spamento mori — death will come. get a life policy.

wow — nothing like the direct approach, i guess… if only i didn’t have all my spare cash committed to helping the grieving relatives of the former nigerian foreign minister (& getting one of those absolutely-no-study-required PhDs)…

typo? this software will detect viruses… surely they meant to say install?

got the skillz to pay the billz? working through yet another minor crisis of confidence… not quite out the other side as yet, but getting there… & yeah, i’m well & truly tired of the same old schtick after all these years… but, in the slightly disturbing tradition of the gubernator, we ain’t gonna take it any more… (& yes, in answer to the “what do you wanna do with your life” question, i wanna rock…)

currently drawing inspiration from:

• keri — the work she’s been putting into her thesis is astounding…
• sunday — looking forward to saddling up & heading for 100+ kilometres from front door to front door…
• the avalanches — that boy needs therapy (purely psychosomatic!)

behaviour monitors: apply within — a marvellous opportunity to lose weight (could stand to lose a little more), learn a new skill (need some of those), or… control my temper?!? why you little…!!!

Putting plans into action will improve your prospects, but this takes discipline. Ask a group of friends to monitor your behaviour. That way, if you fall off track, they’ll be around to correct you. You have a marvellous opportunity to lose weight, learn a new skill, or control your temper. Be prepared to make a few mistakes along the way. With the help of your mates, you’ll cross the finish line in record time.

http://www.radioheadlive.com — tickets for the sydney show (23 april 2004) on sale monday 3 november…

freaky weather — that time of year when the weather just can’t make up its mind… rainy trip to work yesterday (with the sun breaking through on cue not long after i arrived…) & then today, beautiful this morning & the afternoon getting more & more ominously overcast… & now, again, glorious sunshine… & daylight saving is just great, cruising around centennial park at 7.00 in the evening…

brain — ow, my brain is rapidly approaching hurts… there’s just too much happening… option 1: whinge about it, throw hands in the air & collapse into heap… option 2: look where i’m going, chill, & keep moving… i’m trying to stick with option 2 (but years of training are hard to shake)…

Q. how much do you know about filemaker pro?

A. a bit.

Q. how much do you need to know about filemaker pro?

A. more. much, much more.

Q. what are you doing about that?

A. learning as quickly as i can.

Q. & writing on this page is helping by…?

A. good point.

it’s later than you think… so i was planning to ride over to andrew’s on sunday morning before we headed out to play squash… the alarm goes off at six, & i think, well, mebbe a slightly more leisurely start to the day & i press the button marked “more sleep please” & head back to napland for an hour or so… when i finally surface, keri wanders past dressed for yoga & casually mentions that daylight savings started at 2am… doh! one immediate change of plans later, i drop keri off in bondi junction & drive to marrickville, where i find that andrew & anna are at least as surprised about the whole daylight savings thing as i was…

boofhead — a slightly rancid smell that won’t quit & hair full of little black crumbly bits of foam tell me it’s new helmet time, but my big, boofy head doesn’t wanna fit into any of the helmets that are currently on display around the place… i think i want a bell x-ray, or mebbe a giro xen, but no one has any bells or giros available at the moment… i keep getting told some very involved tale about the shops having to wait while a new distributor gets sorted out or something… everyone’s hopeful of getting stock within the next month, which is of little immediate help…

bracing — ventured into the ocean for my first swim of not-quite summer yesterday afternoon… & oh my if it wasn’t teeth-chatteringly cold… not surprisingly, i had giles baths all to myself… cold! & when you got out, windy! but, at the same time, in some way that i can’t quite articulate, & which may just be an attempt to rationalise my actions, it was great. i had that deep, i’ve been snap-frozen feeling for about four hours afterwards…

sydney to the ’gong — it’s on next sunday… although this year it’s sydney almost to the ’gong then back up the old highway to some park somewhere in sutherland… which doesn’t quite have the same ring to it… part of the coastal road is out of action until 2006 or thereabouts, hence the new route… fortunately, all the insane hills in the royal national park have been retained… hurrah!

hmmm… andrew mentioned the sidebar was appearing below the content instead of to the right of it in mozilla on the mac (although it was okay in safari)… turns out the page wasn’t rendering properly in mozilla on windoze either… why? well, from what i can see, it was because i’d dare to specify a width for the navigation/sidebar thingy…

ummm… as soon as i specified a width for the sidebar (either the sidebar div itself, or an element within it), mozilla insisted on rendering the sidebar below the content div… why, i don’t know… the only two solutions i could come up with were: 1. don’t specify a width for the sidebar (which stuffs up a couple of other things); or 2. specify an absolute position for the sidebar… so i did that, & now mozilla seems happy to put the sidebar next to the content… i’m guessing there’s a reason for that, but i can’t quite figure it out…

the bikedoctor — says my bike is a-ok… woo!

ooh, a letter! from the House of Pimpin’…

uh oh — error fetching codec? i hate you, microsoft media player…

big birthday bundle of happy — it’s my brother’s birthday today! & it will come as no surprise that the birthday package is, uh, not gonna make it in time… but, you know, i missed karen’s birthday earlier in the month, so it’s only fair that i miss kevin’s, right? uh, anyway… present(s) will be on the way, soon… no, really…

kings whack pigs — finished up missing basketball & yoga last night, but the kings beat the pigs 97-83 & yoga will be there next week…

fantastic — glorious weather again this morning… dropping my bike in for a quick once over tomorrow… totally cruising…

punk’d — you know who you are…

uh oh — kings versus pigs at the entertainment centre tonight! i am so there… except… wednesday’s yoga night… & i missed last week… mindless sporting event or reinvigorating yoga class… you may or may not be surprised to know that i’m having difficulty deciding…

run down — verging on coming down with something again… been feeling a little flat for a few days, & this morning a borderline sore throat… okay, i think that makes the basketball/yoga decision for me… basketball, definitely. no, wait, i mean yoga!

wanna grow, up to be, a datadebaser — filemaker pro is kinda nice… kinda weird in places, but overall, kinda nice…

undoubtedly awful — this page is badly implemented… the stylesheet’s embedded, & kludgey on top of that, the mark-up’s not properly semantic… & that’s before you start in on the content… i’ll probably get around to fixing things up at some point… also: some things may just be broken. my bad if so. please refer to the “probably get around to” statement for an indication of when things are likely to improve…

thwip-thwip-thwip — my head hurts…

yawn — mr sleepy-eepy goes to work…

moronserver — if you were going to go to the trouble of sending spam while pretending to be the president of the united states, wouldn’t you think you’d go the extra mile & at least spell george correctly? unless, of course, the mispelling was intended as cutting satire?

positively balmy — it’s a gorgeous day in sydney today… blue sky, minimal haze, warm… great day to be either at the beach or stuck in front of a database… so why didn’t i requisition a waterproof laptop when i had the chance?

meep — & you may ask yourself, how did i get here?

objects hit by mirror are closer than they appear — i’ve often wondered how much it would hurt to get clipped on the elbow by someone’s wing mirror… focuses the attention, i can tell you… surprisingly, as long as the car has a folding mirror (& you don’t subsequently fall off), it doesn’t actually hurt that much…

is ted smarter than the weather? getting mirrored happened last friday, a day that was also memorable for raining just lightly enough when i was leaving home for me to think riding was still a good idea… of course, by the time i got to centennial park it was pouring, so i was totally drowned by the time i got to work… all hail the waterproof backpack… if only i’d thought to pack a spare pair of socks…

happy happy joy joy — getting whacked & soaked on friday morning was pretty much emblematic of last week…

this week, however — is gonna be a big, coconut-scented bundle of fun…

oh, well, that explains it — apparently mars has been stalled in my communication zone… meanwhile, in other horoscopic news:

You can reasonably argue that much is not as you intended it to be. You can’t, though, make a very convincing case to support your claim that you face a terrible situation. A benign sky is taking good care of your primary needs. As these include the desire to feel secure, loved and engaged in something constructive, you should ask yourself how important your secondary needs can possibly be. These all involve wishing you could exert more power, control, choice and authority. All in good time. For now, be glad of what you’ve got.

& fair enough, too — astrological perspective be with me & defend… &, of course, heartfelt thanks to the benign sky…

fuckin’ yay. okay, so i’m temporarily in charge. generally that’s working out. today, however… got in at seven this morning to finalise papers for the meeting that started at eight. got out of that just in time to be hit by the major funding round results that were announced at noon. haven’t drawn breath since. it’s now six-fifty. why am i writing a stupid blog entry? well, i’m waiting for it to stop pissing down outside, aren’t i? like i said, fuckin’ yay.

oh man… who put me in charge?

horatio wiggins — currently leads today’s nom-de-spam competition… although fern colon & mudhead are giving horatio a run for his money…

body buttered — keri arrived back from her yoga retreat on saturday… with the goes-without-saying exception of having to drive up & down the coast for approximately forever, she had a fantastic time… & brought me back a present — a big tub of coconut & vanilla body butter… my revised plans for the rest of the year now include a sustained period of smelling like a giant ice-cream… oh, my elbows are gonna be smooth, smooth, smooth…

duking it out — spent most of sunday with marauding canberranites… dave, fiona, der simonster & chrisT were attending many & diverse entertainments over the course of the weekend… chrisT set a cracking pace with tickets for absolutely everything: rugger on friday night, livid on saturday & weird al yankovic on sunday… weird al was the main attraction for the majority of the rest o’ them… ev was down from brisbane as well… we all finished up at the duke of edinburgh on sunday night for pre-al drinks & victuals… fiona, anna & i settled in at the pub while the lads plus amanda & chrisF went to get weirded up… judging from the blow-by-blows, the yankovicianados enjoyed… they seemed particularly taken by some of the video shown during costume changes…

assault moth — ow! just got slapped upside the head by a moth the size of a fifty cent piece… if slappy the deer appears in the doorway i am so going home…

fusebox 2.0

lemony picket — the weather started clearing just as the picket line was getting really boring yesterday (no one released the hounds or nuffin), so i scarpered, leapt onto my treadly when i got home & spent the afternoon cruising about… there’s more industrial action planned next week… i can feel an all day ride coming on…

home delivery xanax — no, thank you, but no…

rising damp — coming up on five or so days of constant drizzly rain… & cold, too… i mean, it’s october, hurry up & warm the fuck up… i got bike riding to do & a tan that needs, well, more than just working on…

strike me lucky — off to join the picket lines today, the nteu are striking in protest at the university’s last minute decision not to sign a new enterprise bargaining agreement… a decision based on the government’s introduction of legislation linking new funding for the sector to some ideologically driven workplace reforms… this government? ideologically driven? who woulda thunk it?

long weekend — took friday off & met up with jaine & helen (two of my uts buddies) for lunch, then went & saw matchstick men with jaine… it was great to catch up with them, we had a fantastic indian meal at dahkni in glebe & the movie was okay, if slightly annoying in parts (nic cage as a twitchy obsessive-compulsive con man… enough with the acting already)…

noocassle — keri’s gone to byron for the week for a yoga retreat, & i drove as far as newcastle with her on sunday to check out an adam cullen exhibition… the exhibition was good, some great paintings, although we’d seen some of them in other shows… i caught the train back to sydney, rain all the way & got completely frozen waiting for the bus at central…

continental shelving — so the missing bits for my shelving turned up on thursday, & i spent a fair bit of the weekend putting them together & sorting out my room, & wow, they have made such a huge difference… they look great, & i’ve been divesting a lot of crap that i’ve had jumbled up in boxes, & yeah, my room is just a thousand times better… i’ve somewhere to put things, & i’ve got desk space again, & yeah, everything’s coming together really well… i gotta get a new blind or two, & some incidental bits & pieces to finish up, but yeah, one of the better furniture-related decisions i’ve made… not that that’s saying much, i mean, i’ve set that particular bar pretty low over the years…

mr grumpy’s weblog — crap. welcome to grumpsville, population me.

slept in, grumped up — huge attack of the snarks this morning… slept in, was going to ride, wasn’t going to ride, gotta play squash this afternoon, gotta carry another change of clothes & my racquet, so maybe i should drive, no, i’ll ride, no, i’ll drive, can’t find my wallet, had to email a file to someone so my pc goes on some bizarre disk-thrashing excursion that takes approximately forever… & the floor of my room’s still covered with crap because the missing shelving parts haven’t materialised… missed yoga last night because i was busy getting drowned on the way home from work… cooked something for dinner that didn’t turn out properly… can’t quite get the exact tone to convey my current level of whininess with the precise degree of accuracy that i’m after… grrr…

ergonomically suspect — there’s something wrong with my workstation set up, i’ve been getting headaches & a sore neck… can’t figure out if my monitor’s too high or low or what… i think mebbe my new desk is at a slightly different level, mebbe a bit higher than the old one, so mebbe i need to lower my monitor a little… which i’ve just done, so expect exciting news updates on this front as the days progress… wow, how good is it being me? i mean, really…

zillions — approximate number of things i have to do…

significantly less than zillions — approximate number of things i can be arsed doing at the moment…

also significantly less than zillions — approximate number of things i have actually been arsed to do recently that have turned out reasonably well…

get over myself already — sheesh. kill the headlights & put it in neutral…

not sure — if i need the power of positive thinking or the power of greyskull…

or mebbe — i should just go & stealth disco someone…