Posts

Dogs

I have written about dogs before but last night I had the pleasure of seeing a particularly smart one. My bus rides have become increasingly boring. I have joined the brain numbed flock, except on Fridays when I seat boogie a bit more than usual.

Last night a blind man got on the bus with his guide dog. I don’t get to see guide dogs very often and I was very impressed with the courteous intelligence the dog showed. It patiently queued with the rest of us and made sure it sat well out of the isle. It even smelled better than a good proportion of bus patrons.

I once mooted going and working for a guide dog training center. A rewarding job, but there is a Hollywood saying that working with animals and children can be problematic. Still it would be nice to come back as a guide dog. If only for the smugness of being able to walk where ever you please and being universally adored.

/0 Comments/by

The Problem with Big Weekends…..

Are the basic fundamentals of physics. What goes up, must go to work on Monday. Thankfully Monday was a public holiday here. Tuesday was terrific. Wednesday is proving to be challenging. A strange silence has enveloped the office. If I am not mistaken a zombie virus is spreading through our gleaming halls and infecting the workforce.

Do you have a zombie plan?

Every male I know enjoys watching zombie movies. They are hugely educational. They help men to create strategies for the eventual outbreak which will bring down civilization. Every well prepared zombie battler has a blunt instrument at hand. Looking around me there is a sturdy looking coat stand and several flammable aerosol cans which would be handy. Being in charge of security cards would allow me to seal off the immediate floors. Leaving the building would pose its own problems. I could possibly throw a couch down three floors and use it to break my fall. From there I could possibly make a dash for the sea and commandeer a water taxi.

Sounds like hard work? You can never be vigilant enough when thinking about zombies.

/0 Comments/by

A New Dawn Yawning

One of my greatest pleasures is spontaneous yawning. So fond of a good yawn I have not mastered a surreptitious yawn. I have been known to yawn at inopportune moments. The very act of yawning floods the brain with cool air keeps us alert. A remnant from days inside caves, yawns are also contagious and the very act of yawning can start a chain reaction.

In fact I predict a few of you are possibly yawning at the very thought of yawning. Something to to be happy about. Heres to yawning. A positively wonderful bodily function.

/1 Comment/by

Subscribe by email

I told you I would be back. In accordance with internet compliance I have added a mailing list option to this fine corner of the internet. By simply entering your email address you will receive a regular email digest which has a list of blog updates. These can be read inside your email client. You can then forward them to your work mates. You could even print them off and take them home for your children to read.

This will be a month long trial before I have to start paying for it. My last paid initiative was paying a team of monkeys to enter my blog into 1000 blog directories. Sadly monkeys do not make good employees and I haven’t exactly reaped rewards. So subscribe away and read my day!

/0 Comments/by

Statistic Crunching

What is the supplement to any exhaustive argument? Statistics. Let me share with you some blog statistics for the year ending 2008. Google offers a fantastic service called analytics which lets me glean all sorts of interesting(for me and accountants) information.

First off lets look at where visitors to this blog originate from.

In a sliding scale of green obviously New Zealand is a stronghold. America has good representation as does the UK, Australia and countries visited during the first chapter of the Rather Large Adventure volume 1. Sadly China, Russia, India and Africa remain untapped. I did think of making a censored version to appease Chinese censors but the resulting page looked something like this.

The average person visited this blog for a total of three minutes and 58 seconds. 53% of visitors visited more than once. 47 Percent vanish never to return again. 32% of visitors visited between 9 and 200 times.

69 percent of my visitors are viewing in US-English. British speaking types do not be offended if you see more American spelling. I must reach out to them.

For a break down of how people are viewing this blog.

1. 91.57%
2. 7.03%
3. 0.82%
4. 0.45%
5. 0.08%
6. 0.04%

Potential investors will be glad to know the revenue for this blog topped $100 US.

$59.52 came from ad revenue. Click those ads click those ads.
$50 came through donations. Donate to me Donate to me.

Fascinating stuff. Surely I am running out of things to write about today?

Maybe……

/1 Comment/by

Twitter ? Twaddle or Tweriffic?

A week in I think I am a fan of Twitter. It seems largely harmless and I am getting more people reading my blog. It is easy to update your twitter from a phone or any internet capable device. It also teaches good writing habits. I am not sure if you have noticed but I tend to write exorbitantly long sentences from time to time and twitter encourages brevity out of necessity.

I do have a couple of tips to share for people that are interested in using Twitter.

1- Write a good bio. My bio needs some work and I think I will rewrite it so people can find me by searching a bit easier. When was the last time you searched for “Interesting, Irreverent, Indescribable but I try anyway”? I thought so.

2- If you are using facebook. Follow this mans guide. It will sync your tweets and facebook status updates.

3- Incorporate Twitter into your conversations. I think Twitter will hit critical mass this year. Become a part of the avalanche.

4- Don’t follow people who announce SEO, Internet Genius and stamp collecting as interests.

5- Add Barack Obama. He will add you back automatically. Sweet.

/0 Comments/by

Three for Tuesday

On the rare occasions when I have been unwittingly subjected to commercial radio they sometimes have fantastic jingles espousing two for Tuesday song duos. Having had a bit of a backlog I thought I would take this opportunity to tell you about a fascinating project I have been working on and a possible career move once more people know of my ever increasing brilliance. This is my three for Tuesday entry.

A good friend of mine is launching a website and she kindly sought my tenure in writing product descriptions for it. Naturally I seized the opportunity and on Christmas eve a box full of assorted goodies arrived. Given the brief of eating, playing with, smelling and absorbing the contents. I busily launched into it. It has to be said writing product descriptions is a lot of fun. I could quite happily sit at the end of a slow moving conveyor belt and dispense with product descriptions all day long. I did have trouble writing about some of the more feminine products but I think I have done an amicable job.

I look forward to sharing with you the website when it launches. I still have a bunch of product descriptions to write but the conveyor belt went off the rails on the weekend. Such is life at the end of a conveyor belt.

/0 Comments/by

25 Random Things About Me

25 random things to Share

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you. I may have tagged you even if you’ve posted 25 random things already. In this case I just tagged you because I love you!

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

I got tagged in a note like this. I thought it would be apt to blog it as my blogs end up in facebook anyway.

1- I own a skateboard
2- I like wearing a sarong
3- I like not wearing shoes where ever possible.
4- I have double jointed thumbs
5 – I have weird points on my shoulders that are possibly artifacts from when I used to have wings
6 – I rarely put drinks down once I pick them up. Probably not a good habit.
7 – I used to work on a games helpline
8 – I used to have a dog named Waggy. Bless her golden feet.
9 – I once woke up around a toilet bowl with a new Girl friend. Curse tequila
10- I have a goal to own a batch on every continent. Maybe an igloo on Antarctica.
11- I have a fear of heights
12 -I have a passion for wearing primary colours
13- I listen to National Radio a lot. Like heaps lots.
14- I lost my wedding ring Phelps butterflying in Chiang Mai 🙁
15- I am incredibly shy. I would rather write than talk to strangers.
16- I have been known to reach out towards other galaxies with my hands.
17- I exercise 6 times a week.
18- I have a wizards robe and staff
19- I wear glasses for driving
20- I lost two school friends in car accidents and did not own a car until I was 24
21 -I make incredible pancakes
22- I plan on missing winter for the next 3 years
23- I have the best friends in the world. Better friends than everyone else. Just because.
24- I have two photos of Obama on my desk
25- I would have died on the Titanic with the British because I am a patient queuer.

/0 Comments/by

Happy Chinese New Year

I like most people only really take notice of star signs when they leap off the page. Given that the Chinese new year has just rolled over I thought it would be appropriate to investigate eastern signs. The year of the OX appears to have themes of hard work and cautious celebrating. Not really things that appeal to a fire dragon but given my goals for the rest of the year they are probably apt.

We now have a date to work towards. The 10th of April will see us leaving New Zealand. We will spend a couple of days in Hong Kong before landing in Paris. Paris will need a couple of days to circumnavigate. Which reminds me I really should learn a few more words of French. We have it on good advice that “bonjour je suis de la Nouvelle-Zélande”(hello I am from New Zealand) is enough to placate most French natives. But ordering croisants and slowing hecklers would be useful as well.

Our next port of call is literally a port. Antibes sits nestled between Cannes and Nice and holds the most boat moorings in Europe. We have been graciously offered an apartment to share with a fabulous friend we made in Cambodia. More magical results from the liberal application of Beer Lao.

Antibes will require some studious studying. Originally a Roman settlement it has an aqueduct and associate roman amenites. It also has a Picasso museum and a naval museum dedicated to Napolean. There are also 48 beaches with in 25 kilometers which should also be investigated time permitting.

The next critical stage will be applying ourselves towards employment. Luckily Anna and I are in fabulous shape and sans loincloths would fetch a high price at any Roman slave market. As for our first super yacht. I will be happy with a modest one. Ideally we will end up on one which actually has sailing capabilities. People from New Zealand if you did not know are blessed with world class sailing abilities. We can literally sail before we walk, or so the rest of the world thinks.

Still one can not be choosy in the year of the OX. This one will do in a pinch. It has two submarines, two helicopters a launch and most importantly a basketball court for whilst the boss is away.

The inspiration for this post came from a couple of fans who were at my birthday celebrations. They literally could not wait for me to piss off overseas so I can continue distilling the world at large. I hope this placates them sufficiently.

Additional note: A fellow bloggerunited member has written a summary of Chinese sign highlights for the year here.

/0 Comments/by

The New President Precedent

Today has been unfashionably busy. A barrel load of problems has besieged our team at work. With good humor we have tackled them but the flood shows no sign of abating. I did arise early this morning to watch the new President take office. My current theory is that Obamamania has rendered our server farms giddy and positively inoperable. To top it all off Wellington suffered a power outage this morning.

I will continue monitoring the situation. I have taken remedial action of cutting a picture of President Obama out of the herald. He now occupies a section of my desk. I will make referential bows and offerings until problems cease.

/2 Comments/by