The Eight Ball [8Ball]

About 6 weeks back in the height of summer having already laid down a brew of beer with Nez that it was time to see just how easy it was to do the same with Cider. Conversations with various people led me to the simplest recipe imaginable:

• 1.5kgs Apples
• 5.7L Purified or Boiled Water
• 1kg White Sugar
• 3 Lemons
• (I added a fresh Nectarine off the tree outside)

Tools:

• Couple of Buckets
• Muslin Cloth (had to substitute a tea towel)
• Plastic Bottles
• Time

Read more…

Should be:

• 2-3 minutes in length
• something everyone knows
• a crowd-pleaser
• mostly vocal (no more than 8 bars of instrumental solo (no long lead-out or lead-in)

Or, this.

Other suggestions are welcome.

For me it’s hard to strike a good balance of challenge and responsibility.  Inevitably there will be times during the year when you really want to do something meaty and complicated, other times you’ll want to just keep it simple and work on things you’re familiar with and maybe good at.

Sometimes I feel I find work is not challenging enough so I ask for more responsibility.  Unfortunately this just ends up making you more accountable for more of the work you were doing before.  It’s not really more challenging, you just end up having more work to do!  Sometimes I’ll get to work on something I’ve never worked on before or work in an area I’ve never worked in before and it’s fresh and exciting but at the same time I’m always asking questions and learning and it can get exhausting and I can begin to long for doing the less challenging easy stuff again!

Round and round in circles it goes, back and forth, up and down.  I always come back to the same conclusion.  Life was so much easier when I was making pizzas for a living.  Lost in my little world of swirling sauce and dropping toppings and slicing and boxing my creations for my customers.  If only I could earn the same amount of money I am now I would be doing that right now no question.

Was it easy or challenging?  It was both every day, I guess that’s why I loved it.  The mornings were easy and the challenge ramped up as the day went on and we got busier and busier until it reached the evening and it was all complete choas just trying to cope with the madness.

But at the end of the day, nothing that happened mattered.  Any decision you made, good or bad, ended once you turned the lights off and locked up the store.

In the real world, my decisions have lasting ramifications and tasks span days, weeks and months and often if you make mistakes you are dealing with the fall out for a long time.

At the end of the day you don’t want your job to rule you or define you.  It should just be the means that achieve the things you need in your life when you’re not there.  If it means more to you than that I think you’ve got a serious problem.  When people ask, ‘What do you do?’ you shouldn’t be telling them your position in the organisation you work for, you should be telling them you do puzzles and water colour paintings! (or whatever it is you actually do!)

Does anyone know of any pizza making jobs that pay about $30 an hour?

Robert T. Natoli - Guiness Record Holder - Most Chin Ups in a minute

xyf recently engineered a chin up bar for us out of some firewood and simply slotting my bench bar into it, suspended from the loft in the garage ceiling, quite brilliant, gonna have backs made out of lead in no time.  Robert T. Natoli is the Guinness World Record holder for most Chin Ups in a minute, an astonishing, 53!!

I covet a biscuit from my childhood. To address my problem, I must know its name.

The biscuit is thus: ridges of biscuit outside, with a thin layer of orange (or apricot) flavour on the bottom, and a circle of chocolate (about 5mm thick) on top.

A crude artist might draw it as such:

As with all good biscuits, I believe it was made by Griffins.

I remember it being off the market for a few years, then back, and then gone again.  I don’t expect it’s around now and I can’t find it on their website.

Anyone remember the name?

In Preparation for the upcoming Starcraft 2 game/s why not spend a bit of time with the pro side of SC as it stands today.

From Connecticut (R)

Don’t know about you guys, but the ‘back to work dread™’ has just crept back in for me, not long now before the fun times are over and it’s back to the grind again.  *sigh*  No holiday is ever long enough…

James Marshalls Pink for the Knights

Raglan, the first HRV Twenty20 Cricket match and the Casino tonight though, that should keep the blues away for a bit.  Check out the gay strip my team the Northern Knights are wearing this for Breast cancer fundraising this season, ewhh… hopefully they have pink cheerleaders.

P.S. Watched Max Payne last night, what a waste of my life, SUCK!

It’s getting close to xmas. Given that I’m such a grumpy old cynic, people are often surprised to discover just how much I love this time of year. I’m one of those who thinks that religion gets no special pass when it comes to belief. Anyone making a claim is expected to back it up with evidence. I don’t see why religion should be excepted from this, so to me, there’s no religious aspect to xmas. There’s been a festival in most cultures at this time of year for so long and for so many reasons that to give any particular religion a claim over it just because it’s the cult-du-jour seems rather silly. I love the sense of fun, the family, the friends, the food, the drink, the giving, the getting, the general sense of “things will get better” that abounds. I try to ignore the tacky ads, the jesus-freaks claiming it’s all about them, the wowsers telling us not to get too drunk or have too much fun, and the moaners telling us about high seasonal suicides. If they don’t want to have fun, I’m not going to try to force them.

That ties into what I actually want to talk about. You might feel pretty strongly about some things. You might feel so strongly that you’re sure “all right-thinking people” agree with you. I know I do. The difference is that I would never try to force my view upon you. Either personally, or by apealing to government to legislate or ban something. I might (and will) try my best to persuade you that I’m right, but that’s all I’ll do. Persuasion GOOD. Force BAD. I’m pretty sure most of you would agree with that, in principle at least.

The problem is that these principles seem to get overridden by most people when attacked with emotive reasoning. Think about your responses to the following words: Globalisation. Corporations. Global warming. Capitalism. Did you like any of those words? Bet you didn’t. If you did, or at least, you didn’t have a negative response to them, congratulations! You’re not a victim of group-think socialism, and there may be hope for you as a rational individual yet!

I really believe that group-think is wrecking the world. I’ve opined this before, possibly even here, but just think about it for a second. Almost everything you read or are exposed to touts the same views, in the same language, and just expects you to nod along with it. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s just collectivism. Anyone who disagrees is labelled bad and a non-conformist, while the conformists all practice non-conformity in the same ways to try to convince themselves they are rebels! Here’s a flash: hugging a tree and wearing dreads does not make you a non-conformist, thinking for yourself does. I wish there were a lot more non-conformists out there.

For those of you who prefer illustrations rather than words, here is the problem:

Groupthink illustrated. Compare yourself to avoid the problem.

So, what does this have to do with xmas? I want you guys and girls to give me a present! Think rationally. Question everything. When someone asks you to do something “for the children”, “for the animals”, or “for the future of humanity”, be very skeptical. Make your own decisions based on your own principles, and always ask “will my choice involve forcing somebody else to do something they may not choose to do?”

And, for the religious out there (you crazy kooks), do unto others etc.

Merry xmas all. Mad less-than-three to you all.

This is what I feel like showing people that I work with how insignificant they are, and also that the US was the former world power and they need to get up with the play :p