Here's my full A-Z list

Rules :-

- must be a pub or a tavern, no sporting clubs, nightclubs etc
- must have had a beer in it
- must have been the current name of the pub at the time

Ambassador Hotel (Redcliffe)
Belvedere Hotel (Woody Point)
Coronation Hotel (Ipswich)
Deception Bay Tavern
Erskineville Hotel
Fihelly's Arms (Brisbane)
Grandview Hotel (Cleveland)
Homestead Hotel (Boondall)
Ivanhoe (Manly NSW)
Jindalee Tavern
Kurrajong (Erskineville, Sydney)
Lands Office (Brisbane)
Metropole Hotel (Ipswich)
Norman Hotel (Woolloongabba)
One Mile Hotel (West Ipswich)
Pineapple Hotel (Kangaroo Point)
Queen's Arms (New Farm)
Racehorse Hotel (Bundamba)
Scarborough Hotel
Transcontinental Hotel (Brisbane)
Ulster Hotel (Ipswich)
Victory Hotel (Brisbane)
Woodside (Wistaston, Cheshire UK)
X
Y
Zetland @ Green Square

Z is for Zetland

I have an A-Z life list I keep of pubs I have had a beer in and up until now I had no Z pub.

But I flew to Sydney with a few mates for a pub crawl and to watch the Rabbitohs & Easts game and finally got my Z.

Here's the list of pubs we got to during the day before & after the football Friday night :-

Sydney Park Hotel
Botany View
Erskineville Hotel
Rose of Australia
Kurrajong Hotel
Park View Hotel
Cauliflower Hotel
Zetland Hotel @ Green Square
Royal Hotel Randwick.
Fortune of War (The Rocks - Sydney's oldest pub)
Mercantile (had had a guful by then so didn't actually have a beer in it)

Then on Sat & Sun we also got to :-

Clovelly Hotel
Coodgee Bay Hotel
Coach & Horses
Steyne Hotel (Manly)
Ivanhoe (Manly)
The Orient

How's that for a long weekend of pubbing it!

Now if I can just find an X!

Ben @ the Beach

Couple of quick snaps of Ben 2.0 at the beach the other day. He's a big sandcastle man. I make em, he knocks em down!

Car Sizes

Why is it that families are now smaller but cars are much larger?

Big 4WD's should cost a lot more to register.

Compulsory 3rd party life insurance should cost more.

Driver's should have to pass a competency test before they can drive one.

And these new Chrysler dealerships being rolled out round Australia should have to pay an ugly tax. Let's leave these hideous yank tanks to the Americans & Saudis.

Sorry

Have to say I think Rudd's apology to the Stolen Generations was a very important piece of Australian history and that he (and his speech writers) nailed it.

I'm a realist and my conservative estimate is that more than 50% of the population have racist tendencies (75% in the over 50 age group). I think Rudd's apology not only hit a chord with the Indigenous People it was aimed at but it also did a good job of explaining to Joe Public why it was necessary.

There were no qualifications about past policies being well intentioned as per Nelson. It was just a genuine heartfelt apology.

It was the first time I have actually considered him to be statesmanlike. Any qualms I had after his cheesy acceptance speech have breen dispelled.

And best of all, he took the opportunity to set some targets that have the potential to make a real difference to the well being of Indigenous Australians. Let's hope they can be met or at least some real progress can be made.

If a government was to come into my home and take Ben away and place him in another culture without a valid reason, and there was nothing I could do to challenge the decision or get him back, I know how I would feel.

What about you?

Dexter - Gotta Love A Serial Killer

Quick recommendation if you are looking for something to watch over the Christmas break. Dexter is based on Jeff Lindsay's books Darkly Dreaming Dexter and Dearly Devoted Dexter and the basic concept is that Dexter is a serial killer with a bloodlust that he satisfies by killing evil do'ers who have escaped justice. Sounds smaltzy and it would be easy to do badly but it is neither of those things. Completely riveting.

IMDB readers can describe it much more eloquently than me...->
"Dexter is the show I have been waiting for my whole television watching life! The complex and damaged characters, the twisted plot line and Dexter's foster dad grooming him, educating him, to make him the perfect avenger,its all so intoxicating! I am breathlessly anticipating the next episode. This show is not only well acted, with each and every main character holding my full attention, but written with such deep intensity that I find it absolutely irresistible! I really find it difficult to wait and see more of how Dex was traumatized as a child, more of Harry's lessons, more of the growing relationship with Rita, more of the ice truck killer, more forensics...More of this great show period. Kudos to all involved...this show will surely be a huge hit!"

Read more IMDB comments here.

Am I evil? Am I good? I'm done asking those questions. I don't have the answers. Does anyone?

3D Head Tracking with Johnny Lee

Awesome.

Crayon Physics Deluxe - Way Cool

How freakin cool is this?



Crayon Physics Deluxe is still in development and is a sequel to the more basic Crayon Physics which you can find out more about here. Download it here.

It is limited to rectangles but it still a *lot* of fun.

Good Ole Dimple

I had a new account request at work yesterday for someone named Dimple Solanki.

At lunch I noticed a horse in called Satinki. I thought "hey wait a minute that's the surname of that Dimple guy."

So I had $5 each way and it finished 3rd and paid $5.20 the place.

As I was collecting my $26 I saw a dog running in the next race called Mr Clontarf.

Being the good Redcliffe Peninsula boy that I am I put my winnings on it, $10 each way.

It duly bolted in and paid $21 the win and $3.50 the place.

As I collected my $245 I said to myself :-

"Good Ole Dimple"

Update - found out Dimple is actually a female :)

Election Post Mortem

Well I got the result I wanted.

Watched the coverage from go to whoa and have to say Rudd's speech made me cringe more than once. Ponce boy Downer liked to have a pop at Rudd as being nothing more than a cliche machine during the campaign. Well Kev sure crambed them all in to his speech. I think if they'd have had a new vote 30 secs after it ended he'd have been back out :)

But I think Rudd will be very motivated to implement his "vision" and ultimately we will be a lot better off as a result of the election.

I think Howard looked like a man who was relieved and had been secretly hoping to get the arse.

Maxine McKew hasn't half got a set of choppers. Full credit to her for winning (hopefully) but more importantly for having the guts to take on a challenge like that. Most celebs want it handed to them on a platter. Can anyone say Cheryl Kernot.

Barnaby Joyce is a dick.

Peter Beattie is a pompous pratt and I feel cheated that he got out on his own terms rather than be shown the door like Howard. Worse still he has inflicted Anna Bligh on us - in case you're wondering why I bagged the coalition at the federal level and labor at the state level, I'm not party aligned, I'm performance aligned. Power breeds contempt or complacency or arrogance or whatever you want to call it.

Hair Crime

How on earth did rat's tails get back into vogue and more importantly how are people stupid enough to get sucked into it?

Obviously people that are not young enough to remember them from the 80's.

Just shocking crime against fashion and right up there with cigarette's as a stupid beacon...."look at me, I'm a fuck-tard".

Election - My Quick Take

The government won the last election so easily (most pundits calling it a two term win) that they got complacent and arrogant.

Strike 1 - With money pouring in via a resources driven booming world economy, they decided not to use it for the good of the Australian people and the planet they live on..i.e. actually governing the country. Instead they decided to store that big ol surplus away for a rainy day when there would be a credible opposition. That way they could use their big ol mountain of cash to buy our votes.

Strike 2 - Howard also took the opportunity to use that massive majority we gave him to pluck work choices from his arse and ram it down our throats (possibly a bad mixture of metaphors :). My beefs with work choices are a) there was not one word about it in the previous campaign and b) it just went waaay too far..sure sort out unfair dismissal laws but don't remove *all* checks & balances and leave workers rights relying on employers being honourable. On what planet did Howard think it would be ok to offer a worker 75% of his pay, take it or leave it.

Strike 3 - a bunch of stuff accumulated for me to strike out the government. Delaying the calling of the election for so long so that they could flood us with taxpayer funded government ad's. I mean they hosed a mountain of money at that ad campaign and it really pissed me off. Add to that Howard not being man enough to step aside and let the people vote for a leader prepared to see out the whole term. Add in all the scaremongering about unions and economic management etc.

But for me the crux of it comes down to this. If we didn't have a credible opposition would the government be doing anything about health, education, climate change, broadband, putting some checks & balances into work choices?

Would they fuck.

It's Official - I Have NADD

Never have I read an article that hit home as much as this one.

It's conclusive, I have Nerd Attention Deficit Disorder (NADD).

Evidenced by the amount of crap open at any one time on my pc.

Evidenced by the fact that I always have 3 to 4 tv shows on the go...soon as there's an ad in one I'm catching up with the next one. By the end of the 1/2 hour I can give you complete plot synopii for all of them.

Evidenced by the fact that I am a master at nodding and murmuring the right noises to make out I am listening to a conversation when in fact I only heard the first dozen words.

NADD. Explains it all really.

My Football Club

I bought into the My Football Club trust who are in the process of paying £700,000 for a 51% controlling interest in Ebbsfleet United a football team in the conference league in England (effectively the 5th division if the Premier League is the 1st). The concept is that the members (who have each paid an annual fee of £35 and there may be 50,000+ of them) will be making decisions including weekly team selections, which players to buy and sell etc. The manager will submit a report and recommendations and there will be some sort of highlights package and then the trust members will vote and their consensus decision will be final and the manager must play that squad/formation.


I'm sure there will be mixed emotions from the 1000 Ebbsleet fans who attend most games. Not sure how I would feel in their position. On the one hand their club is being hijacked in a real life version of championship manager. But on the other there is the real possibility that some serious cash will be sunk into the club and they could potentially be promoted to the football league itself.


I'm also thinking that we'll see something similar to the effect that occurs when a new manager takes over a club and all the players who were playing badly enough to get the previous manager sacked, suddenly start playing out of their skins to impress the new gaffer. But I'm predicting that it might happen every week with the players wanting to be voted in by the myfc trust members for the next game. No-one wants to be bagged by a forum of 50,000 people.


It will be very interesting to see how it all transpires.

What I'm Watching

The shows I'm seeking out to watch when they air each week...

Weeds
Las Vegas
Two and a Half Men
My Name is Earl
House
Top Gear
Heroes (though it's losing me fast)

Windows Explorer Virus

A long long time ago I read about a bunch of shortcuts using the windows symbol key. Only one has stayed with me, [windows symbol] + [e] to open windows explorer.

Ever since I have been plagued with a zillion explorer windows open in my task bar. Not because of some malware but because a zillion times a day when I need to find a file I just instinctively go [ws]+[e]. That azureas download just finished? [ws]+[e]. Where did I save that pdf mag? [ws]+[e]. Bam, bam, bam, there's 3 more.

It's a friggin virus I swear.

Pecker Wrecker?

Since getting a notebook a little while ago I have been using it on my lap a lot and it got me to thinking, am I frying my old fella with radiation. A little googling hasn't found an obvious answer.

I did find something from 2002 talking about Levis introducing jeans with an anti radiation lead lined pocket for your mobile phone..lol and this comment which made me piss myself laughing (fortunately not while my laptop was actually on my lap) :-

"I'd definitely buy pants that protected me from nuclear war. It'd be an easy sell too."

"You like nuclear war?"

"Uh, no, not much."

"Well, I got pants what prevent that. Pants against nuclear war, see?"

"Gimme."

Do I Have Attention Deficit Disorder?

Went to the 1st days play of the Gabba test match against the Sri Lankans today.

I'm not sure if this phenomenen is confined to just me but I always find myself looking back on a day at the cricket wondering how many balls I actually *watched*.

I was there for about 4 hours of actual play and can probably only recall a couple of overs worth of deliveries. Literally.

Normally I can blame that on drinking like a fish, but today I drove...

Next time I'm gonna get hold of some ritalin and knock some back before heading to the game.

Efficient Punting?

All I can say is that if you managed to pick Efficient, the winner of yesterday's Melbourne Cup based on form or some sort of logic, then you are either on a way higher mental plain than me or more likely you have no clue.

Hang up your punting boots right now because there is only pain and misfortune down the line if you plan to use similar logic in the future.

They've Got To Be Freakin Kidding

Just got round to watching episode 1& 2 of the bionic woman…Casting snivelling Zoe Slater from Eastenders has turned me off it for life…may as well have cast her fat slapper sister Kat. And why make it so freakin dark..the attraction of the original series (apart from Lindsay Wagner) was it's smaltz. Popping tennis balls good. Military martial arts combat 5 mins after she got bionicified bad.

Casting the Crossing Jordan guy was also a bad move as was giving him dialog like "we're a private clandestine group dedicated to stopping rogue organisations from ending civilisation as we know it." IMDB shows him as only being in 4 out of 14 episodes so perhaps they came to their senses and canned him.

I see it has dropped below extreme makover in the ratings in the states….here's hoping that'll be the wake up call that sees them send Michelle Ryan back to the Queen Vic in Albert Square.

Random Thoughts

How on earth did this England team make a world cup final? Australia & France hang your heads in shame.

I love my Apple HIFI. Having previously screwed around with a mini-itx media pc & a girder remote to grab songs from my pc via wireless and play them on my stereo I cannot get over how freakin easy the Apple HIFI is and just how damn good it sounds..."room filling sound" is fuggin accurate.

Maldivian's win in the Yalumba yesterday was Caulfiled Cup winning material.

How good do you think the shit hot doods would skate in rental skates? No seriously, I wanna know?

My new Dell Vostro notebook arrives tomorrow. I'm predicting I will be on the phone telling Dell I want the Samsung screen replaced with an LG one within 10 minutes. Read about why here.

Random Image.

Shit A Brick

I was mowing my lawn yesterday, on the front footpath, and I saw a car driving up out of the corner of my eye. The bonnet had blown up and was bent back against the windscreen. It had 2 wheels on the road and 2 on the footpath. It drove straight past me, maybe 3 feet from me, just missed a tree, kept going straight across my driveway and shuddered t oa stop in front of my neighbours house.

My first thought was that he had done an awesome job to stop safely with the bonnet having malfunctioned like that. But the props & r lasted about as long as it took for the driver to get out and stagger around drunk. He was absolutely flogged.

Another car pulled up but hung back next to me watching him. They told me they had been following him to make sure he didn't hit and kill anyone. Apparently he had already hit a car with 2 people in it and 3 light posts.

They called the cops who turned up pronto but the guy was so drunk he didn't even try to run away.

In another half an hour I would have been sweeping my driveway with my 20 month old son. He has a kids broom and just loves to do what ever I do including sweeping the driveway.

Unbelievable.

Out of the Darkness

I have been trying to get ADSL or an affordable alternative for 3 or 4 years! Telstra have steadfastly refused to provision me for ADSL offering different explanations along the way, the latest being a miniscule failure of the voice SQ test (6.59db instead of 6.5) Tried npgdsl & lladsl requests, letters to Helen Coonan, local members, 2 way sat subsidies etc etc along the way. Even considered a hunger strike at one stage :)

Well I have just recently ordered and received Virgin BB@H and it is like coming out of the darkness.

No begging, no knockbacks, no hassles. Placed an online order, got the modem 2 days later, plugged it in, and it just worked straight up. Only 2 signal bars but I get HSDPA all the time (whenever something is coming down, UTMS when idle) The speedtest reports 700kb.

The phone works as advertised so far. I'll port my number at the end of the month.

Everything has just been so freaking easy...

It is hard to explain how much of a relief it is to finally have something other than dialup (that is actually reasonably priced). Unless you've been through the knockbacks and false hope and the grind of fighting telstra every step of the way (just getting them to accept an npgdsl request is a marathon of frustration) you just can't appreciate how it gets you down.

And the best part, after I ditch my landline Telstra will be getting nada from me...ever again.

Mystic River

Having just read the book I thought I would get the movie out and watch it.

What a waste of two hours of my life! I know that books by their nature have much more latittude for character development than films but this was dreadful.

No attempt at all to show us the nature of the three central characters when they were children which in the book built the platform for the entire story.

Just pure shite and not what I was expecting from such a highly acclaimed movie.

It is possible to adapt a book well to film - look no further than the Green Mile.

Two thumbs down!

Anzac Day is all about Respect

Says it all really.

The ADSL fight continues

I ordered a new phone line today with the stipulation that it must be ADSL capable. Apparently by stipulating the code NPGDSL (no pair gain digital subscriber line) it forces them to try and find an alternate cabling route that will meet their transmission loss standards.

The best chances for success occur when a) you have been rejected for excessive transmission loss CHECK and b) you have neighbours who have successfully received ADSL already CHECK.

I can expect an answer from the cable assigner within about 4 days apparently.

Fingers crossed because my next stop is to contact the papers and go on a 'hunger strike for broadband'.

A Night with the Mummies

Carole has a mother's group she goes to and occasionally they go to a movie. She mentioned that they had picked A Night at the Museum to see and that she had no interest in it at all. So I mentioned that I would love to see it since I like Ben Stiller movies a lot...

Long story short I ended up at the cinema last night with the Mummies. No other husbands, just me and the Mummies. Carole was peeved that I even went for drinks afterwards, where I learned lots of stuff...Like Patrick likes to stand up & pee in the bath and when told you shouldn't pee in the bath he reaches down and swirls it around to mix it in better & Rachael drove her car into the garage with a $10k bike on the roof and wrecked the bike, the garage & the car.

The movie was very good btw. Laughs were a little spare in the 1st half but I laughed quite a bit in the 2nd half. 7/10.

Frustratapod

I recently bought an 80gb Ipod video and an Ipod HiFi speaker dock. After dumping all 60gb of my music onto it everything was going swimmingly.

Then I docked it back into my pc and I-Tunes 7 tells me my ipod is in recovery mode and needs to be restored. Huh? So I do the restore (which takes it back to bare metal btw), I-Tunes tells me to leave it connected and it will be re-detected. But it tells me again that the ipod is in recovery mode and needs to be restored.

Off to google where I quickly found this apple support article and the penny dropped...I had plugged a camera in before docking the ipod. The ipod was trying to get the same logical drive letter as the camera but obviously couldn't. Quick bit of rearranging in disk management and voila, I-Tunes is happy with the ipod when it is docked again.

What a meaningful message to describe not being able to get a drive letter -> "iTunes has detected an iPod in recovery mode - Use iTunes to restore"

4 hours later and I have my music back on the ipod.

Fast forward a week. Wake up this morning and groggily walk over to the ipod docked in the hi-fi to play some wake up music. No playlists. Hmmm. No artists. Shit. No songs. Fuckin Hell. Nothing. Still have my movies, tv shows etc but not one skerrick of music.

Open I-Tunes and all my music is there. So how can my music be on I-Tunes but not on the ipod. It's not actually possible to delete music from the ipod without using I-Tunes (or some other software on the pc) which is mega st00pid anyway. So what happened?

More googling, this time no explanation presents itself quickly. More head scratching. Finally I try to play one of the songs in I-Tunes. It can't be found, would I like to locate it? Hmmm. Check the songs can be played directly from the USB external drive I keep them on. No probs. Must be a drive assignment issue. Can't find the drive letter assigned when they were loaded into I-Tunes...I-Tunes just says it can't be found. Finally found the drive assignment in an xml file in the i-tunes tree under my documents. Yep the drive now has a different assignment. Change it back to the one that i-tunes loaded from a week ago and back in business.

So what actually happened? Last night I docked the ipod and it set off to auto sync. In the meantime I watched an episode of Las Vegas. So I-tunes must have gone to sync and not been able to get at any songs so decides to delete everything off of the ipod...jebus

4 more hours later and I again have my music back on the ipod.

But for how long?

Wed 28th

9am 2 x bananas
12pm 2 x salad rolls, 1 jam roll
7pm 1 x strip sub - no chips or other crap


Thu 29th

10am 2 slices toasted bread with ham cheese & tomato
1pm 2 x salad rolls
7pm rib fillet steak, boiled potatos, carrots, peas & cauliflower

Fri 30th

9am 5 x weetbix, milk, sugar
1pm 2 x salad rolls
7pm curry mince & rice


Sat 1st May

10am 4 slices of lightly buttered toast & jam
3.45 pm a salad roll
6pm 2 x sausage & onions on bread, 2 stubbies of lite
8pm 3 x stubbies of lite

Exercise for the past 5 days has been very light as I have been crook. As you can see my food intake has not dropped to compensate for the lack of exercise. But I have stuck to normal meal times with no snacking and other crap. Also strawberry jam is creeping into my diet more frequently :(

Tue 27th

7AM OJ
11.30AM 4 x kiwi fruit
12.30 2 x salad sandwiches, 2 slices strawberry jam & bread
7.00PM coconut crumbed prawns, chips, salad, 2 schooners & 1 pot of lite

Exercise 5.4km walk in 41.25 min (average over 7km/h)

2nd weekly weigh in as follows :-

1st Me (102.1) -> (98.4) -> (97.2)
2nd Chris (113.5) -> (107.2) -> (107.4)
3rd John (80.2) -> (76.6) -> (77.0)
4th Seb (109.5) -> (107.4) -> (108.0)
5th Alun (107.0) -> (103.6) -> (104.2)

So despite having a nowhere near as healthy weekend I still lost weight. But maybe that sends a bad message...

Fri 23rd

7AM OJ
1.00PM Roast Beef, 4 Schooners Gold
4.30PM 2 Stubbies Gold
6.30PM Vietnamese chicken salad


Exercise – Walk the dog


Sat 24th

9AM 2 x bananas
11AM 3 x sausages, 2 x bread rolls, onions, 2 schooners gold
7PM steak burger & salad, sausage burger, nibblies – chips, kabana & cheese, huge slice of chocolate mud cake with 2 profiteroles, 4 stubbies gold, 1 bourbon & coke

Exercise – 18 holes of golf

Sun 25

9AM OJ
12:30PM Stubbie of gold
2:00PM Seafood Marinara & OJ
7.00PM 3 slices white bread and strawberry jam

Exercise – walk the dog

Mon 26th

10AM 2 x bananas
2PM 2 x sausages & salad, 2 bread rolls, iced lemon cake and ice cream, 3 stubbies of lite

Exercise – 18 holes of golf, dog obedience

Thur 22nd April

7.00AM OJ
9.30AM apple
1.30PM 2 x schooners of gold after touch footy
2.00PM 2 x Salad Sandwiches
7.30PM Ham cheese & tomato omelette (3 eggs), 3 small rolls & smear of butter

Exercise touch footy, walk dog

Wed 21st April

7.00AM OJ
12.00PM 2 x Salad Sandwiches
2.00PM Grapes
3.30PM 2 slices of bread with jam (no butter), apple
6.30PM Reheat balsamic vinegar pasta and lamb sirloin with vegies

Exercise - soccer (incl jog to field), walk the dog

Tue 20th April

7.00AM Orange Juice

11.30AM 2 x salad sandwiches on soy & linseed bread, no margarine or butter, trimmed leg ham, tomato, low fat cheese, red onion, beetroot, lettuce.

5.30PM steak sandwich, small serve of chips, diet coke, 3 schooners gold

Mon 19th April

7.00AM Orange Juice

12.00PM 2 x salad sandwiches on soy & linseed bread, no margarine or butter, trimmed leg ham, tomato, low fat cheese, red onion, beetroot, lettuce.

6.00PM 3 large sushi rolls & ginger , caramel skim milk shake

We had our first weekly weigh in.

1st Chris 113.5 -> 107.2 (-5.55%)
2nd John 80.2 -> 76.6 (-4.49%)
3rd Me 102.1 -> 98.4 (-3.62%)
4th Alun 107.0 -> 103.6 (-3.18%)
5th Seb 109.5 -> 107.4 (-1.92%)

Fri 16th April

7.00AM Orange Juice

1.00PM Roast pork & veg. 3 schooners gold

4.30PM 2 x stubbies gold

6.30PM chilli chicken & rice



Sat 17th April

10AM Ham & salad roll during golf

1.00PM 2 x salad sandwiches on soy & linseed bread, no margarine or butter, trimmed leg ham, tomato, low fat cheese, pineapple, red onion, beetroot, lettuce.

7.00PM Balsamic vinegar pasta and lamb sirloin with vegies


Sun 18th April


10AM 2 x slices toast with light smear of butter and strawberry jam , 2 x slices toast with low fat cheese & tomato, banana

2PM 2 salad sandwiches on white bread, no margarine or butter, trimmed leg ham, pineapple, low fat cheese, lettuce.

7PM Baked rainbow trout fillets with extra virgin olive oil, chilli, oregano, ginger, parsley, rock salt and ground black pepper , large glass of white wine

Breakfast
2 slices lightly buttered toast with strawberry jam. Orange Juice.

Lunch
2 egg and lite salad cream sandwiches on soy & linseed bread, no margarine or butter. Apple, orange, tim tam.

Afternoon Tea
Apple + tim tam
1 stubbie gold

Tea

Cold salad – leg ham & silverside, beetroot, swiss cheese, corn kernels, peas, 2 slices of lightly buttered soy & linseed bread, + left over pre mixed Mediterranean salad

I'm involved in a bet to see who in our work group can lose the most weight. To help me stay focused I'm going to post my daily food intake here

Yesterday :-

Breakfast
Orange Juice

Lunch
2 salad sandwiches on soy & linseed bread, no margarine or butter, trimmed leg ham, tomato, low fat cheese, beetroot, lettuce. Apple, orange

Afternoon Tea
Tim Tam

Tea
3 soft boiled eggs, 4 slices lightly buttered toast

Late Snack
Apple

Stuff that's been happening in my life :-

- my father in law (who lives in my rental house) had his 105cm 40" widescreen TV and home theatre speakers knocked off in a break and enter. Calling the Karma gods..are you listening?

- made about $3k on some shares (ASX:TIMPA) thanks to an imminent merger of the parent company. Also had some success in the Promina IPO (ASX:PMN) that listed at $1.70 now trading at $2.36

- going on holidays next month for a week at the gold coast. Main holiday this year will be a trip through Victoria to South Australia via the Great Ocean Rd . Also taking in the Australia Open Golf at Moonah Links on the Morningtn Peninsula.

- been doing quite a few geocaches - up to 16 or 17 found so far. Bravo Hotel, Photo Finish, Feel Like a Tooheys , Poogie Yes Yes , Mountain Creekside , Caloundra City , Brumby View , Wild View , Plantman #19 , Expoition to the North Pole , MacGavin , Clark Kent , Third Lagoon , Where Eagles Dare , Money Changer , Homer , Inner Brisbane , Microjelly. We will be placing our own caches in the near future as well.

- Had my best round of golf for a while (84) and followed it up with some similar scores 90, 87,90. Spending way too much money on golf balls. What started at $30/dozen limit has been as high as $50/dozen lately but I need to reign it in. Current ball is the Top Flite Tour $42/doz, but I have been playing the Precept MC Lady ($30/doz) and Nike Tour Accuracy ($49/doz) as well.

Probably loads of other stuff to update with but that'll do.

Token blog update to keep Tank happy.

Had an overnight trip to Korralbyn to play golf on Anzac day. 6 of us played in the Copperhead challenge from the back tees and it was pretty tough. Some info about the course and how tough it is can be found here. The weekly copperhead challenge from the back tees that we played in gives away a dozen balls just for breaking net par 72 but since 1984 when the comp started they have had just 2% of players collect the free balls!! None of us collected either.

I enjoyed the golf but it was bedlam when we got back to the resort and started drinking. These days I like to control the rate I drink and keep control of my senses. Bad stuff happens when I don't :)The downside of this is that when everyone else is getting plastered and going mental it can be a little testing on your patience. Maybe I'm getting old! One of the guys managed to break the glass top of a coffee table which cost us $50 but it's amazing that was the extent of the damage. The unit looked like a bomb site when I got up next morning!!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I got Robbie Slater's auto-biography for my birthday and have really enjoyed it. The guy is a bit of a big head plonker and I was expecting not to like the book that much, but he has a really easy to read style that has a lot of interesting behind the scenes info about his time at West Ham and the other clubs he played at.

I'm starting to amass a bit of a sports biography collection. One day I'll collate a list.

Long time no post.

Recent DVD's added to my collection :- 4 disc Spiderman box set, King Ralph, Band of Brothers box set - which I picked up for $36.95 AUD since it was mis priced. What a gritty emotion packed series.

I hit a guy with a golf ball the other day - from 250 metres away it hit him on the ankle on the full..it had to hurt. He was amazingly understanding about it..I would have been way pissed off since he was standing in the middle of his own fairway when it happened. Carded a 90 with 36 stableford points.

Won tickets to see Bruce Springsteen's Brisbane concert last month. Carole is the big fan and wanted the tickets bad, but I had a great time. The Boss just didn't stop for 3 solid hours. He puts so much energy into his concerts it is easy to see why he is still one of the biggest selling live acts around.

Discovered geocaching the other day. Basically people hide stuff and post the gps co-ordinates on the net, you load them into your gps receiver and go find them. Generally each cache has several things in it (with only a small $ value), and you take one thing out and replace it with something you took with you and fill in the log book. Lots of fun. Carole in particular has got right into it.

After buying a $350 shaver with credit card reward points, I can honestly say that no electric shaver is as good as a blade. Here's the one I bought

Played 9 holes in a break in the rain yesterday and although I didn't score well, I am striking the ball as well as ever. That's a bit of a contradiction but I am not far off posting a very low score (by my standards). We were honouring the annual tradition of having a Kenny Young memorial golf day. Kenny was the father of one of my friends and passed away in '96. Each year for the past 7 years about a half a dozen of us get together to remember him.

I'm sure he's up there in a bar somewhere having a beer and a laugh. Cheer's Kenny!!

Picked up the Reservior Dogs SE today. About time it got released in Region 4. Why the bloody hell have JB Hifi started taking the discs out of the cases? I want my discs in the shrink wrap in pristine condition dammit. Scratch another DVD retailer. [pun intended]

Also found some blanks that my tempermental cdr will burn to. Verbatim digital vinyls. Look like a mini LP record.

If the Around the World in 80 Days reference got you reminiscing, you can download Jules Verne's novels here. It's not illegal..old books become freeware after a certain time.

Can anyone explain to me why an xbox can be had in this country for under $300AUD which includes damn good graphics AS WELL AS a hard drive, processor and everything else and yet a decent quality video card for the pc costs as much or in many cases much more????

I'm guessing that the xbox hardware is heavily subsidised because they know you will be buying games @ $100 a pop. Still doesn't make it right...doesn't microsoft put nvidia graphics hardware in the xbox? How can nvidia sell to ms at a fraction of the cost they want consumers to pay for their pc cards? I know it's not apples with apples but it's still fruit. Rotten fruit if you ask me. Fix Tricks, Fix Tricks.

I fixed my pedal with an occy strap. Does the job for now. Did I mention that I can't get enough of GTR 2002?

I bought a copy of F1 2002 on Sunday. You'd think I'd do that because I wanted to play it right? Wrong. I had to have it so that I could play a free mod called GTR 2002 that is based on its physics engine. The mod is based on the real life FIA GT championship from Europe which features Porsche, Ferrari, Lamborgini, Dodge Vipers etc. For a free mod developed out of the goodness of the hearts of 20 or so dedicated enthusiasts, it is absolutely fantastic. I cannot begin to tell you how much fun it is. I have been having a ball with it every night until last night. The spring on one of my pedals snapped and that was the end of that until I can get it fixed. Damn doesn't begin to describe how annoying that is.

it's a short working week but it sure seems to be taking a long time.

I've just spent some time evaluating my DVD collection. Your movies must say something about you. One time I thought about starting a thread on aus.dvd about doing an analysis of people based on the contents of their collections...here's a quick list of mine - you make your own conclusions :-

Alien
Antz
Bone Collector, The
Bram Stoker's Dracula
Braveheart
Brewster's Millions
Contact
Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon
Das Boot
Desperado / El Mariachi
Exorcist, The: 25th Anniversary
Fifth Element, The
Fight Club
Gladiator
Good Will Hunting
Great Escape, The
Heat
Jackie Brown
Jebediaries
Jumanji
Lawrence of Arabia
Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels
Matrix, The
Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc, The
Moby - Play The DVD
Notting Hill
Paris Concert for Amnesty International
Patch Adams
Perfect Storm, The
Point Break
Prince Of Egypt, The
Pulp Fiction
Red Hot Chili Peppers:Funky Monks
Right Stuff, The
Rounders
Saving Private Ryan
Se7en
Shaft
Shanghai Noon
Snatch
Spartacus
Sting, The
Super Speedway
Superman II
Superman: The Movie
There's Something About Mary
Tomorrow Never Dies
Toy Story 2
U-571
Walking With Dinosaurs

Some of these are embarrassing to own (which doesn't mean I don't like them btw)

Some of these I own and don't even like - buying for appearances?

Which movies would I care about losing in a fire?

I like light hearted comedys but don't own many

What would be really enlightening would be to have accurate figures for how many times I have watched each. Some would be 0. Why even bother taking the shrink wrap off until I watch it?

I know in the early days of home theatre and DVD I used to buy movies because of the quality of the transfer/audio mix/extras with the quality of the movie itself being secondary.

So I'm screwing about in the front yard practicing my golf chipping. I have a dozen real balls (not plastic practice whiffle balls) and a net my wife got for xmas. I'm just bumping them at the net 8 or 10 feet away. Carole comes up and asks to have a go.

"Are you sure you want to try with real balls?"

"Yes of course."

A minute later she's had one swing, one divot out of the front lawn, the ball goes sailing over the front fence and goes bouncing up the road towards a neighbour's car. We both just stand there watching it go..bounce bounce bounce...it didn't hit the car. And Carole didn't hit any more golf balls. :)

My wife just got home with a present for me. New board shorts. She bought them because they were cheap...but I just bought 2 pairs recently. I guess you can never have too many pairs :)

Why

Why have I started a blog? To learn more about myself. To write about something requires that you think about it. When what you are writing about is yourself and your life, then the process of thinking about it may lead to a greater understanding of both. At least that's what I hope :)

About me

My name is Tony and I live in Australia. But rather than give you some great spiel about my hobbies and interests, I'll wait until they pop up in my life and you can gradully find out about me. If they don't pop up in my life then they musn't be hobbies or interests...We'll see what evolves as time goes by.

I'll cover one aspect of my personality today and the others I'll also leave for when they are topical. I'm an obsessive person. By that I mean I get interested in something and I obsess on it. It consumes my thoughts. I dream about it. My web browsing is dominated by it. I buy paraphenalia to do with it. I borrow books from the library to find out more about it. Not sure if it's entirely healthy but it's how I am.

I can't face typing it all over again tonight. I need sleep........

Don't you hate it when you spend an hour typing something up and then lose it? Well that's what just happened to me..my very first blog post and when I clicked Post and Publish I get vbscript errors and can't salvage what I had typed :(