Anything About You?

Yes, I am at home as I am to sit an exam tomorrow.

I am just studying it up and relaxing with some guitar and light reading.

All should be good. However, I did leave my blog notes at my actual home, so no updates till Saturday!

Sorry folks!

Electrical Changes Are Charging Up The Young

In case my last post was too cryptic for some of you morons out there, yes I did have a car accident. No, it was not my fault. I finally found out the extent of my injury. Turns out I actually dislocated my knee, which had set during the impact, and I had torn a few ligaments in it. It still doesn't feel right, and I am taking some anti-inflammatories. If it hasn't healed by Monday, I'm in need of some more scans. How wonderful! Especially since it was a really low speed collision, and the impact on my knee was very small; I've been hit harder before.

The car, ahh my wonderful car! It still runs, but the radiator has died, and a fair bit of the engine block is messed up. It will cost a considerable amount to fix it. Even though I only drove it on the weekends, it was heavily relied upon! This whole ordeal is just bullshit really.

On to more lighter events. Should condoms be free? The question was posed to me recently, and I didn't know what the answer should be! Is sex such a fundamental part of human development that it should be free? Like water from a tap etc? But companies need to make a profit, so how can this be remedied? State made condoms?? Hahaha, perish the thought! But the choice isn't there is it? Well as far as I'm aware. Condoms can be bought from stores and chemists, but you can't obtain free ones outside of university (at least so I've been told). So what are non uni going people supposed to do? Haha, it's not my problem or concern anyway. The whole condom buying thing just totally weirds me out, and hell I don't even know how to put one on! I remember in High School some of the physical education classes got to try out on test tubes, but my class wasn't one of them, and now that's probably the reason why so many of my former High School alumni are parents!

The trouble with typing up my blognotes a few weeks ago is that I write them in shorthand, so with no context, I have NO idea what the hell I meant to say!

I finally got the router going, so we have Xbox Live goodness, and my friend has the net on his comp, but it's not like it matters since I do the most downloading anyway! Already done 15 gig for this month! I'm impressed, haha! A lot more where that came from though! Never again will I attempt to bridge a hardwired Modem into a wireless router! Next time I'm getting a combined modem/router!

Ahh weirdly enough I just got hit with a dose of tiredness. I'm gonna leave it there for now folks, but never fear, plenty more blognotes to come.

Joaquin out.

Accidents Happen

And all you're left with are questions, and not much else.

What if I'd done things differently? Left a little later/earlier?

Now my confidence is shaken. My shroud of invincibility has been lifted.

My knee hurts but it's only my heart that's broken.

I'll never forget the noise and the instant realisation that this is REAL, and I wasn't imagining it.

I've never been in shock before, it was a bit of a rush.

As the shock wears off and the cold goes away, the extent of my injury will be apparent.

It was a nice car I had once...

Well hey, at least everyone else is fine.

Coronas And European Girls

I don't know if anyone has noticed, but in this city there seems to be a lot of people who are leaving their 1/4 full Corona bottles around! And not just near pubs and clubs, you see them in random places. Who leaves a Corona bottle lying around, especially when it's 1/4 full?? What if it's the same bottle everywhere I keep seeing?? Haha now that's a thought!

So it strikes again, go to a restaurant, and yes, there are attractive women. Legs till next week, amazing bodies and dresses, it made it rather difficult to eat! But I got the thought that they were much younger than me. Noo, before you all start dialling 911 or triple zero, they were definitely legal. But still a lot younger than I was. I'm almost a full decade above the age of legality here. You see it now and then when someone in their mid 20's dates someone in their late teens. I don't really think that sort of thing is for me. I guess this is where the harsh reality of age and life set in. Well them's the breaks I say!

As stated, I have a ridiculous amount of updates to get into the Joaquin Rate List (JRL), and I think that may take me some time. As I am trying to type this one out as fast as possible, I'll have to wait till next time to get those up. I just want to be home and away from here. It's so much more peaceful and the atmosphere is just so much more conducive to actually getting work done, when I'm left to my own devices.

I finally visited the other after moving and we had a cracking good time! He showed me the wonders of a program called FL studio (the latest iteration of Frooty Loops), and goddamn, what a powerhouse of a program! Makes Adobe Audition look like a bloody pre-school Audacity like program! We were working on a song (interestingly enough, a dance song) for like 2 hours, and it was just brilliant; sitting there nodding our heads to the beat, it was fantastic! The other is getting a Midi controller for more control over the action, and depending on how it pans out for him, I may also get one. We also got into some jams, which were fantastic and they have gone up into dropbox for fine tuning. The other also procured himself an Epiphone SG copy and it looks fantastic! Plays well too. So congrats to him!

So it finally happened! After 20 years of Telstra being absolutely crap, my phone line is up and running! I have ordered the internet and that too is listed as being up and running, so all I need is a modem router and I am GOOD to go! Hell yes, here comes 50 gig and downloads till I cry!! In terms of internet and phone provisioning, it still makes me ill to think how far behind the rest of the world Australia is in terms of service. We pay an exorbitant amount for internet that is not all that fast, nor does it allow enough data allowance. This is supposed to be a first world country, and we're getting stiffed. The problem relates to Telstra's ridiculous monopoly on all the service infrastructure, they've shut everyone out. And since they had a huge market position before it was privatised, they can just destroy everyone else. This isn't right. Under the constitution there is allowance for telephony devices to be TOTALLY governed by the Federal Government. Handing control over to a private company should not be allowed right? Cause there is an implied right that all Australians should be able to access it, therefore charges such as line rentals or service charges cannot be levied, because the tax system should pick that up under a PUBLIC right. I hope this National Broadband Network will come good some time soon!

Haha, at work the other day, I was so in the zone and just ploughing through work I just felt REALLY relaxed. In fact, so relaxed I coulda just peed my pants right there and then! Ahh work, what a funny place! We have these poorly produced videos to teach us about the dangers of I/T security etc. Anyhow in these videos these people keep stealing data from Government employees. Of course they're actors, but what's gold is that the I/T hackers are all these ridiculously attractive females. I'm sorry, but that's just not believable. No attractive female works in I/T as a programmer. Graphic designer yes, tech support perhaps. But programming? Nope, not true! Sorry, nope, never!

I got pwned by a guy with an umbrella the other day. When I used to live in Sydney, if it was relatively overcast in the morning, or if someone walking down the street from my window was carrying an umbrella, I would carry one too. I have not followed this now that I'm back here. I saw a guy in the morning carrying one while I was on my way to work. It was a sunny day so I thought he'd just have a burden. But lo and behold, come home time, it was POURING and I got drenched! Haha he showed me!

I think I posted that story about that girl whose job I took over when I first joined the public service. The one who obviously did not like me, but unfortunately had a fantastic ass. This made it even funnier when I discovered that her surname is just another name for prostitute (I shan't repeat it here or it'll be easy to ID her). I saw her again the other day and she totally gave me the biggest death stare ever, haha fantastic!

Since the colder weather has started, I have started wearing a light t-shirt underneath my shirts and suit jackets. I am a huge fan of this, as it keeps me incredibly warm, and the plasticy smell from the packaging that they're in totally gets me off! It's so nice, I love it!

Anyhow, that's it for now folks. I'll try to blog from home if I get my stuff in order and get my router etc. Have a nice day! Joaquin out.

Back In May I Forgot My Thoughts

Yes, I know I was meant to blog last week, but I never got around to it! Too much study to do, and I really could not be bothered. However, this is good for you because I now have a backlog of blog notes to get through.

Bloody Telstra! Epic fail! I'm meant to have my phone line and internet set up at my place already, but alas, they have failed me, so I still only have access to the internet on the weekends.

I don't know how it happened, but the Joaquin Rate List (JRL) is set to grow by a bloody substantial amount on my next update! I will hit that up at the next available opportunity. I want to get home quite soon, so I am just going to blog then get ready.

I will aim to get the other to blog ASAP. Further, I will try to get in a jam session with him. I've been getting a few more ideas in, and now that I've cut my nails, I am good to go with the guitar!

Do you ever get the feeling that people are laughing at you? After work I usually have to walk against the flow of general pedestrian traffic in order to get to my place. Therefore I am walking in an oncoming direction to most people. They all seem to look at me, laugh a bit then look away. What is up with that? Are they laughing at me? What's wrong with me? No doubt, this makes me extremely paranoid and self-conscious. I hope this isn't a sign of mental illness.

As mentioned above, I have been studying to get some assignments and such done. This opened up a new world of scary procrastination for me. I was doing EVERYTHING else except study. I used to be so motivated, and a lot of my work was done before the due date, but this time around, I am not loving it so much!

I don't know if I ever ragged on it before, but when I had Optus internet in Sydney, it really was quite a fantastic deal. Despite counting uploads AND downloads in my download limit, 20gig per month was definitely more than enough to get through. I only came close to limits because of my ridiculous downloading and streaming. But when you couple that with the fact I got free calls to all mobiles, landlines and so on, it was something I really enjoyed! I'll probably never see the likes of that any time soon. I was ringing like a man possessed!

I keep waking up with cuts on my fingers these days. Really small superficial ones, but how is it happening? Am I scratching myself in my sleep? Where did they come from? It can't be stress related, because I find that work is getting easier.

I have no idea why I keep going back to my Sydney days! If I'm always a grass is always greener on the other side person, I'll never be happy! But anyway, I remember that after my first year of work, we were forced to take extended leave over the Christmas break. This ended up being close to 3 weeks, whereas in the public service I only got 3 days off during this period. I had a bloody good time. Instead of going to the gym at 6:45 in the morning every day, I would get up at noon, casually eat breakfast then later work my way to the gym...where there would always be the same HOT MILF on the treadmill totally killing it and filling my head with various lustful thoughts, while she was watching Oprah and exercising. Then I would just play games and watch movies till about 3-4am and I bloody loved it. I will never get holidays like that ever again, where I am being paid to have a bloody fantastic time. By the time I get substantial leave (long service I suspect), I will probably be married with children and my life will be over!

I remember in college I had an acquaintance who liked some girl (this was quite common knowledge), but she kept dating losers. I asked him how he felt about it, and he said that he had this unrealistic expectation that whenever he met ANY girl he liked, he would picture their entire future together, of them being married and having children etc. At first I guess it could be written of as immature, but in reality, I honestly think that is every guy. Most girls don't realise that, and that's a shame, as we are typically characterised as unfeeling, unthoughtful brutes.

U.S. 80's/90's sitcoms had the best city settings. I remember Perfect Strangers and its wonderful introduction featuring many shots of Chicago. I also remember Driver 2, where I would spend countless hours driving around the city (in the 70's). What a great place to visit. Ditto for Full House and San Francisco (but Mythbusters also shows off the city in great detail). Speaking of Driver, I think that game made me a much better real life driver. It was one of the few games where a road car handled realistically, and not like Need For Speed Carbon, where a car can supposedly turn 90 degrees without braking, at well over 200km/h. Case in point? I tried to over take a guy when a one lane road split into two lanes, and then as I was next to him, I found that he had started to drift VERY far over both lanes, and almost sent me into a blood traffic island at 80km/h. If I had not been on the ball and had been watching him, which in turn enabled me to slam on the brakes and avoid him, I would have definitely had a pretty significant accident. Good ol' Driver!

Am I burnt out? I don't feel like I can work as hard as I used to anymore. Or am I just getting lazy?

The other day at work I forgot my headphones and had to suffer from lack of stimulation! I have a DVD of songs in my drive that I listen to occasionally when I need a pick up, or need to get into the zone to do some repetitive tasks.

There's a guy at work who has a ridiculously attractive girlfriend -who also happens to work there, but in a different area. I just mentioned this because he should be damned!!

I read on wikipedia the other day that in Wolfenstein 3D (that classic game), the bosses were drawn with 2D sprites, so that no matter what way you approached them, they would always see you! NO WONDER! They would always just start shooting at you and you'd always start on the back foot! It's not like current games where you can sometimes sneak up on bosses and take them out and make life easier for yourself! Those geniuses at ID software!

Haha, anyhow, that's it for this week folks. Have a nice day! Joaquin out.

Am I Living It Right?

What is it with bands reforming without their original core members? I read the other day that Hole had reformed, but I looked at the band lineup. It's only Courtney Love who is back! I'm sorry, but that is not Hole! When it's only one person (granted, that person may be the most well known), I don't think that can count as having a band reform. Especially in that situation, as Courtney Love had just had a moderately successful solo career. Ditto for Guns 'N Roses! It's just Axl Rose!!! At least Izzy is in it from time to time. Yes, I know that Slash is everyone's fave, but Izzy was really the genius of the group, and I loved his guitar lines.

A scary realisation struck me the other day. As I've mentioned in a post several months ago, this city is having a lot of construction work done (in order to accommodate our ridiculously unneeded expansion). As a result, the majority of suits and so on that you typically see (from being the capital city) from public servants has given way to the bright fluoro green tops of construction workers and other laborers. I've been on the road at a lot of odd times while visiting friends, like 4am etc. You see these people all around the road flying to get to work while they're barely awake. Anyhow they're all my age or younger, driving around in expensive cars with arm candy when you see them about town. What the fuck?? Seriously, what the fuck?? These are guys who probably haven't finished college, who have just started working and have earning capacity greater than mine! What sort of reward is this? I finished college, I went to university for 5 years! I have a bloody honours degree in law! Where's the fucking fairness in that?? That got me questioning, am I living it right? I'm not sure, you may have to ask John Mayer. Thanks for rewarding me for following the "set path".

I am still yet to get the internet at home, so I am back at my folks to study and to get my weekly blog out of the way! However, that is all to be set up soon and I should be re-connected within the next 2 weeks. This is good, considering I have probably THE biggest update to the Joaquin Rate List (JRL) in the blog's history! I didn't think it was possible, but these hotties just keep coming out of nowhere!

I was shopping the other day at some store and I ran into one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen in my life. Tall, brunette, curvy, she was just wowza. That got me thinking. What is it about large girls I like? No, not fat girls, not chubby girls. I'm just talking about girls who are structurally built large. Let's not get into a heightist discussion, as the other covered it very well in a post near the start of this blog's history. I'm about average height for a guy, with a regular build, so I guess most of the girls I would see out and about would be smaller than me. So when you have a girl who is taller and "larger" than you, it's just weird. It's probably some sort of complex! Haha, probably for my ego!

It also got me thinking that I talk about girls too much on this blog! I should return to some of the grand intellectual discussions that featured throughly in the early stages of this blog. Studying is a bitch. I don't know why I'm doing it again! If work wasn't paying for this, I would not have continued. Having my free time swallowed up to do something I don't particularly enjoy is not really a good motivating factor here.

The other raised some excellent points regarding the proposed internet censorship filter in Australia. I believe he was spot on. This USED to be an open minded country. However, that dark period where the conservative party ruled (with an iron fist) for over a decade has just totally fucked with people's heads. Now as a result, even the liberal party (not THE Liberal party) is not as progressive as people thought. It's just spouting horrible Orwellian rhetoric in order to appease to the population and keep their grip on power. What's worse is that the only people who seem to oppose these moves (as well as our current backwards policy on refugees) are not politicians! I won't go into a full on spiel about what's wrong with the system, as the other has already gone into sufficient detail.

The other day I noticed that there may be an undercurrent of young power hungry go getters at work. They're not in my division or anything, but they did look very young. Maybe I outrank them??

I walked to work the other day from my new place. This was pretty substantial, as it's a 40 minute walk at a fairly brisk pace. For some reason, I constantly had "Mother fucker on a motorcycle" pulsating in my head. This was odd, considering I've never actually heard the song in my life. As a result, I spent the 40 minutes with a firm grin on my face. It was a bloody long stretch, especially before work. Was it life changing? No, it was nothing like my "death trek" from the Eastern Suburbs to the North Shore of Sydney that I undertook just a few years ago, in order to save some money. Now that walk was brilliant!

I have been tired a lot as of late, so I have started sleeping earlier, and it's been good. I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. In fact I got some good gameage and some movies in, around my studying.

Oh gosh, the other day at work I had to sit through this AWFUL presentation by some apparently famous and powerful fellow (who I don't remember the name of). The backbone of his presentation was a powerpoint talk. Failage x1000. I was FIGHTING the urge to just pass out from boredom and tiredness! Powerpoint is overused in the business (and academic) world. It adds nothing to your speech. I remember in first year uni (before I became jaded and cynical), one of my favourite lecturers said he was a complete hater of powerpoint (before I knew what it was), and not to use it, unless it adds something special to your speech. To date, I have not seen an example of PP adding something special to anyone's speech. Therefore, I agree with his thoughts! In fact I should do a powerpoint presentation on how shite these presentations are, just to revel in the irony! For a start, Visio is much better. However, I feel that these things are not needed if you're a good speaker and can engage well with an audience. What awesome famous speeches in history came accompanied with a bloody Powerpoint presentation? None! I'm sure the other will agree! Did Martin Luther King give his "I have a dream" speech with a projected image of some kid sleeping with a dream bubble over his head?? Did Henry V give his St. Crispin's Day Speech with with a projected image of the word "WIN OR DIE" in the background? I don't think so!

I had not played guitar in over a week, until last night, and I think I still have it! Chordal wise, maybe not so solo or technique wise. But I am taking some guitars with me to get back into it full steam! I have also been reviewing some guitarpro songs and now I am perplexed. What do you do when you've finished a song and you have a different version of the song which MAY have a superior melody in terms of chordal progression?? Ahh I'm stuck, cause it's one of the best songs I've composed!

Haha, I sent these blog notes on Wednesday from work. I feel like I'm in a time machine where I'm reviewing them now and trying to remember what I was talking about! Very trippy I gotta say!

The weather has been switching between warmth and bone chilling coldness. I don't know WHO the hell can stand that sort of weather? It's not natural, it has a bad effect on the body!! Some people are just nuts, especially those in less than warm clothing when it's cold! Teenage girls in short shorts outside won't be thinking they're so hot when they're hooked up to a breathing machine in the hospital with bloody pneumonia!

My life has become more complicated since moving back here. My problems were big before, but they did number lesser than the ones I currently encounter. I only hated work before, as well as not saving enough money. Now there's a myriad of things! I'm saving, but what am I saving for? Are these even things that I want? Just something to be considered I guess.

That's it for now folks! Till next week. Joaquin out. You've reached the end of the line!