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Walked out the front this morning to see a bold little Kookaburra just hanging out in one of the trees in our front yard. He was quite content to have his picture taken.

• Both Paramore’s and The Basics’ new albums are out! Lots of new music to enjoy.
• There’s a Spring Food & Wine festival at The Entertainment Quarter (Fox Studios) that I will hopefully be able to get to sometime over the weekend.
• Get to make music on Sunday arvo/evening with some great mates. And we get to work on playing Complete by Kutless! It’s a brilliant song that I reckon will push us out of the usual comfort zone of “church songs”. In saying that, it has some brilliant string work mixed in with heavy guitars – the guitarists are fine, but the string work will be up to me on keys – that’ll either some synth fun on the keyboard, or maybe even some midi work – haven’t decided which is better/easier yet.

In the recent weekends, the Rural Fire Service have been doing quite a bit of hazard reduction around our area.

This weekend, there was quite a bit of work up in the Crosslands and Galston area. And the wind was blowing in just the right direction to cover Hornsby and Wahroonga this morning as I headed up to Hornsby to get my haircut. But it wasn’t too bad at home.

But we headed round to Cathy & Grant’s place in Normanhurst for lunch this arvo, and the smoke got quite thick as the arvo wore on, and ash started falling too. I certainly wasn’t enjoying it – and Howie enjoyed bagging me out about it too. And now back at home, the smoke has blanketed Westleigh pretty badly too. I think it’s even seeped into the clothes that have been out on the line.

This is mostly a new experience for me. Living in Toongabbie for the majority of my life was awesome, but it was never near any bush. So bushfire smoke and ash was few and far between. And while I adore living here now and being so close to bush, I’m definitely not enjoying the smoke that comes with it.

I just hope all this hazard reduction means that there won’t be any fires near our house – that would be worse.

Telstra has demonstrated over the last 5 years that it can be a leader in the world telecommunications marketplace. It went from a follower just riding on the coat-tails of a copper network, to creating the biggest and fastest mobile network in the world.

Yet this morning, the Australian government has decided that it doesn’t like an Australian company being too successful. After all the the time, money and effort that Telstra has invested into becoming the leaders, the Government has decided that it’s time to slow it down.

They announced a series of reforms to telecommunications legislation that will essentially force the break-up of Telstra. Stephen Conroy tried to make it look nice by saying that Telstra can voluntarily choose to break up the way it wants, but then swiftly added that if they didn’t, the goverment will break them up anyway. And added a boot in by saying it’ll block any new mobile spectrum acquisitions until “it structurally separates, divests its … cable network and divests its interests in Foxtel.” Talk about bullying.

For me, this just seems like it’s going to make it very, very difficult for Australia to continue to be a world leader in the mobile broadband marketplace. Telstra’s advancements have forced Optus, Voda and 3 to play along or get left behind, and has meant that we have four 3G mobile networks in Australia. That’s massive for a country of our size compared with the US and China. And so by slowing down Telstra and forcing it to separate, are Optus, Voda and 3 going to bother making anymore advancements? They won’t have anyone to try and keep up with.

It just feels like the government has caved in to the whinging and whining of other telecommunications companies in Australia, who aren’t as far ahead as Telstra, and has just chopped it right down to slow its growth.

Somehow, the government thinks that a 100Mbps nationwide fibre network is the answer to Australia’s broadband problems… but in 8 years when its built, it will already be redundant. And in that time, Telstra would’ve been beyond that point in wireless broadband. Wonder if that will still happen, or if this will signify the beginning’s of the government’s monopoly on Australia-wide telecommunications?

And lastly, I loved the nomination that Stephen Conroy put forward for himself for the Ignorant and Stupid Comments of the Year awards:

Senator Conroy said Telstra copper network was literally “collapsing in the ground”.

“Every time there is a flood, every time there is heavy rain in northern NSW, Queensland, there is a further degradation of some part of Telstra’s copper network,” he said. “There is an enormous maintenance requirement every year to continue to just try and keep it where it’s at.”

The infrastructure in the ground was actually blocking the capacity to deliver decent broadband.

Bring on the comments telling me that Telstra is a big bully and that it’s the right thing for “competition” and for Australia – I’d love to hear them and I’m ready for a fight. Cos you try and tell me that the government isn’t being the biggest bully of them all right now.

[smh link]

If Cold Chisel were reuniting to play a gig, and Living End, The Presets, Grinspoon and Sneaky Sound System were supporting, I would be calling up B2, and we would be there without any hesitation. Anything and everything would be cancelled in order for me to be there.

And if the V8 Supercars were going to be doing a street race around the wonderful Homebush preceinct, I would also be calling up B2 and making sure nothing got in the way of us spending 12 hours a day for 3 days lapping it all up.

Luckily for me, both events do exist. Even better, both are one and the same event… and I already have my 3 day ticket! And it’s my birthday weekend to boot!

The V8 tickets went on sale a few months ago, and we were quick to get ourselves a 3 day grandstand ticket. We knew there’d be other entertainment on during the weekend, but going by previous V8 races like this, we didn’t expect it to be all that awesome.

And then last night, I happened to be cruising through the TV channels just after 6:30pm, and stopped when I came across Matt White interviewing Cold Chisel. As the interview went on, I suddenly realised what was occuring and almost couldn’t believe it. And to top that off with Living End and The Presets is going to be just amazing.

As a side note, someone commented on Twitter that the V8 event at Homebush was such a bogan event. And I quipped back with something like, “perhaps, but it’s still awesome and I can’t wait! And Cold Chisel are going to be playing there!” And then I realised that Cold Chisel playing at a V8 Supercar race possibly makes it the most bogan Saturday in Sydney. Ever.

Hanging out for the next few weeks:

• The Basics’ new album, Keep Your Friends Close, is due to be released on September 28, according to JB Hifi… but nowhere else seems to have confirmed this yet. But after seeing them live recently, I’m excited to hear these new songs.
• Paramore’s new album, brand new eyes, should be out that same weekend as well. I loved Riot! and love their new single too, so I’m hoping this album will be tops too.
• And then Relient K are releasing a new album on 6th October! Forget And Not Slow Down has actually arrived only about a year after their last release. Their last one was this awesome fusion of country and punk, and their new one should be great by the sounds of the title track.

Then sometime in November, Switchfoot are releasing new music too. And lots of people are talking up the sound of this new album, Hello Hurricane.

I wrote a post a month or so back about my thoughts on what church is, and what I’m thinking about how it can be done differently… lots of thoughts still going on in my head.

But toward the end, I wrote a bit about Soma Church, a new church starting up in the Ryde area of Sydney that has similar ideas to what’s in my head – they love Jesus and think he’s the best thing to happen to this world, and church is cool, but they realise that “church” isn’t for everyone… so they’re trying to mix that up. It’s gonna be an awesome journey for them.

Like I wrote, I’m not feeling led to go and join them. But I am very, very keen to watch what goes on, and see how I can be inspired within my community in and around Thornleigh. And I’m also very much looking forward to seeing how two guys with computers and a guitar make the music – very different to what you would normally expect in “church”. You should check out an insight into a recent rehearsal of theirs.

Anyway, they’ve finally secured themselves a venue in the Macquarie Centre for a Sunday arvo. It all kicks off on the 20th September at 3pm. Check out their website to see what they’re on about, and if you’re up for it, come and check it out. I certainly can’t wait for it. :)

Sam and I both definitely enjoy the good taste of things – we both love very good tasting coffee and red wine, and recently, he’s begun to teach me of the great tastes that beer can bring too. With all that, there was a bunch of places in the Sydney CBD that we wanted to go to. So we thought we’d come upon the best idea ever when we thought of doing it all in one night.

Thus, the Heart Attack Tour.

I’ll let you read my tweets from the night to see how it went down and the places we went to. Suffice to say, it was amazing. But not perfect – we missed out on Sydney’s best coffee, and the chocolate venue at the end may need to be changed for next time.

Wifey and I headed up to Katoomba last night to have dinner, and to see Playjerise play @ The Clarendon. Amazing venue, and a brilliant show. The idea of Katoomba to see a gig on a weeknight didn’t seem so bad when I booked the tickets a few weeks back. But in hindsight, it wasn’t the greatest of ideas. Still, the show more than made up for today’s tiredness.

Playjerise playing with a mini string orchestra supporting was just perfect. It worked amazingly well. It all could’ve been mixed a bit better, but that could’ve just been the venue. The arrangements were brilliantly written, and they all just generally looked like they were loving it.

The evening in photo form. Apologies for the glary-ness of some of the photos – an iPhone isn’t the greatest of low-light cameras.

It is often quite hilarious to see how tabloid media handle stories in order to gain the audience.

The NSW Police put out a media release yesterday that brought The Daily Telegraph to the ground with a story they published saying that the NSW Police is censoring crime information and pictures in order to make the public feel safer.

I loved this response from the NSW Police:

Unfortunately, not one word of a very detailed response provided to the Daily Telegraph last week on this issue was used in this morning’s article. Censorship in reverse, it could be argued.

Take that!

Each and every day, The Daily Telegraph, or at least one of the news.com.au subsets, gives new meaning, and further proof, the the phrase “never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”

Micky (my Mini Cooper S) spent the latter half of last week at the Mini Garage being fixed. He’d had an engine glitch that was just recurring every few days – the glitch would happen, and the car’s computer system would then cut the power to the engine to a very, very minimal level. It took the mechanics a couple of days to find the error, and then they thought they might have it ready last Friday. But they had to keep it over the weekend. Eventually on Tuesday arvo I got it back, all shiny and washed, and with the engine running a lot happier than it was before.

Other than not having my car for the first couple of days, this week has been pretty good.

Last Saturday night was great fun, having adventures into the city to watch GNW being filmed with Kate, Sam and Lachie. We got there early enough to enjoy some Hannah’s Pies in Ultimo, and then it only seemed to be a short wait in the line until we were inside. Afterwards, we made it over to St Ives’ Max Brenner for some dessert.

Work this week has also been pretty good. Felt a bit frustrated last week after getting a grilling from my manager. But I guess it was warranted – the sales are fairly low, and the sales opportunities were pretty non-existent. But it motivated me to really step up this week and start leading the account managers to get moving on doing their job a bit better. There’s so many chances out there to have conversations with customers about data networks and such… they just need to do it. In the end, the week went really well… felt like I made a lot of progress.

Looking forward to doing a lot of nothing tonight. Might have a chance to chance to catch up on the V8s from earlier today, but otherwise, just sitting and watching a movie with Debbie will be tops too.

I did very much enjoy the end of GNW this week:

We leave you with the good news for the week ahead…

Qantas will release it’s yearly results from a hole in the baggage compartment.

Rio Tinto will also announce its yearly results; apparently executives are down.

The World Air Guitar Championships will be held in Finland, which is where Neil & Tim come from.

On Wednesday, it’s the national day of Afghanistan – there will be fireworks!

And the Bodypainting Championships in South Australia will go horribly wrong when many of the painted bodies are recognised by grieving relatives.

I thought twice about writing this… but none of it was asked to be kept quiet, and I don’t think I’m saying anything that isn’t already known.

Today I got to meet with the guy who looks after iPhone sales to enterprises and governments in Australia for Apple. He’s a pretty tops guy. I definitely enjoyed his thoughts on getting iPhone fleets happening in businesses, and what the device can do for them as opposed to what it can do for consumers. It really is a very powerful device. We get to hear from Apple for a couple of hours in a presentation sometime in the next fortnight. They’re gonna share a lot about the iPhone in the enterprise world. I’m really looking forward to that, especially the security stuff.

I had a few giggles to myself during the 90 minutes or so, cos he’s definitely Apple’s whole marketing strategy personified – the secrecy, the knowledge that they’re better than everyone else, the exclusivity. He even talked about Apple’s strategy to have the iPhone becoming as much a “throw-around” word as iPod is – that is, even if you have some random MP3 player, people tend to refer to any MP3 player as an “iPod” … Apple want that same brand recognition with iPhone. Incredible.

And we asked them about participating in a data forum where we’d bring customers, and we like to have vendors assisting with setting up a stand and showcasing what they’ve got. He said they’d only be interested if there was no other mobile provider involved.

We talked about the hows and whens of getting iPhones into the hands of us tech sales people to use, and Apple wanted a commitment that we’d use it as our primary phone (work-wise) for at least a month before deciding whether or not to keep it. I liked that. They weren’t just giving them to us for us to use as demos and to sit in a drawer for weeks on end. And they follow up over the next weeks and months with weekly updates of app recommendations for us.

Can’t wait to get my hands on my new iPhone. Using it for work will be quite a different experience, I think.

It made for a fun Friday. Apple are a good bunch of people.

On the topic, I made my blog iPhone friendly tonight – you can check it out on your iPhone or iPod Touch and it looks nothing like what it does in a normal browser… but at least it loads very quickly and simply.

And I added a tweetmeme link down the bottom. Useful? Probably not. But cool nonetheless.

Collection of recent iPhone pics…

And what a glorious weekend it was.

Friday evening, Sam took Debbie & I out to the lower north shore. We eventually found a parking spot in Neutral Bay, and walked up Military Rd to a Japanese restaurant. Unfortunately, no booking meant we were sitting outside, but at least we were able to snuggle up under an outdoor gas heater. We pondered over the menu for quite a while (Sam and I ordered some overpriced, and not all that special, Japanese beer), but eventually decided on some soft-shell crab to share as an entree, and then a chicken udon dish each. The soft-shell crab was amongst the best I’ve ever tasted, and the chicken udon dishes backed it up amazingly. The taste was so brilliant, and it wasn’t all that pricey either.

From there, we went for a drive down to Cremorne Pt, and began walking along the reserve out toward the point. Just when you thought you couldn’t go any further, and the view of the city in all its night glory wasn’t amazing enough, we snuck through a gap in the rock, down some stairs, and then out of nowhere appears a ladder that just drops off the cliff… seemingly onto nothingness. We clambered down, hopped across some rocks, and then out onto a small wooden boardwalk that heads out to a small beacon just off the point. A gate/fence and a big warning sign stop you reaching the actual light beacon – but standing on this boardwalk was just incredible. You are far enough out from the land to just be able to look west to the Harbour Bridge and feel like you’re just standing on the water.

Saturday morning was an adventure out to Fox Studios to their farmers’ markets. I guess they’re not really farmers’ markets… more boutique food markets. Cos there was some really tasty pasta and meat and other foods, but all from small independant suppliers. And all for a small fortune. It would be so easy to spend a couple of hundred dollars there in a couple of hours. We walked away with some pasta and creamy truffle sauce, some gourmet sausages, and had some lunch there too. We then headed to Paddington for some more “traditional” markets… but with not as much food to eat. But it was still fun wandering around looking at all the amazing talents of some people.

But then it was home to prepare for the event we’d been waiting for – the progressive dinner. It was entree/drinks at one couple’s house, dinner at another, and then finish with dessert at the third couple’s. Friend Deby and I thought it was a brilliant idea when we came up with it, and it proved to be just as awesome as we’d imagined…

We started at Cathy & Grant’s place with a grilled beef salad, and some fruit punch cocktails. And then it was quickly over to our place for dinner. Debbie did an awesome pumpkin & spinach salad with pine nuts, and I cooked up some if the sausages I’d bought earlier in the day and some honey soy chicken pieces too. By this stage, a couple of really nice bottles of wines had been cracked open and were being enjoyed. At about 830, it was time to head round to James & Deby’s place for some dessert. We started with some chocolate fondue, and James shared some very nice dessert wine that they’d bought up in the Hunter on their honeymoon. And then we finished off the evening with some homemade sticky date puddings.

As you can imagine, we nearly rolled home, but it was such a brilliant night that we’re already planning for round two in November… when it’s warm enough to have BBQs outside.

I’m too scared to weigh myself yet though.

Just posting a picture of my breakfast this morning to test out Lightbox – this very cool plugin to enable some nice picture displaying on your blog.

Ok, maybe this is me being offended by a newspaper when it’s convenient for me, and perhaps I should be a bit more uniform in my frustrations at newspapers… but…

I am really annoyed by this headline:

“Aussie blokes make the worst husbands: study”

The annoying bit is that the headline pretty much has nothing to do with the story. The article talks about a study across many countries and continents. And actually, it focuses a lot on cultural differences.

But for some loser editor down at the smh, something like, “Cross cultural husband differences” just wasn’t punchy enough. So let’s make it seem like a study has shown that Australian men are the worst at being husbands. Yeah, good idea.

Freaking Today Tonight is taking over the world.

Well, oops. It’s been a week since my last blog.

Work is starting to settle into a bit more of a rhythm now that we’ve left the beginning of the fin year behind. That’s something I’m quite happy about. My new sales targets are through the roof… but you get that sometimes.

I enjoyed a pretty awesome weekend just gone – I got to spend time fixing our roof with Dad, watching the V8s, going to one of the most intense AFL games I’ve ever seen, reading the paper and having a coffee, watching more V8s, and then finished off the weekend with dinner for my sister’s birthday down in Narellan at a pretty tops modern/Italian restaurant.

On AFL… I’m beginning to worry myself. I’ve become heavily into it. Debbie quizzed me at the top of the AFL season about whether or not I was going to become a member next year. I was quick to say no – I’d enjoyed going to games every now and then when other season members weren’t able to go, but I was happy with leaving it at that. Since Oscar has spent most of this year demanding Jenny’s time, she hasn’t been able to make use of her AFL membership… and a few people have gone to a few games, but on the whole, I’ve been to quite a few this year. And have found myself seriously considering becoming a member myself next year. I don’t think I’ve ever been into any sport as much as I’m into AFL now.

My how getting married and moving has changed me… :)

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about church – why we “do church” the way we do, how to do it differently, how to involve more people… and why you’d want to change all those things.

It’s stemmed from a bit of a selfish place – I find sitting through sermons so hard sometimes. 40 minutes of listening isn’t good for a boy with a very short attention span, let alone 40 minutes of listening and trying to get something out of it. I think actually do my best learning by discussing within small groups of people – times like that really stimulate my mind and challenge my thinking. And so I’ve been wanting to push those typical boundaries of how we do church – wanting to incorporate more of that discussion and have more of a non-submissive Sunday evening.

I guess it’s about making church less of a place of consumption – you come, take what you like,

But in all this, I haven’t actually felt out of place at the place I currently go to church (tcbc) – I still feel very much at home there. I guess that’s cos, like I mentioned above, church is way much more to me than the set program each Sunday evening – it’s those conversations with the people I love, and those very intelligent conversations that make me hunger to learn more about the character of God. And music is a huge part of how I meet with God personally – so that very loud, very tight band-created musical moments (whether I’m a part of them or not) are pretty powerful things between me and God.

It’s definitely going to be an ongoing thought process. In all the changes last year and moving away from Toongabbie to Westleigh/Thornleigh, I’m discovering a new side to my growth as a follower of God, and a new side to my desire to chase and uncover more about God’s character. And it’s very cool.

In amongst all this thinking, I’ve spent this evening reading about Soma Church. It’s a church plant from an existing church in North Ryde that’s kicking off in early September, and their desire is seek to change the culture around “how” Christians do church: “for instance, the style of music we sing to, how we do our preaching, when and how often we meet, and so forth.” Very cool to read about, and I’m going to be very interested in following their journey closely.

The other cool bit about following them closely will be seeing them change the idea behind “church music” and reshaping that as well. I’ve been following their thoughts on twitter, as well as on a specific blog for their music. As a bonus, I’m discovering that a a few friends are involved in it all!

Like I wrote above, I feel very much a part of my family within tcbc, so I’m pretty sure God wants me to be there and isn’t suggesting that I move away from there… but with everything that I’ve just written about, I feel like I’ll find a great deal of enjoyment in seeing these guys reshape how they do church.

Either that or it’ll stir up more things inside my mind. :)

It’s been a while between updates.

This weekend has been pretty tops so far. Yesterday was a fun day up in the Blue Mountains again. Sam and his family were up there for the weekend, and so Debbie and I headed up to visit them for a Saturday lunch. After lunch, we drove down to Wentworth Falls and went for a pretty awesome bushwalk down to coffee, and then back. Any bushwalk that involves coffee is pretty tops in my book.

And this morning was meant to be mowing the lawns. But it didn’t quite go that smoothly. I realised I needed petrol, so went and got some and left it to the side til I ran out. And then found the mower wasn’t running smoothly. A crack in the airhose would cause that – so off to the shops to buy some gaff tape. And then after about 10 minutes, it ran out of petrol finally, but after refilling, it took a good 15 minutes to start again!

After I finally got started properly and going along nicely, Debbie comes out to tell me that the Howies were coming round soon and that I needed to have a shower.

So now it’s only half done. That’s a job for later :)

Now, it’s off to lunch at Deb & Jenny’s aunty’s place.