Thursday, November 23, 2006

Pink floyd experience

Awesome night! _ I just came home from 3 hours of awesome pumping Pink Floyd. The Wall presented on stage, and a fair amount of The Dark Side of the Moon album. Amazing!
The Pink Floyd Experience was worth every cent!
The guitarist was awesome and the lead vocalist was so passionate - he really acted the part well through the wall section - even including smashing a guitar! The saxophone had to be heard to be believed and the 3 female vocalists did their part very well as well.
Rock on!


Posted by: Jethro | 1:23 AM |

Sunday, November 19, 2006

What I did this weekend - Reptile enclosure, bike ride, work, movies

We are only a few days away from receiving our new baby bearded dragons - they are being flown up from Melbourne. So to be ready I had to build a enclosure. We were fluffing around trying to rearrange the existing tanks and work out where we were going to house the little beasties. Jude went to the dump for something and rung me all excited, they had a cabinet there at the recycle shop, $8. She ended up coming home with a rather large cabinet and a piece of tempered glass in a plastic frame. I spent Saturday morning building running tracks onto the front for the glass to slide in and out of. Saturday afternoon we went for a long drive - around a circuit near here over Mt Mee. It is a hard driving track with lots of windy hillclimbs and as the road was almost completely empty I was able to throw the Territory around like it was a sports car, keeping the engine gunning and minimal complaints from the kids. As always the view up the top was spectacular and the kids enjoyed that. Back home we finished off the cabinet, fitting 2 separate low voltage halogen lights for light and heat, and a uv tube for the uv rays the dragons need. A heat exhaust vent and switches for the whole lot installed and then a timer. I then spray painted it all black. Jude published pictures on the ARK reptile site.

Friday nights I now have two staff over working on projects, so thats Thursdays and Fridays now we have staff here for 5-6 hours a time. We made good progress on a job so that is good. I still have a lot of jobs on, new web sites being built as well as several software development projects. I am also consulting 3-4 days a week as a knowledge management evangelist in an funds investment company. I'm learning a lot as I go on that job about knowledge management, Office and Sharepoint 2007 and investment management strategy. I am working in Beta Funds Management Strategy for any readers who know what that means!

Saturday night we played games with the kids and watched movies together. Then Jamie and KristyLee came over and we played cards.

Sunday we went to church and then after lunch we kicked back for a while. Jude then went to visit her sister in hospital (new baby and infection after the ceasarian). The kids went to Grandma's to play with cousins and I went cycling. Had a hard ride up the hill and back, doing it quite a bit better than last time. The personal training we are doing each Monday is really starting to pay off.

Tomorrow I have to head to a couple of clients, then race home for PT.
Now its get some work done before hitting the sack.


Posted by: Jethro | 11:14 PM |

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

Books I have just finished


These books were all very powerful and opened up various emotions in me as I read them.

"Red Sky in Mourning" is the courageous story of a young woman lost at sea along after a vicious hurricane turned her yacht upside down, killed her mate and knocked her unconscious for a whole day.
A "voice" spoke to her during her moments of insanity, desparation and struggle for survival. I felt frustrated and empty at the end of the story as she seemingly ignored the voice and any command on her life after it had helped her live. The ending became an anticlimax. I felt she was so close to God and never found Him.

"In the Presence of my Enemies" is the exact opposite. Martin and Gracia Burnham were taken hostage in the Philippines and held captive for a year. They were marched over hill and dale running from numerous gun battles and worse. They starved, lived in constant fear, Martin was manacled to a tree each night, ravaged with fever and lost extreme amounts of weight. They battled with depression, bouts of despair and "Why me God?" Yet they learned in the end to love their captors, and discovered their innermost personalities, ugly as they can be. A warning to us all that given the right circumstances we could be as evil as the next person. In the final gun battle Gracia was wounded with a shot through her thigh while Martin and the last other remaining hostage were shot dead.

Jack is a frank and open discussion of the life at the helm of GE for John (Jack) Welch Jr. There is lots of very good business analysis and management technique to extract from the book. The one grating thread is his passion for integrity and how he demonstrated that in the company, yet managed to fail two marriages. I struggle to divorce the two concepts. Recommended for anybody with any passion for learning about big business and management theory in practice.


Posted by: Jethro | 9:05 PM |