sinéad

I ordered a gigantic 20inch pizza last night, as my house was full of drunken people that were in need of nourishment. It was supposed to be delivered in 30 minutes, after 40 minutes the delivery man rang me for directions to my house, he sounded like he was close, so I went outside to have a look out for him.

While outside I noticed this rather expensive looking car, driving backwards around the corner, driving backwards towards me, driving… BANG! right into my neighbour’s car. It was only when the guy driving the car jumped out and said “Pizza! I’ve got your pizza!” that I realised it was the pizza delivery man. He said he would “Leave a note” and I gave him far too much money and just ran away, into my house.

Last night was… well… interesting.

This morning I took a look at the car, not much damage was done, and the guy was true to his word, he left his name and number. But I’m still annoyed at myself for accidentally giving him a HUGE tip… he didn’t just crash his car into my neighbour’s car… the pizza was late!

Happy July, by the way. I’ll miss you June.
Below is the poster I made for an upcoming showcase gig for a friend of mine, Stacey Kavanagh. Check out the gig, she’s a great singer, piano player and songwriter.

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Some friends came over last night for a few drinks, I’ve not had any extra hours in work lately (damm over-staffing!) so we stayed up till 4am. Kudos to me! So yes, that seems like proper healthy behavior for a young woman with some free time on her hands… until I realised today how many times my buddies asked me to take my laptop out last night (for music and internet), and I didn’t. And the excuse I used…

“You don’t drink and drive, and I don’t drink and surf.”

< cringe > Me < / cringe>

I am an embarrassment to myself. I just can’t help it though, ever since I dropped my Zen and it… oh the horror… it stopped working (waiting 2 weeks for it to come back from repair)… so anyway, ever since I dropped my Zen I have been paranoid about my laptop breaking too - I’d be so lost without it, I do have the family PC as a backup, but my laptop is where ALL my personal space is. It’s my little world that’s password protected and all mine. I’m too over-protective of people using it, I hover around them waiting for them to finish whatever inane task someone (without their own computer) could possibly have.

Sad, aren’t I? Or perhaps just a nerd-to-the-max-o.

In other boring news, I had my job interview with O2 Retail on the 19th of June, they’ve called me asking for my references, but so far they’ve yet to get back to me about the position. How very… annoying.

This term “World Cup Widows” really annoys me. It’s being used as a marketing ploy to advertise an arangment of alternatives to watching football, and is obviously directed towards hetrosexual women who have partners that will be enjoying the World Cup. It reinforces the male-female stereotypes with regards to sports, and encourages partners to spend time apart, rather than attempt to share in eachothers past-times.
How depressing.

I’m getting sick and tired of people asking me…

“So, what are you going to do now?”

For the last few weeks I’ve stuttered while answering, or ignored/abused/ran-away-from the person asking. So I have come up with a default answer to this very annoying and stressful question…

“I’m taking a year off from my studies.”

This seems to please everyone and stops their further queries about where I am currently working or where I WILL be working. It literally shuts them up and gives me sufficient time to make a speedy exit… and from now on my speedy exit will take me to the cinema, seeing as Jen has given me a year pass to Cineworld in Dublin, what a fantastic birthday present. I DO love movies.

Strange day so far.

Acceptance: I got a phone call from O2 Retail, I’ve a job interview on Monday morning for a full-time position in the City Centre, selling phones, again. Boring, yes. But at least it’s money. Which I’ll need if I want to start saving for college next year.

Rejection: I got an automated e-mail from Google…

After carefully reviewing your experience and qualifications, we have determined that we do not have a position available which is a strongmatch at this time.

This is one of those times where automation sucks. If only there was someone I could actually physically talk to, that would answer this question for me: How am I supposed to get experience, when no-one wants to hire you, if you don’t have any? How annoying.

Yesterday, I turned 22. And I felt as though I’d come to a dramatic junction in my life, where things could either go downhill very quickly, or slowly continue upwards.

Within the last year, a major change occured in my life. I met the woman of my dreams, which encouraged me to finally wake-up and realise that I really wanted to progress academically, in order to fullfill my desire to be successful professionally, to move out, settle down and eventually start a family of my own.

Love is a powerful thing.

Over the last year, I worked harder than I have ever before. When I look back upon my Leaving Certificate, I realise how foolish I was. In the end I was very lucky to gain a place in a college course that has given me the opportunity to combine my two favourite subjects: humanity and technology. In 1st year I was enthusiastic and did very well in my exams, but circumstances led me to neglect my stuides, and take my place in college for granted. During 2nd and 3rd year I did not push myself hard enough, which in the end has made my final year a difficult one. I had to work harder this year, to make sure my overall degree mark was sufficient enough to allow me to one day continue my studies and eventually get my Ph.D.

Today, I recieved my college exam results. I was so shocked by them that I had to call my course co-ordinator to confirm the words sitting in Firefox. I got a GPA of 3.19 for my final year, and added with my 3rd year marks, I have been awarded a Second Class Honours Grade 1 (2.1). I am now the proud owner of a Bachelor of Science (Honours) in Psychology Applied To Information Technology.

A 2.1 was important for me to achieve, as it gives me the ability to persue a masters degree course in almost any area of Psychology that I desire. Currently, I have my eye on a sweet little number that is actually more Computer Science based: A Master of Science in Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing at Trinity.

Now all I have to do is save or borrow €4000. I’m planning on using this year to save, so far it’s not exactly going to plan, but once I get myself a new job I should be well on my way to getting myself into a nice masters course, and then someday perhaps I will lecture… or maybe, get a lovely job at somewhere like Google.

So, in conclusion… the “dramatic junction” I’m standing at right now is steep, but I’m very much looking forward to the climb ahead of me. Knowing I’ll have a woman like Jen by my side, and such wonderful friends and family, gives me confidence that I can succeed in this weird and wonderful life.

It’s a thursday morning and I’ve been up since 9am. So far, I’ve distracted myself by going online and watching a few episodes of Lost. I’m bored. I need to get out of my job and start something real. I’m still only working part-time, and it’s probably the most boring job on the planet - simply because I don’t seem to have any customers, ever! I wish it was busy at the weekends, in the shop, but it’s just not and there is nothing I can do about it. So I’m looking for something a bit different, something full-time and interesting, but I honestly don’t know what that is.

I’m feeling very annoyed at myself. I turn 22 on Sunday, and I get my final year results on Monday. So on Monday I’ll be a 22 year old college graduate that’s stuck in a dead-end job. Here is to hoping my results are good enough to get me into a post-grad course, I did afterall get a B in my thesis. And if I get into a postgraduate course, at least it will postpone the inevitable “getting a REAL job”… because right now, I’m under-qualified to do what I really want to do, and under-qualified to be hired to get the experience I need. Otherwise, if my results are crap, I’m going to have to relent and take some kind of crappy low paid intership.

It’s all very annoying.

Yes, I know that IS a long subject line… it’s the title of my research which has been printed and hard-bound, and handed into the college, and I’ve presented it at the PSI Student Congress. It’s all finally over and done with. So, if anyone is interested in what I’ve been doing for the last 6 months…. read on.

The Memory Recall Of Pop-Up Advertisements Amongst Experienced Internet Users:

The aim of my study was to examine the relationship between Internet experience and memory retention of pop-up advertisements. Participants completed an online survey about their Internet experience, during which a pop-up advertisement appeared. Participants then completed a paper-pencil test examining their recall of the pop-up. This study found no relationship between experience and memory retention, online. However, low memory recall rates of the pop-up advertisement were found. This study also found that the more experienced a user becomes online the more likely they are to use pop-up blocking software. Implications of this research suggest Internet users learn to actively attempt to remove pop-ups from their surfing experience, that pop-ups are ineffective forms of advertising online, and that online advertisers should focus on alternative forms of advertising.

For the completed dissertation you can download a PDF version here or view the online version here.

There’s a couple of things I wish I could have done this year: use the eye-tracker on my participants, test the stress levels of participants using the net with pop-up blocking software and then without. But alas, doing either of those things would have required twice as much work by myself, and I just didn’t have the time or equipment. Maybe for post-grad.

Mozilla Firefox has a number of features that make it far superior to it’s Microsoft counterpart Internet Explorer (IE). The important ones for the geeks amongst us are the added security features and excellent pop-up blocking, however, it’s stand out feature for me has always been tabbed browsing.

Tabbed browsing allows you to open multiple webpages in a single browser window, instead of your taskbar being cluttered by multiple IE windows. Tabs allow you to quickly flip back and forth between webpages, and drag and drop open tabs to keep related pages together. It doesn’t just un-clutter your taskbar, it uses less memory and is actually faster than IE at opening webpages. Tabbed browsing is not unique to Firefox, it features in other browsers that are not IE, yet, out of all the alternatives to IE, Firefox is a clear winner due to it’s intuitive interface, customisability and accessibility features.

Today, I discovered a preference in Firefox that I had overlooked and yes, this might sound inconsequential, but if like myself you’re getting to grips with the latest Internet craze, RSS Feeds, you might benefit from reading this.

Clicking links within my RSS Reader (I’m currently trying out the Beta version of the Yahoo! RSS Reader that has been embedded in the Yahoo! Mail interface… but that’s a whole other story…) kept opening new Firefox windows, rather than tabs, unless I right-clicked and chose open in new tab. My error was forgetting to right-click, and yet, I continued to make this error. Upon visiting the Mozilla Help: Tips and Tricks webpage I discovered a lovely feature to Firefox that allows you to open external links (opening new webpages, that usually open in a new window no matter what browser you use) in a tab.

Open external links in new windows or tabs:

If another program wants to display a web page in the default browser, Firefox will reuse an existing window by default, which means that it will navigate from a page you might be reading. To stop this, Go to Tools > Options… > Tabs, and under Force links that open new windows to open in: choose a new tab.

Simple, right? Excellent? Yes. I am now happily reading RSS Feeds without annoying myself… too much.