ɔimoɈɒ

I was meant to be going to a concert on Sunday night.

Well, it didn’t pan out that way. While Dad and Calvin enjoyed the concert, I sat in the car from 8 pm until 11 pm and read a book. I’d guessed that this would happen and therefore brought me recent purchase “Mac OS X Unleashed” with me. I didn’t mind – I’d been meaning to read the book for ages and hadn’t had the chance.

We left Dublin at 11:45 and arrived in Lisburn at 01:25 which was damn good going for a 100 mile trip. I arrived home 20 minutes later and was asleep seconds after my head hit the pillow. I spent most of Monday like a Zombi and frankly I’m still beat – which means I’m irritable.

I’m tired and I’ve been angry now for over a day. I really wasn’t in the mood for the ante-natal class last night and it just made my mood worse. We didn’t make it home til nearly ten and I spent the next couple of hours reading about PHP and MySQL because I need to know about it ASAP.

I’m under a lot of stress – this I know. I’m going to just have to knuckle down.

The centre cannot hold.

I was out last night . Good enough night. It was Lorene’s birthday which is as good an excuse as any to hit the town. Northern Whig looks very upmarket but underneath the flash clothes and greasepaint it’s just people from Belfast.

Don’t get me wrong as Ms Hynde would croon. I like the people. I also dislike them. Some people are open and smiling and glad to see you. Others seem to mooch from bar to bar in search of conflict. I mean, what’s up with that??? Why would someone feel the need to create a bit of havoc in a social gathering? I suppose it’s a cross section of the populace of the island. A small number of people ruining it for the rest of us.

I mean, there wasn’t a fight or anything just some harridan who tried to create arguments.

Anyway, as I said, it was a good night. Only other fly in the ointment is “talking shop”. When you’re out with people from work you quickly realise how little you have in common with these people. None of them write, play RPGs, want to make a movie. I sit down, say hello, sip my drink and immediately someone asks me to pop over during the week and tell them how to connect a web page to a database. How do you politely say that, for instance, that’s not my job. How do you suggest that they just go out and get trained if their boss wants them to do it? And if it’s not that then it’s a constant barrage of bitching about this manager or that manager and how since the changes were made to the service level agreement, the service has really changed….well.. DUH!

I think it’s brought into sharp relief because I don’t drink. I remember the details and the next day I remember – omigod that person bored the nipples off me! At least I have Sunday to sleep this one off.

Ah, Sunday. It was snowing briefly this morning but it’s not lying and seems to have stopped. We’re meant to be driving down to see the Indigo Girls in concert backed by Pina Kollars tonight. I’m not 100% sure how to get to the Olympia but i’ll figure it out before we leave…which, if my calculations are correct, should be in about two hours.

I’m also tired of chinese food. I think I’ve tried everything on the menu. I’m getting that way with our local thai as well. At least – i’m tired of the cut-down menus that we get here in NI. I’m guessing that there’d ned to be some variety. So much of it tastes the same. As Lesley isn’t keen on Indian then I’ll not be able to strike out in that direction. Looks like I’ll have to strike out on my own.

To finish this entry and set the mood.

Laugh at your mistakes. Everyone else will.

Duncan, Elizabeth and Helen were over today. Helen and Elizabeth helped Lesley do some housework (which due to me teaching Wednesday night, being in Dublin Thursday and being out last night) didn’t get done. While that was being done I was trying to help Duncan in the baby room upstairs. I’m not very handy to be honest and it was painfully obvious.

I’m pretty melancholy at the moment – the whole money thing is getting me down. We’re doing okay but we’ll be going from Dual-Income-No-Kids to Single-Income-Single-Kid and that’s a considerable difference. I’ll also have to kiss my camcorder goodbye. Pity, cos I found a pretty good deal ( http://www.apple.com/uk/promo/giftguide/video.html ) and I had high hopes considering this new training course I’ll be teaching in a couple of weeks.

I’ve also managed to increase my teaching schedule from 1 hour per week to 3 hours per week – thankfully all on the same night! That’s a good bit more cash in the pocket too which will make things better. Two jobs is very tiring, three might just kill me.

Anyway, enough moaning. Bye.

We saw Serendipity on Sunday at 2.45. Good film. Kate Beckinsale looked very elegant and it’s sort of good that British women are popular as leading ladies. Cusack alone has starred opposite Catherine Zeta Jones twice, Kate Beckinsale once and Minnie Driver once. Anyway, it was a good film.

I’m meant to be booking dinner for Lesley’s birthday in the Japanese restaurant up on the Ballyrobert road. I’m looking forward to it a lot. I’ve no idea what “real” oriental food tastes like because the Chinese and Thai restaurants sometimes seem so westernised. We’ve been to the Ginger Tree (the Japanese restaurant) once before and I loved it. I was being conservative. Next time I’m going to go a bit mad now that I know I like it.

My friend Jane is Korean and she tells me about these wonderful-sounding dishes she prepares. Again – I think that unless you are in the country – you don’t GET what the meal is meant to be. My parents went to Hong Kong years ago and they said that Chinese food was TOTALLY different to what we get here. Of course, I’m well into my Chicken Massaman and Chiang Ban Riang (or however it’s spelled) and haven’t had a “Fried Rice with Curry Sauce” in years but it leaves me wondering. I guess I’ll have to pester her for a recipe for a meal. Sort of reminds me of when we went to the Chinese supermarket in Belfast. There’s some wonderful stuff there but I feel like I’m missing out on so much of it. I don’t know what a lot of it is (it’s only labelled in Chinese) and I wouldn’t know what to do with it – I’ve mishandled Bean Curd before in my curiosity.

I got my hair cut today. It’s very short. Feels very comfortable and will be very easy to deal with in the morning – something that was actually becoming frustrating. Am I getting lazy? I’d like to think that I’m getting focused. Might just be wishful thinking.

Plan for tomorrow?
10:30 – Scan at the hospital
Should be fun and we should have a few more pics for the webserver.
12:00 – Hopefully write more training course stuff.
17:00 – pick up Lesley from work.
19:00 – Computer Architecture class
It’s on an hour earlier so that should be good. Probably an hour early from now on.
22:00 – Sleep
I’ve got to be in the centre of Belfast for 6 am to drive to Dublin for 9. There’s this whole Mac OS X seminar thing going on and I’m going to be talking to a nice lady about some extra work training people how to use Mac OS X. It’ll be a long day.

Had a weird dream last night. Lesley was the MD of a company we co-owned. It provided consulting services and contract work and was all Mac-based. Very vivid. We both hope it comes true.

So, I’m applying for another job.

There’s a job I could do in Lisburn – IM & T Development and Operations Manager. I could do it. It’s about the same money but it’s a management step rather than a purely technical job.

I think I’d like that.

I have to train some people but it’s worse than that. I have write the training course as well. I’ve written bits and pieces but it wasn’t until tonight that everything began to crystalise in my tiny mind. Trying also to organise a course that would keep everyone entertained, teach everyone what they needed to know and also pitch it at the right level. Some people will be coming to the course with considerable knowledge of the subject while others may be casual Mac users.

Of course, I need the money that the course will bring. Last year I joked about being paid in hardware which would keep my upgrade needs satisfied but the cash is really what I need especially with the baby coming, the creche being costly and Lesley having trouble with work – I’ve said she can stop when she wants but I’m not going to demand that she stop – she knows her own limits and to help her through the day I’ll be meeting her for lunch so she can have a lie down in the car. It’ll be nice – sort of the highlight of the day.

In this day and age I don’t know why Novell continues. It’s like they haven’t got the message or something. It’s actually a bit sad. Every now and then I come across some poor bugger having big problems and all I can say is: if you were using an open standard then you’d be sorted mate.

I’m probably reacting to the mood my darling wife was in when her machine was “put on the network” at the University. The machine was from then on a hell of a lot slower (get this: it’s 166 MHz) and would crash every time she tried to shut down. As a result I’m becoming convinced that Novell is punishment for shoplifting in some countries.

Great quality control there guys. As a result she is now forced to use her iBook for just about everything. Course then you realise that Novell’s support for the Mac has always been crap – last update from them was 1999. No loss.

Oh, and their website is slow as hell.

Some things just weird me out. Slashdot is a hang out for geeks and gets more than it’s fair share of mindless drivel in the comments after every story. This story, a criticism of Apple’s strategy seems to have brought the Linux geeks in to …protect…Apple….

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/14/1647208&mode=thread

Weird.

Best Quote: “P.S. I’m not a Mac user… but, I may be one soon.”

Weird.

So weird, in fact, I’m off to have a shower. Was back at the gym for the first time in months and did only a little workout. Not too bad. The lack of pain might mean I’ll keep it up.

While looking up this word using Omnidictionary I stumbled across several meanings.

fundament
n 1: the fundamental assumptions underlying an explanation;
2: lowest supporting part of a structure;
3: the fleshy part of the human body that you sit on

I finally understand what a fundamentalist is.

And yes, I’m listening to the same CD as last time. Wonderful.

This morning, a loyalist paramilitary group shot dead a 20 year old catholic postman on his way to work in a dominantly protestant area.

I don’t want to live in this country any more. I don’t want to raise my children here. I don’t love this place, I don’t love the people and I don’t love living here. I feel ashamed to say I’m from Northern Ireland.