The Chemical Brothers - Galaxy Bounce
I’ve had a few friends (who lurk but don’t comment!) complain to me that I don’t update this blog enough. Well boo.hoo.

At the end of the day I’m a pretty normal guy - I don’t do anything too outrageous on a regular basis and I don’t particularly think my day to day life is that interesting. Like the rest of you, sometimes things just lull along and I autopilot through each day. I don’t want to be blogging about, oh, I dunno, what colour socks I’m wearing today, because it seriously does get that boring.
I could bitch about work, too, but I try to make it a habit of not bitching about direct issues that your superiors or colleagues could find. I do have some rules of success bouncing around in my head that I might note-blog in a day or two…
So yeah, as the tagline says “quality ramblings” not “I was late for work so I’m wearing the same underpants as yesterday LOL and my cat farted when I closed the front door ROFLGARGLE ramblings”
What am I doing at the moment? Well, I’ve got my friend Layla and her sister Ashley lined up to move into my apartment, so that it stays within the circle. I’ll likely have them be custodians of my lounge suite, or I may even sell it to them. I am about to gift a pair of rack servers and a couple of boxes of components to my local Polytechnic as a follow up to the gift of old equipment at work, this will mean I have to move less stuff to the new house, and will get me a bit closer to my half-arsed goal of minimalism.
At work I have a massive laundry list of projects, most of which are held up by a stupid funding freeze. Yes, I understand that finance folk like to feel more important than they are, and I understand from first-hand experience that ALL accountants are insane (to a varying degree) without exception, but putting on a funding freeze for weeks upon weeks only hinders progress and AFFECTS PRODUCTIVITY. And what happens when there is a negative impact on productivity? THE COMPANY EARNS LESS, MORONS!
I have also been fighting uphill on a couple of projects - where some people who shouldn’t be in on the projects in the first place are voicing silly uninformed opinions like “oh we can save a few thousand dollars here…” Yeah… I’m hired and paid to be informed about things that are critically relevant to this project (hence my inclusion on it), you are not, so kindly STFU kthxbai. When my employer was two seperate small companies a decade ago, being thrifty would have made sense and might have been a rewarding and hackish solution path to take. At nearly 900 people globally, it’s time we stopped shoehorning things together and started investing a little bit more, doing things right from the start and getting a superior Return On Investment.
As it turns out, studying Business Computing did get me in the right mindset for Corporate IT. Now I can beat down slimy little Business Analysts and grease up Project Managers with terms like COA, TCO and ROI until common sense, or my version of common sense, prevails. I do loathe having to talk in pseudo-manglement lingo though, going forward with ROI’s of the redefined paradigm in this space in mind to enable the community through synergy.
Wiiware is out. Nothing interesting on that yet. I purchased Zelda: Ocarina of Time on WiiVC though, but I haven’t played it yet - gotta batterise my borrowed wave controller. In the meantime, I’ve been cranking Phantom Hourglass on my DS-Lite and I’m amazed that the control scheme hasn’t reached the Wii. The use of the touchscreen and gestures was an astounding move.
Finally, for shaving, I was roaming around the Wellington CBD looking for a technical manual for Zimbra (which I am trying to figure out to get it to drop in as seamlessly as possible to our existing infrastructure at work) and I noticed that Kirkaldie and Stains had a Crabtree and Evelyn store, which had NONE of the cool men’s shaving products I had heard about. I went into K&S proper and noticed their pathetic little men’s grooming stand, with no DE gear, and one SE blade from a manufacturer that probably hasn’t even heard of themselves.
They had Taylors of Old Bond St though, who for those of you who don’t know, are absolute legends in wetshaving circles. Sandalwood was a bit much at $75 for a wooden pot of soap (considering it’s 15 quid a pop direct from the manufacturer - or roughly NZD$38), and an extra $75 for the matching Sandalwood aftershave. So I grabbed the $35 Lavendar plastic pot, and man does that lather up a storm: Less than half an almond’s worth and I had enough lather for about three shaves. So it’s going to last for an age. At the same time though, I noticed a New Zealand made product: “Scully’s for Men”, made in Bulls. Now Bulls is not too far from my hometown of Levin, so I felt some kind of odd connection to this, like Foxton Fizz soda. So I got it.
Best.shaving.purchase.ever. At the moment I have Nivea for Men Sensitive Skin, and The Bodyshop Arber aftershave balms, and both are a bit much for my face after a shave. Usually I’ll do the cold rinse to close the pores, then go away for five minutes and come back to do the aftershave to reduce or hopefully eliminate the irritation. This magic elixer goes straight on, doesn’t sting, almost 24hrs later the skin on my face feels amazing, it smells like coke bottle lollies and judging by its ingredients, is probably edible, which will be handy for the impending apocolypse.
If you can get this product, I wholeheartedly recommend it. Even at the pricey Kirk’s it was a mere $15. No disrespect to Taylors of Old Bond St, from Lundun Engalund, but it turns out we can do things better right here in little ol NZ.