Grumpy Old Woman

Well I’ve had an interesting week so far.

It started on Saturday, with some slight pain on my right side each time I took a breath. I tried to ignore it as my parents were coming over for lunch on Sunday and I was cleaning and cooking in preparation for their arrival.

Fell into bed exhausted on Saturday night and found that when I lay down, the pain was much worse, each breath hurting ALOT. So, I sat down in an armchair in the TV room and attempted to sleep sitting up. Managed to catch about 2 hours sleep on and off.

Sunday came, pain was still there. I thought “Shit, I really did pull a muscle badly there”, so dosed myself up on anti-inflammatories and struggled through the day. Told my parents I thought I had pulled a muscle the day before, did what I had to do, fed them and sent them on their way. After they left, I had a mountain of dishes and cleaning up to do, but didn’t attempt it, just dosed myself up on some more anti-inflammatories, and sat on the couch with a heat pack hoping the pain would subside soon. It didn’t.

I attempted to lie down that night to sleep, but it was a definite no-go, as the pain was bad and I couldn’t breathe when lying down, so to the armchair again it was for maybe another 2 hours sleep.

Monday morning came, and I knew it was time to go to the Doctor, if not the hospital. Rang my boss to tell her I wasn’t going to be in (well blubbered down the phone actually) and she told me to get to the hospital right away. Of course, going to hospital is SCARY, and my Doctor is nearby, so I went to the Doctor. It was hard to drive with the pain and breathing was difficult.

Of course the Doctor said that I needed to go to the hospital, as I needed an xray to rule out pneumonia or a blood clot in the lung (eek!), so I deposited my car at home, packed an overnight bag (just incase) and off to the hospital I went.

I arrived at the emergency room at 11:30am, saw a triage nurse straight away. She took my blood pressure (which was fine), took my temperature (also fine), asked me about my medical history and medications etc. I told her I was having severe pain on breathing, and that breathing was also difficult.

She told me to sit down in the waiting room and wait to be called by a Doctor.

FOUR HOURS LATER, I saw a Doctor. She took some blood (and I swear, I didn’t even FEEL the needle go in, she was that good), organised a chest xray, gave me some pain killers (woohoo) and sat me outside in the waiting room AGAIN.

Another 2 HOURS later, (although it didn’t matter to me, as I was dozing on the pain killers), the results were in. I had a very severe chest infection (right lung), so I was given 2 types of very strong antibiotics to take, and some drug-addict heaven-type pain killers.

I ended up getting home that night at around 8:30pm. A very long day.

I slept in the armchair again, as I still couldn’t lie down, but the next day (yesterday, Tuesday), the shortness of breath had improved alot, and so had the pain. I was able to get through about half the dishes from Sunday (there were a LOT of dishes to wash!) The improvement lasted until last night. Now the left side, just below my armpit and slightly to the front, same pain on breathing. Dosed myself up again on painkillers and managed to sleep LYING DOWN, and on the side that was painful (which actually helped). Pain is still there this morning, so I’m going to take a shower and head off to the hospital again today to get checked out.

Of course, it could just be muscular from coughing, but I’ve been down that misinformed road only 2 days ago, but now I’m on heavy duty antibiotics and it shouldn’t be the same problem. I’m worried about a blood clot, as I haven’t exactly been running around the for past few days and have been basically sitting up the whole time. So, I need to be sure I am not gonna fall off the perch in the next 24 hours.

Will let you know how I go.

Non-geeks, move on, nothing to see here.

Others, FEAR MY LINUX BOX!

That is all.

Well, I’m at the end of my first week in the corporate communications area. How did I get here? Well, perhaps a little background…

I was a HR Manager for a state government department. Due to a government policy change, an edict came from the highest levels that corporate services areas (e.g. HR, Finance, IT, Admin Support) of a number of government departments should merge into one entity to provide these shared services back to those government departments, but at a different physical location.

Now, there are different types of “doing” HR, as far as I am concerned:

• Operational HR, which involves processing of transactions (such as recruitment admin, processing workers compensation etc)
• Consultative HR, which involves providing professional advice to managers on dealing with issues such as poor work performance or attendance, coming up with strategies for filling difficult positions etc and providing employees with counselling and career advice,
• Strategic HR, where the HR Manager is a part of the organisational (or regional, in my case), executive group and working with them in the business planning process, providing input on business strategies from a HR perspective. For example, if the business plan over the next three years is to bring in some kind of special program of services, thinking about whether we would need to recruit new staff, or perhaps up-skill existing staff over the preceding period so they could do it, or, would some staff roles become defunct in the process and what would we do with them etc.

What I liked doing was Strategic HR, and I was doing that happily when an opportunity arose to work on the implementation of a new HR and payroll system. Now I was keen to get involved in the implementation because:

1. I am a HR Manager, and a new HR system has the potential to provide me with good reporting information for such purposes as workforce planning, so I wanted to make sure I could get the sort of information I wanted,
2. I’m a wanna-be geek, so this would combine my professional HR knowledge with a new computer application.
3. I have a short attention span I like gaining different types of experience, so thought getting involved in this implementation would increase my skill-set.

So, I was successful in getting on to the project in a Change Management capacity. Mind you, being a Change Manager didn’t mean (in my case) not getting involved in the system build scope or technical areas (much to the distress of those for who they were a responsibility), so, poke my nose in I did. And I enjoyed it BIG TIME.

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I live in an apartment block and my TV reception is crap (I was going to say shit, but thought better of it). Even though we’ve got an antenna on the roof, due to all the construction going on locally (tall cranes - so they tell me), watching TV is like watching shadowy figures through a North American snowstorm a lot of the time.

Now, let me explain for my Yankee readers, we have only 6 free to air analogue channels here in Sydney, with cable TV subscriptions to only a small percentage of Sydneysiders. Unfortunately for me, the only cable provider that provides a satellite service doesn’t provide the service to apartment buildings, unless the wiring is built-in at the build stage.

So, you can imagine, I treasure whatever TV viewing I can get on my crappy reception and was beside myself when a friend (thanks Warren!) told me that if I were to get a digital set top box, my TV experience would improve big time.

So, I did. Picked one up on Saturday and for good measure, purchased a hard disk drive DVD recorder to keep it company.

Now I’m the person my friends ring when they buy a new piece of audio-visual equipment for help in setting it up, but I tell you, getting this set-top box hooked up to the DVD recorder and TV had me climbing the walls for THREE DAYS.

First, I could get digital TV on the TV, but not through the DVD recorder, then I could get it through the DVD recorder and not the TV. Then, I couldn’t get the analogue channels through the TV (which I would need if I was recording digital to the DVD recorder) then rinse, lather and repeat!

Anyhow, thanks again to a rather whiny call (from my end) to Warren, and some head-scratching from him whilst trying to decipher the manual (it was written in Engrish - ugh!) on my 45th configuration of wiring, it all worked!

I now have six PERFECT TV channels to watch! (oh, and plus 2 extra digital ones).

So now, if you need help hooking up your set-top box, call me!

NOT.

My Dad is the undisputed world champion new car buyer. He’s not brand loyal when in a buying mood, and will buy a car from the dealer who gives him the best deal.

He likes to trade-in his car every 2-3 years, so he gets a good trade-in and so that his cars are almost always under warranty and he looks after them so well that they are in pristine condition when he does. That’s not to say he doesn’t drive them, because he does, long distances, as he lives down the south coast of New South Wales and drives to Sydney every couple of weekends at least.

Anyhow, back to the car purchase.

He sits down and decides how much cash he’s prepared to pay on top of his trade-in and will NOT budge from that figure. He then sets out to do the rounds of the new car dealerships striking fear into salesmen. He’s had Fords, Nissans, Mitsubishis, and is currently driving a Toyota which is fairly new, but he’s not real happy with it and he’s missing the ABS he had with his last car (which did, in fact, save his life on one occasion). My mother’s the one that is nervous now in a car that doesn’t come with it as factory installed, nor can they get it installed after the fact. I suppose she’s nagged him so badly he gave in.

Aaaaanyway… He sets off on his rounds visiting the various dealers just looking and to cut a long story short, at no time has he ever purchased a new car for a dollar more than he’s been prepared to pay, and including EVERY (and I mean EVERY) optional extra included at no charge. This time was no different. The negotiations take over an hour, and the last 2 times, he’s been walking out in disgust, with the franchise owner and salesman running after him to the street to make a deal. I swear, if the salesman hasn’t lost 3 kilos in sweat making a deal with my dad, then he hasn’t done a good enough job. I should pimp him out to people buying new cars for a charge of a couple of hundred bucks a pop, because he will save you thousands!

But this time the unthinkable happened. He went too far in his brand whoring…

HE BOUGHT A HOLDEN!

Oh the humanity!

Well sadly my holidays are over. During this time I took a vacation from everything (including this blog obviously). Seriously, I had good intentions, but alas, intentions they remained so I apologise… AGAIN.

As I mentioned in my last post (such a long time ago), I have been having a veritable reading ORGY. I haven’t really read for pleasure in about two years, with the projects consuming so much of my time but at work and at home but boy, I have REALLY caught up over the past three weeks!

I talked about the Harry Potters and the Jean Auels in the last post, but you can add Bryce Courtenay’s new book, Whitethorn, Lisa See’s Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, Melina Marchetta’s Looking for Alibrandi, Steve Squyre’s Roving Mars and a re-read of Aron Ralston’s Between a Rock and a Hard Place. God Bless Audible.com and a few other sources as all of these were audiobooks! I didn’t even have to turn a page!

There are a couple of these books that might interest a few of you, so I’ll give you a quick biopic of these:

Roving Mars - Steve Squyres

Steve Squyres is the actual guy behind the Mars Rovers project. He’s been involved right from the time the project proposal was written right up to and including launch, landing and scientific experiments on Mars. His memoir takes you through the whole process, what was involved, the dramas, how NASA does stuff and what happened behind the scenes. You don’t need to be a geek to enjoy this book. Trust me.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place - Aron Ralston

Aron Ralston is the guy over in the States who is an experienced climber. One day he goes canyoning in Utah by himself, has a climbing accident in a secluded location where his arm gets pinned by a boulder, and ends up CUTTING HIS OWN ARM OFF WITH A PEN KNIFE when he’s at the point of dying from dehydration. Holy cow.

Lisa See - Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

Set in 19th century China, tells the life story of a young girl. These were the days that foot-binding was practiced and marriages arranged. Seriously, the life of women then was sure interesting!

As for Bryce Courtenay, I won’t go into detail except to say, onya Bryce! Another excellent read. Looking for Alibrandi is the book on which the movie was based, another good read too.

Now I’m not one of those serious reading tossers, who are all about themes and such codswallop, I’m just in it for a good read and to be transported in my mind to another time or place. All of the above books did it for me.

In other news, I started my new job in corporate communications today. The day didn’t start well with my alarm not going off in the morning and a panicked start to the day, but so far so good. I’ll absorb another couple of days and let you know how I’m going.

Anyhow, that’ll do for now. Gotta ease myself back in here too!

OK I realise it has been exactly 12 days since I last posted (bloody hell, didn’t that go quickly!), so, if any of you are still visiting in the vain hope that I am NOT dead, well I’m not… and I’m sorry for the vacuum that was this site for that period.

So, you’ll be wanting an update then? Okay.

The project I was working on is finished, finito, done. That’s good news, because that means I’m on holidays! (The bad news is that all the extra cash I was earning as a result of working on the project is also finito unfortunately). So, I am officially sans having to get up for work for the next 2 weeks (plus the week I’ve already done), time which I have put to good use immersing myself in two of my favourite pastimes, reading and shopping.

I have discovered the joy of audio books, books recorded onto cd which, in my case, I’ve converted to mp3 format and am listening to thru my ipod (or computer, or dvd player). Nothing is as sweet as sitting back on the couch (or lying down) having good books read to you by a professional narrator. I’ve rediscovered the Harry Potter series of books (and omg I wish she would hurry up and write the last book already!) as well as re-reading the Jean Auel Earth’s Children series (and that bitch goes 10 years between books, dammit…)

My problem with reading is that I just can’t stop. If I start a book, nothing and I mean NOTHING (such as TV, or even blogging!) can drag me away. Seriously, it was 3.30am one morning before I forced myself to bed, only because I was so shocked that I was still up reading, not because I was tired. I clearly have no self-control.

I DID drag myself out of the house to go shopping at a somewhat distant shopping centre (we all like a change of scenery don’t we?) but found that the highlight of the trip was actually the rest room. Now, I don’t know about you, but one of the most distasteful things in life is visiting public rest rooms. It starts with the toilet seat and the female “hover”, where you don’t want to actually “sit” where unfamiliar bottoms have rested. Now Australia has finally come into the new millennium, with some bathrooms providing paper seat covers, but not all, so it was a nice surprise that they were available.

The next issue I have is the washing of the hands. Seriously, is it WORTH washing your hands in a public rest room? You have to turn on the tap with your dirty hands (not to mention the dirty hands that have gone before yours), but, unfortunately, when you have washed your hands, you need to turn off the SAME tap with your clean hands. What’s the point? Then, if you’ve managed to turn off the tap with the use of a paper towel, you still need to exit the rest rooms by opening the door to the outside world. Again, an issue, as we KNOW some filthy people don’t wash their hands, so have smeared god knows what on the door handle.

Well these restrooms were like a gift from heaven. Firstly, there is no door to the outside world, but instead, a small maze-like corridor (so you can’t see in to the bathroom area). There were paper toilet seat covers, and taps that turned on when you put your hands under them, and off when you took them away. No touching! The hand dryers were automated also. Hygiene heaven!

I swear it was worth the trip just to pee.

So now I am just catching up on the list of about 80 thousand blogs I read (okay, well maybe I’m exaggerating a little), catching up on all the tv series’ I watch, and thinking about which book to read next.

Oh, I did find out that I won’t have to go back to generalist HR when I go back to work. I’ve been given an opportunity to work in corporate communications for three months. I’m beside myself with joy about this. Communications is an area that definitely interests me (cuz I DO like a chat…) and, of course, I do like to write. I’ll be getting to play with all kinds of groovy software, might be able to do some sorting out of the corporate Intranet (the design is good, but some of the content is all over the place) learn some new skills, PLUS, the woman in charge is really cool. She helped me out quite a bit on project related stuff, and appears to really know what she’s doing, so I’ll be hoping to learn a lot from her.

So, life is sweet

I think about how I am going to explain to my father that he need not bring his toolkit when he visits with mum on Mother’s Day, as I got help in working things out, from America, via my computer and the internet, and it makes me giggle inside.

I am speaking of course, of the remarkable transformation of this to this.

Once I got help on working out what cam studs and cam locks were, (hugs to Tone (Bio) and Zipper) and armed with my squeeze bottle of PVA glue and ten THOUSAND other screws, bolts and assorted other thingies, I set about the job of putting it together. Was kind of like a mega jigsaw puzzle really.

I figured that if I could install various bits and pieces inside my computer and can change a tap washer, I could do this and I was right. The hardest bit of all was hanging the damn door can you believe it?

Anyhow, once again I am compelled to say… God bless the Internet and those that dwell in it!

OK because I clearly have so many readers (yeah, you can tell by the three people that actually comment…), I thought I would drive the remainder away by letting you in on some of my dank, dark little secrets. Oh, I can be high and mighty at times, but underneath that confident, witty exterior lurks the following:

I love reality TV.

Yes, I do. Australian Idol, Big Brother, all of them. A new series of Big Brother just started here, and immediately one of the contestants struck me as EXTREMELY hot. He’s a country boy, you know, and on his bio piece they had him riding a galloping horse in slow-motion, bare chested, smiling his million-dollar smile. Well last night he ‘fessed up. He’s gay. He WAS too good to be true. I was devastated, although not as devastated as the girl who’s been trying to crack on to him since the first day.

I eat chicken livers.

Love ‘em, fried up with garlic and onion, with mashed potatoes and peas on the side. Totally yummy. I eat any type of patè, except the seafood ones (cuz they aren’t REALLY patè), but I draw the line at eating any other animal’s liver fried up or cooked in any other way.

I haven’t cleaned my oven in 12 months.

and that’s all I’m gonna say about that. Seriously, do I have to give a reason?

When I’m stuck for content, I post absolute crap.

This post proves it.

I’ve written a new page on the Wordpress Plugins I use, which can be accessed on the right sidebar under “pages” for easier access, where I have listed the plugins I simply wouldn’t consider being without. The list has a bit more information on the plugins I’ve previously mentioned, plus a couple of new ones. Now I’ve quality tested a HEAP of plugins, and these are the ones that worked for me the best, were relatively easy to install, and I’ve found extremely useful.

I have written previous posts on Wordpress Plugins and pondering the benefits of Wordpress versus Mambo (or as it is now called, Joomla), but certainly the Wordpress versus Mambo post was written very early on in my experience using Wordpress.

A bit more time has passed now, and I have noticed I get quite a bit of traffic from people using search engines to look for pages comparing Wordpress to Mambo and looking for write-ups on Wordpress plugins, I thought I should do an update.

Also as mentioned previously, the biggest difference I found between Mambo and Wordpress was the availability of plugins for various purposes. I know that, had I still been an active Mambo user, I would have been drooling over the plugins listed on the new page, as all I would have LOVED to be able to access for my Mambo site. Of course, it’s been a while since I did any work on my Mambo site, so things might have changed, but I still doubt it can compete, simply by virtue of the fact that there are so many more Wordpress users, and correspondingly more work going on in development (thanks, development people, by the way!)

So, if you’re a Wordpress user, I hope you find the page useful. If you’re deciding on which way to swing in the Wordpress/Mambo/Joomla debate, go for Wordpress. I am definitely a convert.