The slow decay of my physical form cannot be arrested by Earth technology. Usually this is an excellent opportunity to get some loot into my life; every birthday, I come up with a list of stuff to pad out my meagre earthly existence.  This year’s been funny though: with my recent bout of introspection and continuing evolution into intrisic vs. extrinsic rewards, I find that there’s little stuff I want.  Let’s not even get started on need. Don’t you worry.  I’ve risen to the challenge and come up with a few choice items, but what I’ve found is that the things I’m trending towards wanting are … less stuff.  The list of loot demands are trending towards things that provide experiences and nothing that looks like a consumer electronic or toy or widget. It reminds me a little of my Read More …

I’m talking about you, Destiny. Taken King came out last night.  I’m now taking methamphetamines to be able to hit my life goals: Keep my job; Write a book; Play Destiny. Working okay so far! Also, I like Nolan North as the new Ghost.  Nothing against Dinklage, I mean he was good too — but it’s nice when you get awesome twice.

People will lie to you. I caught up with an old work colleague and friend for a coffee yesterday.  She was in this situation where her work — where I used to work — is telling her a bunch of things.  Top of mind are: You are bad at your job, and Because of this, we’re going to demote you and pay you less money. Having worked for the very same place, and experiencing at least one of those things (constant negative feedback, which we’ll get to in a moment) and a partial on the other (due to contract, they couldn’t demote me, but they avoided raises when they were applied across rest of the team), I was a sympathetic ear.  I think I was also a useful ear, because I mentioned to her that: She is in fact good at Read More …

Ahem. You know when you’re meeting a friendly, and they ask you what has happened since April? So, that’s me. Turns out, things are kind of exciting from my end. I’m making good progress on Night’s Fall – it’s probably at about the 50% mark as of today.  And by 50%, I mean first draft, so don’t get too excited.  I know there’s a number of you — you know who you are — who keep asking me how that sequel is coming along. You might, therefore, be asking, “Richard, so.  Tell me.  Why no blog posts?”  It’s a little like this.  The new job is very exciting and has me working at a level that is rewarding, but it’s sucking free time out through my eyeballs.  Given a choice between blogging, and writing, I would rather write – it will give Read More …

Man, I don’t get why my online banking has lower requirements than the thing I would use to file medical receipts.  It’s my data, FFS, so I just dropped this in to their customer contact bin. Hi – I tried to set up my southern cross today, and got to the password page where it requires two letters and two numbers. I stopped there and won’t be continuing – you’re asking me to keep a different type of password to what I usually use, and I’d be constantly forgetting it and having to reset. Just thought you’d find the feedback useful; since it’s my data you’re holding it’s not your job to tell me security requirements as it’s my risk, and I doubt I’ll be using the service until it better suits my needs.  As it happens the password I Read More …