It's been a rather "full on" week. Work has been intense, driving back & forth between the hotel & the new pub, trying to keep both of them operating. I've been really focused as well which has been good, but detrimental to blogging.
Something I have been getting into is a bit of Ebay work, searching out a few pin bargains.
I've been collecting little metal & enamel pins since way back in '87. Since then the collection has grown & I've ended up with some rather cool sets.
The set spelling out COKE is from the 1996 Atlanta Olympics & I found a coloured set a number of years back but failed to bid high enough at an auction of coke memorabilia in Port Adelaide. I've searched for ages to find it on the net & after finding a different Atlanta set on Ebay & tracing it's origins, I've managed to find the owner of the coloured set! Since I also won the auction, I'm picking up both these additions to my collection during the week.
After visiting the Hard Rock Cafe in Sydney & purchasing a few of their infamous pins, I joined the Hard Rock Cafe Pin Collectors Club (HRCPCC). It sounds a bit cheesy, but for the price of membership, they sent four pins & a card to get me 10% off all future Hard Rock purchases, which made the whole deal very worth while.
Overall, I have no idea what the collection is now worth, other than it goes into thousands of dollars. It's not a retirement nest-egg, but a talking point & reminder of where I've been. They look pretty swish too!
To see the complete set of photos, click on the gallery in side bar.
The dreaded moment hit me yesterday when I opened the browser & then determined "I have absolutely nothing to write about!"
I don't quite know how to get through this delicate period of time without lot's of love & support. I just know there will be a return to form. Maybe my life has finally become uninteresting!
If anyone would like me to blog about a particular subject, ask questions or take me on a "Who wants to be a Millionaire" type challenge, I'll be up for it. No matter how crazy, it might get me through this dark time.
In direct response to the number of hits I get looking for information regarding the superb Maton EBG808 acoustic guitar, I've taken the time to upload the photos I used to have sitting on this site.
Over on the side bar is a new "gallery" link which contains various photos in various catagories.
I've also stuck the Sydney Panoramas in there with some more standard shots which were my favourites from the trip.
Well, the potential next Prime Minister of Australia, Mark Latham, has admitted to using dope & aren't the press loving it. I have no doubt it will headline tomorrow's newspapers & some drop-kick will come forth saying they were his personal dealer!
The fact that he has been honest is a bit of a rarity in politics & may even sway a few votes in his direction. Why it's such a big issue is beyond me. I've no doubt that George Bush would deny having used drugs at any point during his life, but he is also incredibly stupid. Whereas, Bill Clinton rolled the wacky tobaccy & is unbelievably intelligent (see Andrew Denton's Enough Rope for proof).
I have no idea who is going to win Big Brother 4. Thankfully, Ryan got the boot, much to the evident horror of host Gretel (now she can move on from shagging past housemade Saxon!). Out of Bree, Paul & Trevor, my prefered winner would now be Paul, but I doubt whether winning a million will change him too much. I just don't think Bree or Trevor have done enough to deserve the big win!
My sister brought around a 18 month old kid today. Not her's, but the son of someone she teaches. We had been told the child was not very bright, but wow, there was nothing going on behind two huge brown eyes. Quite sad actually, but we think it's mainly due to a lack of attention paid to him by the parents. There is nothing wrong mentally, just a real lack of progression throught the phases of being a baby. When they arrived, he stood just inside the door, completely still, with only his eyes scoping around for close to ten minutes! We talked to him directly & even ignored him without any response. I think his parents need to update the kid's memory processor & maybe some extra RAM might help!
How I haven't been sacked for the current condition of my office is going to be a wonder for the ages! I literally have crap everywhere & as each day passes, more partial reams of paper turn up with a sack over their shoulder asking if they can move in.
I need more space, space, space (insert echo, fading into a lost cause.)
Everywhere I've worked has had a major issue with storage. Seven years of all this useless information has to be kept for taxation purposes, but only after a couple of years the pressure build up of boxes & files begins to limit the amount of oxygen space available in the workplace, thereby ensuring employee insanity.
Based on the amount of paper this property goes through in a day & the ludicrous amount it would use during a year, I can only imagine there is a Brazilian rain forest set aside with this company's name on it!
My writing of this entry is due simply from the frustration of not knowing what part of my office or store-room to tackle first.
I need to move the files from my office, but that requires finding place in the store-room. However, the store-room is currently full & the really old stored stuff needs to be moved either to another storage room in the car park across the road or to a small area eighth floors above me, two floors of which must be accessed via stairs (It's a really horrid job to do, hence the difficulty finding someone to do it). Once it's done though, the store-room needs to be resorted before anything else can be stashed.
My other option is a bottle of kerosene, a box of matches & a closed office door, with me walking briskly away from the scene with a suspicious look on my face!
Magic Mountain is finally closed pending its imminent destruction from the foreshore of Glenelg. This has been a long time coming & way overdue.
The only time I ever went there was to play mini golf. I've never ridden the skycycles, crashed the bumper boats or careered down the waterslides & I have to say I'm not too fussed that it's going.
I used to walk past it everyday while working at the Pier & to have a shopping complex & some open space will draw far larger crowds, especially considering Magic Mountain was closed during winter.
Let's face it, the carousel & the waterslides will appear in the next complex built on the existing site & anything has to be more visually appealing than the concrete, fake mountain that has stood for 20 odd years.
I've had someone come up to me all excited because I can apparently go to Boost Juice for a free... you guessed it, Boost Juice!
Listeners of Adelaide's Triple M are given a first name each day & if your name matches & you have proof, you can go get one of those hugely fad health drinks. I don't quite understand how some pureed frozen fruit costs so much, when you can pop a Nippy's fruit box in the freezer for a whole lot less.
I don't know whether I'll be taking up the offer on a bloody cold day like today. A chilly 8 degrees when I walked outside this morning!
My other problem is I just don't think I could pass myself off as a Triple M listener. There's something morally & ethically wrong which holds me back.
After a number of failed installs & attempting many unorthodox ways of getting a stable system, everything now works, knock, knock! (insert image of me rapping something wooden!).
Therefore, while I can upload, here are my final two panoramas from Sydney.
These two probably should have been joined together had I actually thought about it at the time!
Since you can't take a camera to the top of the Harbour Bridge on a bridge climb (not that I did the climb anyway!), this is the next best spot, from the top of one of the Bridge's pylons.
I was hoping to find a shot of the Opera House which actually has Justin Timberlake & Cameron Diaz in the frame. We walked across the Bridge & could see a few people on the top sail of the Opera House. There were photographers on the Bridge with huge cameras, but we had no idea why they were around. In the following day's newspaper, we found out the people climbing the House were the celebrity couple! I'm sure I took a photo, but I can't find it. I'll keep searching!!
It's now Wednesday afternoon & for the first time this week, I'm actually getting around to doing my own work rather than anyone else's. I'm not complaining though, because it keeps me busy thinking about a dozen things at once.
It looks like I'll be involved with the setup of a new property next week which will be interesting. The size isn't huge, probably about half the size of the Pier in terms of food & beverage outlets, but since I am employed at the hotel full-time, that's a good thing!
This will be the second property that I'll be involved with setting up. Mostly the finance function, but I will inevitably jump around sorting out stuff that other people haven't thought of.
Since It's likely I'll be stuck doing the accounting employment thing for a while to come, this sort of gear is what interests me. The challenge of making a pub or hotel actually operate from day one, ensuring that everything works the way it should & being able to walk away knowing I had a part in it!
Once the new place is up & running, I'll let you know where it is & you can all come & drink there. For anyone who wants to have a guess at the pub we're taking over, here's a couple of clues; 1. The pub is just outside the parklands of the city. 2. It was the place of choice for Uni students before the General Havelock.
It's getting on in the afternoon & although I've stuffed around most of the day, it's been reasonably productive. That really shouldn't work out that way, but it has, so that's a good thing!
Here is the last panorama I've managed to load to the server before my home computer exploded into a thousand pieces (it didn't really, but I wish it had, purely for my own satisfaction!).
I know I've said it before, but Bill Gates has a lot to answer for when it comes to Windows XP.
In an attempt to raise the dead, I installed Xp over itself doing what it calls an "upgrade" (it's still another way of saying "repair"). All seemed to be going well until the video card kept resetting itself along the way & then up came an error. A missing DLL file stopped the installer completely & the only option was to kill the power. It resumed the install & completed successfully according to it's own bizarre reasoning.
I admit, XP has never been more solid & reliable, but it's generating errors every four seconds. The "Remote Call Procedure" starts, records the error, stops itself, then realises it should be running & the process begins again.
I am able to collect the error details & of course the built in support centre in XP is quite willing to assist as always, by attempting to connect to the internet & do the research for me.
Problem is, the error is directly related to the process of dialing out. Therefore, it attempts, fails, records more errors & basically 'cracks the shits'. That's a technical term by the way!
I went into work on Saturday with the full intention of getting in, doing what was required, then getting the hell out of there before anyone noticed & found other things for me to do.
With a very short attention span, I got bored & wrote the preceding post, not really expecting a response to such pleas.
However, after only about five minutes, young Dida from Luminous Times was gracing my screen after waking up around Midday! I should be appalled by the wasting of half a day, but I was actually quite jealous & would have much preferred to do the same! After much banter about what's going on in our worlds, Dida left to start the day.
Within two minutes I then had Jaime from J'aime ma vie! keeping me company on her Friday night in California (sounds like a good name for a song!). More discussions of various topics whilst I juggled Balance Sheets, Lead Schedules & about a dozen folders littering my desk & floor. As far as I'm aware, Jaime departed, still dancing around the room, enjoying some quality internet music!
In all, my work efforts were stretched out over about four hours, constantly being hurried along to complete stuff whilst secretly typing in between. There's no doubt it should have taken less than half the time, but having someone to chat to on the side made it all worth while!
Thanks again to these great gals for maintaining my sanity during such trying times!
The rest of the weekend was spent mostly swearing at a computer that just wasn't happy to play along. Windows 98 will now only run in safe mode, XP causes constant restarts & is causing all sorts of system files to be corrupted in the process. By late last night, it was fairly stable, but the shut-down sequence looked far from desirable. The error is supposed to be RAM related, but mixing various sticks of the stuff made no difference. It's time to copy XP over itself!
I've worked out that I just like heights! Here's the next photo in the Sydney panoramas series.
Click to enlarge.
The Sydney Olympics were held in Homebush, which before all the Olympic venues were built was primarily swampland. It's come a long way & right in the middle of it all is a Novotel hotel from which this picture was taken.
The Main stadium is directly behind & you can see the other athletics track on the far right. The main foreground building with the funky roof is the Aquatics Centre & the road leading to yet another stadium is the Olympic Boulevard. The remainder of the buildings are for support services with the city & Harbour Bridge visible on the horizon.
Well, I'm at the point now with my PC of pulling off essential files & doing a complete format of the hard drive. Scary stuff, but I've done it too many times before, so it'll be okay. Nothing to lose if you really think about it!
At the moment though it's not of concern, because I'm not at home. This blog entry is being bashed out at work as I try to finalise the "end of month". I've spent most of the week-nights here doing 12 hour days but it's nearly done!!
Yep, blogging from work on a Saturday! Not much of a weekend, but I'm wearing casuals rather than the shirt & tie(noose), I've got the music playing & I've got broadband to entertain me between balance sheets, working capital statements & mountains of folders which litter the floor & desk.
If anyone is up for a bit of a chat, I've got MSN Messenger open & waiting. Just send a message to "peterleeelliott@hotmail.com".
After four years, I think I'm going to switch my computer on one day soon, hear some sort of mechanical "thump" & that'll be the end of it!
I've been busy backing up all my files onto CD, & removing any programs which might be causing problems & basically patching things in an effort to keep it running.
In recent times, pretty much every program I have run, has shut itself down with illegal operations. The computer reboots once or twice after it's first switched on before it becomes stable. I can no longer play DVD's or CD's due to skipping & the video card makes some internal noise after a while & reverts to 600 x 480 & 4 colour mode.
Remembering a time when everything worked 100% was a long time ago.
Originally, it ran windows 98 exclusively but In a failed partitioning attempt, I lost everything! I then upgraded with memory, cd-burner & Windows XP, which crashed on it's first installation!
Eventually, I had 98 & XP running, with Linux also hiding on a partition. Since I could never work out Linux, (through frustration mainly) that partition ended up as another hard drive.
Now I use XP, which always has issues & 98 is there as a backup to get behind the scenes of XP to sort things out. It's a less than desirable arrangement, but it's been working.... up until now!!
Last night I experienced 12 reboots in half an hour! Between the "boots", I managed to download half a set of virus definitions & try a couple of things, but to no avail. If I use windows 98, I can't log onto the net because it always says the port are already open. I'm screwed either way!!
Therefore, I now experience a lack of posting ability, but I'll do my darndest to blog by other forms & from other destinations.
Finally, since it didn't go up yesterday as promised, here is another pic from Sydney.
Click to enlarge.
This one is again taken 250 metres in the sky from the top of Sydney Tower & covers the city from the very bottom of the tower to the skyline with the Harbour Bridge also in view (albeit a little blurry!). The pink & green roof of the building at the bottom is rather unique but I have no idea what it is!
This is the view from the member's balcony with Sydney directly in the middle on the horizon. After the Games, a roof section at each end was installed, where two stands of seating once stood, reducing the stadium's capacity from 110,000 to down around 80,000.
The stands at either side of the ground can be moved closer to the field by 15 feet for rugby matches! In this photo the stands have not been moved closer & you can see the gap about a third of the image from the right.
It would be virtually impossible for the stadium to be returned to it's original condition to host another Olympics, due to the renovations which have taken place since. The running track was ripped up & is now used in an adjacent complex as a training track & the track surface is quite spongy, which I didn't expect!
I just wish I'd snapped a few more shots to extend the panorama. Bugger!!
Tomorrow's photo is a bit of an experimental shot.
I promised to drop in some Sydney photos on Sunday, which turned out to be a big lie!
However, I did start uploading to a photo site so I can link directly.
Instead of giving just some crappy tourist shots which everybody takes, I've pulled out the image sets that have been stitched together to produce panoramas! (thank you to the good people at Canon for their cool software.)
Therefore, with a new image per day, for a few days at least, I present my Panoramas of Sydney & surrounds!
Click it to see the full shot.
This was taken from Sydney Tower at dusk, looking from Darling harbour on the left right around to the Harbour Bridge on the right, with the city sprawled out beneath.
A work colleague has just been offered tickets to the Opening Ceremony of the Athens Olympics, Airline tickets (business class) & accommodation for nix!
Yep, due to various factors, the tickets have been made available & with family in Greece, all their accommodation will be free as well!!
As can be imagined, they are quite hyper, which I think totally justified. They're also going to try & get in touch with George Donikian from Network Ten who will be going over to report on the Games.
With they're current luck, they'll probably get to see the Closing Ceremony from a commentary booth!
It's not very often I attend birthday bashes for people turning 50, but I did on Friday night & had a blast!
The birthday girl in question works for the front office of the hotel & since she was having a party with friends on Saturday, she decided to start the weekend by having drinks with work colleagues. We quite simply hovered around the bar from about 6pm to, hey, whenever the lights were turned up to move us all along. I imagine it was about 2am!
After five months working at the hotel, this was my first social outing with most of them & from what I'm led to believe, the first person from the finance department to ever be invited or actually turn up at any such event! I must be doing something right!
Anyway, I must say that our reception desk girls (all aged early twenties) always look stunning in their work uniforms, but on Friday night, they were truly beautiful. The gals always get jealous of the flight crew stewardesses which come through the hotel, who are all picked to a stringent criteria of tall, thin & blonde. I think our girls are far more naturally pretty, rather than those who have carefully applied litres of make-up.
There was dancing to a boy band (sad, but true) & a fair bit of drinking performed during the evening. Thankfully most of them booked a room in preparation of the nights festivities.
I've spent most of the weekend sitting around playing the guitar & relaxing, knowing that the coming week is going to be painful at work. I really want to get back into writing songs again, but I'm finding it hard to switch off & think clearly in a musical state of mind. Instead, I've gone through my photos from Sydney & I'll put some of the best ones up here, or link to them since I don't have the space on the site. Hopefully, they'll be up at some stage this evening!
I seem to have a bit of an issue with Fridays. Every Friday brings up stupid issues & stupid people, most of which, in the scheme of things, pale to insignificance but have a profound effect of using 90% of the day's time.
The other issue which makes want to smack my head against a solid surface is the really bad system which covers records all the transactions of the hotel. There is a whole accounting function written into the software, but it's by no means written by anyone who has ever dealt with accounting. I got to the point of having to walk from my office before I screamed like a pansy & threw my fist at something.
I've also dropped in an enquiry about taking over at a different property. A new hotel has been purchased & is to be up & running by the end of the month. I'm not sure if it's a great move from here, but keeping in the same company has to be better than dumping the job entirely & having to find a new one.
Ironically, the Human Resources manager is keen for me to sign a contract, after it was forgotten about when I moved from the Pier. I've said straight out, that if the contract contains the same salary as I'm currently on, I'm not going to sign it! If it becomes a major issue with management & it determines whether I continue working here, then the decision from my end will be fairly simple!!
That's the end of my grievance & yes, I do feel better now!
"In addition to having repetitive, uncontrollable twitching or spasms of your eyelid (usually the upper lid), you may be very sensitive to light or have blurry vision."
Yep, that describes it, but what's it called?
"Blepharospasm"
Cool! I have a condition which is hard to pronounce twice in a row (try it!) & simply means "eye twitch".
I decided to do a bit of research & found out I have an actual medical condition. My right eye lid has been twitching for a couple of weeks now & it's starting to drive me crazy.
There is no cure, so I'll be waiting for it to stop on its own. Actually, that's not 100% true. Stress, fatigue & caffeine are common causes but there's no way I'm laying off the coffee or laying down for sleep!
In fact, there's an entire site dedicated to it - Blepharospasm.org!
