Morpheus again

I really enjoy the Matrix movies. It's probably the slick corny lines, there-is-no-spoon messing with your head, added into a weird mix of retro, steampunk, and over the top kung-fu.

But I just saw this advert that Kia has released for the US market where they brought Laurence Fishburne in to reprise his role as Morpheus. I don't know how much that cost them to make, but if that car was being sold here, I'd be "just take my money already!!!"

I'll never get tired of 'bullet time'.

No running in the halls

They always tell children this in school. And its generally viewed as good wisdom.

But when I know that the train is coming, and the next one will be another long 10min wait, the desire to sprint just takes over.

Now I have enough restraint that I don't do this at the crowded stations, particularly in town as there isn't often the room to weave through crowds without bowling people over. But at the suburban station near the office, crowds aren't an issue, but yesterday the stairs were.

I was tired, I wanted to get home, and was already slightly fatigued from pushing the board from the office. So as I started running down one flight of stairs, I actually slipped and lost my balance near the beginning.

The human mind is kind of amazing as how so many thoughts and decisions kick in all at once, however it wasn't really the slow motion that I would wish for from the movies. It was more like 10 options suddenly thrown up on a HUD during a car accident. You almost hit one out of reflex.

Anyway, I almost saved it. Some quick foot work got me half way down while staying up right, and as I neared the bottom of the stairs, my mind whipped up two options:

a) Keep going with what has been working, or
b) Jump the remaining portion of steps

I went with (a) and ended up on hands and knees at the bottom with a stack of skin missing from one elbow.

The train was still rolling into the station so I had to pull myself up, run over to and up the next flight of stairs.

The whole thing wouldn't be quite as raw if there wasn't any spectators. Damn.

Smash it babe

In the last season of My Kitchen Rules, one of the teams was a pair of young ladies who were themed as that season's headline villains. Ashlee and Sophia were interesting for their distinct confidence and trash talking, but the thing that stuck with me the most were their favourite phrases:

"Smash it"
"Babe"

These words, and their delivery, amused me so much that I started trying to work it into my daily conversations, however my wife told me it is a "guy thing" and to "stop it".

MKR has just started up again, and I think the editors of the show are getting better at working out the psychological buttons to push on general populace to hook people in. Its now a well worked mixture of oddballs, narcissism, as well as regular conflict between extreme personalities. It does kind of work too. I find myself wanting to watch to find out about whether the girls from WA really have travelled as much as what they claim. One of the things that they didn't show in the MKR adverts, was that one of the pair, Kelly, had worked in London for 4 years, which does open up the chance to travel more easily around Europe. It still takes money though, hence I am itching to know how extensive the travel was. But honestly, I think it is some sort of jealous hope that it is more of a case of embellishment, rather than 4 years of extensive and in-depth travel.

Realising that about myself is disappointing. I think I'll just steer clear of MKR from now on. Roll on World Cup.

I'd rather have quantity

I love ice cream. When I used to work on short expatriate assignments in the USA, the range of flavours and brands of ice cream were like a dream come true. There were even the oddball seasonal flavours that would come up, like pumpkin pie flavour during the thanksgiving season.

Not all suited my taste, but I'd discovered the cookie & cream flavour there, and after that, wasn't so interested in anything else. The other thing I liked, was that American supermarkets often did the "2 for the price of 1" sale, including on ice cream. So, at probably my worst peak, I was buying 2 half-gallon tubs of ice cream each week.

Started looking a little chubby for a while there.

Since getting married and having some wisdom and restraint provided by my better half, I definitely am in better shape and my face isn't like a moon anymore. However I just found out that the Cash and Carry stores (bulk purchase outlet) do 10 litre tubs for $15.

Dude... that is value that just can't be passed up.

The flavours on offer are a little less complicated, but if I learnt anything from Cold Rock Ice Creamery, you just need to apply a little creativity to dress up vanilla. Now these wholesalers don't just let in any Joe Public in to buy. You have to have a membership, but my road-side assistance membership includes access to Cash and Carry as a member perk.

Whee!! Found a cure for the summertime blues.

Offline for a bit

Its Australia Day weekend this weekend. I'll be without internet for most of it as I'll be off running some leadership training.

No posts for a couple of days.

Picking this post title reminded me of the movie "The Internship" where Billy keeps referring to things on the internet as being "On the line". Heh heh, makes me smile everytime.

Who? Lil' ol' me?

We have a small IT team in the company I work for, with a few IT guys on the east coast and a couple on the west. One of them has the same first name as me.

Now this isn't a big deal, but when it comes to email most people don't know, or just can't remember the email address of all their friends let alone all their work colleagues, so people end up relying on address books to do auto-completes and provide the email address they're after.

You can already see where this is going. Every now and then I get included on a systems administration email by accident when the sender meant to get the other guy, but didn't check the full name before hitting send.

Its always confusing for me, not because of the subject matter of the email, but some stupid part of me feels flattered that the sender thought I'd have some meaningful contribution to their request for help, even though I know they meant to include the other guy.

I can't workout why that part of me gets a buzz from it. Guess I'm just starved for direct positive reinforcement in my workplace...

I'll take those odds

I was checking the weather today (not sure why I bother, as its summer and I'd just spent an hour commuting through the stuff - it's hot), but I noticed this for the first time today in terms of the "chance of any rain".

 

5% chance of rain. It isn't really cloudy, not like this:

But actually more like this:

 

If that's 5% chance on a 38 degree day, and people in this country are willing to collectively throw several million dollars each week into lottery for a 0.0001% chance...

Then why didn't I see a single umbrella being carried on the train today?