The Life of Valdi

Mid West WA, a procrastination blog

2007-11-23T01:59:00.001+09:00

I'm procrastinating.. The last night this year I actually need to be up late doing shit (I have an assignment to hand in tomorrow and then I'm done for the year), and rather than do it and go to sleep, I'm procrastinating. Kimberly commented on my blog, which reminded me people actually read it at a time I was open to posting.

So yeah, it's been a busy few months. Work and uni are fully dominating my time. I had three exams this week, which sucked, especially by the third when I really couldn't be bothered. The last thing one wants to do after spending all day at work, is go home and study or do assignments. It's even worse when working away, even if I wanted to there's no time. Oh well, almost there.

Work wise I've been mapping a proposed iron ore railway corridor, 500km long! Plus an 80km spur. So far we've mapped 200km in two trips, and hope to knock off another 300km in the next two trips. That'll take me through to christmas, when hopefully I'll be taking a 4 week break before going back and mapping the 80km spur.

In the first two trips we managed to drive 6,500km. Most of the driving was to and from the place we were staying. So I've seen a lot of this sort of view out the front of the car:

Here I am wandering through the bush.

I should probably mention at this point that I'm not mapping along, I'm mapping with a Sri Lankan engineering geologist. I think the cultural and language barriers are getting to me a little, or it might just be the fact that he's a SHIT driver and he usually drives in the mornings so I can call the office in Perth on the sat phone to check in. He has to learn too I guess. You've never seen anyone stall a car so many times though... I counted to keep from going insane how many times he stalled, it was 5 the first day, then 6 the next day, then 5, then 7, then 6 again. It's insane. It was forgivable the first couple of days, but for the love of god, learn from you mistakes. He's better know... still stalls every now and again but not as much. I'd hate to see him try to park in a shopping centre. So yeah, this is him:

And here he is changing the only flat we've had so far...and that was only a slow leak...well, fast enough to change the tyre but not dead flat.

There's been no shortage of wildlife either... I've seen a whole heap of sheep, cows, kangaroos, emus, goats, lizards and birds. I hate sheep, they're soooooo stupid, so there's no photos of them, but here are few of the other creatures getting about:

Bungarra, or race horse goanna. This one was digging a hole in the road...I'm not entirely sure why but it wouldn't move, so after taking a few photos I just drover around it.

Kangaroo... plenty of them jumping out in front of the car trying to get killed. I hit two so far, both on the same drive back to our accommodation one afternoon within about an hour of each other. They're relatively small so they don't damage the 4wd when you hit them, just themselves. The first one I hit I killed, and technically it hit me...in the side of the rear bumper. I hit it and then went back to check it was dead... it wasn't, but an ever growing pool of blood around it's head suggested it wouldn't be long. I'd grabbed my rock pick out of the car to put it out of it's misery but it died on its own so I didn't need to. This is a live roo though, i didn't take a photo of the one I killed. The second one I hit must have gone between the wheels or something cause I heard it hit, but didn't see a body.

Wedge Tailed Eagle... these are big birds. Sri Lankan guy just clipped one when we were driving home one day...it had been gorging itself on a roo carcass by the road and was a little slow taking off...it got an extra push from the windscreen and managed to fly away unharmed.

Goats... goats run pretty quick when they see you coming, so I haven't got any photos of live ones... found this one on an electric fence...nasty way to die.

The plant life is much more picturesque. Not sure what kind of tree this is, but it has cool bark.

For the first trip and first two days of the second trip we stayed at a mine site.. which was decent. After that we moved to a town called Cue, and stayed at the Queen of the Murchison bed and breakfast. Not a bad place, except there was an aboriginal funeral on while we were there and so we could only buy mid strength beer from friday morning to monday night...at least the view was interesting.

After that we moved to a town called Yalgoo...what a shithole. We stayed at the Yalgoo Hotel-Motel... we saw it from the outside and thought we were at the wrong place cause it looked closed down. It wasn't, and is actually alright inside, but the rooms were questionable. Next trip we're staying at a pastoral station..that'll be interesting.

Well I've written enough I think. I'll leave you with a couple photos of the Dalgaranga meteorite crater, a wholly underwhelming experience :)

oh, and for the record...Nissan Patrols are a shit 4wd. They're okay on the highway, being a turbo diesel, but damn, get them in a bit of sand and they struggle really badly...very underpowered vehicle. I recommend a Toyota Landcruiser for any serious off-road adventures. I haven't tried but I'd also imagine the Patrol to be terrible for towing.

safety first

2007-11-15T21:10:00.000+09:00

okay, maybe some old pics

I'll post some new pics from the mapping eventually :)

yep.. no post

2007-11-15T21:02:00.000+09:00

2 months and no post... damn, my excuse is I've been busy... which is true. Maybe christmas :)

It's a bird, it's a plane, no wait.... it's a post.

2007-09-13T01:02:00.000+08:00

And a proper one at that :) It's 1am, I have to work in the morning, but I'm posting anyway. By doing stuff late at night I feel I've better utilised my day, and will strangely probably sleep better, maybe not so strange, It's a good way to unwind. Anyway let's start with another bee photo, this one in my own back yard, which actually reminds me that there were three bees in my house the other day... not sure how they got in, but it took me a while to figure out the buzzing wasn't coming from my speakers, but rather a bunch of bees. There's also a redback at the ceiling of my lounge, but he's probably not going to come down so that's cool, I'll leave her there a couple days, she can kill the god damn crickets that have been sneaking in.. but then she'll have to die too, I don't want no red back on my toilet seat :) Anyway.. bee photo...

I'm doing a Masters in Engineering Geology over in Sydney, which means I have to fly over every now and again for some short courses. Actually got out to the city last trip for a decent look around. I took some obligatory shots of the opera house and harbour bridge... even walked across the bridge and around Luna Park. While wandering through the city I came across this...

A closer look...

Yep, that's right, a mere week and a bit before APEC some mischievous people put dishwashing liquid in a fountain.

Sadly they didn't use a decent and more bubbly brand/product so it didn't seem to bubble too much... made for a decent photo though :)

Sadly I didn't have a taller tripod with me but no matter. The small one did still allow me to get a decent night panorama, the stitching of which is a partial cause to me starting this post so late. A slightly less common Sydney shot (not that there was any shortage of people around taking night shots of the opera house and bridge. click for a bigger pic).

The Lunar eclipse (red moon) happened while I was over east, but I didn't get any decent shots for two reasons, one I didn't take a decent tripod this trip, and two, I hadn't charged my camera battery and it was flashing the low battery warning after the first couple shots... Doh!

Once back in Perth I finally bit the bullet and bought a new wetsuit (the old one was uncomfortably too small) so I could start surfing (bodyboarding) again. There was a decent swell, and apart from a couple excruciating calf cramps it was good. This was two weekends ago, and I went last weekend as well. I might even go this weekend if the winds are right. I took a couple photos after I got out of the water and got into some dry clothes. It was quite crowded by this stage.

But there were still decent waves to be had.

So that sort of brings things up to date. I go away Monday to start mapping of a 500k rail route so don't expect a post more than once a fortnight, but hopefully the trip will yield some decent photos :)

I don't know, I guess I'm just weird like that.

2007-09-04T22:53:00.000+08:00

I'm in a strange place in my life right now, hard to describe, a sort of limbo, between where I want to be and the lower echelon of where I'll end up if I don't get my shit together. Not that I absolutely NEED to get my shit together, I've done alright so far without ever managing to really get my shit together, but by not getting it together, I'm sure to make things harder for myself.

Work is somewhat stressful at present, the age old work situation of far too much to do and oh so little time in which to do it. This is compounded by my postgraduate studies, which are the icing on an all too heavy cake.... apparently I'm studying full time, no wonder I'm feeling the pressure :(

Oh well.... she'll be right. I've managed to scrape through life thus far, the next two weeks shall be no exception. Shame I miss maja's bday party though :( That REALLY sucks!

Anyway, It's about time I posted a pic. Pretty sure I haven't posted this one yet, it's from the Pilbara, a bee flying to a flower quite rare where we were, the only one (although there were a whole bunch in a 50m square area) of its kind we'd seen in about 150km of driving in fact.

Next post I might put up my wholly unoriginal long exposures of the sydney opera house and sydney harbour bridge from my last trip over for uni.

Stupidity it seems, begets further stupidy.

2007-08-17T19:46:00.000+08:00

I'm having a bad fucking day today I've decided. It started with insufficient sleep, followed by not getting enough done, followed by the kind of stupidity I can't understand, followed by the news of further stupidity I can't even begin to comprehend.

Luckily I've reacquainted myself with Nine Inch Nails, at very high volume, which is slowly ebbing away the pain and frustration of my day.

Most of my pain stems from having waaaay too much to do, and no time in which to do it, but the icing on the cake was the news that I may not have quite escaped the FUCKING IDIOT that used to work for us till last Monday, whom I consider the bane of my last two years' existence.

Luckily we're not re-employing him, so it's not my fucking problem anymore, but the company we do a lot of work for, well, their enviro's want to bring him on as their "GIS" guy apparently. The only thing this guy knows less about than geology is GIS, but he probably still knows more than them. Oh well, as I said, no longer my problem, though I'm sure it will become my problem... sigh.

I feel better after that rant :) NIN is helping too :) It's a shame Super Audio CD never really took off, they're awesome!

personality

2007-08-07T22:37:00.000+08:00

I was sent an email today directing me to the following website:

http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp

by entering the result into google and running a search you can find out what it means, the result from personalitypage.com seems to be about right, not that I checked others, but this one seems to be free of advertising, and by my reasoning a website that doesn't advertise can't be completely full of shit.

The results seem surprisingly accurate, and although I'm still skeptical, it's hard to argue with results. So what do you reckon? Accurate? What personality type are you?

Oh, and If you're wondering, I'm an INFJ.

God Damnit!

2007-05-19T09:19:00.000+08:00

I just got crank called by some random choges... "would you like to order?" followed by giggling. Obviously they think they're funny. Times like these i wonder why i payed for a silent number... they're probably trying to crank call the person that used to have my number, a Mr Kestell, for whom I receive far too many phone calls.

Oh well, I'm over it now.

Melbourne

2007-05-13T05:31:00.000+08:00

Well i'm now in Melbourne for 3 days. I came on the red eye which always seems like a better idea than it is :) I didn't sleep as much on the plane as i should have, but i decided to have 'supper', which was good.... salmon and some nice white wine... glad i used my frequent flyer points to go business class... sadly it'll be economy back home though :)

Arm is still broken, but better, though very wasted away, it'll be weak as piss when i finally get to stop wearing the splint/plastic cast thing, oh well.

Hmm, what else.... nothing cause my time in this internet cafe is nearly up.... time to find a place that serves decent coffee :)

NIN... can't wait :)

Spiderman 3

2007-05-02T23:22:00.000+08:00

One of the best parts of seeing a movie before most people, has to be seeing it for free. So I saw spiderman 3, and it was goooood :) much better than spiderman 2. Admittedly, there were moments i felt like slapping Sam Raimi, but it was still good. So go see it, especially seeing as they confiscated my mobile phones, yes, plural, sigh. The did give them back though.

Sleep now.... be good peoples!

Must be one of THOSE days...

2007-04-26T10:46:00.001+08:00

Maybe i should just go home and back to bed, cause it seems to be just one of those days. Nothing feels right, my bus was late, i feel cold and shaky, my three coffees this morning don't seem to have helped with the cold, and are probably contributing to the shaky. I have my splint now, but it appears i'll be in it for another 4 weeks :( This sucks cause i'm going over east to see Nine Inch Nails in 2.5 weeks, and i'll probably have to go bush both before and after that trip, and both times i'll still be in the splint. So much to do, so little time to do it..... hmmmm, maybe i'll listen to some music on the iPod to calm me down.

Sigh..... back to work.

Another photo from my last dive... sure could do with the serenity of being 10m underwater right now.... more work came up between the last paragraph and this one, i'm gonna be a busy boy it seems :S

Easter...belated pics

2007-04-13T17:52:00.000+08:00

Hope you all had a good Easter, mine was okay apart from the arm and complete inability to do stuff. Managed to be able to take some photos down the farm....

Can you tell I was bored (yet lazy) this afternoon?
That horse didn't seem to run, but rather bound at times. Sadly i couldn't get a photo of it with all four hooves off the ground.
Old 4wd, doesn't look like it'll be going anywhere for, well, ever.
Some things you just can't do in the house....

I get out of my darn cast in a week and a half and get a plastic splint which i can take off for showers and stuff.... hooray. Might even be able to play hockey this season :)

Bugger!

2007-04-03T22:33:00.000+08:00

Well it doesn't look like I'll be playing ice hockey this season..... I fractured my wrist at training thursday night. My hand was just in a bad place when i got checked, and when going fairly fast in the opposite direction to the person checking you, apparently the force of impact is higher than the strength of bone. Spoke to the surgeon today and I shouldn't need surgery which is nice, but it's my dominant hand so i'm a bit of a gimp for a while. Luckily i'll still be able to work, going back in the morning. Only two days left this week luckily. So yeah, attached a pic from the CT scan to give you an idea of the damage. I suspect my glove and elbow pad prevented it from being a more severe injury.

Diving - North Mole

2007-03-28T16:20:00.000+08:00

Yep, I'm finally writing a real post, with pictures to boot. It's been an exceptionally long time, but I've been busy and mostly on computers I don't want to blog from so I have hence not blogged. Regardless, on with the post :)

I went diving with a couple of mates on the weekend off North Mole in Fremantle. It was fun, and seeing as I'd never dived there before it was interesting. Anyway, I got a new camera just before christmas, and got an underwater housing for it as well, but it took a few months to come in. This is the first time I've dived since getting the underwater housing so I HAD to try it out :) I didn't test it sealed before chucking my camera in it and taking it diving, but luckily it worked fine and my camera stayed dry. So here's some photos:

This is where we entered the water. It was a little steep, hence the rope. Not the easiest of entries but manageable. That's Reece in the foreground and Munkey down the bottom. The red tinge is because I already had it on the underwater setting.

Found this broken plate/bowl, and decided to take a photo cause I thought it looked cool, and cause I was basically photohappy and took a photo of everything :)

I look like chode under water :)

I didn't see this Port Jackson Shark, luckily Munkey did and grabbed me and took me back. The shark seemed to be sleeping when we first saw it, and I got a few photos getting closer and closer until it woke up and decided we were too close. This photo is from after I woke him.

I have lots of photos but these are the highlights. My next dive might be a night dive which could mean some pretty cool pics :) Hope you enjoyed my first real post in 9 months :)

Son of a......

2007-02-09T07:18:00.000+09:00

Comment Spam! god dammit, this is not helping my desire not to log
into blogger from work. I got spammed mere moments after writing that
last post.

I'm back

2007-02-09T07:10:00.000+09:00

Now that Corinna has informed me that posting via email does work I
guess I might start posting with some regularity again, though by
regular I mean more than I have been so no promises.... i suspect more
punctuation was required but it's early and I seem to have a cold so I
don't want to think about it too hard.

So yeah, I'm working up North at the moment, building a railway to
link a new iron ore mine to the existing rail infrastructure. It's
not too bad except for my roster, which is 11 days on, 3 days off. Oh
and some of the people on site who are just so completely full of shit
it's not funny..... but you get that regardless of where you're
working so oh well.

I haven't really got much to say, except that I saw Tool last weekend
and they were fucking awesome! Muse were pretty good too. At one
point, the words "see you in November" came from Maynards mouth, which
hopefully means they'll be back on their own tour then, not playing
festivals like they are now.

Guess I should do some work or something :)

Does this work

2007-02-06T06:53:00.000+09:00

Not sure if this will work but drop me a comment if it does. For
those wondering why I've stopped updating it's because I'm working for
a company at the moment with a disturbingly invasive internet usage
policy and as such avoid reading blogs over their connection. I'm
also too slack/busy to blog while I'm at home. If writing a post via
email as I have done here works I may consider posting like this for a
while, and just chucking up a few pics on break.

Oh yeah, welcome back Kimberly :)

Semi update

2006-07-19T04:52:00.000+08:00

So here I am, sitting in leicester, England. I am 1 year and 1 day older than I was on my birthday last year.

So even though I've been to London and Vienna, Those photos are on my iPod and it's too hard to get them from brad's laptop which has some USB issues so i'll stick to my birthday, which really is the most important part of the trip :) Ignoring the fact that I'd forgotten my birthday was coming up before kristen reminded me a day or two before :)

So anyway, the day started with presents, brad got the awesome goonies shirt you can see me wearing below, and a special clerks dvd :) He also took me to see the pikies, or gypos as they call them. For those that don't know, they go and set up their caravans somewhere because the english don't have laws against it. It is hilarious (unlike english TV which is shit), so we got a photograph with their camp in the corner of a shopping centre car park. Wal-Mart no less, which is 24-hour, so at least they have convenient facilities :)

For further entertainment, we went well beyond Leicester, south, and stopped at Stonehenge, which was sweet. Here's Brad and I sitting like school children in front of it.

We stayed at a hotel in Southampton for the night, which was really cool. Here's brad and I at the bar downstairs.

Helen, sweetheart that she is, baked me a birthday cake. After our long day travelling through the English countryside, seeing some sights, some beer and some dinner, we really needed some cake. Here I am blowing out the candles :)

So yeah, my birthday was sweet, as was spending it with my best friend :D I need to repack and stuff so I can't blog any more. Going to Iceland tomorrow :)

I'll try to update again soon but as usual, make no promises.

Crap!

2006-07-05T15:54:00.000+08:00

My girlfriend has just informed me via SMS that we'll be out of the country in a mere 72 hours.... this should be a good thing, unfortunately I have a lot of work crap to do before then... Ghey!

Meanwhile my cat has moved in to the box my vacuum cleaner came in. Why this involves so much noise I do not know :) The box clearly wasn't piled well as it has now rotated 90 degrees and there's a tail sticking out of it.

So yeah, sunday morning local time I'll be in London, specifically knightsbridge in kensington. This probably means something to someone, to me it means I at least have somewhere to stay. I'm going to Vienna after a couple days in England, then back to england, then to iceland, then back to england and back home. I can't wait to get on the plane and get away from all this working! I don't mind working, but I'm overdue and well ready for a holiday, so working doesn't excite me too much right now.

sigh.... i better go do something productive.

proper post...me?... never!

2006-06-28T22:24:00.000+08:00

Well, maybe just this once.

Normally I'd be in bed by now... not because I necessarily want to, more cause I somehow feel obliged to. Oh well. I'm up, enjoying some Nine inch Nails in 5.1, which I haven't done for a while, and really do enjoy.

I have plenty to update with, but will restrict myself for now. Mainly due to lack of photos of stuff... probably just as well, as I have been spending money quite frivolously, mostly just cause I can, and it's mostly useful stuff so it's probably not all that frivolous, but I just kinda like saying frivolous in regards to spending money cause it amuses me.... though not as much as my repetition of the word would suggest.... maybe I should have gone to bed :)

So... what have I been doing for the last 6 weeks? Well, I dug about 200 or more of these:

Excitement plus.

I also took this photo. There are some advantages to getting up at ungodly hours of the morning :)

There are similar photographic advantages to heading home at the very end of the day.

Big Dozer, a D10 to be semi-precise. Noisy bloody thing!

there would be more photos but blogger is a real prick to me when it come to posting photos and I can't get any more to load :( This is a good reason to go to sleep I think :)

I'm back!!!!

2006-06-24T07:52:00.000+08:00

After a 6 week run of 11 days on 3 days off I'm finally back in civilisation for a reasonable amount of time.... YAY! A proper update is pending, but I really can't be bothered right this minute, plus i'm on my computer and all my pictures are on my laptop.

To add to my stress, 2 weeks from now I'm going overseas.... so much to do, so little time... oh well, somehow it shall be done :)

Not a break :(

2006-06-12T22:22:00.002+08:00

3 days is not a break :( Back to work tomorrow. Oh well, i'll be back in 11 days. Till then.. be good!

COLD!

2006-06-12T06:52:00.000+08:00

It's 6:50am on a Monday.... my girlfriend has gone to work, my best friend is not answering his skype (which doesn't surprise me seeing as it's probably 11 or 12pm where he is), I don't have to go to work today (well I actually do but only briefly to pick up cabcharges), and it is freezing cold... not actually but it feels like it. I think I'll go back to bed and sleep some more, as there is no reason to be up at this ungodly hour if I don't need to be.

Break

2006-06-10T10:16:00.000+08:00

I'm on break... yay :)

While my girlfriend slaves away in the kitchen cooking me pancakes I thought I'd write a quick post. I have to go shopping today, and being a boy, most of this shopping is functional. I need to buy a weight belt cause I'm probably going scuba diving tomorrow (I get a chill just thinking how cold it will be), and I'm going to buy a ladder so I can change the lightbulbs in my lounge. Normally changing lightbulbs isn't a problem for me, I'm 6'4" so I can generally do it without a ladder, or stool, or anything other than the floor. My lounge however is a different kettle of fish, I measure the distance from the floor to the roof this morning (to assist in making the right ladder purchase) and the distance from the floor to the beam the lights are attached to is 4.03m. This is just a little further than I can reach :) Sadly my camera is at work so there may not be photos to follow, but I'll see what I can do.

For now... pancakes and coffee await :)

More random photos

2006-05-28T11:11:00.000+08:00

Various photos I'm pretty sure I haven't posted cause I've been so slack with my blogging..

Albany wind farm.

You can take some cool photos when you figure out the manual settings on your camera :)

To cross or not to cross. All 4wds should be this dirty :)

For those of you that thought the picture behind the cd in undertow was odd, it is, but aparently it does happen. Hehehe, cows are funny looking :)

It's not a bucks party without a dinghy full of beer :)

Well that's it for me for now I think... till next time.

Hockey photos

2006-05-28T11:04:00.000+08:00

They didn't come out too well but there a couple of decent shots :)

This shot looks really cool cause just the one guy is in focus and all the other players are blurry. Unintentional but very cool. Clearly the shutter speed was too god damn slow.

This is me... despite what it may look like I'm holding the puck to give to the umpires who seemed incapable of finding it themselves.... it had been sitting on top of the goals.

Kitty

2006-05-28T10:46:00.000+08:00

I have a cat now. A girl my girlfriend used to work with is pregnant and for whatever reason doesn't want to have a cat around anymore, and I really liked the cat so when they were looking to give it away I decided to give it a home. She's so cute. Meet Tally, my new cat. She's about 7 I think.

Wandering.

Watching the great outdoors. When we first got her we kept her inside for a few days. She now roams relatively freely.

My girls sleeping on the couch.... aren't they cute :)

I'm Back

2006-05-28T10:29:00.000+08:00

Well, for 3 days anyway :( I'll add some posts in no particular order, and then that'll be it for a couple weeks till I get back from the bush again. Hope you're all well :)

Okay, lets see.... here are some pics from my recent trip to the bush. I was working hard the whole 12 days so there weren't too many photo opportunities, but I did manage to snap the odd non/semi work related pic :) Sadly most of my photos are of test pits, which are boring unless you care what the ground conditions are like, which I'm sure none of you do :)

Took this photo while waiting to meet up with someone. The clouds looked really cool that morning :)

Sunrise.... I've seen a lot of very cool sunrises while I've been away, and sunsets too. Sadly I don't have too many photos of them because I'm usually driving when I see them. There's nothing like heading to work, before dawn and driving into the rising sun and then going back to the camp just before sunset and driving into a setting sun. Lucky I took a good pair of sunnies with me :)

Bulldozer, a D10 to be specific. The blade is 4.8m wide! You'd be pretty darn skinny if that beast drove over you.

I realy like this shot. The only reason I saw the opportunity is because I was taking a piss, looked across and thought it'd make a good photo, so after zipping up I went and grabbed my camera :)

Bad Blogger

2006-05-14T21:44:00.000+08:00

I know I am a bad blogger for not posting but I simply do not have the
time at the moment. We're getting into some field investigations that
will require me to be away at site for an extended period of time. If
I get a chance I'll post in one of the 3 day breaks. I'm doing 11 days
on, 3 days off for the next 6 weeks.

I'll post when I have time

2006-05-11T06:42:00.000+08:00

Work is freaking busy and i'm not home much at the moment so no
post.... soon... I hope, I will make a decent post :)

I should be sleeping

2006-04-21T00:13:00.000+08:00

I should be sleeping, but I need a little wind down time after hockey training so I thought I'd post on my blog, and fix my freaking links :) It's 12:12am, I got back from hockey training at 11:30. A beer and some potato salad later I'm ready for a post. I don't have any of my recent photos at home at the moment, so I've dug some old photos out of the archive :)

lets see what we've got....

Random phot of my cousins cat. Ain't it cute :)

Photo from Cocos (Keeling) Islands. The texture effect of the wind on the water was awesome :)

I grew a "beard" once. I then shaved it in to a goatee of sorts and went out in public with it for one day. I really don't think facial hair suits me, so other than too lazy to shave stubble I don't grow facial hair :)

Random photo from the last night of my last geology field trip for uni. Ahhh, the good old days.

Grazes sustained from jumping off a car at ~40km/h. It seems like a stupid thing to do, but I figure it was jump or fall, and falling would have ended up much worse... I stand by my decision :)

Alrighty.... bed time :)

Ha!

2006-04-10T14:24:00.000+08:00

It's just so funny that I had to share :) You know how many people
like to put a quote at the bottom of their emails, well my friends
don't try to be so high brow, and this may possibly be an original....
regardless it is truly a classic:

Remember, a fur burger a day, keeps the brokeback away.

An update is pending

2006-04-10T09:51:00.000+08:00

I hosted a Buck's weekend at my place on the weekend, and yes, an
update is pending... I'm not really that slack I just don't have a lot
of free time to sit down and blog. But soon my dears.... soon :)

Perhaps I should start a mailing list to inform people when I update
my blog.... opinions?

Monday Mornings

2006-03-27T09:20:00.000+08:00

I passed a heavily pregnant woman smoking on my way in to work this
morning... must be a monday morning.

Great way to start the week.

They put weird shit on water bottles

2006-03-23T11:50:00.000+08:00

Sure is handy having the ability to email posts from work :)

Anyway, I was drinking tap water out of a water bottle I bought a
while back, when I noticed once again the stupid shit it says on the
side. It goes like this:

"You're doing stuff. You get thirsty. You need pump pure water. Pop
the top to get the refreshing hit you need when you're on the go. Get
moving. Get pump."

Now I don't know about you, but I really don't think having that there
sells more water, or serves any purpose whatsoever other than to make
the reader wonder why they put it there. Perhaps I should ring the
consumer information hotline to ask them why it's there :)

test

2006-03-22T18:53:00.000+08:00

I'm testing email blogging, if it works you might see more frequent,
and more whiney updates, as I will be able to email posts from work.

I would post from work but we have a very invasive IT policy so it's
just not going to happen.

... crap, i fucked up the address.... lets see if it works this time :)

More pain

2006-03-15T06:48:00.000+08:00

Further stupidity had been added when I got to work yesterday morning, and, almost unbelievably, someone had applied some common sense, a manager even, I could hardly believe it. A site Medic added the following:

From: Medic, Site (GMBDC)
Sent: Monday, March 13, 2006 6:52 PM
To: Monkey, CAD (GMBDC); Dickhead, Some (GMBDC);Chick, Random (division of GMBDC); Entire division of a GMBDC
Subject: RE: xxxx Street - Cigarette butts

Not to mention the health effects on non smokers. Side stream smoke is worse than smoking.

Regards

Site Medic
Ambulance Paramedic 157
Medical Centre, Some Construction Camp
Some Place
Phone: 08 6xxx xxxx (Medical Centre)
Satfone: 04xx xxx xxx (Ambulance)

Site Admin: 08 6xxx xxxx (Some Place)
Site Fax: 08 6xxx xxxx (Some Place)
Email: site.medic@globalmultibilliondollarcompany.com

I have to say I've never heard the term side stream smoke before, is that kind of like jet stream smoke? Oh, and I really find it amusing that he's spelt sat phone as satfone, I mean for fucks sake! Anyway, at this point the voice of reason piped in with this:

From: Reason, Voice Of (GMBDC)
Sent: Tuesday, 14 March 2006 8:13 AM
To: Medic, Site (GMBDC); Monkey, CAD (GMBDC); Dickhead, Some (GMBDC);Chick, Random (division of GMBDC); Entire division of a GMBDC
Subject: RE: xxxx Street - Cigarette butts

Team

I understand the passions that this sort of statement brings out in people and believe that the opinions of everyone are important and valid however when you reply to Linda's e-mail or any of the others tagged onto it you need to understand that you are sending out a trail of e-mails to everyone in Expansion Projects. If you have comments on the issue please send them direct to Linda only, I am sure she will take them on board, this type of issue can easily contaminate electronic mail systems and prevent the normal flow of communication.

Thanks. Voice

Voice Of Reason
Manager Employee Relations
Division of Multi Billion Dollar Company
Phone- (08) 9xxx xxxx
Fax-(08) 9xxx xxxx
Mob- 04xx xxx xxx
E-mail voiceof.reason@globalmultibilliondollarcompany.com

I was quite tempted to email him back congratulating him on doing his job and shutting these fuckwits up but refrained as I prefer to just stay off the radar rather than try and sneak under it. I love the fact that this guy was so tactful about it, telling these people that their opinions count and all that... clearly he's quite good at his job. It stopped the bullshit though so I was happy :)

Now I think I'll go have some breakfast.

When does the hurting stop

2006-03-13T18:25:00.000+08:00

Today at work I received yet another idiotic series of emails. I really don't think people consider the implications of the "reply all" button in their email, as this email originally would've have gone to at least 1000 people, all of whom received the replies. This series of emails went as follows (names have been removed or replaced to protect the guilty):

From: Some Random
Sent: Monday, 13 March 2006 4:05 PM
To: An entire division of a global multibillion dollar company
Subject: xxxx Street - Cigarette butts

The City of Perth have lodged a complaint in regards to the cigarette butts being dropped near the tree's on xxxx street at the Level 2 entry of 1 xxxx street and there have also been numerous complaints about cigarette butts being thrown into garden beds.

Building management have arranged to have this area cleaned up, however, future costs incurred due to having to clean up after people littering shall be charged to directly to the project concerned.

Regards
_____________________
Random Chick
Health & Safety Coordinator
Global multibillion dollar company
Level 4,1 xxxx Street
Ph + 61 (08) 9xxx xxxx
Fax + 61 (08) 9xxx xxxx
Mobile 04xx xxx xxx
random.chick@.globalmultibilliondollarcompany.com

Now I figure this is fair enough, whatever, I don't care as it doesn't concern me but she's right, and the smokers shouldn't be putting their cigarette butts anywhere other than bins. Although ideally they'd put it in designated ashtrays as the number of times I've seen smoke barreling out of bins because some dickhead didn't put their cigarette butt out before chucking it in the bin and it's started other shit smoldering is absurd. I should also point out that the dickhead that sent this email is stupid enough to have a full stop after the @ in her email address in her signature... this is not my typo.

Anyway, some dickhead replied to this email, using the "reply all" button with this:

From: Dickhead, Some (GMBDC)
Sent: Monday, 13 March 2006 4:14 PM
To: Chick, Random (division of GMBDC); Entire division of a GMBDC
Subject: RE: xxxx Street - Cigarette butts

Hmm, maybe IÂm going out on a limb here, but perhaps global multi billion dollar company could work with COP to locate a bin in an area that obviously needs it.

Hmmm, yeah that'shelpfull fuckwit! Maybe people should smoke where such a bin, specifically for cigarettes already exists.

Then, in comes in a guy from our office, whom we liken to Butters from South Park with:

From: Butters (GMBDC)
Sent: Monday, 13 March 2006 4:22 PM
To: Dickhead, Some (GMBDC);Chick, Random (division of GMBDC); Entire division of a GMBDC
Subject: RE: xxxx Street - Cigarette butts

Or ban smoking in public places!!!!

Another helpful contribution. This guy is supposedly an engineer.... they'll give any idiot a degree these days! I overheard someone in the office say, in response to this email, that "maybe they should ban breathing". I added that they should ban the "reply all" button, as it would be more beneficial.

Another reply to some dickhead's email came shortly after, from some random CAD monkey which read as follows:

From: Monkey, CAD (GMBDC)
Sent: Monday, 13 March 2006 4:31 PM
To: Dickhead, Some (GMBDC);Chick, Random (division of GMBDC); Entire division of a GMBDC
Subject: RE: xxxx Street - Cigarette butts

Maybe global multi billion dollar company should encourage staff NOT to smoke at all. Look at all the benefits you derive from that;

Better for your health.
Considerable saving.
No more smelling like an ashtray.
Improving productivity.
Cleaner environment (no butts and cleaner air entering the building).
Need anymore .......

Regards,
CAD Monkey
Electrical Lead Draftsman
Place Up North Upgrade Project
Level 4, xxxxxxxxStt
Perth WA 6000
T: (08) 9xxx xxxx
F: (08) 9xxx xxxx
E: cad.monkey @companygmbdctookoveratsomepoint.globalmultibilliondollarcompany.com.au

At least this guy got his email address right :) But yet again, a contribution I didn't need to read. I felt like pointing out to him that it's a long way down from that high horse he's perched himself on and that he should be careful not to fall but refrained. His email also made me think of what my mum had said a couple nights before about the principal at her school's husband dying in his sleep at approximately 50 years old with no apparent cause. The guy was a fitness freak of some sort. Reminds me of something Bill Hicks said about non-smokers holding this eternal life fantasy, which extends to health/fitness nuts. Everyone dies sooner or later, at the end of the day you could get hit by a bus tomorrow so who cares, enjoy life, don't get too caught up in the bullshit (he says after writing a whole post about the bullshit).

Big Day Out - Perth

2006-03-08T21:41:00.000+08:00

I know it's been over a month since this actually happened but better late than never really hey?

Anyway, mostly photos for this one... Wouldn't want anyone to have to actually read :)

It was, as you can see a big event. This is just the mainstage :)

Gerling had big balls... and lilypad dancers.

The boiler room wasn't exactly a room, or the ideal place for candy ravers

End of Fashion.... First time I'd seen them play, they were really quite good.

Can you guess who this is?

Iggy and the Stooges. Rocks out for an old bugger. The whole time he was playing however I couldn't help thinking his skin looks like E.T.

White Stripes. These guys were fucking awesome, and made the event totally worth it.

Well that'll do for this post. Till next time...

Hockey's back

2006-03-05T23:07:00.000+08:00

Well I've had my first game of ice hockey for the year. I definately could have played better in the first period but after that it wasn't too bad. Took a while to get back into checking people, but I'm getting there. Couple more games and I might hopefully stop holding back, but I guess it depends on who I'm hitting.

The result? Well we won 3-2. A good result for the first game of the year. We have a new goalie who I was really impressed with. I thought he was a sieve in training cause I kept scoring on him but he turned it on for the game and played really well which was good.

The superleague team played before us... I used to play superleague when we had two teams but when we went to one team I decided not to bother... glad I didn't, for some stupid reason the club has decided our superleague team will play non contact.. what's that shit?

i'll get there eventually

2006-03-04T11:27:00.000+08:00

I'm a bit hungover, but not overly, which is just as well cause I'm going to a beer festival today with my friend reece. We'd go tomorrow but we have a hockey game so we can't. Should be fun :)

And I promise to write a post with pictures before the end of the weekend (keep in mind it's a long weekend for us this weekend) :)

busy busy

2006-03-01T21:08:00.000+08:00

Well I haven't posted for a while... I've been pretty busy. Since the last post I've managed to fly to the pilbara twice, backup about 140gig of data off my PC and reinstall windows, build my boss a computer for work and knock out the power to my suburb and possibly several of the surrounding ones also.....oops.

Anyway a post will be pending as soon as I find the time and my pictures to do a proper one. Until then this will have to suffice.

The ice hockey season starts on sunday night which should be good, except that in starting so early it will finish at the end of july... I plan to be overseas from early July to early August which means I'll miss the last couple games and the final....doh! Oh well, I think I'd rather be OS anyway :)

2006-02-06T00:42:00.000+08:00

It's 12:40am. In less than 5 hours I'll be on a plane (work trip). 4 days later I'll be on a plane back. And then I can tell y'all about the big day out. For now, all I will say is that the white stripes were fucking awesome, and I reckon I got some pretty good pics :) I took 212 so some of them should be good at least :) Now I have to go pack and go to bed :)

war

2006-02-02T00:09:00.000+08:00

I'm about an hour and a half into saving private ryan. It just got to the bit where he tells everyone he's a school teacher. This reminded me of a story this old guy out at site told me. This guy is about 70, and I spent the better part of a day in a car with him driving around the pilbara. He told me a lot of stuff. One of the things he told me regarded his father. His father, it seems, was a school teacher. When the war came, like most young men, he wanted to do his bit for his country and tried to enlist. Apparently every time he enlisted he was refused, with them saying they needed school teachers more than soldiers. Apparently he eventually lied about his occupation to get into the armed forces, but when they eventually found out he was a school teacher he was kicked out. So here's this poor guy, wanting to do his part for his country, being refused. Then of course, while everyone else is at war, here's this guy still around, teaching the children. Apparently he'd constantly be receiving white feathers in the mail. For the uninformed, this means that everyone thought he was a coward because while everyone else was off fighting the war, this guy was still around.

How fucked up is that? I can't imagine, just how fucked that'd be. I just felt like sharing that, cause I think it's one of those things... people need to know about that sort of stuff. I own many war movies. I like watching them...... not because I think war is great, but I think it's important to remind ourselves just how fucked up war really is, understand it, relate to it. If only politicians could really grasp it... then maybe they wouldn't be so quick to sacrifice lives that aren't their own over conflicts and interests that aren't their own.

So what have I been up to these past few weeks?

2006-02-01T17:55:00.000+08:00

Having had my rant and a couple imported beers I'm starting to feel better :) Unfortunately, without lemon, my imported beers were starting to taste funny. I've now ventured out into the street, theived a lemon from a nearby neighbor's tree and
am ready for my usual photoblog :)

So yeah, what have I been up to. Well this weekend just gone I went to a 21st at an agricultural college about 3 hours from my house. This was fun, but I have no photos. The next day however my girlfriend and I went down to her parents house, which is only an hour from where the party was (only?) and on the way stopped to do a bit of circle work. Even took a photo :)

Oh yeah, I didn't get a new car, it's my girlfriends ute in the photo :)

On the way to her parents place we stopped at a town called Waigin (I think that was the name anyway) who have jumped on the "big" something bandwagon, and whose claim to fame is the "big ram". It is quite big, and judging by the signage it may like to eat dogs every now and again.

I have to say, these beers are tasting much better with lemon... shame I don't have a lime tree really. Anyway, this is a good shot of the ram itself.

Amusingly, despite being the "big ram", I think it's better known for it's giant ballsack :)

It's been a really long time since I last posted (other than the immediately previous post) so I've just realised I didn't post anything about my first trip to the girlfriend's parents place. 2 weeks previous to the weekend just gone I went down to my gf's parents place to meet them for the first time. This was a 4 hour trip I think... maybe 3.5. Oh, and that's the time it takes at the speed limit, I'm sure it would be marginally quicker if I was speeding, but I find it's generally cheaper to stay on the speed limit :)

Anyway, her parents are really nice so the trip was all good.... photo time.

They had a little baby chicken which was cute enough to warrant a photo. It seems they even have a incubator to hatch them. Not sure why they don't leave them with the chicken, probably so they can collect the eggs and just hatch as many chickens as they see fit. None of the others in the incubator had hatched though... weird.

They also had a couple of lambs...apparently there are two times at which the ewes can fall pregnant, and one is later than the other. This and the other lamb were from the latter impregnation, and therefore born later. I bottle fed one of them.... greedy little fuckers. I have a photo of me feeding them but it's on my girlfriends camera so maybe I'll stick it on a later post some time. So yeah, lamb number one:

Went horse riding while we were there too. I haven't been horse riding in probably more than 10 years, and this horse hadn't been ridden for about 6 months so all in all it equated to a recipe for disaster. Kristen (my gf...she has a name... it isn't Robert Paulson) said she got scared every time my horse started cantering as she thought I'd fall off. I was of the opinion that having ridden a horse before it was all old hat, and like riding a bike. I had fun... and a sore ass at the end of it, but as far as sore asses go I'd rather have it from riding a horse than being ridden by one :)

This is a nice photo of Kristen riding a horse. I didn't really take many photos while riding the horse as it was a little hard to control one handed while taking a photo. Good fun though.... I'll have to do it again some time soon :)

Australia day was a week ago. The last few years I've spent Australia day at my best friend's parents house drinking and swimming and being exceptionally intoxicated by 6pm. This year however he was in England. I was supposed to be working up North, but came back a day early and spent it with some mates down the foreshore. Oh, for my non Australian readers, Australia Day is pretty much our equivalent of the 4th of July, only we unfortunately are not independent of the Poms (English).

Hmmm, a guy from foxtel (Australian pay TV/cable) just came round. Good guy, he knew Tool (I was listening to Aenima really loud at the time) and almost the first thing he said to me was to turn it back on (I paused it to answer the door) so I took an instant liking to him. We discussed foxtel pricing over a beer (I was nice enough to offer him one.... better than drinking alone) and am now seriously considering it. It costs a bit but it's not like I can't afford it, and although I've always said I wouldn't get it cause I don't watch TV, I must admit that I don't watch TV cause there's nothing on. So yeah... I'm thinking about it... I wasn't so drunk that I signed up... I told him that I would think it over properly when I was sober. He wasn't pushy, which was good :) I'm no half way through my 6th beer... I should probably make/eat some dinner at some point :)

Anyway... Australia Day Photos..

Have I mentioned how much Tool rocks? I love cranking up a bit of Tool... it, is, excellent :) I'm listening to (accidentally just published my blog via random accidental keystroke) Salival at the moment :)

back to the matter at hand... again:

This is the exceptional marquee my friends and I erected on the foreshore for Australia Day. Truly the best to be seen, and definitely the most Australian.

The master of Australiana, Reece and Trent. These two brothers are true Australians, and I am proud to be their friend :)

Janet, Chris and Reece went for a swim in the river. Cleverly they kept their heads above water. I suspect this "dip" saved them a trip to the bathroom :)

My guess is I was saying something in this photo :) Like the shirt? We all had matching shirts... the "crack a tinnie tribe". Very cool :) Everyone's shirt had their name on the back as well which is pretty cool... and the southern cross (the stars on the aussie flag).

A nice shot of the marquee with the city skyline in the background :) Perth is quite picturesque really :)

As you can see, by late afternoon the foreshore was quite crowded :)

This was a spur of the moment photo. This guy Trav had an Aussie flag tied to himself as a cape, and just happened to be standing next to me when the wind and sun were just right. This awesome photo was the result. It shall hereby be titled 'Captain Australia' :)

A bunch of us posing with the marquee. To be honest, I have no idea who took this photo, as I am in it :) It was one of the chicks, I probably don't know who cause I don't actually know her :)

There were fireworks, but due to a sunstroke induced headache and a complete lack of headache tablets amongst our crew I bailed (left) before they were on. To be honest, I could give two shits about the fireworks, they're the same every year, and I haven't been to see them for a number of years. Maybe next year... might even try get some photos of them :)

And so concludes the catch up blog entry. I'll try not to take so long to update next time :) Oh, and a special, sincerest apology goes out to Brad and Helen, whom I expect may have been made homesick by the latter photos in this blog :)

Shut the fuck up!!!!

2006-02-01T17:24:00.000+08:00

As a consultant I am in a position whereby I am working out of 2 offices. There's our office, which is nice and quiet and very good for getting shit done.... and there's the client's office where I am currently spending the majority of my time. The clients office is a typical office environment with cubicles and fast internet, and, unfortunately, lots of people. I say unfortunately, because most of these people could do with a nice big cup of SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!

It got so bad today that I came within moments of standing up and yelling exactly that... SHUT THE FUCK UP!!! Everywhere around me all I could here was these fucking morons dribbling on about completely irrelevant and self involved shit. The noise was incredible and I couldn't concentrate, think, or do anything at all. Luckily, just moments shy of yelling at everyone I grabbed my ipod, stuck in the ear phones and pressed play. Moments later I could feel the insanity ebbing away, slowly being replaced by an ability to concentrate.

Needless to say I purchased a case of imported beer and have started to drink it in the hope that after a few hours I won't even remember today, let alone relive it in my dreams.

Now I think I shall try find some photos for a new, non ranting post.

and so starts another year

2006-01-12T22:45:00.000+08:00

I went to Ice hockey training this evening, first training for the year, and first one I've been to since my car got broken into. Wasn't too bad, turns out I'm a bit fitter than I expected to be... can't complain about that really.

I will complain about the fucking nets we have instead of glass on the boards though. For the second time, my helmet caught on the nets behind the goal... damn near ripped my face off! Unlike last time the straps to my face cage didn't pull through and so it yanked pretty hard. I was skating quite fast when I got hit, my helmet caught on the net and yanked my head back really hard, and with such force that when the helmet finally pulled off my head it slingshot through the air and landed about ten or more metres away from me. I hate those fucking nets! I also got hit in the throat with a puck, but that wasn't too bad, I copped the edge of it so it's just a red line across my neck.

Anyway... some picture from the last few weeks:

I finally bothered to work out how to control the shutter speed on my camera, and took a photo of my newly rigged with lights patio accordingly :)

My best friend Brad and I on new years day at the Perth Cup (Horse Race).

Jason driving me home after some thing at my parents place where I chose to drink rather than drive :)

I hate blowfish, they're really annoying when fishing. I scooped this one out of the water with a net without ever hooking him. He kind of got caught, and stupidly inflated himself making the situation worse. Pulled him out with pliers in the end. It's just such a stupid looking creature I had to take a photo of it :)

My mate Reece has a ski biscuit which we took out on my dad's boat one day. It was great fun.

And that's all I can be bothered posting for tonight... I'm tired and need to go to sleep :)

IT

2006-01-05T09:17:00.000+08:00

The uselessness of corporate IT was highlighted once again to me last year.

I rang IT cause I was unable to connect to an ftp site to download a very important driver for one of our laptops. I got this email as per their usual procedure:

From: Helpdesk
Sent: Tuesday, 29 November 2005 9:59 AM
To: me)
Subject: A Helpdesk Call, 361636, Has Been Logged On Your Behalf

A Helpdesk Call has been logged on your behalf.

The details are as follows:

InfraActive Call Number:
361636

Helpdesk Officer: (I thought I'd better remove that)

Call Description:

Unable to FTP to ftp://ftp505:Al7tE!Hi@mailftp.mei.co.jp/
Error windows cannot access this folder.
Does not prompt Valdimar for a username or password.

They said they'd get back to me. Not having time to wait around I went to our other office and downloaded the driver over dial up. It wasn't a big driver so it didn't take long. 2 freaking weeks later I get this email:

From: Helpdesk
Sent: Tuesday, 13 December 2005 11:06 AM
To: me
Subject: helpdesk call

Valdimar,

Regarding your helpdesk call requesting access to ftp://ftp505:Al7tE!Hi@mailftp.mei.co.jp/, I cannot connect to this site with the username and password in the link. Is it possible there is a mis-type or the wrong username/password?

Thankyou

Needless to say I was not impressed, so I responded with this email, wondering what reaction I might get from them:

From: me
Sent: Tuesday, 13 December 2005 11:19 AM
To: Helpdesk
Subject: RE: helpdesk call

The site had an expiry of two weeks for the download. As it has now been approximately that long I imagine the password has expired. The file was required rather urgently (a firmware update for field equipment) so I went and downloaded the file from our own office, as it became apparent the download problem was not likely to be resolved within the required time frame.

Thanks anyway,

Valdimar.

My email was originally a lot ruder and more of a "fuck you you useless prick you should have dealt with this 2 weeks ago" kind of letter but I toned it down as I didn't see the benefit of antagonising IT. This was followed with this response:

From: Helpdesk
Sent: Tuesday, 13 December 2005 11:20 AM
To: me
Subject: Your Helpdesk Call, 361636, Has Been Resolved

Your Helpdesk Call, 361636, has now been resolved by **** *********.

Helpdesk Representative's Comments:

valdimar advised that he had a workaround to the problem.

Fucking IT. Yeah, a workaround to the problem. Valdimar has advised you pricks are fucking useless to him.

I hate IT

by request

2005-12-25T11:19:00.000+08:00

:)

Merry Christmas all :)

Christmas came early this year

2005-12-22T20:17:00.000+08:00

If Christmas celebrates the birth of Christ, does Xmas celebrate the birth of Malcolm X?

It is true that I have indeed not been posting much lately. Sorry y'all, I've been very busy, working, partying and spending time with my girlfriend and best friend (not necessarily at the same time)..... which leaves little time for posting. But I am now so quit yer whingeing :)

So anyway, Maja and Geezer will be away at work for Christmas so we had an early christmas celebration for them so they wouldn't miss out. Many photos were taken... 128 in fact.

Where to start, well, maybe I'll just post a bunch of pictures instead.... I got wicked ones :) Hopefully blogger will be good and upload them....

This is my cousins daughter... Ain't she cute :)

I'm totally jealous of maja's sock monkey. Here she is getting it drunk.

I like this photo :) My uncle's dog Rosie.

Evil toads waited in the garden.

mmmm, arty :) I'm tempted to frame this one :)

I think I've finally figured it out.... blogger won't let you put more than 5 images per post. Next post has the rest.

Due to overwhelming concern of people who care I've spell checked this blog. Amusingly blogger isn't in their dictionary... go figure.

pt2

2005-12-22T20:15:00.000+08:00

The photos continue....

Kids are so cute, especially when you give them a bouncy ball. Hard to focus on though.

Everyone was drinking.

Rosie helped clean the Weber.

Seems the sock monkey brought some roofies with him from Canada, and took advantage accordingly.

Needless to say, I was shocked :)

pt3

2005-12-22T20:14:00.000+08:00

Last lot...

Smile like Geezer's not your dad :)

Brad, Helen and I.

Presents galore.

Jason's always pleased when someone's between his legs.... Interestingly neither Maja or I took this photo :)

Raising the Bar

2005-12-20T17:46:00.000+08:00

I caught part of 40 days and 40 nights on tv last night. It was the follow up dialogue between Shannyn Sossamon (what kind of name is that anyway) and Maggie Gyllenhaal regarding the feather only orgasm. I have to say they've really raised the bar of unreasonable female expectation with that one haven't they. Who writes this shit anyway?

My best friend gets back to-day... do da, do da.

2005-12-07T06:36:00.000+08:00

My best friend gets back from the UK tonight at 18:40. I can't wait. He's been gone since early february and will be back for just over a month. As you can see from the above pic I have prepared myself for his arrival. You can't quite tell but there's 2 cartons of beer in my fridge... should last till tomorrow night I think :)

I'm not sure when I will be able to update my blog again, but I will soon.... eventually :)

tradgedy and fun

2005-11-26T04:10:00.000+08:00

It is to be expected that having two work functions involving free booze two nights in a row that there is bound to be some tradgedy. Yeasterday was clearly not my day. Thursday after work there were celebratory drinks at a bar across the road from our office. After two pints of beer the keg was apparently "blown" so I switched to red wine. My glass was empty mayber 3 times the whole night. Which means the waiters just kept topping it up. Accordingly I have no idea how much I drank, or what happenned after about 6:30 (free drinks went from 4-6). This was quite a concern, especially seeing as I woke up in the bushes half way between my work and my house, no idea what happenned or how I got there. I had to walk the rest of the way home, and felt quite seedy accordingly.

To top it all off, when I finally decided to go to work the next day, I pull out of my driveway only to realise that my tire is flat. I took it to get repaired, but the puncture was too close to the sidewall to be repaired. This meant I had to get a new tire. Turns out tires for my car cost $250 a pop. Clearly not my day.

Tonight was my work's xmas function. It was fucking mad. There was a vegas them, and they had fucking tina turner, tom jones, elvis, cher, queen, all kinds of shit, kan kan girls the whole lot. Madness I tell you. Excellent night.... And, best part, I remember everything :)

Photo time......

elvis on stage

me and elvis, wait, sorry, Elvis and I :)

desert looked a lot better than it tasted :)

I had a great time... and most importantly... remember everything :) I'd post more phots but blooger is being a pratt of late and doesn't insert the html code for photos when I upload then.... annoying :(

continued from previous post below...

2005-11-23T06:51:00.000+08:00

The aforementioned mouse.

I was somehow roped into playing circle of death with my cousin and his friends. Despite this I managed to stay reasonably sober. I was the thumb master for a while, which got people pretty drunk. It was fun. I took this photo of my cousin's friend, which I thought I'd post cause I think it looks cool.

And so you'd know who I was talking about when I said my cousin's friend did this to him.... hahahaha
.

In other news I actually wore appropriate "business" clothing to work the other day, for like the first time ever. We had a big meeting with some guys from a government department so I thought I should wear something other than jeans :) One of the government people was a complete fuckwit as far as i'm concerned, and seemed to be making decisions before being in full possesion of the facts. I wanted to speak up and try and make him "get it" but that wasn't my place so I bit my tongue. I was just there to work the technology, as we had somewhat of an interactive presentation involving GIS software to display locations of stuff and what have you. My part of the meeting (working the visuals off the laptop) went fine at least :) So yeah, when I got home I thought I'd take a photo to mark the rare occasion of me dressing like a city office worker.

Jeans are of course much more comfortable to actually sit and work in, which is why that's what I usually wear to work :)

Artful Dodger

2005-11-21T21:11:00.000+08:00

Well there isn't anything artful about it but I seem to have successfully dodged a cold. I've felt kind of ordinary last few days, but by actually keeping my fluids up and not drinking alcohol (except saturday night) I seem to have kept it at bay. Sweet.

Yeah so I haven't posted for a while. These things happen... I have an excuse :) You see.... I'm lazy :) Hahaha, but that's not the reason. I've finally gone and got myself a girlfriend... Yay me.

Now, an update on what I've been up to of late......

Commuting to and from work, an achievement given my previous hate of public transport :)

Surving the office life....barely. There be nasty paper cuts to be had in the office, i think I was safer out in the field.

Visiting my new cousin....here's maja with him, ain't they cute :)

Cooking and eating tasty meals..... not on my own :)

Visiting my Grandma who's down from Iceland.... Hmmm, I should go vist her again.. bad grandson!

Photographing trapped mouse that some person up the road from my cousin's house caught. Amusingly just after this photo was taken the mouse made a run for it, successfully escaping to a nearby house. They were going to let it go in nearby bushland. Personally I would have killed it, but I guess I'm just mean.

well at least there would be more photos if blogger wasn't being a biatch!

And now for something completely different...

2005-11-11T06:50:00.000+08:00

Well 2 weeks agao I went to my friend reece's birthday party.... it was themed, I hate themed parties, mainly because of the effort involved. I did have fun though, drank most of a bottle of Jack Daniels (amazingly this required less than 1.25 litres of coke) and managed to stay awake till 4:30 before falling asleep on a recliner. Anyway, i neglected/forgot to bring a camera, but luckily leish didn't :) Here are a couple of her photos. Oh yeah, I'm sure I didn't look quite this white... the flash just brings it out :)

Munkey and I. My eyes appear to have light projecting out of them in this photo.... I'm not entirely sure how that happened... it's not photoshopped.

munkey, me and reece

I just heard on the radio that "Commuters in South Africa sick of train delays have set fire to three trains in Johannesburg causing millions of dollars damage". I'm sorry, but how will this stop train delays???

anyway, a pic of a whole bunch of crew..

and lastly the photographer Leish and and I... oh, and bad boy bubby's cat :)

Sweet, now I should really have some breakfast and get ready for work... TFIF!

2005-11-07T06:46:00.000+08:00

i feel so proud

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

2005-11-07T06:40:00.000+08:00

this may be the last one for this morning

You are a Self-Discoverer

You're not religious, but you've created your own kind of spirituality.
Introspective and thoughtful, you tend to look inward for the divine.
You are distrusting of all forms of organized religion.
You especially dislike religious gurus and leaders, who you feel are charlatans.

What's Your Religious Philosophy?

i should really stop doing these things now

2005-11-07T05:57:00.000+08:00

The Cure Shares Your Taste in Music

See their whole playlist here (iTunes required)

Which Musician (or Group) Shares Your Taste in Music?

and while I'm at it

2005-11-07T05:53:00.000+08:00

Your Career Type: Investigative

You are precise, scientific, and intellectual.
Your talents lie in understanding and solving math and science problems.

You would make an excellent:

Architect - Biologist - Chemist
Dentist - Electrical Technician - Mathematician
Medical Technician - Meteorologist - Pharmacist
Physician - Surveyor - Veterinarian

The worst career options for your are enterprising careers, like lawyer or real estate agent.

What's Your Ideal Career?

Some of these things are really lame in how they come up with shit. Random quizzes like these are why I usually sleep in, but today I'm at at 5:30 and don't see the point of going to bed for an hour, as it will end up being 3 and i'll feel worse for it.

doh!

2005-11-07T05:50:00.000+08:00

sorry Corinna... wanna swap?

You Are Not Scary

Everyone loves you. Isn't that sweet?

How Scary Are You?

sweet

2005-11-05T10:46:00.000+08:00

It's the weekend again... yay. Every weekend is a good weekend because every time there's a a weekend It's one weekend till my best friends comes back from the UK for a month. After this weekend it will be 4 weekends :) Oh, and it's just good to not be working as well :)

I went and saw Doom last night... it was about what you'd expect :)

I watched Garden State the night before. That was really good. I'd reccomend it to anyone. Unless you have no taste in movies in which case this would probably be no exception. Zach Braff is quite a talented writer/director/actor in my opinion. There's a bit in the movie where he asks Natalie Portman what she's listening to and she says "the shins", so I thought sweet, cause I really like The Shins. Only I hadn't heard the song before. I knew maja had two Shins cd's but I didn't really like the other one which i assumed was their first album, but turns out is something else. Long story short I went to JB HiFi and bought the album the songs I'd heard from were on titled 'Oh, inverted world'. It's really good, but at 34 odd minutes it's dissapointingly short. I also bought 'Takk', Sigur Ros. I'd never really listened to much Sigur Ros, thinking I didn't really like it, but couldn't remember why so I bought it on a whim. Good decision. Another excellent CD :)

So todays recommendations are....

Listen to the Shins album oh, inverted world, and if you haven't heard chutes too narrow you should listen to that too!

And listen to Sigur Ros.. they're sweet. I must borrow some of their other cds off Maja to see if I like them too.

Oh yeah, a special hello goes out to Sarah, who usually seems to be the first to read my posts (and comment)... she's sweeet :)

Bulk

2005-11-03T21:16:00.000+08:00

I've picked up the word bulk as part of my vocabulary. This is unfortunate because the person i picked it up from annoys me, especially when he uses the word in a sentence. I've decided he has cow eyes....this is not a good thing. They're just blank, he looks at me and all i can see is these cow eyes, devoid of any real intelligence. It's unfortunate. Perhaps I just need to drink more... I find him quite tolerable when I'm drunk :)

Oh, and to use bulk in context so you understand....

"They're all earning bulk money."
or
"he's got bulk cash."

oddly I can't think of this word used in context without money also being involved, yet i'm sure i've used it in other contexts.

oh well.

random thought

2005-10-31T19:37:00.000+08:00

Disproportionately muscular men (eg short and wide) are bizarre.... don't you think?

Damn it!

2005-10-31T19:31:00.000+08:00

I opened up the selection of songs for shuffle... what do I get, Metallica! I really don't think much of Metallica, though they were awesome when I saw them at Big Day Out last year... go figure.

It was strange until I realised what was going on...

2005-10-31T19:25:00.000+08:00

I maximised iTunes and pressed play, Nine Inch Nails doing a cover of Joy Division's 'Dead Souls'...sweet. Pressed the shuffle button because I didn't know what I wanted to listen to.....Another NIN song, and then another. I started to think it was odd to have three in a row when a fourth came on. Hmmmm, oh, i see, i'd done a search for NIN in my playlist so it was only shuffling the results of the search. DUH!

The pics

2005-10-30T19:54:00.000+08:00

Glass everywhere... Bunch of savages in this town! Had to get both front windows replaced, as well as the window mechanism for the passenger side as they fucked it getting the window out.

FUUUUUUCKING CUUUUUNTS!!!!

2005-10-28T00:00:00.000+08:00

My day was going okay, I did nothing bad, nothing to bring bad karma on myself, yet nonetheless bad karma came upon me... crap :( I went to hockey tonight, as I have the last two thursday nights, went inside, played, showered, came back out, looked at my car... started thinking, what the fuck is that on the ground next to my car, followed by the realisation "fuck, that's my window!"

Basically it seems that while I was playing hockey, some group of little cunts have come along, seen the car, decided there must be something valuable in there, and threw a rock through the window.... CUNTS! They didn't get much, but as you'll see from the photos, there was fucking glass everywhere. What did they get, oh, dammit, i just realised what they got, they got my fucking NIN live CD (and all that could of been), my copy of the downward spiral (also NIN), a regurtitator CD (there were two, they only stole one...unit, they left art) and the cover for Aenima which was in the cd player at the time. I found the rock on the floor in the back of the car, a piece of rail ballast ironically (is it really ironic though? that I work on railway investigations and a piece of railway ballast was thrown through my window?). Luckily one of the guys had a dustpan and broom in his car (work car) so I was able to use that to clean the copious amounts of broken glass off my seat so I could drive home. They also stole a bit of small change, but amusingly they didn't get all of it... must have been in a rush. I find it odd there was so much glass considering I have tinted windows and the tinting is on the inside, and therefore should have prevented it spraying everywhere.

So yeah, it's more of an inconvenience than anything. It's not much to replace, and the vehicle is insured. It's just bloody rude though. It's ruined my day tomorrow cause I'm going to have to wait for a window repair person to come out. There's a train line (freight not passenger) that runs past the back of the rink, chances are that whomever did this probably came from along there and over the fence. Maybe I won't play hockey next week, maybe i'll hide out and see if I can't spot them. Apparently this sort of thing happens at the rink a lot. I've never been aware of it... wish I was, probably wouldn't have helped though. Guess I should get an alarm put on the car :( Oh yeah, and you'll notice jelly beans on one of the seats.... there was a big bag of them.... strangely they didn't take them.

okay, well ummm, blogger won't let me upload photos for some reason so I'll have to try again later.

hahaha

2005-10-26T22:35:00.000+08:00

I just watched beverly hills cop. Now unlike most people I generally watch the credits, and as such I was rewarded with this bit of amusement.... Beverley Hills Cop #2 is credited with the name William Wallace. This amused me so I thought I'd share :)

onya cuz

2005-10-25T23:00:00.000+08:00

Congrats to my cousins band End Of Fashion (he's the drummer) on Winning an ARIA award the other night. In honour of the occasion (or maybe just cause I was bored) I fucked around with a photo I took of the lead singer while I was in Melbourne. The first one is the original. Which do you think is best?

In other news I don't have a girlfriend yet...gee, I guess Grandma will be dissapointed when I see her next :D

Thanks Grandma

2005-10-23T19:01:00.000+08:00

I was at my parents house for dinner this evening... Sunday roast. My parents and grandmother were there. Dinner was fine and normal. After dinner I had to leave almost straight away as I was meeting a mate for a beer in fremantle. My grandma looks at me, and just goes "You need to have a girlfriend!" ...
"Thanks grandma."
"so you have someone with you so you're not lonely"
"I'm not lonely, I have plenty of friends" (I'd seen 4 different groups of friends over the course of the day)
"but you need to have a girlfriend"
at this points my mum pipes in and jokingly adds "yeah but it's not enough to have a girlfriend, you have to get married."
grandma adds "yeah but she has to be nice"
"okay Grandma, I'll go find a girlfriend just for you."

hmmmm, I need to stop talking to those people :D

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

2005-10-15T11:16:00.000+08:00

I'm finally back and posting :) And for now it is quite possible I will be updating more regularly for a while. I seem to be having trouble with the english language though so bear with me.... I'm slightly hungover. As you can see from the pic below, updating my blog was high on my list of priorities for the day, beating such things as showering and putting on pants :)

So yeah, anyways, I've been out in the field busily mapping away. Saw a few things one wouldn't expect to see in the Pilbara.... Saw a fighter jet, on his own, flying just a few hundred meters of the ground.... very bizarre. Also saw camels, which are uncommon in rocky areas... they ran when they saw us coming so I didn't get any good photos.

trains are so photogenic.... just after I took this photo the fucker honked at me... scared the hell out me (it's a very loud horn).

Our poor mapping vehicle took quite a beating from all the driving through the bush, and I mean THROUGH the bush :) Sometimes the bush fought back.

This gully crossing proved too much for the old girl... ended up having to back out and go around :( It doesn't look that bad, but we were actually stuck when I took these photos. We had to jam some tree branches under the wheels to get traction.

A view out of the windscreen just before a big dropoff...scary :) This was far as we went.

Tell you what though, the toyota landcruiser is a bloody good vehicle, it stood up to the punishment we gave it really well. We celebrated by taking stupid pictures :)

There are some rather large lizards around the Pilbara. This bad boy is called a Bungarra I believe. I think he was somewhere in the range of 1.5 to 2 meters long, wouldn't want him running up me that's for sure. those are some nast looking claws. Luckily he hadn't warmed up when we came across him so he wasn't moving around too quickly.

At the end of the day there's nothing better than having a beer and watching the sunset :)

Random plant pic.

Random pic of me.

So what else has been going on.... well I have no idea. I'll think what I've done a post again later :) I drank 10 pints of various german beers last night at oktoberfest (the curtin universty version), so I'm a little hazy right now. I assume I must be sober by now, but I'm not sure that I was when I woke up this morning :)

I took yesterday off, and went for a surf in the morning. I'm not sure when I last went for a surf but it was quite a while ago. It was really good, I have to start going regularly again I think. The waves weren't great but they weren't bad either, and it was a really nice day so it was all good. Unfortunately I forgot my camera so no pictures.....next time :) There were a couple of helicopters about, and they kept hovering low over the ocean in the area I was surfing, it was a little disconcerting, cause you have to wonder why they're hovering. This is why. I was at a beach a bit further up the coast, both helicopters I saw were television station choppers, must've been getting footage for the story or something. I only found out last night that it was a shark sighting. My dad rang me while I was out last night, I couldn't hear him at all cause it was too loud so i just said I was fine and hung up... he was ringing to make sure I was fine having heard about the shark... I was.

I think last post I mentioned an incident that required me to change my clothes :) Well, the story is, I was sitting on a picnic bench type thing at the wet mess with my boss. I was leaning back to take a photo of some sort, keeping myself up by having my legs hooked under the table....my boss in all his wisdom decided he'd lean back too. WE WERE ON THE SAME SIDE OF THE TABLE. Needless to say we ended up wearing our respective glasses of wine....I was not impressed. It was pretty funny though :) I leave you with a pic of the damage :D

I think it's time to shower and put on some pants :)

Sorry

2005-10-11T21:52:00.000+08:00

hey y'all, i'm in a bit of a transitional phase at the moment, having just got back from the bush, we've taken on a new employee, and I've got a new laptop. This means that posting right now is a little difficult. both time and content wise. Do not fear however, there are plenty of stories and pictures on the way, which I shall post soon, I'm planning to take a day in lieu on friday so if I don't post before, I will post by then :D

Until then I leave you with a random pic of some friends and I from my housewarming oh so many months ago :) only because they're the only pics I have on my desktop computer :)

Lots of photos and minimal text

2005-09-25T22:35:00.000+08:00

It's what you all want, really, isn't it :) I have to be awake in 5 hours and I'm pretty tired so I'm going to try and minimise the time I spend writing this post. I should just go to bed, but I promised I'd update so I will :) Plus if I don't do it now it'll be another 10 days till I post, and that'd be way too long (hint hint... brad and helen....write a post).

Okay so now for photos, no story, just a short descriptor for each I think :)

On the first day we stopped by the local runway... the terminal seemed a little run down :)

We did a lot of bush bashing, and this was the first stake in the tires we noticed...luckily they're full of silicone so they don't go flat :)

A nice "artsy" shot :)

Where did you eat lunch today? Bet you didn't have this view :D Amusingly this was the only place I got mobile (cell for the yanks) phone reception...I took the opportunity to msg my best mate who's in the UK.

I like this shot, it's the road from the adjacent hill up to the hill I had lunch at.

There aren't roads where I've been mapping.... would you believe the terrain can get a lot worse?

I came up with a name for the new company we'll be forming/working under, and we celebrated with a bottle of red, and another, and another.... got some good photos during the first bottle... i'm pretty proud of the wine glass shot :)

it was a good sunset that night, but this photo of it could be better if I had a better zoom (this used digital zoom).

After 3 bottles of wine between two of us my dinner looked pretty tasty, or not, one way or the other I took a photo of it, looks bad I know, but I think it was tasty :)

Bottle number 4.... there's an interesting story about bottle number 4... maybe I'll tell you sometime :)

And I'll leave you with a photo I can't quite explain, no wait, I can explain it, I understand now, it has to do with bottle number 4 and the fact that isn't the shirt I was wearing when we started drinking it...it's all my boss's fault :D

So there you have it folks, hope you enjoyed the photos, I'll post more photos and text when I get back in another 10 days time or so. Right no I must go to bed, I have to be up in 4 hours (blogger was being a bastard and not uploading photos properly so it still took me 50 minutes to write this...hope you appreciate it) :(

HE'S ALIVE!!

2005-09-24T09:12:00.000+08:00

As I suspected I think my neighbour must have been on holiday as I just spotted him out the front, sweet, glad he's not dead. I'll update on my trip later today or tomorrow, It's grand final day so I got a lot of drinking to do :)

I forgot what I was going to call this post.... oh well.

2005-09-14T00:45:00.000+08:00

well it's a quarter to one in the morning and I'm a little tired. I don't think I'll go to bed though, doesn't seem much point. I've got a bit of stuff I need to do, including packing, and I have to get up at 3:30am anyway. Why do I have to get up so early? Cause I have a 5:30am flight to Newman for a 3 week mapping trip. It's won't be quite 3 weeks though, On the night 23rd (my sisters bday) I will fly back to perth for the weekend, and back up to site at 5:30am monday morning. The break will be good I think.

Meanwhile I have a bit of stuff I need to do so I figure by the time I've done it it will be time for me to get up or near to so why go through the effort of trying to sleep.

Egads, there was going to be a point to this post but I can't remember what it was. My weekend maybe. Saturdaynight I went to visit my cousins in jarrahdale, and went to the local pub. This was fun, and I managed to get drunk...yay. Was also the firt real opportunity to drive my car outside of the city/suburbs which I enjoyed.

well I better get to packing, and will try to post on my weekend off in 10 days time, and should have plenty of pretty pictures for y'all to admire.

It's pretty cold at 3:30am

2005-09-10T03:37:00.000+08:00

Well it's 3:30am, and technically now Saturday and I'm freezing. I've got the heater on but it doesn't seem to be working to effectively, I think I'm just easily chilled today... must be the lack of booze. I don't have a heater in my study (though I think the computers and monitors do an alright job) so I've taken my trusty work laptop to the loungeroom were it should be warm but I'm not.... I guess a nice cold glass of Guinness wasn't such a good plan :)

So yeah, the week is finally over, sweet. Next week of course won't be over for three weeks cause I'm going away but that's a whole other story. So what did I do today? Well, finished off the work day with a nice glass of red wine... we have Friday and sometimes other days (if it's real bad a Monday afternoon) after work drinks at my work, which always consist of a glass or three of good red wine, of which there are many bottles in the upstairs part of our office, several dozen at least, and I can't say that I've yet found one that sucked, or was in any way bad :)

Anyway, after work I dropped my shit home and had dinner at my parents place, take away, Hawaiian packs, which was decent. Following that I went to my cousins place and played some pool, but didn't drink cause I was driving. I got home about 10pm. This must of course sound like a pretty soft Saturday night right? Yeah, well not if you've reassessed your priorities and found yourself a lay for the evening :) So yeah, I haven't taken care of the getting drunk part of my weekend plan, but at least I got laid. Hmmm, new plan, can I get laid every day of this weekend? Well.... If I tried I probably could but I'm not sure I'll have the time :D

So yeah, despite the fact that it's heading closer to 4am I can't say that I feel particularly tired.... except that as soon as I typed that I yawned. I'm spent, but not tired, I'm a total night owl sometimes.... maybe I'll clean or tidy some part of my house, or maybe I'll just have a few beers and watch a movie....hmmm, the latter sounds like a better plane, though It'd be good to get the tidying out of the way... oooo decisions... too hard :)

Oh, good news... I don't think the old guy next door is dead. I went round there this afternoon and had a look through his windows and there was no sign of him in the kitchen, loungeroom or bedroom.... or laundry. He could be on the shitter or something though (it didn't even occur to me to be honest) so I might check with the other neighbour to see if she knows if he went away or anything. I'm guessing she won't though. I've never actually met/spoken to her so I guess it's as good an excuse as any... maybe I'll tell her to stop her hippie friend parking in the driveway, it's annoying... then again, maybe not. I'm tempted to break into the old guys house via the roof just make sure he's not in there, but if he's not in there then it's a total invasion of privacy so I guess I'll just see what the other neighbour says.

On that note, I bid you all adieu. Till next time..

no wait, seeing as you were good enough to read this far I'll reward you with another pic from my melbourne trip. This was in my hotel room bathroom after NIN, we took a bunch of random photos... as you do :) In fact... here's two..

Well tired seems to have set in fast, I'm nodding off, so I guess I'll just go to bed.

one more day

2005-09-08T21:42:00.000+08:00

One more day and it'll be the weekend. Yay, I think I'll get drunk. Where and with who is yet to be decided. I'm shopping around for plans. Might see if I can't get laid, that's a good plan, but oddly not the priority, may have to reasses.

In other news I am concerned that my neighbour may be dead. His car is there but I haven't seen him for a while, he didn't put his bin out on tuesday (but then neither did I) and his mailbox seems to be filling up. I don't even know his last name, but I guess I could look at his mail to find that out. I live on a block with 4 units on it. I live in a rear unit. The font neighbours on my side seems to have gone away...not sure where, but apparently somewhere they can drive to. Wonder where. Maybe my neighbour went away also, but he's old, so he may be dead. Maybe I'll try look in the windows and see if I can see him inside tomorrow. I hope he's not dead, he's a good neighbour, doesn't bother me, and is a little hard of hearing so never complains of noise.

I might have to go to bed now, I could do with a decent nights sleep :)

how do you spell the noise made when you burp?

2005-09-08T01:01:00.000+08:00

I can't say I've been getting enough sleep lately, and tonight will be no exception. I started going through some boxes of shit i brought from my parents house and trying to throw out and recycle everything I don't need. This was fairly successful in terms of throwing out and recycling stuff but I have not managed to finish the job. It is now an even bigger mess than before and I can't be bothered cleaning it up, and should in fact go to sleep but as I have been wandering the net leaving semi non sensical comments on peoples blogs I decided I should write another post for mine. Have I mentioned it's 1am and I will be attempting to get up at 6:30am in the morning? Hmmm, guess I'll be drinking coffee tomorrow... or today or whatever it is.

I got up late this morning. My alarm went off at 6:30am as usual, and I shose to stay in my cosy warm bed as usual, and after snoozing the alarm 3 or 4 times, turned it off, decided i'd get up in a second, and when I woke up an hour later I got up. Amazingly I still got to work by 9am. I poured myself some cereal after I got up, opened the fridge, and rememebered I needed to buy milk. I poured the cereal back into the container and went to work. I had a coffee, black (we don't have milk at work) with sugar for sustinence. Two coffees later it was lunch time. I didn't quite get around to getting lunch and then had to go to the freaking isolation induction.... where I had a coffee. I had 2 biscuits with my 2nd coffee, which was my first food for the day.

On the way home I went to the shop to buy milk. Apparently they don't sell real milk any more. There was only hi-lo or skim milk or other shit that is one of the former two with a different name. Hmmmm, maybe they moved it. I went to the other end of the shop where the cheese is. There wasn't any milk so I grabbed a packet of grated cheese. I'm assuming I might use this cheese for nachos if I decide to make them at some point. I went back to the milk section....there still wasn't any full cream milk....did I miss a meeting? I started thinking I should watch television, particularly the news, so I might know what the fuck was going on....I still don't know. I did find a couple 1-litre bottles of milk though, so I bought them and the cheese and left.

I cooked a steak for dinner, and had some chips with it. I was going to have vegies as well but decided I couldn't be bothered. This was the only real food I'd eaten today. I just ate a 200g box of BBQ shapes. I thought you might like to know.

I'm going to go to bed now as it seems like a good plan. As the photos in my last post weren't too exciting I thought I'd add some better ones...enjoy.

Probably my best (clearest) photo of Trent from the NIN concert.

Another shot I think is cool:

Here's a random pic from back in february of me and big fish I didn't catch myself, but did have some small part in landing.....maybe :) I could have told you I caught it, but that would be a lie :) I look a bit odd in this photo I think... not exactly sure why though.

Sorry for the Delay

2005-09-07T18:52:00.000+08:00

Well I haven't blogged for a while, sorry to all those who missed me. Been kinda busy and mostly not at my computer feeling motivated enough to blog. Well anyway I ended up buying a new car, not the near 3 year old turbo I posted a pic of before, but rather a 9 month old normally aspirated MKII version of the same car. So yeah, here's a picture of my new car in my driveway :)

It has sweet 17 inch rims with fat tires which grip extremely well in the dry and quite well in the wet, though the car has traction control so it's not too much of an issue of they don't grip :)

The interior is quite decent, though stereo doesn't compare to the stereo in my old car :(

So yeah, apart from the stress of having a nice new car and not wanting it to get scratched when I've only just bought it I'm pretty happy with my new car :)

My ice hockey grand final was on Sunday night. WE LOST. Unbelievable (though I kind of expected it). Despite the fact we have the top four scorers in the league we were unable to score enough goals to win, and lost 3-2. I have to hand it to their defense, they played pretty well. As far as I can figure the 3rd period was scoreless. I should probably be more upset about the loss but I'm not, not really anyway. I think it's because all in all I did what I could, and as a result not one of those three goals against us were scored when I was on the ice, and I think one of the goals for us was scored when I was on the ice..... I'm pretty sure I was on the bench for the second goal we scored but to be honest I can't really remember. In the end the other team just wanted it more. Their super league team (of which many of them were a part) played immediately before our game, and lost, so they didn't want two defeats in one night, and rose to the occasion to beat us. They didn't get there cleanly though, getting at least 24 penalty minutes for the game. We didn't get a single penalty, and I finished the season having not once gone to the penalty box. Given that we lost I'm thinking maybe I should have done something to get into the penalty box, but then again probably wouldn't have been a good idea :) This grand final was in Senior A, which I don't think I'll play next year, as to be honest I'm sick of it, the standard of play is nothing on super league which makes it a lot less fun I find. Oh well, here are some pics from the game:

This pic is from the second period. That's me in red trying to clear two players from the other team out of the slot.

Can anyone see what's wrong with this picture? I'm skating in to shoot the puck, and the forwards are skating out of the zone rather than towards the net for the screen/rebound.... no wonder we didn't score enough goals.

Here's my team being good sports and congratulating the other team on their win :) Despite having just lost I actually had a smile on my face, not sure why, I guess it's probably just because the other team really deserved their win.... they worked pretty hard for it.

In other news....
Monday I had dinner at Maja and Jasons place, jason did a good job of cooking. My parents and jasons daughter were also there. After dinner we went and saw 'Chess' (the original or close to version, not the NY version which is supposedly shit) at WAAPA (WA academy of performing arts). That was pretty good, and thoroughly enjoyable.

Yesterday I did a fire wardens course, it wasn't a bad course, got to use the different types of fire extinguishers to put out fires which was cool.

Today I had to do a half day isolation course (isolating equipment) which was piss boring and almost completely irrelevant to what I do but oh well, I had to do it as a pre-requisite for going to site next week so it couldn't be helped.

Oh yeah, in one week I'll be back up in the sunny Pilbara, same place as I had my helicopter week, only this time I'll be there for 3 weeks! I'll be doing mapping which will be okay, except that I'll miss Maja's party :(

\end todays blog

Hockey, Helicopters and Fast Cars

2005-08-28T22:24:00.000+08:00

Well I'm having another good week, not the best ever but certainly decent......mostly ("they mostly come out at night.......mostly").

We had our semi final for Senior A tonight (my superleague team didn't make the finals). I must admit I was a little nervous about the game, as it was an important game, but it was okay. My plan for the game had been to take the first opportunity I got to lay big hits on their best players to make them think twice about coming into our end.... it was a good PLAN. One of their best players was playing in the superleague semi final which was before our game.... he broke his ankle (a guy on the other team fell on him), so that took care of that. As for our game, we scored the first goal very early in the first period. We held them at 1-0 for a fair while but then they got one back taking the score to 1-1. After that my team picked up their game a bit and we ended up winning 6-1. I didn't lay too many hits, but didn't really need to for the most part. But that's enough about that.... except that our grand final will be next Sunday at 7:30pm at our home rink....sweet. I'll probably go to the other semi final game tomorrow to see who we'll be playing. I hope the Wildcats (number 3 team) beat the Patriots (number 2 team), as the Patriots are old bastards and we have to play non contact against them which is totally gay, plus they're fuckwits and play dirty (ie they hit us even though we can't hit them).

Thursday and Friday I was up north for work, doing a preliminary site visit for a 50km railway line they'll (iron ore company) be building. I didn't go to bed till 1am the morning I was to leave as I was preparing stuff for the trip. I woke up at 3:30 and got my shit together and got down to the airport for my 5:30am flight. I was in the Qantas Club lounge (my boss got me in) waiting for the flight and went to get some breakfast, when I saw this guy sitting in a chair look around, lift his leg, and with a massive grin on his face he did the loudest fart I have heard in a long while. It was pretty funny, and yet shocking at the same time, I was quite astounded.

Anyway, the trip was pretty good despite how tired I was the first day. I got to ride in a helicopter, we did a heap of four wheel driving and it was generally pretty cruisy. There were 7 of us all up in 2 cars. The helicopter trip was early on the first day.... we flew over the area the rail line is going to go to give us an idea of what the ground was like. It was pretty fun. Hmmmm, so much text, must be time for pictures :)

This is the helicopter coming in to land:

It banked quite steeply as you can see:

Here's me in the chopper, don't you just love my oh-so-trendy safety sunglasses:

I like this photo, I think it looks cool:

Some of the tracks we drove down weren't exactly in great condition... this is actually one of the better ones, there were a lot of times we didn't even have an actual track to drive on.

We drove down a creek for several kilometers, for lack of a better (or actual) track, it was fun, but we sometimes had to drive out of it and back in to avoid obstacles. Here's the car driving back into the creek....it's a dry creek by the way :)

This is probably the best photo I took the whole trip....our view from the small hill we sat on to eat lunch on the second day. what you can see is Mt Robinson.

Last photo I'm blogging from the trip for now....the main rail line into which the 50km rail will tie.

Now, what's this fast car business you ask? Well I've been looking to buy a new car and decided on Ford Falcon XR6, but after talking to the guy at the dealership I became pretty keen on the fast version.... the XR6 Turbo. I went in on Saturday and took said XR6 turbo for a test drive..... mmm, fun. Certainly has plenty of power, taking the car from 0 to 100km/h in just 6 seconds. I certainly enjoyed driving it, but when I went back to the dealer I wasn't really sure. He fucked off for a couple minutes, came back and offered the car to me for the weekend to test drive more completely.... how could I say no :) Here's a nice pic of it in my driveway :)

Saturday night it rained.....I turned the traction control off....this wasn't smart. Hehehe, I know what you're thinking, but no, I didn't crash it, didn't lose total control or get it fully sideways either, but I did discover just how easily the back wheels come unstuck if you put your foot down a bit... didn't even realise they were unstuck until I took my foot off the accelerator at the speed limit and the back end kicked back into line.... oops. So yeah, traction control was definitely a must in the wet, in the dry however I found even putting my foot down, in a straight line, from a standing start the wheels stayed glued to the road nicely :)

I do really like the car, but I find myself thinking that the power is rather unnecessary, as for the most part, driving normally the turbo doesn't even kick in. I take the car back tomorrow, and will probably not buy it, opting instead for the non turbo version, which looks the same but isn't quite as powerful (apparently still does 0-100km/h in 8 seconds so it's by no means slow). By doing this I'll get a car that's 2 years newer, and therefore still has 2 years of factory warranty left on it.

I'll update ya'll when I buy the car, whichever one I get :)

Hockey Pics

2005-08-24T17:00:00.000+08:00

Not the best (sorry maja, but they're not) but I know y'all want to see them anyway. Lets see what we have... here's me skating.

There's no real action shots...will have to get maja to take more photos at the grand final :) Here's a pic of me sitting on the bench trying to catch my breath after I started hitting..... double shifts are tiring :D

I have a 5:30am flight up north tomorrow, and don't get back till late friday night so don't expect me to post till then. Take care of yourselves people :D

Man, I leave my desk for 2 seconds and...

2005-08-24T09:55:00.000+08:00

Talk about bad timing. I left my desk for like 2 seconds (well maybe a bit more than that) to take a piss, and when I come back the consortina door to my section of the office is closed. "hmmm, that's odd" I though to myself... followed by, "god dammit" when I realised this meant i'd been locked in my section and the alarm had been turned on. Thinking quickly i jimmied the lock open very quickly and went and disarmed the alarm. It didn't go off but it was doing that 'I see you' beeping. Lucky I was able to jimmy the lock. I saw the guy that set the alarm reversing out when I looked out the front.... fucker. I mean surely if I'm not at my desk and my laptop is on and the screensaver hasn't even kicked in yet there's a strong possibility I'm still in the office.

Shit, I'm gonna have to start leaving a note every time I go to take a piss... "please don't lock me in and set the alarm, i'm just going for a piss."

Well that's my morning.... How's yours?

More hockey goodness

2005-08-22T22:47:00.000+08:00

Had our last Senior A game of the regular season tonight. I was really tired and started off the game pretty slow, and pretty much played a lazy game for the first period. Amusingly this worked out okay, and we were up 5-0 at the end of the first. The second period our opposition picked up their game a bit, and I decided to stop being lazy and start hitting people. Didn't lay a lot of checks but a couple, and I made them count :) Despite my efforts the score was 5-2 at the end of the second...I was still tired, and felt like going to sleep on the bench but obviously that wasn't an option.

Third period we hung on, and ended up with a 7-4 scoreline...I think. To be honest I can't remember but I'm pretty sure that was the final score. The other team had a really good player with a nasty habit of being able to get past all of our players. This got quite annoying as you'd imagine, and so I decided to go after him, lined up as he was about to get past one of our players and hit him as he got past. This was a good plan, as it kept him from scoring. It was funny, even the umpire commented to me that it was a good hit.

Sometimes I think I'm a little overzealous with my hits, but fuck it, it's a full contact sport, so why should I hold back? I always make clean hits, and very rarely make late hits (unless I really don't like someone), and even if it is a late hit, it's still within the 3 seconds. I haven't spent a single minute in the (penalty) box all year... of course up until Saturday I hadn't scored a goal or got an assist all year either. I wonder if people in Senior A think I'm a thug, it's possible, at 6'4" I'm one of the tallest players in my league, but I only weigh 85 kilos so I figure it evens out :)

Hmmm, am I rambling? Well anyway, as it turns out I got 2 assists this game, and so for the season I have one goal in super league, and two assists in Senior A. Must be the new stick :) It also turned out one of the guys from the other team broke his collar bone. I saw the guy seemed to be wincing a little when he went off but I didn't realise he never came back on. Oops, maybe he should drink more milk. So there you have it folks, two assists and I broke some guys collar bone.

Next week is the Semi Finals, against the other team from our club, should be interesting, they almost beat my team last time we played them (I wasn't there), it was a tie, and apparently they were in front and my team equalized in the last 30 seconds. Hopefully we do a little better this weekend.

BEST WEEK EVER!

2005-08-21T15:43:00.000+08:00

Sorry I've taken so long to blog but I've been a busy boy, and am only now finding the time to sit down and write a post.

Okay so Wednesday was Nine Inch Nails. Went down to the venue at 4:30, and about quarter to 5 they let the few of us who are members go in. I think all up there were probably about 30 or 40 people who came down for the meet and greet. They let us in and we went through to the inside where we got the priveledge of watching the sound check. The sound check was fucking awesome, just being able to stand front and centre and listen to my favourite band without some fucker bumping into me and whatever was just so good. They played about 4 or 5 songs I think, one of which was dead souls, a joy division cover they did for the crow soundtrack, that was so cool, I always wanted to hear them play that live. I was like "wow, that was awesome, if they played burn my day would be complete", but they didn't play burn in the sound check.

After the sound check we were told to line up along the barrier and the band would come along and say hi and sign our stuff. I was up one end, and ended up being the first to get to meet Trent, it was so cool, he's a real nice guy. I shook his hand, he signed my record, I was stoked. Would have been nice to be able to have a bit of a chat with him but there were lots of people and so it was only a brief meeting, but still... very cool :D Also met the rest of the band, who were also really nice guys, very cool.

We got told we weren't allowed to take any pictures during the sound check or the meet and greet which was a bit disappointing but meeting them was priveledge enough so I was okay with it. But as trent reached the end of the line he was letting people take their photo with him so I managed to get in there and get my photo taken too....sweeet, pity I look like a total chode in the photo :D

I met a couple from Perth at the meet and greet, they too had flown over for the concert...they were really cool, claire and greg, I'll have to catch up with them :D

Anyway, the sound check was fucking awesome... so I guess the actual concert was really fucking awesome :D I really enjoyed it, and took heaps of photos, most of which didn't turn out too good, but enough did work out for me to be happy. Oh, and my day was complete, cause not only did they play dead souls, but they played burn as well.... awe-some! Here's a photo of the band playing, and another of me in the mosh... I should mention that Melbourne mosh pits are lame, people don't seem to get into bands the way they should there, but I won't complain cause it's handy for taking photos :)

So yeah that was NIN. I can't really describe how much enjoyed the experience, but you get the idea :) I bought some merch...got a tour shirt, a pack of buttons and some stickers. Here's a pick of these things with my signed vinyl copy of with teeth.

Thursday wasn't anything overly exciting, but friday night was another sweet night. Friday night I went to see Regurgitator play, supported by the mint chicks (from New Zealand) and Snowman (whom Maja speaks of often...the bass player is our cousin). So yeah, Snowman were up first, and they went off as usual, but I didn't really get into their set... the lead singer seemed to be trying s little too hard, they were good, but I've seen them play better. Here's a pic of them in action...

Next up were the mint chicks... to be honest I don't really remember what they were like....I guess that means they weren't anything too special, or maybe more so that Regurgitator were so good that I forgot about everything else. Here's a pic of the mint chicks playing...note that their lead singer is hanging from the ceiling...impressive :)

So yeah, I haven't seen Regurgitator play for a while, but I've always enjoyed it when I have. This year is the 10th anniversary of the first time I saw them play live, when I was just 15. They were really good, I really enjoyed it and found myself snapping photos and jumping around to the music and singing along to oh so many of my favourite tunes from the band. Great gig... but melbourne crowds, sheesh, most of them just stand there and stare, I think I'd hate that if I were in a band... I'd want them all there jumping around having a great time, not standing there like trees... oh well. My pics of Regurgitator playing were much better than my NIN photos due to them not having the smoke in the air than NIN had. Here's one of my pics of them playing.

Olga being the great cousin she is, was able to fulfill my request that she get me backstage after the gig to meet Regurgitator. As with NIN they were really nice guys, but also really friendly guys. I'd wanted to get a vinyl copy of their album Tu Plang from 1995 to get signed but wasn't able to find one so I had nothing with me to get signed. However they had a small pile of their tour posters in the area where I met them so I grabbed one of them and got them to sign it. So yeah, that was really awesome, especially cause unlike NIN I actually was able to have a decent chat to them. Here's a pic of Quan and Ben from Regurgitator, Olga and I :)

So my Melbourne trip was fucking awesome, I had a great time, got to catch up with people, met some new people, met two of my favourite bands and watched them play awesome sets and had an altogether good time. It's funny, Since I arrived in Melbourne on monday morning, I have not spent a single night sober, and been out every one. But there's more to my best week ever...oh yes, that's right :)

Friday night was my last night in Melbourne, and I caught a 10:10am flight back to Perth... I was a little hungover but there is a Hungry Jacks (aka Burger King) in the departure lounge of Melbourne Airport, so I had some of that. I read the whole flight back to Perth, and arrived at 12:15 Perth time. I had a 5:45 hockey game and used the time between to have a hair cut....I've had better.
Last nights game was the last for the season for my super league team. Having not won a game the entire season (15 losses) we really wanted to win this one. However half the team didn't show up (WTF!) so we had 8 players including the goalie, which meant just 2 players on the bench. We went into the game with the aim of minimising the score against us.... we scored the first three goals. Then they scored against us, and then we scored another goal.....but not just any goal.... MY GOAL. That's right folks, yours truly scored his first goal for the year (and for many years given i had a few years off and didn't score in my last season either) in a super league game. It was a pretty good goal too, the puck came out to me on my backhand, got it onto the forehand and made a quick and somewhat akward wrist shot, the goalie gloved it but it came back out of his glove, went up over his head, and into the net. I was exstatic, I couldn't believe it, I scored my first ever goal in superleague, and I scored it from the point, in our last game for the season. We went on to win the game 8-6, which was pretty good considering we had so few players, and given our previous track record. Anyone would have think we'd won the stanley cup when the game ended, we were all so stoked, it was great, and the perfect end to such a great week :D After the game we went to one of the guys houses and drank many a celebratory beer, and I was drunk for the 6th night in a row :)

So there you have it folks....BEST WEEK EVER!
hope it wasn't too much to read....took me over an hour to write :)

Greetings from Melbourne

2005-08-16T15:34:00.000+08:00

Hello from the not so sunny city of Melbourne. Well, it wasn't too sunny yesterday anyway, today was quite nice.

Hmm, so far....
I caught the redeye from perth, and arrived here at 5am, having not slept on the plane I was a little tired. Couldn't leave my bags at the hotel till 7:30am so I just sat on a bench at the airport and read a book before making my way to the hotel about 7. I had about 5 hours to kill until I could check in to my room, so I went wandering.

My first taste of melbourne culture was a rather attractive cappucino :) I had breakfast with it also.

Walking towards the city I found the weather wasn't too fantastic, rain being great walking weather, i found shelter in a park and read for a while.

I wandered aimlessly through the city for a while, trying unsuccessfully to source a vinyl copy of the downward spiral (NIN album) to get signed when I meet the tomorrow. I walked around for hours, but didn't buy anything. I checked into my room and tried to have a nanna nap as I was well and truly tired from having not slept since the previus morning. I'd been in bed for about 10 minutes when I got a phone call from my boss regarding last weeks trip away....he needed some info. Half an hour later I hung up the phone and tried to sleep again. I wasn't succeeding....just as well, as about an hour after the first call, I received another call....from my boss of all people. 20 inutes later I figured there was no point trying to sleep, and decided to walk back into and around town. The weather was a bit better....

I probably shouldn't have done so much walking, but walking is such a good way to take in the city....don't see much from a tram. Sure do have sure legs and feet though :(

I went out and met my cousin who's just moved here for dinner. I could have caught the tram, but decided to walk, half an hour that didn't help my legs and feet, but did allow me to see more stuff I wouldn't otherwise see. Here's me walking down the street...it was kind of cold :)

Dinner was good, we went to a place which had $4 pizzas. They were really good, as were the beers we had with our pizza :)

Today I had a much needed sleep in, and did a little shopping in the afternoon. I bought a pair jeans and some shoes, here they are on the bed in my room. Don't you just love the bedspread?

Tonight I'm having dinner and some drinks with a mate that lives over here and so I must go. Tomorrow is the big NIN day...sweeet, can't wait.

inaugural HNT

2005-08-11T23:49:00.000+08:00

Well I am officially some sort of blog whore, and accordingly I be one of the few men to enter the HNT fray, though I have not gone so far as to go to that website where people say they're part of HNT, that seems too much like effort, just like pulling my pants up a little before taking a photo, oh well, live and learn :D

Excitement Plus

2005-08-11T23:17:00.000+08:00

I recieved an email today that got me all excited, it went something like this (note that '...' means I edited something out.

as a selected premium spiral member we would like to extend an
invitation to you to come down and meet the band while we are touring
in your part of the world. we're trying to coordinate this meet and
greet with one of the australian shows you may already be planning to
attend... thank you for your support and upon confirmation i will
forward further meet and greet instructions

This is why I was excited, I was going to get to meet Trent fucking Reznor. It just so happenned that I got the email almost as soon as it was sent, and so I responded within 10 minutes. It was an arduous wait between emails, and I just got the response:

you and one guest are invited down to meet the band ... feel
free to bring one item to have signed. thank you again for your
support and your spiral membership. we look forward to seeing you
soon.

woo hoooooo :) I'm so excited, this is going to be soooooo awesome. Now the big question....Which one item do I take to get signed???? It's funny, when I joined the NIN fan club I thought it would be sweet, but then nothing really happenned with it yet, except for stuff benefitting US members, but I knew Trent would come through for his fans, as he already had with the release of the multitrack forms of 'the hand that feeds' and 'only'. By multitrack forms I mean a download of all the loops for the songs so you can remix them yourself, who else does that? I'll tell ya... no one!

Hehehe, can you tell I'm a big NIN fan? Not sure how I'll get to sleep tonight :D

Excitement

2005-08-11T12:50:00.000+08:00

I am sooooooo excited I can barely contain myself. I won't tell you what about till I have confirmation it will happen, but if it does happen it's gonna be uber sweeeet! Hehehehe, I don't know what to do now, I'm way too excited to work, hmmm, I'll have to try calm down, but I can't, it's toooo cool.

just thought I'd share :D

Quicky

2005-08-10T22:59:00.000+08:00

Well I'm buggered (which is Aussie for tired in case you were thinking something else). I've just got back from a 2 and a half day trip for work. Got up at 5am this morning, worked most of the day, then at 4:40pm it was a 45 minute bus trip to the site airstrip, a 30 minute flight to Newman on a very little plane, and then a 2 hour trip on a bigger (Boeing 717) plane back to Perth, where I arrived just before 9pm. I thought I'd check my emails and stuff before bed, but prolly should have just crashed.

I might to that now.

We are the champions...

2005-08-07T21:29:00.000+08:00

...of our shitty little Australian ice hockey league. Well not quite, but we just played the team that was a very close second to us, and whooped their arse 6-1. Amusingly the top 4 goal scorers in the Senior A league are in our team, and tonight they further solidified their positions as the top 4, though I think the order changed. I of course, have not a single point to my name...ahhh, the unglorified position of defense. If only they kept a record of plus minus here, oh well. There's two games left in the season and then the semi finals and then the grand final. I wonder what I will do with all my new found spare time when the season finishes....hmmm, work away no doubt.

Alrighty....piccie time :)

First up we have a picture of my desk at work...but I think I'll save that for when I explain what I do. Instead it's a random picture of me...what do you reckon, hot or not?

hmmm, I'm on my main computer and most of pics are on other computers (my laptop and P3) so I will post more later. Now I must shower and go to bed.

meh

2005-08-06T17:15:00.000+08:00

I have a headache... I've had this headache for several days. I went to my cousins going away party last night (he's moving interstate, it was fun, but didn't help my headache. Today my headache was much worse, accordingly I have done FUCK ALL with my day. It's almost going away now, I'm wondering if perhaps I .....crap, I forgot what I was wondering.

I've started writing random comments in people blogs, or more the case, adding a random word to my comment, or just having the random word if I have nothing to say. I think I may have finally gone insane. The random word is currently food related. I may stop writing random food word comments, but not today.

I'm going to go book my hotel for melbourne....sweet, that trip is gonna be awesome, full of photo taking and stuff.

My best panorama so far

2005-08-03T11:13:00.000+08:00

This is my best panorama so far I think (that I've properly stitched that is). I took this up near a town called Whickam in the North West of Western Australia this year. The stitch isn't perfect, but you can't tell :) It's made up of 6 photos and takes in an almost 180 degree view. I was able to enjoy this view for the better part of 3 weeks while on a geotech drilling program. Pity it was 40+ degrees celsius with 75%+ humidity everyday :) At least I was able to take some nice photos :)

Do you think I should have a seperate blog for photos like these?

Urrgh!

2005-08-02T11:56:00.000+08:00

My laptop is giving me the shits...It's a bit too slow for some things, like the texture analysis filter I just tried to run on an orthophoto I'm doing an interp on. It just occurred to me to cancel the filter seeing as it's not going to produce anything useful anyway. My boss has been asking me if I want a desktop computer to use in the office. I said I wasn't overly worried but I think it might be better for when I'm doing this sort of stuff, as it would handle it both better and faster. Guess I should start spec'ing one up. I'll build it myself (that doesn't mean I'll pay for it), otherwise i'll be stuck with some Dell piece of crap. I hate Dell, I had one at my old work, it was (along with most stuff they make) a PIECE OF CRAP. I think for now though... lunch will be the go :)

Don't talk to me about flies!

2005-08-02T10:18:00.000+08:00

Maja bitches about the flies at her mine... I wonder if they ever get this bad? This pic is from a trip I did around Easter time this year. My boss and I managed to get a hold of some fly nets that trip, I think that if we hadn't we probably would have gone insane!

Kill the frog, then look at the pretty picture

2005-08-01T23:30:00.000+08:00

My mate Chris sent me to a website where one can kill that stupid fucking mobile phone frog thing...best I can figure the little fucker gets killed at least once per second...I've found three different ways to kill him, can you find more? Go here to kill the fucker with a baseball bat.

Here's a pretty picture I took in Hancock Gorge on my RDO when I was last up north :)

Tired and sore

2005-07-31T20:22:00.000+08:00

Well I've just got home from two back to back hockey games and I surely am tired and sore. Superleague was good, we were playing the top team in the league and the scores were tied with just a couple of minutes left in the game, things were looking good until one of our players checked another of our players who had the puck...we lost the puck, they scored. I didn't see it, but it obviously wasn't good. So yeah, we lost 3-2. DOH! Our team remains winless for the season.

There was a punch up in the superleague game as well, a guy on our team started it (he had a punch up last week as well), and got his ass kicked in my opinion. The guy on the other team got several good punches in, and our guy had a big egg looking lump on his head, just minutes after the fight ended...he'll be sore tomorrow I think :)

Senior A was interesting, we were playing a team we drew against last time we played them. I don't usually get hurt in Senior A, most of the people in that league can't check very hard... I got hurt this game.... initially by my own hand. Early in the first period I made a rather overzealous check on one of their players in front of our goal, and basically went straight through him, and down to the ground with him. This wouldn't normally be a problem but I managed to smack the top of my knee cap on the ice.... it hurt a lot... I limped off. Luckily it was one of those fast passing pans and I was okay for the next shift :)

The corker though, was a hit I took in the second period. Fucker came in under my arm and the full force of his check went straight in to my relatively unpadded rib cage. He winded me, I couldn't believe it.. I honestly can not remember the last time I got winded, and don't think I've ever been winded this bad. At least he didn't knock me down...that's probably why he got me so good, he just ran in to me, and I didn't give so just took all his momentum in to my rib cage...it's still kinda sore. Again it was just a one shift injury and I was able to get back on the ice for my next shift. I'm just glad I was right next to the bench, so I was able to get straight off :)

I copped one other hit that really pissed me off. I was on the boards with one of their players and the puck was tied up in our feet. I was facing the boards. There was 30 seconds to go in the game and all of a sudden I just got smacked from behind. One of their players had lined me up, and skated in for what I can only describe as the most blatant check in the back I have ever seen (or not seen as the case was). The umpires called it for once and he got a 2 and 10 penalty (2 minutes for something and a 10 minute misconduct).

I might have been a little more pissed off about this cheap shot if A, it hurt, and B we didn't win the game 7-0 :D We whooped them. Our goalie got a shutout, everyone played really well, it was a great game :)

Now it's time for dinner and a much needed lie down... I'm exhausted :)

Pee Please

2005-07-29T18:50:00.000+08:00

Well I've had an interesting few days. Wednesday I awoke feeling rather ordinary, and realising I'd finally got this freaking flu everyone seems to have had I went back to sleep. I woke up again at midday. As it turned out I was ill prepared for the flu, with a mere 3 tissues left in the box so I had to go shopping. Bought some magic pills (cold and flu tablets), tissues and a few other random things. I figured seeing as I was out shopping I'd have a look for a new ice hockey stick. I ended up buying one, and am now $300 poorer.... luckily I knew the guy at the score and he gave me 50 bucks off... sweeet. It's a one piece composite stick... but I'm sure none of you care for the details.

I couldn't be fucked going in to work thursday so I took another sick day and went back to bed. I watched the two towers ridiculously long edition in the afternoon, this time staying awake through the whole thing....perhaps this weekend I might try watch return of the king :)

Went to hockey training thursday night to try out my new stick. I don't think I've ever sweated so badly before, I suspect it had something to do with the flu and the cold and flu tablets rather than me skating any harder than usual. The new stick was sweet, and a definite improvement on my old stick :)

Today I had to do a drug and alcohol test for the next job we're going away for. This was of course, a SUPERVISED urine test, where some shick has to be there while you pee. I felt the urge over an hour before I was due to go have the test, so I hung on, went there, filled the cup, signed to say I'd watched her seal it, and then briskly walked to the normal toilet to finish peeing... it just doesn't seem right to pee with them there... I think everyone is more comfortable if the cup gets filled, and then the remainder of the bladder is emptied elsewhere... Maybe that's just me, I guess some people may not be able to stop peeing once they've started.

So yeah, now I can go smoke dope, take drugs, do whatever and not have to worry, cause I won't be getting tested for a while. Pity I feel no need to do these things really. Oh well.

here's a panorama photo I took on my last trip up north. Not bad eh :)

oh yeah, I went and saw geezer this arvo after work to lend him my digital camera for the weekend. I woke him from a deep slumber. Fucker was asleep.... IN THE BATH! hahahahaha, what a nonce! :)