A University Summer.

Ah, a university summer is a wonderful thing. Firstly, we have a blissful 3 months without the undergrads making for a very quiet and mostly relaxing time. During the Christmas break we get the lab cleaned up and looking great and have a very relaxing time pacing ourselves with our paperwork.

Then comes the first week back of the students and the joy that is young women dressed for summer. Whew! I am a happily married man but I still appreciate the beauty that is the female form. And let me tell you that there is a LOT of female form to be appreciated at QUT right now. I have to remind myself that I am old enough to be a father to most of the women in first year! (There's also the problem of me being married, faithful and fat enough that most of them would rather gnaw their own arms off.) I also have to wonder what I would think if any of them were my daughter and they dressed like some of them are today. Would I let them out of the house? And does that kind of thinking make a Grumpy Old Man (TM)?

At any rate, I do very much enjoy the view here at Uni during summer. It really is very pleasing...

37 journeys around our sun...

Happy Birthday to me! Yay! I'm another year older. Funny thing is I don't feel any older. I don't really worry too much about my age. I'm pretty proud of every year I've spent circling this star of ours. I'm no genius and I'm fairly confident that I'm not going to win a Nobel or change the course of human history or anything like that (I'll leave that to my son) but on the whole, I'm pretty happy with my life.

Yes, I know I had a big b!tch about Bad News (TM) a couple of posts down but sometimes you need to let off steam. The reality is that I am still pretty happy with my life and having spent 37 years living it, I've grown rather fond of it.

Here goes for trip number 38 around Sol. Let's see what it holds...

Blood Bowl!!!!!

So last night I took it upon myself to show Medway how to play Blood Bowl. After recommendations from both myself and Greg to get the PC game and play, he explained to me that there were aspects of that game he found confusing. So I explained to him that he should play the boardgame and it would show him what was happening in the PC version.

Last night wound up as a good time to do that as the rest of the guys were finishing their 40K game so Medway and I collected up the stuff and headed off to a quiet corner to play.

He took Humans (a nice, generic team) and I took Necromantic (Werewolves, Frankensteins, Zombies, oh my!). Then he proceeded to wipe the floor with me. I helped him a lot with hints and tips so as to help him score but he rolled like a demon while my rolls were pretty sucky. He smashed my team around and I just couldn't do anything right. But at the end of the night I didn't care and I had a good time playing. Medway seemed to enjoy it too.

But at the end of it all I realised just how much I miss playing the game. Yes, I have the PC version but for me its really just not the same. The PC version is cool and all but really I love painting the figures (with a maximum of 16 players per team it's easy to get them done) and I just love the feel of moving them around the board and rolling dice. I need to try and find a way of playing it more often. I just wish that Ags and Draco were into it as we could have a great little 6-person mini-league. If only I could find more players and a little more time...

Sick of Bad News.

I've always been a proponent of the philosophy that life is like a footpath (sidewalk for you Americans). Just when you're walking along happily you seem to step in a big pile of sh!t and you have to take some time to step aside and wipe it all off before you can keep walking or else you'll always have a smell of sh!t following you around.

Well, it seems I've stepped in another pile. Its certainly not the biggest I've ever stepped in but I'm already tired of it. All I ever seem to hear nowadays is Bad News. It started last week when a good friend of mine told me that her mum was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Her dad already has dementia and now her mum has been given 6 months to live. She then informs me that one of my ex-lecturers who I got on really well with has had a stroke and will spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. He can barely communicate but the worst part is that he lives alone and it was three days before anyone found him. That's just horrible.

We are getting solar power installed in the house and we have had nothing but trouble with it. We signed the contract back in July of 2009 and once they had our deposit we heard nothing from them for 5 months. Every time we contacted them for details we got a "we'll get back to you" and then silence. Eventually my wife called and asked to talk to the CEO and was told that we would have work commence soon and they were sorry for the problems. Part of the install was the upgrade of our power box as the current one is over 50 years old (solar power systems generate a lot of heat). So a week ago we get a call from our sales rep to tell us that they aren't going to upgrade our box. They will refund us the cost of the upgrade once the installation is complete. We tell them, not good enough: we want the upgrade, not the money. We have plans to follow the upgrade. Nope, they won't do it. We argue and eventually I ask to speak with the CEO. I eventually get through to him and explain we are sick of the way we are being treated. Give us the upgrade we are paying for. He apologises again and tells us he will fix it. Yesterday, they come to install the panels. They leave without installing them telling us that the rails on the roof have not been put on properly. The sales-rep tells us that the contractors refuse to work on our roof because its an old asbestos roof (we told them this when we signed the contract BTW). Now, he has rescheduled the install but frankly, I'm sick of this crap from them. Really, really sick of it.

Last night I planned on getting some stuff done in the man-cave. I've moved all my stuff in, I just need to tidy it up and make it nice. Nope. Alex decided to be a pain last night and since my wife twisted her ankle yesterday, it was up to me to take care of him. He was a right royal pain and I'm very tired of the poor sleep patterns from him (as in he doesn't have one still). Don't talk to me about controlled crying and those other techniques. My son is smart enough to know that if he keeps us up all night, we will give in as sleep-deprivation is a torture technique for a reason (let me tell you). We only seem to get one good nights sleep from him for every two poor ones. I just wish he would settle down. We've tried every technique under the sun and a few that aren't and nothing seems to work with him. I love him but I'm really tired of this (literally).

Plus at work we have undergone a "restructure" of our faculty. This is supposed to make us more efficient. All I have seen so far is the faculty office trying to take all the power away from the technical areas and make our lives more difficult. Not one benefit have I seen but I can count at least 6 new obstacles to overcome. Joy.

Gaming. My outlet. The way I let off steam. Thursday night is my night with my mates and games. Last week i get a call from Humph that something has died uder his house (where we play) and that its unlivable. Great. Evening cancelled. Oh well, I have a Warmachine tourney Saturday. That will make up for it. I turn up for said tourney. And only 3 other people do as well. I know of at least 6 people who all said "Oh count me in, I'll definitely be there." Not one of them turned up. It was, frankly, bloody slack. Allen took time out of his weekend to run this event and people just didn't bother turning up. Next year we have both resolved to play Blood Bowl instead.

I know there are people out there who have it much worse than I do. I'm no emo and I am very thankful for what I have. But I am tired of Bad News. I'd like to see some good stuff happening. It's hard to be positive when all you hear is Bad News. I'd like to wipe the sh!t off my shoe and keep going, thanks.