Distracted as all get OUT because I can't find where to download Data Management Services WEB-INF folder and files are let alone install and run them - unriddle me these sayings:

• A vessel under optical supervision never reaches a temperature of 100 degrees Celcius.
• One feathered aerial biped imprisoned digitally is equal in value to twice that many aboreally located.
• Inquisitiveness on the part of a member of the feline species was responsible for its extinction.
• Never subject a presented equine to denticular inspection.

PS: apparently magnesium helps as well. Helps what? memory! God dammit, pay attention!

woof!

What made me notice the scene at all was the 20-something dude with a mobile phone filming them. Moving between the traffic as it ebbed and flowed, video taping these two extremely inebriated woman fumbling around in the gutter - and that appalled me more than their intoxication.

I can barely walk up to a stranger and ask them if I can take their photograph stone cold sober, and this man was gleefully filming these people at their worst. What was he going to use the video for? to whom was he going to show it? what was the point for him? Why was this pathetic scene worth recording? which of his friends would find reviewing it worth their time? Am I encouraging such behavour to be invisible? What is wrong with me ? why does this bother me? why didn't it even occur to me to intervene? Was there anything I could have done?

Something to do with my hands - Her Space Holiday (no video - only audio)

Comic Relief with Catherine Tate and David Tennant via Jack Yan

• It only takes 35 minutes to walk to work - apartment-door to office-door


• I cross some of Melbourne's best eating and bookselling streets on my journey to and from work (Smith, Brunswick, Lygon)


• I can easily stop at Cinema Nova if I fancy a movie on the way home


• I can even walk through a park if I wanted to!


• I get to use a G5 Apple Mac


• I have a 22" wide flat panel display


• My rubbish bin gets emptied every night. _every_night_ I can put all sorts of things in there before I go home: drink bottle lids, used tissues, crusts, dead bodies, and when I come in the next morning BAM! empty bin! *magic*

Okay - mostly I just wanted to tell you about the bin thing - but thought I would pad out the list with other stuff. The bin revelation was a mighty finish though. Some people might argue it was interesting enough information that it alone could have been enough for a post - be that as it may: this post contains more interesting things about my day and I hope, Gentle Reader, it wasn't overwhelming.

Better zombies by Ling Ling Ang on Flickr and the Facebook page with all the info

I showed up on my first day with a sore throat and as the afternoon progressed my manager said I looked like I was "fading fast" and he was right. I went down like a ton of bricks later that evening and didn't rally enough to work again until Thursday. Truthfully, had it not been my first week I wouldn't have gone in for that day either, or the Friday, but I was feeling bad/embarrassed for calling in sick so soon after starting. Dosed up on cough mixture and paracetamol I made it to home time both Thursday and Friday.

So I have this new job. I'm not sure I ever told you about my old job... but then, I was probably being mysterious.

El Orfanato is a scary movie with enough spooks to give a grown Scotsman a big fright. [ mish would give this movie 2-thumbs-up if her hands weren't covering her eyes ].

Thanks for the tickets, Kieron!

Willo, Teh Fox and I went to the 10:45pm session of Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull last night. It was cold and clear, with the smell of Winter in the air. Rugged up with coats and scarves, we made our way into Hoyts in the city.

I've had Indy's theme music in my head for two weeks, having been working on some promotional stuff for it at work. I was like some cinematic Pavlov dog, humming the tune everytime I dealt with a piece of film collateral or Indiana Jones trivia.

The movie is predictable, uncomplicated, a bit naff at times, but lots of fun. I had a good time, and I was genuinely pleased to see Henry Jones Jr one more time. I honestly hope I don't see him again though; this was a nice curtain-call, but that's enough George - don't drag any more of your horses into the streets, just let them enjoy their pastures.

I left my job as Interface Developer at Citrus on Friday.

I am not good at leaving - I find it difficult to know when to leave and how to go about the process of leaving, and then on top of that, I'm an awkward hugger - so I avoid any action on the leaving front until I absolutely *have* to. I stay too late at parties, I stay too long in jobs, and I over-stay my welcome in relationships.

In one of my previous jobs, many years ago, I left resigning from the company late - I stayed and stayed, hope making me think things would change, my heart kept telling me that the person at the core of our pain might change even though my mind assured me people hardly ever do. This time, and for a change, I listened to my head and took the opportunity the University of Melbourne offered me and I start there on Monday.

Leaving is never easy for me - I hate resigning, I dislike saying goodbye, I feel uncomfortable being the focus of attention on the last day and I say dorky things because I'm nervous. Maybe leaving isn't supposed to be easy. I have learned, though, that if I'm unhappy with a large incompetent part of my working process that continues to impact on my daily levels of satisfaction, then staying and trying to ride it out isn't always the best course of action for me either.

I was asked several times in my final week if I was excited to be leaving - which I kept finding was a strange question to answer given a) how much work I had to get through in my last week and b) how much I love working with the talented Studio team at Citrus. Yes, I was and continue to be excited about the new challenges ahead of me, happy to have Flash in my life again with the added challenge of learning Actionscript 3, looking forward to learning all about Flex, thinking about all the things I've learned since the last time someone had me design a learning module etc, but I am genuinely sad to be leaving such a great team of online designers, developers and friends.

They're not pretty - and I know how annoying it is to make a comment and have to wait for the admin to publish it - but for right now, the comment are on, but not the best solution.

One good thing (for me, anyway) is that in the last 24 hours since making the modifications and turning the comments back on, I have had no SPAM _at_ all_ - compare this to 1500/24hours when I closed the comments last week.

So, yay (for me) but user-experience-apologies in the mean time.

The thing I really need to do is upgrade Movable Type - I'm a few versions behind. What stops me from upgrading is the fact MT upgrades are a time confusing pain in the arse, not to mention heavy handed in the file-size department. So I remain on 3.whatever instead of being all 4.0+ with all the loopholes and problems that causes my poor old blog.

I love your comments. I will approve them as often and as soon as I can - thank you for your patience - or if you don't have any patience, thank you for putting up with this clunky process.