serpserpserp

What my post would be on www.fmylife.com

2009-03-03T20:45:00.003+11:00

This would be for yesterday...

"Today I was getting changed into my running gear when I heard a bang in the hallway, thinking nothing of it I decided to re-arrange my bag which took 5 to 10 minutes, I opened the door to a person in a wheelchair desperately needing to go to the toilet, I was in the only disabled bathroom for ages and that was them knocking to get in, FML."

I am going to hell for that one. I've done some bad things in my life most I probably have some excuse I could come up with at the gates of Heaven to scrape in, but seriously, I got nothing for that sin.

** Ok here I go for the excuse, the other change room is way down the other end of the car park and always packed, it was 6:30pm and I thought nobody would be around so I jumped in this room, usually it takes me about 60 seconds to get changed because I have it down to a fine art. Also I bust people going into this room and changing all the time, hell, some people even use the shower in there. **

Yeah, still, no excuse eh?

What is wrong with Messenger programs?

2009-02-22T14:48:00.003+11:00

Why don't people use them still? Come on people, it makes the Internet worth living!

Gears of War

2009-02-22T12:14:00.003+11:00

Last night I headed over to a mates place to play some xbox360 we recently got him for an engagement present. I thought it was just going to be some light hearted stuffing about, you know, trying some of his new games but generally just chatting and drinking. We started out the night playing some 3 player Halo 3 Deathmatch, Halo is really really boring, maybe the single player is something more exciting (I wouldn't know since I haven't played any of them) or maybe the killer part of the game is the online experience, but everything else about it feel a bit generic. Although the vechicle driving is fun (although nothing more exciting than doing the same thing in Unreal Tournament.)

Had a steak dinner next, which was tasty, then loaded up Gears of War, this game is a ton of fun playing Co-Op. I can't see why anyone would want to play it any other way. We playing through the first Act swapping in and out between the three of us when we died etc, then it was decided that we were going to finish the game in one sitting.

Big mistake.

This game goes forever, I thought doing Co-Op we'd breeze it in under a few hours, about 6 hours later we had finished about 2am, with myself having a massive headache and eye watering problems (We played it on a giant 50 something inch plasma, with the stereo up way too loud). Got home and collasped in bed.

Never thought i'd have a giant gaming session outside of the homies in Melbourne, guess I just did.

U2 iPod is dying

2009-02-17T17:55:00.002+11:00

So the iPod astro gave me many years ago as the best birthday present ever is now slowly dying. Over the last 6 months or so it has trouble keeping its charge over 24-36 hours, usually I only use it once a day for going home, which is 40 minutes tops, then the next day if I forget to recharge it is flat.

Over the last 2 weeks, it has been having troubles buffering any track over 10 minutes, it basically plays the file but the controls become completely unresponsive for 45 seconds until its recovered and allows me to do stuff. Considering I play a lot of mixes and constantly scan through them all the time, this is pretty crap.

Today I plugged the iPod in to transfer some songs on it, it started to whir and then made some very strange beeping sounds (which is odd because the sound effects should be on mute) and then anapod could recognise anything on the iPod. So after about 30 minutes of stuffing about I cave in and install iTunes to reformat the thing, iTunes then updates my iPod software which requires me to plug it into the AC adapter (why I don't know) to completely update it. My AC adapter is at work so until I get back there tomorrow, it is not usable, merrrrr. On top of this, I now have the most bloated music program in history installed on my PC, meeeeerrrrrrrrrrrr.

So if I don't fix this up soon I'm going to have to consider getting a smartphone, I wanted to wait for the Palm Pre to see if its any good, and I can't afford the $1000+ HTC Touch HD so I might have to bite the bullet and get an iPhone. However most likely I'll just get another iPod, maybe an 8 giger or something like that, or a huge iPod classic, we'll see.

Max Payne - The Movie

2009-02-17T17:34:00.002+11:00

What the hell was going on with that movie? It started out fair enough, although you'd have no idea where all the characters fit in unless you had played the game. As a rendition of a game it was an ok movie, as a movie on its own it was pretty poor. They should have focused and the more tripped out flashbacks that happened in the game and focused less on force feeding the plot to the audience.

Oh yeah, and it's wide open for a Max Payne 2 movie, which would be good because the second game had a decent plot. It will be interesting to see if it will ever come to light.

Tweetin'

2009-02-16T20:43:00.001+11:00

I'll give you tweetin' ! *shakes fist*

Seriously, give up the microblogging format and get back to the big B, blog. It is where it is at, it is where it should always be at.

Art of Noise - Close (to the edit)

2009-01-26T21:22:00.000+11:00

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=-sFK0-lcjGU

'That' version...

2008-12-03T22:27:00.001+11:00

Trent Reznor on Johnny Cash's version of Hurt.

Bloody Fight Club

2008-11-25T21:20:00.002+11:00

It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.

Why does one of my favourite quotes have to come from a movie with such an annoying fan base.

Take that NSW Government

2008-11-25T21:12:00.003+11:00

I am so blowing, like a $150 on bus tickets before Janurary 1st 2009, no way am I getting caught out by the bus fare hikes this year. Last year it was like 8% increase, this year cause the government is broke, it has gotta be like over 10%.

I'll do that and they'll probably just up and change the ticketing system on me, arseholes are reading my mind.

Rewards point credit cards are only useful if for free or rich people

2008-11-25T20:40:00.002+11:00

Serious. If you are an average person, don't get a reward points card it just doesn't pan out unless your earning over 6 figures a year and it is simple to see why...

I just got the top of the line card with reward points from work, I did this cause for some strange reason I qualify but more importantly it just became fee free for me.
The fee for my card for your average joe is a few hundred quid a year, I think that is ridiculous, in fact since I've been on government payments mostly all my life, I find it really difficult to comprehend the whole "bank fees" thing, which is odd considering the place that I work, but anyway...

Back to the card, my card gets a point for every dollar you spend, sometimes if your lucky you can buy stuff and get 3 or more points, this is probably available to you about 90% of the time if your super scrooge about it all (and oh yes, I am). To actually earn enough points to say, get a voucher at a big chain store for the amount of cash you pay in your annual fee, you have to get at least 50,000. Yes that is right, 50,000. so even if you spent all your cash at the 3 point or more stores, you'd have to dolly up at least 16.666K of cash a year. That is after tax folks, and if you want to avoid fees, you can't include rent/mortgage payments in there. 16 and a half thousand is a lot to spend in a year for your regular person, you'd have to blow on average over $300 a week (remember no rent) just to get close to that amount. It is crazy.

But you know if your in a relationship with two incomes and can do the whole additional card thing well you'll probably breeze it in. I know married couple at work that do serious damage with their points, I know some guy who reckons he has accumalated 300,000 points with his wife and kids over the last 1 and a bit, that is some serious coinage being channelled through the plastic. Does this guy not know how many over priced wine chillers he could get with those points?!?! at least like 8...

So in closing, reward points cards are bad, when I go home this Christmas, I am so going to talk my parents into a rewards free, account fee free banking world, they better believe it.

Big bad ISP law of suits

2008-11-24T21:25:00.003+11:00

Here are some interesting articles on the eye-eye Net lawsuit:

LawFont's view.

APC Mag view.

A lot of people seem to believe this has been a decently thought out lawsuit. It will be very interesting if this case is won.

Housing

2008-11-24T20:24:00.000+11:00

Did I mention house projects? Cause god damn this country needs some more housing!

But to do a backflip..

2008-11-24T17:47:00.002+11:00

I don't think we are looking good for next year, considering our heavy reliance on resource exporting and countries/companies not really needing the massive amounts that these companies wear gearing up to produce/sell.

This country needs a massive deficit in the budget and it needs to be spend on infrastructure. Productivity, Health & Environment infrastructure I'd like to see it spent on. I mean massive projects too, something on the scale of the snowy mountains scheme they did way back when, but with less deaths and more long term benefits and employment.

For the record...

2008-11-24T16:11:00.002+11:00

I think the RBA will cut rates by 50 basis points on December 2nd. I can't see them doing another super massive cut this year.

But hey, no one saw the 100 point cut last month, this country is not nearly in as bad shape as the media is making out.

BE POSITIVE PEOPLE! :D

Monday Updates

2008-11-24T13:20:00.002+11:00

So I am at home on a Monday (don't ask). So it is time to get my bliggity blog on:

Job - This job right, all signs in my mind tell me its good. I go to work everyday and I learn something new (something I love out of a job.) The people are good, if a little narrow focused (for some of these people, their life revolves around their job, and that has to be partly because they really want it to orrrr, they really want more promotions/money), I get along with my customers, and I am starting to feel a little more comfortable with what I do day to day, things are coming along alright. However I still have this problem where I go to work every day waiting to get in trouble for something (guess that is part of the "learn something new" thing) and I also wish my hours were a teeny bit shorter, but you know, overall it isn't too bad.

Sydney - I still really enjoy living here, I don't know how I will ever adapt to moving south again. Sure Sydney is dirtier, collapsing under its own weight of corruptness, infrastructure problems and economic downturns, but you know, it has everything I want, the weather is nice and god damn some of the surrounding areas are picturesque!
Still, I think I could move to the country again, maybe north coast of NSW, I think the inner paste bogan in me still loves the idea of living healthy in a sea side town. At least now the Internet works at a reasonable pace out there, right???

Ikea - Went to Ikea Sunday, when you walk through there do you ever feel like you are part of some group of people fleeing some war torn country to a refugee camp across the border?!? Think about it, everyone is in some sorta dazed and somewhat agitated state, following the line of similarly looking people in one direction, all the while looking at the few people walking in the opposite direction like they are crazy. Small children are everywhere, oblivious to where they are or crying in confusion, people are grabbing shit they don't need, fabrics, glasses, cushions, jamming that shit on the trolley, gotta keep movin', gotta keep ahead of the pack, Don't fall behind... Then when you get to the checkout its like you've reached that UN refugee camp, people grabbing boxes full of crap, piling it onto more trolleys, waiting in massive queues to get over the border.. err, pay for their goods. People are even more testy, fights break out over queue jumpers, people cry when their items don't get scanned properly/can't pay by AMEX, it's a humanitarian crisis people.

You could totally write a descriptive short story with a twist on what I said there, I am soooo clevar.

More blog later.

Simpsons Avatar

2008-11-24T13:17:00.003+11:00

They don't have a pasty, hairy faced, spiky haired guy with a underbite avatar. I guess I just don't belong in Simpsons land.

I want eatability 2.0

2008-09-28T21:27:00.002+10:00

All right n00bs listen up, I like review sites right, and I like food. I use to be a big user of eatability.com.au but then I realised it sucks, why? Because it doesn't reward the reviewer, it does make you feel like all that time and effort in writing a review on a resturant matters 'cause basically all it does it get appended to a list ala a comments section on a blog really, and that sucks.

What I want is for someone to build a 2.0 restuarant review site that makes me feel like writing that review was actually worth it, I want my reviews to be able to be rated up or down, I want to have a count of reviews next to my username so people can see if I'm a fly by nighter or a serious contributor, I want to be able to have flexibility in categorising resturants into something that isn't by "food type" or "geographical district". I want owners to have their own type of user so they have a bit of control over what is listed on the site, so they can add more informational value or images, menu's, discount offerings, have right of proper reply etc, not what it currently is with them making daft usernames and pumping up their scores and making bogus reviews, or just negatively altering the work of others. I want amazon styled "if you liked this resturant you might like" functionality.

I want a bunch of other shit but just start with that, do it soon and don't make me do it myself *shakes fist*.

Whoops

2008-09-06T13:27:00.001+10:00

Just napped to about 12:30pm.

Early Saturdays

2008-09-06T09:49:00.002+10:00

I've been up, out of the house, to the Pyrmont market which seemed to be closed down do to the massive amount of rain we are having today, when to Pancakes on the Rocks which after the 3 or 4th time of being there is really really average. Then went to Glenmore meats and bought a ton of erm, MEAT. Now I am home and all before 10am!

Over paid.

2008-08-30T16:55:00.002+10:00

The last two pays I've got from work have been more than I should be getting. It is to do with moving to my new job. Someone, somewhere has put my base salary plus super into the box where it should be just my base salary, so I am getting what, around 9% extra (whatever default super rate is) than I should be. I noticed it last pay and thought it might iron itself out before this pay (and trust me, my work payment system does some fruity things some times) but it hasn't, and it sucks too because I'll probably have to pay that money back, or get deducted or something for the rest of the year to make up for it. It double sucks because now I see what I would get paid if I had a 10% raise, and I could really deal with that, but that isn't coming for a loooooonnnggg time. But now I'm use to that extra money coming into my bank account, I don't want to give it up!

Monday I'll tell the powers that be the deal, they'll probably turn around and laugh at me for being so honest and they would have just kept paying me or something, but I need to be honest about this shit cause that is the guy I am. Brr.

Back to study?

2008-08-28T21:15:00.002+10:00

So I am thinking about undertaking some more study, a certification to be exact but i'm not sure I really want to commit to it. It would be really helpful for me and my job if I did do it, plus if I completed it all (It would take at least 3 years) it would help me move to mostly any role I would like to go in my current work environment. But right now I struggle just keeping up with my job and this study would require a lot of attention because its not something I'm good at naturally and only some of it mildly interests me, some of the other stuff in it will make me want to cry cause it will be more of some of the annoying stuff I did at uni.

I guess I'm hesitant about it because I am worried I won't give it my best shot and will half give up and end up failing the first exam. It requires at least 10 to 15 hours of study a week and from what I've read on the internet that is a fairly conservative assumption.

So lets weigh up the pro's and cons:

Pro

- Would really help me a lot with my current role and moving beyond that.
- It is a very well respected cert. probably because it is so damn hard.
- I want to do something challenging like this, preferably while I still have the energy of youth on my side (although that seems to be running out soon.)
- It would help my confidence if I finished. I'd be pretty proud.
- It would help me decide a hell of a lot quickly if this is really what I want to do with my "life".
- It costs $1200 a year to study. (cheaper than going to uni and more valuable!)

Cons

- It will basically consume my life outside (and probably a bit inside) of work. This is hard as I don't really have enough time at the moment to attend to astro, family, physical activity.
- It costs $1200 a year to study. (Money I don't want to spend atm)
- It is really hard, not a lot of it seems like a much fun.
- I can already see bits in it I will hate.
- I am not confident in my abilities to pass.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

How's it all going?

2008-08-24T14:58:00.002+10:00

So I am 19 days into my new role, you cool internet peoples probably like to call it "4 weeks" but I can't keep up with you crazy cats and your leet meme language.

So how am I doing? I'm doing alright, I'm working longer hours, but I have tons of stuff to do and I am constantly learning. The people at my work are still friendly, I think some of them are waaaaay into their jobs too much, but maybe that is just because right now is the busy end of the year (it is the end of the reporting year for my area of the business in September I believe.)

Still not sure about the long term outlook on this area, I mean it is much better than the old are I worked in and I think I am more motivated and happier in this job then I have been in quite some time. Just not sure if it is totally what I'd like to do for the next 30 years. Pretty sure it isn't, but then what is? I figure I'll work here until I burn out or just find it so boring I'll try something else. I hope I continue to find fulfillment out of it for some time to come yet.

So I am writing this so I don't have to study, I can't believe I am actively studying finance theory outside of uni for no benefit apart from me just knowing it. I mean, I need to know it cause of my job, but there isn't a pretty piece of paper or something really tangible at the end of doing this, just the satisfaction of know what the hell people are talking about and hopefully being able to input myself a bit more than I can now.

Ok I just got distracted by the bronze medal basketball game on TV. Man the coverage of the basketball has been shithouse, but what should I expect? Every olympics, world championships, NBA, NBL, it is all bad all the time. Makes me irriate! They'd rather show some shit swimming qualifier than a basketball game, and then they only show like 5 minutes of a game anyway, pathetic.

I want to make Parmigiano Reggiano crisps. Who's with me? (*motions Jerry Maguire style at the internets*)

I am waiting for something like the Asus G50 to come out on the list of salary sacrifice laptops I can purchase through work. I don't really need a new laptop, but I do love using that salary sacrifice.

I feel like ripping of this wordpress theme and maybe doing a sub domain on astro site or something. I need to have a fully fledged site to get back into the internets. Maybe. I dunno I got some much other stuff I should be doing I sort think, do I really have time for the Internets anymore?

Don't be silly, I bet I'll be blogging in some form for the rest of my life, I've almost been doing it for half of it now, gotta kept that streak alive.

Man since when was I turning 30 next year, holy crap. Aren't I suppose to be a millionaire by now or something?

I wanna go stay here, the deluxe water suite is only like 1 to 2 grand a night for two people. So internets, you're paying right?

Back to the present.busi

2008-08-17T21:54:00.003+10:00

Hurrr, Sunday night, it use to be pretty easy going, I'd sit around doing pretty much nothing but procrastinating about not going to work the next day, but nothing was a stress, I'd know what I'd have to do the next day, I knew I could sleep in a little, rock into work a little late if I wanted, it wouldn't matter cause I knew I'd have everything in my work day under control and have all my work pretty much done and dusted before midday.

These days, well, today, it required study, baking, cleaning and iron of work clothes. Sunday are now harder these days because now my weeks are harder. No having everything under control, no rocking in late (I get to work pretty much 8:05 to 8:30am everyday now) no having everything under control by midday, its all work all the time, and I don't mind, but it is more tiring than I was use to as an I.T guy.

You know people who work in I.T should own up to it. "It" being the lack of work we do. 80% of these people do fuck all but work to make themselves look busy. Half of the people in corporate I.T jobs don't even have any history of interest in I.T or education. It is often something they "fell" into because the media beats it up as the "future" for cubicle drones. But what these people don't realise is that the real I.T work is somewhere else, not in what they are busy making themselves do. The real I.T work is out there in web start-ups, biotech, Engineering and research. What we do in "retail I.T" is nothing more than glorified shop assistants or production line workers, its pathetic.
It is pathetic that we can get paid so much for it too. I know one person in my old team that does fuck all work, dishes out most of it to other people, misses deadlines constantly, has "meetings" late in the afternoon out of the office. Rocks in late most days due to it being part of the "study plan" for "a" university subject this person is doing, it is unbelievable. It is unbelievable that people who work on websites and the like have never coded a HTML page from scratch in their life, they've never learnt to use photoshop, they have never learn the basics of setting up your own site. The people are mostly in charge of a major website, but if you told them to go out tomorrow and buy/setup a domain name and put some simples pages up there with graphics they won't even know where to start.

Did I mention these people fell into these fucking roles?! I mean one senior manager has been with the company nearly twenty years, started out as a P.A and now manages the content team without any real experience or education in management of people or actually knowing anything about building websites?!?! 5 people, yes 5, that I know that work on major IT projects as people who are suppose to be "experts" or the "source of truth" for certain things on the website came from starting out in call centres, call centres that have NOTHING to do with tech support or I.T? People that use to ask me simple things about coding their personal websites but turn around in meetings and expect me to listen to them be an expert in say, MIS systems, Internet marketing, User centric design? I had one woman who was the most senior BA on a project I was working, the woman who was in charge of me and several other people on the project, tell me that she once took a B.A course and the only thing she learned out of it was that she isn't a B.A.... THEN WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU?!? I'll tell you what you are, your a person that turns in sub standard work at the last minute and then say it was shit because of the time constraints and human resources you had at your disposal. You are a person who actually has a big say in who gets hired externally onto the project, yes you, that is right YOU! You must look at people and decide to hire them because basically, they are better than you at doing your job, so they must be useful. Oh god.

I think the reason I left my last role was simply from not being able to see the logic in progression of your career. It would seem that if you were old, and had been around the business for a long time, you were all of a sudden elevated to a position where you start having real influence on technical/website things without ever having stepped foot in a classroom on the subject or even taken a real interest in it outside of your job. Come on people.

As usual I don't know where I am going with this, but I've been typing for too long and I've gotta sleep. Maybe more on this tomorrow.

My new job

2008-08-10T16:08:00.002+10:00

So I guess it is time to blog about it. I've had a total of 9 working days in it and so far so good. The first few days consisted of my freaking out and having no comprehension of what was going on. I'd have to ask for explainations on everything about three times over, nobody had any time, and I had major I.T issues with my phone/apps/email/roaming profile, on top of all of this it was the end of the month and a lot of instructions on big deals come through at this time and are very time sensitive it was pretty bad.
I was pretty depressed coming home those first few nights, I was just thinking about what I got myself into, it is hard going from one area where you have a natural apptitute to going to a place where you really have a small base knowledge of what the fuck is going on, it is a very hard mind shift to make. On the Thursday of my first week the senior person that I will be working with most of my clients came back and really helped me get a handle on things, gave my some motivation and at the end of the week told me that I had been doing an excellent job so far. That was something I really needed to hear so that was great.

The long weekend came and was pretty much eaten up by my sisters visit, so I didn't really feel like I got to recover, I went back to work this week and felt better about the fact that it was a short week, that helped me stay focused, I learnt a lot more stuff this week, was expected to handle more ad-hoc thing on my own and basically things started to gel a little more.

So the place and people itself are also pretty good, everything is a faster pace and people work very hard, everyone is pretty nice and generally want to get things done. On that note, I noticed that if I sent emails to people they'd get back to me either straight a way or a few hours, phone calls were returned straight away, a huge huge improvement over my last area, where everyone is very relaxed on getting back to people or need constant prodding to do stuff. People just take pride in what the do here and want to help, its great.

Also Wednesday morning was pretty interesting, the guy that does the economic announcements to the media came down to our floor and basically gave us a heads up on where the financial markets are going to go for the next month from his point of view. Extremely insightful, this guy must live and breathe this shit cause he know everything about every country and every market, unbelievable, I'll be interested to see how many of his predictions come true, he is a very bullish person so I think he is an overshooter, but will see how my conservative views match up against his next month :) .

This week I'm not really looking forward to, I dunno why, I think I am still adjusting to my new working hours, yeah, I work more now. My old job was a cinch and I'd rock in about 9, take over an hour for lunch, browse the internet a lot, take 2 15 minute breaks, and still have time to do my regular work and extra stuff on top of that, and still be ready to leave work at 5pm if I wanted to. These days I get in around 8:15am and take a decent lunch (still refuse to eat at my desk all or even most of the time, it is unhealthy for your body and your mind) and finish usually around 6ish, I try to leave work earlier so I can still walk home with my work friends from my old area, but that is getting harder to achieve, 95% of the people on my floor are still at work at 5:30pm, maybe 80% at 6pm, some of these people must pull 11 to 12 hours daily, that isn't going to be me any time soon!

More to come on this topic...

5 songs.

2008-08-07T21:45:00.003+10:00

The last 5 songs i've been editing through Audacity:

Stakker - Humanoid (You can never fault stakker)

B52's - Channel Z

Janet Jackson - Rhythm nation

(I have no idea why I love those last two songs)

Madonna - Justify my love (it has a great simple break and synth)

Kylie - Confide in me (Easily Kylie's best song, it was her "Justify my love")

Lets just face it, my music tastes are just strange.

Lessons learnt

2008-07-27T21:06:00.002+10:00

So Friday was my last day at my old job, as I've mentioned before I'm moving on to a new business area as of Monday. Out with the consumer Internet projects and in with the institutional banking, I'm not really nervous like I thought I would be with a new job, I think maybe in the morning I will be. I had my farewell drinks on Friday night and I was surprised at the turn out, I had about 30 people there at the height of it all, they weren't all work "mates" a lot were just people that I worked with, but it is nice that they went to the effort to come out. I recieved much advice and questioning about my future direction, people kept tell me I am moving into an area of the corporation where "all the money is", I don't think I'll be seeing any of that for myself anytime soon, but my old work collegues seem to think I'm getting some massive payrise, which I can tell you I'm not, it pretty much a straight transfer.

It is funny you know, because about every 3rd person was tell me that the area I am going to is where the money is, yet they had no idea that they happen to be the rated No. 1 in the Australian sector for what they do, that is actually why I want to go here, I want to see what has made them the best in the business. I want to be around people that actually feel motivated to do things better, instead of being around the nay sayers and "lifers" that just come to work every day to get a pay check and couldn't give two shits if things change.

Anyway, I was going to write a whole lot more about what I've learnt over the last 18 months in my current work and what I have discovered is a good way with dealing with quitting your job, and how to manage peoples expectations, but I'll save that for another time.

Wish me luck that things are going to turn out decent for me here, cause if they don't.... *shakes fist*

Here, have some Greenland

2008-07-27T10:23:00.001+10:00

Hell I wouldn't mind going here and trying Polar Bear either.

More Icelandic love

2008-07-26T22:49:00.002+10:00

More articles to read on Iceland, I really really want to go there. I'd love to study something over there I think. But first a holiday is in order.

How will I ever decide between doing that or getting enough money to do something like travelling around the Antarctic? Oh boy, I really want to do something like that one day, I need some big cash dollars from somewhere for that though.

5 tweets in blog form

2008-07-19T20:15:00.002+10:00

1. Soulseek might be crap these days, but it still pulls out the odd rarity when you sure as hell can't find it on the regular internets.

2. I plan to start doing this on Monday, I am pretty sure I can only do about 5 proper pushups tops at the moment.

3. I am both please and apprehensive that next week is my last week in my current job. Then it is on to the non internets world.

4. Hybrid Soundsystem_01 Disc 1 is really decent for ambient movie soundscape lovers, disc 2 is sadly really crap for everything.

5. Is glad that I am through week 1 of the Couch to 5km program with astro. Time to do it all again in a new city!

Remember when we cared about the internet?

2008-07-18T12:22:00.000+10:00

Reading a little article about how <a
href="http://meta.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/02/1553218">slashdot
came about</a> (about to read the other parts if I can find them,
while I wait for I.T to fix stuff for me), it got me all nostalgic
about those heady times when I was at the end/out of high school and I
really loved the internet and all things computer related. Reading
this article made me also realise that this guy who created slashdot
is not much older than myself, then I started to feel annoyed that I
never got off my arse and did something back then that I would have
found cool. I guess when I was just finished high school I thought I
was already too late! All this Internet stuff was booming! Amazon,
MP3.com, Ebay, Yahoo, I thought these juggernauts had everything
covered, I thought everyone else had everything covered, even when I
started working for MP3 aye yoo I felt that the company I was in was
too late getting in the game (years later I realised I was right and
wrong there...) but hell, when I look back on it now I feel like the
internet was still like a small child.

I guess my whole point is that I should stop thinking it is too late
to try something, not that I really have anything now that I want to
try, which sucks and something I attribute to getting old and not
exercising that "inventor" side of the brain.

Ok rambly drawn out blog (I've been writing this word by word over 4
hours :/ ) over.

New NY law: show me the calories.

2008-07-17T12:21:00.001+10:00

I just saw this (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25464987/) and while I
think that having a law that requires shops to show the calories that
are in foods is a step in the right direction, but personally I'd
rather they have to list out what ingedients are in their foods and
how much. I would figure that would be more benefitical to all and
easier for the people who make the food to do this than have to
calculate a calorie count (which is probably very uneven item to
item). I think I'd be far more turned off eating something bad for me
that showed how much sugar/salt/fat i'm inducing instead of calories.

Debt slavery folks...

2008-07-11T23:06:00.002+10:00

This country is in big trouble with housing isn't it? I mean we are looking down the barrel of some interesting times in a few years (maybe 2 years) if the current economic climate continues to take place. People are holding on for rates to stop rising, but a key indicator the RBA is using currently to decide if to raise rates is inflation, food, petrol, and all that other junk we use to live our daily lives is going to keep going up, seriously, it is going through a long over due correction, who would have thought that we should be paying a fair price for the crap we dig and scrape off the ground?
My thoughts aside, inflation, it sucks, this country is in big trouble with its expansive policy setting of the last government. We have these things called "houses" that we live in, we have been sold to us by the powers that be that the "Aussie dream" is to own our own home. So then everyone got one, way back when, and then they had a great economic run for a long time and then got greedy and though "lets buy a bunch of houses, hell we only need to live in one, maybe have a second for a holiday home, but fuck that lets leverage ourselves to the eyeballs and get as many as we can con our locale money lenders into letting us buy".
So then people did, and the government changed the policy on everyone to let this happen even easier, slashing capital gains tax and giving us negative gearing options, those arseholes. They were selling it to us like it would make it easier for "the battlers" to get in and buy a house, but when you look at those policies, they are really only there to help multiple property owners (MPO), and these MPO's are dippy old people that have basically become slum lords because they buy shitful properties in inner city locations, but are too lazy and ignorant to develop them, so they rent it out at highly inflated prices and get rewarded for losing or making money on these properties, but will be at a servere financial disadvantage if they sell them, because everything is geared towards allowing people to buy investment properties, but penalising them to sell, what's the fucking point?
So now rents have risen, battlers are losing their homes because they can't afford shit, wealthy boomers are holding on to all their houses because there is no point selling it unless the prices are booming through the roof So now we are all going to sit around clutching our nads, with no houses to buy and rising rents, because in this climate no one wants to invest in housing because it costs a bomb and is a nightmare to organise, buy pre existing houses for massively inflated prices in a market that is declining in value, or sell houses and lose money, even the government is dragging their feet on building massive developments because quite frankly, no government in this country has ever made a good decision on public housing.

Why don't we wake up to ourselves and do something about these rent increases? Hell even a place like Dubai is capping rents, yes that's right, of all places, fucking Dubai is capping rents! Even European countries have sense when it comes to rental properties, they've been capping rents for, well forever, and have this little thing of valuing rental properties of $ / square metreage instead of Australia's $ / Wow factor + water front views.

I don't even know where I was going with this, so instead of editting it or deleting it, I'm just going to publish at and go lie in the bed where it is warm. Night.

Other things on imdb that excite me

2008-07-06T12:27:00.002+10:00

Rendezvous with Rama
Ender's Game
Avatar
Battle Angel

Ones that interest me, I wonder how they'll turn out:

Star Trek
Terminator Salvation
Fantastic Voyage

Ahhh, recycled stories, don't you just love them?

Dollhouse

2008-07-06T12:18:00.002+10:00

I am vaguely interested in seeing Joss Whedon new Sci-Fi show Dollhouse. Although as much as this guy has created some much loved shows, I've never been a edge-of-my-seat-my-see-the-next-episode fan, Maybe he'll prove me wrong.

And speaking of Eliza Dushku, whatever happened to that show Tru Calling? It was totally decent and had Jason Priestley as a main character, that is television gold right there!

You think our governments bad...

2008-07-05T13:19:00.002+10:00

Take a look how the Italian government has bailed out their national airline over the years. My favourite part of the article: Italy has injected about 3 billion euros into Alitalia in the past decade.

John Howard was good for something, he just let Ansett crash and burn after the small assistance they got over their lifetime. Sure it was hard for a couple of years and a lot of people lost their jobs/money, but this country now has more competition and cheaper flights than ever and a lot (although not all) of those people did find other employment.

Can't let go of those ideas...

2008-07-04T12:49:00.000+10:00

I can't believe Michael Robertson who's brainchild was the original
big music website MP3.com, is trying to get his "music locker" idea
off the ground again. He basically ruined the relationships he had
with the major record labels the first time around (8 or 9 years ago)
when he just went and ripped 1000s of signed artist CDs and placed
them online, then through the magic of software and the internets, if
you put a legitimate CD in your computer drive it would unlock those
albums for you inside your MP3.com account to download or stream (I
can't remember if you had to pay for that service.... I think it was
free for the limited amount of days it was online). As you can
probably guess, this system is pretty open to rorting, and so the
litigation came down like a ton of bricks, the the dot com crash
happened, and it pretty much sank MP3.com as a viable commercial
entity.

And now he is doing it all over again at MP3tunes.com, guess what?
Litigation reigns supreme all over again. EMI are pissed off at him
(and it is probably just because it is M.R that they are chasing it).

Sometimes you just have to let an idea die or approach it a completely
different way to get it off the ground. I assume he just thought it
was market timing, the world and record labels weren't ready for such
a forward thinking idea (that was badly implemented), and record
labels don't want this idea spun to them by a black sheep still
closely associated with the words illegal, music, MP3, Napster,
AudioGalaxy etc. No matter how unfounded that is.

You can't "like everything"

2008-07-03T12:35:00.001+10:00

People when it comes to music, saying that you "like everything" is a
cop out answer. Liking everything = loving nothing. I don't believe a
person can be really passionate about ALL music. Pick some fucken
music and be proud to say you love it. If you give me that "like
everything" answer I'm hardly going to keep a music conversation going
with you. Even if you love something I'm not that interested in
personally, at least I will admire your enthusiasm for it.

Fwd: Testing 1, 2, 3

2008-06-29T22:10:00.001+10:00

Testing to see if I can blog from sending an email, how is this working?

New Job

2008-06-29T19:37:00.002+10:00

In my new job I am about to accept on Monday, I will be employed as an "Associate". That is a very ambiguous name for "guy that does the stuff no one really wants to do."

I guess we'll see what it is really like in 2 to 4 weeks time!

Did I mention I have a PS3 now?

2008-06-29T18:07:00.002+10:00

So yeah, if I updated my 365 blog you'd see that I bought a 40" Samssung M8 LCD TV and a PS3, I got the MGS4 bundle pack the day after it came out (I wanted the GTA4 but it was all sold out). So yeah, a PS3 is far cooler than what I thought it would be, with the new firmware updates you can stream images/music/video from a Vista machine, which means you don't have to load everything up on the PS3 before playing it, awesome. It works great for TV programs and the like, probably will not work for a blu ray rip or something that high quality, it also doesn't do all codecs, like H264 or whatever the hell it is, which is bad cause all the NBA rips are done like that these days, but I'll live.

And yeah, with the Play TV on its way, the PS3 is gonna do everything I want.

OH yeah, it's nice to have digital TV, abc2 saves me from bordem on Sunday more times than not!

Oh yeah, MGS4 is pretty decent, I finished it last Monday, I want to play through it again to see if I can beat it with just pure sneak and handguns, Metal Gear Online blows, it is so laggy, and the automatching thing takes forever. Maybe I just need to level up more for it to get better....

Bank Myths #1: The more credit you have, the easier it is to get.

2008-06-29T16:25:00.002+10:00

So I remember when I was younger and I use to believe that getting a credit card with a big limit was the way to go, then once you had a big card with a big limit you could go to another bank and ask for a card with a big limit cause the bank down the road just gave you a card with a big limit so why shouldn't they? Don't they want you as a customer?

Well it seems in reality, if your personal income only allows for you to have 5k of credit from a bank, and you have 4k from one bank, if you don't lie on your application form, the other bank probably won't even give you a credit card, or they *might* give you 1k. Interesting, then if you were to get a loan, they credit often can eat into what you can borrow anywhere from a 1:1 or 2:1 ratio. So if you have a 10k limit they will lend you 10 to 20k less etc.

So what bought up this post? I had a letter from my bank the other day offering to double my limit, interesting, but they also want to charge me more fees if I accept. However on the letter it also has an easy option to lower your limit, which I think is excellent and a very responsible thing to do, I've never seen my other bank do that (I only bank with 2 banks.)

Twitter Revisted

2008-06-29T15:16:00.004+10:00

So now I signed up for twitter, properly. I couldn't remember my old twitter u/p from when I signed up last year so I'm alllll new. I don't get it really, neither does astro, its like facebook statuses for mobile phones and webzzz. You could just do this in tumblr or blogger if you wanted to set it up that way. Still I think I'll probably use it while I'm frolicking around town now.

And you can't randomly comment on twitter, I like the random good natured comments I get on blogs which happens about once every 2 years on my blog.

"Our Money"

2008-06-29T11:24:00.001+10:00

I don't know if I've blogged about this before, but the concept of "our money" in terms of people in relationships disturbs and complexes me. That whole thing of pooling all the money you've got together as a couple into one big pool that all expenses come out of, I just don't get how you aren't setting yourself up for massive problems in the future with this sort of set up.

So many times I've heard at work and elsewhere about how some is in trouble, or is going to be in trouble with their respective partners because they have bought something for themselves or want to make a massive purchase out of the "our money" pool , and then everyone chimes in with their stories about misfortunes with the "our money" and a lot of them seem to be big sticky sore points with a lot of people.

People are shocked when I tell them how long I've been together with astro and how we don't have an "our money" system. A concensus is that if you are together for around 2 to 3 years you must adhere to this system, what tha? It is weird you know cause astro and I never ever fight about money, sure we (as in me) might tease the other about spending our last bit of cash on stupah, but we have never got to the point of "I can't believe you spent $300+ on a handbag/computer part, how are we going to eat and pay rent now?" kind of situation. I think we work it pretty well, we split all costs, if someone wants to buy a present for the other there is no expectation that anything is ever coming back the other way, if we go out to dinner and one person pays we either take stock and return the favour in the near future or we just forget it, actually when it comes to dinners that aren't a special occasion and it is really expensive, we always sort each other out at a later day, if it is something like $60 total than its no biggie, that is the cost of having fun in a relationship.

If we are going to make a giant purchase together, either one person pays for it all or we go halves, this has changed slightly as we have gotten older, and we pretty much go halves in everything furniture/appliance wise, and if the other person isn't into that much than no biggie, we just don't get it, or we pay for it ourselves, none of this guilting each other into getting something, or making promises of buying Y in the future if we buy X now, or acting like a big baby until the other one can't stand it anymore and buys you the gift, what kind of relationship is that?

I think I can understand the our money thing a bit better once people are married, I mean you are suppose to be together forever right? So pooling your money then for a house or new car or whatever sort of makes sense, but unless you are comfortable contributing all your earnings into a pool for the other to spend at their will, you are always going to hold resentment.

I think the our money thing seems to hit major problems when one person earns a lot more money than the other, yet the lessor earner spends just as much of that hard earned on stuff for them personally. Like a friend at work, she earns good money, her boyfriend is a forklift driver, they do the "our money" thing but he is always wanting to buy things for himself, music equipment, a mountain bike, expensive camera equipment, stuff that is only for himself. They don't have a lot of spare cash after there massive rent fork out (they pay $550 a week) and good time lifestyle they have, so its a massive issue for them. She ended up letting him get the push bike, which he used for about 4 months, was gathering dust for another 3 months, and then he lent it to his friend to have, which she sees as probably never getting it back now. But instead of letting it go she'll buy clothes, other little knick knacks, and if he ever complains she'll always point back to that bike (one of many examples) and justify her purchases that way, tit for tat is not exactly a great way of handling a couples personal finances is it?

I think I might come back and write more on this one, there are steps you can take to overcome these problems, just depends how far down the rabbit hole you have gone with this one.

Remember the 90s?

2008-06-29T11:21:00.003+10:00

Trying to log onto efnet to look for something, remember when you were a teenager and you use to wake up and be excited to log onto the internet through our dialup modem and then on to the big wide world of IRC? It seemed like this never ending swam of information and possibilities, all through the power of text in windows. Ahh the 90s what a time to be alive.

2008-06-29T10:05:00.002+10:00

Bill Gates quits Microsoft - not really, he is still going to be there one day a week to work on projects. I don't get everyones doomy outlook on Microsoft, I guess they've been doing it for the last 6 or 7 years in that respect. Sure there shares are getting hammered and sure the Xbox and Zune haven't exactly made them lots of cash (although the Xbox is doing alright these days), but this is a company that at the core of its business (productivity software) will never be threatened by recession, or commodity prices putting them out of business, they have billion and billions of dollars in the bank, they recently bought back billons of dollars worth of shares, are everyone is still going to run windows products for the next 10 years (well in the corporate sector anyway), when the bear market bottoms out you could make worse purchases.

But still buying tech stocks is always risky, its like banking on my shitbox car to do a 500+ km drive, by all means it looks like it should make it easy, but something unforseen always happens along the way that turns it into a flaming heap.

2008-06-28T23:15:00.002+10:00

You'd think after writing blogs for literally half our lives we'd be bored of it by now. Or figured out why we do it, I have no idea why I feel compelled to write on the internet to only a handful of people that might still read this. Maybe it is just habit now? Maybe I just feel compelled to write? On the Internet? Like how people use a mouse with their right hand 'cause that is what they have always done?

Anyway, job stuff, got my offer Friday COB, it was what I was expecting, nothing exciting, better than what I have now though so that is good. So Monday I gotta tell me boss I really do want to leave and no amount of parading senior people into meeting rooms to get them to tell me to stay is not going to change my mind. Unless you feel like giving me a massive 50%+ raise, then I'd stay... This whole thing really isn't about money anyway, it is about throwing myself into something I have no experience in and seeing if I sink or swim, I am interested in seeing how this whole area of the business works. Supposedly it is the big money making area, I currently reside in an area where we basically beg for money to do projects every year, we'd probably get funding for about 25% of the things we'd like to do, and then after about 6 months about 5 to 10% of that money gets taken back due to "tightening of belts" so stupid. Like for instance, we get allocated yearly money October, for things like training and the sorts, I remember that in December, only 2 ish months after the funding came out, management were saying to "use it now while we have it" I thought they were saying to use it before someone else in your team uses it, what that meant is "use it now before someone above us takes it back" 6 months into the year all the funding for training is not suspended, due "tightening of belts" bloody hell.

Yeah so this new area is not suppose to be like that, they directly make a lot of money for the business, so it you need cash to do something you get it, you blow that cash, only have something 80% done and instead of getting canned, YOU GET MORE MONEY TO FINISH IT, what a novel idea. We'll see if it is really like that though.

Another good thing is that I'll be working in the new fancy building over the other side of town, and instead of having to waddle my arse down there a few times a week to do stuff I'll just be there. Which is good and bad cause you can always make a detour for SNACKS and looking at stuff, but it also sucks when its hot as hell and you turn up to a meeting looking like you just had sex with a dump truck full of extremely unstable water balloons.

I am actually pretty nervous at starting a job where I have no aces up my sleeve, I will know shit going into this, which means I'll have to work my arse off just to do the normal stuff that everyone else can do in 5 minutes, I see many early mornings and late nights doing "stuff", which depresses me but in some sort of sick way sort of excites me.

I have no idea what the hell I am going to do with myself when I turn 30, I remember when I was 16 I thought I'd be dead, in jail, or be a rich barstard by the time I turned 30. I am none of those things, although I think a 16 year old me would be freaked out but happy if he met me, I've come a long way, I never imagined that I'd be doing what I am doing now, hell I never even thought I could get myself a job or even get into TAFE at 16.

I hope when I get to 30 I don't do I lot of looking behind me, at other 20 somethings and being worried about being much stupider than the next generation, its funny at my work, I only know one other person who is my age, everyone else is either at least 3 years younger or 3 years older than me. It is like everyone born on the cusp of Gen X & Y decided that that work for big companies is for chumps and did something else, maybe they are onto something....

2008-06-26T21:06:00.002+10:00

So I am in the midst of getting a new job within the place I'm working at, I am probably jinxing the whole deal by blogging about it but whatev. I'm moving out of the 'online' area and moving right into a job that has more to do with what I studied at uni, and less to do with what I already know IT wise. It is a scary move, purely because I've never done a job like this before, well in this area, a job is a job, this isn't strictly technical or requires a lot of specialist skills, but knowing what I know and having studying this stuff at uni means I should be able to pick it all up pretty quickly.

Everything is still up in the air, I'm waiting for a 'formal offer' which our internal recruiter that I'm dealing with is 100% coming, the annoying thing about this all is that it is work protocol to have to tell your boss that you have another role lined up before you actually have the job. On top of that you have to find out when you can leave, which is always ASAP in the other people's minds. So I've been having difficult conversations with my bosses the last 2 days trying to tell them that yes, I am actually keen to go, no it isn't their fault, no there is nothing you can do to make me stay (unless you give me a TON of cash or something very interesting to work on, but that just doesn't happen in the area I'm in at the moment) and yes, it is really what I want. This is all a hard act to swallow when I'm not actually sure if this is really going to be for me, I've never done it before, so how can I possibly know?

Anyway my boss(es) are taking their sweet time to give me a date for when I can leave, which sucks cause it means I can't get my offer until they do, hell I might not even take it if there is something in it that is serverely disadvantaging, its driving me crazy! I just want to have it all over and done with.

Applying for this job was a bit of a pain in the arse too, it sort of found me through a work friend of mine that works in that general area, I went and had a coffee with the people just to suss it out, it seemed interesting, but I was unsure I wanted to take the plunge and I can assure you I came off looking like I didn't know what I wanted too. So I left that and organised to talk to some more people in that area that do a similar job to what I'll be doing, they sort of sold me on it a bit more, then I was strongly urged to apply by the recruiter who was being a proxy for one of the first ladies I met, anyway, after slacking off on doing that I get it inm they immediately set up an interview time, I do a STAR behavourial type interview with some other people, I was stressing hard about it, but because of all my grad interview experiences that do all that same sort of stuff, I did well, it just sort of comes automatically for me now, I can just turn it on at those type of interviews, probably the best lesson I learnt from doing all that grad stuff!

Anyway, then I had to do a second interview with the head honcho and the other senior woman who i happen to meet way back in the second interview, it was pretty much "get to know me" interview, with a few curly questions, no biggie, still stressy though. And now I am here.

Ok time to end this rambly crap cause the last two weeks have just tired the hell out of me!

I need to blog moar.

Music meme

2008-05-25T20:45:00.002+10:00

Who doesn't love a music meme? And thanks to astro I'm doing one! Also view cat's version.

1. Presidents of the united states - Peaches

Last weekend this song got stuck in my head out of nowhere, now I sing it all over the place. I was never really a fan of these guys, but man they had some stupid catchy lyrics.

2. Nine Inch Nails - Lights in the sky

From the new album 'The Slip', Deliciously sad and depressing, simple piano and vocals, what's not to like?

3. Carly Commando - Every Day

Speaking of piano, I still listen to this song regularly, it is a beautiful piano piece in my mind. Warning though, the youtube clip above is a bit raw sounding.

4. Harry Gregson-WIlliams - Humvee Chase (Hybrid Remix)

Now it is time to move onto serps favourite genre ORCHESTRAL BREAKS! Lets kick it off with this rare Hybrid remix which I only got my hands on this afternoon (shameful I know). The youtube version is a live version and sounds terrible, but it is all you get! boo! FYI - Humvee is my favourite of the HGW Hybrid remixes.

5. Chance Jumpers - Vendetta (Ilya Malyuev pres Baltic Sound Remix)

More ORCHESTRAL BREAKS (yes it has to be said in caps) now this track has it going on, every time I listen to it I feel like it would be a perfect soundtrack to some sort of epic space battle/exploration or something. I am also a sucker for stutter guitars in long ambient breakdowns. I am also dumbfounded how they fit some much sound into the frequencies they do, god damn you talented producers :( .

6. His Boy Elroy - Step Into The Light (The Emissary & Starfire Remix)

This is also another off tap ORCHESTRAL BREAKS track (it's in bold this time for effect, do your biggest im-doing-a-hard-poo face strain when you say ORCHESTRAL BREAKS). Did I mention I am also a fan of piano breakdowns? I think you know I am, plus this track has this whole battlestar, african drums sound going on to it, obviously sounds like it should be part of a big budget soundtrack. These guys deserve every good thing they get out of this track, it is an absolute gem.

Be warned, the above video link is only the original mix, doesn't nearly give you the energy and precision you get out of hearing the remix, but all the elements in the original are used to perfection in the remix.

7. Brainchild Symmetry C (Lange Breakbeat Remix)

And just to finish it off, here is another big breakeat track, probably one of my favourite all time breakbeat tracks, not nearly as tight programming wise as the rest listed here, but damn close, and when do you expect for something made in 1999 anyway? I love this track for nostalgic reasons, it was an end of an era for trance when it hit the year 2000 I tell you and it was already on its way down by then, shame it has been 8+ years and things never recovered!

Pizza experiment success

2008-05-24T14:10:00.002+10:00

Last two weekends I've been making pizzas from the ground up again. It is quite satisfying doing it, and now that we have a Kenwood chef, I don't have to spend 20 to 30 minutes making the dough the old fashioned way by doing the old cirle-wall-with-flour-and-add-yeast/water/sugar-mixture-to-the-middle-and-stirr, I just just chuck it all in the mixer and 10 minutes later, BAM, pizza dough that old needs 15 minutes to rise and be ready for consumption.

So anyway, here is a new success i've made, it is a roasted sweet potato with fetta, pine nuts and basil.

Astro and I have been getting this fruit/vegetable box delivered most weeks since what seems forever now and a few months ago we started getting sweet potato in the box (the box is mostly full of seasonal stuff, so it can be a little random in what you get sometimes). Being the complete food idiot I am, I had no idea what you could use sweet potato for, astro found a few uses for it (Irish stew being one of them) but we'd say we would think of something to make with them, but end up getting lazy/sidetracked and produce nothing.

One day near a place I go to get my eat on for lunch, I noticed someone using sweet potato slices on a pizza, it was the first time I had ever noticed seeing that (sidenote: I think once you start consuming a lot of raw ingedients with cooking, you start noticing what is put in your food from take away places) so basically I thought "I'm gonna give this sucker a whirl.

So here is the reciepe:

roasted sweet potato with fetta, pine nuts and basil

pizza base

1. 400gm of plain flour (I'm gonna give wholemeal flour a go next I reckon)
2. 100gm of semolina flour, if you don't have this, just sift (sp?) a 100gm of plain flour a few times to get to fine. Although semolina gives it a great texture.
3. teaspoon of salt

4. Combine above ingredients.

5. half a tablespoon of yeast
6. 400mls of warm water
7. half a tablespoon of caster sugar (if you don't have that I've used, brown sugar and that was fine, it just needs to combine with the yeast for all that important bread chemistry to happen.)

Combine 5, 6 and 7. stir well until all the yeast is not clumpy and combined into the water.

8. Shove in kenwood chef and mix for 10 minutes on setting one (pretty much the second lowest setting on any other mixer)

After 10 minutes, put cling wrap over the bowl and let it sit for about 15 minutes, maybe a few more.

meanwhile....

9. grab your sweet potato, don't bother peeling the skin, just chop into fine cubes, as much as you want n your pizza, then chuck those babies into the oven at about 220ish degrees, for about 15 minutes (10 if you don't want them well cooked) I try to do this while I'm waiting for the dough to do its mixing/rising.

10. grab your other ingredients up (fetta, basil, pine nuts, tomato base sauce), open your packet of pine nuts and try a few. chop up as much of your ingredients you feel like eating (don't chop the pinenuts), there is no rules here, I don't try to put stacks of fetta everywhere though, I try to be pretty liberal with the basil, although my basil plant(s) are starting to run a bit dry!

11. once you've waited 15 minutes for the dough, grab a chunk off, flour your bench and rolling pin (if you got one) and start rolling that sucker really fine. I like to make my bases as thin as possible, but still be able to pick it up and move it somewhere, I also like to make this pizza in squares, go figure.

12. grab your sauce and whack it on (instead of the bottled tomato pizza base styled sauce you get at the supermarket, you could always make your own with 2 cans of tomatoes, some basil and garlic/olive oil heated up and reduced in a saucepan, its awesome in pizzas), grab all your other stuff, liberly spread everywhere (make sure that the roasted sweet potatoes are the main ingredient though!

13. Transfer to a foil sheet that has olive oil and a bit of flour/semolina on it (So it doesn't stick) than put that on a tray, put in the 220 degree oven for about 10 to 15 minutes, depending on how well you want to pizza base to be cooked.

14. EAT IT, YUUUUMMMMMMMMMM!

2008-04-25T22:54:00.002+10:00

That's it Jackie Chan, you give Yao Ming that cookie/treat/spring roll. All small chinese men must bow down to the very large chinese men. What the fuck is that Visa ad all about?

2008-04-25T22:31:00.002+10:00

Oh my god, I wasted 2 hours watching this Shopgirl movie. What the fuck was that? That was terrible.

2008-04-13T22:13:00.002+10:00

Friday 5, on a Sunday, it is the new black.

1. Among your acquaintances, who’s the best screamer?

Answer: My mother would easily out scream/screech any human in the known universe. She can go from silent to window shattering in an instant.

2. When was the last time you had to shout in order to be heard?

Answer: Seriously, I feel like I am shouting half the time when people ask me to repeat myself because I speak so softly. I speak REALLY softly at work most of the time. So the last time I felt I had to shout (that I can remember) was probably Friday arvo.

3. When was the last time you cheered for anything?

Answer: I cheer for astro almost every day, seriously, we are always running around going "hurray for X" and "Yay for Y", we are a two man cheer squad!

4. Whom did you last yell at?

Answer: Probably my mum, but all in good fun, she likes to stir me up I think, she finds it funny when I yell at her on the phone.

5. When did you last lose your voice, or at least find yourself hoarse?

I think the last time my throat was hoarse was the day after Astro's birthday drinks this year, I certainly did talk a lot that night!

2008-04-04T19:50:00.002+11:00

Why does "comfort food" mean extremely fattening sugar ladden food?

Why do corporate people use the word "flick" when they are talking about forwarding an email? Just say forward people! "flick" is no easier or shorter to say, it also has the added bonus of making you look like a dick infront of people that don't exist in the corporate world.

Why do people hide peas on children? They will always find them in the end, they always taste so distinctively different from the food you are hiding them in, just give it up people!

2008-02-03T21:32:00.000+11:00

So I've been thinking about blogging for a while, tomorrow I will be offically off the graduate program. I've got my job lined up, I'll be staying in the team I am working on a project which should be an interesting experience. Just need to sign my contract which should be done this week, they've been screwing around the last few weeks with doing that, it was more of the fact that no one really knew how to move a grad to their team, well the boss of the area does but she was away on leave and very busy when she got back.

Anyway, I feel kinda weird to be finally off the grad program, I'm not sure what I thought I was going to get out of it when I started, I guess I did get the variety in work that I wanted from doing it but I still feel like I want more, what that variety is I am still not sure. I don't feel particuarly passionate about doing something else, I don't feel particuarly passionate about where I am staying either, but I think it will be a great experience to stay and see through what I am working on.

I think I thought the grad program was going to help me sort out what I really wanted with my life, I think it has reenforced a few things in my mind about what I don't want to do for the rest of my life, and open my eyes to some things I might consider trying in the corporate world. I dunno, some days I feel like I'd be so much happier going outside to plant a field of trees each day, conquer erosion one salty creek at a time or some shit. I think this whole never realising what your calling (or perhaps actioning it??) is the reason people jump into marriage and have kids, when they are super young, or like become self destructive, who can be bothered actually figuring it out? Aren't you suppose to know these things from the beginning?

I know, I know, life is all about figuring this shit out...

So anyway, back to the grad program stuff, I'd recommend anyone to try doing one, and I don't mean doing a "grad job" I mean doing an actual program that is tailored for introducing people into big business and all that shit, really it is quite useful, they allow for you to make the odd mistake, and they give you decent training and it is always nice to have people around that have either a) done the same thing as you but a year(s) earlier, or are experiencing the same thing now.

In other news, I need to figure out what I am going to do with this year, last year was all about getting here and surviving, now I feel a little more settled but with no clear direction with what I want to do. Seems to be the theme of this blog really! I think I might buy more shit this year, why the fuck not eh? I never really did go crazy like I thought I was going to last year, I guess because Sydney is far more expensive to live in than most people think, seriously, Melbourne seems so much cheaper now and I thought it was expensive there.

2008-01-01T22:02:00.000+11:00

Happy new year, here, have a graph of the cameras I've been using on the cocksage365 project I have been doing:

Courtesy of some strange little online graph app I found.

Read my random blog crap on tumblr, until I do a proper website.

2007-10-15T21:51:00.000+10:00

Project 365 here, just for cat.

2007-10-07T22:02:00.000+10:00

Doing stuff here now. For a while...

2007-09-13T21:12:00.001+10:00

God damn you world, blooooggggggg! Blog damn you!

Speaking of blogs, I am thinking of winding this one up, I sorta already do everything on facebook now and I'll never got around to doing my own domain cause I am so lazy. I dunno.

I probably won't close this down either though, I am also too lazy for that.

2007-08-27T22:03:00.000+10:00

Today my cat Sophie died, she was a beautiful cat that lived for 15 long years. She was my real first cat as I was lucky enough to pick her out of the RSPCA in paste all those years ago.

I'll miss you Sophie.

2007-08-18T12:52:00.000+10:00

So me, bleerrrr.

New rotation is going good, I am working on a project that is going to help prevent a lot of fraud that goes on at my work, it involves mobile phones and the internetsss. Should be pretty good when it gets done and right now it feels pretty interesting to be involved in it.

So today I went up to my local dry cleaners to drop in my shirts, they are a bargain at $10 for 5 shirts, I reckon I might go there every 3 to 4 weeks and just take in my dirtest work shirts. They do a fantasic job and at that price, who can be bothered to waste a few hours washing and ironing every weekend? ANYWAY after I hit that up I thought i'd head down to my local park less than a block away from my house to check out some bball courts I spotted when I was up on the roof of our building last. I got there and the park was loaded full of people, playing rugby on the field and jamming the surrounding courts, there were a bunch of soccer playin' azns jivin' on the basketball court playing some form of soccer where the goals were the supports holding the basketball rings up, these supports were less than a metre wide. Each team had about 4 players on it with a dedicated goalie, I am guess that the end of the game comes is when someone actually knocks the goalie over and scores one goal, or when one team dies of exhaustion, which ever comes first I suppose.

Once I walked through the park and realised I won't be able to shoot hoops at all today, I headed over to a sign that said "Bakery" on some old warehouse building and sure enough there was this little bakery inside, I went in and checked out the goods, not much was really on offer so I bought some sort of chocolate mousse eclair and high tailed out of there, it was sickenly delicous and sugary.

Then I headed up the road back towards my house toward our dingy and expensive independent supermarket, I found another cafe in the middle of nowhere which looks like it serves some decent breakfast foodz. I'll have to head back there one day, then all of a sudden I was in the hsopital grounds area not far from my house, in front of a huge building which I always thought was abandoned but was never sure, so I investigated...

Took a quick walk around the outside and yep, it sure looked abandoned, the front area where there use to be those automatically opening sliding door thingos were all locked up, inside looked like a bit of a throwback to the late 70s to early 80s, there was just random shit everywhere.

Big ol' abandoned building

When I realised it was abandoned good and proper I sat there thinking about how it was such a waste, the funny thing is that there are quite a few building like this in Sydney, it is weird cause it sort of reminds me of how Melbourne use to be like 15 years ago, with all those abandoned CBD/inner city properties/warehouses.
I tried to find a way inside to check it out more, but it was all really tightened up good, I did see a few difficult ways of getting in through some ventilator duct things that either vandals or street people use to get inside, but I didn't feel confident that I wouldn't seriously hurt myself getting in there on my own.

How about some water polo?

That pool was over a fence right next to the building, you could see that a lot of teenagers or something go down there to drink/drug it up, lord knows I would be if I was 15 again and had a cool abandoned building near me!

There is no escape...

Supplies! Now I know where to hide out when the zombies attack

And on that, I was thinking this place would be the coolest set to do a post-apocalyptic or zombie movie at night...

Anyhoo, bored of this post already. Moar later.

2007-08-09T20:47:00.001+10:00

The ol' food for thought.

2007-08-06T10:02:00.000+10:00

So the weekend is over, today I have a day off work, w00plez0r!

So yeah, most of the last few days have been eaten up by some interesting points. Friday was the last day of my rotation, I had a review at the end of the day by my boss and all that. We have to give ourselves grades and then basically explain why we deserve to have them. It is not as bad (or good) as it sounds, on one had you might feel like you have to really justify yourself and if you were to have a bad boss that would be hell. On the other hand you might think you can just waltz in there and just give them a top marks scorecard and BS your way through it. Neither really happens, you both generally have a fairly good idea of what you've done and where it fits in with the structure. Both times i've done it I was told to grade the scorecard up a little bit as I might have been a little harsh on myself. This time around my manager had a lot of nice things to say to me and felt I should try to be a bit more confident in what I am saying. He often says I have these great ideas that come right out of left field that no one has thought about, but I often miss the right opportunity to get them across to everyone. I can see the trap I've fallen into, I do sit there and look at far more experienced, senior people and think "They've probably already thought of this so I'll keep my mouth shut", but I've been told that is not often the case and I should speak my mind, supposedly it is what I am being paid for!

After that it was pretty much straight home to prepare stuff for the monster 52km hike I did on Saturday. This is the last of our really long practice hikes before the 100km event which is now 3 Fridays away. I got out of around 4:45am and drove my arse down to Chowder Bay, which is a super rich area of Sydney and you can see why because it is a beautiful area. we got started just after 6am still dark, and ended up doing a pretty good pace all day and finished around 6:30pm, around 12 hours on our feet with about 3 x 15 minute breaks at the longest. It was a real killer and my left knee started killing me about 30km in (thank GOD for Nurofen Plus!) but I was pretty stoked that I made it all the way to the end and felt like if someone asked me to do another 10km, my body could have done it (but thank god I didn't).

I then headed home, but took a detour to KFC, which was a bad move because the traffic around my area of Syd on a Saturday night is worse than 8pm, Saturday on Chapel Street, unbelievable, I will never complain about traffic in the places I use to live in Melbourne again.

Got home eventually, then started fixing my bag up for our Sunday walk, yes, I was going out again. Went to bed around 10:30pm ish. Woke up around 5:25am (Sleep in!) and drove my arse a long long way away to back up on the hardest section of the course (14km of pure up and down mountain ridges). The first hour or so my knees were killing me and I started to feel a bit sick, everyone was telling me how pale I was, I ended up eating some more food and about half way through the walk I felt a bit better (particually when we got out of those cold ridges/waterways into the sun!), I swear it was the hardest hiking up some mountain ridges I've ever done, I had zero energy and seriously felt like just sitting down halfway up until I felt damn ready to keep moving, however I kept my "mental toughness" and kept plodding one foot infront of the other until I got to the top (and bottom) of those ridges (god damn 4 of them!).
At the end I felt pretty pleased with myself, we completed that section in around 4 hours which is a great pace for the terrain, I headed home on a Sunday before lunchime for the first time in what seems like months. I got home, ordered a pizza and sat down with astro and which the mindless fantastic 4 silver surfer movie. Jawsome.
I was pretty stoked to have made it through the weekend with no real bad injuries, later that night I went up to play table tennis with astro and her bro, somewhere in there I injured a toenail on one of my toes, it hurts quite a bit now, all digging into the side of my skin. I can't believe it did it (or aggrevated it) doing something so non-active! Brr!

After that I had beautiful dinnar (soup) that astro cooked for us, it was just lovely.

Then I proceeded to play a bunch of Snow bros and Dicewars and fall to sleep at around 9:30pm where I snored my head off until today.

-EDIT-

2007-08-01T21:41:00.001+10:00

[21:37] cat: TWIST MY BALLS
[21:37] cat: touch them with your hand
[21:37] Meebo Message: cat is offline

2007-07-30T15:00:00.000+10:00

Now after that giant blog it's time for more.

Having today makes me miss going to uni and having the choice of whether I was going to go to lectures/tuts or stay at home, whether or not I was going to do that assignment or leave it another day/week. Ahh that was the life.

It was also the life of no money, constant stressing about not utilising my time wisely and losing sleep/confidence/weight(?) over exams.

In other news, I just went for a light swim in the pool in my building, I should use it more often, it happens to be a beautiful day outside too, the sun is shining and I think it is about 20 degrees, that gets my tick of approval.

2007-07-30T09:46:00.000+10:00

So today I am taking off work sick, I felt pretty terrible last night and this morning. Although I do feel better now and it is only 10am! Hooray! But at 7:30am I felt brrrrrrr.

Anyway yesterdays training was pretty hardcore, I ended up waking up at 3:45am (yes that is right, only managed 4 to 4.5 hours max sleep too. :/ ) and bumbling around trying to jam food and water down my throat before fumbling out the front door to my car to burn rubber 20 to 30km north of my place to get to our starting point for our training. I have interesting routine now in regards to what I eat in the mornings now before I do my 30km+ hikes. I always make sure I have at least 2 big glasses of water before I leave home, I always eat something bready in the car on my way there (or at home if I have the time). I also make sure that I drink at least 600ml bottle of powerade/staminade type stuff before I get to the starting line too. All this is pretty difficult for a guy like me to do as I've always been a person that hates eating or drinking much within an hour of waking up, it is almost a form of torture on some mornings.

So anyway I got to the place at 4:50am, we were scheduled to start at 5am but no one else was there, I thought i'd take this opportunity to duck into the toilets while I was waiting, man I hate going to public toilets at sports ovals and things like that, but it is even worse when it is 5am in the morning and freezing cold and pitch black, I always feel like some sorta night zombie lunatic is gonna bust on me and demand my millions of dollars I always carry into public toilets. Anyway....

Everyone else rocked up at 5ish, one person was 20 minutes late, I was pretty annoyed at this as they all made a big fuss about starting at 5am and not 6am (our usual time), so that causes me to lose an extra hour and a bit of sleep and then I end up waiting in my car for over 30 minutes anyway, grr.

So we headed off in the dark with our head lamps which is always novel for about 50 metres until you trip over something because you depth perception using a LED headlamp is somewhat limited enough to cause you to think the ground is +/- 5cm. At around 6:30am we put them away when the sun has come up and continue on for another hour or so and get to our first checkpoint which was about 12km in. There were a bunch of people out with horses and we were thinking they were crazy being up this early getting into the whole dressage stuff, I guess they saw us and thought we crazy being up this early and we don't even have a horse.

We set off again waiting for the day to get a bit warmer as we were all a bit freezing. Started passing a lot of people who were also training for the event, chatted with my teamies about their lives, children, jobs and then about the pros and cons of myself having grown up being the son of two rural/remote medical gypsies and my 'interesting' music industry jobs. We got to our next checkpoint where we had a work collegue meet us with supplies, this was the first time we had ever had someone come down and meet us during training so it was nice, although I didn't actually need and supplies as I have gotten so use to bringing my own stuff (and over packing with extra food). We set off again, through a suburban setting for a while, then down a big wide fire trail to where we drop off a cliff all the way down to a foresty river area where we scramble along for a loooong time and then up and over a ridge down to a nice little seclued bay where a bunch of people were launching boats.

We rested for about 10 minutes, filling up on water our of some revolting taps and headed off again, only around 13km to go but my knees were killing me already and it was the toughest leg to do for the day. I chucked on my ipod for the first time during all our training sessions (we find that listening to ipods and what not can sort of kill the team spirit and conversation) through this dreary area of the track which is a long long slow climb over a few km. Somewhere in here I took some painkillers for my legs, the rest of the day took forever to finish, the last section took just over 4 hours as it requires a lot of scrambling and up/down/up/down climbing over stuff, it was a killer and everyone was pretty knackered. I got to the end and was glad I was finishing, but also chuffed that I managed to do over 42km in 11 hours (including breaks) without really injuring myself, I also felt I could have kept going, but I think 50km would be starting to push my limits for distance I can cover in one go.

I guess we'll see next weekend when I cover 50km Saturday and then another 10 or so on Sunday (testing how well we back up after a sleep).

Today I feel hella stiff my legs, left hip, lower back. This on top of feeling ill makes for a pretty 'meh' Monday.

2007-07-28T11:09:00.000+10:00

So I am reading about the new Civ 4 expansion, playing some soccer management game on my mobile while playing Dicewars in another browser all at the same time. Have I gone strategy gaming mad?

2007-07-27T19:08:00.000+10:00

I am bustin' out a blog for cat! Hoorah!

Man today I totally got F all done at work. What a jib.

I gotta get up at 4am on Sunday to hike 40km, I think I am going to die.

2007-07-26T21:08:00.000+10:00

Just for cat, a blog.

So what has been going on with me aye? I've been going to work, doing lots of 30 km hikes on Sundays for my TW training and erm yeah....

So work, I don't have long left in my rotation, I still haven't decided where I am going next, but most likely to either work in a security related team or on a product project team, both sound decent and have my interest to an extent so it should be good. I must say I feel like I am starting to get my head around the whole "big corporate world" thing. It takes a big of adjustment learning to work and communicate with people who are very ingrained into the corporate culture, sometimes it feels like they are speaking another language or just throwing out acronyms and buzz words for the hell of it, who knows maybe they are?
Hurrr this is turning out to be another "go nowhere, describe little" posts. Hmm what else? I must say i've been given a fair bit of training in this job i've had, today I counted that in my almost 6 months i've been here I have had almost 14 days of training of various sorts, from photoshop training to user centric design, to public speaking to various other things, which has made me really glad I took this job as I really need it!

Hurrr I am so whacked out I think I might go to bed, I haven't had any form of caffeine for 3 days! Brr.

2007-07-14T10:31:00.001+10:00

Today's Jerkcity strip is stealing my humour from years gone by.

2007-07-12T21:05:00.000+10:00

My version of the Kyle and Jackie-O show/ads/whatever.

Edit: This image is a reflection of how annoying I find them, now you can suffer too.

2007-07-08T21:39:00.000+10:00

So I need to blog, but what to blog about? I have so much to blog about but can't be bothered explaining the detail behind it. I'd like to talk about how my training is wearing me down in every possible way and I have serious doubts about me and some members of my team making it through without doing some serious damage to our bodies (hope I am wrong!) . I'd like to talk about my job, and how I am enjoying most aspects of it, but I still feeling like a lazy blob while I am there, I'm moving onto a new department in a few weeks which will be good for a change but not so good in the fact that I have a lot of work to do before I leave whilst trying to represent myself better than I have been so I can ask for a job back in the team at the end of the year (so far it has been the best of the rotations).
I'd like to talk about Ninja Spirit, as it is fun to play but is so hard to finish in the arcade version (as opposed to the PC Engine version). I'd also like to talk about how a family member was on the Qantas plane that lost a panel today, scary stuff.

Forgot the rest.

Bed time now.

2007-06-30T11:08:00.000+10:00

I watched the movie Sunshine with astro the other day, and although it was a decent movie (although it felt like about 40 minutes of the movie was chopped out in places, and some cheesy symbolism) I remember thinking all the way through the movie that I really liked the score and sound effects to the movie. Today I just found out that Underworld completed the soundtrack with John Murphy, no wonder it was so good.

2007-06-28T22:24:00.000+10:00

Watching STP film clips on youtube tonight, Scott W is really a totally awesome frontman and we all know that, however I totally forgot he use to look like this back in 1993 when they performed on letterman, he was totally ginger, ffs.

2007-06-26T22:08:00.000+10:00

I was gonna blog, but than Dicewars happen, blame this guy, night.

2007-06-04T22:01:00.000+10:00

Weekend? How was it? Went out Friday night with workmates to a pretty cool bar/pub in Sydney, it was a giant place called "The Argyle". I had a good time and spent way to much money on drinks. I think I still have this problem with socialising with work people though, they sorta have me pegged as a nice guy who doesn't blag alot and generally will keep his trap shut if nothing useful is going to come out of it, which is the way you just have to be sometimes at work. However out of work I am a different beast and can sometimes be a little hard to tell if I am joking with you or what, I guess I just have to keep going out and showing people what I am like, I haven't really been going out a lot with the grads, so it does make it hard when I do.

Sunday I did more trailwalker training, 32km+ again, this time it was on the hardest sections of the entire trail that we will do. It was really really fucking hard I tell you, I ran out of water towards the end too because we only found one place to fill up along the way and it about 4km into it so it wasn't much use. I wrecked my left knee although it is feeling a lot better, astro did some knee tests on me and came to the conclusion that my knee cap might not be tracking properly or something, so I'll have to sort that out.

Today I finally got my shoes I ordered from Paul's warehouse, it feels a bit underwhelming to get them now, over a month since I ordered them and they were only suppose to be send from a suburb about 15km away, sheesh.

I also got my ASUS VX2 laptop on salary sacrifice today, it sure is pretty and meaty, although Vista is hella slow, it is all a bit of a letdown really. I am starting to have a bit of buyers remorse but I think I'll get over that.

2007-06-02T16:01:00.001+10:00

My sisters new(ish) cat, he looks just like kitty really.

2007-05-31T18:28:00.001+10:00

You Belong in Paris

You enjoy all that life has to offer, and you can appreciate the fine tastes and sites of Paris.
You're the perfect person to wander the streets of Paris aimlessly, enjoying architecture and a crepe.

What European City Do You Belong In?

2007-05-30T19:25:00.000+10:00

How do you link Linkin Park to The X-Files, Sphere and Dune (TV series)? Through this guy. How the hell does a guy drop out of college to end up doing all that stuff THEN join a band? Sheesh.

2007-05-27T20:40:00.000+10:00

So this weekend I've covered 37km on foot, 10 on Friday and 27 today. I was suppose to do 30 but I had to pull out early due to a knee injury which is pretty damn sore at the moment. I had no idea how I ended up doing it either, about 17km in today my knee just started hurting and never stopped and kept getting worse, the funny thing was that it only hurt when I was going down hills and walking on level ground, not going up.

I also came across a geocache which was under a rock about 9km into our walk along a river, we were considering logging our name and so forth, however we had nothing of value to leave in the box so we let it be. I should have taken a picture with my phone but I totally forgot that a have a phone with a camera in it :) .

2007-05-27T18:04:00.000+10:00

Here comes the good friday five, on a Sunday, cause it sure wasn't up on Saturday when I looked (when I should have been looking on Friday, but ANYWAY!):

1. what is your favorite board game?

The game everyone refuses to buy for themselves (and to play with me) Risk, and all its cool Risk like derivitives (Cool = Risk: 2210AD and the hawt new Risk: The Transformers Edition. Not Cool = Any LoTR editions, die bitches!

2. what is your favorite card game?

More card games people refuse to play with serp. Billionaire
and Entrepreneur (cool Aussie made, hard to find card game). OF the gambling variety you can't go past Blackjack to lose all your money with.

3. do you like to play games on the computer or on a gaming system?

I like playing games on the computer, however I have probably done most of my gaming on consoles, evil beasties!

4. if so, what is your favorite game to play?

Staaaarrrrrcccrrraaaaaffffftttttt, Jagged Alliance 2, (when I make it through a whole game without some kinda plot bug thing going on), Close Combat 4 and onwards and all n00b pwning Counter-Strike variants.

*List will change in my mind in the next 5 seconds.

5. do you like to play games with people or to play them alone?

I go both ways baby!

2007-05-24T19:35:00.000+10:00

Whenever I listen to Underworld - Dirty Epic, I always get this thought in my mind that Radiohead's Idioteque and other parts of Kid A was a total rip off in some sort of way, even though they are obviously different songs.

Ok I've finally got that off my chest after 6 or so years, feels good, oh yeah.

In other news, I watch state of origin last night, something i've never done so drunk before and also just something I haven't done in a long time. There is something not quite right about being in Victoria and watching origin, although being from Queensland you can never truly say you hate origin football. I think it is built into our dna or something.

I am so knackered and this post is not making sense, later.

2007-05-20T18:35:00.000+10:00

So today I did 30+ km's for the trailwalker, it was really really tough, supposedly these were the easier of the checkpoints compared to the later stages. I tell you what they were rated a lot higher but they sure weren't much easier, I thought they'd be all flat surfaces on footpaths and things like that, but it was more of the usual descending into valleys, scurrying over boulders and trying not to slip, trip over and fall down into the rivers/streams, by the end of it I was truly knackered and right now my knees are killing me and I can't walk straight or very fast. I have no idea how I am going to handle doing 100km's, but I am not going to give up right now.

Now i am off to eat more phoodz and read more about Starcraft 2!

2007-05-19T10:40:00.000+10:00

This weeks Friday Five is so weak I couldn't bare to do it on an actual Friday.

1. At this moment, how many rolls of toilet paper are there in your house?

A total of Six, I think...

One. Have you ever gone skinny-dipping?

Yes, whoopdedoo.

2. At this moment, how many working flashlights are there in your house?

Probably two, if you count my headlamp I recently bought for Trailwaker.

Two. When you're home alone, do you strip down to get comfortable? Do you ever go out without underwear (bra and/or panties) because it's more comfortable?

Yes, although I can't say I get totally naked unless it is really hot and I get distracted by something on my computer while I get changed. I don't go out without underwear anymore, although I use to never wear underwear until I reached high school I think.

3. Do you know where some candles and matches are?

Yeah, they are at the BP across the road.

Three. Have you ever/Do you use the bathroom with the door open? Are you comfortable using public facilities?

Yes and yes, although the latter of course depends on how shonky the facilities are. I mean I am comfortable enough to use any public facilities if I need to, but that doesn't mean I feel particularly comfortable while I use them.

4. If the power were to go out right now, how long could you probably get by on the food in your house?

A couple of days if there were zombies outside, if no zombies, just head out to some suburb that has power and chow down!

Four. When getting intimate with your significant other, lights on or off?

Brother, it ain't no thang.

5. It’s someone’s birthday, and you’ve GOT to come up with something to give him or her RIGHT NOW! What have you got?

Here, eat the rest of this astro made, peanut butter cookie I am eating.

Five. How comfortable are you with body exposure/nudity of others? Group shower rooms?, topless/nude beaches?, breastfeeding in public?

I ain't really comfortable with flaunting my money bags to the public, but you never know...

2007-05-17T20:37:00.000+10:00

So I've just finished watching Jamie's Kitchen for this week, I like the show and I like Jamie Oliver, but what I don't like are those five words that are utter too often by people. In tonights show, those words ground on my ears a grand total of 18 times, considering these shows are around 45+ minutes in length, that sure is a lot of bad English. Hell, if I had counted then amount of times people punctuated their sentences with "you know" the figure would have been at least 40.

I don't like playing the English Nazi, but this is really getting beyond the joke people.

2007-05-12T12:59:00.000+10:00

I don't think you guys hear me complain enough about the PT near where I live so here is another story that happened during the week. On Monday I waited 35 minutes for a bus that I was able to get on. I could pretty much walk to work in not much longer time than that. 23 buses went by before there was enough room for me to get on, Twenty-Three, it is a new record.

2007-05-12T11:01:00.000+10:00

my house is your house is my house is your house is my house is your house is your house is mine.

It's F F tiem!@#

1a. we're buying you a lifetime subscription to any magazine or periodical journal you want! what'll it be?

Super Play

1b. if you were a nocturnal animal, what nocturnal animal would you be?

You know it has to be a prawn, er, I mean a possum.

2a. we're buying you any existing non-chain, one-location-only store and giving you an expert lifetime manager, so that all you have to do is make decisions and watch them succeed or fail! what will be the store, and what will be your first change?

Manhattan Pizza - First thing I'd do is get back with the old menus fast, or if you are going to continue with your new crap brand of pizza put the prices way down, then tell them to stop trying to become a cafe or if they really want to do that, then move them to a better location.

2b. which is better: to obey the law to avoid punishment, to obey the law because the law makes sense, or to obey the law because everyone should?

Obey the law to avoid punishment, so you can spend your hard earned on stuff like this.

3a. we're buying you any house within a one-mile radius of your own! which one do you want, and why?

I dunno, a place in the building I am in currently would be pretty nice, otherwise a house with a yard and 2 bedrooms (and a bathtub) in one of the back streets near here would be fine.

3b. who is your favorite all time movie villian?

Hans Gruber.

4a. we're hiring someone to take care of any ONE specific household chore (except cooking) for the rest of your life! which chore will he or she attend to?

Washing the dishes.

4b. are any kind of ethics involved in wearing a hat?
nope.

Who cares for hats?

5a. we're providing the start-up capital for any crazy idea for a business, service, or product you can dream up, giving you total creative control while we finance your dream for five years, after which it must fail or succeed on its own merit! what will it be?

Investing in serious amounts of Powerball and Tattslotto tickets.

5b. when is the best time for you to take a 20 minute nap? why?

Usually at midday or 3pm weekdays, pity I'm at work during those times!

2007-05-12T10:37:00.000+10:00

Now because it is a Saturday, a blog.

This week was my first full week in my new rotation, I must say I am impressed so far. Mainly because everyone has been welcoming and helpful, and when I have had problems with getting my head around things, instead of trying to give me the 30 second elevator version they actually sit down with me and try to work through things, you know, like we are working on a team or something :). I guess next week will be a better test as I get more into what I am doing and there will be less distractions, but so far so good.

In other news my car is still down for the count, still not sure what is wrong with it completely, but it would seem that it is going to cost upwards of $800 to at least get fixed, with the latest worst case scenario quote being around $1300, if it starts getting up around that it could very well just be worth getting rid of the car, I just don't know. You are either screwed if you do or screwed if you don't with cars, since getting anything decent second hand is going to cost you around 10k and then you aren't assured that you aren't buying someone elses problem.

2007-05-10T22:04:00.000+10:00

I just saw some stupid story on sbs somehow combining YouTube with The Beatles and some nerdy emo vblogger, yes I do hate YouTube.

I can't be bothered writing a blog, I'm drunk and annoyed at Trent Reznor at cancelling his show tonight that astro and I were suppose to go to, thanks Trent, you've ruined astro's birthday present! Why the hell haven't your minions updated your website to reflect this?

So I'll blog about my first week in my new rotation later, tonight I spent drinking guilty champagne and watching some TV whilst eating pizza. This is more unusual than it sounds for me these days. I had a good time.

2007-05-06T20:49:00.000+10:00

Now because scientologists are on my TV, a blog.

Today, I did more walking out whoop whoop and it was pretty nice really, weather was good and the terrain was interesting. On the way there and on the way home I had crazy overheating of my car, I thought it was because they radiator fans seemed to have stop working one by one on the way there and back, I ended up calling the NRMA and joining up with them cause my car was sounding like shit and overheating every few minutes and inexplictibly starting to lose water without it actually exiting the car chassis. Turns out somewhere along the way I blew the head gasket, he reckons it would have been a small crack a long time ago that just got a lot bigger today. So I had to get the car towed and so on, which costed money and wasted most of my Sunday, what a jibb.

Got home and watched Blood Diamond to try and take my mind off things, man it was a pretty boring and predictable movie, well it was ok in parts but the dialogue was dire and forced, the ending was stupid and the love story was all tacked on and again, stupid. Still I watched it all the way to the end, I am such a sucker.

EDIT: This guy acted really well in the movie I thought.

Now I will go to bed, hope you enjoyed another boring "my day" blog by me!

2007-05-05T10:09:00.001+10:00

And noowwww to save the planet from global warming, a blog.

So yesterday was my last day in my current rotation, everyone was nice and said they were sad to see me go, they even got me cake (2 in fact) for the occassion. I spent most of the day cleaning up my work and inbox trying to sort out what is important to hand over to my department and what can go, i think i nearly have everything sorted out to a point where it is good to go for someone to take over what i've been doing, it's more confusing than hard the things I had to deal with so whoever takes it over will be fine.

Last night after a tiring week I went on a 12km night walk in the bush somewhere for trailwalker training. It was actually pretty good (I thought i'd be pretty bored) although it was hard on my knees for quite a while due to the rough terrain, we all had headlamps on which sorta looked like we were going to do night ops somewhere or something which made me chortle at the time. After that I had to walk back through the city after I got dropped off which was probably another 2k or so in itself. I got home, ate a little and went to bee eee double dee (BEDD!).

2007-05-01T20:58:00.000+10:00

And now because I love you all, a blog.

So yeah, Public Transport, did I say I hate it up here in Sydney? (well no) Monday was awesome because I caught the new express bus from my stop which was prepay tickets only! which was totally awesome because I hate hate hate it when people get on the overcrowded peak hour buses tossing up fifty large to the bus driver for a 2 to 4 dollar ticket which causes insane delay pain. How much delay you ask? Maybe 5 to 10 minutes of my bus ride! omg how do I cope with losing so many valuable spaced out, arse sitting minutes in a day? I just don't know how I stay sane.

Speaking of sitting on my arse being spaced out, my work is about to pay me to learn both photoshop for 3 days, oh yeah that's the stuff. I actually don't really know how to use photoshop that well past making 43 graphic novel styled erotic fan fiction's of Jax from Mortal Kombat (so that's not true, or is it???), So it'll actually be a good experience.

Oh and before I got off the PT subject (because I already had), today it totally sucked getting to work for some reason, I counted 15 buses that passed on by before one actually stopped because it had room for passengers, 15 !!! Crazy! That was probably the worse wait i've had to endure for a bus so far in my adventures up here.

2007-04-29T21:29:00.000+10:00

Now because you can't handle it, a blog.

Don't feel like workin' tomorrow, I guess it is because it is my last week at where I am and I have a lot of loose ends to tie up. It should be alright and I should be able to get through everything but I just can't be bothered. I think the ANZAC day off thing has thrown me, same with Easter, just as I started getting use to 5 days on 2 days off it goes all public holiday on me.

I remember I use to complain about the public transport in Melbourne, it was crappy smelling, never on time, expensive etc, Well now I think I have grown to miss it. In reality it is really good, nice and easy to get around on, makes sense, cheap (it really is) and is hardly overcrowded. Sydney is just that extra step up of craziness for PT, its always packed, you can throw the timetable out at certain times of the day, trains/buses can pull up at your station/stop and you will have NO CHANCE of actually getting on it cause it is so packed, the ticketing system is really retarded, you can't go to a ticket outlet and buy tickets (without getting the really overpriced tourist tickets) for say, a bus/train/ferry, stoopid.
Plus they have a bus ticket here which is only for 1 or 2 "sections", 1 or 2 sections from my house won't even get me 3 or 4 kms away, it is retarded, to travel 5kms to work I have to go through 4+ sections, what the hell? Don't think about making any stops along the way, once you get off a bus you have to pay again to get back on, regardless of what million number "section" ticket you just bought, retarded.

Least in Melbourne it is all laid out nice and easy, 1 ticket for a large area for any transport all day, reasonably priced. Oh yeah.

2007-04-28T14:44:00.000+10:00

Now because I got tagged, I will blog 5 reasons why I er, blog.

1. Cause writing on the interwebs is what you do

Whenever I started using the internet about a billion lightyears ago, I always wanted to have my own webpage to put stuff on. To start off with it was dumb "Under Construction" banners and all the most retarded animated gifs I could find, then after I got bored of that I started writing shit about myself and my life, in glorious minimal black background white text format! I wish I still had my first page I ever started writing on so I could take a screenshot :/ .

2. I did it cause blogger was easier to post stuff with.

Whenever the hell blogger came about some other de wds were (i think) already using it, at the time I use to write blogs from work in notepad/wordpad or whatever I had and post them on the mail server of a very old ISP I use to be a member of that had cancelled my acount so I couldn't put stuff on their normal web server, but yet I could still add crap to there mail server. So anyway, they were doing it and telling me how easy/awesome it was so I think I joined up, although it didn't last for very long as I went back to the manual thing a bit later. Then years later when I started to become much much lazier, I started posting on blogspot, good ol' blogspot.

3. I do it now cause blogger is all set up and ready to go

And seriously, who can be fucked tossing about with all those new fangled ones, maybe when I buy my own domain name and stuff I'll do it.

4. I dunno

I really don't know why I still blog now, I hardly ever read my archives, hardly anyone actually reads this page, but for some reason I don't want to stop. Maybe one day in 40 years (god willing) I can look back at all my sprawling internet archives and figure out what the hell I was all about (can you believe I just said "god willing" ??).

5. Is this over yet??

I like blogging these sort of things, like getting tagged or the ol' friday five when it was around the first time. I guess I also blog because other people I know blog, and I'm a big fat sheep, and get pestered a lot to blog. :/

I think I actually like reading other people's blogs more than I do writing my own, which at one point, wasn't really the case.

2007-04-25T21:46:00.001+10:00

Today I took a day off from blogging.

whoops.

2007-04-24T23:34:00.000+10:00

Due to this guys ~~blog~~ facebook page I took the Political Compass Questionnaire and got Economic -3.25 and Social -4.15 . The end.

2007-04-22T21:18:00.000+10:00

Back by popular demand, a blog.

So what has been goin' oooooon? Working, this week I got to decide where I was going for my next rotation which starts in a few weeks. Basically I decided to move into a design area which focuses on doing the actual screens and usability design/testing for products which are used internally and externally throughout the organisation. It should be a decent learn experience and is in a completely different area from where I am working now with the actual work being a completely different style, which is a good thing.

Apart from that I started doing some things to help train for the Oxfam Trailwalker thing, I've started doing some cardio work in the gym upstairs and I am also walking to work on Fridays of every week to help build up the ol' legs. It is a 9 to 10km round trip to work and it takes me about 40 ish minutes each way (45 minutes on the way home as it has some hard steep hills, we are talking Shuffler steep people (bad link I know).

As astro has mentioned, we've been cooking a lot lately, this was the third weekend in a row I made pizza by making my own pizza bases. I tell you, bought pizzas don't taste any good anymore after you make your own this way.

Can't think of anymore, blog later.

2007-04-16T21:21:00.000+10:00

Dear World,

In response to you saying "do you know what I mean?" at least once an hour a day.

Yes, I understand what you are saying to me, but that does not mean I agree with you.

Love serp

2007-04-15T19:21:00.000+10:00

Since I am on a blogging spree I might as well keep going, so whats been going on in life? Well since the last time I've blogged I've had my ups and downs, my family is going through a tough trot (doesn't that happen every few years with us?) work has been good although I have been struggling to keep my motivation and I don't know why, I think it is bad habits left over from uni which I need to quash. I need to finish things out fully, I have that problem of once I know I can do something and do a good job of it I'll just stop doing it, it's like I don't need to prove anything to anyone because I know in my mind I can do it and for the moment that is all I care about, weird eh? I'll kick my arse this week and start finishing things off because after this week I only have 2 weeks left in my current rotation and I need to make sure I round it off with a decent impression. It has been difficult to keep any focus over the last couple of weeks due to my family but I gotta keep trying.

Today I work up at 5am so I could drive somewhere over the other side of Sydney to hook up with some work mates to start doing training for the Oxfam Trailwalker thing I have commited myself to. Everything was going fine until I got about 10 minutes drive away from my destination and my car started overheating, I had to pull over about 3 times in the next 250 metres over a 20 minute period, not good. I decided to call my workmates and chuck in meeting up with them since I was running late, they sounded really disappointed which was really frustrating because I don't want to seem like I am piking on them. But hey, I was 20kms from home and I need to get this car back there before any sort of heavy traffic started to pick up.
So after much coaxing and fingercrossing I got the car home, it only overheated once (50 metres from my front gate), God I hate cars.

2007-04-15T15:19:00.000+10:00

Just incase you never understood what "Game Over" meant.