Category: Diary

Couldn’t resist when I saw it in Coles today.

The first conversion to digital was CD to MP3. It would be about 8 years ago now that I converted 600 odd CDs to MP3, prompted by the arrival of my first iPod. Since then the purchasing of CDs has slowly dried up to nothing. The last CD I purchased would have been Paul Kelly’s Stolen Apples, and that was in 2007.

It wasn’t long after MP3 that I began to torrent television shows from overseas (starting with Lost and Life on Mars). Initially I’d download the show and convert them to DVDs to watch. Then we bought a DVD player with DivX capabilities so we’d download and convert to DivX, which saved a bundle on discs (this was before we had a DVD RW burner). A couple of years ago a PC came free and, using Windows Media Centre, I turned it in to a media PC. It is now networked and has two TV tuners and it’s how we watch our television and movies. We have 115 movies on it at the moment and years worth of television series. It’s also my project over the next year or so to upgrade the PC and the amp to allow for surround sound when watching telly.

Now I’ve made the next move to digital entertainment,, I”ve bought a Kindle. I’ve only had it for a week but I can see it will be the same seismic shift. It’s so easy to use, and so convenient. I’m reading Alice In Wonderland to Bert from it and it’s great to pick it up and start exactly from where we left off. Ren bought one at the same time as me and she’s already toting over 250 books around with her. And the books are cheap, massively cheaper than the paperback versions, even when buying from Book Depository. I’m sure there will be some books I continue to buy, it’s really only suited to text books and anything with images just wouldn’t work, but for a straight forward read of a novel it’s superb.

So music, movies and now books. If they could just figure out a way to digitise caffeine I’d be in heaven.

So here’s a picture.

Just over a month ago we stumbled across an episode of 30 Rock on Channel 7, or maybe it was 7 Two, or possibly Mate. Anyway, we thought it was incredibly funny and I spent the next couple of days asking why no one had ever told me to watch this show. I also spent that time sourcing all four complete seasons and the episodes of season 5 up to date.

I’m happy to announce that we’ve now watched all 91 available episodes (92 if you include the repeat live show). It may sound slightly obscene to have watched that many in such a short time but the episodes are short, only 20 minutes or so, and with the summer break it was a lot easier to stay up later and fit in just one, or two,or three, more.

It’s a great show and it is sorta sad that we now have to wait for more Lemony goodness but now we can get back to the other shows we had started. It may be time to look up summaries of the eps we’ve watched in season 3 of True Blood so far. Or more Dexter. Or….

Too many choices. Blurgh!

Anyone who has to spend more than, oh, 5 seconds with me in the past six months or so would know just how much I love my Android phone (sorry everyone, particularly you Zita). It’s great and I use it to keep track of everything  for home an business. One fantastic app I found was Neat Streets. It’s designed for you to report issues in your community. You take a photo and it automatically records the location, make a note on the problem and submit it. Neat Streets then gets the location from the report and sends the information on to the relevant local authority to deal with.

Today I got to see it in action.

A little while ago I noticed that someone had just abandoned a few sheets of metal mesh in the parking bays in our street, along with a trailer. I realised they had been there for a while so I snapped a photo with my phone, made the note and away it went.

I was standing out the front today wishing that some one would come along and weed my garden for me when I noticed two guys in safety shirts walking up the street. They went to the mesh, had a poke around and walked back up the street. Five minutes later they returned with a bob cat and truck and the mesh was gone.

Now I know it works there’s a couple of other things I’m going to send in. Not pointing fingers but if you live two streets over and the car you have seemingly abandoned is blocking the footpath, and has been for a few months, stand by…

Henry is going to miss his big brother when Bert goes to school.

Some days are accidentally great.

The plan had been to take Bert to see Brickvention, an amazing Lego display put on by Lego enthusiasts. Bert loves his Lego as much as I did when I was a boy so I was very excited at the thought, until I saw the line. It snaked from the Town Hall door, down to Collins St, up to and around the corner to Russell, up around in to Little Collins and down past The Victoria Hotel – over half a kilometre around a city block – and this was half an hour after opening. Apparently, at that stage, the wait was 2 hours and during the day this rose to 4 hours at times.

Scratch that idea then.

So we moseyed on down to ACMI at Fed Square and took in the Dreams Come True exhibition from Disney. It was amazing, such stunning art work. I could have spent hours there but Bert was eager to move quickly from one area to the next. I may go back ,especially as I just discovered you can download the audio tour before you go. If you’re at all interested in animation, movie making or Disney you have to go.

After an all too brief look we decided it was lunch time and rice paper rolls sounded like a good idea so we headed off to Tho Tho’s, a favourite old haunt of mine. They’ve been open 21 years now and chatting to one of the original waiters he told me now the young people who went there when they first opened are now bringing their children. Made me smile.

Not even getting caught in city traffic on the way home made me grumpy. I got to spend a morning with just one child, a rare event, and loved every minute of it., even if we didn’t get to see the Lego.

Like all bad poker players I have a tell, something that gives me away, only mine is to do with work, not cards. I’m snowed under at the moment, I should be working every minute of every day and one project in particular had been giving me me huge amounts of grief and this manifested itself in my shoulder.

Yep, when I get stressed my left shoulder tightens up so much I can barely move my head. I can feel it getting tighter as my frustration, then stress, about a project builds until it reaches the point it did on Sunday when I couldn’t even drive the car.

Thankfully it doesn’t happen often and there is a sure fire cure: get the work done. As the major problems of the project were overcome today I could feel the muscles relaxing, it’s the oddest. sensation, and now with the bulk of the work done it’s completely gone.

I’m just hoping I can get done what I need to tomorrow and finish the project completely, I don’t fancy my tell coming back, I need to be able to drive to finish my next job.

I just realised there’s been a few things over the past month that I haven’t written about here and I really should put them down for future reference. The other day Mel asked me if I thought blogs were dead. I don’t think they are dead, although I think a lot of their functions have been taken over by Facebook and to a lesser extent Twitter. It’s just so easy to make a quick post on Facebook to let people know what’s going on. A lot of things that may have once been a one paragraph post are now dispatched to Facebook. I generally post to Facebook via Twitter so the updates appear on the home page of this blog and I’m also toying with the idea of starting a side blog that automatically brings in my Twitter posts. This way mum will know what I’m up to and that, yes, I’m still alive.

As for blogs, I think the diary blog is fading. Stalwarts such as Daniel will keep on going, as will a relative young pup (only 9 years this year) such as myself, but blogs seem to me to be becoming increasingly niche focussed. Mum blogs, tech blogs, gadget blogs; these are the way of the blog future.

Anyway, time for the memory dump.

The biggest news to record is I had a vasectomy (okay, I don’t blame you, feel free to scroll down until you see ‘SAFE TO RESUME’). After adding three kids to my instant family and with Rae taking care of the ‘no-more-kids’ duty, not always to the benefit of her health, it was time for me to take the responsibility. I have to admit I was nervous about the whole thing, i think most guys would be, and the massive thunder and lighting storm that hit as we drove to the clinic didn’t do anything to calm the nerves.

There was a brief meeting with the oddest doctor i have ever seen. He seemed to be dying of terminal boredom through the consultation that lasted a few minutes. I was then lead to the change room and instructed to, um, preserve my modesty with a small blue towel as I walked in to the theatre. Not sure what the purpose of this was as it was discarded as soon as I lay down on the chair. He said he’d explain everything as he went along but this was soon dropped when he started humming to himself. I must have been a boring patient.

The procedure was quick, 14 minutes and he was done. My examination of the ceiling was interrupted when he finally spoke and said ‘there’s your right one’ and he plonked my right vas deferens on the surgical cover on my chest. It must be his party trick. A couple of minutes later he added the left one. I swear I’ll never eat spaghetti again without a pang of regret. Couple of minutes and one band aid later it was done. I got dressed and we drove home. I only had a local anaesthetic and it was all so matter of fact I now have no idea what I was worried about.

i can honestly say I never felt any pain, not one skerrick. Day 5 was a bit uncomfortable with  swelling but that lasted 12 hours and was done. The worse part was having to wear jocks for a week afterwards, I’ve been a boxer boy since my 18th birthday and can’t see myself ever changing. We’re now in the middle of the waiting period until I’m officially infertile. If I was to be asked I’d say do it, my experience was nothing but positive. Just have some ice ready for day 5 and you’ll have nothing to worry about.

SAFE TO RESUME

There you go, all that icky stuff done with.

We had a great Christmas this year. It was at our place, which I love, and was a good relaxing day. The night, however, was not so relaxing. We went to bed and couldn’t get to sleep because The Ferals had their karaoke blasting in to the night. I swear, you could hear it in the city. It was so bad that at 11:00 we were contemplating calling the police when we heard a beeping sound. A truck reversing sound. Yes, at 11:00PM on Christmas night someone was reversing a removal truck up our drive and parking it on the nature strip and footpath  directly outside our bedroom window. When someone slammed the back door I headed outside.

I must have looked a site in my Pac Man PJ pants and old t-shirt. “What the hell are you doing? It’s bad enough with the idiots across the road [just as two of the idiots in question walked past, good timing Tony] and now this.” They apologised and said they’d only be 15 minutes, which they were. I watched them unload furniture and a fridge before taking off again in a convoy of cars but, seriously, what is it with neighbours moving in in the depth of the night? Needless to say Boxing Day was very quiet.

Then between Christmas day and new years Zita gave us a brilliant present, a night off. She bravely volunteered to stay with the kids while we took off. It was pretty short notice but we ended up having a great night in, drum roll please, Caroline Springs. Yes, I know. It’s not quite yet the St Kilda of the West but we had a ball ‘cause it was the first night we have had away together since our honeymoon, five (long) years ago.

We got to go shopping together, go for a long walk, watch movies in bed and just relax with the threat of little feet thumping in and little voices demanding attention every five minutes. It was glorious. Dinner delivered to the room, movies, wine, cheese and breakfast and all just five minutes, but a lifetime, away from home. Thank you again Ztia, and thanks to the good folk at Mercure Caroline Springs who upgraded us to their most luxurious suite. The next morning we even got to go The Sun to watch The King’s Speech. A night away and a grown up movie. The memory still makes me smile.

On the way back from the movie we stopped and bought a new mattress. This came about ‘cause earlier in the week we actually looked at our existing mattress and noticed the two perfectly shaped Rae and Tony indentations. It was 10 years old so due for a change. The new one has a 15 warranty so we’re thinking it should last us at least 15 years. The only bad thing is that it’s a lot taller than our old mattress so we’re in the market for a few new sheets too.

We’ve also been powering through 30 Rock. We watched an episode on telly in early December and couldn’t believe how funny it was. I know, I know, we’re late comers to the cult of Liz Lemon but we’ve bought in hard. We’ve watched the first four seasons since then, which was easy to do in 20 minute bursts, and now we’re up to the current series. I think it’s about 90ish episodes we’ve knocked over in a month and a half. As Liz would say “what the what!”.

Rae has another week of holidays left so there’ll be more to come. It’s been a good month and good start to the year and I really must try to get better at leaving memories here.

I’ll do my best to remember.