I am a proud parent… Wel, cat-owner.

My kittycat, Kiara, inherited from a former housemate “P”, has always been somewhat recalcitrant regarding the use of the indoor toilet facilities, preferring on all counts to relieve herself against a wall.

This led to some unpleasantness in the past, as you can potentially imagine.

Since I’ve moved, the theory ran that this would continue unless drastic action was taken.

With the help of iMeri, a plan was concocted, which was this:

Ingredients

- Ten parts clay-based litter

- One part dirt

- One wet area that can be closed-off totally (bathroom for preference)

- One Weekend newspaper

- One Recalcitrant un-housetrained cat in a cat box

- Two rubber(ish) door wedges of any colour

Instructions

1. Add both ingredients and mix well in one litter tray.

2. Lay down plenty of newspaper in the room-of-choice.

3. Put cat food and water at the furthest point from the litter as possible with regard to the architectural layout.

4. Make sure the wedges are on-hand and enter room carrying cat box (inside which is said cat).

5. Place cat box down and wedge door shut.

6. Open Cat box and let cat out.

7. Give her a pat, let her know everything is okay and exit stage-left (wedging the door behind self).

8. Wait.

I let her out two days afterwards to see how she’d fare. On the whole she went okay until she did her usual trick in the corner of the loungeroom. After having her face rubbed in it and then dumped unceremoniously into the litter tray (then the door being closed after he afterwards) she appeared to quiet down.

And then yesterday I saw her do her business in the litter tray and she was lavished with praise.

Okay, so it’s not quite the joy a parent would have when their kid finally works-out how to use the toilet rather than nappies, but it’s fairly close, surely?

It’s a cool wet and dark day today, just the sort of day that it’s great to be at home.

However, I’m at work with a somewhat wet skirt front and things to do here. Life’s like that unfortunately.

Still, I had a good breakfast, thanks to a transfer of funds from my backup bank account, and hopefully am getting paid tomorrow (it is Thursday?).

It’s funny that when I was younger I used to hate it when it rained, mainly because I hated being stuck at home. Now I like my home, it’s quite nice actually to be able to just chill inside with the pained bleating of my cat in the background (as she’s locked in the bathroom as she (a) doesn’t get the idea of the cat litter, (b) because I’ve just moved house and has to remain in there for 2 weeks — apparently — so she becomes attuned to the house she’s now living in and doesn’t do a runner or get lost, and finally (c) because she has a habit of weeing against walls when she’s inside on her own because of the issue listed above in (a).).

Got that now?

Wheres the Cheese?!

If you’re Australian and remember the 80’s (perhaps wishing you didn’t), here’s a vid care of iMeri:

I had no idea his beard was so… big.

You know what they say about men with big beads?

They swear a lot when they F*ck up!!

Spam at work is boring and clogs your in-box. Especially in this workplace.

Course, most of the spam here is internal, sent by moronic idiots people clicking “Reply All” rather than just “Reply”.

I’ve sent a few mail responses (to all just to make the point) since I started here, highlighting – if sarcastically – this habit. For example, in response to an enthusiastic announcement to all-and-sundry that a particular application had been completed, I responded-to-all thus:

Waytogo! I’m so impressed I’ll let everyone know!

Yesterday, one of the big bosses wrote a message asking that people don’t click what I am now calling The SPAM button.

However, it has been ignored by all.

Today, I got bored with clicking delete repeatedly (I’m getting RSI of the forefinger as a result of this), and as tempting as it is to write a message to all dripping sarcasm and pointing-out my current forefinger injury, it seemed far easier (and very Lisa 4.0) to create a catch-all mail rule, which I am calling Team [MYCOMPANY] SPAM.

And it works… oh it works… and in the last 30 seconds it’s grabbed 5 incoming messages.

Finally, something that MS Outlook can actually do without crapping-out.

Thanks to Mooni:

The morning can be improved with the dulcet tones of Stephen Fry

So what’s your fave greeting?

Ahhh, the good old days

Like one of the comments says: nobody hijacks a TV show like TISM.

But the interesting thing about this band, and bands like them (um… Are there any bands like Tism, anywhere??) is that they seem to be more outrageous simply because they’ve got masks on. The liberation of not being identified with your own actions gives them an edge that’s rarely –if ever — repeated.

Course, their abysmal run with record companies only goes to show they were before their time. Imagine, if you will, if TISM had been around right now, with online music and the circumvention of the record-company vampires…

I’ll add this to the list of things I’d like to have seen…

F*ck Planet Earth…

thx to RobotAlice

10 golden rules of Technical Writing

1. Get to the point as clearly and distinctly as possible (ie. No flowery prose; it’s information not marketing material). Short and Sweet Keeps It Neat (SSKIN)

2. Procedural material is structured thus: Task, Location, Operation (eg. To create a message, in the Gmail window, click Compose Mail).

3. If it’s Online you don’t stick a bazillion screenshots inamongst the procedures; it’s distracting and makes the thing hard to read. If it’s print docs, then you’ll have to compromise.

4. Try, whereever possible, to separate explanations of windows from the procedures to operate them, this way procedures can be used to construct complete tasks.

5. What’s a Task, you ask? A Task is a collection of procedures which occur throughout an application or programme to achieve a particular goal. (eg. To send a message in Gmail, you don’t just jump in with “Click Compose Mail”. You have to first open the site, then logon, then Compose Mail; 3 procedures in all).

6. No UI, No Documentation, it’s that simple. It is ultimately impossible to construct accurate documentation unless you’ve got the User Interface. Those that say you can are idiots. The logic is simple: they think their specifications are perfect and will be translated directly in to the programme. The truth is that the specifications are rarely translated in an identical manner. Therefore lots of time can be lost documenting from Specs, then re-jigged when the actual application comes through. Also, specifications are far too complicated and often include useless information.

7. Know Your Audience. Users don’t care that the application is written in Perl with PHP5 and a SQL-Server 2003 back-end database, therefore don’t add such technical jiggery-pokery to user documents. Technical documents, however, probably need information like this.

8. I forget what 8 was for.

9. Hardcore knowledge of databases, programming languages, test-scripting and anything else are not required to write documentation about a programmes. They can help but are more likely to complicate issues

10. It’s always nice to have a Table of Definitions/Terms somewhere in the docs, to cover-off all those annoying acronyms.

The Plot Thickens.

This could be an issue for my oft mentioned hope to be able to use a VoIP enabled iPod Touch as a telephone, but it’s still early days for this idea.

However, the people at iPod Touch Mods are going gangbusters on their microphones, so the demand is certainly there…

We’ll just have to wait and see what happens once the iPod Touch SDK is made available…

In the meantime, there’s an alternative available… at least in 2 months time.

It’s all over.

The move is complete – faster than expected (thanks to The Great Purge of ‘07-’08) and the boxes are 99% unpacked and away.

There’s a stack of computer stuff in the first bedroom, hidden quite well by two of the wooden polling booths  I got last year (they turned-out to be very useful indeed). The front bedroom is a nice peaceful space now, the main bedroom is pretty tidy (needs a couple of new items, but will be fine for this week), and the lounge, kitchen and bathroom are well organised.

And even Kiara the kitty seems — on the whole — okay. I let her into the kitchen and lounge today, but put her back in the bathroom as she was about to pee in a corner. She’ll have to go in the bathroom like the rest of us, at least for the next 2 weeks.

Meanwhile, my finances are at empty until payday on Friday. I have to hope that the pay will hit my account on Friday… otherwise it’s going to be a long, lean weekend!

This one could be titled any of the following:

Fucked Both Ways

The Cashing of the Karmic Paycheque

Steel Roofs and You

Or any of a multitude of other similar titles.

Twice yesterday I mislaid my keys.

Once I left them at home and ended up climbing over rooftops; not so much a cat on a hot tin roof, more a stress-monkey burning ones-self then dropping down into a garden which happily was mine.

The second one was a lot worse. It involved a late-night hands-on-knees extravaganza where I was searching beneath seats in The Astor theatre for said keys, a walk with two friends — whos patience I very much appreicate — back to the cafe where I thought I’d left them, calls to taxi companies because they probably ended up in the taxi to Windsor, and then, finally, a car ride with phone calls in-between to try to work-out alternatives.

There were none.

I ended up breaking in again, this time at 11.30 at night over two fences from the opposite direction to that taken earlier.

This time, however, there were no handily open doors, no useful ways in; I bent all four corners of my drivers license trying to trip the deadlocks before, finally, having to put a brick through a window.

I’m getting good at that.

Another hour of cleaning up (while expecting the Long Arm Of The Law to screech up to my front door and demand why a burgular was cleaning up the mess) vacuuming and mopping the floor while speaking slowly and softly to myself and the universe at large how I would like this string of bad luck to depart with bags packed, and restore sanity, peace and harmony to my poor addled brain and the room which I’d violated with the aforementioned brick.

Then I cycled home. It was midnight, and I was moving early in the morning.

My dreams, unsurprisingly, were fraught. That is, until I sat up and meditated a while, and wrote a diary entry which basically said that I have not screwed up friendships, plans nor my life and reinforcing to myself that it was an isolated incident related to stress-levels and a finite buffer size for Things To Do, which had just dumped things off the bottom as it filled up.

Then I slept peacefully and deeply.

For an hour.

I’m up now, it’s 7.30am and it turns out that my good friends J and J who are coming to help me move are actually not turning-up at crack ‘o dawn, but are going to meet me for breakfast at Soul Food Cafe, which I will gladly pay for. The universe has delivered; they filled up with petrol yesterday, which means I can actually buy food to eat this weekend and for the rest of the week.

I also avoid offending my housemates who were somewhat preturbed by my suggested start-time for the move (originally stated as “early”, which for J&J is potentially 5am).

And now, as I sit here in my nearly bare bedroom, I realise that it’s probably easier to transfer all the boxes from the loungeroom into here so we can take the whole lot out the back rather than the front. I say this for two reasons:

1. The fridge is in the garage, and it’s at the back.

2. I’ve lost my keys, including the house-key to this home.

So, my next hour is going to be jam-packed with shifting boxes.

No matter!

Now the mental job is to stop saying “These things happen to me” and instead stating loudly and to the universe “These things NEVER happen to me”.

You get what you ask for, really.

“…Dear Buddha, I’d like a Pony and a Plastic Rocket…”

HeyZeus H. Christo!

Australia Day is a big thing here where I work.

This morning there were girls (blonde Gen Y’s of course) wandering around draped in the Great Austraaaaalian flag.

This afternoon, we have buff blokes (Short-haired, potentially gay {not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s the only way I could imagine they’d found the shorts they were wearing} , with stomach muscles like the side of security-vans) dressed in tiny, tiny shorts, pushing an esky around filled with Paddle Pops.

The theme here is Australian Beach. The location, my work. The astonishment factor: high.

Suburbia Sucks

Happy Austraaaaalia day!

Break out the Cardonnay and lay into a Lamington, then feast yer eyes on these beauties:

The Monty Python Bruces sketch

Douglas Adams on Australia

Thanks to RobotAlice for this.

Interesting article about Facebook.

I find Facebook interesting yet boring. It seems to restrict your interaction with others rather than making it easier.

Maybe it’s cos I’m GenX rather than GenY…

These guys are one of the biggest advertisements for what’s wrong with religion.

Rabid, fundamentalist… not muslim… christians who’d put a bullet in you if they could get away with it.

Like Douglas Adams said:

“…nearly 2,000 years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change…”

Where exactly is the message of “the great white saviour” (middle-eastern origin, but don’t let that be an impediment to the Jesus-is-a-white-man industry) in the Westboro Baptist Church? Cast not the first stone, anyone?

Hah.

Not so-much country as a variation on a theme:

Root!

Thinking I recognise the vocals and general ambience of this bunch…

In memory of Heath Ledger… who died today on a bed in New York  surrounded by pills.

Felt wonderful after my first bikram yoga session in a month. Funnily enough, someone I had a major falling-out with was at the same class.

I was in the queue for the sign-up when I noticed her first, and madly SMSd a friend while keeping my face averted. I initially thought she was on the way out, which suited me fine.

Then when I arrived downstairs for the room, it turned out it was very nearly full, but they made space for me.

I made an entrance, that’s for sure; G was there and piped up with a hearty “It’s L!”, to which I replied “Darling, haven’t seen you in forever!”, which I had (24 hours earlier in-fact).

Anyway, this ex-friend was actually in the room, and would have seen me enter and if she hadn’t, she sure as hell would have heard!

Came close to running into her in the changerooms afterwards, but I stepped out again as they were pretty full. I’m more of a wait-til-things-settle kinda Bikram student. Not really into the quick rush out and get going ASAP.

So, what’s the etiquette for meeting people you just don’t want to. Or rather, in this case, I couldn’t care less… it was strange is all.

Lisa 3.0 would have paniced and left immediately, never to return. Lisa 4.0 is made of sterner stuff, and frankly couldn’t care less if someone she had a run-in with happens to be in the same geographic position as she is.

Shows how much I’ve changed.