Paul's journal

Very surprised to wake up and hear a new initiative that hasn't been announced yet being discussed on the radio. When I got to to work I found that it was a surprise to all in the office. We're trying to work out how this happened which meant a bit of forensic log file analysis which was an interesting little challenge. I also saved a new file as evidence of why we'll never have a blog on our websites.

Another hot day in the city. The office has kept me cool though. I went out at lunchtime to check out JB's 20% off sale, but it hadn't reached the 40 degrees mark by then.

It had when I left to go to goodbye drinks for Drew. Fortunately the pub was cool. Stayed about an hour and then got a bit eager to get going.

The train was really slow most of the way home but getting out of it I was hit by this wall of heat. The house is alright today though and I'm happy to hear that the cool change is coming around lunchtime tomorrow.

I had a job interview this morning to take over my manager's position. Mine was the last of three, and a little weirdly, and because it was an internal interview, I've already got the results. They are offering it to another person with seven years experience in a similar role.

But I've also got feedback on the interview too which was good, I was second pick of the people they interviewed and Ursula's given me some advice on how to make some stronger responses next time.

I'm not too disappointed, I think I kind of knew I wasn't quite ready anyway to take the role anyway, which is why I was slow to apply, but it was good experience doing an job interview since I haven't had one since mid-2001!

Melbourne had a tropical storm today. Lightning was cracking overhead as I got to work. Our fancy new office building couldn't cope and our lights flickered off and some people's computers turned off. We wondered about the safety of the guys in the crane next door.

When I went out at lunchtime it was grey and like it was going to rain again. I came out of QV and the sun was shining and it was so hot and humid. Very uncomfortable.

Then as the afternoon went on a second stormfront approached. This time the rain hit the building hard. Most of us stopped to watch it sweep past the windows. And of course the Connex messages started coming through.

A tree fell down on the Dandenong line and at 930pm the line is still blocked. Must have been a big tree. I didn't want to face an hour delay trying to board buses on such a busy train line so I hung at work for a while.

When I left, with no update to say the line was clear I got on the Frankston line instead and arranged a pick up. About 9 stops short of that stop though the train driver came on to tell us that because a tree had fallen over the tracks the train was going to be terminating.

How do two train lines get blocked by trees on the same night? How do four hours goes buy and the line's not clear? Did they bring the powerlines down?

My trip home last night, even with the guy not looking back, was so much better.

At the start of the week it felt like this week was going to go forever. But, even with a bit of sickness, it feels like it went pretty fast. We had a goodbye lunch today that I felt a bit flat at but it was followed by farewell drinks which went much better. I was louder than usual, helped by the people and the acoustics in the "nightclub" (I prefer calling it "diary room" but I don't think that will catch on).

It's got really hot too. This weekend would have been a nice one to head down to the island but I haven't planned well enough. I did some shopping tonight, watched an excellent episode of The Office and despite the heat feel like catching up on some sleep with an early night. I slept in a bit this morning so I think I could use a few good zzzs.

I need a new Work icon too, the one above is very, very old.

Grr. I'm sick again. Another cold. Not too bad but annoying. I managed to put it off all weekend so I could hang with the guys on Sunday, but last night the sneezing came. I slept really well though and wasn't too bad this morning so I went to work. I had a bit of sneezing and some runny nose but I've had worse. Left a little early from work but reckon I'll be okay to go back tomorrow.

But there was good news today as well. I bought my Spamalot tickets tonight. Found some good seats, three rows from the front on the side for a show in about four weeks time. Should be good. And I finally got the promotion my boss has talked about for a while so that's cool.

I was going to go shopping today at lunchtime and try to get a few of the new DVDs I wanted. Instead I went through with a plan I came up with last night and had lunch with the new guy. The crush is now pretty much over (I still think he's really cute but, you know, has a wife). I thought about going tonight but the family went out to celebrate my mum's birthday. I'll do my shopping tomorrow or over the weekend instead.

I am in dangerous crush territory. I am falling. It's been a while.



I've just seen a face,
I can't forget the time or place
That we'd just met, he's just the boy for me
And I want all the world to see we've met
Na na na na na na

Had it been another day
I might have looked the other way
But I had never been aware
And as it is I dream of him tonight
Na na na na na na

Falling, yes I am falling
And he keeps calling me back again

It was a very short day in the office today, but my eye was often drawn to the new guy. I kept trying to match him to the gaydar pictures I saw and there is a similarity but I'm not yet 100% sure that they are the same person.

The more I look at him thought the more I think he's gay but I wonder if that's my assumption colouring the view?

I also am thinking he's too attractive for me, but we could be friends. The idea of having a true peer in the workplace sounds really good.

I've already been mixing a bit more around the office trying to make a good impression in his peripheral vision and it has made me in more like I fit in than normal.

Although the official pack up day is tomorrow, we ended up doing a lot of the clearing of our desks this afternoon. I filled two boxes and now have a lot of little miscellaneous things left. The computers get switched off early tomorrow so it will be an easy day at work.

It's probably a good thing there wasn't that much work to do today. I was totally distracted by the new guy. I find him very attractive and what's better is that if I had to guess I'd say he's not straight. I am keen to get to know him a bit better and see if my intuition is correct.

Nothing I have seen about Second Life makes me want to go exploring in it.

I often remark "but you can't kill the dragon" which confuses people until I explain I would see the appeal if it was a game. I've never played a

Quite tired today after staying up late last night. With one big project done at work I haven't quite got back into the day-to-day routine. I'm just wishing it was the weekend. Got a replacement Swindler from Daniel over lunch. Decided not to go to spin class since I'm almost, but not totally, over my cold. That and I'm tired from last night and it was freezing when I left work.

Yet again I get my hair cut and I fall sick. I woke up feeling a bit off and by the time I got to work my nose was running and it continued to all day, plus with added sneezes.

I left work early, and might have left earlier but I wanted to see our new website delivered safely into the world wide web.

This time around the cold wasn't as bad, and it shouldn't have been since I just had one a month ago. I was a bit wasted Friday night and had a a bit of a chill on Saturday, but by today I'm mostly fully functional.

My plans to go shopping and to go to the movies were postponed, but I could catch up on the Deadwood DVDs, and have now started series two.

I was hoping to watch The Office tonight but the download is still going. Since we hit our monthly quota every thing's dropped down to a crawl

I did venture out today and got some containers I wanted to help organise my room a bit, and it is helping, but I really need more room.

Feeling a bit fatigued from the spin class last night. Had a tour of the new offices today. They look good, but might take a while for it to feel like home after six years in the current place.

Had lunch today at the Langham Hotel thanks to the events girls. It was a really nice spread and I'm glad I went.

I thought about not going because our new website was going into production today. I was expecting big problems but it went really smoothly. It's all ready to go tomorrow for the big launch.

I went out tonight and got my haircut, probably a few weeks overdue. Got the remaining legends figures I wanted at the same time.

A little disappointed after my successful email flirting on Monday for there to be an empty inbox the next two days. Oh well, I'm going to keep moving on. Work's really busy afterall which is a good (if not complete) distraction. Hopefully the new site will be up by early next week. There's a few new faces in the office, and of course they are women (sigh!). Didn't feel much like the gym tonight but went and am now exhausted. Had wobbly legs when I got off the bike! Watched the remaining half of the Emmys but not much worth watching in that part that I hadn't already seen on Monday.

I was off on a training course for the day. It was really interesting and the time flew by which is not often the case with these things. There were two familar faces in the class. One was a lady I worked with during the Commonwealth Games; we chatted over morning tea. The other I went to Uni with although he was a few years ahead of me. I had a bit of a crush on him back then. we had lunch together. Workwise there were a few things I can bring back and somethings I want to change so it was very worthwhile.

My boss was back today. Nice to have her back around. The five weeks have gone really fast. She shares my outrage over the webforms. I misread the email and the one I thought she send in July that was being taken as approval, was actually sent in July 2006!

I checked out the city David Jones today and didn't find the titanium figure I was after but was, as always, quite taken by the shoppers in that store. They do tend to be of higher quality than some other stores.

There's been a few articles about a new Wikiscanner tool that lets you look up who's been editing Wikipedia entries. The journalists have been looking up companies and government agencies and finding that they have edited articles about themselves or their works. I did a look up of my Department's IP address and there's a list of articles. Not too long and nothing too controversial. However quite a few of these edits (on random articles of interest to me) were actually done by me. I'm a bit nervous now about someone from IT coming and knocking on my office partition.

Spent most of the day working on adapting the new designs to our template. It's working well, but it was time consuming, but also fun.

I went down to Minotaur at lunchtime to get the new Ultimate Spider-Man trade. It's been ages, but the Clone Saga was worth the wait. A great story, some nice twists on 616 characters and some of Bagley's best art in ages. Shame he's leaving so soon, but rumour has it the whole Ultimate Universe might be on it's way out. It would be good if this comic can wrap up nicely.

It was a day for finishing. I also completed The Full Cupboard of Life (which was rather short and wrapped up too quickly).

Then I played the final battle of Kingdom Hearts II. I had to go a few times on the ultimate battle but it wasn't too bad. I had held off wanting to get all the Journal complete but it looks far too hard as you've got to do all the Colosseum tasks (50 round battles?) and really level up to face Sephiroth and I can't be bothered really.

There was a farewell lunch today for another woman in the office. I had a drink with lunch and I'm not used to that so it went to my head. The afternoon's meetings went okay but I was feeling a bit woozy with it all. The lunch itself was a bit painful. I really needed another two or more drinks to get through it.