Almost Ready

Well the move is almost here. Sitting in a room totally covered in boxes. Personally can't wait to get it over and done with. Can't find anything. Even having all these boxes here I know I haven't got half as many boxes packed as I should have. But this place is so small that I don't have enough room to pack. Lucky for us that we'll be dual renting as the lease period overlaps by about 10 days. That's 10 days of storage time!

Moving Blues

One of my biggest hates would have to be moving. I love getting to a new place with nicer this and bigger that. But the process itself would have to be in my top 5 hates. I'd rather go in for elective surgery than arrange and carry out a move.

What do I hate about it? Everything! Boxes all over the place. Packing up those boxes. Fing the boxes to pack the shit into. Not being able to find anything because... you guessed.... they're in those boxes... somewhere! Then you have to find a decent but fairly priced removalist. Hope that you can get one for the time you have off work. I have mentioned in a previous entry the hassles involved in just FINDING a place. Sydney is such a shite place to move about in real estate wise.

What's with AFL Rules?

Now let me get one thing straight here. I am not a big Aussie Rules supporter. I played the sport as a kid (several years with Bangor Tigers) but never had a fascination for the sport much beyond that. But watching the St Kilda vs Melbourne match today had me horrified at what has happened to the rules.

Here's the scenario; you have a ball high up in the air with two opposing team players under it to contest the mark. There's some grabbing, pushing and shoving as both players have their heads up anticipating the ball. Now one of the guys get the mark but thanks to some (quoting the commentator here) new AFL rules introduced this year, any contact between players contesting a mark shall be penalised. Why not just get it over and done with and give them all tutoo's? Make them perform Swan Lake or something. Seriously what is happening to our society? To top things off, if a player only touches an umpire, I mean simply to make contact not delibrately, then they'll be fined and have match bans placed on them.

A guy sues a local council because he dived into a natural sandbar and breaks his neck. He gets awarded millions too! It's a natural surrounding. It's not like the council built it. Life savers, warning flags and other such devices are only there help. But we BLAME them when something goes wrong. Is this kind of mentality slipping into the sporting world too? State of Origin football use to mean something when you knew there'll be a fight guaranteed. You knew that when players were that charged up there was nothing staged about it. But players get such a hard time from the press when involved in donny-brooks that they wouldn't even dare take on another player toe to toe in fear of fines and ridicule. We are living in such a sissy society now where we have non-contact contact sports. I pledge to you to help... toughen up our society. Lets weed out the wimps out and shut 'em down.

Panel Damage

 Today I did a whoopsie. I hit my car into a car park pilon while reverse parking. Now while I give you time to laugh and say suck shit let me explain. The pilon was the same colour as the wall behind it. So looking into the side rear mirror it simply looked like the wall. But I heard a sickening crunch and I was totally confused as to what the hell had happened at the time! Why paint the pilons the same colour as the wall? In a dark underground carpark too. Well so now I am left with a buckle in the rear quarter panel of the driver side. The main reason why I liked the car to begin with was the fact it was so straight too! DOH! So now I need to track down a good panel beater.

Working in car rental means that I can park vehicles better than most people. However it was not my driving skills that let me down. It was my lack of looking! But I still am angry at the shop owners for shitty lighting in the car park area!

Real (Pain in the Butt) Estate Agents

I would just like to know one thing... how the heck do Real Estate agents keep organised enough to actually turn a profit. What I am getting at is my recent experience in Unit hunting. Renting that is. The amount of mix ups... miscommunication and blunders are incredible. What makes it even more incredible that these errors occur is the fact that all the technology in the world is available to them to avoid these blunders. Gizmo's like mobile Pocket PC's. Laptops and even more traditional PC's could break the communication. Yet I think it's more of a local cultural problem that is the major factor here. Aussies just accept bad customer service.

In Japan the Real Estate agents are not too busy eating lunch to even look at you when you talk to them. They actually will take you unit to unit till they find something you are happy with. No "You've got the place... umm... actually no you don't". These local real estate agents are the ones who in a couple years time are going to be trying to talk me into buying with their agents. I'm taking notes.

Busy Busy Boy

Gotta love my photo for today! That hair of mine just has a life of it's own in the mornings. Well it's actually afternoon! I've been flat out. I mean it! Flat out with all sorts of tasks. Updating my Indoor Cricket site with a totally new theme. I have made the Blackouthouse blacker! I love the new look and it seems the guys love it too.

I've also been busy setting up Xboxs for Halo frag sessions with my mates. If you haven't played a link up game of Halo with 2 Xboxs then ya gotta get it going! Anyone who thinks it's not worth doing are kidding themselves! Just wasn't happy about the fact a regular ethernet cable wouldn't do the trick. You have to buy the official cord. WHY? That's blatant extortion in my books. Not happy Bill! You're rich enough aren't you?

Buying cheap Net Mini Disc players. Seems every man in his dingo are buying iPods and so Sony Mini Disc players prices are dropping faster then Paris Hilton's panties! It's excellent finally being able to use the PC to edit track names and edit track positions with ease! Never was an easy task in the past!

I'm gonna be finally moving soon. Which means a computer room! No more sharing the same room with the TV. But this could cause trouble in the roost. Me and the other half chat while she watches TV and I piss around on the net. But with a seperate room could be a problem as we are in seperate rooms. To be continued...

Life Gets Simpler... Sorta

Just got myself a really good deal on a (what's now regarded as outdated) MD player. I love the format. Mini Disc allows you to shove heaps of songs on a tiny format. But with iPod and all the others going mpg3 or bust it seems Mini Discs days are but over. Anyway... what I'm getting to is the lack of user friendlyness. I was hoping that I could simply use Windows Media Player to record and label discs. But nooooo! Sony make you use their own program. Not an issue unless you are like me and have something like 2500 songs on your hard drive! After having already gone through and labelling all of those tracks I don't feel too excited about the prospect of having to go through all that again on another program! It's like VHS vs Beta all over again. Which program will win this battle? What format will it support?