Category Archives: Life

Compelled

Family, Humour, Life

When Claire and I are out and about at the shops, it is common to have people at payment counters ask what sex our unborn child is going to be – it’s great that they are interested. We’re happy to tell whoever is asking that we don’t know the sex of our child and that it is going to be a surprise. As soon as we’ve spoken those words, for some reason the people we’re talking to feel compelled to tell us the sex of our unborn child.

In the last eight months, I can’t count the number of times people have come up to Claire and said that she is having a boy or girl. Every time someone offers free advice on the matter, we ask them why we’re having a boy or girl and you get back reasonably consistent reasons that have a certain amount of wiggle room in them. As an example, common reasons are that your wife’s stomach is sitting high or low or that it is shape x or y. The wiggle room I’m talking about is that, different people suggest that sitting low is a boy or girl and likewise on the shape.

The other thing that I’ve noticed is that it tends to be older people that feel like guessing/telling us what sex our child is going to be. I got thinking about that the other day and it occurred to me that they might feel compelled to tell you the sex because in their day, being able to definitively know the sex of your child pre-birth wasn’t an option so it was normal to guess. I’m sure that the old wives tales were born by expecting parents asking their local doctors what sex their child was going to be (when he/she had no idea in the world) but felt obligated to come up with an answer and subsequently a reason.

What crazy theories have you heard about determining the sex of an unborn child without any scientific intervention?

Phantom Of The Opera

Life, Music

This evening I was fortunate enough to see the world acclaimed Phantom Of The Opera at the Lyric Theatre in Brisbane.

I say fortunate, as I some how managed to receive a ticket on the back of a birthday present for Claire from her parents this month. It was pretty awesome actually, as Lucy and Michael wanted to go and see it another time so there were four excellent seats beside one another. Claire and Lucy had seen Phantom Of The Opera three times prior, Michael had seen it once before recently, while this was my first experience.

I don’t know how to describe it accurately enough to do it justice, other than to say that the detail in the set was incredible, the costumes are great and Anthony Warlow has a truly magnificent voice. The female lead for Christine was played by Ana Marina, who I thought had an excellent voice. There is a schene toward the start of the first act, where The Phantom is yelling at Christine to sing for him; it gave me goose bumps!

The show is only on until the 27th April 2008 in Brisbane, so if you can still get tickets to it – I would highly recommend it.

Improved Fitness

Life, Sport

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been going to the gym before heading off to work in an attempt to improve my fitness.

When I decided that I’d start working out in the morning, I honestly wasn’t sure how that would pan out for me. It’s fair to say that I fit squarely into the night owl category in terms of sleeping patterns and I haven’t exercised in the morning since I was in high school. After waking up bleery eyed for a few days, my body was already adjusting to the changes and within a fortnight – it was feeling normal to be up and exercising.

A month has lapsed since adjusting to the morning exercise regime and in that time, I have increased all of my cardio work significantly. As an example, when I first started using a cross trainer or elliptical runner, I was feeling the burn after only 10 minutes on level 8 with a stepping speed of about 45 per minute. This morning by contrast, I exercised for 40 minutes on level 15 with a stepping speed over 55 per minute for the entire session.

One of the really nice side effects about improving my general fitness, is that it knocks on into other facets of my life. I’ve noticed after playing a couple of the top squash players in my grade, that I often feel aerobically exhausted and my legs are often quite tired as well. After losing a few kilograms and with the drastically improved fitness, I’m able to really take it up to the top guys in my grade; in fact three weeks ago one of them rolled me in a match and this Tuesday it was a roll reversal!

Next up I’m going to start blending more jogging into my morning exercise routine, in a hope of being in a reasonable state to complete the 10Km run in this years Gold Coast Marathon.

Straying The Path Of Righteousness

General, Life, Sport

It has finally happened, I didn’t think it would – I have been faithful for such a long time but it felt so right.

A week or two ago while at the gym, I was reminded ever so gently that my shoes needed replacing again. I’ve been using Asics sport shoes for a very long time, if I were to take a guess I would say since about 1995. During that time, I’ve been through a pair about once per year or just over. In most cases, the reason for upgrading was that the fabric in the heal of the shoes was wearing through, which is to be expected with a lot of use. I don’t recall ever wearing a sole out or having a blow out, even though the lateral movement from tennis isn’t what an average running shoe is designed to cater for. Despite literally daily use and a solid serving of abuse, they kept on keeping on.

I ventured into an Athletes Foot and stood in my socks on the pressure device and was quite shocked to see that I have even distribution of weight down both legs; apparently not normal at all. My arch is pretty standard, not too low and not super high which gives me a good selection of shoes to choose from. The bloke brought out a pair of Asics, New Balance and Brooks.

I tried them all on, the Asics were very familiar of course and felt really good. The New Balance were a little too narrow and I seemed to get quite a lot of roll in when I stepped, not enough support in the right spot for my size/weight I suppose. At this point, the Asics felt soo much better than the New Balance that I figured I’d end up with yet another pair of Asics; that was completely shot down after stepping into the latest release Brooks running shoe. To my complete surprise, the Brooks shoe was more comfortable in the sole and the width and length of the shoe was even better than the Asics but the clincher for me was the stability it provided when I walked in them – they virtually removed any roll in which I have (not a lot) but that small improvement makes my foot feel so much more stable in the shoe.

In the last two or three weeks since having the new Brooks running shoes, I’ve been giving them a bit of a workout at the gym. I can now quite comfortably jog for 20 minutes without feeling any soreness in my shins and I’m increasing that each week. I would love to keep the jogging up at the gym over the next couple of months and compete (read:finish without being near death) the 10km run for the Gold Coast Marathon in July this year.

In the meantime though, I’m enjoying straying the path of righteousness!

Regeekified

Hardware, Humour, Life

In May, I realised that over the course of the last few years some of my so called geek status might have been fading, as I lamented that I hadn’t taken the side panel off my computer for over 2 years. Over the last fortnight, I can confirm that I have been quietly re-estabilshing my geek-fu with the following hardware acquisitions:

  • Intel Core 2 3.0Ghz CPU
  • Asus P5E Motherboard
  • Asus GF8800GT 512MB
  • Corsair TWIN2X2048 8500C5D 2GB
  • Western Digital 74G SATA Raptor 10000 rpm HDD (16Mb Cache)
  • Western Digital 500G SATAII 7200 rpm HDD (16Mb Cache)
  • Liteon 20x DVD Dual Layer DVD+/-R SATA
  • CoolerMaster Real Power 550W Extreme

At the same time, I have installed Windows Vista Business, which was a pretty seamless exercise. After using it for the last fortnight, Windows Vista is certainly a visual upgrade from Windows XP Professional however there are a few things that keep getting in my road. Once I’ve fixed those and the Vista driver problems I’ve been having, I’ll reevaluate whether it is worth downgrading to Windows XP Professional.

Besides those few little problems I’ve had with Vista and driver support, the new computer components sure do hammer. I’ve been playing Counter Strike:Source, Team Fortress 2 and a few other games with the highest settings I can manage and it isn’t missing a beat.

For those that are interested, the Vista performance information for that above hardware is:

  • Processor, 5.6
  • Memory, 5.9
  • Graphics, 5.9
  • Gaming Graphics, 5.9
  • Primary Hard Disk, 5.9

I chuckled when my slowest component was my 3.0Ghz CPU!