a little over a year ago i sat down to say thanks to number of people who had, in one way or another, influenced my life for the better... whether they'd intended to or not. it's been a long year since then and i've gone through some shit between then and now and while i'd like to stand tall and say i got myself through it... well, if i did i'd be lying. we move through each other's lives, steps in a dance that brings us together for seconds or decades, bouncing off each other, each of us a particle in life's Brownian Motion.
so here's to those i've met and remembered and those i've forgotten, to those you cursed me with their friendship and those who blessed me with hatred, to those who got me drunk and those who kept me alive... especially when they're the one and the same.
Pietre - for showing me just how easy it was to go out for the evening with someone i'd met 5 minutes beforehand.
Dad and my Sister - for showing me how high you can rise and how far you can fall.
Andrew - for getting drunk with me in 3 different countries.
Jacq and Nick - for helping me get back into circus tricks.
Speedfox, Daywalker, Cathy H and The Greyman - for being reliably up for a beer, sitting on the kerb outside the Red Lion and making my last few months in London awesome to the max.
Shadow - for always having something to teach and something to learn, for making my phone ring and always having a pot of tea on the go.
Sandra - for making it so easy to come back to Canberra.
Andrew Duggan - because firing me absolutely made my day, week, month and year.
Rachel - for making my last job interesting and being a particularly awesome reference.
Matt - for showing me it CAN be done, and putting up with my shit at his wedding.
Moonbug - for hanging out with me in yet another part of the world. where next?
Ondine - for being remarkably adaptable.
Shaalwyd - for always having an available ear and turning my life upside down in your driveway.
Matthias - fur Spasse auf Berlin.
Mal - for giving me absolutely no excuse for not being able to play Wish You Were Here.
MCG - for being part of some of my more entertaining stories and taking me to see the Little Mermaid.
The Boy - for never, ever changing.
Brit Pete - for giving my old leather jacket a good home.
Cesky Krumlov - for being such a lovely little town with such great, cheap beer.
Tiernan - for ensuring that there's someone out there who's even crazier and more inappropriate than i am.
Emma - for eliminating the "boring" from my life just when things were starting to get dull, and preventing me from giving up my gypsy lifestyle just yet...
you never can fit it all in, just say what you can. whenever you try to write the "definitive list" of anything you'll finish off, stop your laptop and be lying in bed trying to sleep when you realise you forgot something obvious. as per last year, anyone left off the list can whinge at me directly if so inclined, or alternatively are welcome to take the "go fuck yourself" option: the choice is yours...
Monday, March 29, 2010
Monday, March 22, 2010
the Peter Raven Self Improvement Project....
it occurred to me about six months ago that apart from learning new skills for work and wandering around Europe i hadn't actually picked up any new skills since... um... shit, you know, i can't remember the last new skill i learned, you know? riding a motorcycle? what was fucking forever ago!
a while, anyway.
now, i work in the tumultuous world of Information Technology, where a new product is released onto the market on average once every five minutes globally, where Sun and Adobe insist on updating their Java and Flash platforms any time one of the developers farts (if the number of notifications i get to update is any indication), Apple release yet another piece of unreasonably popular bling every 12 months and Moore's Law has continued to hold true since 1965. it's a good world to live in - i get paid a frankly mind-boggling sum to play with gadgets and boss electrons around, but the amount of reading you need to do - reviews, manuals, whitepapers, etc - is pretty daunting. you're not going to keep up with it all unless you put the effort in. on top of that, there's the constant upgrade path - Windows 3.11 led to 95 led to 98 led to (the living abortion that was) Me led to 2000 to XP to (Me's spiritual successor) Vista and now on to 7. meanwhile, Windows in the server and corporate-space, NT grew up to 4.0 before converging with 2000, then on to 2003 and the stunningly originally-named 2008. on any given Tuesday i'm likely to need to know whether or not i can install Windows 2000 Server on this particular piece of kit, or whether i'll need to use Windows 2000 Advanced Server instead. can i install this app on the Windows 2003 Standard R2 x64 server, or will we want to deploy a VM running the x86 version instead? it's a lot to keep track of, memorise and use, and so by the time i head home i tend to want to do Something Completely Fucking Different like video games, drinking and having sex with women - you know, those good, wholesome pursuits of any lad in their mid-to-late 20's.
then i bogged off overseas and had several months of bumming around with less of the work and and a whole lot of fuck-all to do and i realised that playing video games got a bit old after a while, drinking was expensive and having sex with women... let's just not go there (because i hardly did). hell - apart from this little body of wordage i was a consumer - recipient of a torrent of input, and outputting little more than photos and the occasional whine of "woe is me, i can't get a job and beer is expensive".
getting back i had a number of grand designs, and one of these was that in 2010 i going to learn stuff again, namely another language and a musical instrument. i'd enjoyed French and German while i was travelling, and after digging through my fileserver again i realised i had a whole series of German lessons on it so that sorted that. Shadow's brother is a mad guitar fanatic and was overjoyed to take on the task of helping me learn, so that too was sorted. since then i've managed to get through the first 6 (of 30) German lessons (they're listen-and-repeat and go for half an hour. i do them when i have the opportunity) and i'm Making Progress with the acoustic Mal lent me to practice on.
it's been good fun - especially since i take almost any opportunity to use the German i've been learning on people, and the first time i cranked out a vaguely recognisable version of "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd... damn it was a satisfying feeling. it's also reminded me of the joy of learning - for the last few years all the new stuff i was filling my head with was either a) work-related or b) history of the places i was visiting. half of my down-time over the years has been spent doing techie stuff anyway - it's not unusual for me to work 9 hours, then go home and spend another 3 stripping down laptops, refurbishing and rebuilding them. having something unrelated is helping to bend my brain in new directions. sure, sometimes i have to force myself to flick to the next lesson on my Personal Sanity Device when i'm on a decently-long drive (which now lives in my car rather than in my pocket, but that's how live works sometimes) or pulling up some Tab on my file server and actually pick up the damn guitar but... i'm having fun, and having fun being an active participant rather than a passive one like i would be if i were reading a book or watching a movie.
i'd like to think that i'll managed to have a decent grounding in German and be able to play a few tunes decently well by years'-end, but fuck it - i'll not be disappointed if i can't as long as i keep having fun in the meantime... and if this gets me back in the habit of learning new things... well, all the better, really!
a while, anyway.
now, i work in the tumultuous world of Information Technology, where a new product is released onto the market on average once every five minutes globally, where Sun and Adobe insist on updating their Java and Flash platforms any time one of the developers farts (if the number of notifications i get to update is any indication), Apple release yet another piece of unreasonably popular bling every 12 months and Moore's Law has continued to hold true since 1965. it's a good world to live in - i get paid a frankly mind-boggling sum to play with gadgets and boss electrons around, but the amount of reading you need to do - reviews, manuals, whitepapers, etc - is pretty daunting. you're not going to keep up with it all unless you put the effort in. on top of that, there's the constant upgrade path - Windows 3.11 led to 95 led to 98 led to (the living abortion that was) Me led to 2000 to XP to (Me's spiritual successor) Vista and now on to 7. meanwhile, Windows in the server and corporate-space, NT grew up to 4.0 before converging with 2000, then on to 2003 and the stunningly originally-named 2008. on any given Tuesday i'm likely to need to know whether or not i can install Windows 2000 Server on this particular piece of kit, or whether i'll need to use Windows 2000 Advanced Server instead. can i install this app on the Windows 2003 Standard R2 x64 server, or will we want to deploy a VM running the x86 version instead? it's a lot to keep track of, memorise and use, and so by the time i head home i tend to want to do Something Completely Fucking Different like video games, drinking and having sex with women - you know, those good, wholesome pursuits of any lad in their mid-to-late 20's.
then i bogged off overseas and had several months of bumming around with less of the work and and a whole lot of fuck-all to do and i realised that playing video games got a bit old after a while, drinking was expensive and having sex with women... let's just not go there (because i hardly did). hell - apart from this little body of wordage i was a consumer - recipient of a torrent of input, and outputting little more than photos and the occasional whine of "woe is me, i can't get a job and beer is expensive".
getting back i had a number of grand designs, and one of these was that in 2010 i going to learn stuff again, namely another language and a musical instrument. i'd enjoyed French and German while i was travelling, and after digging through my fileserver again i realised i had a whole series of German lessons on it so that sorted that. Shadow's brother is a mad guitar fanatic and was overjoyed to take on the task of helping me learn, so that too was sorted. since then i've managed to get through the first 6 (of 30) German lessons (they're listen-and-repeat and go for half an hour. i do them when i have the opportunity) and i'm Making Progress with the acoustic Mal lent me to practice on.
it's been good fun - especially since i take almost any opportunity to use the German i've been learning on people, and the first time i cranked out a vaguely recognisable version of "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd... damn it was a satisfying feeling. it's also reminded me of the joy of learning - for the last few years all the new stuff i was filling my head with was either a) work-related or b) history of the places i was visiting. half of my down-time over the years has been spent doing techie stuff anyway - it's not unusual for me to work 9 hours, then go home and spend another 3 stripping down laptops, refurbishing and rebuilding them. having something unrelated is helping to bend my brain in new directions. sure, sometimes i have to force myself to flick to the next lesson on my Personal Sanity Device when i'm on a decently-long drive (which now lives in my car rather than in my pocket, but that's how live works sometimes) or pulling up some Tab on my file server and actually pick up the damn guitar but... i'm having fun, and having fun being an active participant rather than a passive one like i would be if i were reading a book or watching a movie.
i'd like to think that i'll managed to have a decent grounding in German and be able to play a few tunes decently well by years'-end, but fuck it - i'll not be disappointed if i can't as long as i keep having fun in the meantime... and if this gets me back in the habit of learning new things... well, all the better, really!
mental block...
i had something i wanted to talk about, i know i did, but after half an hour lying in bed trying to work out what it was i can't for the life of me remember what it was. i could ramble on about housework and video games and generic weekend amusements, but i won't bore you with the details so i guess this is all you're getting for now. i'm sure i'll remember what it was, or i'll thing of something else... such is the way of these things, really...
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
say something, anything...
i'm suffering from the oddest variety of writer's block at the moment. i know exactly what i want to talk about during the day, but when i get to the part of the day where i have the time to actually apply brain to keyboard i think i'd rather say fuck it and sleep. this is getting a bit bothersome, so instead i'm just going to throw things down as dot points so that i can at least get SOMETHING written down:
- my job is vaguely entertaining. it's also occasionally frustrating, but the joy of getting paid on a weekly basis is that before you know it you're receiving a hit cash injection, which makes is a lot easier to maintian your motivation.
- Matt's & Julia's wedding went smashingly well (see earlier post). i woke up with a massive hangover the next day, although that had nothing to do with the wedding: afterwards Sandra and Alison invited Skye over and we sat up until disgustingly late getting through 6 bottle of champers. after which things got somewhat messy.
- yesterday evening E and i celebrated our 400th email. i don't even want to know what the tally of SMS's and phone-call minutes would add up to. i'd question the figures, but Exchange logs don't lie...
- speaking of which, i'm seriously looking forward to the Easter long-long-weekend which i happen to know is 16 days away, not that i'm counting. at all. in any way shape or form. i mean... 400 isn't THAT many, right? it's only 100/week...
- after enjoying not having a backlog of broken tech to fix, i seem to have found myself with 2 laptops and a mobile phone to repair. i'm not sure how i accumulate these things, but what the hell? it'd be nice if i could earn money from this sort of thi... oh yeah, that's right: i do. a LOT. moo hoo ha ha!
- i mean, we mostly email while at work, so that makes it 10 each way, each day. it's not THAT much. and Shadow: that's enough out of you, sunshine!
- my poor Audi's had a hard time, having been mishandled by the fucktards at Goodyear in Phillip. seriously - how hard can it be to tighten the nuts on a fucking wheel when you put it back on? it can't be too much to expect, surely. their incompetence was a contributing factor in me running off the road in the wet the other weekend. i'm just lucky i didn't do any serious damage to mein Deutsch auto, although i did have the boys down Canberra VW Centre in Belconnen check it over. THEY at least do good work.
- my guitar lessons are going vaguely well. i realised the other day that i can actually play most of "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd - slowly, off-tune, but recognisably so. now if only i could engage my brain sufficiently to sit through Lesson 6 my German lessons...
- i'm fucking tired and never getting enough sleep. i'm yet to find a good solution for this - even when i have a nice quiet night in at home there's always something to do, someone to call, something to read...
Monday, March 8, 2010
Snippet #17: on outdoing yourself...
i have a reputation when it comes to weddings, primarily that of being a shit-stirrer of the highest order. to date, i've been a Bride's Man once, Best Man twice and MC thrice. i've given speeches on four different occasions where i've generally insulted one or both of the members of the couple, questioned the bride's sanity, even expressed surprise that the bride was wearing white on the day. i've referred to the groom as being "a fat, useless layabout who'd never amount to anything". i've likened commitment to handcuffs and relationships to pits of despair that are doomed to failure... and somehow i've always got away with it. i've written the word "FUCK" in confetti. i've sold cigars to the groom's party. i've jokingly suggested that i'd show the bride's little sister a good time. and the groom's aunt. i've sung the first verse of "What about me" while using my kid brother as a prop. in short, i have a penchant for shennanigans, but somehow people keep inviting me to their weddings and giving me a microphone or a stage.
Matt & Julia got married yesterday in the nicest ceremony i've seen in a long time, and the first in may years that has had absolutely no religious over- or under-tone. it was solemn, and joyful, and completely perfect for who they are. of course, i was doing my best to keep the jokes flowing and Matt distracted. we just had to get him through to the kiss, and when he did it was like the clenched stillness lifted and a cool breeze blew through the clearing. from there on it was just a reception with too much beer and wine and all was joy.
we eat and people are having a great time, rolling into speeches which everyone kept short and sweet. i'd like to hope that it looked like i had more of a plan than i did - i more or less worked out the order of events as the evening went on. i got everyone's attention and cracked jokes between speakers. Julia's dad then Matt's mum, Elise as Julia's Matron of Honour then me as Best Man, after which i asked if anyone else wanted to say anything at which point Tiernan leapt to his feet and was informed that no, he was NOT permitted to speak. Julia un-ban-hammered him for a couple of minutes, until he started getting inappropriate and i ushered him back to his seat (we'd rehearsed it beforehand, when they told me i wasn't to let him speak. i couldn't help it - it was too good an opportunity to miss). Marcia took her cue and raised a toast before Matt & Jules made a show of cutting one of the 100 cupcakes Jules had made the day before, and with all the other formalities done i went to hit Go on the MP3 player Matt had given me for the Bridal Dance. i get it started and they start to dance awkwardly, so distracted by the fact that they're dancing in front of 87 of their friends and family that that it takes them a moment before they realise that what they're dancing to is not, in fact, Phoenix by The Butterfly Effect. i'm standing by the jukebox with a growing grin on my face as i watch them stop, ears pricked up, trying to work out what's wrong, the realisation dawning on them when the lyrics start
"Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down..."
that they have just fallen victim, at their own wedding, to a RickRolling.
i've told this to people over and people ask me how i'm still breathing. how the fuck did i survive? to be honest, they reacted exactly how i'd expected them to: i got a high-five and a hug, after which i legged it. see, when i'd seen Rick Astley on the list on Matt's Creative i couldn't help myself. i knew i just had to. the crowd seemed divided into the camp who had no idea what was going on, the group who thought that "Never Gonna Give You Up" is a lovely song and the rest of them who got the joke. by my reckoning it's the biggest, maddest thing i've ever managed to pull off at a wedding. the trick now is going to be finding some way of beating it.
the trick, you see, is to be audacious without being out-and-out insulting, make sure your gags are appropriate to the people you're playing them on and above all: make sure they're utterly harmless. i've gotta say tho, that i'm feeling pretty good about that one. there can't be too many peopel who can say that they RickRolled a wedding and by my reckoning this will keep my infamy-rating high for quite some time to come...
Matt & Julia got married yesterday in the nicest ceremony i've seen in a long time, and the first in may years that has had absolutely no religious over- or under-tone. it was solemn, and joyful, and completely perfect for who they are. of course, i was doing my best to keep the jokes flowing and Matt distracted. we just had to get him through to the kiss, and when he did it was like the clenched stillness lifted and a cool breeze blew through the clearing. from there on it was just a reception with too much beer and wine and all was joy.
we eat and people are having a great time, rolling into speeches which everyone kept short and sweet. i'd like to hope that it looked like i had more of a plan than i did - i more or less worked out the order of events as the evening went on. i got everyone's attention and cracked jokes between speakers. Julia's dad then Matt's mum, Elise as Julia's Matron of Honour then me as Best Man, after which i asked if anyone else wanted to say anything at which point Tiernan leapt to his feet and was informed that no, he was NOT permitted to speak. Julia un-ban-hammered him for a couple of minutes, until he started getting inappropriate and i ushered him back to his seat (we'd rehearsed it beforehand, when they told me i wasn't to let him speak. i couldn't help it - it was too good an opportunity to miss). Marcia took her cue and raised a toast before Matt & Jules made a show of cutting one of the 100 cupcakes Jules had made the day before, and with all the other formalities done i went to hit Go on the MP3 player Matt had given me for the Bridal Dance. i get it started and they start to dance awkwardly, so distracted by the fact that they're dancing in front of 87 of their friends and family that that it takes them a moment before they realise that what they're dancing to is not, in fact, Phoenix by The Butterfly Effect. i'm standing by the jukebox with a growing grin on my face as i watch them stop, ears pricked up, trying to work out what's wrong, the realisation dawning on them when the lyrics start
"Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down..."
that they have just fallen victim, at their own wedding, to a RickRolling.
i've told this to people over and people ask me how i'm still breathing. how the fuck did i survive? to be honest, they reacted exactly how i'd expected them to: i got a high-five and a hug, after which i legged it. see, when i'd seen Rick Astley on the list on Matt's Creative i couldn't help myself. i knew i just had to. the crowd seemed divided into the camp who had no idea what was going on, the group who thought that "Never Gonna Give You Up" is a lovely song and the rest of them who got the joke. by my reckoning it's the biggest, maddest thing i've ever managed to pull off at a wedding. the trick now is going to be finding some way of beating it.
the trick, you see, is to be audacious without being out-and-out insulting, make sure your gags are appropriate to the people you're playing them on and above all: make sure they're utterly harmless. i've gotta say tho, that i'm feeling pretty good about that one. there can't be too many peopel who can say that they RickRolled a wedding and by my reckoning this will keep my infamy-rating high for quite some time to come...
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