Perfect timing

Posted on March 31, 2009

Things have a way of sorting themselves out right? Today’s rain storm that hit Sydney led to one of our office’s window seals rupturing, spilling water all over my desk and computer. Either that or last night’s black-out (which affected the entire CBD as well) meant my computer was borderline deceased, making some ghastly noises as it sat precariously in a pool of rain water. Then in the afternoon we received our second batch of new equipment, which included the replacement the IT department ordered a couple weeks ago. Perfect timing! To my surprise the new comp is pretty well optioned and puts my home machine to shame. The guys are still installing all of the software I need on it, so hopefully by tomorrow morning it’ll be good to go. My old, crappy 15-inch work monitor has also been replaced with a 23-inch one. Perhaps I should do a rain dance more often.

YouTube’s the new Google

Posted on March 30, 2009

There I was, spoon in hand and face sprayed with the juice from a pomegranate. As I yelled a couple of expletives, it dawned on me that the answer was right in front of me. YouTube. This link showed me how it should be done.

Thriller

Posted on March 29, 2009

What a season opener for F1, culminating in that controversial crash between Vettel (above) and Kubica while they were running in second and third position respectively. Personally I’m not too sure who was at fault, but after the initial contact it looked like Kubica came off the brake, perhaps to make sure Vettel was taken out as well. Garth would’ve been a bit upset as he had tipped the Red Bull team in our office bets, but for me it has been a profitable weekend!

See that coming?

Posted on March 28, 2009

Those who follow F1 will know of the struggle to find a buyer of the defunct Honda team, with Ross Brawn coming in at the eleventh hour to form the new Brawn GP team. With only a few days of testing, this has been a rather monumental weekend for Brawn: the cars have blistering pace, they’ve locked out the front row in dominating fashion (they’re probably wishing they put a bit more fuel onboard), and Sir Richard Branson flew in today to announce that Virgin will be their major sponsor. I hedged my bets on Brawn in our inter-office F1 betting comp, so tomorrow I’ll have all of my fingers and toes crossed that they can do a flag-to-flag victory!

Indulging

Posted on March 27, 2009

During today’s lunch break I popped into a small Asian grocery store on Anzac Parade in Kingsford, and noticed that they sold quite a few different types of Japanese Kit Kats. Jackpot! Picked up versions that were white chocolate, mixed berry and one that had rice bubbles in it.

Couldn’t help but LOL when I saw this.

Awesome apple gummy from Korea. Papz practically ate the whole pack.

Another lunch another burger

Posted on March 26, 2009

When it comes to favourite suburbs, Newtown wouldn’t be very high on my list. The other guys at ASM frequent it regularly for lunch, but I usually give it a miss. Today I gave in to peer pressure to try out Burgerfuel, which is located on King St.

Burgerfuel heralds from New Zealand I believe. They had this full-size rendition of a model kit stuck to the roof.

Cardboard burger holders. Smart thinking 99.

Cool brand of water.

Here is Kula’s mega burger. I went with something smaller. I’d give it a 5 out of 10. Although the sweet potato fries were certainly interesting!

While walking back to the car, Garth drooled all over this Triumph.

Here’s the Yam that was parked next to it.

What the…?

Posted on March 25, 2009

Each apartment within our complex comes with a pretty big storage room, which are all located on the car park floor. This evening I went into mine to dig up some old junk only to find this: a not so inconspicuous hole in the brick wall that separates our storage room from that of another apartment.

It was a true WTF moment. I think I stood there for a good two minutes scratching my head. The hole is about the size of one and a half bricks, and is located at the base of the wall. I stuck a torch through it and saw the remnants of the bricks stacked in a pile amongst my neighbour’s stuff. I’m not too concerned about anything going missing from the room, but it doesn’t make any sense. Surely it would be easier to kick the door in then try to break in brick by brick. Or maybe an animal of some kind did it? Weird.

New toys for the boys

Posted on March 24, 2009

Today the designers received two large boxes containing, you guessed it, the new Mac Pros. The poor guys have been slugging away on their dinosaur era Macs for quite a few years, and Auto Salon’s new management quickly fixed that issue.

Intel components. We haven’t put CS4 through its paces yet, but we’re expecting the Mac Pros to dramatically improve our efficiency.

Check out the super slim keyboard. Crazy. I don’t think typists will like the feel, but it was super cool nonetheless.

Certainly in keeping with Apple’s image, all of the packaging was impressive.

Chassis-wise the new Mac Pro is one impressive piece of engineering. Its almost sexier with the cover removed. Here are the hard drive bins.

S 2

Posted on March 23, 2009

Accounts guy Hons drives this black on black S2K. Its an 03 model and I think it lasted, oh, about two days before he started modifying it. It all started off with a set of Spoon coilovers and the rest just kind of fell into place. He recently pulled the hardtop off so that he can enjoy the last of the summer rays. He also has a set of CE28Ns, which he puts on when he gets a little bored with it. Not bad for a daily!

Lawn bowls

Posted on March 22, 2009

Lauren’s birthday was on Saturday, and for something a bit different we headed down to Balmain for some lawn bowls.

Most of us hadn’t done lawn bowls before, and so the first couple of games were pretty hilarious. My first bowl rocketed into the ditch at the other end. Jake (pictured) has played it before, and he came real close to claiming a few wins for his team.

Rachel was a surprise dark horse. By far the best player (and thankfully on our team), she had little problem getting her bowls within an inch of the jack. Crazy precision. I continued to bowl mine into the ditch.

Although I always perceived lawn bowls to be an oldie’s game, it was quite a lot of fun and something I’d definitely do again. Perhaps it was because of how much alcohol we drank during our games.

Dinner was at adjoining bistro and by this time we were all pretty tanked, leading to some ridiculous conversations. The lamb was so-so, but the company was great!

Love and hate

Posted on March 21, 2009

There are moments when I truly loathe my beater, the Honda Jazz (Fit) that I’ve mentioned before. It is probably the most uninspiring car on the market and Zi from JDM Yard (who also owns one) categorises it as an appliance, just like a fridge.

I find it interesting that I’ve been holding off buying the new tyres its needs, even though I’m getting pretty close to the treadwear indicators. With any of my other cars I had an approach that was the complete opposite; I would be happy to splurge stupid amounts of money at a whim. I guess that’s the difference between a car you love to modify and one that you use for nothing more than commuting purposes.

Today I was reminded why I bought the Jazz in the first place. Since my sister Caroline is moving to London for a couple of years, I spent my Saturday helping her move her painting gear out of the small artist’s studio she had been renting. Although she was adamant that we would need to do a couple of trips, we fitted in two stools, a small table, an easel, half a dozen boxes and stacks of canvases. There was even room to spare!

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