Diary of a Madman

Fair dinkum.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/labors-blogwatch-plan-hits-whirlpool-of-dissent-20090321-951z.html

Apparently the Government’s new internet censorship plan now includes plans to monitor “blog” sites (like Whirlpool – not that I would call it a “blog” site) with specific interest in sites with criticism of Stephen Conroy.

I say this Mr. Conroy – THIS is a blog site.

I will also say that your policy on internet censorship is abhorrent to (in my opinion) the vast majority of internet users in Australia, and will do NOTHING to stop the scourge that is child pornography. The recent leak of the ACMA blacklist to WikiLeaks also shows the incredibly slippery slope you’re trying to slide us down… from blocking illegal content, to blocking legal (adults only) content.. to monitoring and potentially blocking simple discussion of the Government and their policies.

The previous government’s offer of free internet filtering software was ignored by all but a miniscule proportion of parents – surely this tells you how many parents believe their children are under threat from the evils of the internet?

Stop pandering to the wishes of minority groups and impinging on the freedoms of the MAJORITY of Australians. Get your head out of your arse and LISTEN to what people are trying to tell you.

Monitor this. You are a prize luddite and your Government seem to be hell bent on ignoring the wishes of your constituents – do that at your peril. You plonker.

I await the men in black coats to come and take me away.

I had actually planned to post weekly to give updates on the diet. So much for that.

On the upside – I’m still on it, and have lost about 13kgs so far. Not too shabby! On the downside my weight has remained fairly static for the last 3-4 weeks – seems as if my body is used to what I’ve been putting in, so I now need to change things up a bit to try to shock the metabolism into action again.

Well, I had my weekly weigh in on Tuesday. Disappointingly, I only lost .5 kgs last week – making a total of 3kgs lost in 2 weeks. It was a bit of a kick in the guts considering how much food I’ve missed out on! But hopefully this coming week will be better. I’m certainly feeling a little trimmer anyway.

Bradman was desexed yesterday, the poor little guy. I was a bit upset after we dropped him off, felt like a bit of a wuss but I just hated seeing him stuck in a tiny cage at the vets barely big enough for him to move around in. Anyway we got him home last night and all is well – he just wanted to sleep and was very, very quiet… he didn’t manage to keep his dinner down (and silly us for choosing to get the carpets cleaned yesterday) but I think that’s just normal side effects from the anaesthetic. He’s acting more his usual self this morning! Poor little guy, can’t wait until he’s had his stitches out (10 days) and he can run around and play like normal again.

Too long since I blogged, but nothing interesting to say. Very, very busy – work is flat out and computer business is going sort-of okay as well! Not that I’m doing any advertising, just word of mouth… but there is something happening usually every week, whether it’s a web design job or a new PC for someone.

I started the Kate Morgan diet this week. It’s not too bad so far (I’ve only been on it four days). Basically you have a shake as a meal replacement for breakfast and lunch, and a normal dinner (within reason). I’d like to get down to somewhere between 80 and 85 kgs (I’m about 178cms tall).

As of Tuesday the 22/4 – 106kg. Will post updates here!

Went to the Anzac Day service this morning at Deloraine (with the puppies) – and now we’re about to head off to Great Lake to do some fishing (assuming the weather holds up!)…

Sorry for the extra vitriol in my last post. Too many beers, methinks, and incredibly pissed off at not being able to get my peaceful internet time without being chewed on. I tend to lose my patience after the fourth or fifth beer… not that I get violent, just very loud and obnoxious and tend to yell at inanimate objects (and naughty puppies). Ahh well…

Anyway this week my favourite subject is reversing cameras on cars. I saw some thing on some inane morning show (actually it was probably Today, because Clare can’t stand Sunrise, as if one is somehow less pathetically perky and politically correct than the other) about reversing cameras on cars. Apparently because of the amount of kids that are getting run over in their own driveways by their parents, some lobby group or other is lobbying (that’s what they do I suppose) for reversing cameras/sensors to be mandatory in all vehicles, and encouraging people to get them fitted aftermarket to their existing cars. Now I have a number of issues with this.

Firstly – instead of making cars easier and easier to drive, shouldn’t we actually be teaching people how to drive properly? To my mind all these bloody driving aids are wonderful, but slowly but surely they’re eroding the skillset of the average driver. In 20 years there won’t be a driver on the road who can’t stop in an emergency in a non-ABS car without locking up all four wheels, or who won’t know how to accelerate heavily without spinning the wheels unless the traction control is turned on.

Secondly, and this partly is the same as the first point, why aren’t these people looking where they’re bloody going? Are they reversing with their eyes closed? I drive a late model Holden Combo every day (the same as a Opel Combo if there’s any poms reading this) – that thing has got to have the worst rear and side vision of any vehicle I’ve ever driven. Two small windows in the back doors, no side windows… yet I’ve never hit anything and I can even reverse park the damn thing. It has these two ginormous things hanging off the a-pillar on each side… they are called mirrors and if you look in them they show you what’s behind you. It also pays to take it fairly slow and steady, as not everyone appreciates your lack of x-ray vision when reversing out of a car parking space in a busy supermarket car park. But so far, after 6 months or so of ownership, not a bingle in sight.

Thirdly, the vision is far better in a normal passenger vehicle than in a 4WD. If these soccer mums weren’t driving Pajeros and Prados (ironically many of them have some sort of greenie sticker on the rear window.. yet the aforementioned vehicles are big gas guzzlers and usually have never been offroad in their lives) for taking the kids to school and back, they would have far better rear vision and would be less accident prone (even if the aforementioned soccer mums had any driving skills to begin with). Get a bloody station wagon for crying out loud, it was good enough for the baby boomers and it should be good enough for you too. If your friends give you a hard time you can tell them you’re cutting down on carbon emissions so that you can offset your next Thai holiday.

Fourthy… and perhaps most importantly… who’s watching the darn kids when they inexplicably run out in front of your moving vehicle and you don’t see them???

Once again we have a classic case of trying to remove responsibility from the people that should be taking it…. am I the only one that has a problem with this? I’m all for making things safer… but not at the expense of common sense.

So let’s not put the cart before the horse… instead of giving people more electronic gadgets to distract them while they drive (as if there aren’t enough distractions in the first place… and it could be argued that in many of these cases where kids get run over, distraction is actually a big part of the cause)… let’s teach them how to drive and teach them to be responsible for their children.

Happy trails!

I haven’t blogged for a while. But I need to let off some steam.

When you’re driving, for fucks sake, the order is this: Indicate, THEN brake, THEN turn… do NOT fricking put your brakes and your indicator on at the same time… do not swerve into the turning lane at the last minute and THEN deign to put your bloody indicator on. Repeat after me… indicate (pause)… brake….. turn!!!!

If I am nice enough to update your phone to Windows Mobile 6, and your computer then pops up an error saying “you need to update to the latest version of Activesync” then for fucks sake, WHY CALL ME AND ASK WHAT TO DO??!!! Are there not dozens of perfectly acceptable search engines who will (upon typing in “Microsoft Activesync”) give you multiple download links and perhaps even explain how to install it? (As sad as it is that you need instructions to download, click “run” and then “ok” a few times)….

Oh and I apologise in advance if I have offended anyone. Especially if you are Aboriginal because apparently that entitles you to an extra special apology from the Prime Minister and everything. It’s a damn shame all the non-Aboriginal people who were impacted by the same policies you’re whinging about don’t get an apology. It’s also a damn shame some of you people don’t even have the decency to listen to the point of view of our esteemed opposition leader who might, just might, have some useful input to the situation as well. Despite the fact that you idiots don’t want to hear it, because it goes against your poor-diddums principles. It’s also a damn shame that you won’t move the fuck on and get on with your life, just like everyone else who’s had a bad experience has done. Reconciliation will never happen while you people continue to carp on about past injustices. We’re in the 21st century now – the more time you waste looking backwards is more time you could’ve been spending improving yourselves. White folks don’t have an excuse despite the fact that many of us come from broken homes and alcoholic parents and generally fucked up upbringings… we just have to get on with it. So please, just take a growthefuckup pill and make something of yourselves. If you don’t want to do that then bugger off and stop leeching off the taxpayer.

I may seem in a bad mood… I have no idea… but would someone please genetically engineer a puppy that doesn’t want to chew on every fucking thing in the house, piss on the carpet, and will leave me the fuck alone when I’m trying to work. The ones that are out there at the moment seem extremely defective.

It’s been a while since I blogged.

3 more days until puppies!

Santa was good to me… I got a Stig t-shirt… a whipper snipper… the new Matthew Reilly and Ian Rankin books… gift vouchers to Autobarn and a couple of hardware shops… and various other bits and pieces.

Merry Christmas all!!

Well, we made our afternoon-trip to Geelong yesterday to check out the puppies. It was a lovely day, our Hyundai Getz rental car hummed from Melbourne to Geelong and back on $15 worth of fuel (I kid you not) and we were lucky enough to spend a couple of hours cuddling all different puppies from the litter and chatting to the breeder. We ended up choosing a lovely boy for us (Bradman) and a girl for Clare’s mum (who’s name is going to be Jess… we believe… although it’s changed a couple of times already).

This is Bradman

This is Jess

I took a heap of happy snaps with the camera and am sooo glad I upgraded, it’s far, far better than the Canon S2IS that I had been using. I’m still coming to grips with all the options, it’s a big jump going to a digital SLR and I fear it’s still a little bit too much camera for me a the moment. But still, with practice…

Well, we’ve actually managed to find a puppy it seems! There is a litter that’s just been born at a breeder in Geelong, and after speaking to her today we’ve decided to go up there in a couple of weeks (on the 17th) to look at them and potentially pick a couple out. Flights and car are booked… fingers crossed all goes to plan. Hooray!!

Ironically, the grandfather of the puppies is from the Kaparla kennel down in Hobart (Kaparla Loch Invar, about 13 dogs down) who is one of the breeders we’ve been speaking to locally.

In other news, I bought a Canon EOS 400D the other day. Twin lens kit, 2 batteries, 2gig SD card, etc – from eBay. Hopefully it’ll turn up this week so that I can start playing!!

Okay, so Clare and I have been wanting a puppy for a while now – a Golden Retriever. He’s even got a name but I won’t mention it until we’ve got him.

We’ve both got time off work booked between Christmas and January to bring him home and acclimatise him to our place before we start leaving him alone for longer periods.

Anyway… we’ve been talking to the puppy referral officer of the Tasmanian Golden Retriever Club about where to get one…. and we thought we’d get a puppy out of a litter that was due from one of their member’s bitches on the 31st of October. But today we got the sad phone call that the litter was born this week and there were only 2 puppies in it As we were about 3rd or 4th in the queue, we missed out. So now we’re scratching ourselves wondering if anyone else has a litter due now! Puppies aren’t usually ready to take home until they’re about 8-10 weeks old, and we can’t take a puppy any earlier than Christmas… so we’re hoping we can find someone!

We’d much prefer to get one here in Tassie so we can view the parents etc… but I guess worst case scenario we can buy from the mainland. There’s a few different breeders advertising them in the Trading Post, etc. I have bought my last 3 cars from the mainland so it’s not like it’d be the first time I’ve bought stuff from the “big island”!

I knocked this up last night and think it was rather yummy (even if I do say so myself!). Dead easy too.

Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 30 minutes (walk away and forget)

Ingredients

1 packet (frozen) Ingham Chicken Breast Steaks
1 tube tomato paste (I used an onion and garlic flavoured one, there are lots of different types so choose one that sounds nice to you)
100gms (or so) of shaved champagne ham
150gms (or so) of tasty cheese (or some other type of cheese that you like)

So you do this….

Preheat oven to 200 degrees celcius or so.

Place chicken steaks on an oven tray layered with baking paper (helps save washing up effort later). Spread each one liberally with tomato paste, then layer ham on top of that. Slice (or grate) cheese (I sliced) and layer it liberally on top of the ham.

Bung it in the preheated oven for 30 mins or so – the cheese will melt and go nice and brown and crispy. Serve steaming hot.. mmmmm, delicious!!

We eat food from Pasta Resistance pretty regularly, and they make a dish called Gnocchi Matriciana, which is a lovely gnocchi in a creamy tomato and bacon sauce with a hint of chilli. We’ve had a few goes at replicating it at home (from packets) and tonight we came about as close as we’ll get I reckon! We also gave it our own special sundried tomato twist… yummy yummy….

The best bit is, it’s fairly cheap (cost us about $12 for 2 huge meals. With a larger packet of gnocchi it could serve 4 quite easily). It’s also dead easy to cook even for allergic-to-kitchen types, it only takes about 10 or 15 minutes to knock up, and all you need is 2 saucepans. So here goes…

Ingredients

1 x (500gm) packet of fresh gnocchi. This makes 2 BIG meals – Coles also sells 375gm and 650gm packets, so adjust this to suit
1 x tub of “Italian Tomato and Garlic” Latina pasta sauce
150gm diced bacon
A few tablespoons of sundried tomatoes
A few tablespoons of fresh cream
Chilli powder to taste

Method

Pretty simple really….

Putt a saucepan of water onto high heat – size not particularly important, so long as it’s more than big enough to fit all the gnocchi in.

Get another saucepan on the heat – brown the bacon for a couple of minutes, then put in the pasta sauce and stir well. Let it simmer for a few minutes, stirring occasionally. Cut up your sundried tomatoes a bit and add them to the mix too – keep simmering and stirring.

When the saucepan of water is boiling, chuck in your gnocchi and watch carefully – after a few minutes the gnocchi will start rising to the surface – once it’s all come to the top (by this stage the water should be boiling again), your gnocchi is cooked – take it off the heat.

Now add your cream (a few tablespoons is about right, just enough to make it a bit creamy) and chilli powder to taste, let it simmer for a minute or two to mix in. Then serve up your gnocchi, and pour sauce over the top. All done!

Serve with garlic bread – yummo! I’m still full… .wish I’d taken photos…. Cold vanilla ice cream and chocolate pudding also makes a great follow up!

Hooray….

I’m at work at the moment. Currently, I’ve been on hold to Telstra for…. ~35 minutes.

Thank goodness I don’t have a customer here waiting.

What’s worse, I’ve just been told that there’s morning tea (iced donuts!) in the staffroom. Hurry up and deactivate this bloody service so that I can go munch out!!

Been reading the Discworld books lately – up to “Sourcery”.

Has anyone ever compared him to Douglas Adams? Such an absolutely BRILLIANT turn of phrase. I frequently laugh out loud (much to the distraction of Clare since I usually read in bed… where she’s either trying to read herself, or trying to sleep!)….

Bit more info on the author here – I highly recommend them.

Well, I am completely frustrated.

I got a Treo 750 a few months ago as my work mobile – it’s an absolutely awesome phone in most ways, and I’m pretty grateful to my work for letting me have one!

My problems started when I decided I needed a bluetooth car kit for it. First I bought a Parrot C3000 Evolution to fit in the Excel. I blew it up.. but that’s another story.

I then ended up changing cars and now I’ve got a nice 04 model Holden Combo. Nothing flash, but it’s the perfect vehicle for running around town with my day job as well as carting computers and parts etc for the side business. But, I need handsfree – I’m sick of pulling over to the side of the road to answer calls!

So, I bought a JVC head unit (a KD-BT1 with onboard Bluetooth, thinking that would save me some hassle, and I needed a new head unit to replace the factory one anyway.

Well I’m blowed if the damn thing will pair…. it sees the car kit, but the car kit can’t connect to the phone. Palm can’t help me (“it’s not on our list of compatible devices”) and JVC can’t help me (“make sure your device has Bluetooth version 2.1″) so I’m stuck.

The only way I can get it to pair is by installing a third party Bluetooth stack from Broadcomm… which doesn’t exist, officially. I did find one (which someone had actually ported to the HTC Universal) on XDA-Developers which will run on my device, and it pairs with the head unit fine, but no sound comes out when I make a call.

So I’m back to square one, with no car kit… argh!!!!

Now’s the time for me to have a little rant then… I thought Bluetooth was supposed to be a standardised technology for crying out loud? Why does Palm have to have their own proprietary bloody Bluetooth stack which only works with certain things? It’s just making things difficult for your customers!

Anyway…. I am without a handsfree… still… guess I’ll have to keep pulling over.

Side note… I’ve updated WordPress to the latest version… updated Coppermine too…. new host is fantastic, so far…

Thanks for listening!

Well, I’ve changed hosts – the old one was driving me nuts. This one is much faster (and hosted in Australia) and costs around the same! Big props to Jumba

Got lots of things to say – none of them probably very interesting. Although I do feel a real need to muse on politics, what with the election coming up and all. And photography. And X-boxes with XBMC. And why hasn’t there been a Windows Mobile 6 update for the Palm Treo 750 on Telstra yet? Vodafone and 3 have got theirs… the rest of us are just using hacked ROMs

Must update WordPress to the latest version tomorrow too. Methinks it’s well overdue.

Well, I’ve finally done it – started a business. Again.

For those who are interested… the website is http://bendweb.com.au – my plan is to do a little bit of everything. PC hardware, web hosting and web design. I have a meeting with a potential client on Friday to do a site for her (Clare’s boss, as it happens) – I’ve got accounts set up with a couple of wholesalers (and have a few more in the pipeline) so it’s all good

Going to put a few links here to remind me later…

Thanks to Neil Crosby for this article it helped me get a web page past validation this morning.

Also thanks to Nick Schoonen for this article – which helped me get my OsCommerce site set up to work with Paypal in AUD

Now I’m off to start working on a schedule of fees and charges…. joy.

PS Clare and I went to Melbourne last week and saw Phantom of the Opera. It rocked. But don’t ever tell anyone I said that or you will be disowned

Well, I’m blogging again. One of these days I really should get rid of all the spam comments and trackbacks… but anyhoo.

Am I the only one in the world who thinks that they can actually write really good material, but never does? I say this because I’ve always fancied myself a bit of a writer but never managed to quite… get around to it. And here I am, thinking I want to write something. For Clare. The problem is that you need to be suitably inspired to do it… and perhaps I’m only 80 percent of the way there. I have a few words to say but don’t quite know how to start saying them.

Things are quite okay at the moment. Not great, but okay. I hope they slowly work their way up into “great” territory again but at the moment it’s a day by day proposition.

I’m playing basketball once a week, and loving it. And for long time readers (there is probably only one of those, if he followed the domain change which is unlikely since I never told anyone about it) you will remember I was trying to lose weight – well – I’ve lost about 11 kilos since Christmas. All by modifying my diet, basically – I’ve only been playing sport again for a few weeks so it’s not that.

However, my knees and my ankles are hating me right now… I really hope they get stronger otherwise I won’t be able to keep it up!

And further to that original post – as of tonight I am back on the meds again.

The last few weeks have been pretty average between Clare and I – the situation with this other guy is not helping much. I’ve been trying to get over it like I told her I would but it’s not as easy as it sounds especially when she is constantly getting messages from him even while her and I were out together on Saturday night and at home on Sunday morning.

Now, after me being in tears at some point pretty much every weekend for the last 3 or 4 weeks, I walk out of her place early because I was so upset, and miss our regular Sunday dinner with her family. And today she tells me we can’t go on unless something changes.

Of course there’s more to it than that but she basically told me it’s something I need to fix otherwise we just can’t continue. And I guess I can understand that.

So it’s back on the meds for me… at least in the short term. I hate the side effects but I did feel happier when I was taking them, certainly happier than I feel now. If that’s what it takes to keep this relationship together then that’s what I’ll do. She means too much to me to lose over something like this.

And many of the things she said today echo some of the things Cas said to me years ago… she just can’t be the strong one all the time. Why haven’t I learnt from my mistakes? I have an absolutely wonderful woman here. She is just about perfect in every way. I just hope she can forgive me and we can work through this or I don’t know what I’ll do.

Or as I said to her today, I just wish I could be a different person.

WHY CAN’T THINGS JUST STAY GOOD FOR A CHANGE!

Work is giving me the shits at the moment, they have me trying to do three different jobs and I get no thanks or encouragement at all. Clare is spending way too much time with another guy who has been making advances towards her, yet I’m supposed to just put up with it – and all of a sudden she is talking about how we’re going to break up eventually and it feels like she’s given up on us.

I’m also running out of money… although it breaks my heart I just can’t afford to keep the ute any more so it’s on the market.

A lot of good things have happened in the last few months of course.. it’s just that when bad things happen you can’t see anything but what’s in front of you. And doing that is just bringing back a lot of the old self-destructive thoughts again. It’s awful but I feel like I can’t keep fighting them forever, and the things I want in my life just seem to be forever out of reach. So what’s the point. *shrug*