Friday, February 28, 2003

It's bright and early on Saturday morning and it's been a bit of a hectic week, so it's good to get a couple of days off for a breather. Work has actually been really interesting recently, we have got some interesting new products coming up and we've just been working on and released our new webservices that allow you to send a fax, sms, email or voice message directly from your web site. We are also bringing out a new service called click2talk, you will basically be able to post a link in your e-mail or on your web site, and if someone clicks it, our system will phone two nominated telephone numbers and then bridge them so that they can talk to each other. Clever Eh!

MrT 2/28/2003 10:28:00 pm [+] : Feedback!

Had a nice Birthday yesterday, cards from everyone. Vic bought me some new strings for my guitar ( I think she is trying to tell me something!) and the eighties edition of trivial pursuit. Although it is the Australian version, so we may struggle with some of the Australian questions - who are Cold Chisel! It would be a disaster if we got on the Australian version of Who wants to be a Millionaire. The first question would be what state is Perth in and we'd have to phone a friend.

Went to Oh Calcutta! last night for an indian, rather spicy but really good.

We found out that we won the big T contract at work yesterday, so hopefully there will be meat for all for supper.



MrT 2/26/2003 10:37:00 pm [+] : Feedback!

Monday morning and all is well. Had my appraisal last Friday which went pretty well. To be honest it's a relief to get them all out of the way ( although i still have some to write up).

We're sort of playing the waiting game now, even though there is definately around four weeks to go ( according to the docter ). Vic had a go at me for always being on the computer, and so I had a PC-free weekend and caught up on my reading instead. I finished the book about the history of London, inspired by the Monopoly board; the book was called Do Not Pass Go and was written by a chap called Tim Moore. Pretty good. I have now started "Parrots in a Pepper Tree" written by Chris Stewart, who used to be in Genesis. IT's the second book describing is new life in Andulica, a small backwater in central Spain. All very relaxing and Vic was right in that it made a change from sitting at a computer all day.

We went to the Pictures on Saturday to see Gangs of New York, but this was full and so we went to Just Married instead. I wonder how much money is made my the film companies from people who are desperate to see a film, but their first choice is sold out? Anyway it turned out to be quite good for a laugh, so I'm not complaining.

Am getting a bit frustrated at the lack of progress on my project, just not really possible to progress whilst doing a full time job, so have decided to put on the back burner for a while.


MrT 2/24/2003 01:47:00 am [+] : Feedback!

Yesterday, I flew down to Melbourne to do Symon's review. Flew on Virgin Blue which now operates most of the internal flights in Australia since the demise of Ansett. Thankfully the planes are a lot better than the trains. Modern aircrast, friendly hostesses and a slightly quirky sense of humour ( is this what you need when you're placing your life in their hands? ). The menu's are named "A La Cart" and refer to midflight munchies, liquid amber and vino and bubbly.

The flight between Sydney and Melbourne is only an hour and so you have barely taken off before you are landing again, but they still managed to cram in a round of beers and the mandatory selling of perfume and aftershave. I think you would have to be a bit of a shopaholic to feel like you needed to buy aftershave on a flight that only lasts half an hour or so.

Flying back from Melbourne today and it's a much clearer day and have a great view out of the window. All in all a succesfull trip - it has done me really good to get out of the office and break the usual routine. Melbourne had a very different character to Sydney, wide boulevards, less people and traffic, a bit more European, although of course most of the buildings are still very moderen. A few noticeable degrees cooler as well.

The Melbourne office was relaxed and located on the top floor of high building and so had fantastic views over the city. It would be interesting to spend some more time here, but all in all I think I would still take Sydney as a place to live.

Interestingly, Google have bought Blogger and so who knows what will happen to it. The blog of the founder of the company Pyra ( who run this site ) is quite interesting.



MrT 2/18/2003 10:03:00 am [+] : Feedback!

Made our way through the anti-war protestors to go shopping for Baby provisions and successfully acquired a pushchair, nappy disposal unit and bottle cleaner - Hurray. Check out the movie showing the pushchair's first test drive!


MrT 2/16/2003 07:15:00 am [+] : Feedback!

Went shopping for pushchairs this morning and we think we have narrowed the shortlist to two and it seems likely that we will carry on to make a purchase tommorrow. For some reason we have been given free films on our cable and so have had a movie marathon so far this weeked. We finally ended up watching The Animal which was unusually funny. It just goes to show that you never know.

Have completed all of my reviews this week, which was mentally tiring as I had a couple of negative ones to do as well as positive ones. I also found out that one of the best people in the team is planing to resign and move to France for 12 months. His plan is to contract and work no more than three days a week, whilst earning the equivalent of five day's pay. An arrangement that is very difficult to argue against. I did point out that France is more than likely to be full of French people - but that was not sufficient to put him off.

Have cleverly downloaded many articles from the Internet about all sorts of topics, Australia, Travel, Careers, Fatherhood, Parenting, Music, History etc, compressed the text, stripped out all of the spacing then took it to a printshop in town to print and bind for me. They charged $15 dollars and I have about three months of reading material that I know I will find interesting and relevant. I just got sick of buying magazines that were eighty percent adverts.

MrT 2/15/2003 07:54:00 am [+] : Feedback!

O come on now. I can just about take being beaten at Cricket - but football!! You have no idea how much stick I took at work yesterday.

MrT 2/13/2003 10:15:00 pm [+] : Feedback!

Busy day at work today, so arrived back and got a full roasted chicken from the Dish and the Spoon at the top of the road, made hot chicken sandwiches with plently of salt and washed down with a Carlton Cold. Going to watch a movie on the Mac and chill.

Sven has named his squad to play Australia on Thursday morning, looks pretty much near full strength, looking forward to giving them a good pasting, although not quite the same satisfaction as beating them in the circket or the rugby.

Vic has been really uncomfortable since the weekend, perhaps this is the final growth spurt. Wish I could do something to help.



MrT 2/11/2003 09:08:00 am [+] : Feedback!

When Vicky gets a taste for a home cooked dish, you certainly know about it. Sometime last November, we had Chicken Snitzels with salad and cheese in Turkish bread for an uninterrupted five nights. Impressive, but the record could be in danger with our current favourite, brocolli cheese topped with nachos and salsa then browned under the grill.

Spoke to James on the telephone last night. He seems in relatively good spirits, and seems up for a visit as soon as they let him back into the country.

The word is spreading and now brother Andrew has a blogspot at [+] : Feedback!

Met up with Shane and his six month old daughter, Bianca at lunchtime. What a cutey, I managed to hold her at the Dish and Spoon for over half an hour, without her breaking down in tears, which is a good sign.

In the evening, we went to the Gold Sheaf at Double Bay last night and had v. tasty steak and a sort of risotto that had been fried in the steak juices. Very nice. We went to go and see Chicago at one of the older Odean style cinemas next door. The film was really good and well worth seeing if you get the change. When we got back we had messages from both Helen and James.

Just done my tax return and if the calculation is correct I'm due 2,500! because I was paying full tax for the year before I left, but in fact only worked nine months of the twelve months. I hope this is right, as it would certainly come in handy.


MrT 2/09/2003 04:30:00 am [+] : Feedback!

Went to Grant's leaving do at XO tonight. XO is a nice Thai ran by the same chef as Rockpool, which is probably the most famous venue in Sydney. We had mussels, duck and peppered beef and it was very tasty. I noticed that the whole place was filled with groups for leaving do's etc. Can't wait to get on with my idea now. Sat next to Dominic, who is now become a surf dude, getting up at 6am each day to go surfing on Manly beach, before coming in to work.

Heard a bit more about Caroline's travels. Caroline worked at Xpedite at York, before coming out to Australia about five years ago just after Mark ( who now works for Xpedite in Japan). In March, she plans to have nine months leave and go and travel round Asia, Europe and South America. All sounds quite exciting although its sod's law that we will lose contact with Rob and Caroline and Mark and Aleta after starting to get to the know them well.



MrT 2/06/2003 12:50:00 pm [+] : Feedback!

Sat out in the garden tonight on a nice evening after fairly non-productive day at work. Long meetings, appraisals etc. Yesterday lunchtime, we went to David Jones to check out pushchairs and strollers. We've got our eye on one which will do nicely. Third series of league of gentlemen starts here on Friday, so looking forward to that, otherwise pretty quiet here. I'm currently reading quite a good book about a bloke who is discovering London's history by visiting each street ( and station ) on the monopoly board - can't quite remember the name though.

MrT 2/04/2003 09:53:00 am [+] : Feedback!

A funny day today, in the end we decided to go to the cinema to see "One Hour Foto". Not bad - but not exactly "entertaining". Anyway I'm just glad we have a digital camera. We went to the first parenting class last night. I thought they would tell us about changing nappies, bathing the baby for the first time, burping, farting, pumping and all of the other grisly details. Instead it was a lot of warm touchy feely stuff about changes in lifestyle, creating a harmonious household etc. etc. We agreed that we will be OK on that score as our house is already very harmonious - Vic tells me what to do - and I do it!

I'm still building mock-up pages for the big idea, check out the Dinner Page,the Registration Page and the Create Event page. It's still a bit rough, perhaps Pete could help me out with the design, and Jane could open the UK subsideriary. Because I will have everyone's e-mail address, I thought I could automatically send a survey to the guests after the dinner and request their feedback on the meal, ambience, service etc. I could collate this and send to the venue every month or quarter as part of the value-added service.

Geoff and Anne have arrived safely back home and are coming to terms with the snow. Geoff went straight out and applied for broadband after I showed him the list of music available on my Streamload account. But apparantly it's not yet available in Crook - you need at least 350 people in the area, before BT will install it.

Going to cook some nachos now and take them upstairs to watch a film on the Mac which is now comfortably installed in the bedroom as this is most comfy position for the Vicster.



MrT 2/01/2003 08:34:00 am [+] : Feedback!