amphigoric macoronical pointlessness

lacking inspiration really

not even looking forward to new years. got a sore throat so probably won't be drinking anyway. hopefully i'll feel better tomorrow. gonna go skiing again :-)

gibber gibber

actually, i think i'm in a black kind of mood now.

bribed myself into doing the ironing with a couple of movies. the fantastic 4, which was ok, and constantine which i really like. (the reviews suck, but you get that)

played a computer game or two, felt like shit, completely mis-fielded some txt messages from ex-girlfriend. so now i really feel like shit.

wrapped it all up with the crow, one of my all time favourite movies

hindsight is a wonderful thing.

getting up early this morning to go water skiing was a great idea. had a great morning, skiied hard and really enjoyed it.

having a couple of beers back at my mates place after we finished was not such a great idea. it's only 6:30 and i'm full as a goog. opps

avagoodone everyone

well so much for an xmas eve dive. went skiing instead.

and i'm out of condition again, still, whatever....

unhinge worn out record, insert new one, woops, still out of condition.

but i'm happy about a day playing on the water. so i'm sitting at home, stuffing around on the intermanet, when one of my mates rings up.

he's been going along a dirt road and someone going the other way has been driving in the middle of the road. we all do it, but when someone's coming the other way or if you're going through a corner, you move over. this person didn't and my mate had to move out of the way, over the shoulder into the loose shit.

and then everything got loose and stuff. to cut a long story short. he managed to get everything going straight (so as not to hit a tree side on and kill his son in the back seat) and centre punch a tree and write off his car.

oh well, it's just a fricking car. all else is good. bit of a scare though.

so i gave him a big hug, which hurt like a bastard cause he's bruised, so i laughed. at least you're alive.

well. got an xmas eve ski in. i'm happy with that. my mate's son is ok, as is my mate. actually, i think i'm a little stunned, but i'm ok.

ok, well no matter what religion everyone is (or atheist like me)

have a merry christmas, festivus, hanukka, saturnalia, birth of mithra or feast of the son of isis

and a happy nude year

i just like having an excuse to party, shower the kids with gifts, go for a surf, and generally feel pretty damned good and get a coupla days off work.

ps: and yes, i've been wasting time trolling through wikipedia, and it's a coupla days early, but for the next few days i might be a bit busy to get around to saying it. or incapable of focussing on the keyboard long enough for my fingers to bounce off the right keys

well it's not the night before xmas yet, and thats good because i've still got over half my damned pressies to buy.

the kids are the worst. i thought that meant i was a terrible father cause i didn't know my kids well enough to know what to buy them. except i rang my ex and she doesn't know either. so that made me feel a bit better.

i dropped off a late birthday present and xmas present for a mate of mine's daughter last night. she was impressed, except she already had the present i got her for her birthday. oops. plus a spider bit me on the arse on the way up to their place. i think that's a subtle hint that i should clean up my room and pick up all the clothes on the floor, as it's not the first spider i've found in my clothes.

i managed to win an mp4 player in an xmas raffle. i didn't even know such things existed. one of the companies we buy off said that anyone who wanted to, could donate $10 to the smith family, send a copy of the receipt to them, and be entered in the draw. i thought it sounded like a good idea so i went in it. it'll give you some idea of the quality though when i say it can be set to work in either english or some asian picture language, and the instructions are written in engrish

if you don't know what engrish is, then a good way to get an idea is to take a sentence, translate it to another language using babelfish, then translate it back to english again. voila! engrish. another way is to buy a cheap korean video player and try and read the instructions.

hanging out for the end of the day. hopefully i'll finish buying presents, have a coupla drinkies, and get an early night for our xmas eve dive. each year the dive club has an xmas eve dive, but usually i'm working, this time it's the weekend so i'll get to go.

hmmmm, monday monday

got a new cd-player on the boat. it'll play anything. the last 3 electronic sulking machines (cd players) were excruciatingly fussy. they wouldn't play about a dozen cd's from the libarry on the boat. so with this new player, i had a chance to play some music i hadn't heard for a while. i really like "monday monday" by the mommas and the papas (i've had a few beers, that don't look right), but anyway, i put the cd on, and i'm as happy as can be, for about 10 mins, then i'm bored. sure, mama cass has a great voice, but after the first coupla songs, i'm over it, need variety, skip to next disc

i can listen to credence for a bit longer, well the whole cd as it turns out, coupla other wierd cd's in the mix, but variety is good.

water is warm, viz is better than it has been, and i manage to get a few dives in on saturday. how cool is this. it's a little wobbly though, the easterly swell is getting right in, wobbly just about everywhere. and it's one of those wierd forecast days. when we heard it we thought they were on drugs. the wind changed about 5 different directions during the day, we were lucky, just before we put the divers in, for the afternoon dive, we started dragging anchor, so we pulled it up to move, and it got a bit ugly, so we moved to the south side of the bay.

these divers were made of really cool stuff.. a lot of them were in their diving gear for nearly an hour before getting in, and they were still happy. the divesite we took them too was a cool spot, but not that clear unfortunately. and a little wobbly still. when we moved to our night dive location we thought all would be good, but the weather changed yet again, so we moved to our "get out of jail" location which would be calm.

sunday started out very bright, right in the fucking crew quarter's windows. i finally give up and get up and we get it all ready for brekkie.

we head outside the bay for our first dive and the water is blue. i drop down our 18 metre shot line, and despite refraction from the swell and surge, i can see the damned rope down to the weight. shit. i don't get to dive on sundays, too busy. fuck fuck fuck.

we drop a few of the more experienced dudes in at 35 metres, one on a rebreather, the other on open circuit, they have a fucking awesome dive. viz is 30-40 metres at that depth. pricks. but they said when they got shallower to where the other divers were the viz was pretty crap, about 25 metres says Sven. and here i thought he didn't get english too good. nothing wrong with his sense of humour. "you suck" i say with a grin. he's grinning like a cheshire cat. shit i woulda been too. when it's blue like this you put up with a bit of swell. coupla sea sick people though.

not me though. travacalm for breakfast (usually with a borocca) and all is good. swell gets too bad, i lie down and shut my eyes and go to sleep. eventually i'm right

these buggers lucked the best viz of the year. we're going for a xmas eve dive though, maybe we'll get it too ;-)

Pillage then burn.

from Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates

played twilight soccer tonight. had a great time.

and i got two goals! woohoo! and i missed some too, but you get that. (especially me)

my first one was a header even. with my usual header style. i closed my eyes and hit it. unfortunately i hit the keeper too. he was built like a brick shithouse and i didn't see him so i came off second best and was a little winded. he was apologetic but i was grinning. i scored a goal! sub!

the second was much like the first. everyone was yelling, so i just hit the damned thing and by some fluke it went in.

they got some, we got some. they screwed up, we screwed up. and much yelling, laughing and swearing was done by all.

i'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy

thank the gods for saturday. saturdays are my favourite days. fun fun fun

woke up late, with a hangover. oh well, you get that. then picked up the kids and went water skiing. first ski of the season. so we were particularly hopeless. on my third run i was locking my fingers together cause i had no strength left to hold on.

drop off boat and kids and head for drinkies with over 35's. pre season drinks. the season starts in march. :-)

then leave there early to go to my work christmas party. i'm on my best behaviour as it's at the same location where, about 2-3 years ago, i got the shits with the dj and threw a glass of beer over her (and subsequently got kicked out of the work social club for months). long story and no-one ever said i was blessed with a large amount of common sense. so i behaved, drank, danced, gossiped, and generally had a great time and upgraded my hangover for today.

weekends, and especially saturdays, i love 'em!

yay friday! yay! users are lusers! yay!

(hyperbole shamelessly copied from tssh, although of course they are really being sincere, encouraging, and not the slightest bit scarey...)

well it's not the lusers that are annoying me today. it's a stupid software company. that we have bought a large, ungainly and expensive document management package from.

cue rat talking to company helpdesk:

rat: we noticed that the users documents aren't being backed up from their shared drives, the archive bit isn't being set on the file. (note: any file created or modified in winblows, has the archive bit set (box ticked). it stays set until the file is backed up and the backup software un-sets it (removes the tick))

helpdesk bunny: yeah our software doesn't set the archive bit. can't do it.

rat: huh! how can i set it?

hb: you can't. we suggest you do a full backup (and tells me, after some prompting, where on their website i can send a request for enhancement, otherwise known as fix the fucking bug)

rat: ok thanks for your time.
hangs up (mumble mumble, choice expletives about stupid fucking software companies with no fucking clue)

we had one contractor called "shedsoft", i can't find any references to it on the web, so this can be it. well let me say i've been (unsuccessfully) trying to work out a way to hack his software (actually it's more like a virus, and like most viruses, it's badly written and hard to get rid of) so that when the user clicks "help" then "about" it says "shitsoft" instead.

so now i've gotta screw up our already complex backup system, and add a clunky fudge to fully backup their directories each night. only rather than individually select about 500 subdirectories on different departmental drives, i'm gonna have to just add a few extra gigabytes to our backups each night that don't need to be there.

ok, summary. geeky rant that is particularly annoying to me about stupid software companies with no clue. which reminds me of a joke:

At a recent computer software engineering course in the US, the
participants were given an awkward question to answer:

"If you had just boarded an airliner and discovered that your
team of programmers had been responsible for the flight control
software, how many of you would disembark immediately?"

Among the ensuing forest of raised hands only one man sat
motionless. When asked what he would do, he replied that he
would be quite content to stay aboard. With his team's software,
he said, the plane was unlikely to even taxi as far as the
runway, let alone takeoff.

well the cat didn't run away, it's back and is behaving like normal (neurotic, paranoid and generally freaked out)

so i check the mail, a couple of big huntsmen spiders, well probly wolf spiders, i'm told that you only get huntsman spiders over in western oz, acting nonchalant on the letterbox. well one was nonchalant, the other had his head bitten off, i probably caught them in the middle of getting up to mischief.

my daughter doesn't like spiders, and when she was little she couldn't say "huntsman" correctly, so she'd run through the house saying "look out for the husbands!"

the cats turn up, and run away, so i leave them food and bugger off. in the house and something lands on my neck, i frantically brush it off (thinking of husbands) and turn on the light, but it's only a grasshopper. so i mumble cursewords at it and go in the kitchen and turn on the light, a couple of big bush cockroaches try and run away without drawing attention to themselves. too late, it's the sandal for those two.

i've had enough playing with the animals, i'm going to bed

ps: a quick look in the fridge has revealed a coupla beers i'd previously overlooked. i spare a moment for a couple of kind thoughts for my mate who's house i'm babysitting. they may be light beers, but i'm as dry as..... a .... very dry thing

i feel like eeyore today, everything is on top of me and bringing me down

i'd rather be like tigger, bouncing off the walls and driving people insane.

that's my winnie-the-shit analogy for the day...

my memory serves me as usual

this morning i'm ironing a shirt for work. being the super organised person that i am, i'm living out of washing baskets. rather than folding everything up, ironing the work shirts, and putting everything away properly, i run late every morning

so anyway, i'm ironing my shirt. and i'm thinking to myself that i really need to get organised with this stuff (see above) especially as i'm gonna be house sitting for a friend of mine. hmmm, that's gotta be coming up soon, oh shit.....

i'm meant to have moved in on sunday arvo and been feeding the cats since then. so i head out there first on my way to work. of the 3 cats, two were outside and were living off dried cat biscuits and water, so that was cool, and one was locked inside, shut in one room. woops. i find a note on the bench saying how they couldn't find one of the cats when they left, it's probably inside somewhere.

the cat was less than happy. nor was it happy to see me. i hope the little bugger doesn't run away. i went out there at lunch time but it hadn't magically re-appeared, and i'm only about 50% sure that it's out of the damned house anyway, so i left some food inside just in case.

welcome to my world

and a wierd world it is. i'll start off with the usual kookiness. my over 35's soccer team is having a "pre-season drinks" get together. not content with only having an end-of-season get together, they like to get together before the season, just in case anyone has forgotten who the rest of the team are, or what a beer looks like.

i've spoken to the head organiser about 5 times about it, it was on for a particular day, then they postponed it for the following weekend as some people couldn't make it. so i rock up at the pub, about half an hour late i thought, and no-one is there. no worries, i probably got the time wrong. some people turn up that i thought might be involved, but no, they weren't, then a dude who also works for a real estate turns up, so i say g'day. he asks why i'm all spruced up. i said for the pre-season drinks. nah mate he sez, that's next weekend. i thought he was takin the piss but after another dude who also works for the real estate, and is on the team, turned up, i had to admit defeat. i wasn't an hour early, i was a week early.

oh well. this shit happens to me all the time. had a few drinks with the dudes, they told me some real-estate stories, i giggled a bit, then when they took off for their work chrissie party, i rang my sister who picked me up on the way home.

the rest of my day was really cool. one of those days that makes you happy to be alive.

i'm not working this weekend (probably meant to be doing some overtime on a project i'm working on, but it's not gonna happen, next weekend maybe) so i'm sleeping in. relaxed. think "pig in shit" and you're getting close.

my stupid phone goes off, a text message. no prizes for guessing who it is. it's me brother wishing me a happy birthday. i drag myself out of bed and proceed to waste my morning playing computer games. a bit later (i'm still a bit dopey) the phone rings, my aunt sez happy birthday and stuff, oh yeah, and tells me how they're putting in a bypass near the family farm up north, and yes, it's going thru the family farm, and the house that's been in the family for generations and my cousin has just spent a motza restoring. so that's less than pleasant.

back to normal dopeyness, phone goes off again. the kids and my ex and her fiance sing happy birthday to me. i was gonna ring my daughter and say happy birthday (we share a birthday) but i thought it was too early. they giggle and i'm slowly waking up.

what the hell, it's blowing westerly, the swell is meant to be up, maybe it's working. traditionally, even if i'm not surfing at all, i have to surf on xmas day. so i figure i could use the practice. i head out to the nearest surf spot, and it's blowing offshore, lots of lines coming in (lines of swell) but mostly shore dumping. but i see some of the older surfers hanging around off to the left a bit further out. a few minutes later, the sets come through, right where they are. (no point getting old if you don't get cunning) so i get my board and paddle out.

the only problem surfing when it's offshore, is when you screw up and are behind the wave as it breaks, you can't see where you're going due to the spray. i screw up heaps. but i get a couple of waves and i'm having fun.

oh yeah, and my good deed for the day. when i was getting ready to go surfing i had my board on the boot of my car, put some wax on, dumped the wax in the car and ran back to catch my board in mid-air as the swirling winds decide to pick my board and send it flying. (saving some dude who's behind his car helping the driver reverse it in from getting smashed).

as i head out for my surf, i notice that their van is parked on the wierdest angle. it's got wa number plates, a big NL sticker on it, plus stickers and stuff which generally indicate that their backpackers or maybe navy dudes (out of state plates). so wierd is ok.

when i get back to my car i notice their tail lights are on, headlights aren't on though, maybe it's brake lights. the beach isn't exactly packed, i think i know which ones they are (as i'm walking back to the car i see a really cute purple bikini with bits, didn't get any details from the two guys with her, cause i was looking at purple bits :-D ) so i wander back down the to the beach. they see me walking towards them and one of the dudes kinda figures i'm after them so he comes over and i tell him about the brake lights.

he's got a dutch/german accent (which figures, given the NL sticker) but his australian is pretty good. he says the stupid lights have been staying on for a day or so now, they only bought the car a week ago. but he traipses back to the car with me. i'm wondering why, if he knows the problem, but whatever. then i learn why they parked the car so funny, so they can push start it when the battery is flat hehehe.

oh well, he's got the door open, i'll stick my nose in and have a sticky beak. there's a little switch above the brake pedal, i fiddle with it, hmm, this should be for the brake lights i reckon, so i get him to push it in while i look at the lights, yep, that's it. now for the funny bit. there is a hole in the lever of the brake pedal, so the switch can go through it. i'm thinking, if you had some cardboard, you could cover the hole, and the switch would turn the lights off. so i tell him that, and he finds a little plastic grommet that fits in the hole. problem solved.

one happy dutch backpacker :-) (and his mate and his mates g/f too i spose, cause they don't have to push start it)

so i'm thinking, the purpose of having a hole and a plastic grommet, must be so that there is a way for the system to fuck up. i mean, if there was no hole in the lever, just metal, the stupid thing would work. i wonder what wierd little rooster came up with that.

anyway, after that i felt pretty good. made a friend and maybe they'll go home and send over more pretty dutch girls with purple bikinis :-) just doing my bit for the team ;-)

oh yeah, how cool is the crab nebula. i wonder what it would look like if you were inside it. (warp speed mr sulu...)

and looking up, gees, that's a lot more shit than i meant to write. oops....