So I promised to write about the scam I actually was hoodwinked for 20 seconds. This one is fairly sophisticated.
I recently received a letter from Domain Name Registry saying that ultimatesigh.com was up for renewal at the end of the year and that I should send payment details in the included return envelope to ensure noone else gets it.
Wow
I thought,
a year really went fast.
I actually considered plonking money into the envelope for a second. Then I had a good look at the price. It was $45 to renew for one year.
WTF
I thought. I had registered with My Domain for $10 and I thought the renewal was just another 10. For a split second I thought the letter was from My Domain. Then I realised the name was different and return address was in Aust. Turns out the company is called MelbourneIT and apparently they must trawl through domain registers looking for Aust domain owners. They then send an official looking letter asking for a fairly large sum to shift the registry to them and to re-register your domain through them. Their date for ultimatesigh’s expiry is like 4 months early too, probably to scare you even more. I think quite a few unwitting domain owners may fall for this trick. Sneaky but profitable business they’ve got. 🙁
So in the end sigh is still here.
So what do people think? Would people rather 3 day weekends or to work every second day only? I would choose to work every 2nd day only.
Here’s why: I think that a lot of the reasons for people being depressed at work, especially Mondays, is that they
have up to 4 more days of straight work before having a break. It’s the fact that there is so much more to bear before finally a break that makes people feel sad. But if you only had to hold on for the remainder day before your next break? Well that’d be like a Friday every work day. It’s not so bad anymore. You can see the end, it’s within reach. Like the song says you only have to “Hold on for one more day”.
So what do you guys think? I’ve set up this forum topic for everyone to vote on.
According to this SMH article women prefer to quit work and become housewives if they can.
Well no shit. That was bloody obvious. I think most people would prefer to stay at home and / or something that they like and find interesting without the pressure of that something needing to generate enough income to support you. Most of the people who tell me to simply go do “something I like” are women. But then they are invariably supported or plan to be subsidised by partners / family to enhance the income they get from their oh so fulfilling roles. So to those people with that advice to me, STFU. You think that it hadn’t crossed my mind before, or that I am not currently looking out for easier / better paying roles to allow me more free time or to gain financial independence faster? The thing is, finding something like that is hard and I don’t have the luxury of the option to marry up. Well I guess I do, but it’s pretty fucking unlikely. Just like I theoretically have a chance of striking it big in a jackpot win. So if you bring up the subject of work with me and ask me if I’m happy with it, prepare to get a genuine answer from me. Life is not always rainbows and unicorns. Sometimes people don’t like what they are doing but they have to do it anyway at least for the time being. You don’t have to try to enlighten me with your wisdom, and improve the situation for me, actually I would rather you kept your “oh why don’t you do something you like?” shitty simplistic suggestion out of the discussion. End of rant.
I’m a little late in announcing this, but the Ultimate Sigh Forum is up. You can access it from the top menu, it’s the right most item.
It’s now fully functional and there’s an appropriate image representing each sub-forum, ones that I know Suti will like.
Now if only I can win lotto.
I think I’ve said this many a time, I’ve never had a good new years eve. It’s always been either me being sick or tired or not actually having a good time. I think most of it has to do with the fact that we try so hard to make this one night of the year super awesome fun.
But this year I think I’m playing it super low key…just going to a friends down the road for a drink and chillage…so hopefully this will break the trend.
I also just finished Gears of War2 yesterday (having taken a work at home day). It was a pretty good finish, quite easy last level compared to what came on the way to the last level. Now I just have to wait another 2 years or so for the next one to be released and drop into the bargain range. There’s also still Skibi’s Castle to conquer….respect.
In a stream of consciousness post, I upgraded my phone’s OS last night from an ancient Android 1.5 to a custom ROM posted by guys who finally bothered to root and mod the shitty Motorola Backflip, based on the only slightly out of date Android 2.1. I swear this is the last phone I buy from Motorola. I actually quite like their Blur service, which backs up all the contacts up automatically, but they make their phone so anti-upgrading in terms of building lock down on top of lock down even though they still ship an out of date OS without any intention to release upgrades themselves to people outside US. Fortunately the modders have put together a pretty good ROM as well being l33t enough to bypass their lockdown. The process was anything but painless though. If not for some persistence and searching, the phone would be either a brick by now, or still running 1.5. Basically it’s too hard and an arduous for your normal consumer to do, which is what I guess Motorola is aiming for, so they can sell another phone with a newer OS as an upgrade.
Finally, happy new year everyone. May we sigh less in 2011 with big wins ahead.
Merry xmas and happy new year from ultimatesigh.com. It’s been a very sighful and eventful year personally, not so much career wise. Who would have thought ultimatesigh would still be up.
Forums will be added soon so all impromptu sighs can be discussed, and of course once I have the mailserver configured correctly, we can look forward to @ultimatesigh.com addresses to anyone who wants it.
Time is never time at all, you can never ever leave, without leaving a piece of youth
That’s from the Smashing Pumpkins song, a song I really loved back in high school and uni. What the fuck does it mean? Who knows? But it sounds good and it’s pertinent because it talks about the leaving of youth. Sometimes I have to ask what the fuck is it I’m doing? I’m fiddling around with blogs like I did with this particular blog back in the day. I’m listening to the same songs, I’m commenting out some code in vi like I did back at uni (although this time it’s just a 1 liner for wordpress to recognise local host and not assignments).
Do I want there to be more in life? Sure I do. But I don’t want to climb the corporate ladder and chain myself to the desk. I don’t want to work 10 – 12 hours a day, 5 days a week. You know what? I like writing blogs, I like vi, I like fucking around and pissing my time away. What I don’t like is the feeling of only doing the say so of other people. I’m not just talking about work. I’m talking about personal life. Sure you had to do what your parents told you when you were a kid, but you had such shit loads of time that it didn’t matter, it didn’t eat into the meager personal time that you had. Now away from the office and you have obligations with parents plus you also have obligations from significant others and you have to use up time to deal with each and every one of those issues. Sometimes, I like to say that I feel like a 28 year old boy. Majority of the time I am happy even though I sigh, but sometimes I like to bust out some depressing songs and write some rants.
Life is for rich people to laugh at the rest of us
As said by Sutit.
Go to uni…then what?….then get a job…then what?….then get married…then what?…then have kids….then what?….then you get old and die. It’s the dot dots that I want to populate with then I chill.
I’ve been watching a bit of Community
It is a great show and very funny. At least the first season that I’ve watched is anyway.
The main point I want to get across though is that the show actively promotes lower expectations by showing how liberating and happy that can make people feel. For example, in the show the star high school quarterback was crippled with expectations and ended up deliberately injuring himself so he didn’t have to face the final game. Then in community college where noone cared he was free to just play and enjoy the game again. Basically much of the show is about not caring about expectations anymore because noone expects much from community college students and that one shouldn’t beat themselves up so much if they don’t achieve everything they set out to.
Just enjoying the journey, chilling with friends, having heaps of fun and doing stupid shit is pretty good too. Well that is my take from the series. As I think about work and how infinite it is, I often think why we push ourselves to do even more stuff at or for work. It’s not like there’s a finite amount and once you push yourself to get it all done in extra time, then you can relax and do all the things you were holding off on doing. Work is the ultimate time sink, the more you put in, the more it takes. There will always be work to do at work. No matter how much effort or time you put into it. So why not do all those other things you wanted to do for yourself when you can? Do a good job at work, for whatever definition of “good” you want to use, then leave and do the shit that really matters to you. In the end the people who get ahead in life are either truly doing what they like and/or extremely gifted anyway and/or manipulative psychopaths and/or super charming or hot.
So let’s all be a community and not worry about killing ourselves for European handmade faucets or luxury cars made from unobtanium. Time you spend doing that is time you miss out doing better stuff, like upgrading to KDE4.6 or playing soccer or whatever floats your boat.
In a bid to improve the feedback loop on this blog, and because I’m killing time before 5, I’ve implemented a feedback form that can be accessed if you click on the “Why Sigh? | Contact yman” heading in the menu. Scroll past the vid and there should be a form where you can fill out your details and an email will be sent directly to me. With any luck I won’t get spam. 🙂