Dark Thoughts

Looking back at my blog, it's been ages since I've posted, but it seems like such a short time frame since I felt I updated it.

I lost one blog entry by inadvertantly closing w.blogger without saving, but ya get that.

In that post I reviewed Burswood's Atrium restraunt as a breakfast venue and decided that $30 for bacon and eggs on toast was a little on the high side, though it was a buffet and there was lots of stuff avaialable, but still $30.

I ranted and raved about other stuff as well, but ya get that.

Anyway, onto more recent developments.

It's my birthday next week, and while the threat of travel has precluded me making plans for my bouncy castle party, but it will happen. Probably towards the end of this year, but we'll see. Anyway, Jodie's coming down for my birthday, which is really cool, though I kinda feel a little guilty because it's an expense that she probably doesn't need at the moment.

I don't think I'd have been able to convince her on an economic rationalist front anyway, and besides, I really do want to see her again, so perhaps a small streak of selfishness crept in there somewhere. Anyway, it's too late now, because she's booked the ticket, so I'll have to be content in the knowledge that I was concerned with her spending so much money just to come down and hangout for a weekend.

I've also helped in the recording of a friends band and got to play with a couple of Urei compressors for the first time. Nice units for vocals and guitars, though not ideal for drums. They are seriously easy to use, and very easy to get pleasing results with. I can understand why people rave about them.

One thing to note, for anyone that wants to use them, you need a proper balanced signal input for them to work. An unbalanced signal wired to an XLR with the ground attached to the cold pin won't work. The unit expects a phase inverted signal at the cold pin. We ended up pressing a Mackie 1202 VLZ into service as a glorified DI Box, and this had the added benefit that we had gain pots on the Mackie's pre-amps which proved incredibly useful for overloading the Urei's inputs and pushing the unit to the warm distortion that valve compressors are so famous for.

The biggest downside to the Urei is that there is no Attack knob, instead the attack and release seem to be controlled internally automatically depending upon the ratio switch and the threshold control, as well as the input level. Probably some sort of level feedback system also controls the attack and release parameters, though intuitively I couldn't quite work out exactly how it all worked.

Nevertheless, it was heaps of fun, if not draining. We stuck well over a hundred tracks through the compressors, two at a time, each of them about 8:30 in length.

I've also finally got my property trust set up now, though there's a small error in the name of the corporate trustee that is seriously going to shit me unless I get it fixed. The name should have been Obsidian, but I think someone's finger slipped and it ended up as Obsidsian. That's hard enough to say, let alone remember when I've got to write it on a piece of paper for the purposes of purchasing land.

Anyway, I'm in the process of finding out where the error occured, and rectifying it. Worst case it's going to cost the trust $330 to get fixed.

I'll be starting to look for properties again this weekend and I want to buy one in the next few weeks. Time to talk to my mortgage broker and get cracking on the newspaper listings. It'll be fun, and my housemate wants me to take him through the whole process, so I guess I'll have a bit of company.

While on the subject of talking about houses, I was talking ot Jodie last night and she mentioned an interest in buying a house. It seriously brought a big smile to my face. She doesn't feel ready to embark on the whole mortgage thing quite yet, but I think it's good that she's considering investing, even if she hasn't yet formulated an investment strategy yet.

As I've discovered it's the length of time that you own the assets that's important, not so much when you buy them, or for what reason. She's still young, so there's plenty of time.

I'm trying to be supportive of her decisions, because really, she's the one that's got to make them, but it's hard to quell my enthusiasm for developing investments while young.

Before I talked to Jodie last night I had a game of hockey. It was probably one of the least enjoyable games I've ever played. Not because we lost 5-2, but because the other team were absolute animals. They were rough, and played the style of game where they try to drill player's with the ball in order to get free hits. It's very unsporting, and not at all in the spirit of the game. To make it worse, the unpiring was dismal, with one of the umpires so completely brow-beaten by the team of animals, that he just reversed decision after decision upon protest of the opposition.

Very unprofessional, and decision reversals such as blowing a short corner, in which we, as defenders, stopped, the ball then going into goals, and then calling it a goal are just plain wrong. The umpiring was so bad that it affected the playability of the game and the final result. Umpires should NEVER do this. They are there to keep the game flowing and under control, not to manipulate the game.

I don't think one of the umpires likes me very much, because his decisions constantly baffle me so much, that I'm always asking what his decision was for (which I'm entitled to do, and I do it politely). I think that he doesn't take it well though, and this causes him to be more critical on me the next time.

The organizers want us to play another season, but I don't know if I want to if they keep the same umpires.

Anyway the office is shutting up, and I don't want to be locked in for the weekend, so I'm going to sign off.

Have a fantastic weekend. I know I will, even though there's lots of boring stuff like doing my books planned.