So my long weekend so far…

I worked yesterday, working saturdays aren’t all that bad as all your really expected to do is hang out until someone walks on to the yard and then go help them buy a car. So that, although a little boring at times really wasn’t a bad way to start the weekend. I don’t normally work saturdays, but am so I can have a long weekend next weekend to go to Sydney, but when I do I don’t mind it cause I figure there’s really not much that happens on a saturday morning, at the most you plan to have lunch with people and normally I’m finished by 1pm so even that is fine.

Anyway, after work and last night I didn’t do much, which was ok, but there were a few things I wanted to do but couldn’t cause of rain and the like. I still want to mow the lawn, I’ve become a little lawn proud and am trying to grow it where it currently doesn’t.

So this morning I went to a Christening for a work colleague, it was at a Uniting church, for people who don’t normally go to church, wasn’t sure what to expect, thought it would be a little weird and involve parents making promises that they wouldn’t normally make or even talk about. And it was, and they did.

We gave a Colin Buchanan CD, it felt weird giving a present and also I for some reason felt like I should have been giving something with pewter on it or something that looked like it had been sitting in a Christian bookshop since the 80’s and had the word christening on it somewhere.

But in the end Nat dropped it on the present table and walked away which was the easiest way to deal with all this weirdness, maybe we should have done more, but I’m sure the subject will come up at work soon.

Dubbo now has an oporto, I say that it’s about time!!

I tasted it the other day, and it was good!!

Can anyone explain why my blog of Evie has turned up on an Australian political blog site?

I found it by googling Evie’s name… very odd. i didn’t know that Evie had such an influence on Australia’s politics…

Link here: http://theaustralianindex.com/politics/?s=search&categoryID=7&searchterms=%22evie%22

Just scroll down the page.

And… And… look at this:http://www.blogcatalog.com/blogs/the-chronicles-of/posts/tag/dicker/

A lot of people hate them, but if I have the time I don’t mind a chat with a telemarketer although I wouldn’t ever buy anything from one.

Sometimes I like to lead them on a little, but my favourite game of all is playing the I’m really having difficult understanding what you are saying. I’ll usually pick a certain thing they say, the more unimportant the piece of information the better, and just ask them to repeat it, or ask them lots of questions about it, or pretend you just don’t get it, they’ll try to move on but I don’t let them.

But my newest, and most favourite game to date, is to see how quickly you can get them to hang up on me. I have rules though, I can’t attack them, can’t abuse them, can’t be angry or anything, but just have to be reasonably polite.

So basically I play the I don’t understand you card until they get frustrated and hang up, but I don’t say that I can’t understand them but rather be polite and ask them to repeat themselves or explain it better, or repeat the word/phrase incorrectly back to them and ask if that’s what they said.

I didn’t think it was all that possible to get them to hang up on me, but it seems it is, yesterday I had one indian lady who called and her opening line was ‘Hi I’m calling from VIP Tel’ or something like that, now it took me most the conversation to work out she said VIP Tel, I though she was saying wepatel or something. Anyway I was able to get her to hang up in 2 minutes 20 seconds and the whole conversation was me repeating what I thought she said the company name was and her trying to correct me and say what it really was. At one point she tried to just move on, but I wanted to know the company name, so she didn’t get pass me trying to understand the company name before she gave up and hung up.

So 2mins 20sec is my current record.

So lately I’ve gotten myself a few small website jobs, a little bit of freelance I suppose you could call it.

I thought I had kind of lost my passion for a lot of the designing and building of websites and that kind of stuff, but man it’s different when you’re doing it for yourself, I’ve enjoyed it a lot more. And kind of hope to get a little more in the future.

Anyway that’s all I have to say on that.

I had something to blog about, something really good to say…

But I forget what it was.

Here’s some more Evie for all you web-baby-stalkers out there (Jo)… :)

Click here

It happened! We have a baby girl! Little Evie Grace Dicker was born at 11:26pm, Saturday September 6th 2008, weighing in at 3.95kg and 52cm long.

Fi did a completely awesome job in labour. Fi will be the first to admit that she doesn’t have many stories of physical perseverance, and she doesn’t really have a high pain threshold but she handled it like a true champion! And… wait for it… no drugs! A lot of hot water and a little bit of gas, but no drugs! Fi now has the biggest story of perseverance and pain tolerance that a person can achieve.

It was all very exhausting, and we’re only now starting to catch up on some sleep. She’s feeding and settling quite well at present, we hope it lasts!

There are plenty of stories to tell, and maybe I’ll chronicle some, or you can ask me and I’ll bore you to death with them… but for now here’s a couple of photos to wet your appetite.

I’ve been keeping a quiet eye on the ‘end of the world’ experiment that some scientists are running at the moment (some news items about it here: here )

They’ve got a live webcam of the experiment running here: here

Worth checking out, some interesting footage.

Um, hello? Has anyone spotted a problem with the rationale in taking down the “want longer lasting sex?” billboards? [The SMH article is here if you want more background]

The argument is that these billboards - which are text only - might be over-sexualizing our children. Now it might be the case (if they can read) that they’ll want to ask their parents what that sign is all about, but hey, kids start asking “where did I come from?” long before they learn to read…

But really, we haven’t hit the real heart of the flawed logic behind the removal of these signs yet.. Here’s the big problem with the rationale: everyday I go past bus shelters, shop windows, news stands, and billboards that have all sorts of erotic images on them - half naked women in underwear, swimwear, lingerie or whatever… Men and women in seductive sexualized poses, (and who knows what they’re advertising!) and yet there is no complaint.

What’s worse? A billboard that says “sex” or a billboard that shows sex? I’ve got no problem with the text. In fact these billboards are at least giving a voice to men who have real sexual issues and need help…

I think once again we’ve missed the real issue here… Print the word “sex” and we go ballistic… Try to sell me some shoes by putting a sexy brunette in underwear with big cleavage… hey, no problem…

Personally I find the image more distracting than the word.