mexirish...nz

Well it's turning out to be an interesting time. As I discussed recently , contracting is turning out to be something of a pain in the ass. I recently started applying for suitable contracts in Auckland - a sprawling city in the North. Apparently. I managed to secure a phone interview with a Nameless Large Company, and they kindly informed me afterwards that I came "a close second".  This was cool, and usually that woud have been the end of it.  Us contractors have to be used to rejections - it's part of the job. But they have confused matters a bit - they told my agent that they might consider me for a perm role. Usually, I'd reject this straight away, but it's been nearly 5 months since I last secured a contract.  Also, it's a very well known company, and there are some excellent bribes, er, I mean benefits... I'll not mention what they are cuz you'll instantly know the company.  Suffice to say I'd be able to do the thing they do f

Who's Christopher Maloney? Why would I say such a thing? Good reasons. Baloney Maloney!

I love to hate youtube.  But sometimes, I find something that makes me love to love youtube.  Edward Current is one of those things. Great stuff :)

I'm feeling a bit in-awe today.  The word awsome  has changed its meaning somewhat over the last 50 years.  These days, people bandy it about like "Cool" or "Hey that's great!". But I prefer to reserve it to describe the almost spiritual feeling we get when exposed to something truly amazing. The reason for my feeling of awe today is that I was contemplating the size of the Universe. I was watching an episode of Carl Sagan's Cosmos , for the first time since I was a child.   I hadn't really thought about it before, but our sun is one of 200 billion (or so) other stars in our one single galaxy (the Milky Way).  Our galaxy is one on a million billion other galaxies, each one with it's own 200 billion stars.  Isn't that utterly mind boggling? Isn't that awesome? And what about time? Carl gave an excellent analogy. Let's say that all of time has been compressed into a single calendar year.  The big bang happens during the first se

This is the NZI Sevens weekend here in Sunny Wellington. Jacqui and I didn't manage to get tickets - by the time I'd remembered to log on to the website, they were all long sold out.  Apparently they were all gone within 3 minutes, so I don't feel so bad. It would have been great to have gone to the actual tournament, but since that wasn't possible, we went into the city to bask in the ambiance. And we're glad we did!  The whole city was out, and I don't think much work was done! The whole point of the Seven's weekend is, surprisingly, completely unrelated to rugby. Rather, it's about being seen in your outfit.  And every year, the outfits get a bit crazier. This year the costumes included, but where not limited to: Oompa-Loompas Avatars Fairies SWAT team members Cavemen (and cave women) Synchronised swimmers Baywatchers Blues Brothers Mexicans Also, everyone was either drunk or crazy.  Many were, in fact, both. Jacqui got hugged b

There's been quite a lot of media coverage this last few weeks around homeopathy .  Homeopathy is an alternative treatment based on the assumption that the less there is of something, the more powerful it is. Let me explain. Let's say you have a problem with sneezing. You sneeze and sneeze, and you just can't shift it. So the homeopathic treatment would go along the lines of saying, "well, what causes sneezing? pepper!" You they's take a teaspoon of pepper and add it to a litre of water. They'd then shake the bottle, and take a teaspoon of the mixture.  This teaspoon would be added to another litre of water.  This would also be mixed up, and a teaspoon taken.  This process would be repeated.  The homeopath would claim that each dilution makes the potion stronger! The final potion (mostly water with a little sugar or flavour to make it taste "mediciny") in then prescribed to the patient. Yes really.  Some treatments go though dozens of