amphigoric macoronical pointlessness

spam spam freakin spam

when you're up to your armpits in alligators, it's sometimes difficult to remind yourself that your initial objective was to drain the swamp...

i've been looking into an anti-spam solution for a bit. but had other more important jobs to do. mostly just going from fucking crisis to crisis. so now the boss wants something in place and being tested by this thursday.

so i drop the ball on a couple of other projects. i don't give a shit anymore anyway. nothing is gonna be done on time. where's your computer you say? here's 40 cents. ring lifeline and tell someone who gives a shit.

so yet again i'm up to my armpits in microsuck's isa server. miserable, mis-begotten pile of flyblown, plague infested filth. fucking around with dopey arcane settings so i can eventually bypass it's control over port 25 and let the smtp relay do it instead. finally mail is coming in again. next step is to install the software on the firewall. the install is pretty straight forward, and now we've got it in and learning about our email. and heaps of emails have [SPAM] added to the subject line, but still going through for now. don't want to drop anything. now i've gotta get email going back out through it as well. so i broke it again a few times, managed to un-fuck it and get rid of the backlog. now to try again.

fucking computers. bring on the weekend

a fun night.

the music was ok, but not enough dance music.

my friends who are girls (can't say girlfriends, implies nooky, and i'm not getting any) are all suffering injuries that prevent dancing (rather convenient don't you think?)

anyway i tried not to misbehave too much as i have to work today. but i get a very cool sleep in as i don't have to be at work until 11:45. sleeping in on the weekends is just great!

friday again woohoo!

and now to bore you with some pictures.

a nudibranch picture that kinda worked


my office


exciting huh? you can tell friday is just fun and exciting here. the boss just popped his head out of his office and told us to stop throwing stress balls at each other. we've only been doing it for the last 2 hours so i guess it's kinda wearing thin.

well it's nearly the end of the year. i'm looking at my resolutions and wish list from last year and i'm impressed, i actually achieved a few things.

wish list:
1. new wetsuit for surfin - yes
2. and a drysuit for diving - arrives in 2 weeks
3. fix goddamn motorcycle - NO :-(
4. buy new motorcycle - NO :-(
5. buy u-beaut hq ute - NO :-(

resolutions:
1. spend more time with kids - yes
thanks to kidlet D, we now play squash every tuesday. and kidlet L has started coming too. the pair of them have a great time and so do i. L has hit me with the damn squash ball about a dozen times and she just laughs and laughs. D is fitter and getting better and better so by the time we're finished, i'm sweating like crazy and grinning like an idiot. when we play now i don't give him any leeway at all and i'm pretty much playing as hard as i can, ok, that's not that hard, and he wins his fair share of games... with L i'm usually trying to hit the ball so she can get to it, but that means she smashes the damn thing and makes me run all over the place. and then she laughs. hehehe little monsters
2. cut up credit card. - NO fuck fuck fuck. i'm am so fucking hopeless with money.
3. finish more things i start - sorta. the key to achieving this is start nothing :-)
4. party more - YES :-D
5. relax - working on it. still a stress puppy at work, but i'm learning finally to relax with the kids and weekend work.

tomorrow we're having a farewell at work, then over to the local entertainment centre for a mate's band. should be a big night. and now my ex has just sms'd me to tell me that L is having her year 10 formal as well. i think i might be there somehow :-) can't muck up too much. working on diveshop 2's boat on saturday...

just got filled in by the ex. we don't go in, we just send them off from the front door. turn up with camera, take a picture of her all dolled up, tell her to avoid anybody like me, and have a good night hehehe

another sucky monday has arrived, and i'm hating it like usual. fortunately the weekend was a lot of fun so i'm still riding the wave.

on friday i tried out with another diveshop. i thought i was just along for the ride, but ended up having to be a divemaster. took two pommie lads on a bit of a tour and managed to find something i don't usually find. the anchor! my mate who was driving the boat was most impressed. so impressed that for the second dive he moved the damned boat and pulled the anchor up so i couldn't find it. so i took them back closer to the cliffs so they had some orientation for the ascent.

one of the guys was quite experienced and had done a lot of diving in the uk. the other had done a few less dives and on his first dive had to work on his buoyancy a bit. i was surprised on the second dive though, doing our safety stop the more experienced guy nearly ended up going feet first to the surface. a beginner's mistake. but it turned out he was a little underweighted and we didn't notice on the first dive because we were hanging on the anchor.

home for a quick tub and change of clothes, then grab my bags and back out to board my usual weekend diveboat. this group is always a lot of fun, and they come back a few times a year. which is good, because you know they'll be a lot of fun. but not so good because of the late nights and hangovers. i ended up going to bed at around 1:30, but others were still kicking on at around 3:00am. so they were a bit stunned on saturday morning.

wash dishes, fill tanks, throw customers in the water, get them out of the water, fill tanks, repeat... after lunch i get a break, take a quick siesta, then beat them in for the next dive so i can get out first to do my job. cute little nudibranchs, lotsa fishies, an octopus in a hole. i was relaxing and enjoying myself, but then it was time to head back. woops, back to normal navigation, only just found the anchor chain for the mooring we were on, then i found a little octopus, so i stopped to shoot a few pictures, then i found a mass of at least 2 octopuses. dunno if they were fighting, eating each other, or having hot octopus sex. all 3 maybe? finally i stop shooting pornographic octopus pictures and head along the chain to the boat, found at least another 7-8 octopuses, but they were all behaving.

i showed the resident fishlife experts my pics and neither of them could work out what they were doing. i'll have to pull my finger out and stick them on the web somewhere or other...

friday yay

although with hindsight, having a few beers with the lads from soccer last night was a bit of a mistake. fronting up to a new diveshop today, and i want to make a less than horrendous impression...

oh well, not completely trashed. had my seasick tablet already, gatorade and redbull to follow. now to check the weather forecast. hmmm westerlies, then a southerly change with isolated thunderstorms. guess the swell will be coming up as well and we'll be huddled in the south side of the bay. and the rain radar shows it's only a few hours away. oh well...

tuesday-itis

gah, it's just like monday morning. at work, feeling like shit, hungover. what moron decided to go out for dinner on a monday night!

i've decided to buy a drysuit for my weekend work. so the boss says what day do i want to come around for dinner and get measured up? this week is pretty much booked out so monday night it was. so we're sitting around having a few drinks (as you do) and the boss says ok, lets measure you up for this drysuit before we've had too much. then she says, ok, get your gear off.

huh? damn. turns out that she had to put text marks all over me and measure between them. so i'm standing there in my reg grundies, glad that i didn't wear my sunday ones, trying not to feel self conscious while getting measured up. then i was glad because my tummy measurement wasn't more than my chest, but only just. time to start going to the gym!

by the end of the night i was quite merry, but due to a few vodka shots i was having trouble with double vision. the boss worked it out when i kept on closing one eye to talk to her. fortunately my lift took pity on me at this stage and took me home.

damn, i'm paying for it today.

another huge weekend.

i didn't even know i was going to be working. after one of my mates who works for another dive shop lined up a deal for me to come along for an "acclimatisation" day with them, i thought i was going to still have a cruisy weekend with the kids.

so i rang the boss to organise picking up my dive gear off the boat. then it all went awry...

"aren't you on this weekend" no i'm not, check the roster, and i look to. agent W is meant to be stalking the deck this weekend. and then i knew, i'd just been on the phone with him, it was he who had arranged the diving day with shop #2. woops apocalypse. so a few hours of ringing around and stuff later, and i'm not having the kids this weekend. another big apology and i'll see you on tuesday for squash.

we had big westerly winds, so managed to get outside the bay and underneath the cliffs, and i got a few dives as well! yay! dive one is pretty good. the water is pretty clear, lots of fish life, but the stupid prick that last serviced my gear didn't put it back together properly. i hate it when i do that. there's air pissing out of my first stage regulator, and every time i turn so that my first stage is lower than the demand valve (the bit in my gob) it dumps a shitload of air. i was thinking "fuck it", i'll be right, just keep swimming (no, that's not a quote from nemo) when i realised how much air was being dumped each time i rolled, i got a wee tad nervous. we're 30 metres down. byebyeeee cookie. i'm going up.

i'm a lot more relaxed at 5 metres. from here i don't mind being a submarine launched missile. from 30metres i'd be bent i reckon. i can drop my weightbelt on the cook and be at the surface in seconds. but the water is so clear i can see her below me, so i know she's tracking the bottom back to the anchor. i'm midwater. haven't got a fucking clue where i am, except somewhere to the south of the boat. she finds the anchor, and then i see the reflection of the boat's superstructure under the surface of the water. too easy.

the night dive was a lot more fun. after fixing my regs we went cruising for night critters. sleeping cuttlefish, goatfish, morwong and a shitload of little rays all lying all over each other. naughty little shits, they're just having sex i reckon. we swim around, checking out the nightlife, then find the anchor, wanna go up says agent C (cook), and i'm going, "check out the little squids!" so we shrug and make imcomprehensible hand signs at each other, then she goes, Hey! check out the squids over here!. hehehehe

grooving right along... great weather, managed to avoid getting burnt. lotsa sunblock. tormented the customers and generally had a mad time. gonna be hungover and unhappy tommorow i can just tell. oh well, fuck it. monday is hangover day after all...

well Huey certainly let it rip last night. it was raining datsun cogs.

we won our game of soccer. mostly because the side we played against panicked more than we did. and i'm feeling it today with corked muscles and bruised bits from running into people, falling over people and generally being a clumsy klutz in the wet weather.

it was raining a bit when we played, then after we finished it got heavier. we ran into the rest of out winter team on our way to shelter to drink the rest of the beer. so we stayed out in the rain hurling abuse and other constructive criticism at them as they played. in the second half someone said it's easing up and we all looked at him cause it was raining harder and harder. then a few bolts of lighting flashed and banged, then they called off the game.

when we first moved down here it rained like that for 3 days, flooded the river and opened the rivermouth. when it opens the rivermouth like that we get a really cool sand bommie at the entrance, only it's about a kilometre out to sea, too far for me to paddle. but after a few months it comes in a bit and the surf there is really cool. so even though it's nice and sunny now and the weekend is coming, i'm still hoping for more rain :-)

bring it on!

billions of blistering blue barnacles

the goddamn weekend is over. gotta hate that. had a good one though. lotsa sleep!

friday night i thought i was going to have a quiet night. but i thought that after watching the band check in for a night at the local pub, i'd drop in for a few quiet ones and watch the band.

a few beers later and my brother turns up. haven't seen him at the pub in donkey's years. then half the damn soccer (ok football for anyone not in oceania or yankee land) team turns up and next thing i know we're having a big night out. afterwards we're trying to leave and all the lad are playing wrestles in the carpark. the security guys move us on, so they're fighting casually amongst themselves for the next few blocks, until they finally sort it out. then my brother finally works out that he's been missing out and tackles a couple of them for a wrestle. ok, it was only 2, but if there had been 4 standing together he'd have tackled them as well. they weren't quite ready for the onslaught and had a bit of a hissy fit. sucks to be you dudes. someone dropped a bottle (ok, it turns out we are the ignorant drunken bastards that leave broken bottles lying around, sorry about that) and the next thing you know they are all panicking and stuff and he's being dragged off some poor unsuspecting soul.

funny thing was, they thought they'd forcibly dragged him off. as soon as he heard the glass and someone say "stop" he relaxed and stopped. been a few drunken wrestles with my younger brother, and this dipshit attempting to drag him away was only a butterfly causing a storm. fortunately younger brother saw the fragileness of said butterfly, and realise that perhaps said soccer team was not up to major pissed wrestling challenge, and let them off, this time. hehehehe

sat'dy night was an 18th birthday party for a kind of nephew of mine. ok he calls me uncle, that's close enough :-) at my kid's aunt's house and a big night was had by all. we were gone by about 11:00. one kid playing poker with his cousins, the other bored out of her nut.

sunday morning and i realise that i've taught my kids a very valuable lesson. how to sleep in very late on a sunday. i'm as proud as can be. so i ring up my brother to take me over town to find out where i left my car...

mum's birthday party, kids running around like lunatics, a few beers a the club. and i'm one worn out individual. monday is gonna suck...

rain

how boring, blogging about the weather. still it was nice waking up just before 6 this morning, listening to the thunder and watching the occasional flashes of lighting through closed curtains. and then straight back to sleep. one of my favourite garfield cartoons has him setting his alarm really early so he can sleep in later. i don't mind being woken up at 6:00am, i'll have no problems getting back to sleep.

looks like sydney is getting some rain in the catchment anyway. not enough to end the drought or fill warragamba dam though.

oh well, now i'm awake it's time to feed my face and waste the rest of the day un-productively :-)

time for a day off

i've decided this week sucks, so i'm not going to work tomorrow. dunno if i'm going to sleep all day or try and spend my time (insert whatever adjective means that i do stuff here). oh fuck it, i can't think of the word, and it's not gonna happen anyway.

turns out my adsl modem isn't broken, dodo tech support is. so i worked it out by myself. car is still broken though. maybe i'll get it back tomorrow. but they've said that a few times this week so i'll wait and see. just ticking away the time waiting for soccer to start so i can have a few beers afterwards. yes i'm a fairly shallow person. beer is the answer, what was the question. homer, you are my hero.

only boring drivel happening with me lately. working and stuff. gonna go and watch a mate's band play on friday night. then my extremely hungover self is going to get up and let the kids in when they get dropped off at 9:00am. but that's ok, they know where the telly is and they won't wake me up when i go back to bed. there's no motor racing or other fun stuff like that on this weekend to keep me and my beer glued to the telly. might take the grots down to the bay to watch the innaugural 32 mile trailerable yacht race, or something like that. if the weather doesn't suck too i much might nick dad's little boat and go out and be an obstacle...

oh yeah, we did have something interesting happen. a swarm of bees found a hole in the outside wall of the laundry and moved in. so they were a bit of a hazard. but if you put your ear to the inside wall you could hear them buzzing and some other crackling noises. which was either them making honeycomb, or eloctrocuting themselves on the backside of the nearby powerpoint. the lights weren't flickering though. anyway, it was really cool listening to them. busy busy, day and night. the pest dude came today while we were at work, now they are gone. i like that. nice and easy. bees annoying, ring the pest dude, bees gone. i wonder if there's a service like that for annoying commodores....

oh yeah, 4 hours later, productively. i can't even think the word. so i'm not gonna act it

humpday

payday again. spent it already. on my stupid car. hopefully picking it up today.

the guy who's working on it rang the other day and asked if anyone had worked on it previously. i told him it had been completely rebuilt about 2 years ago. then he told me that one of the oil cooler lines was crushed. i didn't want to jump to conclusions so i asked if it was possible that it had been crushed by contact with the ground (from me driving over something) he said no, most probably from the gearbox being removed. and it was most likely the cause of my gearbox dying. fucking great. and it's out of the warranty period for the rebuild.

i'm glad i didn't take it back to the first loser who worked on it. but i'm very pissed off that he has cost me $2500 to replace the damn gearbox that he was meant to have fixed in the first place. i mean if he specialises in automatic transmissions he shouldn't be screwing them up. so i'm gonna ask him about it, then i think i might just make sure no-one i know ever takes a gearbox to him again.

and my new adsl modem seems to have committed suicide as well. dammit. i spose that's not amazing surprising though considering the lightning and thunder yesterday morning. just something else broken. i wonder if normal phone surge protectors work for adsl modems. i should check that out...