Infinite State Automaton

Today and yesterday were good days for me. I worked hard, fenced well, overcame many programming difficulties, washed clothes and ate good food. So, I'm weary now. My brain is alive but I can feel my body going 'bleh omg let me sleep'. But I'm not done yet.

So, posters. Yeah, I remember now. The whole idea of the posters and war material around is to appeal to the people who think that by playing these war games they can somehow participate or take in some of the spirit, the courage of those fighting men and women who lived and fought and died before them.

I wonder what a real soldier would think, if they came in to that room, and saw the people of many ages - children, teens and adults, boys and girls too - moving plastic figures around a table and rolling dice. Would they be outraged, that the depiction of their friends and loved ones who died in such a circumstance be so boldly sold out for money, or encouraged, that at such great expense they were able to secure even this future. I wonder. I felt embarassed.

I had wanted to join the army when I was younger. Initially it was my mothers idea to give me some kind of future because - I had the impression - she beleived computers were not a real career and that my dreams of getting involved in them somehow were fantasy at best. Later I tried again because I wanted to do it. Unfortunately, or fortunately, I was unsuccessful. My younger brother Warren is in the army and has fought in Iraq and the Solomon Islands. I didn't want to hurt or kill anybody. I just liked the feeling of belonging, the feeling of being in a uniform that I had from scouts. I wanted it again.

When I watch the way different gamers play their games of warhammer...some drive their troops forward and sacrifice them as meat shields to allow their more powerful forces to get in to position with less casualties. Of course these are just plastic models and it's nothing to care about if you have to let all of your troops die to save one man to win the game, right? Someone made a comment that in one game, his army was on top of (wait for it) a giant sea turtle for transport. At some point the turtle came under attack, so the player ordered his turtle to dive underwater to protect it from harm. This meant the entire army on the turtle were lost at sea and drowned. The player made this decision fully knowing the consequences because the sea turtle was more expensive than the men and he didn't want to risk losing it. I commented, "What a terrible thing, to know that you and your friends are all going to die because you weren't valuable enough to the commander." They laughed and agreed, but nobody thought anything else of it. But it stayed with me. Maybe because of the report I listened to on Friday.

At work, my co-workers are big on meetings. I have one every Wednesday morning to say what I have done that week ("Oh, I chatted in mirc and browsed wow insider..."). The last Friday of every month, students about to put out a thesis or professors and so on who are giving a talk at a conference get a chance to practice in front of the whole SEEC group. This week was a rehash of an old one that Ahmy had put together after September 11 which dealt with Systems Engineering in counter terrorism. One of the things he commented on that the Western Society is having problems with is that terrorists deliberately exploit Western values to gain additional notoriety/cause casualties and protect themselves. He cited the example of the seige in Beslan where several hundred school children were killed. From the terrorist perspective, that was a major win, because for three days they had 24/7 media coverage. It was an incident deliberately calculated to capitalise on the Western situation - freedom of speech, freedom of media - to damage. The fact that people died were an incidental happy consequence of the terrorists goals, and the fact that most of them were children was largely irrelevant to them.

I talked about this with Ahmy afterwards. He explained to me his perspectives on lots of different cultures. One thing he pointed out that was a flaw in Western society is the punishment for failure. If someone has a new idea for a project direction, and the project fails, that person is usually demoted, dismissed, or at the very least ridiculed. The company is unlikely to go in that direction in future. You can see this in the games industry where you will see a company make game after game after game that is relatively the same with little change except to update to the new computer hardware. In Australia, it's known as 'tall poppy' syndrome. The person who excels is the one who is pulled down or mocked. I've heard Anna talk about 'the nail that sticks out is the one that gets hit'...the person who wants to be different. I think this kind of sentiment is probably the same the whole world over, but it is probably more pronounced in certain places. What I have read on bullying in Japan, for example, far transcends anything most Australian school students would ever experience or witness.

Values...


In the Bible it says that originally we all talked the same language and lived in the same area, until Nimrod pursuaded the people to build the tower of Babel. God saw this and said "When they are all working together, who can stop them?" and scattered the people all over the world and broke up our languages. I always thought this was a bad idea, but recently, I haven't been sure. I think people who have the most hate are really afraid, afraid of others, because they don't understand these different people or things or were afraid they would be harmed somehow, so they attacked first. Trust is a hard thing to come by, but once won, more valuable than gold.

When I was in China I felt so terribly guilty about the conditions the people were living in because they were wonderful, decent people who were just in a bad situation. When I saw twelve people packed into a dormitory that was the same size as my single room I was ashamed. They never said anything about it or complained. And, after my initial shock subsided, I started to see something. They had adapted to their situation. The way they used their space, their three dimensional packing sense, their...ease of moving past each other, practically flowing over one another, whereas here people would uneasily stop, be offended, demand extra space or be rude to each other...

I think people are amazing creatures. Sure there are many terrible dark things about our races, and the things we have done to each other and this world. But I also have seen the brighter side, the spirit of a volunteer, the kindness in someones eyes, and the quiet hope of parents watching their children. I've seen people put aside their own goals and ambitions to help another.

When I see things like this I think, we can make it. I think, there's a bright future for all of us. And I want to help make it.

This was the inscription on a poster at the Military Hobbies building. Here my valiant Space Marines were utterly crushed by the combined might of Shane's Space Marines, Stan's Imperial Guard, and Justin's Space Marines. The poster depicted some half dozen laughing RAF pilots from WWII, and the quote is from Sir Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of England during that terrible, terrible time.

There were many such posters, replicas from different periods of war. Some were quite graphic and disturbing, showing warped animals with human features twisted into sneers or faces of hate in a military uniform. Even I was able to easily pick out which nationality the 'evil' creatures were supposed to represent. I thought little of it except that a few days prior, someone had said to me (in response to my challenge when that person made a comment about another person) "It's ok she is (insert nationality), she is used to it."

Of course it's not ok. I was deeply saddened to realise that there were still deep rooted anti-racial sentiments alive in people. Of course I knew it was there, but I hadn't seen such a casual, dismissive remark right in front of me before. As I write this I have to wonder if I, too, have these kinds of feelings about different races that I won't know about until suddenly I say or do something and...oh, who knew I felt that way all along? I'd like to believe otherwise. Living in Australia means I am bumping in to and mingling with people from different nations, cultures and ethical natures all the time. But then I remembered I HAVE said things like this - because this person was a woman, I automatically assumed she would not like certain things. At the time I didn't understand her angry reaction but now I think I have some small spark of knowledge.

It was something to think about.

I will write more about the posters, and the uncomfortable feeling I got from playing wargames in such a place later, but now I have to go to work.

So, it's been a long time since I updated my blog.

There's a really good reason for it.

On Sunday night at 11 pm I officially finished baking for Donut King. I handed over the keys to my replacement, Lothar, Monika's father. The original agreement was that I was going to bake and train Lothar Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, but somehow Monika extended it out to Wednesday morning because Lother wasn't available Thursday night. I had an unexpected ally in Lothar, who simply said to his daughter in his clipped German accent, "It is impossible." Monika wanted me to teach her father how to bake, how to make the cake donuts, how to ice the donuts, how to make the cream and custard, and how to clean the entire store.

"I don't want to do it," Lothar said, "It's impossible for me to learn in one week what you did in five years, it is kahrazee for her to expect it." What Lothar hadn't been taught, he obviously couldn't do. So, I 'forgot' to teach him how to ice donuts, make the custard and cream, or the cake donuts and, in fact, everything except what he - and I - were originally specifically hired for: Baking the yeast donuts.

Monika expected me to be in the shop tomorrow morning at 2 am, making the donuts and icing them, so that she can stride in at 6:45 and all the work will be nearly finished, so that I will have time to disappear, have a shower, get in to my new work clothes, and work from 9 - 5. She knows I will not be there because the only reason I would be, would be to train her father in these extra things that her father has already told her he will not do. This is exactly the situation I told her that she would face on the 21st of June if she did not hire additional staff. And yet I will not be surprised if I recieve a phone call at 6:45 am - "Why are you not here?" - and I will have to give the honest answer, "Because I have been captured by aliens and am in a human biodome inside Jupiter, please send help."

But seriously folks. She dragged out 'three weeks notice' to 'one month' and a replacement for me to train only arrived the day before finally reached the limit? It's just not good enough. If she had her way, I would still be working there forever until she sold the shop.

This part of my life is over. The door is closed, never to open again. I will not look back in this direction.

So, on more cheerful news...

Dani sent me a present for my birthday!

OMG PACKING TAPE? How to open?

I know how to open.

Rusty's Sword of the Seven Weasels In Your Pants STRIKE! (Insert cherry blossoms blown on wind).

The box lead me a merry chase but the battle is over. SPLODE!.

I lewt the corpse.

OMG! Potions of Mighty Awesome Power!

You don't believe? Behold.
Mighty.

Awesome.

Power.

But wait, there's more...

So much more...

I try to open the good old fashioned way but I r fail.

OMG! 20,000 years of evolution tells me...

SOLUTION GET.

(Close up so you can see my glorious, handsome features. You know, 'An Hero Cam')

I do this for Auir.

Pwned!!1111kek

Come on, MOAR cherry blossoms.

K, stop cherry blossoms.

Suddenly, with the packaging torn asunder, the holy goodness contained within is revealed.

Dani.

I am so happy.

Because of you, on this day, the light is with us.

Ahm chargin mah lazah.

Ahm still chargin mah lazah.

BI-DOO!!

Paladin Sky Paladin Salutes You for your very clever, thoughtful and wise choice. Thank you, Dani. I will put all of these things to good use.

Green is my favourite colour!

Sky gives this card a thumbs up for hilarity. (And thanks for signing it too, Twal!)

Additional Dani commentaries that she wrote that I wish to share with you so you can see just how clever she has been:

On the main box:

"To: The Illustrious Mr Christopher Dunn".

Oh ho ho. I am VERY susceptible to bribes.

On the silver, made of something-to-hard-for-me-to-eat box:

Sky's Epic Present
Binds when picked up
Unique
Trinket
Classes: Paladin
Requires Epic Win
Equip: Increase Reputation gain with all factions by 200% (where where you when I did Argent Dawn!?)
Use: Increases levels of win and awesome by 500%.

But seriously, thank you Dani. It was too much fun. I hope you enjoyed watching me open it even as half as much as my brother and I had opening it. For future reference, yes, AN EMTPY BOX is not only a suitable gift, it is a well planned out and thoughtful gift. Something is not natural about my brother and I.

Speaking of Rusty, he recently learned that there is more to the Internet than downloading pr0n and made a myspace page. He writes quite well for a child, but he should learn to spell check and praise me more often. That I am listed after Optimus Prime as a hero is acceptable, but to forget to mention me by name is...foolish.

What's been happening? I'll cut back to the last post that I unceremoniously abandoned.

Well, the netherstorm thing was a success. Ves and Mal escorted Bessy the undead cow back to her undead farmer, so that they could...hmm...make undead milk I suppose. What would that be? Yoghurt? Butter? Cheese? Well, it sure was worth it, and Mal walked away with a new belt to protect his, ah, belt area. I don't know why undead farmers are carrying high level gear, or even why the goblin run arena system has better pvp gear than the two main factions that have an entire arms industry devoted to supporting their soldiers, and I don't know why I was duel wielding swords in those pictures when a Paladin can't do that. Clearly, I am a super paladin. You know, like super man. "Look, up in the air, it's a bird, it's a plane, it's Skyyyyy Paladin!" Hmm. Now that I think about it, being in the air IS the kind of place a Sky Paladin would be...

AND THUS SUPER PALADIN WAS BORN.

At the moment, WoW is on hold while I recover from the last week. I will probably be working on Taren to get his alchemy skill up. I also want him to get to use the level 35 Sword that Raziri, in an attempt to fatten him up before she eats him, put a whopping Crusader enchant on. Mal is currently on an extended mining expedition, attempting to find a living ruby in adamantite deposits and stockpiling the left overs for our favourite lady warlock, while both he and Ves wait for a group to go in the mana tombs with. It doesn't help that we are both ridiculously flat out right now and don't really have time to play at all.

So, my new job.

The official position is a computer programmer under the instruction of one William Scott, ex flat mate and also fencing buddy. What we are working on is not top secret but it is commercial so I'm kind of politely discouraged from talking about it in great detail. I haven't actually made very much programming progress at all, but I have made a number of improvements and suggestions to the overall design of the projects and apparently they were well recieved. My job is to write the user interface for one project, and design another project, ah, pretty much from scratch. Both of these need to be done by Christmas.

The first week was spent reading up on the programming languages I will be using, meeting people in the office, and discovering that about 50% of my time is spent talking to other people. The staff use MSN to communicate with each other. I despise MSN. I destroyed it and burned it out of my home computer, and vengefully hunted down the system processes and services and killed it there, too. I like mirc because it is simple and non intrusive. I hate msn for precisely the opposite reasons - when somebody writes to me, the little taskbar flashes continually. It's so distracting. I have to respond and most of the time it is just people making conversation. I don't mind being friendly, in fact I like it, but I also like to get my work done. On top of that, if I think I have managed to escape from a conversation, the people can send me a nudge or something to try and get my attention back. It's really intolerable. I can't stand it and wouldn't have put it on at all except that it's the only way everyone in the building communicates and I must know where the meetings are going to be.

There are two projects that I am working on. On Monday, my first day, we learned that the computer I had been given could not handle either of the programs I was supposed to write. The graphics card couldn't handle OpenGL past 1.1, and the machine was so old they couldn't find a replacement video card. So, this morning I got a new one! It is a much more flashier creature than the previous one.

I really like the new job. The environment is good, the people are friendly, and they share my sense of humor for the most part. Early Friday morning, by cooncidence, there was about a dozen of us lining up for coffee. Somebody commented on this, and I said "Prehistoric man's ability to find coffee in the wild helped bring our society through the treacherous Ice Age. Shorly after, the terrible coffee against tea drinker wars commenced. It was a dark time, a shadow upon humanity." At that point, one of my new co-workers announced he would only drink tea. We both glanced at my cup, filled with coffee, then at his cup, filled with tea. "Ah, my ancient enemy," I began, but then everyone started laughing - my work was done.

Yesterday I met with the professor who is also the boss of my boss about the work we are doing. It was supposed to be a meeting where I found out what the specific requirements of the program he wants me to write are, but this didn't eventuate. I really don't know what benefit the meeting was, as it didn't clarify anything for me. I keep hearing people say "People are talking about you", and the general impression is 'good', but so far I haven't ACTUALLY done any work, so, I don't know what it could be from. Maybe they like my clothes? Anna counselled me on colours, so, I think I owe her a big thanks sometime.

So, my first meeting was Monday at 11 am. It was a birthday get-together for one of the staff and also a celebration for someone who had recently moved in to a new office. (They like to have a meeting for just about anything. It's a wonder any work can get done.) I met a few familiar faces, which was a surprise, including one of my previous lecturers. Anyway, it's possible I am actually overdressed for the job. Mostly only the professors and senior staff are wearing a full suit, with tie. I am wearing a jacket, business shirt, neat dress pants with belt and shoes and no tie. Somebody commented that my belt was too loose. I looked down and, in fact, it was! Apparently I had set it one too many notches out. At the same time, somebody said that there was plenty of cake left, and encouraged us to eat it. So it was at this point I happily said to the nearby group, "Oh, I have to eat more to fill my pants up." Predictably everyone went silent just in time to hear this. The group near me knew the context was 'Eat CAKE to make the pants FIT' but everyone else heard 'eat CAKE to fill pants with SHIT'.

Awkward.

What was more awkward was when I then went to get a piece of said cake, and everyone went silent and watched me.

Aaawwwwwwkkkkkwwaaaardddddd.........

So I went all slo-mo and traded a piece of cake for an empty piece of air, Indiana Jones in the Temple'o'Doom style. Yeah.

The main thing I had going with the customers at Donut King was that I pretended to be a Pirate. I would often regale the customers of the birth of the donut, how ol' Captain Pete Heyn made the donut when he accidentally stepped on a bun with his peg leg, at the same time as his metal hook was struck by lighting and fried the donut. Like most of the things I say, I script them and practice them when nobody else is around to get the voice and the tone right, and can recite it from memory - fairly accurately. I'm working on the pirate theme in the office, but so far I am keeping it light. The occasional 'yaarrr' and 'ahoy matey' is all I've done so far. I'll give it a couple weeks before I start showin' up with me captains hat. At Donut King, this was met with looks of confusion, surprise, and terror. But here, so many computer programmers...actually understand what I am saying! It's not uncommon to get a counter 'yarrr!' and every now and then, someone who will claim they are a ninja, or that I will have to walk the plank, and...ah. It's just a good environment. I'm really happy.

Next of course is to introduce the epic battle between humans and dinosaurs.

Ok, Saturday.

Saturday I worked at Donut King. Then I met Sarah for coffee at short notice. Like really, really short notice. I walked out side and got a text message. I haven't seen Sarah for a long time, since she finished her PhD (So she's Dr Sarah now) and aside from the occasional e-mail we send each other every few weeks just to stay in touch, that's the only contact we have. I was very very hungry, so it should indicate how highly I think of her that I spent a long time eating my ham and cheese croissant because I was enjoying talking with her so much. The poor girl is so tired, I can hear it in her voice and see it in her eyes, I'm glad I made the decision to catch up with her even though I was in my filthy baking clothes. I don't really know her very well at all, and we're not all that close, but somehow we've just always kept in touch. Maybe we both understand that the other is crazy busy but we want to be friends? I don't know. Well, she is a person I would like to see more of and now that I have proper social hours, maybe! For one thing, she organises really good costume parties. The very first one was, in fact, a pirate theme. Ahoy!

Right after that it was drive home, pick up my brothers (Aero was down for the day) and go watch the new Harry Potter Movie. After we arrived, I went back to the car to put my ticket in there (so that the evil park Nazi's wouldn't give me a ticket) and, that's odd, I don't remember billowing clouds of steam issuing out from beneath the hood when I left. So I popped the hood and yes, you guessed it - a radiator hose had split. It wasn't a very severe split, but the timing was really annoying (but not as annoying as it would have been if it had happened even two minutes earlier, costing me another engine). I watched Harry while mulling about what to do with the situation - I had to get my brother back to the bus station and I knew there wasn't enough time to get the cable fixed before that...and it was already after noon, so (as I later found out) all the mechanics were shut. I eventually put Rusty and Aero in a taxi and paid to get them home, while I called the RAA and waited for them to come and fix my car.

RAA - Royal Automobile Association - will come out and get your car going or tow it somewhere, but it is usually prohibitively expensive to join up at the same time as you ask for help. I had been meaning to join with my first new-job-pay on this Thursday, but God decided he wanted me to have RAA membership NOW. I was able to solve the problem by throwing money at it, but due to the area the car was broken in, the mechanic couldn't get to me until 5 pm...by this time, the big football game finished, and the entire area became an immutable sea of cars. Somehow, immediately before this, Rusty had arrived back with his own car. What a good brother! What else could to men do when stuck in a place for a long time except go blow things up? So that is what we tried to do. We went to try some of the games at the nearby theatre, then decided it wasn't enough, and went in to watch Transformers instead. Wow.

Just wow.

Rusty has seen it four times. I can see why. It was perfect.

I came back late Saturday evening. I don't really...remember much of what happened in between Saturday night and Sunday night. I think I went to sleep, and got up at around 2 am ish. Anna was on, but it was too late to drink with her unfortunately. We had tried to arrange a chance for floor sky once more but because of our busy schedules it didn't work out this time.

Well, I wrote a lot. I'm going to leave it there and come back later. If you want something to do, go reply to Anna's blog. She wrote some really good questions and I will get on to them real soon.

What a day.

It started quite well - Ves, Gnizzle, myself and two extra plebs were running Mana Tombs. Unfortunately right near the end, and the actual reason we had come there - the magic pants o'doom - one of the annoying plebs (there is always one) had to bail, and it kind of derailed us all. That said, the other pleb, the druid was really good. We (I mean Ves) tried to pursuade some of the other guild members to help us out but they were afk or busy. I feel sorry for Ves, she has been wanting the mana tombs run for about a month now and nobody seems to want to spare the hour or so it would take to run her through.

Oh, special mission! It's time to get the flight point in Netherstorm.

So I guess I will have to tell you the amusing story of why I announced "I need to eat to fill up my pants" to the entire board of my new job on my first day, some other time.

Most of the time misunderstandings between people are harmful and can get in the way of a good friendship. My experiences in this area started quite recently when I first encountered people who would deliberately withold information or change details slightly when passing on stories with the sole intent of hurting others. Somehow I had blundered through all of my life until my early twenties without encountering the highly dangerous thing called 'gossip'.

Having one person in a circle of friends who liked to lie and change details in this way is bad enough. It is easy to isolate and work out who the person is, and you can take everything they say with a 'grain of salt'. Even though you can still like the person and be friends with them, and have fun times and go places and so on, you just can't trust what they say. It's a sad feeling but you have to protect yourself. If it had of happened this way for me, probably it would have been difficult but no more so than high school.

When everyone in an area is this way it is not so fun. You start hearing your own words echoed back to you from people who weren't present for the original conversation, but TWISTED. "I don't enjoy to get up so early" becomes "Sky said he doesn't like to go to work" becomes "Sky hates working for you" becomes "Everyone tells me that you said you hate me." Compound this with some people who sincerely believe they have perfect memory, are flawless Christians or feel that it is their responsibility to mess with others affairs to 'help' them, and you result in an environment where my daily plots to destroy everything took on a more specific and a little too graphic role. It didn't help that one of these people was my girlfriend, the other was my boss, and the other was a workmate. Oh, did I mention my girlfriend was also a workmate?

However, this is not the purpose of this update; I will save this rant for another time. Living in this environment for the past five years had resulted in much of the damage that I have spent the last year undoing, and is a mighty, mighty cause for rejoicing that this dark time of my life will officially come to a close. In school, I could defeat my opposition through diligence, intelligence, or force of arms. I didn't know what to do in this kind of environment.

The reason I am writing this is because I had a conversation with Sebastian in mirc today that reminded me of something else.

On November 11, 2006 Belinda Emmett died of breast cancer. She was the wife of Rove MacManus (unfortunate last name) and one of the last things she did was compose a song for him.

Perhaps you have heard Big Girls Don't Cry before. If you have, then you know the truth of the situation. If you haven't, then I implore you to stop reading and play the music. Don't watch the video. Listen to it thinking that it was written and sung by a woman who knew she was dying, and that it was the final message she could write for her husband, something timeless that could reach out from beyond the grave to share to him the love that she had.

I am unashamed to admit that I cried when I first heard the song, knowing the reason for it's existence.

SPOILER.

So I was naturally disappointed and embarassed when I found out not only was it not written by Belinda, but it was a rip off of an older song. The real song Belinda wrote is So I am and it has far less impact.

END SPOILER

To cheer me up I am listening to Dragon Flame. Much like food, I enjoy many different types of music. It's a big change from when I was young and thought modern music was the tool of the Devil and that I had to avoid listening to it, avoid alcohol, sex, drugs, undesirable language and company, etc and so forth. So when I say I was practicing my 'possessed by demons' voice this morning you can see how I am a little different to how I was twenty years ago. Also, I am a little taller.

Ha, I should do some recordings and put some samples up. Or maybe not. People might get the wrong idea. Or the right idea, for the wrong reasons. ...

The start of musical corruption and slow descent into darkness was with Jeff Wayne's Musical War of the Worlds. War of the Worlds was written by the now long dead Hubert George Wells, who also wrote many other famous books that inspired movies such as The Time Machine and The Invisible Man. I think it particularly appealed to me (aside from the outer space element) because of the part of the story that detailed the Thunder Child. Another rant I will talk more about it; most people go 'Hwah?' when I try to explain how the actions of the crew of the Torpedo Ram spoke so deeply to me.

However, right now I am listening to Iron Maiden's Seventh Son - The Prophecy. Hmm, it's not as good as I remembered it. I guess my musical tastes have moved on since ten thousand years ago.

Ramble ramble ramble.

Well, I wrote a lot and still haven't got to what I wanted to talk about. It's WoW related, and WoW is down right now for maintainence, but writing even this amount has relaxed me somewhat.

I guess I should do some more work.

I followed Dani's advice and went to this place to get some ideas of what kind of hair is the right hair for me.

The advice is simple and common sense. All this time I have been going to a hairdresser instead of a barber because of the price difference. I can get a hair cut for as little as $US8. I have never been satisfied with how it looks; one problem is because I genuinely don't know any hair terms and the other is that I was more interested in the price than the result. That was when I was working at Donut King, and I was always wearing a hat, so the primary objective of the hair cut was to 'not have it escape and enter a donut'.

Now I will be out and about during the day light, and people will be able to see me. After they have realised I am not a demonic manifestation of pure evil, hell bent on their material destruction and eternal damnation and have recovered from their fear, they will promptly recoil in shock and loathing at my unspeakably vile appearance. And that's during the night time. I could be arrested if people saw what I wore to work during the day time. No, really. Some of you have seen those pants, and for this, I am sorry.

Well, not really. They are kind of funny. I still have the green pants that need a bull clip to hold them up, and the black pants that have a big hole in an embarassing place, and the other black pants that have a big hole in another embarassing place. However, I now have nice sans-hole trackpants for wearing around the place and/or doing groceries/committing crimes so I only wear those wretched things for the amusement of others, or if I forgot to do my washing.

Or for old times sake.

Now, where was I? Ah yes. Hair cut.

I can't be sure because I don't have any front on photo's but I think my face counts as an oval type from the link I gave earlier. This means I should aim for a 'Matthew Fox' kind of hair style. I googled this fellow and all manner of hair styles came up, most of which would not look disgraceful on me, but some of them I lack the hair length to even fantasise about. This cut example, example 2, example 3 looks like a cut I have already had, except without the chip in the middle of the forehad. So I think I guessed right and am just lucky to have the right sized head. Apparently using forceps when I was born paid off in the long run, too. Thanks mum!

I think I'm going to go for a brush cut or a Caeser with a tapered back and slightly arched sides.

Most likely I'll say these things to the Barber and he will take one puff of his cigar (...why is he smoking a cigar? Did I go to a tattoo parlor by mistake? Oh no...) and grumpily announce, "You'll get what yer given, kid. Shut up and hold still."

My mum came back to the house as I finished this and said, "No, that guy (Matthew Fox) is totally wrong for your hair. Just say 'give me a number 4'."

:/

Well, if all else fails, I can always have 'Hat shopping' as my next blog post.

I have this afternoon off from work. I had expected to be working from 4 am through to 4 pm with a two hour break in between, however, this shift has now been shuffled to Wednesday from 4 am to 3:30 pm. This means I can catch up with my blog now.

Yesterday was the first day of actual filming. It was really cold! I sincerely expected for rain to come in and end it all, but in the end we were lucky and it didn't come at all. A quick recap - I am working with Rodney, Mick, Jamie, and some other people who I haven't met yet to compose this video. Rodney is the director, Mick is the lead camera and audio guy, and Jamie and myself are actors. I found out yesterday that Rodney had previously released 'Thrash Bus' and 'Thrash Bus 2' which were, basically, old, junk cards driven around in farm yard paddocks. The cinematography (I think that is a word) was really well done; it looks professional. Some of the footage was exceptional, and although the music was lifted straight from The Matrix it fitted disturbingly well. Most car chases in movies start with a beautiful, expensive car, that slowly has bits of it chipped away as it exchanges blows with other cars/parts of the city/bullets/rockets/pedestrians/cyclists/garbage bins. Thrash Bus starts with a car that they got from a junkard that still goes (but is not roadworthy) and parts fall off during filming for no apparent reason. You know, windscreen wipers, rear vision mirrors, that kind of thing. It's not a serious film and the 'plot' was strung together AFTER the filming.

Rodney also talked a bit about Urban Golf, which I incorrectly reported as 'Urban Gulf'. He explained that the premise of the movie is about a group of six golfers of excellent calibre and ability, but thus far unrecognised by the professional golfing community (due to a number of specific incidents that had them barred from playing professionally), who band together at night to play golf. Since they are barred from normal golfing greens, they tee off...from someones front lawn...and play across the city to a designated position elsewhere in the city where a temporary hole has been placed. It's basically mini-putt-putt golf, on a city scale. On the way they have to deal with the many, many obstacles that will be encountered - balls that land in pools, in people's backards, gutters, rooftops, that crash through car windows, etc, etc. It looks like a lot of fun. I hope I get to work in it.

So, yesterday. Saturday night I stayed up quite late and drank sake. At some point I had the brilliant idea, "Hey, this bottle is so close to being empty, why don't I finish it?" This kind of thought got me in to a lot of trouble later on when suddenly I was too drunk to remember what I was doing, where I was going...at the time I was playing WoW and had promised to put together some items with my smithing skills for Raziri to disenchant. I don't remember what happened. I remember getting on to the gryphon to fly to eastern plaguelands. Then it was suddenly the next day and I was in bed, still fully clothed. When rational thought returned to me and I discovered it was...hmm...seven hours later, I realised 'omg, Anna was waiting for this stuff.' So I got up and farmed the thorium I needed and mailed them off to her. Luckily I was spared Raziri's epic wrath, and Malachiel lives for another day. Eventually his usefullness will expire and that will be it for him. So it goes.

This took me to about noon, when I suddenly remembered, 'Oh, I was doing something Sunday...' CRAP! I had forgotten I had the filming starting in an hour. My house was a mess! The original plan was I was going to help with the filming, then there would be a three hour break, and I was going to clean up/shower during the break, and then the second part of the filming would take place in my bedroom. What actually happened was that filming took a lot longer than expected, and then they rolled straight over to my house and...oh God, I had cups and cans and bits of paper and dirty laundry everywhere. I managed to clean it all up in about five minutes, but it was so embarassing.

The actual filming was a lot of fun. I was manning the b-camera, while Mick had the a-camera (because he knew what he was doing). You can see some of the photos as well as the script and some other goodies at that site. As you can see, I need a hair cut and a shave. The not-shaving was deliberate; it's intended that my character (Jackie. OK. I am seriously being typecast in all of these things. Lords and Ladies? My characters are sex crazed wizard/evil coachman thug/various gender confused evil elves. Aside from the wizard (A young Ridcully), all of those character suffered injuries and/or death (Coachman: Knee to groin. Elf 1: Stabbed in gut by Queen Magrat. Elf 2: Head crushed by angry Librarian. Elf x: Number of small rolls in production that also involved various crushing and/or stabbing deaths, also, one especially fun 'crossbow headshot'. OK! As You Like it - Evil mobster Brutus. Later, wrestler Charles who likes the mens more than the ladies. Later, beaten and probably killed by the main actor, Thorrin aka Orlando. Exception: Corin the sheepherder was NOT evil or sex crazed. In this current film, I am evil. It's so much fun. But just once I would like to be a) not evil and b) not scantily clad) have some kind of defining feature to make me obviously older than Jamie, my younger brother (apparently). Obviously at 2x years old, Jackie is still living at home, so, it's a little embarassing for him. However, I really do need a hair cut. My last day of working out the front for Donut King is Wednesday. I will look forward to not having to wear pink again. So, hair cut will be Friday afternoon or on the weekend.

I never know what to say to a hairdresser when she says, "So, how do you want me to cut your hair?" Tips are appreciated.

My main role on the day was to provide a second camera angle and also for stereo audio. We did several takes (maybe five or six) for each shot and later Rodney will go through and pick out the ones he likes best. We did this for the main shots of Jamie leaving the school and arriving again, and for a couple of shots as he walked through the streets. Later I put on some shoes and pants that the pursuer will be wearing and they took a few shots of me being menacing and evil. Much later on...oh someone is here. brb.

Ok. My plans for the day are now "Parents are here, do stuff." So, I'll add more later...

I finished updating the links in the furniture section that Anna went shopping for. Now all my furniture is picked out, I just have to wait for my first big phat pay check to roll in so I can spend it all.

In all seriousness, my first couple of pays will go on finally crushing out whatever remnants of debt I will still have. It's really ironic that I have at last got a professional job at around the same time I actually got my finances under control. Well, perhaps not. If I had rolled right into this job with the same spending habits I had six months ago, the situation would not have improved except that the quality of the things I was wasting my money on would improve substantially. Now I am actually in a position, and have an attitude, towards saving money towards my future.

I don't know where I will be in six months time. Fifteen years ago, I knew it all - I was going to become a games programmer, make kick ass games, and my life would be set. I didn't care where I was going to live because my life would be care free, I would be jet setting around the world on a perpetual holiday, stopping once every three or four months to release another major blockbuster that the gaming world would go mad over, before going on another luxury trip. Then as time went by and I started to get a better understanding, my vague ideas slowly coalesced into a better form - I was going to finish University, work at Ratbag (an Adelaide based computer games company), then move to Illinios and live with my at the time girlfriend Dana.

But things started to fall apart. I didn't reach the goals I had set for myself. Instead of blitzing through university with the top grades that I had honestly expected, I failed subjects, was delayed, and even eventually split up with Dana. It's ten years this year on what was supposed to have been a three year degree. Oh, it hasn't all been downhill! On the way there have been things that have slowed me down, true, but if I really sit back and am honest with myself a lot of the problems were because I took on too much volunteer stuff, failed a willpower thing, or didn't have the courage to say no to something that I couldn't afford to do. The problems I have had for the last five years are symptoms of bad decisions I made in the previous five. I don't blame anybody else for the situations I have been in. They were my own bad ideas, usually made from a selfish or childish opinion, with little forethought or based soley around dreams.

My natural father is a dreamer. He would always say, "I am going to do this," or "When I do this, this will happen," or "My plan is to..." I despised my fathers inability to finish anything that he had begun. His life is a history of part time jobs that he spent six months at, almost always in different fields - railroad worker, kitchen designer, hotel manager, retail assistant, photographer...to me this kind of indecisive nature is frustrating, unreliable and unsustainable. When I identify the flaws that I see in my father that I have previously criticised, it is a major shock to later find that I am the same as him in so many ways.

Are things truly different now? These last ten years have been difficult for me. A lot of it feels to have been wasted time, where I am just sitting around waiting for other events to happen so I can move forward again. Excuses that I have made as a reason not to do something so that it seems too hard so that I don't have to do it. Not calling somebody because my phone is disconnected, when there is a payphone outside. Not doing an assignment one night because I can do it the next day. Not working on my programming because there is no deadline for it...instead of honing my skills in areas that will matter some day, I seem to be pursuing intangible goals that have no real pay off. When I had two hours spare today, I bummed around the house, doing tiny errands in no order and wasted time when I could have, heavens, even been grinding something useful in WoW or working on REPAST.

I've come a long way in maturity in the last few years but I still don't really feel like an adult most of the time. On the surface it looks good (I think). I know the areas I need to improve in. For the last five years, my excuse for not doing these things has always been because of Donut King. In a few weeks time, I won't have that excuse anymore.

Will I do it? Will I be able to come out from hiding behind the reasons for not doing things, and defeat the demons of ten years of failure that have clouded me? I can't say for certain. But already I can see an attitude shift. Instead of thinking, "I can't do this because..." I find myself thinking, "I will be able to do this now that..." I'm simoultaneously excited and afraid. I'm nervous, but happy.

All the different roads of my life are coming together. I know where I want to be. I know how I'm going to get there. Every single major obstacle has been removed. The road is clear. I just have to walk it.

In response to Dani:
Taren is fury specced. Originally I picked a warrior for him because we were going to do the "Fill Tim's guild with nub drenai" thing; Erelah is a hunter, Funshinebear is a priest, it just seemed like the logical choice. I went with fury spec while Taren is levelling but I might respec at a later date if we start doing instances. However in the end game, I already have a prot spec character - Malachiel - if the guild wants tank at end game from me, I will put forward the Paladin. If there is already a main tank better than Mal, it makes better sense for a Fury warrior instead of another protection spec unit.

Malachiel has some pvp goals.

Grand Marshall's Quickblade - 20 Eye + 15300
Grand Marshall's Barricade - 20 Eye + 15300
Grand Marshall's Scaled Gauntlets - 20 AV + 10098
Grand Marshall's Scaled Shoulders - 20 AB + 10098
Grand Marshall's Scaled Legguards - 30 WSG + 16065
Grand Marshall's Scaled Helm - 30 AV + 16065
Veteran's Scaled Belt - 40 AB + 17850
Veteran's Scaled Bracers - 20 WSG + 11794
Veteran's Scaled Greaves - 20 Eye + 17850
Veteran's Band of Triumph (X2) - 20 AV + 30600
Veteran Pendant of Triump - 10 Eye + 15300

This requires 176320 honor, and the following marks:

Eye of the Storm: 70
Warsong Gulch: 50
Arathi Basin: 60
Alterac Valley: 70

Currently he has 24509 honor, and the following marks:

Eye of the Storm: 1
Warsong Gulch: 24
Arathi Basin: 15
Alterac Valley: 83.

It's really hard to get an Eye of the Storm game. If I don't log on for a pvp game before 11 am my time, it just doesn't happen, even during an honor weekend. It was also impossible to get an Alterac Valley game in the 40-59 bracket in Area 52 - I wonder if all the Eye of the Storm games are in the 70 bracket? The scaled armor set is surprisingly useful for Mal as a tank - it has less resilience and more stat and ability buffs, particularly +Str, +Sta and +Int, as well as a number of helpful set bonuses including decreased hammer of justice timers and increased Seal of the Crusader damage (which he uses almost all the time). I'm not satisfied with Mal's damage output at the moment, so I bought him a new sword today and am going to look at getting +attack power/+str gems to help increase it.

I probably won't pvp with Taren and focus on getting him up to a more useful level as a priority for him.

I updated the links section (thanks Dani!) and fixed up most of the Ikea links from before so they don't wrap halfway off of the screen.

Unfortunately the Ikea site suddenly stopped talking to me about halfway through, I'll try do to the rest later.

I didn't get to go to Blackrock Depths yesterday. I slept in too long and everyone went without me, boo. I also didn't clean my room, so, I'll get on to it today. It's not in terrible condition, there is just a lot of cans and paperwork that I don't need to have in here.

I didn't meet my mother yesterday. I accidentally slept for seven and a half hours when I meant to have a half hour cat nap.

The Schoolyard Justice site has been updated! I have the role of 'Jackie' and you can see me in the storyboard, filling in for Karl who hadn't been selected for the role at that point. Unfortunately, Rodney elected to remove the lengthy scenes I wrote involving the love triangle, car chase, gun fight and banana peel incident. Of course he is still new at this directing business. I'd like to let him develop to find his own direction; but he needs to listen to a more experienced person from time to time.

Maybe I can get that banana peel back in again if I disguise it with a beard and moustache.

The week looks pretty clear for me at the moment. Tonight I have Rodney coming over to check out the house as a set for one of the scenes, and tomorrow I am going to a church thing with Rusty. One of the ladies there happens to be a book editor, and since Rusty is wanting to have a book published, she is probably a good person to talk to. She just returned from Japan with her new fiance who proposed to her on Mt Fuji two weeks ago so maybe it's not a good time, but it will be good to catch up with her - she was also the leading lady in As You Like it and Lords and Ladies. She's really a very talented actress. I quite like her, and her fiance is a good bloke too. I wish them the best of luck, but I am quite confident, they will work out just fine. Some people just fit really well together.

I'm working at Donut King during the day this Wednesday for the second to last time (hopefully).

In the not too distant future, my good friends Lance and William are having their birthdays. I know what to get William, but Lance is a bit trickier. Lance is also my fencing instructor, and the best Dungeons and Dragons DM I've ever met. I haven't had a chance to play for about five years now because the group became too much of a problem and he had to stop it. But yesterday, massive news! He's starting it again, with all new characters! This is a tiny bit sad, because I had a level 13 Paladin, but there's no reason I can't start the same character again with different stats. Maybe this version of Aslan d'Kinaugh will be more dangerous than his warhorse (Ned the Avenger. A normal warhorse that happened to roll max stats and seems to crit with every single attack) but somehow I doubt it. There's just something about those big, fat Ned dice that can't be beaten.