WauloK’s BangRocks Blog

Tonight I logged onto the Reading Cinemas website and saw that in ten minutes Barnyard would be on at the movies. I quickly closed all the windows in the house and got Sienna and I ready and we ran out the door. We got there with plenty of time due to advertisements and grabbed a large popcorn, large Solo drink and some Natural snake lollies.

We got our seat and watched the show. Sienna really loved it. She was laughing through most of the show and even stayed awake for the whole thing. It started at 6:30pm and went until about 8pm. She did have a sleep earlier in the day, though which probably helped.  We had a great time watching the silly cows standing up and doing silly things. She didn’t even seem to mind when the nasty coyotes did their thing (I won’t give it away). It was a bit scary then sad, but she still enjoyed the show. I guess if we all lived through Bambi then it’s not so bad. Kids these days are more desensitized aren’t they?

That was the first time I’ve taken Sienna to a cinema and she had a really good time. Now I know I can take her to them from time to time

AMD will sell processors to Apple in future, CEO Ruiz says

“Hector Ruiz, chief executive officer of Advanced Micro Devices Inc., said Apple Computer Inc. will eventually buy its semiconductors to provide an alternative to Intel Corp. chips,” Ian King and Ron Day report for Bloomberg. 

Bet ya nVidia chips are the next thing to support !

A few days ago on Foxtel they had a Star Wars marathon so I’ve taped
Episodes 1 - 6 and going to watch them all one at a time, in order.

Since I’m not one of those sad geeks that have watched Star Wars daily
since the 70s, it’s relatively fresh to me and I hope watching it in
this order will let me get the full story from go to woah

40 mins left on Episode 1. Don’t think I’ll see the end tonight, though.
I should be off doing my exercises and maybe some meditation.

What a damn good movie. Some really good martial arts. Some babes fighting. Some panty shots. Some titty shots. Naked Holly Valance.  And I knew Jaime Pressly would scrub up nice outside of “My Name is Earl”.

The story was great and the fighting magnificent. I gotta get this when it comes out on DVD.

They shoulda had the fight with the girls and the warriors.

Helena was okay but I go for Holly all the way. She’s yum and especially in this movie

Four starts outta Five. Maybe an extra half star for the half naked girls

Green Wing is on TV again, if you didn’t guess by now

My Poker didn’t go as well the last couple of times. I mean last night it went OK but not as good as it could have. My brain was in PARK. Don’t ask me which park it was in.. I bet a couple times when I thought I had a good hand when I in fact had nothing at all. Missed by one card. At least I made it through the break which was better than the Thursday before. This time I had $1000 through the break.

Tonight I did better at Ten Pin Bowling than last week. I got there earlier and got some practice and tips, so that was quite good. I might go an extra night a week as I can pay $3.95 per game instead of the usual. Maybe some Tuesdays if there’s nothing at all on at the movies. Still gets me a night out.

Had a great weekend with Sienna. We just took it easy as we both weren’t 100% Good to see her as always tho. Got a parent/teacher night on this Thursday night. I’ll see how she’s been doing at kindy.

I bought a couple of books today from Borders bookshop.

• The Power of Intention: Learning to Co-create Your World Your Way by Dr. Wayne W Dyer
• Texas Hold ‘Em by Phil Hellmuth

I’ve just about finished reading Beginners Guide to Reality by Jim Baggott.

It seems like I’m still recovering from my visit to Red Cross.

On Friday I wasn’t sure if I should go to work, but did and then told the boss I was heading home. Came home and bought some dinner on the way and popped into the doctor to book an appointment (not just because of how I was feeling but because Red Cross said I should get a checkup).  I came home and ate dinner then slept until 3:30pm when I got up to go to the doctor.  He said everything was fine besides a viral chest infection (I had been coughing and phlegmy for a few days). He gave me some Polaramine antihystamines and sent me off. I picked up Sienna and we came home again. Sienna hasn’t been 100% either so we both had a quiet day yesterday.

Sienna woke me at 7am this morning as she’d been to the toilet and needed cleaning up. Looks like a bit of diarrohea. I cleaned her up and got us some breakfast and lay on the couch watching TV while she played.  I kept falling asleep all morning and eventually Sienna fell asleep too. I turned off the TV and finally woke up at lunch time. I got some fish and chips out of the freezer and put them in the oven.  Now I’m just watching some poker I recorded a week ago or so while Sienna sleeps.  I’m still deciding if I’ll play poker tonight. At this rate I might give it a miss.  I don’t know that I’m going back to donate blood ever again. The doctor I saw Friday said it wasn’t an allergic reaction to the anticoagulant but passed out due to so much blood loss.  I don’t think the blood plasma donation is more than normal blood donation as they do it in three stages and pump the blood back into you.

I posted some blogs from my mobile yesterday but they seem to have gone missing in action.

I went to the Red Cross yesterday to donate some blood plasma. I sat down at about 1:30pm and the machine drew out blood twice and took the plasma, mixed it with anticoagulant and pumped the blood with red blood cells back into me. The third time, when it was almost complete, I felt faint and told a nurse “I think I’m going to faint” then passed out.  I woke up with my feet in the air as they tried to drain blood and oxygen back into my brain.

After a while they sat me up a little bit then did that a few more times over about 45 mins. Once I was sitting upright they decided to give me a cabcharge and send me off home. Well, after about 10 mins I passed out again so they got the ambulance in not long before 5pm.

I had a trip in the ambulance to the local private hospital and spent the afternoon there getting saline dripped into me and monitored my pulse and blood pressure. The last number I saw before leaving was 115/67 and I said “It seems to have come up a bit since I was admitted”. The doctor said “Yes, you are up about 20 points from when you came in”. I’m guessing I was lower at the Red Cross, though.  Mum says this is a lot and got a bit of a shock when she heard. She says it sounds like anaphylactic shock.. probably from the anticoagulant pumped back into me. The nurses did say there was a slight chance of an allergic reaction, but said I didn’t have to go and prove them right I said “Some guys will do anything just to get an afternoon off work, but this is a bit extreme!”.

Just before 6pm I went to the loo since I’d had so much fluid put into me and walked there and back fine without passing out, so they said I could discharge myself.  I had a cup of tea and some sandwiches and checked out. I got a taxi back to Bec’s mum and dad’s place and spent the night there so someone would be able to keep an eye on me. I had more water.. about 750ml of cold fridge water and some sandwiches and went to bed at 9pm. I was feeling so exhausted.

I got up this morning and Bec’s mum dropped me off at the train station so I caught a train home, got changed and showered and came back into work again. I had my multivitamins and a glass of V8 vegetable and fruit juice drink I’ve started getting into. Before I got a train I picked up a ham and cheese croissant and a mocha coffee from a local coffee shop to have for some breakfast. Boy did I need it!

I don’t think I’ll be going back to the Red Cross again. I had no problems donating just blood a couple of months ago, but once bitten twice shy so they say.

Check out this website Joey just sent me a link to:

Oceangram

Write a message and send it in a bottle or just wait until one washes up on the shore of your browser, read it, add to it and send again!

He’s got a boat, Baldrick.

Today was compulsory voting day for Queensland (well.. in Australia ALL voting days are compulsory).

I’m not even sure what the Liberals or anyone else stand for. All I saw on TV were anti-ads against Labor. One woman lamenting that her darling son was ‘killed’ by Paul Beattie, the current leader because he didn’t fix the health system or roads or something… WTF?!?!?!  These kinds of ads I find disgusting. The only other advertising they offered were to slander and attack the current party’s failures but I haven’t seen anything about what they stand for. I even read the local newspaper where the member for Labor (Jo-Ann Miller) talked about things she had done and some plans for the future, while the opposition were once again slandering her and talking about her failures and not mentioning once what they have in plan to fix things. What’s the bloody point? Stupid Liberals. I’ve no sympathy at all.

I’d not even heard of the name of the Liberal member who is trying to get elected. No idea at all. Yet, I’ve heard all about Jo-Ann Miller in the paper and met her at the train station and read her spam in the mail.

Today, we got busy with washing the clothes and dishes and did that voting thing above.  We got home and finished washing then went shopping. I wanted a cheapish frying pan as mine is rusting. Usually in the shops I can find one Teflon one for $14 or more. Today at Crazy Clark’s I found THREE for $10! A small, medium and large one together in a pack. SWEET!  I also bought some underwear from KMart. Found a pack of 3 for $20 so got two packs. I have too many holes in my current drawer full of underpants. Must be too big for them and keep tearing holes in them

After we put that stuff in the car, we went to Coles and bought some groceries and stuff. I wanted a good mop as my tiled floors get really scuffed and dirty. My current sponge mop seems pretty useless. All I could find was a $17 microfibre super mop thingy, so I got it to try out. We got home about 3-ish and I packed everything away then took Sienna to her room for a nap. She fell asleep about 3:30pm and didn’t wake up until about 5pm.

In the meantime, I put “Sin City” on the TV to check out. A friend at work told me about it so I taped it last night with my funky Foxtel IQ box (they tell me hopefully by the end of the year they will be able to transmit Channels 7 & 10 to the satellite people. No idea why cable subscribers can get it and not satellite ones.. oh well). It seems watchable. I had it on in the background and watched it in bits and pieces while searching the web for some sort of CPU cooling application. My PC randomly reboots and I’ve no real idea why yet. I guessed maybe it was something to do with the CPU overheating.. although that sort of thing should not really happen these days. I downloaded SpeedFan and installed it. It has no clear instructions so I fiddled a bit with the numbers and crossed my fingers something good will happen.  The other reason I’ve had problems with reboots seems to be due to my PC running out of IRQs. If I had all my stuff plugged in and hit DIAL on the XP dialup program, the PC would spontaneously reboot! I unplugged my PocketPC, Webcam, SE K800i phone and printer to see if that helps. It let me dial up again to teh interwebbeh so that’s something I guess. As I said it still randomly reboots but not so often. That’s why I’m trying this CPU cooling idea. I don’t want to spend $50 on a cooler fan to suck hot air out thru a PCI slot in the back if it’s not temperature causing the issue. Then again, if the software DOES work I won’t need the fan either hehe

Things I’m going to keep an eye out for:

Dead Man’s Chest Exclusive 2 Disc Collector’s Tin!

Da Vinci Code, The - Extended Edition (EXCLUSIVE Collector’s Tin

House, M.D. - Season 2 (6 Disc Set) (FREE Thermometer)

Tru Calling - The Complete DVD Collection (8 Disc Box Set)

My Name Is Earl - Season 1 (4 Disc Set)

What The Bleep!? - Down The Rabbit Hole: Deluxe Collector’s Edition!!!!! OMG OMG OMG!!!@$#@!

What the Bleep Do We Know info c/o Wikipedia:

What the Bleep Do We Know (according to the makers “Bleep” is a bowdlerization of “fuck” — William Arntz has referred to the film as “WTFDWK” in a message to ‘Bleeps’ “Street Team”) blends a fictional story line, discussion, and computer animation to present a view of the physical universe and human life within it, often relating this to neuroscience and quantum physics. Some claims discussed include: that the universe is better thought of as being constructed from thought (or ideas) than from substance; that what has long been considered “empty space” is anything but empty; and that our beliefs in who we are and what is real are not simply observations, but rather form ourselves and our realities. Additionally, a brief discussion of the theory that peptides manufactured in your brain can cause a bodily reaction to an emotion is used to claim a new perspective to old adages such as “think positively” and “be careful what you wish for.”
In the fictional story, a deaf photographer (Marlee Matlin) acts as the viewer’s avatar as she experiences her life from startlingly new and different perspectives. In addition to the story line, a team of purported experts in quantum physics, biology, medicine, psychiatry, and theology discuss the roots and meaning of Amanda’s experiences. However, the viewers are left in the dark on the credentials of the experts until the credits at the end of the movie.
Marlee Matlin as Amanda in What the Bleep do We KnowThe comments of those presented as scientific experts converge on a single theme: “We all create our own reality.” This is not a widely held view of physics by the scientific community, but it correlates well with subjective experience.

Just heard on the radio Peter Brock died in a car crash in Western Australia!
What is going on?

I’ve had a few days to try out the phone and I must say it’s a lot better than I expected! I wasn’t 100% sure it would be the best choice but it has grown on me and now I love it! I just have to get used to entering text via T9 again. I use the phone to listen to the radio on the way to work and back. The only gripe is that the synchronization software for Windows won’t work via the usb cable but fortunately it works fine with bluetooth which is how I prefer to connect the devices.

I went and saw Clerks 2 last night at the cinema.

I’d give it two stars. It was OK but not brilliant. Basically, it’s Clerks but with a few different people and trying to be more vulgar and offensive.

There were some good laughs to be had from time to time but if you want some real good laughs, go back to Jay & Silent Bob strikes back.

I think my preference goes: J&SBSB, Dogma, Mallrats, Clerks, Chasing Amy then Clerks 2.

I can see why that reviewer walked out, though. The Kinky Kelly show looks like it was supposed to be a hilariously funny mistake, but didn’t come off that way quite as well as it could. Bring back the ‘Berzerker’ guy… he was funny

Scientists have invented a remarkable toothbrush that lets you listen to pop songs while you scrub away - by transmitting the sound waves through your teeth and jawbone to your ear

I’d give my iTeeth for something like that…

The Register reports that Google plans to use PC microphones to collect statistics on a user’s environment. Peter Norvig, who directs research at Google, told Technology Review that this software would start to show up in Google software ’sooner rather than later’. The software collects short sound clips and removes background noise. Google then targets its ads based on the statistics collected. With the current level of online privacy, this new level of invasion would seem to have frightening possibilities.

 Reminds me of this quote from Futurama:

My internet browser heard us say the word “Fry” and found this movie on Philip Fry. It also opened my calendar to Friday and ordered some french fries.

Go Google!

Heyooooooooooooooooooo!

 I finally got my new mobile phone. It wasn’t the one I talked about before. I had been chatting to a friend of mine (Hi, SirK!) and he was telling me about this funky phone called the Sony Ericsson K800i. If you plug it into a Windows PC and put it in File Transfer mode it automatically uploads Windows drivers to your PC and becomes a USB Storage device. If you want it to share out the 3G internet to your PC then your PC sees it as a standard Windows ethernet connection which means you don’t need special software. The camera in this is 3.2 megapixels which beats the pants off the 6280’s 2mpx camera.  Here’s some specifications:

Specifications

Not bad for a mobile phone It fits neatly into my old phone’s case too with a bit of room to spare, but the camera out the back makes the fit snug nonetheless.

Tonight I went and checked out the local Ten Pin Bowling alley and had a couple of games. First game I scored 160 and the second 150. When I left they asked me to join a league team so I did and now will be playing every Monday night. How’s that?

From http://www.couriermail.com.au/:

THE Crocodile Man, Steve Irwin, is dead.

He was killed in a freak accident in Cairns, police sources said.

It is understood he was killed by a sting-ray barb that went through his chest.

He was swimming off the Low Isles at Port Douglas filming an underwater documentary and that’s when it occured.

Ambulance officers confirmed they attended a reef fatality this morning at Batt Reef off Port Douglas.

It is understood Mr Irwin was killed around midday,  Eastern Australian time.

Now I’ve seen a lot of Press lately that Nicole Kidman has a baby bump which was faked in photos by journalists. Above you can see an image and she is definitely bumpy. You can tell this image has in no way been altered and it’s a totally original photo. It’s obviously a pose so she must have agreed to it. Now let’s stop calling journalists liars. I know for a fact that none of the photos of models and stars have been altered in any way in any photo either published in magazines or on the internet.

Thursday night I got home ready to heat up my leftover pasta and rush to poker. Wouldn’t you know it but the microwave died…. sorta. Well, I’d set it for 5mins to heat and after 10sec it turns off. So I tried again and it did it again. So I tried 10min and after 30 sec it turned off. I wonder if I put it on for 2 hrs if it would have heated for 5 mins? Anyway, so I heated it up in the frying pan and headed off to poker.

My game of poker finished way before the 8:15pm half time break so headed to the shops to find a microwave.

I first nearly went to Homeart cos they have an “up to 80% off sale”.. but figured they’d not have a microwave so went to KMart. I then checked Target and found another better one so went back to go to KMart again and decided to check Homeart since I thought I saw a microwave up the back. There was a Cookwell Microwave 25L for $179 (down from about $299) so I grabbed that and two touchlamps for my bedside tables. I headed home and threw out the old microwave (which turned out to be 42L!) and installed the new one.  The weird thing is this microwave does not have a clock on it to tell the time. Only the countdown for the cooking. Never heard of that before. It only has 5 buttons on it, but looks nice. I will take a photo and post it here cos I can’t find any Cookwell Microwaves on the internet to link to!

Sienna is asleep in the bedroom so I’ll just take a photo of the side of the lamp box and you can see:

Here you can see one of Sienna’s favourite sleeping places:

Yesterday some guys from work and I went down to the bridge in Brizzy and saw the jets doing a test flyover for the Brisbane River Festival:

I got a phonecall yesterday from my phone provider and they said I can upgrade to a new Nokia 6280 for FREE!!!!!!! Yay! I’ve about had enough of my Motorola A1000. Time for some new blud. This one will have better camera, faster boot times, less crashing and other stuff. I CAN’T WAIT TO GO! I’m so excited I’m going in on Monday and getting my new fone. I also get to keep my old mobile phone but have to sign another 2 year contract. Oh well. Gotta be connected through SOMEONE!

Had a fun day with Sienna today. We got up around 7:30ish (well I did. she got up earlier and went to watch tv). While having breakfast I remembered the Sydney Morning Herald had a free CD if you bought it today so we rushed off to the shops! I got my Beethoven CD played by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra as well as some light bulbs for my lamps (who would think they wouldn’t come with bulbs??? everyone? oh ok..). I got a bubble making gun for Sienna and some toy boats for the bath.

When we got home I put on the washing (clothes and dishes) and we went out the front and planted some bulbs and seeds (not the light bulbs you nong!). She had so much fun doing that. She loves to help out around the house. I had bought some more solar lights during the week. Two for $10 so got four. We put them up the driveway so it lights up at night.

We played for a while then she watched some Little Einsteins and I put her to bed and she went to sleep in there. That gave me some time to type this up and play a few games of Texas Hold’em Poker on PartyPoker.com

That’s it for now cos it’s cutting into my Poker time

Except for Sienna, all the visitors have returned home. Mum and dad just left about 15 minutes ago.

We went shopping and I picked up some real nice clothes for Sienna. About $100 worth.. plus some new shoes for school since her old pink flowery ones broke last week. She was so upset. I bought her some nice, warm purple boots too. They have a sheepskin type inside lining to keep her feet warm. They were only $4! Bargain! She really needed some new shoes.  Poppy gave Sienna $2 and she put it in the boulles machine and won an elephant necklace which has lots of little flashing LED lights inside.

We had a ton of rain yesterday. I haven’t seen any at all since I moved in here, but yesterday it was pelting down. I tried to get a photo but it was too dark. My backyard was flooded. My front yard was flooded. Even the road on the corner near here was flooded. I wondered if dad’s car was going to make it through there but it did.

Dad’s cousin and his wife stayed overnight. They parked their caravan on the front lawn and we hooked up the juice to the house power. I scanned in the local digital TV frequencies so they could watch some TV while in the area. We tested out the GPS machine. It had a list of local petrol stations. I programmed in the closest it had but I knew there was one closer so we went there instead, all the while listening to IN 100 METRES TURN RIGHT.. IN 200 METRES CONTINUE STRAIGHT AHEAD. Why on earth they need to tell you to NOT turn is beyond me. Just say “in 500 metres turn right” instead of updates. I suppose it can be handy though.

We went to the RSL club again with them and Sienna had a fantastic time with the ton of kids in there. She didn’t even eat any dinner.. it was too exciting. There was a grabbing chocolate machine with one of those metal grabbers. A lady was in there trying to get chocolate while her kids played and Sienna found that the most exciting aspect of being in the playroom. Once bigger kids started arriving she’d had enough and came out. We left shortly after that.

This morning I printed out a ton of photos of Sienna for mum and dad to take back home with them. I gave them a photo frame to put some of them in. My Canon Pixma iP6210D does a fantastic job of printing. I bought some more photo glossy ink but didn’t need to put it in yet, even though Windows is complaining for ages about low ink. I printed out a couple of A4 sized photos as well as a bunch of the usual 6″x4″ ones. They came out really nice.

I bought myself a Texas Hold’em Poker set from a local discount shop. It was only $9.99 and has a mat, two decks, lots of chips (no fish tho!), a dealer button, a “Big Blind” button, a “Small Blind” button and a Poker chips rack.

A few days ago I found a small water fountain for only $9.99. Unfortunately it runs on batteries and runs them down fast, so I will have to get some rechargable ones. I had a bunch of rechargable ones a while back, but with all the moving etc I don’t know where they have got to. I saw a really nice seahorse fountain which is much bigger and plugs into the wall, yesterday but since I had already paid $9.99 for a fountain I didn’t want to spend another $39.99.

At Crazy Clarks discount shop now they have a very small DVD player (about the size of a book!) for $39.99. I’m tempted to get it as I need one to save booting the server every time I want to watch a movie. It even comes with a remote! It plays DVDs, MP3s, CDs and is multiregional. I might pop back today and get it. That will be 4 remotes I now have. LOL! I need a Universal Remote Control soon. It was only about 4 months ago I had no devices with remotes. Now I have: Foxtel IQ, SD Digital Set Top Box, TV. A few friends of mine have the Logitech Harmony remote which they swear by, but for me $129 is a bit much for just one remote.. for now .. maybe one day I’ll get one Instead, I bought dad a Sudoku handheld game which has 50,000 games in it for Father’s Day. That should keep him busy. He’s a real Sudoku addict!

Sienna has just sat down in the lounge and fallen asleep while watching Little Einsteins again. I think she’s worn out from all the visitors. She had a fun time running and hiding from poppy and teasing him. I think they both really enjoyed it a lot.  I slept on the blowup airbed and got the mattress off her bed for her to sleep on. The airbed will be great in summer as it’s very cool to sleep on, but at the moment it’s too cold for her. I just laid some towels on it before putting the sheet on top and that stopped the coldness from getting into me while I slept.

I mowed the lawn yesterday morning. It had rained a little the night before, but not enough to stop me mowing. The whipper snipper ran out of string quickly though so I will need to get more of that. I’m sure I have spare string around but am not sure which cupboard I’ve stowed it away in. I figured it was best to mow the lawn while my mum and dad were here to watch Sienna for an hour. ONE HOUR! Down on the Gold Coast it took me over FOUR HOURS to mow the lawn and whipper snipper around the place. This is like paradise

I haven’t yet tried driving my car since it got repaired. I’m sure it will be fine, though. Since dad was here he wanted to go everywhere in his car, so I drove them around like a chauffer.

The other night we came home and went to get the clothes off the line. I opened the back door and found this little fella sitting on the step. He must have been waiting for the rains. I hope he survived the flood! The image is really poor since my Motorola A1000 has not got great sensors for dark photos, so I’ve enhanced it a bit with The Gimp graphics editor.

Mum and dad arrived a couple of days ago. I picked up Sienna wednesday
night and had Lube Mobile mobile mechanics arrive to look at my car. I was
concerned after running low on oil and it hasn’t had a service since 80,000
kms. It’s now up to 126,000 kms. Way overdue! It was going to be a basic
service but as it’s been so long I had to go for a deluxe type service
which, with parts became $511 instead of $174. Whew! The guy arrived at
8am and didn’t finish until around lunch time. Apparently it should also
get a new cam belt but that’s about another $500 again, so I skipped it for
now.

Mum and dad arrived about 11am. That afternoon we went to the shopping
centre. Mum got some clothes and we had lunch then got some groceries.
Sienna was asleep on my lap while dad went to Coles. We came home and she
woke up so I gave her some Panadol to fix her temperature. After that she
got her second wind and was much happier.

Yesterday we went to Queen’s Park and had morning tea which turned out to
be enough to cover us all over lunch. I had scones with jam and cream and a
ice chocolate drink. Sienna had a couple of sips of that and her lemonade
spider but has not been very hungry the last few days .. except to eat
poppy’s Arnott’s Pizza Shapes. We went down to the swings and slides etc
while nonna and poppy finished their devonshire teas. Next we went to the
small wildlife park there and saw the kangaroos, emus, ducks and
birds.

We came back home to rest. Due the warm, strong winds a fire had started
near the motorway but we turned off before that anyway. Sienna fell asleep
in the car on the way home and I put her in bed. I’ve put up my blow up
airbed for Sienna and I to sleep on. It has a motorised air pump and
depending on how you set it up can be a single bed, queen sized bed, couch,
reclining couch or bed-couch. I’ve had it set up as a queen bed but got
Sienna’s mattress off her bed as the airbed can get cold during the night
so tonight might make it a double high single bed and put her mattress on
the floor instead of on the airbed.

Last night we went to the local rissole (RSL Club). Sienna played with some
kids in the playroom on the slide while we ordered. I picked up my
membership card which they should have posted out two months ago.
I got tempura fish and chips so I could share with Sienna. Mum had prawn
cutlets and dad had pork with veges and gravy. Mum also had some caramel
cheesecake for dessert. Mum and dad loved the place and we might even go
back tonight cos dad’s cousin and wife are coming to visit. They have a
caravan and will park it in my driveway and hook up the juice to the house
power. They were coming yesterday but got stuck in traffic due to a car
crash near the airport roundabout.

Today we are going to see my mum’s brother and his family for lunch. Should
be great catching up with my cousin and her kids. I saw the kids years ago
but not since so Sienna should have some fun running around with them. When
we get back dad’s cousin should be here. His GPS didn’t have my home on it
since the area I live in is only very new.

Can someone explain to me what the hell Green Wing is and why I felt
compelled to watch a whole episode of it? THEN tell me why I set my Foxtel
IQ box to tape it weekly.

It’s totally fuct up!

There’s some doctor whom all the staff are in love with .. guys and girls.
But he’s in a coma so one girl marries him then jerks him off and
artificially inseminates herself with his juice. First she has to work out
how to reduce the acid level of her ‘vertical smile’ or what she also calls
her ‘panty coin slot’. Next she lies on her desk in her office with two
legs in the air, squirting his juice up her skirt into herself while
singing ’swim little fishies into my dam’!!

That’s just one story going on at the time. The rest are just as
bizarre!

I think it’s because the show is just so damn surreal. I couldn’t stop
watching it!

Some other guy had sex with his mother and apparently so did many
others.

Is it ‘Scrubs’ to the infinite level?

Just had a quiet day at home with Sienna yesterday. Picked her up Friday evening as usual. Yesterday we made some Toilet Roll People. I drew some people on some toilet rolls then strung the lot together on some string. Sienna loves it.

I spent a lot of yesterday trying to find some good freeware Finance software.. mostly budgetting stuff but it looks as if even though there’s plenty around they are pretty much useless. You can import your QIF data and display it, but that’s about it. A couple of useless pie graphs and stuff don’t really help. Two of them let me set categories on each transaction, but only manually so doing that for 200+ entries is too much. Surely they could easily add an option on importing to specify categories based on the Description field. eg. If the credit card transaction says “COLES BRISBANE 4000″ you put it in the “Groceries” category automatically. Even partial matches like “COLES*”. I’m sure the expensive ones probably would do that.. Quicken? But not the freebie ones. Might have to shell out after trialling some Commercial applications.

The ones I tried were:

abasetup.exe - Abassisi
AceMoneyLiteSetup.exe - AceMoney
grisbi-0.5.7-win32-gcc-050605-gtk2-not-provided.exe - Grisbi (crashes if you look at it!)
jgnash-1.10.6.exe - JGnash .. java one
mlfe.exe - Metalogic Finance Explorer
mmgrex_setup_0_6_2_0u.exe - Money Manager Ex
PLCash.exe - PLCash .. java one too

If you are interested in freebie finance software, go check it out, but don’t expect much.

I got the washing done yesterday and the day before even washed the kitchen and dining room floor! Wonders never cease!

Today we have to go shopping and then I might take Sienna out to a park. We both need to get out of the house for a while and she needs some fun. Will have to get some more photos taken.

The photo album on here died. I don’t know how it happened. I think Fantastico broke it. I ran an upgrade and it changed the user and database to gllr1 which was already occupied by the VZ-ALiVE gallery and the other database vanished. Coulda been something else. I dunno. At any rate, all the database was gone so there was no point in keeping the photos around. I will reinstall a photo gallery some time in the future when I cbf.

I decided to cut down on my daily coffee. I was getting a large mocha which was $4 but now they decided too many people were ordering them and eating up all the chocolate so they raised it to $4.20. Well, that was already $20pw or $80pm so I don’t want to spend more money on coffee. Normally I’d not pay $4 for coffee.. even a large one, but the people at Cube were very friendly and nice and knew my drink. While going to another coffee shop (before it closed down) they asked me every day what my drink was even though I’d been going there for months. Anyway, I need to save the money now as last weekend my car ran completely dry of oil while I was out at Texas Hold’em Poker night. I put 2 litres of oil in it when I got home, but perhaps there is a leak. Besides, I can’t remember when I last had the car serviced so I have Lube Mobile coming this week on Thursday morning at 8am to give the car a service.  Should be $174.80.  I have Thursday to Tuesday off since mum and dad are coming to visit, so hopefully the car will be fixed before they arrive. We can go places in their car, but I’d have to hang around the house until my car was repaired anyway. I’ll pick up Sienna from her mum’s on Wednesday night.  It means I have to miss Poker on Thursday and Sunday but it’s better to see my parents since I haven’t seen them for over 2 years.  I’m sure Sienna will love seeing Nonna and Poppy since she would have been only about 1yo when she last saw them. She occasionally talks to them on the phone, but it’s not the same thing.  I also have some relatives from the Newcastle area coming to visit some time soon. Perhaps they will turn up when mum and dad visit. It’d be good to have lots of the family here. I haven’t seen most of my family in years. Only one emails me and one I talk to on MSN sometimes. Other than that, I don’t hear a ‘boo’ from anyone at all.

You may have noticed some weird things happening with my blog the last couple of days. I updated it to the latest version and wanted to rearrange my Goooooogle ads. It took a while to set it up correctly. Unfortunately, WordPress doesn’t have any way to test a theme while you edit it. The only way I could do it is to create another WordPress blog somewhere to test with then upload the changes to my usual blog once I’m done.

Why is there not much work being done with voice synthesis? It was all the
rage for a while and now you don’t hear much at all. Even my Commodore 64
could talk without samples. Anyone remember SAM, the Software Automated
Mouth?

They are already making movies with computer-generated actors but we seem
to be stuck with the idea we still need real voice actors. Is it because we
will only pay to hear high paid famous people or maybe the voice synthesis
cannot give us that realistic emotion we need in the dialogue.

Surely someone is working on bringing us emotional sounding computer
synthesised speech?

This should be the next generation of computer interaction. No doubt it
will need some kind of markup language to set which emotion. Or perhaps
CSS? Cascading Style Speech Oh please let me be the first to coin the
phrase!!

If the Microsoft Text to Speech application were upgraded with emotional
characteristics, I could get rid of the blue screen and just have it scream
"OH, DAMN!! NOT AGAIN!!". Pebcak errors could be replaced with "You EEDIOT!
Are you trying to kill me, man??". Although a good Windows sound theme
could already do that with a nice WAV sample.

The day when movies are totally created by computers including both
graphics and sound cannot be too far ahead. They’d require a server farm
for voice synthesis to go with the server farm of graphics generation they
already have.

I look forward to the day this dream becomes a reality. Now all we need is
ScriptWriter 4000…