jamisonprawn.net

What a tops day that was. Didn’t feel like work at all…

• Not happy that Micky might already have to go back in for a service :( about 9 hours ago.
• off to get a coffee… and perhaps a bagel too. about 9 hours ago.
• Going to visit Mini people this afternoon. Trying to be calm. about 8 hours.
• packing up my computer to head out to Silverwater for friendly catch up with old customer. about 8 hours ago.
• Just said goodbye to a nice customer over coffee and good quality cakes. They were always worth 200 new mobile numbers a month. Will miss em. about 5 hours ago.
• Now at Canterbury on quite possibly my last customer visit in this job. Teaching someone how to sync email on a Palm Treo 750. about 5 hours ago.
• Done and dusted with the pda set up. It’s easy when it’s the 46th time you’ve done it. Off to Mini in Parra. about 5 hours ago.
• Just realised that’s work finished for today! Yay! about 4 hours ago.
• Hooray that Micky is fine! The nice BMW man just told me to use PULP rather than normal. Shoulda thought of that. about 4 hours ago.
• Frustrated that I can’t find my $100 mini shop gift voucher. Going to have some lunch. about 2 hours ago.
• Still can’t find gift voucher :( off to Myer to buy new work shirts! about 2 hours ago.
• In westpoint posting a letter and heading for Myer. It’s fun to finish work at lunchtime! about 1 hour ago.
• Yesss… 30% off :) 43 minutes ago.
• Mmm Coffee Emporium latte in hand. And with that, I’m headed home. 28 minutes ago.

Thanks twitter.

edit: hooray for fun new twitter updates on the right, and the cool little loading circle :D

It seems as though a lot of bands are realising that providing your first single off a new album for free un-DRM’d download is a very good way to generate hype and get people interested in your album.

Good stuff I say.

Kutless have joined the fray and are offering their new song for download here. WIll have to listen to it later on today, but looking forward to hearing it.

Further on the excited musical ventures that are in the wings to be released in the next few months - I forgot that Relient K also have two albums slated for release during June or July! Matt Thiessen has blogged that the new songs will all be mixed by now. He refers to it as the Christmas Eve syndrome… so I’m guessing they’ve left it to the last minute… perhaps suggesting that the album is only a few weeks away. That would be fun!

My sister is quite awesome.

She messaged me during last week asking if I was interested in an organ that was going for nothing. I curiously asked about it (not wanting a huge church organ). She called me today from her mother-in-law (to be)’s place and tried to describe it to me.

It’s a Baleani Altimoro. Although that could just be the brand name. It’s all Italian apparently. But some searching on the internet finds that most Baleani Altimoros are accordians. And this is an organ. But I found a band’s myspace, where their keyboardist had blogged about his - saying the same thing, that it was hard to find any info about it. But there’s at least a picture there, and the guy describes the sound that it makes, which potentially could be quite interesting.

At any rate, I’m looking forward to getting it and hearing how it sounds. Perhaps it’ll make sounds worthy of playing more often. If not, perhaps eBay will let me know that its seeming rarity might be worth something…

We’ve only been waiting about 5 years.

They have released their new track, Hammerhead, on their website as a free download. And encoded at 320kbps, DRM free. Very sweet indeed. No point in paying $1.69 on iTunes for it, that’s for sure. I do indeed like the sound of the song. Someone on Facebook compared it to Million Miles Away, which I would agree with. The other thing is that it’s quite long for and Offspring song - 4 and a half minutes. And I don’t think it needs to be that long. It feels they they just played random chords and repeated them for about a minute longer than necessary.

It doesn’t actually sound like anything wonderfully different from Conspiracy and Splinter days… very similar sound indeed. But in the end, it’s been so damn long since we last heard new Offspring that I don’t care. I love it :)

And excitement continues, because they have finally announced a date for the new album, Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace: June 14 for Australia… 3 days earlier than the US! We are so special. This album was beginning to feel a bit like Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy, in that I wondered if it would ever eventuate. But it is finally done and I can’t wait to hear it.

Hopefully Revive’s new album will arrive in Australia sometime this month, and then all I’ll have to wait for is Jack’s Mannequin’s new album, which was supposed to be out April, then June, and now not until August.

My goodness, the last 72 hours have been crazy for iPhone Australia rumours. In particular, which carrier(s) will be ranging the phone.

From my personal point of view, I love it all. Can’t wait to see what happens in the next 6 weeks! I’m quite excited that the rumour that began about a month ago (3G iPhone announced in 1st week June, launched in Australia on all carriers in last week of June) seems to still be the latest rumour. A while ago, that dream of an HSDPA iPhone on both 850/2100mHz and not carrier locked seemed crazy. But as June draws closer, and that rumour hasn’t been quashed or proved wrong, it gets more exciting…

But from a work point of view, it’s incredibly frustrating. All the non-mobiles people and customers expect us to have all the answers. And that’s frustrating because Telstra haven’t released anything at all. And very importantly, neither have Apple. I guess people who don’t normally follow all the Apple releases know that until Apple actually say something, nothing is in concrete. There’s just been article after article after article on what “people” and “sources” have said.

This is the latest article that everyone’s talking about in the office today - apparently Telstra are ranging the iPhone. It’s a great wonder who ZDNet’s source is… cos I reckon out of Telstra’s 10,000 odd employees, you can probably count the number of people on your hand who are actually in the know on what’s happening between us and Apple. And I’m most definitely not one of them.

Everyone knows that Vodafone announced that they would be selling it. However, I love how very vague this press release is - no date, no mention of what version, certainly no mention of excusivity… just that they would be selling it. And I find it really interesting that Voda actually annouced they’d be selling it before Apple announced it in those countries - isn’t that very, very out of the ordinary for all the other country releases?

Oh and it’s “understood” Optus will sell it too.

But again, I know better than to trust anything about Apple until Apple tell me themselves :)

What a wonderful week!

Not only has my replacement started, thus sharing my workload quite considerably, but it’s just been a very, very quiet week anyway! Annnnd, there’s been big sales coming through still! I really couldn’t ask for much more. :)

On Monday, we’re telling all the customers to start talking to my replacement for everything… but I don’t start my new job until the 19th! Hello quiet and relaxed week for James. It will be quite nice enjoying a bit of a break.

Tonight I’m hanging out with Debbie being Uncle James looking after the turtles after having a very yummy chinese prawn stir fry thingy that Deb’s mum cooked. Was delish.

That’s about all there is to my story. Micky is fun :)

What a fun weekend that was. Lots of driving and doing things.

Saturday night was bassing with the women of Toonie Bapts. Steve, Dave and I made guest appearences at their Women’s ministry night helping out in various ways. They’re always very awesome nights, and many of the guys who’ve been along to help wish they could go all the time. And as a bonus, Ellie played some songs in the background as people were arriving for about 20 mins, which was quite cool to just sit and listen to. The boys’ plan of ducking out to Gloria Jeans to get a coffee during the evening was thwarted when GJs was shut. Disappointing.

Sunday was a pretty tops day of relaxing after not feeling so wonderful at the start of the day. A quiet drive up the Putty Rd was in order though, and photos were taken. It’s such a lovely piece of road. I do want to keep going all the way up to Singleton one time soon, and then across to Newcastle, and then back down along the Old Pacific Hwy. Other roads still to drive include the Royal National Park and Sea Cliff Bridge, and also the Old Northern Rd up to Wisemen’s Ferry. Going up into Watagans would be fun too. Ahh so many nice roads in NSW.

I led at church on Sunday evening, and am a bit disappointed in the effort/prep I put in, but thankfully God still used us in the service, which is always exciting to see. And it just made me more aware of the effort I should be putting in. It was acoustic stylings on Sunday evening though - we were drummer-less. But surprisingly, that didn’t bother me much. And an acoustic sesh was actually quite fun. I enjoyed playing with those guys, and the songs really worked. Guess God had it planned all along.

And lastly… fun times last night hanging out with Sam and his lovely Canadian girlfriend, Jenn. It was frustrating getting home from work - clearly I didn’t learn from last week that leaving right on 5pm is a bad, bad thing. And then I was even stupider and thought I’d give Epping Rd a go! But finally at 6:30 I arrived in Thornleigh and cooked some dinner, and we all had a fun time. And even went for an excursion around the block in Micky.

I’m enjoying work being a little bit quiet. Hopefully my new friend will have her computer up and running tomorrow and I’ll be able to start getting her to liase with some of the customers, and can do even less! It’ll be like a mini holiday before I start my new role. Right now, I need to go fetch some coffee and some cookies for a friend who is having an uber crap day.

The amazing Ellie Magill is on iTunes!

Fantastic music. You definitely should buy and listen.

So what’s the Mini really like?

Incredible. It’s an absolute ball to drive. Very, very fun. I need to get used to driving a front-wheel drive car again though. Since I’ve had the Commodore, I’ve always said I prefer front-wheel drive cars… but now I just have to get used to driving one again now!

Just about the only thing I can find wrong with the car (and it’s not really wrong anyway), is that it’s almost got too much power for its little front wheels. It’s very hard to get the power down cleanly, especially when you’re exiting a corner. It handles brilliantly when you’re not accelerating hard, but give it a little push, and the poor thing struggles to keep traction.

But you could say that kinda adds to the fun. Cos the power of the car is unbelievable for a 1.6L. They quote 125kw of power… but cos the car’s so light, it feels like a lot more. And the torque is pretty awesome too - driving along in 5th gear at about 60km/h, and you can put your foot down and it just pulls very, very quickly.

The interior keeps the fun levels high as well: little fun things like “mood lighting” - there’s a couple of LEDs on the roof, and then some lights in behind the door handle, and on the b-pillar as well. And you can change what colour they are!! So cool.

And lastly, and very importantly, the sound system is crazy. It sounds very much like something you’d pay many thousands of dollars for. Actually, perhaps I did. Anyway, it’s just brilliant and very much leaves my Commodore’s stereo sounding like a $20 cassette player from Dick Smith :)

Just wanted to share all that. As you can tell I am still very excited about it. Just about 24 hours old, and I’ve already driven more than 200kms in it. And I’m sitting here on Debbie’s couch feeling quite ancy about not driving it now.

Please allow me to introduce Micky:

Micky is a 2007 Mini Cooper S. He likes PULP, twisty roads, and long drives by the beach. This photo was taken this afternoon as he sat beside some pretty BMWs in the dealership - but he looked better :)

After what has felt like a very, very long week, I got to collect him this afternoon, and have enjoyed driving it around Sydney this arvo.

Debbie and I are headed out this evening for adventures - amongst other things, we will be going on a night drive through Galston Gorge! I will have to find time to get back out there in the day, or up to the Putty Road to do a nice photo shoot.