The Grax Domain

31 May 2006 One Word Blog Day

Bugger

What are you talking about?

29 May 2006 Frasier, Transformers, and a White Cheetah

I had a dream last Sunday 21st May, but I've been busy to be able to put anything down onto this site. Luckily I managed to write down most of the dream when I woke up, so now I can share what I experienced.

I don't remember the first part of the dream, but I remember how it carried on...

It was an episode of Frasier. He had invited a groups of old boffins (A scientist, especially one engaged in research.), white beards, glasses and all. They were sitting around the table trying to figure out what to put on display at some science show. Frasier and Niles were in the kitchen being worried about how to keep the boffins entertained, as well as making their usual comedic comments (there was no canned laughter from the audience). Then one of the boffins saw an old grandfather clock in the room. Gazing into his reflection he is hit by inspiration. He know what to make on the stand; a clock that is always accurate and never stops. At first the others were confused by this proposal, but they slowly came to realise that this is a fantastic idea! Everybody was happy.

This somehow lead to me working out that there's going to be an alien invasion sometime between the years 2050 and 2555. I told people around me, then jokingly said "Oh that's alright, I'll probably be dead through old age by then."

In the next part of my dream I'm at home with my family (my mum, my brother, and my grandparents) and we're all around a table playing a friendly game of poker. Next thing I knew we're all in this ballroom/nightclub place dancing away. And there were Transformers there, real life full sized Transformers! There was a girl I knew from salsa dance class and I tried to dance with her, but it ended up in disaster as I kept stepping on her feet.

The next morning me and my family discovered that my brother ended up buying a cheetah using a credit card. I think it was when he was drunk, but I'm not too sure. So we went to the zoo where it was being kept and my auntie we on the phone talking to customer service trying to convince them to cancel the cheetah order. I looked at the cheetah my brother bought; it was white with cheetah spots all over. I sat upon the wooden fence and watched it in awe. It then looked at me, jump onto the fence and sat next to me. It was being friendly to me and I scratched behind its ears.

I remember reading a TV guide magazine. I was glancing at the kids channel section and I'm sure I saw The Childrens Channel in the listings. Anyway I distinctly remember one movie that caught my eye; "Mega Man Movie: The End". It was a Mega Man anime movie (y'know, Mega Man from Capcom fame) and he was killed by some Multi-headed Man enemy.

Anyway my auntie had given up with customer service at this point and gave the phone to me to deal with them. There was an Indian woman on the other line. She was trying to convince me to not cancel the order of the cheetah that my brother made, but I was not having any or it. I was getting more and more irritated by this. Then I happen to see my dad who was at the local market. He was wearing his cyber-goth gear on, rather than the conservative look that I normally dream him being in. He smiled at me and waved.

Then I saw in the distance a tiger. It looked like Sher Khan from the Jungle Book. It was evil. You could tell it was evil because he had evil, villain music playing in the background. He said something and then grinned a wicked grin showing off more teeth than it was actually possible to fit in his mouth. I shrugged it off and carried on talking to customer service.

I then woke up in real life. The thing is when I awoke I had my hand by my ear like I was holding a telephone receiver. And I think I was muttering in my sleep too.

20 May 2006 A quick to-do list

OK now that I have some free time on my hands (in theory) I'm going to use this time to sort out various web projects of mine that really need to be finished. These are the things I plan on resolving:

1. Update my Cv (most important)
2. Update the Magic 8 Ball (it's looking shoddy and I'm getting sick of cleaning out the spam every 10 minutes)
3. Give The Art of Grax site a complete restructure (it still uses tables! *shudders* Bad Grax!), as well as trying to throw in some pictures into it
4. Tweak The Grax Domain in various ways

The first point is the most important thing that needs to be dealt with and I hope to complete it by the end of this weekend. The other stuff can be dealt with at a later date.

In unrelated news I've been loosing a couple of things; first off I'm still loosing my hair. Not a good thing, I was hoping by some miracle it would be growing back now that stress levels are not so high. But oddly enough I've also lost some weight somehow! I've lost an inch off my belly in the past few weeks. I dunno how I did it; I haven't really done anything like more exercise to loose it, but I'm glad its gone. Perhaps its down to the lifestyle of staying up stupidly late playing Second Life every night (and thusly not eating as often as I should). Mind you my eyes look terrible... =/

15 May 2006 My representation of my father

I had a dream last night. I don't remember any of the details. All I do remember is that it featured a stoney beach on a cloudy day and my family, especially my father. The main reason I remember this is because he looked like how he used to look about ten years ago, when he had a more conservative look about him rather than the cyber-goth look that he has now.

The thing that I've noticed is that whenever I have a dream with my dad in it, he looks like what he did back in my youth rather than what he looks like now. Especially in this dream and this dream. Why do I do this?

11 May 2006 Nezis.co.uk version 2.0

I've finished remaking my illustrator friend's site. It's taken a couple of months worth of free evenings to complete. Even though I can't take any credit for the design of the site, I've really proud about the coding I used to make it work. It's an infusion of Flash, Actionscript, PHP and XML, all coming together like a mass orgy of love. All for 85k worth of filesize (plus the external picture that gets loaded)!

Anyway, feel free to have a look. Let me know what you think of it. ^_^

www.nezis.co.uk

7 May 2006 Soy Loco!

It's Sunday 7th May...
I just got back from work half an hour ago...
I've been working on a site all day that has to go live very soon...

And I have been slowling going more insane...

It's really bad. I've been trying to talk to my work collegue (who is also been working with me today) and explaining to him what needs to be done to fix various bugs, but he couldn't understand me. It's not that I was muttering, its that the things I was saying didn't make any sense. I guess I wasn't speaking in English; I was speaking in a language that requires few words and the ability to read my thoughts.

... Good God I'm talking in riddles like a woman! :-P

3 May 2006 Stupid mistake at work

So I did something rather stupid and insensitive to the wrong person today. I insulted the Bigboss at work this morning. I'm not sure if it was by accident or on purpose, I'd rather not thing about the reasoning behind it.

The basic idea is that it was our daily morning meeting; the kind that brings everyone up to speed about how everyone is doing. I was generally in a bad mood, mostly because I'm thinking about the big project I'm working on, partly due to the lack of sleep I've been getting for the past few days. Totally self inflicted I might add, so I deserve no sympathy.

It came to my turn and I became very, very sarcastic. I ran down the list of things to do but said it in a sarcastic overtone ("pulling a miracle out of our ass", "palming work to him upstairs", etc). It was mean to be talked to everyone but I was looking mostly at Bigboss; so I could see how she thought it was aimed at her. I was trying to be light-hearted and not try to be too serious. But not did I cross the line; I took a shit on it as I passed. Suffice to say that Bigboss was not happy. She looked at me scornfully and said "Is that sarcasm I hear?!" and carried on at me in a raised voice about how what I said was very inappropriate and how hard she's working trying to keep everyone happy. Which is technically true.

Anyway we went our way and I went about making me tea rounds. My immediate boss took me to one side and told me about how unwise and inappropriate I was talking that way and that I should go apologise to Bigboss. I'd told various work colleagues what I had done. Not in a boastfully way, just so they know what was going on. I will admit it now I would be lying if I didn't feel a sense of satisfaction that anybody would have felt talking back at their boss while they're in a bad mood. I just had the audacity (read stupidity) to do so. It wasn't until I told one work colleague when I felt the full guilt of what I did.

I got to the last person on my tea round and cheerfully she asked how I was. I told her what I did. She replied with a disappointed "Oh Grax..." and looked at me with a mothers disappointment; the kind that cuts right into a childs heart. I felt so guilty and terrible, I was actually quite horrible and I didn't mean to be. My mind was beginning to flood with all these afterthoughts about the consequences of my actions. I blocked them out the best I could, I had work to do and I was going to apologise to Bigboss. Just walk in for a few minutes and explain that I was wrong and that I am sorry. Which is harder than it sounds, considering that is Busy Season at work and people have to do a dozen things at once, especially Bigboss.

A few hours I finally got to see Bigboss in her office. I closed the door, we sat down and I apologised. I told her that it was wrong of me to act that way, me being busy was no excuse (especially as how she was comparatively more busy) and that I am sorry. She said that being sarcastic is no way to talk to a human being and that it's horrible to be at the receiving end. She then told me that everyone else who was at the morning meeting had gone up to her saying how appalled they were at me. I was shocked. I tried not to be, but I was visibly shocked. I didn't think they gave a shit.

Afterwards we went back to our work. She seemed okayish really, but basically I don't think I'll be recovering from my moment of recklessness anytime soon. I wonder how many people I've offended unintentionally in my life with my sarcasm and bluntness. I'm only trying to be funny and light-hearted. Mind you I never said that I was a funny guy. :(

Oh well.... so much for my bonus this year...