Ever so briefly:

I'm laying on my dodgy mattress, which on the shag carpet floor of my squishy room in my new place. And loving every part of it to pieces. That's right, I've finally moved out. There is so much to write about on this subject, but I desperately need sleep. Till next time...

It's been a while! I should start by apologising for my last scant post, with its vague description of my low mood at the time, and then my complete lack of anything, even comments, from that point onwards.

I still don't want to go into much detail about things, there is still a lot of stuff to deal with. I do want to assure you all that I am doing much much better. In a way, I am filled with more energy that I have had for years. That same unfocused chaotic energy that I loved so much when I was going though uni, that has been missing from my life of late. But I'm a different person now than I was back then, maybe this time I will actually be able to use it for something constructive?

I'm finally moving out of home, something I should really have done 6 months ago when I first wanted to. I had originally planned to move out on my own; get my own little shoebox that I could pad out with all my own things. Two weekends of scanning newspapers indicated how expensive that was going to be. Now, the opportunity to live with a very old friend of mine has come up, a guy from high school. He is the well polished, immaculatly clean kind of guy, perhaps my polar opposite. He is a great cook, and makes kickarse coffee. His old housemates called him Batman for all the gadgets he owns. For far less than what I was planning to spend on a one bedroom place each we will be able to get an absolute mansion of a place.

The first thing I am going to do is get a double bed. The second thing will be a Serious fishtank. The third thing will be to get a proper desk for my computer. One not built into the wall with no gap behind for cables. I am 100 percent defineatly absolutely NOT going to get a giant flatscreen High Def TV.

My birthday was a few weeks ago (thank you for all the wishes!). This year, for a change, I actually went out with some friends for dinner. I don't usually do anything like that, I'm to lazy to organise anything normally. This year everything was organised for me. We went bowling, where I wiped the floor with everyone (Karen wasn't there), and then we went out to dinner at warners at the bay. Pretty fun, nice light company.

Went to Camberra for road trip, drinking, and socialising. Was so much fun, so glad I let myself get talked into it. Was good to catch up with friends and meet some new people, even if I bearly even said hi to Mav :P.

For the SCAers out there, i am heading to Spring War after work tomorrow. Sooo looking forward to this. It will be cold, my cloak has phased out while I've been absent. Going to join the Felag, and work on my flagging drinking capacity :D.

Its late, more next time!

Did you know? The Wheel of Time series rocks.

Current Food: Goldburgs on Darby does fantastic Ceaser Salad. Trust me, its awesome.

Sorry for not posting. Everything I could write about is either private (yes, some things still are), or extreamly depressing, and LJ is a bad place for that. Suffice to say I'm feeling pretty miserable at the moment.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see."
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Put a star next to things you are ashamed to have read.
5) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Part of me is getting really angry about climate change and oil shortages and food prices and commercialism and all kinds of things. I want to rant and preach, hurl critisisms through the netwaves, blame everyone around me for the horrendous state of the world. I am burning with enthusiasm about this.

Unfortunately part of me wants to kick some more arse on my brother's Guitar Hero III.

I have absolutely no desire to write about the holiday, spectacular though it was.

(... Don't worry Serck, this entry is about 3 hours old. I'm going actually going to bed now, like a good little engineer.)

Did you know? Ever run out of shaving cream on your international holiday? Try shampoo.

Current Food: Those honey BBQ wraps at KFC are spectacular. I am such a comsumer whore.

Hey all! I just wanted to post here so I could put "New Zealand" down there in the little location thingy. Things have been wonderful, I'm sleeping like magic, thoroughly relaxed, and hardly sunburnt at all really. We are heading out of Auckland in our sexy little hire car in a few minutes. Will be home in about a week. Lots of love..

Current Food: Everything..

It is the Eve (technically) of our Tropical holiday. At exactly this time tomorrow (from my perspective anyway), I will both be at Vanessa's place bearly able to sleep from excitement, or we will have just crossed the International Date Line, and I will be heading to the resort for our 1st night. I am pumped! Well, no, actually. Right now I'm yawning my head off, since it is very late, and I should be in bed. I still have a whole 8 hours of work to get through, and that is going to be tough enough.

But I couldn't leave without posting this one last time. I know that whenever I go on holidays the time feels ten times as long as it really is. This will be my longest holiday to date, including all the family things I've ever been on. When I get back I doubt I'll remember where I live. So I have to post this, my last thoughts before I head away.

I've just finished watching Season 1 of Dexter. And, what I said in my last post, it is beautiful. With my intense disgust for anything made from TV, I rarely watch anything at all. But this hooked me right from the very start, and I haven't been able to do anything with spare time except watch it since.

Of course I had to watch the rest of it before I left - otherwise all the gorgeous build up would have been wasted. I would have hated it with nuggets of advertising buried inside it, Dexter's dark trains of thought interrupted with yammering about phone approved personal loans or bright cheery junk food ads. The long seven day gap between episodes would cause the series's sharp tone to fade away, until it becomes nothing more than background noise set against everything else that happens in a week. Just thinking about it makes me realise just how wretched the life of a TV junkie must be. A jewel like this was not meant for the cesspit of commercial television.

I realised a while ago that I would never become a professional writer. I am too flighty, too sheltered, too uncomitted. Too doubting on myself maybe? It is, for me, just a hobby, but I can definately live with that. When I started watching Dexter I was suckered in by the glossy look, the atmosphere, the acting, the music; the glossy paintwork basically.

But once I got into it, it was the story that kept me captivated. Whenever I watch or read something that I really enjoy, my imagination is stoked into a bonfire. I start mentally writing how I would describe things, and how I would change them. I usually steal plot ideas for my novel - like most writers I suppose. So when I watched Dexter that same thing happened. I was writing my own version. I was piecing together the story the way I thought it should go. And Dexter's writer, for the most part, agreed with me. I could glimpse the end before it shone onto my tiny little monitor. I could see how it all plugged together, how the author had moulded it into life. I felt like Dexter in the presence of the Ice Truck Killer's work. I think I enjoyed that as much as anything else.

So Dexter is Dark, Disturbing and Gory. But excellent. Watch it.

I'll post this tomorrow, if when I wake up it isn't complete drivel.

It is the worst time to be posting for me right now. Physically, I'm at a very low eb. Friday afternoon usually means a week of insomnia has built up, and beer O clock is the spark in the powder keg of sleepyness. I also have a random headache, which always makes writing hard. Nevertheless, I need to do this now, because I don't trust myself to do it before I leave.

Vanessa and I are now only five days away from our holiday to Samoa and New Zealand. Woo! So exciting. It will be my very first time overseas, and we have piles of stuff we are going to do while we are there. Too many things to list right now, but if things go well I'll post our itinery up before I head off. I wanted to take my lappy with me so I could keep a journal of the trip as we went, but we will probably be pushing it for space as it is. Writing from the paper age is way too slow. So instead of that I'm planning to use the video features on my camera to keep a video diary. So don't worry, you won't be missing out on any boring crap.

Aside from the trip thing, there has been a fair bit happening. I stayed at Vanessa's auntie's farm, at Bathurst, last weekend. I've never been to a real farm before, and it was awesome. I fed the potty calf, and fed and groomed their extreamly old horse. All the other animals are pretty autonomous, so I didn't get to feed any of them. The views down the hill are amazing. I heard it said that when you are on the farm it feels like it is the only place in the world. I love that idea. I can't wait to head back there - We will probably go down some time in Spring when all the baby lambs need to be taggedmarked.

After my burst of writing last week I thought it was about time I did some tidying up on my lj. My tag cloud has become much busier, as you may have noticed. Other minor things too. One day I'll have to get that writing journal. One day...

I met some of Vanessa's Sydneyite friends last week too. I met Vanessa after work "at the pub". In newcastle "at the pub" means that you just slap on a new shirt and spay some deorderant, and you are ready to rock. In Sydney it means full business attire. So I was somewhat underdressed when I turned up to the "pub" - to the point that they nearly didn't let me in. Vanessa's new scene is a completely different world to the one I'm used to - and until last Friday I didn't realise just how different. Of course, her friends were lovely, and I'm sure I had them all charmed.

I've been watching Dexter. I don't usually glut myself on serieses, despite having about 100 gigs worth of them on my hard drive. Most things on TV I can't stand. They make my brain slow down. Dexter is beautiful. Elegant. Real Art. So unlike the steaming crap that assails me from each of the three TVs in my house. I've watched 4 episodes of it today. I'm addicted. It is fiery_ichor's fault.

I had my pay performance review at work this week. I was extreamly nervious - as usual. Logically, there is no reason to be. I've been kicking arse, and the boss is very easy to get along with. Still, there is a fair bit of importance resting on those few moments, and that is the stuff I'm not too good at. Despite nerves, it went almost flawlessly. I played well, danced around the tricky questions, didn't fill the pauses with unnecessary words, outwardly appeared calm and in control. Words are a fun game. Irritatingly there is a layer of abstraction between my supervisor and whoever decides the payrise, so dispite the excelent negotiations, I won't know precisely how things went until I get back.

That will do for now - I'll put this up before we go away, after editing.

Current Food: At Lime the other night I had Roast Duck. I've never had it any way other than fried before, and this was much better. It is like an extra greezy chicken, that tastes a little like pork, and a lot like something entirely different. Definately worth trying, the next time you are out at a place that charges $30 for a main.

This is from an old unfinished idea that I dug up while cleaning out old hard drives. I had a massive list of semi planned episodes for this, and (despite the first episode being pretty crap in my opinion) I think the whole thing would have been moderately entertaining. There are several flaws, and I can see how much I've learned since I wrote this in the beginning, so I guess it is good to see how I'm improving. Anyway, on to the crap.

( Who Actually Does That - Episode Two )

Thanks to Caffeine, you get to experience TWO entries written by me today. Aren't you all ever so lucky?

Here is a highly important thing that I think most people have yet to realise. Trains. And just how good they are. Every fortnight when I make the trip down to visit my Sydney girlfriend, I have to choose between my sleek comfortable car, and the dirty crowded smelly train. And the train consistently wins.

Environmentally conscious, safer than the freeway, arguably cheaper (once wear and tear on the car has been factored in), and a more social experience. Trains are all of these things. But they are not enough on their own. The real clincher is this: Time. Basically, spending two hours driving in a car is a wasted two hours. Hands and eyes are constantly occupied. The best you can do is listen to an audio book, or music. Not to mention the driving. Truck drivers get paid to drive all day, because basically driving sucks and no one actually wants to do it. Unless you have one of those cars which costs more than a small house to own, costs more than a US Presidential Candidacy to run, yet holds less passengers than my "small" car.

But the train, on the other hand, leaves my hands, eyes and mind and completely free to do whatever I want. Right now, for example, I'm typing. Other times I have played Civilization, read highly intellectual books like "The Sword of Shanara", and watched Xmen 3 with the drooling yoboes sitting behind me. These bountiful exercises would have been missed if I had chosen to drive.

Does the incessant chatter of the rabble all around you bother you? That's what MP3 players are for. Alternatively, like me, you can let the torrent of chatter become meaningless white noise, a snug cradle for your focus to live in. Then there is the scenery; coasting over the Hawksby on a sunny day is lovely (at least until daylight savings ends and the only time you get to see sunlight is through the window from your cell at the office).

Don't get me wrong, there are some interesting features of the whole business. Let us consider the following gems.

* Crack whores may talk to you. What is it about my ruggardly handsome features that attracts crack whores? I know the ladies in question were crack whores because one wondered out loud to me whether they would be able to score at their "friend's" place. Actually, they weren't that bad. One of them kindly offered me a cheap, off the books, room at her government provided housing. She even left me her number when I feigned interest. This was shortly before the two of them invited a couple of adolescent boys to come along to their crack party. I wish I was making this up.

* Bad parenting. When and if I become a parent, I will no doubt have a greater sympathy for this kind of thing. Until then I reserve the right to be irritated by it. Piercing screams carry a very long way on on the narrow confines of a train. Most parents resort to blatant bribery, such as "Be good until we get there and I will buy you a new Wii game!" It is a safe promise, since their daemon offspring have the patience of roughly the average commercial break.

* Needing to pee. It is probably the vibrations or something, but I can never last the entire journey to Sydney without needing to go. Fortunately, the toilets at Hornsby are the cleanest on the planet. I know this, because every time I land on Hornsby station they are being cleaned. Day, night, whenever. Peeing in the toilets on the train is like like trying to thread a needle during an earthquake. Don't even think about sitting down, unless you collect diseases, and are missing some of the more exotic Hepatitis strains.

* Dry humping 14 yr olds. Other people do not have the luxury of being entertained by simple things like books and laptops. And, as any hot blooded human reading this knows, boredom causes sex to float to the surface thoughts. So I could understand a little fondling here and there. But these kids aren't even old enough to get into an M rated movie. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is an M rated movie. I swear they catch the train as a cheap alternative to those hotels where you pay by the hour. I thought those hotels were already the cheap alternative. Like any adult complaining about those younger, I know that I am making myself seem like and old grouch right about now. So I might as well say that in my day we never did things like that. At least I didn't anyway. Lucky brats.

So no one could say that I have been been shown a boring time on the train. These are the kind of rich eye opening experiences many sheltered lives would pay to enjoy.

Armed with a train ticket, a fully charged laptop, and maybe a packet of fantails, I could take over the world. Without an internet connection (except for an unsecured wireless network for about 30 seconds when we stop at Gosford), I have nothing to distract me from whatever productive thing I want to do. That's right, no KOL, no comics, and no porn (unless the rooting pre-adolescents count. And no, they don't). And the benefits speak for themselves. Just look at the quality of this amazing post!

Well here I am, working hard on the train down to Sydney. A clean white textpad screen in front of me; a blank slate ready for me to ravage my mind upon. Unfortunately, I can't think of a single thing to write now. Typical.

I guess this just becomes the usual kind of boring event describing entry. There isn't really anything wrong with that, unless I intend to write something people would actually want to read of course.

I will say that I've learned something very important over the past few days. Caffeine. I have discovered Caffeine. Even as I write this I can feel the effects of ridiculous amount of tea I had with breakfast running like fire though the tiny blood vessels in my brain. I can sence it lubricating the pathways for thought, like the engine grease for the pumps in a sewerage plant. Why the hell didn't anyone tell me about this? Oh wait. Pretty much everyone did.

See, I've been doing it wrong. I thought it was meant to make you feel less tired. And, it doesn't really do that anyway, it just makes your mind too busy to remember it is tired. I never really felt those effects, since I've never had more than a few cup of tea or coffee at any time. I used to claim that I was immune to the effects of coffee, to the people that whirled around in the midst of their own caffeine high, winking and nodding to each other. The poor fool doesn't understand they think to themselves.

My fingers are vibrating with energy, as though each one is independently struggling to contain it's excitement. A nice lady next to me, asks me how I became so quick at typing - she has done a typing course and wants to know which one I did, because she is nowhere near as fast as I am. I say (words running into each other as i speak) that I've been using computers my whole life, and that all it takes is practice. It's a lie. I should have told her the secret. Caffeine.

Now at work, my mind is now working almost as fast as my hands can keep up. Every time my computer, which before used to feel so powerful, struggles under the constant barrage of keystrokes and mouse clicks I feel caffeine fueled rage start inside me. How dare it waste these precious milliseconds? I swallow another mouthful of the coffee flavoured sludge that my work generously provides. It tastes like luke warm mud. In my veins it runs like molten steel.

If, like me, you have been wasting in real time, unaware of the radiant brilliance of caffeine time, you truly need to experience this. It is probably the kind of thing that responsible people would tell you to avoid - as if somehow the rantings of an insane drug addict are bad advice. Some tips. Water can hold more tea than those miserly teabag manufacturers would have you believe. Try making a cup with two bags instead of one. Also, leave the bag in as you drink it. This ensure that as little of the precious chemical is lost to the rubbish bin. If you enjoy sleeping, make sure you dose up before dinner, otherwise your rampant mind will refuse to let you. I barely sleep as it is (Yes, even before I learned caffeine's secret), so this is a non issue for me.

I will have to leave it there, as I am bursting for the toilet. Till next time.

**This entry is about 2 weeks old. Please forgive the smell**

Good afternoon to my countless faithful readers! Your devotion to this journal will pay off when it becomes famous and popular. Yes, you will be able to say with pride that you were there when the whole thing started (Actually, this was 5 years ago i believe), and sneer while you accuse the rest of the world of just "jumping on the bandwagon".

I'll keep this post purely about what has actually been happening in my life. If you came for something insightful or entertaining, you might as well just click the page down entry on your friends page, until you get to the next person's post. You many have to press it a few dozen times of course.

Today is a "writing day" for my brother Josh and I. We are currently being extremely metro, and have taken our lappies to Gloria Jeans in Hamilton to do some writing while we have coffee, and use the free wireless internet provided by the Newcastle Council. nesselle is up in the Gold Coast for Natalie's Hen's night. I was invited to the Buck's show too, but I want to save money for the wedding itself. So, the net result is that I have the whole weekend to myself. Tonight is ukelesh's leaving party, which I will actually be free to go to, holy crap!

So what has all my time been going towards? Aside from work and spending time with nesselle I've mainly been spending plenty of time (probably too much time) playing computer games. I finished nearly all of the games on my top ten, the list from about three weeks ago. I've also been doing a fair bit of writing, as well as wrestling with my new PC. Oh didn't I tell you? I bought a new one, only my second PC ever, and this time built entirely by myself from scratch. I had a little to learn, but it wasn't too bad. Unfortunately not long after I'd had the thing put together, glinting black and imposing in the corner of my tiny room, that the hard drive packed it in and I lost pretty much everything. Fixing that cost me hours. I kept running the data recovery program over and over, hoping against hope that at least some of my porn photos could be recovered. This is the second time this has happened to me, so this I bought three hard drives, so I should be able to organize a Raid, with parity bits to prevent this from every happening again.

Vanessa and I spent two nights, thanks to her connections, for free, in a place called "Kim's Hideaway" on the central coast. It's a nice resort for extremely rich Sydneyites who want to go somewhere relaxing and far away from the big city. Our bungalow was massive, beautiful, and right at the ocean's edge, so that the sunrise came flooding in through the bedroom windows, which were full length, and covered four fifths of the beach facing walls.

I played, and won, a game of Blind Chess against Sean, from work. The game spanned two days, included pawn promotion, as well as castling, and caused us to get much less real work done that we would have otherwise. No doubt my bosses will eventually read this so let me hasten to mention that I'm joking and of course I would never waste time playing games when there is so much fun to be had working.

I'm now running a roleplay session of my very own. It has been extremely difficult so far, I'm having to learn quickly. The biggest thing to has been the dodgy self-made adventures that I've been trying to run, which I've made very complicated, and spent much less time on than I probbaly should have. It's certainly very stressful to say the least. As long as everyone continues to forgive my shortcomings I'll eventually become proficient.

Last night I went to a Poker night at one of the girls from work's house, along with a small group of other of the more dedicated players also from work There was real money involved, as well as a stack of rules that everyone else I've ever played with has never bothered with, like the cut-card, and the big blind getting the opportunity to raise. I was the first one out, but I certainly didn't embarrass myself, and only lost because of bad luck on a maverick hand. I'd been keen to see how I go at one of the free Poker nights that Phoenix does every month.

Christmas and new years were excellent, if very busy, and the 10 days we Vanessa and I had off work went by very fast. Christmas lunch was the usual gluttony fest it always, at our place this year for a change, and then we rushed to Vanessa's parent's place for Christmas, heading to bed embarrassingly early at about 10pm. For new years this year I spent the night with my cousins Amy and Aaron, The boys versed the girls in a game of "Deal or No Deal", and the boys lost, so as per the rules of the game, we had to scream "NO DEAL" at the pizza man when he told us how much the pizza's cost.

Coffee is done now - so we are off. Will post this from home at some point in the not too distant future, since I haven't culled it.

( And now: The review of The Sword of Shanara )

Next time I'll (probably) review "Making Money" by Terry Pratchet, a book I was given for christmas by my brother. I finished it ages ago, but then, I also finished the Sword of Shanara ages ago :P.

[I wrote this on the train on the way to Sydney last Friday night. It sounds more depressing than I intended, but I still want to post it, as the sentiment continues to ring true in my mind. Consider this a little "talking out loud".]

It has been a very long time since the last post. It is pretty sad to think about the gourmet happenings, left unwritten, that are now just old news. My first instinct is to just start listing in point form whatever I can still remember. However, some other things are on my mind, so I'll just ramble.

I've been writing a few bits and pieces, but mostly, for whatever reasons, my motivation for it has crumbled. I'm in a motivational black hole lately. I guess this has alot to do with the fact that lately much of my energy has been spent on writing roleplay sessions and work. I doubt I'd even be writng this if I wasn't on the train to Vanessa's place. And also because I'm starting to feel the need to do something constructive, since the time I spend geting constructive things done is miniscule lately.

Even though I haven't been writing much, I have still been very contemplative. In many ways things are going well. I am going even better at work than I was talking about last time. Made plenty of new friends, and not usual way the work relationships happen by having to work together every day, more in a genuine kind of mutually interesting people kind of way. In fact, for whatever reason, I seem to be making friends easier amongst the big group of people that I did amongst the small group of people. This probably has to do with the fact that in the new section I'm pulling my weight than I was in the old section. That might just be because the work is easier, but I think to think that I'm slightly more capable than I used to be. Probably just a combination of improved focus and improved organisation. It's nice to come to that realisation.

There are some other realisations that I've come to too however. The main one is that, slowly, gradually, over the past few months, I've become a boring person. Yes, that is a 100 percent accurate way of describing myself. I bearly hang out with anyone these days, except for the people I work with, Vanessa, and my family. These are the necessary people in my life, the easy kind, the kind that see me every day no matter how dull I become, or how little the effort I put in. Aside from them I bearly keep in touch with anyone. A year ago, this was quite the oposite!

The long distance between Vanessa and I could be blamed for some of this, weekends that I spend with her are certainly keeping me away from SCA gatherings on Sunday, not to mention the occational party or events. But it certainly can't be blamed for all. There is no reason why I couldn't catch up with people after work, or even do things as simple as keeping in touch with people on MSN and facebook.

Already this flurry of negativity has worn me out, and I don't feel like going on anymore, and I just feel like writing something interesting and fun instead. Maybe I'll get to that in a few minutes. But, it's important to realise that I don't often have these deep ultra critical assesments of myself and my suroundings, and I need to have more of them sometimes.

I think I'm very good at excuses, especially the ones made to myself. I'm also very good at ignoring extreamly crap things and situations - on the whole a very good thing, as it means I'm pretty much always happy, but it also means I'm unlikely to ever pull myself out of a bad situation when the opportunity comes along, instead just making the best of things, and telling myself that everything is going awesomely.

Also, I could say that I'm always far to content to take the easy road instead of a harder one. This means that I'm always nice to people when maybe I shouldn't be. I tend to avoid social situations, because they feel like hard work. I am still living at home. I can give you about fifty reasons why I'm still there, and they are valid excuses, but the fact remains that I AM still there, and it is, most definately, the easy way out.

Anyway, this is definately the most self depricating entry I've writen so far. It remains to be seen whether I'll even post it [Sorry past Chunkyy, you can't outguess yourself all the time]. My journal used to be a very different place, lovingly crafted, carfully censored so that it only showed the parts of myself that I wanted the outside to see. While this may have been entertaining, I'm starting to think that these days my journal should be a much more honest place.

Anyway, enough Jiba-jaba. Now for something a little less dark and gloomy...

Ah Portal, what a perfectly awesome game. I didn't even realise how much until very recently. The main reason that I am so bored with games these days is probably because where gameplay was once the only thing that made a game playable, now people who make them are obliged to waste so much time on making things look shiny, in order to attract the attention of all the kids with short attention spans and too much money. Don't get me wrong, nice looking games are great, but what is the point of making golden cricket bats if they are too expensive to buy, and too heavy to use?

So, after realising this, I then realised that Portal was probably right at the top of my list of favorite games ever. Then, not long after that I started wondering exactly what that particular list would look like. And so, after several weeks of agonising thought, I now present my Top Ten Console and PC games ever. Ahem.

1. Star Con II
2. Portal
3. UFO Enemy Unknown
4. Deus Ex
5. Civilisation
6. Dungeon Keeper
7. Toejam and Earl 1
8. Angband, Nethack, and pretty much any other Roguelike game out there.
9. Scorched Earth
10. Heroes of Might and Magic


For long, rambling explanations and also where to download some of these games from, see behind ( Read more... )
Ah see... I knew that making this list would be a bad idea. I am now thoroughly insensed by nostalga. The Ur-Quan Masters has been downloading on my PC while I have been writing this. Oh well, who really needs all that fresh air and sunshine anyway? Not me. I'm not a tree.

I have to write this quickly as every muscle in my body is soaked through with exhaustion. It has been a massive two weeks since my last post - in fact when I checked back to see what the date of the post was I thought it had to of been at least four weeks. So jammed packed has these few days have been.

Firstly, I bought a new computer. My old one hasn't worked for ages, so I've been subsisting on my heroic little lappy - the one I do all the writing on going to Sydney. Very exciting, this time I was really keen on building the thing myself. Things went well, even though I managed to screw several things up in the progress. So after a week of some fairly serious effort I have the thing running. Specs, for those who interested, are Q6600 Intel Quad Core Processor (2.40 GHz), Nvidea 8600GT Graphics card, 2Gbs RAM, and 500 GB SATA2 Hard Drive. So those who know what I'm talking about will also know that I will probably only ever use about 10 percent of those specs for just about anything I do, but still, it is beautiful.

I have been lots more social too. Since the last post I have

*Caught up with fiery_ichor
*Caught up with Bec (the dear old uni friend who now lives about half a K away from me)
*Been out for dinner three times with Roger (the Pom) and Sean, two easy going guys from work
*Went to a birthday party with the highschool gang for Kat's Bday (and helped get her TV working while I was there)
*Put in an appearance at Sunday gathering
*And made it to the SCA end of year Christmas party - and I even brought Vanessa.

And tomorrow night I'm supposed to be heading out for a coffee with Susie and Erin (also dear old friends from uni), so that would have been another thing to add to the list - assuming I left posting till tomorrow night, which is what I have been doing most of the week.

For a short time last week work transended beyond "challenging" to become "stressful". Tiny pieces of supidity scattered accross the globe were, for a brief moment, pulsating in perfect harmony, causing massive damage to the project I found myself in, leaving me to do lots of patchwork in a very short amount of time. But, after having made it through that, I am now pretty bored, since there is nothing else to speak of for me to do right now. Having said that, they did send me off on a training course for two days last week, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Especially the parts where they lavished food upon us and gave us free stuff.

After the tape came off my foot, and I discovered that my foot suddenly didn't hurt anymore, I celebrated by joining the new Gym at Kotara last week, and have been several times already. Tonight I went to a class which is basically Aerobics with handweights added in. It has some wanky name that I don't remember, but it definately works. I am so sore after that class I can bearly move.

I think part of my foot problems have been all the hard concrete running I was doing, combined with the messyness of Soccer. So I guess I'll give both of those a miss for the time being until I get a better picture of how things are going. Nevertheless, it is brillient to have my full stride back. On Saturday I ran from my place (along the slightly nicer gravel/dirt trail) all the way through the bush to Glenrock Beach, and then to Bar Beach. That would have to be one of my favorite ways to excercise in Summer - the water feels so good once you get there.

Vanessa came over on the weekend, for an all too brief catch up. We have each had little things we needed to do on the weekends, which have been seriously cutting into the time we would normally spend together. So as such we are both really keen to get this one more last week of work out of the day so we can start two solid weeks of relaxing, more or less together the whole time. Officially we have now been dating for over two years, which is pretty amazing to think about. Vanessa is beautiful, in every way. And it has been a wonderful two years. The days have passed by so easily I bearly noticed, which is probably an excelent sign of our compatibility. This paragraph has probably passed over the mushyness threashold, but I've never let things like enjoyability get in the way of a good LJ post.

To summerise, I am currently burning brightly with energy and motivation. Maybe I'm part plant, and the hot summer days are somehow fueling me with life? It's more likely the imminent christmas season which is getting me all worked up.

To all the lovely people who commented on my last post to let me know that the book I was refering to is acutally called 1984, and not 1928 or 1982 as I originally thought, I am forever greatful to you for correcting my mistake. It's nice to know that whenever I need to feel loved all I need to do is publically make a false statement and everyone will come flocking to point it out. On an unrelated matter, I will now remind everyone that December has 30 days, and that 2009 is a leap year.

Gnite all :)

Current Food: It took going out with someone who weighs less than half what I do to discover this, but Goldburgs in Darby St does absolutely fantastic Ceaser Salad. The chicken is nice, but it doesn't go well with the rest of the salad, so skip that and save ureself $5 (or just get more drunk).

Did you know? When the instructor at the gym class tells you to only grab 2.5 Kgs worth of hand weights, you better fucking listen to him.

While I'm here I might as well update properly.

Things have been going very well lately. Well, that's not quite true, things have been going along pretty much as they always have, but I have been possessed of an inexplicable energy of late. I feel happy and fulfilled pretty much constantly. More evidence of my reverse depression I guess.

Having said that, I have been kicking lots of butt at work lately. The new role is better than I could have believed possible. A situation arose where it was necessary to disagree with my project manager, and I think I made it through that pretty well. I have also spent lots of time repairing other's mistakes and trying to improve the ridiculous processes they put us through. Two Fridays ago I was responsible for Morning Tea for the office, and it went very well, everyone was very impressed. It was just banana cake and more mars bar slice, but it's nice to know I've got the basics down.

The writing thing didn't get much further than the last time I wrote - I probably spent no more than 10 hours on it in total and ended up with just under 8k words. Oh well, next year. I still hope to finish what I've started.

More on the writing front, I am now trying to learn things from the movies I watch and the books I read. I just finished reading a book by David (and Leigh) Eddings called "The Redemption of Althalus." Now the man was once my most favorite author - "The Belgariad" was awesome while I was growing up. But the Althalus one is just awful. I'm sure any fans of the author will agree with me. If that kind of quality is all that it takes to be a novelist then I could probably release a new one every six months. Anyway, so what I have learned from Althalus is this: Don't be crap. It's a start. I'm now reading "The Sword of Shannara" by Terry Brooks, because from my memories of the book there is a really well written romantic scene buried in there that struck me as really effective the first time I read it. Books on my to read list are Dracula, Catch 22, and the George Orwell one, I think it's called 1928, but Google is being silent on the matter, so I may have that name wrong. This paragraph is long and boring. Whoops.

My annoying foot has been slowly getting better. I thought I might have taken myself back to square one with recovery after playing indoor soccer on it last Wednesday and making it hurt like crazy all over again. I booked an apointment with the foot doctor guy and he said that apparently flat feet aren't all that bad afterall, and all I need to recover is to wear tape on the sore foot for a few days. After which he proceeded to tape up my foot until it resembled one of my Nan's Christmas presents. It is doing the job though. Tonight I went to the gym to test it out and it felt great! No soccer for a while tho :(.

What else? Christmas shopping is nearly done, just need a few more little crap things for the people I don't really care about all that much. Mum and Dad have put Christmas lights out the front of our house. There isn't alot there, but it looks excelent. Heaps better than the overdone houses elseware in the street. Next year Dad wants to do up some wooden cutouts. I'll take a photo.

Went bowling with the old buddies from high school buddies recently. Was heaps of fun and I manage to win both games without even trying. Yes, I am awesome, I know. Afterwards we went back to Teddy's new house - walking distance from my house, and got drunk and watched Borat. Good times.

Well that certainly became long quickly. All good tho, no one reads this anyway :P. Keep on loving life my dear friends. [Edit: the book is called 1982 Chunkyy, you dickhead]

Did you know? Trying to make a watertight seal for your taped foot (so you can have a shower without getting the tape wet) is impossible with a Woolworth's bag and sticky tape. Either use something better, like a Myer's bag or a 12XL Condom, or just have a bath.

Current Food: Josh and I had a Gloria Jean's coffee tonight after I came home from the Gym. Was excellent catching up, so hard to find time these days. Anyway, we had a slice of Banana Toast with enough butter to grease a scotsman on top. It was excelent - will endevor to make it myself.

I know that us Software Engineers are a mysterious lot. From the outside it's all staring at chunks of textual gibberish and complaining about bad indenting. However, I can now present to you a scene from the movie Swordfish that neatly sums up exactly what I do every day at work.



I especially like the way that the director captured the bad dancing and the swearing.

Current Food: Cigarettes and Wine. Apparently.

Dear Santa... Dear Santa, This year I've been busy! In July I gave jadeybaby81 a kidney (1000 points). In September I pulled over and changed nesselle's flat tire (15 points). Last Sunday I ruled Canada as a kind and benevolent dictator (700 points). In April I bought porn for stereotypist (10 points). Last Wednesday I ruled Asscrackistan as a cruel and heartless dictator (-700 points). Overall, I've been nice (1025 points). For Christmas I deserve an XBox 360! Sincerely, chunkyy

Write your letter to Santa! Enter your LJ username:

See there nesselle, I found time to change your tire tyre even though I was busy preparing to usurp rule from two different nations much simultaniously. It would be cool to rule two at once, you could make them have wars against each other for practice. I might see about getting Asscrackistan's name changed though.

[edit: Thanks for helping me with my dodgy spelling Vanessa]

Did you know? Internet killed the video star.