I like a tart kiwi

Don't mind me, I'm just pulling a cats bum face after eating an awesome kiwi fruit. Nice and tart and zingy. And a tangelo - they must be in season too.

I'm usually more of a vegies man. I like my broccoli, pees and spuds with loads of heavy spicy sauce, depending on the dish. Indian and Thai are perfect. But fruit, hmm, not so much; I've always maintained that if spring rolls grew on trees I'd eat more fruit. It has to be really really good for me to bother. What's with these big watery appley nothing franken strawberries for example - why bother, they taste like watery nothing. But that kiwi. >mmm<

Saturdays

... are always a rush.
Generally I tumble out of bed soon after 6 and get Annalise up dressed and fed ready for gymnastics.


Where she runs around pretending to be a fairy. Then we're in the car back home to pick up Alex and Adrian and continue on to swimming. Annalise is almost able to get her head out of the water by herself and Adrian and I go in together in what is more a class to teach them to close their mouths and not breath. He like it at any rate. Alex usually powers out her k in the outside lap pool.


Then we usually head back home, lunch, head out shopping for the week and finally return home in the late afternoon if we didn't already have something else on. In the mean time we have squeezed in several loads of washing and tried to attend to any house stuff we need to. Obviously we also try to fit in some real estate viewing where we can.
I do love a beer Saturday night.

My wrist is fine now, thanks for asking.

A few weeks back I buggered my wrist using my tool the wrong way. 20mm may not sound much but its tough trying to get through it, even on high power - my tool jammed up and it just about riped my hand off.

I'm no handyman, but in trying to build a fridge slide for the $X$ I've got pretty good with a few power tools such as the circular and jig saws. Apparently that skill does not extend to drills. At one point I was trying to drill a 100mm diameter hole with a hole saw on the end of a power drill through 20mm marine ply. About half way through it grabbed the saw, twisting the drill out of my hand and wrenching my wrist in the process.

Three weeks later I still couldn't lift a milk bottle from the fridge so I went and had it x-rayed. They wouldn't take a picture of me flashing the bird - I did try. Turns out nothing is broken, just bruised. I was going to scan and post the x-rays but meeeehhh, cbf'd.

I've had to lower the gym weights but the wrist has slowly been getting better and yesterday I did the pump class with my normal 30kg + weights again. Now I'm sitting here with a cold, a "saw" wrist and achingly sore boobies.

The moral of the story is don't be a tool with tools.

Myelomas return

A little over a year ago dad had a pain in his spine that turned out to be Multiple Myeloma. He underwent chemo which worked well but broke his personality and sanity. It was a long climb out from depression for him but he's a strong and loving man. Just when he's feeling fit and enjoying life again he got blindsided buy the news that it has returned and is aggressively eating his chest and ribs. He starts treatment on Monday. Because of the problems he had on the original chemo that is now ruled out as a option. We may be looking at stem cell therapy or who knows what.
We just had a lovely lunch together at a local pizzeria.
They gave me lemons.
Love you dad.
See you soon

I had a boy look for the fire-extinguisher

There was a fire in a bin immediately outside my window.
Smoke Billowing
Bystanders gawking
Headless of my own safety I gallantly sprang into action and ...
checked the kitchen...
checked the hallway...
asked my colleagues - 'um, where is the fire-extinguisher?"
'[giggles] Anhh, it's right beside you'. Oh, yeah, right at my knee*.
So, where were we.. Grabbing the fire-extinguisher I ran out the door and
and
.
.
.
and
.
.
.
bloody pin how do you pull it out?
.
.
.
and
.
....
and finally, heroically, blasted ash all over the place. Now my cloths stink of ash and burnt plastic.

I think we have the photos up on the internet before Security even arrive.



Yes, I know I need a hair cut.



* actually outside my office that I must have walked past hundreds of times.

Life is not here for Sombody else to live

Alternate title: So what if you lack confidence, suck it up and get one with it.

There is a profusion of gen X's and Y's out there in blog land with anxiety and confidence issues. Nerds, geeks, dags, the overweight / underweight and generally people with issues.

Life is not here for Somebody else to live. This time, this place, your 'now' - it is yours.

Live it

Don't put barriers around yourself that are not there.

It is not for the beautiful people and all the other imaginary creations of the media out there. It is for the 12 year old Mexican kid playing soccer with his friends. It is for the retired Roman Soldier with some mundane task in his shop. It is for everyone who has ever been human and you have as much right to experience and be here and be you as anyone.

If you like him - tell him, ask him out for coffee. If you want to dance with her it won't happen if you stand there. You know what - you may fail. And the downside of that is???? Go out there and be audacious. There is nothing wrong with failure or being introverted or a bit of a dag or the kid who was bullied at school.

That said - If you have depression or you feel you have an anxiety disorder - go and get professional help. See your GP.

comments are open so long as nobody is nasty

Got Crabs?

Saturday afternoon saw us down at Balmoral beach. The kids played in the sand for a few hours. I'm not sure if the best part was the kookaburra that nicked Alex's prawn cutlet or the kitsch Leb wedding going on behind us complete with the bride disguised as a huge meringue and pink lace bridesmaids chowing down on kebabs.

Taronga

Tromped our way through the Zoo over the weekend. Adrian was fascinated by the pelicans.

And another thing

What the hell was this all about?

Michael Hutchence may have done it but he had pulling power and had just been doing it with Kim Wilson, which would make anyone do something dumb.

----UPDATE----
Guilty
--------------


... segway ...

Speaking of which: what the hell happened to Black+White Magazine? Which by now should have 100 beautiful pages of artfully disrobed Australian Olympians. Stephanie Rice would have made a splash.

I'm a nerd herder

So this is the first week that students are back for Sem 2 classes.

I'm ultimately responsible for the running of the online teaching websites - wikies, blogs the online classrooms and a plethora of other technologies. We record in the order of a thousand hrs of lectures a week and podcast them. We get data feeds from the student system and emails from some other system and staff details from yet another system. The online tools via which students communicate with each other, read their lecture notes and submit assignments and the integration code between all these things is all mime to make go and provide staff support. We train the academics in how to use the tools and have a help desk to answer their questions when they didn't listen in class. I also have to look after desktop support for the section of the university in which we are located. I've a good team, some systems administrators, programmers, trainers and miscellaneous IT workers who all work well outside the box of their job descriptions.

On the slowest of days we are busy. Students are accessing their online units 24x7. We are busy on xmass day. Some students do courses that are entirely online and for them the systems I own are the university. This is the time of year that we hire extra support and put the KPI's and strategy meetings aside and knuckle down under the load, do the unpaid overtime and eat lunch at our desks. Academics get stressed and somehow it is our fault when academics do unusual and creative things with their online units. If we fuck up I get 20 thousand emails letting me know exactly how bad we fucked up. Nothing like real time feedback - it is like working naked - everybody can see everything you do and every little mistake.

So far this semester we haven't had a singe piece of hate mail - which after 40+ K enrollments into many hundreds of online units is, I feel, no small achievement.

How was your day?

Two G&T's down

Two G&T's down on a Friday afternoon.
I had something in mind to post but the kids are screaming and for the life of me I can't remember what it was that was so impotent important.

60 Minutes

This weekend make sure you catch 60 Minutes.
See Sean fly into a tree

-----------
UPDATE

Video and story