Greetings,
I've taken a look back at blogging and the Bloggosphere (there! I said it!), and for me, I started tapering off blogging right about the time when work swamped me to death (I'd say mid of 2012) and when Blogspot / Blogger / Google changed the blog posting page. Yeah you could do a little more, but something about posting now was a little different, a little.... clinical.
Though don't get me wrong, I love writing.
I've seen a move for more commercial blogs in the past year (and by that I mean 2011 - 2012) and people throttling back on personal / private blogs. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
I've got mobile devices with blog apps, so lets see where and how 2013 turns out.
Dav out
I know
Caught up in the middle
I cry just a little
When I think of letting go
Oh no
Gave up on the riddle
I cry just a little
When I think of letting go
Greetings,
My last post was roughly June 19, 2012. Since then, I've been mainly hiding, because of the cops.
I was hoping to sell my story to MGM or some other movie studio, but then McAfee had to show up and go completely bat-sh*t insane. No one's going to want to buy my story now when compared to his?
 |
| I'm Tony Stark after a weekend of drinking |
I've given up trying to out-bat-shit-insane him. Its just not possible. Or it is, but its not worth my liver.
Trying something else now.
Dav out
Hiatus
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
| Author:
Dav
I'm going away for a bit. A hiatus of sorts.
Watch this space.
Dav out
I'm at a payphone trying to call home
All of my change I spent on you
Where have the times gone, baby it's all wrong
Where are the plans we made for two?
Greetings,
I caught this on the news today:
"Starbucks to phase out coloring from crushed beetles"
I'm like, yeah, so maybe its on their logo or on cups or something. Turns out I'm wrong. Oh. So. Wrong.
"Starbucks Corp said on its blog on Thursday that it will stop using a natural, government-approved coloring made from crushed beetles in its strawberry flavoring by late June, bowing to pressure from some vegetarian customers."
Wow. Crushed bugs? Seems like Starbucks has been using the extract in its strawberry frappuccinos and smoothies, as well as some deserts like raspberry swirl cake.
- Lucky I'm not a strawberry frapp kinda guy
- I'm more of a cheese cake person
Turns out that this isn't a new thing.
Wikipedia says that the dye has been in use since the 15th century to dye material a deep crimson colour.
Now, FYI, this is what goes into your drink (ground up of course):
 |
| Shaken, not stirred please |
Once you get over the whole "There's BUGS IN MY COFFEE?" it seems like this is pretty much a normal thing, the US FDA says its ok with them.
 |
| Uh, mom, why's that barista crushing something to a bloody pulp and adding it to my drink? |
Well
veterinarians vegetarians all around the world should be able to breathe a sigh of releif as Starbucks will be amending their recipes to make use of lycopene, a natural, tomato-based extract.
Next we'll have this happen and give up on that as well.
 |
| We should have used beetles instead! |
Dav out
I like it like that!
Hey windows down, chillin’ with the radio on
I like it like that!
Damn, the sun’s so hot, make the girls take it all off
I like it like that!
Yeah, one more time, I can never get enough of everybody
Sing it right back, I like it like that!
Greetings,
Well I spent the weekend thinking of how I could execute a plan I had in my head on building a note / recipe holder that could double up as a sign or marker board (that I could clean easily). "Clean" being the key word here.
I've been toying around with the general idea and design in my head for a few weeks, and since I wasn't getting any work done just thinking of it, I thought lets just jump in and get this done.
 |
| Pictured are recipe's stuck on my new holder / marker board. Behind it is a doorway to hell. So uh, stay away |
Generally I wanted to get rid of some spare scrap aluminum I had lying around. I really wish i had some more ferrous material instead so this little hack could have turned into something I could use magnets with as well. *shrug* next time I guess.
No use re-writing it, click on the link below to get sucked into a detailed run through:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Kitchen-recipe-holder-sign-board/
Enjoy!
Dav out
Skies are crying, I am watching
Catching teardrops in my hands
Only silence, as it's ending, like we never had a chance
Greetings,
Recently I've been peppered by a different kind of pop, namely K-Pop. I blame MTV (MTV Asia to be precise) because they tend to lace their normal music video programms with K-Pop music videos.
From what I've seen so far Korean Pop (K-Pop) comprises of a special formula:
- Male artist - androgynous
- Female artist - as many as you can pack into a bus
- Female artist - legs, as many as you can pack into a bus
- Any artist - must be able to say these words in English - "Yeah. Oh baby. Yes. OK etc"
- Not afraid of glitter and makeup
Seriously, some of these Korean bands have up to 13 members.
Thirteen.
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| Hi, can we just have the band in here please? Oh, you ARE the band? |
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|
|
|
Its not surprising that many of the female bands dress the way they do, its a multi million dollar (Won or Won, you pick) industry. Being sexy translates into more album sales, and more work.
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| For the Korean won before the North–South division, see Korean won. |
I'm not going to throw around K Pop band names, that's what Google is there for. Super Junior, Wonder Girls, 4 Minutes by the way are just to name a few. Band shelf life goes from anywhere between 6 months to 10 years, depending on the Scoville scale of how hot you are.
One bit of news I found a little amazing while reading up on K Pop is that there have been plans by
South Korea to weaponize it, just to annoy the hell out of North Korea. Just imagine playing
Avicii - Levels, over and over again just because your idiot neighbor does home improvement work on a Sunday morning.
 |
These aren't cute girls, they're actually Voltron in disguise.
You just need to know how to assemble them the right way |
I think the boots market should be doing very well in Korea.
Dav out
Blur
Sunday, January 29, 2012
| Author:
Dav
Greetings,
2012 has been a blur. Happy New Year. Happy Chinese New Year.
I can't seem to sort things out to make some breathing room, but I'm working on it. 2012 started out rough, its been a challenge but its not going to be too difficult to pull through.
Dav out
I can taste the tension like a cloud of smoke in the air
Now I'm breathing like I'm running cause you're taking me there
Don't you know...you spin me out of control
Greetings,
I use a
LOT of Excel in my everyday life. I blame work (of course I blame a lot of things on work, but that's for another blog post).
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| Crazy, but not that crazy |
Excel makes things..orderly. Order is good! Order is next to Godliness I hear. Anyway, I'm sidetracking.
I periodically (re: every Friday) send out an email to some of the guys at work with some weekend music, and after a while I was receiving requests for spesific songs and couldn't keep track of what I've sent out and what I had cued on for the following weeks.
Cue Excel!
So from a 3 column sheet, I progressed on to a 8 column Excel sheet, and more importantly, a drop down for song status where I could select 'Sent' or 'Not Sent'.
After a while (22 new rows) I was sorting each row by Status and I realised the way I was managing the 'Sent' status could be done in a more logical, automatic manner. So I fired up Google and looked up IF statements as well as Nested Statments.
Microsoft's Help page was not so much help because I was not looking for a complex macro. About.com's page on nested IF statements hit the nail on the head for me.
This page had a simple to understand example, and got me thinking that I could just simplify an IF formula in Excel to do what I wanted.
My requirements were simple, if I put in a date in a column (Sent Date), I wanted the column (Sent Status) to change to "Sent". If there was no date value, I'd want the column to say "Not Sent".
Warning, formula below!
=IF([@Date]> 1,"Sent", "Not Sent")
Sample excel below FYI
http://www.mediafire.com/?ksktpp1aqraljxg
So I've nerded out this week. I am ashamed.
Dav out
I resolve to call her up a thousand times a day
Ask her if she'll marry me
in some old fashioned way
But my silent fears have gripped me
long before I reach the phone
And before my tongue has tricked me
Must I always be alone
Greetings,
It's one of those dates that's really memorable. Pretty neat date / time, the next we'll have would be next year when its 12/12/12, 12:12:12. So we've almost maxed out the 12 hour count, lets enjoy it while we're able to. Another added advantage is that its a Friday, so TGIF.
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| Shown - cool date and time. Not shown - the crazy drinking planned for later |
Stay safe people!
Dav out
Greetings,
I've been putting this off for a while, mainly because I didn't want to jump on the bandwagon. So, here it is. RIP Steve Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011).
There are so many photos out there of him, and some of them have been used on every site possible. Instead, I'm opting to have this photo, to remember him by. Taken in 1979 (wow, special year that eh?), you cant but help think that he's a natural born sales person. A pioneer even.
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| Steve Jobs poses with an Apple computer, September 1979. Photograph: Ralph Morse/Time & Life Pictures/Getty |
His passing was pretty much a shock, mainly due to the fact that the new iPhone was launched not days before.
I've never really been a fan of Apple products, but my issues with Apple were mainly centered around the proprietary way Apple's products worked. iTunes nearly cost me my sanity once, so never again I promised myself. Did their products work? Yes. Did the products do things in a new, unique, human way? Yes. And that's where Jobs excelled. That's where I think Apple excelled. Pushing the envelope.
Let's see who picks up the mantle now.
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| Jobs - the man with a vision, the money to pull it off, and the insane mad drive to make things happen |
Huge loss. Would love to read the full autobiography when it comes out. For now, there's a
great review here.
Dav out
Oh my life is changing everyday
Every possible way
Though my dreams, it’s never quite as it seems
Never quite as it seems
Greetings,
Its a huge pet peeve for me, that in this time and age, we're still using pieces of glass and silver paint in vehicles that can cost up to $1 million. I'm talking about rear-view and wing mirrors.
Imagine that! We're placing our lives and very expensive automobiles in the hands of glass, that costs maybe say $5 (just the glass, the case etc might cost you more). The automotive industry has improved by leaps and bounds since the first Ford T, but we cant seem to get away from rear-view and wing mirrors.
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| If you sneezed just right I'll shatter |
|
|
Its 2011! We should have like, laser rangefinders with video cameras and
FLIR built into them!
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| Pictured - FLIR. Not pictured - deer he just ran over |
I can see the issues related to having a bunch of video screens or cameras built into your car and dash, but they cant be any more distracting then having to look at 3 separate pieces of glass. With the technology available, we're able to build in proximity detectors, distance (rangefinder) measurements (great for parallel parking) and, if you're feeling really high tech, an Idiot Detector 7000™. Just maybe.
Me? On top of getting rid of those silly wing mirrors (how many times has someone smashed yours off?), I'd want to mount a machine gun on my car. Just for those special moments when you have someone cut you off or jump queue. Would be
perfect.
 |
| What? Too much? |
So yeah.
Maybe its just me.
Dav out
Hey, if we can't solve any problems
Then why do we lose so many tears?
Oh, so you go again
When the leading man appears
Always the same theme
Can't you see
We've got ev'rything going on and on and on
Greetings,
I got held up in traffic the other day, mainly because there was a building fire close to where I live. What got to me was the new fire department uniforms. For some reason, it looks like we've roped in Andy Warhol (and maybe his weight in coke) to design these colour swatches.
You call that a colour pallet?
I can't understand what they were going for. Fire cameo? If it was me, and I was headed into a blazing inferno, I'd like to do it knowing that if I fell over or something, that my buddies would be able to find me in all that smoke and flames and stuff. That's why a lot of first responders and other jobs that require high visibility get issued clothing with luminescent strips. So that they are
visible.
Lets look at a simple comparison here. I'd make a uniform that stands out in a fire. A fire where, the bulk of the basic colours you'll be seeing would be either red, orange, red AND orange, and thereabouts.
Bob, Bob! What are you DOING? I can clearly see the guy through all those flames! Jesus man, what have you been smoking?
So lets go with what we have instead:
Oh. My. God. Bob, that is PERFECT! Lets just add in a little more red and orange, and we can safely camouflage ourselves in that fire!
Well I'm pretty sure that will work out real well in practice.
Damn, I should have put on my smoking jacket instead
Dav out
I know the things you wanted
They're not what you have
With all the people talkin'
It's driving you mad
Greetings,
Something I shared internally, maybe also good if it went "external". I'm not the best person out there to approach someone and start a conversation, but I think this is one of those "do or die" kind of things in the world of business (or daily work, its not pleasure, so I'll not lump it in that category).
Most of the time its hard to make the first move. Coming from a technical / IT background, I had to think of steps, test said steps, review, update, and try again. Results of these trials are the holy grail to basic communication and networking with people below.
Q: I don’t know what to say, or how to start the conversationA: No right or wrong way, but why don’t you start the convo the normal way, by introducing yourself, where / what you do and shaking the other person’s hand. An additional tip is to approach someone you feel comfortable with, is not engaged in any conversation with other people, and also looks lost like you.
Q: Ok, shook his / her hand, now what?A: You can speak about anything, but since you don’t know the other person, it would be hard to guess a topic that would interest him / her. Stay neutral for now, and maybe talk about the weather. Then, move on to what the other person does / where they work etc.
Q: Check, now there’s an uncomfortable silence for the both of us. Help!A: Ask them a simple question that’s bound to get them talking, IE: ask them about themselves. You’ve learn what they do from the earlier conversation, maybe try “So how’s business in
these days?” or “I don’t come across many people in , is it a very niche / special market?”. Don’t forget to give the other person queues to show that you’re listening, like you agreeing, and maybe nodding.
Q: OMG ITS WORKING! What now?
A: Tell them what you do. Don’t just read from the company brochure
Q: Great, I told them what I do in 10 words. Now its quiet again :(
A: Be truthful. If the other person mentioned something / some feature / concept that you’re not sure of, ask them about it. EG: "You know, I've seen a lot of stuff on Business Intelligence (BI) lately, thing is, what REALLY is BI anyway?"
Q: Sweet! More talking
A: Yes
Q: And?
A: And, don’t forget, introduce people you know, to the person you’ve met. If you came to the function with a group of consultants for example, bring the new person over and introduce them to the party. This can also be based on the wingman concept.
Q: Lastly, what if the other person is BOOOOOOORING and stops talking?
A: Unless you’re attending a function with ONLY TWO PEOPLE, you can always excuse yourself, and go speak to other people. Remember, other people there are just like you, they are also hoping to speak to someone but haven’t had the chance to. The recommendation here is if you excuse yourself, and them bump into the same person later perhaps when you are leaving the function, is to greet the person and say something like “it was nice talking to you earlier, maybe we’ll bump into each other sometime soon”.
The above is not easy, it only comes with a lot of practice, and sometimes you end up in a very short 5 minute conversation. You have to keep working at it. Some people end up liking it so much that they go on to speak to people in non work environments. Or maybe even make a profit out of it.
Maybe I should turn this into a flow chart . . . . .
{Edit - In response to the ONE comment I've received from Hurk, I'd like to present to you a custom flowchart aimed at this blog post}
Click for bigger image
Dav out
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
No we didn't light it
But we tried to fight it
Greetings,
Well its all over the news by now, but those fake Apple 'Stores' in China are being closed down as we speak. Oddly, they are being closed because some of them do not have a license to operate, and not because they are infringing on any rights of the principal company.
Is this a case of 'creative license' gone too far in terms of mimicking an Apple store, or is really more of "imitation is the best form Of flattery"?
Kudos to the
original blogger that brought this to light, but I'm pretty sure this was already known by the locals though no one really bothered to act on it.
Strangely so, Apple has also been mum on this. As long as they are selling genuine products maybe?
*shrug* Welcome to the new world order.
Dav out
Greetings,
The recent news on people brought up for wrong doing (during work at an ex company location) has me thinking, is there even a statute of limitations on what you've done, and if there is, how long back does it go?
Alcatel Lucent, NoW and other companies are feeling the brunt of these issues, but its the people working under the management that's being offered as sacrificial lambs. I'm not saying that these people DIDN'T know what they were doing, but in some cases its what you do on a day to day basis at work and never really think about it later.
No, I don't go around bribing people nor do I hack phones. Haxx0r!
Its just, how long back in time do the need to look before they find something incriminating? I don't want someone to go back 15 years in my past and say they found me drinking a can of Coke at my first job as a store boy just because someone dusted off a VHS of a security cam.
Its an interesting notion, but its something I'm trying not to dwell on.
Dav out
Overheard
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
| Author:
Dav
Greetings,
Overheard @ the restrooms of a hotel after a business meeting:
[A] Uh, this Thursday, besides the afternoon, when else are you free?
[B] Well, the morning I guess.
[A] That's no good. I'm meeting someone in the morning. What about later?
[B] Um, no, I'm not going to be in the office during the afternoon. You already know this.
[A] Ah, yeah. Hey, what about 2pm then? The client's available at 2pm.
[B] I'll text you, ok?
Now, let me be clear. I'm one of those people who think personal time at the restroom / urinals is just that, personal time. Don't encroach on it by striking up a conversation with me, even more so something related to work.
The thing is, guy [A] obliviously did not really grasp what 'afternoon' means. Or perhaps in their environment its something else all together.
For me, afternoon is anything after 12pm (or 1200 hours). Guy [B] must have had enough and couldn't concentrate on the job at hand, hence him agreeing to what came across as absurd to me.
*shrug* I'm just saying, you know?
Dav out
I remember how we used to talk
about the places we would go when we were off
and all that we were gonna find.
And I remember our seeds grow
and how you cried when you saw
the first leaves show.
The love was pouring from your eyes.
Greetings,
Recently I've been wading through some cruft and trying to sort out what works from the bits that don't.
It's been . . . . challenging.
Actually, no, that's not quite the right word. If I had some duct tape and was able to tape together challenging, painful, confusing, and downright insane, I'd be able to come up with the word I need here.
I'm going to ease off work for a bit.
Just a little bit.
Dav out
Yea right picture that with a kodak
And better yet, go to times square
Take a picture of me with a kodak
Took my life from negative to positive
CDN Win!
Monday, July 04, 2011
| Author:
Dav
Greetings,
Canada Day is celebrated on 1st July, the official independence day of Canada. The day commemorates the founding of the Canadian federal government by the British North America Act of 1 July, 1867.
That's for the rest of us who didn't know that it was Canada's birthday last week.
CDN Edit:
Rumor has it some other obscure country in that region will shortly be having its own annual celebration of itself. Have not been able to find anymore information about this. Stands to reason though.
Dav out
Greetings,
Here's my very own personal steps on how not to have a
grape great day:
- Go to the store. See South African grapes on sale
- Spend 10 minutes trying to figure out which sack of grapes have the least mushed up grapes on the vine, only to settle for a prepacked tray
- Take grapes home
- Set grapes (in tray and cling wrap) on counter top, ohh and ahhh at the thought of eating these in front of the telly
- Peal off cling wrap
- Have grapes fall down the counter top to the floor in a cascade of luscious, juicy globes of goodness
- Dance away and backwards to avoid falling grapes, like they were globules of VX gas (See the movie 'The Rock' for vague reference)
- Mash and squish 10 - 15 grapes with step # 7 above
- Stop. Stare. Facepalm at mess
- Spend the next 20 minutes cleaning juice splatter from floor, cupboards and every-god-damn-where else
- Eat remaining 10 grapes
- Rue buying grapes
Dav out
Greetings,
I don't really watch all that much TV, and god forbid if it was American
Effigies (Idol, Latin!). The thing is, I was watching this documentary on
TBM's and there was an advert for the American Idol finals.
Imagine my surprise when I saw this guy's photo:
Hey ma, look at me!I've never heard him sing, but the only thing that comes to my mind when I look at that photo is Alfred E. Neuman. If you don't know who that is, then you're way too young!
Come on, look at the similarities!
What? Me worry? Only if I don't win in American IdolIts hilarious that they've made that 'Reality TV' show last this long. What is it at now, Season 11? I can't even remember all of the Idols.
Dav out
If you think you're getting away
I will prove you wrong
I'll take you all the way
Boy, just come along
hear me when I say
Hey
