is it hot in here?

my bedroom: smallest in the house, smallest window of all rooms. upstairs, so gets the warm air. and in the best side of the house to feel the full brunt of the afternoon sun. not the best place to leave a computer running all day...

while i had escaped to the rumpus to hide out for most of the day (only room with air conditioning), my pc was slowly heating up. when i got back, it was in the middle of a scheduled virus scan and popping errors saying the hard drive was overheating!

remove cover, shift portable fan in position to blow, blow, blow. now it's sitting at a cool 42 degrees... that's down 20 from a peak of 62 :|

- - - - -

week 1 of my holidays is nearly over... what have i done? some potted highlights from the last few days:

monday: dinner at friend's place, carolling afterwards, and then standing around at mt cootha singing away with an impromptu a capella performance of the carols we'd learnt and also a few other christian songs. wonder what those around us thought of us! hehe...

tuesday: hung out for most of the day in the city and south bank watching free event after free event. [click for photo log]

wednesday: tagged along with my parents to a christmas eve concert at logos church in mackenzie. first time i've visited their new building - rather grand looking it is... being temporarily excited with the "discovery" of messenger plus - rather useful, i say.

thursday: christmas day service at church, driving around looking for a place that's open for lunch, hanging out at the tans', and extended family dinner back on the southside.


i think i'd rather be working - at least that way you get to spend the hottest parts of the day in air conditioned comfort ;)

oh winter, where art thou?

engineering a reunion

caught up with some of my engineering coursemates thursday night. with both adrian and jasper (gone to the US and canada respectively) back in town for christmas, a few of us took the chance to meet and catch up.

dinner was at the cafe colosseum near home - interesting sounding pasta items (mine was the "rabbit ravioli", and fairly well presented plus ok value for money (further savings to be had courtesy of the entertainment book).

afterwards we retired to ted's apartment... this was the first time i had seen it, and boy it's nice! fifth and top floor of a single block, 4x balcony's on all corners, really nice river views, and complete with modern kitchen and large screen tv. photos here, and samples of the views here:

yeah i like nightscapes :)

oh but it does feel awful...

... knowing that those who *are* going to go will be called to a meeting, and then seeing people you know being rounded up at the appointed time. even though i wasn't all that close to them, three guys i work with/near are among the list.

i was told to go home early. just as the meeting got underway. so not even a goodbye - though what do you say?

and so i came home... :|

not for me, it seems

i've been informed that there are people who will be going, but i will not be one of them.

and that those staff who are continuing will keep getting paid weekly in arrears during the break.

yay... ?

gloom today, doom tomorrow?

i've just glanced at my water bottle and realised that i haven't had even a sip of water all day!

rumours (if you afford them any weight) are that tomorrow might be d-day for a "closing" announcement. might be "fitting", given that the bulk of the company will be on 3 weeks of unpaid leave after tomorrow. *sigh*.

having problems with the doro playing nicely with adsl on the same line at home. low volume plus the odd crackling. and why would you make the the hands-free speakerphone half duplex? even the speakerphone on our old analog cordless (which got along well with adsl) was full duplex. some design decisions i just don't understand...

oh well. there's nothing like a spot of retail therapy to give you that boost of buying power. bought my monitor (a 17" flatscreen samsung syncmaster 785MB) yesterday, much nicer on the eyes though there are a few niggly things with the picture that make it not an 100% satisfactory purchase. also it's the first time that union shopper has really failed me by not being able to source a cheaper price - this time round the best they had was $65 more expensive!

they also couldn't beat $395 for a sony mzn710 md recorder that my dad was after. his previous unit has started playing up after almost two years, and isn't recording properly anymore. hence the requirement for a replacement. it came in a promotional bonus pack, from which i scored the backpack, cos all he wanted was the recorder :) gotta say the bonus headphones look pretty stylish - pity i don't go portable audio-ing often enough ;)

so another season of survivor is over - i'm reasonably happy with the outcome (not so much who won, but who didn't win). no matter how much you try to separate the game from real life, i believe you're still accountable for your actions, regardless of the situation/circumstance in which you find yourself. now that my monday nights are emptying fast (with the departure of alias and survivor), i've latched onto the new show on friday nights "our generation" (called American Dreams in the States). i like the premise (the tie-ins with 'american bandstand' are quite clever), and find it to be pleasant and enjoyable viewing. plus i like the period music :)

entropy is...

(in the non-thermodynamics sense of the word)

• getting a cold in summer... less than two months after my last cold... *shakes head in disgust*
  
• closing the sliding door on my wardrobe, knowing that i needed to move my hand out of the way (or else it would get squashed!) and the neural pathways not acting fast enough to effect the required physical movement to get my pinkie clear :(
  
• leaving the house having turned off my computer that was in fine working order, and coming back a few hours later to turn it back on and finding that my monitor has turned blue. it's 5 months out of a 3 year warranty, will cost me $55 to get a repair quote, and probably $110 minimum labour charge plus parts for a repair. by which time a brand spanking new true flat model for ~$200 (with an equally new 3 year warranty) is looking the decidedly more attractive option. lucky for me there's a spare monitor at home, but it makes strange noises in power saving mode, can't run the same resolution as my blue monitor, and even then is a bit fuzzy... i'm not sacrificing eye strain over money, so i think i'll get me a samsung 785MB.
  
• my shoes (the pair i wear most often, and about the only pair whose purchase i remained happy with after getting a new pair back home and wearing it a few times) falling apart. and squeaking. i hate squeaking shoes. shoe shopping is not my forte.
  
• my g-shock watch shedding its shock-absorbent urethane outer layer. so now it looks rather thinner and is not as well protected... it's lasted nearly 7 years and had its first battery change earlier this year. the internals are still good, so even though i've been eyeing off some of the offerings in the "tough solar" range, i should really save my money for more necessary purchases...
  
• the administrator at work telling us that, even though the previously arranged 3-week long shutdown over christmas/new year is still going ahead with everybody going on annual leave, we won't be getting paid for it.
  
• another MSIE vulnerability that could prove rather nasty. doesn't seem to be any fix/workaround available to joe blow at home... caveat emptor!

what's voluntary about this?

says a colleague to me as i was walking past mid/late morning: it just keeps getting better for you doesn't it?

me: what do you mean?

him: first they make you take leave you haven't got, and now this...


rewind a few hours... i walk into work to find people putting up christmas decorations. i even got a piece of tinsel to use for my work area (i tied it in a bow and draped it across my pc - very artistic i thought :p) the mood is relaxed and jovial...

within an hour an abrupt and compulsory meeting for all staff was called, whereupon we find out that the company has gone into voluntary administration. that's the "this" referred to above. yup, feel the mood dive...


just as we were all leaving that meeting i got a call from a job prospect - work that is not too dissimilar to what i'm doing now, but even less pay (if only ever so slightly). do i jump now? or wait and see? don't really want to be going back to centrelink after we ended our previous 6-month long love-hate relationship! hrm...


oh well, got to play with new toys at home... courtesy of my parents' first reward after a few years of collecting AMEX points - doro 5045+1 cordless digital telephones. we've got the silver version... nice and sleek :) would be even better if the LCD and keypad were backlit, plus throwing in a bit more memory for the answering machine wouldn't have hurt.

alas, one son's novelty is another mother's technology learning curve ;)

handle handel?

so i went to a performance of handel's messiah on saturday night - never really been to anything like that before - and i think most of it was lost on me, as one who fails to appreciate the finer points of music. still, good horizon-broadening experience, and a nice enough (though expensive!) activity to share with a friend. it was performed by 4 soloists with the backing of the brisbane chorale and queensland orchestra. apparently it was a very rare performance, given that they were using handel's original manuscript.

i pretty much knew nothing about "messiah" heading into it, other than having heard the term mentioned in conjuntion with the composer (and i don't know much about him either!)... once again google was my friend in pointing me to a bit of background skimming :) and i even remembered something i had read about why the audience stands during the hallelujah chorus (the only part of the whole performance i vaguely recognised) at the end of part the second! see, i do have a culture bone in my body ;)

anyways, took a snapshot before i went into the venue (main auditorium, brisbane city hall) - gives me an excuse to show a pic in my blog :p this is the christmas tree at king george square, with the city hall and clock tower in the background.

haven't yet found an easy/convenient/free way to upload photos to which i can directly link, so this will have to be an irregular special. so back to handling handel's messiah... it's all about / inspired by (bible verses concerning) the birth, death and resurrection of the God-man jesus christ. and as per most of the advertising/publicity associated with performances of handel's messiah, this is a "must-see". make sure you don't miss out on the CHRIST of christmas.

feliz navidad :)

sick equation

a. saturday - out in the cold wind and rain
b. sunday - around person with throat infection (and another starting to get a sore throat?)

a + b = ...

c. today - wake up with slightly dry, slighty sore throat. going through about twice the amount of water i usually drink at work...

hrm :/

ps. some pictures from the outings with international students (dinner tuesday, city saturday)

ye olde holiday season

the powers that be at work have decided to shut down the company for three weeks over christmas and new year... so everyone's required to take 12 days of annual leave. i'm reasonably happy to have the time off, but it means i'll have to go into negative figures for my annual leave balance :( or not get paid! oh well... nett result being that i'll be having holidays from 19 dec - 12 jan exclusive. now all i need to do is figure out how to squeeze some value out of that time :)

- - - - -

one of the good things about working so close to home is that on the odd occasion where i find out that a FOM could use something that i probably have at home, i can...

• drive off during my lunch break and pick it up from home
  
• drop if off at said friend's place for a quick test to make sure it fits the need
  
• hang out with friend and another visitor for about 15mins
  
• drop them off at the local shops on my way back to work, within an hour of my departure

ahh... local community... i think we don't get enough of it these days.

- - - - -

that was my day on tuesday. then at night i (and a few other yfers) went along to something that fatty had organised for two taiwanese students she's been meeting up with to do CE (christianity explained). we had dinner at montezumas, and then went to nene's house to watch the jesus video in mandarin. it was good to be able to help answer some of their questions, and to hear their interest and of things they remembered from what they'd read and discussed with fatty. they'll be going back to taiwan soon, but both have christian friends there so hopefully their quest for truth will continue.

- - - - -

after a brief exchange stemming from a game of cranium last night, i seriously think that the definition of "ubiquitous" should be amended so it doesn't appear so synonymous with "omnipresent". just leave it at 'widespread', i say.

music::streams cd (word records)

"what the heart loves, the will chooses and the mind justifies"

(a key Reformation principle, as quoted in an article from the latest issue of the Briefing)

which reminds me, i recently bought two books on the Reformation from Matthias Media... really should get around to reading these some day...

greener grass

FOM got a new canon digital camera (the powershot A80), and was mucking around with it thursday night when some of the prep for shteppi's 21st was happening. i like it better than mine! except that it's a bit bulkier... but certainly fuller featured. anyways, took some photos these past few days (shteppi's 21st, ivanson's baptism, YF thanksgiving night) and have posted them here.

work's been better with my supervisor back in the picture sharing the load :)

both my sisters have taken off for holidays, so the house will be rather emptier these next few weeks. as for me... no enough moolah + no enough leave = staying put in brissie this summer...

the fat lady

has sung.

the winner is patlabor

after spending some time trawling through the atlanticdvd site, i've finally decided to use my $10 credit towards the patlabor movie 3 special edition dvd. my first anime dvd :)

3 more hours to go. 3 more hours of me running the show. i'll be glad to hand it all back next week!

my phone's beeping at me. will it die before i reach home (and a charger)? oh what trivial things occupy my thoughts...

i want weekend. no actually i just want to hit pause for a while and do nothing. now where's that remote control?

i dream of simple things...

I dream of simple things
I can believe in
Like the feeling this day brings
True love and the miracle of forgiving
I believe in simple things

everytime i hear this song on the radio it takes me a while to realise it's an amy grant number.

every now and then i glance down at my feet (when i'm shoe- and sock- less) and i'm momentarily confused by the colourful toenails i see - then i realise that they belong to me! heh, i suppose the novelty will wear off soon...

every once in a while you experience a "hey, cool!" feeling upon finding a fellow christian among your colleagues.

every so often i watch a movie more than once. "my sassy girl" was better the first time around, but it did give me some food for thought. not real sure it was the best choice of diet in my current state though...

every once in a blue moon i wander in my wonder, and feel like i'm going round and round in circles. i find myself back in the haze of nebulosity, and i dream of simple things...

hanging with the girls

a bit of an interesting and unplanned kinda day...

started off with a early (for a saturday) kickoff. woke up late(r than i was supposed to) again, so only managed a few bites of breakfast before the my first appointment of the day - an 8am meeting with terry strong. he came over to follow up my dad and i, as we both recently became members of mannatech, thus entering the business aspect of the glyconutritional market.

that took a bit longer than i expected, so after it finished i only had time to brush my teeth and gather a few things before rushing out the door for a dental appointment. apparently i need to floss, esp between my upper front teeth :| my lower left wisdom tooth is still missing, so my upper left will need removing at some stage, either when it hits my gums or it starts growing out :(

and so, with the planned part of the day over, i dropped in to fatty's place on my way back from the dentist to return her adsl modem and continue troubleshooting their connection problems. managed to get things working, and ended up staying the rest of the afternoon, where i...

• got my toenails painted by val
  
• tried out some sandpaper hair shaver dooby (it really works!)
  
• assisted in some hairdressing as a bunch of girls prepared for a ball later that night (this was mostly holding / passing hairspray, and holding bits of hair!)
  
• saw and learned first hand how/why getting ready can take so long!

ahh the insights into the world and ways of women ;) (how little do i know!)

- - - - -

i've also put up some photos from last week's noosa outing.

(blank)

can't think of anything imaginative, creative, or even functionally descriptive for a title. i give up.

another friend recently announced her engagement and upcoming wedding. meanwhile i've recently been doing some (longish/hardish) thinking about my bgr. too early to say more, maybe. will be seeing her tonight. big long chat methinks... hopefully a useful/constructive/productive one :/

can't remember when/how i got on their mailing list, but after pointing out a privacy breach with atlantic dvd's latest newsletter, i've been given a $10 discount on my next purchase. no idea what to get, if i use it - too much on offer and nothing really standoutish. anyone want to save $10 on a dvd?

i like how survivor has evolved, and that the game has introduced new twists and surprises (eg the looting element, temporary tribe member swap, and now the outcasts tribe). then again, 7 series of the same thing would probably get rather predictable and boring. can't help but read ahead on the US website before the episode airs on australian tv though! but the way they've edited this series' shows feels different to some of the earlier series, which i thought gave a lot more airtime to the physical survival aspect of the contestants' time in the game. oh well, back to meeting my physical survival needs (aka lunch!).

relax...

(brings back scary memories of the rather un-funny attempt at a movie that was zoolander :| )

yes it's friday and another working week is over. i don't think i've felt so busy for a while... seems most other people are busy / snowed under / occasionally showing glimpses of stress cracks too. two more weeks of me being alone, i think i mostly prefer it when i'm not. except when the company's not really wanted, but i digress...

work hard, play hard, so they say. busy / fairly packed weekend coming up too... starting in about an hour's time :o where will i find the time to catch up on sleep? guess that'll have to wait till next week... *yawn* i don't think this is good.

gracenotworks is back in action - go check it out! i didn't realise one of the guys responsible for it is a brisbanite!

meanwhile, i can't be sitting here too much longer... *yawn* again... hmm...

stock (re)take

how hard can it be to keep a proper count of stock? mustn't be as easy as it might sound, or else some people aren't trying very hard / aren't following procedures very well.

but enough about work. meet gromit!

handling paper as a major part of my work has given me a few paper cuts... *furrows brows*

bleh...

ahhhh....

that's better....

1. 7.5 weeks since my last haircut. i think that's been the longest for quite a while. hard to find time now that i'm working, and most saturdays have been busy too, so went for the lunch hour dash. oh for the days of free home hair cuts - though without the professionalism :p
   
2. 2 down, 15 to go, and i'm done for the day. so far i don't think i'd like to be on my own doing this, so will be glad when it's over. meanwhile the monthly stocktakes are happening next monday - now that should be interesting... *gulp*

daily double::wed 29 oct
1. What is the scariest movie you've ever seen?
probably hellraiser (not sure what number). saw it in late primary/early high school, probably won't find it anywhere near as scary now, but my friend (at whose house i was watching the video) saw me so engrossed on the screen that he sneaked up behind me and went BOO! to which i literally jumped... hehe...
2. Have you ever encountered a celebrity?
unexpectedly saw 'ah niu' (singer from malaysia) at the halo cafe in KL a few years back, and had a photo taken with him and the other guys he was performing with.

d-day

for the next 17 working days, i'm running the show - supervisor's gone on leave... bring it on! (or not... :p)

misc

keeping the ball alive

previously i thought that i, as a pretty clueless participant of this competition, numbered in the majority. now that nike have decided to give some hints as to how to find the codes, i can safely number myself in the subsequently even larger majority of participants who now (assuming they didn't already) know what they're doing... does that help or hurt my chances of winning something?!

keeping banking interesting

might not win anything out of this, but could earn more money via better interest... happened across citibank's site, and noticed that their online cash manager account is currently paying 5.00% p.a. interest (as of 20/08/03). that's 0.25% p.a. more than ING direct's savings maximiser (which i'm using), which hasn't budged from 4.75% p.a. since 07/06/02! but i suppose that's better than dragondirect's directsaver which *was* keeping pace with ING until it went down to 4.60% p.a. on 30/07/03... furthermore, citibank's account looks to have a few more features, like access via EFTPOS, ATM, BPay, direct debit etc, which could be useful for some. hmm... on second thought, i reckon it's almost good enough for me to use as my primary transation account! especially given that my current account has account keeping fees tied to minimum balances, and a whopping interest rate of 0.01% p.a. note to self: definitely worthy of further investigaton.

metway vs. my way

the same institution that takes care(??) of my general transactional money also handles my car insurance. i went with them for the sole reason that they gave me rating 1 from the get-go. now that i'm eligible for rating 1 for life with many other insurance agencies, i've discovered that i can save money by leaving my current insurer of 4 years. as my new insurer's slogan goes, lucky.... i'm now with AAMI!

back to the beginning

the reason why i was looking at citibank's site in the first place is... i applied online for the car insurance, and was about to pay for it with my debit card. then i thought i'd do my sister a favour and ask her if she wanted to pay with her credit card so she can earn points (since her CC has a rewards program), and i'll reimburse her in cash. that started me thinking... maybe i should check this credit card thing out more, so i asked both my sisters about their credit cards, and found out that my younger sis (whose card i used) has a card with a rewards program, no membership fees, and 55 day interest free period - not often that you get the last two in tandem, as far as i'm aware. now the bonus is that it (the APESMA/CBA Affinity Card) seems to be something for which i also seem to be eligible. note to self: another thing definitely worthy of further investigaton. so anyways, my older sister asked me whether i was thinking of getting a CC what with asking all these questions, and says: have you checked out citibank?

quentin's best movie yet

today's jumping around in time and action has been brought to you via the inspiration of kill bill vol. 1, which by the way rocks! if you like that sort of thing, that is :) and i sure DO! and that best movie thing? well that's from the horse's mouth. ok so the inspiration linkage is a bit flimsy, i only thought of it a few minutes ago and it seemed to fit at the time :p

daily double::
1. When was the last time you have gotten sick?
how timely is this? i'm sick now! (ref. last few entries)
2. Do you own a digital camera?
sure do :) carry it with me almost everywhere, but don't always pull it out to use...

iron chefs in kitchen battle

sounds like a worthy newspaper article title? hehe... caught the second episode of the 'new' show on sbs last saturday. watching the iron chef (the version screened is mostly dubbed and subtitled) reminded me of typical wacky japanese tv. maybe because it is :p check out the unofficial but fairly comprehensive iron chef compendium.

still sick, feeling the worse for it, and with no drool-worthy restaurants to fantasise about this week...

stoopid

is how i feel... because

1. i signed up for nike's keep the ball alive competition thing, but now i have absolutely no idea what i'm supposed to do...
   
2. mooks' world seems to be falling apart / caving in / some sort of seriously not good, and i have no idea how i can help :(

oh and i'm sick. not majorly (yet?), but nevertheless. bleh...

music::wow worship (yellow) cd2

disappointed

a potted review of dinner at the hairy lemon:

• wording on the enhancer section of the menu is misleading, so i didn't have my seafood
  
• had the chilli roast pork. the meat itself tasted ok, but the rest of the dish (pumpkin mash, mushrooms, vegetables) tasted weird. apple chips were interesting, but again strange to be eating savoury apple...
  
• nene had the sirloin steak, but reckons it looked and tasted like pork. and the mushroom sauce was too alcoholic.
  
• so for a place that markets itself as the "Brisbane's Finest Steak and Seafood Restaurant" (according to the website) and something along the lines of best function venue or similar (according to the signage on site/on the menu, can't remember exact wording), we both felt a bit robbed, at least expectation wise.
  
• though quiet when we first arrived, the place was got fairly full later on. maybe they were understaffed and thus took too long to serve customers, but people from two tables close to us left without ordering anything - just upped and walked out.
  
• though it looked like an interesting venue indeed, there wasn't really anything (beyond the cosmetic and aesthetic) that made it much different from any other restaurant.
  
• ah well, we scored one free meal out of it, albeit not to our palettes' fancy...

after dinner saw us grab some dessert at the blue lotus a few doors down the road, where we bumped into mooks and my sister. they (the blue lotus) might be franchising into sunnybank! there's already a BK31 and cold rock in the area - so i suppose ice cream lovers will enjoy the extra choice and variety.


throat's dry and sore. i don't want to get sick... :|

music::wow worship (yellow) cd1

*drool...*

i'm tucking into my lunch (nice sandwish, thanks mum!)

i'm also thinking about what i'm going to have for dinner :) will be dining at the hairy lemon steak and seafood restaurant (picked out of the entertainment book) and catching up with nene, which we haven't done for too long. i'm not that big on steak (maybe partially because i don't eat it enough to be confident of what i'm ordering!) so i'm eyeing off either the chicken or the pork, plus a seafood enhancer. *yummm* (i hope :D)

oh, my morish nuts arrived monday, enriched with a $5 discount voucher for a future order. good nutty value (and smart marketing) :p

music::you've got music (word entertainment promotional CD)

*thump, thump, thump*

that's how my head was feeling yesterday. not sure why, but it was hurting. not majorly, but enough to be annoying. so i tired taking a nap after dinner, but don't think i slept deep enough for it to be of any benefit. later on when i was trying to sleep i couldn't fall asleep. hate how that happens...

feel better this morning, so that's good. got to work, and my PC decided to be rather anti-social and not play on the network. got the internal support folk to investigate and they couldn't find anything wrong. took my PC away for a while, so i ended up spending the time rearranging and adding stock to the shelves. later on he came back saying it worked fine in testing - plugged everything back in and it's working again. sometimes these "self-resolving" problems are the most annoying cos you're none the wiser as to why it played up in the first place :-/

the 7th japanese film festival is coming to brisbane, but i'm not sure if i'll go see anything... sometimes i wished i lived in sydney (cos they get more asia-pacific films, JFF being a case in point). can't make waterboys, saw spirited away last year at japanime, and initially baulked at twenty-four eyes (upon discovering it was in b&w, and made almost 50 years ago :p) - but after reading the synopsis i've reconsidered. now to find some company to go watch it with, and in time to book some tickets... ? hmm...

friday five

1. Do you watch sports? If so, which ones?
yes. mainly basketball (NBA, but i haven't watched for ages because it's no longer available on free-to-air tv) and cricket. sometimes tennis (preferably doubles, preferably mixed), rugby union (the world cup starts tonight), rugby league (only if it's a state of origin game). occasionally (only because it's so rare to find it on tv) volleyball (indoor and beach), snooker/pool, badminton, table tennis...
2. What/who are your favorite sports teams and/or favorite athletes?
hmm... pass... don't really follow sports with enough fanaticism to have favourites. though i guess michael jordan was beautiful to watch when in action.
3. Are there any sports you hate?
not really / can't think of any. but some sports which i have zero interest in: any equestrian stuff, motor racing...
4. Have you ever been to a sports event?
yup. saw part of a sheffield shield game (domestic cricket) ages ago, went to one or two bullets (local basketball) games way back, and watched a few basketball matches at the goodwill games a few years ago.
5. Do/did you play any sports (in school or other)? How long did you play?
never anything in structured competitions, but in junior high i spent most of my free time at school on the basketball courts. when i first came to australia my class mates in primary school introdued me to the game of cricket, so i played a bit of that too. also handball (not the european kind) was popular during my primary school days, and i had a brief fling with squash towards the end of primary school.

misc...

just went to the local shopping centre during my lunch break and bought some blank double cd cases for a little project i'm supposed to be working on but haven't done much about. there were packs of 5 for $2.50, which is cheaper than i'd seen anywhere else. just as i was about to leave, i see some being sold individually for 40c, also marked 5 for $1.50... :-/ but there were only 3 of them, not enough for what i needed. but why would individual ones be priced cheaper than bulk? it doesn't make sense.

while at the shops, noticed signs saying that the new extensions to the centre are due to open on monday! haven't been there for ages and didn't realise it was almost ready. must return for a closer look.

before i left, my colleague had a call from her daughter (which happens quite often), and after a brief chat about her daughter she asked me in passing whether i had any children. my reply was almost a reflex - no i'm not married. i guess i live in a world where i equate having children to being married; the one follows the other, not the other way round, and not independently of each other. i wondered whether i had inadvertently passed judgment on her as i've never heard her mention a husband, so i've no idea whether she is/was ever married...

still bored.

la-di-da...

i'm bored. it's friday. i want the weekend to be here. hmm... no i think what i really want is some time to sleep and not work. a day or two will do... :)

not that work is that hard or stressful. in fact i kinda wished it were busier, so that i'd have stuff to do! but it's quite variable, and even though i'm getting paid so much less than my previous job, i still feel weird about sitting here with no work to do. fatty used me as a subject for a psych assignment last year, and that revealed some things about motivation linked to perceived worth. ie you're not as motivated to work if you feel you're underpaid (which is probably fair enough), but you're also less motivated if you feel you're overpaid. i don't think i'm feeling overpaid, i just think i'm being paid to do nothing. of course, i'd probably feel worse if i was getting paid a lot more to be doing the same kind of nothing... hehe...

i want the money; i want to be paid. but i want to work for it; to earn it by doing something of value.

work is a strange beast. got to mooks' place last night, and arrived in the middle of an unhappy post-dinner table conversation. unhappy for her, as she was in tears. so i parked myself on the sofa and waited. the tv was on fairly loud, but i didn't want to turn it down in case that came across as me wanting to listen in on the conversation between her and her parents. so i'm kinda glad that her brother came and talked to me - that boy's fairly on the ball :)

anyways, the conversation was about her work/workplace. long and ongoing story that one... where to start? don't know, won't try. and so we didn't end up doing any of our regular stuff, but instead sat around a bit, then went and applied some face masks (i'm smoooth... hehe), and then made some popcorn (trying out the new popcorn machine she got for her birthday) and ate them with golden syrup.

music::felicity (music from the hit television series)

education gone crazy?

just got reminded of of something that came up when i was over at fatty's on monday night. she tutors these students, who also attend this extracurricular program called northshore(?) - something similar to kumon, from what i understand. anyway, the homework they get from northshore is pretty hard. fatty's role as a tutor is mostly to help them finish their homework, and so she wrote down a list of stuff she was going to bring to uni the next day to ask around. a few of these i knew off the top of my head, but some others were quite difficult. try this one on for size:

"SO DEDUCED RECEIPT"
fnd an anagram of the above phrase, to give two words that are antonyms of each other.

now the kicker is that this is for a grade 6 primary school student... ??!! even i had no idea where to start... so in the end pulled out my revo (which, incidentally, has been behaving fairly well of late) for a bit more processing power. it helped in the anagram department, leaving me the antonym bit to figure out, which i did :)

ah well, back to work i go...

gripe, gripe, gripe... and some less gripey stuff

ADVISORY: long and rambly... (skip the first 6 paragraphs to avoid geeky ramblings :p)

was going to blog yesterday... started with a few words during the day, and was going to actually write something when i got home. but i didn't count on the trials and tribulations of PC ownership to rear its meddlesome head. ended up spending most of my evening trying to unbreak my onboard NIC. this whole thing actually started sometime ago, when my brother fried both sticks of RAM in his pc, and so i had to help troubleshoot. well, he only fried one - i'm pretty sure the second stick only started burning after i came on the scene, but that'd be because the socket on the motherboard was already fried... anyways so then he asked to use his HDD in my pc, so i reluctantly agreed on the condition that he not touch my hardware for any reason (he's damaged a few pieces of hardware - both his and ones jointly owned - by doing things that really shouldn't be done). so i figure the easiest solution would be to try and get some dual-booting thing happening, but that didn't work. in the process of trying to get his hdd to work on my pc, my setup which was working fine had a slight hiccup. my firewall app reset itself and i lost all my rules. URGH. that's the second time it's happened, for reasons i still don't understand, so i uninstalled that app in disgust. how silly is it to not be able to easily backup or export/import rulesets?

so then i downloaded a comparable product (long story about how the orginal parent company split in two and each 'child' continued development on the same base product but now independently growing etc - i was using one and thought i'd try the other). i'd actually briefly used the other one when i was setting up this current PC, cos i thought the first one had disappeared. it was slightly different and i refound the first so used that cos i was more familiar with it, plus the second one had problems with hibernating in xp. anyways i'm all geared up to give this other app a second go, so i installed it yesterday (now a later version from when i first tried it), and again problems with hibernation. stuff it i thought, not worth the hassle cos i love my hibernation! uninstall. but now my network is broken.... ??!!!

major ARGH!!! ok no lights on the network ports... let's try to suss things out methodically... check the router port with another pc and cable - yep all ok. check the cable using another pc - yep all good. so it's my pc... alright... double check that it's all enabled in bios (no reason this should have been affected, but just to be sure) and it's all good as far as i can see. next step windows... it says the connection is all enabled and that the LAN is connected, but still no lights. DHCP is not working cos the ip is wrong/invalid. so i try disabling and enabling, then rolling back the driver for the NIC, then uninstalling and reinstalling the device in xp. all no go. did everything the windows hardware troubleshooter suggested, not that i expected it to come up with any gems, and it didn't. even resorted to using system restore and that created a few more problems of its own so i had to do it a few times, but in the end even when i restored to a point when i knew that network was working it still didn't. grrrr...

so now it's getting late, and my router is flashing away with other siblings surfing the ADSL highway, and i'm sitting with a seemingly functioning NIC which just happens to not be working. it's like it's not turned on, yet the OS thinks it's A-OK. i'm almost ready to give up with disgust and frustration, and call it a night. i think i need the sleep anyway.

but, a thought strikes me about hibernation and how the NIC is setup to allow power management by the OS (ie winxp will shut down the NIC when it hibernates or goes into standby). what if... what if maybe when i had that other firewall installed and had those problems with hibernation, that stuffed something up? now, my pc had been shutdown, restarted and reset a good number of times this evening amongst all the installing, uninstalling and system restoring that's occurred to try to fix the NIC problem, but not once has it hibernated... hmm... ok let's give it a try. hibernation should be fine now cos i've system restored to a time prior to this present saga. hibernate. all good. restart and come out of hibernation... and let there be light(s on the NIC)! hooray! but i'm still not happy that it took so long to solve (the symptoms were just a bit too sketchy and misleading), nor that the problem happened in the first place.

but what can you do? learn from it what you can and move on...


speaking of moving on, change of topic - what i was going to write about in the first place. but the momentum has been lost... so i'm less motivated and inspired (not that it'd make for very motivating or inspiring reading anyway).

so, in brief... mooks seemed to do ok with her exam. we had dinner at the manor, a chinese restaurant nearby. we were going to go for the happy hour special, but found out that it needs a minimum of 4 people. so we had steamboat instead, which was pretty good but probably a bit on the expensive side. i'm still getting used to the concept of using two pairs of chopsticks when it comes to steamboating, so for the first 5 minutes was using the one pair for everything... not that it really bothers me, but i guess other people might find it odd. towards the end of dinner, a waiter came to pack up and remove the dishes. in the process he knocked over a bowl of dipping sauce, and spilled on mooks. she later complained that his first reaction was to say sorry, and wipe up the table... and then offer her napkins to wipe herself.

so we went back to my place where she borrowed a pair of my pants (which weren't going to go with her new shoes! =|) and left hers to soak in some stain remover, before we headed off to the movies.

pirates of the caribbean. keira knightley is rather pretty, hehe. johnny depp i felt had a interesting role, and played it well. overall a fairly light-weight but nevertheless entertaining movie with a few genuine laughs and chuckles along the way. plus it was free, cos mooks had free passes :)

a few things i didn't quite get though... [SPOILERS warning, stop reading now if this applies]

1. was will's father also affected by the curse? he should have been, since he took part in the taking of the cursed treasure. so, that being the case, how could he die? ok maybe he didn't die and is still stuck at the bottom of the ocean somewhere, tied to a cannon...
   
2. in the scene where jack finally shoots barbossa, barbossa falls and an apple rolls out of his had. does this mean he was holding an apple in his hand *all* this time?? ie while duelling with jack with the swords and all?? now i know that the apple had some meaning and significance to his character, but this seemed a bit too convenient.
   
3. how come elizabeth's clothes dried so fast on their marooned island?? maybe she was wearing a different brand to when she fell into water the first time round... (okay so i didn't take that much notice of jack's clothes in either scene... but can you blame me?! :p)
   
4. stupid monkey... i thought it had drowned already. but if it too can be cursed, does that mean it also paid its part by blood the first time round?

hmm... all these questions... hehe

music::ginny again

it's a rainy day...

and the office smokers are gathering outside my window for their deadly pleasures. usually (ie when it's not raining) they're further away from the building. is that carcinogens i detect seeping through the walls? :p


finally fixed up fatty's internet access problems last night. thanks to a friend mr google introduced, attempt #3 (or has it been more?) was successful in restoring normal functions. IT troubleshooting is so much fun! but it does provide a sense of accomplishment when the problem is solved :)


yesterday my supervisor asked about the cd i was playing. hooray ginny! on a (musically) related note, i've decided that i don't really like norah jones *that* much. ie. her stuff is really good for mood/background music, but none of the songs in particular really grab me...


mooks will be doing her pre-reg exam soon/later this afternoon... and we're going out for dinner and a movie afterwards to celebrate :D

it's official - i'm a nutter!

it wasn't until recently (last year or so?) that i came across the term "morish", as used to describe something tasty that leads you to eat more. today i happened upon a company (based out of WA) called Morish Nuts... and so i browsed their site, thinking that their products may make for interesting gifts... and then i signed up for their competition giveaway... and then finally i parted money to become a member and receive some complimentary samples (hot cashews and choc peanuts) and permanent entry into their monthly giveaways (am i a sucker for freebies?!)

so yep, i've gone and joined the Morish Nutters Club.


ooh! today i got some stationery! scissors, staple remover, and small stickty tape dispenser. dispenser doesn't suit my large roll of tape, but at least i can now use scissors instead of incisors :)


daily double::fri 03 oct
1. Do you have any posters or pictures on your bedroom walls?
yes... A4 colour photocopy of a night photo i took from a plane window while on the ground at singapore international airport in the early 90's; two A4 sized movie flyers (for 'not one less' and 'galaxy quest'); an A3 poster for HKFF 1999 (hong kong film festival), which mark from heroic-cinema kindly sent me cos i wasn't able to make any of the screenings in brisbane (was working night shifts then); an A4 sized glow-in-the-dark postcard thing showing the nightscape from mt. hakodate (south part of hokkaido, japan) back towards the mainland; a printout of the prayer points from sem1 for the YF committee members.
2. If you had to give up one, which sense would you give up (sight, smell, touch, hear, taste)?
hard one... probably smell, partly because my sense of smell isn't all that sharp anyway.

music::ginny owens CD - something more

lost in the beauty of the moment...

i had driven that road a few times already, and knew the way well enough that consultation of a map was not required. but the last few times i'd been there i'd driven at night, and today i was travelling by day. things looked quite different - i could see what i was driving past! nice, out-of-suburbia quasi-farmland greenery on a bright and somewhat windy day. added to this that i was taking my sister's relatively new holden astra for a spin. then throw in a bit of norah jones, whose debut cd happened to be in the car cd player, and i was lost in the beauty of the moment...

so when i came to some rather unfamiliar territory at the end of the road, i realised i had missed my turn-off!

anyways, let's backtrack a little, and provide a potted photolog with commentary, on other parts of my day:

• earlier in the day i went to my second cousin's 21st birthday yum cha. [pic of invite - the few things i shot during yum cha were all vids]
  
• had to leave early so as to attend another cousin's wedding. [pic1, pic2] the band was really cool - they played boppy 60's pop, giving the proceedings a relaxed and lively party-ish atmosphere. there was "my girl" and "(your love keeps lifting me) higher and higher" during the signing of the registry, and "let's get this party started"? during the recessional. a nice change from the more typical classical type pieces one tends to hear at weddings :)
  
• it was after the wedding that i went on the drive above, to catch up with some of the folk from yum cha. they had gone to superman's house, and when i arrived they were piled on a little trailer riding behind a ride-on mower! crazy ppl... but i quickly joined in too :p [pic showing one person on the back, cos the other group stuff i took was a video]
  
• superman then had to go to work, so we moved on over to fatty's house. more norah :)
  
• one thing i find strange about the astra dash is the potentially confusing dual dials [pic]. usually the tachometer is a single digit figure showing x1000, but on this car it's a double digit figure showing x100. with the tacho dial being the same size as the speedometer, it could take more than one look to figure out which dial is showing your speed...
  
• at fatty's, i went and checked out porky's new family car, the 2nd generation echo. i was curious to see the differences between that and my first gen echo. while there i decided to take a couple of photos showing the dash layout, since i recently commented on this rather unique feature of echos. [pic1, pic2]
  
• then it was off again to return home and change before heading out to the wedding reception. i thought the flowers on the table were an interesting touch :) [pic]
  
• at my table i met a girl who remembered my name from high school! she was wearing some rather funky jewellery [pic], which, thanks to my 4 years of engineering studies, i recognised as featuring some electronics components!

ok that's long enough an entry... early start tomorrow - helping out at evangelistic service at church.

music::norah jones mp3s (legit and free from here)

whine...

yesterday my manager was getting angry at her printer. i don't actually know what was wrong with it, but today she has a new printer.

meanwhile my printer still works, most of the time... though it jams everytime i've tried to use the manual feed tray, and it's not particularly fast, plus recently it's occasionally printed funny characters.

and a few other stationery/consumables whines...

• there are no mechanical pencils available in the stationery supply
  
• there are normal pencils, but no sharpeners to keep them nice and pointy
  
• there's no sticky tape dispensers, and no scissors, so i'm using my teeth to "cut" strips of sticky tape
  
• i miss having a scroll mouse. the person in charge of stationery doesn't know what a scroll mouse is. okay maybe i should have used "wheel mouse"
  
• there are no fine point pens. i'm definitely a fine point pen person, which is why i'd be whining that there are no fine point pens. and also why i prefer mechanical pencils, and why i'd be complaining about the lack of them...
  
• the medium point pen i *do* have is one of those annoying ones which quickly and easily develop a build-up of ink at the ball point. that is a badly designed/implemented pen, and not one fit for writing.

friday five::
1. What vehicle do you drive?
metallic silver manual toyota echo sedan
2. How long have you had it?
almost 4 years now
3. What is the coolest feature on your vehicle?
the dash :) couldn't find pictures that look like mine so i've settled for some american version here - of course my car is right hand drive, and the dash is digital not analog as in these pics. but you get the idea...
4. What is the most annoying thing about your vehicle?
can you believe that there is no light for the boot? so stupid...
5. If money were no object, what vehicle would you be driving right now?
given that i don't actually know that much about cars, this is a tough question. but, also given that i watched "die another day" just a few nights ago, the aston martin vanquish (or rather, the souped up Q-branch special "vanish") is fairly fresh on my mind :)

meh!

(i think that's the sound some FOMs use in a situation like this)

i hate stuffing things up - making simple mistakes. i rate myself high on attention to detail when it comes to "promoting" myself to prospective employers and the like, so almost feel like a liar when i stuff up at work. yes i know i'm not perfect, but....

meh!

watched the first ep of survivor7 last night. seems like it's been a while since series 6 (amazon), so i once again find myself fascinatingly drawn to see what happens when you throw a group of strangers together and force them into various situations. not that i'm a blanket fan of these type of reality tv type shows - never got into stuff like big brother, or those "dating" games/shows. did watch a bit of the mole and the amazing race, but that didn't last. early favourite is on the drake tribe, and i'm liking rupert - the big ol' hippie looking dude! haha... but as they say - the game's unpredictable, and game is on as long as your torch is still burning.

REVOlution!

more strange noises from my revo this morning... discovered after sleeping in, because my second alarm (on the revo, naturally) failed to sound. so, in the mad dash to get ready and avoid being late to work again, i flipped open the device, turned it on, and voila - strange noises.

this time, strange noises = hard reset and shut down. likely to have been caused by total battery drain. lost everything. grrr... stupid me wasn't even smart (or paranoid!) enough to make a backup after the last set of strange noises a few days ago. so i grabbed the charger and rushed off to work.

at work, managed to do a bit of googling to discover this leading to a 'say... that rings a few bells!' when i came to the last two items listed under "possible problems", especially the last one about sounds causing the device to switch off. hmm... wonder how much that would cost to fix... wonder whether psion will repair it as a design fault, even though my unit is over 3 years old now...

well, now that i'm a bit more clued up on why my revo may be revolting, i've restored, updated, backed up, and installed ChaDis to help me keep an eye on things in the immediate future. but i have a feeling my woes have indeed been due to either the battery or battery connector (or both...) and it's going to be a case of live with it or spend more money (to fix, or upgrade)... *sigh*

humming along

i hate...
how my work PC is soooo slow. it's forever disk thrashing because it simply does not have enough RAM. trying to run Win2K on 64MB RAM? that's asking for punishment.

i love...
how i managed to score another 64MB, and now the PC is positively humming along :) so, even though it still has less RAM than my old Win98 system at home, it's still much better/faster compared to how it was half an hour ago!


daily double::mon 29 sep
1. Do you have a TV in your room?
no. if i did i'd probably never leave (except for personal hygiene and nutrition purposes :p)
2. What do like to watch on TV?
hmm... currently? the movie show, alias, survivor, plus movies, the odd special, and occasional channel surfing where i might watch bits and pieces of some sports, cooking, current affairs, news etc...

does not compute?

my revo just made strange noises at me as i went to move the bag it was in... please don't tell me you've gone and done a spontaneous reset on yourself! i grimaced. it had already proved itself capable of this feat some months back, causing much cursing from me and fuelling fervour to maintain a much more rigorous backup schedule.

can't think what should have caused anything to go make funny noices... in any case, i opened up the lid, turned it on, and prepared for the worst.

*phew* looks like it's managed to lose a few settings, which only took a few seconds to restore. but oh... also lost some data that i entered earlier today... though only from one application (that i could see) and not from another?! hmm....

don't die on me just yet. i'm not ready to afford a replacement, though a dell axim (like one my on-a-technology-spending-spree of a younger sister recently bought) looks to be the goods if i'm forced down that path anytime soon :)


daily double::fri 26 sep
1. Apple Juice or Orange Juice?
apple, cos OJ is *every*where. though given the choice (and the variety you typically get most places you go is oh so boring), i'd go for something more exotic. like... guava, coconut, watermelon, starfruit, soursop, lychee, sugar cane... give me malaysian hawkers, or a half decent asian grocery store / juice stand :)
2. Coca-Cola or Pepsi?
neither. coke rots your teeth (among other negative effects); that stuff is strong! soft drinks contain carbon dioxide - why drink in the waste product that our lungs breath *out*? i've cut down heaps on my intake of soft drinks, but i still occasionally go for lemondade, fanta, sars and creaming soda. almost never any type of cola.

congrats F & SL!!

newlyweds for the day... and a fairly warm one (ie day) at that! but yeah nice wedding and reception. really great too to catch up with some old friends/acquaintances from high school, uni and church.

but for now, sleep... *yawn*

don't bite your lip

there's a real sense of foreboding when you bite your lip (in the literal sense), cos you just know that it's going to lead to a nice little ulcer. pain. less joy in eating. bleh...

on the figurative side (though perhaps tongue is more typical than lip), i've been playing around a bit with adding comments to my blog. thanks to the useful help section of blogger, i picked out my comment host of choice (enetation), and voila! never knew it was so easy :D

and so, back to the topic, or not quite as it were, don't bite your lip :) ie. comment away, if that's the sort of thing you're into. not that i think my blog has enough of a readership base to really warrant comments... but you never know who might stumble across my nebulous thoughts and want to add some of their own...

sounds::thunder, and rain against the window

come again?

umm... wow... blogshares

just been spending my lunch break at work trawling blogs from RBJ, and came across the above... i guess it's time to get back to work and earn some real $$! (real as in non-virtual, as opposed to real as in serious/"lots of" - yeah, saw my first pay slip today and so now i know exactly how much i'm getting paid...)

the wedding march

how's this for a list of speedy couple FOMs and their movement from "dating" to engaged/married? all within 6 or 12 months...

1. met october last year, started going out soon after, engaged march?, married june
   
2. known each other for ages, started going out early this year? getting married this weekend
   
3. met november last year, started going out some time this year?, engaged in august
   
4. (i only know the bride) couple was apparently on, then off. back on this year and getting married next weekend
   
5. (i only know the bride) couple would have met august last year at the earliest. no idea it was even on the cards but found out after the fact that they got married in or before august this year
   
6. met last year?, started going out april this year, found out today that they had gotten engaged
   

as i wrote to one half of couple #6, i feel positively slow in comparison ;)

oh oh oh, i'm a working class man

... to paraphrase jimmy barnes ;)

alas, my days of unemployment have officially ended with my first day on the job at a new workplace. mixed feelings i must say... but it's good to be working and earning money (though it's not very much) rather than dipping into my savings or living off the government. lots of things to learn, and not so much free time anymore... snippet of conversation with a friend of mine:

me: oh well, it pays better than centrelink
FOM: but you'll miss the hours though...

true, true...

aim adjustment

'One day as I was reading 1 John 2 I realised that my personal life's objective regarding holiness was less than that of John's. He was saying in effect, 'Make it your aim not to sin'. As I thought about this, I realised that deep in my heart my real aim was not to sin 'very much'... Can you imagine a soldier going into battle with the aim of 'not getting hit very much?'
-- Jerry Bridges, in "The Pursuit of Holiness" (p. 96)

you can breathe now...

hrm. it's taken more than a year for me to start venturing into tweaking with the template. got motivated to do (or at least look into doing) this after seeing lots of other blogs and related sites recently. [read: they pretty much all look spiffier than mine] for now, i've just done some minor tweaking and customisation. tomorrow, the world?! :p

so just in case you were holding. well... maybe just take one quick breath ;)

music blind

a korean student told me at convo club last week that the word they have (ie in the korean language) for people who are computer illiterate translates to "computer blind". correspondingly, i am a "music blind" person. makes it hard and frustrating trying to learn a song in a choir... :(

hardly reason enough to feel glum, but that just so happens to be the case.

*sigh*

snippity snip

there's something therapeutic about cutting off bits of your body. no i don't mean in a masochistic sense of forcibly removing one's body parts. i'm talking about cutting nails and cutting hair. the act and the aftermath brings a certain sense of rightness, a la "now that's better!" which makes the seemingly choresome task of regular maintenance not entirely unsatisfactory :D

2 out of 3 ain't bad... ?

am in the midst of preparing a series of 3 talks, to be given this weekend at a small camp for international students. convo club is a ministry of es, and is something i've been involved with for the past couple of months.

never prepared, let alone delivered, talks like this before :o

so why am i blogging when i'm only two-thirds done? good question ;)

music::bossa baroque by dave grusin

ascii Star Wars "movie"

i really can't believe someone(s) actually did this... but if you're bored, telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl

apparently it's the whole movie. i wasn't *that* bored ;)

hmmm... if you live in Australia and you like your Christian reading bite-sized yet non-fluffy, check out the Briefing from Matthias Media and take advantage of their current special:

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i've been a subsriber since jan this year, and it's money well spent. highly recommended :)

goodness, it's been almost 8 months since my last entry! did anyone miss me? ;)

welcome to the wonderful world of ADSL, courtesy of the good folk at iinet and initial capital expenditure to the tune of nearly $500! (but kindly sponsored by a sibling with deeper pockets... hehe)

so, now that i'm off the dial-up mill, i've decided to revisit my blog. also because i've just been reading someone else's blog, so it jogged my memory/desire. check out pinkronnie - i met this girl when she came up north to visit my youth group camp in july. i think she's into the colour pink... in a BIG way!

ok. 'nuff procrastinating. it's good to be "back" though :)