Wednesday, 10 September 2008
Tuesday, 9 September 2008
Hax0r Economist
I found some old webiste curios hiding in Firefox's Bookmarks so thought I'd share some, as opposed to writing anything sensible or worthwhile.
The first is the Hax0r Economist, casting Alan Greenspan in a whole new light (and shows the age of the link).
A favourite:
The first is the Hax0r Economist, casting Alan Greenspan in a whole new light (and shows the age of the link).
A favourite:
Cyxplycth, Abblefrobnok, Urrlgh!
I think a big indicator of society's downfall, not including it's inability to recognise my genius in monetary form, has been the lack of quality swear words.
Cussing has lost almost all meaning, and now a few f-bombs resound with a faint hilarity instead of an air rending shock.
New swear words are hard to come up with. Variants on themes (eg ass-hat) are ok but just don't cut it in the ear-curdling department.
The subject came to me as I was pounding out the budgets for GFoC* over the last 3 weeks (hence the lack of posts etc). I had around 10 companies to budget for and had spend 80% of the time on the first company as the formats were new and needed a LOT of fixing. So I've been spending all day, and most of the night, for the last few weeks trying to thrash out something that will work (One company alone had over 60 variables just to create the revenue model).
It wasn't until last Wednesday night, at around 1.00 am, when I discovered that instead of taking 2 hours just to format ONE division of ONE budget, I could do x, y and z instead and then the process would take about a minute.
a MINUTE ????!!!!???!! Cyxplycth, Abblefrobnok, Urrlgh!
Strangely, I felt underwhelmed.
* Generic Foreign-owned Corp
Cussing has lost almost all meaning, and now a few f-bombs resound with a faint hilarity instead of an air rending shock.
New swear words are hard to come up with. Variants on themes (eg ass-hat) are ok but just don't cut it in the ear-curdling department.
The subject came to me as I was pounding out the budgets for GFoC* over the last 3 weeks (hence the lack of posts etc). I had around 10 companies to budget for and had spend 80% of the time on the first company as the formats were new and needed a LOT of fixing. So I've been spending all day, and most of the night, for the last few weeks trying to thrash out something that will work (One company alone had over 60 variables just to create the revenue model).
It wasn't until last Wednesday night, at around 1.00 am, when I discovered that instead of taking 2 hours just to format ONE division of ONE budget, I could do x, y and z instead and then the process would take about a minute.
a MINUTE ????!!!!???!! Cyxplycth, Abblefrobnok, Urrlgh!
Strangely, I felt underwhelmed.
* Generic Foreign-owned Corp
Monday, 25 August 2008
Ev'rybody wants to work
No, no, not me...
It's one of the few occasions where my life co-incides with that of Brian Mannix.
I'm a professional, moderately successful, leader of men. Yet I don't like working.
The results are fine. It's just the doing of it is a joyless exercise.
I've talked about procrastination before, and I think this is an echo from when it first arose. The first few years of my career were spent hating it. Actually, it goes back to uni when I worked out fairly early on that accounting was not something I enjoyed all that much. It was the fear of letting my parents down, I think, that kept me going at it.
The wash up is that I take very little pleasure in the day to day of my work. I've managed to ditch most of the technical, boring accounting stuff now but dealing with the mundane of my current job still brings out the bad stuff.
One of the ways I combat this is to reward myself e.g. get the report done and I'll buy myself lunch today. Problem is, I find that I over reward myself. Just last week, I worked at home till 12.30, got in before 7.00, worked 2 hours and spent the next two in a meeting. My reward was to go and get my lunch and spend a half hour on Google reader catching up on my feeds. Unfortunately, I sat there until 3 and wasted the benefits of my hard work.
A tool I'm working on from my last session is the 3 D's as used in addiction therapy - Delay, Dilute, Divert. And it's kind of worked until today. I'm away on work and had allocated the afternoon for doing some grind work for the budgets. The sheer effort of working on this crap and not giving myself a reward that would end up with me not dong anything has now left me with a headache and insomnia, which is why I'm blogging and not sleeping. Sigh.
The work wasn't hard, btw, just of the kind that seems to jerk my chain, procrastination wise.
Here's some Uncanny X-men to cheer me up:
It's one of the few occasions where my life co-incides with that of Brian Mannix.
I'm a professional, moderately successful, leader of men. Yet I don't like working.
The results are fine. It's just the doing of it is a joyless exercise.
I've talked about procrastination before, and I think this is an echo from when it first arose. The first few years of my career were spent hating it. Actually, it goes back to uni when I worked out fairly early on that accounting was not something I enjoyed all that much. It was the fear of letting my parents down, I think, that kept me going at it.
The wash up is that I take very little pleasure in the day to day of my work. I've managed to ditch most of the technical, boring accounting stuff now but dealing with the mundane of my current job still brings out the bad stuff.
One of the ways I combat this is to reward myself e.g. get the report done and I'll buy myself lunch today. Problem is, I find that I over reward myself. Just last week, I worked at home till 12.30, got in before 7.00, worked 2 hours and spent the next two in a meeting. My reward was to go and get my lunch and spend a half hour on Google reader catching up on my feeds. Unfortunately, I sat there until 3 and wasted the benefits of my hard work.
A tool I'm working on from my last session is the 3 D's as used in addiction therapy - Delay, Dilute, Divert. And it's kind of worked until today. I'm away on work and had allocated the afternoon for doing some grind work for the budgets. The sheer effort of working on this crap and not giving myself a reward that would end up with me not dong anything has now left me with a headache and insomnia, which is why I'm blogging and not sleeping. Sigh.
The work wasn't hard, btw, just of the kind that seems to jerk my chain, procrastination wise.
Here's some Uncanny X-men to cheer me up:
Monday, 4 August 2008
So what's the worst sound to hear at the dentists?
Is it:
a. 'That will be $213 for today and we'll make the next booking for two week's time';
b. The dentist's favourite drill - 'the rattler'; or
c. 'I'm just puncturing the abscess now and then let the pus drain out'.
a. 'That will be $213 for today and we'll make the next booking for two week's time';
b. The dentist's favourite drill - 'the rattler'; or
c. 'I'm just puncturing the abscess now and then let the pus drain out'.
Wednesday, 2 July 2008
My suggestion
I'm full of it them.
Tea's redone her blog and is looking for a clean start, so I thought, given her obvious design skillz, why not do the same thing as Deke does?
Link found courtesty of the ever-cool Lifehacker.com.
Tea's redone her blog and is looking for a clean start, so I thought, given her obvious design skillz, why not do the same thing as Deke does?
Link found courtesty of the ever-cool Lifehacker.com.
Monday, 30 June 2008
Off to the Dentist again!
Recently the Princess had surgery to remove her four front teeth as her adult left tooth came through the roof of her mouth. As her tooth came behind the baby tooth it wasn't going to fall out on it's own. Apparently the adult tooth absorbs the roots of the baby teeth hence why they fall out. And as she has such large adult teeth and a small jaw there isn't enough room for the new teeth. So off to the dentist. The Princess would not allow the local dentist to pull out the tooth so off to the paediatric dentist who has lovely fairy gas. The fairy gas got nowhere near the Princess' nose, so off to surgery we went.
The dentist recommended we do 2 or 3 years worth of dentistry work while she was under because he didn't think he would get near her mouth any time soon. OK we went ahead and had the surgery done, a mold was taken while under so a plate could be made to push the tooth forward over the bottom teeth. All goes well. We are surprised how well the Princess recovers and quite happily has the plate fitted and really enjoys wearing it. (She enjoys it because she's the only one in her class with a plate and all the other kids want one now!) We even pay the bill quite happily and thank the Lord for our private health insurance.
Last Friday night the Princess had a sleep over at a friends house. She wrapped her plate in a tissue and put it next to her dinner plate as she forgot her plate holder in the car. I guess in all the excitement she overlooked it and did the best she could to look after the plate itself. Dinner was finished and off she went. In the meantime her friends Dad cleared the table and threw all the tissues and serviettes in the fire. Yep plate and all! They looked in the fire and the next morning and not a scrap of it was left. It must of melted. Even the the metal pieces.
Great! My friend was extremely apologetic and is insisting on paying but we won't have a bar of that. It's an accident and that's all. So now on Wednesday I have to take her back and have another mold taken of her mouth. If you hear screaming and crying on Wednesday morning coming from Mount Hawthorn you can rest assured that will be me trying to get the Princess to have this mold done.... again!
The dentist recommended we do 2 or 3 years worth of dentistry work while she was under because he didn't think he would get near her mouth any time soon. OK we went ahead and had the surgery done, a mold was taken while under so a plate could be made to push the tooth forward over the bottom teeth. All goes well. We are surprised how well the Princess recovers and quite happily has the plate fitted and really enjoys wearing it. (She enjoys it because she's the only one in her class with a plate and all the other kids want one now!) We even pay the bill quite happily and thank the Lord for our private health insurance.
Last Friday night the Princess had a sleep over at a friends house. She wrapped her plate in a tissue and put it next to her dinner plate as she forgot her plate holder in the car. I guess in all the excitement she overlooked it and did the best she could to look after the plate itself. Dinner was finished and off she went. In the meantime her friends Dad cleared the table and threw all the tissues and serviettes in the fire. Yep plate and all! They looked in the fire and the next morning and not a scrap of it was left. It must of melted. Even the the metal pieces.
Great! My friend was extremely apologetic and is insisting on paying but we won't have a bar of that. It's an accident and that's all. So now on Wednesday I have to take her back and have another mold taken of her mouth. If you hear screaming and crying on Wednesday morning coming from Mount Hawthorn you can rest assured that will be me trying to get the Princess to have this mold done.... again!
Tuesday, 24 June 2008
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's 2BarRiff!
And I am cute, too
I wasn't going to use this place, or any other, to eulogize my brother. After all the emotion and hassle of the last couple of months, I just wanted it over and done with and then get on with my own life.
One of my most enduring memories of 1BarRiff was him as a child, spending hours upon hours on the backyard trampoline. He would create vast worlds that he would inhabit as a superhero such as Super-1BarRiff, Bat-1BarRiff, Spider-1BarRiff or Wonder-1BarRiff (which was kinda creepy).
All this wasn't so bad, gender experimentation aside, until the day he started turning up at school proclaiming his super identities to all and sundry. To the other kids in the family this was mortifying as we were subjected to humiliation by association, while 1BarRiff, oblivious to our pain and his tormentors, tore around the school grounds it the classic Superman pose. Or tried to stick to walls in the classic, but doomed to fail, Spiderman pose. I'm glad he was never seen to do the old Wonder Woman, arms outstretched, twirly costume change thingy as I would have had to kill him to avoid the abuse from my classmates.
Now, far be it for me to let this website be about anything else, so I now need to segue into how this is all relevant to, and about, me.
I could never be a superhero, for two reasons:
1. I use my powers for evil at worst and self interest at best; and
2. I'm not good with lycra.
As the mornings have gotten colder, I did a major re-assessment of my running clothes and so ended up wearing bikeshorts and a long sleeve SKINS top while running. The SKINS gear, btw, gets a 2BarRiff 2ThumbsUp - they simply do a great job of, well, everything they claim it to do.
The main problem is that it takes so long to put this stuff on. Stuggling to get the gear over and under all the bits, and then getting the arms and, ahem, package, just so - all while not tearing the bathroom up as I waltz about, is a major endeavour.
And so Super2BarRiff would be a less than super hero as banks would be robbed and buildings burned down in the time it would take to put my underwear on over my pants.
I look good in lycra, though.
Depression? Oh right, I nearly forgot.
Silly me
I realised today that I haven't talked about depression much on the blog. And there's a good reason - it's because I haven't been thinking about it all that much.
(At this point in time the old self would now go back and calculate how many days it's been since
I last posted about depression. The new self now doesn't really care.)
In some ways this is good. Not having to deal with it minute by minute has shown me that I may be some way through the worst of it. Life has been a little on autopilot, aided by medication (of the non-vodka kind) and continuing therapy. I've now fallen into a pattern that's reasonably happy and easy to coast along with.
This is where the post could end. Life, as the fairy tale, ends with happily ever afters and the book is closed.
In other ways, though, I still need to work on the depression. According to my therapist, I'm
at the point where I can either take things deeper or leave them, but I'm over the worst. My
emotional development has been restarted, I'm more aware and thoughtful of things and have a
generally happy outlook.
I still live with depression, though. While the drugs do work, they haven't killed the beast,
merely cut it's claws and thrown a blanket over it. There are still fears in my life such as the fear that the beast will get loose again; the fear of failure; the fear of not having the answers and the fear of not being what I was meant to be.
My feeling now is that I have the benefit now of choosing to fight these battles, or not. So it's not a battle for my life, merely a breather while I maneuver into position.
So good point: I only stare into the abyss now, rather than teetering over the edge.
Bad point: Not much fuel for writing. I guess there's always cat-blogging.
I realised today that I haven't talked about depression much on the blog. And there's a good reason - it's because I haven't been thinking about it all that much.
(At this point in time the old self would now go back and calculate how many days it's been since
I last posted about depression. The new self now doesn't really care.)
In some ways this is good. Not having to deal with it minute by minute has shown me that I may be some way through the worst of it. Life has been a little on autopilot, aided by medication (of the non-vodka kind) and continuing therapy. I've now fallen into a pattern that's reasonably happy and easy to coast along with.
This is where the post could end. Life, as the fairy tale, ends with happily ever afters and the book is closed.
In other ways, though, I still need to work on the depression. According to my therapist, I'm
at the point where I can either take things deeper or leave them, but I'm over the worst. My
emotional development has been restarted, I'm more aware and thoughtful of things and have a
generally happy outlook.
I still live with depression, though. While the drugs do work, they haven't killed the beast,
merely cut it's claws and thrown a blanket over it. There are still fears in my life such as the fear that the beast will get loose again; the fear of failure; the fear of not having the answers and the fear of not being what I was meant to be.
My feeling now is that I have the benefit now of choosing to fight these battles, or not. So it's not a battle for my life, merely a breather while I maneuver into position.
So good point: I only stare into the abyss now, rather than teetering over the edge.
Bad point: Not much fuel for writing. I guess there's always cat-blogging.
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