Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in MisterQuade's LiveJournal:

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Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
9:31 pm	Mixed bag! Late again posting an update this week, but I have excuses...honest!! First things first though... I am now the father of my very first son! Liam Jack Coxon, born 11am, December 2nd, 2009. 3.6kg, 51.5cm long (lanky bugger......ruckman, or so my dad claims!), and a pretty good crop of very dark blonde(ish) hair. He has all the regular bits and no complications so far. I shall spare you all the gory details other than to say he was delivered naturally abeit under cover of the good drugs ;) and leave azhure to fill you in on the birth story when she is home. She is doing well and is moving about under her own steam as of this evening. I am being a wuss and escaping the hospital in the evenings so that I can sleep ;). Today also happens to be my father's birthday, so he was naturally chuffed (and was arranging for his Dockers team membership as soon as he knew the name). With my birthday on the weekend, we will have a very busy time for ourselves in coming years come early December. I have taken the day off work and will be taking tomorrow morning off as well. I feel like I am copping out a bit by heading straight back, but I am in a situation now where I don't get paid leave, and also feel the need to put a good effort in for early impressions sake (and for my own getting-up-to-speed sake). Ok. On to weight loss. This week....once again.....0.7kg. This is turning into a habit. Last weekend, I indulged a little on BBQd german sausage and beer at a LAN. I will also blame fluid retention from catching myself a cold on Friday night. Thankfully the cold ha gone the way of most of my illnesses and gave me a sniffle and sore throat for two days and buggered off. Oh, before i get to the graph I should elaborate on the Saturday. I caught up with my old workmates for a day of Golf at Burswood. I was surprised to find that I can actually still hit a ball accurately, if not very far. Though come to think of it, if I was using decent clubs of the correct length and better balls, I would have probably done a little better. It was an Ambrose rules round which we finished off with a score of 89. By my reckoning, that is not too bad, and since a good number of the shots we played were from my lie, I am pleased. The day though was a bit of a challenge for being out in the 30 degree sun with a cold though ;). That night, I packed up my PC and lugged it off to a Left For Dead LAN. Had a ball with the blokes there who had been playing for most of the afternoon already. I had to pike on the matches a bit early because I was KNACKERED, and the pace of L4D2 is just too frantic. Ok....graph. Now.....my prediction for next week's chart is a bit dire. I have already eaten a little too much today, but I put that down to the stress of fatherhood (geez Wade, 10 hours already...suck it up man!). Also, my birthday party is this Saturday. I plan to have a heap of good shellfish there which is reasonably good, but also a stack of beer....which is....well..calorie bad....I can't say bad ;). I am hoping that mum and bub can make it, but we won't be rushing away from hospital before we are ready :). (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
11:03 pm	Oops I missed Monday's update by a couple of days...oops! I'm sure I have forgotten most of what happened last week by now, so this is probably going to be short! Let's see. Weekend, that wasn't so long ago....Ahh, a housewarming party at which we caught up with all our mates, and got to admire a swanky new abode, and my Grandma's 90th birthday lunch on Sunday at the Hyatt Regency Hotel. At both events I was a bit naughty and ate too much (for my diet). Damn tho both were well catered! :) Actually, the two days before that, I was not too well behaved for lunch either come to think of it....both work functions of one type or another. Ahh well it happens....I have to give my metabolism a shot in the arm every now and again I guess. Now the problem is, how will I behave myself over my birthday weekend coming up (not this weekend). I am thinking that it will have to be exclusively seafood for me...how will I cope ;) (not sure how the beer factors in). Let's see, coming up. Tomorrow Sony finally bring out their PlayTV addon for the PS3...very excited...I will be scooting out to EB to acquire one of those at lunchtime! The weekend will be a Saturday containing a (old work) work golf day in the morning, and a LAN in the evening.....hopefully Sunday will be spent in not too much pain. PS3 topic reminds me that I also recently bought Little Big Planet for the PSP last week. Love the game...so cute and frustrating. The PSP version is VERY similar, and only obviously lacks the multiplayer component. Been mostly playing Mass Effect for the PC whenever I can find time. I am enjoying the story, tho still pissed off with the slow bloody lifts, and inability to backtrack to areas that I skipped (not knowing beforehand that I wouldn't be able to go back at my leisure). Too many other games I want to buy and play, but I just dont have time....and with a bub on the way....that's not going to improve!! :) Ok, to the weigh-in....did I give myself enough excuses earlier? 0.7kg again. 91.1kg current weight which just puts me over 10kg lost in the 10 weeks. Still on target, and I am feeling good about next Monday as I am having a perceived skinny week this week ;). THE GRAPH! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
12:09 am	Getting closer The title refers not to the goal weight loss, but to the impending family member. Not long now, most likely less than two weeks. It is not very likely little Leeroy will be sharing my birthday any more, but that's fine......the crayfish is MINE! The car seat was fitted yesterday. After a little bit of pondering over the instructions I have sorted it out, and in the process have discovered that I actually DO have a child harness restraining bolt in the rear window of the car....fancy that! A thing I didn't even know I had! Work is remaining challenging and interesting. I can't wait to get involved in the detailed network design for this new port.....there's a hellava lot to do, and it's looking like it will be a ripper. I got a second credit card in the mail today. I feel sort of dirty in a way. The bank was doing a promo on American Express cards which link into your existing credit line. The plus side is that it is no cost to me....I get double to points for using it, it all links into the one account even though I get two cards, and now I can finally link a CC to my online shopping accounts and not be locked out because azhure is already registered with the same card number :). Weekend movie purchases were the Matrix Trilogy boxset on Bluray, and Quantum of Solace, also on Bluray. I have been hesitant to buy either, the Matrix, because I already own two copies of the damn movies on DVD, and Quantum, because it was not as spectacularly great as Casino Royale. Having watched the first two Matrix movies on Bluray though, I am thoroughly glad I have them in High Def now...the subwoofer at the end of Reloaded was almost shaking the house to pieces. Quantum I am happy with as well.....I have watched a downloaded copy enough times that I realise that I DO like the movie a lot. I think it is great what they have done with the Bond franchise now. I am VERY tempted to now buy the Star Trek original series on Bluray, even though AGAIN, I own the DVDs. The difference being that the Blurays have seamless branching containing the updated special effects, and a remixed lossless HD soundtrack. The best part about them is that if you want to watch them unmolested by the modernisation, you can still watch it in all its budget effects mono glory. I am a big fan of the Star Trek updated special effects after watching what they did with the "Motion Picture". It was done with a lot of care and attention to making it look like it was part of the movie all along and MIGHT have been doable back in the day. I managed to finish off "Uncharted: Drake's Fortune" on the PS3 on Sunday in Normal mode. I am a lot more impressed with the game than I was with the demo, and I think I will be buying the sequel soon. The trip to the DVD store reminded me how many bloody games I want to buy for the damn PS3 too......I swore I wouldnt when I bought the thing! ahh well. In the meantime, I still have Batman to finish :). And on to the weight-on. This week was a slightly dissapointing 0.7kg. This week I will have to borrow a phrase from Moff Jerjerrod... "We shall double our efforts!". I blame it all on the bacon on Saturday morning, but DAMN it was worth it! Graph as follows.. (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, November 9th, 2009
10:20 pm	This is getting predictable. Well.  What to update this week? Family news.  I am a first-time uncle as of Friday last week. azhure  and I paid a visit to her brother and his family at hospital.  Of course we copped a few "this will be you in a few weeks" comments, but that was to be expected (and tolerated). ;).  My new niece is very cute btw! Let's see.  I picked up a Bluray copy of Transformers 2 last week and managed to watch it on the weekend.  This is now officially the loudest disk I own.....my new(ish) subwoofer really had its work cut out for it!  In fact my newly pastered ceiling had its bloody work cut out for it from the vibration!! I couldn't resist this weekend's Steam special.  Bioware's "Mass Effect" game for $10, bargain!  It's one I have put off buying for years because I couldn't really face the time investment of another RPG, and for all of its wonderfulness, I know the game had its flaws.  Anyway, $10 is pretty much an automatic purchase these days, so I did! :). I'm still hankering to buy myself a new SSD harddisk for my PC.  The problem is, that I want one that is bigger than 200Gb.  Problem being that for a decent one, that means a thousand dollar outlay.  I just can't bring myself to justify that much money on what is admittedly a HUGE performance boost, but is really something I don't NEED.  A THOUSAND! Grrr.  The other thing with that is that I would like to upgrade to Windows 7 when I switch, and I want Windows 7 sooner rather than later, so I am torn over this  bloody thing.  I could go for a smaller SSD, but I just know I will run out of room too quickly, and the last thing I want to do is split my apps onto a spinning platter (that should be for bulk data only).  I think I'll sit on it a while longer and see what happens to prices (stop going up!!!). Ok, getting to the topic and excuse for my posts is this week's weight update.  No surprises here again, 1.1kg farted into the atmosphere in total last week (azhure  would have you believe that this is where it has all been going). The graph is boring but looks like this!! (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, November 2nd, 2009
6:10 pm	Holding steady What can I say today?  Not a hellava lot really.  Week three of the job is starting off smoothly with no particular dramas yet.  We are still going to be busy for the next month, so we will see what happens after that.  Lots of talk about BHP and Rio Tino join ventures and how it will affect our project in the future, but we can only continue on as planned until we find out otherwise. I had a mildly productive weekend with a shop on Saturday and a nice free lunch on Sunday. On Saturday I managed to Fix the retic with a new main solenoid (stripped the thread on the old one in previous repair attempts) Bought all of the Startrek Next Generation movies on Bluray Bought a used copy of Uncharted: Drake's Fortune for the PS3 (in preparation for importing the sequel). Inadvertently found two copies of Neverwinter Nights 2 for $4 each (couldn't resist). Bought a shiny new laptop for azhure . Even if it was a Mac (patooey!) And I think we ended up watching a boatload of downloaded and recorded material from the week. Oh, good news on the PS3 front......the long awaited PlayTV addon is officially out on November 26.  This was after being promised for the Olympics last year mind you!!  I am very glad to have gone for the PS3....the extra stuff that Sony keep releasing for it make it a pretty kickarsed little box.  (I especially like the idea of streaming TV over the network to my PSP). And finally, the week's weigh-in.  I was once again a bit nervous of this one since my weekend was not as well behaved as I would have liked.  However, I think my good behaviour and the sheer amount of times I visited the small room during the week (due to increased water intake) compensated for that.  I have managed an even 1kg this week, which couldn't be any more average :). (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, October 26th, 2009
6:39 pm	Nother week, nother kilo A good weekend has been had!  After a loooong week at work, it was very welcome to get a bit of time off, even if that meant attending a very long anti-natal class.  I didn't mind it per-se...it was just a long time to be sitting down and listening to people talk. Come to think of it, last week was a tad weird.  The work days felt short, but the work week felt like it took forever!  Maybe the universe popped in a lot of really short days last week rather than 7 long ones? Saturday night was the week's saving event with Squasher's 40th birthday shindig at the Sail and Anchor pub.  It was a perfect night to be out on the balcony catching up with old friends and watching Fremantle hum from above :). I was a bit worried about this morning's weigh in.  I had deliberately saved calories for the weekend so I could have a reasonable amount of beer.  I had an extra large dinner on Sunday too since I was feeling exhausted and realised I was probably just running out of food in my system ;). Anyway, I shouldn't have been worried, as it was a bonus 1.1kg week this week.  Makes up for last week's 0.9, so I am bang on 1kg/week target again! (Comment on this)
Monday, October 19th, 2009
6:37 pm	First day of the new job!! What can I say at the moment really?  It's not like I did any actual work at all.  I got myself settled in and all of the inductions out of the way, and then a good chunk of the afternoon was spent in a meeting. I just love the fact that it is in town and so bloody convenient to public transport.  25 minutes door to door during peak hour.  How can you go wrong?  I need to get my smartrider all sorted out though......why does the dept of transport make it such a pain in the arse to get one of these things?? Let's see.  I suppose I should talk about my LAST day of work at Serck too. Sucked! Felt very sad and emotional all day, but held it together till the end of the day.  Kept the goodbye speech short.  I felt much loved and appreciated though, which is always nice to hear.  It was also a good sign that the GM decided that we'd all just take off the last hour of the day to celebrate too. Saturday was spent fixing retic (which promptly broke again), and taps, and spot of shopping!  Shopping involving a nice PC upgrade.  I am now quad core enabled!!  Not that I game a heap these days, but buggerit,  I had a bigarsed long service payout and I wanted a present! Sunday I managed to dodge azhure 's baby shower (for the most part), and went out to buy beer, engine oil and help dad fix a fence....I felt like I had to assert my manliness or something.  The evening was spent celebrating the new job at Little Creatures :). Finally, this morning's weigh in.....  somewhat spoilt by last night's LC splurge, but still a good result!  0.9kg is beginning to look like a habit!   (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, October 12th, 2009
11:17 pm	Shh, quiet. He posted! I have been a quiet little lurker for a long time here, but I have some news to share so I shall! For those who do not read azhure 's LJ, I am soon to be a father!  This is old news to most, but I am sure someone out there hadn't heard yet.  Little bugger is due on my birthday, so there goes any hope of me getting any attention from now on! ;)  Well I am still having Crayfish dammit!  This is clearly the biggest news and news that I am not quite absorbing myself I suspect.  It will all get very real soon tho :).  I just spent the day constructing the cot and other furniture, and taking delivery of prams and car seats. Actually, on the weekend I finally got round to cleaning out the "junk room" which is now the nursery with some much needed badgering and assistance from Steph.  This room has been full of junk since we moved in 2 and a half years ago, thinking "I will get round to organising that"...hmmf.  Ended up turfing a lot of old computer gear and rubbish that I was too sentimental to get rid of during the two house moves since I left home.  Part of that was my old Uni notes.  Wow...there were some old memories there. Second piece of news is that I have resigned from my job of 12 years to face the big wide world as a contracting Engineer.  Pay is good, market is still unstable, but I am keen to give it a go!  This week marks my final week with Serck, and it is going to be interesting!  I have a lot to get done before Friday!  Good news is that  I will be working with old friends in the City which will be a real change of scenery for me.  Also I will be working in quite a different capacity in the new job in a completely different aspect of process control than I am used to. And lastly for now I am back on my weightloss regime again!  I am once again posting progress so you bugger can keep me honest.  I started up in secret so I could see if I could do it for starters.  It has now been a few weeks and I have been averaging a smidge better than 1kg/week which is fine by me.  The difference this time is that I am not on the Jenny Craig food.  I am simply limiting my Calorie intake to 1200-1500 per day.  My weight gain reason is simple, I love to eat a lot!  By simply cutting down and sticking to reasonably healthy fare I hope to get down to 80kg by the end of January 2010...let's see. I will once again post the chart for progress. Well that was some big news all chucked in at once.  I will try to keep things posted as they develop from here! :)     (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008
6:04 pm	Congrats!!! Sending out a huge well done to the US of A for making the right decision today! On behalf of the rest of the world, I thank you :) I will send a fruit basket! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 16th, 2008
11:18 am	Olympics for REAL men! A rare post for me, but I had to share given the current Olympic climate. http://www.realmansolympics.com/ This is pure gold!  (pun only partially intended) The Olympic medal tally, but weighted for each event's manliness! Unfortunately Australia just doesn't rate due to our swimmer's fruity costumes ;). One cool thing is that you can put in your own weights for events, so you can make your own medal tally based on your own arbitrary criteria! (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, July 12th, 2007
10:45 pm	I just watched the ABC global warming doco... And I only have one thing to say, and that is... Who let the eugenics nutters into the audience?? I mean really.....Did they just manage to accidently find them all in the audience? Were they just the only ones wanting to ask questions? Did they sneak in en-masse? If nothing else the audience "question time" made for some laughs tonight!! (Comment on this)
Saturday, July 7th, 2007
9:09 am	This was too good not to post! Your stats are: STR:16 INT:15 WIS:13 DEX:13 CON:13 CHR:15 The real life AD&D Stats Generator. (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 7th, 2007
11:52 pm	Well, that is Linux updated to a new core for another year. I am fairly impressed with how smoothly these updates to Fedora go. This is the second time I have simply dumped the DVD into the PC and said update, and so far, both have been pretty successful. Try doing that to Windows and see how many problems you get!! For the record, this update was from Fedora Core 4 to Fedora Core 6. I am getting into the habit of updating every 2 cores when the previous version looses its update support. The only problems I had were several unresolved dependencies...usually the result of an obsolete utility package that could just be removed entirely, and a few services that weren't quite fully installed. All hardware, drivers and settings seemed to be retained. Even the problematic Java stuff seems pretty solid. Only one problem now is that the auto updater seems to have changed its behaviour (doesn't download updates nightly like before), and none of the documentation I can find has listed this change. BAH! This prompted another spate of software updates on my own PC....things that I usually don't check as a week by week thing....firmwares, UPS, hardware monitoring. Also been playing Lego Starwars 1. The sequel is by FAR the better game......the original has several sectoins where you can trap yourself, or the AI will screw something up. Also the vehicle sections are abominable. The general design and quality of puzzles is also lacking. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 3rd, 2007
5:55 pm	Ooo it's official Theyre making the next Indiana Jones movie!! (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 30th, 2006
9:19 pm	Ok, I'm impressed Yep, I should have looked at the google homepages first before asking questions ;). Thanks to those who suggested I check it out. My god these clever little boffins are good aren't they? The shit that google manage to put together in web pages is amazing. I guess that's is what comes from a development environment where the geeks are allowed to bend their wills to whatever the hell they feel like. Getting payed to PLAY is the way to get results in technology I think. Hell, I think I get more work done when I am "unmanaged" at work myself. I am lucky that my boss is pretty hands off most of the time. (Comment on this)
Friday, December 29th, 2006
6:20 pm	What is your homepage? After a long hiatis I post once again. I have been on holiday over the Agnostica/New Years break, and aside form a couple of nasty (read 10) callouts in the last 2 days, it has been spent watching telly and playing Lego Starwars 2 on the laptop. I have somewhat questionably decided to swap ISP's over this period too, which has led to about a weeks worth of downtime. Luckily, being on call has allowed me to leech off the work's wireless connection in the meantime, so I haven't been completely offline (I would have enabled dial up but I forgot that my NEW shiny linux motherboard only had a single serial port which was being used by the UPS...doh). Anyway....I am not on IINet's shiny ADSL2'ness and have a question. What do you use as your homepage? I have traditionally used my ISP's homepage/member page as my home, but after moving from Westnet's great members page to IINet's somewhat bland home page, I am looking to break tradition. I am tempted to simply point my browser to Google and be done with it....fast, small, and useful. But I want options.....I like opening the browser to see a local TV guide, news headlines, and weather info. Yes, I could just keep using Westnet's members page, I hear you saying, but that feels a bit...wrong, I dunno. Times are a changin and I feel like a change too :). I downloaded a free VOIP client to test out the VOIP I am paying for, for no good reason, and that seems to work nicely. I am still trying to figure a use for it mind you, as I don't know anyone internationally, or interstate for that matter. I am also resisting the urge to spend over $300 on a wireless VOIP phone that would save me approximately fuckall on calls since I generally don't make any.....but damn.....an IP enabled 802.11 phone....that is just cool. Actually it is phone envy all round after having a gander at hbb's shiny newness. I think I might give up on my slim hope that Nokia will decide to release an 850MHz HSDPA version of their N95 marvel, and go for the IMate-Jasjam. Being Windows Mobile, it will have more or less the same software support as the Symbian platform I am familiar with, and all I really miss out on is the GPS and media features, which, well, are there for flash and not going to be big features for me after all. New Years will be a quiet one this year...between on-call and lack of inclination, a night in will be relaxing before heading back to work :). Weather permitting, I will have an excuse to get the telescope out :) (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, December 2nd, 2006
10:03 am	Asteroid's Revenge http://www.flashninjaclan.com/games.php?ID=27 Asteroids from the rock's POV? (Comment on this)
Monday, September 11th, 2006
8:28 am	Not sure if I should be pleased or not... Another week, another weight-in. I'm not doing a terribly good job of shedding kilos laterly though! Well that went better than exprected! This week's excuse......SITE VISIT! I'll fill in the details on another post. I have been too slack to write anything about it till now. The summary is that I have been in bustling Mount Magnet, 560k's NE of here, after being informed at very short notice. I eat like a pig on site as a general rule, and I even managed to sneak in some Nando's and Chinese takeaway on the weekend. Ok...this week for sure!!! (Comment on this)
Monday, September 4th, 2006
8:32 am	BAH! Next time, you won't be so lucky! Didn't really devote myself to this week's weight losses and it shows consequently. Gotta lay off the crap food on Friday, and the double dose of Nandos, while extremely nice, is a killer. And the cookies....oooooh the cookies. They keep respawning in the kitchen in all their mapel'y carob goodness. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Monday, August 28th, 2006
8:12 am	Oops Ahhhh HOLY SHIT WHAT'S THAT? *point* Big eatin on the weekend has bumped me back up again....doh! Ahh well....it is probably only temporary, and I promise to myself that I will behave this week. Meanwhile, I am in pain. Not too bad mind you. I have been in the City 2 Surf which I walk every year. 12km from town to beach. No blisters this year like I normally get....I think the strategic bandaids had something to do with that. Sore hips as always though, but the muscles themselves are in good shape. The pool walks have been good for me this year. I make no excuses for my gammy hips...I'm a swimmer, not a walker :). Meanwhile, new RAM arrives for the PC today. Very excited. I think I figured out the problem with the old stuff too. RAM required 2V, motherboard supports only 1.8V. It's not something that is usually a problem, so the voltages aren't prominently displayed under normal circumastances. Just that the OEM motherboard I bought is probably somewhat rare in only supporting the one voltage. Checking my new stuff reveals that it does indeed go down to 1.8V. I feel a bit better having found this out, and will not be dreading some random crash months down the track. (Comment on this)