Black gold woes

So I was watching Inside Africa on cnn and one of the stories they covered this week was the attacks on oil pipelines in Nigeria. I have always heard of these attacks on the news and how oil prices shoot up shortly after but never really heard the reasons behind such attacks. Apparently the locals around the Niger delta live off $1usd a day whilst they see billions of dollars in oil being pumped out of the ground and they want the money to benefit the people.

Where does the money go? good question I wasn't paying that much attention but I think they were saying to corruption in the government. Anyway to add insult to injury the oil industry also was causing great damage to the environment and their way of life fishing and farming are no longer viable. I guess I can support their cause but they need to find alternate ways of resolving that situation.

In the mean time gas prices are breaking records worldwide. What was funny/sad that after 7pm news on Wednesday(when they announced massive gas price increase effective Thu) I was on the road I saw long lines at many gas stations because people where trying to cash in on the cheap prices before the increase. Things look grim as the prices per barrel we are hearing now are futures contracts and are yet to take effect.

So have y'all started feeling the pinch yet? if so do you plan any lifestyle changes to help ease the effects? I think I am a minimalist by nurture so there isn't much for me to change. I remember I used to have a bad habit of driving over to the supermarket close to me for small items.. what a waste, it literally takes me a minute to walk there. Maybe I can get a scooter, I hear those things get 80 miles per gallon.

House sitting

Do retired people take vacations? Well my parents seem to be off yet again and can be spotted all over the eastern side of North America in what I have dubbed their back packing trip. They asked their helper to keep coming and watch the house during the week and me to house sit over the weekends when she is gone. Friday, Saturday and Sunday night up here in the sticks.. *sigh*. I am not about to be driving this far just to water their plants, feed their dog and ensure someone is in the house at nights so for the past few weeks I have ended up spending from Friday straight through to Monday morning up here.

One would think that spending so much time trapped in the bush would make me a better blogger and post more or read all those posts my blog friends have been typing up but the time has been flying while I'm up here surprisingly. As y'all can see from my last post I took a trip down memory lane and went through some old photo albums. In fact most of the time spent up here is a trip down memory lane as this is the most time I've spent up here in a couple of years.

Spending time up here has made me reminded me off all the things us townies take for granted. Water is gone up here all the time and my parents have a 2400gal. water tank but when there is no pressure it sucks just as bad. Watchable cable.. their cable quality sucks, nobody wants to watch grainy TV. Higher speed internet, am I really complaining about 1MB dsl? when I left here I was on 56k dailup.. anyway the internet is still much faster at my home back in town. One benefit up here is there is no traffic noise, only the chirping of birds :)

Anyway while we are still living in the past, how great is this video? yup, I've been also browsing youtube for my favorite 80's songs too.

Back to the present, what is sad is that they didn't leave an itinerary. I think they are in New Jersey now but I have no idea where they will be until they come back. I don't even know when they are coming back or the flight information, my guess is sometime around the end of this month.. and of course they expect me to pick them up from the airport.. slackers.

It was written in the stars

*sigh*

Once upon a time there existed such things as $1 and $2 JMD notes.

Also there once existed a 7 year old boy who saved his dollar bills in a cardboard box. I guess it explains why I am like this now.

What does the future hold? The immediate future looks grim, I wouldn't be surprised if inflation surges past 20% this year.

So good, it has to be fattening

So it's not really a secret but I am a little ashamed of it.. but it is so good!

Anybody that knows me knows I absolutely love The Hills which stemmed from my love for Laguna Beach which I stopped watching when they reached season 3, we all know it's the original cast that made that show. Anyway I will admit that it is kind of odd that a grown, straight, man would have any interest in these shows but I am hooked.. The Hills is the only show I actually make the time to sit down and watch during the week, if it was any other show it could pass me and I wouldn't care. For y'all who missed out MTV hosts all episodes online.

I guess I should explain the picture. I have always wanted to make one of my pics into a panel comic scene(does this count as a secret?) but seeing it took me for ever to figure out how to add the pop up caption in GIMP I think I will give up on photo editing.

Taking the php plunge

I have decided that I will start developing a web site. This will be a non-profit venture, just a small project to keep me abreast with the changing technologies. The main problem is that I have no idea what to make the site about though I have narrowed it down to the following specifications:

• Targets the local scene. (Jamaica)
• User content driven.(I don't want to be the one entering all the data)
• dynamic content to stimulate return visits.
• Low maintenance and operate relatively unmoderated.
• should be simple and easy to implement.(hey.. this is just a hobby)

Anybody wants to throw an idea out there for me to do? Everything has been done already and has been done pretty well too, no need to re-invent the wheel.

I have been looking at cheap hosting packages and realize that PHP has really taken off *sigh*. Perl is really my language of choice after doing these set of tutorials way back in 2001 but to find hosting with the requisite perl web application framework would put a hurting on my pocket for this non-profit project. So as the title says I am going to take the php plunge and do some php tutorials to get my programming ability up to scratch(after 5 years) to build a site. It shouldn't be that hard, the first CGI-bin I wrote was in C before I learned perl. So it's more tutorials for now, I have found this site that looks chock full of information.

At the end of this I should be able to put ajax, dhtml, pgsql, php, json and javascript on the end of my resume. Even my blogspot page is reaping some of the benefits of this new found information, one might notice I added a widget that shows 5 random pictures from my blog. If you cant find it I even wrote this* little script to whisk you to the right location on the page.

*only tested in firefox so may be broken elsewhere.

I have seen the light!

and it was panty dropping sexy.

When wingman came back from navigating the seas in January he saw the end result of the renovations[read new layer of paint] the landlady did in previous months and deemed the place to be so sexy that "when the girls see the place dem pantie must fly now". I don't know what kind of girls he talks to but he needs to introduce me to some if a freshly painted place gets them to drop draws. lol on second thought maybe not.. disease free life is all that is cracked up to be. It's sad that he's going back to sea again soon, his view on things are hilariously warped.

Anyway on to the matter at hand, last week I went to view a row house that was drop dead sexy. It is being auctioned by the state because the owner** passed on and didn't leave a will. Now this man left behind a mostly finished 3 bedroom townhouse in the Long Mountain country club community that had an uninhibited view of the entire Liguanea plains. Now I say mostly finished because the deck in the backyard isn't complete, it needs some security grills on the doors/windows and most importantly it has water damage from a leaky roof. Being mindful of what repairs would I need to make I am sure what I can afford to bid will be lacking but it doesn't hurt to try.

** what was interesting was that my parents pointed out to me they sold their first townhouse to this man about 20 years ago. I never lived there but I remember following them to the place a few times while they were wrapping up the negotiations to get it sold. I wonder if I ever met the deceased man. It's a sign that this new place is in my destiny! lol wishful thinking.

On the matter of wishful thinking I was at my mechanic today and saw this car[+10 years] being serviced.

Yeah I know SUVs suck but I've found myself lately eyeing small TDIs. So the amended list of things I want but cant afford is:

1. Range Rover Sport Land Rover Defender 90 SVX
   
2. Townhouse from last week.

Care to spare some change?

3/4 left to go

Well it's spring now (not that Jamaica has seasons) and the first quarter of the year has flew past me. So whats new?

• Much to my shock(and horror) my company moved my dept. back to I.T. *sigh* It also looks like they are trying to dump a whole lot of extra work in our laps too. The company has gone through some organizational restructuring and many heads have rolled. I got a call from a guy today who was employed with the company for 15 years asking me for advice in moving his career into my field. That will probably be me in a few years time when I get placed on the chopping block but until then I shall stay on milking this corporate cow.
  
• Another one bites the dust, crashplus looks like its about to be wound up and liquidated to see if it can meet it's liabilities. lol good luck with that. I do not feel sorry for those who ignore all logic and put $1 in a black hole expecting to pull out $2.
  Tip-of-the-day: don't put money into anything that has more liabilities than assets.
• Thanks to google my blog, throughout its lifetime, has been discovered(not that it was hidden) by several friends and of course subsequent phone calls/emails followed. They mostly say it was my profile picture that that gave away the owners true identity so to avoid passers by from quickly identifying me I have replaced my face with my foot. Now any friends in the future that want to pass by and "discover" me will now have to actually stop and read the blog.
• So I noticed my past few blog posts had been picked up by people and passed around via email and was even posted to a facebook group.. *pops collar* I wonder what they are saying in the emails.. any lurkers out there care to share? What was entertaining is that a young lady on facebook pointed out that my blogger profile stated that I had "none" for my favorite books and she was turned off. I racked my brain and updated my profile, go check it out.. maybe now I can get me a girl!
• RE: new years resolutions.. I think inflation pretty much dealt with that.. did it hit 18% last year? other than that I guess nothing has changed, maybe the haters where right. I'll have to check and get back on this one.

I actually woke up and jogged this morning! great way to start Q2 `08. How are things with you?

UWI Carnival '08.. the day everybody got a ride edition

Well as promised in my last post here are the additional photos. It was a daunting task to pick out some other photos to make a new post as I had hundreds to choose from. I scanned through em, re sized a few and I now present you with the uwival "everybody got a ride" edition. I wouldn't even go as far as saying you needed to be an able body man to get some action that day, tree stumps, street signs, security guards, girls and garbage bins had to endure the pelting of all the gyrating girls pelvises. I am sure these girls here made this mounted campus security day pushing him into blogger history.

The road march was pretty tame in comparison to the judging of the bands. I saw a large circle form on the lawn in front of the library and apparently all the bands where being judged for their energy(read ability to juke and get down on the grass). As soon as I got wind of these activities I went over to view the leggo beasts.

Get down they did. Now I would like to believe that I am not a prude but how does one factor in rolling around in a dust bowl, laying on her side with her legs open and a guy thrusting from behind in their soca dance routine?
I'm sure things got more interesting as day turned to night but I didn't stick around to find out, I had to finish up some work I started earlier in the day.. yah somebody has to do it. So I left as the trucks turned off the ring road and went on to the students union for the big fete.


Oh the irony.

UWI Carnival 2008

Based on the response I got last year with my UWI/UTECH carnival post I had to go back again this year and bring it back to the blog. This time I actually stayed until they made an entire loop around the ring road and came back with so many pictures so lets just start off with some in no particular order.

Free jimmy hats.. free alcohol? wet scantily clad girls? who could stay away?

From the disabled man(who was there last year also) to the paparazzi to the curious onlookers the place was teaming with people. What was disturbing and funny at the same time was a bunch of young boys(~10 years old) that would spot girls dancing by themselves and gyrate their way into position behind them only to be pushed away by the much older college girls upon detection. One such boy can be spotted in that first pic with the disabled guy.



Can you tell that yellow is my fav color? it just brings out the best in people :p [drools]


Lets just hope that he got shot in his crotch.




It's official, this post has reached photo critical mass and the debauchery is still yet to come.. I guess I'll post the rest later.

a time to kick back

For the past 7 weeks there has been one person missing from my dept. at work so I have been picking up a lot of slack but it is now my turn to shed my burden and drop it on their shoulders. I spent some time last Friday transferring knowledge to the rest of the dept. and now I am off for this week :D. What are my plans? maybe do some spring cleaning, some shopping* but my main goal is to relax and do absolutely nothing.

Not only did I have work to deal with my parents decided I needed more to do. They were re-shingling their roof before the rain season and them being 2 old retired folk decided that I needed to make the time to inspect the progress of the work as they couldn't climb up on the roof. So I had to drive up to the sticks with my camera in my work clothes in the middle of the work day and scramble up on their roof to take pictures for them. I wouldn't mind as much if they lived close but they lived on the other side of town and beyond. To demonstrate how beyond they live look at the view from their roof below, yes, that is a cloud at the same level I am at.



If that little hill on the other side of the valley wasn't there that view would be priceless but we all can't have a nice view. This picture on the left is what I see when I look out of my bathroom window at my apartment. Those houses are in Jacks hill.. not a bad place to live if you can weather Jamaica's version of fire season. After months of no rain it seems like a yearly occurrence now for them to have massive fires on those hill sides.

* As I was leaving work on Friday they gave me a gift certificate to show their appreciation for all the work I have been doing.. lol. It lists 10+ places I can redeem it at such as jewellery, computer, furniture, clothes, music, hardware stores, hotels and some supermarkets. The value isn't that much to make me say wow but at the same time it's large enough not to ignore. I guess I will pop by some stores this week to see what I can buy.

Louzy Bay

It had been way too long since I've been to the beach so when noodle said she would treat me to a day at the beach for my birthday I was more than happy and suggested Louzy Bay. Who knew such a place existed? I saw it from far a few times but didn't know how to reach it or if it was open to the public.

After a parking on the road and a short trek through some bushes I started to doubt my beach of choice. The beach was scattered with bits and pieces of beached drift wood, plastic bottles and was very lonely. There was nobody there to provide assistance if anything were to go down like drowning, robbery, injury or any other unfortunate incidents.. we were the only ones on the beach.

Being the only people on the beach also has its advantages as well. Once again I abolished the phrase "Where the sun don't shine" as I deemed the place suitable to make my own nude beach while keeping my fingers crossed that the people in the far distance weren't getting a free peep show. Lime Cay move over, this is now my new fav beach that isn't dreadfully far from town. If someone would only rake the place it would be perfect :p. I also need to add a beach umbrella to my beach bum tool kit although I'm not sure how it would survive out there in the fierce gusty winds that battered us the on the sands.

a word to the wise?

I think I first noticed this about a week ago.. is someone trying to give me a sign? Those are my stairs to the ghetto penthouse.. why would someone put their tacky sign on it? how about they put it on their front door. Maybe it will keep away thieves :p

On saving money

So for Christmas I got my mother this nice brushed stainless steel toaster oven pictured above to replace her 20+ year old tiny rusty toaster oven. She loved it and claimed she didn't know how she managed without one for so long (*pops collar* yup my gift was great :p). Anyway since my birthday was last week and they had no idea what to get me they asked if I wanted a toaster oven too, how original. What was funny was that she asked me if I wanted the same one or a cheaper plastic model which costed 1/2 the price.. and she was serious. Silly questions aside I am now less one item away from having a fully stainless steel kitchen.

On to the matter of closing investment accounts.. intrest rates have been trending up but I noticed that it wasn't trickling down to me. So I called my bank and pointed it out to them and they told me they don't know when they will adjust their rates and they don't do private negotiations. I then enquired as to what kind of penalties I would face in closing my account, she answered then she swiftly ended the call.. she probably didn't even hear me say bye. So I drove over there on the way home from work to tell them cya and it was a different story. After much boot licking and time wasting I rejected their 100 point increase and was on my way to their competitors to build my cd ladder.

On to the matter of me being a bank, recently a friend asked me for a 7 figure($#,###,###.##) loan.. really now. He wasn't broke just having liquidity issues and made the terms of the loan very attractive but as I said before I'm not willing to take on that form of risk. It didn't really speak much for his "investment club" that every John and their dogs are starting these days which he was trying to get me to invest into.