Javadoc

It's amazing - I'd never really done any serious javadoc-ing before.

I learned that all you need to do for package level comments is to have a package.html file in the root of the package. Javadoc will then pick this up and include it in the comments it pulls out of the .java files. Cool!

http://java.sun.com/j2se/javadoc/writingdoccomments/

Agile Testing: More on performance vs. load testing

Agile Testing: More on performance vs. load testing

Seems like a good reference

Reading

I'm back on the reading bandwagon, as I'm not studying this study period.

 

Lunar Park - Bret Easton Ellis

 

So far, it's been pretty good - I'm only about 5-6 chapters in though.

Blood...

I donated blood yesterday - for the first time.  It was pretty good actually, although I did feel a bit crappy afterwards.

 

I probably am getting sick, which is not a good thing - as Jack is still suffering from the gastro he had earlier in the week.

 

 

Fisky

is gone. :(

He came in last night, looked a bit out of it - didnt really want to eat. He slept in the house with us, and in the morning, when Rach went to pick him up - he hissed - very strange for him. She let him out, and he tried to pee. I went out for a ciggie about an hour later, and I saw him trying to pee twice - in the 10 minutes I was out there.

I suspected that he had crystals, we took him to the vet, and they said the same thing. Unfortunately we had to have him put down. :(

It's a sad sad day...

Jackers

Poor little man - he's a sickies, so Rach has taken him down to the hospital. He has been spewing and pooing for about 8 hours now, so he's probably a little washed out... :(

Words...

Jude is in a parrot stage at the moment. While we were up in Queensland, he started saying 'bloy', which is Jude talk for Fly. :) Which is funny, because he was chasing after the large moths flying around up there.

Otherwise, he just parrots the last thing that you say, which is great, until you let rip with a cracking swear word! :)

Coffee

While I was working out at the bank I found a place which has Gravity coffee - my favourite from down at Bear Brass here at Southbank.

The girls down at Illia are fantastic, as you can see.

Holidays!

We flew back into Melbourne tonight, it was a really good flight - Jude slept nearly all the way home. We kept him up at Currumbin Bird Sanctuary, riding on the train, and walking around - he conked as soon as we went to return the car.

It was a long drive home, but finally made it back.

Holidays to start!

We are flying out tomorrow morning, early - for Queensland.

7 days of exams and theme parks! :) There are a couple of exams, one for CPT11, and one for MAT17 - both of them i'm pretty comfortable with.

Phil and Jo's wedding

last night was heaps of fun! :) We left the kids at home, and partied on! :) Rach enjoyed herself, and we had a bit of a dance too! :)

It was good to catch up with Dan, Guy, Adam and Roy.. I haven't seen any of them for ages and ages! :)

We have promised to go and visit Dan's new place, I might see if he's free for lunch one of these days too. Maybe between Christmas and New Years. :)

The iPod is going great guns, it's just a thing of beauty!

podcasts..

it's pretty much all I've been listening to - as it's free, and interesting.. :) Thankfully, the radio stations here are all onto it, plus I can get the best bits of Merrick and Rosso's Sydney radio show.

I will list a few of them as I go, with a review... My fave at the moment is TwiT - This week in Tech. go and have a look at http://www.thisweekintech.com

:) I've downloaded a couple of leo's other podcasts, so we will see how that goes.

Trains..

Last night I worked back late, and got the 7:50 train - which was aparently the first train to go through to Frankston - due to a fatality at Chelsea.

Well, I left reasonably early tonight, and got an express - which stopped at Editvale - because someone jumped from between the carriages of a train coming into the city! We had to get off, and so I called Rach - who had to drive up to Mordi, and luckily she heard the announcements at our station.

Car..

Has finally been taken away! :) We were supposed to get $100, but nothing was forthcoming.

Been busy at work recently, with only 5 working days left before I go on holidays!

iPod video Converter!

Found a great one: http://www.tomdownload.com/multimedia_design/video/cucusoft_ipod_movie_video_converter.htm

Do it!

iPod

is this the coolest thing ever?

I spent most of my time at home searching for new interesting podcasts to download, and I've got a few good ones - This Week in Tech was really fantastic - it was long (around an hour!), but it's perfect for my train trips, and as it's basically a bunch of geeks talking about toys and technology, it's really floating my boat!

go to www.thisweekintech.com to download.

I'd have hyperlinked the title, but blogger doesnt fly with Opera. Bummer.

Other than that, Rach has been working, which has been good, but although the hours were good, it just wasn't for her. Kudos to you for trying baby! :) The job that you do at home with the boys is far far more valuable to me, and you cant tell me that you liked being away from the kids. I'm glad they dont get up when I leave for work in the morning, otherwise I'd just not go - and that wouldn't be good..

Had lunch with Amol today, which was fantastic - we tried to go to Camy dumpling house, but it was packed - lines out the door! I think the 100,000 extra people in the city for the union rally was really filling up the city. We ended up at the QV building food court, which was suprisingly good - had an Oporto, as recommended by one of my colleagues, Kevin. I'd not really had anything to do with him before, but he does look like an actor on Home and Away. Strange!

Anyway, we had a good chat, and he seems to be waiting for his review - I'm just amazed that the company isnt looking after it's most precious resource - the people. I mean, really - they dont have any assets, no IP in house, so it's all about the people - granted, they could probably get rid of the services business, and still live off 'Big Blue' like a little leech, but that would reall suck! (Yes, the pun was intended!)

So, it's time to finish my last assignment for CPT11, which is good - and I'm feeling good about the Maths exam coming up too.

It's been nearly a week!

Ok - So it's been a few days. Brief run down:

Saturday - Didn't go to the races, but went to Phil's bucks party. Good fun! :)

Sunday, took it easy, didn't get up to much - I think I might have even had a chance to get my test done.

This week has been full on - with this weekend being a work weekend, we have been flat out trying to get everything sorted out so we are go for tomorrow.

It's a bit sucky, but we are going for a Mid-december deployment to production. Time will tell if that's enough time.

Away from work, I've been busy importing music for my iPod. iTunes music service is pretty good, as is the free podcast search. I've been listening to a bunch of them on the way to work. It's a really good way to learn things! :) Who would have thought, an iPod as a learning tool.

Trying times..

I was stuck in this as I was trying to get to work this morning.

grrr...

It happened in February this year also. How hard do you think it would be to lightning-proof the signal box at Caulfield. Unfortunately, I was stuck on the train, and it was known the signal box was down at about 6am, and I didn't get on the train until 6:52. If I'd have known, then I would have got off and grabbed a bus to another train line.

Anyway, I managed to get booted off the train at Moorabbin at 7:10, waited for a bus for about 20 minutes, and then after talking to Rach, grabbed a train to Mentone. Mentone is a bus hub, and I waited there with a couple of other people for a bus to the Sandy Line. We waited about 30 minutes for a bus, and we got on it ok - and made it to Southland. As we were going to transfer to a Sandy bus, the bus depot manager told us the trains were back on. Back to Moorabbin at about 8:40, or 1.5 hours after I got booted off the train.

Anyway, went down the ramps, got a seat, and the train was still waiting about 25 minutes to get through Glenhuntly. I finally walked into work at 9:55, right on 2 hours late for work.

Melbourne Cup Party

We had a few people over today to watch the Melbourne Cup. Really beautiful day weather wise, we all spent most of the time out in the backyard, except for the really important race at 3pm.

Mike, Kylie, Jake, Paula, Jenny and Darryl came over for a bbq, and lots of betting.

I put on about $40 worth of bets, all of which LOST! Rach did ok in the betting though.

Maykbe Diva ended up winning the race, retiring at the top of the game, and is widely regarded as one of the best of all time. No horse has ever won 3 Melbourne Cups, let alone three in a row.

We played Buzz, which was heaps of fun! :)

Opening Doors...

Jude can now open doors himself. He stands up on his toes, and jiggers the handle while pushing the door. Little bugger. :)

iPod

I got one of a.

How awesome! :)

Just the most beautiful piece of technology, so simple and elegant. The interface feels really intuitive, as I've never used the click wheel, but it really seems to work ok. I've got to get some protective covers for it though.

Unfortunately I couldn't get a black one, as there are only whites in Australia at the moment.

I'm very excited!!

Father Bob Maguire

Father Bob Maguire

He's been on a few of John Safran's shows, and on Denton. Very funny man.

This weekend...

Was really busy. Went to Healesville on Saturday, and also dropped in on Mike and Kylie. I've got the details for Phil's bucks night, which is on next weekend. Hopefully I can win some money at the races on saturday, so I can go to the bucks night. We saw pretty much everything, except for the bird of prey show, which was a bit sucky - Jude started playing up just before the show, so we went home. It was a long day for the little man.

Sat night, Rach's friend Kirrilee came over with her husband, and we played a new PS2 game called Buzz. So addictive. We actually went out tonight and bought it! :)

Today was pretty cruisy, Rach went out of lunch, so it was just Jack and I today, we had tummy time, floor time, sitting up time, and sleeping time. I managed to get a bunch of house work done, which was satisfying, although it would have been more useful to get some study done! That's what the train tomorrow is for, I guess.

Tomorrow is going to be super quiet at the office, with about half the office not coming in - Tuesday is a Public Holiday, so most people take tomorrow off and get a 4 day weekend. I'll be getting stuck into work, and playing with the new iPod. :)

Excited!

I get to buy one of these tomorrow!

AWESOME!

I'm hanging out to get it! It will probably mean that I wont have to lug this bloody laptop to work every day. I might need to burn off some cd's of source code and other things on this machine though. Otherwise, I'll be laughing! :) I should probably also get a 1-2gig memory stick for storing other bits and pieces.

Big Person Foodies

Little Jack has his first solid food - well, I say solid, but it's really pureed apples yesterday :) And He's going for jabs this morning too. Poor little guy. Not too many cries were had, which is good. He's so alert now, following you around the room as you walk. Well, following Rach anyway. :) I think he's a mummy's boy! ;)

Coming up...

Heading off the Healesville Sanctuary tomorrow, which I'm really looking forward to - I haven't been there myself for a few years now, and the kids will really love it. Well, I'm hoping that they do anyway. I just hope that the weather holds out - This is Melbourne, so it will probably be good at some stage tomorrow, just as it will probably be shithouse also.

Spring racing carnival is coming up, which means I have an opportunity to wear the hat I bought last year! Unreal. I'm going to look like quite the betting man. Chasing after the kids. :) I think it might be time to get a TAB card, we say that every year, but I really think we need it. Honest! Neil seems pretty keen to come and have a look at the races! As do Ben and Betsy. The carnival officially starts tomorrow, with Derby Day kicking off the carnival, then Cup Day Tuesday, Oaks Day Thursday and Stakes Day on Saturday. Mega!

Smoking..

Is back. Well, at least for me it is. I only lasted a couple of days this time. Next time will be longer, I promise. It's one of those things really, I quite enjoy it, even though I know that it's really bad for me. I had to go and get some smokes yesterday, after I found the bill for the last visit to the doctor, which cost me $50.

I got a strange message this afternoon, from the Connex sms notification service - talking about an obstruction at Mentone - 20 minute delays, which doesn't fill me with joy. It's looking pretty good at the moment though, down to Patterson without a problem.

Work...

We had the monthly staff meeting, which is always fun. Free food and drinks should never be knocked back. The share offers have come through now, so everyone seems to be pretty upbeat. The HR manager has tempted fate and sat some people through exit interviews, and I think I might be asking if I can sit through one too. It's getting to the point where I've got to say something. Edwin and I were discussing the hiring policy, which looks like it's focusing on hiring people at more senior levels, which means there are fewer opportunities for existing staff. Sucks to be me. Why not take people off projects, train them, and promote them from within? Hire graduates, put them in the support area, get them some practical experience, and then move them into the consultancy side of the business. Cheaper, and better for staff morale in the long run.

Fortunately, I ran into ET on the tram while going ot the staff meeting - he seems keen to get me on board for the Product team, which I'd be cool with - I wonder though if there would be a lot of travel, which would really suck ass. Oh well, cant have everything eh? Fingers crossed, it might mean that I'll be able to get out of the Overtime rut that I've been in, and start working normal length days!

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/guess-what-just-turned-34.html

stuff.

Ok - I ran out of ciggies yesterday, around 11am. Nothing dramatic, just went downstairs, had a fag, came back up. I'm feeling pretty good this morning actually, I'm certainly not getting any cravings, or shakes, or crazy stuff like that. I know I have a really addictive personality, so if I do get hooked on something I love, it's hard for me to give it up. Although, I love to have a bet on the horses, and restrict myself to the cup carnival. I will continue to update if any change to my physical condition. At least with a jiggy neck I dont have to worry about looking around. I woke up with Jack's little feet in my back on Monday morning, and it's screwed my neck. (Although, I did play snooker against Neil, and came from 6-32 down, to win 60-32!)

Spoke to Phil, who's getting married at the end of this month - he's doing really well - very busy with the plans for the wedding. His wedding is about 4 weeks away now. I wont be going to the bucks party, well, I might, but not to any part that involves money. Bummer.

I've got to ring Mike, and see how he's doing too.

Work is a bit nuts at the moment, I managed to sort out the reports on Monday (about 10 hours work!), and then move onto the stored procedure for Start of Day Load. Aparently we are soon to be asked to work 10 hour days and 7 day weeks. I thought the days of slave labour had finished? If you want people to work hardcore hours, go and outsource your IT to India or Bangladesh. I'm going to suss out work and see what they say about the overtime thing. It might be the catalyst for a resignation - given that the share letters are coming out soon.

I realised why I love the coffee at illia so much - they use Gravity, which is the same as the Bear Brass guys use! I've been going there for about 2 months now, and only just realised last week! Duh. When I took that first sip from the first coffee there was something familiar about it. It was just like the girls used to make it for me!

Early..

It turns out that I woke up early this morning - so I thought I'd catch an early train - unfortunately, I missed the 6:09 train, so that means it was a 20 minute wait until the 6:29. What is all that about? If there were more regular services, running from earlier to later, I have no doubt that more people would use the system. We also only have 155 trains at the momemnt, which means that there is no additional capacity to run more services. I guess with the driver shortage of the past 12-18 months, that's not realy been a consideration. With petrol becoming very expensive, I would have though that it's a great chance for the government to push the public transport barrow. Maybe not?

I finished my assignment on Friday night, submitted all on time. I'm sure mine was the crappiest one out there, but as far as I could tell, it met all the criteria. Who cares if it doesnt look great, as long as it's functional, right?

We were looking after the in-laws place on the weekend, so we watched a bit of foxtel. Saturday we got a pay-per-view of the new Metallica movie Some kind of monster. It was brilliant, seeing how these therapists work. Amazingly, the record company was paying $40,000USD per month! It's pretty good dollars, if you can get it.

Sunday was 'Pimp My Ride' day, so spent a couple of hours watching that. What a great idea for a show. Get people with shitbox cars to write in, take their car away, fix it all up, and give it back to them... crazy! I even saw a car with a spa in it. Seriously.

After we left the in-laws, I took Jude home on the back of the bike. He seems to like it, although it's a bit hard to tell, as you cant see his face. At least he doesnt spend the whole time screaming, or kicking you.

People...

How long between talking to people does it have to be to still
consider them friends? There are quite a few people that I haven't
spoken to for a few months, but I still consider them friends. Maybe
they are more like acquaintences?

Anyway, I've been suffering from bad stomach cramps - it might be time
to go and see the doctor. It has happened a couple of times after
I've had jester pies - mind you, the pies are really really good -
nice crispy pastry, and the fillings are amazing - real meat chunks in
the meat pies, as opposed to lips and assholes in a standard meat pie.

At work I'm on the timesheet bandwagon now, we have to fill out 2 lots
of timesheets - at least the ones we do for our employers are fairly
straightforward - as far as they are concerned, I'm working on one
project - it's just the client ones which are down to the half hour.
At least I've managed to get into the swing of logging stuff on a half
hourly basis, which I've been doing for the past month or so.

The useless programmer has gone on holidays for 3 weeks, so fingers
crossed we will have the actual coding mostly done. He can do his
head in when he tries to actually run his tests that he's written. We
went through his data dictionary, which was 120 pages - for about 15
tables. It's a bit much. We culled it down to around 100, but it
does seem that it was a pretty hardcore enterprise. Personally, I
would have just had a table with a couple of fields for each table -
Field Name, Type, Description, Example Values. And a paragraph blurb
about what the table actually represents. Easy - and only 15 pages.
That together with the data model, and you should be able to
understand what's happening with all of the information in the data
model.

It looks like I've been bumped off the 'Lead Developer' role, which is
a bit of a downer - A new staff member was hired, so he's taken on a
lot of those tasks - which is fine by me, but unfortunately I will
have to stand by the quality of the code that I've written. Damn.
That being said, I did learn a lot while I was in that project role,
and certainly as far as the office knows, that's what I'm doing. I am
planning on spending some time over Christmas to re-read the Java 2
certification book, and get the Support Centre to book the exam - that
will allow me to apply for SC roles at other places - and get myself a
20-30k pay rise.

Argh - here come the cramps again.

Sitting up...

Jack has been straining in his chair to pull his little head up - and this morning, while propped up on the couch, he spontaneously pulled himself up into a sitting position, which lasted for about 30 seconds, before he came crashing down. He was pretty pleased with himself, sitting up and looking around. Luckily Rach was sitting right next to him, but it might be time to spend some more time on the floor!

He's getting better with the rolling over, only from front to back so far.
I haven't re-visited his book of records recently, but that will be one of the things for the weekend.

Cricket..

What a letdown. Australia went into the match looking vulnerable, and
came out unified again. Stuart MacGill has to be the unluckiest leg
spinner of all time - coming along at the same time as Shane Warne.
MacGill has a fantastic record, taking about 5 wickets per match, but
he really struggles to get a game - except when the team is playing in
Sydney. Hopefully the selectors will see his brilliant 9/80-odd in
this super test and put him into the side for the West Indies early
this summer - They are notoriously bad at handling any kind of spin.

As with the one dayers, it really proves the adage: A champion team
will beat a team of champions. My current thoughts about the Aussie
Cricket team, mostly on the latest one day and test matches:

Matty Hayden is back in form, after curbing his previous
belligerent streak, he's done a fantastic job - Personally I would
have dropped him from the one day team a little earlier, as it was
obvious the pressure of getting on with it had been telling on him.
He played a fantastic match, taking a great catch of Kallis off Warne
- as well as Man of the Match scores of 111 and 77. It was not so
much about the numbers, but the way in which he made them. He slowed
his normal strike rate (of around 70-80 runs per 100 balls) to around
45-50 - and just waited for the bad balls - and did he put them away.
He hit some majestic drives and cuts, reminiscent of his hey days.

Langer got a brute of a ball early on the first morning of this
test, made a 30 odd in the second innings - Was fantastically
consistent throughout the Ashes, when the pressure was on Hayden, he
stayed in and helped us post reasonable scores. Took one easy catch,
but was pretty quiet for the rest of the match.

Ponting showed that he is easily temptable outside the off
stump, as Freddie picked him up with a beautiful swinging delivery,
moving away from Pontings off stump.

Clarke

Made a couple of average scores, but still hasn't been able to live up
to the standard he set during his first test series - taking Sri Lanka
apart. Also looked good against India too. Got bowled by a good ball
in the second innings, although he did play down the wrong line, and
the off cutter made it through the gate. Needs to tighten up a little
bit, but looks like a good prospect for years to come.

It looks like Katich is struggling, after a couple of 50's in
England, and hardly any runs during the Super Series, his place must
be under question - Hopefully Brad Hodge can come in and make an
instant impression - or put Mike Hussey in. Katich is also one of the
'over 30' brigade, with Hodge not much younger - Hussey proved his
class in the Super Series one-day matches, and should be given an
opportunity. Katich looked all at sea against Murali (although,
Murali makes a lot of batsmen look average!) - He just seemed rooted
to the crease, unable to get his feet moving - the shot he got out to
was pretty terrible, playing around his front pad, and bunting a low
catch back to the bowler. Might need to go back to state level to get
himself sorted out

Gilly looked a hell of a lot better, although it looks as
though Freddie Flintoff will be around for a while to unsettle the
Australian batsmen - Certainly Gilly looked suceptible to the 'around
the wicket' tactics of Flintoff, but in this series he did make some
fantastic scores in the one dayers (100, 60, 30) and a flowing 94 in
the first innings of the Super Test. Man of the series.

Watson

Given a chance to prove himself with the ball against some of the best
batsmen in the world. Was a bit one dimensional, not having much
lateral movement, or movement from off the pitch. Bowled a few overs
that he would prefer to forget - Sehwag took him apart. Batted
alright, but needs some good time in the middle.

Warne

Looks pretty good - a very different proposition to MacGill, but still
has enough experience to pick up most class batsmen - While MacGill
got the figures this match, a lot of that was due to the pressure that
Warne built up at the other end - forcing batsmen to take on MacGill
to score - and inevitably getting themselves caught or stumped.
Batting hasn't been great - I'm still waiting for him to make his
first test century - after being so close with a 99 a few years back.
I think from memory he's got the most amount of runs for a player who
has not scored a century.

Lee
Leaked runs like a sieve, but was fast and aggressive throughout - I
think Ponting was right on the money, when he first took the captaincy
- he wanted tighter bowling from Brett - you cant go for 5 runs an
over, even if you are taking wickets. Was unlucky at times against
Sehwag, and just plain bad at other times. Batting has been pretty
good, getting up towards Shane Warne in the batting stakes - certainly
in the one dayers he's been good in the 'lower order hitting batsmen'
role.

McGrath

Metronimic as ever - Very unlucky to tread on a ball in England, and
other than at Lords, didn't/couldn't really show his very best.
Missed one test, looked under-done for the one he came into - and was
behind the 8-ball in the last 2 test matches - I think he even sat the
last one out?

MacGill
An attacking bowler, took a fantastic bag of wickets in this test
match. Personally, I think the Watson/MacGill experiment worked in
this match. It's unlikely that Watson will play against a stronger
bowling attack, and will have a lot easier time of batting. MacGill
is clearly a number 11, but with the ball in his hands, looks likely
to take a wicket every visit to the bowling crease.

Stuff..

Not much really going on at the moment - We were planning on moving
into Rach's parents house - but it looks like they aren't going to be
moving anymore. That's a real bugger, as their house would have been
perfect - Large enough to have 2 lounge areas (one for adults, and one
for the terrors!), plus 3 bedrooms and a study. Also has 2 bathrooms,
but only 1 toilet. I think we will probably move down into Frankston
now, given that we can get a 3 bedroom house down there for about $200
per week.

We had also toyed with the idea of buying a Nimbus people mover from
Kylie's sister - After some research, we decided that it was probably
not a good idea - and the fact that she wanted $9,000 for it, and the
red book value was around $4,000-$6,000. Certainly not worth 50% more
than the most expensive price. Aparently, they have small engines,
and are regularly loaded up (with kids and stuff), so the engine
labours, and they get pretty tired. Basically warned that anything
over 10 years is probably not worth the investment. That now means
that we will be getting the little beast back on the road - so that I
can get to the station. If we move, it means that we can be a little
farther from the station, as I don't have to walk it.

There really isn't anything good on commercial tv any more - now that
we have ABC (and ABC2), and with the recent Ashes series on SBS - I've
found that the only commercial shows we watch are: CSI (Original) and
the Simpsons. And of course Neighbours. We watched a great show on
Sunday night, all about gold. Very interesting - talked about early
coins, and european kingdoms around Roman times. If I wasn't studying
at the moment, I'd probably do a history course on that historical
era. I might see if I can't do a single history subject anyway.

Crazy stuff...

So Rach was telling me that Roy and Renee broke up - unbelieveable.

It's one of those things, you never really know how someone else's relationship is going, until they call you to tell you that it's all over. I sent him a note on his journal, just to say hello...

:)

http://www.livejournal.com/users/uberjeep/

Excellent journal, very dark humour.

Friday night..

Was good - I ended up staying back at work until about 6:30 - and watched the cricket at work from about 4:30.

I went down to the Exchange Hotel, and met Paula, Ryan and Rach. They got on the fizz, and then we went to dumplings - my second visit that day! After feasting there again, it was off home to see the littles - both of them were out cold. Jack hardly stirred in the whole getting him home routine.

I was allocated the 'getting up in the middle of the night' job last night, but Jack decided that he would sleep through. What a good kid. I guess it helps when he has his warm sleepy sack, and a belly full of food. Even though he's been a bit unsettled, he's coming good.

small, but loud!

Now has his own room - rather than sticking him in with Jude, who already gets jiggy when he's disturbed, Rach re-organised the study to fix the little guy's bed. He seemed pretty happy with the sleeping arrangements last night, so lets hope that he sorts himself out. He did manage to put himself to sleep the other night on the couch, I was looking at him fight the sleep, but he eventually conked it in the end. :)

Specialness..

He's going as good as ever - it's his child care day today, so we will
see how that goes - he seems to get quite upset when Rach takes him -
and he cried nearly the whole time he was there last week. Poor
little tacker.

On the upside though, he's starting to count - he gets to about 8, and
then loses interest. To be expected. He knows where the 'lollies'
come from now, and will stand at the kitchen entrance pointing to the
cupboard saying 'more, more, more'.. :) He even managed to record the
answering machine message, which consists of him saying 'car, car,
car' for about 30 seconds.. :)

Bleh...

Had lunch with Reuben yesterday, which was fantastic - I haven't seen
him since the break up. Sounds like he's doing ok at the moment, but
know really knows? He's working at another bank down the road from
where I am, so we will probably start having more regular lunch
meetings - it's certainly closer than the last place he was working -
Dandenong!

Rach spent yesterday morning re-arranging the study so that Jack could
have his own bedroom - and it seemed to work alright last night... we
will see..

The trains have been a bunch better recently, certainly no need to
stand up the whole way home - I figure that was something happening
(probably a cancelled train previous), which caused 2 trains worth of
people to get on the same train. The main problem with that is when
there are so many people, the trains dwell a lot longer, so more
people are there when the train arrives, which means the trains are
fuller, and the trains dwell a lot longer at the next stop, etc etc...
it's a viscious cycle.

God, I love playing party poker - it's just awesome fun - scamming
poor people out of their hard earned credits! Woooo! I'm
consistently getting into the last 3 on the tournament tables, which
is testimony to me learning and understanding the game. I'm still not
fantastic at sucking money out of people yet though. Practice
practice.

Sardines...

Man, we had the most packed train ever tonight - I managed to get the 5:08 express train, but by the time it got to Flagstaff (2 stops!), it was standing room only. I don't think I've ever seen that before.

The other problem was one of the loops not running, so we had some people from gwy/alamein on our line.

Oh well, what can you do eh?

Happenings..

A few things are going on at the moment. Reuben and Paula have broken up. A real bugger that, so now they have to sell/buy out the house from each other. It's never good, but I hope that they can get through the house sale without resorting to lawyers, who just end up leeching a bunch of money from the both of them. The housing market isn't super flash at the moment, but I guess they have some time to sell. Rach thinks that Paula will probably go back to Ireland now, which is a bugger, because she and Rach are close. I called Reuben the other day, I'd heard that his laptop got stolen out of the back of his car! Talk about bad stuff happening all together.

Rach is really encouraging me to go and play cricket - which i think is great, because I've not played for a long while, and i'm really starting to miss it! At least it will get me off the couch on Saturday afternoons! I don't know how fit i'll get from it, but it's got to be better than doing nothing, right?

Very strange thing last night, I went out to feed the cats, was listening to the cricket, and decided to clean up the shed a bit - Opened the shed door from the inside, and saw there was a car there. Not mine (which is permenantly there at the moment!), not Paul's, but a strange car. Anyway, I looked towards Paul's place, to see if it was a friend of his (it was not a car of any of his family), and there was a guy standing in Paul's doorway. We had a quick conversation, I was trying to work out who he was looking for - some couple called Sean and Rosa, or something - I suspect that it was just a cover, and that they were looking for Paul, who just wouldn't answer the door. Anyway, the guy reluctantly went back to his car, and slowly drove off - I just stood in the shed waiting for them to leave. Weird.

Saturday night, I slept out on the blow up matress with Rach - Unfortunately, I managed to jigger my neck - I've started wit hthe anti-inflamatories, but it's stiff as a board - I've also taken my heat pack to work, so that I can get some heat/blood flow into the area. I need to be mindful not to get stuck sitting at my desk for a long time today.

Cricket..

What a great series - well, if you are an Australian cricket fan anyway. We comprehensively thrashed the world XI again - It seems to me that the old adage: A champion team will always beat a team of champions rings true - certainly when that champion team has just got back from a series defeat in the Ashes.

Gilly was back to his best with the bat, the loss (dropping) of Hayden hasn't hurt too much - I thought Martyn was on thin ice after his first match duck, but he came back to put together a 50-odd and 30-odd last night. It looks like Mike Hussey is going to be a player, very much in the mould of a Bevan, he's a nudger/accumulator, and accelerates when the time is right - He and Watson got us from 5/150 odd, up to 294 by the end of the innings. It seemed to be just too much for the World XI, who really struggled to get partnerships going - Brett Lee was fiery and hostile from the opening, removing Gayle in the first over. That set the tone for the fielding innings, and Glenn McGrath was metrononic as always. I was really impressed with Pidg's "Pitch Map", which basically has all of this deliveries landing in the same area. Brilliant bowling.

Here's hoping that this Friday's "Super Test" can be just as good a match. If it comes close to any of the Ashes test matches, then we will all be satisfied with the concept.

Cricket

The World XI has come to Australia to play the world champions - and how did that work out? It was a fantastic match, if you are an Australian supporter - We ended up making 8/255, a little below what they were on target for at the 20 over mark (around 280-300!), but it ended up being too much for the World XI, who struggled to get to 150. Shane Watson with 4 wickets was man of the match, and Brett Lee did another fantastic job with the bat, whacking 26 of 17 at the end of the innings. He's becoming a bit of a specialist slogger down the order.

The crowd seemed very disappointing, maybe 12-15,000 in, but seeing as it was a work day, it's probably too much to expect to have 30-40,000 in. Hopefully Friday and Sunday's matches will have big crowds, to get some good atmosphere going in the Dome. It looked a bit slippery (the affliction not only affecting footballers!), and the ground was very slow in some patches - with well hit straight drives stopping dead on the patchy outfield.

We batted very well, Katich a good move up the order, but Damien Martyn must be wondering (like the rest of us!) what happened to his great form of 12 months ago. It seems like only the other day he was is career best form, and we were all talking about how he could have been left out of the side for 6 years after the devastating loss to South Africa in the early 90's.

The fielding was still a bit shonky, with a drop each from Shane Watson, and Brett Lee - Katich also dropped a difficult chance at mid on - although he was running with the flight of the ball, which is never easy to do. Glenn McGrath was superb as usual, his first 7 overs going for 10 runs, and a wicket. You would think that someone who seems to bowl on the same spot all the time, who isnt express, would be a real target - As a batsman, if you know where the ball is going to land, why wouldn't you just try to step back and whack it?

Sangakarra was good, although he was gifted a life early on (by the Katich drop), he went on to make a respectable 60-odd, and when he was out, that was about 60% of the runs for the team. Unfortunately no other batsmen really decided they wanted to stay out there.

I managed to get an early train this morning, mostly thanks to Scully who woke me up about 5:30 - It was geting light, so I decided to get up anyway. This should get me to flagstaff around 7:40 or so, and I'll be able to get stuck into the work I've got to do, unless of course the machine I normally use has been taken/upgraded. I'm hoping not.

Sickness..

I've not been this sick for a while. Monday night, after eating some chicken tandoori - I spent the rest of the night on the toilet - until about 9am the next morning. I finally got around to not sitting on the toilet, and then spent nearly 2 hours waiting to see a doctor. Unbelieveable.

I actually got the shits with that place, and went to a late night clinic where you have to pay up front yourself, just so I could see someone. I got my certificate, luckily for a couple of days, because I woke up this morning, still getting the sweats. The only bugger was that I missed out on playing pool with Neil today.

I did terribly in my maths test this week - 4/17 - at least I know what I really need to concentrate my studying on now. I had been cruising through mostly on refreshing the memory of the last time I studied this subject.

Words..

He's started with more now:

Jude
Keat
pidey - or Spider. :)
Bus

That's about all I can remember at the moment.. :)

Bali

Another round of bombings. We have now decided that there is definately no chance that we will be back to Bali. It's really unfortunate, because it's a beautiful place, but it just seems to be a magnet for religious extremists. Hopefully the Balinese people don't suffer too much as a result of the lost tourism.

I think you will find that airlines will start cancelling services there, as the demand falls.

Random Stuff

Had a chat with Alan today, sounds like work is doing some good stuff - with their pizza round tables. Interesting that the CEO wants us to move towards having IP, which means products, which means staff programmers. And these staff programmers would be developing code for consultants who are out in the field. I'm not too sure how well that's going to work. Unless the product is really well tested, and documented it's likely to be a white elephant - like the project I worked on previously, which suffered from that problem.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a few of the staff members from the company we used to work for pushing the product idea to the side, as it really didn't work effectively. The product team eventually developed into a company of it's own, which was terrible. Unfortunately it's quite hard to product-ize something specific for a J2EE consultancy team, given the variety in the work that we take on. Obviously, we are pushing products from our business partner, which leads you down a dangerous path, in terms of keeping agile in relation to client needs.

Personally, I would suggest that we decided on a 'Developer Toolset', with a known set of best known open source projects (Hibernate, Jasper, Struts, Spring, Display Tag Libs, Ant, Maven, etc etc), in which we have a bunch of training, and a reference site implementing all the projects. This would make life a lot easier. So, you could envisage having a new start, with a clean laptop installation - then install Eclipse (or WSAD, or whatever IDE is standard), with the reference implementation of all of our developer tools - and have the ability to then send the developer out to actually do some consulting work straight off the bat.

This would allow people to work efficiently in a known tool set, we have access to/create our own training courses (which we could sell to clients!), plus we could sell the 'Centre of Excellence' idea much more strongly also. If we had a quarterly review of the tool set, along with consultants submitting a 1 pager on any new tool/versions that come along, this could be checked, and then added/discarded in a well organised manner.

How this would work in practice, it's a bit hard to say. We did have a great deal of difficulty in getting a developer tool set organised for a group of 15, let alone 100 consultants. Everyone has a big personality, and this means everyone has the favourite/best known tools to do specific jobs.

I might have a chat with our chief architect when I'm at the monthly meeting tomorrow night.

Yeeha!

Well, the boil has resisted all attempts to extricate it. Rach started hacking into it last night, but no joy. I think it's time to go and visit the doctor to see what we can do. I probably should see a dermatologist to work out if there is anything that can be done longer term also.

I spent most of yesterday in a requirements workshop, which was really interesting - a hell of a lot of work has come out of it, but i'm confident that we can get it specified nice and thoroughly, although the work is continuing to expand. I doubt we will be able to give it to them by mid January, as the plan states. It will be interesting to see if they get more budget, after just going to the budget committee and getting a 50% increase in the budget already.

Hopefully I can get some work done today - I might spend some time typing up my view of the requirements workshop too. The requirements for the reports I've been working on have come through, so it will be interesting to see if it all flies. :)

Little star!

Rach decided to submit a picture to 'Bright Stars', which is essentially a child labour business. They organise catalogs, ad work, tv work, etc. They called yesterday, and told us they would like to meet with Jude, to get his 'personality'. How much personality do kids have at 19 months? I know he's a cheeky bugger, and he loves to smile/laugh, but what are they really going to get? I figure they just want to confirm that the photo we sent in is from the kid we have, and not just some random internet picture.

Anyway, he's going in Friday to meet with them, and we decide what work we are comfortable with him doing. I imagine that he would be ok for catalogues and that kind of stuff, but not too sure about any scenario where he has to do something, and repeat it! He tends to do something once, and then not do it again, regardless of the amount of coaxing/bribery/coercion you apply on him. He's a funny kid. I will post a photo of him eating his lunch desert later too. :)

Bits and pieces..

I missed riding the bike last night - Which is a bit of a bugger, because I really wanted to get some exercise - I've been feeling a bit blah over the past few days - probably the lack of sleep on Sunday night which is contributing to that. My face has a massive blind pimple, the likes of which have never been seen before! If I hadn't had the chat from my boss, I would have hidden myself away, like the elephant man. I have also managed to rip a chunk of nail out of my thumb. ARGH!

Phil gave me a call yesterday, and told me we are being invited to his and Jo's wedding! Cool as. It's in about 8 weeks (end of November), which means it's going to be a busy time for both of them, organising everything. I still don't really know where it will be, or even what time of day! I guess that's what the invitation is for hey.

I'm going to be busy at work today, having a workshop from 9:30 to 12:30, and the morning meeting from 9:00 to 9:30 - so effectively I'll get no work started until 1pm today. joy.

I've also just finished the Mail Merge portion of my Computing Assignment 1. Now I just have to find a bunch of uni's that offer online/distance courses, list them out, and footnote the links that I used to find it. Also got to finish the 'Best Achievement' paragraph. Should be pretty straightforward, I will hopefully do that tonight, as I cant surf the web on the train. :(

Bathies..

Little Jack had a bath with me tonight - He was a bit all over the place at the start, but he relaxed, and got a bit used to it. He was holding onto my hands for grim death though - he had little white knuckles. I had him supported behind the head, with his legs and body floating - and he seemed to enjoy that quite a bit - he had big laughs when I did the 'boo' game with him. So cute. He seems to be much more aware of what is going on around him, and will be rolling around pretty soon - Rach found him moved down the couch on morning, it might be time to start putting him in his cot - although he seems to not really like it at all - screams come pretty quickly, even when you put him in there after he's asleep. Poor little tacker - he must feel the cold.

Recently...

I saw a couple of movies recently, on tv, which makes it a bit hard to judge them properly - I find that tv stations pick bad times to break movies up (with ads!), and often scenes are cut due to the content of the movies - we have a fairly strict set of boundaries as to what is appropriate to show at different times of day.

The Hot Chick
Not a great movie, Rob Schneider swaps bodies with a high school cheerleader, and hilarity ensues.
4/10.

Just Married
Well, Brittany Murphy is gorgeous, but she can't help this dog of a movie. Ashton (Dude where's my car?) Kucher is average poor joe, and Murphy is rich girl. I didn't really watch the end of this film, but I was tired - and it's not like I walked out of a movie that I'd paid my hard earned for.
2/10

Rach and I were going to go and see a real movie on the weekend, and there seems to be quite a few good ones at the moment - the names of which escape me right at the moment. Although I did see on the weekend that the new Rob Schneider film Deuce Bigelow 2 got an absolute caning - phrases such as 'The worst movie of the year', and 'Don't waste your money' have been attributed to this film. I'm curious to see it, just to see if there is any truth to the reviews.

It helps that we have about a dozen free tickets to go to the movies, but it's not helping that we don't have anyone to look after the smalls.

Work

I have been having a few good wins, but I'm finding that going back over work that other people have done is quite a bit of a shock - sometimes stuff that was supposed to be done, just has not been done at all. I had to debug a few stored procedures yesterday, and re-work a bunch of unit tests, after our schema change - I was confident that this had already been done, but it doesn't look like it! Hopefully that will be the last of the re-work that has to be done as part of the migration to the new schema. That, and re-doing all of the scripts for the database to be re-created. We have to have good scripts, otherwise we wont have a useful database for the testing phase.

Chaser

You have to go and see this site - www.chaser.com.au - Brilliant satirists, they have their show back on ABC2 (if you have digital, yay!) - and they have a bunch of merchandise which I'd love to get - including a t-shirt, and dvd's of their previous series. Their site is really well done, with a real 'The Onion' feel to it - I just cant wait to see one of their stories picked up by some dumb journo, and then being busted on 'Media Watch'. I'm constantly amazed by the sheer stupidity of a lot of journo's and editors, putting obvious internet fakes on the front page of their daily newspaper. And the suckers at Sunrise, who believed that photos sent in were taken in Bunbury WA.

Fitness Regime

I was too tired last night to get stuck in on the bike - I'm cranking it up to 30 minutes a night now, as I only start sweating at about 15 minutes. 15 minutes is just too short to get any real benefits, and 30 minutes is the length of most programs, so I'll do it that way from now on. Tonight will be the first time at 30. Hopefully I can build up my fitness to a point where I can take Jude on a bike ride for at least an hour. We might ride down to Frankston in a couple of weeks, and then get the train back (or ride back, depending on how I feel!).

I've been eating a little better, but it hasn't helped my skin - which is playing up something shocking - I have a massive boil/lump on my chin, which is shithouse! :( I am eating healthier mostly due to the fact that I've got no money left this month, so it's sandwiches from home all the way! :)

Public Transport

I'm a big advocate for public transport - I spend a lot of time lurking at the railpage forums learning about how the system can be improved - It's amazing the cars that I see in the carpark since the price of petrol has gone up through $1.30 per litre - Brand new BMW's, Integra's, Calais, all kinds of brand spanking new cars.

I really hope that the line that I'm living on has some services added to it - we are in desperate need - I'm only 3 stops from the end of the line, and the trains to the city are near on full by the time they get to my stop - and are standing room only about 3 stops later. We are still in school holidays, so there is a bit of easing of the pressure , but it still makes sense to add some services

This never happened when the price of petrol was around $.80 per litre - It looks like we are entering another oil crisis, just like in the 70's - when Holden released their ill advised 4 cylinder commodore. That became a museum piece!

I've heard that there will be a new timetable released around the 8th of October, and there are to be a few more 3-car Siemens services running on the northern group lines. Unfortunately that means that less Siemens 6-car sets will be available to the caulfield group lines. We will be getting more Comeng trains, but what can you do?

The weekend...

Was great.

Today was really quiet, Jack was pretty jiggy all day today - he had to have love pretty much all day. Poor little tacker. I spent most of the day doing nothing at all but watching telly.

Yesterday was good, we went to Rach's parents place for grand final day - what a fantastic game too. Sydney got up by 4 points, after a fantastic pack mark in the last 5 seconds of the game by Leo Barry.

Paula and Reuben broke up too - that's shithouse.. :(

Getting bigger...

Little Jack is getting a lot more head control now, and he is following stuff with his eyes. He is having big awake times, but is still not really eating more than about 120ml per feed. Hopefully he will start to take a little more, and sleep a bit longer. Unfortunately he doesn't like to sleep up in the boys room, which means he spends most of his sleep time on the couch.

Sickies

Poor little tacker - he's really really sick at the moment. He had his first real spew, while lying on the couch with Rach last night. Poor little lamb. He then whinged for the next hour while we were trying to get some sleep. What are ya gonna do?!

Jasper, Exceptions, etc

Busy doing some stuff;
- Jasper Reports PDF factory. That went pretty well actually - I managed to hook in an XLS generator factory in about 3 hours - All I needed was the XLS exporter to be used on a filled report. Easy as pie.
- Exception handling framework - This is a pain in the arse, as we have a number of logging destinations - the application log, the database event log, the UI log and the monitoring software log. Hopefully the site logger that I've put together is able to handle this ok. There are quite a few good sites related to generic exception handling, which I have to read up on - unfortunately we don't really have time to spend on it during the project.

Had a great day at work, got a hell of a lot of things sorted out, which is good. I'd been having a bit of a nightmare with the Jasper Reports generation, and have set up stubs to hook the reports into the client publishing system, so we dont have to worry about it. I still haven't ridden the bike this week either.

Chris and Murray came to meet the team out where we are, and he gave me a huge rap - I was pretty impressed with that - I didn't really think about it, but I was the only person out there for quite a while, and aparently I 'opened up opportunities' in the group that I'm working for - which has gone from 1 person (me!), to 4 - and soon to be 5, if I understand it correctly.

Dinner was great tonight, we had low fat Lamb Kebabs - just pita, lettuce, lamb backstrap and tzatziki (sp) - which were very tasty indeed.

testing times..

11/15 for my exam - I'm happy with that. All of the exams make up 15% of the overall mark, with the other 85% being for the exam, which I will have to sit in Queensland! How crap is that timing?

We will be up there for the big holiday in December, and it's just at the right(wrong) time! I spent the train trip in to work this morning studying, reviewing the first 3 weeks of lectures, and going about 3 weeks ahead. The logic/proof stuff will be finished soon, thank god. I must make a note to read the text book for the first 4-5 weeks of reading, so that I can cement my understanding. I might have to take a day to review the notes I'm making while I'm up in Qld.

Wednesday- Murray came to see me at the client site today - aparently the client has mentioned that i've been taking a few days off - and that is right on the money. With the kids being sick a fair bit recently, and my back playing up (that's a once every 3 months job!), I'm not suprised that it looks like i've been sick a lot. He was just checking to see that everything was ok - My main gripe was about the seating at the client site, which is contributing to my dodgy back.

Well, that and the fact that I'm 25 kilos overweight.

Opera Test

I read today that Opera browser is removing the ad banner, and the subscription fee! How good is that? I have been a fan of Opera for quite a while, but found that it didn't fly properly with the internet banking sites that I used to use - Now that I don't internet bank, it's all good!

Mondayitis..

Didn't ride the bike - Dumplings for dinner, as Rach had come in early so we could go to Amol's suprise birthday tonight, which was fantastic! He
was very suprised to see us all there - I think there were about 30 odd people waiting in the restaurant for him to arrive. We had a good chat, and he had a great birthday. We left reasonably early, as the kids were with Rach's parents - And we got there just in time to watch the Mark Latham interview on Enough Rope. Latho is just going hammer and tongs at everyone. Great to watch, in some way, but very sad for the Labor party in general. I personally think they are going to suffer from this, and Kim Beazley is just the most useless leader ever. Lame Duck.

Also did my Discrete Maths exam for week 3. Not too bad.

The weekend

We had the quiet weekend, and god it was great. I think Rach and the boys were going a bit stir crazy - it's ok for me, because I'm away at work for 40-50 hours a week, to sit at home on the weekend, but they just want to go out. We decided that it was time for me to start exercising a bit, with 15 minutes of bike riding per night, for this week, going up to 30, etc.

I am eating pretty average at the moment, I think cutting out the fizzy drinks will help a lot!

Busy..

Been flat our recently - Had a few things that I wanted to blog about, but I have been too exhausted to write them on the train.

Plus I've been reading my maths lectures on the train too.

You beauty!

Warnie now has 4! Yeah baby...

Now we have only 5 more wickets to get, and then we can have a bat, and hold the Ashes!

Oh yeah, and I've got to do my maths quiz tonight - I re-read the 3 lectures for this week too.

dj flange!

I had a good couple of hours dj'ing on Ruby's decks last night! I had a ball! I'd really love to spend a lot more time learning to be a good dj.. :)

Wordliness

Jude has a quickly increasing vocabulary;

• Scully (cully), the cat.
• Plane, accompanied by pointing at the sky. We have shark spotting planes go over on the weekends about every 10-15 minutes.
• Thai and Pad Thai. We've been eating a bit of Thai food recently.
• Boobies. This made us laugh. A lot.
• Doobie, second cat.
• Baby - Clear as a bell.
• Chester - from 'Snap goes Chester', one of his favourite books.
• Bum. A personal fave of mine! ;)

He knows what a cat is too - if you ask him where the cat is, he goes to the back door where the cats wait for us to let them in.

We have started reading to him, and buying him a book or two per week. He loves to sit on the couch and listen to us read the books.

Eye Of The Storm

Eye Of The Storm

Ashes - Test 5, Day 1

Well, we are going not too bad.

After letting the openers get away, Warne has come back and got 4-for. Unbelieveable.

Child Care

Rach has found a good cheap child care place in Chelsea - just up the road.

He is going for his first 'test' day tomorrow. :) I hope he has a great day. awww.

Laughter...

Little Jack has started laughing - I really don't know what makes him laugh, but I've managed to get him to laugh a couple of times in the past few days. And it's not a forced laugh (i.e, from tickling), this starts as a smile, moves to a coo, or a two syllable noise, and then becomes a laugh. I was really chuffed. :)

Busy Fathers day...

Been busy recently - trying to finish the assignment which has been plaguing me for a while.

Quickly - Today was good fun, got a great brekky, a beautiful card from the boys (Rach), and all in all took it pretty easy - Rach cooked a BBQ, and her dad came over too. Very nice Salmon, Chicken and salad for lunchies.

Yesterday: We went to Southland first thing in the morning - we had to have our Yum Cha - It all went pear shaped pretty quickly, with Jude playing up, and then Jack wanting foodies - We managed to get through, and Jude seemed intrigued that we were eating with two sticks, while he's still struggling with a spoon.

This week was reasonably quiet at work, we had a few changes waiting to go, dependant on some other work. Got to nail the Jasper Servlet on Monday, and then ready to rock and roll. Crazy!

Developing...

Jude has come along with a few new things that he's doing now:

1. Jumping - he loves it!
2. He's moved onto two syllable words - well, kind of - Daddy, CD and pad thai.
3. He's got Thomas the Tank slippers that flash every time he takes a step - I'm surprised he doesn't walk into more things while he's wearing them, as he has a habit of watching the lights on his shoes, and not where he's walking! :)
4. Eating with a spoon - We have to put down a massive sheet over the lounge room, but he's been getting into the Thai food - Green chicken curry, and coconut rice is a favourite at the moment.

Connex

Is making sure that i'll get home late again - we haven't gone faster than about 30km/h since we left Caulfield - we must be operating under caution orders or something like that. It's taken nearly an hour to get to cheltenham from the city. how's my day going? Oh yeah - I still have to get myassignment done for Reasoning. I have the equivalent of about 15 a4 pages to read, and then construct an argument of about 12-20 points of out that. excellent. NOT.

BTC - Grand Final

I got flogged. What a bastard. I only lost 3 games all year, and one of them was the grand final.I was really hurt by Primus hurting himself after the first 2 minutes of the game, and peter bellplayed, even though he wasn't named in the 25 players on Thursday night. ARGH! Oh well, I stillwin $50, which is not to be sneezed at. I'll collect that on Wednesday.

Ashes - Day 4

We Lost! In an amazing show, we managed to set them 130 odd runs, and had them 7 down before they gotthe total. Warnie made 45 odd with the bat, and took another 4 wickets in the second innings, whichis really helping us out. Anyway, there is just one more test to, starting late next week - we needto win it to keep the ashes, and england only need a draw.

Swimming

Little man loves swimming - so we enrolled him in water awareness classes - which he starts next week. :) So cute.

Ashes - 4th Test, 1st Session

What a disaster. 1-130 odd. Trescothick bowled off a no-ball.

Shaun Tait was pretty good, but hard to expect much from the kid.

Glenn McGrath out with a dodgy elbow.

The Ashes

The 4th Ashes test starts tomorrow night. It's a new thing to be excited about the Aussie's playing England. Ever since I can remember, it's been an easy tour for us. Go over there, drink some beer on the plane over, and smash the english cricket team.

It's now a real challenge, with the English batsmen performing pretty well against our aging bowling attack. Glenn McGrath has been heroic, coming back from his torn ankle ligaments only 8 days before the 3rd test. Shane Warne has put his marriage problems behind him and has been fantastic batting with the tail. His bowling has been useful, but not what I would call lethal. Then comes Jason Gillespie. He's struggled all tour, and thankfully has been dropped for the 4th test.

Then comes the decision about who to replace him with: Kaspa or Tait.
Kaspa is definately a more consistent bowler, and actually has been great bowling for us over the past year.
Tait has not played a test for Australia yet, but why would you take a bloke to England to not give him a game? After a spirited net bowling performance yesterday, it looks as though the selectors are going with Tait. 22 years old, fast and agressive - just what we need to punish those poms! :)

argh.

Getting hassled by spammers on my movie review site. irritating.

Been a bit busy lately. Let me do the rundown:

• 30th Birthday on Monday
• Party coming up this weekend
• Work has been crazy, more on that here.
• Made the Grand Final of BTC, coming up this weekend
• Assignment due on Monday

So there are a few things going on at the moment! :)

Giggles

We got some giggles out of him today - not exactly laughs, but more like a giggle. It took a fair bit of tickling to get it out of him though - he had a little red belly! ;)

Pool

We went to Waves down in Cheltenham today - it was fantastic.

Huge pool, wave pool, kiddie pool and a small pool for playing around. Jude had a good time, he didn't really go for the wave pool though! He really likes playing in the water though!

Texas Hold'em

I won the Texas Hold'em tournament that my work had tonight! :) How good is that?

I came a bit late, and my boss was leaving, so I took his chips - and kept growing them and got to the last 3 with 50% of the 1000 chips. Awesome.

I took out the 2nd chip leader, with a couple of great hands, and then it was me with about 2/3 chips vs the other guy - with only 1/3 chips.

A couple of good hands, and he was toasted! :) yeah baby!

I won a $150 voucher for dinner too!

New Words

I mentioned the other day that Jude has started saying more stuff. Well, just to add to the list:

Bum
Chester
Baby
Nanny
Oh, and Car. :)

He also loves shaking hands too!

BTC - Qualifying Final

I had a huge win, 185 - 153.

Mostly off the back of 3 great performances by my WB players, Gilbee, Cross and Brad Johnson. I actually had 11 players over 100, and another 3 in the 90's - Can't ask for more than that.

Unfortunately Brad Ottens hurt his groin, and is unlikely to play again this year. I have a couple of other players to bring in for the Grand Final, Steve Johnson, and Ben Holland having played well recently. Injury cloud over Primus (who didnt play this last weekend), and McPhee doesn't look likely to play again this year either.

Eugene is playing Mike for the other place in the Grand Final, but if I can get the same strong performances out of my players that I had this week, it should be a win for me this season.

Dodgeball

This is a funny escapist movie. I thought it was worth watching, after seeing all the coverage for VV's newest movie - Wedding Crashers.

Vince Vaughan and Ben Stiller are really great in this film, playing bookends in the gymnasium game. When Stiller's gym decides to take over Vaughan's gym for a parking garage, the only way to raise the money is to win the American Dodgeball Championships.

Stiller is great in the evil role in this film.

7.5/10

Garden State

Fantastic movie - From what I can work out, it's largely biographical, written and directed by lead actor Zach Braff. Known mostly for his work on Scrubs, this is a breakout film for him.

Natalie Portman shines as quirky girl next door, playing of Braff's Andrew Largeman. Largeman returns home after being estranged from his family for 10 years, after the death of his mother. He has been medicated by his psychiatrist father, and struggles to feel anything.

ZB's blog here.

Get it on dvd! Now!

8.5/10

Ashes - Third Test, Day 1

Unbelieveable. Glenn McGrath plays, 8 days after tearing ligaments on his ankle.

Dropped catches, and good batting - I'm talking about Australia, not England too!

Gilly went at a catch one handed, and dropped it - Trescothick on 13 too. He's now just got his 50.

Gilly then dropped Vaughan on 49, McGrath bowled him next ball - off a no-ball. SHIT!

Looks like the rub of the green is going with the poms, but it will be good to see how the aussie's respond to this pressure.

Happy Birthday

To Roy!

go to hell, you old bastard!

;)

BTC

Results:
Eugene 150 v Tamera 137
Mike H 158 v Neil H 98

So, this week:
Keat v Eugene
Tamera v Mike

I had a good week, with a big score of 168. Hopefully that should be enough to beat ET.

Edgbaston test

What a stunning match. This is one of those test matches that will be talked about for a long long time - Lucky that SBS decided to telecast it live.

Warnie, Lee and Kaspa got us to within 2 runs of a famous victory, and I cant help but wonder what would have happened if we had got Flintoff earlier yesterday. He and Jones made 50+ for the last wicket, and we had no problem getting to 230 - well, we were 9 down, but just those extra 50 runs was the difference really.

As I had hoped, Punter wasn't too disappointed with the outcome of the match, there are a hell of a lot of positives to come out of it - although the continued average form of Matty Hayden is a concern. Marto has been a bit hot and cold also. Hopefully the inclusion of MacGill will get us back on track, with most of the poms seeming to struggle to read Warnie.

Bring on Old Trafford!

Big Smiles

Little Jack is giving smiles now. He is a funny baby, with a very expressive face - showing his displeasure at the first sight of adversity.

He seems to be a bit of a sensitive soul. :)

The Ashes

Are game on!

Looks like the Aussies are going to lose tonight, 2 wickets left and 107 runs to go.

Great effort by Andrew Flintoff, coming out and smashing our attack around the park, after hurting his shoulder batting! He then came out and ripped into us with the ball, and it looks like he's taken the game away from us.

Warnie has been brilliant again, taking 10 wickets, but he needs to do a job with the bat now - he's 20 not out, and batting with Gillespie, so they might be able to get at least some of those runs we need.

The next match starts on Thursday, which doesn't give us much of a chance to get ourselves sorted out. A couple of key areas:
1. The toss - Have a bat Ricky!
2. Glenn McGrath - missing him badly.
3. Brett Lee - Good come back last night, after being pole-axed on Friday night.

C'mon Aussies! C'mon!

Car!

Is his new thing to say! :) clear as a bell. You dont realise how many car ads there are on tv, until Jude points them out every time there is a car on the telly.

We took him up to Puffing Billy last weekend, to see the trains. He's been obsessed with his Thomas toys, and goes around the house pulling on the whistle, and going woo-woo! :)

He got a bit of a fright, we were standing right next to the locomotives when they left, and they blew the whistle, which scared him. I think it was a bit loud for him. Poor little lamb.

Jasper Reports

We have to implement Jasper Reports to product xls and pdf file reports.

I learnt that Jasper has moved to v1.0, and is now fully supported. I'm pretty sure that it's still open source, but a company has decided to take on it's support (like with JBoss).

I also found a nice looking Eclipse plugin for building the reports visually. Hopefully we can get the formats of the reports together pretty soon, and start building them. I will go into more detail once I've got my teeth into it, and implemented it in the application.

BTC

I've been a bit flat out recently, so I will re-cap the BTC season so far.

I finished on top of the ladder, going 16-2 through the regular season. Amol missed out, with Eugene, Tamera, Neil and Mike Hodder getting through to finals.

This weekend's games are:
Me - Bye
Eugene vs Tamera
Neil vs Mike

The winner of Neil v Mike will play the loser of Euge v Tamera, and I will play the winner next week.

I've got a few injury worries, with Adam McPhee and Matty Primus missing again this weekend, hopefully they will get up this week, i could really use them! My Bulldogs players were brilliant again, with Gilbee the pick so far. Brent Harvey had 37 odd posessions today, which he can hopefully maintain through to next week.

Madness!

What's going on with this project? Sketchy requirements are leading to much consternation from the development team. i.e me!

Ah yes, this is how it goes.

Been busy, but haven't got much done. Still have 45 pages of reading to do for the last assignment, and the channel deepening test is going ahead soon - the ship sailed into the bay yesterday.

War room meeting this afternoon, with a new PM. This will be interesting to see how it flies.

Busy

Sorry about the lack of posting - i've been flat out! :)

Rach and I bought a camera yesterday - Sony DSCW7 I think. Very nice unit. No shutter lag, and a really nice clean 5 megapixel image.

Some shots will be up shortly, once I can get them downloaded and uploaded.

I think I won my btc match, which means i'll have the first week of finals off.

I have spent most of this morning looking for a Web Services Unit test tool. Once I find one, I will let eveyone know how it goes.

Two Month Checkup

Little man went for his 2 month checkup today. He's doing well in the weight department (he's put on a kilo since his last check), and he had his first real smile this afternoon too! :) So cute.

Pisser!

Had a classic conversation with a taxi driver this morning over this story.

We were pissing ourselves - do you think horses have really big straws to snort it? Aparently it's rife. I want to know where these horses are getting their gear from!

War of the Worlds

A really (suprisingly!) good film. I was sceptical after all of the recent media about Tom and Katie getting together, and married and all that kind of crap recently. He's got this movie playing at the moment, and she's got 'Batman Begins' out now (which I'll be reviewing soon).

Spielberg really took a lot from the coverage of the 9/11 WTC attack coverage, with a hell of a lot of it eerily similar, from the lead character being covered in dust of dead people, to people running madly through streets when the aliens arrive.

Edge of the seat stuff, and would work really well in a dark cinema, with loud sound. Not terribly much in terms of CGI, which is always refreshing, and Tom Cruise isn't too stretched as the deadbeat father, who has both of his kids when all hell breaks loose.

Definately worth a watch.

8.5/10

Movies!

Rach has taken Jude down to get a few movies from her uncle. Hopefully we will get a chance to watch them tonight! :) Along with the Ashes, Before the Game and the Tour de France. Busy!

I dont think we have watched a dvd on the new telly either, so that will be good to see what it's like! :)

Blog-a-rama

Have updated all of my blogs this evening, after finishing my 2nd assignment this semester.

Busy week gone, along with the flu, which knocked me out on the weekend (well, it started Friday), and continues to today. Aparently I'm ok to go back to work tomorrow, which should be a hoot! :)

Anyway, my PM has managed to get it too, so we have both been knocked out! I will see how we are going tomorrow morning, and if he's not in, I'll be able to get the team humming along! yeah baby!

Smiles

Jack had big smiles today. Among other facial expressions (concern, anger, frustration)

He also had huge 'head up' time, which involves him looking out the window while Rach and I are patting him on the back.

He had about 5 hours of awake time, and ate 2.5 bottles (a lot!), cried a bit, but stayed awake.. by the time we got him to sleep, he has completely conked it now! Very cute. We tried a few things to try and get him to rest, I walked the house with him, sat in the dark, which made him a bit tired, but we also put him back into his bonds 'turkey' suit. I think he might have been a bit uncomfortable in the Reuben and Paula kimono style wrap suit. :)

Egg Head

Maybe that's where the expression came from. He was playing this afternoon on the blow up mattress that we have in the lounge at the moment. He has been loving sitting on it while either Rach or I bounce him up and down.

Unfortunately he was sitting right on the edge, Rach bounced him, and he cracked his little head on the tv cabinet. Crying ensued, and he had a lump on his head. Luckily cuddles made it a little bit better, as did frozen peas, chocolate, strawberry yoghurt (yum!) and nurofen. He's resting now, but he did have a nice warm bath, and he seemed pretty comfy.

Anniversary

2nd Wedding Anniversary today. Well, technically yesterday, but I've been up feeding Jack, watching the Tour de France, and finishing my 2nd Reasoning assingment.

We had a quiet day, we had planned to go to Vue De Monde, which is the restaurant of my favourite chef, Shannon Bennett. We tried to get in there last week, and when we rang, they told us there was at least a week's wait, so we held off until today's booking - unfortunately I am sick, so we didnt head in...

I haven't left the house for 4 days, so I didn't have a chance to get a card either - Sorry baby! I hope that I tell you how much I love you, but next year will be a lot better - After my review, and my career planning meeting (which is set for Friday now, instead of today), that should pump my pay up soon - hopefully up to around 80k or so. If they dont come to the party, I'll start having a look around.

This bloody assignment is giving me the shits. I've just been putting it off, and putting it off, we got a week's extension, and i'm still 2 days behind. I think it's time to go to bed now, and I'll have a good crack at the rest of the assignment tomorrow morning. I know i'm letting myself down, but I really just want to pass this subject, and get stuck into the studying of the mathematics books, which came last week.

Racism

Are we born with racism progammed into us, or is it learned? I will go into more depth later.

So, he does know how to say sorry.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/immigration/howard-says-sorry-to-rau/2005/07/15/1120934368681.html

hahahaha..

Review, and Dinner

I had my Performance Review last night. It went really well.

I really like the bit where he asked 'So what was your last review like?', and my response was: "Exactly the same as this one, One more project, certification, senior consultant" - 2 years ago. I hate to say it, but I really have heard it all before.

Look, it's not all bad - We had a good chat, I've got to sit down with the Architect, and go through what I need to do, skills wise to get to SC. Hopefully not too much. And hopefully a reasonable pay rise. Having 2 mouths to feed is a lot less taxing that 2 mouths and 2 kids!

Rach came into the city last night, after my review, and we had dinner. We went here.

I have to say, some of the best meat I've ever had. I'm not a huge meat fan, but this stuff was brilliant. The softest, tastiest calamari ever. EVER. It was all fantastic. Do the banquet, if you go away hungry, there must be something wrong with you.

Does she really think anyone cares?

about this?

I mean, seriously - why doesn't she just accept responsibilty for her actions. She chose the babysitter, he fucked up. Why drag the coroner in so that they can blame someone else? I'm sure she feels guilty about it, and so she should.

I just get irritated when I get the paper every morning on the way to work, and there's nearly always a story with her calling for another inquest. That's what happens when redneck hicks find out about legal-aid.

harsh much?

Zoo

We went to the Zoo yesterday, and it was fantastic! :)

Jude had a ball, seeing all the animals, and he especially loved the butterfly house. Little Jack spent most of the time sleeping (not suprisingly).

It was beautifully sunny, so we took it nice and easy, and wandered around the whole grounds - we saw the new elephant enclosure, which looks really nice. We also got a Zoo Passport, which means we can go to Healesville and Werribee zoo for free sometime in the next 12 months.

I spent some time on Sunday doing my assignment, but was relieved to find that the deadline had been extended for a week. Hallelujah!

Home alone... almost!

Rach and Jude have gone to a classical spectacular in the city today - although it's raining, which sucks a bit!

Jack and I are here, nice and warm at home. Now I just have to do my assignment, which shouldn't be too much of a drama, I don't think.

Anyway, I've been quite busy at work, and trying to get this guy organised is a bit of a nightmare.

Righty-o

A couple of things today.

I went into the office for a meeting - and ran into my boss, who wanted a chat. Funky as. We had a chat about the colleague who had some issues, and got suspended. He ended up admitting that he did contact the client and tell them what was alleged. Oh well, he should have known better.

Good thing running into the boss, I've teed up a performance review for Tuesday next week, and we will talk salary after that. Not too long after that either, I've not had a review/salary review for 2 years. The boss also heard the rumor about me quitting. I wasn't happy.

Ben and I had lunch yesterday, and dissected the whole situation. Betsy was on Deal or No Deal on Monday night, but I didn't get home in time to see! She won $1000, and it's still waiting for the cheque!

London won the Olympic games for 2012. Good on them! :) I was shocked, I must admit - I thought that Paris was a shoo-in (shoe-in?).

Round 14 Review

Crunchers v Hooders
Crunchers won this tough slog by 5 points, putting them in the 5 last finals spot. Hooders is still in contention, but need his players to fire up in the last 4 weeks of the season to ensure they are in contention for the premiership again.

Losers v Farts
Farts got up by 10 points, which was flattering to Losers. Farts are only half a game out of the final spot. Losers are yet to really perform at all this year, and have struggled. Farts have been up and down, but need to come home strong to be sure of finals.

Tendulkars v Black and Blue
Black and Blue win comfortably by 20 points, in the fizzer of the round - Much stronger performance expected from Tendulkars, and he has responded by savaging his players in the media. Only time will tell if this is a wise strategy. I dont want to say it, but he's only one and a half games ahead of 5th place, so he might have to motivate his team to make finals again this year.

Duckings v Keatsters
Huge match by Ducklings, with Keatsters scoring the second highest score, it still wasnt enough, losing by a massive 48 points. Keatsters was hurt by Harvey's hamstring injury, and the decision to leave M Voss (34 posessions, 138 points) out realy hurt. Ducklings really have come out and put themselves in premiership contention.

Curly v Alex
Curly smashed Alex by 27 points, with Curly in 8th place, but find themselves only 1 game out of the top 5.

The competition is squeezing up, with only the top 3 assured of finals, and top 8 teams are still a shot at the finals. Only 4 weeks to go!

Digital Camera 0, Jude 1

When a 16 month old meets a digital camera, and there are tiles nearby, it's bound to end in tears. And it did.

The camera has been dismantled, and is sitting on the dining table, dismantled.

Time for a new one.

Bummer

So, the car has sheared off the driveshaft - here's the damage:

• $600 to open up the transmission, and see if there's metal inside, if there's not, includes a reco.
• $1500 if there is metal inside - essentially a replacement transmission will be slotted in.

And then Rach called me yesterday, and told me that Jude had got a hold of the digital camera, and smashed it on the tiles in the kitchen. I got home last night, pulled out the little screwdrivers, and had a look inside. It's a beautiful piece of engineering, but I still couldn't get the bloody lens straight. Oh well. Time to get a new camera - another cost we don't need.

I'm tempted to just cancel my birthday, get the car fixed, and a new camera - although that means we probably wont be able to go to the planned Wedding Anniversary dinner Rach booked for us at Vue De Monde. That's shithouse. I wish I had won tattslotto! (who doesn't!).

Workwise, I got an email yesterday that my colleague had 'resigned', and that he 'wanted to keep it quiet until he left' - yeah right. I don't believe it for a second.

And then I got an email requesting me to meet with my 'favorite' PM and BA - joy of joys. I've flagged this as a waste of time, and the client that I'm at now is not happy. And so they shouldn't be. I had concerns last night that they might be trying to set me up as the patsy, so I get the short shrift. I've put together my response, so I'll go to the meeting.

I'll post this afternoon, and see how we go.

Dancing Man

He loves to dance - to anything; Crazy Frog, Specialist Dealer Network, Any ad with music. :)

He's started stepping it up too, he only swayed loosely, but he's going hardcore now! :)

btc

I got flogged, 194 to 147. The only saving grace is that i did get the second highest score out of all teams. Which is not too much help, as I lost huge.

Black and Blue this weekend, so that should be alright, as long as Voss is in good form, and Burns is still doubtful, after being reported. Now i'm only a game clear on top of the table. No doubt I'll finish in the top two for the finals, but hopefully 1st, not second. :)

earmuffs

ok - i'd love to swear, a lot - hence the earmuffs.

but I wont. I'm hardly suprised, but the $1000 cheap car is turning out to be expensive - Rach called a few transmission places this morning, and it look like it's going to be a $1500 repair job. i.e a new transmission. Shit.

Suckery...

Unfortunately the car has broken already. I know, what do you expect for $1000. Not much. Anyway, Rach took it to her parents place, and then tried to leave - and the bloody thing wouldnt go into gear. Shit.

Anyway, it's going to go to the transmission place tomorrow hopefully.

We went to carribean gardens today - which was pretty cool. I am pretty sure that i've been there as a child, but dont really remember much about it. They have a little train that travels around, lots of stalls of computer gear, and clothes - I bought a great Subaru racing team jacket - for just $45.

Baby crying - gotta go and iron shirts too.

Tummy Time

Little Jack spent about half an hour on his tummy last night - just looking around and seeing what was happening.

He's going a bit crazy tonight though, which isn't good. Oh well. These are the joys of parenting.

Busy!

Ok - Last night we went out for dinner with Ruebs and Paula - At the Shanghai Dumpling House - Excellent food. We had to wait for a bit, but damn it was worth it. The only dissapointing thing was the sticky rice. We then went to the Lounge for a couple of hours, and had a few drinkies. Reubs also wants to get rid of his decks, and get some drums - So we said we'd buy his decks - That would be cool as baby! YEAH!

Friday I didnt go in to work, I was up all thursday night with the little baby. He was going a bit nuts between 1am and 3am, so I woke up at 7:30 after 4 hours sleep, and was basically wrecked.

Thursday night was interesting, at the montly meeting, nothing too interesting happened - the shares and stuff arent going to happen until september. No big suprise there.I had a couple of people come up and ask me if i'd resigned - the rumour going around is that i've quit. Interesting.

Also, one of my colleagues has been suspended from work with full pay. I'd been in email contact with him quite a bit recently, but aparently the client complained that he'd not been giving 100% commitment after getting a 'bad review'. Now, that raises a few interesting questions, such as: Where did the client hear that he'd had a bad review? I cant believe that he would tell the client about his salary/review situation. I've had issues with the quality of his work in the past, and I spent a couple of months on his project trying to raise it up, quality wise. That's no biggie, he started working with us straight out of uni, so hasnt had a great deal of work experience. Another thing that really counts against him is the business he runs on the side - although it seems to take priority over work things. Not good.

Anyway, he just sent me an sms this morning, so i'm going to try and suss out what happened - he did try to call me just after it all happened, but I didnt answer the phone -my bad.

Round 13 Review

Keatsters v Tendulkars
Huge win by Keatsters over Tendulkars, with both coaches suprised by the final margin. Although Amol's team had a large number of strong performers, the non-performers were bad. An even team performance from Keatsters, including 130+ point efforts from his reserves leaves him with some tough decisions leading into the 1 v 2 battle this weekend. Tendulkars with work to do in the run up to finals time.

Alex v Crunchers
Crunchers class got them over the line, and put themselves only half a game out of the top 5. Alex was performing well, but since draft week, has not won a game. Maybe his lack of activity on draft night has cost him.

Black and Blue v Curly
Black and Blue are starting to get a run on, with 3 wins in a row. Curly struggling, but with Buckley back, and not selected (!), this hurt the team. Definately a contender for finals. B&B will need all their luck to get over Tendulkars this weekend to continue their winning streak.

Farts v Ducklings
Comfortable win by MIA coach Tan over strugglers Farts. Farts could really have put themselves up as a finals contender this week, but let the game get away from them. It's time for Farts to fire up, and make a big run for finals action.

Hooders v Losers
Hooders fell in against bottom of the table Losers by 4 points - Although Hooders is now in the top 5 by half a game, this kind of performance doesnt bode well in the run up to the finals. Will find strong competition from log-jam of 5 teams fighting for last finals spot.

Busy Weekend

A big weekend.

Sunday was cruisy during the day, and then we went to visit Mike and Kylie at the hospital where they had their baby, Jake Ashley Rackham Storer. He was born on Friday night around 10:20. Everyone seems to be going well, just tired I imagine.

Saturday was not too bad, had a bbq with Bill and Dotty and Jorja - for Rach's birthday.

Then on Saturday night, we went and visited Guyman at his new place - He cooked us dinner, Spag bol, and we put together his new BBQ. Then watched Australia take on our traditional rivals Bangladesh in a one day match. We flogged them, I didnt even get home before it was over.

Friday night was spent watching the stats on the footy, I had a few players going around from my BTC team, so I wanted to keep an eye on them. I'm pretty sure that I've had a good win. That would leave me 12-1 after 13 rounds.

Job Hunting Phase

Ok - I'm going to seriously look for a job. I've set up email profiles for a number of job sites, and put in nice and specific search criteria.

Now I just have to find the bloody job!

And go and talk to the current employer and see if they want to give me a pay rise. Or lots of training, and a performance review.

Yeah baby!

Which OS are You?

Spending Spree

It's Rach's birthday today - So I stayed home from work.

Well, It was also because Jude woke up about 10 times last night, and cried out until about 3am. Which means I didnt get to sleep until then. And still had to get up at 6am for work. Bugger.

Anyway, Rach was going shopping, checked the bank account, and found we'd been paid our $3000. Awesome. Shopping time!

We went and bought an LG 76 cm widescreen telly, a 7.5kg Westinghouse washing machine, and a Digital Set Top Box. Funky as.

I'm kind of watching it now infact. We also got some wiper blades, and the new Foo Fighters album.

Cricket

I dont know what happened to this entry, but anyway.

Australia are stinking up the joint, bad. What is the deal with that? How can we possibly lose to Bangladesh, as if a loss to England is not bad enough.

Glenn McGrath has highlights! Shane Warne is getting his rug replaced. Andrew Symonds is out on the piss.

Poor John Buchanan must be tearing his hair out. Maybe he can donate to Warnie.

Poker

Texas Hold 'em is the game. I love it! :)

I've even got Rach playing now too. We play at partypoker.com, just for play money. Very cool.

I might apply for the Australian poker championships - it's only $60 entry for one of the sattelite tournaments.

Jude just woke up, so gave him some nurofen, but he just spits it out. Oh well.

Holidays

My holidays are nearly over. It's been bloody busy with the new baby, and new car. I still haven't been down to Vicroads to register the bloody thing yet. I have to do that soon. Maybe at the end of the month when I get paid, seeing as we have about $50 left for the month.

Rach has sold the pram, and we got $150 for it, so I'm sure we could do with that money soon! Otherwise, I've got to get some sleep - it was a pretty sleepless one last night - baby after baby kept waking up, and then the Aus v Germany soccer match was on, so I just stayed up and watched it - and went to bed at 7am, and was woken up by Jude at 9!

Also, I signed up at partypoker.com and have started playing (badly!)

Ok, off to bed, and the last day of holidays, at least until christmas, or the next public holiday.

Second Checkup

today. Rach took him down there, in the car - it was bloody freezing today.

He's put on a little weight, but he's still feeding funny. He's still only a little guy though. I still haven't been arsed to get photos online yet, so I'll probably just do that from work some time.

We have heaps of them, so it's not like we don't have any, it's getting them uploaded/printed that's the problem. Anyway, Mike and Kylie gave us a half a dozen photo frames (8x10) so we can print a bunch of them and stick them up!

Round 12 Review

Keatsters v Farts
As expected, Keatsters returned to the winning list, with a thumping 50 point win over Farts. Dropping Brad Johnson had the required effect, with a fantastic even team performance. Brad Ottens has put his hand up for a rest this week, with an average performance, with Brendan Lade next in line for a call up to the seniors.

Tendulkars v Curly
Curly put up a strong performance against Tendulkars, but were overwhelmed by 25 points. Tendulkars with a great even team performance, with 10 100+ point players all contributing.

Ugly Ducklings v Hooders
Fighting 3 point win over finals challenger Hooders, with Ducklings scraping in. Hooders Michell kept his team in the game with a fantastic 231 BTC points, and Coach Tan left with a decision to make about players who are underperforming.

Black and Blue v Crunchers
Comfortable 18 point victory by Black and Blue, with Crunchers struggling to get up for a key game for them. Black and Blue look dangerous, and if their team clicks, they could be a real wildcard come finals time.

Alex v Losers
Suprise first win by Losers, getting up by 20 points over Alex's underperforming list. Hooray!

The top four teams (Keatsters, Ducklings, Tendulkars, Black and Blue) have cemented their positions inside the top 5 with strong wins, now 3 games clear with only 6 regular season matches left until finals. There are still 5 teams with legitimate claims over the last position in the finals. Larry's Losers might be the wildcard, once a team against which coaches pencilled in as a win, they are now competitive, which means that coaches will have to be on their games until the season is over.