Manda QoP

This isn't a geeky post I'm afraid, apart from a brief bit of science content courtesy of Wikipedia. I try to avoid blogging on personal items however, this is a pretty major change that will be taking place in my life and I'm fairly sure that people are going to notice. On the 15th March I'm having a gastric sleeve operation. This removes the portion of the stomach that releases ghrelin, the hormone that makes you feel hungry; More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Ghrelin . I do feel that this needs some justification. My family and close friends are very supportive, however, a few people seem to think this is cheating to lose weight. It isn't. I've spent 2 years thinking about this and sold my house to pay for it. I am terrified and I really need everyone to be supportive as it's going to be very hard for the next 4+ months. For those of you who think I'm cheating, here's some background. In most people the hormone ghrelin is only at h...

I've been thinking about IT and how it has changed, for most people I guess it's changed for the better, but for some of us it's just not fun anymore. IT used to be about inventing, creating, figuring things out, getting excited about new things and going to work was a great adventure. For fun I'd pick up a new language and figure out writing a little app, like the little game I wrote using SCADA, a chess game in C and a bouncing ball app in Delphi, silly little things but they amused me at the time and I felt as though I was learning something. It was hard to imagine not loving your job and feeling so happy that you weren't in one of those 9-5 trapped in the office jobs that afflicted normal office workers. IT was fun and it stimulated the mind. Nowadays we appear to have ended up as drones, plodding in to 9-5 jobs where the software to create does all the work for us, thinking is optional. I have no desire whatsoever to invent little games anymore because it...

Hola - so today was a day of busking and lawn mowing, the busking was far and away more fun. My friend is still a LONG way from raising the 1500 quid that she's trying to raise for The Meningitis Trust, so if anyone out there feels that someone completing a half ironman in Jan, full ironman in March and the London Marathon in April is working hard enough to warrant some of your money, please hop on over to her donation page and help out with a donation. http://apps.facebook.com/v irginmoneygiving/myfundrai sing.php?viewid=660067015& _fb_fromhash=037e1a21c8adf c604d231f551ad8c832

Unable to stand the pressure of not being able to check my work email whilst on the client site, I have given in to the empire and purchased a prepaid Darth Vodem. On the plus side, it only cost $90 and came with $40 free credit, then got topped up by another $10 when I entered my details online. Groovy. See folks, this is what happens when your IT people block gmail and some of your contractor's work email is gmail. This is going to happen more and more as people move more towards cloud based solutions and get rid of the servers cluttering up their server rooms.

This morning at 8am NZT I passed my MS Dynamics CRM 4.0 certification exam. It was a 20 minute trial resulting in a 92% score. One was aiming for 100% but at that time of the morning it's just lucky that I could even spell my name on the form. I am, to be perfectly honest, gobsmacked. So kiddies... the trick to making this exam so simple? Lots of practical experience that gets the stuff into your head so that you don't even have to think about it, plus practice exams to calm the nerves. The questions I got wrong I'm assuming were the few that I looked at and went "errrrm" for, that's usually a good clue that you're a bit stumped for an answer. Some of them I hadn't covered during practical setups on my spiffing virtual machine, reading more of the manual may have been a good idea.

NZ Journalists really are shockingly bad. A police officer gets dragged along underneath a stolen car and what do they focus on? The officer has had a sex change. What the hell does that have to do with the story? It is completely and utterly irrelevant!

I've had the Avatar game on pre-order for a wee while and was very happy to receive it last week on release day. I was expecting a box to arrive with a pair of swanky red and green glasses after all the 3D hype, but I guess the Wii version isn't 3D as no swanky glasses for me. I am a tad disappointed in that side of things. Anyhoo... on to the game itself. I started playing Avatar last week and am really impressed with the beautiful World that has been created. The game is smooth to play and I'm enjoying that on the Wii you use the nunchuck and wiimote to leap around the lounge hitting invaders with a spear. I'm very much looking forward to the parts that involve the balance board as well. I've always been a fan of these type of games, where you're running around collecting weapons and killing foes on the way, but the added dimension of having to actually wave your arms around instead of just pressing buttons really is fun. Now, if they could create a ...