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Uncategorized

Highs and Lows

After having a particularly random sequence of thoughts… (although, how could you have a random sequence… doesn’t the word “sequence” imply something of an order to the items? so I guess it would be a random attack of thoughts… (although “attack” describes something about the intent of the thoughts, which is not accurate in this case – I guess I could use “bunch”, but that implies that they arrived together, as opposed to arriving in a haphazard fashion (I just did a spell-check on “haphazard”, and I really need to get some kinda clipboard based spell checker – currently I open MS Word, paste the offending word into it and get it to check the spelling), much like this set of thoughts)

Ok, so after a particularly random randomness of thoughts (although, mind you, how can you get a “particularly random” anything? Surely its either random, or its not?)…. [Grrr this is getting tiring]

After a random randomness of thoughts I… oh wait… I forgot what I was going to say with all that “random randomness junk”…

Thank goodness for titles – I was going to talk about my highs and lows… basically I was having a few random thoughts and was debating which I should blog.  I ended up canning most of the ideas as irrelevant, stupid, time wasters, or just plain boring… So I thought that a good post would be a “Highs and Lows” post…

I got the idea from a movie – I think it had the “Die Hard” guy (also starred in “The Kid”, and that comedy about the dentist who’s wife hires someone to have him killed) anyway… the movie was about a husband and wife who were not getting along (at some point they send their kids away to “Summer Camp”, the parents “separate” and I think they get back together before “Summer Camp” ends)  At some point, when the whole family is sitting around the dinner table and the dad asks them what their highs and lows of the week were.  Its meant to be a “quick look” into the other person’s life to help them get to know eachother… but at some point it loses its sincerity (kinda like walking past someone you know in the street and saying “Hi, how are you?”) Eventually you do it because its “what’s meant to be done”, and not because you really want to know how they’re doing.

So, anyway… What are my highs and lows for the last week?

Highs: Going to the Zoo with my wife (Christie), buying a dishwasher (its extremely cool to not have to wash dishes), our first “group dinner” at home (Sean, Matt and Helen came for dinner and DVD’s), and our 1 month aniversary of being married, and finding our marriage certificate after not being able to find it for almost 2 weeks.

Lows: Lack of sleep/energy (all these “stoopid” public holidays are messing with my brain’s clock), a “really slow” pc at work that’s making my progress pretty much non-existant…

I’m sure there’s more lows that I’m not thinking of, and I’m sure I’ll have a high tonight when Christie graduates from Wits with her BA (English and History)… 🙂

Categories
Uncategorized

Blogging blues

I must admit, I chose the title coz I liked the alliteration… A more accurate title would have been “Blogging Introspection” or something like that… But without further ado, here’s the blog entry

Some day I hope to blog like Rory or Wil… Well, not EXACTLY like them… but with a similar style… one that’s less “Today I did x, y, z, had A for lunch, and met person B, and C“, and more “here’s a snapshot of my thoughts“… Less “Dear diary“, and more “insight into what makes me tick“.

Something like that…

Categories
Humour

“We’re sorry our President is an idiot”

I just saw this via Scoble (who got it via BoingBoing (who got it from here)) – Its a washing instruction label found on a laptop bag… A quote from the site “The English is exactly what you would expect and so is the French, for the first 6 lines. The last three lines of French are most interesting. ‘We are sorry that our President is an idiot. We didn’t vote for him.'”

Categories
General

Face manipulation

Have you ever watched those FBI/CIA/OCA (Other Covert Agency) programs on TV where they have this funky software that they use to either build up a the face of a suspect, or can see what a suspect would look like after some facial reconstruction/hair colour/style changes?

Well, now you can do that yourself using http://www.morphases.com!! They have a fairly small set of faces, but the software is quite cool, and aparently they’re going to be adding more faces soon.

Be warned… don’t go there unless you’re prepared to spend a significant amount of time having fun…

I’m in the middle of trying to build a face that looks like mine… it quite a bit more difficult than you’d think it might be, especially over a slow-ish internet connection.

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Home Cell

Home cell…

Last night was our first “Leaders in touch” meeting… For those of you who haven’t been at New Covenant Church Bryanston for over a year, the “Leaders in touch” were put in place about a year ago to help connect homecells and people in the church with a broader base of leaders. 

While we have about 7 eldership couples at the church, there are probably about 1500 members in the church.  Which means that there are about 214.28571428571428571428571428571 members per eldership couple.  So there’s no way that everyone will be able to connect with an elder when they have problems… On top of that, the elders don’t devote every second of their entire life to counselling (that just wouldn’t be feasible).  Home cell leaders are probably the next point of contact… but then I’m not really in a position to be “couselling” people on deep issues (there would be no accountability for my actions), and what about those people who aren’t in home cells?

So that’s where the “Leaders in touch” come in… they’re people who are trusted by the elders, and who have the maturity to deal with whatever issues they’re faced with (even if it means referring them to the correct elder).  Anyway, the “Leaders in touch” connect with the home cell leaders to help them if they have hassles, teach them, encourage them, exhort them, etc.

Anyway, last night was our first meeting with them… actually it was dinner.  There were 4 home cell’s leaders there, which was great.  Its awesome to hear other people with similar issues to you, and to hear how some of them have solved problems you’re struggling with, or to be able to help others with suggestions from what you’ve done to solve problems that they’re experiencing.  Simon and Tarryn(sp?) Murphy are our “Leaders in touch”. (Ok, I’m getting tired of putting “Leaders in touch” in quotes all the time, but the only other way I could write it to signify that its a “title” is to say Leaders-in-touch – but even so its not really a title as much as it signifies a relationship)

It was a good evening, and it was great to get to know everyone better… 🙂

Categories
General

An update (finally)

Well, so much is happening, and I’ve not done an update…  I have a partially completed “Wedding Update”, but too much happened and I don’t want to leave stuff out or mess up details… the next thing I know I’ll find myself sleeping on the couch again.  (Um, actually its not “again”, coz I’ve not done that yet.  Christie’s too nice to do that to me)  Anyway, back to the point… I’m going to skip writing about the wedding till I have time.  I’d also like to upload some pics from the wedding to coincide with the wedding blog entry, so I’ll have to spend some time at home getting the pics and details ready.

In other news: My company has made 2 big sales!  One to Denel (announced internally on Friday), where our software is now going to be going into their entire set of companies/divisions.  It was used in about 8 of the over 30 companies… and the deal is worth between R50 and R100 million. (That’s a big enough ballpark not to cause any concerns over leaking out the details – not that we were told to hold off the details, but I’d rather be a bit more on the safe side)   And the other sale is to “SAS” or “Siemens and Forecia” (or something that sounds similar)… the “SAS” sale is WAAAAY smaller in value than the Denel sale, but its aparently a really good foot into new/other market areas for us. (Don’t quote me on that I’m just clueless underling, so I know nothing.  On top of that, all comments are purely my own views and not those of my company, or any company related to my company, or anyone else’s for that matter (unless otherwise specified(your milage may vary(batteries not included))))

 

Categories
General

I want to work for Microsoft :)

A quick blog…

Two cool recruiters at Microsoft (Zoë and Gretchen) started a blog recently… It has a whole bunch of information on Microsoft interview questions, etc….  All the links above are in response to their “Search Engine Baiting” post.

And incase you’re wondering, I’d love to work at MS – sounds like they have an awesome attitude towards development and customers.  I had a few friends of mine from varsity start working there about 4 years ago (I’ve lost contact with them now), but they all seemed to love it.

Categories
General

Back!

WOW, there’s a lot to talk about… but I’ll get to that in time.  A brief synopsis of the last week and a bit follows:

The wedding was great, we really enjoyed it.  The honeymoon was awesome, its a great place to stay – really relaxing.  Came back a day before we expected, but we got to do some shopping for our home which we wouldn’t otherwise have done.  Charlie, John, and Keri left for the Singapore LTT. It was great to be back at church – the Jazz picnic was cool.  The public holiday on Monday was an excellent day to catch up with household stuff, and prepare for the week.  Tuesday was great, the first day in the “normal” routine of life as a married couple.  Home cell went well (Helen spoke), and that brings us to today. 🙂

Categories
General

Final blog before the wedding

Cool… one last blog before I get married… Being the “uber-geek” that I am, and having everyone at work asking “how many hours left?” (ok, ok… I admit… it was just one person that asked) I thought I’d get my PC to work out how many hours were left.

So I set up an excel spreadsheet to do it for me… but then I thought… hrm, maybe I’d want to check this when I am not at my PC… so I thought I’d setup a web page… but what good is a web page if you’re not at a PC?  So I ended up making a mobile web page… so I can check the countdown from my cellphone(A Sony Ericsson T300).

So, if you go to http://www.digitaltinder.com/WC.aspx, you’ll see my Wedding Countdown… When it gets to 0, the service should have started, when its at -1, I should be officially married.  At around -4.5 to 5 hours, I should be making my speech, so if you want to pray for me, that’s when I’ll need it. 🙂

Bye. I’ll write again after the honeymoon. (I’m back at work on the 22nd of March, so that’s possibly when I’ll write my next blog)

Categories
General

Trial run

Last night was the wedding rehearsal, and dinner.  The bed I’d ordered was meant to arrive some time today (after 3pm), but I got a call at about 3pm yesterday to find out if they could deliver it yesterday.   Eventually they dropped it off at 5pm – I had to leave work early to meet them.  (After agreeing to drop off the bed at 5pm, they rocked up at 4:30pm wondering where I was… so I told them to come back at 5, which they did)  As I arrived at my complex, I got a call from my mom asking directions to the church, and from christie to ask if I could give her a lift to the church.

I hate it when you have 2 phone calls, and a bunch of people waiting for you… especially when you have pretty crappy reception and the calls are important.  Anyway, my mom got her directions, Christie got a lift, and the bed people not only delivered the bed, but they also helped me move my current bed to its new room in the house. (in the loft)

The practice went well… oddly enough, the people who had to drive the furthest (my dad and colleen) were the first to arrive.

Malcolm (the guy doing the service) is great. We’ve not been the best at communicating what we want to him, but he seems very relaxed about it.  He asked a whole bunch of questions that we hadn’t thought of regarding how the service would run, and I learned a lot about what we’re doing when, and how.

The supper was great… the Coffee Shop ladies cooked an excellent stir fry, and we all enjoyed chatting and eating. 🙂

Afterwards, Mark (my brother) decided to stay the night with me which was great coz we sat and chatted for an age, and we both worked on our speeches for the reception.  Mine’s kinda finished except for a list of people to thank, a few last touches, and I want to get it checked for “appropriateness of humour”. (some people might not get some of the jokes)