A glimpse into Jake's past ...

From the vault ... a younger, angrier Jake

Jake was clearly not always the good-natured law-abiding soul he is today - his past is so riddled with myths, legends, half truths and lies that the real truth will probably never be known. Although regarded as a person of interest, his team of crack barristers ensured that he was never charged with any crime. It is well known that from the age of 2 to 5 years he was the brutal overlord of the Jakuzzi - a senselessly violent and criminally insane rabble of three-to-five year old sociopaths, psychopaths, cannibals, self mutilaters and many others from the nameless, shapeless mass of human detritus who have already been judged as being completely incapable of existing in normal human society. These soiled and evil-smelling kindergarten dropouts were ferociously loyal to Jake or as they referred to him, the Dolphin of Pain. It was not uncommon for some crazed minions to chew off their own arms, legs and even head, or to mine their own spleen and other organs and present them to their beloved Dark Cetacean master before expiring in a frenzy of blood and pain.

Jake and his minions' reign of terror ended as abruptly and mysteriously as it started - some say it was attrition among the hordes caused by finite numbers of body parts, others suggest that it was the great dolphin purge of '85 - someone looking suspiciously like Pac Man was seen leaving in a hurry and Jake was nowhere to be found.

Recently Jake was reported to have re-surfaced and he has been spotted acting suspiciously on and around the Monash University Caulfield campus - it is believed that he is impersonating an academic but for what evil purposes? He claims to have left his old life behind, but we must ask can he be trusted? - does evil ever really die, and what kind of systems are his students really building in the dark recesses of K-block?

If that was a week, then I've had it...

"Jack be limbo, Jack be quick, Jack go unda limbo stick,
All around the limbo clock, come on lets do the limbo rock
Limbo lower now, limbo lower now, how low can you go"
Chubby Checker, Limbo Rock

What a horrible, horrible week! Many of the things that could go wrong or bite me did! I have contingency plans though, so its a shame that like all contingency plans they didn't all work as planned and some of my issues are still breathing down my neck and some are digging up my nature strip.And horror of horrors, worst of all I've been so late home most nights and so tired that I have often had to forgo the therapeutic healing properties and fizzy goodness inherent in any fine Australian beer made exclusively from Australian beer stuff. I have also missed more than a few of the traditional nightly beer'o'clock festivities with their characteristic all-in full-contact limbo dancing and paintball contests so beloved in my village. Without the regular benefits of these essential and important socio-spiritual lubricants and balms, is it any wonder that more than a few of the women from my village are sad and repeatedly bump the limbo stick? Is it any wonder that my chakras are dry and cracked?

Its not bad enough that I have to suffer the indignity, degradation, ritual humiliation, and cruel and unusual punishments that go along with being Jake's "female dog of the breeding persuasion" this week - no I have also had to bear disruptions, implosions, explosions, separations, insurgents, discontinuations, betrayals (I had to take care of the problems with Santa once and for all) and I still have no exit strategy!!

Teaching into and being involved in the IE program is in my opinion one of the most rewarding areas in which an IT academic can work, but sometimes administering the IE program can be a real nightmare and worse than pulling teeth without an anaesthetic.

- if it was just room bookings it would be a breeze, but we have to wrestle with Facile-ities and ITS (Intimidation Terrorist Services) for things that should be easy - still chasing swipe card access to K-block studios, still pushing for whiteboards, still wondering about old printers, still getting laughed at when I put in requests for opening port 80, still trying to get my account to access the computers in studio, still having decisions overruled, still being misinformed and played by opportunistic students, ...

- trying to help students and being shunted around needlessly to all the wrong places and having to deal with the petty officiousness of ITS and Student Salvages when neither knew what they were talking about is a pain - do they do this to students? Or did they just pick me as a staff member and consider that it would be fun to see me run backwards and forwards for a couple of hours

Would you even dream of treating your client like that? How long do you think it would take for them to contact me or Jake? What would it do to your reputation and that of Monash?

- and are students a little more obtuse this year? or am I just getting old and twisted and cynical -- what is it about answering a question honestly that causes most students to go catatonic or paralysed from the neck down or to totally lose the power of speech? why the complete refusal to admit that you don't know something, especially when its quite clear that you don't know? do you think its better to be ignorant than to be seen as not knowing something? - are you not responsible for your own destiny? do you still think its a rehearsal?

Well my pretties, if ignorance and mediocrity are your goals, why are you at uni? You all know how I feel about mediocrity and ignorance, and the nature of my job advice if these are your goals:

"Would you like fries with that?" - Hamburger Wrangler
"Can I see your ticket punk" - Connex Gruppenfuhrer Ticket Nazi
"Please leave your message after the tone" - answering machine message
"Have you got 2 bucks for a coffee mate" - Flinders St Station entrepreneur

If your answer to the above questions is a resounding McNo! then you had better bring along your dictionaries, textbooks and Mr Wiki (he knows everything!) to studios and seminars 'cos here comes the 'shlock and bore' tactics - I intend to push your vocabularies, challenge your intellects, mock your village elders, and make you question all you think you know. For some perverse reasons not entirely known or understood by even myself, I believe that by introducing uncertainty into an atmosphere already rife with fear and ridicule I will somehow be able to harness this and make you feel good about yourselves and confident in what you know, what you can do, where you are going, what you are learning and what you have learned.
More importantly we want you to be able to recognise when a learning imperative rears up on its hind legs and tries to bite you on your intellectual jugular, and for you to view this hungry imperative as the joyous opportunity it is.

In fact we have only really taught you enough to enable you to get into more trouble than you are probably capable of getting out of - but you'll know how to find what you need!

Learning doesn't stop when you leave uni and once you enter the big bad slowly-warming world you will be expected to acquire much new knowledge, and to attain many new skills and techniques. Your ability to learn quickly is one of the most saleable skills you take from uni, so if you embrace learning, learn to love it, and then look for every opportunity to discover more, you will have a definite and quite visible advantage over those that see learning as a chore and you increase your chances of reaping the benefit.

It would be nice if equality really existed but like many human social constructs its all smoke and mirrors. Don't be afraid to be more equal than your peers and contemporaries, and let them know that you are more equal! We need others who aren't as equal as us, so we have a reference point for just how equal we are! - its a bit sad sometimes that mediocre seems to be the norm out there but that makes it easier for we more-equals to both perform and be noticed

We are the thinkers and wordsmiths in our industry as well as the picture creators and doers - we are expected to have insight, we are expected to know lots of stuff, we are expected to have and take initiative, we are expected to find out lots of stuff before we are asked about it, we are expected to make quick and confident decisions, and most importantly we are expected to be able to communicate our thoughts and knowledge effectively and articulately. To succeed in any area we need to be proactive rather than reactive - this needs knowledge, understanding, intuitiveness, and the preparedness to act on the strength of any or all of these factors - we accept that occasionally we get it wrong but this should never stop us from making a decision when one is called for - better to get it wrong and recover, than to make no decision and go nowhere!

THESE THINGS DO NOT HAPPEN BY OSMOSIS OR CHANCE! AND THEY WON"T HAPPEN AT ALL IF YOU INSIST ON ENSHRINING YOUR IGNORANCE BY AVOIDING WHAT YOU DON"T KNOW OR DON"T WANT TO KNOW - IT IS ALL WELL AND GOOD BEING AWARE OF AND COMFORTABLE WITH WHAT YOU KNOW, BUT IF YOU DON"T RECOGNISE OR ARE NOT PREPARED TO ADMIT WHAT YOU DON"T KNOW , YOU CAN CAUSE MUCH TROUBLE FOR THOSE RELIANT ON YOU AND MUCH EMBARRASSMENT FOR YOURSELF.

Strangely, I feel better now that I have vented my spleen, and I can look forward to next week when I will bring my barbed flail to studio and use it as a teaching aid!

Come into my parlour ...

"You're a microscopic cog in his catastrophic plan, controlled and directed by his red right hand."

Nick Cave - Red Right Hand

I can't say that I'm entirely enamored with the idea of revealing all the dark and sordid secrets, the deals and machinations, the late night meetings exchanging envelopes in car parks, the unidentifiable body parts in hessian bags - but if we expect you to bare your souls to us in your blogs I suppose its only fair that I also expose the dark underbelly of the IE project and the twisted ramblings of the minds that plot its course.

Of course many of you will already be realising that for Jake and myself, our successful takeover of the IE projects is just one small step in our evil plan to overrun New Zealand, ultimately achieve world domination and become rulers of the largest empire ever seen on film or screen - and you lucky IE folks have the chance to become our minions. We will keep you informed of our progress on all fronts!




So why, you may ask, am I awake and blogging at 5am - there is no time to rest, and while you're sleeping away your hour I'm wringing all the goodness from the daylight I've saved!

... so don't forget ... I'm wide awake ... I'll be watching ... and waiting ...