| The flatmate-kindred-spirit-combo left for foreign shores on Friday; her departure as fine, friendly and inebriatory as her tenure. She left in her stead a stack of sold & discarded possessions, and over the previous week each room has had been by turns immaculate, and a construction zone. The construction zone eventually settled into a large corner of the living room and a majority of my bedroom. I have not yet found the time or will to resume normal services.
For the brief interlude between FKSC's departure and the new flatmate's arrival I wandered the flat & picked disconsolately among the piles, like an estranged lover. While the colourful domestic touches FKSC left were somehow comforting, the rest of her remnants caused hollow echoes through my soul just as surely they cluttered up my living room. Even the weather closed in to match my grief. My darling man did his best to placate me, but was ultimately consigned to watching TV while I stared blankly out the window and sighed (& drank) heavily.
Thankfully, the new flattie arrived within a day - incoming items were appended to the outgoing, and we spent much of the day ignoring the mess and bonding over lunch, work, and girly movies. I do believe all is well, despite still not being able to get through my bedroom door. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| Three days ago I got an email from Frontier Touring saying "update your details and win tickets!", so I did. They asked "which act would you most like to see?" and after some consideration I responded "Nine Inch Nails, the last of my top 20 that I have not yet had the privilege to see live". I submitted my info, clicked through to the home page, and saw the promo for Nine Inch Nails playing in Auckland in Feb. Frontier Touring's customer service is AWESOME!
Today I installed VMware Fusion and XP on my iMac. There's this feature called Unity mode, which basically means that right now on my Leopard desktop I have an XP toolbar and IE7 window. Although I kinda feel like I've vandalised my Mac, the effect is very AWESOME!
There's a liquor store opening right across the road. This is an example of AWESOME market research.
My flatmate and I are going to TOP GEAR LIVE, and I anticipate that this too will be AWESOME. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| From this article at Boston.com. Also, great photos.
"by their calculations, there's a 1 in 50 million chance of creating a black hole and consuming the earth. there are 6.6 billion people alive on the earth. turning this thing on is the moral equivalent of killing 132 people. nobels all around!"
"Wow. Beautiful pictures. Although looking at them gave me a strong sense of foreboding, because it's not hard to picture that place swarming with headcrabs."
"Why the hell is the chick using a CRT monitor in an advanced state of the art facility. o.o"
"Listen. Hadron has been messing with us for so long, it has this coming."
"The bird's eye view of the 27km ring is amazing / Throw in a little creative landscaping on opposite sides, and it will be the world's biggest GOATSE"
"Has it occurred to anyone that this may be the reason why we have never been able to find any other intelligent life in the universe? Every time a civilization on some planet gets to our level of technology they get curious about finding the Higgs boson, build a big machine like this to investigate, turn it on and ... PFFT!"
"Chuck Norris once roundhouse'd someone so hard, that the force of his foot colliding with their face created a micro black hole. The LHC is based off of this event." | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Life ticks over, but only incidentally. Late May, mum walked in the door and broke her leg. Further investigation indicated another tumour had eaten out the bulk of her femur. Noone really knows if it's the remnants of the previous tumour (radioed into submission in October) or a new one, but probably it's been there for the duration, its damage masked by back pain from the previous treatment. Oddly enough, these tumours don't appear to be behaving in the manner the experts would expect a proper secondary tumour to behave, and are working their way away from her vital organs. For this we are grateful. Maybe the worst she can expect after this is to lose a toenail.
She got the leg bolted back together, but then developed an infection, and the nuts & bolts started working their respective ways into the wrong places. She got a helicopter flight to Middlemore for her birthday, and the pilot was generous enough to do a loop over the farm, long enough for Dad and me to notice and run outside waving frantically. After an operation to extract the bolts, the infection, the cancer, and by extension most of her leg bone, she's now trussed up like a chicken and relegated to lying on her back for a total of two months (minimum) until and after the bionic leg operation. Tedium is not adequate; speaking as the child most similar to her mother, this is possibly equivalent to the fifth circle of hell.
As a result, while my brother and uncle spend fair chunks of their week at Middlemore, I've been spending a considerable amount of quality time with my dad at the farm - thus is the joy of Working From Home. He cooks breakfast and tells me to get my lazy arse out of bed, I work, he noodles around in the shed, sometimes I help out with the alpacas, evening comes, we have a whiskey, I cook dinner, he does the dishes, & we settle in to watch Mucking In and Mythbusters. It's been nice to be able to ignore everything except the fundamentals, and really nice reconnecting with my dad.
RE: Working From Home. In January I finally realised my dream of becoming a bona fide web developer (granted, that's not especially difficult in this day and age). I've also proven my salt in IT support and management, the latter of which has thus far included hiring someone, assigning him work, then laying him off, none of which are particularly straightforward at the best of times, but when executed remotely can induce a procrastination that resembles sleeping sickness. Fortunately something I no longer need to worry about. Currently I'm working on big-pay projects in order to justify my own employment long enough to be able to do the really fun stuff.
Anyway, I've fully acclimatised myself to the pants-are-for-meetings ethos and shower-optional days, although sometimes I don't notice that I haven't left the house for two days until I'm at the gym, complaining how difficult it is to get my arse down there. That said, the work's fun, and I've become a whole lot more of a techy freak... helped along by the switch to the magnificent MacBook / iMac combo. Was holding out for an iPhone, but I'll wait until dumb vodafone provides a more realistic monthly plan.
The rest of my life has wound down to autopilot, somewhat. Time at the farm and a busy work schedule are a reasonable excuse to break from social interaction. Still fighting, but only sporadically. Other projects getting some brain-time but not much else. Feeling guilty for wanting to lose some weight; my flatmate and I refer to our efforts as the stick-person diet (although we're not going for stick-person - just normal people that can fit back into our old clothes. Also, "our efforts" are pretty half-hearted). Speaking of my flatmate, first time I've flatted with a girl for about four years, and she's the coolest flatmate I ever had. She does roller derby, so we hang out at the end of the day, drink wine/gin/vodka and compare notes. She cleans, we cook for each other, swap clothes, and hang out with each others' mates, and encourage each other in our slothful and inebriating ways. We watch Firefly, Dr Who and Mighty Boosh. It's all so... girly... | | comments: 10 comments or Leave a comment |
| Today, Wanda Harland proclaimed that the future is here, and it is good. In that vein, I present a conversation with my flatmate:
H: I'm downloading it now. I just have to work out how we transfer it from my computer to yours, but that should be pretty easy.
S: Can't we just... hold them near each other?
H: Hahah- oh, wait. Yeah, I think we can. | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG Duran Duran playing Vector Arena on March 26!!!! Have I DIED AND GONE TO HEAVEN??? | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| | New year, new job, new blog. New flatmate too! My home site's suffered from a serious lack of affection, & now I wish to revive it. Didn't want to abandon my friendly livejournal community though, so using some shiny new webdev skillz, I'm gonna publish my livejournal feed on my site! I hope. If this works then I'm sorted. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | kack-handed | | Time: | 04:52 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/smileys/hyper.gif) battered hither and thither |
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| I've been writing with my left hand all damn week, and if it's even possible my penmanship's getting WORSE! I can't even blame it on (cheese-)grating my finger, because that was on my right hand.
My head hurts. I've been smacked in the face* three times this week, once by a knee. Oddly enough, my instant reaction to the knee was to laugh gleefully. Very Patricia Arquette in True Romance, except without so much blood. Or hitting, granted.
* this isn't actually allowed, but happens occasionally with the more flail-inclined. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Study some chinese: success rate = 0%. Poor result, can't be blamed on boyfriend. However, I discovered yesterday that Alt TV's been replaced with a chinese channel, so I'm watching it in the hopes that the language will osmose. Yesterday I watched a chili-eating competition, and a news item involving a billboard of some (I assume) rock star taking off his jockeys and strutting around with his wanger out.
Previous monthly challenges proving more successful in instilling better long-range habits: weekday meals still well-planned and executed; and alcohol consumption still down (not out). Monthly expenditure has reduced as a result.
August: write with left hand. I'm out of practice, we'll see if it goes the way of the chinese study. | | comments: 4 comments or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | Hat-trick | | Time: | 10:07 pm | | Current Mood: | ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/smileys/determined.gif) doof doof doof |
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| YES! Three for three, despite my fears of a sudden mad dash that would render me ticketless, I now have tickets for Crowded House, The Cure, and Marilyn Manson. I'M ON FIRE!!!!
(eclectic tastes) | | comments: 6 comments or Leave a comment |
| I am eating a Little Cake (that's what they're called) of the orange & poppy-seed variety that I got from Altezano this morning. It's seriously cram-packed with poppy-seeds. I did some research, and apparently if I did a drug test tomorrow I'd very likely show up positive for opiates. That's pretty hardcore.
In monthly-project news, I haven't exactly cooked dinner every weeknight, primarily due to entrance (stage right) of a new BOYFRIEND*, who's been doing a fair bit of cooking for me (nice!). However, I've gotten takeaways just one weeknight of the whole month, so I've ticked that off as Achieved. I've also managed to keep the alcohol consumption down. Yay, it's working!
Next project - more study of the chinese. This may be slightly more precarious, since I tend to spend a little too much of my spare time with my new BOYFRIEND*.
(*Excuse the delirium, it's been a long, long time; it's a relief to know my use-by date hasn't expired) | | comments: 13 comments or Leave a comment |
| No booze at home. Alternate alcoholic with non-alcoholic when out.
Not Achieved to the letter of the challenge, but Rampant Success to the spirit. More care to eat dinner before leaving the house; consuming that first non-alcoholic drink consistently led to far fewer pints; many many drink-free evenings; just two drunken gigs (in quick succession), but I was on holiday, drank lots of water to take the edge off, and one of those evenings was deliberately merry in anticipation of a long-awaited meeting with an internet troll, who was ultimately very nice to me. | | comments: 7 comments or Leave a comment |
| Quote:
From 17May we're improving our systems 4 u. There may be delays in bills, plan changes & balances.See vodafone.co.nz/changes or letter we're sending 2 u next wk
Notes:
Trendy txtspk. They do that every time they send a text message. Note that their apostrophes are still 100% correct.
They're sending me a letter anyway. They just wanted to show off their 1337 TXT SK1LL20R2.
"We're improving our systems 4 u. There may be delays in bills.." IMPROVEMENT CITY! Last time they made improvements for me, their website messed up my attempts at payment for three days.
Final Mark:
C- | | comments: 2 comments or Leave a comment |
| My habit of making my clocks a few minutes fast when I reset them has finally taken its toll. For the last month I've had absolutely no clue of the real actual time, because every single clock/watch/digital-display to which I'm exposed is different.
I have a nasty suspicion the server automatically resets my work PC's clock. This is annoying because it's a good 10 8 minutes fast. Our boss has reset every offline clock in the office to reflect this (OK, this is now confirmed. Cue argument with my brother/sysadmin about the accuracy of our server clock in relation to every other clock in the WHOLE WORLD).
Due to this insidious creeping inaccuracy of all clocks in my sight, I've declared a jihad! They're ALL getting fixed, even my bedside clock which I always deliberately set fast to try and coax me out of bed earlier. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | Subject: | APRIL | | Time: | 12:23 pm |
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| Earlier to work: failure. I'm trying to re-improve my get-up habits this month, to make up for NOT GETTING TO WORK BEFORE 9:30 A SINGLE DAY IN APRIL.
Managed to get in before 9:40 for about two weeks. The difference between getting to work at 9:40 and 9:25 is the difference between getting up at 8:20 and 7:45. Worth the effort? I think not.
May: Drink less. One day down, so far so good. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| I have a really fat, painful pimple inside my ear.
In Time magazine, from an Indonesian correspondent: 'Hong Kong shouldn't get universal suffrage - it'd be like giving a teenager the keys to the ferrari.' OH COME ON PEOPLE!
Monthly project I: Work Before 9:30 failing. I'm blaming it on the trip to Sydney over Easter. I'd done well in the last two weeks of march, will try harder next week.
Sydney is surprisingly clean and pretty. My old friend still looks like a hippy, but she sells finance and drives an Audi.
Level of revival of the new, improved nzmusic.com inversely proportional to level of productivity at work. I'm not sure how/why changing buildings got the site de-blocked, actually.
[EDIT] Dang, I think I just OD'd on chocolate-covered coffee beans. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| Isn't there a way to coexist with ants? Due to the number of tasty crumbs stuck in my keyboard, they took over my desk during the weekend. After some sustained rapping on my desk, and sweeping out the worst of the crumbs, they appear to have started searching elsewhere for sustenance, but there is still a tiny but steady exodus across my desk.
Occasionally I get irate and squash the stragglers but they're damned hard to kill, and when I see the mangled little black carcass that I feel really bad. Everything that makes them so annoying when they're alive just seems like a magical miracle of nature once I've thwarted it. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
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![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/smileys/angry.gif){kind=small}
shitty
![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/smileys/okay.gif){kind=small}
indifferent![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/smileys/bouncy.gif){kind=small}
pop personified![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/smileys/embarrassed.gif){kind=small}
BOYFRIEND![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/smileys/blank.gif){kind=small}
sober![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/growf/smileys/confused.gif){kind=small}
ambivalent