NYE Beach tomorrow?

I'm prolly headed to Pyrmont at night for fireworks seeing as nothing is locked in.

Thank you James for a most excellent Gourmet Lunch!

hopefully you guys are having fun at Benny's house.

If I don't see you guys before new years, then Happy New Year!

It's a celebration bitches!

Thanks for hosting Yi.

Stick it to the Strata man.

Benny, do you have my lonely planet? (Why is everything at Benny's house?)

Does anyone have my apple DVI to S-Video converter with the yellow video cable?

Benny, can you bring the communal poker set?

Hi all,

Today 8pm at my place in Waterloo.

Hash, can you bring your poker set?

Spain, Wii? PS3?

Scott, gourmet beer?

Eric, mahjong?

I'll provide soft drinks, wine, spirits and snacks.

See you all later today!

I really want the RS4 (3 youtube parts) to win. I was surprised that it wasn't Clarkson who brought it to the plate.

The BMW is too bourgeois, James.

Event: Lunch
Location: 16 Boulton St.
Time: 2PM Saturday 29th.

Call/SMS me if you're coming.

Thanks all for coming... and don't worry about the mess, I've already taken care of it.

Btw...

WTS: One Apple USB connector , and one Benny's phone. PST me with your offer.

Thanks for having us KJ. Sorry about the sand mess.

Thanks for cooking, SSgt.

Well in all fairness, why would you commence programming software dependent on legislation that has not even passed yet? Its just common business sense to wait.

As my boss says, welcome to Australia, land of the lazy :p

lol Eric, love your rants. The bugs are deliberate btw, more to laugh at you than for the ridic financial gains accrued from continual updating and new releases

Hash, yeah, that's why us accountants and finance people pay you hundreds of thousands to give us a piece of shit that doesn't fucking work probably. So in the end, we have call you comp people up to get it fixed, which will take an extra 9 months to fix. And you know why that happened? Because they were too fucking lazy to start writing the damn thing until August after the legislation got passed in July. (Apologies to all the other comp people that didn't dis accountants/finance people who reads this blog.) FYI Hash, I am doing super and investments. Excel is probably one of the most versatile "calculator" available that is used extensively in accouting and finance. I am pretty sure some fund management companies use excel to do SOME financing modeling as well.

I did manage to get the thing to work. After freaking 5 hours of tweaking with Macros and all that shit. Something I sorted out with our IT department. Well, the macros were done by the IT, and i just gave them the skeleton of what I wanna do, and the simple Vlookups and whatnot. The error that I had was because I was trying to make it too complicated. Trying to do drop downs, vlookups, print ranges and all that so the people who will be using it won't have to do a thing. So staying up till 3am last night after getting drunk didn't help. =p.

When I heard brokeback was gonna do the Joker, I thought no way...

But goddamn, when I saw them pix, he looks so fkn freaky o.0

Good job! Definately gonna watch.

Recent Movie Reviews

American Gangster
Easily Ridley's best film in recent years. Marvelous feel. Goodfellas-esque. Scorcese would be proud. 5/5.

Atonement
Definitely has the Focus Pictures 'feel'. Starts off mysterious and promising, slides in the second act and comes back in the finale. The supporting actress completely eclipses Kiera's performance. She needs a re-shoot ala Lauren Bacall in The Big Sleep. Delightful score. 3.5/5

I Am Legend
The trailer depicts a formula zombie movie. With such expectations, it blew my mind. Much more than an American version of 28-days later. Even within the depleted zombie genre, it still finds room for surprises. Will Smith does his thing and comes across with real human dimensions. Sam is charming. Best viewed with friends. 4/5

Into The Wild
Directed by Sean Penn. Marvelous characters. Main lead totally adorable. Best watched with no fore-knowledge of the plot or trailer. Permissible to view the poster a priori. Watch by oneself in introverted state. 5/5

No Country For Old Men
Not as good as the reviews would make it. Funny, but lacking a something. Adorable supporting actress. Main villain vexing. 3.5/5

The Mist
Rubbish. 1/5

11 at my place....

Bad news is that apparently tomorrow == heavy rain and gusty winds..... which means..... (you can fill in the rest). Anyways meet at my place at the designated time. If you're not here by around 11:30am and we do decide to go to the beach it'll be at Curl Curl (best wave-riding beach there is imo)

Anyways call me if you need anything.

0415434379.

See ya tomorrow. (I'm also loaded with munchies right now keke)

Comp people use real programming languages, not tools made for retards, slow kids and accountants =P

... Use Google or bring the problem on Saturday

Hey ppl, anyone who's going to KJ's on Saturday know how to use Nested VLookups in Excel? Perhaps the comp ppl can help? I am trying to create a spreadsheet that can look up certain codes from "Sheet 2" and auto fill in the cells on "Sheet 1". I can do the Nested Ifs with no trouble. But I can't get the Vlookup to work probably.

I finished buying most of the crap for saturday.. so really no point in bringing extras.. (I'm not stopping youse tho)

Also, for those who really want alcohol.... I aint supplying any. (Would be great if people could supply some) Sorry guys.

Anyways see ya Saturday. (Hopefully it'll be sunny in the sat)

OK ... It is confirmed so far that...

People going

Hash
Benny
Spain
Darren
Yi
Chu
Joel
Jono
Alex
Sean
Riley <-- need more confirmation
Night Only:
Scott
Marc (I think) <--- need more details soon please
Charlie (I think) <--need more details soon please
Eric



I can't accept any more people from this point onwards I'm sorry...

Please gimme a buzz if you need details...

0415434379

PS: Don't call me between 6pm-9pm. I won't pick up.

Seeya Saturday.

I think we all know which category you fall into Eric ;)

Interesting read. I wonder which category I fall into? The "doing handbrake turn in Acacia Avenue" thing is over for me. I don't like driving/speeding/doing stupid things on the street anymore. I wanna race on the track these days...lol.

KJ, for this Saturday, I can only come at night. Hopefully around 6ish (maybe earlier). Depends on when shopping is done.

Darren, if you can't get your brother's copy of Transformers, I can bring mine.

I like to drive my what now? Oh, you are referring to a hypothetical Darren..

I watched Hitman last night.. it's not worth seeing, except for a few nude scenes with no plot relevance.. If you must see it, watch it on a Tuesday. There was an asian hitman and a black one as well! I'm pretty sure that the barcode on the back of the black one's head had to be done in white ink..

There was also a token black interpol guy, with a british accent! I could not help but think of that coffee ad with the black guy from schwopshire.. or wherever it is he's from.

Another one:

I'm reminded of the early Eighties' elevation of the word 'turbo' to denote excellence in everything. The Saab Turbo was a cool car, therefore turbos were; and it was a short step from that to turbo vacuum cleaners, turbo sunglasses and turbo disposable razors. -- J May

And at this very moment as Yi is reading this, he is thinking exactly what I thought as I read it: What happened to the awesome Turbo button on the casings of 286/386/486's of the late 80's early 90's???

Weblounge is next.

The problem is that at the moment, petrolheads fall into two distinct groups. There are those who like cars because they are an outward symbol that life is treating them well. We see a lot of this in Cheshire. In the Golden Triangle between Prestbury, Alderley Edge and Wilmslow, they park their Lexi and their Bentleys at the bottom of the drive (so they can be seen from the road) and walk to the house.

Then you have Darren, who likes cars for their ability to do extremely high speeds in extremely inappropriate parts of town. He thinks that by doing a handbrake turn in Acacia Avenue, all the local girls will want to catch some of his venereal diseases.

I know of no one who likes cars solely because of their design, no one who loves cars purely for how they look. This would be fine. This would be cool because it would be like enjoying the clothes you see on a catwalk. -- J Clarkson

john's probably read it already but goddamn, its so true.

from KJ:

KJ's Day of cakage

Date: 22nd Dec 2007 (Saturday)

Time: 11:00 am

What we do: BBQ at my place... (probably in the evening),
Beach time in the daytime if weather holds (it better),
Soccer as well (but I reckon beach > soccer anytime)
Nightly activities also welcome... e.g. Dota.. consoles .... maybe even a movie...

What to bring: yourselves.. swimmies, if ya want alcohol you'll need to supply it yourselves (I quit .... .... .. Temporarily)

What I'm supplying: food... food.... food... drinks... a place to stay... ummm... TEKKEN.... that's about it .... (no good dvds ..)

RSVP: Asap... and i mean ASAP.... (his war3 nick [at] gmail.com)

Someone post this on the blog I'm lazy... (I don't want any uninvited people... so just tell me beforehand and it should be fine [Only cos of the possible food shortage tho I doubt it])

Hope to see ya there...

I retract my former statement and now say that it is awesome weather for beach.

Doesn't look that great today guys. If you still wanna do it, then call me, otherwise I'll be homing.

Southies can drive to a Northie and the northie can drive to the beach?

Lol Marc. So what did you get?

Who's keen for northern beaches at 3pm Saturday?

Marc, Spain, KJ and I are. Benny is interested

27 degrees and Sunny

Light entertainment:

This EQ test is bs...if I followed all the optimum answers which would give me 100% EQ, I would have no bloody friends left lol....

Having respect and acknowledging other people's [potential] feelings is important, but seriously, if a guy got 100% in that test, he'd be what we call a pussy.

I work hard for the money, so hard for the moneeeeehh

I've got to say, I love Sam de Brito's All Men Are Liars blogs (while Sam Brett's Sam and the City blog is next to useless). Such an incredibly articulate writer (for a really Aussie bloke too). I was just reading this article
http://blogs.smh.com.au/lifestyle/allmenareliars/archives/2007/12/greatest_night_of_your_life.html

What really got me cracking up was:
"Around midnight, I turned my attention from a slinky French anthropology student named Alise and watched as a stunning blonde Spanish chick shimmied through the crowd and began a flamenco dance, hips moving like some kind of MIT, perpetual motion machine."

(A perpetual motion machine basically creates/converts more energy than it consumes, thus producing infinite energy. For James - this means it normally violates the first and/or the second laws of thermodynamics.)

Sam de Brito makes my night. (another of his articles that I was reading)

pro...mono

yay for geeks!

Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal had nothing on you Darren XD

Thanks for organising a great night Annie, and I can't believe you guys talked me into doing.. what I did..

And yeah, why don't we make it a weekly thing, Night Of the Disco: Sergeants and above only..

Thanks for an awesome night, Annie. God we haven't done anything like that for ages. Especially Scott's aneurism about Darren...

CTO dancing in da club ftw?? XD

OH MY GOD -- The Mechwarrior license has been reclaimed from Microsoft!!!

Friendly reminder: Dinner tonight 6pm, Bungalow 8. Seeya there

Goddamn, should have split Telstra before it was privatised. Now Australian IT infrastructure is boned. But I guess everyone has 20/20 hindsight

John Howard is not interested in spending money for broadband. The market takes care of itself, didn't you know? I mean, look at Australia's world class broadband system! XD

Just had lunch after reading that article. Its really awesome with that in the back of your mind while you're trying to keep down a bibimbab.

Regarding HD-DVD and MS move to online downloading. I can't see how that that would happen in the short-term. Blu-ray/HD-DVD discs etc are a whopping ~40GB in capacity. How the hell can you download that (assuming the same quality) given Australian broadband conditions?

I can't say much for American/European broadband structures, but look at how much our infrastructure has grown since, say, 2002 when we first started uni.

A spokesman for Twentieth Century Fox was not available for comment but the company has responded to previous lawsuits involving "Borat" by saying free-speech law protects films and literary works that are "matters of interest to the public." - SMH

Matters of interest to the public and public interest matters are worlds apart....

I read an interest article about the sexualisation of females from a young age (not a new topic) in the Australian today and decided to google the author's name to see what else she did. One of the first entries is as follows:

abortion

...and like holy "mother-of-god" shit. Not for the feint of heart.

Director: Microsoft fueling HD wars
Microsoft is deliberately feeding into the HD disc format wars to ensure that its own downloads succeed where physical copies fail, says movie director Michael Bay in a response to a question posed through his official forums. The producer contends that Microsoft is writing "$100 million dollar checks" to movie studios to ensure HD DVD exclusives that hurt the overall market regardless of the format's actual merit or its popularity, preventing any one format from gaining a clear upper hand. Bay's own Transformers is available on disc only in the less popular HD DVD format despite his stated preference for Blu-ray. To the director, this is primarily a stalling tactic while Microsoft refines its own online-only technology.

"What you don't understand is corporate politics," he says in the response. "Microsoft [officials] want both formats to fail so they can be heroes and make the world move to digital downloads."

Thought for the day,



Karl Marx says:

Your mother is like my thoughts on socio-economics; every worker gets a share.

Facebook is now officially gay. Too much force-fed clutter on the homepage. Even myspace is at the control of the user and not force-fed, its just that 99% of them don't know what aesthetic design is.

Congratulations Scott and Yi, you were formerly wrong, but now right. Deactivating this now half-pos.

Any update as to blu-ray/hd-dvd/gibbons?

Facebook is a goddam meat parade.

Dude I would have loved to but I didn't check the blog all day until 10pm at night. I ended up hunting around for a haircut, and buying a new bike helmet. Otherwise yes I was very keen for the beach and it was a perfect day. :)

He sounds lonely. You should add him, then...

Superpoke him
Assess your likeness-compatability
Vampire bite him
Zombie bite him
Add him to your entourage
Add yourself to his entourage
Find out his stripper name
And much much more...

Disappointed about yesterday. It was a killer day for the beach...you guys suck =.=

haha. I just found the CEO of the Australiasia region for Arup....on facebook. Surprisingly, he has but....4 friends.

Despite what smh weather says, it looks pretty nice today. Anyone down for Northern Beaches?

edit: yea Eric I made the same mistake but luckily realised after 1 red light that I was heading in the wrong direction on Horseley Park Drive

Have to say "Thank you" to Joel for the BBQ and the hospitality. The food was great, and the air con was cold. It was nice to see everyone some of you after a long absence.

The drive home was somewhat...disastrous as I took a wrong a turn somewhere, and ended up further south west than I wanted to. Went to Horsley Park before I released I was going in the wrong direction. My GPS is getting more pathetic everyday as it's starting to take longer and longer to find the "3rd satellite" to pinpoint where I am. So by the time I got signal, I was already driving home with my good old map. POS.

reposting -
DAY OF CAKEAGE - Dec 01 2007

Okay kids, here's the details you've all been waiting for.

Location; My place (Gemoore st Smithfield)

If you're driving and coming from the the m4/Parramatta Road westbound turn left onto Cumberland Hwy, right onto the Horseley Drive, left onto Gipps st, right (last right) into Gemoore and follow it to near the dead end.

If you're coming westbound from the Hume Hwy, just turn right onto the Horseley drive and follow the directions above from there.

If you go by train, just catch the train to Fairfield station and I can arrange a convoy from there (4 max at a time).

Okay, now that that crap's outta the way...

The Fun shit!

As Hash said before, theres a pool here so there will be much partaking in the swimming occurring. There is also a school behind my place with a full sized Soccer field (Goals included...Last time I checked), Monkey Bars (Yey) and half Basketball court with ring (If someone hasn't stolen it again..)
There's also cakeage, PS2, Gamecube, DVDs, BYO Game System if you want. If anyone can network some sorta LAN then thats welcome too.

Foodage!

There'll be a BBQ running with a wide selection of farm animals for your partaking, also I'll be on the deepfryer frying up some chicken (Also Karaage if I learn how to by then), there'll be lots of random snacks, etc etc.. you get the point, there'll be food.

In Closing

A good starting time for me will be probably after 2pm, maybe 3.. or 4.. Depending on when I wake up and it'll go into the night for god knows how long.

Sound good? Email me an RSVP or SMS or whatever, surprise me :)