I’m going to put a concept down, just to see if anyone else has ever had a similar situation occur. I’ve got my own theory on what’s going on, but I want to determine if others share the experience before I ramble on about it.
It’s a bit of a difficult one to describe, but I’m going to give it a go.
Put simply, I keep coming across people who share almost identical personalities & traits of someone I have known in the past. Each time, the new person comes along straight after the relationship with the prior one ends.
Since I can quote multiple instances, coincidence is no longer plausible. In one particular case, I’ve met three people covering over ten years, who have continued on from the last! Their similarities extend to looks, personality, even the way they laugh!
I’m saying goodbye once again to daylight savings. It’s going to take me a while because I’ve really got to adjust to gaining an hour which is very significant. Going to bed later is fine, but I’m waking up an hour earlier due to my body clock, only to find that I can’t go back to sleep! I gained an hour, but lost one in the process!
Thankfully, it was a productive weekend. I could have shot myself on Friday night after I deleted a recording I was working on. I can turn such simple things into such stupidity. On Saturday, I re-recorded a couple of guitar parts, a drum track & lastly the vocals. Managed to also put down a cover of a John Mayer song as well & it all sounds pretty good too. I just hope no-one was listening when I did the vocals. Unless those listening in have access to headphones as well, the only thing audible is the singing, which looks & sounds pretty strange performed on its own.
I’ve taken some photos for a new “about” section. Some are okay, some are simply crap. I’ve got a small cut in the corner of my mouth which is taking forever to heal. Only shots on my right side are usable. How come when a sore is visible, does it take three times as long to heal??
In other news,
• If Ian Thorpe can accept not being in the 400m, then everyone else should too. The rules are stupid, but they all knew they existed, so that’s the end of it. Craig Stevens should not be put in the position of giving up his spot to ensure Ian gets to swim.
• George Bush is a dickhead! Where are those WDM’s?!?
• Scored 5 points in the first round of Footy tipping.
• The girl I took over from at the Hotel had a boy on Sunday. A six pounder named Alex.
• Pearl Harbour is a shocker of a film. How the hell do you make such a stupid decision as parking your entire fleet in one spot, get it blown to smithereens, then make the whole thing look so patriotic?!?
• For those who read past entries regarding one Miss M. I heard a couple of really bad stories & yet there is still something appealing about her!!
• I don’t think I’ve used this much punctuation in a blog ever!!
Sometimes it’s just fun to watch people panic for no good reason.
As I turned to drive through the city this morning, a woman started to cross the road, only to then recognise that I was bearing down on her & in a wave of adrenalin decided to run back to the side of the road.
In doing so, she’s left her shoes behind for my car to pass over. In my rear-view mirror she had to wander back to the middle of the road, clumsily reattach the shoes to her feet & then continue on.
If she had just continued walking, she would have made it across the other two lanes before I reached her.
Instead she ended up back where she started, shoeless & hopefully embarrassed!
Since there is no Friday Five this week I thought I'd go back through some site links. I think everyone that has used a questionable phase or a few words on a page, which could when put together describe some sort of fetish, has had someone reach their site using a disturbing search query.
This site has been visited by a few people that wish to know "how to perform perfect oral sex". I'm not sure I know the answer to this one, but when I work it out, I'll post & let everyone know. Either that or I'll write one of those books for dummies!
Other than people searching for obvious keywords like "unlucky", I've had 22 hits from those whose "ears won't pop". I suggest increasing the pressure by blocking the nose & then trying to blow, then swallow or yawn, this opens the ear canal & assists in releasing the pressure. Hope that is of some help!
Last Wednesday, this site was found using a "holy toledos batman" & the Friday prior through "art of looking busy". I will stand by that one because it is an art worth mastering.
If your looking for "churn senet", I'm the first off the rank. Why my ISP makes someone feel ill is odd, though based on their service levels, I am starting to feel the same way.
I've had three hits for the words, f**k, sex, knickers & cherry. Being naive to all of them, I don't have a clue what they were looking for (cough, cough)!
My favourite, is that over the time I've made up a few words, mainly because I couldn't find one to fit a context. "Cryptocity" appeared way back in January 2003, but I'm only number three on Google. A couple of people have actually registered sites using this name. Coincidence? Well, yeah, probably, buy I still should have taken out a patent!
I'm having quite a few nights out & about at the moment. Monday was the whole bloggers meetup thing & then last night was a product demonstration of Roland/Boss equipment at Allans Music.
Lots of very cool equipment, but it also comes at considerable cost. My collection of guitar equipment has become quite extensive this year so I'm trying desperately to resist.
Hopefully the nights out continue. I go through periods where I just need to be alone & then have spats of wanting to be around good company. I'm going through on of the latter at the moment, even though I'm sitting here by myself typing away!
I've mentioned various bizarre coincidences that have occurred in my past. Things that occur completely out of the blue & really make the hair (what I have left) stand on end.
Last night I was thinking of one of the girls I worked with down at the Pier, reminding myself to send her a message & basically keep in touch, as we have since she left way back in the third quarter of last year. I've picked up my mobile later in the evening to check if it needed charging, only to find a message from her! I thought it was a bit of a surprise, but nothing more than a bit of luck.
However, it all became freaky during work today. Since I'm taking over the entire finance function of at the Radi, I'm also giving the place a damn good tidy up which is a fair bit of work. So in jeans & a t-shirt I've dived right in, sorting drawers that haven't been opened for years, boxing stuff & chucking gear that really shouldn't have been kept in the first place. Since there is a fair bit of communal storage in one particular room, we've had to muddle through archive boxes which have been stacked beyond safe limits. Without warning, one of the boxes split, sending payroll files of terminated staff across the floor. In catching the remainder in the box, my hand has come to rest on the file of one particular member. Can you guess? Yep, the girl that sent the message last night!!
Out of at least eight boxes, containing literally hundreds of files each from 1998 through to 2000, the odds of even finding her file if required would have been a near impossible challenge, let alone through luck.
There has to be a signal of some sort here, I just wish I knew what the hell it is!?!
So, what do you call nine bloggers in a beer garden?
I have no idea, but it did happen last night at the Exeter on Rundle Street. Being fashionably late at 6pm (last one to arrive!), I had that weird stomach churning experience as I wandered up to a group of drinkers, none of which I knew in real life, but a few of which I’ve exchanged comments with over the months since the inception of Adelaide Blogs.
I wondered for a while on whether to go or not, but thought, in the end everyone is in the same boat as myself & it’s about time to break the anonymity. The hospitality was in abundance & with a group of inherently creative people, there was always going to be a billion topics of conversation available.
Thankyou to the other eight attendees, being; (if I remember rightly)
I wrote an entry on my handheld last night about how the blogging program I was using would be the coolest if it actually managed to post from my Palm Tungsten, through my phone via Bluetooth & into Blogger. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the coolest because that entry never managed to land here!
The program is Hblogger from hexlet.com & it is a Palm based program which theoretically allows blogging from anywhere at anytime via GPRS. I’ve been searching on & off for a while for something like this. All attempts had so far fallen well short, by basically not doing a darn thing!
It all looked hopeful for a while. My Palm was able to log into Blogger & pull back the details of the journal, but when I actually went to post the entry it all turned awry. Something about being outside some parameters & extra gibberish was the final result.
My search for true wireless blogging by Palm continues!
Had a good night out with a few lads last night at the German Club. The last place I would ever consider going for a casual drink on a Friday night, but I now know it's one of Adelaide's little secrets.
The atmosphere was so relaxed, with everybody of all ages joining in the various German songs being belted out by a simple accordian & drummer duet. During the evening, these guys downed a substantial amount of booze & still managed to play. After just a couple of the Deutsch beverage range, I was certainly feeling influenced, so these two were seasoned drinkers!
Earlier in the evening, with a bit of time to kill, I wandered past the Clipsal 500 track along Hutt Street, managing to peer over the top of the barracades to watch the Konica Series cars belting around. Trying to cross Pultney Street on my way there ended up being a twenty minute affair when police entered the intersection & stopped all traffic. The other intersections along the road were also being blocked. Police cars seemed to come from all angles & at high speed. With people around me talking of terrorist attacks & the like, eventually a police car escorting an ambulance from the race track hurtled by after which the traffic was cleared & the police disappeared from whence they came! Nothing in today's paper about any accident, so It may have been a drill for the real thing!
I tried this last week & lost the lot, but I'm up for giving things another shot. Here is the Friday Five!
If you...
1. ...owned a restaurant, what kind of food would you serve?
I'd be having a restaurant that served good simple stuff. Nothing overly fancy that scares the majority of the population when they gaze at the menu. I think it would be called "The Chicken or the Fish"! You probably get the idea!
2. ...owned a small store, what kind of merchandise would you sell?
I'd love to run a guitar store, but then I'd be constantly paranoid about people trying the gear & damaging it, as I've seen in every music store I've ever entered!
3. ...wrote a book, what genre would it be?
Wouldn't have a clue on this one. Probably some self-help guide instructing people how to not be stupid!
4. ...ran a school, what would you teach?
English darn it! Most people under the age of 20 these days have appalling grammar skills.
5. ...recorded an album, what kind of music would be on it?
Well, this one's actually under way. I'm currently doing some digital demos, but a couple of acoustic performances are here.
Now that I have vented & feel a whole lot better for doing so, it's time to lighten the mood.
I received an email from sonyericsson regarding a couple of new mobile phones, the K700i & S700i, which look very cool. I imagine they will be the first models on the market with a 4x optical zoom which is pretty impressive. I don't consider myself to be a phone gadget freak, but I do love gadgets. My phone, the sonyericsson T610 has been flawless. It's getting on to being a year old & considering it was the very first of it's kind to hit Adelaide's airwaves (however, there's plenty of them now!), it still looks great, does everything I want it to do & has done a good job of providing some photographic content to this site. I can't see myself upgrading for quite some time, however, I'll have no doubt it will the same brand. I've had three phones in my time, both still work fine, but would look pretty out of date in 2004!
After everything that's gone on in the last week or two, I've still managed to complete another song. I'm yet to start recording seriously on my digital studio & I've got a fair bit more to learn. Something it has done is open my eyes to all facets of song arrangement. Playing my stuff is easy when unaccompanied, but trying to give a song depth with other guitat, bass & drum lines is a real challenge.
The song I've finished just flowed out in the end, one of those unexpected riffs that just develop without force. It has a real acoustic, country flavour but on electric would drift into a bluesy, grunty piece. I'll publish a demo or two when their done, especially now that there is some space on the server after the redesign.
Speaking of the new design, it does contain some faults that I've discovered. Some have been corrected but there is more to do. I'll add a new about page when I get a moment. I'm going to try & take some new photos of myself, which, looking the way I do, is a seriously difficult thing to do!
I’m in two minds about blogging here today. I have issues with posting stuff that is depressing to me, because I know people don’t want to hear about other peoples problems. The other side of that is, why have a journal if you can’t flesh out both the bad stuff as well as the occasional good?
Therefore, if you want to stay happy & in bliss, I suggest you don’t read any further. Hell, I’m never going to know if you read it or not!
The whole issue is about a bloke called Tim, my sister’s fiancé. As I’ve written before, he has no job, is incredibly selfish through being an only child & is beyond lazy. To my Parents, this guy is a loser, who will most likely never get a job & just live off my sister’s income.
Tim is 35, very traditional & gets lost in a world of fairies & dragons. Most of his existence has been reading books, playing war games with lead figurines & drawing. Make no mistake, he has talent in his artwork, but the real & imaginary sometimes combine to where he drifts of to a fictional place to escape what is happening around him.
In becoming engaged, Tim never spoke to my Father about marrying his daughter. Being someone who likes to live in olden times, I thought he would have gone down this path. I know it’s not supposed to be the modern way, but I know I would speak to the father of any future wife & I’m sure the majority of married men have done so. All of these issues would have been raised at this time rather than a couple of months before the wedding.
The incident which has brought everything to where we are now is when my sister became sick from salmonella poisoning. She was sick, so ill that she ended up in hospital. The morning before she went to hospital, she was at her unit in a fever with blue lips, as white as a ghost & severely dehydrated. Tim had arranged plans for myself as well as a couple of others to go see a film which he had already seen. I saw her just before we headed off to the cinema & she looked pretty bad. The fact that Tim was quite prepared to leave her with my folks suggested that she wasn’t in as bad shape as I thought. I thought about her throughout the film & I don’t think Tim was too concerned. Her condition worsened to the point of calling an ambulance during the evening. I remained at home & kept Tim up to date on the situation during the night. For someone to both be able to get some sleep when the person you are supposed to love is in hospital & then not be desperate to be by their side is beyond me.
My parents confronted Tim & my sister on the Sunday night two weeks ago. Tim seemed rather calm in addressing their concerns whilst my sister was too angry to say anything. For a few days after the communication between the two sides broke down, caused numerous tears & way too many sleepless nights. Eventually my sister started talking to mom again & after an hour conversation on Tuesday night, everything was out in the open & wounds were being mended. When Tim got to their unit that night & took over from my sister on the phone, he abused her about how she dare question anything he does & that everyone should leave them be.
More tears & a whole lot more stress for the next few hours until Tim called to apologise for his immature behaviour. My folks went around to their unit on Tim & my sister’s request & after midnight returned home with little to say other than most things had been sorted out & my sister need some time to just think about things.
I don’t actually know what went on that night & I’m being left out of the loop. No-one is really talking to one another & everything is being done to avoid me from the conversation. Last night was awkward & I was actually uncomfortable being in the place that I live. Hence, the reason for the updated website. If no-one wants to talk, you get stuff done.
By this morning, my folks have broken down. Dad apparently dropped an apology to Tim for his efforts on that Sunday night. Mom is now distressed because she feels she is without support & coping all the blame & dad is on the edge because he doesn’t know how to fix things.
When I left home this morning, I gave them my thoughts before leaving them still in tears. I basically told Mom to stop. Look at the big picture & I’m hoping the hatred for Tim isn’t such that my family is going to fall apart. He’s not worth it.
I’ve done everything I can to this point. I don’t know what else to do. I can’t speak to my sister because she doesn’t want me to be involved & resents the fact that I have been so far. I can’t speak to Tim, because I’m afraid I’ll do something stupid & lose my sister further. My folks obviously want to keep me out of the loop based on last night’s performance, which leaves me where? Worried like hell, caught in the middle & the scariest part is that I haven’t lost one wink of sleep or shed a tear over any of it.
Am I completely immune or detached from those around me? I’m not depressed in any 'I need therapy' way, but it does make me sad that everyone tells me everything, I go out of my way to protect & honour them, but at the last minute they turn & walk away as though I’m ignorant to what is happening.
I hate the fact that I’m getting scared to go to work because I don’t know what is going to happen during the day & if everyone is going to be alright, but I also hate going home from work & wondering what I’m going to face when I get there.
Well, there you have it, a new design for the first time in around two years.
It's a whole different version than I originally had planned, but this just seemed to eventuate without too much fuss. I'm happy with it for the moment, mainly because everything currently works (I think!).
There is also no permanency with this design. That racing stripe & header logo could change at any time or when I just get bored with looking at it!
My main mission was to eliminate all the garbage that had accumulated in the site's directories & speed up the whole loading process.
That mission has been completed & 'one before unlucky' enters a new era!
Aye, it is St Patrick’s Day, where everyone finds that little bit of clover in their psyche, only to then drown it in various attempts of swallowing Guinness.
The whole family thing came to a head last night. It could have ended very nasty indeed. Thankfully, all parties are okay. I’ll have to really think about whether I’m prepared to be involved in the wedding, if it ever does occur. A few things have ended up being pretty personal against me, why that is I don’t have the foggiest idea. I’m just an easy target for a scapegoat I think!
The hotel played host to the Prime Minister on Monday. Lots of Liberal Party members driving the staff in the bar crazy. I’m not sure what is actually worse, a room full of politicians or a room full of fanatical party members! Little Johnny Howard dined in the banquet room & gave the odd speech before disappearing to another destination to convert more voters.
This weekend is the Clipsal 500 & most of the crews, drivers & the rest of those involved have jetted into town. About ten minutes ago, I walked past Neil Crompton looking dazed & confused in the hotel foyer. Last year it was Greg Murphy checking out the sights of Glenelg while he was at the Pier. I’ll have to hang around at the bar later in the week & see who else is about the place!
I’ve been fully out of action for over a week now. Very little at all has gone right recently for myself & those directly around me. About the only thing that hasn’t caused me any grief is the one thing that I normally whinge about, being work!
It all began on the first Sunday of the month. My parents have been worried sick about my sister & her fiancé, who at age 35 is still hopelessly unemployed. He has no real desire to obtain a job & the last thing my folks want to see is my sister get married, have this guy freeload off her & then take half of all she’s worked hard to obtain if they ever end up down the road of divorce.
Problem is, how the hell do you bring the subject up? Do you just blurt it out & face the consequences or hold your tongue, let them get hitched & live in hope that nothing goes wrong?
My parents chose the first of those two options & let’s just say everything has turned out pretty messy, to the point that my sister is no longer communicating with the family. Both Mom & Dad are shattered, since they are effectively losing their little girl to a guy who now sees the issue as not being his problem. I’m also coping the silent treatment from her, which annoys me, because I can see both sides of this scenario. I’ve told her that & I still cop the brunt of it when she decides to answer the phone. Her attitude over the phone was such, that if my folks hadn’t been so desperate to contact her, I would have told her told her how & where to step off this planet followed by silence as I hung up the phone.
Anyway, to cut what could be a long, family-breaking story short. I’m coming to the conclusion that the fiancé in question may just be the freeloader that has been suggested. I’ve always got along with him, but some of his comments in passing have been questionable & I think if I hear something along those lines again, I’ll probably be up on assault charges.
To change subjects, the other reason this little site has been lacking in blog content is due to either my computer or my service provider. The simple problem is, I am unable to log into anything once connected to the web. Banking, blogging & email all sit in suspended animation once login details have been entered. I can see my modem sending the info, but nothing comes back! I wrote a Friday Five last week only to lose the whole thing after which I was fed up & flicked the little switch on the front panel of my PC. There’s nothing more frustrating than losing a blog entry & they never sound as good on a second attempt!
It is possible that my ISP is part of the culprit. I’ve been with Senet for over 4 years & since a take over, the quality has slid noticeably. Drop-outs, the recent introduction of 4 hour logon periods (I found this out after losing a non-resumable download with a couple of minutes left to run!) & some suspect administration errors have swayed my thinking into a possible change of provider.
The latest debacle with Senet was when I logged on to find I had run out of hours & would be forced to spend money to even access my account. They ended up double charging my credit card without providing receipt details & then told me that I had only just covered my outstanding debt!!?!
A very nice email outlined this, to which the response was automated with a list of help links based on words used in the email. Not one human being looked at it directly. A more assertive email was sent to which a blunt reply of “give us your details & we’ll refund your card” was the response. Not impressed!
The new design is still coming! I’ve just got to get my head around the issues on the home front first & then I’ll get back into it!
My first month end at the Radi is over after a week & a bit. For any accountants out there, they know that's a bit of a milestone. Twelve times a year, you get to deliver what always ends up as bad news to the top of the corporate tree.
Lesson 1 in Accounting - There is no set of figures which will please a boss. If every department exceeds their budget, the most you can hope for is a grunt or better yet, "where is the rest of the profit?".
A bad month is even worse. Handing over a crappy set of accounts instantly makes you personally responsible for everything that has gone wrong. The fact that the accountant is in no way involved in actually making sales becomes irrelevant.
Thankfully, the hierachy at the Radi is such that the big honcho does not get involved with mere minions like myself. Sure, I have a car-park pass & an office, but I'm not considered an "executive". Trust me, that's not a bad thing!
Overall, month end hasn't been as scary as the current accountant made it out to be. I kept getting told that they used to hide away for a week, maybe a weekend for good measure & rarely see daylight due to the extensive hours required! By the way it's panned out, if it takes me more than three days of solid work next month, I'll be surprised!
Lots of buttons, sliders, lights & plain good technical stuff. But, what the hell is it?
It is a Boss BR-864 Digital Recording Studio & now I can put my stuff down in a professional form (once I work my way through the 200 page manual). So far, I've been able to get some decent guitar setups going & recording seems straight forward, but I've got a whole lot to learn! Should be fun.
I also purchased a digital cable so I could connect to my Sony stereo, only to find that the bit rates used are incompatible. Back to analog unfortunately. I would love to see some colaboration between companies rather than making all their stuff exclusive so as not to allow other manufacturers componenents to be used. Very frustrating!
Anyway, that's my new project for a while. Once I've got a couple of songs done, I'll stick them somewhere here or at least link to them like my last efforts. If you haven't heard my previous efforts the three songs are here.
My other project is to redesign the site. I have the idea coming together & it's going to a case of how to do it as cleanly as possible. This page currently takes so bloody long to load, I'm sure half the stats on people visiting the site leave before it's loaded. This will change soon, I promise.
Okay, what else has been going on. The hot weather that's been hitting this part of the planet has dissipated for the time being. I actually found a photo from my phone that sums it all up rather well;
This is looking west down towards Hindley St. on a day of 40+ degrees. Just plain nasty!
I'm feeling so much more positive today than I have for months. I was actually writing a blog entry on my Palm Tungsten & ended up reading over it & thinking "Why am I doing this to myself?!?". It related to the last couple of entries & looking back at it made me realise how much of a moron I was being. That entry will never make it here & the girl in question... well, hey if that's the way they feel.....
In an effort to get back on track, I'm going to make a concerted effort to dribble out some of those creative juices & make a few changes.
I'm going to head into Allans music at some point this week & spend a not-so-small amount of dosh on a digital recorder & then I can lay down some of my music. I've come up with some really catchy riffs & song lines, but I need to get them in a form where I can edit & develop. I hate forgetting a lyric, only to never get it back. I need a better memory damn it!
My other objective is a complete redesign of this page. "One before unlucky" will continue indefinitely. I'm not really concerned with who checks out the site anymore. I've had a bit of a wake up call over this one in the last few days. I'm seeing so many journals enter the offline zone & after two years, I think I'm a bit addicted to venting in this media, however far apart the entries!
The quota given by Senet is in the 5meg realm. I know for a fact that I've blown it completely with the last few photo entries I've made. I'm thinking something really simple is the go, though I think the current design has dated reasonably well. Ideas or suggestions would be welcomed!
As a last resort to mend a friendship, I've given out the details of how to find this site.
I don't take a matter like this lightly. My parents, sister, work colleagues or best friends have no idea that I maintain an online journal.
It took me all of yesterday to weigh up whether this was the right move & after sending the details with my face buried in my hand, I still don't know. I know someone has performed a search for those details this morning, but no response has been received.
I suspect however, that this maybe the end of a two & a half year exercise & the downfall of "one before unlucky".
If it is, so be it. My most personal possession may well have been sacrificed for the trust of one person. That's how much they mean to me!
