A FOUR post day!
Hahahahaha, no really, reading through my last dozen posts I realised that I have talked games for a while. So I should let you know that I am playing Stalker; Clear Sky again. And I have a friend over at present and he has been playing it as well. His own disc, when he gets the hang of it we will LAN.
I don't want to play the storyline this time, only using it when needed to unlock map sections, I will not be entering the tunnel over the bridge to Lamansk, I intend to get involved in the faction war. I want to join Freedom and wipe out Duty, and then join the Stalker faction and wipe out Freedom. Unfortunately I have discovered that every time I wipe out the Bandit base they just repopulate from the back of the warehouse, so I am expecting Duty and Freedom to do the same. Although, in contradistinction, I have learnt from previous plays that you can only wipe out the army base at the start of Cordon about four times before they stop repopulating it (by running up the road from off-map); so maybe that will happen with Duty?
Why do I clean out the army base? 'Cos it is a great source of good guns, which I sell for rubbles to upgrade my weapons and suit.
No, I won't force you to suffer a five-post day just for the fun of it :)
Wednesday, September 30
Ah hah...
Okay, so that qualifies as a 'Rant'. And it was kind of disorganised to boot.
Also I updated the little blurb on me on the side, and now it kind of runs a bit too long I think, but what the hey. To be honest, one of the pics published of me, whilst really good, was not actually of me, rather it was of the South Australian DPP. He was making a lot of noise and getting a lot of media space, but he, himself, was keeping out of camera shot. Anyhow, I was business analyst for the Supreme and District Courts of South Australia at the time and a new judge was being sworn in and consequently we were both at the event. My seat was along the side, facing inwards, and just a tiny bit ahead of the DPP's, and on the other wall opposite were the cameras. So page three of the paper the next morning shows a big pic of the DPP, half the page, and in the background, me. And they used a pic taken when I was looking at the camera too! So cool. My mum cut that pic out and stuck it on her fridge for months. Why? You may ask, there was a perfectly good pic of me from the Australian's IT section from when I launched an encryption software company.
So, anyhow, that was a rant, and the blurb is now too long but so what? I had to qualify what I had said about the media, and I had to add a bit about coming back to Oz, even though it is my dream/hope to return to Singers on a permanent basis at some time.
Also I updated the little blurb on me on the side, and now it kind of runs a bit too long I think, but what the hey. To be honest, one of the pics published of me, whilst really good, was not actually of me, rather it was of the South Australian DPP. He was making a lot of noise and getting a lot of media space, but he, himself, was keeping out of camera shot. Anyhow, I was business analyst for the Supreme and District Courts of South Australia at the time and a new judge was being sworn in and consequently we were both at the event. My seat was along the side, facing inwards, and just a tiny bit ahead of the DPP's, and on the other wall opposite were the cameras. So page three of the paper the next morning shows a big pic of the DPP, half the page, and in the background, me. And they used a pic taken when I was looking at the camera too! So cool. My mum cut that pic out and stuck it on her fridge for months. Why? You may ask, there was a perfectly good pic of me from the Australian's IT section from when I launched an encryption software company.
So, anyhow, that was a rant, and the blurb is now too long but so what? I had to qualify what I had said about the media, and I had to add a bit about coming back to Oz, even though it is my dream/hope to return to Singers on a permanent basis at some time.
I Hate Women
I guess I should be more specific; I hate Feminist Anglo Bitches.
Our wonderful legal system here in Australia has come up with a new one; a woman is not responsible for her actions when she is drunk. If a man has sex with a drunken woman she can charge him with rape, even if she consented whilst drunk, even if both of them were drunk.
Is she responsible if she was driving? Or is she only not held responsible if she was drunken driving and the victim was a man?
If women are not equally responsible for their actions then why do we pretend to treat them equally at all? They want their cake, and our cake as well, AND they still want US to pay the bill. There are times that I wish I could simultaneously vomit on every woman on Earth.
It's kind of like how sluts think that they can hang out with drunken footballers and not be expected to provide sex. Once upon a time they would just be called stupid, now they scream and the law listens. Women are just not responsible; they do not take responsibility for their own actions. If you choose to jump off a cliff then you cannot blame anyone else for the consequences.
This has all gone so far, but believe me there is still room for it to keep going, but one day Western men will say "enough" and white bitches will get a dose of reality. If you choose to behave as a slut then don't be surprised that no-one respects you.
So, on top of the fact that more than half of Australian wives are unfaithful to their husbands after three years of marriage, and that one third of children born in marriages in Australia were not fathered by their mothers husband, and that when most Australian marriages end in separation after three years (I wonder why?) the bitch routinely gets seventy percent, and that in Adelaide a man can be charged with assault for looking at a woman (not saying anything, not touching, not even pulling any facial expressions, just looking), a man can now be charged with rape even if the bitch consented, and consented the whole way through, but regretted her actions the next day.
And people ask me why I have both given up on Australia and given up on Australian women.
Our wonderful legal system here in Australia has come up with a new one; a woman is not responsible for her actions when she is drunk. If a man has sex with a drunken woman she can charge him with rape, even if she consented whilst drunk, even if both of them were drunk.
Is she responsible if she was driving? Or is she only not held responsible if she was drunken driving and the victim was a man?
If women are not equally responsible for their actions then why do we pretend to treat them equally at all? They want their cake, and our cake as well, AND they still want US to pay the bill. There are times that I wish I could simultaneously vomit on every woman on Earth.
It's kind of like how sluts think that they can hang out with drunken footballers and not be expected to provide sex. Once upon a time they would just be called stupid, now they scream and the law listens. Women are just not responsible; they do not take responsibility for their own actions. If you choose to jump off a cliff then you cannot blame anyone else for the consequences.
This has all gone so far, but believe me there is still room for it to keep going, but one day Western men will say "enough" and white bitches will get a dose of reality. If you choose to behave as a slut then don't be surprised that no-one respects you.
So, on top of the fact that more than half of Australian wives are unfaithful to their husbands after three years of marriage, and that one third of children born in marriages in Australia were not fathered by their mothers husband, and that when most Australian marriages end in separation after three years (I wonder why?) the bitch routinely gets seventy percent, and that in Adelaide a man can be charged with assault for looking at a woman (not saying anything, not touching, not even pulling any facial expressions, just looking), a man can now be charged with rape even if the bitch consented, and consented the whole way through, but regretted her actions the next day.
And people ask me why I have both given up on Australia and given up on Australian women.
Monday, September 28
Cough, Cough
So, this guy at work was on leave for two weeks then comes back to work for one week and then calls in and we are told will be ill all week and has been diagnosed with whooping cough and will have been contagious for the week he was back at work.
On the good side I don't think I saw or heard him cough at all, a fact that makes me wonder if he's laying it straight.
On the other hand there was this woman that works closely with him that was coughing her head off for half the day - and not going home, not wearing a mask, not ...
How can people be so totally self-centred, so convinced that their own needs and wants are all that matters, and that their impacts upon others are totally unimportant in comparison?
In Asia she would have been asked to go home. If she had been coughing like that on the streets without a mask the cops would arrested her for her social irresponsibility. But in our Western society the rights of the individual outweigh the good of society. Well, maybe not, maybe I am overstating it a bit, but that's how it should be. At least in my head.
Anyhow, a couple of times today I have had a really scratchy cough...
Over the last couple of weeks I have really bulked up, for some reason I have felt totally starving and eaten twice as much for each meal. (Given the loss of appetite is a symptom of whooping cough I am counting myself pretty safe there.) My tum has bulged and tightened and breathing was getting hard. Frightening. So today I realised that this was going to take some serious will power, something that I have never felt the need before with food, and have made sure that I have kept to the three meals and kept them small and gone for a two hour walk this evening. It was meant to be a run, I have no problem walking; day long hikes, up mountains, down dale, but I know that just walking, even brisk and long, is not going to be enough, running is going to be necessary. But a ten km run straight off the bat is too much.
So, that's the plan. I should get around to joining a gym at some point as well. I have a really great gym set, but I just wasn't using it, so I gave it to my sister. But when I pay gym membership I go. Financial incentive, works for me.
I had this experience once; I was getting a little on the fat side, my suits were getting tight around the middle. So I joined a gym, worked out three or four times a week for half to three quarters of an hour. Lost the weight, my suits fitted in the middle - but they were tight around the shoulders!
Can't win sometimes, have to buy new suits either way.
Had a friend over for the weekend just gone. Hadn't heard from him for over a month, turns out his phone had died and he had lost all his numbers. Also turned out that he was working that day just south of the CBD, and he lives waayyy north. I, of course, am living in the CBD, so I told him he should visit on his way home, he stayed two nights. So I have lent him my spare swipe card and key so he can let himself in since he does night shifts mostly and has two shifts south and two shifts north. He can crash for the night between his two south-end shifts. He will get in after I have gone to bed and won't wake until I have gone to work, so I probably won't see him, but if they happen at the end of the week like they did last week then he will probably stay the weekend as well.
He kind of went crazy with my cable. My sister did the same thing last time she was here and discovered that I had cable. And then he maxed out my broadband download limit updating games. I guess it had to be done, but whilst Steam was updating and installing he wasn't able to play Defence Grid, which is on my Steam account, so I think he should have prioritised.
Meanwhile a new young blonde has started at work. She is spending time with all the people at the bottom of the ladder, getting things explained to her. It will probably be a while before she speaks with those of us at the top of the ladder, how sad. On the other hand, there is this brunette, brown-eyed, cute for an Anglo (but still an Anglo, remember) that has been interacting with me a lot lately. I wanted a good excuse to do some interacting with her, but she is now sitting herself on my desk and smiling. Someone told me she had a boyfriend, or a fiancé, and I have a thing against trespassing, in theory. We shall see, maybe she is just flirting, and you know that I don't really want anything more from an Anglo, after all, it would only lead to trouble, that's why I gave up on them. Well, probably on white women altogether. Anglo, Western Euro, Eastern Euro, all trouble, all crazy. But then, maybe there is just no such thing as a sane woman?
It's half past ten, I have done a two hour brisk walk (interspersed with runs), eaten half a meal, and my eyes are closing. So goodnight all.
Oh, yeah, late update. I was just reading through my last few posts and realise a few threads were still hanging. Most importantly, my contract got extended to the end of October. I feel good about one of the private tenders I am in on, and that would start in November. So things are not too dire yet. And yeah, running along the river park tonight kind of reminded me of Singapore, lots of Asians - but then Australia is full of them now - too cold for Singers, I know, but still, it almost had that feel to it. I felt homesick.
On the good side I don't think I saw or heard him cough at all, a fact that makes me wonder if he's laying it straight.
On the other hand there was this woman that works closely with him that was coughing her head off for half the day - and not going home, not wearing a mask, not ...
How can people be so totally self-centred, so convinced that their own needs and wants are all that matters, and that their impacts upon others are totally unimportant in comparison?
In Asia she would have been asked to go home. If she had been coughing like that on the streets without a mask the cops would arrested her for her social irresponsibility. But in our Western society the rights of the individual outweigh the good of society. Well, maybe not, maybe I am overstating it a bit, but that's how it should be. At least in my head.
Anyhow, a couple of times today I have had a really scratchy cough...
Over the last couple of weeks I have really bulked up, for some reason I have felt totally starving and eaten twice as much for each meal. (Given the loss of appetite is a symptom of whooping cough I am counting myself pretty safe there.) My tum has bulged and tightened and breathing was getting hard. Frightening. So today I realised that this was going to take some serious will power, something that I have never felt the need before with food, and have made sure that I have kept to the three meals and kept them small and gone for a two hour walk this evening. It was meant to be a run, I have no problem walking; day long hikes, up mountains, down dale, but I know that just walking, even brisk and long, is not going to be enough, running is going to be necessary. But a ten km run straight off the bat is too much.
So, that's the plan. I should get around to joining a gym at some point as well. I have a really great gym set, but I just wasn't using it, so I gave it to my sister. But when I pay gym membership I go. Financial incentive, works for me.
I had this experience once; I was getting a little on the fat side, my suits were getting tight around the middle. So I joined a gym, worked out three or four times a week for half to three quarters of an hour. Lost the weight, my suits fitted in the middle - but they were tight around the shoulders!
Can't win sometimes, have to buy new suits either way.
Had a friend over for the weekend just gone. Hadn't heard from him for over a month, turns out his phone had died and he had lost all his numbers. Also turned out that he was working that day just south of the CBD, and he lives waayyy north. I, of course, am living in the CBD, so I told him he should visit on his way home, he stayed two nights. So I have lent him my spare swipe card and key so he can let himself in since he does night shifts mostly and has two shifts south and two shifts north. He can crash for the night between his two south-end shifts. He will get in after I have gone to bed and won't wake until I have gone to work, so I probably won't see him, but if they happen at the end of the week like they did last week then he will probably stay the weekend as well.
He kind of went crazy with my cable. My sister did the same thing last time she was here and discovered that I had cable. And then he maxed out my broadband download limit updating games. I guess it had to be done, but whilst Steam was updating and installing he wasn't able to play Defence Grid, which is on my Steam account, so I think he should have prioritised.
Meanwhile a new young blonde has started at work. She is spending time with all the people at the bottom of the ladder, getting things explained to her. It will probably be a while before she speaks with those of us at the top of the ladder, how sad. On the other hand, there is this brunette, brown-eyed, cute for an Anglo (but still an Anglo, remember) that has been interacting with me a lot lately. I wanted a good excuse to do some interacting with her, but she is now sitting herself on my desk and smiling. Someone told me she had a boyfriend, or a fiancé, and I have a thing against trespassing, in theory. We shall see, maybe she is just flirting, and you know that I don't really want anything more from an Anglo, after all, it would only lead to trouble, that's why I gave up on them. Well, probably on white women altogether. Anglo, Western Euro, Eastern Euro, all trouble, all crazy. But then, maybe there is just no such thing as a sane woman?
It's half past ten, I have done a two hour brisk walk (interspersed with runs), eaten half a meal, and my eyes are closing. So goodnight all.
Oh, yeah, late update. I was just reading through my last few posts and realise a few threads were still hanging. Most importantly, my contract got extended to the end of October. I feel good about one of the private tenders I am in on, and that would start in November. So things are not too dire yet. And yeah, running along the river park tonight kind of reminded me of Singapore, lots of Asians - but then Australia is full of them now - too cold for Singers, I know, but still, it almost had that feel to it. I felt homesick.
Monday, September 21
Peanut Butter
No it is not an allusion to groundnuts instead of peanuts being in the shops in Singers. It was 'cos I am watching the peanut conspiracy episode of American Dad.
Several people I know in Singers are getting elevator upgrades in their HDB blocks. Contrary to what I inferred from what I had previously read the bulk of the expense is being passed to the residents. For the people I know these range up to tens of thousands for PRs and more than ten thousand for citizens. For some of my friends it is nowhere near so much, but still more than ten thousand for PRs and thousands for citizens.
Now, most of the people I know in SG are Chinese Malaysian and PRs, their life plan being to live and work in Singapore and then retire back to Malaysia in their old age. But now under this financial pressure I have seen some take citizenship. It raises interesting questions. I always had difficulty with the idea of living in a country for over twenty years without taking citizenship, but that is because of my personal viewpoints. For me, my Australian citizenship means little to me, I am quite open about my desire to leave permanently. And as, what Singapore classes as a strategically desired skill set, I have the option of taking PR after only two years of residency, and then citizenship after two years of PR.
But what happens after the lift upgrade? Do they revoke their Singaporean citizenship and retake their Malaysian citizenship? Do they keep both? I know that the Singaporean constitution does not allow for dual citizenship, but such laws can only apply within a nation, a country may not acknowledge another nations claims of membership, but once you cross the bridge do you become a Malaysian citizenship again? Does Malaysian acknowledge your MY citizenship and deny your SG citizenship? As Australians we used to have a similar conundrum with dual Australian/US or Australian/UK citizenship. Australia changed its laws, but Singapores rule is set in the constitution.
And so to the subject I was going to write about a few days ago but was too tired; the Japanese election. What I want to know is just how much will change, or will it be a mere cosmetic alteration? I was raised with a solid programming of all things Japanese are unmitigated evil, but I have grown beyond that on my own. For example; Australians often say quite bad things about Japanese environmental policy, after all they murder dolphins and whales, and you need to understand - to Europeans that is murder, before Christianity it had the same death penalty as murdering another person. Asians have difficulty understanding this. But look at the bigger picture; 78% of Japans tree cover still stands, less than 2% of Australias trees are still here; Australia pumps millions of tons of pollution into our rivers, Japan spent decades cleaning up bays that were polluted by early mercantilism. We declare some species endangered and protected, but then destroy the environment that is critical to its survival, whereas in Japan they have declared whole valleys and their river systems untouchable to protect the giant salamander (and it is GIANT, two and a half metres long!). So who really has the better record?
But criminal organisations are allowed to have shop fronts in Japan, they appear to be allowed to engage in slave trading without any interference from government. Boys in colleges set up rape clubs. I could go on and on and on. I want to know if any of this will change. Will the new Japanese government actually outlaw criminal organisations? Because until they do I just cannot accept them as a civilised nation. I know that it is a terrible slight for most of the population, but it is the choice of the government, they can change this.
In a way it is like the water issue in Australia.
The government claims that we have a water crisis and yet they still permit people to drain our rivers to farm cotton and rice in deserts. If such things are permitted then they cannot truly believe that we do really have a crisis.
Ask yourself what was going through the minds of the Christmas Islanders that cut down the last tree to move their big head statues. With the loss of their tree cover they suffered terrible erosion and a huge drop in their farming output and they starved so much that they turned to cannibalism and most of their population vanished. To me that is where Australia is with its 'water crisis'. If it is real then stop farming cotton in the desert. I can't stand such two-facedness (another new word).
My Oriental neighbours are holding a rodeo in their apartment apparently, for the last few days it happens every day from 6:30 or 7:00 pm and goes for an hour or two, but it is pissing me off too much and is bringing todays blogging session to an end.
Several people I know in Singers are getting elevator upgrades in their HDB blocks. Contrary to what I inferred from what I had previously read the bulk of the expense is being passed to the residents. For the people I know these range up to tens of thousands for PRs and more than ten thousand for citizens. For some of my friends it is nowhere near so much, but still more than ten thousand for PRs and thousands for citizens.
Now, most of the people I know in SG are Chinese Malaysian and PRs, their life plan being to live and work in Singapore and then retire back to Malaysia in their old age. But now under this financial pressure I have seen some take citizenship. It raises interesting questions. I always had difficulty with the idea of living in a country for over twenty years without taking citizenship, but that is because of my personal viewpoints. For me, my Australian citizenship means little to me, I am quite open about my desire to leave permanently. And as, what Singapore classes as a strategically desired skill set, I have the option of taking PR after only two years of residency, and then citizenship after two years of PR.
But what happens after the lift upgrade? Do they revoke their Singaporean citizenship and retake their Malaysian citizenship? Do they keep both? I know that the Singaporean constitution does not allow for dual citizenship, but such laws can only apply within a nation, a country may not acknowledge another nations claims of membership, but once you cross the bridge do you become a Malaysian citizenship again? Does Malaysian acknowledge your MY citizenship and deny your SG citizenship? As Australians we used to have a similar conundrum with dual Australian/US or Australian/UK citizenship. Australia changed its laws, but Singapores rule is set in the constitution.
And so to the subject I was going to write about a few days ago but was too tired; the Japanese election. What I want to know is just how much will change, or will it be a mere cosmetic alteration? I was raised with a solid programming of all things Japanese are unmitigated evil, but I have grown beyond that on my own. For example; Australians often say quite bad things about Japanese environmental policy, after all they murder dolphins and whales, and you need to understand - to Europeans that is murder, before Christianity it had the same death penalty as murdering another person. Asians have difficulty understanding this. But look at the bigger picture; 78% of Japans tree cover still stands, less than 2% of Australias trees are still here; Australia pumps millions of tons of pollution into our rivers, Japan spent decades cleaning up bays that were polluted by early mercantilism. We declare some species endangered and protected, but then destroy the environment that is critical to its survival, whereas in Japan they have declared whole valleys and their river systems untouchable to protect the giant salamander (and it is GIANT, two and a half metres long!). So who really has the better record?
But criminal organisations are allowed to have shop fronts in Japan, they appear to be allowed to engage in slave trading without any interference from government. Boys in colleges set up rape clubs. I could go on and on and on. I want to know if any of this will change. Will the new Japanese government actually outlaw criminal organisations? Because until they do I just cannot accept them as a civilised nation. I know that it is a terrible slight for most of the population, but it is the choice of the government, they can change this.
In a way it is like the water issue in Australia.
The government claims that we have a water crisis and yet they still permit people to drain our rivers to farm cotton and rice in deserts. If such things are permitted then they cannot truly believe that we do really have a crisis.
Ask yourself what was going through the minds of the Christmas Islanders that cut down the last tree to move their big head statues. With the loss of their tree cover they suffered terrible erosion and a huge drop in their farming output and they starved so much that they turned to cannibalism and most of their population vanished. To me that is where Australia is with its 'water crisis'. If it is real then stop farming cotton in the desert. I can't stand such two-facedness (another new word).
My Oriental neighbours are holding a rodeo in their apartment apparently, for the last few days it happens every day from 6:30 or 7:00 pm and goes for an hour or two, but it is pissing me off too much and is bringing todays blogging session to an end.
Wednesday, September 16
Overlay
Yes, two weeks without a post, then two in one evening. I wanted to let the last one stand alone, and not to complicate it by changing subject, as this one will probably do a few times.
My google analytics map overlay is quite interesting.
I can easily understand that most of the visitors to this blog come from Singapore, no surprise there. The next biggest source, at a little less than half the number of Singaporeans, is the US, and that is not really a surprise either simply because there are so many of them in the one country. Australia at number three and just a bit less than the US is also not a surprise. But the next, with only a bit fewer than Australia, is routinely Brazil - now that I, and I suspect you, would not have imagined. Well, it has been Brazil at number four for a few months now.
I am playing Rome Total War again, without the Total Realism mod and without using cheat codes. I was recently playing Evil Genius via Steam, yeah, I have the game discs somewhere but couldn't find them - turns out my nephew has them - and Steam was selling it for only US$10, so why not? Anyhow, I got bored with the constant overload of enemy super agents when I moved to the second island. I just wasn't getting the chance to build the base up. You would think that having moved islands you should be able to build the second evil lair in piece, the forces of justice (huh!) would/should imagine you out of the game. I tried hacking the save files to reduce my notoriety score, even to kill off the super agents, and I tried the unofficial patch so I could put gun turrets inside the base (have them covering the cells I have the super agents in so all five of them are pretty well out of consideration), but the non-stop avalanche of soldiers and veterans just got boring.
I have started reading a book about gamers, specifically how some US management consultants think the computer/console gaming generation will impact business culture. I find it fascinating. The bastards classified me as a baby boomer. My parents are baby boomers, so how can I be???? I have noticed that every time I read something they are extending the baby boom forward and cutting generation X back, those of us who were once one, are now called the other. Anyhow, I am gen X, it is not up for debate, I was gen X ten years before gen X existed. I am a gamer, this book assumes that people my age are the parents of gamers, but I am a gamer, my friends are gamers, one of my friends mothers is a gamer, so eat that. (As in, she is a little old grey haired lady.) My friends and I were into computers when they first came out, before the Microsoft/Intel combination changed the landscape. Blah, blah, blah, except to add that when my father (who was head of the school of mathematics at one of the unis here) had to baby sit me I was plonked in the unis mainframe console room and the post-grad students would log me in to play Star Trek. Space was a ten by ten grid, stars were asterisks, Klingons were 'K's and Romulans were 'R's and I was the 'E' - yeah, you couldn't play the good guys. Probably the entire multi-storey computer had less power than a wrist watch does now.
Anyhow, all that is waffle, this book was written to help generation history understand generation future, and finding myself amongst the latter I find that in a perverse way it has helped me to understand flat-scans in ways that I never thought before. How ironic.
But, yeah, all of these boomers and hippies and drugged out drop-outs that thought they were the future, and all they ended up becoming was the problem. Our grandparents and their parent built a great world, and our parents just coasted on a raft of bubbles, inventing things like welfare states and tax-funded pensions to ensure that everybody else paid for them, and it is left up to my generation to fix it all. I consider that my brother, who is only two years older than I am, to firmly be in that dead generation, that locust generation, that is the way his mind works. Whereas for me, by the time the rest of the world got into the X-Files I had been there, done that, and moved on. But now I find that I can talk with people twenty years younger than me much more easily than I can talk to people ten years older than me. I talk with my nephew and his friends and they get it, I talk with people at work supposedly in my age cohort and they don't get it, and I can't understand how their minds work.
There was going to be something else about something in the news recently, but I can't be bothered right now, and quite frankly, I can't remember what it was...
My google analytics map overlay is quite interesting.
I can easily understand that most of the visitors to this blog come from Singapore, no surprise there. The next biggest source, at a little less than half the number of Singaporeans, is the US, and that is not really a surprise either simply because there are so many of them in the one country. Australia at number three and just a bit less than the US is also not a surprise. But the next, with only a bit fewer than Australia, is routinely Brazil - now that I, and I suspect you, would not have imagined. Well, it has been Brazil at number four for a few months now.
I am playing Rome Total War again, without the Total Realism mod and without using cheat codes. I was recently playing Evil Genius via Steam, yeah, I have the game discs somewhere but couldn't find them - turns out my nephew has them - and Steam was selling it for only US$10, so why not? Anyhow, I got bored with the constant overload of enemy super agents when I moved to the second island. I just wasn't getting the chance to build the base up. You would think that having moved islands you should be able to build the second evil lair in piece, the forces of justice (huh!) would/should imagine you out of the game. I tried hacking the save files to reduce my notoriety score, even to kill off the super agents, and I tried the unofficial patch so I could put gun turrets inside the base (have them covering the cells I have the super agents in so all five of them are pretty well out of consideration), but the non-stop avalanche of soldiers and veterans just got boring.
I have started reading a book about gamers, specifically how some US management consultants think the computer/console gaming generation will impact business culture. I find it fascinating. The bastards classified me as a baby boomer. My parents are baby boomers, so how can I be???? I have noticed that every time I read something they are extending the baby boom forward and cutting generation X back, those of us who were once one, are now called the other. Anyhow, I am gen X, it is not up for debate, I was gen X ten years before gen X existed. I am a gamer, this book assumes that people my age are the parents of gamers, but I am a gamer, my friends are gamers, one of my friends mothers is a gamer, so eat that. (As in, she is a little old grey haired lady.) My friends and I were into computers when they first came out, before the Microsoft/Intel combination changed the landscape. Blah, blah, blah, except to add that when my father (who was head of the school of mathematics at one of the unis here) had to baby sit me I was plonked in the unis mainframe console room and the post-grad students would log me in to play Star Trek. Space was a ten by ten grid, stars were asterisks, Klingons were 'K's and Romulans were 'R's and I was the 'E' - yeah, you couldn't play the good guys. Probably the entire multi-storey computer had less power than a wrist watch does now.
Anyhow, all that is waffle, this book was written to help generation history understand generation future, and finding myself amongst the latter I find that in a perverse way it has helped me to understand flat-scans in ways that I never thought before. How ironic.
But, yeah, all of these boomers and hippies and drugged out drop-outs that thought they were the future, and all they ended up becoming was the problem. Our grandparents and their parent built a great world, and our parents just coasted on a raft of bubbles, inventing things like welfare states and tax-funded pensions to ensure that everybody else paid for them, and it is left up to my generation to fix it all. I consider that my brother, who is only two years older than I am, to firmly be in that dead generation, that locust generation, that is the way his mind works. Whereas for me, by the time the rest of the world got into the X-Files I had been there, done that, and moved on. But now I find that I can talk with people twenty years younger than me much more easily than I can talk to people ten years older than me. I talk with my nephew and his friends and they get it, I talk with people at work supposedly in my age cohort and they don't get it, and I can't understand how their minds work.
There was going to be something else about something in the news recently, but I can't be bothered right now, and quite frankly, I can't remember what it was...
The Red Queens Race
Yeah, notice how I dropped the non-possessive?
Lewis Carroll, hmmm, let's not go there.
Point is that I used to get somewhere between 30% and 50% more each year, but right now I am earning the same as I got last year. So a lot of running to stay in the same place. Comparatively, since the agencies wanted me to drop my rate by 25% to even 50% from one agency, you could say I have done well to hold my ground.
Trade is slow. I had coffee with one agencys manager for executive contracting for the public sector today, and she painted a very sombre picture. There seems to be just nothing on the ground from the agencies. Meanwhile I have four in the pipeline from my personal network, but nothing guaranteed for next month.
By "public sector" I meant civil service; we have public/private in Australia, rather than the government/public that they have in the US.
Apparently the public sector is looking attractive to a lot of permanents, since it weathers downturns better here. They tend not to lay off staff like commercials do, but I promise you that they are not doing too much hiring either. Anyhow, my forte is project work, and few have the budget for starting any project at this point.
Strangely I have heard from several sources now that February will see an upswing. In the government sector that makes sense; budgets will get approved end of the calendar year, everyone is on holidays through January, and will ramp up in February for their implementations a few months later. The logic doesn't quite work for the corporates, unlike governments they are usually not allowed to start spending money until they actually have it.
I had lunch yesterday with the government sector sales rep for one of the largest systems companies. I am talking Oracle, SAP, IBM, but won't tell you which one. She was being very hush, and although I know a few things that she should know as well, I will be hush as well. But she did talk about the scene as she saw it; to a degree I think she is looking at SA through rose coloured glasses, but she made some interesting points.
Adding all of this to the impressions I have picked up from the independent contractors recently, as well as the feedback through the grapevine, I get the impression that some big things are planned next year, but nothing is happening in what is left of this year.
With the contract I am on finishing in a few weeks I am left wondering how I will pay my rent for the November, December, January period. All things considered, I need at least $3,000 a month to get by, and right now I don't have the wherewithal for three months of no income. But apparently if I can weather that patch then everything is meant to look peachy.
All of this because I took such a chance on Singapore last year, and now I am left carrying the burden of that failed exercise. Normally I would have the reserves to get me through a few months of down time without any problem, but all those reserves and more got burnt up trying, unsuccessfully, to transplant my career to another country.
So right now I am feeling a little more concerned than I am used to.
Lewis Carroll, hmmm, let's not go there.
Point is that I used to get somewhere between 30% and 50% more each year, but right now I am earning the same as I got last year. So a lot of running to stay in the same place. Comparatively, since the agencies wanted me to drop my rate by 25% to even 50% from one agency, you could say I have done well to hold my ground.
Trade is slow. I had coffee with one agencys manager for executive contracting for the public sector today, and she painted a very sombre picture. There seems to be just nothing on the ground from the agencies. Meanwhile I have four in the pipeline from my personal network, but nothing guaranteed for next month.
By "public sector" I meant civil service; we have public/private in Australia, rather than the government/public that they have in the US.
Apparently the public sector is looking attractive to a lot of permanents, since it weathers downturns better here. They tend not to lay off staff like commercials do, but I promise you that they are not doing too much hiring either. Anyhow, my forte is project work, and few have the budget for starting any project at this point.
Strangely I have heard from several sources now that February will see an upswing. In the government sector that makes sense; budgets will get approved end of the calendar year, everyone is on holidays through January, and will ramp up in February for their implementations a few months later. The logic doesn't quite work for the corporates, unlike governments they are usually not allowed to start spending money until they actually have it.
I had lunch yesterday with the government sector sales rep for one of the largest systems companies. I am talking Oracle, SAP, IBM, but won't tell you which one. She was being very hush, and although I know a few things that she should know as well, I will be hush as well. But she did talk about the scene as she saw it; to a degree I think she is looking at SA through rose coloured glasses, but she made some interesting points.
Adding all of this to the impressions I have picked up from the independent contractors recently, as well as the feedback through the grapevine, I get the impression that some big things are planned next year, but nothing is happening in what is left of this year.
With the contract I am on finishing in a few weeks I am left wondering how I will pay my rent for the November, December, January period. All things considered, I need at least $3,000 a month to get by, and right now I don't have the wherewithal for three months of no income. But apparently if I can weather that patch then everything is meant to look peachy.
All of this because I took such a chance on Singapore last year, and now I am left carrying the burden of that failed exercise. Normally I would have the reserves to get me through a few months of down time without any problem, but all those reserves and more got burnt up trying, unsuccessfully, to transplant my career to another country.
So right now I am feeling a little more concerned than I am used to.
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