Shaun Lorrain

I have been fairly quiet about this until late today, but yesterday was a really bad day for me. I went to TAFE (College) and found out that we didn’t have to do all the work so I decided to leave early… TOTAL BAD IDEA.

So I left the campus and headed for the bus stop, as I was crossing the road some idiot hoon came up really fast and hit the 20 something year old crossing the road next to me. I cannot get this image out of my head it’s so bad. Picture a young woman crossing a road, a car coming up at like 60 km/h and totally hitting her, she went flying. It was so horrible. I quickly found my phone and called for help but there was so much blood. I am so lucky it wasn’t me that was hit; I was so close to being the one that WAS hit it isn’t funny.

Not only this but as I was on the bus home, my sister in law texted me and said someone told her someone they thought they saw at my brother and sister in laws engagement party had a heart attack. Turns out my “sort” of uncle had a heart attack and was without oxygen for 25 minutes. He is now in a medically induced coma after having surgery and having 6 stents inserted into his arteries. The risk for brain damage is high because of the amount of time he was without oxygen. So we are waiting to hear back about his status.

So today since I didn’t have any assignments to do at college I stayed home and tried to get over what happened yesterday.

EDIT: 7th August 21:00 My uncle has developed kidney failure. Chances are very low. Family considering pulling the plug.

EDIT: 8th August 11:00 My uncle has miraculously turned the other way and starting to recover, I’ll post further updates later.

EDIT: 23rd August 22:00 I haven’t known anything for a few days, but its expected that my uncle will make a full recovery but will have to take it easy.

This post is still under construction.

I just thought I’d post this quick update, the guy came was very helpful and a nice technician to have doing the installation. They arrived around 9 and left just after 11 and it wasn’t that hard to install. They did a great job and now I’m off to record movies on the DVR!

This post may be re-worded as I just realized whilst reading it.. I went on and on about useless things..

Today was enrolment day at TAFE and I had an appointment at 2 this afternoon. I wasn’t quite sure where or what I was going to study, but after talking with one of the lecturers I had it pretty well set in my mind what I wanted to study. I have been doing Certificate IV in Web Design these past 6 months. Even though I currently run a few websites, I really don’t like the design part. I can handle HTML/PHP pretty well.. but the design was just eh.. I couldn’t visualize what I wanted to create and even though clients often tell you what they want.. its still hard.

After deciding that I wanted to enrol in Network Administration I thought I was going to enrol in Cert IV Network Administration because that included Certificate III in it, but the lecturer said its better to just do Certificate III separately. But then came the big decision.. To study at Noarlunga Campus or in Adelaide..? I really like the city, and If I lived closer would probably visit every day, But unfortunately travel to and from can be a bitch with the last bus of the day being at 5:30 PM. So the lecturer just picked for me and it turned out to be Noarlunga. All that means is its much easier to get to and travel time would be around 30 minutes, instead of my usual 2 hour journey to the city. Unfortunately if I want to go to the city, I will have to go on one of my days off instead of during my lunch break.

If you are interested in seeing what Certificate III in Network Administration involves you can click here to see a PDF.

Thanks for reading and if you have any comments, please leave them below!

I rang Foxtel this morning at 7:30, they pretty much answered right away.. as they should since it was so early! The girl was very nice and friendly, However after saying our Good mornings to each other she informed me that they had a note on my account linking to the blog I posted last night complaining about them and that they are deeply sorry for the information I was told and that they were going to upgrade us for free, and re-locate the 2 installation points in my house free of charge as long as we re-sign a 12 month contract which I was going to do anyway. So thanks mysterious reader for sending them the link to the post.. I will post an update Thursday Morning after the man has installed IQ at my house.

Earlier today I was trying to access the Member services part of Foxtel’s website. Only realizing we hadn’t registered before and had to sign up. I thought to myself, signing up would be easy and only take a few minutes.. But boy was I wrong. I had to call them to ask them a question about our account and got the run around but the lady I spoke to was very helpful. We seemed to have our problems sorted and then went on to continue to register only to keep seeing that it was giving me and error while finishing the sign-up process. So I rang for the 2nd time only to find out, for the past 4 years our name has been spelt incorrectly on their system and we didn’t notice since we pay via direct debit and therefore we don’t see a bill. Got that problem sorted out and finally was able to register.. I was thinking great awesome.. all done.. NOT after browsing around in our information I found out we don’t have the IQ service and how it’d only cost $10 a month for each outlet to upgrade.. Awesome right.. Again NOT.. They charge you $100 dollars to upgrade. I rang back the third time and just asked “We’ve had your service for 4 years, We’re currently not in a contract.. I see you offer free installation currently and would it be possible to go back into another contract for free installation.” The person replied and said yes this was possible however we would have to DISCONNECT our service and then go without for a few days and then re-sign up as a new customer.

So anyway, Tomorrow morning.. I’m going to wake up at 7AM just so I can call Foxtel to cancel our service, to then re-connect just so we can get Foxtel IQ, So hopefully this will all be over soon and I’ll be happy.

On a side note, I’ve been wanting to add another outlet in my house in my bedroom for years now. My parents have one down in the front lounge and we have another in the games room (Which is being moved into the Kitchen/Family Room in the new installation of IQ). So with my parents having one and then my brother having the other, there’s barely a chance for me to actually watch it.. that and I also don’t have the time to leave my desk just to lounge around on a couch to watch TV.. When I watch something on my computer I’m always doing something else. So I spoke to my parents tonight about having a 3rd outlet added in my room while they do this since it’ll only cost me $25 a month and the $50 installation fee which is barely anything out of my monthly budget. My mother didn’t have anything against it, However my father seems to think I don’t have the money.. So I’m left with not being allowed to add it to my bedroom. I will have to see if I can convince them otherwise.. I just think I’d be awesome to be able to have shows on in the background while working and having the ability to watch live/recorded stuff while I try and sleep.

After being asked to do a design for a friend, I discovered that web design is not what I would like to do as a job. I have instead decided to study Cert IV Network Administration. You can see the attached .pdf document to see which modules are involved in studying that particular certificate, But I think it will be must more interesting and easier for me and I honestly think I could do quite well at it as a job. One of the main reasons that I’m not continuing with web design is because I’m not very creative, I can’t seem to visualize in my head what I would like the final design to look like and it has put me under a lot of stress just doing that design for a friend. I think this problem mainly might be caused due to my Aspergers Syndrome but I can’t be completely sure not everyone has the talent to be creative. With this study move, it also gives me the opportunity if I would like to study again at Noarlunga campus again. I’m not quite sure whether or not I would prefer to study in the city itself or if I would prefer the southern more quieter campus, the journey to college everyday would be a lot easier if I was to study down south but I like the city environment and having opportunities open to me that could happen in the city. At Noarlunga I don’t feel particularly safe, its known for its crime and there is just a lot of “bad looking” people around.

Let me know in the comments about what you think of this career change and which campus you think I should study at!

So recently because I get migraines so often, my doctor asked me to go get my eyes tested. Now I already know I had some sight problems so I expected that I would need glasses. So anyway I had my eyes tested well, Today I picked them up. They’re only reading glasses but I have noticed they greatly affect my sight while I’m using the computer. I’ll have to do a bit of experimenting what else they help me see but for now, I’m glad that I have them and I even attached an image of me wearing them for you.

Let me know what you think of them in the comments!

So, at 11:27 Friday Night, We had quite a exciting night here in Adelaide. Although we live on 3 Fault lines (That I know of) we don’t get earthquakes that often in the main part of the city. I was laying in bed on Skype with a friend from the US when it struck, and my reaction was.. EARTHQUAKE! and she said “Are you serious?” Now.. at first I wasn’t sure what it was.. It was just like a loud thunderstorm that appeared out of no where? But then I noticed that the wall and my desk was shaking.. which straight away registered to me as an earthquake.

Now, the part about this which made me the most annoyed was the fact no news websites had anything about the quake for over an hour and a half. AdelaideNow did have an article after 25 minutes but all it said was “Reports of a quake are coming in”. There was no news about the size or where about the epicenter was. In fact the United States Geological Survey had information about the quake before any Australian site had anything about it. People turn on TV’s and Radios and look online for news about disasters like this, but its absolutely shocking when nothing had anything about an earthquake!

It was good that we have Twitter and Facebook, because within seconds of the quake there was hundreds of posts on both sites confirming it wasn’t my imagination.

Now as the quake hit, my first reaction was NOT to get under a table or a door frame like we are told, so my question is… Do you go straight for a door frame or under a table? Answer in the poll below.

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EDIT: I forgot to mention the magnitude of the earthquake.. it was a 3.8, Its also funny to note at the time of writing this my house just shook from thunder outside.

Today was a fairly easy day, I spent 2 hours this morning installing some CD drives into a few computers that didn’t have one. It was a fairly easy job to do since its easy as hell,  but the reason it took so long was that I had to keep running back up stairs to get more things (Cable ties, Screws, Screw driver, SATA cables..)

For the rest of the day, I just alphabetized the schools licenses for computer software.. Let me just say.. they have a lot of $$ put into software and there is quite an amount of different programs..

Well, that was day number 3… not much happened today.. Stay tuned! The next day is on the 19th of April, I have some time off due to school holidays.

Today was alright, I spent about 6 hours trying to sync 6 iPods to have exactly the same music, podcast and apps on them which doesn’t sound as easy as you would think. After iTunes crashing multiple times and me getting very frustrated, I finally got them to work. In the end up the way I got them to all be the same was to make one iPod the exactly the way I wanted it and do a backup of it using iTunes, plug in the next one to be setup and “restore” using the backup of iPod #1, after installing the latest OS of course. I think I’ll be writing a tutorial on this issue for other users that are trying to do the same thing to follow, because quite frankly.. there was nothing about doing this around when I searched.

After doing the iPods and getting them done, I spent the rest of my afternoon working on getting an administration machine to boot, it would go to safe mode but wouldn’t get past the XP boot loading screen, after reformatting the HDD and installing a fresh copy of XP instead of the schools standard image we discovered there was something wrong with the image we used and had to make a new image to be deployed.

That was virtually my whole day.. Really boring I know.. but be sure to check back on the 29th for another update on day number 3!

Well today was my first day of work experience at the local school, the one I used to study at. For the next 5 weeks, I am going to be working at the school on Mondays for 8 hours a day doing Work Experience as part of something I supposedly need to finish school… But the thing is I don’t study the normal curriculum anymore.. I go to college instead.. So I just thought I’d do the work experience anyway since I can add it to my resume and then I’ll see about whether or not I have to do anything else..

Anyway, my day went like this.. I got to the school around 7:55AM as they were expecting me at 8AM. The first job I was told to do was to go over to the primary school (Kindergarten-7th grade) to help set up their new iPod touches with their schools IT teacher as she didn’t know how.. or didn’t want to.. either or.. Anyway so I headed over there and I managed to get into the school after some teachers help as the school was locked at that time of day.. and I sat in the primary schools library/computing area waiting for the IT teacher to come into work… So anyway it got to 8:20 and she still wasn’t there so I started chatting to an old teacher that I get along with and it reaches 8:30.. still no teacher.. Go to the office to check morning notices of teacher absences but she isn’t absent.. So I go back to waiting and while I wait I put all the chairs down and turn on all the 50 or so computers on in the library.. still no teacher.. it finally got to 9AM and the school rung her and it turned out she was home sick.. she had sent an email to the school but the person she sent an email to.. also happened to be away. So I went back to the high school, and they said to go down to their storage room and I spent an hour or so moving laptops around.. as they have just gotten 230 brand new laptops for the students to use while in class, But.. while I was in their storage room.. it was so hot and there was no windows or anything to open as its a secure room and the students don’t even know whats in there. So it got to recess time and I just went for a break and had a drink.. came back and I started to setup 2 new laser printers that were going to be deployed in 2 different buildings for these new laptops to print to.. It got to near lunch time when I decided to run down to the schools canteen.. (For you American folk, that’s a cafeteria but with no seating). I managed to skip the line of 200 or so students as I had a teacher badge because I’m working at the school, so I just got a chocolate milk, water and a hot dog. Went back to the IT area and had a 40 min or so break.. My afternoon was cut short as the person that’s in charge of the IT stuff had to go home early so I was able to leave an hour early.. But before I was able to leave I just went through some of the older laptops the school had put out for the students to use, seeing if any of them were broken and had to be sent back to get a replacement. I couldn’t belive the way these students had been treating these laptops the school lets them use.. There was 11 laptops that I had to put into a pile, because they either had keys broken off the keyboard.. the DVD drive missing.. or some kind of other damage like the thing falling to bits.. Ugh..

So that was my first day at work experience…

Well today is my first day of work experience.. For my work experience I’m working at my local school, the one I used to attend and working in IT. As far as I know all I’ll be doing is help desk type of things and maybe working some hardware issues all day. It’s from 8am until 4pm and a 30 minute break in there somewhere. I don’t know how busy I’ll be but I’ll try and poke my nose in on twitter and let you all know how it’s going, tonight I’ll also try and make a blog post about the day. This will be every Monday for the next 5 weeks but I think there is a 2 week break in there due to school holidays. Anyway it’s 2:30 AM now so I think I’ll head to bed since I have to be awake at 5am and I just hope I wake up in time!

Cya later!
Shaun

Over the next few days, I will be editing old posts and deleting some of them also. I started this blog when I was 12 years old and the old posts just really aren’t good to keep anymore or some of the content I don’t want to be displayed anymore. I’m also hoping to change the theme over to one I’ve been working on for the past few weeks when I’ve had a minute or so, So stay tuned!

Well, a few months ago back in October 2009 I transferred the blog from http://sheppardsblog.com to http://shaunlorrain.com (See here for the story) the renewal for sheppardsblog.com is coming up at the end of march and I don’t plan to renew the domain. So for all of you who still access the blog through that address, please change your bookmarks.

~Shaun

So, I just got a phone call from my college telling me that I have to go in tomorrow to enroll.. I’m quite annoyed as I’ve been on their backs for the past 2 months about enrollment and then they ring me on the 2nd to last day about it! grr.. Anyway this year I think I’ll be studying web design which I will be doing part time as my other commitments take up a fair load of my time that I would need to spend studying. Now.. what worries me about this course is that its mainly done from home remotely most likely using a Moodle based learning platform (We’ll have to wait and see.) So to do the work from home and being that its a web design course I of course need Adobe CS4 which as all IT professionals know.. Is quite pricey.. You’d be looking at $4,652 for a non-student edition. Where as the student edition is $598 from Office Works.. So I’m hoping that my schools budget covers that as they also pay for my college course. I’m quite looking forward to studying web design to broaden my skills but I’m also not looking forward to the stress of studying again, I usually get quite funny and weird while studying which is bad for my health and I just generally don’t enjoy it. However I know I do have to study to get my diploma and therefore I am going to enroll tomorrow.. I’m sure you guys will see my work as the year goes on while I’m studying so stay tuned!