It is what it is

So I’m back after a couple of days on holiday.

 

I got asked to write some notes on the stuff I’d done. I wrote a beautiful phone book, and arriving here found none of my cases had been touched, and nothing I’d done had been acknowledged.

So tell me why I was here doing an hour’s overtime, again?

 

 

And so it begins

http://www.apple.com.au

 

 

 

On Interruptions

“Conversely, forcing someone to perform errands synchronously is bound to limit their productivity. The cost of an interruption is not just the time it takes, but that it breaks the time on either side in half. You probably only have to interrupt someone a couple times a day before they're unable to work on hard problems at all.”

 

http://www.paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

 

And if what you do is nothing *but* interruptions?

 

The other source of procrastination for me is just how long I spend avoiding other people (with some of the people I work with, understandable) if I’m depressed, which is most of the time lately.

In which KrisTheGrumpy survives a Random Spider Encounter, and discovers that she *really* signed on for paperwork, not computers

The day began with a Giant Spider Encounter in the shower. (I think the rude little bastard stole my towel, too). The fly plague is perpetuating a spider plague, and I predict in a month or so you won’t be able to leave anything on the floor without it sliding away a few minutes later on a lot of hairy little legs. I suppose I can hope that they don’t like 40 degree temperatures, and that would explain the tarantula lurking near the plughole.

I’ve gotten into World Of Warcraft, and if I wasn’t spending 8hrs a day shuffling papers this entry would look a whole lot more like ‘NElf Druid, lvl 10,  lvl grinding atm, gg’.

On the paper shuffling, I think I’ve gotten myself pigeon holed here, set up a situation where I’m not going to be able to extricate myself.

See, I didn’t get hired as an engineer. I got hired as tech support, at the time an estrogen-only zone. There’s arcane rituals, filing,  answers to questions that sound suspiciously like ‘because I *said* so,’ and ‘do as you’re told’ , bonding over shoes, and a pecking order. It’s a feminized environment, and not in a good way.  It’s the checkouts at Woolworths, or the typing pool.

In a different department, or a different company, where there’s a more male style of communication and expectations I do well. Blame my chart for having Mercury in Gemini.  I know the geek community gets a lot of crap for ‘RTFM!’ but IRL I’ve never found it to be excessive unless your query really did go ‘HELP ME PLZ’.  Knowledge is power, so they express it by sharing information. Sometimes too much information, but the point I’m getting to is that it’s a different psychology.

 

 

 

Today's quote of the day

From one of our beloved customers -

Why do I need to (follow procedure to get replacement copy and reinstall software)? I have already done all that. Are you guys trying to punish me because your software didn't work properly.

Lets do a multiple choice 'MAD Magazine's snappy answers to stupid questions.' It writes itself.

a) No, but damn, I really wish I could.

b) Letting you live is punishment enough.

c) The correct question is why are you punishing me.

d) You better believe it, worm. You can't have your software until Mistress says you can.

Happy Holidays

Today's Earworm- Wires, Athlete


And how was your giftmas?

Mine was pretty quiet. I spent Christmas Dinner with family in Geelong. Mostly stayed off the carbohydrates, but I had some pudding. I've also been working my way through the light beer my mother had sent, and the occasional vodka. Doesn't seem to have done me any harm. D remained strict on what he ate and he's doing really well as a result.

I bought D a 200G Western Digital drive for Xmas, and installed it. Arconis True Image didn't properly clone over the boot sector, or so it seemed, and in the end after trying to clone the original drive a couple of times I gave up and added the new drive as a slave. It turned out that the original 30G drive was a WD 7200 RPM anyway, so replacing it with the new one without a fresh XP install would have negligible benefit.

Turned out too that the video card was running Too Damn Hot so I prised off the original wussy fan, and replaced it with a Blue Orb I had lying around. I wish I hadn't spent several hours scowling at the computer, and probably D too as he lurked in the doorway, waiting to get his computer back.

I mentioned up that I was thinking of upgrading the hdd on my iBook, he agreed with me that it was probably a very bad idea on a stress level. It's my primary machine now and full of tiny, tiny parts packed into a very small space that will cause me many hours of fun (panic, take a deep breath, try again, panic, etc etc).

Like most non-geeks he doesn't appreciate *why* its necessary to do these things that stress us out (or, frankly, why, for example, a video card periodically freezing WinXP is an unacceptable situation that must be *immediately* rectified. Possibly expensively). I know why I got stressed out over the hard drive thing, I've been in happy Mac land so long I'm worried I'm losing my hardware mojo. Also, at work, my whole world is brittle proprietry software. I do sometimes deal with Linux but its usually through a human filter who likes to click on irrelevant things and has a small seizure when I suggest we'll need to modify httpd.conf. (Cue usual whine on Pakled sysadmins.)

Funniest Spam Subject Today

Still have microsoft? Have big and hard!

Ooook....

I need a holiday from the holiday

I just spent about a week and a half  walking a teenage girl around pretty much every shopping destination in Melbourne. Physically I’m exhausted, but mentally things aren’t too bad, or at least I’ve been able to sweep the stress deitrus under a mental rug.

Dialtone was out from Friday to Tuesday due to some hardware upgrades at our exchange.  It’s a long, ugly story. *sigh* At least it’s back up. I’m too scared to ask what happened to the ADSL speed upgrade that supposedly caused this because we’re still connecting at 1500, but as I *like* having dialtone that one can wait.

I’ve deferred my postgrad studies for now, possibly permanently. I think its all of questionable value to me at the moment, and what would be beneficial is some ‘cake’ certs like the Security+. I’ll need that for later.

 

 

Yeah, I have a problem

Yeah, I have a problem
Originally uploaded by MidBlueMac.

Listening to: International Date LIne, Ladytron


And these aren't all of them. Not by a long shot. These aren't even the three or four I carry in my bag. I have a lip gloss problem. Shiny, sparkly, flavored, wine, pink, occasionally red or purple, I have a weakness for them all.
Its like the NEXT lipgloss I see, perched fetchingly on a shelf in its fresh pink packaging, will be the Holy Grail of lipglosses, and I can forsake the other fifty in approximately the same color and texture.

Other than sorting my drawers (thats what prompted the lipgloss navel-gazing) I've got other things on at present. I'll probaly defer my postgrad stuff indefinitely after I finish the current subject. I took it on because I wasn't sure what to do, and now I've got a few projects on I'm really interested in I just don't have the time.
I have a few more website projects that need attention, and my main site of course.
There are other courses that interest me more, too. But they'll need to wait until I do something about work, either do something part-time, or get a shorter commute, or God knows, take a course I'm actually interested in, because the upload is a lot slower on business speak waffle than it is on geek stuff.

The shrew and karma

Watching 'Airline' as Joanna the 'journalist' in the trashy red
leather coat throws a tanty about the flight she missed. No,
sweetheart, nobody is going to be flexible. Nobody is going to break
flight regulations or displace somebody else on a plane just to fit
your over-privileged arse. Know why? Look in the mirror.
I guess her bratty behaviour is really hitting a nerve because there
seems to be so very many people who were never taught that
tantrums are not cool after two years old or so. Other people must
just keep letting them get away with it.
Do us all a favor, if you have an encounter with the lawyer who
needs to grow the fuck up or the whining consultant who keeps
quoting his hourly rate, if you're not going to get fired for
telling them to pull their head in, please do it? For the sake of those
who would get fired?
It takes a village to raise a child, after all.

Goals

Here’s a few little goals I have in mind for the next few months…

 

1)       Pay of my debts, so if I want to start a biz, move to London, open a funky café, etc we’re more agile and can do it

2)       Grow my hair.

3)       Lose the *remaining* 5 kg  (15 melts off like butter, the last few are a bitch though)

4)       Remember current gig is a means to an end, so remember to treat it like a particularly brutal SSL/PKI course.

5)       Don’t stop studying new tech

6)       Take some certification exams, dammit.

7)        Don’t overspend over Xmas

8)       Sock away some money for my Intel Powerbook

9)    Don’t kill anybody before I get a better job

Public Service Announcement

On behalf of all CS reps, everywhere,

If you are a contractor, or other generic humanoid carbon unit who is hired to maintain a server running, say, MongyServer Pro (don’t take that literally, I know some of you do have problems with abstraction. This is for all servers wearing hats, servers named after fruit, servers made of glass, and Blue servers among others) please understand you may one day have to crack a book or  manpage about MongyServer Pro.

Any server, no matter how lickable the interface, requires an understanding of Where the server keeps its Important Bits, and where you might need to start looking in the event of Bad Things Happening.

This goes double if you’re actually working for MongySoft, ok?

Divas and heat

In the space of about three days, the weather has turned from ‘chilly’ to ‘I need a beer and air-conditioning, stat’. 

The streets teem with people. This is something I don’t quite understand. I don’t mean in comparison to *yesterday*, which was quite busy anyway thank you very much (I think we were so popular because nobody else in Melbourne was picking up the phone). I mean there are cars and people everywhere, normally quiet streets are full of cars, and I had to wait for tram #2 this morning. Tram #1 was completely packed except for that dead space in the middle of the tram into which the sheeple are terrified to step. Could have barged through but I had time to spare. Besides, tram #2 was empty enough that I didn’t have to concern myself with some commuting Melburnians’ shaky grasp of the concept of deodorant.

Don’t know where the hell the extra people are from, they can’t all be tourists.

I did some damage on the iTunes AU music store last night. The bloke knew I’d had a real horse-cookie of a day so he greeted we with food, iced tea, Body Shop swag, and an iTunes music voucher. I got the new NIN album while I tried to get an assignment in on time (Hmm. NIN, Uni, unbearable stifling heat, I must be 22 again!).

Yesterday was perfect café weather, today the f-ing thermostat is set way too high. I won’t even discuss co-werkers who didn’t turn on the airconditioning until 9:15-ish.

Day’s not over yet and I’m already fairly snippy. But then again, most of these people calling up haven’t learned anything when I walked them through everything the first time yesterday.

 

 

 

15% less grumpy

15% of my body weight. Gone. Foomp. Still a way to go but damn, feels good hitting a milestone.

 

Decided to make this more of a feelgood post. I had a fairly snarky one up before but I thought better of it and pulled it down before it got indexed. The truth is, I don’t care if I’m popular at work, or what people think of me there. It’s not exactly under my control. And not a permanent situation from the looks of things.

It’s true. Not a permanent situation. I can take action to make the end result more positive, but the situation – as it stands now – with my work relationships and my role here – is subject to change no matter what I do.

For a procrastinator like myself, who needs justification, lots of it, to initiate change, that’s a very comforting thought. I will land on my feet. I always do.

All flights cancelled

 

My Airport Express is dead.

 

And to say that things couldn’t get worse this week is dangerously optimistic. And it’s only *Tuesday*.

More later.

Signs your Melbourne cab experience is not going well

I have officially met a cab driver with a worse sense of direction than me. I swear to God.

Signs your Melbourne cab experience is not going well -

1) They don't know which way to South Melbourne

2) They don't know which way to the Casino

3) When one of the ways 'right' leads to the Citylink, they TAKE THE TURN INTO CITYLINK.

4) Once off Citylink, you have to tell them repeatedly to HEAD BACK TOWARDS THE CITY

5) They're unsure of how to do that, so it's HEAD FOR THE SHINY BUILDINGS

6) Except it's "Go left, dammit!"

7) And you, not the driver, crack open the Melways

8) You tell them to head for the Casino via Swan Rd

9) You give up on that and get them to drop you off at City road, where you, shivering, will begin the two or three block trek to work (and thank God I spotted the Kings way train overpass or I'd still be out there!)

10) They want you to pay the full fare!!!!!! I gave her sixteen bucks, I only had change really, and I wanted to eat lunch. She didn't deserve it, and I handed it over to avoid any more trouble. No, that wasn't the full fare.

Needless to say, I'll try to get something done at $taxico, if nothing else some remedial Melbourne navigation is in order. Only 20 minutes late, thank christ, but I'm doing some suspicious coughing and I'm *still* shivering. I should have gotten out when I realised she didn't know where the Casino was, I mean FFS!

Thoughts on The Island

Without spoilers, I'll say that The Island is a solid C+. It neither really shines nor becomes screamingly offensively bad. It has some cute little character scenes featuring some good character actors. I *liked* Ewan McGregor in this, though Scarlett Johanssen isn't given a lot to work with, sadly, given the girl *can* act.
This movie borrows from a lot of very classic sci-fi, including slightly more obscure stuff (e.g. Capricorn One's 'space suits in the desert' scene).

That said, please, someone, make a Paranoia movie. That's the Paranoia RPG from West End Games. Yep, you heard, correctly, Citizen. Please please please. Lets see a movie skewer dystopias, the War On Terror (for 'Communists', read 'Terrorists'), mad computers, cloning, and all the movies that have come out lately and hooked into these threads in the community conciousness in a straight-faced and, frankly, predictable and depressing way.

I would LOVE to see that.

Times like this, you need laughter.

Bluetooth Follies

NokiMay(098)
Originally uploaded by MidBlueMac.

Replaced my Belkin Bt adapter with a special D-Link adapter ordered from Apple, as the DBT-120 is NOT the same as the DBT-122.

The DBT-120 has a CSR chipset which is supported by the Apple bluetooth firmware update, the DBT-122 has the more common Widcomm chips so it is *not*.

The Belkin adaptor technically worked, and still does, but it was always a little flaky and used to choke my Bt keyboard and mouse connections when I tried to run iSync.

This plug is also made for PC, but obviously doesn't ship in this box.

Back to Orkut

Shopping Break in Hudson's nook
Originally uploaded by MidBlueMac.

Out of curiousity, I'm finding myself logging back into Orkut (Orkut? That thing *still* around?) to check out what's up, who's live, who's not.

I'm pruning my groups list. If 80% of conversation is in a language I don't speak, if my association with the group is either not representative of reality (*cough*DomainsRUs*cough*) or really quite funny (St Augustines Alumni?), it's gone. GONE baby.

I sort of hope the first wave of internet locusts have moved on from Orkut and the servers now stay up.

Pictured is the Hudsons on Elizabeth Street, it is comfy and that corner is ideal for controlling your Internet Empire from a laptop. Except for the Optus bill I guess.

X&Y

Today's Earworm- Coldplay X&Y, White Shadows

Ok there's been an awful lot of things going on since last post.
I've got Coldplay's X&Y, and it is better than the Foo Fighter's 'In Your Honor' for getting stuck in my head, at least at the moment.
Square One, White Shadows, Talk, Low and Twisted Logic are my current favorites, but the others on the CD could grow on me sooner or later. X&Y picks up geek points for its use of made-up code on the CD booklet. Figuring out what the graphic on the back page of the CD booklet said made my train trip a bit more interesting (downside of iPods, no instant gratification on new CD purchases).
The Foo Fighters new CD is *good*, but nothing's really standing out at the moment. It might grow on me later. I should mention I like the acoustic CD more than the other CD.

Today's the first day I've really felt better after having a bad cold for a good week at least. I dragged my carcass in every day until Friday when I had to admit defeat to laryngitis and a pickaxe of a sinus headache. I couldn't do much except watch tv. That's nowhere near as fun as it sounds. If I tried working on my laptop the stabby sick headache would get worse. I couldn't believe how bad it was, all the way up to throwing up once. I was really irrational and upset with D for not being there the whole time, you know, for being out selfishly getting groceries for the both of us rather than holding my hair back or ferrying ibuprofen. Its hard to whine with your vocal cords in wet cement, though. I guess it's funny in retrospect.
I'm about 95% better now, better than I've been for at least the past week. I have a 7am shift start so my circadian rhythms are going to be a little out of whack. At least the afternoons are free for shopping ^H^H^H^H studying so I can get further up the ladder.

Oh yeah. MacTel. I'm over that. I think. I fully expect post-Longhorn WinOSen to run on PowerPC arch. You heard this baseless spec here first! I'm looking forward to badass new PowerBooks, which I'm *almost* tempted to start saving for now.

Train Wreck

Today's Earworm- Technologic by Daft Punk

Today was the sort of day that leaves you really reconsidering your work/life balance. It began with all kinds of human-error transport issues. I started the ball rolling by forgetting my train ticket. I also managed, in the rush, to punch in the wrong ticket zone, but, fortunately the ticket inspectors were fairly forgiving of that.

Train (#2, #1 having departed whilst i searched for my ticket and fumbled with the machine) serenely cruised onto the platform slightly late.

Escaping from Flagstaff, the screen on the tram terminal assured me that the next tram was going to arrive in 20 minutes. *Delightful*. That blew away any buffer time I had. Also, as a footnote, the screens belong to a firm I had a fairly excruciating sysadmin/support interview with a few months ago, followed by deafening email silence. It was the sort of morning to be thinking of that sort of thing. Nobody is ever going to give me a break.
Have you any idea how hard it is to flag down a cab in the Melbourne CBD of a morning? Now I do. The tram arrived just as I managed to flag one down with the assistance of another cab that was waiting for a fare. The cab driver was great. Couldn't fault him. Traffic abysmal. Got to work, had to hit the phones right away, there's difficult paperwork I have to complete (late), there's a uni assignment I should have handed in (also late), the stress of managing my own panic at not knowing nearly enough answers yet, by 3:30 I'm vibrating with stress and I can't picture making it to the end of the day, let alone however long one normally stays in this sort of role.

I collapsed earlier on this evening but now I'm too tired to sleep and I don't know how I'll get through this week.

My job is somewhat less than ideal for my personality. Actually my personality is only ideally suited to ordering about a few personal slaves while I read trashy books on a remote beach. But its where I am for now. Any energy I have for bettering my circumstances has to come from outside work. I have to recharge my batteries by remembering to lead a meaningful life outside of work, remembering my friends, my home life, my interests and my dreams, because despite being a geek *I will not find meaning at work*. Not being a tiny cog in someone else's machinery. And I've been guilty of only sleeping and working and wondering why I haven't got anything else going on in my life and feeling downhearted and overwhelmed. Can't recharge the batteries on 24 hours a day stressing about career.

By de-prioritising work in my realm of things, it will take the pressure off me to be good enough, and maybe I'll get better at it? Maybe with enough energy left over for my other projects, maybe that will open more doors, even live off those in future?

The pink sector of technology

Speedball 3
Originally uploaded by MidBlueMac.

Wellll.... weekend before last I did some shopping on Glenferrie Rd. There's a decent sized Mac store there. Check out the giant Wacom Cintiq if you go there. OMG. If I was any sort of real artist I'd dream of nothing but owning one. Also, cinema displays, iPod paraphenalia, and SpeedBalls (pictured) to lift my iBook's butt off the desk and allow better circulation. I dunno if it helps the iBook run cooler, but they are fun to play with.

There's a computer store there too, which looks less like a store and more as if a tilt-tray truckload of boxed computer bits was avalanched into an empty shopfront. More fun are two local yum-cha computer stores (by local, I mean 'near $newwork'). Western computer manufacturers (other than Apple) don't really understand why squishy wrist rests shaped like koala bears, pink-scarfed girl penguin screen chamois, or any other pink or pastel peripherals are cool.

I don't think that gadgets should *only* be marketed to women in pink, but I like the option being there.

New cast sketch

Midnight Blue sketch
Originally uploaded by MidBlueMac.

I know it *looks* dead but I've been doing a lot of work behind the scenes. Here's a sketchy cast pic. Mostly done on the train. That's why its wobbly. Really.

Steady on, Tiger

Tiger Box
Originally uploaded by MidBlueMac.

I spent most of Saturday sorting out my brand new copy of OS X 10.4 . Heh I thought a backup, drive nuke and reinstall would be the less problematic path..
Some of my issues were self-inflicted (I hadn't verified one of my backup DVDs, turns out the burner hadn't finalised the session). I can say now I don't think I lost any data in the end.
There's some odd bugs and oversights. Browsing s60 symbian phones over bluetooth still doesn't work, though syncing now does (they upload a little app to your phone.) and I have the same pink daisy icon on my phone address book that I do on my user profile.
There's a weird bug where folder names on my external DVD drive disappear. Tiger seems to recognise the drive's capabilities though (it knows its a DVD burner). Haven't tried burning anything yet.
As predicted, Shiny Effects are limited on an iBook G4. You don't get the Dashboard ripples but you do get the little swirl effect when you refresh individual widgets. The little Core Graphics test app (Fun House) works if a little sluggishly.

Seems faster. Could just be a reaction to the reinstall.
Spotlight is everything as advertised. For fun, try typing porn-related search terms into the Spotlight text field on the computers of recent switchers >:).

On the Dashboard - a hint for Aussies. If you want to use the weather widget, type in 'your city, your state' (e.g. Adelaide, South Australia) then press 'enter' rather than the Done button.

This photo was taken Friday night. After standing in the queue at the Malvern Applestore, I got a 'Spotlight' mini torch keyring and a $20 gift voucher. I was overdressed in a big fuzzy jumper and it was really hot in there, but because I was in a sluggish queue I accepted some of the free champagne anyway :).
I didn't have to put myself through that (I pre-ordered) but I wanted my swag and a Friday copy of Tiger, dammit.

Last Call

So I've tidied my desk, sent my 'I luv you all' email to everybody, washed the coffee cup, consigned a forest to shredding, compressed a month's work into two weeks, removed 2.5 years of sedimentry computer files from my account on the main server, my desktop, and my thumbdrive.
Talked to some people, probably won't get to everybody, handing my cards over in an hour or so.
Hmph.

Realisation will hit me on Tuesday. I'm guaranteed to need a couple of minutes to remember the extra tram on Monday.

The space where you were

Today's Earworm- I need to say goodbye - Vast

Second last day at $oldjob (still dithering on a Fri night drinks venue). Its going to be Hudsons at this rate.

Miserable weather. It's raining, but its the sort of warm clammy air where all your rain-weather gear is too hot and stifling. Running extra late, but I'll make that up with change over the next couple of days.

I've taken to carrying around a sketchpad, with a few markers. I've actually gotten some preliminary work done. If you don't respect your muse, and ignore it, your muse will take an extended vacation right when you're trying wrap up the first act and move on. And then the muse will only come back after *days* of brainstorming, cajoling, and watching better sci-fi.

Funny how I've gotten inspired amid impossible deadlines and the paperwork and running about that a job transition brings. I guess Benton didn't have to put away a month's worth of webstuff in two weeks. Could be escapist. Could be therapeutic. Could be a subconcious reassertion that I'm not really my job, because *that's* changing.

Until Friday night though... I think I've about a week's worth of work remaining and nothing is going to stop me today. Not my desk in the monkey house, not meerkat impressions by the boss-unit, bosses boss-unit and co-workers over the cube wall, not caffeine dependency/deprivation. Not that I'm broke til tomorrow and lunch is reconstituted 3 minutes noodles with a more interesting asian providence then usual.

More on the quitting situation tomorrow.... no dirt, just squishy emotional stuff.

Menu Bar Widgets

Menu Bar Widgets
Originally uploaded by MidBlueMac.

I removed some things from my OS X menu bar and added a few. There's a countdown until the end of my current role (looks to have been a wise decision), CPU temp (poor little iBook is no speed demon and it's a hot stuffy day), a smaller battery meter, iiNet Usage (by Harold Chu). Bluetooth, Menumeters CPU usage (again, iBook is an 800Mhz G4), Menumeters network speed monitor, Airport Extreme, and date/time.

I installed the G4 specific build of Firefox but I can't say its any better, even if I like the icon more. Firefox eats a lot of RAM, and the CPU utilisation is insane once you have a few (7, 8, 10 ?) tabs open. I suspect Safari is better behaved in use, but FF has RSS. (Yeah, I'll be upgrading to Tiger. Whether the upgrade will be coming in a Mac Mini box is a matter of budget).

April Fool on .com.au from Google

april_fools_google_cp
Originally uploaded by MidBlueMac.

On Friday Google had an additional prank in store for the Australian .com.au websites. It dropped them from the index. Every last one.
In the fastest rollback ever AFAIK, around 5pm-ish the .com.au domains started to appear for most searches.
Lets just say things were interesting in SEO-land.
I hope it doesn't end up affecting getting through my workload by the 15th. It's the last day at $oldwork (and the end of my brief SEO career, hopefully.) I can't say I was comfortable with the marketing aspects, though those aren't my only reasons for moving on.

Lost Weekend

Just for a change, for the Easter weekend this year, I didn't leave the house all weekend. I needed to recharge my psychic batteries.

I probably should have studied more and eaten less junk food. I don't like to think of the time as wasted though.. sometimes, I need to decompress and catch up on some sleep. I'm a better (or should that be, more convincing) human being when all of the other human beings are seperated from me by a locked door.

Its good to be alone. Well, alone plus the last person I'd kill if I were an Evil Overlord.

I customised my Linux desktop.



Click the image above for a closer look.

(Check out the name of that iTunes client, cheeky! Also, dear ARIA, I own all of that music.)

The whole fakey Apple thing is cute but now that I've done it, it looks sort of tired. Especially if one has the real thing. I think I'll hunt down a slicker theme. I'll keep the FakeDock though.

The Dock is called 'engage', its an Enlightenment application.


In other news, I'm really looking forward to the pre-WWDC Melbourne Apple event though admittedly if Apple were opening a mailbox (and putting on nibblies) I'd be there too.

Also on the Apple front, annoyingly, Macchiato the iBook has developed a slight white spot on the screen which I am trying to ignore, as this is my primary machine. It's got to be a pressure issue. There's an area of screen behind the spot, on the lid of the iBook, which is pressure sensitive (warps when pushed slightly). The rest of the iBook screen isn't. Unlike a lot of recent switchers though, I won't be holding that guy with the turtleneck personally responsible. *shrugs*. I don't know why people submit whiney posts to the forums around the net attributing glitches to Steve or Bill or Linus, you can hold the company responsible for quality control issues in code or hardware, but CEOs aren't Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, they don't have magical omniscient powers that should have saved you from inconvenience.

Ok I know posters don't mean it 'literally'. I think.

ThinkGeek :: Wi-Fi Digital Hotspotter

I need one of these. Now. Just in case there's some FREE wireless hotspots arround Melb.

Murder Mysteries

John Coelho runs live-action murder mysteries for groups in Melbourne. From the looks of this, if you liked Cluedo, you're going to love this game (and make that a lock if you like LARPing too).

Nothing at all like an old-school iBook

:: E-Go ::

Eeeeep! Looks *heavy*. And chunky.

Check out the diamond-encrusted version.

Things Are Going To Change

Today's earworm - Lift Me Up-Moby

The title references the last storyline in Scary Go Round. :)

Definitely personally feels like a season of change though. I'm a postgrad student (RMIT Grad Dip in IT Management) and I'm fast tracking my MCSA.
Trying to establish a routine for Midnight Blue. Just moved the latter to a friendly Athlon box this side of the pond. That's working out so far.
Reconnecting with old friends. Recognising the need for people in my life
Had a birthday recently and I felt really stalled, and pretty down, but that was because perhaps the moves I'd made towards change hadn't borne fruit yet.
Re: the strip - I seem to have caught up with studying, and barring any EXTREEM overtime, that should update again later on in the week.

New Midnight Blue Webcomic Strip

Today's new strip
I'm emailing this in because Blogger is being quite unhelpful.


Ok, as of 11:00am Blogger seems to have it's stuff together so here's my ramble. I was going to have a background, but for reasons which will soon become obvious, a glaring white backdrop was perfectly fine. Anyway, there's a lot of dialogue there.

I penciled, then inked using an Espresso felt-tip. This saves a hell of a lot of time! I used to ink with my Graphire but while I can get better lines, it takes about five attempts . With ink, I'm stuck with whatever I did, which is good for my obsessive-compulsive streak.

The Farce Is Strong With This One!

darth_tater
Originally uploaded by MidBlueMac.

I need one of these...

...though it seems somewhat superfluous, to be honest.....

Thursday Already?

Today's Earworm- Placebo, Plasticine

It's already Thursday... after Monday and Tuesday spent on the couch and a less-than-productive Wednesday. I have a lot of mind-numbing document-crunching to do this week.

Ever get the feeling you could be replaced by a (slightly complicated) shell script?


Postgrad ACS stuff arrived... this evening I should *really* be catching up on my readings and eyeballing the assignment. I've also got some Security+ to do.

And if I'm really organised, strip this weekend.... though I'll understand if you don't hold your breath.

575 Reasons To Back Up Your Data

Engadget are running a competition where they're giving away a 2(!) Gig flash drive to whoever produces the best data loss horror story. There's tales of pr0n substitution, death by magnet, death by Big Night Out, squashed dogs, lost holidays, and untold hours of make-up work.

Moving

The Receptacle - The Receptacle
My domain has just been redelegated (I've got the best hosting setup imaginable, as in I work at my registrar, and the sysadmin and DNS admin are right down the hall.) There *might* be some issues as things propogate but I've done some digging in DNS and things are good to go.
*crosses fingers*

Fresh Firefox 1.01

Index of /pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nightly/latest-aviary1.0.1

Apparently faster startup and load, obviously YMMV.

MobileTracker - Paris Hilton's Sidekick hacked

MobileTracker - Paris Hilton's Sidekick hacked
Stupidity. technology. They don't mix . Maybe they should make a reading of 'The Art of Deception' compulsory in high school, or something. Assuming Paris here actually went.

ELX.com.au (Australia) - ChocoXtreme Energy Drinking Chocolate

ELX.com.au (Australia) - ChocoXtreme Energy Drinking Chocolate


Need to cut back on coffee? No problem! Elx has you covered.


;p

Moving to receptacle.org

Today's Earworm- Lonely as You - The Foo Fighters

Moving the whole shebang to receptacle.org.


Things *might* be a little dodgy for a bit until I get the links sorted, etc. DNS redelegation will probably take place tomorrow, there might be a failover period. (Hey, *I* care.)

Socks and underwear

For my birthday, the folks gift voucher bought me socks and underwear. (No, I'm not posting the latter).

Happy V-Day

0205(6)
Originally uploaded by MidBlueMac.

These arrived unexpectedly yesterday. There were flowers, choccies, and a balloon. (Nothing says 'hate me' like carrying home an overt display of affection).

Some day big D is going to tell me he can't afford V-day (fair enough, as it is wedged in just after Christmas and my birthday) and be telling the truth.

The future and me

Warm fuzzy Wired story about job perks

May the Schwartz Be With You

Boing Boing: Mel Brooks' "Spaceballs" to become TV series

Evil, not evil, I'm so confused!

Google donating bandwidth and servers to Wikipedia
And this after canning ninetyninezeros.

Google Employee Fired Over Blog - The Unofficial Google Weblog - google.weblogsinc.com

Poor guy! I guess it would have been rather politically unwise.... expains why there have been no updates lately.

Hope it doesn't affect his hiring chances with other companies.

glarkware :: robot car

glarkware :: robot car
Hehehe I love it. I do.

Little red Crumpler baggie

Crumpler6
Originally uploaded by MidBlueMac.

Here's my birthday present... a brand new Crumpler laptop bag. Thats an APPALLING photo, I know. Sadly, that's the good phonecam.
A review of the 'Sheep scarer' is forthcoming. Then hopefully I will get a real camera, and review *that*.

iBook plague

0105(4)
Originally uploaded by MidBlueMac.

The iBook count at our LUG meetings is often pretty high. There's three in that pic (mine is the closest).

In other news, work finally claimed the LCD I'd borrowed for the past few weeks.
I'm running Nightmare Weaver and Orifice on a crumbly beige box while the salescritters are being apportioned fresh new Dells. Its not as bad as some boxes around here but even if they'd left me a decent screen...

I asked the boxen-installer as to when I'd be getting a new box.
"Ask $Boss++" he said, in a tone which suggested that the *box* wouldn't be replaced first.
I mentally added it to my 'And that's why I left' list (its a meditative technique that makes all things bearable).

The search for a PFY gig continues.

The Ducks Love It

0105(9)
Originally uploaded by MidBlueMac.

Storms last night resulted in a few adventures in getting to work. Power outage means we had to do a Ray Charles impression in finding our stuff for work...
Then my train got delayed and I had to tram hop across the CBD because the train loop was flooded.
I got a call from my mother to say she'd heard that people had been advised not to go in to work unless 'absolutely necessary'. (She's in Darwin). Sadly, its business as usual around here.
Probably just as well, I had a mental image of the PHB announcing 'Due to the snow, only non-essential staff are required today.' Followed up by rubbing his hands together and thinking 'Layoffs are going to be easy this year.'

Mac mini in the wild

Mac mini in the wild
Originally uploaded by MidBlueMac.

Mac Mini in the 'wild' at the Flinders St Applestore. What you can't see in photos is that the sides of the mini are brushed aluminium and not plastic.

It's hooked into a Sony monitor.

Great Wall Of Dell

0105(3)
Originally uploaded by MidBlueMac.

I constructed a little wall out of Dell boxes to cut down on the glare - a hazard of the sunny weather recently.
Doesn't look like anyone's noticed. I don't want to get sunburned at my freaking desk.

Google Commute

I'm not going to comment on Mr GoogleBlogger, self-censorship, or PR stunts. I will say that after reading ninetyninezeros' blog I am awaiting commuter mobile wifi. In fact I actually wonder if that is real. I've had the 1.5 hr bus commute, but sadly with only a tape walkman for company (I am OOOOOOOOOLD).

Tired

Tired
Originally uploaded by MidBlueMac.

Through temperature, or perhaps being exhausted past the point where one can expect a restful night's sleep, I am bleary eyed and foggy beyond all reason today. (Well, sharp enough to realise I'd dated some paperwork for last year. Ooops).
My office is a fishbowl with an ongoing parade of dazed salesmonkeys. (YES, Its a SCREEN!) I take it back, salesgoldfish.
My paperwork is like pushing an exceedingly dull boulder up a hill (I fully expect to get squashed by the boulder soon enough if I don't get out of its way, recent developments).
My eyes are sore and tired. I have new glasses so it could be worse, at least they focus. It's been GroundHog Day for a week (same paperwork, some horrible weather).

Hmmmm. Cocoa.

I've gotten inspired to try to learn Cocoa so I can write a small program. It's a terminal application that does a few extra things that I'd like to see in a terminal app. Of course this is all talk, I haven't learned Objective C yet ;p
Its a problem that every time I read the documentation I crave chocolate brownies. Hmmmm, Cocoa.

The view from Myers

Nov(9).jpg
Originally uploaded by MidBlueMac.

View from Myers

Mac Mini Carry Bag

Today's Earworm- Cult Of Mac Interview

Five seconds after release, Mac Mini has a cute little Tom Bihn carrybag. Bless.

Everyone is Big Brother

Today's link is http://www.opentopia.com/hiddencam.php . This is a page composed of random camera feeds from those wonderfully secure AXIS cameras that Google helped us find.

Most of the feeds are weirdly anonymous. Where, specifically, are they? Do they know that the cameras are public? That they're being watched?

Again with the posting

Hmm hopefully that sound is the nice RACV person dropping D off.
Yes, it is. *hugs D*

Commuters, be nice to D on the train tomorrow. He's not used to it.

In crazy news, I've just signed up to do a Grad Dip in IT Management via ola.edu.au (through RMIT + ACS).

Option-Cmd-Arrow

There are few things more mindlessly glorious than running Virtual Desktop for OSX, and setting the transition to be 'spinning cube'. Option-Cmd-Arrow and your desktop spins to the next virtual desktop. It is a thing to inspire awe and jealousy in all kinds of PC users.
Option-Cmd-Arrow *SPIN*. Option-Cmd-Arrow *SPIN*.

Small things, hey ...

I have some important things happening this week, and it feels like a good omen that I could find all the paperwork I needed.

A less good omen is that D is marooned at the 7-11 because the clutch on the Lanos has failed. I'm waiting for the RACV to drop him back. :(

I can't be Flarked today

Today's Earworm- The Limbo Song (WHY????)

The New Years break is over.

My iBook just gave me the Multilingual Screen Of Death but it hasn't done it in months so hopefully it was just a software spaz.

I put together a new bookcase (called Flarke) to house D's prodigious DVD collection. I find putting together furniture kind of relaxing. The process of obtaining the furnture, is *not* so relaxing and involves a long drive followed by projectile-child dodging and concludes with a treasure hunt followed by car-tetris. (There is a guide available). D wanted to know why the hell I forced him out on this trek and the truth is that I like Ikea because of the way the furniture often flips out or folds up, or has a cool design in some other way. I'm talking about stuff like the blue LED chandelier, the folding chairbed, or the translucent white desklamp that fits in suspiciously well with the "Mac-istan" on my desk (the lamps are also available in iMac fruit colors).
The DVDs are guarded by an Alien bobblehead and the Master Chief sitting on top of the bookcase.
I've new glasses with progressive lenses on order, with more rectangular frames. I tried the thicker plastic frames that are fashionable now, but I looked like the blonde guy from the Lone Gunmen. So it's metal frames again.
My old lenses are scratched up, and my prescription has changed a little bit. I'm getting distance correction across the top, for those days when my eyes are tired. As in most.

NYE was a non-event, we briefly stopped watching Buffy DVDs to wish each other Happy New Year. D is still watching 'Buffy, the Doom and Gloom years' this evening. I'd sort of stopped caring about most of the cast at that point (6,7), and it had fallen off my must-see list. Willow's big arc had been played out (and fumbled), the show wasted time on whiney slayerettes, Buffy was a hypocritical bitca, there were pacing problems, the Big Bad was just plain boring and amounted to an evil twin most of the time, Kennedy existed, and the new monsters were *super-vampires*. *Sigh*. Anya and Andrew were comedy gold sometimes and Wood was an interesting character but the story arc was spaghetti.

My sci-fi series 3 rule holds - that any 'genre' series, once it makes it to season 3, will enjoy its best season. It's all downhill from there.

Chilling

Today's Earworm- Candle, Vast


Feeling kind of chilled today. I made a special effort to get some extra sleep and now I'm quite laid back.

The Mac virus is spreading, there are iBooks and iPods popping up all over.

I think I got the first iPod here, so maybe I'm partially responsible. :)

Wired for sound

Today's Earworm- Candle - VAST

Had a Coles/Myer voucher. Needed 'phones that would block out surrounding office noise (often including ape-like pounding on keyboards and hard surfaces.).

I had the option of some sort of Sony cans, but I'm sort of anti-Sony outside of picture tubes... and my phone, come to think of it....

I think Sony sound gear is a bit overpriced and overrated, anyway.

So I wanted Sennheiser 202s or 212 pros . No such luck. It's Sony, Koss, or nothing at Myer.

So I saw the Koss Ur10's, and grabbed them. They're $30 Au, enclosed, padded enclosures, cheap plastic fake-silver finish, etc. All I needed were enclosed phones so I could maintain my sanity by tuning out the background noise.

Here comes the surprise - they're pretty good. They sounded a bit muffled at first but they seem to be getting better. They're clear, they don't distort, ambient noise is blocked. Metal strings sound great. Bass isn't overly boomy. Not overly bright. For some reason vocals sound a bit thin, but nothing too horrible.

In conclusion - better than Podphones (not hard!), they're cheap, co-werkers are muffled to a dull hooting, and I can't hear keyhits at all, even my own.
Disclaimers - I probably have tin ears. I've listened to stupidly expensive sound systems and my only reaction has been 'that's up awfully loud, isn't it'.
Also, I have small ears. I wouldn't recommend these phones for an average-to-large guy. Try them on if you can, which you probably can't as they're too cheap to hang on the 'headphone tree' at your local audio store.

Koss Pop Gloss phones

Stuff the 'tweens. *I* want them.

Midnight Blue - new webcomic strip

Today's Earworm- VAST, Winter in my heart


"You spin me right round baby,.."


I smile because I'm the only one who knows what's going on

Seriously though I'm realising I need to slow down and explain things. I'll address that in the coming strips.

I'm allergic to copious exposition but it seems to be fairer to readers.

Forum

Today's Earworm- everything by VAST

Updated phpbb to address some security issues.

Also, if you haven't done so already, check out /usr/bin/w00t because it is really, really funny at times.

Down Again

Today's Earworm- America, F**K Yeah - Team America Soundtrack


And today my site is down and blogger is up and accepting posts. Joyous.

I think I need to review my hosting choices. As well as my job and education choices.

Get out of my space.

Today's Earworm-Tiny Machine - The Darling Buds


Batman Begins

Dr Who


I'm having a extreme personal space day. I can't concentrate with all the noise out here. I kind of feel like punching somebody.

I think that if someone offered me a job, with no raise, but an office with a lockable door, I'd be out of here so fast it wouldn't be funny.

I hate cubes. Its even more of a joke when you even have to share your cube. What exactly do those dividers keep out, anyway?


PS anyone with real offices want to hire a Unix/OSX/Linux/php/MySql geek ?


PPS Here's a link to Paul Graham's essay on 'Great Hackers'. Look for the section on cubicles. Not suggesting I am a great hacker. I am suggesting my brain is in a blender.

PPPS If you don't stop bouncing that ping pong ball on your desk, I am going to make you EAT it!

PPPPS STFU! an oldie but a classic.

Traitorous

Creative Zen Micro (5GB, citrus orange) review - Creative Zen Micro (5GB, citrus orange) Intro - MP3 players - CNET Reviews
Wow, I actually kind of like the sound of these. They have a removable battery and they come in *purple*.

I feel conflicted. But I don't know what the UI is like and I already carry around an iPod 15G in a 'Vamp'. And this this won't talk to Macchiato the iBook.

Today's Shockwave Funny

ImageShack - Hosting :: feuerfreimovie.swf

With Rammstein! (You need sound for the full effect)

iPod Inferiority Complex

iPod Socks are obviously designed for those insecure iPods that felt they weren't big enough in pants. *rimshot*

Actually they look quite practical, given normal iPod usage.

On an introspective note, I caught myself in another bad habit today. Whenever anyone acts weird around me, I blame myself and start wondering what vague social contract I've unknowingly violated. You can imagine what this does to someone who's a bit obsessive and over-analtytical. My brain starts to feel like an overclocked Athlon running vorpal fork bunnies . So its on my list of reactions to question - as in, how is this my problem? Have I noticed it? Sure. Could my reaction reflect reality? Perhaps, but worst case scenario nobody would obsess about my screwups the way I do.

Is it entirely possible they're acting funny because I've just caught them while they were having a pornographic daydream about sales figures or a new T4 connection? Yeah, why not.

Got enough *actual* worries without coming up with new ones. In all probability its something so far from being my problem that the light emanating from my *actual* problems may reach their galaxy in a hundred years or so.


In progress is a 1500 Mbps ADSL connection, Internode and Telstra willing. I can't see us getting by without broadband much longer. And Cupofzen wants EXTREEEM broadband so he can brag on Xbox World. But hey, maybe we need the bandwidth if he's going to be on Xbox Live in his free time and I want to download isos and maybe Other Things if certain fruity computer companies get off their duff. I suspect Australia will be getting iTMS right after Easter Island.

Weird Weather Thursday

Today's Earworm- Blue Monday, New Order

Strange warm, muggy andd dark weather in the 'borg. There's some suspicious clouds about, and it's windy.

Strangely, I've noticed I've been enjoying human contact the past couple of days, on the whole. I think its because I'm not at my wits end with customer service any more. I feel less like this -

With apologies to Empire and Shaun Of The Dead

I was ground down to a fine paste of rage and intolerance by varying kinds of zombie-like stupidity. Now that I don't have to pick up a phone anymore it feels like the wounds are healing and my 'sanity tank' is topping back up. I'm busy (lets just say I might have to start wearing a name tag when I go home) but its not the kind of stress that makes me want to climb a tower and pick off the shambling hordes. Yet.

I'll be posting some new strips for Midnight Blue before the weekend. Really.

Starbucks wifi rolls out in Australia

Starbucks Home

It looks like Starbucks just rolled out wireless. Heh maybe those cool services like music downloads and so forth will eventually cross over to this time zone too.

It's through Telstra, and not free (unfortunately) but they have deployed at virtually every Starbucks I know of locally.

Found - my ideal laptop bag

Slingpack that carrys a laptop | The Buzz by: TOM BIHN
This is perfect as far as I can tell. Unless its a bit big or something.

Today's Earworm - 'Special Ones - George'

Oh Noes!

(Turn off your speakers)



Must be Friday-itis.. this gave me the giggles. :)

Alexa on related sites for midnightblue.net

Related Info for: midnightblue.net/

Oooook. Macquake I can understand. Pickling? That's surreal.

I also notice some ooooold contact details on there. Despite the page being current. Hmm.

Yes, this is what Mac users do whilst waiting for Sims 2 to come to their platform

Penny Arcade

Being platform agnostic (OSX, XP, Linux... hey, all my OS's have an 'x'!) I get to poke fun at both camps.

On Writing

Today's Earworm- Plastic Loveless Letter, Magic Dirt

Pilots *suck*.
It's hard to write jokes, when most the jokes you can come up with are character based and nobody knows your characters yet. Humour in absurdity is great, except when you're still explaining what reality your characters inhabit.
The reality of the situation is that I have to accept I won't be 100% happy with most (all?) of the strips I upload, and until the end of 'Disposable Girl' they'll be a bit exposition heavy. That's the price I pay for not starting a strip with a couple of gamers on a couch, or a bunch of college students. Not that there's anything wrong with that. :)
If I tried to get it perfect, I'd be stressed out and stalled again in another hiatus, and I sure as hell don't want that.

Random stuff

Today's Earworm- Under The Milky Way, The Church

Feeling sort of melancholic. Still a bit sleep-deprived despite catching up last night.

shiny shiny: Gadgets

shiny shiny: Gadgets

This site rocks. Yes, tiny USB keys, Hello Kitty accessories, and learning that women spend more on gadgets that shoes IS important to me.

Archive pt 2

And the archive page is done. Pretty much. There's some more stuff I'm going to do but the guts of it is complete.
I realised I was going about it in pretty much the wrong way and re-wrote it over lunch :)

Archives

I'm currently working on an archive page for Midnight Blue. Just a simple Php/MySQL thing. Trying to optimise my code so it doesn't take so long to load.

Even at only 10 strips its started to become a pest to navigate around. Wondering if this is overkill though.

I'd also better remember to dynamically generate the last story arc's page listing.

Chrome Fireball Laptop Bag

It seems I'm forever in search of the Perfect Laptop Bag. My STM alley is a nice bag, but hauling any laptop on one shoulder (even a 12" iBook, it seems), charger, books, girl stuff contributes to my shoulder tendonitis. I bought a Targus Matrix backpack and while it is quite ergonomic it is just too honking big. It probably looks fine on a well-built guy, but it's bigger than my whole torso. There's no way to cinch down the excess storage space to make the bag smaller, either.
I guess my best option is some sort of slimline convertable laptop bag. I think I saw one online once that was cream with purple trim, but extensive Googling suggests I may have just imagined it.
And then I found a reference to the Chrome Fireball laptop bag. It is metallic red. It's perfect. But it turns out its not made anymore. They make one close called the Sputnik but it's silver, which is cool but not worth ordering overseas for.

Midnight Blue - new webcomic strip

There's a new strip up now... enjoy. More rambling later. Kris sleep now.

Later......

I've jumped around with styles and layout so much in the first ten strips of this web comic it looks like my very own Guest Artist Week. I'm going to try to keep things more consistent from now on.

Waaaaaaaahh!!

"orkut is under construction.
please check back soon (="

Well great. NOW what am I going to do during the Friday Afternoon slump.

Cute but scary

OS-tan (aka the OS girls)- Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This cracks me up. I especially like the representation of Nortons.... that AV usually ends up doing more damage than it prevents.

Star Wars DVDs

We got our grubby paws on these a couple of days early (good thing we
didn't pre-order, eh?) and they are indeed noice.

We only got through ANH and ESB tonight, so we have not yet witnessed
the notorious 'Anakin' scene. However - we were so stoked at finally
owning a really nice transfer of the movies that the new additions
don't bother me. There's a 'new' scene in ESB that has interesting
implications (I'll have to watch it again) and yes Boba is a big kiwi.
I feel pretty blessed lately with nice DVD versions of classic sci-fi.
We got Star Trek TOS and it looks and sounds about as good as a 40 year
old show is ever going to.

The light is on in the Big Blue Room

Today's song - "Pictures of you - The Cure"
It's a lovely sunny day in Melbourne, in fact bordering on being too warm. I went for a walk.

Election '04, AvP style

I'm not sure where this sign is, but damn that's funny.

Supply And Demand

There are no freakin Nurolasts anywhere in Melbourne. I looked.
When I'm in Cairns, I'm fricking *stockpiling* them.

The house is almost wire-free. If you're trying to load a wlan card onto Win98, sometimes it wants an XP version of ndis.vxd. I don't know why I didn't think of that immediately when installing an allegedly Win98-compatible card, as it's perfectly obvious >:( .

Google is 6

Happy 6th birthday to Google.

Spiders, Viruses

Gradually porting the old Blogs over.... found it's just easiest to cut and paste the HTML than try to convert the individual .php files.

It'l be an early one tonight. The sneezing has been pretty constant all afternoon.

I've gotten mildly obsessed with search engine spiders and the other wildlife trawling my site.

Yearly Resolutions

It's not new year, so it's safe to make resolutions.

I will :

1) Eventually junk every computer I have that doesn't support USB *and* booting from a CD. (I spent the weekend wrestling with my nearly 10-year old proxy server, with faulty floppys/drives thrown in to make things More Interesting. Never again.)

2) Check that *individual* parts work with $OSofChoice, never mind the bloody chipset. (FYI - Belkin wifi cards don't work terribly easily with Linux. Not even when you compile the drivers.)

3) Upgrade one thing at a time. (At one point, the network was running off my iBook :( )

4) Update this webcomic at least weekly.

5) Finish studying for at least my latest cert ( CCNA )

6) Make an effort to eat properly

I will not :

1) Put off until tomorrow what can be done today.

2) Put of for six months what *should* have been done today.

3) Drink too much caffeine and work myself into a foaming lather of stress.

4) Sweat the small stuff.

5) Ignore the big stuff.

6) Substitute Pringles for meals.

7) Drink Cherry Coke for breakfast.

Frozen Bubble

Playing Frozen Bubble on my iBook... oh wait I just remembered, there's supposed to be a webcomic on this site.
We've been on unannounced hiatus for a while, due to the demands of work, family... and frankly, sleep.
But lots of things are going on behind the scenes. A site upgrade using PHP and MySQL is coming. A new strip should be up in the next couple of days.

Hey, Macchiato!

I have been assimilated. I've not got a 12" ibook, maxed RAM, airport. I've loaded on the Gimp and trial Fireworks, so we'll see how that goes.....

Queer, not Geek, Eye

Aaagh Thom! It's a computer case, not a 'hard drive!'
Oh well, I don't know patina from pate (or foie gras from grass).

And I for one, welcome our shiny ivory overlords.

Current Drool Object Shiny Thing!

I've seen it in real life, pictures do not do its stark white beauty justice. And then there's the GUI.