New Years Eve Post & No Sigh

Dec 312010
 

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custom ROM posted by guys who finally bothered to root and mod the shitty Motorola Backflip, based on the only slightly out of date Android 2.1.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make their phone so anti-upgrading in terms of building lock down on top of lock down even though they still ship an out of date OS without any intention to release upgrades themselves to people outside US.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.

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Merry Xmas and all that

Dec 232010
 

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.

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Tonight Tonight

Dec 212010
 

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.

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Expectations and just chilling

Dec 172010
 

I’ve been watching a bit of Community

Community logo

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.

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Reason for not much sighing

Dec 012010
 

People have asked, yes they have, why I haven’t sighed recently. It’s because of being very busy and tired. All this is due to the usual root cause of sighs. So I won’t say too much more about that, except sigh.

But I have just got my new lego set!!!!!!!

AT-AT

It’s the motorised lego version. I’m really looking forward to assembling the lot when I get the time. Hopefully over a weekend soon. Thanks Salsa.

Also sigh super sigh, Xmas parties scratched due to bad publicity fears.

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World football commentary

Nov 222010
 

I listen regularly to World Football Phone In, on BBC 5Live. It’s a great show with lots of people around the world calling in talking about football and tangential issues with a panel of really good football journalists.

Anyway Tim Vickery was talking about families of Brazilian footballers in Europe and how displacement affects their kids. Apparently a lot of the kids grow up in a sort of no man’s land, people who don’t fit in any culture completely. Tim ends that discussion by commenting how those kids who are born or grow up outside the country their parents were from do get an advantage in terms of bilingualism but there is a worry that they are in no man’s land.

I feel like that sometimes. Not truly Aussie and definitely not wholly Chinese.

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Collection of sighs: silver bullet, spiders

Nov 162010
 

This sigh has been a couple of months in the making.

First let’s talk about the silver bullet. I really liked this car, it got me everywhere I wanted to go, was minimum fuss in terms of maintenance and most of all, cheap running costs. It was super fuel efficient and what it lacked in power, it made up for in sheer awesomeness and gusto. But alas, time ran out on this workhorse, after hail damage caused by parents leaving it outside because they wanted to get it clean, and too many kilometres driven, the curtains had to fall on silver bullet (aka Hyundai Excel sports edition). So we traded it in for a new car. This was a few months back now, but I’ve finally gotten around to blogging about it.

Here are a couple of pics of silver bullet’s swan song:

Driving silver bullet
That’s me behind the wheels

Last goodbye
That’s the last photo before we drove silver bullet to trade it in for Silver Bullet v2

So now I’m the half owner of silver bullet v2, aka Hyundai Getz. It’s a nice enough car, and I quite like Hyundai. But I don’t know, it doesn’t feel as comfortable as silver bullet, but I guess it’s a whole lot zippier.

The other sigh is the amount of spiders and cockroaches in my apartment. Even after 3 Mortein bombs, they are still prevalent. Everyday I kill at least 2 cockroaches or spiders. We do have bait everywhere in the apartment and they are meant to lure cockroaches, poison them but leave them alive long enough for them return to their nests for them to spread the poison to their comrades. So let’s see if their numbers decrease over time. Also we are yet to deploy external deterrents or defenses on the balcony. I do have a sneaking suspicion that all the curry cooking in our apartment building is luring those insects in.

You may be wondering why all the sighs Y? Is this a particularly bad period? Well the website is called “Ultimate Sigh” so obviously the content will be skewed towards sighs. It’s a selection bias designed from the start.

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Pain

Nov 152010
 

Argh! At work but continuous stomach pains. 🙁

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Sunset

Nov 122010
 

Last Saturday, me and Salsa went to the last Sydney concert of Powderfinger who are currently on their sunset tour.

We had general admission tickets and got there early, so got a standing spot right up near the stage. 🙂

sunset tour

The above picture was sneakily taken on my mobile. Can you believe that no photos by normal concert goers were allowed, and mobile phone usage was also not officially allowed, with security having the right to kick you out no question asked? That is pretty heavy handed in my opinion, all because pro-filmers and photo takers, as seen in the picture, can do their thing and sell you concert DVDs.

Anyway, the difference in the treatment of General Admission concert goers and those with seats was massive. GA people were herded around by security and had loud warnings about no moshing, crowd surfing, drugs or any other unruly things which we plebs do at the drop of a hat. The seated folks got proper and friendly customer service, and could enter at the actual entrance instead of basement.

The actual concert itself was excellent. The support band, Jet, rocked!!!! I don’t actually like listening to their music usually but when performed live, the energy and sheer wall of sound totally makes it a very enjoyable experience.

One lady in front of us cried when Powderfinger did their last song. I tend to think their songs are alright, with only a few standouts. :p

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Contact

Nov 102010
 

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. 🙂

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