I couldn't sleep and this is the only time I'll get to log in today anyway so I figured it was a good opportunity to wish my friend, Antony (a.k.a. "Westy"), a happy birthday. Have a good day, dude :)
Throughout history there have always been about five dances that everyone has to know in order to be upstanding and contributing citizens to a society. Sadly, today's five dances are the Nutbush, the Bus Stop, the Timewarp, the Macarena and the Chicken Dance.
I'm not sure what that says about us, but I think it might be derogatory.
And thanks to Adrian for getting me on to this subject. Adrian: strong are these dances. Mind what you have learned. Save you it can!
A new play by Alexander Dumas has been discovered. And a new manuscript from Ernest Hemingway has been found. What the hell is going on? Has the last full moon brought on a bout of literary legends rising from the dead to uncover their great works to a blind following who never cleaned their attics?
.... But only just. I'm still REALLY behind in my normal administration so please bear with me folks. I will get back to emails, phone calls and general stuff as soon as I can. In the meantime please just give me some time. With the workload I had last week and the fallout from the workload last week still being resolved this week, I haven't had much time to think about general chit chat.
I enjoyed the AFL Grand Final on Saturday, in spite of the home team losing. Was a good day and a good game anyway. And on Sunday I actually managed to get a couple of hours to myself. A good thing I think.
*Get well* vibes to my Mum who is recovering from some bug and *vibes* to all else who need them right now.
Good old North Melbourne, but for today's Grand Final in Melbourne, go the Lions!
There are many expletives I would like to use right now. But I'm just going to have a cup of tea. Suffice to say the week just got a lot worse.
Happy Birthday Ma. It would have been my grandmother's 100th birthday today. Thinking of you anyway, Ma, and remembering all that you did for us.
The week hasn't improved. More details in the extended entry. It's indulgent and boring. Move on if you don't want to read whinging.
Got home last night from work at 11:30pm after leaving work at 11pm and was back in the office around 7:30 this morning. Spent the entire day working without so much as a ten minute break. Longest time off work was a discussion with a co-worker between finishing at BGSB and getting to a board meeting (which thankfully was brief, due to lack of attendance by my colleagues). I am only just home now and have a microwave dinner going.
I'm so tired I can barely type. But it's not just the hours of exhaustive work and high degree of stress; it's the fact that even when I have stopped working my brain hasn't stopped. I might have got to bed soon after midnight last night but was up at 3:30am with strategies to fix the problems at work.
The trouble is that all the usual staff I could call on are away or are otherwise engaged. So I'm about 3 staff members down in an area where I have limited expertise and for a class I cannot teach. It's Week 3 and the students have faced 3 staff members so far in a 6 week course. I feel sorry for them and have tried to help as I might, but I really don't think I'm doing a great job. I've spent 11 hours since 5pm yesterday preparing materials and developing assessment items in a subject for which I am not directly responsible (though I am administratively responsible). Additionally I have taught 6 hours of classes and spent another 2 hours in consultation and a further 3 hours in training the new Secretary for ANZCA. In the meantime my own work has taken a back seat. If it were not for my teaching I'd be batty. Thank goodness I have something to look forward to, to get away from this mess.
Dinner now. Then rest. Catch up on work tomorrow.
This week is NOT GOING WELL.
I have just today had a staff member pull out for the remainder of the teaching period due to illness and I can't find a replacement. In the meantime I'm trying desperately to collate resource materials for whoever can take the class last minute. So here I am in the office at 10:38pm when I arrived at 8am this morning. So much for getting research done today. So much for dealing with other people's problems and other issues coming down at the moment.
FWIW (For What It's Worth) my priorities this week are the following:
1. My students. Any queries you have will be dealt with.
2. My teaching. I have 3 hour classes to attend to.
3. Organising teaching relief for the unit where the lecturer has taken ill.
4. ANZCA issues. As the handover of secretarial duties is tomorrow, I have a huge workload there.
5. Research. I have 2 papers due.
6. Family and friends who just want to touch base.
...
1000000000000. People who hassle me.
We clear?
Have had a lovely weekend, beginning with meeting up with my friend Vanessa from Melbourne on Friday night for a couple of drinks, and more drinks and dancing with Camilla afterwards. Was fantastic to see Van again. Miss her heaps. And it's always great with Cam on Friday nights! It's actually rather legendary now. Then Saturday after some work, I spent the evening with some work pals at my place and enjoyed a DVD and facials. Very girlie. After a leisurely brunch on Sunday morning I now am watching the weather approach and am feeling rather lazy. Not too lazy for links though.
Yet another example of geeks-settling-an-argument-with-a-research-project, the Star Wars versus Star Trek in Five Minutes site establishes once and for all that the Empire would smash the Federation to bits.
Melbourne is about to be invaded, according to the Herald Sun, merely because the Grand Final of the AFL this year is a contest between two out-of-town teams, the Brisbane Lions and Port Adelaide. I'll be backing Brisbane next week. I'm a North Melbourne supporter normally, but in this case, I'll be going for the home town.
And in the lead up to the Federal election in Australia, On Line Opinion has some interesting articles covering issues at play.
One from off the starboard bow....
Thanks to Kevin for the link to the story on the German international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle (DW), whose website now comprises pages written entirely in Klingon. Based entirely on the fictional race from Star Trek, Klingon is the only language which is almostly fully evolved, and as such, has gained recognition as possible alternative to genuine languages. There are even whole translations of Shakespeare's Hamlet in "its original Klingon" available to purchase. The DW Klingon pages are here.
Be very, very frightened about how much time some people have on their hands.
I think it's possibly dangerous to be as tired as I am right now, but hang it, I'm forging on anyway.
Mum has returned home to Melbourne and I miss her lots. We may be very different people and have lots of different ideas about things, but I miss her when she's not there. Love you heaps, Mum. Look forward to seeing you again sometime soon.
And just quickly ... Birthday greetings to Vanessa today - hope you've had a great day, hon. Thanks to Brad, Troffie and Callum for looking after my interests and concerns lately. I don't know what I'd do without my techie dudes. You all rock. More reasons to avoid living in Sydney with the release of the source-of-spam map of the world. And hugs and vibes to my brother, and to all who need some TLC.
There are some amazing satellite photos of Hurricane Ivan in the Caribbean Sea over at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration site. And for those who may be curious, a hurricane is, in fact, a tropical cyclone. It's just the regionally specific name for the same thing that occurs off the coast of Australia every year. Only here in the Land of Oz, we're the only people in the world to call a cyclone a cyclone. In Asia it's a typhoon and in the Atlantic it's a hurricane. But when the meteorologists get together at the Hurricane Research Division - perhaps ironically - they talk about tropical cyclones. Ivan is pretty severe, though. It's even stronger than the devastating Cyclone Tracy that killed 50 people in Darwin (and 16 offshore) in 1974. Tracy was Category Four. Ivan is presently sitting at Category Five. And after the unprecedented spate of cyclones hitting the tropical regions of North and South America, the chances must be low for the forthcoming tropical season to be quite so bad for the north coasts of Australia this year.
First of all I need to express my outrage at the cowardice of the Liberal Party (and the Prime Minister in particular) and the similar stupidity of Channel Nine in giving in to the Liberals in denying the Australian public vision of the worm as it turned throughout the debate broadcast. It's a bloody disgrace that Howard can't handle the idea of a viewing audience having vision of public opinion falling on the weakness and stupidity of his arguments. Of course he doesn't want to look stupid, but if he really didn't want to look stupid then perhaps he should have thought twice before making the huge leap that going to war is a way of increasing security. Now he just deserves to look stupid.
But on to the debate itself.... regardless of any general analyses, I think without question that Latham won the Great Debate. Worst of all from Howard's performance was his response to the Daily Telegraph journalist, when he said that the budget surplus of some $25 billion would be spent on a "fund for the future". What the hell is that? A bank account to add wealth to the government coiffers without considering the needs of struggling Australians? Or perhaps an investment in the sort of "intelligence" that told us Iraq had weapons of mass destruction? Either way, it was an absolute disaster for Howard.
I felt a couple of points really ought to have been handled better. First of all on the issue of terrorism and security, no-one - not journalists nor Latham - attacked Howard on the quality of intelligence being considered, nor did anyone ask the crucial question of how investment in vehicles and strategies of war in fact deter terrorist activities (in the past 50 years, wars have actually increased terrorism acts, not reduced them). I also felt that on the issue of public hospital funding and other health package issues, the key question of how either party would handle the States was not covered. If the States have not adequately handled budget allocation, what incentives or caveats could be placed on the GST to ensure spending on health care? And on the taxation issue, no clear guidelines on the future of stamp duty and other State and Federal taxes - all supposed to be eliminated under a GST regime in 1996 - were outlined by either party. Latham was not sufficiently challenged on his assistance for young families and Howard was not challenged on his budget management in terms of distributing profits from surplus. Perhaps more importantly, however, not one moment of the Debate focused on environmental issues, small-to-medium enterprise incentives, future plans for a technologically driven society, and/or a future for regional Australia and primary industries. So the basis of Australia's production of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and the basis of our ecological future was basically absent from this debate. Instead the global terrorism threat, and the old-fashioned issues of health care, education and taxation held court. This is probably instructive: the election is shaping up to be a war election, in the style of the Menzies era. Sadly, innovation and our environment are most likely to be casualties of this election.
In a side note, it was interesting to note that the invited audience at Channel 9 were skewed for the whole evening in favour of Latham and against Howard. It's also interesting to note that the demography of the Sky News poll result of the debate favoured Howard. Of course, there are lies, damned lies and statistics... and then there are polls. But if I am not very much mistaken, most analysts will say that Latham won the Debate. Whether or not he will win on election day is another story...
I'm still around and kicking, but have been busy with my mother here in Brisbane so have not posted as often as I normally would. So much has happened that I haven't blogged that I'm falling way behind.
Happy birthday to my lovely friend Lou for last Friday - you know I was thinking of you hon! Hope you had a great day!
I'm rather curious about the Genesis disaster for NASA. There are so many biblical or at least mythological references for what has happened that it's all just a little freaky. As someone who regards herself as unaligned, this is coincidence as far as I'm concerned, but why the religious types haven't had a field day on this topic yet I have no idea.
The bombing of the Australian Embassy in Jakarta can only be described as a despicable act and a huge waste of time and life for whomever is responsible. Well done, terrorists. You killed your own kind. What stupid twits you are. I am, however, interested in the technologies of "bomb-proofing" a building - presumably blast proofing the glass in windows through a heavy glue-based bonding of layers of a plastic and glass mix, or through some other reinforcement, and replacement of all external surfaces of buildings with reinforced cladding. Damn good idea. Although I'm not sure it would prevent a rocket propelled detonating device, it certainly would stop all these stupid and ungrateful suicide bombers from throwing their life and the lives of countless others away. I just want anyone who wants to become a suicide bomber to put a gun to their head now and pull the trigger. You don't deserve to live and you sure as hell don't deserve to be a martyr. I certainly hope the perpetrators of the bombing of the Australian Embassy are remembered as mass murderers. Because in politico-religious terms, they achieved absolutely nothing, except the annihilation of their own people.
Perhaps most frustratingly, this Embassy bombing can only *strengthen* Howard's position in the lead up to the forthcoming election. So well done again, terrorists. The person who sent Australia to war in Iraq has probably had a huge boost in his position in the lead up to the next election. The very object of the exercise - to eliminate the infidels and spread terror among them - has had the very opposite effect. Even so, I will be watching the Great Debate tonight to see how the two leaders perform. I suspect that it will be somewhat irritating and probably a waste of time, but at least policy and not personality will be the focus.
I took a photo of my GSN402 Strategic Use of IT class tonight but can't upload to the net because I'm too lazy to connect all my devices together. Maybe next time. This is an interesting unit to teach, however, and I enjoy exploring all the issues arising from the digital economy. Just to provide some good reading material for students and to reflect on Australia's position in world terms on IT use and the business sector, here are a few pieces that may be of interest....
1. DFAT's Innovative Australia fact sheets which are laughably out of date (based on 2000 statistics and research), challenging the whole notion of being "innovative".
2. The current Information Economy Index for Australia, which is more up-to-date, but if this is an information economy no wonder we're all in debt.
3. The Global E-Readiness Rankings where Australia has slipped from 2nd place, to 6th place, to 9th place and now to 11th place.
4. Jobs in the IT Sector in Australia.... IT management seems to have the most jobs.
5. Basic E-Commerce statistics for Australia and globally ... although you probably still need to use the Clickz Stats toolbox for up-to-date stuff.
6. Just as general reading, hit the IT section of the Australian, Slashdot, ZDNet and TCS (Tech Central Station) for the latest news, views, and abuse.
And no, this one doesn't need a memory card, wireless connectivity or batteries. But size does count. And it's big. Or it seems so to me in my little flat!
To clarify, I have my mother to thank for a new 68cm flat screen TV in my lounge. I know Kevin and a few other of my geek and not-so-geek friends will be pleased, and I must admit, it will be nice to watch sci-fi on something larger than a postage stamp. Thanks to Mum for hassling me and dealing with my frustration in trying to work out how I was going to manage all the connected devices, and of course, thanks also for paying for most of it!!!!!! Mother most wise and kind. Thanks also to the guys at JB Hi Fi for delivering it for free!
Thanks to Kevin for the link to the news article on Britain's favourite screen scientists: Dr Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker from the muppets. The sock puppets beat Mr Spock (Star Trek), The Doctor (Doctor Who) and Dana Scully (The X Files). Just scary stuff.
