VolaciousNet

There’s nothing quite so scary as when your kids go missing. Again.

I was working up in Newcastle the other week when I got a late night call from a distraught husband telling me that Jasper was missing – he had broken through the back fence and couldn’t be found. This was more than a worry – the little tyke has got next to no road sense and we live moderately close to a few major roads.

I tried to do my best to console the boy, but I wasn’t there and there wasn’t anything I could do apart from encourage him to calm down and “think a teenage dog” in order to determine where he might have gone. 4 hours later at 3 in the morning, I still had a distraught boy and no dog.

Woke up the next morning – still no dog. Boy extremely upset now. Managed to get him to call around a few vets to see if they had found him – Success! The 3rd vet he rang had a runaway blonde labrador delivered to them last night.

Adam went to pick the dog up, and byu a sheer stroke of luck the vet was offering fairly cheap rates on castration, and better yet they could do it immediately. “What do you think, should we do it?” was the text message I got. An emphatic “yes, chop ‘em off!. That’ll teach him” sealed Jasper’s fate.

Needless to say we now have a sheepish puppy feeling a bit sorry for himself. Well at least he knows the punishment for running away!

I told Adam the same applies for him

The recent story about Balloon Boy has highlighted just how stupid it is to coerce a 6-year-old to keep a secret. It reminded me of an amusing story that happened to me not long ago.

I’m not sure whether I have mentioned before on this blog, but recently my mother bought a property near Bathurst (3 hours west of Sydney), where I’ve been going quite a lot over the last few months. About 6 weeks ago, I went up to the farm to stay the weekend with my mother, my brother & sister-in-law, and their 3 little anklebiters (aged 5 years, 3(ish) and 1 respectively). Adam stayed at home as he had things to do, but he did let me bring the monsters (pictured) with me so they could have a run around on the farm.

My boys, being labradors and thus extremely loyal, don’t like it when they don’t know where I am. One day I took off into town (to go to Bunnings, no less!) and on the way back my mother calls me and says “have a look for your dogs when you drive down, I can’t find them and think they’ve gone for a wander”. Oh well, no biggy, they could just be down at the river or rolling in a tussock somewhere, I’ll keep an eye out. Of course, they were nowhere to be found.

Level 1 – Concern begins, I get on the motorbike and take off around the farm calling out to them. After going around the farm several times, I come home empty-handed and we decide to escalate to Level 2 – Worry. If they weren’t on the farm – they have probably headed onto a neighbours place and out west feral dogs get shot. Whilst my two monsters look in no way feral (bright red collars and a goofy look), I don’t know the neighbours all that well either. So mother gets in the car and I get on the bike and we look further and up to the road. My 5 year old nephew thinks this sounds like an adventure, so he goes with my mother.

Still nothing, we are at Level 3 – Moderate Panic. It’s been 4 hours or so, no dogs and we’ve been everywhere. Snakes are abundant on the farm (we haven’t seen any but the area is known for it) so I am starting to wonder if they may have been bitten and how I would find their bodies if they had. AND if that was the case, I was thinking of my escape plan, to a remote island somewhere where Adam couldn’t find and kill me.

Anyway, we managed to find them – well a neighbour did and tied them up to his shed. We found them looking very muddy and sorry for themselves. At that point, my mother, brother and even his wife decided it would not be a good idea to tell Adam. They know my boy and know that he would be beside himself if he thought his fur children had been in any danger. The trouble was my nephew was there as well – so we attempted to teach him about what a “secret” was, and why we couldn’t tell Adam. He seemed quite agreeable to this – and we went on our merry way.

During the course of the week when I got back I thought how I was going to explain to Adam that I lost the dogs, because I knew it would be only a matter of time before he found out. My entire family knew. Then it so happened that we were to have dinner with my brother and his lot the next weekend with my father (who was in on the joke), and my nephew would probably not be able to help himself.

Before dinner we reminded my nephew that he wasn’t to tell Adam about losing the dogs. “OK Uncle Gus” he says cheerily. Sure enough later over dinner the topic of the previous weekend comes up (staying at the farm) and up pipes my nephew “oh, is that when the dogs ran away?”. I burst out laughing, as does my father, my brother and his wife, leaving Adam confused and bewildered. “What? Ran away? What is he talking about Gus”? I try and tell the story whilst chuckling at the predictability of my nephew.

So words to the wise here – if you want a secret kept, don’t tell the kids!

It’s rare that Microsoft can take a piece of the “cool” pie away from Apple. But that is what they have done with Windows 7’s Media Centre. I’ve been trialling it for the past 4 months, and I don’t know what I’d do without it. For what it can do, the level it can do it, and the price you pay, it is phenomenal.

So to give you a rundown on my setup, I took my old webserver “Xandir” (original host of this site and others) gave it a new case and a good cleanout, then ordered a few new parts from EYO and plugged them in.

She is now equipped with:

Believe it or not, it didn’t cost that much. I probably spent about $500 to upgrade the machine enough to make it an Media PC, the video card of course being the most important (only $150!).
Still seems a bit you say? But not when you consider what she would ordinarily replace. This is what she is capable of:

What impresses me most however is the UI. This is where most Media Centres fall down – the Win7 Media Centre has a brilliant 10-foot UI that is easy to navigate and uses Picture-in-Picture and opacity blending to look really really good! You can drive it using nearly any remote. Selection of a remote control should be easy – I made a mistake and bought a cheap one from Jaycar, it does work but it has a few issues and is very frustrating (electrical problems inside the unit. Ever known a remote control to crash?) I now use IntelliRemote and control the entire PC through my iPhone via WiFi (for extra geekiness).

Installation was a breeze – it’s built in to Windows 7, which worked out of the box. And can be easily extended with heaps of plugins to customise it how you want. I also like that I can use the computer normally (on a VGA screen) whilst the Media Centre app drives the TV.

So this is where I say Sorry Apple, you lost this one. Microsoft’s actually pipped you here and it makes your AppleTV look a bit plain and lacking functionality.

I’ve been looking forward to a setup like this for some time. As you can see from the photo, the Bravia sits on the feature wall in the living room, I love the white frame – it makes it look like a picture No cables to be seen either – all cables and inputs are taken out through the wall and into the cupboard behind – which is where the Media PC is. Beauty and simplicity – that’s what a good TV experience should be.

You know what? I honestly think that Twitter and Facebook are killing old-school traditional blogs.

HA! 5 years ago blogs were the forefront of “armchair journalism”, with amateurs shooting their mouth off to whoever would listen. Now it’s come down to “how can I fit what I want into 140 characters and make it sound interesting”. Well here’s something I’ve found… it’s not that interesting!

Now I probably sound like a grouchy old man, but I just don’t get this Twitter thing. It seems nothing more than a cheap way to illegibly proffer half-baked thoughts and ideas to nobody in particular. In reality I think it’s just a way for companies to do cheap market research. And now that KRudd, MalcolmT and every “clbrty”(sic) is caught up in this “tweet” fornication, it really just takes whatever sparkle it could have had and turns it into a marketing tool.

It’s even bastardised the Facebook “updates” from whence it came, making the mundane even more illiterate.

Sometimes I just want to shout out to the world If you haven’t got anything to say, don’t say it!. And if you do, do it properly!

Who knows. Maybe Twitter will become something of the past when Google Wave is launched.

Homer: (Homer is showing his family his new inventions.) This is my “Everything’s Okay Alarm.” (Picks up a device that looks like a smoke detector and presses a button. It starts beeping loudly.) (Homer shouting.) THIS ALARM WILL SOUND EVERY 3 SECONDS, UNLESS SOMETHING ISN’T OKAY!
Marge: HOMER, TURN IT OFF!
Homer: IT CAN’T BE TURNED OFF! (The beeping starts weakening, then stops completely.) But, it does break easily.

Y’know what I find the problem with blogging is?

I tend to only post when I’m trying to avoid something, and particularly when things aren’t going well. I need vent space. I need to bitch about something, or at least connect with others.

So herein lies the problem, things are going well, so I never feel like sitting down and nutting out a post!!!

I do so now not because things are bad, but because I feel guilty that my blog of 6 years is still here, still online, and I’ve got so many opinions and thoughts that I’m thinking “Gee, I really want to write a post about that!” but they never make it to that first keystroke.

So I’m going to write a batch of them. Most of them are opinion pieces, political rants, maybe one or two stories about my whirlwind life in the suburbs, and maybe even a gratuitous photo to keep you all interested.

Fellow bloggers please note – I still read your posts daily on my iPhone, but I lack the ability to reply due to the limitations of said phone and the fact that most of you use Blogger and it’s not particularly easy to comment. For your convenience, this site is now iPhone enabled, if you load with your trusty JesusPhone it will be styled for you to read easily I don’t know about comments yet – I’ll work on that

As for the happenings around here, as I said things are good. Adam and I are going well, our relationship appears to be getting stronger day by day, as corny as it sounds. Buying this house and working on it has really made both of us a lot happier, and our fights of old seem like a distant memory. Sadly several friends in long term relationships (think 6-7+ years) have decided to split lately, I try sometimes to find out what went wrong so I can look out for the same pitfalls but analysing other people’s relationships when you don’t know what goes on behind closed doors can be a real headache.

Anyway, please stay tuned, I might churn out a few posts today and post them day by day, please feel free to leave a comment so I know I still have an audience to rant to!

I’m in desperate need of breathing new life into my blogroll.
Bloggers, as we know, are fickle beasts and blogs tend to have a shelf life of about a year or two.
The you get the desperados like me who still run their blog on LiveJournal. Sooooo 2004!

What I need is new things to read. My blogroll on Volacious.Net.Au is grim only because the latest Wordpress update killed all my links.

So I’m rebuilding it and trimming out all the people who don’t post anymore, which leads me to ask my dear readers:

What are the good blogs you’re reading at the moment?

Link me!

Shelton and Jasper playing tug-of-war with a rubber chicken.

Only problem is that Jasper doesn’t play fair – he’ll suddenly let go, latch onto one of Shelton’s ears who drops the rubber chicken in surprise. Jasper lets go of Shelton’s ear, grabs the chicken, and scampers off.

Cheeky little brat

As I metioned in a previous post, recently I took the plunge and quit smoking after 7 years of the habit.

It’s one of those things that I had thought of doing on and off for many years, but like most smokers never really got serious about it because… well…. I enjoyed smoking! I felt better after having one and the reasons go on and on. Adam had been nagging me for years and years about giving up, naturally I never did. Seeing a government anti-smoking ad on TV usually made me go straight outside and light up. You know those ads, the ones with some crusty old bogan blaming smoking for her mouth cancer instead of her 40 years of poor dental hygiene and eating roadkill. Or the ones where the crying child actor is asking the concerned doctor actor why he can’t fix the actor attempting to play “daddy” who trying to rasp out “I love you son” with a tube up his nose. Yes, I may be insensitive to what those actors are trying to portray, but I absolutely detest the way those ads are mode. In particular, I absolutely detest the NSW Government’s “QUIT” campaign.

I actually called the 13 QUIT number one day last year, curious to know if there was an easy way to fix the smoking cravings whilst finding a better way to deal with anxiety other than smoking. The woman on the phone took my name, number, details, as I would expect, then proceeded to ask me had I seen the ads on TV or in the newspaper. (Yes, you nitwit, do you think I accidentally dialed you instead of calling the pizza place?) and asked if I wanted to quit. (again, WTF?). She then started on a dialogue most likely printed on her screen about how smoking is bad for your health, blah blah blah and did I know all this? I started getting a bit angry here – What kind of idiot living in this day and age is NOT aware of the health dangers associated with smoking? Treating me like an imbecile is very unlikely to get me to listen. So she said she would send me a “Quit Pack”, which I assumed would be a nice little set if tricks to stop smoking, maybe a stick or two of nicotine gum, and some case studies of people who had succeeded.

What did I get 6-8 weeks later? Half a kilogram of glossy pamphlets that spewed the same propaganda that the government ads did. At this point, I was fed up with the whole deal, and my (very strong) feeling of spite caused me to immediately reach for my pack of cigarettes, light a smoke with my zippo, and use the zippo (and fluid) to set their pamphlets alight. Curiously enough, the highly-plasticised glossy pages burned with an intense green flame. I’m sure the fumes coming from the flame was even worse for me than the cigarettes, but at that point I really didn’t care.

Oh, and did I get a “follow-up call” to see how I was going? Nope. Didn’t hear a thing. Another shining example of an effective NSW Government program.

So, back to the present, the only way I knew it was time to quit was by moving into this house – I had always wanted a complete “revamp” of my life, start in a new direction as a new person. And quitting smoking had to be a part of it. The hardest part was making a promise to myself and actually keeping it – I mean, how many “last cigarettes” can one have? What really did help was a $20 book I bought, written by a fairly well-known quit-smoking advocate, Allen Carr. I was too cheapskate to go to his course, but I thought if I could read through this book and get a few thoughts into my head about an effective method, it would be a start. And really, that’s all it needed – to put things in a different frame of mind. The book is not perfect, no methods are. However, by sitting down and reading that book, it cemented in my own head that I was going to give it a proper go this time, and I needed to remember that all in all it was something quite simple – a drug addiction, and that as long as the drug is in the system, it will continue to want more and more. And no drug addiction is ever a good thing. To starve it would be hard (and it was), but now I rarely think about it, which I think is the biggest blessing of it all.

So I’m not going to say to all the smokers out there you can do it and wave the pom-poms, frankly if a smoker wants to smoke, they will, and it’s really none of my business. It really irked me when ex-smokers got on their pedestal and told me how “disgusting a habit” it was, and that “pffft, if I can do it anyone can” so it’s “just a matter of willpower”.. What I would like to say though is that I am very proud that I was able to do it – usually I’m terrible with self-control and I’m incredibly impulsive – so it’s not as though it’s a matter of willpower. What I am hoping is that I can now have the confidence to change other parts of my life that need a little touch-up – one thing at a time!

I thought nothing could shock me anymore when it came to free-to-air TV.

First, we had Dancing with the Stars

Then, we had The fattest Biggest Loser

Now imagine this: Combine the two! Fat people losing weight in a dancing competition.

Introducing: Dance Your Ass Arse Off

Think it’s a joke? Nope. Coming soon to Channel 9!

As many will know, the last OzLotto lottery didn’t go off, and the jackpot is now $90 million. The OzLotto lottery is incredibly hard to attain, you need to get 7 numbers correct (out of 45) instead of the usual 5 – chances to win are slim!

Naturally, I like to enter it because if I win, the chances of me having to share it are minimal – imagine $90 mil coming into your bank account! Whilst I was in NZ, they let go their biggest ever jackpot ($35 million) to a woman in Hamilton. Naturally, Hamilton being a small and decidedly poor town, keeping that a secret wasn’t going to be easy, and whilst working on a TV headend (for that is my job) I saw a lot of news yet-to-be-broadcast news clips as journalists desperately tried to hunt down the winner and “out” her. All the interviews said this woman was a “completely unremarkable” and “normal” person, who worked as a dish cleaner at a local restaurant.

I wondered what would happen if I won something that big, especially something like $90 million. We’ve all sat around and wondered, haven’t we, about what we would do if we won the lottery. Would we give it away to charity? Would we buy a new house / car / boat ? Would we invest it? Sure, this is something you would consider if you won $1 million or so, but $90 million?

So I had a thought. What would I do? Would I want to remain anonymous? What would I do with such a stupid amount of money? Simple. I’d start a political party, and use the proceeds to fund it and gain publicity. My lotto win would not be anonymous – I would want people to know that I had won it and what I was going to use it for – instant cheap publicity!

For a long time I’ve dreamed about starting a political party – you know, the one that everyone is screaming out for but nobody is satisfying. It apears that the only time someone starts a political party is to satisfy some extreme view ala Greens, One Nation, Christian Democrats, Family First – nobody seems to want to start a party that is moderate in nature that satisfies what most of the nation wants! The Liberals and Labor do not come c;lose. So many people of my (our) generation are screaming out for a party that promotes conservative economic practice and progressive social policy. Where is it? Some time ago I was contacted by the “Liberty and Democracy Party” that purported to support all of this and more, yet on further analysis appeared to be promoting policies that were a copy of the American system – and look how well that’s turning out! I put them in the “extremist” bin with all the rest. The Democrats tried, but really their economic policy was not strong. They were middle of the road on EVERYTHING.

Could I do it? I don’t know. The only way to get elected in this country is to know the system, convince the right people and have the media onside. And have a lot of money so you access said system. Definitely not a one-man job – and how do you attract the right people into your party that won’t end up hijacking it for their own political purposes? NSW Liberals is a prime example of that in action. You must be sure that those people coming into your party have similar goals and ambitions to you and aren’t trying to twist and warp your policies.

Above all, it would have to be a party capable of winning actual *power* in this country, and put an end to bipartisanship. I think this may actually be possible if decent party members were found that would be willing to be electoral candidates. And all this would be attracted if I actually had the money to start it all up. Politics aint’ cheap!

So yes, maybe I’m dreaming – I’ve thought before of “infiltrating” the existing parties, hoping for change, but we all know that this isn’t going to work – revolution political overhaul is the only way to really make a directional change in this country. Those in the current system are corrupted well before they reach the top.

Speaking of the top, WTF is this with Malcolm Turnbull and this OzCar affair? What the hell was he thinking? Firstly, a very cheap shot to take if he was using that to upset Kommandant Rudd, and with so much risk to his own political career? I actually had hope for the federal Libs when Malcolm won the leadership – the wets were finally taking back control and steering the party back on course, and then this. Whether this email was “faked” or not (I personally believe it wasn’t faked, AFP can be persuaded to determine whatever they like and the original evidence will never be released for public scrutiny), it was a hell of a risk to put his career on. I thought this guy wanted to be PM? Misleading parliament? Hell, Johnny H mislead the whole COUNTRY, was caught, and he still got voted back in! What was the point of attacking Rudd over a free ute?

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