somewhere north, had no money was going to Busk for a week to get the bond up, his girlfriend then turned to him and said "How the fuck are you going to do that your burnt your guitar last night" at this point everyone in the house stops and is looking at them, it’s not soon later they leave and we tell them we don't think this is going to work.

3AM Spoons
It was some game with spoons and hitting people with them they would sit in a circle, not sure on the details but it would wake the girlfriend up, and then proceed to tear it up them all.

But as for photo's they are few and far between, this was all before digital camera's where built into every phone, hell there wasn't even you tube (we had a network share with a heap of funny video's in it - crab v pipe how you entertained me) I have the one from the newspaper which I'll scan and share when I can. But if old Ghetto/CQGL people have some pics please send them my way.

Quite a few things!

Ok, quite a few subjects to talk about in this update.

Firstly, I'm typing this from a fully fixed Dell laptop. Another technician was sent to my house on a Saturday morning where he replaced the LCD, The Entire Case, the motherboard (which had an onboard CPU) and the fan. Things he didn't replace? Hard Drive & RAM. Working an absolute treat. had the first event listed in my previous post never occurred, I would say Dell is AMAZING. One happy little customer now. Lesson learnt from the whole dilemma? Sometimes things just don't go as planned, but they tend to work out in the end... This lesson has seemed to repeat itself quite a few times in my life...


Which brings me to the second item I want to talk about which is my application to the police and an update since my first post which I copy and pasted from my thoughts on my birthday last year in November.

So I  received a letter in the mail to say my application had been received and they were happy for me to progress though to a Maths/English/Psych exam on the 31st January. I arrived with bells and whistles and it was a very full on day. The English test I believe I went well in however the Maths was not easy and I went home feeling a little unsure. A week later, a large envelope arrived "We are pleased to announce you have been successful" It went on to say that a Psych interview has been arranged for Monday, and a physical test arranged for the Monday after. I was over the moon.

I turned up today once again excited and glad to be there. I can say this was, by far, the hardest Interview I have ever been involved with. 1 on 1 with a psychologist who is out to break you. It was not easy, 2 hours later I thanked her for her time and the opportunity and walked away with a smile on my face. When I arrived home, not so pretty,  I cried for over an hour. Yeah that's right, I balled my eyes out and I'm man enough to admit it. A lot of issues were bought up, I should point out I feel there is a certain level of confidentiality I feel I should maintain regarding the application process so I will not go into details on specifics of questions or areas raised, but it hurt.

Next up was my medical  assessment with a doctor in the afternoon, absolutely nailed it. A+, no problems. The doctor went as far to say I was incredibly fit and healthy and couldn't believe I was 27.


The third item I want to discuss is Solo Cinema watching. A few months ago I put a post on my facebook asking friends and family their thoughts on going to the movies alone. I had never done it and always seen it as something... forbidden... But to my surprise,I was quickly shut down on Facebook, everyone telling me I must try it and how excellent it is. I shrugged it off as everyone being crazy :) Till today. Today I went and saw "Chronicle" at the cinema and broke my solo cinema virginity. I felt it was a good way to distract me from the interview in the morning. I absolutely LOVED the actual movie. Was really great and highly recommend it if your into District 9/Cloverfield style movies. Being alone however was not for me. I wasn't uncomfortable it was the fact that I had noone to share my movie experience with when the credits rolled and the lights came back on. In summary, going to the movies alone is not for me and something I don't plan on doing again for a while.

I have some exciting things in the works as well, as the subject of this blog is everything and anything I plan on going into other areas that may be a little less exciting but remain important to me at this time in my life. Areas like my favourite Starcraft 2 players to watch, or my quest to get better at the game myself. I also want to talk more about SAP and my current casual role as a SAP VC Modeler (Variant Config) I'm not sure on the IP of the material I do but I'd like to give some specific examples of my work and some of the problem solving I do. Also I'm contemplating doing a VLOG of me practicing my physical test for the Police force, or perhaps something else fitness related and that side of my life. I'm a little hesitant go into nutrition because to be honest I'm not a nutritionist, I just know what makes me feel good and how I like to eat. So there's a few ideas I have for the future.

That about wraps it up for me, I'd like to leave this post on a positive note with 2 of my favourite YouTube inspirational videos:

Dell - A little rough around the edges

So last October I bought a brand new Dell XPS 15z laptop from the Dell website, after on a whim clicking on their "chat to our sales team" button I said I wanted to buy the laptop, I had already researched the heck out of it and was going to buy it regardless, but just asked for a discount. The person gave me their e-mail address and said we couldn't talk about it on the chat, she rang me then told me to place an order. I then had to ring up to cancel it, she would then be able to give me a quote for some money off. It all sounded bizarre but whatever, I was getting $500 off and assumably she got some commission off the sale.

So I bought it and it arrived like 2 days later. The laptop itself is great, exactly what I wanted and has served me great. 

That was up to 2 weeks ago, where the PC overheats and just shuts off with no warning when playing any game, I rang the special XPS support line, I was placed on hold for 40 minutes. I gave up and hung up.

I tried again the next day but in the morning thinking the phone line would be less busy, 2 rings and straight away a man with an Indian accent picks up the phone asking how he can help. I quote my service code and he says ok no problem, what's the issue. I explain to him my problem and he says no worries, someone will call me within 2 days to sort out a date to fix it. I can handle that.

During these 2 days my PC continued to overheat just doing anything, opening media player etc. I turned it on in the morning and a line of dead pixels greeted me right across the middle of the screen... good news is, Dell was already going to call me, so no biggie.

Two working days passed (which included a weekend) and I receive a phone call as promised. The man said a tech would be out to fix my issue, I said "ok, but do you want to know my issues" gearing up to explain that I now had additional problems, however he was blunt "no, that's fine we will see you on Wednesday" and hung up.

So, yesterday as expected an Indian knocks on my door with a small parcel in hand, I let him in. I explain I also have a line of dead pixels in my screen and he says he wasn't informed of that so I would need to call again to have that issue fixed. I understood but boy oh boy I wish that guy on the phone would of let me get a word in.

So he spends 40 minutes trying to open my laptop, I couldn't see what was troubling him but he was having a seriously hard time, sweat dripping from his head and he kept muttering "oops" finally, the case opened and he proceeded to take the heatsink off my CPU. he opened up his parcel which revealed another heatsink which looked exactly the same as my last one, no replacement fan or anything... just the heatsink. Perhaps they had a lot of these things doing this issue so they knew the heatsink would be the issue, I don't know.

He swapped them over and attempted to put my PC back together, I let him do his business and he comes up to me "Do you have any superglue?"

You should of seen my face, holy... shit... "No, I don't have any superglue, what's wrong, why do you need superglue?" Turns out he had snapped two of the little rubber feet on the bottom when he took them off to undo the screws lurking underneath them.

I told him not to worry about it and I had to call about the dead pixels anyway, I would just let them know about it then. So he shows me the PC, and the entire silver chrome lining around the pc is not sitting right, it is totally loose and just floating there, the surround around my screen has popped out around from the LCD, the dead pixels are all up in my grill and it turns out the original issue of the PC overheating is still an issue, replacing a heatsink with the exact same heatsink turns out does f*ck all...

I take the time to bring up another issue with the laptop that till now I was willing to cop as "general wear and tear" which is around where my left palm sits on the laptop, the chrome nice polished finish has come away, and has a rough "scratch" like feel to it, it's visibly noticabe and often it hurts to rest my hand on it, but I bring it up now and he says that if I mention it, I should get a new one if I use the word "rust".

So I ring Dell again this morning, I explain the entire Saga, and we repeat all my issues. So they tell me within two working days someone will call me to arrange a technician to come out. I ask if I can take the laptop to them instead of waiting and he says no that isn't possible.

So... to be continued I guess. I'm not exactly angry at anything, it's not like they aren't covering their warranty, and it's not like it's a bad product...

It's just.... a little rough around the edges.

Happy Birthday to me

Hi all, hope everyone's weekend is working out the way they envisioned it :)

As indicated in my test blog below, I'm going to copy and paste a story I wrote on November 8th, 2011. The post was initially posted on OCAU and was quickly moved to "The Pool Room" where only the best threads end up, in over 10 years only 89 threads have ever been moved to this forum. The post itself has been viewed 8386 times and the amount of feedback I received was quite amazing. So, without further ado:




Hi Everyone,

Today is my 27th birthday, i'm alone in my room no one else here, I have no plans to go out tonight or have anyone special over. Even if I wanted to - there is nobody to invite.

Sounds pretty depressing right? If there's anyone else out there that loves scrolling through forums and just likes to read random stories, let me explain to you why i'm all alone on my 27th birthday...

I've led a very good life so far, I always had lots of friends in school, brothers to fight with and my mum never said no to us, she sent us all to private school and always pushed for us to have the best education possible. Life never really got any harder, I went to uni just "because" studying multimedia studies. Half way through my degree I got a job in web design at the age of 19 which paid an absurd amount of money at the time considering my qualifications.


Man I hated it, absolutely hated that job, I lasted 2 months and left the industry completely, I deferred from uni and never went back. It was during my uni years though that I lived at what was nicknamed "The Ghetto". I think at 1 point in time we had 11 people living there, all computer nerds all just gaming all day every day (and night). This went on for about 3 years, party,LAN,party,LAN rinse repeat. Life was good (ha). I eventually decided enough was enough and I moved to Brisbane in 2005, I decided it was time to get a job, start getting a life.

So I got a girlfriend, I got a job doing Data Entry and interacting with new people, once again life was good, I had money! I completely stopped gaming, to a point where I lived in a house that only had dialup for internet so that I wasn't able to game. That didn't last long as I quickly got involved with the Counter-Strike LAN scene in Brisbane, joining and participating in tournaments. I would work come home, prac, girlfriend, sleep, Repeat.

Eventually the girlfriend broke up with me and not to long I started going out with another girl, whom I would eventually be with for 3 years and bought a house with.

Big mistake.

Within 1 year of owning the house together we broke up. I had been in my job for now 5 years, this mediocre shit office job that I didn't even like. It was time to evaluate my life. What was I doing, where had the years gone and what do I REALLY want to do? I stopped playing CS immediately and started partying, I got wasted pretty much every night with my friend and go to work the next day hungover as heck, only to do it again and again, we found out the best way to do this was to buy $5 bottles of red wine. But this couldn't possibly last forever. What did I want to do?!?!

I finally figured it out, I wanted to be a Police officer. in 2009 I decided I wanted to be a cop, and I didn't just want to be a police officer, I wanted to make a difference and I really wanted to do this. This would be a job that is exciting, that i'm passionate about and that I would want to do.
I started to find out what I needed to do to apply, and I started getting ready.

Fast forward to Christmas Day, I had lost a little weight getting my fitness ready (years and years of gaming makes you a fat fu*k) I was so proud of my weight loss I challenged my dad to an arm wrestle, my dad is 60 years old but was a professional fisherman his entire life. It was on - I had to win this the whole family was watching! All my strength I put into it, and I could tell he was really going for it to, our veins started to appear, It felt like minutes had passed... yes minutes had definetly passed, my brother yells out "comeon bro you got him!!" and at that moment, It felt like someone had come up right behind me and kicked my arm right out of its socket, my arm exploded onto the table, hyper extending out, flopping around like I had a 2nd elbow, I see my Dad go as white as a ghost. What the F*CK just happaned?!?! My brain couldn't figure it out.

Turns out through the pressure of the arm wrestle, my upper humerous bone had twisted and snapped completely in half inside my arm. I can't describe the pain, it was Christmas Day and we were 40 minutes out of town in the bush, It was hours before the ambulance were able to find us and when they did - they treated my dad for shock first. I got loaded into the ambulance and off to the hospital we went. The next few days are a blur in my head full of painful hours. In for surgery I went, nervous, scared. I awoke and I instantly knew something was wrong, I couldn't feel or move my arm. A day passed before I was able to talk to anyone about it as the Doctor did the rounds in the morning. He explained that during the surgery my radial nerve had to be moved, causing it to shut down and hence I can't feel or move my arm and the physio started. 6 months later I was able to move my thumb. Those few months sucked, I couldn't do anything by myself, whenever I see people missing limbs now I genuinely get so sad for them, I wouldn't be strong enough to lose a limb forever. This was all time spent wasted - all I was thinking about was that I wanted to be a police officer.
I still owned the house with my ex, I couldn't get it ready for sale in my condition and I was still working this shit office job I hated. Life sucked, life sucked real bad.

We put the house on the market - it took over 6 months to sell, it was now November 2010 and I still hadn't applied for the police force, it was all I wanted to do. All I cared about. The house sold and I moved into a rental with some friends, and in doing so changed Gym - this changed my life. A starting package offered at the time had 3 free sessions with a PT, for once in my life I agreed to something like this. It changed my whole life, before the end of my first session I knew this guy would get my arm back to normal (still very very weak, I couldn't lift a 2L carton of milk) I explained to him my goals and we started working towards it. I finally apply in January 2011, it was finally happening.

It took 2 months for the police to contact me. I went and did my defensive driving course, my first aid, a full medical, I did there beep test and a range of other things, everything came back perfectly and passed everything with flying "colours" except for one thing - my colour vision. It was not so flash, and I went to see a colour vision specalist at a university for further testing, the specalist said that whilst I am colour blind it was nothing that should stop me from joining the Queensland Police, he wrote me a referral letter and I was happy! I got another call from the police to come in for there own practical colour vision test, extremely confident I went in. It took 1 week for the police to ring me again and tell me that unfortunately I was unsuccessful and that due to my colour vision I would be unable to join. I politely said "That's ok, thank you anyway" and hung up the phone.

I had pulled over to answer the call at the time. I started driving... I remember the first tear strolling down my face, quickly followed by another, the 2nd eye starts up, I remember feeling this extreme rage overwhelm my body, I slam my fist so hard into the steering wheel and scream "WHY!" "WHY FU&^KING WHY!!!!!!!!!" I felt defeated. You have to understand this is all I thought about for nearly 2 years, and it was over. No amount of training, or any surgery or anything will fix this for me, it was beyond my control. I had invested so much time in this, I had dropped over 20kg and had never felt healthier, which is at least 1 thing I could take away from it.

I was devastated and told everyone it was over. I was lost for a week, unmotivated to train, unmotivated to do anything. That was when I found out that in Western Australia - they had removed the requirement. I was overjoyed instantly. Ringing them to confirm it wouldn't be a problem I had a decision to make.

Should I leave all my friends, all my family, my new girlfriend, my secure job, my life behind and start again in Perth? I knew nobody over there. I decided to go for it, when my lease ends in October I will move to Perth.

I resigned from my job, I told my girlfriend and my housemates. It was time to go. Those months passed very quickly, I trained insanely hard (the physical requirements are tougher in WA) and I was dedicated to make this happen. I had a wild goodbye party that was off the rails with just shy of 100 friends seeing me off. I sold everything I had packed my essentials into a suitcase and a backpack and off I went.

I've been here just shy of a month, my application is submitted and I wait for the Police to contact me. I know nobody. I don't regret my choice, I'm glad i'm following my dream and i'm glad i've been brave enough to go with this and give it a go. I can't forget why I want to be here and how much I want this. Never settle.

Thank you for reading my story.

I'll join the fad

So I've decided I'm going to start blogging. I've posted quite a few "blog" type posts in some forums over the last month and really, they belong in a blog. So here it is. I'm still pondering whether to place my forum posts on here, I think I will.

Anyway, this is just a quick hello and to see how the blog looks.