September 2008 Archives

Again, no direction where this thing was going when I started. So it's all over the place. But I hope that it makes you a happy person when you listen to it.

Here's what I cover:

• Did you see the new look of idiologic?
• A few updates on stuff I talked about on previous podcasts
• "Big Wheel" (by Tori Amos) video preview on my weblog
• Why I drink my coffee with a spoon in it all the time
• My grilling stupidity, I am an idiot
• Finding my first love and the reply
• My dream that took place in the shower
• Don't forget to read the weblog regularly OK?

This 'un's 21 minutes and 45 seconds long and a few bytes shy of 10 MB.

And of course, do you have something to say to my face? Then click this lovely Skype button:

Want to subscribe to the feed, then just go here. If you want to just listen to idioPod 44 here, clicky-clicky here.

There are so many health benefits for using infrared saunas. Don't know what I'm talking about? Infrared radiation is electromagnetic radiation that penetrates the body and heats it directly and more efficiently. And yes, folks, it is safe. If you suffer from rheumatoid arthritis or arthritis, like most of my family, an infrared sauna could really help. Not only that, a person can lose weight (up to 900 calories in a 30 minute session), increase blood flow, lower blood pressure, unclog skin and relieve a sore throat. There are so many more benefits. You can just imagine what these benefits can do for you and your family, right?

I've always been an advocate of relaxing or telling people how to relax a little bit. And you know what, I'd really be happy to try it out to detoxify my body and relieve some of the sunburning that Australia is well-associated with (you know, the Sunburnt Country...). Definitely give Midwest Saunas a try and I'm positive you'll be feeling better in no time. It's a cool concept. Try out a far infrared sauna today.

Hey everybody, this won't be long. Not by a long shot. I know I'm supposed to be working on "Gold Dust" but I made a short preview video of "Big Wheel" from Tori Amos's latest album "American Doll Posse".

So yeah, here is the preview:

Basically I'm making a story about my feet. They have a story to tell. A very interesting one. This definitely isn't my best work I've done, by the way. I put it together in like 10 minutes with iMovie HD.

I was going to make this into a podcast, but the realization is that I need to start getting ready to go to work in a bit and I just can't get that done in 40 minutes (recorded, edited, posted and blogged). So I'll just discuss what I was going to talk about here and I know I'm going to catch a lot of flack about it. But that's OK. I need to vent because the feelings are raging and swirling around inside my head.

I'll admit that there was once a love I had before my current partner and before the person who I proclaimed to be my first love. And of course, it turned into a long-distance relationship where the distance was incredible, I mean like 20 hour flight incredible. And I got bummed out and swore I was going to move to this country to be with him. And I worked on that but soon realized that I wouldn't be able to do that and gave up on the relationship. I still kept tabs on him for the first few years and then in 2001 I had the opportunity to go to his country and I did. I met up with him there and the sparks were sparking but I didn't feel like I could do anything about it. I left his country and headed back to Australia where I ran into a lot of trouble and went back home. I lost contact since then. It made me really sad that I lost that contact and over the past few years I had been desperately trying to find a way to regain that contact I had.

Just yesterday I found his personal website. He has picked up some mad design skills over the years. Honestly, I didn't know if it was really him until I flipped through some of his paintings. Then I saw two that he sent me a loooong time ago. I was like "Oh... shit..." Apparently, he finished his degree and moved to Canada. And I couldn't be prouder of him. I knew that he didn't want to stay in his country and because of the circumstances which I won't mention here, I didn't want him to either. But at the time, there was just a limited amount that I could do to help. I found his online portfolio which lead me to his MySpace and Friendster profiles. I sent an email to him and have been on pins and needles waiting for a response. I haven't gotten one just yet but he'll get around to it, I think.

It's a bit strange to see something like that though. I have to admit that out of all the people that I have lost contact with over the years, this one is the most important because of its sentimental value. It actually put me in a good mood.

So here's to finding lost friends!

The next design of idiologic is upcoming but I can't say when but I wanted you guys to have a look and tell me what's working and what's not working. That is partly why I posted some of it up on my "beta server" so you can take a look. It's only 2 pages so far and if I show you a preview at least you know what to look for. So here it is:

Of course the content on it isn't final and most of it isn't real. It's just the look that counts. Some of the graphics are off but that will be fixed later. If it looks reeeeeeeally bad on Internet Explorer... someone with Windows... let me know. You can access it here or just happily click on the photo. You'll be lead to a blue page with some information on it that's basically there for me.

Remember, if you see something that looks hideous, let me know. (I have been testing with Opera.)

With that, I'm out of here. Have a good night. (And no, I don't name my redesigns. I have been calling them V1, V2 and V3 for a while. The V2's actually still exist on my real server... tee hee.)

This is a reply to the comment here. I've been crazy axe-wielding a bit lately so I thought I would offer an insight into what's going on and why I take comments about my relationship so hard.

Hey V.

Ok, I know who you are (in a certain way). And from what I've gathered over the past few months things have been pretty rough for you. And I sincerely apologize for being so rude. I wanted to be more rude, but now I know who you are and I do appreciate your input. No, I thought you were someone else to begin with so I was waving around some sharp knives.

Don't worry, things are doing well enough. But you have to realize that I both of us (my partner and I) know what we're doing. I sort of saw what you were saying as direct hits to my relationship which, I'll admit, kind of irritates me. I guess sometimes I don't want to hear that things aren't working out, etc.. Over the past several years, I have worked hard on the relationship and when it looks like it's failing, then I don't know what to do.

But please don't confuse me going out and doing things with friends and such as cheating because I know my boundaries of what and what I can't do. I am not trying to get even or anything like that. I have to have a life outside my relationship. If I don't, then things get a bit nasty when we're together too much. We have to maintain our relationship, yet have separate lives.

I can't speak for every American, but we're not all bad, honestly. I'm sorry you went so far just to be disappointed and you came back home. But you have learned something from the experience, right? :) I don't know all the details and if you ever feel like chatting about it in a less public setting, let me know. It would be great to chat with you and get to know what's going on.

I do appreciate you reading up on me, listening to me and such. I truly mean that. Thank you. I appreciate your feedback (though I DO get a bit bitchy sometimes). I am sorry that I was snapping your head off lately. Hang in there and if you ever want to have a chat, feel free. It might be good to get some of your frustrations out to someone.

Ben

Okay, somewhere along the road I have asked for comments and I get them. And someone, a Melbournian in fact, who uses BigPond has been posting them! So thank you Anonymous but I have my shit together, thank you very much! But this is a great opportunity to write a few things for clarification:

I do appreciate the relationship I'm in. The fact that I do go out with friends and do things, doesn't make my relationship any less important. I do feel like there comes a point where my listeners don't want to hear 30 minutes or longer of my relationship problems. Yes, I may continue to nag and complain that things aren't going well when I do talk about it but I'm well-known to concentrate on the negatives than the positives. Having said that, I admit that my relationship with my partner of over 8 years still tops the priority list for me.

I feel that it is important in any relationship to balance the personal part and the love part. And really, just because I hang out with friends, go on vacations with them and such, doesn't put my relationship at risk. Hello, we have been together for a long time. Longer than a lot of straight marriages. We know what we're both capable of. We both have a good idea on how the other thinks. To me, that's great!

The main reason why I remain in Australia and have decided to make it my home is because of him. My continued education was just a bonus. Regardless of what you might think, Anonymous, I know what I'm doing. I know what not to do regarding the boundaries of my relationship with Gilbert.

With all this said, I'm out of here. I am dead-ass tired today for some reason. I did decently with the interview but I need to read up on my manuals and stuff. Definitely.

Goodnight to you.

Wow, I realized that I jumped a lot around with the topics that I picked to talk about so hang in there. I tried to be a bit more organized but oh well. I talk mostly about my relationship, career and weekend. The main point, though, is that racism sucks and racists need to get over themselves... now.

But of course, that's not all I talk about. Some of the main points are outlined below in the form of bullets... but not the kind that cause blood spattering:

• A few relationship and career happenings and implementing changes,
• Fri night movie: Wall-E, Australia vs US release dates and Hellboy 2
• Instead of going home, I'll head to Brisbane/Gold Coast in Oct/Nov (tickets booked) (and please, if you're in Texas, don't think this is my preferred place to go for the holidays because it's not)
• My friend's birthday was on Fri so happy birthday to him.
• A racist jerk in the subway/train station tunnel at Flinder's Street Station (tirade warning) and my personal suggestion for everybody
• Going out to eat & drinking too much... again.
• Admitting that I am wrong to say some things sometimes
• idiologic.com/journal is your friend... thanks for visiting!

Exactly 24 minutes of happy, gorgeous, pretty fun. This thing weighs about 11 MB. Oh yeah, and Skype if you wanna:

You can download idioPod 43 here or alternatively, you can respect the capabilities of your computer and subscribe to the feed!

Also... also... also...

New Casey Stratton music is here (but not in my podcast... it's just around and I make no mention of it in my podcast... but...) and you can take a look here:

Hi ladies and gentlemen and everything in between, how are you? I'm hoping things are going absolutely fabulously for you and I hope that you've won the lottery at least twice. If none of those things apply, then go kiss a kitten. You'll feel better about it. I just had the unexplainable need to post something here. I'm not sure exactly why. Maybe I'm just tired and need sleep... which I'm about to do.

Unfortunately, today I was sick. I didn't have any energy and my eyes have been giving me a lot of problems lately. I think it's from wearing a contact that should have been flushed down the toilet about a month ago. I was supposed to go to the city and eat some of my friend's stew... and that's not meant to sound filthy. Really. Plus even if it was filthy, that's pretty gross.

I'm going to prepare a new podcast about Friday because I do have things on my mind that I need to talk to you about. Believe it or not, I have a topic for a podcast episode! Wow.

And I also wanted an excuse to share that animation with you. It's pretty damn scary.

But anyway, I hope you all had/have a good weekend. Peace out, strangers.

The first version of this podcast episode was thrown in the garbage for being too depressing so I made another one. A lot of what's been on my mind is Hurricane Ike that completely destroyed life for many people in the area where I lived before I moved to Australia. If you don't listen to this podcast for one reason or another, please help someone out who needs your help, even if it's moving furniture or bringing a cake to a neighbor. Just do something nice, okay? :)

In this podcast episode I speak about the importance of helping people out but I also chat to you about these things:

• Hurricane effects and helping those in need (please donate to American Red Cross)
• Finally, my bandwidth upgrade is here
• Job interview today... I hope I get it
• Rocky Horror Show in Melbourne. I want to go but...
• Progress on "Gold Dust" video plan
• My rough draft plans for unreleased podcasts, music and videos
• My feelings about PETA and being "morally forced" to vegetarianism
• Read up on the weblog. I have been posting like crazy.

This episode is longer than most have been since #12 at 34 minutes and 35 seconds. It weighs in at about 15.8 MB.

Feel free to download iP 42 here and to subscribe to the feed here. Leave your comments here, eh?

Skype... just another option to contact me:

A FYI Update (18 Sep 2008 at 3:53 pm): Apparently JCPenney does exist in Australia. I just got an ad from them but it's what Montgomery Ward does in the USA now... basically just catalogue stuff. Oh, and also, I didn't get that job. But I took their advice and will move in a different direction with my career for now. I mean that in a good way too. :)

Hi everybody. I won't be here for too long because I plan on going to bed pretty soon but I wanted to share a video with you of the destruction Hurricane Ike has caused. It's really scary when you put it in perspective. I've spent a good chunk of the day (while using the Internet) trying to find photos and videos of my neighboring cities where I lived. This video I'm about to share with you will show you just how much things have changed.

It's scary to think that this storm will cause some of my family and friends to move away and makes me question if it's really wise going back or not. These hurricanes are just spirit breakers I know. It seems like when I left people just got things organized from the one that tore everything up in 2005. Wow. I still can't believe it.

Sad thing is that I haven't "officially" talked to my family yet. I'm sure that things are OK because my mom did call me when they got back. I think they were lucky not to have to replace two houses. But that doesn't go for everybody.

Please, if you possibly can, donate your time or money to some of the relief aid back at home. I know it's a lot to ask sometimes, but they definitely need everybody's help. A good place to start is the American Red Cross. I know that I sound like a broken record, but this is very important to me. If you want to do one nice thing for me per year, do this. EVEN if you don't live in the USA, please help an organization. You'll never know when you or someone you love will need their help.

I will scrap the old idioPod 42 and replace it with a new one. I'll reveal more details about it tomorrow. I need to get to bed. I have important things to do tomorrow which I'll detail in the new 42. (You will eventually have access to the podcasts I didn't/don't publish. I'll tell you how soon.)

Hello. How are you doing today? I'm writing to let you know that I am going to postpone posting the podcast episode I made late last week. I just didn't care to upload and download things this morning, so I didn't. It's been quiet for a while around here as far as exciting things happening but wanted to say a big thanks to Mark who has left me a comment or two. I appreciate it a lot. I've been falling a bit behind listening to other people's podcasts. Until the new broadband plan goes into effect, I'll have to wait it out a little longer.

And to reply to your comment Mark, I guess we should be lucky that we're no longer productive members of American society anymore, especially if they screw up one more time which, sadly, I think will happen. Sarah Palin is pretty hot... you know, in a kind of redneck way. But I'm still fuming over Hillary. Still voting Democrat though, so don't worry.

With all the controversy surrounding Spore, I was pretty disgusted that I bought it. It's funny when you go out and buy something, play it and you're fine with it. I think Spore is fun, honestly. Not the best game ever, but it's fun mostly. (I'm absolutely hating the civilization stage though.) So, if I'm I'm enjoying it, why do I regret buying it? This is the funny part... when I am reading some of the reviews they're not the greatest. Yeah, a lot of it is bitching about the digital rights management (DRM). But I read that they really dumbed the game down quite a bit which is a bit sad. The cell state is horribly easy but it could have been so much more fun. I love the guys at Maxis (the developers of The Sims 1 and 2 with 3 on its way) and don't really mind the people at Electronic Arts. I really don't mind the DRM. And I know I couldn't have downloaded the damned game or it would wipe out almost a whole month of bandwidth. So I guess it's fine, though I did pay about $80 USD for it. Entertainment and communication is just priced sky high here. But if you're going to use something, you might as well pay for it, eh? There is no free lunch so to speak (though free lunches do rock).

And to show my support of this game and because they're attention whores, here are some of the creatures I've made:

The last thing's pretty scary, eh? That's a horse with 6 arms. 4 crab arms and 2 human arms. That's why genetic experiments are WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! Say no to products tested on animals because that's what happens to them. OK, I lied but still...

Other things that have been happening? Still bummed out over the damage of the hurricane(s) back home. It really sucks that it sunk in that the beach cities going to Galveston (from the east) are totally/mostly wiped out. I was always jealous of those people who had the beach houses but I would never wish something like that on them.

I'm actually pretty much in a mess at the moment and I'm afraid that I can't mention what's happening here. I can't anywhere but if you're curious, you can add me to an instant messenger and I'll clue you in. I encourage it. Nobody from Texas is online mostly because all the power lines are snapped and stuff so I'm holding it all in. Have MSN? Add remixweb at where Google's mail is and you're all set to go. I'm hoping I don't have to be more blunt than that.

I just called my family and friends and got to talk to Brandi and my other friend Joey and they seem to be doing OK. Brandi's went home for a bit and is heading back up where she was staying and my other friend's living at the hospital right now (working). Fun X3.

That's all I'm going to say for now because I NEED to get dressed. :)

Well, Hurricane Ike has come and gone but it has left a huge mess I hear. I can still remember the huge mess Hurricane Rita left behind and how the damage was so bad, my parents had to move from the house we lived in for over 20 years and both sets of my grandparents had to get a new roof on their house.

My mother called me to let me know that their houses are still intact for the most part. That's good. But some people weren't as lucky:

This picture is from Gilchrist, Texas so you guys know that the area needs a lot of help. A lot. I took the picture from this article from the Sydney Morning Herald. That is why it's absolutely vital that if you possibly can, give money to places such as the American Red Cross. Sure they don't let gay men give blood, but hey, there are other ways you could help.

One of the hardest things to do at times like that, for my family anyway, is to accept aid. I have grown up, believe it or not, to try to do things myself first and as a last resort I ask for help. If it had not been for the people who gave generously to causes like this, I would have starved and/or had no water to drink. So if you've given to the Red Cross (or any other organization) in any country, thank you.

No doubt the people where I am from will need to get their lives back in order again and I wish I could be there to help them. I remember back in 2004 I gained my title as a "Good Son". :) A lot of hard work and effort was required and I'm glad that I got myself together that quick. (Of course I had to leave for a week to work somewhere else... and my allergies were going absolutely crazy.)

Those days are behind me though and I'll do what I can from here to help my fellow Texans.

For a little cheering up, I decided to treat myself to a new game and it's been awesome so far. It's called:

I hadn't really read much about it really recently but I read somewhere that it was considered to be vapourware but honestly I can't remember where I read that.

So what exactly is Spore?

Spore is a multi-genre "massively single-player online game" developed by Maxis and designed by Will Wright. It allows a player to control the evolution of a species from its beginnings as a unicellular organism, through development as an intelligent and social creature, to interstellar exploration as a spacefaring culture. It has drawn wide attention for its massive scope, and its use of open-ended gameplay and procedural generation. (as stolen from the Wikipedia article here)

So yeah, from the makers of The Sims. You basically start out as a cell and as you eat either plant cells or "meat" cells, you grow in size. After a while, your cell grows legs and hops out of the water and on land where the creature runs around either killing things and eating them, or making friends with them. Then after that (which I haven't really gotten to yet), you form tribes, gather food, make friends or enemies with other tribes and yeah, personally I am not sure what comes after that.

Why do I like Spore?

Any game that gives me tons of options to customize just about everything in the game is fun for me. That's what I liked about Simutrans. But this post isn't about that, it's about Spore. As I make creatures, they're uploaded to the internet (which you can turn off if you want). And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what I've created:

So yeah, great fun, eh? Those are the only ones I've actually shared with the real world. I've made some pretty nice ones. It reminds me of genetic modification for some reason or saying something like "Here, bird. Go have sex with this gorilla and have babies." Scary stuff there. It's fun because the bird, for example, sings, flies and beats the crap out of other things with its claws. Yes, my bird has claws. Its name is Chanary. Which reminds me of something else... this is so Pokemon-ish. (I am a Wiki-linking machine today!)

If you want a trial of the Spore Creature Creator (which is fun in itself), you can go to the Spore website to get it. It's a pretty hefty download of about 190 MB (for those of us who have limits).

So far it's kept me amused for a long time but right now, it's no Sims.

What don't I like about Spore?

The game has some pretty weird requirements if you want to install it. Have an older Macbook? Tough. It doesn't really like shared memory graphics cards.

• Mac OS X 10.5.3 Leopard or higher
• Intel Core Duo processor
• 1024 MB RAM
• ATI X1600 or NVidia 7300 GT with 128 MB of Video RAM or Intel Integrated GMA X3100
• At least 4.7 GB of hard drive space for installation (plus more for creations)
• Will not run on PowerPC (G3/G4/G5) Mac systems
• Internet connection required for registration (so you can play)

Going back to the system requirements, I didn't have a problem installing it or running it for that matter. It requires 1 GB of memory for Macs and that's what I have. I need more. Sometimes things do get a little rough around the edges, but that's OK.

I'm also not liking all the downloaded creatures that show up in my games. Some are Russian names, some are Japanese... and what good is that for me? I wish there was a way to get rid of that or just rename them. Or something.

So what do I recommend?

If your computer can run it (aka you just got your computer fairly recently and for the Macbook, JUST got it), then try it out. All in all, I really like it. I didn't want to sound like a review for this post, honestly. It will be a good replacement for WoW when I ditch it in a few months. :)

So far it's been awesome.

Feeling a bit melancholy today for some reason. A bit gloomy I guess you could say. I'm actually listening to music from Titanic so that might not be helping things at all.

Between working myself to the bone and this morning, I went to eat at a place that was downstairs from Soul Mama. It was $10 steak dinner night! And let me tell you vegetarians out there... that, for some reason, was the best damned steak I've had in a long time. I usually don't eat steak. In fact, I haven't for years. It was medium cooked and I ate every single bit of it. Oh it was good and pretty damn good for $10. I looked it up and the place is called Amello. Of course, they want you to go in and order tons of booze (which I didn't do) to cover the costs of it. The waitress was like "Oh, they are cooked for a certain length of time so you can't get it well-done." I was thinking, oh crap. I like my steaks well-done. Well, it wasn't and it was good. I felt like a good carnivore! And I'll definitely go back.

Despite the awesome steak, today I feel sorta "blah". I guess people are entitled to that. I think what's going to happen in the long-run is that something's gonna have to give.

It's a bit funny but I got comments on my last podcast. I actually got two of them. And let me clarify this now... you shouldn't comment on podcasts without listening to it. First, nowhere in the whole podcast did I mention having sex with anybody. At least I don't think I did... hmmm... I was just commenting on my constant self-love if you know what I mean. And how I'm better at that. So unless I cloned myself and I'm fucking myself, that's not "extramarital". Hate to break that to you.

Anyway, it's one of those times where I don't want to type anymore so I'm gonna leave you a picture of a good memory I have from Texas... a cheap Margarita (at least cheap compared to the $14 each here).

Well, idioPod 41 has arrived. I had to edit out about five minutes because I was going on a tirade about how people need to live their lives and blah blah blah. Well, not really. I just said some things that reflect on me badly as well as someone else. I just don't need to do that. But it is something I will eventually talk about. I don't know how many times I have told people to shut their mouths when they don't know the full story... and I didn't. So there. :)

So, idioPod 41 is a severely edited version. (In the future, I will make the unedited versions of my podcast episodes available.)

I mostly just talk about my weekend here and boy was it crappy at times. I don't know what was going on. I guess I need to take more care about what I do. But this is what I do talk about:

• Enjoying the quietness (in a way) and the details on my weekend
• My crappy start to Sunday and the partner's impatience, no apologies
• Ramadan makes me hungry when the sun's up.
• Soul Mama is good. Really good. So good that I lost my wallet there. (This is a global vegetarian restaurant in St. Kilda, a suburb here in Melbourne.)
• Can I financially and/or legally go back home for the holidays? I don't know.
• Need to find a babysitter for my dog...
• Change the polls: Slap/beat/maul/kick a Republican today!
• My sexual "habits"

And in the long tradition of posting the times and file sizes, it's about 21 minutes 53 seconds long and weighs about 10 MB.

Got comments? Ain't got no sense to work a pen and paper? Leave that there few lines of that there encouragement and I'll be more excited than a flea on a hot brick.

Or hell, Skype me if you want to. Subscribe to be fed if you want or you can just listen to idioPod 41 here.

As you were well aware, I am redesigning idiologic and idioPod from the bottom up. I'm testing out new technologies and colors in hopes that I can come up with something that is a little easier to navigate. I'm looking for simplicity this time around (as with 95% of my redesigns). I've chosen a red theme this time around and am pleased to share with you some screen shots:

Much of what you see is filler information which means that the options you see and how you see them will most likely change in the future. If the page is long, the part on the left with the hand scrolls down also. I plan to put weblog, podcast and Twitter updates along with it. The red background actually does have some detail to it but you can't see it very well from my shrunk screenshots. (Also, the address bar is blurred for who knows why... it's not actually on the internet yet.)

I will have the option of posting pictures on the pages instead of putting them all in albums and stuff. I found the gallery to be too complicated and spam bots like to visit it so this will hopefully curb this problem. "Synthetics" is actually album cover art I made a few years ago for a song I did. I thought about using the rainbow diamond a few times in one of my website designs.

Probably one of the notable things to mention is the simplicity of contacting me. The email form needs a lot of work (which is why I haven't shown it to you) but I think this is the easiest way to get my point across.

And now the ugly part: Firefox handles it a little differently. So far I haven't noticed any MAJOR problems. Just a tiny bit of the code I use doesn't display the way I should. The reason I test my website in Opera is because Opera is the leader and creator of CSS. And what is this CSS? You can stylize text with it, move things around and such. It's programming code so to speak. If you took away CSS from my website, things would be hopeless.

I will be testing my website with Safari, [especially] Opera and Firefox. I don't have access to Internet Explorer as weird as that sounds.

It's been a quiet few weeks here. Eerily quiet. But I guess that's OK. That's why I'm going to skip posting a new podcast episode tomorrow. That's certainly not a threat. It's just... hmmm, that time of the year when I start to kind of slack off a bit. I have been working on a new look for idiologic. It's not going very well but I know what I want to do, but not sure HOW if you know what I mean. It's very red, black and white. Good concept but not enough knowledge.

Today's uneventful. I gotta get my grill fixed today. Ok, not the one that is linked... but this one:

About two months ago, we bought a new grill because for some reason I get these horrible, nerve gnawing cravings for grilled sausages, burgers and especially chicken. It was regularly $399 but we got it for $199. I'll let you know that it's not worth $399. The grill that's above isn't the one I own. It looks the same, but it has 3 knobs total and one of them is for the burner on the side. Well, anyway, since I got it, the damned thing won't work! The damned thing won't light and I think that gas isn't getting to the burners. (I blew through them and it seemed there were no blockages.) So there is a grill technician coming by later today. After 2.

I'm the person in our household that puts things together, fixes things, changes light bulbs, and smooshes spiders. Spiders like this one... really.

Then of course, I cook 50% of the time, clean a little every day (kitchen during the day, he does it at night), make beds once a month, sweep the floor every week, take out the garbage bins and stuff like that. My friends like to tell me that I'm the housewife. But they don't understand that I do a lot of things around the house. I told one of my friends what I do a few weeks ago and got asked "Come marry me." Flattering.

It sounds like I do a lot more than he does but don't be fooled. Most of the time, if he didn't cook, I'd just starve. I don't like to cook everyday and especially don't like going out to eat daily.

I end up smooshing all the bugs because he's scared of them. We could be arguing for the past 23.5 hours and he'll come to me and say "Ben. I need you to come step on this spider." Sadly, he is scared of all the bugs. Moths, spiders, ants, and stuff. But it's a trade-off really. He knows and understand that I absolutely cringe at slugs, snails, worms and stuff.

Lately, we've been doing pretty well. I'm a bit shocked at it but then again, there IS a reason I've been with the same person for over eight years. Something has to be going right.

Of course when I ask him if there's an Asian super hero who wears a cape and flies around picking up dropped coins, taking money out of people's wallets, making dents and scratches in cars and stealing clothes to dry clean... he doesn't appreciate that very much. I have always made fun of him for being so damned... hmmm... "frugal". He eventually told me that it hurts his feelings so I've let up a bit. He's a good guy; he deserves better. Plus stereotypes are not good. Especially when you throw that in front of their faces.

Now, after I've probably insulted a few people... I'm off to shower because I have to smell nice for the grill guy/lady.

I woke up and realized that I should have done this earlier. I have a few things to do today (today being the 2nd of September) so I was in a bit of a hurry. I still managed to do about 18 minutes worth. Very phlegmy. Very raw. In #40, I talk about things. Somewhat interesting things. And what are those things, you ask? They're here:

• Still in Melbourne, closer to permanent residence, immigration visit for today
• A summary about my visa process & my passport... very short
• Hurricane missed my family, more storms on the way
• My passion about what I will do (career-wise, perverts) and why, a clarification of working in rehabilitation
• Considered stopping at 40 and why I'm still doing these things
• Australia Coke vs Australia Pepsi, Pepsi Max vs Pepsi Zero(?) (I think that may be Coke...)
• Adapting to Australian life better
• How to make my ultra-good Hot Wings
• A better bandwidth plan for the Internet
• Keep the webcam? Tell me. Read the journal, yeah?

This one is 18 minutes long and weighs 8.2 MB.

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