Five years to the day, seven hundred & seventy six posts & around thirty thousand visitors later, "one before unlucky" is being replaced.
I came to the conclusion a few days ago & after considering a host of potential name changes, it became far easier to start again from scratch.
The reasons to cease production of "one before unlucky" are many, as are the reasons to keep it going. More than once this decision for finality has been reached, but this is the first time I'm actually relieved by it.
All the entries are backed up for posterity, but they can no longer be viewed here, (unless you really, really want to, in which case flick me an email!).
It gives me a damn good reason to tidy up my little piece of the internet & start with a clean canvas, rectifying all the issues which I had been putting up with in the process.
The new blog will be easier to remember, easier to get to, but only available to those who email for access, stumble upon it or hunt me down. I won't go out of my way to hide it, so if you know what you're looking for, the chances of discovery are rather good. Those on my current blogroll will find out when they get included on my new blog.
When will it be available? As soon as possible, but there is still some work to be done.
Edward the Compressor has made its welcome addition to my little family of guitarist paraphenalia. Why did Marshall, the big amplifier company, decide to call a pedal "Edward"? I don't know, but I think it's good it has a real name rather than just ED-1 which is the product code.
I'd been checking Ed out for a while & last week the price dropped by $30, so I had to have him.
When I went to pick it up from Allans in Rundle Mall, the girl in the store was frantically on the phone for someone to come to her aid. It seems some school kids had wandered through & one of them had a full carton of milk which they then proceeded to drop, sending a cascade of it across the floor. Thankfully, it only splashed one amplifier in the process, so it could have been a lot worse. Getting any sort of fluid in a high powered electrical device is a recipe for disaster! Of course, the kids had done a runner!
Speaking of guitar pedals, a few months ago I took delivery of a virtually new Dunlop 535q wah pedal for about half its retail price. (See, this just proves all pedals should be given names!)
The guy who hosted the auction on ebay flew to Singapore from Melbourne around the time the auction ended & sent me a message saying he would send it from overseas.
It took a few weeks to arrive which had me worried about being duped, especially after he said he would cover the freight costs (which in the end worked out to $35!).
What caught me by surprise was the security tape used by customs. The package had markings on it to say it had been opened for inspection, which was fine. The pedal's box inside however, had been wrapped in tape saying it had been inspected by 'The US Department of Homeland Security'?!?
The tape was new & there was no way into the box without cutting through the it. I'm pretty sure that between Singapore & Australia, there isn't any part of America floating in those waters, so why then, does a US government agency check goods that aren't going anywhere near the stars & stripes??
Yet more crap received through the mail at work. This time, a catalogue of all the Occupation Health & Safety stuff, which has given me a few ideas.
The catalogue includes all sorts of signage, first aid, labels, security items, motivational posters & even toilet paper (because you have some really nasty accidents in there!).
Anyway, the various forms of signage caught my eye & I'm thinking about sticking a few on my office door. For some reason a closed door doesn't really mean too much at work. I'm fascinated at the number of people who see my door closed, proceed to knock & then enter without my response & ask "are you busy?". WTF!?!
I hereby present a small selection of signs which may appear on my office door;
Firstly, nice & simple. Highly appropriate, very self-explanatory, but not much fun!
These can be used to induce confusion in the hope that by the time they've worked out what's going on, they have forgotton what they were going to annoy me about & just keep walking.
I thought this might work, but after thinking about it, I'd have people shuffling through the door on their chair, so maybe not!
This one just works, doesn't it! Actually, my office isn't too bad, there are worse. However, this would have been perfect when I worked down at Glenelg. In that case this sign should have been mandatory. The office was only a couple of metres square without windows!
Here's one for the front door. We don't have many children around the place, but more the inexplicable lack of adult behaviour by various guests & staff within the building.
A touch cryptic, so I'll explain. My office has a history of disasters of the sewerage kind due to it's location next to a pumping room. The pipe work above the office has failed twice over eight years, sending some rather noxious elements down the walls. Thankfully, no one has ever been injured & I've been assured it cannot happen again, but having this sign on the door might make a bit of a reminder.
Have a look over at www.seton.com.au for all your signage needs & pick some for your own work environment. I'd link directly, but I'd probably get sued for using their images!
I'm notorious for waking once or twice during the night. I don't know why, maybe they are the moments of being returned yet again by aliens from yet another abduction, or perhaps it's just a sleep pattern I'm trapped in.
Normally, I'm only awake for a minute or so before I start to drift again & if I'm lucky, I can get straight back into the dream I just left. It's the way it's always been & when I can look over at the clock & see I've still got a few hours of sleep left, it's an indication that the dreary feeling in my head means I have been asleep & I will be somewhat rejuvenated when the alarm finally goes off.
Last night I had one of those occasions when when you put your head on the pillow & suddenly wake up to the alarm seconds later. Somehow, six hours vanished without me believing I'd slept at all!
I sure feel like I haven't slept, but my watch agrees with the time on my bedside clock & the sun creeping over the hill is a reasonably conclusive indication that at some point the hours of darkness flowed by.
That doesn't mean I'm not still going to blame the aliens though!
So I had someone talking to me about their weekend. I asked the question "Have a good weekend?" & got an answer which rambled for significantly longer than I had time for. A "Yes" would have both satisfied my curiosity & all the required elements of pleasantry.
Instead, I ended up hearing about their local fruit & veg market where they need to go early to get the decent looking goods & how they missed out this time around due to being late & what was still available wasn't worth having. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Anyway, this went on for a while & they said they "had to go there a couple of weeks ago for...... "
A long pause ensues. It was the silence which grabbed my attention back into the conversation I had long since tuned out of. They were doing a whole lot of memory searching for the remainder of the answer.
Then they said "Oh, that's right, for some fruit & vegetables."
"What?, you're kidding me!! Fruit & veg from a fruit & veg store!?! Well, isn't that a novel idea!!"
I didn't say that bit out loud, but I should have because they were deadly serious that they couldn't remember what they went there for!
Flights to & from Melbourne in November are locked & loaded.
It's going to be a major music overload with Billy Joel on the 10th, U2 on the 16th & Pearl Jam on the 22nd!
The cost of the flight over was $61 & back was $83, which makes the flights cheaper than the BJ concert!
One little lesson for the masses though. Webjet does a fair bit of publicity for it's website on television & in print, but use their services & you pay for that advertising in the commission they get. For each of my tickets, Webjet were planning to add $15+!!
Effectively, their site picks each of the airline's websites & summarises them into an easy to read form, allowing you to quickly spot the cheapest flights. You then select the flight you want & it tries to sell you accommodation & car hire as well, which probably gains them more commission. The site is useful, but as soon as you find your flight, you go back to the corresponding airline's website & book your ticket there. Instant saving of $15!
I had a call on my mobile at a smidge after 8am this morning. Since I was driving, I let message bank do the work for me & answer the call. Usually, it's a builder calling for someone else with my first name due to a phone number mix up when mobile phones changed from analog to digital all those years ago. It's a long story in its own right!
So anyway, when I eventually pulled up at a set of lights, I listened to the message & discovered it was the Hotel's bank. It didn't go into any detail but I had an idea of what it might be for.
Yesterday, I sent a fax to transfer a six figure sum from one account to an account with a different bank. I thought the call may have been to double check the amount & do a bit of a cross-reference.
How wrong I was...
Just after I entered my office, my phone rang & it was the bank on the other end again. They explained they had performed the transfer but they had inadvertently added an extra zero on the end!
This error on their part had turned a six figure sum into a seven figure sum & yes, we are talking about a mistake worth millions of dollars!!
For a bank which had just transferred the equivalent of 24 Porsches at roughly $300,000 each, they didn't seem too stressed, but that didn't stop them asking me "What would you like us to do?", like it was an error on my part!!
I suggested they reverse the transaction & do it properly this time, which really shouldn't be something they need me to tell them.
The boss said I should write a cheque for the excess funds in the other account so they can't get it back.... Hmmm, always thinking of how to exploit the stupid! Can't quite see us getting away with it though!
Time for a hard & fast blog entry to keep everything up to date.....
I've had a cold which I've managed to get over in record time. I was talking to someone last Thursday morning about how amazing it was that I'd missed getting sick while everyone around me was dropping. However, I'd spoken too soon & by the afternoon my eyes were bleeding & my nose was a tap, so I took Friday off work to try & recover. Saturday was worse, but when I woke on Sunday, it was a whole lot better! Normally it takes a good week to get through a cold, so I'm not complaining. Still sounding very sexy with the rough voice though!
On Monday, I booked tickets to see Billy Joel play in Melbourne in early November. It's a Friday night, so I'll fly over in the morning & meet my sister who is flying in from Canberra & we'll spend the weekend exploring the city. It's been ten years since I was over there, so it should be fun. My main plans so far are to check out the Hard Rock Cafe to indulge my pin obsession & also have a wander around Federation Square, which looks rather cool. If I get time I'll drop in on a couple of people I know as well.
Also related to ten years ago, (Hmmm, it's a segue, just not a very good one!) was a primary school reunion which I attended & it looks like there might be a chance of a twenty year reunion some time soon!! I've been contacted by someone trying & drum up some support for the event & last time there was a good crowd. While I think everyone is generally terrified of reunions, it was a great night. Hopefully it goes ahead despite the fact there are a number of people who are now spread across the world!
I received my new business cards with all the updated branding, only to find my name spelt wrong! The printer has copped the brunt of the blame but as we're all quite aware, printing companies only work from a signed off proof & in this case it was signed by the General Manager! After the best part of four years & the fact their surname ends with two letters the same as well, I had some sort of hope they might get it right! I couldn't imagine the grief should anyone spell his name wrong!! My only consolation is I'm in good company since a bunch of cards for others were also messed up. Once they are correct, they'll look much better than what I've got & I originally though they were snazzy!
I've had my new phone for just over a month & I've taken nearly 400 photos of all things here, there & everywhere! Here are a few from the plaza at the Festival Theatre for no reason inparticular!!
