Move on, people

This blog will no longer serve to amuse, irritate, or distract you. It is dead to me.

Cheers for reading and commenting. It's been fun. I've had over 12,000 hits on the site and that isn't too shabby for less than a year of blogging and counting the hits.

Ben - it is the thesis. I've 65 days to hand in a good draft. I need to kick arse. My own. Have been treading water for far, far too long. Time to become who I want to become. Or something.

It's all part of my long term repositioning strategy.

Anyway.

Bye.

Dave.


ps new site is http://dave.stuff.gen.nz/wp/index.php. remember to update links, bookmarks etc.

Death to Bloggy

Although this blog is stumbling ever closer to doom, there may be salvation through resurrection. Thanks to the magic of Mog and Si (once I dutifully 'show him the love') I could get a stuff.gen.nz account. Which would be cool.

Mutually beneficial arrangement. I get my own wang site, they get a blogger who actually knows how to update.

For the love of god, Ben, she's been gone nearly half a week - blog already.

Death row

I came this close (fingers pretty close together) to deleting this blog moments ago. It got a temporary reprieve due to an NBC camera man getting in the way.

Deleted him instead.

Muntface

In keeping with my policy of wanting to do work (honestly) but being unable to really do much due to large brick wall a metre from my friggen head [note - this, like Aranui, is metaphorical], I ended up carting Tim around town. Truely, I am a taxi and will be ridden always. Bonus was free pie, coke and world of warcraft for a couple of hours. Awesome.

My character (hereafter known as 'me') was an undead warlock. I named me Muntface after a couple of earlier names had been snapped up. One of the benefits of being a warlock is that you can get a minion after completing a short quest. Minions are cool and one day I wish to get some for real. My Muntface minion was an imp. I'm not sure I want a real imp in real life. He tended to have a strong affinity with fire, and as we saw in a previous entry, Fire and Dave make for comic adventures. Perhaps my minion will be a small dog or child of some description.

I digress.

World of Warcraft is cool. I never really got into the warcraft games as they tended to be overly suck. But this is cool. I can use fireballs to make people burn, and use lightening to make people dead. This is good. Quests aren't too difficult, and I made level five in under a couple of hours. When you die, your ghost runs back to your body - doesn't take long and seems like an appropriate punishment for the death and all. Some people don't have much of an attention span.

Now I just need
1) pc
2) money
3) game
4) to finish thesis.

Please note, above was not in order of importance.

I need game.

Awesome

I've moved into my new flat. It is good, largely because it involved moving out of my old flat, which was bad. Claire and I put in a rather substantial amount of time cleaning the place, killing the spiders, mould etc, mowing the lawns and doing the garden and getting rid of junk and I have to say we did a pretty good job. Place looked better (far, far better) than it did when we moved in. New flat is cool. Although my room faces south and get very little sun, it is dry. This is good. Usually I can press a cup to the wall and have it fill with water or bees (depending on how thirsty I am). We have a pool table, fooze-ball table, macked out bbq, sky digital, surround sound, dvd action and a cat that runs away whenever he/she/it sees me. Good judge of character. It's also in walking distance to uni. For those of you who thought it was in Aranui - no. It was a subtle ploy designed to make you think I was going to live in Aranui. I didn't think it would actually work, but I'm constantly suprised.

Also awesome was Si tonight with the theatre and the sports and the laughter. Best show I've (yet) seen. Si was Indifferent Man who had to save the world from Shifty Man. Hilarity ensued. As did poor jokes about Christopher Reeve being 'Disembodied Voice'. Emily C and I had a good time... could have sworn more people were going to show.

And on a slightly more grim and depressing note, listen to Elliot Smith's recent 'from a basement on the hill '. Particularly King's Crossing. A bit patchy in places but very very good.

It could happen to anyone...

Last night started off pretty well. Claire cooked Charlie and I nachos and we sat around drinking ginger beer talking about intellectual issues like the fine lovers of fine love that we are and are known to be. I fell asleep on a big comfy leather lazyboy while Claire made a hat for Cup Day and Charlie played guitar. Haven't had much sleep this week. Good times. Dropped Charlie off and went home to find Peverel was all fine. Bachelor pad! No bachelorette to share it with at the moment, but at it enabled me to do those things blokes like to do when no-one's watching - read Womans Day. Nic called around 11 to ask for a ride back to his place. At the moment Nic has no car and lives close to hokitika. Agreed and we arranged so that he'd call when he was ready. I went back to slaying many orcs in Return of the King on xbox. Very pretty.

Am in the process of moving out and throwing stuff away. Rubbish day was today. It was important I put the rubbish out today.

Nic called at 11.30ish. Grebbed wallet and phone, groped pocket for keys, closed all windows and locked all doors to make sure no-one could get in when I was out and went outside, locking door behind me.

Bugger.

Those aren't keys. That's money. Damnit locked out. Quick, call Nic and explain.

Bugger.

Phone has no money.

Walked, ran and hobbled on my gammy ankle (I'm trying to save my good one) to brothers house, hoping he was still up and could lend me either his car or his keys to my car. I don't have keys to his, and even if I did they were locked inside my flat.... Lights on in Greg's flat - door open, flatmates in their rooms. Knock, open door. Nothing. Wander over to Greg's room. Light on, not home. Probably out drinking celebrating finishing exams and possibly uni. Bastard. Wander around flat some more. Knock and call out. Nothing. Flatmates in room turn their lights out. I could take anything I wanted. Damn morality. Give up finding Greg under couch and don't want to look in his room for keys. Leave flat grumbling.

Five options. Walk to Ben's place and hope he's home. Walk to Charlie's place and sleep on the couch. Walk to Varsity and get security to let me into office so that I could do work and sleep on floor. Walk along Riccarton Road, hope Nic calls and share taxi with him to his place. Or walk the streets and wind up on the otherside of town at Claire's pad so I can grab the one spare key in the morning.

Ankle saw and swollen. I'm a soft pansy. Walk toward Ben's place. Change mind. Walk toward uni. Change mind. Walkd toward town and Nic. Get text at 12.05 asking if I was still alive. Sweet but not very practical. Keep walking. Get phone call from Nic when I got to Riccarton mall asking whether I was still alive. Much more practical. Laughs at me (rightly so). Plan formulated - Nic will get Tim to get him and get me. Start to walk back to flat. Turn into Peverel.

Oh bugger.

Fire.

Flat on street is going up in flames. Looks like wall and kitchen. Call 111. Never done this before. Answer very quickly and I'm put through to fire. Inform dude of what's going on, where it is, etc. He tells me to try and make myself and the fire known to residents. Hobble toward blaze. Fire scares the hell out of me (although in small doses it's pretty). Lights on in house. Door open. Students in backyard surrounding very large bonfire made up of what look like old palalates a couple of meters from wall. Munters. Call 111 and get put through to fire again. Get same guy. Tell him what's going on and apologise. No worries, mate, he says. The fire engines will still come because there shouldn't be anything like that at this time of night. Fair enough. Two fire engine arrive 15 minutes after I first call 111. Impressed. One goes. The other uses hose to put out fire. Cool. Takes seven minutes to arrive, reverse, put fire out, give warning etc to residents (I imagine) and leave. Impressed. Good work fire department.

Nic and Tim arrive after fire engines leave, missing out on the coolness of big red fire trucks. Drop Nic off in Wigram and back to Tim's. Watch him play World of Warcraft. He's modelled his character on himself. Tusks really accentuate his eyes. Fall asleep on couch. Laughed at in morning by flatmates including one I haven't met yet. They leave. Bobby (cat) laughs and molests me.

Now have to get in touch with Claire at the races to get key back to flat to organise the rubbish that won't be put out today.

Random bloody night.

Moral of the story: Ben, Charlie, get yourself a car and a license.

World first photo

You know that little voice that tells you that you want another drink, another drink, that girl in the corner, or the matches to make everything burn, laddie? Scientists at UCLA have recently developed new technology that can actually photograph that little devil on the shoulder. Early results indicate test subject actively discussing the situation with said devil, who appears to be engaged in song. Transcription of the conversation is not yet available, but may be soon in comments section once Ben (re)learns how to type.

UPDATE: Grandma peacekeeper suspected of being a terrorist.