belated happy easter everyone!
Sunday, March 30th, 2008
Archive for March, 2008
twitter, bitches
Saturday, March 29th, 2008so the more people i follow, the more i agree with molly, but generally, it seems everyone broadcasts a certain level of “noise”… as per andrew, things that really grate on me?
the tweets that are along the lines of;
- good morning
- good night
- need coffee/sugar
- too much coffee/sugar
- i can has foodstuff, nom nom nom…
- the weather is cold
- the weather is hot
if there was a way to make shite like that invisible, i’m sure the twitter logs would be about an eighth the size! so why bother with it then?
hmm, occasionally there’s a pearl of wisdom or joke or thread that makes it worthwhile, but generally, i guess the people that will use it the most are also the people most likely to have a disorder or four… excluding all the bots and blog pimps…
at the end of the day, it’s just a bit of fun really, and expecting better content from a service that is mostly chock full of extroverted geeks, is probably asking a bit much.
oh what a night
Thursday, March 27th, 2008last night was just like any other normal night, except not;
i got home from work and we went over to auntie judy’s place for dinner, garlic prawns for starters and then a thai coconut chicken dish, excellent!
we left at about nine fifteen because Liam had missed his sleep completely and wasn’t settling down… got home, fed and put him to bed, ended up falling into bed at around 2215… Liam was still grizzling on and off… at 2245 kim nudged me;
“the cat is banging the blinds, please get her before she wakes Liam up”
ok, no probs…
it’s all a blur now, but i stumbled out of bed and down the hallway, looked right and the window for the spare room was reefed wide open! i made out a shadow in the corner of the room and hit the light, some guy was in our house! i heard myself yell “what are you doing in here, get the hell out!” turned to put the other light on, and heard him say almost apologetically “ok ok” and he was gone; out the window.
i was shaking. the baby was crying. kim was talking to me from the other room.
we called 000, reported it, as i hung the phone up, a policeman was tapping the front door, they were that quick to arrive, seriously.
an hour of going through it again with them, talking to the neighbours, (turns out they aren’t all like that tool from number 6, cool!)… and after securing the house we eventually got to bed a bit before midnight…
as if that wasn’t enough, the oncall phone rung at 12.40am and i was up for another three and a half hours troubleshooting an exchange problem for the London office of a company my work supports. as i suspected after spending all that time, it was a problem at “their” end rather than anything i could actually help with… terrific, thanks for not checking your systems before calling me.
so yeah, today has been a write off, tonights sleep should be much less eventful.
i hope.
it’s no big deal really
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008a couple of months ago i was organising a clearing company to do a massive stock pick up at a city building… old computers had been boxed up and replaced with new ones, and they were off to be auctioned… so spoke with the guys in the truck, arranged a time… spoke with the building manager, booked the loading dock; sorted.
about 2 minutes before they’re due to show up, the fire alarm starts going off, no announcements of a test, just alarms, realising my planning will go down the drain if the loading dock is shut, i race out to the foyer, and against my better judgement press the down button from the 24th floor.
the lift arrives, i get in and hit G.
with the alarms still ringing out, the lift moves down as per normal, then bang, stops in the express zone.
i look at my mobile phone; no reception. great. i bounce a little to see if it’s moving at all… hmm… can’t really tell… i figure the fire alarms have just kicked in and the lifts are all going back to ground or i’m actually stuck and there’s actually a fire… nervous much? i was.
enough time passed to work myself into a quiet panic, and just as i was working up the courage to pickup the emergency handset, the doors opened and i was at the ground level.
PHEW
ok, i’m out and there are firemen everywhere, but it is a drill… albeit a full drill with all the staff walking down the stairs, spoke with the fire warden and got “no, call the removal people, there’ll be no pickup today”
bugger, but that isn’t really the point of the story…
i guess ever since then, i feel a bit nervous in lifts now… it’s not that bad or anything, i’m not sitting in the corner rocking or anything, just… aware of how precarious it is.
the other day a mediocre american sitcom spoke to me… a veritable pearl of wisdom from samantha who? if that is even possible…
“…being in an elevator is like riding a coffin down a mine shaft…”
nice.
lies and statistics
Sunday, March 23rd, 2008we won a match!
i didn’t want to get my hopes up before the game as fulham haven’t won away for something like 30 matches, and the last team they beat on the road? newcastle.
anyway, it’s done now, phew, i didn’t see the match unfortunately (i did watch our loss to liverpool the other week though 
), apparently we started with martins, dukes and owen up front… which is good, if he’s fit, i think martins should start every match…
horrible stats huh… what a shocker.
hey, the socceroos play china this week, a very important match for the world cup qualifiers… timmy and emmo are both out injured, so hopefully the rest can step up, we’ll see.
operating heavy machinery
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008as per twitter… after explaining the story a few times i thought i may as well write a proper post about my brain explosion…
on tuesday afternoon i got home in time to go with kim to the maternal health nurse clinic so liam could get his six month injections… and with hindsight really shouldn’t have.
so in a big loud room you take a number, and eventually get called up to the desk to fill in some forms, i didn’t know at the time, but i was standing next to jane turner…
so then you go over to the other side where the nurses are and kim held liam while he got two injections and some sort of drink medicine thing… i overheard jane say to her daughter; “if you’re scared of the needle, look at me”
funny
anyway, liam got the injections and didn’t much like them… it looked like the nurse really stabbed them in… but i guess she kinda has to huh… so then we have to hang around listening to other crying babies for ten minutes to make sure liam doesn’t have a reaction…
on leaving, the car park was super busy, lots of people coming and going, we were parallel parked and there was an empty bus park in front of us… kim and i were chatting as normal… i started the car and noticed that someone behind me was waiting for the spot we were in, just out of habit, i edge forward to let them in and kim started yelling…
you’re on my foot! go forward! go forward!
so yeah, i just ran over kims foot. not good.
we had a quick argument about how serious it actually was, i wanted to go straight to hospital, she just wanted to go home and ice it… she ended up calling a friend to get checked out later… at the hospital a doctor and foot specialist said nothing was broken and it was just bruised badly, but there is a chance the skin has been severed from the flesh and a skin graft would be needed to repair it… at this stage it doesn’t seem that serious so fingers crossed…
yes, i am now a man-slave for her and she is paying me out mercilessly…
lesson learnt?
-make sure all arms & legs are inside the vehicle before you do anything, and…
-don’t stress about inconveniencing people occasionally…
it would’ve only been another 30 seconds, damn.
gift horses and their mouths
Saturday, March 15th, 2008if you followed me on twitter you would already know that i won an 8gb iPod touch on friday! crazy huh, i haven’t won anything for years, the thing is i guess, you have to enter competitions to win things… and so often these days, competitions require sms’ing and for some reason, i’m not OK with that…
after a vendor seminar a couple of weeks ago, they offered a feedback form with a chance win stuff, i would’ve filled the form out because i wanted to tell them some things about their product in the real world anyway… but i’ve gotta say, i’m stoked.
…and torn.
now i have to use an apple product.
terrific
realistically my rio carbon 5gb has survived very well, but since i dropped it last year, hasn’t really been the same… with no scroll wheel, i updated it to the “developers” firmware so i could use the front keys to navigate, which is ok, just not ideal…
so i’ve never had an iPod before, and in an effort to avoid the bloat, i will try to use winamp to manage it… but imagine that apple will make this difficult at every step.
i’ll keep you posted.
oh hey, also, i just heard that the F1 cars no longer have traction control! how cool, not that i’m really into it, just that it makes the drivers less like passengers and more like pilots. this weekend at albert park should be halfway interesting!
choonz
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008so i went a bit nuts with buying music this month, just thought i’d catch up on a bunch of stuff i’ve been meaning to get for a while… still, i didn’t break my own rules and pay more than $20 for any one album, and in most cases paid less than $15!
- motion city soundtrack - even if it kills me… something newish that i’m really getting into, kinda like the hippos crossed with weezer, very cool, and quite clever lyrics in places, which i’m always a sucker for!
- hard-fi - once upon a time in the west… probably the best “2nd album” i’ve heard for such a breakout band, really dig the horns in “can’t get along (without you)”, and they’ve retained that sort of anthemic sound while resisting the urge to add drama. i also really like that the NO COVER ART cover art is followed up inside the case with a large spread reading INSIGNIFICANT PHOTO SHOOT
- alicia keys - songs in A minor… can’t believe it’s taken me so long to get this one, and it only cost $10! they’re all good but the standout track has to be “rock wit u”, it grates on me to type the spelling like that, but the sound is just that good…
- nirvana - unplugged in new york… i used to have my brothers copy of this and think i almost wore the laser right through the disc, haven’t listened to it since, yet, the mood will grab me again sometime soon, and when it does i’ll be ready.
- gomez - how we operate… this album has taken forever to grow on me, unlike a previous one of theirs “in our gun” but “notice” gives me goose bumps now and the album just gets better from there.
- the white stripes - get behind me satan… another one that has taken me forever to get, the album is full of excellent songs but better than that it flows really well. “my doorbell” is my personal favorite.
- jebediah - of someday shambles… i went through a stage of hearing this album far too many times a week and even still the lead singers voice annoys me a bit; i steer well clear of bob evans… that said, this album is just full of really good songs, it’s inescapable. plus there’s the whole rewind before track one starts thing.
- herbie hancock - the essential… ahh the classic… i rarely buy albums for one song, but since he won that grammy i couldn’t help myself, maybe i’ll discover more of his listening to this… or maybe i’ll just skip to rockit everytime…
- norah jones - feels like home… dinner music, albeit pretty high standard… compared to… i guess elevator music? gotta say though, i love the dolly parton duet… “humble me” has to be the stand out track.
- jose gonzalez - in our nature… maybe my only regret of the month? i find it preachy and annoying, probably the opposite of what he was going for… and do we REALLY need someone else doing massive attacks “teardrop”? damn. teardrop is an amazing song, leave it alone, i’m looking at you wendy matthews, House MD, and of course you Jose.
- the music - welcome to the north… ahh back when emi was releasing crippled media, don’t call it a CD because it isn’t. the album doesn’t comply with the standards that make compact discs, compact discs. anyway, the music were probably the loudest act at the gold coast BDO when i went, beating out slipknot, the beastie boys and system of a down… and this album rocks, my fav i guess would be breakin’
so yeah, massive month for me huh, have you bought anything this month?
sunday night lights
Monday, March 10th, 2008the 2008 motogp season got under way last night, first race since the fifties to be run at night! i can’t help but think the only reason they did it was to slot the race into the “correct” time period for TV audiences in the US… oh well… it was lit up like day for the most part anyway, still, it can’t be a very “green” approach can it?
the racing itself was excellent, seems to be a very competitive field this year, former superbike world champion james toseland looks confident, casey and the duc look absolutely formidable… the commentators were saying dorna might be looking at limiting the ducati somehow, and i think that’s utter crap, motogp is about building and racing the fastest bike you possibly can, they are purpose built. if ducati’s bike is faster than everyone elses, then suck it up and go back to the drawing board - no one ever changed the rules when mick doohan was winning… maybe mr.honda is more is equal than others? that said, casey has always been at the pointy end of the pack, no matter what hardware has been underneath him…
i can see why the ducati has an advatage in the world superbikes, because those bikes are based on production models and the ducati is a 1200cc (named 1098 strangely), and the rest of the bikes are 1000cc… so yeah, room to change a few things there…
interestingly the commentators also said, “pedrosa said hayden doesn’t know how to setup a bike, that’s why he’s riding last years model”
yikes, that’s a bit harsh… i wonder how that garage is getting along now?
hehehe…
i’m relevant! …kind of
Sunday, March 9th, 2008so yeah, i got pretty excited on friday morning, i managed to get a mention on BOL… not for anything i’ve said or done, just for linking them to an article i thought might be relevent… and turns out it was, cool huh.
i’ve put some new photos up here
not much else to say really…
rice mush, mmm…
Tuesday, March 4th, 2008nothing to report really, liam is growing, yelling a lot, not sleeping as well as he used to in the night, but is still adorable… and kim is amazing, so the usual i guess… we’ve started feeding him rice mush and mashed potato occasionally… he thinks it’s pretty interesting and doesn’t seem to spit it back out (straight away), so that can’t be a bad thing… from the little i’ve read, he has the correct tongue reflex?
the laptop i want is getting closer to release in australia, yay!
on a completely different note, privacy.
- do you own a shredder and use it regularly?
- do you keep statements for seven years, then shred them?
- do you worry about giving away too much information about yourself online?
- ahh, how good are dot points?
this came up because i was getting increasingly frustrated with the amount of paper the banks send me. what to do with it all? then i started thinking about all the information about myself i freely share here anyway… i considered password protecting all the “family” posts and supplying the password to family and close frends, but what hassle, and is it even worth it? what is the actual risk?
i’m sure liam will be highly embarrassed by this site in the future, but until then; it stays, mostly unguarded.
if i ever started betting with actual money on an online poker site or had to buy something online from a seller i didn’t think i could trust, i’d get a completely new credit card and keep the limit down to like $100… that way if it was compromised; it wouldn’t be a big deal…
so then, should i be concerned with this online personality i have to craft?
meh.
i have decided meh. i just think too much. i will try to “be myself” on twitter, facebook and here, and if that means spamming you with crap you don’t care about, then so be it.
me talking crap you don’t care about probably isn’t a new concept anyway!