So long since the last post

Yes, I'm a complete and utter disgrace. I've neglected this blog terribly. But I'm going to try and get back into the swing of blogging.

What's changed since my last post? Quite a lot I suspect. For starters, I have some awesome new friends. G'day to Ashton, Nathan, Dan, Kerrick, Bill, Mike, Patrick and Alcon, all people I've met along the way and all of whom I count as good friends.

Nothing really to say tonight, other than I'm off to the Grand Prix in Melbourne in March, which will be a blast I'm sure!

Mondays...

Why do crazy things always happen on Mondays?

The network at work was having a psychotic episode for most of the morning and the worst part is that I don't know why. Was it my predecessor, fiddling with things and breaking them? Was it something to do with the server crash about three months before I started there, or did aliens come and bugger things up over the weekend?

Either way, it's not good for the stress levels - I don't mind things going wrong, but things that go wrong for no apparent reason, with no obvious solution, really try my patience :)

Minesweeper - the movie

Where do people get their ideas for this sort of stuff? :)

http://www.ohgizmo.com/2007/08/07/brilliant-video-if-minesweeper-was-a-movie/

A decent pub lunch

Anthony and I went for lunch today at the Moon and Sixpence in the city. Lunch was a plate of crumbed chicken breast topped with ham and melted cheese, served on mashed potato with roasted vegetables and gravy.

The perfect drink to go along with that would have to be a pint of Bulmers Cider.

Yumm-o!

BOFH meets BTDFH

Ok as a good sysadmin, I'm familiar with BOFH of course. But it looks like mine is not the only industry to have to suffer its way through stupid people.

I present ... for your reading pleasure and amusement: The Blank Top Chronicles - a very BOFHish look at the murky world of taxi dispatch.

Birthday Party and Phone Stuff

It was Anthony's 18th birthday celebration on Saturday. Dinner for family and friends was at Jimmy Dean's Diner in Scarborough, followed by a night at Burswood casino.

I had a great time, even though I lost badly at the casino. The gods must have been smiling on Anthony though - he came home with more money than he started with which is always good!

I've updated my phone to the Windows Mobile 6 operating system. Reports and reviews on the Web suggest that WM6 is more stable and responsive and in the few days that I've been using it, I'd have to agree.

As well as the OS update, I've added a few little utility programs - one thing I missed from Windows Mobile 2003 on my O2 smartphone was the automatic profile change from Normal to Meeting when in a scheduled appointment time. I've since found a utility to do that in WM5/6.

Books

My god ... has it been that long since I wrote something? I must be up for an award for the world's least prolific blogger or something!

Just finished reading the third book of a trilogy:



The basic premise is a combination of a historical war novel with a sci-fi twist. A modern day (actually slightly futuristic) group of warships gets transported back in time to the middle of World War II with interesting consequences.

John Birmingham is an Australian author, with his own blog, newspaper column, and a series of popular books.

I'm pleased to say that the Axis of Time trilogy was worth every second. I highly recommend it.

Gotta love TV journalism

OK so apart from the fact that I haven't blogged in ages, which I'm just going to conveniently ignore ...

Watching "A Current Affair" tonight, I heard a world-class stupid comment from one of their so-called journalists. On a segment about junk food, the voiceover said "We are all uniquely different".

Golly. Really!?!

TEE

To Anthony and all his friends about to enter the mayhem that is the yearly Tertiary Entrance Exam, best of luck and I hope everything goes well.

I look back on my own TEE many years ago and all I can think is "thank god it's not me going through it again!"

:-)