It’s official! Last night Lyle Kennedy and myself were confirmed as Greens’ candidates for Ashfield Coucil. We’ll join current councillor Mark Rerceretnam campaigning for the next two months and hope to increase the green vote and maintain three councillors for the Greens on council.

Recently I joined Engineers Without Borders and last night at the AGM I was elected un-opposed to the role of Director of Internal Communications. The stated responsibilities of the role are

The responsibilities of the director of internal communications include facilitating communication within the committee, and between the committee and the Chapter members. Responsibilities may include managing our Chapter website, developing regular Chapter newsletters, and informing members of upcoming events.

Additionally I’ve put my hand up to be the acting Director of Awareness until such time as someone can do it full time. As I don’t really have the spare time to commit to it permanently.

Next Thursday I hope to be approved by SHAG to stand in the Ashfield Council elections. Looks like I’m going to be a busy person for a while.

From the Sydney Morning Herald today:

US President George W Bush urged Cuba earlier this week to free political prisoners and dismissed the new president’s reforms so far as “cosmetic”.

“If Cuba wants to join the community of civilised nations, then Cuban rulers must begin a process of peaceful and democratic change and the first step must be the release of all political prisoners,” Bush said.

“This is the policy of the United States and it must not change until the people of Cuba are free,” he told the 38th Washington Conference of the Americas.

Mr Bush, how about releasing the 355 political prisoners you have detained in Guantanamo Bay yourself?

I just got back from a weekend away dancing at the Australian Celtic Festival in Glen Innes. A good time was had by most, and I certainly enjoyed myself. A big part of that was the thourougly enjoyable sessions in the Club Hotel with the Qld Irish Association’s Pipe Band. They played some awesome music until the wee hours on both Friday and Saturday night, and were more than happy to accomodate a few Irish dancers. They also led the flag raising procession from the Irish standing stone to the Hill or Tara.

Expect photos soon.

Happy happy, joy joy. Yesterday I received my new iPAQ 212, a glorious PDA with a 4″ VGA screen. Replacing my broken but not forgotten Dell Axim X51v.

After installing all my favourite apps, well ok, after install Mobipocket Reader & Remember the Milk Sync, I was recommended to Touch Commander. A quick download of the demo & I am in love. Touch Commander brings finger gesture commands to Windows Mobile, in a similar fasion to the iPhone.

Oh the love, it works just like it says on the tin. I can open applications and browse my music and photos with ease.

Or two.

I’ve decided that I need to post more.

I’ve also given up Gloria Jean’s Coffee. Or at least a (week)daily cup of it. At $3.80 a cup that’s $19 a week and a whopping $988 a year in my pocket.

So my goal of 85-90kgs by last September kind of got list in all that having wisdom teeth removed and wedding preperation rush of last year. So it’s time to identify why went wrong, and then tackle the issues head on with a all new and improved excercise plan.

Problems:
1: I’m lazy.
2: Whilst it would be nice to get down to 85-90kgs, I’m not obese, and most people tell me I’m not even overweight. So whilst I can see my beer gut when I look down, there isn’t the peer pressure to reduce.
3: Did I mention lazy.
4: It is far to easy to skip a day at the gym.
5: No independant monitoring or assistance.

Solutions:
1: I have hired a personal trainer, at a rather hefty $280 for 5 sessions I have a lot more incentive to go.
2: I’ve committed to several dance performances this year, that require practice and more practice.
3: I am not allowed to upgrade my computer in any way until I reduce my beer gut. Let’s say down to 34/35 inches.
4: My PT regularly assesses my progress. I can’t cheat her.
6: My PT is a dance instructor, so it’s a dance focused session, no decided after 2 weeks of doing weights I don’t want to do it.
7: Fortnightly updates to this blog of my progress.

Interestingly, despite not running for a few months I can still do over 3mins sustained running, and after only a few months practice I can swim 2kms in less than an hour in an olympic pool.

I can’t be bothered writing a full article at this time, but had a read of Scott Yang’s blog to get a similar view.

Issues:

1: DVD turn around is slow.
2: TV Series DVDs sent out of order (what, do they want me to copy them so I can watch them in the correct order later?).
3: Very very poor customer service. Have had my account put on hold several times because Quickflix had a problem with the billing, not because my credit card was bad. Called up, basically told deal with it, we’ll reinstate your account now and you might get some more dvds in the mail next week.
4: Did I mention they are slow?

I pay $46.95 per month to have 4 DVDs out at a time. I receive the DVD I watch the DVD I post it back. It’s not unusual for me to watch 3 or 4 a day as I have a long commute and don’t sleep much. I would expect that in any given week I’d receive between 10 and 12 dvds, instead I average at 8.

Blockbuster and Civic have better deals that get me more DVDs and in the order I want. I’d rather have the inconvenience of going to the store than the inconvenience of not having any DVDs that I’ve payed $46 for and still having to go the local video store to get a movie.

I just noticed that today is the last day to sit the old exam for the NAS specialist certification, as I have 3 years experience with the old NAS systems and only about 6 months with the new NS350s, NS20s etc, I decided to sit the exam. Down to a Prometric centre I went and 15 minutes later I’d passed the exam.

Now I have just one exam to go before I’m an EMCTA which will be nice.

I decided yesterday to get the ITIL Foundation certification. I enrolled in a web based course which I’ve done half of, and I’m booked in to do the exam on Friday. It seems remarkably easy for such a desired certification. Though I guess I have spent several years working in ITIL environments without knowing it. Most of the information seems to be common sense applied to an IT department.