Family Visits

Hi there *waves*

Well recently my sister, brother in law and niece traveled a couple hundred kilometres to come see me and do some other things which was pretty cool since I havn't seen any of them in close to nine months now.
I used to live with them up in Bundaberg (most boring town ever if your not into rum and fighting) before moving down to Brisbane, our ancestral home (well in recent history anyway :p).

Sis is getting pretty big with her second child now and I imagine it won't be long now untill I get the news of a healthy boy or girl since they do not like to find out the sex before the child is born at which time I will be an uncle x 2 WOOO! \o/.

Emily, my niece is a little cutey and very entertaining and chatty, despite not remembering me due to still being so very young she was talking my ear off about anything and everything.
It was with great difficulty that I tried to keep up with her nebulous conversations which incoporated a great deal of words I couldn't understand but for a todler of a year and a half she has a remarkable grasp of the english language and can generally get her point across in a very cute fassion.

I managed to snap a shot of her when she stole dads "Dudes", which is what she calls his sunglasses, likely because of my sister calling him dude whenever he wears them, some in joke there for sure.
I am sure everyone is going to enjoy this :D.

Blackle

Hey there sports fans.

I know for a fact that Mel is a massive supporter of many good causes for saving our natural environment through many forms including the saving of electricity so as to reduce our greenhouse emissions, extend out our natural fossil fuel resources and such so I would like to take this opportunity to introduce those readers of this blog whom do not already know about Google's new search engine, "Blackle".

For those worried about energy consumption and all its downsides ... When your screen is white, whether it be an empty word page, or the Google page, your computer consumes 74 watts, and when its black it consumes only 59 watts.
Mark Ontkush wrote an article about the energy saving that would be achieved if Google had a black screen, taking in account the huge number of page views, according to his calculations, 750 mega watts/hour per year would be saved.

In a response to this article Google created a black version of its search engine, called Blackle, with the exact same functions as the white version, but with a lower energy consumption, check it out.

http://www.blackle.com

I am now personally using the new Blackle engine and will do so into the future since I spend a great deal of time on this energy hungry beast every single day.
Be friendly to the planet that supports your life and the lives of your children and in turn perhaps even lower your electricity bill some as a reward for your dedication.

Cheers
Xy

Testing testing 1,2,3

All right, I have been keeping myself entertained with a few stand out from the crowd vids i've seen recently and thought it would be good to serve a dual purpose in testing out embedding code and entertaining you the reader by sharing a very cool one here.

Picture yourselves and co-workers for those of you whom read this blog while at work in a similar situation and have a little giggle.
It's relatively work safe and would be better with sound if at all possible, Enjoy.

No more late nights

After letting my weight balloon out and my self esteem deflate, after constantly feeling like somebody twice my age, I decided late last week to join a gym near work, and for 3 mornings now I have been getting up at 5:30am so that I can get to the gym before work and leave enough time to get ready in the morning and still make it to work on time.

So far I am really enjoying it, and I hope the motivation stays with me. I've been leaving the workout feeling really refreshed and haven't been getting tired until bedtime. It's a strange feeling though to leave the house while it's still dark and to see the city in the morning before other people have woken up. It's very surreal. The staff are very friendly which can also seem a little too much first thing in the morning. I'm not a morning person so when someone is overly bubbly or chatty I don't really respond well, hehe. The early mornings also mean that I can no longer stay up until midnight playing Lord Of The Rings Online so naturally, I am having withdrawls.

I am also, ofcourse, trying to watch what I eat. So then it's typical that today I have a major craving for some Fruchocs. Bah.

Anyway aside from that we had my sister's birthday on the weekend so went to their place for lunch on Sunday where I proceeded to hold Susanna for as many hours as possible. I swear she's grown in the week since I saw her last. Other than that it has just been work as usual, nothing exciting at all really.

And now, a funny quote I overheard in the office:
"If you were a piece of work I was halfway through working on, where would you hide?"

A beginning and an end

Truth is I've been in no mood to write. Those that know me will know why, those who are passing by here will have no idea. In time no doubt I'll write about recent events, but things are just too raw at the moment to do so.

However, there is some good news, and that is that on 2 July 2007, my niece entered this world. I am ofcourse biased, but I think she's beautiful. See for yourself. (Thanks for the piccies, Michelle).