Just 2 and a half hours after going to sleep after last nights busy work session I was woken by my mobile phone ringing out in the office.

It turned out to be the dispatcher from Messenger Post who must have got my number by mistake and in turn got a blasting down the phone from a less than happy Stu!

After several more hours sleep I phoned my old work to firstly ask that it doesn’t happen again but also to send my apologies to the hapless employee who probably was not expecting to be yelled when he dialed that number.

I am getting very tired of the "Dullsville" tag that is getting bantered around by media and sanctified by people who are unable to entertain themselves.

The latest claim by the government is the new changes to the liquor licensing laws will kill off the Dullsville tag once and for all.

That's an interesting arguement! Is the government trying to tell us that the solution to our problems lie in alcohol? Are we all supposed to just get pissed and forget about our problems?

Trying to suggest this one piece of legislation will change the attitudes of 'glass half empty' people is just plain stupid. It's not going to change the reasons why people see this city as boring any more than extended trading hours or daylight savings.

The biggest change needs to come from the people who always like to look at the negative aspects of life and only then will we truly ditch the Dullsville name that Perth is getting stuck with. 

a new camera.

NO! This is not some bad Photoshop make over. This is my camera which has started to sporadically take really bad photos. The LCD display is playing up and the zoom lens won’t extend fully without creating errors. The camera still does take nice photos but it’s increasingly becoming a hit or miss affair.

So I have been looking at cameras online and trying to get an idea of what is available and, with a rough idea of what I wanted.. Then I went shopping.

I went to a few camera shops and saw some different cameras including a digital SLR which I was really rapt in but I was also more confused with choice.

I had seen some very nice cameras and all had good points to them but the SLR was sitting at the front of the list even though it was more expensive than the others.

In the end Lia and I walked and talked and worked out what I need the camera for. I decided that, as much as I wanted to get the SLR, I should stick to my goal of getting a high end standard camera.

In the end I went for a Fugifilm Finepix s9600, deciding to stick with the brand of camera that has served me so well for over 14,000 photos. It also means I can continue using the same media as before which is good.

A new camera

This is a 9 megapixel model with a good zoom and a super-macro function which gets in really close. I am looking forward to taking some for this website but in the meantime, here is one that Lia took.

I’m watching you read this!

Emily and James have always played with computers from very little. As a result they are both quite good at games.

When Thomas and Cameron moved in here they saw my two playing and wanted to play too and as a result they are both getting reasonably good at the games too

When I was a kid we played games like snakes and ladders, ludo and draughts, all of which have a conclusion where someone wins. These games provide good lessons in life where sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t.

What I have noticed about most of the games that the kids like is that you just don’t win. You play until you die and that is it. For me this seems to be quite a cynical lesson.

It’s not all games of course. Emily’s favourite game on the PS2 is a scooby Doo game where Mystery Inc. have to solve another mystery. It’s the kind of game that you play over a period of time and save as you go and, although it does have the inevitable game over if you run out of lives, it is possible to play it out to a conclusion. It also has a running story line to it which is quite nice.

I don’t really play games myself but the one that I do like is Sim City which I first started playing many years ago. I remember having to spend over $500 getting an extra 8mb of ram for my 486 machine to get the game to work but I used to play it a heck of a lot when I was living in the outback.

I have the current version which I play occasionally. The graphics and rendering is a lot better but the latest version tends to concentrate too much on being the mayor and I just want to build.
Thankfully I found a nice little cheat that lets me get as much money as I want without having to worry about pesky budgets.

If only life were like that!

The last week was pretty good and I got to spend some time with the kids but I am still finding it hard to balance my time with them and the new job.

Both Tuesday and Wednesday nights I got to read them bedtime stories, something that I have not been able to do since changing jobs. I even got to spend some time in the garden, pulling weeds and removing the summer petunias and planting some pansies for winter and spring.

On Sunday we went to Hillarys boat harbour where we had fish and chips before looking around the shops there while the rain poured down on what turned out to be the wettest day in a couple of years.

One other thing that was happening in Hillarys that day was a psychic fair which pretty much got washed out and that got me thinking..

All these so called psychics paid money to some organising company to rent a tent and space in this fair but if they were truly psychic they should have known that it was going to get rained out and that they were wasting their money.

Yeah, I know they are going to tell me that’s not how it works!

Getting my finances together has been one of the challenges of this new job as I have always been someone who is not good with budgeting. Having been paid fortnightly for the previous eleven years it did take a little getting used to having extra money one week and then not having enough the next. I think that I am finally getting on top of that problem.

The second problem that I am noticing with the work is the amount of time that I am spending. My roster is supposed to be 45 hours a week over 6 days but it’s probably more realistic to talk 50 hours. Then there is about 8 or 9 hours of driving to and from each week.

Finally, once I am finished, I get home on the nights that I close the store and everyone has already gone to sleep. A couple of hours winding down either chatting or watching something and it’s getting very late once I get to bed. Getting to sleep between 2 and 5 in the morning means that I am waking up later and, without the constraints of having a reason to get up, I am sleeping more hours.

This is probably very good for my health but means that I don’t seem to have the time to do things that I want to, such as spending time in the garden, working on my web design or more importantly with my family.

Tonight was good though as I only worked 6 hours and made sure that I was out on time, warning my assistant manager that I would not be staying back because I wanted some family time. He fully understood and so at 8pm I was out of the door, picked up by Lia and the kids.

We headed into Mount Lawley and had Belgium waffles and ice cream at Gelare before heading home where I read a story to the kids before they went to bed (something I used to be able to do every night).

Tomorrow is my day off and I want to spend as much time with everyone as I can. The only flaw in my plan is I have to go and see a new web design client in the early afternoon but that shouldn’t take long and the kids can go to a park with Lia while I am in the shop.