PageListTemplatesYou are on the archive wiki. The new wiki is here. HeadsUpSho, been busy for the last couple of months, haven’t had a chance to post. Fortunately not much of interest has happened in that time so you haven’t missed much. Life has been continuing as normal with the exception that I have started to study. It is taking a while to get back into it but I’m finding it easier than I expected. The problem is that there are no lectures and no recommended reading for the exams. There is simply a list of topics that you must be able to answer questions on… a three page list of topics. Fortunately DeBeers? has organised a set of notes for us, but it is far from ideal, basically consisting of photocopies of several textbooks for each subject. What I am referring to as studying is more like sifting through the bollocks, trying to find something worth committing to memory. Anyway, just a heads up, my little brother Andrew has just gone down to Cape Town and will be starting varsity soon. He will probably make a turn past the gazebo at some point so be nice to him. Oh, and if he forgets please remind him to get a copy of clawmarks for me. Anyway, just another heads up, Kim and I will be in Cape Town sometime in March. She will be doing a masters block course at stellies or such. I must dash, work is madness at the moment. ChristmasIsACominUrg, I hate working this time of year. 4/5 of the population has taken leave and the mine is a ghost town… well on surface anyway, underground is still a hive of activity. You see we are developing a new section of the mine complete with massive new crusher and 50ton trucks that race around an underground circuit at 40km/h without a driver… scary. Anyway, said new section is supposed to be up and operational by the end of January, a task that is looking pretty much impossible at the moment. This means that there is no rest for the wicked or the migrant labour who want to take their one opportunity of the year to go home and be with their family. I’m realising more and more that we truly are the evil empire. No contractor’s holiday for them. Apparently the whole thing is political, as such things tend to be, and apparently at the end of the day it is their own, read: the union’s, fault, but still. Initially they were required to work for the entire period, excluding public holidays, but at least now they have been given a special concession to leave on Christmas eve and only come back on the 3rd. Unfortunately the workforce weren’t happy with this and last Friday (15th) they collected their payslip and 65% didn’t return on Monday. I have never seen so many ‘makuluskop’ that angry, I thought the mining manager was going to spontaneously combust. What the real problem is, is that technically they could all be fired on the spot for AWOL, but then we would have no one to do the work and we definitely won’t be finished by January. On the other hand, tis the season etc. so we could just let them off, but that is hardly fair on the guys who came to work and then we loose any authority they had. Right now I am just very, very glad that I am an outsider looking in. In happier news, ILoveItWhenAPlanComesTogetherLast night was a bachelor’s party for one of my buddies. All in all a very enjoyable evening with an appropriate amount of drink and shenanigans… limited of course by the random alcohol testing at the mine, but hey. What made the evening really cool was the fact that Rob, the victim, was completely clueless until the party actually started. He and I are both pipe liners for the local round table, which happens to have one of the best party venues in Lime Acres. Coincidently this week was also ear marked for the December business meeting. On Monday they sent out an email to all the members that it would be held on Wednesday. They then sent out another email to all the members (minus Rob) changing the date to Tuesday. This was followed shortly by another email to all the members (minus Rob, plus his local friends) saying that his bachelor’s would be held at the table on Wednesday. Everyone did an excellent job of keeping it quiet and the meeting went off without Rob even knowing… of course we marked him absent as he hadn’t tendered an apology. So last night comes, everyone arrives half an hour early and hides in the back. Rob arrives late because his digs mate wasn’t ready on time (what a coincidence) and is fined for it. We then go through about 3 pages of the minutes that have been doctored to bring his few mistakes up as often as possible. The final page was ye olde stereotypical picture of a guy with a ball and chain and some appropriately cheesy comment about freedom. At this point the rest of the people moved inside and the party began. It took a couple of seconds for it to sink in and about a quarter of an hour to loosen up but I think he appreciated it. WeighTooMuchInfoUrg, I hate administrative incompetence! I’m not going to rant about it though… We live in South Africa, so we’ve all experienced it. I am going to rant about the fact that I just lost 3 CDs?. Well, that’s not strictly true. I just lost a competition for which the prize was 2 CDs? and I have to buy one of them for the winner so… The competition was a simple weight loss challenge between myself and two friends. We decided one evening that we were pudgy and sick of it, so we challenged one other to rectify the situation. We weighed ourselves the next day and each chose a target weight. We decided that the winner would be the one who gets closest to their target weight… Sadly that was not me. Although, I was up against steep odds. The guy that did win is getting married in a couple of weeks and so had a little more motivation. :) We’ve been weighing and tracking our progress every week or so since then and we have all done rather well if I do say so myself. Eventually we decided that it had to end and so scheduled the final weigh in for the beginning of December… last night. Damn, I was confident. I’ve lost a lot and last time we weighed I was well in the lead. I’m not sure what this other dude did but he lost 2kg between Monday and Thursday! I think I should send him an article on anorexia. Still, in addition to 3 CDs? I have lost 15kg and I am pretty proud about it. I’m getting to a point where I will have to start buying new clothes that actually fit me. What is really groovy is that you can finally see the first sign of an outline of a sixpack… you have to look at precisely the right angle in a mirror forged from mithral, covered in diamond and bathed in the tears of a unicorn, by the light of the full moon, on the summer solstice after dancing naked in the town square and outrunning the angry mob… but still :) StoopidStoppidStoopidThe door to my office remains closed at all times because it leads out of the building and I like my aircon. The handle to said office door hates me and every time I leave I get a massive static jolt. I’m being serious, static shocks are usually laughable, but these really hurt! Right, so I get sick of this and decide to try something. I figure that it is the creation of the arch that hurts and not the actual current flow. So, if I take a something conductive, hold it in my hand and touch it to the handle, I should discharge and be able to exit safely. I’m an engineer, leave me alone. I figure that the logical item to use would be a key. So a couple of days ago I try using my office key to discharge myself before exiting, and it works really well. Today however I pull my car keys out first, by mistake of course. I don’t think too much of it so I try them… Bum Bum Bah! They don’t work. This really confuses me so I try them a couple of times. It is only when I start my car to go home for lunch that I notice a major difference between my car key and my office key… My car key has a plastic handle.
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