Dark Thoughts

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.