Looking back through maintenance tasks completed in the past 2 months...
Me: 22 + 3 failures reinstalled
John Chen: 9 + 4 failures reinstalled
Irma: 8 + 1 failure reinstalled
Kushan: 5
And I need to "lift my game"? ffs...
Oh well, off I go now to a meeting to discuss “What are the five most powerful actions I can take to remove barriers that stop my team from providing excellent service”...
1. poke out my eyes with a pen
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Friday, April 27, 2007
Fireworks!
Yay, biggest fireworks i've seen from the window upstairs today. Over the Glebe Island Bridge and over the city. I never know what they're for, but they do seem to be every other weekend or Friday! Whatever, it's cool to have fireworks all the time =)
The pasta dish I attempted was one I'd never tried before:
Click here for the recipe
It turned out reasonably well. I don't think it was that great, but people finished their food and helped themselves to seconds so it can't have been too disgusting! :)
After dinner we amused ourselves with playing Table Tennis on the XBox 360. I find it really amusing that the table tennis game is made by Rockstar games, the same people who do the Grand Theft Auto series.
Having trounced Luke in our previous match I was brimming with confidence in the first match of the night. I shouldn't have been so confident. Luke managed to whip me dead in straight sets! What the hell happened?? Oh well. I managed to beat Brock and Ceez (and lose convincingly to Gareth also, but it's his xbox, so no shame there).
We played table tennis for a really long time, and by the time we'd finished it was time to call it a night. It was really good having everyone over for dinner and hanging out, especially on a friday night. I mentioned to Eugene on Saturday that it already felt like it was Sunday to me, since we'd done that on Friday night. I enjoyed preparing the food too, even though I wasn't totally impressed by the result. I don't think I'll cook that recipe again. Have to have people around more and cook more.
The pasta dish I attempted was one I'd never tried before:
Click here for the recipe
It turned out reasonably well. I don't think it was that great, but people finished their food and helped themselves to seconds so it can't have been too disgusting! :)
After dinner we amused ourselves with playing Table Tennis on the XBox 360. I find it really amusing that the table tennis game is made by Rockstar games, the same people who do the Grand Theft Auto series.
Having trounced Luke in our previous match I was brimming with confidence in the first match of the night. I shouldn't have been so confident. Luke managed to whip me dead in straight sets! What the hell happened?? Oh well. I managed to beat Brock and Ceez (and lose convincingly to Gareth also, but it's his xbox, so no shame there).
We played table tennis for a really long time, and by the time we'd finished it was time to call it a night. It was really good having everyone over for dinner and hanging out, especially on a friday night. I mentioned to Eugene on Saturday that it already felt like it was Sunday to me, since we'd done that on Friday night. I enjoyed preparing the food too, even though I wasn't totally impressed by the result. I don't think I'll cook that recipe again. Have to have people around more and cook more.
Monday, April 16, 2007
Whining dogs
This must be how the dog next door thinks. Except while he's thinking, he's shouting "HEY! HEY COME BACK!"
Seriously - all hours of the morning and night. Even when the neighbours are home!
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Weekend Comes
It's been a pretty uneventful weekend after a very busy week. Once again, the week just gone was the longest four day working week i've ever experienced. Back until past eight a few times, missing lunch due to the work on. I'm just glad it's over!
On the friday night was Rachel's farewell - I got mixed up and thought she was going to Dubai, but actually she's going to Mumbai. She had a great night - playing pranks and generally taking the piss out of people. She's pretty mischievous, so it's a shame she's leaving. Another office character on the way out! We went out to Crystal Bar, which is a really nice place actually. It's down about three flights of stairs in Martin Place, decked out in the most opulent curtains, drapes and cushions decor that I've seen in quite a while. As I was on my way to the drinks I bumped into Kay! She was wandering the streets looking for Bond street, and she was heading in totally the wrong direction - towards China Town, and she was already almost at King Street. I walked her to Bond street, chatting away, and found out that she is in town until the end of May. So cool! I haven't been able to hang out with Kay in a long time, since she moved to Perth. Usually her trips back are for two or three days, and she's got to catch up with so many people during that time that we only get to meet up for a coffee for half an hour or so.
So I spent the night dashing between the two parties and getting texts from the other party whenever I was at one ('Where R u?', etc) but it was still a great night out. Until later, when Mindy called. She was really upset and depressed - the long distance relationship thing is hard. I'm glad she's having fun and enjoying England, but I wish I could go with her. We spent almost an hour talking on the phone about various things and hopefully sorted a few things out. It's still all a bit new and unsettling right now. Maybe things will calm down in a week or two and then it'll only be two months to go! Hopefully I'm joining her for 2-3 weeks in July! Yay! The plan currently is to meet outside the UK, as she finishes work in late January. So Maybe Italy, Spain or France is what I'm thinking. I've never been to Spain or France, and Italy is just great so I wouldn't mind going there again. I think Mindy has her heart set on Italy, so I'll have to try and convince Luke and Ceez to join us there. The only problem is that they're attending a wedding in Paris, so they can't exactly not go to that.
On the friday night was Rachel's farewell - I got mixed up and thought she was going to Dubai, but actually she's going to Mumbai. She had a great night - playing pranks and generally taking the piss out of people. She's pretty mischievous, so it's a shame she's leaving. Another office character on the way out! We went out to Crystal Bar, which is a really nice place actually. It's down about three flights of stairs in Martin Place, decked out in the most opulent curtains, drapes and cushions decor that I've seen in quite a while. As I was on my way to the drinks I bumped into Kay! She was wandering the streets looking for Bond street, and she was heading in totally the wrong direction - towards China Town, and she was already almost at King Street. I walked her to Bond street, chatting away, and found out that she is in town until the end of May. So cool! I haven't been able to hang out with Kay in a long time, since she moved to Perth. Usually her trips back are for two or three days, and she's got to catch up with so many people during that time that we only get to meet up for a coffee for half an hour or so.
So I spent the night dashing between the two parties and getting texts from the other party whenever I was at one ('Where R u?', etc) but it was still a great night out. Until later, when Mindy called. She was really upset and depressed - the long distance relationship thing is hard. I'm glad she's having fun and enjoying England, but I wish I could go with her. We spent almost an hour talking on the phone about various things and hopefully sorted a few things out. It's still all a bit new and unsettling right now. Maybe things will calm down in a week or two and then it'll only be two months to go! Hopefully I'm joining her for 2-3 weeks in July! Yay! The plan currently is to meet outside the UK, as she finishes work in late January. So Maybe Italy, Spain or France is what I'm thinking. I've never been to Spain or France, and Italy is just great so I wouldn't mind going there again. I think Mindy has her heart set on Italy, so I'll have to try and convince Luke and Ceez to join us there. The only problem is that they're attending a wedding in Paris, so they can't exactly not go to that.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Tired; So very tired
Desperately in need of a good night's sleep right now! Last night's work and the night before's study are starting to take their toll after the long Tuesday night movie. This is the longest 4 day week ever!
Sydney FC's ACL match got rained out, postponed due to a flooded pitch. The Indonesian field had no undersoil drainage system, so when a storm broke 90 minutes before kickoff the water just pooled on the surface. The local groundskeepers, police and volunteers tried to clear the pitch using a single pump, supplemented with brooms and using the advertising hoardings to try and sweep the pitch clear of water, but when another storm broke it was all over. Match to be replayed at 1:30 this afternoon Sydney time, so I think I'll head down to watch it next door while eating my lunch. Sydney needs to win or their hopes of progressing are pretty slim since only the top team out of four progresses!
Sydney FC's ACL match got rained out, postponed due to a flooded pitch. The Indonesian field had no undersoil drainage system, so when a storm broke 90 minutes before kickoff the water just pooled on the surface. The local groundskeepers, police and volunteers tried to clear the pitch using a single pump, supplemented with brooms and using the advertising hoardings to try and sweep the pitch clear of water, but when another storm broke it was all over. Match to be replayed at 1:30 this afternoon Sydney time, so I think I'll head down to watch it next door while eating my lunch. Sydney needs to win or their hopes of progressing are pretty slim since only the top team out of four progresses!
Hell Day
Work was stupendously bad today. What made it worse was that the whole day things seemed to be going pretty well. I stupidly miscalculated the time difference between London and here and called Mindy when it was 6am there instead of the 9am I thought that it was. But it was ok! She'd been awake since 3am.. poor little one. Still it was good to talk with her and find out about her day. While we chatted I read a bit of her blog and left a comment. I was pretty amused by her enthusiasm about the shopping and wish I'd been there to see it in person. Other things that went well were, an urgent task I was working on got semi-cancelled, another one got postponed a day and all that stood in the way of me and the 6-a-side soccer comp kick off (followed by the second half of the Sydney FC vs Persik Kerdiri ACL match) was a measly little IPO change that had passed through dev, test and staging environments with barely a noise... until production.
In production, things aren't like they are in UAT and Test, where they get fairly regularly updated and poked and prodded by developers doing their work. Production is like a sacred shrine.. or a dusty unlived in house. Very liable to break with a careless step. Mostly it's ok, but in this case.. it was not ok.
Everything broke. One problem fixed led to two more things breaking. As we went things just weren't going our way.
One slightly comical break in the catastrophe was when i got a phone call from Eugene. When i picked up all I could hear was "EEEAAAOOOOWWW EEEAAAOOOOWWW EEEAAAOOOWWW" Haha I had set the alarm when I left that morning and he'd obviously gotten used to it being off, since usually I or Gareth had arrived home before him lately. After I reminded him of the code, he laughed, cursed me and said that from now on he was going to set the alarm every day until i got caught out like he had.
At around 6:30 pm we decided to pull the plug and back track. Easy? Usually yes... tonight? No. So, at quarter to 8 on Wednesday night I trudged home having achieved a sum total of nothing.
Massive cleanup job ahead of me tomorrow, as well as explaining what went wrong to a little table full of business and management types, probably. Ugh. And the semi-cancelled and postponed jobs are both on tomorrow night as well. Triple ugh. At least I don't have to worry about rushing off somewhere tomorrow night... i can spend the whole night at work if i have to...
In production, things aren't like they are in UAT and Test, where they get fairly regularly updated and poked and prodded by developers doing their work. Production is like a sacred shrine.. or a dusty unlived in house. Very liable to break with a careless step. Mostly it's ok, but in this case.. it was not ok.
Everything broke. One problem fixed led to two more things breaking. As we went things just weren't going our way.
One slightly comical break in the catastrophe was when i got a phone call from Eugene. When i picked up all I could hear was "EEEAAAOOOOWWW EEEAAAOOOOWWW EEEAAAOOOWWW" Haha I had set the alarm when I left that morning and he'd obviously gotten used to it being off, since usually I or Gareth had arrived home before him lately. After I reminded him of the code, he laughed, cursed me and said that from now on he was going to set the alarm every day until i got caught out like he had.
At around 6:30 pm we decided to pull the plug and back track. Easy? Usually yes... tonight? No. So, at quarter to 8 on Wednesday night I trudged home having achieved a sum total of nothing.
Massive cleanup job ahead of me tomorrow, as well as explaining what went wrong to a little table full of business and management types, probably. Ugh. And the semi-cancelled and postponed jobs are both on tomorrow night as well. Triple ugh. At least I don't have to worry about rushing off somewhere tomorrow night... i can spend the whole night at work if i have to...
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Easter Movie Marathon
Whew... so, I made it through Easter relatively unscathed. Normally Easter is the crest of the Blockbuster Big Movie season, and since it coincides with a long, long four day weekend it's practically compulsory to deprive yourself of sleep and see as many movies as you can, for better or for worse.
Movie damage so far:
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Friday)
- No movie on Saturday... rest
- Hot Fuzz (missed 10 min of climactic plot expounding) (Sunday)
- Hot Fuzz (it was that good) (Monday)
- 300 (Tuesday)
I really am a big fan of Simon Pegg who did Hot Fuzz and before that, Sean of the Dead. He's got a wry sense of humour and his own distinctive style of cinematography and story-telling which is pretty rarely successful these days. Most times people will stick to the tried and tested and succeed in spite of unoriginality, or they'll try something different with terrible results thereby encouraging everyone to be the same.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was only memorable for the last line of the movie where Michelangelo proclaims "Argh! He's in my mouth... he tastes... disgusting!" which, when you have a peurile sense of humour you can take out of context and it's quite funny ;)
300 was... underwhelming. The first fight was good, but after that the mechanics of the situation made it too predictable and there was nothing new to do, really. I mean, there's only 300 of them against a million. So they're not going to win. And not too many of them can die at a time or the movie will be over already!
On Sunday, the day of rest, I went out to dinner with mum, dad, boubou, phoebe and mum's friend Katie. We went to the chinese place at Greenwood in North Sydney. Big mistake. The Greenwood Tavern had some really loud rave going on at the same time; I couldn't stop bobbing my head to the music. Some of the people in the restaurant had the wristbands on that proclaimed that they had spent their $40 or whatever and were simply lining their stomachs with the greasiest food they could in preparation for the night ahead.
One particularly noisy bunch right behind me were really annoying. There were three of them, two boys and a girl, who looked to be in their early twenties and they were celebrating a birthday with way too much food for the three of them, plus a bottle of champagne. I was concentrating on my dinner when i heard the owner of the restaurant suddenly shouting out "WAit! WAIT!! Hey wait!!!" What do you know, the three noisiest diners from right behind me had finished half of the food and champagne that they ordered and then bolted away without paying for it. It kind of put the whole restaurant in a bit of a subdued mood after that. A small mood-lifter after dinner when we were walking to our cars was when two kids handing out flyers to the next all-night rave tried to give their flyers to boubou and Phoebe. I assured them that they had already got their tickets and we shared a bit of a laugh.
Earlier on Sunday, Mindy had just arrived in London. She sounded like she'd taken the long flight pretty hard. She was tired, scared, headachey and was bleeding from her ears! I wish I'd been there to baby her and tuck her in and fuss over her until she was feeling a bit better =(
Monday was a pretty good day. I got up late, talked with Eugene and Gareth for a bit before inviting them to come hang out with Luke and Ceez for a while before seeing 300 at Imax. Gareth wanted to get on with some work, but Eugene was keen so we headed around to Lane Cove. We played on the Wii for a while before realising that Luke was a bit handicapped in Splinter Cell. We were creeping along corridors, sniping and strangling guards and generally slipping through the shadows with ruthless efficiency until we came across some lazer trip wires. I naturally stopped when i saw them, but Luke continued edging forward. I assumed he knew some trick to slipping past them, so i watched in mute amazement as he sidled right up to the, extremely close, and then into them... blowing us both to bits. Game over. It turns out that he couldn't see the red lazer beams at all. Blast his colourblind eyes!
Luckily Ceez had made a perfect chocolate gateau to distract us from our failure. Brunet rated it as very good and I agree - it was really rich and soft - not too dense at all - and quite sweet without being sickly. The layer of syrupy jam in the middle was still warm from being melted too =)
After the cake we headed into the city to get to see 300 at Imax. Eugene had asked us if we already had our tickets, but we assured him that not that many people went to Imax and we'd have no problems getting our tickets for the 9pm session after dinner. Nevertheless, we decided to get tickets before dinner, just to be safe. So we rocked up at 6:30pm, two and a half hours before the movie, and were confronted with sold out signs all around! Damn it, Eugene was right. So we got tickets for the 6pm session for the following day on the Tuesday.
Movie damage so far:
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Friday)
- No movie on Saturday... rest
- Hot Fuzz (missed 10 min of climactic plot expounding) (Sunday)
- Hot Fuzz (it was that good) (Monday)
- 300 (Tuesday)
I really am a big fan of Simon Pegg who did Hot Fuzz and before that, Sean of the Dead. He's got a wry sense of humour and his own distinctive style of cinematography and story-telling which is pretty rarely successful these days. Most times people will stick to the tried and tested and succeed in spite of unoriginality, or they'll try something different with terrible results thereby encouraging everyone to be the same.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was only memorable for the last line of the movie where Michelangelo proclaims "Argh! He's in my mouth... he tastes... disgusting!" which, when you have a peurile sense of humour you can take out of context and it's quite funny ;)
300 was... underwhelming. The first fight was good, but after that the mechanics of the situation made it too predictable and there was nothing new to do, really. I mean, there's only 300 of them against a million. So they're not going to win. And not too many of them can die at a time or the movie will be over already!
On Sunday, the day of rest, I went out to dinner with mum, dad, boubou, phoebe and mum's friend Katie. We went to the chinese place at Greenwood in North Sydney. Big mistake. The Greenwood Tavern had some really loud rave going on at the same time; I couldn't stop bobbing my head to the music. Some of the people in the restaurant had the wristbands on that proclaimed that they had spent their $40 or whatever and were simply lining their stomachs with the greasiest food they could in preparation for the night ahead.
One particularly noisy bunch right behind me were really annoying. There were three of them, two boys and a girl, who looked to be in their early twenties and they were celebrating a birthday with way too much food for the three of them, plus a bottle of champagne. I was concentrating on my dinner when i heard the owner of the restaurant suddenly shouting out "WAit! WAIT!! Hey wait!!!" What do you know, the three noisiest diners from right behind me had finished half of the food and champagne that they ordered and then bolted away without paying for it. It kind of put the whole restaurant in a bit of a subdued mood after that. A small mood-lifter after dinner when we were walking to our cars was when two kids handing out flyers to the next all-night rave tried to give their flyers to boubou and Phoebe. I assured them that they had already got their tickets and we shared a bit of a laugh.
Earlier on Sunday, Mindy had just arrived in London. She sounded like she'd taken the long flight pretty hard. She was tired, scared, headachey and was bleeding from her ears! I wish I'd been there to baby her and tuck her in and fuss over her until she was feeling a bit better =(
Monday was a pretty good day. I got up late, talked with Eugene and Gareth for a bit before inviting them to come hang out with Luke and Ceez for a while before seeing 300 at Imax. Gareth wanted to get on with some work, but Eugene was keen so we headed around to Lane Cove. We played on the Wii for a while before realising that Luke was a bit handicapped in Splinter Cell. We were creeping along corridors, sniping and strangling guards and generally slipping through the shadows with ruthless efficiency until we came across some lazer trip wires. I naturally stopped when i saw them, but Luke continued edging forward. I assumed he knew some trick to slipping past them, so i watched in mute amazement as he sidled right up to the, extremely close, and then into them... blowing us both to bits. Game over. It turns out that he couldn't see the red lazer beams at all. Blast his colourblind eyes!
Luckily Ceez had made a perfect chocolate gateau to distract us from our failure. Brunet rated it as very good and I agree - it was really rich and soft - not too dense at all - and quite sweet without being sickly. The layer of syrupy jam in the middle was still warm from being melted too =)
After the cake we headed into the city to get to see 300 at Imax. Eugene had asked us if we already had our tickets, but we assured him that not that many people went to Imax and we'd have no problems getting our tickets for the 9pm session after dinner. Nevertheless, we decided to get tickets before dinner, just to be safe. So we rocked up at 6:30pm, two and a half hours before the movie, and were confronted with sold out signs all around! Damn it, Eugene was right. So we got tickets for the 6pm session for the following day on the Tuesday.
Friday, April 6, 2007
Stupid Rain!
Went jogging just now and it felt pretty good, although now it feels a bit gross, sweating even after a shower! I did a Gareth though - exactly halfway through my circuit, when I'm farthest from home, the skies open and I get soaked. One nice thing though, was seeing my second 'full' half-circle rainbow in as many days. It reminded me of Mindy's 'Rainbow' tag on msn...
Family (circa 2000-ish?)
The family (me with the medieval pageboy hair)
Man, Picassa isn't too bad - really easy to upload photos. Dunno if it's better than Flickr, though. Have to try that out too when i dump a whole lot of photos from my camera later.
Good Friday
After waking up late, finding clothes strewn on the floor (though bizarrely I'd taken the time to neatly hang my trouser pants on the hanger) and several missed calls and messages on my phone it dawned on me that I'd had quite a big night on the Thursday night leading into the extended long weekend. After going for a couple of drinks at CBD with my friends from work we moved on down to Slip Inn to meet some friends of Luke's. Eugene had said that he might meet us there after his work function and Gareth had promised to make an appearance as it had been a long week.
On the walk down I got the text from Gareth saying that he was tired, going home, sorry. Oh well. I was surprised when we got to Slip Inn that the entire downstairs was booked out for a PwC function! I called Eugene to find out whether he was there too (everywhere was packed!) but he seemed a bit confused and said that it must be some other function, probably a farewell or something. Oh well. As it happened Eugene couldn't make it either. Luckily there were a lot of people there with the combination of floorball and CommSec people. Mindy wasn't there though, which made me think how unhappy it was that she wasn't around for this long weekend, since she'd been pining for a long break for quite a while. Plus whenever we go out Mindy and Ceez are usually sticking together and chatting the whole night which both of them seem to enjoy, so I think Mindy would have liked it. The whole city was packed the whole night and it went quite late. I think I ended up getting home about 2am and waking up Eugene who surprised me by sleeping on the bed outside my room! I think because they were going down to the south coast the next day, so Max must have been sleeping in his bed.
So, after i woke up, i saw i had some missed calls from a 'withheld' number - gotta be Mindy. So i tried to use the calling card number she'd texted the night before. No luck - no credit. Tried to top it up by guessing my new card's expiry date. No luck. Damn! So i texted and caught her online instead. I'm really happy to hear it when she's out doing something, with friends, shopping, getting coffee, getting her hair done. I know it's really hard on me being apart; i can only guess how hard it is on her too. So i know that it's good to be doing something instead of just sitting around at home like i was this morning. I felt really sad and a bit disoriented when i woke up and she wasn't there. Well, I suppose this is something we'll both have to learn to deal with over the next couple of months. I'm sure we'll do it. Really sure.
Plans for tomorrow: Help Ian + Sheena move house, meet Bayliss for lunch... study study study! And jog lots =)
On the walk down I got the text from Gareth saying that he was tired, going home, sorry. Oh well. I was surprised when we got to Slip Inn that the entire downstairs was booked out for a PwC function! I called Eugene to find out whether he was there too (everywhere was packed!) but he seemed a bit confused and said that it must be some other function, probably a farewell or something. Oh well. As it happened Eugene couldn't make it either. Luckily there were a lot of people there with the combination of floorball and CommSec people. Mindy wasn't there though, which made me think how unhappy it was that she wasn't around for this long weekend, since she'd been pining for a long break for quite a while. Plus whenever we go out Mindy and Ceez are usually sticking together and chatting the whole night which both of them seem to enjoy, so I think Mindy would have liked it. The whole city was packed the whole night and it went quite late. I think I ended up getting home about 2am and waking up Eugene who surprised me by sleeping on the bed outside my room! I think because they were going down to the south coast the next day, so Max must have been sleeping in his bed.
So, after i woke up, i saw i had some missed calls from a 'withheld' number - gotta be Mindy. So i tried to use the calling card number she'd texted the night before. No luck - no credit. Tried to top it up by guessing my new card's expiry date. No luck. Damn! So i texted and caught her online instead. I'm really happy to hear it when she's out doing something, with friends, shopping, getting coffee, getting her hair done. I know it's really hard on me being apart; i can only guess how hard it is on her too. So i know that it's good to be doing something instead of just sitting around at home like i was this morning. I felt really sad and a bit disoriented when i woke up and she wasn't there. Well, I suppose this is something we'll both have to learn to deal with over the next couple of months. I'm sure we'll do it. Really sure.
Plans for tomorrow: Help Ian + Sheena move house, meet Bayliss for lunch... study study study! And jog lots =)
Thursday, April 5, 2007
FP!
Being new to the whole blogging thing the first post is a bit intimidating. I suppose I just announce that I have a blog (which is pretty obvious by now) and that i'll post a lot (ok that's a lie).
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