You can guess what he’s famous for…

The title says it all really. Now I’m just going to have to find some time - probably when I’m not at work… to actually set it all up.

Lately, I have been trying to learn how to juggle… Well, actually I have kind of been trying since I was about 12, which I think is how long I have had my juggling balls, although they do still look new. However, now I actually am starting to be able to do it, as Lindsay at work has given me a bit of an added incentive. I’m allowed to go home once I have done one more catch than the previous day. Today I have to do 9, which I have already done, so I can go home when I like! I started on Monday with 6. You’d think that once you got that many happening you’d be into a rythm, but for some reason it’s still not working for me. I’m just going to blame my unco-ness and leave it at that. I may be spending a lot of time at work next week though.

Just finished watching this weeks episode of “The Queen’s Tour” with John Campbell. As you can probably guess from the title, it was in Wanganui. As per usual, Jaquie Brown was profiling the Saturday nightlife, which consisted of attending a roller hockey practice, followed by annoying the design school students who were working on their assignments, then watching the rugby at a boarding school - probably the one redeeming feature, but then I guess they have rugby everywhere, followed by visiting some wierd cafe which wasn’t exactly pumping. Possibly a little lacking in terms of an awesome night. At the start of the night she was trying to flag down cars which were off to Palmerston North for their night out to see why they would want to leave.

Anyway, I’m sure it’s an alright place to live… Possibly the most disturbing part of the show was the end where John Campbell did the titanic “I’m the king of the world” scene on the paddle steamer Waimaire.

That was followed by the stunning revelation on Nightline that Saddam never had any weapons of mass destruction.

Well, that’s 3 posts in one day. I wonder if there is any way that I am going to keep that up… Probably not, but at least if I get into the habit there’s more chance that it will happen.

Paul posted a link to an article about geek guys yesterday, which was scarily accurate, so I thought I would go through it and comment about myself point by point… (The article is here) If you haven’t read it you should read it. It will also help this post make more sense.

“Geek Guys are smart, loyal, interesting, have an cool sense of humor and are very creative. Parents love them, too.”
Yes, I can agree with that

How does it work?
The pulling everything apart thing. Yes, to a certain extent… although somewhat reformed.

Toys.
Not huge on the toys like I used to be, but I do have some juggling balls, a frisbee, a tennis ball and a cd case that can be made to eject rapidly on my desk at work

Creativity
I like to create, but often find it gets pushed to the background with all the other stuff I have going on.

Science Fiction/Fantasy Conventions.
No, not really, at all. Although… The dressing up part, I nearly went into town dressed as a pimp the other day. Silk dressing gown, jewellery and shiny shiny aviators. in the end I left the dressing gown behind.

Gaming and role playing.
Gaming yes, role playing no. I tend to prefer a bit of adrenaline/action and more fun in less time from the games I play. I don’t really like RPGs that much. Partially because I think they are more addictive than fun - much like gambling - you don’t see that many people smiling at the casino but it’s always full, and partially because there is a lot of magic/demons/occult in there which I don’t think fits with my faith very well. But then one could argue against the excessive violence in the other games I play too, so that’s not really the main reason. I tend to play mainly first person shooters and driving games, although I do enjoy the occasional real time strategy or adventure game.

The Net.
Yes, definitely, I started doing the instant messaging thing (ICQ) in 1996 and did the BBS thing before the internet really got going. I’m not really big on the online gaming thing though, partially because we only have dialup. Up until this point though I had managed to avoid blogs, although I did have my own website on geocities for a while, which got scarily out of date.

Geek guys and a challenge.
Definitely can’t resist a challenge. Ask Jamie about the foozeball or Merodie about the pool. Current challenges I am working on are the juggling (mentioned in a previous post) and trying to find my flatmate Emily’s blog. Usually I can find stuff in a matter of seconds, but I don’t think her one has hit google yet… Ayley and Kelly can tell you how fast I found their blogs. In breaking news, I couldn’t be bothered waiting and she told me what it was. If it had been on google I would have found it with the search terms I was using…

Humor.
For obscure references see Blog title and URL… Currently I’m stuck on a bit of a “you’re” kick. You take what the other person has said and you kind of modify it and make it funny by adding “you” or “you’re” or “your” to it.
For example:
Yesterdays Dilbert cartoon
Statement: “That’s crazy”
Reply: “You’re crazy”
Statement: “This pan’s kind of hot.”
Reply: “You’re kind of hot”
Sometimes it’s funnier to just do it in your head…
You get the picture.

Dress. Casual, comfortable and ‘wearable.’
Yes, although I do try not to look too heinous… and do even make an effort on occasion.

Geek guys and a mystery.
Similar to the challenge. Possibly what keeps me up for hours when some part of my computer isn’t working quite right

Music.
I do own a guitar, but definitely plink and I listen to most things. A lot of Christian rock/pop/hip-hop, along with the beatles and pretty much anything. Don’t really like lyrics which have heaps of swearing or otherwise bad - really couldn’t figure out how to put that. And no, I don’t really like country. I’m definitely not as opinionated about music as this.

Diet.
I can cook and usually eat reasonably healthily, if maybe somewhat too much. But as the article says I do tend to eat junk food when gaming.

Loyal
I’d like to think so, but I’m not shy and I think I make friends reasonably easily.

Intelligence.
Pretty much - like what it says in the article, although I don’t really like blowing that trumpet.

Parents love Geek guys.
Everybody loves me

Geek guys are romantic.
Not something people see in me every day, but it’s there. Although, I don’t think I would make a heart out of microchips or write a poem comparing a girl to a piece of hardware.

Geek guys are passionate about pleasure.
meh, never really thought about it.

Occupation.
I am a system test software engineer, which is fairly technical, although sometimes it’s not challenging enough, and I really don’t work well when I’m not being challenged.

Where the Geek guy hangs out.
Yeah, pretty much anywhere.

Well, hopefully that wasn’t too boring…

I should be in bed doing the necessary preparation for the LAN tomorrow… oops, today, but instead I am still being dragged back to this blog thing. A couple more people have joined the bandwagon… Louise (my sister) and Baz. Anyway, I thought I might order halflife 2 from steam, but then it started trying to update steam which I really couldn’t be bothered waiting for, (does anyone think I have begun to speak a foreign language) so it’s just going to have to happen today at the LAN. But first I am going to hopefully buy a swissball, which I may even use as my seat at the LAN if I’m crazy enough, followed by trying to find some bargains at the garage sale at the church at church corner.

We had beer and pizza or “Monthly Company Update” as it is now called at work this afternoon, followed by some discussions about the things that were said, which are going to have to remain confidential … and then we went to Baz’s and ended up playing Nintendo for a couple of hours before eventually heading off to Rockpool to play some pool, after which I headed back to Baz’s to pick up my cellphone and headed home to write this, after giving him some valuable tips on how to set up his blog from my vast blogging experience. Anyway, that’s probably enough rambling about how my day went. I think I may actually prefer writing posts that are about something interesting or that have some sort of theme, but in my tired state you are going to have to settle for my night out. (You may want to put this in the “Where the geek guy hangs out” section of my previous post.)

Ok, I have been at the LAN for more than 4 hours now and I still can’t play games. I got counterstrike source, abut when I tried to play it, it said I should update my video card drivers, which I then proceeded to try… Midway through the install it crashed, royally screwing my computer, leaving me trying to revive it for the rest of the day.

I did have slightly better luck this morning, coming away from the garage sale with a jigsaw puzzle and 5 packs of Girl Guide Mini chocolate biscuits. However, the warehouse only had two swiss balls in the size I wanted and they were both purple, so I didn’t get one of those. I did buy some croissants from the bakery outside the warehouse though, making for an excellent breakfast back at the flat - apparently the girls had just been discussing making some kind of different breakfast seconds before I walked in the door. On a positive note, the other 8 people at the LAN are having no trouble gaming…

51 seconds till I have another driver download to try…

Thank you omega drivers, you just saved my life, well, my hair anyway, from being torn out. Note the time… I arrived at the LAN at 11am and now I can finally start playing games.

We went to Captain Ben’s - the local fish and chip shop for tea, (about 8:30) and I decided to try something different for a change. Every time I go there I see this sign written completely in Chinese advertising the Chinese dishes that are available and every time I tell myself that the next time I will actually pick one of them. So, today I actually did it… Here is the dialogue with the girl behind the counter…

GBTC: Hello, what would you like (or something similar)
Me: I’ll have one of those please (pointing at Chinese writing on the menu)
GBTC: You can’t be serious.
Me: Yes
GBTC: Do you even know what it is?
Me: No
GBTC: I suggest you choose something better.
Me: No, this is what I want
GBTC: It’s kind of a chicken and tofu thing on rice - Is that really what you want?
Me: Yep, sounds good.
GBTC: That will be $6.50
(Money changed hands)

Some time later…
GBTC: Ummm… The pointy thing (announcing that it was ready)
Me: Thanks
GBTC: Would you like chopsticks or a fork?
Me: Chopsticks please.
GBTC: (Somewhat mockingly) Have fun trying to use them.

And that was pretty much that… Incidentally, it was very tasty and I wouldn’t hesitate to order it again. (I know which one on the menu it is too.)

I went back to Captain Ben’s today after church and because I wasn’t feeling adventurous, I pointed to the same thing as last time. Strangely, I got a different meal… I think this one was bacon and egg on rice. Still very tasty, but I’m back to square 1 on the learning the list front.

I clocked the original Myst today - well, at least I think I did… It doesn’t seem to actually end. It just lets you keep exploring. I also played quite a lot of single player MOHAA earlier in the day, which was actually quite a sobering experience. One of the missions was the allied asault on Normandy. I was landing on Omaha beach and the suicidal nature of the whole thing was quite a thought provoking thing on the stupidness of war. Every single time all the people in front of me on the landing craft got mowed down by machine guns, as I did 9 times out of 10. Luckily it wasn’t real, or I’d be dead at least 30 times over.

I also installed Myst 4 just before I went to bed. I think it is possibly the biggest game I have ever installed, weighing in at a whopping 8GB on two DVD’s. It is very pretty though, although Cyan and Ubisoft failed to provide “invert mouse” as an option, which is somewhat annoying for my upside down brain.

Last night marked the end of small groups for another year of navs. A bit of a sad occasion, but a good time to reflect on how the year has gone and looking ahead to the future. A lot has happened this year, which I won’t go into here because I don’t really have that much time to write this post, but I might go into it in more detail in a future post.

I had quite a long talk to my family the phone on Monday night too, which was really good, with my brother setting an all-time new record for him on the phone, of about 70 minutes, which is extremely impressive. Incidentally, if there are any girls aged aproximately 19 from the Hamilton area reading this… (Not very likely but it could happen) I won’t say anymore, but feel free to post a comment.

I also got Quake 3 on Monday, which is a fairly old game now, (which made it really cheap) but still a lot of fun. I installed it linux too, and it installed and ran without a hitch, which I thought was pretty cool. I’ve never really played the game before either, because when it came out my computer was too slow to run it, causing the people I was trying to shoot to appear to teleport around the screen instead of smoothly running.

So, a combination of quake 3 and the long phone conversation meant that I “decided” not to go to the gym on Tuesday morning. I will try again tomorrow… Now that daylight savings is here, getting up at 6:20 is starting to become more of a struggle again.

I’m still managing to go home every day! Today my target is 14, which I have already achieved. I finally feel like I’m getting the hang of it…

Recently at work me and Baz have taken to playing Dutch draughts at work (also known as international draughts.) See his blog for scores. It is a much more interesting game than what most of you know as draughts or checkers. I will try to explain the differences as well as linking some actual rules.

The first difference is that it is played on a 10×10 board with 4 rows of pieces instead of 3 (20 pieces instead of 12). Any piece can take backwards, not just the king. Taking is compulsory and if you have multiple options, you must take in the way that will allow you to capture the most pieces. (A king counts as one piece). The biggest difference though is the kings. They can move as far as they like along a diagonal in any direction instead of just one space. If they are jumping they can start any distance before the piece they are taking and end any distance after it. However, they must still follow the maximum take rule, so if they can land somewhere where they can take more pieces, they have to land there. This can lead to some serious carnage, once you get a king and makes them much more important. You win when your opponent can’t move (no pieces or completely blocked in).

I think that’s about it, see the above rules site for the rest of the rules, although I think I’ve covered most of them.

I’ve been told that I am a lazy mofo and should post, so I am… (posting that is.) To see relative laziness, it may pay to compare wordcount between accuser and accusee, which tells quite a different story, considering the two blogs were created within a day of each other! At first I thought not a lot had happened since my last post, but looking back, that is not actually the case. Here is a selection:

I decided to let the juggling challenge die it’s natural death… Incidentally, I did 26 juggles this morning which would have seen me well into next week. Juggling is actually a lot easier if you aren’t trying to count.

Dutch draughts is going somewhat worse now. Baz won the first game and I won the next nine, and he is currently on a winning streak of 6… I did catch him perusing draughts problems on the web when I came in one morning, so I think he might be putting a little bit more effort into learning the map… (Gaming reference)

I played some of the prince of persia - warrior within demo last night which wasn’t all that, but I haven’t finished it yet, so I’ll reserve my judgement, but I’m not really overly impressed and will quite possibly cancel the pre-order I placed just over two months ago. (It comes out in a month’s time.) This is also partially due to the large number of games that I already have and haven’t finished.

On Tuesday we farewelled Ayley, which involved eating a Scottish dinner, including haggis and “taties and neeps” (mashed potatoes and turnips) and fine malt Whisky. Eoin did a fantastic job of addressing the haggis before we ate it as well (Scottish tradition). Jeremy and Me (well, mainly Jeremy) had put together a bit of a presentation of video clips and photos of Ayley during her time here, which we showed as well, including the guaranteed technical difficulties. Windows media player really does suck. Then I somehow managed to recover Peter’s 11 page assignment which his computer had crashed and eaten… Possibly the first time I have ever got something useful out of a windows tmp file. I was quite impressed that it actually worked.

I think I’ll leave it at that… I could include more links if I really tried to but I don’t really want to link to Microsoft… They have kind of cancelled themselves out. On the one hand, the aforementioned technical difficulties and on the other, actually managing to recover the data lost when Windows crashed… Apparently this was due to a problem with HP’s printer driver and not Microsoft’s fault?

I actually did quite a lot yesterday, looking back. I got up just before 7 (Yes it was the weekend) and went for a roller-blade, which I haven’t done for ages, which was fun and also some much needed exercise. A wee bit of boring stuff like tidying my room and doing my washing. I played the prince of Persia demo some more, which was not great, and I got to a point where everyone else has problems and the big monster gets stuck in the corner and you can’t kill him. Anyway, too much detail. Played a bit of Myst IV as well (very small amount of progress), re-potted my cacti, went to a meeting, watched “The Castle” - I’d never seen it before, classic comedy - recommended… Then watched some of the rugby which wasn’t all that exciting due to not having any teams I cared about, so went to the undies flat to watch another movie…

That is what this post is really about. The movie was “Lost in Translation.” This was possibly the most boring movie I have ever seen. Nothing actually happens, and it is about two bored people hanging out together. The only reason I didn’t fall asleep was that I was hoping that something was going to redeem the movie, but alas, no, nothing. We did watch it rather late in the evening which could have contributed, but I’m sure it can’t have been that big a factor. I decided to check out what others thought about it and looked it up on IMDB. I cannot agree… (See post title) This movie is ranked an 8/10 and is number 153 on the best 250 movies of all time. I’m not quite sure if we were watching the same movie, but I really didn’t see it. Anyway, enough ranting… I recommend this movie if you have absolutely nothing else to do for an hour and forty minutes and have seen all other movies.

Now, to end this post on a more positive note, I am going to post a photo of my cacti. From left to right: As yet unnamed, Shaggy and Spid.

In other news, The two games of Dutch Draughts played between the flying Dutchman and the crazy Scot on Friday both ended in a draw…

Sunday was great. First I had church, which was excellent. Some of the lines in one of the songs really stuck out to me. The lines were “Create in me a clean heart, O God and renew a right spirit within me” and “Restore unto me the joy of my salvation”, both of which stuck out as I have been rather grumpy and tired of late, and the grumpiness really isn’t a “right spirit”. Reuben recently wrote a post which used a lightbulb as an analogy for Jesus, and I made a rather cryptic comment at the time about taking light bulbs for granted. I think it is possible sometimes to take God for granted and forget how amazing he is, which I think is one of the reasons that we worship, - to remind ourselves. I think there are a lot of things that we take for granted, for example I am writing this post in a text editor, because blogger doesn’t seem to be working. I expected it to just work, but the link just wouldn’t work which I really wasn’t expecting before 7 in the morning.
Anyway, on to the rest of my day. After church, we went out out to the Martin’s place (near Prebbleton) and had a massive bbq. When we came back, there were some people I knew playing soccer on the Ilam school field, so I joined in, possibly the first exercise I’ve had in weeks. I’m writing this on Thursday but pretending that I wrote it on Monday, so it seems a bit weird to write that I’m playing basketball tonight, which will be my next bout of exercise, but I’ll write it anyway because I am. Then I had a meeting with food and got home in time to watch CSI and NCIS. One of the highlights of the day was telling everyone who asked what I had planned for Monday “Nothing”.

Today (Monday - Labour day) I played Myst IV most of the day (small amount of progress) and then went to Rachael’s house with Megan and had a spa, which could have been quite relaxing… Then after tea I introduced Megan to the world of Arnie, in the form of True Lies.

**Update, I figured out why I had to write this post (and the next one) offline… “A major error was made in the network routing“**

Yesterday was quite uneventful, which was kind of strange, being my birthday. I really must be getting old… Actually, I quite enjoyed the relaxedness of it all. I may have just invented that word… We had a romantic dinner for four (Spags) by candlelight, after which my Sister rang. After I talked to her I opened the present that my flatmates got for me which was very cool! - A sushi kit… Someone must have been noticing the copius amounts of sushi I eat my way through Then the rest of my family rang up and I talked to them for some time. Possibly the most interesting piece of news was that my brother Frans who kept pretending that he couldn’t be bothered learning how to drive has been getting lessons in secret since Tony got his learner’s. Dad told him that he had to get 10 lessons with an instructor before he could drive with Dad and the first Dad knew about the lessons was when Frans asked if he could drive. After that I had a piece of very yummy carrot cake that Megan baked for me while I was on the phone (no Mark, it wasn’t bacon cake) and then went to bed. Oh, today is actually the day that I am playing basketball