Miscellaneous Thoughts

2005-02-03T15:58:00.000+01:00

Well, I'm still here. Just turned thirty, so I did. Just posting for the hell of it, really.

2004-05-10T10:58:00.000+02:00

test

2004-05-09T20:58:00.000+02:00

-I can't. It's too difficult. It's too far. Too much. I'll never be able to do it. What will people think or say?

-Take control! Accept responsibility NOW for what will happen, what is happening in your life. Don't blame or thank anyone else, not your boss, your spouse, parents, siblings, or friends for your current situation. You put yourself here. You thank yourself or blame yourself, accept the truth, then resolve to do something about it, if necessary. Once you do this, you regain control. Don't like your job? Get a new one, look for something better. Don't have the skills necessary to move up the ladder, or to get a better job? Acquire them. Take a class, study in your spare time. Read up on the subject.
-Live in the now. Plan for the future, but stay in the moment. It's where it's all happening.
-Dreams are good, but don't leave them as dreams alone. Dreams are insubstantial. Take concrete steps to realise them. Set realistic but challenging goals to bring your dreams closer.
It can be done. You can move from where you are to the next level. It's up to you.

2004-05-08T22:20:00.000+02:00

-Impossible....!

-No, just improbable. there is a very important difference here!

2004-05-08T22:15:00.000+02:00

Life lived correctly is an execution of a work of art. The human spirit is like an instrument waiting to be tuned by physical, intellectual, spiritual and emotional experiences and exercises, in order that it may live its time on this earth to it's fullest potentiel. Some people have had the fortune to develop this to the utmost. Others don't even realise that they can have a more fulfilling existence, that there can be more than what they have now. And it's not just in terms of material posessions or financial success. What is a fulfilling existence? Fulfillment may mean happiness. What is happiness? Who can define happiness? There are some who live with a modest income and are among the happiest people on earth, as there are miserable billionaires. Happiness is in part knowing the values, ideals and beliefs that you hold dear, and living in accordance with them. Most importantly, happiness is love, loving and being loved. It is also finding your place in life, knowing what you enjoy and are good at, and living that life to it's full potentiel.

tbc......

2003-12-04T19:42:00.000+01:00

Miscellaneous Thoughts
I'm starting to get revved up about the Return of the King, the latest and final chapter of the Lord of the Rings. The trailer looks incredible. At the moment the first two films are probably my favourites of all time. Maybe this'll change in a few years, but it would have to be something really special to top the experience I had when I first saw Fellowship in the cinema. Wellll, roll on the 17th December.

I feel the urge coming to write, draw, paint, sing, play, compose and generally create.....maybe synthesise all these and make a movie?? Soft images and hard words, or vice versa.....gentle melodies giving way to harsh sounds....what the hell am I saying? But I'm free writing here just typing away whatever comes into my head...try it sometime it's liberating. Why am I stuck on this money thing, I want independence, but haven't gotten there yet, one of these days manna will fall from the sky and the ship will sail into the west carrying me and mine home to Valinor!! LOTR reference for anyone reading this who knows anything about that sort of thing. And what about that Elvish language? It's like the onomatopeia of magic, it's fantasy and magic put into sound....beautiful to hear....

Im Alcareru, Telin le thaed. Lasto beth nîn, tolo dan nan galad.
Alcareru, melethron en Cenire. :)

This is magic distilled into words. Speaking of words, they're dangerous....in the wrong hands the pen is indeed mightier than the sword, in that it can mobilise a lot of swords pretty damn quickly. What's the point of it all? In one hundred years none of us will be around so what does it matter, what's the purpose? Dark thoughts sometimes creep through, y'know like we're all going to be feeding worms one day, it's just a question of how and when. And what of immortality (going back to the elf thing again)? Would anyone really want to live forever? Dunno it seems to me that what's here might be better than what's on the other side.....is it oblivion? Now think about that for a moment. We're just (to quote Monty Python) spiralling coils of self-replicating DNA. If we are just biological machines programmed fundamentally to reproduce, despite our sophistication and complexity, what happens when the machine gets scrapped and recycled? Is an afterlife just wishful thinking on the part of a bunch of self-aware organic molecules, condemned to ponder it's existence until it that existence fades away? Listen to Radiohead's Fade Out on their album The Bends for a VERY bleak look at life and death. Or is our complexity evidence of a higher power, something that could never have evolved on its own? The Golden Mean, the laws of Physics, natural constants....hmmm. Maybe someone's trying to tell us something. Then again, maybe it's just co-incidence or, simply, the way the cookie crumbled. "We are stardust, we are golden, And we got to get ourselves back to the garden." And we are.

Comments, curses, criticism and any other form of correspondence to:
(remove nospam) nospamalcareru@free.fr

Namarie

Alcareru

2003-09-04T09:41:00.000+02:00

Sometimes I wonder about people. You think they're your friends, but it seems that they're just out to get something, or maybe just keeping you in their address book in case they need you for something at some indeterminate point in the future. I don't like this. To me a friend is a friend. Simple. You do each other favours, you hang out just because you like to be with each other. You don't suddenly decide that, just because you find that someone doesn't have any connections or "usefullness", you should spend more of your time with more "useful" people. A friend is not a burden or a target for mockery. You do not insult friends. I'm beginning to think it's time to readjust the line between friends and aquaintainces. Things have changed too much in the last few weeks.

On another, brighter, note, we're going to Greece on Saturday for two whole weeks!! Rhodes, in fact. I've been reading up a little about this place. It seems that everyone from the Ancient Greeks, to the Romans, Crusaders, Byzantines, Ottomans and Italians have been there over the last 25 centuries. Two weeks won't be nearly enough. Still, it'll be nice to get away from it all for a while, just me and my darling. No phones, emails, whining users.....ah paradise.

Ok, time to go to work.

2003-08-28T18:05:00.000+02:00

ok, so the water's fixed. The plumber came this morning and took an hour longer than planned, so I was late in to work :) dommage.

This bloody blaster worm's everywhere. In the office, on customer PCs.....if I catch the bastard who released it, why,I'll... I'll....probably ask him\her to teach me how to do it! Anyway, McAfee's Stinger program's a great one to get rid of it. Microsoft have released a patch(!) to secure the vulnerability that is exploited by this particular beast, so you oughta install that too. Another fun day in plug-it-in-and-watch-the-lights-change land. The guy pulling 2 PS2 and 1 USB extension cables managed to decapitate a co-ax cable used by some video conferencing kit, so there was a minor panic when the planned conference an hour later was endangered. Not to worry though, there was no danger of it! Frankly, I wasn't too worried, the phones were still up. What did we do before video conference, use smoke signals?? And what is it with some of these people who flip out at the slightest inconvenience?? MS Word has a blue background instead of white...aaagh I can't work like this! Ooooh, aaaaah, the margins in Word are too wide....try the macro button that is labelled RESET MARGINS! Oh Dear, I can't print....try setting the right default printer, dumbass!!
Sometimes I wonder why otherwise intelligent people turn into blithering idiots when put in front of a PC. Sometimes all you gotta do is restart the damn thing and it'll be fine, but no.....they'll sit in front of it for hours waiting for someone else to do it.

Do I sound bitter? I'm not really. I've been in this game for a while now, 2 years telephone tech support, another 2 and a half on desktop\LAN\WAN\telecoms, and it's just a fact. People are afraid of what they don't understand. And most don't even try to understand.

Anyway, it's time to leave this place. I'm going for a pint.

2003-08-27T17:58:00.000+02:00

hmm....last one came out twice. Looks like I've yet to get the hang of this blogging stuff. Ah well.

Today the plumber came to fix the leaking, or rather fully flowing, tap. But, of course, there's a problem. They need to replace it, and have to present an estimate to the landlord. So that's 4 days without hot water. He just called to say he can come tomorrow, so the end is in sight. Still, it could be worse. It could be winter, and washing in cold water is NO fun in winter, I can tell ya from bitter experience. What else? We've been going out a little too much lately, the Green Linnet, a jazz\blues concert on Monday night that was great, but getting between four and five hours sleep more than two nights in a row isn't very conducive to, well, anything, really!

It's great fun, though.
Well, I've got work to do.....signing off :)

2003-08-27T17:29:00.000+02:00

[ Sun Aug 24, 11:30:58 PM | John Mahony | edit ]
So here I am, Monday morning about to head out into another week of work. The tap in the bath won't stop running, so we have to get the plumber around later. Ahh well.....c'est la vie. No point flipping out over it. I'm beginning to get fed up with this whole work thing, though. It's just getting in the way of all the other stuff I'd like to do, but hey, it pays the bills. And I suppose that here, in France, it's not like you have to break your back. 35 work week, 5 weeks holiday a year and another dozen or so national holidays......whew, it's like the workers paradise here (now where have I heard that one before?!). So life goes on, I can't complain too much. My job pays pretty well, they've given me a laptop for work and a PC for my own use at home, all you can eat munchies and snacks, in the office, plus lunch....not bragging or anything, but just trying to find all the bright spots. They say far away fields are always greener, and I'm looking a lot at those fields now. I should be a little more grateful for what I have though. A beautiful wife, a nice apartment, a job, let's face it, that doesn't break my back on most days, and more than enough money to live on. Life's not so bad, after all.

2003-08-25T08:30:00.000+02:00

So here I am, Monday morning about to head out into another week of work. The tap in the bath won't stop running, so we have to get the plumber around later. Ahh well.....c'est la vie. No point flipping out over it. I'm beginning to get fed up with this whole work thing, though. It's just getting in the way of all the other stuff I'd like to do, but hey, it pays the bills. And I suppose that here, in France, it's not like you have to break your back. 35 work week, 5 weeks holiday a year and another dozen or so national holidays......whew, it's like the workers paradise here (now where have I heard that one before?!). So life goes on, I can't complain too much. My job pays pretty well, they've given me a laptop for work and a PC for my own use at home, all you can eat munchies and snacks, in the office, plus lunch....not bragging or anything, but just trying to find all the bright spots. They say far away fields are always greener, and I'm looking a lot at those fields now. I should be a little more grateful for what I have though. A beautiful wife, a nice apartment, a job, let's face it, that doesn't break my back on most days, and more than enough money to live on. Life's not so bad, after all.

2003-08-25T08:19:00.000+02:00

testing....this is a test post.