Dark Thoughts

OK, well, I'm still serious about this losing weight thing. I weighed in again last night at 100.5 kg which is lower than the week before, so I'm feeling good about the progress so far.

In the last week, I've made some good progress about changing some aspects of my life. I visited a gym and will join up tomorrow, with Jodie. I also worked all day Saturday digging up the backyard, getting ready for some serious paving. I played squash on Friday and am due to play again tonight, though I may have to miss it due to a personal commitment, but that's not too big a drama.

I've cut down my serves for dinners and lunches, and am back to toast and vegemite, with a Barocca on the side for breakfast. Only 2 desserts this week. Pretty good, considering one of them was when we ate out. Anyway I'm still motivated to do this, and will report back next week on the continuing progress.

Thanks to all of you who have sent through emails of support. It is appreciated.

In other news, I've been having a shocking time with Cubase SX3 and mLAN on the weekend. I got 8 bars recorded, and one audio part re-arranged ready for recording. I had non-stop glitches, but fortunately they seemed to be on the output buss, not the FX buss, and seemingly non-stop crashes. The cubase crashes are pretty serious ones, resulting in me having to stop mLAN by stopping the physical layer process before I can reboot. I can't stop cubase, no matter what I do, except for the reboot.

On the reboot, my quatech parallel port card seems to forget that the 8PortSE is attached, and I have to reboot to fix that. It's like it doesn't release the MIDI interface.

I'm going to try to trash my cubase preferences, and rebuild them from scratch. This could be what's causing the problems. If that doesn't fix it, then I'm going to uninstall the parallel port, mLAN and cubase and reinstall them in that order and see if that fixes it.

If that still doesn't work, then I'll see if I can get the system working without the parallel port card. If it's still flakey, then I'm going to get myself a new computer.

It's pretty annoying, because I want to just get down and do some music.

I've also been working hard on the back yard of the house. I've pretty much got all of the cooch removed, and have started carting the yellow sand in, for the paving foundations. I'll need some more sand before I've finished, but we've got to extend the retic before we can finish that. My housemate has started on installing the conduit for the wiring for the retic, and also the water pipe for the gardens at the back. There's still a bit of work to do, but we should get the retic finished into the back yard next weekend, and the yard cleared, and ready for compacting and laying bricks. The yard and front retic will be next on the list, but we'll leave that for a couple of weeks.

I also had dinner with Jodie's mum the other night, and some family friends. It was a fantastic night. We found a nice little out of the way restraunt called the Lamplight, in Forrestfield. Very nice food, and great service, for a very reasonable price. The company was great, and we had some "interesting" discussions with the family friends. A great night was had by all, and the wines that we enjoyed topped the evening off perfectly.

Anyway, work to do, coffee to drink, so until next time, keep smiling.

If there's one thing I despise more than religious nutters, it's banks. I got hit for a $45 fee yesterday for a refused transaction, this is despite the fact that I had transferred money, and it had been debitted from my other account, but for some reason it hadn't cleared into the account where the direct debit came from. Now to put this in perspective the debit was for $131 and it would have left me $50 in the red in that account (if the transfer hadn't taken place). $45 is 34% of the total transfer or 90% of the amount I would have been in credit!!! And it's not as though the transaction is out of the ordinary. Every month for the past 10 years there has been money getting depositted to that account. Every other month the amount clears overnight, but not this time, and now that the amount is 1 day late, I cop this obscene fee.

If I had only had $1 in the account then it would have been OK for the bank to overdraw my account by $44, but it's not OK for the transaction to go through as it stands. It begar's belief.

How can a bank justify these fees? There is no way that a an electronic transaction can possibly cost $45. Heck I can get a new phone line installed into my house for that price, and send gigabytes of data around the planet. It's no wonder that they are recording record profits, because they are ripping off their customers, and the ones that can least afford it. I wouldn't put myself in that category, as I'm doing quite well, but this fee is aimed at those with low account balances, and who rely on apportioning payments accross the year through the use of direct debits. Most direct debits are in the region of $50 to $100 and a $45 fee on one of these would mean no food on the table for some families, let alone half a dozen a year.

Perhaps the banks justify it by seeing it as a fine. All well and good, except that the bank is a service provided to customers, not a police force.

On a more positive note, you may have noticed a change in design to the Dark Thoughts blog. While I really liked the old design, the little goblins behind the scenes at blogger.com changed something, so my old template left a huge chunk of blank space at the top of the blog. So the new one now has splashes of orange throughout. Why orange, I've been asked, well, it was the colour programmed for the headings in the original template that I hacked, and I really couldn't be bothered trying to find a different colour and reprogram all of the fields, and besides, the orange looks quite nice anyway, and matches the blogger logo at the bottom of the page.

Other stuff that's happened since yesterday.

Jodie was in a fit of anger last night because her computer had a "Install new hardware" message (due to the motherboard sound card not being disabled) and then because her karaoke function on her stereo wouldn't work when she went to scream her lungs out to her favourite angry song to seek solace. This was due to the minijack-jack convertor being broken, and I think also due to the small minijack on her stereo.

Minijacks are notoriously dodgy, and it is the reason why muso's avoid them like the plague in their audio systems. There simply isn't enough room to make a good electrical contact, and their small size means that the mechanical strength of the connection is always in question. The cable also isn't of the highest quality so the contact with the XLR connector on the mic also isn't the best, but I found a new convertor, tested the cable, and got it all working, but it was too late by then. Jodie had had enough.

Anyway, the good new is that the karaoke is working (well, good news for Jodie anyway :P), and the computer is functioning again (sans the zip drive and CD burner - due to one of the IDE Channels failing).

I wrote an awesome trance bass line last night but the glitches over mLAN meant that I couldn't record it, and then Cubase went down. I'm getting a bit annoyed at this whole Cubase/mLAN thing. It's great when it works, but almost impossible to fix when it doesn't. I just want to sit down and write some music dammit.

I was listening to "God Told Me" by Paul Kelly on Triple J this morning, and it got me to thinking about the role that God plays in so much of the violence around the world. God seems to be one of those unquestionable things. Everything else is up for scientific scrutiny, but not religion, for some strange reason.

Many violent acts around the world are done under the guise of god's word, or as the voice of Allah, or some other deity. These acts that are so fundamentally opposed to the religious views and teachings of nearly every religion on earth, are done in the name of some hitheto mythical deity. Listen People, IT'S NOT GOD TELLING YOU TO DO THESE ACTS!!! The voices you hear in your head aren't god, they are your own deranged psyche willing wanton death and destruction on the world.

Unfortunately when someone gets to a position of power and starts talking about voices in their head, or a direct hotline to god, laughing at them for the fool that they are is pretty ineffectual, and if they have big guns, then it can be downright deadly. Why are religious wacko's afforded more respect than any other wacko who hears voices.

"My imaginary friend, Milko told me to kill those people!" - Man get's locked up indefinately
"God told me to kill those people!" - Man get's elected president or becomes a hero...

If that's the way it's gonna be, then god told me that you must all send me money to upgrade my studio. Music is a thing of beauty, inspired by god don't y'all know...

I stood on the scales this morning and weighed in at a whopping 102kg. Now that is heavy, for my height. Not so heavy that I'm immobile, but heavier than I would like.

I've had enough of worrying about my weight, and seeing those 3 digits on the scale this morning have stirred in me a call to action. No longer will I worry about this. Instead I will do something about it.

Starting today, I will work towards my target weight of 80kg. That's 22kg to lose.

To do this, I am going to join a gym and exercise for 1 hour every work day. This can be squash (Mondays and Friday's) or bicycling to work if the weather is fine, or a cardio workout at the gym.

I'm also going to cut deserts out from my diet. I never ate deserts anyway, but they have crept back into my diet of late. No more. I've put my foot down, and it made an impact in the carpet :P I've asked Jodie to halve my dinner servings, if she is making dinner, and when I am cooking, I will strive for smaller servings myself. I will also report my progress weekly.

On days like today I really despise who I have become physically. Generally I'm happy with every other aspect of my life, but this weight is draining life and energy away from me, and I want to get it back.

I'm having a difficult day today. Not only have I spent most of the morning trying to ascertain exactly why it is that Telstra (or any other company for that matter) can't supply us with broadband access despite the fact that our neighbour 4m away can get it, but my dearly beloved is causing grief as I try to organize her birthday present.

It's something that I've been planning and trying to organize for the last few months, having put many hours or research into it, in order to try to give her an absolutely unforgettable and fantastic birthday. My efforts have been frustrated somewhat by a) My work deciding that I won't get back to Australia until the morning of Jodie's birthday (which meant that I need to reschedule the surprise) and b) Jodie's absolute resistance to helping me get this thing happening. I needed some information so that the company providing the present can ensure that it is done correctly and safely, and while I understand Jodie's reluctance to share such information, I can't understand her anger or flat out refusal to give me her height. She is angry at me and has threatened to not even be here for her birthday!

I'm short tempered today after having being lied to by Telstra salesmen, having being forwarded to 5 different departments before being cutoff and then to discover that we are on a completely different line to our neighbour in the first place and that short of spending $1500 to get our cable rerouted (and having no guarantee of success anyway) that we won't be able to get broadband until Telstra decide how they are going to market their new upgraded service sometime in the next 6 months. After finally having found a decent Telstra rep by the name of Richard, who really did do his best to find an alternative solution and find out exactly why our line had excessive signal loss, I then had to move on to finding out why the electrician who has promised to re-imburse me for a faulty installation has not yet paid us. He has the flu and is waiting for the building company (who referred us to him in the first place) to get back to him with the payment details. If he was planning on forwarding this to them to sort out with, then why the hell did he quibble about the amount so much. The fact is it has cost me $1100 to get electricity restored to my place, and he's only going to pay $758 of it, meaning that I've got to get angry with yet another electrician who is openly flouting the trade practices act of Australia, and point out to him why I shouldn't have to pay $350 to them because it's more than they quoted, and they didn't actually do anything anyway.

What is it with customer service now days. All I want to do is get basic services provided to my house in the suburbs of Perth. I think that this house was built on the edge of somesort of Bemuda Triangle anomoly thing, where nothing works, people can't find the house and when they do, they manage to stuff up the simplest possible jobs such that I spend months and months on the phone to incompetent salesmen, tradesmen and complaints lines. It's like trying to wade through thick jungle thicket when you are chest deep in mud. You exert an enourmous amount of effort while leaches suck your blood and the briars tear at your skin, only to find out that you have got absolutely no-where except now you feel a whole lot more exhausted and covered in mud.

Needless to say, these two events left me in a less than pleasant mood, when I got on to trying to do the "simple" task of paying for the present for my dearly beloved. I'm pretty miffed at the moment, as such a simple task as paying for a present has turned into such a difficult and drawn out affair. And I've just discovered that the flights have now been changed so my original plans can still be executed, so now I have to go back and rechange my original changes and sound like a complete idiot.

Aaaaarrrrgggghhh!!!!!!

I wish I was home in bed, but knowing how my day is going, the ceiling would probably collapse on me and pin me to my bed for a week. It seems to be one of those days where the world seems hell bent on placing obstacles in my path to see what extraodinary lengths I will go to in order to get to my destination.

I've given up trying to organize this all at the moment, lest I make Jodie even angrier by my impatience and general grumpiness. I'm going to go and have a quiet lunch and calm down some, before getting back to the task at hand, and diffusing the tension that I have caused this morning. I do love Jodie dearly, and I know that this present is something that she is going to love, but getting short tempered isn't going to get it organized for me. I know that I can do this, and work my way through everything, but it all just seems so hard today.

Anyway, lunch is beckoning and I need a calming atmosphere or a short bout of Yoga to re-align my spirit into the normally positive and forward moving thing that I like.

The last few weeks has been somewhat of an exhillarating ride in the mining industry. In the last week alone we've signed two farily major agreements that commit our company to a lot of work in the next few years. The business that I am in, is still in it's infancy, in that it is a relatively new technology in a historically conservative industry, backed by an even more conservative, and risk averse, banking industry. People don't much like things to change, because that involves going out on a limb and testing new water's, where there is the potential for loss.

For an emerging technology, this adds up to 10+ years of development, testing, pilotting, scoping, advertising, demonstration, begging, pleading and then if we are lucky, we'll get the chance to put our heads on the blocks to stand behind the technology.

Anyway, what tends to happen is that the industry has been waiting for someone to adopt the technology for years, and when one company commits, then everyone wants a piece of the action. This is where we are heading this week.

Not that it's bad, just busy.

I got 2 x 200 page engineering documents dumped on my desk yesterday for me to read over. Somehow I need to make a recommendation at some stage on these, and others, some of which may be in Chinese. I then need to convince 5 other people that the recommendations I have made are the correct ones, before referring the matter to the board, and doing the whole thing over again. This is before the work even starts, and for only one of the 4 or 5 projects.

It can be an exciting industry, but at the same time, it can be frustrating to work so hard, and appear to get no-where.

In other news, I got a Kurzweil DMTi last night, which will help to expand my studio. It's a box that allows me to sync a bunch of different digital signals together. For the unitiated, it's a bit like platting hair. The hair start's off unruly and going in different directions with different lengths, but once platted, and controlled, is much easier to move around and keep well behaved. Multiple streams of digital audio is similar, but less hairy. Anyway, the DMTi is the magic platting machine. Put hair in, get plat out.

I still need to get some expansion cards for it, but that will come once Kurzweil have their wharehousing back to normal after their recent turmoil with aggressive takeover's.

Things are going well with Jodie. I'm currently planning her birthday surprise, which is cool. I just need to tie up a few loose ends to make it all happen, but it will be pretty awesome when it all comes together. We've both been sick for the last few weeks and are in the process of recovering both our energy and our health. We're planning on a few more fun trips out, starting this weekend, with a movie and a trip to the wineries for lunch. It should be a fun weekend, but we will be sure to do some more interesting things in the future also.

Anyway, it's a busy day, and I've got lots of paperwork to plough through, so back to the grindstone for me.