Time well spent

This is my first post in 2.5 months and I've done 4 posts since March. Not that nothing has been happening for the past 5 months, quite the opposite. You wouldn't know it from this blog but not only is the date for the big day finally set, it's only just over 2.5 months away. It's actually all a bit surreal. After going out with Tiarnee since the beginning of 2005 & being engaged since July last year it's hard to believe that it's almost here.

I've grown so much in the past few months & yet such growth only makes me painfully aware of the growth still to come. I've lost weight, through a (generally) healthier lifestyle. It seems getting paid to sit on your butt in front of your computer is healthier than doing it voluntarily at Uni. God has been teaching me an awful lot about myself. I've almost adapted to living in Adelaide, the traffic lights still annoy the you-know-what out of me. I still think it's ridiculous that it takes me 15-25 mins to travel 4.5 kms (That's right Melbournites, I can afford to live that close to the CBD) every morning& that it's no slower to ride my bike than catch the bus. The excitement & responsibility of becomming a husband both scares me to death and gives me a reason to get up in the morning. Over the last few weeks I have and am confronting issues that I've been ignoring and running from for almost half my life. I've started playing squash again. I've won 1 of my first 4 matches. This week I learnt a fair bit about Microsoft SQL Server 2005 & stored proceedures. Oh & did I mention I'm planning a wedding? Invitions are currently under construction.

It's great running through life having little idea as to what I'm doing, but knowing that God does.

My aim is to start posting fairly regularly again. There's plenty going on that I could blog about, and when I was posting regularly, there were actually people reading what I had to say. The amazing thing is that this is true inspite of the fact that I was just a bored Uni student back then.

21

So I'm officially an adult now. All grown up. Responsible. Mature. Educated. You know, all those things that society expects me to be.

I had my 21st party on Australia Day which was good fun. Approx. 50 people came, so it wasn't too huge. But the engagement party was the big one, so that was ok.
Speeches were given by:

1. Graham - (father of a couple of my mates) said some really nice stuff about the friendships I've had with not just his kids, but others in the area.
2. Tiarnee - Congratulated me on everything I'd achieved to date & reminded me of the big future I have in front of me& encouraged me to take opportunities as they arise. Was really nice and personal without being too gushy. Not that I would have minded.
3. Dad - his favorite memories of my life & how I'm entering the big bad world now.
4. Me - I thanked everyone for coming, especially the non-locals for traveling. I also stated about how my 21st was worth celebrating, because after 21 it is all down hill and everything that is good that can happen to a guy is happening to me this year. Because:

• I'm starting work.
• Getting my own place and furnishing it with my own stuff.
• Getting a really good job and my own money.
• Getting married.
  
• I'm still young enough to enjoy all the above.

I then said something serious about how lucky I am and how I've been so blessed with everything around me.

Can life get any better than this?

The Death of Innocence

Well after a couple of months in the blogging wilderness I'm back on the cusp of so called "Adulthood."

It's been an amazing couple of months in which so many things have happened.

The first was that I finished my Bachelor of Information Technology, so in May I'll be able to have the letters B.I.T. after my name. Exciting stuff.

After leaving Ballarat on election day I drove a truck almost non-stop (full-time +) until New-Years. This gave me some badly needed money to tide me over until I start work on the 25th of February. I wonder if O-week at work will be anything like O-week at Uni.

I also managed to spend at least half of the above earnings on a 3-day trip to Adelaide with Tiarnee. The money was spent on furniture for my flat that I was lucky enough to secure in a prime location just north of the city. It really is the perfect spot, only a 10-15 minute commute for me to work, a 5 minute (or less!) commute to see Tiarnee, and for her, is walking distance to her bus route to Uni. So because she is moving in later in the year, she wanted a say on the table and chairs, fridge, and Queen-Sized bed that I (we!) ended up purchasing. 'Discussions' were had, but the fact that we where still on talking terms for the trip home really did bode well for the future.

The last 2 weeks saw our family with an exchange student from NZ. Jacques was a Protea turned Kiwi who was really good to show around the place, and even came to Ocean Grove with us. That is where we've been for the last week. In Ocean Grove relaxing, playing tourist in Melbourne & did I mention relaxing? Oh, & cheering for Marcos Baghdatis.

In summary, those people that told me that "remember this time, school years are the best years of your life" where oh so wrong. I hated school. But I'm loving now. God is amazing to me, and I seriously sometimes wonder if it can get any better. Did I mention I'm turning 21 tomorrow?

IBM, iRiver & 1 Bolt

Yesterday was a very eventful day, for 3 reasons. Two I had planned, 1 I had not.

1. I worked my last shift at IBM yesterday. It was a gracefull departure with hand-shakes and well wishes from my bosses. As I said in my farewell email to everyone:

   My time at IBM has come to a close today! With the end of my B.I.T. at Uni just 35 short days away it’s time for me to leave and concentrate on my final assignments, as well as exams. As well as celebrate during Week 13.

   Being a tech support person definitely helped my communication and confidence in dealing with people. I now know that in whatever job I do I need to be learning and being challenged. The challenge had been lost in my tech-support role, and I was starting to find it repetitive.


2. 
   After work I shopped around for and purchased an iRiver x20 4Gb MP3 player for $184 from JB Hi-Fi. Which is the coolest shop in Ballarat, since it opened earlier this year. The reason for purchase was that I was sick of only having the radio to listen to in my car, & it would be cheaper to buy a portable MP3 player than get my CD player fixed/replaced. I've had a play with it & it also has an FM radio & can play Video and display photos. Oh, it has an inbuilt-mic & a line in port & did I mention a Micro-SD slot for extra memory! You can't get that functionality in an iPod.


3. 
   I was driving back to res after buying said mp3 player, when my clutch pedal broke while attempting to slow down to turn into a supermarket. Later inspection would reveal that the clutch itself isn't broken, but rather 1 bolt very similar to the above has fallen out of the clutch pedal housing, so now the pedal won't push in far enough to press the clutch. Just because my 4 assignments due this week arn't keeping me busy enough, I now need to get my car fixed.

All in all it was an interesting/ fun day!

Time on

I've just got back to Uni again for the final run home. I've just moved into Time-on in the final quarter of my University career. In 8 weeks & 4 days I should hopefully have a University Education. Which on a global scale at least, makes me very fortunate!

So here is the closing stages of the game by statistics:

• 8 weeks & 4 days to go
• 5 weeks of classes
• 1 week of swotvac
• 2 weeks of exams
• 5 assignments
• 1 presentation
• 4 exams
  
• 1 massive (or more) celebration(s)
• 1 Bachelor of Information Technology w/ approx 18 months experience @ IBM.
  

I have a lot of work to do!

The quest for the Holy Grail

Last Friday at work I attained the ultimate in call-center work. I reached the pinnacle of my job. It will never better than it was on Friday. I may possibly never work a shift that good again in my entire life and because of this I almost resigned on the spot so I could do a 'Steve Bracks' and quit while I'm at the top. So what happened on Friday at work that was so awesome? I wasn't promoted, I didn't get a pay rise & my work was the same as any other day. So what happened? The answer: nothing. I attained the holy grail of IT support. No calls for my entire shift. Ok, so it was only a 2.5 hour shift, but I still got money for nothing. It will never get any better than that.

Thanks to APEC & the public holiday in Sydney, the calls where few and far between. I actually think that APEC was worth it because of the above, and the fact that the Chaser team got to stage a fake Canadian Motorcade. It certainly didn't achieve anything for the good of the planet. If only HECS & HELP debt repayments were "aspirational & non-binding."

Now stop typing Jonny, before you get angry that innocent people can get locked up overnight without legal recourse in THIS COUNTRY for accidentally crossing the road at the wrong time.

A Peak at The Future

This time 1 week ago I had just finished a delicious $12 meal on O'Connell St & was strolling with Tiarnee through North Adelaide marvelling at some of the obscenely large houses that exist there. It was a great weekend, where we could just hang-out for once without the pressures of 'seeing' & hanging around our family. We could actually just 'live' a little bit, we didn't have to squeeze 2 weeks of catching up with each other into 48 hours. It was nice.

I also got to have a bit of a look through my future work-place. It was very cool. Don't know exactly what I'll be doing, but I'll be programming something, most likely web-orientated stuff(hopefully!) in Java or C#. The corporate world looks to be a very different world to the one I'm used to. I don't think I'll mind being at the bottom of the food chain (corporate ladder). Oh, & I DON'T have to wear a suit to work. Standard dress in the office is jeans and T-shirts. Which I'm very happy about. Almost as awesome as the dress-code, is the fact that I might be getting flown to Melbourne one weekend and put up in Crown-Towers to attend seminars and stuff. Food, flights, accommodation etc. included. Hopefully it happens!

Anyway, the weekend came at just the right time. Reminded me not to get too bogged down at Uni, and that yes, after all these years of study I'm finally working towards something tangible.

Flatout Neglect

I've been negelcting this blog quite alot recently, with only 4 (this makes 5) posts in the last month. My site statistics have reflected this, with August likely to be the second lowest number of hits in a month since the inception of this blog. The positive side to those statistics is that it shows that people will come & read what I have to say, as long as I'm saying stuff. So why the neglect? Two reasons that I can pinpoint:

1. After the excitement of getting engaged, everything else that I'd normally blog about suddenly seemed trivial & un-important.
2. I am pretty flatout with different things at the moment.
   

Here's a rough listing of events on each weekend starting 1 week ago from today.

• Went home for the weekend.
  
• Team weekend for Rock Solid Kidz mission.
• Going to Adelaide (next weekend) to visit Tiarnee.
• Nothing at this stage (Switchfoot, Pillar Antiskeptic Gig in Melb on the 6th.)
• Engagement Party weekend (at home/ Bordertown)
  
• Rock-Solid Kids Mission in Ballarat from the 22nd-28th Sept.
  
• Home for the final weekend of the holidays, before coming back for final few weeks at Uni.
  

So all that on top of the roughly 15 hours a week at IBM & the final Semester Uni assignments. Speaking of which, I've gotta go and design me a website. I have 2 assignments due before I leave for Adelaide on Thursday. I'd better start one of them....

Corporate Machines

They've just introduced a new 'coaching' system at work. Where we are given statistics on our previous weeks performance and then work out a couple of 'goals' to work on to improve our call handle times. I'm lucky enough to be apart of a pilot group, that'll be extended if it's a success. (Early signs are pretty positive) The aim of this is to obviously find ways to help us improve our call handling times. Stated benefits of this system include:

• Over the weeks being able to see improvements in our performance & therefore being better at our job.
  
• Better motivation to work as we can see that our improvements are helping.
• Better working conditions as improvements slowly mean that things will get less hectic & so everyone is less stressed and happier.

Non-stated benefits of this new system include:

• Better employee productivity/ more efficient labour.
  
• Lower wage expenses/ better use of wage expenses.
  
• Revenue growth due to better overall performance.
  

Apart from the aesthetic positives listed above, there are no benefits for the individual. I don't get paid any more for doing my job more efficiently. Yet the system works, after only just over 1 week on the new system, I've already shown strong improvements in some areas. Therefore, I'm doing quite a good job at helping an American multi-national corporation boost it's profits.

Yep. I'm a good little cog in the machine of capitalism. Doing my bit to maintain the socio-economic status quo. That is, the divide between rich and poor, and those in between like myself.