It's a funny thing trying to self assess - like tonight I lead church, I felt that the songs were wrong, what I said between was stilted and wrong and althought the talk was ok that it didn't hit the spot. Yet tonight 3 people came up later and said it was just right as a service! Well I am glad though cos I didn't want it to be a poor service it just felt like it.

LDC starts in a week and there is still a bit of reporting to do, maybe these things are keeping me down. The stress is slowly working away at me and I think that is why I feel so tired. I will be glad when LDC starts cos it means that there will be just the one thing to focus on and it's something that I love and is always a great adventure of seein God do some amazing things.

Last night The Noble One and Praetor came over again and joined me and Steve for some RalliSport fun - The Noble One was the undoubted gun driver of the night winning far more races than anny of us. I owned on of the tracks, Praetor had an aboslute shocker and Steve managed to pull off the only nose plant of the night.

Now my thoughts on RalliSport Challenge - it is the most visually detailed and beautiful rally game if not any car game. Some of the stuff looks so real you'd think it was. However the game also has a lot of really annnoying features, the most annoying being the reset thing. If you go off the track or somewhere they don't want you to then you get reset back to a dead stop on the track. Now this sounds ok, but the way it ism implemented is ludicrous! Like if you just stay too much to the left or right off the road, not short cuts or anything, it will reset you, but if you end up upside down it won't! And even in bits where you could jump a hill and end up on the track without any real gain but more fun then half way through the air it would reset you back to where you left the road - clearly a game made by old farty pants.

Less than a week to Leadership Development Course - with so many kids sick and being the last week, hopefully I might get a quiet week - yeah right, reports are still hanging around, reprints of errors, and people want me to assess what went wrong and come with fixes right now - the annnoying thing that the battle to get the computer system [old and crap OASIS] to work means that things like chasing teachers can sometimes fall through the cracks.

Got a last minute call to lead at church tonight - I don't mind, but I feel a bit tired at the moment - so I might just head off for a nap - cheers.

Well something amazing has just happened - The Praetor's alleged youngest sister is no longer alleged I have seen video footage of the once alleged sister of The Praetor.

Unless Peter is in on the scam as well! So maybe this is just an actor hired to make me think that The Praetor's alleged youngest sister is real..... peter rekons I will see her tomorrow, but then if they hired an actor once they can do so again...

Just about to head off to work and thought I'd catch up on yesterdays email and visit Rob's blogg and view the guestbook....

So I just want to clarify something - when I say "that nerdy shell" it is not an insult, just an observation, and maybe a badly worded one - I am a nerd and see nothing wrong with that, nor in others, just as those disgustingly sporty athletic types have nothing wrong with them either. Rob wrote on my guestbook that he had told me he thought soccer was great - it wasn't so much the interest in soccer that had surprised me, but that he had moved onto the using it as a conversation point which I had never heard before. Anyway, probably no need to worry about so much to give it a paragraph, but I just felt I wanted to clarify.

Spent a great night playing rallisport - I felt I had the move of the night, where as Rob had the stack of the night getting his XBOX Opal to sit on it's nose!! And James, well he had the most fun.

another week is over - sort of - tomorrow it is probably back into work to make a last attempt at getting our new server up and running - I have been cautious because it is so different that wanted to learn as much as I could so as to make sure I set it up best I could. So tomorrow I must bite the bullet and do the transfer, after all with 587MB available we are close to full.

It was an interesting night at BB last night - and that is all I have to say about that, other than The Blue Haired One was very excited by his first question and answer - so if you need wisdom, visit The Paper, follow the link to James Says and ask a question. Oh and one other thing was hearing the Praetor talking about sport!!! Yes, maybe that nerdy shell has a crack in it. Go Praetor!

Something funny??? Well I can't remember really, there are quite a few students away sick at the moment - oops, I don't mean to say that it's funny but it makes for quiet classes - ahhhh. Matt from Year 7 didn't even supply any humour today. Anyways have a great weekend.

check out The Paper for a new page, James Says.... Relive those special moments where nuggets of knowledge have lifted your hearts - or ask James your own question and get his response.

James - The Blue Haired One - his wisdom is wise

OK I finally got onto the music jamboree site and it all appears cool - the warnings remain for the tv show though. I particularly liked the COMA CARD, which is very very useful and, as the suggested on the show, you should download a copy, print it out, fill in your favourite music most likely to rouse you from a COMA and then trim and run down to your local video store and get them to laminate it for you!

Old grey is back home, thanks to the Noble One who drove me to the rental place and then over to pick up the repaired old grey. The Noble One, always living up to his name. And in great news the Reco Transmission comes with a 20000km 12 month warranty and it actually cost exactly what the person said - so if you are in the Toongabbie, Seven Hills area give D.S. Jones Automatics a spin - Completely reconditioned Automatic Tranmission change-over units, General Mechanical Repairs and Authorised Inspection Station 96742494.

Had a great day with Year 7 during maths - we had a double period of further algebra and they didn't mind it. Was it a great lesson, full of new and exciting presentation methods? not really, I think they just got a spin out of being able to do algebra, that scary and evil part of high school. I am really enjoying this class, they are probably the smartest class I have ever had and the best behaved. Plus because they are still new they are not the cynical, brooding, "I hate maths", teenagers that the combination of hormones, dreams shattered and the school system creates.

I think I may have commented on this before, but I want to say it again - I love teenagers. I say this because often when I say that I am a High School teacher the comment I get is negative, and along the lines of how do you cope with them teenagers - much easier than the adults I have to work with at times that's for sure. I think that the media and adults in general need to be much more positive about the young people around us, we need to remember that the feelings and expectations of a teenager can be very very confusing and contradictory - the best part about teenagers is that they are so often more willing to listen, consider and then, if convinced, to actually set about changing. Now of course this is as much of a generalisation as the "evil teenager" sterotype but I think much more true and fairer. I enjoy the fact that teenagers are so often full of energy and hope and a love for life - people who crush that are the worst people of them all. What do you think - comment on the guest book.

I am sitting in the fire warmed lounge room, watching John Saffron's new show called Music Jamboree and it is fantstic [warning Drugs References, swearing, thoughtful, anti-establishment] a collection of interesting and different things to do with music - f'rinstance in the States the DOJ tried to ban glow sticks cos they are Drug paraphenailia! Bizzare but true. It's on SBS, where else. Oh and as for the website - I have no idea what may be on it because I think their servers are swamped. So probably not a site for the under 18's.

Wondering how MicroSoft is changing it's philosophy after been told it has monopoly powers, well in this article we learn that Microsoft has not changed a bit - "consumers should be very concerned that Palladium will mean that their computers and information are no longer under their positive control but rather under the omnipresent surveillance and enforcement of a third party more interested in turning a profit than empowering their customers to think and act for themselves." Have a read and decide for yourself.

You can tell it is almost time for Leadership Development Course because my car begins to have troubles. Every year - usually during LDC - something goes wrong, wether it be muffle trouble, gear box or electrical, something on course takes out my car. Well this year was looking good until two weeks ago when my cooling system packed it in - so new Radiator, Water Pump and Thermostat was required - and then this last week my Automatic Transmission is mucking up. The car will be repaired on Tuesday. [Mind you if I dealt with little problems when they came up rather than ignoring them, they wouldn't become big expensive problems.] On a positive note I had found a place that would work on the car and was beginning to wonder who might be able to get me home [Steve's car is off the road too] when one of the parents of the guys at BB drove up! Thank you God for looking after everything, even the simplest thing.

Yesterday wasn't one of my better days, let something get to me, and the silly thing is that I have been really thinking about the key to contentment that Paul talks about in the bible, and how no matter what is going on around you the key to being content is to rely upon Jesus and his power that is so mightly at work within us. I was also reading about how instead of cursing people who upset us we need to be blessing them - I can see how these things work but within me is the struggle, for some reason, not to let go of how I feel about events and people. Even though I can see that by looking for reasons to bless your enemy will help you as much as them, and that relying on Jesus does let you put what happens day to day into a broader perspective. Oh well, change takes time, and I will keep on working away at it. In the end though, the only way I [and anyone for that matter] will experience the truth of the words of the Bible is by reading them and then trusting God enough to actually live them out.

Went to soccer yesterday, a cold day made worse by a dull loss in the Reserves and a great game but a loss in the Firsts [enjoyment heavily marred by the cold].

On the 18th I talked about Matt and how he didn't know why he was wearing his tracksuit, well today in class he had some more troubles..... Every Maths lesson starts with 5 Quick Questions, which they do while I mark the roll and gets them settled into the lesson. Anyway Question 4 was "How many sides does a nonagon have" Anyway I had just finished the roll and was giving them a bit more time to finish when Matt [who was sitting in front of my table] asks "Sir? How many sides does a nonagon have." I looked up and said, "I asked you first! You tell me!" Matt just looked at me and went "Nah Sir, how many sides does a nonagon have?" "I'm not telling you, I asked you first." His mate nudges him, "He asked you first, on the board silly, and anyway it's nine." I think Matt still had no idea.

The reports are just about done. The new Year 11 reports look very nice. Right now I am just waiting for Year 7 to print and then I can go home...

I'm on core.org.au again with news of the latest IE for Mac.

Funny thing, yeah, there was something funny, but I can't remember what it was. Oh well. At least I laughed.

Rob has finally put a link to my site on his front page - it's a nifty little rotating logo! Now all he needs is the spinning and flashing and sounds!! Thanks Rob [click the green Praetor logo over there on the right]

Today's funny event [please note Westfields is very vey strict on uniform - school tracksuits are only to be worn during sport time] :: Year 7 student [Matt] arrives late to class - dressed in his tracksuit - hands me two little notes and sits down. I read the notes and one is a late note from the deputy [ok, so now I know why he's late] the other is a note excusing him from wearing the right school shoes. Great, all is good - but why is he wearing his tracksuit?

Matt comes up to get his note back about the shoes. "Ok, so this note is for the shoes, what about the rest?" I ask, wondering why he is in his tracksuit. Matt looks confused, "Mr Cherry said it was okay to wear these shoes, he gave me a note" gestures weakly at the note in my hand.

"Yes, I know, but what about the rest," I gesture up and down, "you know, this is for the shoes, and what about the rest?" Matt looks even more confused, "Mr Cherry gave me the note." Now Matt isn't a bad kid so I decide he is actually confused. Very calmly and slowly I try again, "Yes, Matt, but you are in your sports gear. What's going on, just cos you don't have the right shoes doesn't mean that you can wear your tracksuit. Why are you wearing your tracksuit?" Matt looks a bit upset now, I am sure he thinks I am crazy. he doesn't say anything. I am trying to be gentle ...

"Matt," I say gentlely, "Why are you wearing your tracksuit?". 'I don't know", replies Matt. "What, you don't know?" "No" "Did you just have sport? about to have sport? not got your gear?" "I don't know." His mates are in stiches, Matt is looking very uncomfortable.

In the end I just told him to sit down. 5 minutes later he comes up and asks to go and get changed. I let him go.

I won Risk! woohoo! Lead church on Sunday night and felt it went well. And it was a good sermon too - so all around vey cool. Had lunch with James on Sunday as well and enjoyed catching up with how things are in the world of Jimmy.

Today's funny event was hearing comments from students about our sick head teacher as to way he really isn't at school - all I can say is that they have some great imaginations.

As a regular reader of Rob's Blogg I noticed a few interesing links and thought I add my own thoughts - firstly Minority Report - should be an awesome movie, the guy who wrote the orginal story Philip K Dick was a legend writer from the 50's and 60's I think. He had some great ideas about the future, mostly bleak, and mostly about us being tricked by perceptions of reality that are wrong, or clever aliens. Total Recall is also based upon one of his stories. It should appeal on all levels, action, adventure and also making you think about crime and punishment and the future.

Freedom Ship, the city at sea. I saw a story about this and other HUGE Engineering plans on FoxTel over the weekend. Now what I am about to say is just how I felt, my opinion, as I watched this show about a huge cone building to hold 100,000 people and a huge Bridge to cross the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea and then finally the Freedom Ship. Mostly I just felt sick, sick that so much money could be contemplated on such an extravagance - to me they showed where the free market system doesn't work [although much of it does].

And the ship most of all. It really serves no useful function except for letting money hungry people avoid all national ties and act as if there is not a world around them - the people carefully mentioned that they would stay 12 miles off shore at all times [thus always in international waters] sure it was amazing, stupendous, but it had no purpose at all and would utilise an immense amount of resources to satisfy the cravings of a whole bunch of rich people. What was particularly interesting was to hear how they had been unable to test it's stability in heavy seas because no computer was programmed to model something so huge - the numbers were just meaningless - they may have fixed that by now. But in the end the 11 Billion Dollars they were seeking to raise could do so much more useful things, the resources they consumed could be used in far more useful ways.

I don't know, it just got to me, such an extravangant waste by rich people, just to make them richer.

Well, I am just coming to the end of 6 hours at work, in which the only thing I actually achieved was to get a new media convertor set up at each end of one of a fibre optic run, then a 16 port unmanaged switch set up in the distribution cupboard, set up a DNS server inside the school [which is supposed to help out OS X servers but seemed to make no difference], change the mounting on an oversize switch.

Now why did that take 6 hours - well because the run out to the stadium isn't working, cos the set up that was working fine on one fibre run has decided that it doesn;t like the run out to the stadium and although the little red laser light is coming trhough both ends it refuses to make a connection. Oh and cos to find an old computer to run the DNS I had to find a mouse and a mouse ball that worked and then enough a power point to plug the thing into. Oh and of course the stadium and Network Central are at opposite ends of the school and Network Central is upstairs in the library and I have to lock and unlock everything cos it's a weekend.

Managing our new servers will create new difficulties, whilst at the same time allowing a lot more utility and we have to buy a $180 program to manage our user lists - which isn't much for a school except that we have to buy it from US and we will prob have to use Credit Card, which means good ole brendan will have to front the money and hope that the school pays me back quickly.

Anyway, I love working with Computers!!! I do, it is just a pain to have so little to show for 6 hours work. Nothing exciting anyway. Tonight is a Risk night tonight and I am looking forward to that a lot. Oh and another highlight will be reading Understaning Using Net Info.pdf a classic tale of domains, user, groups, root, parents and children all written in Palatino with Headings in Garramond Narrow. I'm EXCITED ;)

/cam2 has a shot of Steve "watching" the FA Cup in front of the fire. It's a bit dark but should be viewable - vaguely. lol.

Well, it's Friday again and I am relaxing in the warmth of the lounge room with the fire in the corner and a banana Paddle Pup in my hand, crusin the net and talking with Steve and a few people online. If Parra was winning then it would be perfect. Very relaxed tonight. Next week will probably be pretty hectic, but I am taking a break from running Bible Study and going to BB and doing The Paper [issue 190 online now] and so that should help a lot with getting through the last of reports and preparing for LDC.

Oh yeah and speking of The Paper I have given it a face lift and used the power of blogger to make it easy to put in news - in fact for the next 5 weeks there will be no paper just news updates on the website - so if you wnat to keep in contact with the Tooney Boyz then visit the website.

This article lets you take a peek inside Jaguar which is Mac OS X version 10.2 due late US summer. Includes screen shots too. I'm excited!

Also Apple has started a no hold bars gloves off takin' it to 'em Media Campaign - "Switch" tells it all - but if the word doesn't tell you then having a read here or a watch here might help you out....

Warning - Iif you watch all the ads i think the music in the background must carry some subliminal message, cos I am feeling compelled to buy a Mac, even though I own one, have a work iBook and work with them all day.... Arr Mac, until you use one, you don't know what you are missing.

Have you visited mattydempsey.com???? Why not! Click that link and check it out - the evolution continues....

Well another day down, reporting is crazy times at westfields and with the main admin server been doing crazy things we have lost a week and a half and so the pressure is on. Our Head Teacher is quite sick and we hope he gets better, however it has meant for one less source of stress and extra work. Something funny from today - well I can't think of anything - it was a good day though, just busy.

I have been using OS X on the iBook the school got me - I thought it might not be able to handle it, but it is going fine. The down side is that I have too many legacy applications and so I must bid farewell to the beauty and stablity which is OS X. Mind you I find that OS 9.2.2 is mmuch much more stable than previous OS, it's been a long time since I have had a serious crash in Classic either. So I guess I will get over having to go back to Classic on my iBook. I can still reboot it into OS X when needed - just hold down the X key on startup.

Well the printer needs more paper - until next time, cheers.

This is an AppleCare Document [#106482] that answers a few security holes that Rob had in his Blogg awhile back - to tells you how to use the Open Firmware Password application to set up low-level password protection with Mac OS X 10.1 and later. Only try this on super critical mahines as it locks you out of very useful trouble fixing options.

Just posted in case Rob doesn't get a chance to or his blogg isn't working properly.

Just finished watching The Charlie's Angels movie from a few years ago. I loved it for three reasons - diaz, barrymore, liu - and the music. They had way too much fun making that movie. The Chad IS great! Left me feeling very single though.....

Oh and I made it into Core again with the Evolution of Halo story - yeah.

The guys at FSD Web Design tell me that mattydempsey.com has had a bit more content added and should have some more up by tomorrow - I think it's looking good.

If you are a Halo fan then you will want this movie called 'Evolution of Halo' on your Hard Drive [the link takes you to a page of mirrors - it's a 52.1 MB file].

The quality is not great, it is a Camera recording of a low quality movie, but to give an idea of what the vision of Halo was it does it well. There is a commentary from Bungie staffers but it is hard to understand for the most. The highlight for me was the sequence where they go through about 10 different weapons, some are funny others make me wish that the technology/time could have met the vision.

In this movie I see the Halo that I heard about back in 1999[???] and fell in love with. [although I am glad they went more 1st person] (oh and did I say it is 52.1MB)

hmm I always feel a warm glow when I read stuff like this - and the article, whilst true on the OS X side - didn't even talk about iPhoto [free still image handling, starts up when you plug in your camera and handles imports, organising, web page making, and photo ordering from Kodak], iMovie [FREE movie editting software which rocks rocks rocks] - all of that is yours straight out of the box in an easy to set up computer with an easy to learn interface.

And when you read that on the back of a laugh thanks to Robs blogg, then maybe the world is ok after all.

And of course the G4 Server tempararily at home with Wolfenstein goes a long way toward making that feeling of rightness grow.

Also started 28 days of bible reading challenge. I know I should read every day, but sometimes I get forgetful and lazy and find life very tough with it. So me and some of the BB guys are starting a habit forming 28 days of reading the bible everyday. Those of the praying persausion might pray for me and boyz that we can do this and get back, or strengthen the habit we have.

I'm off to kill some germans - cheers.

As promised the guys at FSD Web Design have got mattydempsey.com up and running. Don't be a goit, check it out bro.

This is what happens when an funny idea just goes too far ..... mattydempsey.com coming soon....

Well I survived Wednesday. Felt down again this afternoon, just lots to do and deadlines to meet, in some ways the usual Term Two troubles. I realise I have dropped behind in the something funny happened at work today thing, and right now I just can't think of something funny that happened. I know I felt fairly relaxed in Year Nine Computing today and I think we laughed a bit but I can't recall what happened.

I remember one thing, which wasn't really funny, but one of my year 9's said that all their work had been deleted. They knew who it was and so when they had started working I wandered off to get the other kid out of class.

Well anyway it turns out that someone had told this other kid that the kid in my class had deleted one thing of his and so to get the kid in my class back he decided to delete one thing out of my kids stuff. Unfortunately the one thing the kid in the other class decided to delete was a folder and the folder contained all the work the kid in my class had done for his web page.

As the kid in the other class explained what happened and I told him what had occurred his face just fell as he realised that his simple pay back prank had destoryed a whole terms work. I really felt for him and will again when I give him an after school detention for his efforts. Not really funny but at least a story that isn't negative about work.

Oh and James laughed at something I said tonight - so I guess that's not a bad day really. See you all tomorrow.

GEEK ALERT!!! - The Register notes that some smart cookie with a PhD and a belt sander has cracked the security key on an xbox.

The Squad Comp Camp was really great. I actually relaxed and enjoyed myself. Rob managed to add a few more scratches and brusies to his parents van at no cost of life or limb just to his nerves - and his wallet as they start work fixing the tyres and general damage. We drove it home, and no one got hurt, so although it's bad the car is damaged, thank God it wasn't worse. Plus I enjoyed having a one on one chat with Rob on the trip home.

The winners will not be known until Thursday night. Dave took a camera so there may be photos for The Paper - maybe.

Finally I have place my finger upon what it was about seeing Matty D last thursday [see Blogg entry 30/5@11:51pm] that cheered me up - it was great to meet someone who had no agenda to pursue with me, wants nothing from me and has no deep issues to discuss that require anything more than empathy [ie I don't have to DO anything except love him as a brother].

After this weekend I still don't feel down about going to work tomorrow - I will leave that for the morning. Roll on holidays - only 5 weeks to go!