So here’s a recap of my Christmas… I hope you are sitting down and have a nice cup of coffee handy cause this could take a while.

Ok, the intro to this post was a little unfair. In all honesty, I love each and every one of the families I’m involved with and it’s always good to catch-up with everyone. It just irks me that it all gets squished into a few days of back-to-back activities.

But before I get to that, the couple of weeks leading up to Christmas were really very exciting. We went to see Arj Barker perform at the Powerhouse. As expected, he was awesomely funny, but I didn’t expect that his warm-up act would be equally as funny. So, if you hear of a guy named Joel Osborne touring (and not the one who’s an internet marketer who’s obviously used his online marketing skills to outrank the comedian of the same name), go and see him cause he’s great too. After the show, we bought a couple of Arj’s DVDs which he personally autographed for us.

The following weekend (or maybe two… I’ve lost track now) we had the Kintek Christmas Party. For those of you who don’t know, my web hosting company works closely with a number of web development firms and one that we’ve done a lot of work with over the years (and in the process become close personal friends) is a mob called Kintek.

The party was held at one of our joint clients – a wine bar called Bar Barossa. The food was great, as was the wine and their selection of international beers. After a lot of great conversation (that I’m sure became progressively more entertaining as the night went-on) Kristy and I were honoured to accept an offer from another client of mine – Chester’s Boutique Hotel in the Valley.

I’ve done a lot of stuff with the owner and helped him get a number of his sites online and in return he said that if we were ever in the area and needed a place to stay, just let him know. So the week before the party, I asked if the offer was still available and he hooked us up.

The room was awesome – in fact, the whole place is spectacular. It was once the owners personal residence that he converted into a guest house and now it’s grown to be a fully licensed boutique hotel. It’s quaint with about a dozen rooms which gives it a very warm atmosphere, but at the same time is classier than most hotels I’ve stayed at. Despite our stay only being overnight and still being in the same city that we live, it felt like we were on holidays.

That was the build-up to Christmas… this is when it starts to get hectic.

On Christmas Eve we went to Church with my folks. This year Dad was in the choir and Mum tried to encourage my brother and I to join him. We both politely declined, but Dad did a great job with the singing and I must admit, I do enjoy the Christmas Church service.

Then we grabbed some Macca’s, went home cracked a beer and opened our presents. It was pretty cool – this year I got some Skeleton Keys, Ice Invaders, some new board-shorts, Prototype for the PS3, a cooling base-station thingie for the PS3 and a computer screw-driver set in a novelty grenade casing.

We had a few more drinks, watched some Christmas stuff on TV and went to bed.

Got up early the next morning and headed over to Kristy’s Mum’s place for breakfast. Had some food, chatted, exchanged presents then it was back home to quickly make a salad and grab some wine and then head down to the Gold Coast for lunch with my family (this year it was at my sister’s new place).

Lunch was good and my family are always a very entertaining group of people to be around. Dad jokes, Tom’s new dreadlocks and the Woodford Folk Festival. After eating a little too much and the kids opened their pressies, we headed back home again. More beer.

Next day we went over to Kristy’s Auntie Sue’s place for lunch and then afterwards we caught a bus into town for Kristy’s old school friend – Bexta’s birthday which she was having at The Exchange. They had a deal where you could buy two cocktails for the price of one up until 9pm, so we built a decent stock-pile of mojito’s. Bexta had a great turn-out of people and as it so happens (and I’d like to throw-in a joke how Ipswich being a reasonably small town, it can be a little incestuous… but given Ippy’s reputation, that comment most certainly would be taken the wrong way) I went to primary-school with some of Kristy’s old friends – so it was great catching-up with everyone. Kristy has some great old school mates. Caught a maxi-taxi home with a bunch of them and ended-up drinking some more at Andrea’s place and somewhere during that time I passed-out on her couch.

Kristy woke me at about 5:30ish and we caught a cab home. Had a few hours sleep and then it was off to Kristy’s other good friends (these ones from Dancing) – Trish and Dave’s. Had lunch with them and they gave me a great little book called Twitterature – basically classic literature, as it would possibly be told today using Twitter.

Before I go too much further, I just want to point-out that this simple gift really took me by surprise because (and this may only apply to me… I’m really not sure) but generally when you receive a gift from a friend of your partners, it is most often generic. Something that they think you might like, but often turns-out wrong – like buying a bottle of bourbon for someone that drinks scotch. There’s always good intentions, but they often fail to hit the mark. For this reason, I’m always thankful and grateful for the thought, but expect that I’ll never be able to use the gifts I receive in such instances. But in this case, it was perfect.

So back to lunch – which was good (although I wished I wasn’t quite so hung-over because I’m sure the afternoon would have been more enjoyable if that were the case). I then headed back to the shopping centre bus terminal near Auntie Sue’s where we left my car the day before to go into town for Bexta’s drinkies.

Grabbed the car and then headed straight over to Caleb’s grandparent’s place for dinner. Fortunately, by this stage, I was feeling less hung-over enough to make it through the evening.

Next day it was over to Kristy’s Dad’s for a BBQ. After we ate and the kids exchanged presents, I found a nice comfy spot on the couch and fell asleep. Kristy was out the back chatting with her Dad and the kids were well engrossed with the PlayStation and their new toys, so no one really noticed and it was great to actually have a break for an hour or so.

Went home, drank some more, played some Prototype and then went to bed. Next day was our first day off since Christmas Eve. Enjoyed it by doing absolutely nothing. I think I spent most of the day sleeping in our newly air-conditioned bedroom.

The following day Con came round and we caught-up before Kristy and I had to head over to my brother’s place for dinner. I say this every time we catch-up with my family – I don’t do it enough because we always have such a great time when we’re together, but I suppose the months between visits is part of the reason it’s always so good to catch-up again.

Then the following day was New Years. Kristy had some stabbing stomach pains and despite the fact I give her a hard time, she’s a pretty tough cookie, so when she said that she might need to go to the hospital, I knew it must have been pretty bad. After a short wait in the emergency ward (read: a couple of hours) and a few tests later, they determined that Kristy may have a tiny gallstone.

They couldn’t find it when the doc did the ultrasound, but based on the results from the blood-test and the symptoms, they were convinced that was the cause of the pain. It also made sense that the pain had subsided because it only hurts when the stones move and once settled, you can go for months or even years without them bothering you again. Just in case, he subscribed some pretty hard-core pain killers and suggested Kristy gets a proper stomach x-ray.

Despite feeling a lot better, Kristy wasn’t up to a big night, so Con came around and we spent the night catching-up, talking a lot of shit and drinking a lot. By the time mid-night rolled around, Con decided it was time for his proverbial drunken phone calls and for the first time ever it was fun to be on the sending end and not the receiving. Other highlights of the night included us trying to climb one of the trees in my backyard. Not sure why, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Fortunately, we were too drunk to get anywhere (despite crafting a primitive pulley out of a rope that Caleb plays, and sometimes swings from the tree with).

So overall, was a quiet night with my closest and best friend filled with ample amounts of beer, moving onto lots of nice scotch, some PS3, failed tree climbing incidents and most likely a hefty phone bill. Which, in my books equates a pretty good way to see-in 2010.

Two days later it was back to work. While I wasn’t looking forward to working again, the backlog of Christmas / New Years work seemed like a quiet walk in the park when compared to the explosion of family and festivities over the previous week.

Since being back at work I’ve set a bunch of goals which include reading more, blogging more regularly (well, the blogging I meant when the goal was set related to work blogs, but if I’m work blogging more, I’ll inevitably blog more personally too) and generally doing more social media stuff.

To help the whole motivational process, I’ve decided to jump onboard with a photo blogging experiment called the 365 project where I have to take a photo every day for a year and upload it… so here goes…

So, that was my Christmas / New Years… how was yours?

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It’s 9:15pm on a Monday night and I’m only just starting to feel human again after a huge weekend of drinking. Sometimes I make references to weekends where lots of drinking takes place, but this weekend the drinking began on Friday and didn’t stop until late Sunday night.

On Friday night we had our work Christmas party. This was pretty cool because prior to this Christmas I haven’t really had any staff (other than Glen, co-founder and business partner)… but this year, our team doubled in size and we now have two awesome employees – Brigit and Emily.

I was a little nervous when organising the gathering (which was just a small BBQ at the office) because we’ve all only worked together for a few months and despite the fact we all get along well during office hours, I wasn’t sure if there would be excessive awkward silences when trying to bring everyone (and their partners) together in a social situation.

Further to that, I discovered that there’s apparently some workplace legislation that states I have to demonstrate a certain duty of care when providing my staff with alcoholic beverages. How could I possibly do that AND be so drunk I can’t even remember my own name?

Fortunately, it all went really, really well – no one died of alcohol poisoning, there are no incriminating photos of me or any of my team floating around the internet (or at least not as a result of Friday night) and now we’re talking about the possibility of making this a semi-regular occurrence.

The next day I got-up early, helped Scotty get his broken washing machine on the back of his ute so he could get it repaired and then later that afternoon I headed over to Cameron’s place for more drinking. We were supposed to catch-up a few weeks back but due to unforeseen circumstances, that didn’t happen… and as it turns-out, Cameron’s partner (Erika) is in the process of starting her own photography business and wanted to talk about getting a website etc. (so technically, the visit was somewhat work related).

Time seemed to disappear as quickly as the beer did and before we knew it, it was the next day… so after a few hours sleep on their couch, I headed back home for a couple of hours of decent sleep in my own bed before heading back out again – this time to meet-up with some very smart and always entertaining local SEO blokes for (you guessed it) more beer.

When that finished, I remembered that an old friend – Scott, who I hadn’t seen in years sent me a message via Facebook saying he was doing some work at one of the backpacker bars (who also co-incidentally happens to be a client of mine) and that I should drop by and say hi.

So I did.

I was only going to catch-up for a chat and then head-off, but when Scott and alcohol is involved, it’s never ever just a quiet one. He had a bar tab which turned into a late night of drinking with him, his little brother (who isn’t so little any more) and a few other guys he works with.

Was an awesome night and I forgot how much fun Scott can be – likewise I forgot what it was like to have 3 solid days / nights of back-to-back drinking… so all day today I felt like a guy in a wheelchair competing in a hurdles race.

The last few weekends have also been pretty busy (hence the lack of posts), but I’ll fill you in on that when my head stops hurting.

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But to be honest, I couldn’t be arsed right now… so I figured I’d write a blog post instead.

This will hopefully be the last “catch-up post” covering the random happenings over the previous month (or two) and then I should be up-to-date… well, as long as I keep this updated from now on… or unless I just stop doing things. With how busy everything’s been lately – both options seem quite reasonable

So back in September we celebrated Talk Like A Pirate Day with our annual Pirate Party. In my opinion the party wasn’t quite as good as previous years as we didn’t get a great turn-out and I was also interrupted with a work-related issue which I had to resolve (in a very un-pirate-like way given that a true pirate would not conform to such trivial computer issues… well, unless you’re a software pirate).

In the lead-up to the pirate party, we did a big clean-up of the house and when tidying-up the bathroom, I took apart my beard trimmer – gave it a clean-out and put it away in the drawer (when usually I’d just leave it to clutter-up the bathroom bench-top).

A few days later, I had some meetings scheduled and thought I should probably trim my beard and make myself look a little presentable… and without thinking (or checking) I grabbed the trimmer out of the drawer and swept it across my chin.

Normally, I leave the little ‘blade-4′ head attached to the beard trimmer, but due to the clean-up a few days prior, I had taken it off… and as a result of this, the trimmer had proceeded to take-off a large strip of hair down the middle of my chin.

So I had two choices – I could either go around looking like Wolverine (and believe me, the thought had seriously crossed my mind)… or I could continue to shave the rest of the beard off… and unfortunately I went with the later option. In the days that followed, I discovered that I look better with a beard than I do without and sheepishly had to explain to everyone I came in contact with that I had accidentally shaved it off.

The weekend that followed was Mel and Joe’s wedding and of all the weddings I’ve been to, this was one of the better ones (up there with Ger & Chris’ and Kate & Nicks). I may have enjoyed myself a bit more than usual because (unlike when I attend weddings for friends of Kristy’s) I actually knew some people… or it could have been that the ceremony was quite classy, yet quirkily suited Mel & Joe by having a recital from the Dr. Seuss book ‘Oh the places you’ll go’ instead of a bible reading.

It could have been that the speeches were all reasonably short… or that the wedding and reception were all at the same venue (the Victoria Park Golf Club) and while the photos and other bridal formalities were taking place, we could go to the club bar and drink while we waited. Or it could have been the great food or copious amounts of alcohol.

Regardless as to what it was – the night was fantastic.

We drove to the wedding, left the car at the golf club and caught a cab into the city for a few more drinks – we were going to party-on with a few of Joe’s mates, but in the few minutes it took our maxi-taxi to get into town, they had all decided they were going to pike (despite my best efforts to encourage them with ‘Arrested Development’ chicken taunts).

As we didn’t have the entourage we were hoping for, we only hung around for a few drinks and then cabbed it home.

The next day, after shaking off the hang-over, we picked-up Caleb, caught-up with Skye and Scotty for some noodles and then went to pick-up the car. When we got to the golf course, we thought it’d be a shame not to take advantage of the awesome facilities, so we had a game of putt-putt.

I hadn’t played putt-putt in years and despite the course not having the cliched Windmill and the fact that I was more handicapped than Stephen Hawking – it was tonnes of fun.

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Two of these things just happen to be gaming (of the computer or console variety) and trivia… and over the last couple of months, I’ve done a bit of both of these things.

A few weeks back, my folks retirement lifestyle village held their annual trivia night, so Kristy and I joined my brother Brett, his wife Lyndal and my Mum and Dad for a night of tricky questions. Last year our team was a little bigger and we came in second place, although there was only one point separating us from the winners and we later discovered that one of the questions was marked incorrectly, so technically we should have won… but this year, we didn’t do quite so well and came-in third place.

I am not brilliant at common knowledge stuff… I tend to say and do a lot of stupid things… my interests are centred around fairly niche topics (like computers, anything geeky, movies, music and comics) and you’re probably thinking “music” or “movies” is fairly broad, although the songs and flicks I find that I know most about usually fall slightly outside the mainstream stuff. But this all tends to be the stuff that makes for good trivia questions.

I also find myself able to pull answers out of my arse on things that I really shouldn’t know anything about – say, books for example – as I never read (unless it’s a blog or something online) I shouldn’t know the first thing about authors or best sellers etc. but strangely I was giving names of Bronte sisters and answering questions as to which ones were responsible for writing some of their classics. How do I know this? F*cked if I know… but I do. And it’s because of that, that I quite like trivia nights.

More recently we’ve had a nightmare few weeks with random, intermittent server issues which only seemed to affect a handful of select sites and even when those sites were being affected, the server loads and specs showed no signs of any problems – yet the sites were running slower than my grandmother on a treadmill. It took a solid couple of weeks of re-installing and upgrading server-side components, libraries, tweaking configuration variables and we finally discovered that due to a PHP update there were a couple of bugs and any sites using certain functions could have issues.

So, inbetween the issues, when the server was operational, I’d try and escape from life and forget about all the dramas via my PS3.

I played through Batman Arkham Asylum (which was really really fun), Assassin’s Creed (because I hadn’t played it yet, but Assassin’s Creed 2 looks pretty good and I wanted to get up-to-speed) and Infamous (which I’m still playing… much to Kristy’s dismay as I’ve been playing it a lot).

I was previously quite disappointed by current gaming trends as I’d be able to get through most games in a few days – and that’s saying something as I’m not a brilliant gamer, but I was pleasantly surprised that most of these games kept me interested for at least a week or two. Batman took a bit longer than usual cause I kept searching for all the extra hidden riddles and trying to complete every little task… and Infamous will require two complete play-throughs (one as a good guy and one as a bad guy) which will take a while because as it is, I’m only half-way through the game as a goodie.

Other than that, the only other thing worth reporting is that Skye and Scotty have joined our local gym and they’ve been trying to get me to go again. I went last Monday and it killed me. I couldn’t feel my arms or legs for 24 – 48 hours directly after the workout and I think I should have been happy about this because the 3 days that followed were agonising as my poor little (and I do mean little) muscles repaired themselves. And now they want me to go again tonight. I’m not keen, but I probably should.

So if you don’t see another blog post for a few weeks it could be because I feel like my arms have been pulled out of their sockets by Arnold Schwarzenegger thanks to my local gym… or work may have gotten in the way… but I’m really hoping to get back on top of things over the next few days.

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Last week I came home from work and Kristy asks me if we have anything planned for Saturday night. I reply with “I don’t think so… why?”. She then proceeds to ask “In that case, do you want to go and see Mum’s Tennis Friends play?”.

Coincidentally, Kristy’s Mum does happen to play tennis and I had no idea a band called “Mum’s Tennis Friends” even existed, so I looked a little puzzled as to why we would want to go and watch Kristy’s Mum play tennis with a bunch of her friends on Saturday night… but I figured there must be a reason for the invite, so I respond “Um… ok… sure…. where are they playing?”

Kristy replies “At the Coronation Hotel”. Now I’m baffled. Not only am I confused as to why we’d want to spend our Saturday evening watching a bunch of old ladies play tennis, but now I have to process the fact that this whole crazy event would be taking place in a rough Ipswich pub that’s a few doors down from a gun shop and an adult store (which both scarily occupy adjoining premises… but hey, that’s Ipswich for you).

Then if my brain wasn’t broken enough by this stage, Kristy then throws in the comment “Madonna’s husband plays with them, so a few of my old school friends are going along and thought it might be fun to rock-out with them”.

This must have been the point that my head exploded and I was left dumbfounded with a permanent ‘brain freeze’ expression stuck on my face.

Kristy, noticing my mental agony, says “what’s wrong – don’t you want to go?”

So I try and explain that I have no idea of what’s going on – why on earth does the husband of one of Kristy’s old school friends play tennis in pubs with Kristy’s Mum and a bunch of her friends on Saturday nights and how has this mixed group of amateur athletes managed to gain a cult following of 30-year-old women who all went to school together?!?

The next 10 minutes was filled with Kristy explaining that they’re a band and after a couple of pain-killers and a lie-down, I’m back on track and finally understand what just transpired.

So, Saturday afternoon rolls around and we figure that since the band doesn’t start until 7pm and it’s local, we’d have a few drinks before the gig starts… rock-up fashionably late and party-on. So I have a couple of beers… play some PS3 while Kristy gets ready… have a shower… a few more beers… I get ready… another couple of beers and we leave. I’m feeling a bit pissy already and the night technically hasn’t begun.

We arrive thinking everyone would be there already – but no – it was just us and a dishevelled looking crowd. More beer is required.

Now, I should also probably point-out that, as a wimpy, weak, slightly pudgy geek who was picked-on a little through-out school and over the years has been mistaken for a homosexual on more than one occasion… I’ve developed this fairly unfounded and quite unnatural paranoia that whenever I’m in a large group of blokey blokes and I don’t have suitable “backup”, I fear that I’ll get into a fight… or more accurately, get bashed-up.

So given the surroundings, I was feeling a bit nervous. Fortunately, Kristy’s friends turn-up, we start chatting and all is good… Until one of the girls’ husbands starts spear tackling guys randomly. I’m nervous again… but then we start doing shots of tequila and the nerves disappear… as does the feeling in my legs. The pub is also too tough to stock salt or lemons, so we’re doing straight shots of tequila with nothing but the bitter flavour of beer to wash down the sharp after-taste.

By this stage, I’ve forgotten that I’m scared of anything – probably because even if someone did punch me, I probably wouldn’t feel it. But I’m also so drunk that remaining upright is a challenge and end-up deciding it’s probably best if I go home and leave the girls to finish the night without me. And after all that, I don’t even think I saw Mum’s Tennis Friends play.

On Sunday I woke-up and felt worse than I have done in ages. Kristy took Caleb to SeaWorld whereas I just slept, ate (when I could finally stomach food again at some point that afternoon) and then spent the rest of the day randomly watching the lights on the tv flicker at me and played some more PS3.

Despite the pain felt throughout Sunday (and even a little bit on Monday) and the fact that my Saturday night was a little anti-climatic since I didn’t even get to see the band play – it was actually quite a good weekend.

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This is the first weekend in ages that we haven’t had anything planned, so my legacy to do stuff has been going quite well – although I must admit, I’m pleased to have a weekend to kick back, eat pizza, drink beer and watch DVDs which was what most weekends used to consist of.

A few weeks back, we went to our first Brisbane Twestival. What is a Twestival? It’s basically a global series of events designed to bring Twitter users together in an off-line environment and in the process create global awareness (and raise money) for a charitable cause.

Twitter users from all around the world came together at the various local meet-ups (twestivals) organised between the dates of 10-13 September 2009.

Ok, ok, I know this may not sound like the most interesting or exciting event to go to given the geeky nature of it and the fact that a lot of people who are incredibly social online are quite the oposite when you take their keyboard away… not that I can talk – I’m much the same… and as a side-note, I feel a bit hypocritical when I preach about the values of social media lately as my blogging has been sporadic at best, and my tweeting, facebooking and even reading other blogs has been minimal of late.

But all that aside – social media is a very powerful tool and when used to raise money for a noble cause, it’s even better.

This particular Twestival was designed to raise money towards the prevention of youth suicide. To do this, they had live bands, comedy acts, some dancing (which was dubbed as burlesque… and although a little risque, I personally wouldn’t have considered what I saw as ‘burlesque’… but still entertaining) and an art auction.

The highlights of the night (other than catching-up with a few online buddies) were a couple of the bands – one being a very funny comedy act called The Complete First Season and the artwork we bought in the auction.

We generally don’t buy art – we’ve talked about it for years saying how it’d be cool to have some funky paintings around the house, and have even contemplated creating some of our own artwork but have never actually done anything about it… until now.

The auction started and we excitedly placed a bid – partially for novelty purposes as we don’t normally partake in auctions, partially because we knew all money was going towards a great cause, but primarily because the Andy Warde piece up for sale was very cool. To get an idea of his work, check-out some of his stuff from a recent exhibition Andy had a the Joshua Levi Gallery (incidentally the same place that facilitated the Twestival).

Then someone raised our bid, to which we responded… and as you would expect, this went on in true auction-style for a while… til it got the the point where the fun of bidding started to be replaced with the reality that we were about to actually spend two or three times more than our pre-planned drinking budget for the night on a painting. Given that we’re closet alcoholics… and that we hadn’t actually been drinking (much to our dismay, there was no alcohol at the event, but there were some very tasty cup-cakes and some tiny gourmet burgers that made you feel like a giant whilst eating them)… the auction was starting to get a little scary.

In the end, Kristy held strong, kept bidding and we won the piece… it cost us a few hundred dollars and when chatting with one of the organisers, he explained that the money raised from that one purchase would have been enough to save nearly 10 youths from popping themselves – so I felt pretty good about that.

Not to mention that we now had our first-ever, proper piece of artwork, which is now mounted on our lounge-room wall…. and what’s even better is that it isn’t just some snobby piece of work that we bought at posh exhibit with fancy pants people wearing monocles and throwing around words like ‘existentialism’… the piece has character, was purchased for a noble cause and comes with a great story attached – how many people do you know that have purchased artwork from a social media meetup?

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So I’m going to be doing three types of posts over the next few days/weeks/months in an effort to catch-up with everything (not that I expect it will work-out as planned) but this is what I have in mind…

• Current posts discussing the most recent stuff I’ve been up to
• Catch-up posts discussing what’s happened no-so recently
• Random links and other interesting stuff I’ve compiled but haven’t gotten around to posting

Let’s start-off with some of the most recent stuff – it’s been school holidays and Kristy took some time off work to do some holiday stuff with Caleb. One of the things they did was went on a road trip to the Dubbo Zoo and to see The Dish at Parkes.

Due to work commitments (and to be honest, a general lack of interest in driving 1000Km’s to go to a zoo) I opted to give this trip a miss, but after hearing some of the stories, it actually sounded like they had an awesome time.

Me on the other-hand, spent 3 nights working late, eating take-out, playing PS3 and drinking a little more red wine than I probably should mid-week. Also, in some random flicking through YouTube channels I stumbled across a funny little online show called The Guild which follows the lives of a group of people addicted to playing MMO RPGs. I won’t go into explaining it any further, but if you don’t know what MMO or RPG is an acronym for, you probably won’t like the show.

Over the weekend we caught-up with Skye and Scotty (which is becoming a much more regular occurrence now they live around the corner) for a few drinks and some DVDs. Went to a football break-up for one of Kristy’s step-brothers and then went to Janine’s post-wedding get-together.

Janine had her wedding somewhere in the Whitsundays and due to poor timing, planning, conflicts with other weddings and costs, we opted not to go up north for the celebration. As this also applied to a bunch of other people, Janine decided to have a celebration a week later for all those that didn’t attend.

Although Janine and I have a bit of a love-hate relationship (she shits me to tears sometimes… as do a lot of the dancing mums that she associates with as part of her Dancing Studio), it was actually a pretty good night.

On Sunday I offered to help Trish and her daughter Mariah with her laptop which had recently been infected by a virus and in the process, I figured I’d upgrade my laptop to Windows 7. So far (and I’ve only been using it for the last 48 hours), it seems pretty good – quicker than Vista, the install went reasonably smoothly and so far everything has just ‘worked’ which is rare for a Microsoft product.

Unfortunately the virus repair didn’t go quite so smoothly and I had to re-install Windows due to bluescreens and failed boot attempts.

While waiting for virus scans to complete and software to install, I finally got around to watching the loooong video talking about a new-ish project Google is rolling-out called Google Wave. To explain it in it’s most simple form – imagine if a company tried to take the concept of email, instant messaging, social media, cloud computing, online/offline group document collaboration and mash it all into one open-source tool – you’d have Wave.

Email technology has been broken for decades simply because the technology originally created to handle email was never designed to be used to the magnitude that it is today. MacGyver would be in awe of all the bubblegum, paperclips and band-aides that exist behind the scenes in order to fight spam, route emails through poorly configured servers, travel halfway around the world and magically allow messages to appear in the inbox of the person sitting two-feet away from your desk.

So the notion that Google are doing something about this to fundamentally change the way people view online communication and potentially create a whole new way of ‘emailing’ is very exciting for a geek like me. Given the money, brain-power and reputation that Google have, they might just be able to pull this off. Only time will tell and even when the product is officially launched, it’ll still probably spend the next 5 years in ‘beta’ and be invite only like Gmail was.

Well, that’s all I’ve got time for at the moment – I’ll try and squeeze-out another post or two soon with hopefully some more interesting stuff.

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But I made a promise that I would help, so Kristy went out for dinner with Vicky and I had an early night on Friday enabling me to rise early (which translates to ‘before lunch time’ when weekends are involved) to put-in a decent effort and make-up for the weekend before.

With army-green cargo’s, a black t-shirt and a hefty pair of boots – I looked like I had stepped back into the mid 90’s and was on my way to a Nirvana or Pearl Jam concert… until the addition of a big white floppy hat that made me look like a confused grunger who had just joined the Australian Cricket Team.

Normally the only highlight from a day that starts like this is beer at the end of it… but on this occasion, I had my first chance to play with a chainsaw – and it was AWESOME. For the first time in my life, I’ve come to appreciate how males can develop an unnatural obsession with powertools.

Hedges were obliterated, fence-lines cleared, lots of little scratches and gardening related battle scars (although fortunately… and much to my, and everyone else’s surprise… I didn’t end-up as an amputee from my chain sawing) and overall, quite a successful day.

This was followed by an awesome evening with my very good web development business partners and friends – Kintek.

Dinner was at a restaurant called Little Singapore which was BYO and Chris certainly did that – a carton of beer, a few bottles of wine and a couple of bottles of champaign… all of which were emptied before we left.

The food was great (despite me accidentally stabbing myself with a satay chicken skewer… yea, don’t ask) and I chose my meal like I choose my race-horses – by name and picture. Subsequenly I had Kung Po Chicken – go on, just try and say that without a faux-Asian accent and waving your hands in the air like you’re about to Karate chop something.

The dessert that sparked the most interest (once again, purely by name and description… not by how enticing it would be to eat) was a dish called “Ice Kacang” which consisted of shaved ice with 8 different kinds of beans. I couldn’t even name 8 different kinds of beans… actually, just saying that reminds me of the guy from the movie Best In Show who’d constantly name nuts.

So after bean-filled desserts and an ample supply of alcohol, we headed back to Lucy’s place which was around the corner for a few more drinks… which lead to a few more… which lead to yet another rather late and entertaining evening.

When Sunday rolled around, my head was sore from all the alcohol, my body was sore from all the yard work… all I could do was stare at the TV and watch music videos and a couple of DVDs. Then it was over to Kristy’s Dad’s place for a BBQ dinner.

Despite it now being Monday night, I’m still a little exhausted and a little sore from the weekend efforts, but overall, was yet another fine weekend.

Now, before heading-off to bed, I have to finish writing a position description for a new staff member for Ingenuity. While the concept of adding a new member to our team is quite exciting (not to mention all the additional stuff I’ll hopefully be able to get done with an extra pair of hands)… interviewing and picking the right person for the job is often far more painful than you’d expect.

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You’d be talking to someone and ask what they blog about and they’d say something like candles, weight loss, personal development, cars, sports etc. etc. and after politely asking some of the more obvious questions, you’d quickly run out of things to talk about. Then I’d start talking about the rubbish I blog about (search optimisation, social media, random stuff I’d find on the internet and prattling-on about my mediocre life) and I’d have to wake them up at the end of the conversation.

It’s somewhat ironic, because you would expect a group inspired by a tool designed to create conversations online doesn’t always result in decent conversations in real life.

That being said, there were still quite a few people that I really did enjoyed meeting and it was also great to catch-up with some of the guys I know from previous groups. And as the beers were flowing, the night did get progressively better.

[update... just found a photo of me from the night... this was before the onslaught of too many beers]

So much so that when things were winding-down, I decided to head into the Valley for a few more drinks. Stopped along the way a couple of times to ensure I had the necessary nutrients [beer] to make it through the long and arduous journey [a quick citycat trip and a 10-15 min walk through town] which lead me to the Press Club.

A few drinks later, I made friends with (or maybe they made friends with me… things were getting a little hazy by this point) a gay couple who were very funny. Soon after, a guy turns-up with an electronic bongo drum kit thing to play along with the DJ that was spinning.

Once his gear was setup (right next to where the gay guys and I were sitting), he went off to grab a drink and chat with some of the staff… so in my infinite mischievous wisdom, I thought it’d be quite entertaining to have a go at the drums.

Banged away to a few songs, which I though was quite good but sadly, the drummer returned and he didn’t share the same enthusiasm for my playing… so I was kicked-out

Had a few more drinks at a bar down the road……. and then I woke-up. It was about lunch-time on Saturday. I had somehow made it home, got inside, disrobed and went to sleep – but exactly how that all happened is a complete mystery to me.

Apparently I must have been concerned I wouldn’t be able to find my way out of the house as I left a trail of clothing from the end of the bed leading to the front door (Hansel and Gretel style) and after picking this up, I discovered I’d lost my house keys. I knew they must have been somewhere inside (since no doors/windows were broken and I wouldn’t be inside if I had lost them previously)… but couldn’t find them anywhere.

Then Kristy came home and informed me that we were going to go over to Skye and Scotty’s new house to help them clean-up their garden prior to them moving in.

I’m not overly useful when it comes to outdoor activities, manual labour, gardening or anything involving the slightest level of physical fitness… add to the fact that I still felt a little drunk from the evening before (that’s right, still intoxicated – hang-over hadn’t even officially begun), I wasn’t the most helpful member of the group. We’ll be helping again this weekend, so I’ll have to make-up for my uselessness then, plus, I might get a chance to play with a chainsaw… so if I don’t blog for a while after this it’s probably because I’ve become a multiple amputee.

Fortunately the rest of the weekend was pretty quiet which helped aid my sore head. On the Saturday night Kristy caught-up with a few old school friends and had a great time too, so it was a good weekend had by all.

This weekend, other than helping with some more outdoor work, I’ll be going out for dinner with the team at Kintek which I’m really looking forward to.

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So a few weekends ago my mate Cameron had a Guitar Hero World Tour party… and it rocked… as I did, like the bastard love-child of Van Halen, Freddie Mercury and Hendrix… yea that’s what Hendrix meant when he said “excuse me while I kiss this guy” (most people miss-hear that lyric and think he’s actually saying “scuse me while I kiss the sky”… but now you know better).

It turned-out to be a much bigger night than anticipated… lots of drinking… 4 incredibly geeky guys rocking-out with plastic instruments thinking for one night we genuinely were rock gods.. well, until we ran out of alcohol and then noticed the sun was coming-up.

The next weekend was filled with ferry-floss and rides. Well, I’m not a huge fan of either, but that didn’t detract from the weekend. One of my clients is responsible for organising an annual community festival (Centenary Rocks Festival) which featured lots of market stalls, live bands, international foods, rides etc. etc. So we spent the day on Saturday supporting that and then on Sunday it was Caleb’s school fete.

The weekend just gone, Kristy and I went to a Tirty-Tree and a Tird (aka thirty-three and a third) Irish-themed birthday party for one of Kristy’s old school friends. We donned our green gear and Guinness’ and partied like a Leprechaun who just discovered how to turn potatoes into gold. Highlight of the evening was an incredibly drunk, but amazingly entertaining engineer who helped get us into the mind-set of processed meat/chicken… before being processed. Not so-much the gruesome parts, but more-so the potential confusion and how that confusion would be communicated to the other animals (who were affectionately given Aussie slang nicknames). Spose you had to be there.

Then, slot-in the odd BBQ here and there and that sums-up the last few weekends… in between the weekends, I’ve also been doing a bit of work-related socialising / networking. Recently there was an event on the topic of Twitter, and since I like to consider myself a social media aficionado (actually, I’m not really, but I do like using the word aficionado), I was quite comfortable with the subject-matter making it a really enjoyable networking experience. They also had a projection screen behind the speakers with a live Twitter feed monitoring all the tweets pertaining to the event (which provided the perfect opportunity for me to make a few humorous, yet relevant one-liners about things being discussed… and got a few chuckles from the audience in the process).

Yesterday afternoon I caught-up with my good mate Gerard who’s back in town for a few weeks and as a means of promoting his new business venture (and also just to meet some of the local talent) we organised a SEO meetup. I’ve arranged and been to a handful of these in the past and they’ve never been huge, but always entertaining. This one was no different and I think all the guys enjoyed it.. well, all but one lady that had no idea about SEO and was trying to peddle some self-help multi-level online money making marketing product that she couldn’t share too much info about.

Strangely enough, she seemed horrified when we mentioned that SEO does have a technical aspect to it and it requires knowledge/time/effort/money etc. etc. I think she was hoping we’d tell her if you simply do XYZ you’ll rank #1… sorry love, it just doesn’t work like that

Tomorrow night there’s a Brisbane Twitter User Brigade (BTUB) pub crawl that I’m planning on going along to as well. Yea, I know… this along with the last few events sounds pretty geeky, but hey – it’s all about getting out there, meeting new people and doing something a bit different. If that means using a social networking tool such as Twitter as an icebreaker, then so-be-it. Besides, some geeks DO know how to party… ok, ok, yea maybe we don’t… but any group of people become a lot more interesting when copious amounts of alcohol are involved.

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