Paradoxically Speaking

Good Morning

2008-08-20T08:20:00.002+10:00

Good morning indeed but for no particular reason. Life goes on, ride the storm (Roachford). I have a new job for 1 year now. It has taken a year to get to the point where it rules my days, nights and weekends. Today I start operation cold turkey. I will be 100% about the job from 9-5 5 days a week. I will forget the job at all other times. Fingers crossed.
Nearly 2 years between posts. Nice effort :-)

Nothing Much

2006-10-30T03:06:00.000+10:00

Weeks blur into months. It feels like a long time and no time since my last post. I have been cruising at work. Due mainly to lack of leadership and motivation along with rewards for cost savings in the form of budget cuts. Now that I think about it my personal life seems to have followed the same pattern. Days are spent doing nothing because that doesn't incur cost. Thinking is free though. I have probably spent too much time in recent months indulging my imagination. Pondering science and technology mostly.

I have spent more time working with linux and have made some good progress. I have completed installation of a home server machine running ubuntu. It is my home network gateway/firewall/dhcp/dns/proxy server and also hosts some web pages. I went domain hunting and settled on exfinium.com. It seemed short, memorable and representative of the think-outside-the-square type of web site I envision running someday soon.

Latin:
ex - out of, from
finium - limit, boundary

Do as I say, not as I do

2006-05-03T09:47:00.000+10:00

I have a really hard time doing as I'm told. Always have. I'm not the openly rebellious type. I'll take orders just fine. Following orders is more of a hit and miss thing for me. I shudder to think what would become of me if I were to be drafted to an armed force or something.

This disobedient streak extends beyond just authority figures though. I have realized that I seldom do what I want myself to do. Is that weird or what? I have managed to live with this shortcoming in a variety of ways. I don't plan ahead because I usually don't follow my own plans. If I must make plans I set aside an entire day to do the one thing even if that one thing will only take half an hour. Even then I may forget completely or just stubbornly refuse to do what I had planned.

hmm... It just occurred to me that it could be related to my memory. Often I just forget to do what I was told. Other times I just forget why I agreed or decided to do this thing. I have already forgotten why I started this blog entry but it looks like it is nearly done so I guess I'll finish it.

These days I am not exactly surrounded by authority figures. In fact my life is conspicuously absent of them. I think I may have subconsciously planned it that way to avoid inevitably disappointing them. The one authority in my life I do continue to disappoint regularly though is myself.

End While

2006-05-02T09:00:00.000+10:00

Two weeks holiday has come and gone. I am on the train heading back to the office. It took a while but I did manage to wind down and enjoy the time with my family. Mel, my eldest sister is visiting on holiday from her home and work in Scotland and stayed with us for the last five days. That has been good too.

I have been eager to add to my blog for a while now. I think the words are coming back. I have done more thinking on the why blog question and still don't have a conclusive answer, I would like to think that the things I do all have a greater purpose but I often feel that very few, of my pastimes offer much in the way of contribution to the world. I will continue to make entries in my blog as the urge strikes me but I think the original target I set for myself of three a week was a little artificial. It even added to my perceived workload a little I think. I see some people making multiple entries a day, people who I know also have demanding careers. Some have value in every word, some have painful play-by-plays of life's every mundane moment. I guess my rule for my own blog will be: I will post for my own enjoyment and will not feel pressure from any audience, imagined or real.

Episode 1

2006-04-12T00:14:00.000+10:00

I haven't blogged for a while. Mainly because I just don't have any words. None. I have made it through the last couple of weeks with an assortment of grunts, clicks and whistles. There is also the stream of cursing and out loud gibberish. You could say I have had a week long tourette episode, an episode of somethin anyway. I wish I could explain but, like I said, no words.

It's been nearly a week.

2006-04-04T21:39:00.000+10:00

I've had blogger's block.

Not that nothing has been happening. Quite the opposite. A paradox, you could say. The more you live life the less you think about life.

I spent another few days in Sydney over the weekend. After a Friday onsite I headed for the hotel I had booked online. I had been standing in line at the check-in counter for about twenty minutes, thinking the whole time, how long does it take these people to check in to a bloody room!? It won't even take me two minutes. I got to the counter and they had no booking.
"This is the Marriott Sydney isn't it?"
"Yes. One of them"
"Hmm. Perhaps you could check the others for a booking and transfer it here?"
No such luck. Found the booking at another but no room at this one. I spent more time at the counter than anyone before me and didn't even check in.

While wandering the streets with another non-local guy looking for a place to have a beer or three I came across a busker and remembered that I had not played guitar for more than a week. The callous on my fingertips was already starting to peel away from lack of use. I stood and ogled the guitar. I think the busker took pity on me because she offered to let me play. Fantastic. I belted out a truly flaccid rendition of know better and felt much better. (It's difficult to keep a firm melody after a few drinks...) Needless to say the busker was none the richer for my effort. Bummer. By the way if you have a thing for jazz/folk or uncommon melodies you should really checkout www.catherineobrien.com. She played a couple of her own tunes and I was impressed. I really didn't expect a busker to have a website but there you go.

Thank you Cath. You made my Sydney trip memorable, in a good way.

Technobabble

2006-03-30T22:04:00.000+10:00

I have been swearing at my computer a lot today. Well not so much at my computer as at the various people and situations represented on screen. I have always carried on a healthy level(??) of conversation with my PC. I have never been coy about letting it know the extent of my anger when it is outright misbehaving though I have never actually damaged it, that would be wrong. I tell a lie. I have damaged several of my PCs over the years but usually not in anger.

I guess everyone at the office is used to me or something because noone seems to notice me alternating between babbling at and cursing my workstation but I worked from home today and Robyn was regularly checking to see if I had perhaps stubbed my toe or lost the family fortune in a game of bingo.

I'm fine. It's these ####ing ####heads from ###kerville. They interrupt a perfectly good nap just to make unreasonable damands for assistance with messups that are not my fault nor my responsibility. ahem

Stepping Out of the Box

2006-03-28T11:17:00.000+10:00

It just occured to me that I haven't posted anything particularly geeky. When I kicked off this blog I assumed that it would be mostly technology related stuff since that's what I deal with for most of my waking hours. All I can say is I guess there have been other things on my mind recently. I tend to go through cycles of interest in technology both at a hobby and work level and right now I am on a down cycle. I haven't even done any basic reading on the Intel Core architecture, EFI or the AMD socket S. I'm not even sure it's called Socket S. I also really need to dig into MCP study. My lack of experience with administering managed windows PCs is starting to hold me back at work with some of the rollout issues I am called in on. I don't think I am in a hurry to push myself back into the thick of it. It's more important that I take advantage of this break to build other parts of my life that have been neglected of late.
I have decided to take Robyn on a date very soon, this Friday I think. We have only had a handful of night's out alone over the last couple of years, partly because I am a home body at heart. Getting out of the house is an effort for me but nearly always worth it once I get off my arse and do it. I still haven't decided what to do yet. Maybe a walk through the botanical gardens or the new Roma St gardens. Some drinks at one of the quieter beer gardens. Maybe I'll surprise her with a trip to a karaoke spot. She loves singing in front of strangers and is pretty good at it too.
In general I have decided to get out of my comfort zone more and put a lot more effort into building the relationships that I have let slide recently, particularly with my family. For me this is more of a challenge than you would think but I think it is one of those things that will be easier once I have taken the first steps.

Three Wishes

2006-03-25T23:00:00.000+10:00

What do you really want? Really really?
Do you know why you do the things you do every day? Is what you do taking you closer to what you want? Are you on a path to achievement? Discovery? Reinvention? Liberty? Adventure? I find it hard to think about what I want without feeling selfish. I was raised to believe that those who truly serve others will want for nothing, that those who feed others before themselves will never be hungry. I am learning though, that to be part of such a utopian system I must be willing to allow others to serve me and be able to explain what I want to those who wish to serve me.

[enter magical genie, able to change anything in the universe to suit your wish]
1. I want to be able to understand and use all the subtleties of human communication expertly so I can better understand what I can do to make a positive difference in the lives of the people I care about.
2. I want to be able to take a prescient peek at the final outcome of some of life's heavier decisions. Call it 20/20 foresight. I'm sure it would be much more valuable than the hindsight version.
3. World peace.

Not Seeing Sydney

2006-03-23T09:37:00.000+10:00

I have flown to Sydney for a customer situation. I had visions of a room with harbour views and a nice evening stroll through darling park. So far the tour has been a little more like work. Actually yeah it's just plain work. Instead of darling park I strolled to 7eleven. Instead of harbour views I have "city views" which is really just a view of the boring office building across the road.

Well I'm off to deliver some training on my way to the airport. Heh, yeah I found a way to travel for training, just get tangled up in a presale issue and sales will fly you there. It's a little sneaky but very effective. ;-)

Don't Hire Me

2006-03-21T19:01:00.000+10:00

I will start by forgetting to arrive for the interview. Three days later I will call to "confirm" the interview date/time/address/company. I will arrive at the rescheduled interview with the interview details post-it still stapled to my forearm. I will ask for your name three times and the next day when I drop in the resumé I meant to bring I will ask for "the guy that did the interviews".

I have always figured I was just too lazy to bother remembering most stuff but I have been thinking recently that maybe I am just built a little differently. Now I really don't like the idea of self diagnosis or of labeling people. ...but here I go.

I have done some extended research over the last 0.01 days and have a couple of likely possibilities. Amnesia was the obvious first choice, source amnesia in particular and maybe memory distrust syndrome. I find it trivial to remember facts, numbers and solid concepts but context and human details are lost to me very rapidly, often in seconds. I figure that my frequent déjà vu experiences might be related but I don't know how that helps. I have thought before that I may be a little on the autistic spectral side on account of the difficulty I have with the subtleties of personal communication with most people and the unnatural talent I have for "guessing" the right answers to some kinds of puzzles. I haven't really found anything that matches my strange set of strengths and weaknesses. That's ok with me though I guess. I prefer to think that everyone is unique and dropping them into neat categories is, at best, limiting their potential.

The other morning I saw someone that I know in the lobby of the building where I work. All I had was a flicker of recognition. I thought maybe he just looked like someone else that I know. Maybe he was a new member of my team that I had only seen from a distance? We shared a lift and he started chatting to me. It wasn't long before I had to admit that I had no idea where I knew him from. It turns out that he has just started a job with another team in my building. He had to explain to me that six years ago we worked together for six months. That doesn't sound so bad right? I mean I've worked with a lot of people since then. Easy enough to misplace one team member right? Well it wasn't so much a team as a partnership. He was my right hand man in a workshop staffed by only two people, him and me. ...for six months. Aye aye aye. I asked for his name twice but right now I haven't a clue what it is.

On the plus side having a partially 7 second memory has been a bonus in solving complex problems. In the space of ten minutes of working on a problem I will have thought about the problem from a dozen different angles. It's kind of like forgetting my train of thought and starting over but always from a different perspective. Assumptions are tested multiple times and facts are restated. It seems to make me a worthwhile addition to brainstorming groups too.

As much as I love talking about myself I think I should observe the clarity paradox at this point.

Obligitary Blah Post

2006-03-20T20:23:00.000+10:00

I have spent way too much time writing my next blog entry. It's not anything special yet. Two short paragraphs in fact. It doesn't help that I am onto my fourth SG Atlantis episode of the evening.

blah blah blah

School Again

2006-03-16T22:29:00.000+10:00

This morning I was woken by two railway security guards. I had missed my train stop and the train had arrived at the end of the line. That's the first time I have ever missed my stop on the way to work! The nap was worth the embarrassment though. I think it saved me from falling asleep in class again today.

Today was another all day tech class. Teaching was a little tricky because the class was made up of techs with significantly different experience and roles from each other. I guess the diversity helped a bit in some ways though. At least I had a full complement of demo gear for them to strip and rebuild. To do tomorrow: put the demo machines back together properly.

As always, I finished the day with a sore throat. I am normally not much of a chatterbox so when I spend a whole eight hours straight yammerin to a class it really wears on my tonsils. It dehydrates me a lot too.
It's only temporary.

Future Blog: d.i.y.d.actics

If I Were A Rich Man

2006-03-14T21:07:00.000+10:00

Have a look-see and tell me if you don't discover a new interest in urban design and start plotting to build your own alternative metropolis to rule as you see fit, forcing the unthinking population to use world friendly technologies and further expand the borders of your benevolent empire.

... ahem

I first discovered this site at least five years ago and have spent waaay too many hours daydreaming about how I would build my carfree city.

If I was obscenely rich, I mean dictator of an oil producing country rich, building one of these would be a rating one on my to-do list.

In Other News: Look Mum, I can use anchor tags!

Jeepers Peepers.

2006-03-12T18:49:00.000+10:00

Something reminded me of this story recently and I figured it might make an interesting read. Feel free to render your own moral from this story if you see one.

Our new manager had only been with us for a couple of weeks. I didn't know the man very well but enough to know he already had me pegged as a sluggard and a troublemaker. Smart man. Anyway, it was after a long Thursday at work as I headed up the hill towards central station. My brain was now securely in an S2 low power state as I prepared for the hour long trip home. While in this state my wandering eyes innocently fell upon a healthy pair of medium sized breasts coming down the hill towards me. They were fully covered and not dressed to attract attention to themselves but my eyes chose to rest there for a while anyway.

After a second or so I realized that I might have spent a little too much time looking and was probably now well into staring territory. Without another thought I quickly averted my gaze, turning my head, looking up and away into the distance and trying to seem distracted by something else. The moment I did that I realized that anyone who had been observing my stare would now be quite sure that I am a breast ogling pervert. True as that may be I was really hoping that the owner of the breasts had not seen the stare or the gaze tearing maneuver.

Just a moment after what I thought had been a successful escape from embarrassment I heard someone call my name from the direction I had been looking in moments earlier... Instant panic. The silent internal kind. I turned with a half ready smile to greet the owner of the unfamiliar voice. I shot a quick glance back to the empty space I had just been staring at to help strengthen my admittedly weak alibi. "Oh hello." There might have been more words but they were obscured by my sudden jump through all seven levels of panic and the sound of my intestines collapsing into a singularity of terror. My new manager seemed to be in a good mood and continued down the street hand in hand with the owner of the breasts.

Ever since that day I have always left a few extra lights on upstairs when I am in public. I keep much tighter control of my gaze and carefully monitor for inappropriate stare times. To this day I don't know if anyone at all read my behaviour that night. I did end up building a good working relationship with this manager. At a work dinner some weeks later I was formally introduced to mrs. manager. I think I was polite and cheerful but she probably saw too much of the underside of my chin on account of my effort to make it clear that I am not a common tit starer.

Why Blog?

2006-03-11T21:13:00.000+10:00

It's been two days since my last entry and plenty has happened that I could write about. Nothing that I would actually enjoy reading again later though. I have to wonder if I'm making this post purely to convince myself that I can keep a pace of at least one interesting entry every two days. This has brought me around to thinking about the purpose of this blog. It is about entertaining myself and expressing myself. It's about supplementing my memory, which is really not very good. It's about understanding more about myself by putting specific thought and word into my musings. All of these things can be done offline though so the question remains, why blog?

I thought of making this a survey for my readers but really the question is why do I blog? Both of my readers are welcome to explain their reasons and while I might pinch some of their ideas I can't really expect them to answer for me. Here's what I have for now anyway.

I blog to facilitate communication with my friends both local and far flung.
I blog to present what talent I have in the hope that anyone who reads it may be entertained, informed, inspired or otherwise moved.

Debut Single

2006-03-09T22:42:00.000+10:00

I have been practicing guitar and piano a little more recently and my fingertips are starting to wear in again. I even made some progress on completing a song I started on over a year ago. To top it off, today I found a backup of some recordings I thought I had lost and I thought I would share my favourite here. I guess you could call it a debut single because it is a public release of sorts.
I recorded it in my bedroom with the integrated microphone of my ThinkPad so studio quality, it ain't. You can even hear the constant buzz of the CPU fan. Any hi-fi or fine music lover with golden ears should avoid listening to this track. It really is quite raw.
Know Better

Sharp Tongue - Dull Head

2006-03-08T22:44:00.000+10:00

better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt - Abe Lincoln

I used to live by this proverb. Sometime during my childhood I discovered that there is safety in silence and grew up to be very good at not opening my mouth. Very recently I have come to see some value in opening your mouth when you could otherwise keep it shut. By speaking my mind and being prepared for the consequences I have lived experiences that would otherwise have been just an imagination. This is really a significant change for me and it comes with a steep learning curve.
All of that to say this...
Oh crap! What have I gotten myself into?
I have spoken my mind about a topic that I deal with daily and is central to my job. In the process I have managed to piss some people off. One of whom is a mid level manager in my company and another is a manager in a client company. I am pretty sure that what I said needed to be said but perhaps I could have said it differently. Perhaps it needed to be said by someone else? Regardless, I can't rewind my tongue so I will stand by what I said and clarify it where needed. I just have to ride this out and learn as much as I can from the whole show.

Oyster What?

2006-03-07T15:23:00.000+10:00

Any noise annoys an oyster.
But a noisy noise annoys an oyster more.

UPDATE: You may have to say the above out loud to fully appreciate it. For best effect say it several times loudly near as many strangers as possible. It is especially good value while on public transport of some kind, tube, subway or what-have-you.

Food, Travel, Friendship and Introspection

2006-03-07T09:00:00.000+10:00

Monday night dinner was potato mash and bacon:
"This tastes tangy. Did you put some vinegar in?"
"No but I did make it on Friday."
Yeah. That explains it. Also explains the moderate indigestion that lasted all night. My gut still ain't right. Bless her soul.

I will not be traveling at all this month to deliver training. Someone up my management chain is trying to meet some stupid cost target or something. Meanwhile a mate in sales called to let me know he will fly in from Sydney tomorrow to wipe a client's nose and we should get a beer after work

I may have hurt a friendship yesterday. I overstepped a line that a blind man could have seen. This friend is very gracious and I'm sure they won't make a big deal of it. All I can do is continue to be my true, sometimes clumsy, self. I should also slap myself whenever I catch myself trying too hard.
Future Blog: Trying Too Hard

Ask me one day about social filter theory. It's keeping me entertained thinking about examples of filters in action. I'm still working on an easy way to explain it though. I'm new to blogger but I haven't seen a way to post a long article outside the normal flow of entries. I suppose I could use my ISPs web space. hmmm....
Future Blog: The GB&U of Filters

School of Crock

2006-03-04T19:29:00.000+10:00

Is it ever ok to sleep during a class?
...
What if you're the teacher?

I stayed up a tad too late last night chatting to a recently met but instantly close friend. Our chats are like a good book you can't put down. Anyway I definitely yawned way too much while teaching an all day technical class today. Yes, on a Saturday. Don't ask. I may have nodded off once or twice while sitting through a few short video presentations between lectures. I don't know if it is better or worse that I knew almost everyone there to varying degrees.

Apart from 80% the demo equipment not arriving in time it could still be considered a successful training day I think.

Now I have a note from one of my managers demanding written justification for the expense of traveling to Sydney and Melbourne to train the repair centre and the field teams. "Can't you just send them some disks?" Aye aye aye. The thing is I don't really care if they get trained, or how much. It is my job as head geek to deliver technical training when it is needed, not to fight for permission to deliver it.

I know technical people from pre-sales who travel weekly and beg for a break from traveling. Post-sales support is a bums game.

Teaching is the easy part of being a teacher.

It Doesn't Make Sense

2006-03-02T23:39:00.000+10:00

Before you start thinking I have woman issues please note that my earlier post about the female mind was a passing comment about common perception. But since it was the only post so far that has had feedback I have put a little more thought into the topic.
Today at work I listened to my cubicle neighbour have several heated phone discussions with her boyfriend and at one point his mother. By "listened" I mean "tried to not listen". When I realized it was going to drag on for a while I put on some headphones and played the first album I could find on my harddrive. She explained that he was an unreasonable and abusive person and had made unkind remarks about her mother. Had she said the same about his mother she is sure he would have hit her.
After taking the headphones off sometime later she let me know that he had apologized for his remarks and everything was ok now. I was a little concerned for her but I know her enough to know she can look after herself.
It got me thinking though. Why do some women make apologies for their abusive and unworthy partners while others constantly complain about their relatively healthy relationships? Obviously it is not a black and white issue but sometimes it seems to me that women are more likely to deride an honorable man and vindicate a bastard.

Myself in Portrait ...ish

2006-02-28T22:26:00.000+10:00

I cannot deny that Jam is really quite handy with a camera phone. This is the best pic of me ever. Drinks outside Planet Hollywood in KL was a fun night.
Poch sent Shane and I some pics of Friday's "boys night out" at Soda and I hear the video montage will be online soon. That can wait for another post.

Corollary in Passing

2006-02-28T22:11:00.000+10:00

There is not enough matter in the universe to store enough information to completely explain the workings of the female mind.

The Clarity Paradox

2006-02-28T09:35:00.000+10:00

There is not enough matter in the universe to store enough information to completely explain the workings of a single atom.

I read an article that explained this recently but I can't remember where. I think it was a discussion about information theory, all a little bit lofty for my uneducated head. My understanding of it however is that absolute clarity is impossible given the finite nature of the universe.

Explaining
Take Newton's laws and the laws of thermodynamics for example, long held as an elegant, concise yet complete explanation of matter and energy. Einstein's work on relativity clarified some apparent deviations from these laws at cosmic scale. Today, work continues on further clarifying thermodynamics and relativity, notably at subatomic scale. It seems that each advance in our understanding of the universe requires an exponential step in the information required to explain it.

The benefits of using more words to explain something diminish increasingly quickly.

Understanding
Most competent high school graduates have an adequate understanding of Newton's laws. Some university graduates have a handle on the theory of relativity but not as many as you would think. The greatest minds in the field have trouble making sense of matter and energy at the subatomic scale.

The more information that is applied to clarifying a concept the more difficult it is to understand.

It seems that clarity of understanding favours incomplete definitions over exhaustive explanations. Of course this is no revelation to many people as demonstrated by common idioms like K.I.S.S. and less-is-more.

OMG! Too Much work!

2006-02-27T17:20:00.000+10:00

I hate it and I love it. I hate having so much work that I have to let someone down. I love the feeling that my skills are needed and appreciated.

I have too many bosses.
pro. I can keep asking different managers for something until I get the answer I want.
con. Work comes from every angle and everyone wants something different.

I have too many hats.
con. There is always something that should have been done yesterday.
pro. There are plenty of opportunities shuffle the work around and highlight my positive achievements.

Today had some of everything above.

In the end it is the people I care about that make everything else worthwhile.

The Opposite of Disappointing

2006-02-26T14:29:00.000+10:00

I am now back in Brisbane after a "working" week in sunny/rainy Kuala Lumpur. The last week has been both disappointing and whatever the opposite of disappointing is. I anticipated a week of learning and extending my product knowledge with enough time left over to stay in step with my regular work via email. The reality was close to opposite of what I expected. I am struggling to think of anything I gained work-wise. The training was really quite awful and badly organized. With my after hours time I kicked off the week by paying a ridiculous amount for broadband at the hotel and then doing the email > research > email thing. I didn't get to use this golden connection for the rest of the week though because I was either too sick or too eager to get out of the hotel and do something with friends. It was the time spent with friends that made last week the most enjoyable time I have ever spent abroad.