While I was away in Sawtell over the Easter break I was surprised to find out that the Stargate saga has a newly developed spin-off, dubbed Stargate Atlantis. I had always expected this to happen, as the title “SG-1″ logically indicated that there would be other Stargate teams around which the story would centre. Anyway, last Sunday night the Stargate Atlantis start-up premiered at 8:30pm heralding the dawn of this new series, and the next evolution of the best show on earth… well, for a geek like me 
I had been starting to mourn Stargate SG-1, as it was obvious that the writers were winding up the series. There wasn’t much left of the story to tell. The Goa’uld had been defeated by and large, the replicators obliterated, and earth left pretty much unscathed. Unless they had a new enemy appear out of nowhere, they would have had trouble continuing the storyline, and even then it would have been with characters that had been completely explored.
I just finished reading this article about the inner workings of Google. By the end of it I literally had to pick my jaw off of the floor as some of the ideas this group has in the works are simply mind blowing.
The thing about Google that impressed me most was their work environment. So many people around the world are entirely miserable in their jobs. This, I believe, is because the environment you work in has more of an affect on how much you enjoy your work, more so than the type of work you do.
I’ve been in many workplaces where the work itself has been fine, but whether it’s the people you work with, or the environment spawned by the company, what could have been enjoyable turns out to be a place that you dread turning up to each day.
You see, I think it’s because too many managers operate reflexively, that is they only ever talk to their employees when things aren’t going well or they want something done. As such you a left with a group of employees that only ever receive negative, or at best neutral, feedback from their managers. If on the off occasion an employee receives some kind of commendation, not enough of a big deal is made of the accomplishment, so it turns out to be no better than a pat on the back… not exactly motivating hey?
On Good Friday Melly and I traveled to Sawtell (6 hours away) to visit family and celebrate her Grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary. Sawtell is right on the beach, and we had a pretty good time all-in-all.
The bits I enjoyed most included seeing Mark, Natalie and the kids, as well as my mother-in-law, Carol. Dining together over fish and chips Friday (The order took 2 hours to be made it was that busy), pizza Saturday, and a lot of Coca-Cola throughout, we had a good chance to catch up on everything and spend time with our favorite niece and nephew. Believe it or not, all of these good times we spent in small hotel rooms, couching on beds. I don’t think this was supposed to be the good part….
The real reason we had all made the trip was for the anniversary. There was a big party planned for the weekend, but a few week’s ago Melly’s Ma and Pop got sick, so things had to be toned down a little, and so they ended up scaling things back to a lunch. Family was up from all over the place, and it turned into a relatively big family event at Ma and Pop’s place. Did I ever tell you family gatherings are my favorite ? 
Finally, I’m rid of MovableType. Every ounce of the ghastly beast has been removed from my server. You wouldn’t believe it, but I gained about 10 MB of space on my server, yet I can still do the same amount of things with WordPress, and from what it seems, probably more! Yes, I know, 10 MB isn’t a lot, especially when I have 200+ to play with, but being the perfectionist that I am any bloat has a habit of grating on me.
PsychoKitten (a.k.a Melly, wife, cutie-pie) has had her weblog shifted over to WordPress too. Again, while you wont notice a lot of difference, things will be slightly neater. I will say one thing for web development. It bites hard when the world’s most used web-browser doesn’t follow Internet standards. You wouldn’t believe how many times I had things working well in Firefox and Opera, only to find that Internet Explorer was going to do it’s own thing. After many hours though, I’ve got it looking the same across all three. Look out for Melly’s new favicon too, it’s a bit cute.
Anyways, it’s time for bed, I need to be up early and it’s already 2am… eek! 
Yesterday Mellissa and I went for our fortnightly shopping expedition. Just the usual things, groceries, errands and the like. Whilst we were going about our business I happened to notice an exceptional amount of young lads with afros. Even scarier than seeing a black guy with a fro (which I hesitantly say is more natural looking), is seeing a white guy with one. What these guys may not have heard is that afros were a thing of the 70′s… Not long after that time people suddenly awoke from their fashion coma and realised just how aweful afros really are. Mind you, they didn’t just bolt straight to the nearest hairdresser to get a decent cut, they had to transition by first getting a sweeping eye-level fringe, then a mullet (Yes. I think mullets, while ghastly, are better looking than fros), followed by a flat-top with tracks, an undercut, and finally something decent.
Hi all, this is just a quick(?) website update to let you know that I’ve done an overhaul. Surprised? Thought you might be. The site probably doesn’t look any different to most of you, unless you pay pretty close attention to the small edits I’ve made everything should look exactly like it did before the overhaul.
What have I done then? Well, firstly I’ve ditched MovableType. I got sick of a lot of it’s many problems. Comment spam, TypeKey, rebuilding pages, limited features unless you pay, etc etc. What’ve done is changed my blogging system over to WordPress, an opensource PHP alternative with more features. To you guys it will not mean a lot, unless you’re a geek like me. Some things that might interest you are as follows….
After being told that I could have my job back, I’ve decided not to take it. I had actually asked for it back, but after talking to the human resource manager I’ve decided against it. I was hoping to get back into the same area. I had been working in a large call centre for Australia’s largest telecommunications company. Although the position they offered me was still in the same call centre, it was in a different department, working with different people, most of which I don’t care to work with.
I had had a conversation with the HR manager, and a few “issues” were discussed that turned my original intentions of working there again somewhat sour. I was reminded of a run-in with a collegue I had had a month or two before I left, that I thought was dealt with and resolved, brought back into the spotlight. This particular situation involved a heated argument with someone who was known for being crap at doing their job. She had a bad habit of fart-arsing about. A situation arose where it seemed at first like she was again fart-arsing about, and on that particular day I had reached the end of my teather with her, so I let fly. In the end it turned out that the situation wasn’t how it first appeared and I was more or less made to look like an ass. I promptly apologised, was told not to worry about it, and I thought that was the end of the issue. Crisis over.
I’ve been resisting the urge for quiet a while now, but today I got bored and final gave in. I’ve made myself an Amazon Wishlist. This is all sorts of useful for this of your who have ever been struck by the urge to suddenly, for no good reason at all, buy me a gift. If you don’t know what to get me, this long list should point you in the right direction.
Seeing as I’m such a big geek, you might find that a lot of the items listed are in the very expensive price range. Though, there are a few cheap things there too, that could be considered more realistic gift ideas. I will be adding things to the list as I think of them. So far I’ve covered Snoppy stuff, xBox games, DVD’s, clothes, board games, and computer gear. I’ve still got to look into the books side of things, and I’ve purposely left that bit until last as I’ve got a huge array of books that I’m interested in getting.
In any case, at the very least it will be available for anyone looking to buy me pressies. I’m not one for burdening myself with posessions, but this was a fun activity in Internet window shopping. Try it for yourself, and see how fun it is to dream!
…Joshy’s back, tell a friend. That’s right guys, I’m home. At this point in my explaination I don’t really know where to start. As Mellissa mentioned in the previous post, I arrived safely in Melbourne to start my course at Officer Training School. I’d been kitted out, set up my quarters, started lessons and made a lot of new friends. A few days into the course we were briefed about what we would be doing throughout our course, and I was pretty confident as I had done the great majority of it before, during my time in the Army Reserve.