This is all I can take, this is how a heart breaks.

It’s strong and passionate and I don’t connect with it in anyway. It’s not that I don’t know about heartbreak. I’ve made plenty of mistakes and errors along the way and seen my share. I just don’t relate to this song, but I love it.

Paranoid people could read something into it, as they tend to do. Must be tough to live life looking for the negatives in everything that’s going on. Worse is that I don’t think it’s an intentional seeking of negatives. It’s simple a default position to gravitate in a specific direction. I work with a collection of these people. I don’t begin to understand how they get there, but it’s always difficult to see someone else’s perspective.
Not from their perspective as we do. But to see their perspective.

So we arrived here with this song and this post for two reasons. Firstly I started organising my music collection again today. I do a little at a time, so I won’t ever look back and realise I spent 3 days doing it.  And secondly because someone I know separated from his partner.
I have no idea how he feels about it, we barely speak anymore, and certainly not from a personal perspective. So I can only assume there’s a measured pain. It reminded me of those gone and lost.
Of the changed perspectives, most of them my own.

I’ve always had the idea that you shouldn’t be friends with someone just because you’ve known them for a long time. Adding old high school friends to facebook makes little sense for the most part. If we haven’t held a conversation for the last 10 years, why would we now?

The opposing point being, why shouldn’t we have one just because we haven’t for the last 10 years.

Do we evaluate all interactions and friendships independently or as a measure against one another. Or an arbitrary standard decided long in advance without rhyme or reason to it. As many things in life are done, simply because that’s the way they are done.

Who else is missing and gone, and is everyone I am no longer spending time with or on really gone? Or do we not measure it.

There are a lot of people who I’ve spoken to and spent time with who I don’t see as much anymore.

Family and friends, old colleagues, friends met on the internet, friends from here who moved overseas before I met them and their blog, friends who I met on the internet and moved overseas after I found them.

I do miss them. There are many people I think of and speak to. I occasionally write notes. As some people say to write angry letters to vent things and to destroy them. I occasionally write letters. Type some words up in my head, drop a few keypresses into notepad and then delete it.
If the sentiment weighs in for those moments of anger and excitement, then surely solitude and remembering someone is just as valid.

I am thinking of you, I hope you are well.
Maybe we’ll catch up soon.
And to one of you, everything hurts a little less over time. Think of the positives.

T

Fear is a strange creature. As a child we fear the things we do not understand. What is in the dark, how will this taste.
As we get older some of us deal with a phobia type fear, like a fear of 8 legged monsters. It’s not a fear of anything they will do, a fear response simply generated from their existence.

And then we have fear of the known. Fear of consequences, of reprisal, of rejection, of death.

I woke on a Monday morning with pain in my leg, this was nothing amazing, I’d had a sore leg for weeks. But after forcing my way upright through gritted teeth, this wasn’t the right leg. This was the other leg, and it hurt to touch, not just to walk on.
I took this new development and saw the doctor. His prognosis was a bemused look and asking me to stand. Then he looked closer, he pushed, prodded, twisted. But none of it generated pain, lateral pressure, and physical touch caused an immeasurable pain.
I’ve gritted my teeth with a collapsed eye (and later stitches pulled from the same eye), I’ve held my chin high and dragged my bike home with a wrist broken in 4 places, but this was unbearable, a most excruciating pain I have never felt before.

I was rushed off for scans and tests, some digital machine and a high intensity ultrasound. If there is ever anything I don’t need it’s a physical contact based scan when the weight of a sheet hurts. Tears rolled from my eyes as a seemingly uncaring professional pressed harder and harder into my leg. And as I approached the point of breaking, he stopped. Results were conclusive, there was a substantial blood clot in my leg, more than one.

There was little course of action from where it was positioned but to wait for my body to fix it. I was advised more than once, that I still needed to be very realistic about this, the risk if this clot became loose and entered a deep vein would be enormous. Pulmonary embelism was the least of the consequences. I was on a strict watch for over a week to ensure my lungs remained functional and my heart beating.

A week of stress, fear, pain and anguish. The realisation of mortality is heavy handed. It’s something we ignore, or in my case accept.
I’ve always been accepting of an eventual demise, I am a logical creature of science and understand the sequence of events. But I never expected to deal with the possibility early. It was terrifying and worrying, I was awake when I should be asleep and unfocused when I should be awake.

Due to rest, deliberate stretching and medication to keep my blood moving loosely I have shown a remarkable recovery. Contact pain is all but gone, liquid retention in tissue has reduced, I can bend, move and apply pressure on my leg.
All evidence supports a successful correctionn of this unfortunate event. But I am tired, and need rest. More rest.

So presumably the pressure is gone and I can focus on other things. Liv, getting a new fish. Turning 30 years old.

I obviously haven’t done that one before.
Let’s see if I can pull it off.

At least I know this ring of immortality works.

Tonight I lost my fish. About 5 minutes ago. He began to float upside down and not breathe so well.
This has happened before, about 6 weeks ago, but he recovered, or so I thought.
Today was too much for Galileo.

I gave him some shelled peas to help his stomach and changed a small portion of his water for fresh water (with Stability in it) and cleaned his filter.
I can only assume he was sick, I am going to blame the food he switched to recently, he hasn’t been the same since. And apparently was not ok with it.

I will miss you my friend.
not just a fish, a friend. We moved, we saw things, we decided things and we made changes. People came and went (including your sister Juliet).
I wish you at peace wherever you are.

Good night Galileo.

Tim

Illusions – Day 20

Originally uploaded by etimpa

A companion photo to one I blogged earlier.

Sometimes it’s not about control. It’s about fun.
About seeing the bright spark inside of you and one inside of something else. To let things go and just go with what your heart says.

I think it’s about time to shatter the illusions.
I’m not in control here.

So I shall be. Life is my own.

It’s all a bit final sounding isn’t it. Which I didn’t expect. I did see something within the shot. And I did plan this post to go along with it. I just never expected it to come out sounding so abrupt and impending.

It’s been a long time since I’ve blogged and a long time since control. The minor things are there, I look after my time and watch movies, code, play with liv, time with my baby, and the baby, and my little girl…….. how confusing.. Oh well.

But the big things aren’t there. I go to work when I’m told to, I do the things they want me to do.

The final hiccup came 2 weeks ago.
I’d spent the previous few weeks (not including xmas break) working on a new stats system. Ok, hold it. Back one step.

I work as an Operational Analyst. My job consists of two major tasks, report on what the business did and tell the business how to improve it.

Some reporting is simple and daily. How many calls did X team take.
Some is more complex and in depth “How soon after someone contacts us about X are they likely to speak with this team here”. “What is the major driver of dissatisfaction for this type of customer”.

So, I set out to build a new system. A new stats system. A web based stats system. Now web based doesn’t mean on the internet, it just means using a web server.

And I built a functional start. 3 teams started using the system to get their stats. Now this is a step up.
Old stats = excel based tables.
One table, per day, per team.

The managers (without IT knowledge) can’t really filter, sort or rearrange the data.

The new system is dynamicly generated tables.
You can sort by any column by clicking it. Ascending or Descending.
You can filter a table by typing into a box. Want to see only the people with 8 answered calls? We can do it.
Want to see only the people with a HA in their name? we can do that to.

Then I added more. I built a widget system. miniature applications. Single items of information you could add and modify at will.

A widget shows you the top 5 people in your team.
Another one shows you the call stats for a single person for this month. Add another copy and keep an eye on someone else.
Another widget shows you the last business day for YOUR team.
Drag and drop. Re-order them how you like it.

One manager watches the team stats and the monthly totals. Another looks after discipline and has widgets to monitor 4 problem employees.

Everything seemed great. Managers requested new features and I added them. Stats were faster (data is entered once for ALL teams in a single copy/paste instead of once per team), everyone was happier.

Then a team meeting is called with my team. We should review the system. It seems that two people in my team haven’t seen the new system. And not to let the facts get in the way of a good story, they’ve decided it wont work. it can’t be used and won’t meet their needs.

A hilarious start to a meeting about something they haven’t seen.
Unfortunately, things went downhill from there. The team who’s jobs would no longer be to do these stats did not like it.
Forget the managers (the users of the tool, who loved it), forget the agents on the floor (who had no visible stats before this system) and the only opinions sought were of the team who would not ever use it.

Then things came to support. Who would support such a tool, the rest of the team were not programmers, So if I were to leave, there would be no-one to support it.
Then hire a programmer to replace me I said. The tool saves more than 1 persons share of work. Should I happen to go, hire a programmer to maintain and update the tool, this would still leave all of the current work gettign done, plus all the tool benefits.
And it wouldn’t even cost an entire person. The tool won’t need full time care, and we have a team downstairs who could always use another programmer. But alas.
This would not come to pass.

Bold and modern thinking is not going to slide here. We will remain with this ill formed spreadsheet based solution for the foreseeable future.

The hilarity comes in April when another reporting tool we use is replaced by the core business.
The new one works nothing like the old one. And the IT project managers in Sydney don’t care that 4 people in Brisbane might not know how to use it, the software is changing anyway.
It’s going to be much more like programming when we switch over. The team got asked about that too, they “should be fine with it”.

So back to control. This I do not have.
So I’ll work to regain it. either within, or without.

A trip to Sydney last weekend for a close friends wedding marked the third in the last year.
One as a grooms man, one as a guest, and last weekend as the MC.

I’d never MC’d a wedding before and didn’t know what to expect. It seems I had nothing to expect. It was a gorgeous wedding and I got a lot of laughs and complimented by the bride and groom, and by a few guests. Like most times I’ve spoken in front of a crowd, nerves fade away within 30 seconds of beginning to speak.

It also marked the first weekend away for Katie and I. We had 3 days in Sydney, which included a day kicking back in the hotel, and a wild day on Sydney harbour and a visit to Fort Denison. Wind in our hair, sea spray in the air and plenty to see and do.

So many things lately I’ve been meaning to blog about and I simply never get around to it.
I’m loving my EEE pc and it makes the train trip fly by when I remember to bring it.
I’m loving playing Spore when I get time to.
I’m loving playing WoW now and again with Katie. We are so far from the target demographic it’s not even funny. But it’s a game and roaming around together it loses the MMO aspect, and just becomes an adventure together.
I’m loving the comments I receive from people about how much weight I’ve lost. I was never immense, but I was carrying more than I should, and I am now carrying a lot less.

Timps - October 2008

On the topic of weddings. I have to say, the big events don’t always come across just the same way as those that are personal and up close.
The two weddings I attended in the last few weeks have been very different. One was within a giant echoing cathedral and then into a closed in, locked off club in the middle of the city. The other was in a park, through the bushes looking onto Sydney Harbour and then a walk back to the bowls club.

Now the difference here is the event, not the couples. Both are very close friends of mine, and both are very much in love with one another. But only one of them felt absolutely right and like everyone belonged.
I think for me, the feeling is about personalisation. The big church wedding followed by the fancy dinner felt like a template. Like the bride and groom could have been swapped out and we all would have fit in just as well. It was a day, and they were doing what they needed to do, because they were getting married.

The park, the bowls club and the 4 violinists playing some beautiful piece I’d never heard (the piece turned out to be composed by the brides father as a wedding gift). It felt right. It felt like this was a celebration and an event about them. We were here to take part, and the day was because they were getting married. Not getting married because there was a big day at the church planned.

In keeping with my off beat catch of life. I finalised my MC duties (rounding off the speeches) by telling a tale of why Neil and I are friends. How we worked near each other and hadn’t connected. And one day I started singing the super mario brothers theme. Neil sang along from the next cubicle over, and we have been friends ever since. And this line, “I’m finally glad to say, that Neil’s princess is not in another castle”.

Timps out.
Fort Denison: Seen it.
My 3 closest friends get married: Seen it.
Positive comments on how I look: Didn’t see it coming.

As we get older we gain better perspectives, we understand things better.
We can also see when other people will. We can see the things people do and know they will stop. When I was younger I could see the people who were out drinking so much would eventually stop. I knew my sister and her friends would eventually calm down and stop drinking themselves into a stupor everytime they went near alcohol. I knew it.

I unfortunately knew other things.

Yesterday at work there was a conversation about one of the girls on a date. She had been out with a guy for the first time. And the complained he was too nice, and she liked bad boys.

Now this was a personal moment. I was the nice guy. I was the sweet, attentive and overly affectionate guy because it’s how I wanted to treat them. And in this shining moment, at my desk, hand poised over Ctrl+V to include the call stats for one of my teams it dawned on me.

It isn’t what she wanted at all. And it didn’t matter.
There were a myriad of reasons the  nice guy didn’t fit in. But we’ll come back to that.

The key moment was realising that reasons didn’t matter. There’s no harm in her dating guys who aren’t sweet and perfect. She’s not going to marry them. She’s 24 and just having some fun. She’ll eventually find someone who is compatible long term and move on from there.

When I was younger (and obviously single) I had conversations with friends, female friends, partners and associates. Why would girls date these bad boys.
Because they were having fun. Because these boys don’t throw on emotional baggage or dominate anyones life. Because being “the nice guy” at a young age pushes people into a commitment and a deeper relationship they’re life may not need.

It was really good to think that “She’ll have better perspective when she’s older” and then for another part of my brain to say “Yes, she will. So what’s the problem”.

Perspective is from our point of view. So as we move it changes.
And I never considered that my perspective was excessively selfish. But about girls dating people, it really was.

Control

Originally uploaded by etimpa

Sometimes it’s about control.

I can’t believe there’s been no posting around here. Granted I’m the author and haven’t been, but someone has to have been posting. I’ve been busy.
And I never know where to start when I haven’t posted in a long time.

Let’s post a list of things I can recall doing recently….. And then expand on anything.
It’s been months for me and Katie. It hasn’t seemed like it, but it has. Which is great, it’s just common place now, so surreal to be in another relationship.  She’s amazing, that’s not my point. It’s the effortless comfort. Things are in the “see you tomorrow?” stage, and well past the “Would you like to see me this week?” stage. Which is great.
Liv and I have been out with Katie a few times, a trip to the beach for fish and chips, unfortunately got cut short, so we have a planned return with buckets and shovels. I might hide the stuff in an esky or bag so Liv doesn’t know I have it.

OK, other news. I posted Kim’s cd of the photo shoot the third time, and she received it this time. Which was great to know. And still leaves me wondering where the other two ended up……

I posted Sell Me’s cd ages ago. I don’t remember when, it went in the post though. He’s moving up here though, so I guess I’ll give him a new one…… sometime after he arrives.

I pushed forward into a to do list. An EPIC to do list.
It came out as 9 huge goals, 44 tasks as a part of them. Thats 44 tasks altogether, not 44  for each of the 9, eep!
And 177 days. I am currently 2 days behind schedule, but moving nicely on track.

The last completed goal was the creation of a WordPress Theme and at least 4 colour/style variations of the same theme.
I present to you. Delicious. There are 5 variations. My two favourites are watermelon and jellybeans.

You can use the theme chooser on the top left of the theme to pick a variation. There’s some minor tweaking and bug checking and I plan to release these onto WordPress.org later this week.

And I’m pretty damned proud of it all, I’ve never built a wordpress theme before, and this one was based on the Sandbox theme. Feel free to leave a comment here, or on the theme site. I’ve got a few more colour variations of Delicious planned, and then I’ll move onto a new one.

I purchased Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved 2 on the weekend. By purchased I mean used my microsoft points. I had 850 of them sitting on my account since about 6 months back when I bought Burnout 3 as an xbox original. Katie and I played the demo for about 3 hours solid and decided to bite the bullet and get the whole thing. If you know anyone with an Xbox 360, they must play Geometry Wars. It was originally included inside the garage of Project Gotham Racing 3.

Geometry Wars is a space shooter. The entire game consists of simple shapes, Most enemies are a single shape with a smaller shape inside. Graphics are bright Neon colours.
Don’t let the simple sound give you the impression this is simple. This game has every bit of polish and glitz you’d expect from a title with HD branded on it.
Every explosion is a shower of thousands of tiny glowing particles in a neon colour, and you’ll be destroying enemy after enemy. The ultra slick graphics never get tired and with the lights down and the sound up you will be blown away.
I am genuinely recommending everyone who can, gets their hands on at least the demo and try it out.

Movies. Week before last we saw “The Dark Knight”. Incredible experience.
Christopher Nolan has done an incredible job in re-imagining the Batman. (this is one of my favourite touches. “The batman” not “batman”, it’s a title not a name.
The camera work is incredible, especially the Imax scenes. Dinner party camera pans have never been so involving. And as you’ve read all over the net, Heath put in an incredible performance.
Unlike Jack Nicholsons, over the top Joker, this was a real, psychotic, terrifying experience. Many scenes were altered or improvised (clapping in the jail cell) by Heath as a result of his character work.
Prior to performing the role, he lived in a hotel room for 30 days getting inside the Jokers head and reading a few of the harsher comics on the evil deeds of the Joker.
Alas he is no longer with us. Which is a great shame, a loss to his family and to the world of entertainment. While they seem on a very different scale, he did bring a lot to a lot of people’s lives.
JC and I watched “A knights tale” over and over again. Foxtel played it a few times a day for weeks, and then we had the DVD. It was a good background movie and had a real something that kept you coming back to it. And I was a huge fan of 10 things I hate about you. Even if I didn’t really like Taming the Shrew.

Next on my grand to do list is to sort through my Cg art and Photos. I’m going to locate 20 photos to sell as prints (from the hundreds I’ve taken for this purpose). And 5 cg images. I have 4 of the Cg images prepared and a period of time set aside to complete the epic scale of the 5th. I’ll post the CG and the Photos as soon as they are picked out and approved by the commitee.
If they all agree, the range of pics and CG will be voted and sorted by  Katie, The Hen, and Grim. I’m yet to ask the Hen though, so am assuming she doesn’t stop by the blog often enough and I’ll get to her first.

That aspect (including final polish on the CG images) takes me to August 27.

This project takes me 3 hours a day, so as you can imagine, I need to stick to it. I use weekends and simple tasks to get ahead, to make up for days like today where I worked back an hour and a half. But no more of that. I already decided I wouldn’t work back when they asked me to, and Its crept in twice.

We won’t talk about the billing failure that had me at work until 9 on friday night. Yes 9. At night. After starting at 7:45………. I was not impressed.

Ok Timps is out. it’s late, things to do, food to eat and a shower to have. I do miss all of you, comments, emails, anonymous viewers and all.

Comments on the bad movie post: Didn’t see it coming.
People dissapearing into the night: Didn’t see it coming.
Katie: Did not see coming.

So I’m reading a thread on a forum about movies. Awful movies.
People are posting their lists of awful movies that people hated but you loved. I thought this could be good for a laugh, to see what crap they throw out.

My DVD collection……. seriously.
80% of the movies listed on the first 3 pages are on my shelf or in my top 100 movies…… I am such a sucker for blockbuster movies. It’s such an escape, it’s entertainment.

Don’t get confused. I love lots of classics. Gregory Peck in ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is one of my favourite movies of all time. I watched ‘Inside Man’ and spent a few hours afterwards discussing the lighting and camera angles and how Spike used them to convey emotion and control the viewers opinion. But I am equally as excited by ‘The Day after Tomorrow’ and ‘Doom’.

This came up very directly with my girlfriend. And she shares a lot of the awful taste in movies. Lucky for her Which let’s be honest was a bit of a risk having a degree in English and another in Drama……..her taste was much more likely to be for Othello and the original Taming the Shrew than to kick back with Hudson Hawk.

Quick run down of the movies I loved that made it onto the list….

• Doom
• Hudson Hawk
• Unbreakable
• The Last Boy Scout
• Memoirs of an Invisible Man
• Final Fantasy – The Spirits Within
• Cloverfield
• Demolition Man
• Gabriel
• The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou
• All 3 Resident Evil movies

Wow. They are all big scale movies and most have the worst reviews ever. If it wasnt so damned late I’d write why I love them.
Maybe tomorrow?
Leave a comment and tell me yours…..

Or tomorrow is 54.
Tomorrow I’m going on a picnic, off into the countryside, take some photos, eat some sandwiches and escape the house. Here’s hoping the cough calms down a bit by then.

But the future isn’t why we’re here.
The past.
Well the not so distant past.
I’ve been busy the last few weeks, launching a new website, building a new one for me, redesigning one, taking photos, being sick, cooking, a few dates. It’s hectic times.

Being sick was an adventure. I hurt my back last friday with Liv. It was a long day and carrying liv was the final straw for me. Saturday mornings pain turned into agony by saturday night and I didn’t sleep. I did sit upright on the couch and get very sweaty, charming fun there.
But on Saturday I fought through the pain and we made and decorated gingerbread. It would have been gingerbread men, but Daddy didn’t think of getting a cookie cutter or a rolling pin. So a cardboard tube and a knife filled in and we had some odd gingerbread shapes and some gingerbread sticks.

Liv loved them and the ones she didn’t take with her I shared at work. Requests have come in for futher gingerbread aventures. So I’ll let Liv know. But our next adventure is cookies, and DIY Pizzas. Just need to find some gluten free Pizza Bases, someone will make them.

Websites: I have spent a fair amount of time working on a new project.
books.arecontagio.us
Site stores lists of books, you say what you have and what you want. Add reviews, ratings etc.
It’s going to eventually accept SMS/MMS/email so you can send a message in when someone recommends a book and have it added to your “want list”.
Once I finalise the format to store the data I’ll link it with Amazon and a local bookseller for Canada, the UK and Australia. It could generate some revenue in commission payments.
But the goal of the site was for people to use it, not to make cash.
The original money idea was not for me to make money but to leverage the power of the site.
IE We end up with 13000 people who want a specific Dan Brown book. I simply contact amazon with the data and organise a discount for anyone who orders in the next 30 days.
It’s a strong idea and a nice tool.
Other website is the completion of www.garthmalegrooming.com.au After a long list of dramas from former webhosts and domain registrars. It’s now up and I’ll be doing a full write up on e-timpa.com in the next day or so.

Work has been on and off. There’s a distinct lack of sympathy to me being sick. In fact ignoring it. But that’s ok, I’m doing everything I can to minimise the impact and will make myself heard vocally if they push things to far. Otherwise it’s been busy there. I’ve been placed as the CRM representative for a new data warehousing project. I spent time reviewing and giving feedback on their planned structures mid/late last year and now continue as a member of the group. I’m replacing the commercial manager for CRM, so it’s a nice vote of confidence there.
Also, I finished Friday afternoon with a set of data on complaints and how many we receive.
It was a complex set of data to summarise and collate, took me the better part of 3 weeks and involved 3 access databases at just under 2gb each. I’ll move them to a network drive and save my poor pc soon.

I’m not sure how long it would take me to repeat the data, obviously less time than working it all out the first time. Another vote of confidence by the commercial head, good sign the head honcho approves of my work.

Smallville season 7 came to a close. Wow. Tension, drama and excitement.
Spoilers ahead.
Lex Luthor found out Clark is superman, his cousin became trapped in another dimension and then Lex used a crystal from Krypton to destroy the fortress of Solitude with Clark and Lex inside and thats where we ended.

September 1st is the return…….With big changes. The producers are gone. And going with them is the rule “No flights, no tights” brought in before the show starts. Season 8 (the final) will see Clark become the Superman. Suit, flying and the arrival of the indestructible Doomsday.

I’m very torn……..and in other news, Filler from addicting games.
Addictive games…………fuck you brucey.