See You Next Wednesday
Why haven't I done the washing, or the washing up?
Last week I went on a training course to learn about the "Fundamentals of Business Analysis". It was fascinating. This week I could almost feel the concepts I had learned about business analysis fading away as I was coordinating the test plan for the next software release. Not reinforcing the training at the National Support Office does make a change from not receiving the training in the first place at a Customer Service Centre.
Jimbo, Linda and I went to Dave's to play
Dungeons and Dragons on Saturday, and Greg, Jimbo and I went to Jon and Trudi's to play
Golden (Jon's pulp fiction genre roleplaying game) on Sunday. Also on the weekend I dug a garden bed for my mother.
On Tuesday the Human Shields cobbled together an indoor cricket team of new, injured and irregular players. Unsurprisingly we gelled only a little and were soundly beaten for the seventh time in eight games. Despite this we still rank third in B Grade. The pressure of being outclassed on the field every week might disintegrate the team before we can be relegated back to the more realistic D Grade competition we so recently called our own. That would be a pity.
On Wednesday Jimbo came over to watch the Rugby League State of Origin match. Queensland played poorly. New South Wales also didn't play well and only won 23-4. Queensland were thrice lucky to score at all and New South Wales should have scored twice that many points. Fortunately we listened to Roy and H.G. call the game on Triple J FM radio so at least we had that to enjoy with our beer and pizza dinner. Also, we watched a good episode of
Smallville, which was nice.
Last night Jimbo, Linda and I went to Dave's to play more
Dungeons and Dragons. We also watched
Once More With Feeling (the musical episode of
Buffy the Vampire Slayer) on DVD with Joss Whedon's commentary, and an episode of
Futurama, with Fiona and Meagan. We had Subway sandwiches and Ali Babar kebabs for dinner. Jimbo left this morning for Flynn's naming ceremony. Simon returned this afternoon from two weeks holiday in Townsville. Tonight many people are going to the Blue Elephant Indo Lanka Restaurant to celebrate Fiona's birthday and eat new things for dinner.
Last week the Phoenix Powerpuff Girls beat the AAMI Thunderbirds and knocked them back to outright third on the ladder. This week Phoenix play the Liz Ellis Swifts to decide first place and probably the premiership. The Swifts have the best offensive and defensive records and are the only team to have beaten Phoenix in the competition this year. On the other hand Phoenix coming off a thorough 52-36 victory over the only team to beat the Swifts so far this year. Unfortunately these season defining games are not the games televised so I will have to read about it in the paper on Monday where it will possibly merit as much as a column inch.
Now is the winter of our discombobulation.
On Friday I went to the Australian Institute of Sport to see the Phoenix Powerpuff Girls defeat the Canberra Newbies 70 to 50 in a seesawing injury prone match. The Newbies actually won two of the quarters although they never challenged Phoenix who led by fourteen goals at the first break. Three Phoenix players left the game injured however Elouise Southby returned with a strapped knee to finish the game which is a good sign for the Australian team's defence of their world championship title in Jamaica.
Mikey and Jo visited on the weekend and stayed with Mum. On Saturday evening we went to a Fijian restaurant for dinner and saw
The Whale Rider at the cinema. The movie was excellent. I cried. Unfortunately the person sitting next to me was not being very polite. He would make unkind remarks about the film to his friend and laugh at his own comments. He even found something to laugh at during Paikea's speech. I wish he had waited for it to come out on video because if they were watching it at home his friend might have cut his heart out and fed it to him. Maybe.
On Sunday we went to the National Portrait Gallery at Old Parliament House. It was fascinating but it was more extensive than we expected and we were a bit rushed at the end because I had to get back in time to take Linda over to Jimbo and Simon's before we went to Jonathan's game in the afternoon. Still, it was fascinating. The portrait of Deborah Mailman painted with oil paints on jute is a magnificent piece of art.
The previous Tuesday my pulp fiction character, Marion Laverne, was brutally struck down from behind and died. That was a pity. On Sunday afternoon the pulp fiction game continued and my new character, Taylor Carlisle, was mortally wounded but pulled through. It is taking me a little while to get up to speed in the genre.
Cold and wet, together at last.
I washed a bunch of Manchester on the weekend, and towels and doonas too. Then the weather clouded up and frosted over and drizzled a bit. Now I have washing lines worth of material backed up. The dryer can do a double bed sheet, or a flannelette sheet, but can't quite manage a flannelette double bed sheet. Then, last night, I volunteered to wash the indoor cricket strip. Tonight I am on dryer duty because if I don't clear the backlog I'll be sleeping on the couch, again.
This means I can sit in front of my computer and wait for my internet connection to do the stuff I usually don't wait for it to do. And tonight I have a very special connection (currently disgorging data at 40 bytes per second) which can barely handle email attachments. I can feel my character building with every click of the reload button. (Is it the latest trend to have the word 'loading' on the front page of your web site, or is "Document: Done" just a lie?) Meanwhile, back at the 6x86L, I can do some housekeeping, play erratic Tetris, or rabbit on a bit in my blog entry until I get a transfer rate suitable for uploading. I can listen to my Cult TV Classics Volume 1 CD, eat Vegemite on crusty fresh bread from the bakery I found this afternoon which makes Vienna plait loaves and tell everyone about it in detail.
In round five of the Commonwealth Bank Trophy the Phoenix Powerpuff Girls were beaten by the Liz Ellis Swifts and tumbled from outright first to equal first (third on percentage behind the Swifts and the AAMI Thunderbirds). After moving upcourt to wing attack for the test series against South Africa, Natasha Chokljat returned to wing defence in an out of touch Phoenix midcourt. Sharelle McMahon at goal attack had to work at getting the ball into the circle from the midcourt only to come up against the Swifts' Australian defenders, Liz Ellis and Alison Broadbent. The world's best netballer was restricted to just 16 goals from 25 shots for the game, even after Chokljat was switched forward to wing attack in the second half (which Phoenix won 20-18). The Swifts' Australian goalers, Jane Altschwager and Cath Cox, had it all over the Phoenix defence and scored 51 goals from 68 opportunities (30% more than Phoenix) provided by the dominant Swift midcourt. Phoenix's 38 points were earned mostly from Kirsten Wheeler's (22 from 27) face saving performance.
On Sunday, instead of playing Jonathan's
Dungeons and Dragons campaign, Dave, Fiona, Jimbo, Megan, Simon and I went to Jo's place for a replay of the Eurovision Song Contest. Outlandishly attired and with booze in hand we hurled vitriol and laughed derisively at the gaudy spectacle. Despite Jo's residence being recently feng shuied and able to seat everybody (twice), half the crowd couldn't reach the nibbles and the cheap brandy schnapps curdled the Bailey's Irish cream. Western decadence: one, ancient oriental geomancy: nil. Then we forewent the original plan of stopping every three songs to refill and before Terry Wogan could say "two butch walloppers" it was over. A scary lady from Turkey held aloft the trophy (which is so spiky it may not comply with European Union health and safety standards) having earned the land of earthquakes and World Cup Soccer semifinalists the right to host the contest next year. (Or should I say "contests"? Bwah ha ha!) Linda was awarded the
Eurovisionophile Epitomist trophy for an unprecedented second time.
On Monday I was asked for some statistics on the current state of testing for the software release I am the Testing Manager of. At last the nature of these "statistics" which people have been telling me I should be keeping was revealed. Fortunately, maths is fun. I quickly generated a stack of paper as a distraction and set about pasting raw data into a spreadsheet and creating graphs of what was actually requested. Presently I have an array of spreadsheets with pie and stacked column graphs which I can update each morning and email to anyone who might express an interest. (Now, if only someone would express an interest. I think the stack of paper might actually be the standard presentation.)
Yesterday, Human Shields won an indoor cricket game after a run of five unsuccessful outings. Our opposition looked like they might overhaul our innings until their last pair got out four times in their first over and finished with negative thirty runs. As the game started at 5:30pm I had time to drive to the other end of Canberra and catch the second half of another dubious Pub Trivia Quiz with Greg, Jimbo, Jonathan and Trudi. Mallrats came tenth out of fifteen and Jonathan won a jug of beer, which was nice.
At this time Bigpond is shovelling data to me at 22 bytes per second, possibly by using actual shovels.
