Train Posting: 7:50am From Emu Plains...

Now that ClayInfinity is now back up and running, I guess I need to a) find time to write and b) have something to write about. Part (b) is the hard bit, and I guess one of the main reasons why I stopped posting over a year ago was because of some form of writers bloc (Bloggers Bloc). Maybe my life really was that boring that I too realised the material was shite!

And whilst this issue hasn’t really been resolved – my life still is pretty much the same as it was in January 2004 – I guess now though I have a solution to the first part of my dilemma. That is when to write.

The answer is of course whilst on the train! One of the features of “the new blogger” (and it may not be all that new) is that I can email posts in. This means I can fire up the laptop on the train and type away (as I am now) and when I log into the office – bing – out goes my posting…

So the “when” is sorted.

** pregnant pause **

What should I write about? Well I guess what has happened since January 2004. Not a lot. I still work the daily grind commuting from my home in the Blue Mountains to the city which is a trip of about 90mins each way. I struggle to be occupied for the 3 hours a day I am sitting in my train carriage, so I guess this is the answer to that. Work is extremely busy at the moment. My work year is cyclical and it culminates on 30 June each year and with 4 weeks to go, things are busy. I don’t want to talk too much about what I do, but I basically am responsible for the purchase of insurance for a large multinational property manager and all of those insurances renew on 30 June. Its an expenditure of approximately US$30 million, so I guess my bosses want to make sure it goes off without a hitch! So the short answer at the moment is that work is all about long hours and stress at the moment (/me wonders when it is not?)

At the home front, my oldest daughter Kate has started school and will be 6 in July. She is handling it very well and I believe she is adapting to the daily routine very well. She has made friends, seems popular amongst her class mates and is handling the work load. Work load you may ask? What sort of work does a kindergarten kid have to do? Well its a lot! Daily reader that needs to be signed off by mum or dad, 2 pages of maths work, story writing and writing down 3 different words a week and using them in a sentence. This bundle of work gets delivered religiously on Monday afternoons and has to be signed off and handed in on Friday mornings. That means only 3 evenings to do it all in. It may not sound like a lot, but when you’re 6, it is and it seems to be a lot more than what I used to get “back in the day”.

Brooke, my 4 year old munchkin, goes to pre-school on Thursdays and Fridays. Again, she seems to be going really well. She has matured greatly IMHO in the last 12 months and is developing a really great personality. She went through the “Terrible Twos” and was probably a lot tougher to handle in that stage than her sister, but she seems to be really settling down now. She is not as clingy to her mum as she was and seems to be more keen on yours truly… which is great.

Work, kids… what else is there?

Well apart from this blog, I am doing a lot of things. I am now running the “Southern Wastes League” online Bloodbowl league via the great fumbbl site. That takes up a great deal of time… It is for all Australian and New Zealand players, so if you are interested in playing, by all means sign up! If you don’t want to be a part of a league, that fine too… fumbbl.com is a great place to play a pick up game as well.

I also play the traditional table top blood bowl (with a board and real dice!) in the Belltower Blood Bowl League. Not doing too well atm, but its all good fun.

Another good thing to happen in the past few months is I have taken up playing Dungeons & Dragons again. We play every 6 weeks or so and it has been great fun. Whilst not everyone’s cup of tea, D&D has been a hobby of mine on and off for about 20 years now. Never tires with me… I reckon it’s a great thing to do. For those that are interested, I am playing a Human Abjurer… and we’re currently at level 5. J

Another thing that has taken over my interests and I guess is another reason behind ClayInfinity’s resurrection is that I have become a bit of a techno geek. All things techie interest me… particularly software tools that make the internet a better experience. Obviously Blogger is one, but I am now a fully converted Mozilla user. I use Firefox at both work and home and Thunderbird at home as an email client. Why? Because IE kept crashing my system and delivering spyware to me and Outlook express became over weight with Spam. Sure the spam doesn’t go, but the filtering is great with Thunderbird.

Another tool, which I hope you may use for yourselves is KlipFolio. This tool is handy and I now keep up to date using RSS feeds of all my favourite sites and Google News. The tool was referred to on one of my fumbbl buddies’ own blog www.gumbi.log and now I take a feed from his site to KlipFolio… perhaps he’ll do the same.

I highly recommend the software Picasa2. The thing is fantastic! We have a huge amount of digital photos at home and this neat package took them all, sorted them and the interface is fantastic. It also interlinks with Blogger as well and I can post pictures from picasa to here with ease… I will give it a test run soon!

In general though I am:

Browsing: group hug // random confessions (weird link of the day – strangely cathartic)

http://slashdot.org/ (tech geek stuff)

The Connex Whiner (given I am a fellow trainite, but in Sydney)

Listening: Classical Chillout, Ministry of Sound

Reading: Nothing! Need a good book!!

Playing: Madden 2005

Ooh, nearly in the city… be soon time to get off and change trains to the office. This post has been long, and I doubt that I will post such slabs in the future (yes Pete, too long!!) but given that it’s the first of my real posts (apart from last nights start up) I think it was warranted.

Clay