the sound of green

It’s Sunday morning, early, and my alarm goes off. Usually the weekend is a sanctuary from alarms, schedules, deadlines, yet of late Sunday mornings have become a morning to be up, fresh and out the door. Admittedly, it’s only by 8am, not 7am – but after a Saturday usually full of a myriad of activities and people, Sunday mornings can feel every bit as bad as Mondays. The reward, however, is somewhat greater than on a Monday. While the start of the work week greets me with late emails from the previous Friday, a backlog of work to clear and new expectations for a new week, today greets me instead with the promise of a laugh, a coffee, and invariably one reference to a donkey.

Sunday mornings I’ve taken to catching up with my Best Man, my former housemate, my partner in crime for a good couple of years back then. Craig and I met when I was still living at home, and we shared two houses together before he finally got married. What were many nights of late night BF1942, Team Fortress, NFS: Hot Pursuit or slurpee runs are now replaced by both of us a bit more grown up. We’re both married, both working more than full time, him as he builds his own business from the ground up, me as I juggle a job and my own business, and both dog owners. The usual busyness of first couple of years of marriage meant we didn’t see each other anywhere near as much as we’d hoped or expected, compounded by the growing distance as I moved to each subsequent house. Things have changed now, though. Beth is starting to get to know them a bit more, and we’ve decided that making the time is worth the effort. Along with dinners, mini-golf and trips chasing a mythical pizza beast with our wives, Craig and I meet every week for some Man Time.

This week I’m running late, however. I bolt down a bowl of oats before leaving the house, forgetting that a stop for cash is needed. The drive to Camberwell is surprising pleasant, considering I do it five of the other six days each week. Thankfully Sunday mornings don’t exist in Melbourne – the day magically begins at 10:30am – and the traffic is non-existent. I choose not to brave fighting for a car park, and instead pay the dollar that will guarantee me 45mins of uninterrupted parking right out front of the cafe we meet at – incidentally one of the only cafes open, even if it is one of the busiest inner-suburban shopping strips.

Inside, Craig sits waiting for me in his riding gear. His motorbike doesn’t face the same parking restrictions that a full size car does, and he’s made it in before me. He too was running late – though he got there closer to our posted time than I did. Our pizza hunting the night before took it out of us, methinks. Dropping keys and sunglasses on the table, we head to the counter to order. Usually it’s me that orders a full breakfast, and him a pot of tea. This week however, the tables have turned, and in a slightly awkward fashion, we go about the process of ordering my decaf latte and his pancake stack. A laugh is shared – I’m only late because I chose for the first time to eat my breakfast first.

Promptly our hot drinks are delivered to the table; Craig’s pancake stack follows a few minutes later. As we catch up on the week that has been, my mind wanders and I realise how thankful I am to be sitting across the table from him. He’s been a part of my life for many years now, and it felt like we were doing ourselves and our friendship a disservice in the previous few years. We’ve been through a bit together, and know things about each other that no one else save our respective wives know. Reaffirming this friendship has been something I’ve wanted to do for the last three years. In light of things beginning to change, I’m glad this has been one of the first things to.

It’s a lame attempt at a post, but I’ve been bugged for them, and when approaching two months with no traffic, it’s better than nothing.

The slew of computer issues is how (hopefully) over. And what a slew they were!

To start with, the battery on my MacBook Pro had swollen, to the point where it would cut out randomly, and the whole computer could not sit flat on a desk. It was annoying, though hardly prevented me from working – most of the time I’m at my desk, so there wasn’t much issue with running plugged in. I finally got sick of it, and headed into the local Apple Service Centre to swap it out under warranty – only to find that Apple is well aware that their batteries swell, and consider it “normal operation” and wouldn’t replace it under warranty. Disappointing.

The solution was a new $200 battery that work was kind enough to purchase (it is, afterall, a work machine), which meant I no longer had to remain tethered within two metres of a power point to work, and could once more enjoy the freedom of sitting on a couch. Or the bed. Or in a cafe. That was Friday week ago I picked up the new battery – and things were fine and dandy.

The following Tuesday evening, I had the laptop plugged into the TV, and was packing up for the night. Positive I’d unpluged both cables connecting sleek, aluminium laptop to hulking, ugly plastic behemoth, I started to pull the laptop away from the TV. Only to find one of the cables hadn’t detached, and subsequently ripped the laptop from my hands and pulled it upside down onto the ground. Which would have been fine – the harddrive had locked like it was supposed to, preventing major issues, and everything was working fine.

Except a split second later, the other end of the cable pulled the TV down on top of the laptop.

Annoyingly, the TV was fine – nothing wrong with it. I picked it back up, set it down right way up, and everything worked fine. The laptop, on the other hand, did not fare so well. The new battery took the brunt of the damage (and now has a 1cm deep dint in it), but the weight of the TV combined with the force of the impact did manage to bend the whole chassis, as well as completely smash the screen. Sheepishly, the next morning I had to front work and show them the damage, but as I (as well as a number of other staff) work from home regularly, everything was all fine.

Now, I type this on a brand new MacBook Pro – one of the shiny aluminium unibody ones. It’s rather nice, the battery life is freaking brilliant, but there are a few things i’m still getting used to. We’ll see how they go as things go on – and when my MiniDisplay Port adaptor finally arrives. I mean seriously. Why don’t they ship with the adaptors anymore?!

Yesterday my Macbook Pro died. It’s off getting fixed, and in the meantime I’m posting from Beth’s computer. It does mean there won’t be any TTD shots until I get my machine back, unfortunately!

Been shooting a fair bit, though the blog and flickr traffic may suggest otherwise. I’m back in the game however, with a bit of a sneak peek into what I’ve been doing.

More to come later.

It’s raining. The threat has been there since close to 5am, but it’s finally raining. The roads are slick, the windscreen wipers screetch initially from the layer of dust on the glass, but eventually they get back into the rhythm of it all. I’ve spent 84 minutes at the LPG Conversion place this morning, for what was supposed to be a 30 minute checkup – however, I’m not hugely fussed. It’s raining. The temperature is dropping over the next several days, and Winter may finally be upon us.

I’m not adverse to Autumn – in fact, with the mid-20-degree and bright sunshine we’ve been enjoying all week, I’ve been well and truly loving Autumn. Leaves changing, cool nights but clear skies, and the sun awake before me all are considered improvements upon the end of Summer. Monday and Tuesday saw me spending some time out in the backyard purely because the weather was so nice – something that I’ve not felt enticed to do for some time. Autumn’s meant that things outside can be done – our housemates have been gardening, we’ve thrown a 30th Birthday out the back, and I even get to sit and read in the sun. That may be coming to an end, however.

Across the laneway behind our building at work, Autumn has been kind on a certain house. Starting around the same time I started here, a major construction project has been undertaken in the back yard of the house that falls immediately behind our office block. Over Spring and Summer, the walls went up, the ceiling went up, but up until a few weeks ago, there was still no weather-proof roof over the structure – and I can imagine that the owner must be counting his lucky whatevers that the weather has been kind enough to finally have it roofed before Winter sets in for a possible lengthy stay. This project intruiges me no end, though – and I do miss the days when there was no roof or walls, and I could see just what was going on.

It started with a ridiculously oversied hole in the back yard. Initial thoughts were foundations for something, but as the hole continued to deepen, we realised that there is no way a foundation needs to go that deep. It remained dug out for some time, a clean, square hole in the ground, in the rough dimension of a cube – and for a long time we had no idea what was happening. One day a truck, crane and work crew turned up with prefabricated concrete walls, and before the day was over, we realised that a room was taking shape underground. Nothing more was thought until the roof of the room – at ground level – was poured: all that was left was a single small manhole, with an equally thick concrete manhole cover. Almost immediately the double brick walls started to go up – and our thoughts ran wild. Bomb shelter? Secret room? Dungeon? Whatever the purpose of the hidden room, it became clear obvious that part of its design is to remain out of sight.

Now, April winds down and Winter fast approaches. On most days there are work utes and trucks coming and going, with tradesmen working on the project. As the walls and roof have been added, it’s become clear that the above-ground portion is a double garage – sans doors for the meanwhile, but the openings on the front make identification easy. What still makes my mind run in circles is the fact that most days when there’s utes or tradies working there, there never seems to be any activity on the exterior or interior of the garage or ceiling – yet from the comings and goings, from the different utes, from the trucks picking up the scraps, it’s obvious that a fair amount of work is going on. And it’s all happening in the secret underground room.

It’s part of my morning ritual now. I get to work, usually the first or second to arrive, and get my laptop set up at my desk. As it starts up, I head to the kitchen to deposit the day’s lunch in the fridge, and to make myself breakfast. When I’m done, usually with a bowl of cereal in my hand, I go to the window and adjust the venetian blinds so that I can look down at the new garage, and wonder what’s going on. When the day is over, I drove out along the laneway, hoping to steal a glance through an open gate to see more of the interior of the garage. Yet nothing I ever see gives me any answers. It always leads to more questions.

When I’m old, retired, and require numerous pathology tests, I wonder if I’ll be one of those people who is a regular down at the collection lab.

It’s 8am, and I’m sitting in a surprisingly-crowded waiting room. The building is an old weatherboard house that has since been converted into a pathology collection lab. Bedrooms are now treatment rooms, the lounge is the waiting room, and thankfully I’ve never been here for anything more serious than a blood test to find out what the rest of the house has been fitted out as. Plastic chairs and a single reclining armchair are crammed in against every wall, and a television sits powered off in front of what would have been the fire place.

I’m the youngest person in the room by a good 30 years, a fact which is made clear as some of my fellow pathological donors look at me with some degree of curiosity while I pass time on my phone. I’m not an addicted texter, but I am getting a headstart on my morning online catch up. There are all of the tweets that have occured between now and the late hour last night that I switched off the laptop to read. I have to check who has what on their mind, particularly the late-night facebookers or the international contingent of my friends. There’s news headlines to browse, and click through on anything interesting or pertinent. I’ve been going for a good 20 minutes, and yet I still get the odd look. They’re amazed that I’m not entertaining myself with the year-old trash magazines littering the single side table.

This morning routine of mine doesn’t change much from day to day: whether I’m working or at home, at some point in the morning, I spend that time catching up on the world. The reason why I do it is something that still elludes me in its entirety – though it’s something that Beth and I talk about every now and then. Part of it comes down to my semi-news-junkie status, or to my self-proclaimed need to be plugged in and aware of what is happening. But I wonder just how much of it is purely habit, from years of waking up and switching on the computer before anything else. It’s been seven years now that I have spent with my laptop (or desktop for a while there) as an important part of my morning routine – all the way through uni, it was one of the first things I would do after rolling out of bed, beaten only by the biological imperative to empty my bladder. After graduation, and as I started working evenings and nights, the timeframe shifted but the priority remained – first or second action for the day, but now any time from 11am – 1pm. In those days it was often mirrored by a similar session before I went to bed, plugged into the world and keeping up with everything. Now it’s purely mornings due to the other things in life – I now have a wife whose company I enjoy a lot more than my laptop’s, and a job that involves me working while the sun is in the sky, and as such the time for me to be plugged in is while Beth sleeps, and the rest of the world rises.

I thought being and early riser and getting to the collection lab would benefit me today, but I was wrong. Even arriving a minute or two after opening, I’m number 10 on the list, with all of the regulars already in and seated before me. They are regulars, I’m not simply lugging them in a group – they all know the nurses names, all the nurses know them by name, and it’s even as far as the conversations between nurse and patient asking about family members by name. It worries me to think that they have to come here so often – more so that I may end up this way. Which is why I’m here in the first place – now is the time to get things right, to lower my cholesterol, to lose the excess weight, and to be fit and healthy. I know all of the much-bandied facts – the longer I leave it, the harder it will be, the greater my chance of serious illness and the higher my risk of heart disease. Yet before I knew that something was imperically wrong, I lived in a form of denial that I was still reasonably fit and healthy, didn’t get sick much, and didn’t lose much by way of quality of life. How much three months of losing 19.5kg changes your mind.

Finally, some 45 minutes later, my number is called, and I walk into what was previously a bedroom to have my blood taken. I was here a few days earlier ago what turned out to be a false start – I’d forgotten that I am supposed to fast for up to 12 hours before having the tests, and now 12 hours after eating or drinking last, I’m starting to feel it. I’ve even forgone my morning coffee that I enjoy on the drive to work – and sitting in a waiting room for 45 minutes hasn’t helped. The nurse readies the needle, I turn my head and try to quickly distract myself with other thoughts: I hate needles. Up until age 15 or so I was fine with them – all of my primary and high school vaccinations didn’t faze me, yet now they get to me for some reason. The needle goes in, and I can feel the tip of it wiggling around slightly inside the vein – whether that is physically possible or not, I neither know or care. I’m just thankful that it’s only one vial, and it fills relatively quick.

A cotton wool ball is taped over the entry point, and I’m sent on my way. I know I’m going to be somewhat of a wuss about it (though only to myself), and won’t be surprised if my arm hurts, but as I pass the next several regulars waiting in the converted lounge room on the way out, I tell myself that at least I don’t have to come back every week. And hopefully this test will bring back some good news.

Outside it’s an almost surreal Sunday morning. The sky above is blue and clear, it’s a perfect temperature, yet the sun is hidden behind clouds in the east. You feel that it should be bright, yet there’s a winter-esque dullness to the light. I’m walking to our local supermarket, a 50-second trip, and it’s oddly quiet. I never get used to it; it’s always quiet on a Sunday morning, even now at 9:30am. People sleep, people walk dogs, or people do their grocery shopping. With a park running along a creek at the end of our road catering for those walking their dogs, it’s almost too quiet. Yet this is how it is every Sunday.

I’m awake by 6:32am on Sundays; it’s a work day for me. The alarm goes off the same time it does when I work in the office, and while I could easily adjust the time for these days when my office is four steps from our bed, I choose to get up at the same time, and get a head start on the work. A 6:30am start instead of the usual 7:30am means I finish an hour earlier. And on a weekend, with a wife, dogs, housemates and (every second week) family, it’s nice to have that extra time in the afternoon. Three hours into my work however, I need a break. Beth told me she needed something from Woolies, so I don the thongs and walk out the door. Again, I’m struck by the quiet. Even the singular car driving our road is quieter than it would be during the week.

Inside the supermarket is another matter. There are tired faces, but a lot of old(er) people are there doing their groceries. Sunday lunches and Sunday dinners all seem to be on the menu, as I look at people’s trollies and baskets. Almost every customer in the store is congregated in one of two places: the fresh produce and meat area, or the checkouts. Beyond the rather bleary-eyed staff, I appear to be the youngest person in the store. On occasion, I would be one of those people stocking up for a Sunday dinner. Every second week we have dinner with Beth’s family – her parents and sister & brother-in-law. They’re a close family – the fortnightly dinner is not the only time we see any or all of them, sometimes it’s a few times a week. However I don’t need to cook anything this time – dinner’s at her parents’. Instead, I’m purchasing the essentials. Ecualyptus drops for Beth’s throat and a packet of denta-stix chews for the dogs. I hadn’t planned on buying them (I had originally been looking for tyre shine for the cars), but I saw them, and decided they could do with a little treat. Not that they don’t get treats every day, but this morning they’ve been good.

My essentials in hand, I make my way through the self-serve checkouts in record time (sub-30 seconds) and begin the 50-second walk home. A white van driven by DJ Flash (as the license plate proclaims) pulls up and parks as I walk past. An elderly, white haired man gingerly steps out from behind the wheel, and makes his way slowly to the entrance. As I walk home, the one dog owner not enticed by the trail by the creek walks on the opposite side of the street from our house, and I hear Maydog and Zahli up on the balcony start to bark. Close enough to home, I tell them in no uncertain terms that they need to go INSIDE and thankfully the comply. Not before I realise that Zahli is on the roof of the garage, not on the balcony. She stands there with nothing but a 5cm high lip around the roofline keeping her from walking right off the edge. It worries Beth when she’s up there, though I’m less concerned. I’ve seen Zahli too scared to jump off my lap while sitting at my desk because it’s to0 high off the ground.

Inside, it’s back into the cave. I’ve moved over to Beth’s desk as I tend to do on Sundays, utilising her 22″ monitor to extend my desktop real estate. The girls wander off and find different places to curl up and sleep. They along with Beth, seem to have the right idea for Sunday mornings. I on the other hand, get back to work.

This has to be easily one of the coolest things I have seen in a long, long time. I’m a sucker for anything techy that is decent, yet this just blows my mind.

Yes, I realise that for now it’s merely a representation of what some people think the future may be like… but I cannot wait until that time is here and now.

(via Unpluggd)

… I don’t know what is!

I now want to work at LEGO, purely to get my own.

Check it out. (via WIRED)