Photo Friday – Sleep

Posted on August 9, 2003 by admin.presshost

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I’m on time for this weeks photo Friday.
The subject matter was sleep, and I immediately thought of a photo I have of Jamie as a newborn, dressed in bright orange, leant up on a fluorescent green towel, lying on a vivid purple blanket… with Nina (the cat) above his head

I could have been one of the first entries this week, not one of the last!

I decided not to do that one though and, as the entries rolled in, I noticed there were a lot with children and pets sleeping together.
There were also a lot of just children sleeping, as well as a lot of pets sleeping, and quite a few partners sleeping… with footnotes announcing the publishers imminent demise when said partner actually finds out!

I decided that maybe the best way to tackle this would be to approach from a more abstract angle. My first thought was a photo of darkness, which I dismissed as quickly as I thought about it. A couple of other entries beat me to the “death” angle. My photography skills are not good enough to pull that one off anyway.

Enjoying a pleasant winters afternoon in my mums garden, watching the kids eat mandarins they had picked fresh from the tree, I was suddenly hit with my inspiration.
So here is this weeks entry, Enjoy!

The Almond tree in my mothers garden, sleeping through the Australian winter.

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My Whinge

Posted on August 8, 2003 by admin.presshost

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Every few month, Post insists on making us go to stupid meetings where they tell us how great the company is doing, and how much better off we all are compared to all the other courier companies in Australia and of course, hand out the quarterly achievement awards.
I wasn’t expecting to get anything!

I knew this was going to be the case, because it was made clear to me by the operations manager that you have to work a full day to be eligible.
Interesting, so the achievement award isn’t actually based on achievement. It’s irrelevant that I start earlier than anyone else, that I shuttle a whole load of mail from our Welshpool base into the city for some of the drivers, pro bono.

It’s certainly not known at the office that I managed to pacify one of their major clients, who were getting quite shitty by the lack of service they were getting, the same client who went into panic mode when I took two days off sick a few months ago.

“This driver has been with us for about 40 years and is a set run driver, if we don’t hear anything in the office about set runs then things must be going well. We don’t get any complaints about this driver, so these movie tickets go to…
Of course I’m thinking, “My god, could it be???”
I’ve been there longer than anyone else bar 3 other drivers

I needn’t have got excited…
I forced a smile and applauded the recipient, who I wont deny, did deserve them.

Now I have stated before that I think the whole exercise is a waste of time, and that I’m really not interested in getting movie tickets anyway.
So why did I feel so disappointed? I certainly hadn’t felt this way in the past. Confidence that I always put a lot of effort into the service levels I provide has been enough for me.

*sigh*

Talking of movies, I’ve noticed all the billboards out for the new American Pie movie. Number 3, The Wedding.
I missed the second one, no great loss, but I hear in the third one, the scene where he consummates the marriage to the pie is a sheer hilarity!

PASS!

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Photo Friday – Curves

Posted on August 6, 2003 by admin.presshost

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I ended up running late with this weeks Photo Friday Entry, but it is up now.

I had received one posting from Cheri asking where it was, unfortunately I didn’t actually see this post until after I’d uploaded the photo.
I am a lot happier with this photo, I felt that my inaugural entry was a little, how do I put this… Average!

I settled on the bronze sails of the Swan Bells Tower at the Old Perth Port as my focus. Original ideas were, the new access road into Whiteman Park (which is particually curvey in a vain attempt to slow people down), the twin spiral staircase of the DNA tower, Kings Park and that abstract sculpture outside the QV1 building.

I did not know that the Bell tower is the worlds largest musical instrument. Well there you go, you learn something new every day!

The “Swan Bells” tower. Perth, Western Australia

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Rally Oz trial event

Posted on August 3, 2003 by admin.presshost

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Rally Australia is rapidly creeping up on me and I have to confess I am losing my motivation for it. This weekend was the Clubman cup which is always used as a trial event for the main show so I had to head down to Jarrahdale (about 50km south of Perth) so I could write start times on a piece of paper

Blah! I would have rather stayed home with the kids.

Actually, I think that’s my main reason for lacking enthusiasm. I consider the time I spend with my children precious and I get annoyed when something interrupts that.

Rally was something I used to be really passionate about, but this is my 14th year working as an official and I’m finding other things to be more important.
This isn’t the first year I have felt like this, but this year I am beginning to ask myself, “am I doing it just for tradition?”
Who knows?
Once the event starts and I get the adrenaline (or is that av-gas) rush, maybe it will be different

Maybe!

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My coding sucks

Posted on August 2, 2003 by admin.presshost

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I really am going to have to complain about the traffic lights more often. If you read my post yesterday you will remember I was grumbling about a particular intersection in the city that I always get the red lights at.
I traverse this intersection generally four times a working day between 6.20 am and about 7.40am, and yesterday I got the green light ALL FOUR TIMES.

I’m currently drawing a list of other intersections I want to whinge about, and will post these on Sunday. Come Monday I’m going to have the best run with the traffic lights ever!!!

Had a phone call from Amanda yesterday evening to let me know that some of the archive links weren’t working.
Oh crap!
I write and code this blog manually using an old version of homesite. I like this program because it gives me control over the code and doesn’t fuck it around like some WYSIWYG editors can do. *cough* Frontpage *cough*

Anyway, to cut a long story short. I stuffed up when I was editing and didn’t change everything after I had copied and pasted the link code.
This problem is now fixed… Well, at least until I stuff it up again!

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Can we fix it… No we can’t

Posted on July 26, 2003 by admin.presshost

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I have been meaning to post for a couple of days now, but I really haven’t had anything on my mind.
Oh, with the exception of Thursday. I think I had a vice grip on my mind that day.
I woke up ok, but by about 5.45am I was starting to ache and getting nauseous. Joy of joys, a migraine.

I pretty much wrote Thursday morning off.
I still had to continue with my work until I could get someone to take over for me, one of the joys of self employment, but as soon as I got home I took a codeine tablet and went to bed.

I got suckered into fixing someone’s computer for them and I have to admit, I’m ready to scream.
They are running Windows ME on an old 166mhz Pentium with 32mb RAM and only 200mb of free space left on the HDD.
Not really a good choice of Operating System at the best of times, even worse on a computer designed for Windows 95, but apparently it has been plodding along just fine for the last couple of years.

Outlook express gave up the ghost, claiming it didn’t have enough memory to run. Yes I’m not surprised. Windows needs memory, and lots of it. It utilises all the physical RAM first and then after that it uses “virtual memory”, disk space pretending to be memory in the form of a swap file.
The more these people have been putting stuff on their machine, the more they have been cutting into the available space for this swap file.

As they want to do an upgrade on this machine next year, and as the machine is running SIMM memory, I wanted to avoid the cost of upping the RAM, so I thought a larger hard disk would be a good start. Only trouble is, the company who did the last upgrade password protected the BIOS and I can’t get into it to make hardware changes.

AAAAUUUUGGGGGGGHHHHHH!

Ahh primal scream therapy!
Now where’s my hammer!

Jamie and I stayed home today and watched TV, played computer games (hello ABC kids) and just generally playing games. Even though we didn’t go anywhere, we had a great time. I had him in fits of laughter doing a couple of things.
Tickling is always a sure fire method. He was standing next to me going “tickle, tickle, tickle” to which I was going “No, no, no… oh ok”, grabbing him and tickling his stomach.
Another one had him pulling my jaw to get me to open my mouth, which i would do then hold my mouth open. After a short while (or sometimes straight away) I would poke my tongue out at him, which had him recoiling in fits of laughter.

*sigh* he’s so damn cute!

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Photo Friday – Mechanism

Posted on July 22, 2003 by admin.presshost

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My first Photo Friday challenge

The Computer I got suckered into “fixing” but now want to take a hammer to!

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The lost… art of Internet bullshit

Posted on July 22, 2003 by admin.presshost

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I decided I didn’t like the choice of colour I was using around the “blog” section of this page. I put a colour around it in the first place because I wanted to break it up from the image and links below, but in retrospect I realised that it was pulling away from the design I had originally envisaged.

If you look back through the archives at early pages, you will see they are mostly black on white and it was that minimalist feel that I liked about the site. It also made the drop down menu quite startling with its orange roll-overs. I felt that that lilac background was detracting.

Hello Grey!

Further proof that you shouldn’t believe everything you read –
I was reading A Yobbo’s view a few days ago and he had a link… and a rather scathing comment… about Baby Ink. A tattooing company set up especially to cater to babies, infants and children.

Not surprisingly, it turned out to be a hoax. Snopes.com have this site posted on their urban legends pages, but it does remind me of something else that was being forwarded via blog.

I can’t actually remember the blog I found this on, (I came across it while surfing) but they had posted a photo of the worlds largest woman “Photographs show the “biggest woman in the world,” a 7’4″ woman from Holland.” and were getting all the wow comments.
As I had already come across this photo via email a couple of years ago, and later had it dismissed on Snopes.com as a fraud, I felt it was my duty to set this hapless blogger straight, pasting the link.
I guess she didn’t like it as she deleted my post within a couple of hours. I guess it is better to spread deception rather than admit that you are wrong!

Its not just general public being shammed by hoaxes. It is not uncommon for the media to run with a story only to find out afterwards that they are victims of a hoax. In this information overload society with unrealistic deadlines, there often isn’t enough time to thoroughly research a story.

Other Urban legend links – Urban Legends Reference Pages | Urban Legends and Folklore | Hoax photo test

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Burning down the house

Posted on July 18, 2003 by admin.presshost

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I’m finding new and interesting ways to burn down the house!

Yesterday evening I put a load of towels in the washing machine with the intention of putting them out this morning. When I got home from work I went to get them out of the machine only to find them still quite damp, so I cursed and put the machine back on to complete its final spin.
The pump kicked in and I could hear water running down the drain, and I went into the kitchen to grab something to eat.

The original plan was to go and pick the kids up from Amanda’s and worry about putting the washing out afterwards, but before I left the house I noticed an odd smell.
Thinking it might be from the heater I turned the fan off on that and sniffed around that area. I could definitely smell something, but it wasn’t that strong…

Then it dawned on me.

The laundry was filled with acrid white smoke emanating from my washing machine. I cut the power to it and opened up the back door to clear the room.
Great! I shudder to think what would have happened if I hadn’t noticed it before I left.
My hip pocket is feeling it too, as I had to go out and get a new machine today although I shouldn’t complain too much. That machine was given to me about a year ago, and it wasn’t meant to last very long anyway. It was on its last legs when my aunt Carol decided to replace it. (She was going to put it on her front lawn with a “free” sign attached. It was just good timing that I needed a washer at the time.)

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