Exams – Part 2

Don’t you just hate how you’re always on time at school/work every single day, but when something extra important requires you to be there at a certain time, something always fucks it up?

I have been using the car to go to school. Not because it’s so far away or because there is no public transport available (heck I have three bus stops near my house, none of which have a bus that goes past my school), but simply because it’s faster. I live maybe ten minutes away from the train station. From station to station it’s a little under three minutes, yet it’s still faster for me to take the car in the middle of rush hour. Funny how time works sometimes, huh?

Now, I have been driving the same damn route for the entire year. I know the choke points in my route. There is a junction with retarded traffic lights and a railway crossing which I have to wait in front of if I leave the house a few minutes late (given the train is actually running on time). When I’m past the railway crossing it’s usually smooth sailing to school.

But wouldn’t you know it. Out of every day and every place a terrible accident can happen in this city, this idiot driver choose this morning and that particular junction to park his car into someone else’s with 70mph. The entire thing was locked down, traffic jams were forming in every direction and you didn’t realize what was going on until you were stuck in the middle of it with no way out.

Since I had exams I was supposed to be there strictly on time, otherwise I wouldn’t be allowed to make the exam. And for a moment I thought the gods were with me because I managed to drive onto the school parking lot at 8:55AM, 5 minutes before starting time. At least on my watch. By the time I got to class it was 9:02AM and I was late for my exam. Access denied.

Luckily I can still do the exam, though I won’t have a second chance to do it in case I fuck up. So I better not fuck up.

I hate strict times. I hate how you can leave your house well in advance and still manage to be fucked over because of circumstances you have no control over. I hate god for hating me for hating him. But then again I probably had it coming.

Robin

Soldering

This week is a special week called… Project Week! Ah yes, I remember it as clear as yesterday. Last Project Week, which is about two months ago, we had the entire week off! We were the new kids and the Project Week was mostly used for classes higher up, so we had nothing to do. This time though, they did find something for us to do and it’s… soldering. Two days… six hours each and nothing but soldering.

It sucks! But I guess nothing has only fun sides. Every job has it’s downside and soldering is the downside on this job. We need to be able to do quick repairs should something break and if that involves some minor use of a soldering iron then we are expected to fix it.

However 90% of our classroom has no idea how to do it. I did it as a kid a long time ago but I do not remember it being this bloody difficult. How hard can it be to solder two pieces of metal together? Okay in all honesty it’s not the soldering per cé that difficult, it’s the bending and keeping things in place that’s driving me insane. Whenever I try to bend something a certain way the metal just shouts: “FUCK YOU!” and seems to go live a life of it’s own. And when I do finally get it bent the way I want it I have to keep a tiny piece of metal against another tiny piece of metal and solder it together. You do know metal conducts heat quite quickly don’t you?

So yea, I haven’t burned myself yet though and I hope it’s not going to happen but the assignment they gave us was just retarted. We have to make the letters of our class code with metal and each letter can only be a little over 1 inch high. It’s a precision task like you wouldn’t believe and it’s really trying my patience. Today we have another six hours of soldering ahead of us so… more on this lovely subject later.

International Currency & The Internet

A little something offtopic I wanted to bring to everyone’s attention are the downright scams companies are trying to pull off on the internet these days. I’m sure everyone knows what I mean. An American based company sells their product in America for 50 dollars BUT when you try to buy that product from Europe they suddenly change the dollar sign and change it to a euro sign. So 50 dollars suddenly became 50 euro’s and at the current exchange rate I won’t have to tell anyone that’s some major bullshit, especialy because over here we ALSO have to pay 19% taxes over those 50 euros.

Let me just give you the math on a 50 dollar product right here:

$50,- = €38,- at the current exchange rate. (If I were to pay in dollars I would save 12 euro’s.)

€50,- = $65,- at the current exchange rate. (The selling company just made 15 dollars extra!)

19% taxes over €50,- = €9,50.

Which would mean that instead of saving €12,- I’d be paying €21,50 EXTRA! Yea that’s easy money, isn’t it. I’m surprised something like this is even legal.

Anyway, the reason I’m bringing this up now is because I just noticed to biggest scam in history when it comes to the above matter. My Norton account expired so I went to the Norton website to renew it when I noticed that a new version (Norton 2009) had been released. I decided to upgrade from 2008 to 2009 and checked how much it would cost for an existing costumer to renew his subscription AND upgrade his software. After some searching this appeared to cost me a mere $50,- for a 1-year subscription + Norton Internet Security 2009.
I then decided to take the easy road and upgrade my subscription from my Norton software so I was sure everything went as it should. The software directed my to the Dutch version of the Norton website which was no surprise, until I saw the Dutch prices. On this version of the website I suddenly had to pay €108,- to renew my subscription and that didn’t even include the new software! I literally started laughing, this was absolutely ridiculous!! Luckily I’m keen enough to find a way around this bullshit and just bought the 50 dollar package from the website. It came as no real surprise that my Norton software then started to complain about the code being invalid but a quick stop to the live helpdesk fixed that problem. Not only did they give me a working code for the 2009 subscription, they also added 7 days to it for the trouble.

So this is just a general warning to everyone who regularly buys things overseas: Put some time into checking if you can pay with dollars instead of your own currency, even if you have to do some effort. It can save you a LOT of money!

Robin

2009

Time flies, doesn’t it? I mean, as a kid it seems like a year just lasts forever and summer vacation lasts an eternity. But as you get older, it seems time is put into a higher gear each year. Makes me wonder how fast the upcoming year will fly by.

And I’m already turning 21 in 5 days, can you believe it? I still feel like a 17 year old.

Anyway, have a good new-years eve everyone! And best of luck in the new year!

Robin

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