Author: awmalloyadmin

Walking up to the G last night the sun was setting, the lights were on and there was a sea of yellow and black streaming from Punt Rd. I started smiling then and, save for a minute at the start of the game, I didn’t stop smiling all night. I drove back from Armadale with my scarf fluttering out the back window along Dandenong Rd, Kings Way and across the bridge; a Tiger flag flying high over Melbourne.

It’s only the first game, I know, and I’m not getting carried away, but to see the boys play with such passion and to finally see them play as a team (yes Jen, even Richo) made all Tiger supporter’s hearts soar.

Go the mighty Tiges.

It’s Footy time!

Season 2004 starts tonight and I’m too excited to type much more then that. I’ll be wearing my Tigers tie to work today, have dragged the essential footy equipment (cap, pen, radio, Tigers scarf) out of the cupboard and am all set to go.

May your team win, unless they’re playing us.

GO TIGES!

Well everybody, here it is – the prize you will all be fighting for in the footy tipping competition.

Thanks for the photo Daniel

And no, you can’t refuse it if you win.

The urn, prior to becoming the most sort after prize in footy tipping, had a chequered history. It, and its much larger sibling, were a wedding present given to my sister. Understandably she shoved them both in to a cupboard for a couple of years until we tried to sell them for her on Ebay. Surprsingly they sold. To someone in America. Who clearly could not read or didn’t understand how far away Melbourne, Australia was. She baulked at paying almost AUD$70 to have the monstrosities sent to her.

So we shoved them in to one of our cupboards.

They stayed there until Grand Final day last year when Miss Marita, the winner of Tony’s Tipping for 2003, was complaining long and loud that she had no prize to show for her efforts.

Well now she does and the urn has found a home for a year.

We’ll ship it interstate or overseas but it has to come back for it is now the perpetual trophy and the winners name will be added each year to be presented at our Grand Final barbecue.

So, get your tips in. The world’s ugliest urn is up for grabs.
Continue reading “The Prize”

It’s Autumn.

The sun is setting early, leaves are changing colour, warm days, cool nights, winter woollies being dusted off, dew on the cars in the street and I’ve just placed my first footy tips for the year.

Yep, footy is four days away and the great Tony’s Tipping Competition is once more open for business. I was hoping to write my own system this year but time got away from me. All blog readers are invited to join in, just go to www.footytips.com.au and join in the competition called “Tony’s Tipping”.

Marita currently holds the perpetual trophy and it will be tough to prise it from her grasp. Don’t worry if you know nothing about footy as Nigel, an Englishman who has never seen a game in his life, is living proof that the less you know about the game the better. He almost won last year.

He’s here, the BBC have announced the new Dr Who is Christopher Eccleston. What a great choice, he was superb in Shallow Grave and chilling in 28 Days Later.

This is getting exciting.

And twisted. That’s me.

a) I was supposed to go on the 2004 Orange Great Melbourne Bike Ride? tomorrow and even though I’ve done no prep I was going to give it a go and try to keep up with Rob. At least if I made it up the West Gate Bridge I could cost back down to home and collapse but no, my freakin PC is not happy – the hard drive now stops for no apparent reason so tomorrow I’m going to sit here, screw driver in hand, poking and prodding until the damn thing works again.

b) Trivia nights. At the behest of Zita (Rae’s mum) we went to a trivia night tonight. All was going well until, with two rounds to go, the host told us we were equal for the lead. Instantly Rae and I turn in to Mr and Mrs Competitive and this thing becomes the most important event ever in the history of humanity. It was made even worse when, after the next round, we told were one in front by one.

Bad choices, vague questions, dead wood at one end of the table and a bit of bad luck saw us drop a point in the final round which resulted in a tie. A tie! Freakin heck. It was announced the tie breaker would concern tennis. Nigel, why the hell don’t you live on this side of the world?

Of course no one on our table knew anything about tennis and we lost. Mr and Mrs Competitive were not happy. Now it’s way past my bed time, we have no prize, I won’t get to take a photo from the top of the bridge and my PC is liable to freeze before I finish this post.

You may wish spend an hour and a half trying three different drivers and poking around with sound cards and settings in an effort to get sound coming out of your computer but a much more time efficient method is to check that the volume dial on the actual speaker is not turned all the way down.

I learnt a lesson tonight.

My PC came with Windows XP Home, and has been functioning well for a year and a half, happily doing all I ask of it. No breakdowns, no faults, running smoothly so what on earth made me decide it would be a good idea to ‘upgrade’ to XP Professional? That would be my Stupid Voice.

Put the CD in, run the upgrade check and no problems found, for a system only a year and half old that’s not surprising, so off I go. All is well until ’34 minutes to go’. The install stops. It waits three minutes and restarts the PC. Which restarts the installation and all goes well until ’34 minutes to go’. The install stops. It waits three minutes and restarts the PC.

It does this fifteen times. No operating system fully installed means no PC.

The cold sweats started about restart #5.

You know it’s never good when you start dismantling your PC to remove the hard drive. The aim was to see if I could plug it into Rae’s PC to salvage as much as I could. Unfortunately the other PC refused to acknowledge it had a new drive. I’m much more a software guy than a hardware guy so I decided to plug the drive back in to my PC where, by the some Divine intervention (and most probably thanks to me removing everything except the monitor, mouse and keyboard) it magically decided to finish the install on restart 16.

It’s been six hours since I started the install that should have taken 40 minutes to complete. I’ve pulled apart two PC’s, my PC is still in pieces (yet functioning), it tries to boot from the A: drive and I can’t find the BIOS settings to stop it doing so, I need to reinstall internet sharing for Rae’s PC and I’m very very tired.

But my PC works.

And I’ve learnt my lesson. Next time I’ll just buy a new computer with XP Pro pre-installed.

Number one in a possible series of four, here’s my latest Canucks jersey, their special retro jersey from this season, direct from Canada. I’ve also got their home, away and alternate jerseys.

I think I may need help.

Today was the annual Tiger’s family day at Punt Rd. Us and a few thousand other Tiger fans turned up to see the jumper presentation, meet the players, get faces painted, part with some cash for the cause and have a kick on the hallowed turf of Tigerland.

While waiting in line I noticed a guy in, of all things, a Collingwood jacket (Collingwood being one of the Tiges arch enemies for those not in the AFL know). I thought he was either very crazy or very brave wandering in the Tiger’s den until I saw why; his young son was a Tiger fan waiting in line too, a badge of his favourite player and a five dollar note clutched in his hand. “How odd,” I thought, “a Collingwood dad and a Tiger son.”

Then I paused.

I’m the Tiger son of a Collingwood dad with my own Doggie daughter.

I love footy.

Go the Tiges.