Pure Manly Manness

Ok so being a handyman is not one of my few skills, but I can use a screwdriver and cutters are easy.
However the skills involved in drilling and hanging pictures into cement walls are still hard to fathom.
So for this reason, my flatmate and I went to the wonderful store "Bunnings". A quaint little buy every thing you ever needed for fixing a home or living out doors kind of store. Charming really.
SO it's late night shopping and we enter the store at about 6:15pm.
First things first, to reclaim some of my lost manhood. We look at BBQ's since I don't own one, we weight up the pros and cons of all of them. In the end decide that if we could we would buy the $2000 BBQ and not have an oven in the house. ($2000 on a BBQ, I cringe at the thought of spending $200, I mean who the fuck needs a $2000 BBQ. Is it friggin gold plated or something, does it come with it's own butler. $2000, what a WAFTAM.)
Then on to eskys, and then down an isle that advertised "Golf Course". We did walk down this isle, but found no golf course, not even a Par 3 course or a mini golf. False advertising sucks.
Then to the highlight of any venture into the hardwear store. The power tools section.
Plenty of manhood to be found in there, just smell the testosterone coming off those drills and sanders, and don't get me started on the routers.
Well we spotted a hammer drill, perfect for drilling into hard surfaces, of which cement is one. We looked at the price, looked back to the drill, then to the price. Um "Was it made in china by kids under 12 getting paid 3c an hour for their labor?"
The drills was $39. This changed our night. We now saw thay we could indeed afford to create our own power tool dynasty with cheap and nasty tool that were sure to break on the second use. But the comment of "But at that prrice we can't afford not to." came into my head.
Now to find what else we need.
An exploitory insurge down isle 2 found the wall plugs and the screws. But wait were they the right screws, ah ha, no, there ones are better.... and these ones are even better than those, wow, who knew there were this many types of screw. Way tops.
So wall plugs screws. Screwdriver?
So back to the tools section. Find a screwdriver with inbuilt storage of the bits, wow, and its made by "Black and Decker", Sold.
Drill bit? But which one, the choise is to large, I won't be able to over come my awe at the sheer size of the drill bit universe.
Ok, ok, breathe, in, out, in, out. Relax.
So what do I need. Masonary, yep concreat is masonary. But what brand, well this one seems to be the largest in the wall of drill bit universe. Now what size, how the hell should I know?
Stay calm, stay calm. Just look at the wall plugs. Oh, it tells me. 6.5mm. Excellent.
Ah ha. the wall of drill bit universe is no match for my analitical genious.
I hold aloft the drill bit of power and a beam of light spotlights me in its awe, and angles sing of future glory.
The drill, by god the drill. Which one. The $39 el' cheapo brand. The $60 brand name. Or the $45 ok brand. Split the difference, $45 it is then.
Go on grab it.... no, look out. BANG. Ok we won't be buying that one then, get the one behind it.
To the checkout Batman.
$80 later we energe into the glorious night with manhood intact and testostrone levels high, full of joy and happiness at the handy works we are about to embark upon.

All glory be to the Hammer Drill and the Maconary bit of power.
Hardware stores are so tops.

Cloud Thoughts

So to one of the strangest things about me. Well maybe not strange, well not for me. (Someday I will blog about Seagull Theory)
Ok, so clouds freak me out. Ok stop laughing now, not clouds as such but what they make me think of. Clouds are fine, rain bearing things. I like clouds, I really do. But sometimes they freak me out.
Clouds make me think of the world as a submarine. As if that makes it easier for you to understand.
How to explain it.
The world in a ball right, with an atmosphere that has oxygen and all the other good things that protect out wrinkly pink skins from the harsh universe that is out there beyond our blob of exixtance. This "protective coat" of an atmosphere is held to us by the "buttons" of our rotation and magnatism. The earths rotation and magnatism. (I had visions of people spinning around saying "You know it's me and that guy over there who pulls the chicks that keep the atmosphere on this world you know." at parties trying to impress the ladies. Hmm... might try that. Better that what i'm doing at the moment. any way back to clouds)

Now, we humans are good at several things, and completely stuffing up our planet is one of them. I mean there is only so much of the atmosphere. It is a finite reasourse, like oxygen on a submarine, and once we use it all, or poisen it badly enough, there won't be any more.

How is looking to move into space going to be a solution? We can't even keep our planet from dying how are we going to make space colonies work. We have a massive planet with everything for wonderful lives on it, and all we want to do is rape it to make a buck and accumulate the most tokens we can so that our children can have more tokens. What about the the riches of natural beauty and of harmony with our enviroment. Why is making money more important that peoples lives.

Capatilism is stupid.

And this is where my mind goes when I look at clouds. It gets into the whole "what is wrong with the world today" mode. And I bitch and rant, mainly to myself thankfully. But it makes me feel better, but only about myself.

I often wonder about the arrogance of humanity to belive that this world is for them. People put too much belief is god, in all his (or her) shapes. It was my thoughts that he put you on the planet with free will, and that this was his greatest gift. So use that free will to help people for your own happiness, and stop thinking that if I belive in god riches will come and good things will happen to me.

Their isn't enough smite in the new god that people are worshipping. He needs to smite fear into people again. Worship him because you belive, not because he could make good things happen to you.

I don't belive in him and good things still happen to me.

And my mind keeps going. And all this comes from clouds.

Fluffy white clouds.

Sweet Driving Bliss

Another day, one last country trip for a while (with work any way)
This time to a place called Yumali. About 140km out of Adelaide towards Melbourne.
The drought has been very bad for the farmers, you can really see the drought in the crops. It's spring and the fields should be green and bursting with life. But they are stragly and week, at best crops.
Ok so the below photo is "faked" as in I placed the skull on the rock. (I've never know a sheep to die quite with that much photo framing in mind) But the skull was only 1/2 a metre away. So the movement was not that bad.
The skull now sits on my desk, pretending to be an engineer who was on hold on the phone to long. It may look green but their is no brightness These crops should be GREEN not green.
And how often do you see this, a lone sheep. I swear there was no other sheep with in 200m on this one. Maybe a black sheep of the heard. (Ho ho ho, I'm so funny)
And this is just a nice photo.
Good to be out of the office for another day.

We did travel to Bordertown as well, and back for the night, so about 600km in the day. Not bad, not bad at all. Had to concentrate hard for the last hour. My brain started to hurt though, could have done with a little nap. But push through the pain. Just make sure to not die.

Dying would be bad.

It Gets Worse

The Freddo (a peppermint twin) that was in my computer bag blew up.

Now I have to wipe the minty goodness off my cables.

Not happy Jan.

Washing Machine Blues

Good title for a song.
12 bar excellence talking about troubles with a washing machine. It would be pure hit magic. Better than the blues talking about your baby leaving and taking the dog and truck.

And I have a new verse for this song.

I am a lazy washer. I don't check pockets of my clothes before I wash them. So tissues are a problem when I have a cold. I think most people know the pain of a tissue infested load of washing. Major pain in the arse.

I have found the next step in the pain in the arse ladder.

Try washing a packet of chewing gum.

Yes, one packet of chewing gum (Not the type with the hard outer shell but the type that is 7 strips per packet) opened and with 5 peices still intact, well before the washing machine got at them.

So I opened the washing machine and my first question was "What the hell is that?"
and then as I reached for it and pulled it off the botton of the machine, my brain just went "Ah crap!"
So I pull out all the washing, noticing all the little bits of paper stuck to the clothes. But then I pull out a new shirt, worn twice and bought 2 weeks ago. 4 pieces of chewy located at various parts of the shirt.

Insert expletive here and repeat.

Ok so I peeled them off and hung it up to dry, in a vain hope that being dry would make it easier to remove the rest of the gum that is still stuck to the shirt. We will see how that theory works, but I have my doubts as to its effects.

There are about two things about this incident that make me grateful for small mercies.
1: Only one shirt copped the gum and more clothes were not hurt.
2: The shirt only cost $7. So only the loss of time hunting it out was lost. (I was a nice shirt though, dress shirt and all.)

Many brain fades at the moment. Will have to try and get it back into gear so that I don't eat soap instead of cheese.
Feel very stupid at the moment.

I've got those washing machine, chewing gum blues.

Wonderful Stupidity

Got out of the car last night. Walked to the mail box to grab the crud that had accumulated there from the day.
Pulled out my car keys and pressed the "Unlock" button and wondered why the mail box did not click open.
As soon as I had done it I remember thinking "Tops work Champion. You idiot."
Ah, we all have our stupid moments.
This is one I'm proud of though.

Curiosity Made The Cat Wet

I thought he would fall in. But sadly for amusment value, he didn't.

Computer Still Dead

It recovered for about 4 hours under the loving guidance of a friend. But then died again when I got it home.
Technology eats rude bits of a monkey.
This blogging when at work is ok, but you get no real time to create. I need the quiet of my house.
Stupid computer.

Royal Adelaide Show

So, I went to the show.
I love the show and I try to go every year, I even took a day off work to go this year. It was worth it 5 hours of show fun and amusments.
I took lots of photos but thought I would only put in my defining moments for me to have a good Show experiance.

Wood Chopping.
If you haven't sat down for a half an hour or so, and cheered on some guy on stand 5 to try encourage him to win, then you haven't been to the Show.
This year I got lucky and managed to catch the tree felling, this is the best as not only are there sharp bits of metal (ie axes) but also the danger of falling.
Tops. The next defining moment is the purchasing and eating of a Dagwood Dog.
Who ever invented a hotdog on a stick covered in batter and deep fried and smothered in tomato sauce should be given a Nobel Prize in chemistry.
See below for the pure genious of it.
The problem is that they are only avaliable at the show and not for the rest of the year (much like the beloved Bertie Beatle)
Mmmm.... Deep fried goodness.

Can't you just see the smile on my face as I stuff my gob with the pure greatness of a Dagwood Dog.

The only problem was that I kept tasting it for the next 4 hours or so. But even after that long it was still nice and I would do it again in a flash. My arteries might complain a bit though.

Good News and Bad

The bad news first.
My computer was so screwed that we had to format the hard drive.
Managed to save most of my data and my I-Tunes muck. Mainly due to luck and dexterity (Ok, so not because of dexterity.) I have two hard drives and my C drive has the OS on it, however my F drive has my data. Lucky sort of.

The good news is not really news, more an experiance.
Driving back from the gym at 9pm. Going along West Terrace.
With Bently Rhythem Ace's song "T-Spot" playing very loudly in the car.
And fire works from the show exploding in the distance.
Nice.
With the rain and cloud cover it only added to the effect of highlighting the fire works.

It softened the blow of probably not having my computer at home until Friday at the earliest, and then having to get all my other info (like e-mail addresses) again.

Bugger.

Technologies Pain

No I have not been excessevly lazy. Just my normal amount of lazy.

My computer at home has decided to blow up. It won't boot.
I have one of my friends looking at it, so I can't see any mail sent to my personal address, or blog from home.

Bugger.

Hopefully my hard drive doesn't need to be blown away. That would be very bad.

So once again I say bugger.