I’m not sure I should be, but I’m quite looking forward to Mass Effect 2 now. I envision many bleak weekends to come.

I’m also trying to get through my pile of books and I obliterated the previous weekend doing that; currently on book 3 of 7 out of the series I’m currently reading. Also have about 10 others in a different series.

Vice?

Over the last few weeks I’ve been plagued by hordes of what I assume are your garden variety crickets (pictured above). While the one if the photo is pretty small, I would say they probably grow to about three times that size, assuming I don’t kill them first, and kill them I do. Lately it seems that a whole bunch of these infernal buggers have found their way into my ceiling, and they can certainly make quite a racket >_<. I’ve been quite tempted on occasion to toss a “bug bomb” in the ceiling and get rid of them permanently. However, I’m quite partial to having a ceiling over my head, one that is not on fire that is. On some nights I might splat 10 of these things in a single night while they’re hopping around my apartment trying to find some dark and obscure corner in which to camp and annoy the hell out of me. Also, because my ceiling is always dark this seems to confuse the crickets in there, so I will often hear them at all times of day. My solution thus far is to empty half a can of Raid/Doom/Target/etc. (whatever I have on hand) into the ceiling. This will usually shut them up for the rest of the day.

While on the subject of critters, this is what I spotted cruising around my apartment the other day:

It seems I also have quite a spider problem since I murder spiders on fairly frequent basis. This one pictured above is of the Platyoides genus (not sure which species and I don’t really know my spiders), more commonly known as a scorpion spider. Google is decidedly unhelpful when trying to find some more info on this thing. Either way, it looks like it’ll hurt if the thing bites me, so I decided to test some theories about matter occupying the same space at the same time.

Fortunately another warm weather critter that hasn’t made an appearance in force yet are mossies. Hopefully they stay away for a long time yet.

Also, it’s been a while since I’ve been visited by a Parktown Prawn, so no photos there. Given that I live just down the road from Parktown, I do get them hopping around my apartment from time to time. Here’s a few choice quotes from the wikipedia article for the Parktown Prawn:

The Parktown prawn is one of the larger insects found in Johannesburg homes. A large specimen may grow to be 10 cm or more, with long whip-like antennae extending to 5 cm.

A large specimen can jump more than metre high.
The strong exoskeleton of the Parktown prawn makes it exceedingly difficult to kill. They are able to function for a short time when decapitated, and are less susceptible to insecticide than most other insects^{[citation needed]}.

The Parktown prawn is renowned and feared for its ability to jump long distances when threatened (they tend to jump towards you).

I fondly recall my first encounter with one of these genetic aberrations. At the time I was watching something on my PC and was being bothered by some random clicking noise in my apartment. Upon turning my light on I quickly discovered what the noise was. It was the carapace of one of these ghastly creatures hitting my tiles (apartment is tiled right through) after a jump. I can attest to the fact that they can jump over a metre high, as I was visited by one of those massive 10cm monsters that was doing exactly that. While wiki has a clichéd [citation needed] tag against the invulnerability of these things, I can recall quite clearly trying to use a ton of insecticide to make it stfu. In the end I had to pulverise it into a smear with my shoe; which I might add was no easy task either.

Lastly, my finger was the only thing I had handy for size comparison when taking the above photos. Maybe I’ll upload a pic of my finger next to a R5 coin or something.

I got a new bike back in June. A 2007 Triumph Daytona 675 triple in tornado red, which I picked up with only 1350km on the clocks. I then proceeded to crash it not even a month later at Zwartkops in turn 2 when I washed out my front tyre.

I went for a few months wondering why the bike was riding so badly. I eventually got annoyed enough to take it to a bunch of track specialists and drop R1600 on having my front suspension rebuilt. As it turns out my one fork had way too much oil in it and was causing hydraulic lock when under compression which results in no damping… so I may as well have not had suspension at all it was so bad. Quite likely this is what caused my washout with the front.

Next up: I bought a bow back in February and have been shooting on and off when I get some time. It’s a 2008 Diamond Marquis single-cam bow. It’s a superb hunting bow and can be cranked up to 70lb draw strength; I’m currently only running 60lb because I fatigue far too quickly with the thing. I’ve only got a basic sight and stabiliser, but the bow is more than capable of dropping a Kudu bull provided I use the correct arrows.

Also I decided to take up climbing. For now I’m only doing wall climbing out in Kya Sands once a week really, but I’m quite keen to get going with some outdoor rock climbing. Even so, I’m thoroughly enjoying the indoor wall climbing and as a result I decided to start purchasing some kit for myself a few weeks back. The first thing I started with was obviously a chalk bag and some chalk; the difference this makes is astounding. The next purchase was proper rock shoes, and compared to the rentals, the difference is like night and day.

Well, that’s it for the expensive hobbies of which there are quite a few it seems.

In other news; I’m still at the same company who is actually sending me for a bunch of training next week. I intend to go for as much training as I can over the next few months courtesy of my company. The handy thing is as part of our Enterprise Agreement with MS, we get training vouchers, which I plan to use and abuse as I’m aiming for all my certs. For now I’m going after my MSSQL2008 MCITP in DBA. Afterwards I would like to go after the developer and business intelligence ones as well. Unfortunately we have a ton of really high profile and urgent projects going on at the moment and a few extras coming very soon, so time constraints are going to be a limiting factor as always.

Not much has changed with regards to the work situation. I work in a team of 3 supporting a massive host of systems, and given the one guy is very very new we’re generally stretched thin. Good times; at least it’s better than being twiddling your thumbs and being bored all day at work.

In response to the question that was posed to me; I believe that if I were to be given the opportunity to work for your company, in time, I will be able to make a valuable contribution to its future growth as well as continued success. This being said the prospect of establishing a long-term career with your company is one that I find very favourable and I am greatly interested in growing along with the company.

I consider myself to have an analytical mind that is capable of independent thought processes with the ability to articulate my viewpoints should I be required to do so; enabling me to work as both an individual or in a team environment. In addition to this I am a fast learner that is able to adapt to changing circumstances. I am conscientious in what I do and maintain a high moral and ethical integrity. These are some of my personal traits that I feel would benefit both the people and the company itself.

I believe this was in response to the typical interview question of “why do you want to work for us?”. It was probably a closing question that resulted in me composing the response above and submitting it via email. I did get that job, though it was only a couple months down the line that I realised that that sort of work wasn’t for me. Unfortunately by then it was far too late as my inexperienced and overly optimistic self seeking the first full-time job stupidly signed a 24 month contract that essentially locked me in. As a result I ended up wasting both my and the company’s time. Chalk it up to a the hazard of learning through experimentation as the time I spent there and the mistakes I made contributed toward exceedingly valuable work and life experiences.

How disillusioned we become. I’m certainly far more jaded and cynical about work life than I was when I started out 4 years ago, which in the grand scheme of things doesn’t seem like very much time. Fortunately I’m now in a job that I enjoy, one that has taught me much. But, like all jobs (particularly in ICT), this one is just a stepping stone on the path to the next.

I will be the first to admit that my English leaves much to be desired, however I still believe it’s not so bad that I will fall into the trap of creating sentences that are just wrong by mangling words and applying new meanings that make no sense. I do have a tendency to use archaic phrasing and I definitely abuse the semi-colon when I juxtapose two ideas in a single sentence, but I still don’t redefine words based on popular use. This sort of thing really shouldn’t annoy me but it does. I guess democracy is alive and well in the world as the majority certainly rules when it comes to butchering language.

Before I go on, I should clarify that I’m not really a purist. I have no problem with adding words to the dictionary and using phrasing that sounds better even though, syntactically and semantically, it may be incorrect. I also don’t have a problem with applying new meanings to words as the language evolves. However the word “revert” is not one of these. This, in my opinion, is a case where the dictionary definition of the word has been warped and mangled to fit a context in which it doesn’t belong.

re·vert  
–verb (used without object)
1. to return to a former habit, practice, belief, condition, etc.: They reverted to the ways of their forefathers.
2. Law. to go back to or return to the former owner or to his or her heirs.
3. Biology. to return to an earlier or primitive type.
4. to go back in thought or discussion: He constantly reverted to his childhood.
–noun
5. a person or thing that reverts.
6. Law. a reversion.

In the two examples I gave at the start of the post revert is used to mean reply, or get back to, or come back to in a written conversation (most commonly email). I see emails with these phrases almost daily, most often coming from a native English speaker. Even if you were to accept the definition that revert somehow means reply, in the second example the word “back” becomes redundant and even more incorrect. I’ve always been under the impression that revert is used to modify a state, and the dictionary definition above appears to confirm my thoughts. It seems like definition #4 is the source of the confusion… except the example that follows the definition clarifies the meaning quite well.

I can’t be the only one that takes umbrage at the manner in which this word is used. How do these words even make their way into popular usage?

About 6 weeks back I managed to strain the muscle connecting my right scapula to the spine (Rhomboid). A rather painful exercise that has severly hampered most physical activity. The shoulder joint being one of the most complicated joints in the body is highly susceptible to injury and when injured creates a lot of problems. Right now I’ve been unable to ride for long, go do any rifle shooting and gym has also been very haphazard. I’ve been doing about 40 minutes of rehabilitation work on my shoulder almost every day and it’s slowly improving to the level where I can do a bit of gym and some riding without being crippled by pain.

This previous Saturday I went to draw some money out of my credit account. That didn’t go too well as the ATM decided it was hungry and my credit card was the most available sustenance. The only thing I did wrong was to type my PIN incorrectly just once. No grace apparently. So now I have to wait in a nice queue to go collect my new card, whenever its ready that is.

That server I blogged about a few weeks back, well as it turns out I wasn’t entirely correct about its intended purpose. It’s now gloriously serving as a dust collector. Yep, there’s been absolutely no movement on that project, and virtually nothing regarding the other 2 servers.

My job scope is expanding even more as I pick up an increasingly larger number of responsibilities in order to manage to our various application services. I’ve even been shanghaid into some development work, something I’m happy to do, but unfortunately I’m in the wrong department to be doing it as it’s not part of my job function, so I don’t get paid for it.

Hmmm… doesn’t quite seem to work the way one would expect. Oh well.

I’m currently sitting in my old home, at my old desk with my work laptop writing this post, meanwhile cursing MTN through my teeth (however much good that will do…) as I attempt to connect to the internet for the umpteenth time without success; or rather, some very marginal success if you can call connecting for a grand total of 10 seconds each time success.

I took some leave, booked flights and came to Cape Town on a holiday — pseudo holiday — with plans on how to spend the time. One failed opportunity later and I find my plans crashing down around me as the fulcrum on which they rested vanished. Thus I arrive at this point: boredom and so I blog… :)