January is typically a month when a fair amount of time wastin’ is done.

For Mums and Dads it’s the chance to slot in some leave to tack on the end of Xmas, and arrange activities and amusements for bored kids on School holidays. I know a few who are doing a happy dance today…. the first day of school!

I remember hearing many of my friends start to whine from about January 10th onward that they were bored. They’d mope around the house, pouting and complaining about how there was nothing to do. Helpful mums would make suggestions - “play outside” ( but it’s too hot! ), “play computer games” ( I’ve beaten all the levels and it’s boring ), or “go for a bike ride” ( can you fix the puncture for me? ). It was like the longest holiday of the year was some sort of time punishement they had to endure.

I just couldn’t understand this.

I saw that time as a gift, and something to make the most of. I’d devise grand schemes and major construction enterprises, I’d disappear for hours hunting for beared dragons and bluetongue lizards, or I’d spend hours trying to master a new trick on my BMX. Even if the weather was awful I still found stuff to do inside to pass the time, in fact, I found that more often than not, I ran out of time to finish what I was working on.

As a time poor grown-up with boring responsibilities, people I have to see and things I have to do within a certain, billable timeframe, I value these little holiday windows even more. But in case you thought these days I’d just sit back on the couch for two weeks watching the cricket, drinking beer and eating cheezels, you’d be sadly mistaken.

At this moment, as one such respite in my work schedule looms, I am already planning. I’m planning what I will build, or what I will get sorted out, or what I’d like to do or see. Sure, there will be gaps in between getting stuff done where I will be very leisurely - catching up on blogs, surfing, or sitting on the cliff watching the sun set with a beer and a handful of pistachios. But at the end of the week I’ll have a warm glow of satisfaction.

And at no time whatsoever, will I be bored.

( …and that’s another Time wastin’ Tuesday hosed off and put back in the shed. How was yours? )

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Ahhh, hold music. I’ve heard my fair share of it today. Jaysus… have I ever. Commercial radio station hold music, tinkly electronic hold music, advotainment hold music, soothing “please don’t kill us” hold music, and the perennial pianno classics that are supposed to make the time pass quicker ( boy, doesn’t that work a treat? ).

Personally though, I just don’t think they put enough creativity into on-hold music, and they certainly put little to no humour in it. To that end, I propose the top 10 hold music tunes that I’d use if I had a number that people called and got put on hold.

1. Blondie - Hanging on the Telephone
2. Jarabe tapatío (The Mexican Hat Dance)
3. Lou Reed - Waiting for my man
4. Kate Bush - I’m still waiting
5. Buddy Holly - Crying, Waiting, Hoping
6. Stevie Nicks - I can’t wait
7. Pere Ubu - I will wait
8. The Thompson Twins - Hold me now
9. ELO - Hold on tight ( to your dream )
10. Foreigner - Waiting for a girl like you

And that was time wastin’ Tuesday.

How was yours?

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My favourite aunt and uncle ( Connie’s mum and dad to anyone who remembers ) had two freinds they did everything with. They were named Mike and Molly, and they met through Rotary. Anytime we dropped in on them M&M would be there, and even when they came up to our house for dinner M&M would often accompany them. They went on holidays together, they built each other’s houses, and Mike even saved my uncle’s life by lifting a giant 2 tonne I-section off him when the crane sling failed on their construction site. They even bought two matching silver Honda civics from the same dealer, at the same time, and the number plates were the same except for the last digit - which was sequential. Sometimes I thought it was all a bit creepy…

Mum’s best freind lived next door and she had two kids, Kerry and Russel. Russel was my age, and even though we hung out together I often couldn’t stand him. He was a cocksure smartarse, and a know it all - one of those people with sad delusions of coolness. His sister Kerry was older, and by the age of 14 looked like a supermodel ( have a look at Paz de la Huerta in this video clip… the resemblence and mannerisims to Kerry are uncanny ). Kezza was one of those girls who became aware of her sexuality very early, and she used it to full advantage. By 15 her mother had her on the pill, and I remember there was always two or three older guys with cars over at their house - fawning all over her like she was a princess. She was also totally uninhibited, and spent hours lounging by their pool sunbathing topless, often getting up to walk into the house for a drink or a snack. I’d seen her boobs, now 32C and perfectly formed, soo many times they held absolutely no fascination for me. Apart from that though, she was a complete bitch and I really didn’t like her. I found it impossible to find her attractive.

There was a lady down the street who had a violent temper, and her kid was named Robin. Robin was quite the little bastard, probably had ADHD before it had a name. He once chucked a block of conctrete at me that split my head open ( there’s a spot on my head where the hair grows oddly to this day ) and it bled everywhere. When Robin was 6, our next door neighbour Pat discovered Robin’s mum with her head stuck in the gas oven, the kitchen filled with gas… and quite dead. They say the shock turned Pat into a diabetic overnight, and she needed Insulin shots from that day forward. In later years I came to doubt it - her husband Ray worked at the Icecream factory, and all their kids had rotten teeth - and Pat was the size of a horse. They ate an awful lot of icecream…

When I was young I was really into electronics ( my freind Chris and I were major geeks from the age we could pick up a soldering iron ) and made all sorts of projects. One of my early favourites was wireless transmitters - bugs - that you could make really, really small. We played around with circuit layouts for hours to get more range, and some of them could transmit on the commercial FM band for a good 300m. One night my freind Jeffery and I were messing around with a bug, and suddenly he grabbed it and said he wanted to put it under the window of the girl over the road - to listen and find out if she liked us or not. I wasn’t happy but he did it just the same, but by the next day the battery had gone flat anyway. I ordered him to go and get it the next night, but he came back and said “it’s gone”. Two weeks later I saw a moving van outside and them loading all their furniture inside, and then they were gone. I never saw them again, and I always felt incredible guilt because I believed finding the bug is what made them leave.

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… except if you’ve sent it back for warranty… then you most definitely can’t for 4 weeks. grrrr….

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Ahh, TWT… I worked hard at it today!

Sitting on hold with Canon Australia for 17 minutes was fun, as was waiting in the carwash queue for the daffy old bint who’d driven in crooked and cocked up all the sensors - requring a reset by the attendant. The ATM was good too, I had the guy in front of me who needed to check the balance of EVERY account, including getting a print out which he read, screwed up, and squeezed into the tiny transaction record bin slot. Take your time idiot… take all the time in the world…

I offset this by going for two surfs, updating my (work) blog, and writing anti-400D reviews on forums and shopping websites all over the interweb.

So that was time wastin’ Tuesday!

How was yours?

Tags: Time wastin' Tuesday, general by generalboy
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I had such high expectations after reading so much about the 400D on the web, and all the glowing reviews happy, joyful owners have given them. I picked up my brand new EOS 400D + Twin Lens kit last week… saved for weeks… and what can I say?

Let me begin with the manufacturing defects. Mine shipped with a dead pixel in the LCD, a dead sensor pixel, and some mysterious piece of crap that dislodged itself from inside the actual camera and deposited itself neatly on the diffuser. It looks like an eyelash through the viewfinder, but repeated inspection shows the mirror to be clean. Nothing it seems, short of industrial steam cleaning, will remove it.

Undeterred by an irritating blue dot parked permenantly within the menu, I tried to take some pictures with it.

Initially I was excited, as it seemed easy to use, and was not too far removed from my old Canon ( non-digital ) SLR. But after the eigth time the flash popped up despite ambient light sufficient to count the wrinkles on a supermodel, delivering fantastically red-eyed yellow cast images, I started to get a little, well, tetchy. I then tried to go totally manual… but that just made things worse. If you think setting the aperture in any of the semi-manual modes is intuitive and sensible… think again. I hope you really like f5.6… because it would appear there is no way to change it without directly contacting a Canon software developer. If he survives the encounter, and you don’t throttle him to death first, you may just discover the secret. Use it wisely.

To the 400D’s credit, the shoulder strap is broad and sturdy, and the EOS DIGITAL embossing is sure to impress wannabe pro photogs and wannabe yuppies. Unwanted pictures are breathtakingly easy to delete, with none of that timewasting confirmation those other silly toy DSLR’s constantly nag you for. This is a great feature, because trust me, you will want to delete most of the pictures you take.

Summing up, I recommend the 400D to anyone who likes a fashion accessory and doesn’t want to get bogged down in details like dead pixels, light metering or ease of use. You’ll carry an air of sophistication and cool about you at the next wedding you attend as you busily snap away, secure in the knowledge that everyone thinks you’re using a fine camera that a real live professional might use.

Which of course, no professional in their right mind would touch with a forty foot pole.

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Sorry blog neglectarinos for my lack of attention this last week, ‘tas been a bit hectic but rest assured, I have been thinking of you!

An interstate wedding this weekend will put me further behind, but I fully intend to get a post in BEFORE time wastin’ Tuesday this week. As a matter of fact, I had mostly typed it before an unfortunate mishap erased it from my screen. Grrr…

I will also catch up on bloggy rounds on Monday, but if I don’t quite get there, there’s always TWT!

So in the meantime, take care, and buy yourself something nice. And if you can’t find something nice, buy something naughty!

Ciao for now,
your pal,
geeb.

=)

Tags: Time wastin' Tuesday, general by generalboy
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Ok, hands up who hasn’t typed something stoopid into a web browser!?

I think most internet noobs squander hours of their overpriced Telstra Bigpond plan discovering the wonder of www.fanny.com, or www.poobumfartwee.com, or even www.yousmell.com. Sometime later they will get a great idea and wonder if no-one ever bothered to register www.electricity.com, and think they might be able to do so themselves… later selling it on ebay for a huge profit. They will of course, be disappointed.

After 12 odd years, I still type stupid stuff in - but I do searches through whois databases since typing it in to your browser doesn’t really tell you the full story. I’ve picked up some gold from time to time, including www.mrbankrupt.com - which I registered after the TV ads pissed me off one time too many. Sadly, I am yet to make a killing on one of these domains, buy still, I can’t stop myself. And you’d be surprised at some of the names, and variants of names, people have simply never bothered to register. Think there are no good domain names of five letters left? Think again!

Today I devoted a good hour to this pursuit, and turned up some crackers. A couple I might even keep for myself. Just because.

I mean hey… it’s cooler than stamp collecting, right? RIGHT? Shaddup!

That was time wastin’ Tuesday.

How was yours?

Tags: Time wastin' Tuesday, general by generalboy
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Ahhh, if only I could spend EVERY TWT like today I’d be one happy (general) boy.

My inner thighs have surfboard wax chafing, my feet are sore from walking over hot tarmac with no shoes, and there’s a bright red burny streak across my back where my rash top and boardshorts didn’t quite meet for 3 hours splashing about in the surf.

And I feel great.

And that was the first TWT of 2008.

How was yours?

Tags: Time wastin' Tuesday, general by generalboy
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