And that it has. Just short of a year since the last update, you can imagine there's a lot that's changed in my life and this is true.

I've graduated uni and scored myself a job as Web Developer down at Burleigh. I've stayed up here in Brissie though, friends and family being the roots. Wow fuck it's been a while since I've actually had to sit down and write a structured piece of writing for human consumption. These days my life is CSS declarations, Javascript/jQuery syntax or 140char tweets, so this is really fucking hard. Which is a shame because I love English and some wit. I love reading over a well written article and admiring vocabulary that's normally reserved for old texts, but alas, I guess when you leave High School and aren't forced to write letters to the editor or analytical essays, you will start to lose the writer's touch.

Uni didn't really help, well not my degree, being predominately the aforementioned technical writing. However, whilst cleaning up my room, I did manage to find a new comparative essay I wrote for my Creative Industries major of my degree. I smiled while reading, I guess when push comes to shove, I can still write. And as you've gathered, there hasn't been a lot of push and shove in my life, otherwise I wouldn't have been on hiatus from the blogosphere for the last 10 months. Well, here I am now, typing madly away, sorta with an evil glean in my eyes as I know that I'll actually hit publish on this article and not just draft it.

Being 10 months ago since my last update, there is a lot I could write about, but fuck, it's too hard to sit and structure all of it while typing. If I start along that track, this post will be a draft, because it'll get thrown into the too hard basket. So here I go, I'll just brain dump this entry, random information slotted in between long sentences that really could of been summed up with short words like, "I'm lazy" or ... fuck I don't know. Well to some content, I suppose...

I joined some sports teams and it's been fucking great. Indoor soccer, which unfortunately is dead and dusted now (until hopefully Summer) and Touch Footy. I love playing both, although I say I preform better in Touch then Soccer. It's good to be in a team, makes you feel less like one and more like a whole. We started shit, losing every game, then in the second season managed to win the C grade grand final. Third season in and we're 4th (from 8) so shaping up to be heading into the B grade finals. I do write up little snippets about each game over on the G-Team blog if you feel so inclined to read it.

Uhh, I think I've hit point where my mind is teetering on the point of drafting and going to waste some time on the internets, so I'll finish up quickly. This site is currently hosted on shared hosting, which has been good and all, but I've bought a slice at slicehost, and actually do plan to move this site across to that eventually (read: fucking soon I hope). This design will change, and I'm contemplating leaving all these old articles in semi-hidden archives, after all, I'm 21 now and the teen angst is fading and reading those old articles makes me look moronic. Maybe one day, when browsers support CSS printing to the standard, I'll print them all off and have a nice little coffee table book of my early years. In fact, would you believe I still have a MySQL dump of my first few years blogging (I'm thinking this would be about 02/03) when I was really angsty with a whole load of emo thrown in, so as you can imagine, it's an amusing read these days. 

So yes this new design. Well it's put me between a rock and a hard place (or so the saying goes, hold up, I'm wiking it so I can add another some more random knowledge to my kip) as all my blogging years (and my friends @ the-group, who like me have all grown up and gotten equally as lazy) I have used a custom CMS that I coded from the ground up to help me learn PHP. The code is as ugly as a hat full of assholes (thanks Davo), and I would love to revisit it, but I've been introduced to Symphony (not Symfony) which is pretty fucking kickass (although has a few shortcomings). In one mind, it's good for me to code a custom CMS, it keeps my mind fresh and offers a nice break from Symphony and the code is fucking legacy, it still has functions in I wrote back in 02/03! But then again, Symphony's separation into XML/XSLT and the normal HTML/CSS is very nice. Sigh, and then there's the other elephant in the room that is beckoning for me to play with it.

Who knows, but I do know that this blog will take a new direction, less personal and more professional (sorry friends, you'll have to rely on Facebook to get the rawness). The design I'm sketching away is more typographical, because lets face it, I'm shit at graphic design. I know the principles, I get what is nice and what isn't. I can even pick out pros/cons in other designs, but for the life of me, just can't communicate that into Photoshop. One day!

This marks the end of this post, hopefully the next one won't be as crude or verbose and won't be far away.

After a week of work and uni, I have to say I was looking forward to Sunday. Sunday was going to be a good reboot before another week of the usual day to day drag, and it was. The day was meant to start at 8am with Canadian Club.. instead it started at 10am with driving to Indro with Benji and Kyle. Kyle had spent Saturday night at his brother's playing poker and watching the rugby and when things died down, they headed to the city. A few pints and a dumb decision later, Kyle was at home in Algester.. leaving his car still at his brothers. So here we were, driving to Indro on a recon mission. Today was full of recon missions, 'Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted'.

We got the car, avoided a mini pileup and went to JB to browse. Oh how that never works. A combined $120 later and a hearty meal of KFC, the wheels were finally in motion to check out The Shack. Benji and I rode to The Shack, in keeping with the tradition of the great place, only to find that we now have a sealed road almost to it's front door. The Shack had been infiltrated by terrorists. All the windows had be removed... by a screwdriver, removing all the hinges and door bolts. Seriously, who has that much time?! There was a few missing planks here and there, and all our tools and booze drawers had been raided, but The Shack was still standing. Some fuckstains, who if I ever catch, had graffitied inside The Shack to say 'IAB, FUCK OF'. Illiterate fucks. Needless to say, those planks will be removed and turned into bats of mass destruction so if they ever come back while we are there we can belt the fuckers across the face with them. Apart from that rage blackout, Benji and I continued to survey the damage whilst sipping on a few Canadian Club's until we called Yank and Kyle to come drive down and have a look. Yank brought some garbage bags and gloves and me and Benji started the cleanup. Five bags of rubbish later, and we had a clean, yet broken Shack.

It's now our mission to rebuild The Shack in time for the NRL Grand Final, it's 2 year anniversary. Everyone will be invited, considering we can all drive to it's door, so there should be no excuses as you don't have to wade through a few hundred metres of bush to get there anymore.

We left The Shack and headed to Yank's to watch the footy. Fuck it was a good game. The Canadian Club continued to flow, and with the help of Yank and Alex's cats, Bliz and Harris, we were entertained to the max. We reconned a few pizzas from Dominos, and Benji and I made the decision to go to The Normanby to cap off the Sunday. Everything happened pretty quickly, but before we knew it we were bailing out of Kyle's car infront of the pub.

The Normanby is huge. It's overwhelming. The talent, the bogans, the amount of bar staff alone. It's all just huge. It's also the first pub I've seen to serve food on premise, which is probably a good idea. I think me and Benji were just shellshocked really, we'd peaked earlier in the day, and now were just trying to maintain some sort of enjoyable level. We had gone out on a shoestring really, I only had $25, but thanks to Jess, our $25 went pretty far. I pretty sure we at least got 4 rounds in, and I still managed to leave with $8 spare. Thanks Jess

But yeah, The Normanby is massive, and blew our minds. We retreated to the pool tables for a bit and almost got victory but fell a little short of the mark. We headed downstairs to check out the band, but it had stopped and we were instead subjected to watching this cougar run riot with as many mates as possible on the dancefloor. Not wanting to become it's next meal, we headed upstairs to the club and scouted it out. Well, Benji will never forget: 'You. Have. Interesting. *gestures* Hair!'. Crazy soon to be cougar said to him. We mingled straight into the dance floor and made it our mission to claim the podium. I don't know what it is, but we see podium and instantly want to claim it. I failed in the mission, Benji succeeded, but was then cockwalled and all that was left was his fro bouncing around.

Time to go really. Yeatsie was our ride (cheers dude) and a short time later, we were both home, before midnight too. The Normanby sorta had the last laugh yesterday, but needless to say, we will destroy it next time!

Don't Yooh Ever 4 a Second Get Thinking That Your Irreplaceable

I saw that etched onto the back of a seat on the 130 bus today. Something that makes you think a little bit rather then the usual, 'r u 4 sexc tym call 040 etc etc'. I wonder what the person was going through when they wrote it? Still cool nevertheless. Another bunch of words that caught my eye this week is this song title: it's kind of like the innocent smiles you get at the start of a relationship before you fuck everything up. It's from a little known Aussie band called Laura. Not your everyday music, but definitely something for one of those days. I'll probably tuck that CD under my arm next time I'm in JB.

Since I last blogged I went to the Smashing Pumpkins gig at the Convention Center with Danman. It was pretty damn good. Danman and I had a ball, moshing around and screaming at the songs we knew We tried Tiger beer that night at one of those tiny bars/bottleshops on Grey Street, not a bad drop too I might add. Heard some crazy story the next day in the paper that some two midgets (yeah, like 160cm) went around the Southbank Parklands that night robbing people. We managed to escape all that controversy. I guess they were scared of our tall stature.

In other news I have spent the last two Wednesday's first attending a wine course at Runaway Bay, but then following it up with 007 night. I lie a little, the Wednesday before last Benji and I watched True Lies, which was awesome. Last Wednesday, Kyle, Benji and myself hit up 007 then Fight Club. Both looked awesome on Benji's LCD screen with his motionflow brain blowing technology activated.

Nothing much else I can think of to say, Happy Birthday to Cam for last Friday I suppose

OaO

Continuing from where I left off after Iron Maiden on Tuesday, Wednesday brought a leisurely day. In the morning I attended a Brown Forman workshop for work (1st Choice) where I learnt/tasted a few whiskey's, rum's and vodka's for educational purposes It's a little bit odd sipping whisky at 9am, but nevertheless, it was a great course!

I was feeling shitty come Wednesday night with a combination of a massive headache, probably compounded from the noise of Iron Maiden the previous night and my shitty diet of late, and just a withdrawn mood. I had no intentions of drinking, and managed not too even though Benji, Kyle and Yeatsie got quite merry. We went to the Dockside Comedy Club for Kyle's 20th. The comedians were hit and miss, but it was still a pretty good show.

Danman recon'd Benji and myself at around 11 and we decided to head home... via the shack. None of us had visited it since it was broken into a few months back, so we weren't sure what to expect. There's almost a road layed to it's front door, and we have been 'honoured' with our own garden. Instead of the road running straight past the shack, it's on a T intersection with one of the garden islands on the opposite side! The shack was still standing, and it's in great condition despite the rain. The gaping hole in the wall has resulted in a tonne of spiders and random crawlies making it home though, so a clean up job is due in the coming weeks. All in all, we were pretty surprised, but happy that the shack will live on for another day!

Thursday brought the start of my working weekend. It also marked my first shift as manager at Brodies. After nearly 5 years I got the promotion to casual manager, which fits in pretty good with uni and 1st Choice (well at the moment). 13.5 hours is a long day, and managing is a different experience then what'd you expect. Everything's pretty cruisy in the middle, it's the start and finish of the shift that's hectic with banking and what not. 

Friday morning brought more work at 1st Choice, then Friday afternoon brought Brodies work again... fast forward to Saturday morning and I was working at Brodies again, and then fast forward to just a few hours before this post and I was working at 1st Choice! I don't mind the hectic days, it's great money for my age/situation and I still manage to score a few days off here and there. Total count though, 36.5 hours of work in 72 hours, impressive when 21 of the remaining hours is spent sleeping

Tonight I chilled at home, watching the remainder of How I Met Your Mother. I really like it to be honest, and makes me reflect on bits and pieces of my life. It's funny how I say life when I'm still only 19 years young, it's not like anything now is particularly defining of the future. Well, I hope it's not like that, there's just a few things that just aren't 'right' now and I hope a bit of time will work it's magic

OaO