The Grax Domain

30 Jan 2008 I don't like needles....

Apparently I did something amazing today. I donated some of my own blood.

Me, a guy who loathes having needles shoved into him for a mere moment, chose to allow a tube inserted into my arm and drain me for five minutes.

It wasn't the run down community centre that was bad. It wasn't the pin prick on my finger to get a drop of blood for an iron level test that was bad, though I did hesitate to begin with. It wasn't the overworked mature nurse that was talking to various patients that made me lose my cool. It wasn't the build up that freaked me out. It wasn't even the point just after the needle went into my arm that I panicked (I looked away at this point), although my lower half of my body did start to tingle for some reason.

It was when I looked at the red tube...

When I saw the needle in my arm...

When I saw how God damn big the was...

That I thought "Oh bum, there's a freaking huge needle in my arm"...

And I went from being slightly anxious to down right scared. Not 'throw your arms up in the air and scream' scared but a good healthy 'shallow breathing, manic laughing and shakes' scared. I was still trembling after 5 minutes and the needle was removed.

Seriously, I thought the draining needle would be thin, like the ones you get for blood tests. Not a freaking hose pipe.

And for what? To possibly save a life? Well the main reason why I did it was I wanted to do something that scared me. Needles scare me. Being brave and yadda yadda. Plus it's always handy to know at parties what your blood type is.

So hey ho, another notch on my belt of life. I hope someone enjoys my blood, with a slight ting of anxiety for flavour.

25 Jan 2008 One of the greatest t-shirts known to mankind

Ladies and gentlemen.... BEHOLD!



Thanks to the folks at the Penny Arcade Store I have in possession one of the greatest t-shirts known to mankind. Granted you need to be a Street Fighter fan to get any appreciation out of this. But seriously, if you're not a fan of the game then well... *shun*

In fact this t-shirt is so great it is in fact a replacement for my old and wore one.



Ah my old tee; so worn, so faded. It is time to retire the old dog. Maybe I can give it away to a friend or charity or something.

While I was browsing the store I noticed this t-shirt.


Shoot Him First

I've been playing a lot of Team Fortress 2 recently. So because of that and because of the weak US dollar, I picked up one of these too.

That is all.

20 Jan 2008 Lessons on room decorating

I've just come back from my weekend of helping my friend decorate her living room. From this I have learnt the following:

• Painting a room does not take a couple of hours, but rather many, many hours. No matter how small the room looks.
• It's always handy to have the right tools for the job.
• The size of your tool does bloody matter.
• Attaching a Philips screwdriver head to a long flat-head screwdriver with lots of sticky tape does not turn it into a useable long Philips screwdriver.
• Screws in walls are a good way of release manly grunts and growls.
• Asking for help unscrewing a tight screw in the wall does not undermine ones manliness.
• Painting a room at 2:00am is not for everybody.
• It's lots of fun to completely cover your hands in gloss paint, but it's a bit of a pain to get off your hands. And it makes your hands sticky and tingly.
• Not everyone will appreciate you getting your hands completely covered in gloss paint, not matter how much fun it is.
• Painting a room is bloody boring, no matter how much cheesy disco pop you play in the background.

I'm sure these life lessons will serve me well in the future.

19 Jan 2008 Buy Nothing Day: A way to spread a message

I was talking to my friend yesterday morning during our breakfast run. He talked about how the night before he attended this talk relating to the 9/11 event, the war on Iraq and what can be done against the political conspiracy (or something like that). During the talk he came up with a pretty good idea of spreading the message to politician.

His idea was to take a holiday called Buy Nothing Day and modify it or create a day called something like "Not Buying the War Day". The idea being if enough people bought absolutely nothing on this day it will create an impact on the economy that would make politicians take notice or even be embarrassed.

I thought the idea was intriguing and a good one. It would be pretty cool to see as an experiment what would happen if everyone in the country, if not the world, bought nothing and essentially stopped the flow of money. And of course I believe that no ordinary citizen wanted to go to war to Iraq.

Just imagine it. One person buying nothing will not make any difference. Neither would every person in a town. But if we could get everyone in a county/state to buy nothing that would be something. If we could get a whole country buying nothing for one day, that would be amazing.

If we could get everyone in the developed world buying nothing....

Spread the word, get preparing. Mark November 24h down on your calendars. Whether it be to speak a message or to conduct a massive economic experiment, let's make a difference.

13 Jan 2008 Smelly smoothie

Last week I bought myself a smoothie maker. Taking my healthy living New year's Resolution a bit too seriously I figured that I could get my 5-a-day intake by blitzing some fruit and stuff into a drink and quaff daily. Purely in the name of vitamins and minerals.

So far this week I have had a 5-a-day smoothie every day and it has been a tasty way to get my fix.

My question is despite using only fresh ingredients and the drink tasting great in the end, why does it smell bad in the smoothie maker just after the blitz? It doesn't make sense to me.

...

Yes I wash the smoothie maker before every blitz, so don't get smart with me! *points his finger*

10 Jan 2008 Showing a bit of sympathy for the working man in an evil corporation

It been a difficult few days at work recently. We're in full swing of the 'Test it, debug it, rinse and repeat' stage of our products life cycle. Because of this tedious process the level of team moral is getting a bit low. During one of my breaks I pondered over the possibility of over companies that are going through the same process as we are.

Then I thought about the evil corporations of TV and film. It occurred to me that most of the time their products, from the Mega Death Ray to the Super Soldier, failed when it mattered the most.

You've seen the scenarios. Some evil corporation has created this diabolical product that they claim is perfection and will allow them to fulfill their evil scheme, whether it be world domination or total annihilation. Yet when the hero arrives he manages to find the one fatal flaw in the system that completely ruins the evil corporation's notorious scheme, thus 'saving the day'.

A good example of this is the movie Drive. In the movie our hero, Mark Dacascos, is a prototype enhanced human and he faces his successor, who is suppose to be superior to him in every way. And yet the superior model developed a simple fault during the fight, which allowed Dacascos to overcome and defeat the superior model.

With such a fatal flaw with the evil product, you'd think that the creators and the development team would have ironed out those kinds of problems long ago. However if you think about the conditions and the pressures that the workforce are faced with, then you starting thinking that maybe it's not their fault.

They slaving away long hours over the labour of love (or tortured into it, either way), they have an obscene series of deadlines to meet, they going though fixing various bugs (which can be hard to fix if the bugs are attacking you), they don't manage to test every scenario (after all, it can't be easy to recreate the 'hero scenario'), it's no wonder that the ultimate weapon has a few kinks when the time comes to expose it to the world prematurely.

Of course its not like the developers don't know that it'll break. In fact they warn the big boss, they beg with the big boss not to release their creations too soon because 'it's just no ready yet'. But they get told to release it to the hero and, of course, it gets destroyed. I can imagine it being soul-crushing to see their hard work, their blood, sweat and tears get destroyed in front of their eyes. Those poor people.

So I raise my cup of tea in honour to all those poor development team members who have to see all their hard work being ruined because there just wasn't enough time to fully debug it all. Whenever I watch an evil corporation collapse and crumble on television because their doomsday device failed, I'll think of the people at the bottom of the work force muttering under their breath "I told the boss it just wasn't ready, it needed more time. No one ever listens to me..."

May their careers lead on to more fruitful things.

... Y'know, so long as they haven't been killed for 'their' failure.

4 Jan 2008 Ideas about Darwin, Adam and Eve

What if I was to suggest to you all that Charles Darwin had revoked his Theory of Evolution on his deathbed and that Adam and Eve were spawning kids long before The Apple Incident in the Garden Of Eden?

Last night I had helped a friend of a friend moved his things out of his house as he was being evicted. Afterwards we sat down, drank some wine and started to make small talk. Along the way I mentioned that I took the Alpha Course and, being a Christian himself, we had found a common ground to discuss deep and meaningful things. He told me many things related to Christianity and the bible, including how the length of a day in the 6 days of creation did not necessarily mean 24 human hours (after all God's perception of a minute could equate eons to mere human perception), the things that will happen up to and including The Second Coming of Jesus, and how other religions have got it wrong.

But it was two main points that came out of the conversation that really got my attention; Charles Darwin and Adam and Eve. I may not manage to write down word for word exactly what was said, but this was the general idea...

During our discussion Christian-Friend-Of-A-Friend (CFF) and I got onto the subject of evolution (as you do).CFF stated his beliefs, I stated mine. Then CFF stated that the earliest starting point of mankind according Darwin (monkey to man) does not match up with the starting point of mankind as stated in the bible; the bible dates back much further. Also CFF stated that Charles Darwin came to Christianity on his deathbed and actually took back his Theory of Evolution (or something like that). Now when you hear all this it sounds like Darwin had never been 'in touch' with Christianity and the bible has it all correct after all.

I was compelled to do some background research and I took a look at Charles Darwin on Wikipedia. The article tells the story of a man who did believe in Christianity. But over time his belief faded and had completely disappeared when his daughter, Annie, died in 1851. Later on in the article it states that the claim of Darwin reverting was refuted and dismissed by Darwin's children and historians alike. So it sounds like Carwin knew this Christian stuff and still said no. However one cannot draw conclusions from only these two sources (CFF and Wikipedia) and more cross-referencing must be done.

Still just because the evolution origin dates and the bible origin dates don't match up doesn't necessarily mean that one is right and one is wrong. Perhaps they can both be right and both have the same starting point, especially if you think about the different timescale perceptions between God and Man as stated earlier.

Now the next point that CFF made about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden I had never heard before, least of all from a Christian. It was both fascinating and refreshing.

As the story of Genesis goes Eve was tempted and ate The Apple from The Tree of Knowledge and then tempted Adam, who also ate the fruit. They realise what they have done, God casts them out of the Garden, Eve's punished with the pains of labour and periods, they give birth to Cane and Abel, Cane and Abel have their misadventures, they go off and they find other people in the world. CFF's made the following claim...

Adam and Eve lived for a long period of time in the Garden of Eden, in fact hundreds of years (which makes sense since there was no concept of death). During that time Adam and Eve would have been doing what comes naturally to them; reproduced. They would produce hundreds of offspring (and it wouldn't hurt Eve labour wise, remember that pain was a punishment for later) and their children could have gone off and populate the world. And when Adam and Eve ate The Apple the curse was passed down to all the offspring, which includes death.

So there you are, when Cane and Abel ventured out they actually met their relatives.

But there's something about this idea that doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me. Why would immortal creature reproduce? It doesn't seem to make sense in terms of ecological balance.

One of the main points of reproduction is to keep the species alive and to replenish numbers when they die. But if the organism doesn't die then the population will just explode wildly out of control. This would mean millions, billions, even trillions of human beings that consumed the Garden's resources (food, oxygen, etc) at an alarming rate. Not to mention taking up so much space. It would be like a virus! The only possible way the Garden could have supported this was that it produced unlimited resources and space. Which I suppose is possible, what with the unlimited power of God, but it doesn't seem very practical. There's no sense of natural balance for there to be immortal human beings that reproduced.

It was a fascinating 5 hours of discussion and it certainly gave me something to think about. But it's something that I would need to do more research into.

I may even...

*gasp*

I may even have to read The Bible.

What do you guys think of all this?

2 Jan 2008 New Years Plans for 2008

Happy New Year everyone.

... Oh... I'm a little late. Still nevermind.

Hope your guys New Years celebrations were fun. My New Years was big load of last-minute-pub-get-together-with-some-friends-with-drinks-and-a-splash-of-karaoke. Not bad. But looking at some old friends' photos of their parties made me think that maybe I should have spent more time catching up with them.

But enough about me, let's talk about me.

And I'm talking about New Years Resolutions.

After stumbling upon Secretia's New Years Resolution list for 2008 I thought to myself "Hell I'll give it a go myself". So I sat down and jotted down a list of things I think I can improve about myself.

And with that, as you all as my witnesses, I wish to present to you in no particular order, my list:

• Keep my room tidy - I thought I can cope with my 'systematic chaos' but really, the ever-creeping piles of crap is getting silly. I'm starting to lose things in my room it's that bad. No more I say!
• Learn Spanish - Just a little pet project I would like to do so that when/if I go to a Spanish speaking place I'll be ready for 'em
• Manage my time better - Between all the long hours spent at work, going to the pub with colleagues, procrastinating and playing games I felt like that I just run out of time to do stuff, or to even do nothing. I want my spare time back dammit!
• Find me a woman and keep her this time - Arguably the hardest and most important item on the list. Still I'm getting better at this woman malarkey...
• Manage my money better - Despite getting a higher paid job last year there still seems to be some plugholes where money seems to drain away. I need to plug them up and I think I know where they are
• Write my blog entries on time - I've been writing several entries in batches instead of a constant stream for a short while now. I don't know if it really a problem but it doesn't seem to be what professional do in the real world, does it?
• Look after my body better - I'm talking about getting back into exercises, eating more fruit and veg, get back into dancing. I let myself go over the months and it's starting to show.
• Spend more time playing with Flash - I've got a couple of ideas I wanna try out.
• Study the mystic arts to become Sorcerer Supreme - I'm sure I can fit that in somewhere...

I'm sure you will agree this list is quite achievable. Only time will tell.

Until 2009.