Mark O’Meara: the blog

I was talking to Shannon this morning and we were singing the praises of a really good hamburger. I don’t mean some McDonalds burger but I real juicy Fish & Chip shop style burger-type-burger.

Such as think is a work of art and possibly better than pizza. Clearly it would be better than a supermarket or delivery pizza but then that’s not difficult. But what about a real top shelf pizza? That’s the question.

And I have to say I don’t know. At their best both burger and pizza are bloody great. I don’t even know how I would choose between them.

Lesson for the day - Sophie, piffle.

I have written what could be charitably called a first draft of my assignment and that’s probably as much as I could have expected from today. I will probably go back at some stage on the weekend and see what I can do to polish up each paragraph. I figure that with such a cunning strategy I could lift this piece of work from a Pass all the way up to a Pass Plus.

And frankly, given all the reading I haven’t been doing and the giving-a-damn I haven’t been doing it will just have to do.

Lesson for the day - the power of this battle station is insignificant next to the power of the phaff.

O O O O O O O O O O O O

Lesson for the day - when in doubt follow Sarah.

I have just discovered that I have three more weeks of lectures and stuff then a three week exam break (in which I have no exams), three weeks for school experience (which I am not doing this year) and then two weeks back at uni before the year ends.

I am not super sure that the last two weeks really exist since most Canadians will be doing their last school experience in Canada.

The bright side is that uni is almost over for this year which is a Good Thing because I have enjoyed damn few of the classes and none of the assignments. On the downside I was just starting to make connections with people and these are not people I will study with next year.

Finally I tend to go a little crazy on the weeks I am not a Uni. I wouldn’t describe the human contact there as extensive or deep but it helps stave off the lunacy. So I really need to find things to do where I can interact with people so that I don’t just go bananas. So I will look for a playgroup that will have a man in the place and perhaps a couple of other activities.

Lesson for the day - isolation is not everything it’s cracked up to be.

I had dreams about my assignment that is due on Monday and I am yet to start in any meaningful sense. This is not the sort of thing I want to be dreaming about. I would much prefer to be dreaming about Nicky without any clothes on or a vintage Martin guitar (in that order).

But no, I was dreaming about this damn assignment.

I have to devise a task for primary school students where they design and build something. I wanted to come up with something clever, something out of the ordinary and something funny.

It’s not going to happen. They are designing and making the ideal lunchbox.

Lesson for the day - a ticking clock is not music to my ears.

I decided this morning that I would call Shannon and see how her Grand Australian Tour was coming along. Happily Foozley was ready for bed about ten minutes before Shannon finished work.

Last time I went to call her I found out that my super-cheap-calling-card was only good for 12 months and had expired in spite of me recharging it. So I bought another two cheap ones (same brand) at the plaza about a month ago.

When I tried to use these babies this morning to call Shannon I found that they had expired. By the time I got to speak to someone at their customer service and get it fixed Shannon has gone home.

Lesson for the day - maybe next time.

Since discovering that I do actually get 50 emails of spam each and every day a certain amount of the fun has gone out of the exercise. I knew it was a lot but didn’t realise it was quite that much. So I have turned on all the spam filtering on the server (Spam Assassin, currently not working for some reason), and on my eMac (Mail.app Junk Mail which does very little). I also went looking for other software and found Junk Matcher which is both open source and very effective.

It looked at 16 emails in my inbox this morning and neatly identified and moved the 14 of them that the other things missed.

Hoorah.

Lesson for the day - I will be using my address for a little while yet.

I have now collected a little over four days’ worth of spam in my folder and it amounts to 201 messages. Today’s favourite subject “you can be smart!”

That would make one of us.

Lesson for the day - this exercise is making me think seriously about a new email address.

We went, we swam and we lunched.

And now we are home.

The only sleeping Foozley has done is in the car and I am personally exhausted.

Lesson for the day - being busy can really wear you out.

Foozley and I are off to informal swimming in a couple of minutes (no black ties for us) and then off to a thing for deaf kids that the mailing list I am on is having way over the other side of town.

So we will be gone a while. I have supplies and then more supplies.

However I have not forgotten my three readers. Go read Runners-up from the Clich? Development Labs.

Lesson for the day - find busy bee.