November 8, 2009 by Paul Daniel
I spoke to my brother Ian tonight. He, Josie and the boys returned last weekend from a month-long holiday in Europe. They had a ball. Unfortunately, the joy of that trip was tarnished yesterday when they had to make the decision to have Wolfy put down.
Wolfy was a beautiful collie. He had a wonderful 14 year life. What a lottery it is for pets. It is pure fate whether they will be mistreated like so many are, or whether they will come into a family where they are embraced as an integral part of the family. Wolfy was certainly the latter. Ian was saying tonight that he and Josie hadn’t realised what a reference point he was for them – whenever they looked into the backyard, Wolfy was the point of reference.
Carol and I have two dogs – Ned, who we think is a cross between a labrador and a cocker spaniel, and Spike, who is a labrador / rottweiler cross. Spike was the first and is no doubt the apple of both Carol’s and my eyes. Our vets tell us he has one of the most beautiful natures of any dog they’ve seen. It’s so frustrating when people see the rottweiler in him and head the other direction when we’re out walking. You can see the big boy in my profile picture on Facebook.
Ian’s news got me thinking about how much I value true friendship and loyalty, qualities that Spike demonstrates every day. Loss of friendship has been the event that has thrust me into the greatest depths of depression in the past. Still does.
I did a quick search of the web to try and find out the source of the reference to a dog being man’s best friend. I didn’t find it, but I must admit, I didn’t try too hard, because as far as I’m concerned, I don’t care who said it. It’s just so damn true. Dictionary.com nailed it – “A dog is more faithful than most other animals — and more faithful than many people.”
I know that, when Spike’s and Ned’s times come, Carol and I will be absolutely distraught. As Ian, Josie and the boys clearly are at the moment.
Farewell Wolfy! You were a legend!
Posted in Animals, Family | 1 Comment »
October 2, 2009 by Paul Daniel
I flew into Sydney Airport this morning. Never been a big fan of Sydney, especially flying into / out of there.
We were advised in Melbourne that the flight was delayed due to single runway operations in Sydney. We ended up leaving 20 minutes late. Ah, I thought. It must be because there’s a westerly wind blowing and they can only use the east-west runway.
After an eternity of holding and circling, we finally entered the circuit and landed on one of the two north-south parallel runways. As we were getting off the plane, I asked the captain if they had changed runways during our flight. His answer staggered me. No, they were only using one runway because of Air Traffic Control staff shortages.
You have got to be freaking joking! This is the busiest airport in the country, during the morning peak, and we recently spent billions of dollars to build a parallel north-south runway, and they’re not using it because we can’t get enough people to keep it going.
What a joke! Get me out of this damn city!
Posted in Opinion, Travel | 2 Comments »
September 19, 2009 by Paul Daniel
It’s goint to be an incredibly difficult, but really exciting week. St Kilda beat Footscray last night in one of the most nail biting sporting events I’ve ever watched. I checked my pulse during the game and couldn’t believe how much it was racing.
So what’s on this week? I’ll need to see if I can sneak away to training for a couple of hours during the week. Can you imagine what it will be like at Moorabbin? There’s no way I’d contemplate driving and trying to find a car park – might be the train for that one.
I’ll need to find time to go and buy a Drizabone at some stage. I’ve been threatening to do it for a while, but the imperitive is stronger now. Why? All will be revealed below.
The Grand Final parade on Friday morning will be fantastic. Then it all starts to get a bit silly. I’m working out at the Royal Melbourne Show for Red Cross that afternoon – should be over and done with that by about 10:30pm. Then it will be off to the MCG with my folding chair, iPod, warm clothing and Drizabone to join the queue outside the Members, so I can get my favourite seat on Level 2.
So not a lot of sleep (probably zero) on Friday night and, if St Kilda wins, not a lot of sleep on Saturday night. It will be interesting to see what form I display at bowls practice the following day.
Oh well! It doesn’t happen every year. GO SAINTERS!!!!!!
Posted in AFL | Tagged saints | Leave a Comment »
September 5, 2009 by Paul Daniel
I was lucky enough to be on the Gold Coast this week, staying at Jupiters Casino for the Microsoft Partner Conference. I managed to sneak a bit of time in the spa and pool at Jupiters – very relaxing.
The pool area is absolutely crawling (literally speaking) with these guys, the Eastern Water Dragon.
I sat in the spa and there was one immediately opposite me, soaking in the warmth from the rock surroundings. I tried to out stare him – absolute waste of time.
They love swimming as well – there were two of them swimming across the width of the pool, with six feet of water underneath them.
Cool!
Posted in Animals | Leave a Comment »
August 29, 2009 by Paul Daniel
It was Carol’s birthday during the week, so we all headed off to Kimchi Grandma in Carnegie. My colleague Mairead writes a much better food review than I’m ever likely to – I’m not even going to try. I encourage you to have a look at her blog – http://filluponbread.blogspot.com/.
This is the second occasion we’ve been to this Korean restaurant now and the food is absolutely magnificent, and extremely reasonably priced. I really encourage you to check it out – it’s at 125 Koornang Road, Carnegie.
Oh, and Happy Birthday Carol.
Posted in Food | Tagged kimchi grandma, korean, restaurant | 2 Comments »
August 23, 2009 by Paul Daniel
I suspect that, generally speaking, we all have a reasonably tarnished view of the Internet community. As consumers, we sit on the end of our blue cable or wireless link and have very little confidence that there’s too much good on the other side.
Well I have to say my faith has been somewhat restored in the last 48 hours!
Our rumpus room computer (not my laptop thankfully) got infected by the msword98.exe virus. This is an interesting little virus that unleashes a variety of other viruses on one’s computer and proves extremely difficult to remove. Because it is relatively new, my Trend Micro anti-virus software didn’t pick it up. My research suggested that none of the products out there was able to catch and resolve it.
So firstly, a big “you are freaking arseholes” to the morons who are out there creating these viruses. I don’t kid myself into thinking that will change anything, but it makes me feel slightly better.
In my attempts to get rid of the virus, I purchased a product called STOPzilla, whose developer claimed it would. It didn’t! And it ended up costing me about $50. I typed up an e-mail requesting a refund, not in my wildest dreams expecting to have any success. Well blow me down, I had a response within 24 hours advising me I would be getting a full refund. So to is3, while I wasn’t impressed with the false claims you made about your product, I was super-impressed with your customer service. Congratulations!
Having tried a few different things unsuccessfully, I finally decided to contact Trend Micro, the supplier of my anti-virus software. Once again, I didn’t expect to have a lot of success. Here was little ol’ home user me expecting to get a response out of a large corporate software developer. Well blow me down a second time, Trend Micro was absolutely brilliant. In a very responsive manner, they took me through the process of providing them with the relevant HijackIT and scan logs and how about this – within 2 ½ hours of me providing them with the logs (at 10:30am on a Saturday morning), they had sent me a file and the instructions on how to fix the problem. The first go wasn’t a complete success, but we nailed it on the second go, with a similar response time from Trend Micro. So to Michelle “Mike” Valeroso, Elmer Ted B. de los Reyes, Jan Acerbo and the whole Trend Micro team, I say thanks. You guys rock!
Posted in Technology | Tagged is3, msword98.exe, STOPzilla, Trend Micro | 1 Comment »
August 15, 2009 by Paul Daniel
I’ve never tried action footy photos before, so took my camera over to Trevor Barker Oval today, to watch the Sandringham Zebras play the Frankston Dolphins. Here’s the pick of them.
Posted in Photography, Sport, VFL | Tagged saints, Sandringham Zebras | Leave a Comment »
August 11, 2009 by Paul Daniel
I’ve admired Les Twentyman’s work for quite a while and am delighted that his health is on the improve. I certainly hope that he was misquoted, or his quotes were taken out of context by The Age this morning.
The Age reported on a police report that showed that the majority of the violence in the city is carried out by people from Melbourne’s northern and western suburbs. Twentyman is quoted as saying ”Safe Labor seats never really get money spent on them. It is always marginal seats that get the money tipped into them.”
Give me a break! What has money got to do with the fundamental fact it is not OK to be knifing people and belting the living daylights out of them? It’s got nothing to do with money. It’s got everything to do with being decent citizens.
Posted in Media, Opinion | Tagged Les Twentyman, The Age | 2 Comments »
July 30, 2009 by Paul Daniel
Global weather patterns are still frustratingly bizarre. While we here in Melbourne (and the rest of the country) continue to battle drought, with dam levels down below 30%, I found out today that Ottawa in Canada has had its wettest July ever, at the same time as they are fighting bushfires and heat waves over in the west of the country.
Go figure!
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Canada, ottawa | Leave a Comment »
