Personal

I finally picked up my car last Friday. Over the weekend I’ve been pinching myself because it really doesn’t seem true. It took such a long time to get the car, mainly because the title to the car got lost for a while. Without that title I could not do a damn thing. As it turned out even though the title arrived on Friday, I nearly didn’t get the car that day because I forgot about state tax on the car and didn’t have enough cashola on me. I had to go to an ATM and withdraw more cash. I had hit the limit for that day on my US bank card so I tried my Australian bank card. It did not work. I tried it in several more ATMs. Still no go. I had to go back to my bank at work and withdraw more cash from my US account. Over the weekend I found out why my Aussie card was not working. Apparently the bank had blocked the card because some wankers in Malaysia were fraudulently using my card details. Nice. ...

I just learnt that Ministry of Sound have released a new album called “Back to the old skool” and it’s got some wickedly old tracks on it. Saying that though must mean I’m getting old. Is 26 really that old? Anyway, I think this album would be most appropriate for a rollerskating farewell party.

This is somewhat of a sad post. I just learned that an old friend who I went to primary and high school back in Australia died in an motorcycle accident last night. Although I didn’t keep in contact with Rob much since I started Univerisity, there are things that come to mind when his name is mentioned: - Him not allowing me to play on the play equipment with the other people in my class back in early primary school. I don’t know why he did that, but I remember standing up to him one day and saying something like “I will play with my other friends because I want to!” We got along fine after that. ...

This is the first post from my new apartment in the US. My flatmate and I just got the wireless network up and running and everything seems to be working a-ok. From the gap in the blog postings you may have thought that I had run out of steam. Not so. I’ve just come back from a long weekend of partying in Key West, frolicking with alligators and having an awesome sing-a-long/play-a-long session at a friend’s birthday party. Prior to that I very busy with work and trying to tie up loose ends over here in the US. To those of you I have promised things or have e-mails to reply to - you know who you are - you’ll be hearing from me in the near future.

I honestly could not think of anything more appropriate than the above title. Honestly. Yes, Ft Lauderdale and surrounding areas got hit by hurricane Katrina last week, which meant we got Thursday and Friday off of work! Of course, that didn’t really mean you could do anything… it was too dangerous to go outside not only because of what might be lying around, but because a lot of traffic lights were out and that’s just scary. ...

Righty, another storm looks like it’s going to hit here. Whether it will be a hurricane by the time it makes landfall is another story, however from the brief visit to the Target store I just made I could plainly see that some people were in a state of hysteria again. It was all “hurricane this… hurricane that” at the cash registers and people were stockpiling big time. Onto other interesting things, there was a discussion with my lunch group regarding gay marriage and whether it should be allowed or not. The discussion got very heated but I didn’t really join in as I have not formed an opinion on the issue yet. I don’t think I ever will actually as I don’t really care about it. Some people in the discussion were against it because it would indicate to people that being a homosexual was normal, when in fact they argued it was not. Others argued against that saying that it’s their right to get married if they want to. The counter arguement to that was that the only real rights we have are to food, shelter and safety or something like that. This went on for a while and it sort of got into a “think about the children” case. ...

Right now I am completely and utterly exhausted. Hold on, I think I’ve written a post starting like that before. During the week I sealed the private purchase of my new car. I’ve sent the cheque off to the seller’s financing company but I won’t be actually picking up the car until next week. Once I get the existing title, but more importantly the insurance sorted out, then I can pick up the car. ...

Today when I arrived at work I witnessed something quite amazing. What I saw could be best described as a sure-fire way of finding redundancy candidates. At my work there are boom gates such that when an employee pulls up next to one, access into the facility is granted via waving an ID in front of the scanner to raise the boom gate. Sounds complex? No bloody way. So what do you think would happen if there was no boom gate? What if the boom gate had been broken off by some fuel guzzling SUV earlier on in the morning? Do you think people would analyse the situation and not bother scanning their ID because it isn’t fricken required? Some people would, BUT, statistical analysis showed over half the people wouldn’t. If you want comedy that comes in the “I can’t believe I’m seeing this” flava, all you have to do is watch this for 5 minutes to see that over half the people at your work are drones.

This week has been absolutely insane, hence, no updates. I think I pissed off a lot of car salesmen last weekend when I went looking for cars. That tired me out a lot. I think for most of the day I was saying “no, I’m not interested in buying!” They are extremely persistent buggers over here, much more so than what I experienced in Australia. Once they actually realise you’re not going to buy they turn into incredibly rude people. Mind you, I was looking at used car dealerships where they’re not really interested in forming a relationship with the customer so maybe that had something to do with it. ...

Crazy Lightning Flickr: Crazy lightning Over the weekend there have been some massive thunderstorms here in South Florida. Today in fact there was a strike so close that it made my speakers squeal from all the interference. Here is one of the shots I was able to get. The lightning in this shot was striking ground somewhere behind the apartment. Still pretty damn close though.