Random gibberish.

destrado_meep @ 2007-08-23T23:59:00

2007-08-23T14:13:36Z

I haven't posted an entry since I got my job, so four months or more.

I applied for an internal position and I didn't get it.
I'm kinda bummed about it because the guy who got the job pretty much had the same qualifications as I did. He had more experience in an IT job than I did, which is probably what got him the job. Which normally wouldn't have bothered me except that his retail experience is from the competitor.

It sure was fun being in the test lab watching him get shown how to use all the pieces of equipment I've had 5 years with... Well they updated the POS systems... 2 years then I guess.

Life update

2007-04-08T03:09:30Z

For all those who are unaware, i.e. most of you, I have a new job. I'm now a software tester for the same company I was working retail for. Which means, in the loosest sense, I'm getting paid double to do what I was doing before. I use registers all day, but instead of selling people stuff, I'm making sure everything works correctly.

I've finished university and my graduation ceremony is on the 23rd of this month.

I'm still without car but I'm working on that.

So now all I need is a new girlfriend and to keep this job a bit longer so I can move out.

destrado_meep @ 2007-02-07T13:47:00

2007-02-07T03:12:01Z

I took Meg to my university campus two Mondays ago because she was going to be enrolling there on the Tuesday and didn't know how to get there. I showed her around the campus and eventually made it to the School of Computing and Mathematics. Walking through, a man walked into the corridor from the other end. His name is Craig, and he was my favourite lecturer from my time at university for a number of different reasons mostly because he knows his material really well, but he has also worked in the industry, the he is also one of few Australian lecturers doesn't hurt his case either. I've taken a few classes just because he was taking them or was influencing them in some way. I say hello and he recognises me and responds in kind. We talk a little and I mention that I'm not going back any time soon. He then tells me I was a good student, I was a bit incredulous and think maybe he's confused me with someone else. He clarifies that other than not spending a lot of time on assignments I was pretty good. I guess he does know who I am after all.

Woo, the update of something

2006-11-28T11:50:12Z

Is it a bad sign that someone sent me a message asking if I died because I haven't been on my computer for a number of days?

Things that have happened since my last update:
- I attended a Sydney FC match, and the atmosphere is the members stand is a lot like the UK fans, only not as large. So I may have to purchase a membership next season.
- I saw Wolverine and Batman Perform Magic Tricks With Alfred and it was grand.
- I bought Meteos and it is oh so good... gooooooooooood.
- I saw Children of Men.
- I laybyed my brother a X-box for Christmas
- I pre-ordered myself a Wii
- My parents are not going to Vietnam, they are going to Hervey Bay.

Travelling

2006-11-17T02:15:01Z

My parents are going to Vietnam in January.
My sister is going to Thailand in February.
My other sister is going to Fiji in one of those two months.

So I guess the question is... who is coming to visit me?

Halloween or something like it

2006-10-31T08:34:39Z

Halloween is fast becoming a trend around here and I really don't approve of it. Ok, that isn't entirely true, I don't mind halloween parties, dressing up, scary movies, whatever cool. It's the trick or treating that bugs the shit out of me. STOP TRYING TO FORCE A HOLIDAY ON ME.

Before anyone goes "England celebrates it" well, that is true now, but not when Australia was colonised. Why haven't we been celebrating Guy Fawkes Day and setting things on fire? Oh, because they were banned by the state governments. :(

Ok, enough bitching.
Last Monday I purchased a new camera, it is one of these. I also purchased Brain Training and am now addicted to Sudoku, a game I had never previously cared about.

Here, have a Ferrari:

destrado_meep @ 2006-10-17T10:22:00

2006-10-17T10:27:18Z

My parents went to Melbourne and all I got was this lousy...condom...?!?!

Why do these things still work?

2006-10-12T05:29:51Z

Have you ever kept something running long after it should?

I have a set of headphones that really shouldn't be functional any more. They are a set of Phillips HP-890s that are supposed to look like this .

Now for whatever reason my ones have slowly fallen apart, first the housing cracked and fell to pieces, but hey, nothing hot glue couldn't fix, then the other side of the housing cracked and once again it was hot glue to the rescue. This was a good solution until last night, where the cable from the left ear to the right ear snapped. It was 12am and I wanted to play FEAR, so the only solution was was to fix them.

BEHOLD FRANKENPHONES!

destrado_meep @ 2006-09-10T21:08:00

2006-09-10T13:36:19Z

In the last three weeks I have:
- performed an oil change
- spilt 3 litres of oil on my driveway
- removed a 3 litre oil stain from my driveway
- paid my car's compulsary third party insurance ($487)
- discovered that one of my bank accounts has a balance of -$16.42, which I haven't used since I was in Michigan
- turned 23
- gone jet boating on Sydney Harbour
- paid my car registration ($202)
- worked the opening three days of a new department store
- received "sex hair" from a girl also working at said store
- saw John Tucker Must Die

destrado_meep @ 2006-08-06T21:01:00

2006-08-06T11:08:20Z

It's an interesting feeling having your father not recognise you at all, especially when you are wearing a name tag.

I just wish I could have called at a better time so as to have been able to talk about it. The irony was not lost on me.

Being home

2006-08-03T01:58:42Z

I got back into Sydney on the 31st.
I just wanted to thank the beautiful Amberleigh and the wacky Justin for having me for the short time that they did, it wasn't long enough, and I would have stayed forever if you would have had me.

Thank you to Meggy, for giving me a reason to still be here.

destrado_meep @ 2006-07-14T22:12:00

2006-07-14T12:39:28Z

My work was included in this week's Photoshop Phriday, I think that is pretty cool.

Here is a list of things I like more than I probably should:

2006-07-12T15:53:32Z

It's a Boomer's life
Rosebud's Frozen Peas
Mrs Pell's Fishsticks
Orson Welles's Ghost
Blotto Bros. Wing
George Washington

Hooray jerseys

2006-06-25T17:09:24Z

I really want one of these and possibly one of these.

I'm really considering taking advantage of this and possibly getting both of them for an outset of less than the actual price.

Someone give me an opinion.

destrado_meep @ 2006-06-16T02:45:00

2006-06-15T16:48:31Z

Is it wrong for me to find this sexy?

92nd minute substitution meme

2006-06-14T16:06:23Z

6 Weird Facts about me, 5 people I tag in to do the same thing

1. I like arachnids.

2. My eyes change colour from light blue to green. It seems to be related to mood on some level, they are usually blue or blue green but sometimes I'll just be having a shit time and I'll look at my eyes in a mirror and they will be green.

3. I don't like being in large groups of people I don't know if I have to interact with them. I am uncomfortable at parties if I don't know many people, but am quite fine at concerts if I am by myself for example.

4. If I don't respond to a sms message when I first read it, I am unlikely to do it later.

5. I tend to perform better in classes or subjects within classes that other people find difficult.

6. I don't watch nearly as many movies as I should and that is why I haven't seen movies others think I should have seen and why at least a third of my dvds are still in their original wrapping.

Tagging:
jackandhishat, because he is interesting.
lizsterine, because she always tries find me something new to show me.
nyxlyn, because I'm curious what she will write.
sakaristar, because she has been around recently.
wolfyoukai, because she doesn't post enough.

Look at me being serious!

2006-05-07T14:10:27Z

Seriously do it.

This is cool even if the physics are wrong in places.

A longish weekend

2006-05-01T16:59:47Z

I'm either going to split this into 2 or 3 parts depending how I'm feeling and how much I write.
Ghost hunting and possibly witnessing a drug deal
My friend Sarah, who has been at university on the state border, was up visiting last week and after having read this article I decided that since the cemetary is about 5 minutes from my house it would be worth a look. Sarah and I decide to go check it out to try and find the graves mentioned and photographed in the article. The only problem is that there are 3 cemetaries that fit the description, though it is most likely one of the two that are essentially across the street from each other.
Cemetary 1
We arrive at the first cemetary and most likely the one from the article. Sarah really liked the the outline of the headstones against the light from the town. So she took some photos of that but nothing really unusualed appear on the screen of my digital camera. I spent most of my time trying to find the grave with the redish fence from the article to no avail.
Only two weird things happened in the first one:
1. Sarah's packet of cigarettes disappeared, the only place where they should have fallen out was when she crouched to take a few photos.
2. In my search to find the afore mentioned grave I was walking around and everything felt fine, except when I approached a family plot of old graves and my arms started to tingle. So I turned and took a photo of it, which is here, and I could see a few orbs on the screen and I knew I'd hit pay dirt. I didn't even know how much until I got home and counting now I can see at least 14 really prominant orbs in the shot. Also if you have a LCD monitor if you look at it for the side where the colour goes all weird and brown you will be able to see a lot more orbs than you can see straight on, and this is true for the other shots too, you could always play with contrast settings as well, I suppose.

Cemetary 2
The second one we visited was much larger even though it is on the same street. Walking around we didn't see much worth photographing and kept looking for the article graves. Until I saw a orange flickering light where I started thinking to myself, "There is no way I can be this lucky on my first ghost hunt." It turned out to be a candle lantern which was fine, until Sarah looked at it and saw that while it was flickering like a candle it wasn't actually lit. After studying it for a few minutes we noticed some wires, so it had to be battery powered or something. So we set off to look around some more before we heard this unnatural howling noise, "What the fuck is that?" Before a car with blue and red flashing lights screams down the road beside the cemetary.
Now here is where this part gets interesting. Two minutes after the cops fly past a white Commodore drives into the cemetary and parks, and I'm thinking that they are probably just ghost hunting as well and we'll go walk up and have a chat in a little while. There was something about the way they were acting that stopped us going up there straight away. Two minutes after the Commodore came in, a hatchback drives in and parks next to the Commodore before driving and stopping next to my car before continuing on it's way out again.

Bonus Cemetary
After what may or may have not been a drug deal we were kinda nervous. Sarah needed new ciggies and offered to buy me some new batteries for my camera as the rechargeables seemed to be on their way out and needed a new charge.
We then went to a cemetary that could not have been the one in the article, mostly because it is probably the oldest one in town. It is also the one with lots of tree covering so it is also the darkest and coldest. I took most of the photos in the night here.
Sarah and I both had weird feelings about some of the graves, often they matched, sometimes it was of ones close together and photos of them overlapped so what we got were both in shot.
The weirdest thing in this cemetary was that my camera refused to focus in certain places something it hasn't done before or since. In this sequence of three shots, Sarah took the first, I took the second and the third. It's quite remarkable really. I guess some ghosts don't like having their photo taken.
Their nextdoor neighbours had nothing, but nextdoor again gave me more orbs.

Cemetary 3
Nothing really interesting there, except some guy drove out from across the street and it kinda looked like he was looking for the occupants of my car. He eventually drove off but yeah, people are weird.
To be fair, and to show at least one photo from each cemetary, this one gets a show of quality over quantity.

This isn't wasn't every photo I took, there are 31 files all up and the majority of them have orbs in them. If you are interested in seeing them all give me a shout and I'll find a way to get them to you.

Working all day and two 21sts and the double hotness
Woke up the next day and climbed carefully over Sarah to get to my phone to turn the alarm off. I left Sarah in bed and set about to making breakfast, showering and generally getting ready for work and the two parties I will be attending in the evening. Work itself was pretty boring, though I did get to hear a customer tell me an interesting story about a costume party. You'll see why this is relevant in a bit.
She had thrown a costume party and her crazy aunt had turned up as a nun. This is all fine and dandy, except for some reason she has kept her bible prop under her arm when everyone else has discarded their props. Eventually someone asks her why she hasn't put it down, so she shows them. She opens the bible to reveal... a pop-up penis.

I get out from work at 6:15pm and get dressed in the car while waiting for a call from Sam to see if he needs a lift. I arrive at Ray's house about 45 minutes after the start time. I had been informed previously that the cake would be cut at 8pm, so I told Ray that I would be staying until then because I had to go to Jess's party as well. Ray's 3rd cousin Casey made an appearance a short while after I showed up and the only memory they had of each other was throwing toys off Ray's bunk bed and then Casey jumping of it and hurting herself. While I'd met most of Ray's friends that were there I don't really know any of them all that well, and Casey didn't know anyone so I spent most of my time talking to her and insulting Renee. Somehow we got dragged into a conversation the other girls started about pulling "fish faces" and scarily or awesomely Casey is a fish face pulling champion and I'm pretty good. Anyway, 8 came and went and at 8:30 dinner hadn't even been served let alone cake. I went and got changed for the next party. Wearing my 1920s gangster get up, I said good bye to Ray and Casey and I told Ray I may be back after 12 as that would be when Jessica's costume party finished.

I walked into Jess's just after they'd finished serving dinner and one of the caterers actually sought me out see if I wanted dinner, which was awesome because I figured they'd be packing up and left them alone. I knew I was going to match Jess's flapper costume but I was unaware that Dave was also coming as a 1920s gangster. We got some nice photos together including this and this. My ex-manager Jean, who was a hippie, invited me to go drinks with her new IT support collegues as a wingman/safety net and so I can network. Now for those who aren't aware, there is a running joke between Jean and myself about how we engaged and we are as likely to fuel the rumour mill fire by doing things to start rumours as people are to spread them. Apparently she'd got in trouble from Jess and Charonne the week before at Jodie's 21st for "being all over me" while she was drunk.
During this time we've taken a few photos together including some with me wearing a bridal veil and her wearing my gangster hat and I'd been taunting her that she was going to get in trouble. She said she didn't care, so I pushed the envelope again and said that she should come with me back to Jess's house, she agreed and we got the result we were looking for. As she was walking to my car Bec, Emma, Gina and Jason told her to make out with me in the car, I wasn't aware of this until later. We got to Jess's first and we sat talking about whatever until the first cars drove up... and parked side by side on the road with their lights pointed at my car obviously to see what we were doing. They drove around the cul de sac and told us they were going to park on the main street for whatever reason, I guess they were trying to do us a favour by giving us space. So we sat there for a bit, before deciding that more fueling was required and we drove off, and subsequently got lost in surburbia hell which meant it was a long time before we got back.

Here is the double hotness that is Gina and me.

Recovery
I got home from Jessica's at around 3:30am and promptly slept for about 12 hours. I got up to find that Ray had sent me an IM to thank me for coming and that Casey had left me a note with her email address and told me that it sucked I had to leave early and that I should email so we can continue talking about fish faces.

Holy shit discovery edit
I've been going over the photos from the costume party and there seems to be orbs in them. Which kinda puts a damper on the scientific proveability of my graveyard pics, unless for some reason they are following me. I'll take some more photos now and see what happens.
Nothing in the ones I just took, and except the photo I took of Adam which may have had the flash reflected off the window behind him otherwise most of the photos that have orbs in them are photos that I'm in. I don't know what this means at all though I'm definately weirded out.

destrado_meep @ 2006-03-21T01:30:00

2006-03-20T14:42:35Z

I was feeling brave today, so after requesting the opinion of three "wise" men (one Australian, one Canadian and one Englishman for those keeping score at home) I decided that not only was it a good idea to wear my "I'm only two girls short of a threesome" t-shirt to university. It was a good idea to wear it on the day I have psychology, i.e. the only class I have which has more than possibly one girl in it, and most likely half or more of the students are female.

Not only did the girls not try and lynch me for my shirt, the ones that read it found it amusing. None of them offered to make up the numbers unfortunately.

Does anyone have any idea, other than my phone being crazy, why my phone after "going flat" while on a call, will turn on hours later with "full battery" and quite happily make two, albeit shorter, phone calls?

The idea of this scares the crap out of me, and for the life of me I can not think of a valid reason why this API call should have been made. It is just crying out for misuse, I mean, I can't even think of a valid use. Tim came up with debugging, but even that is a stretch.

destrado_meep @ 2006-03-14T00:07:00

2006-03-13T13:44:19Z

I didn't expect to be the only person with one of those turning 30 marriage things. So I guess they really are just the stuff of tv and movies. Still it had an amusing upside. Meg decided that she had to know who it was, "Who are you engaged to? Who is it? Why wont you tell me?" I just found it to be quite amusing.

It seems to be the general consensus for girls at work to tell me frquently that I smell nice. I usually get told about once a week, and no that does not mean that I smell horrible the rest of the week and they are hinting that I need a shower. I've had at least 4 girls tell me that I smell good, and my newest and favourite is that I smell pretty. Mostly because of the whole non sequitur idea of it all. The longer explaination didn't really make the situation any better, though Jade decided I was probably getting hit on.

--edit--
Two updates in one day. Ok, I just forgot I wanted to put this stuff in when I posted earlier.

destrado_meep @ 2006-03-13T11:00:00

2006-03-13T04:27:13Z

I awoke to the noise of what I thought was a tomcat screeching, and how I wish it was. In fact it was my sisters. My 18 year old twin sisters arguing about why sister one didn't get my co-op bookshop membership card when she was buying books for sister two. It escalated from fighting, to screeching to a physical fight. My mother interjected, and put a stop to it. Which happened to be about the time I was considering getting up to slap them both.

At work the same day I'm getting a box set out of the cabinet for a customer who's daughter wants a magazine and to get his attention is going, "Daddaddaddaddaddaddaddaddaddaddaddaddaddaddaddaddaddaddaddaddaddad," so I hit her on the head with the box set. She turns around and looks at me like I've killed her puppy, and I respond with, "You were broken."

If you want the position of God then take the responsibility

2006-03-08T16:55:50Z

I keep putting this off because I usually want to do it either before going to sleep or work and so it has been.

My parents are going to Europe in July. I've helped them work out the dates to be in Germany and the dates to not be. Now for anyone who isn't aware, my stepfather is Hungarian, so I now know how to find Hungarian phone numbers over the internet. Unfortunately his father died on the 25th of December last year and due to his lack of response to his father's letters he was not informed of this until he rang.
I've never seen him cry and even this time it was only a tear or two.

I learned that my favourite fighter plane is not only being retired but has flown it's last combat mission, and the last squadron will stop flying before the end of the year. I have since aquired many a video and the 2004 Fighter Fling has the best use of The Who's Baba O'Riley ever short of Pete Townshend's unfinished rock opera Lifehouse follow up to Tommy.

Has anyone else taken one of those "If we're not married by the time we are 30 let's get married" promises? It's kinda perverse really. I mean what are the rules if you aren't married but are in a stable and happy relationship? I'm not planning on crossing the bridge when I come to it anyway.

I thought my new LCD monitor developed a line of dead pixels on it, but I think it may in fact be the video card, because a similar line has turned up on my tempremental CRT monitor. Which has become even more tempremntal that it is no longer RGB but in fact just RG, so my monitor has a nice yellow tinge to it.

And for anyone who hasn't been introduced, this is Clamps:

What did you get for Valentine's Day?

2006-02-14T07:41:57Z

I got accused of being involved in an iPod heist.

<3 <3 <3 <3

I woke up to this, I find it amusing. The names have been changed to protect the guilty.

2006-02-05T01:18:32Z

Her: shouldn't you be sleeping?
Me: it's 9:23
Her: hmm, I thought it would be earlier than that... you're over in the same time zone as sidney?
Me: I'm in Sydney... well as far as you are concerned
Her: for some reason I was thinking you were on the west coast
Me: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/
Her: and so I can't spell sydney all the time.. at least I don't think it's your capitol!
Me: that's good
Me: do you know the capitol?
Her: Melbourne
Her: and why does everyone in the US say it's Sydney? ;_;
Me: apparently you do not
Me: well apparently not then >.>
Me: the same reason you said Melbourne I guess

destrado_meep @ 2006-01-24T02:03:00

2006-01-23T15:05:21Z

I saw Underworld: Evolution the other day. I am left with a few questions, the main one being. Mister North, why didn't you tell me that you were playing the main villain, hmm? I mean shit, this guy is like an older version of you, it freaked me out a little.