Lev Lafayette's journal

The rolling study machine continues on with daily (or at least, travel time to-and-from work, and evenings) intensive studies in economics dominating. I think I might have gone off the deep-end when I started suggesting that due to diminishing and eventually negative returns of utility in all goods that indifference curves would eventually be circular. This is the sort of mad speculation that one engages in late at night, but it just goes to show that economics isn't all dull. Not at all dull in the wrong way when you have an economy that has just slipped into recession, as my local Federal MP and national treasurer Josh Frydenberg, has been called to task for continually misrepresenting Labor's fiscal policies. Little wonder that the LNP is spending $1m to save his sorry arse in what is supposed to be a safe seat.

In other study news I received my mid-semester assignment result back for my MSc in Information Systems with quite acceptable 80% grade. That was cause for some elation, but it has been significantly soured by the University of Otago suspending my access to the elearning tools because of an alleged $25NZD debt - basically they took my fees (over $4K I might add) decided without reason to deduct $25 and now claim I have a debt, but with no feasible means of making a payment. I am nevertheless continuing this MHEd course courtesy of working directly with the course co-ordinator who is a lot more reasonable in comparison. Seriously though, it is like Otago University is making every effort to prevent students from participating. Hopefully, this will all be sorted out soon. On the other end of the teaching experience, next week I'll be organising a two-day course for High Performance Computing for Mechanical Engineering, which is like my standard courses but with an emphasis on various engineering applications and OpenFOAM in particular, horrible software that it has become.

I haven't just been doing work and study, however. Last night attended a meeting of Linux Users of Victoria with Adrien Close talking about ZeroTier, which looks mighty fine for people who don't like to muck around with tunneling and IPSec whilst on the road, and Enno Davids on some recent less than ethical events in the IT world over the past several months (Australian Census, encryption access, Supermicro, TCL phone data redirects). Further, despite the heat, the RPG Review Cooperative managed to hold its annual Fruit Bat picnic at Bell Bird Park which had a few visitors from Ballarat as well. Finally, last week Mac the Cat ended stuck 6m up a tree; I eventually managed to coax him down with food at 10.30pm to a knot at 4m and then drag him home. A couple of night's later he turned up with a young ring-tailed possum in his mouth, so I guess that's how he got stuck in the first place. We try to have a sunset curfew for Mac, because cats are murderers, and sometimes he gets away with it.