happy halloween... or not

Went to a seminar this evening after work about legal risk, insurance and contracts. I actually found it quite interesting, and its not too often that I find anything interesting which doesn't involve anything commonly regarded amongst most as being "geeky". Anyway, I now know what to do to cover my backside in the event that I cause some catastrophic disaster if I end up with my own engineering firm. Eeeexcellent...

Kinda glad I got home late - I would have missed any trick-or-treaters who happened to come past. Halloween, what's the bloody point? I really don't get it. To me its just one of them stupid American things that people down here do just because they do it in the movies, and the TV shows. I don't know about letting my kids wander around knocking on people's doors asking them for candy. I mean come on, aren't we supposed to discourage kids from taking candy from strangers? At least its not so full-blown around here, we never really get more than 10 kids on a night, and they're usually the kids from our street that we know, so a fun-size pack does the trick, with leftovers to spare. Otherwise we just pretend that no-one is home.

Heard something on the radio during the drive to work this morning about how some American guy described test cricket as "a sport that assumes that you have nothing better to do, judging by the pace of the game". I'm a cricket fan, and personally don't mind bumming around in front of the TV if it happens to be on, but I found that amusing. Though admittedly, maybe I just don't have anything better to do. Will most probably find myself sitting in front of the tele watching the upcoming test series against Sri Lanka on the weekends coming up (may even hit up the 'Gabba and check out a day of the "action"), and even check up the score online when I'm at work.

My favourite news story of the day was about this guy who got fined $400 for throwing a bottle out his car window in anger after a woman gave him the "small penis" gesture - a raised pinky (I'm sure I don't need to go into detail describing this). This gesture was the centre of the latest RTA advertising campaign, and for those of you unfortunate enough to not get the RTA ads on TV (I do, since I get Southern Cross Ten and other "regional" channels, and hence get a lot of NSW-based ads), it basically involves young men driving and doing things they regard as cool, such as burnouts and speeding, and looking pleased with themselves, while onlookers give them a pathetic look while raising the pinky, hence implying that they were compensating for a lack of something. I thought this was an interesting move from the RTA, as I was always of the opinion that people may in fact get offended by such gestures, especially the idiots whose idea of cool is to do stupid and dangerous things in their cars, and so encouraging it probably wasn't the best idea. But hey it happened, someone got offended, but at least all that he did was throw the bottle. In my opinion, the outcome could have been worse - a lot worse...

Anyway I have a lot of annual reports to read - believe it or not, some of them are quite an interesting read, and its good to know what is happening with the companies that I am throwing money at. Until November, take it easy folks.

another day, another post

Well, the weather was good today, which is a start. Hope it holds up for the weekend...

Kept hearing about Peter Garrett today, and the whole Kyoto backflip thing - all I can say is that I loved the way he moved his body back in his Midnight Oil days. Along with Mr Bean, he was probably one of the key influences on my dance style hehe

Well, I finally signed up for a 3 month gym membership today. I'm kinda hoping that it will make me stay motivated - I used to work out on my own in the gym we have in our office building, but I kinda skipped a week because I didn't feel like it, and that week turned into months... But now, with the whole personal trainer and a training program, I am hoping I can keep at it. The main problem is the fact that I can't wake up in the mornings, and I want to do my workouts in the morning before work, I suppose the solution to that would be to go to bed earlier - easier said than done. Oh well, we'll see how it goes I suppose. Would be good to get fitter so that I can last longer than a couple of minutes in a game of touch footy without feeling I've run a marathon. Also would be good to crack the 1 hour barrier in both the 10km run at the Gold Coast Marathon and the 12km at the Bridge to Brisbane. Might not be the most realistic goal for me, but I figure I may as well aim high :)

Anyway I'm gonna try going to bed before midnight and will see if it helps me in getting up just that little bit earlier tomorrow morning.

one day later...

Now, I wonder how long it will be until I get bored onto this whole blogging thing? I've been trying to think of certain topics I can kinda stick to, but then I figured that would just defeat the purpose of ranting erratically. So, here we go...

Election time is in the air again. You can almost smell it. Its beginning to reach the point where I can't watch TV without catching an ad flogging some party or telling me not to vote for someone because they pick their ear wax and eat it. I can't listen to the radio without hearing cheesy jingles telling me that "Sam's the Man". I can't drive around without seeing pointless billboards and people wearing shirts promoting their favourite little man. I can't read a news article without seeing something about a campaign or a worm or who's kissed the most babies. November 25, you couldn't come any sooner... Though little Johnny decided to pledge a $5 million grant to Carnegie Corporation for the development of their CETO wave energy technology. I am a Carnegie shareholder. That makes me happy :)

Hmm what else is there... Oh how about that weather? All weekend there were heaps of moths fluttering around everywhere, especially around the roads, they liked to run into my windshield. Oh well, at least that would stop me from seeing those cheesy billboards. Storms are great to watch from far away, but can be a bit unnerving when they're booming away right above me. Especially when you're on the computer. All this fragile electronic equipment. I mean, yeah, I use a surge protected powerboard and stuff, but I guess I'm just paranoid. The storminess also managed to wake me up at some stupid hour in the morning.

Speaking of, now that the sun is coming up so early in the morning, I really want to get into a habit of getting up early in the mornings and going for a run, a swim or hit the gym but I just can't seem to do it. It would help if I went to bed earlier, but I'm not all that great at falling asleep, so I'd just be wasting my time by going to bed early, I'd just lay there staring at the ceiling. Time I could be spending doing other things, like, er, blogging. Or playing Sim City 4 or reading up about shares (my two latest addictions). Anyway, I need to go find a letter from the gym that I managed to lose - they sent me a letter offering a special deal and I need to find it, from memory it expires at the end of this month so I need to act fast.

Just before I do go, it would be cool to come up with some kind of sign off saying thingy. I really can't think of anything right now, I think I used up all my creativity long ago. So if anyone has any ideas, do share. For now, I shall experiment until I find something that sticks which I'm comfortable with.

square one

Ok so I decided to start a blog. Now I don't know what to do with it. I suppose a first post would be handy, which I guess is the whole point of this post, which happens to be my first post. Well, that all works out then. The whole purpose of this blog is to have somewhere to vent my insanely useless and irrelevant ramblings that would normally be subjected to those I communicate with. This way I don't have to put people through the pain of my erratic and seemingly random diarrhoea of words that just don't make any sense at all. To those actually reading this, I am so so sorry...