as I sat on the train the other day i was thinking about being here in Sydney this time compared to last time, and wondering how much has changed and how much is the same.

And I feel so much is the same and I kinda don't fit back into the space I am supposed to be in, in so many ways I have frallen back into the pattern of Sydney life as before but in a different way. I am contracting again, I am going to the same church on sunday, shop at the same shops although some of them are a little fancier as they have been refurbished. And I am even wearing one of the same shirts I used to wear working in the city, but that is all material.

I look at some of the people that where here before that I now see again L for one, still looks mixed up and confused and doesn't look like he has grown and his prayers in church are still telling God what he is doing... Like he somehow doesn't already know. He still is not married and he doesn't have a girl friend, infact I can not see may female friends around him and yet he used to have quite a few.

I look at him and I don't know how to feel, I want the past to stay in the past but I can't help but wonder if he still thinks I made it all up, if he still believes I am inlove with him or was inlove with him, has he made peace yet within himself or does he still see me as he did.

he looks closed and with drawn and I wonder I suppose if I should feel guilty about that, I mean I did only tell it as it was, and had I not he may have continued on his distructive pattern and been the same to someone else.

thinking back he used to want the kind of friendship that took years to develop, he wanted the same friendship I had with someone else I had known for 20 years and I couldn't give it, he hadn't earned it. when I look aback on all the tests of friendship he had betwen us he failed them all, every single one, I can not recall a single unselfish gesture of friendship from him. He made it hard to display friendship to without him thinking it was something else. so in a way he was not open to friendship not in the true pure sense.

And so I am asking myself why I am thinking about all this. everywhere I turn there is the past every possiblity every road there is the past I can see it and I can smell it and I can taste it and I just can't see what to do where to go.

people at large don't realise this but sometimes after you fix a server it has to settle down before it is OK, it takes a while for it to be at one with the rest of the domain , if it has been down or had comms issues, we can force synchronise servers but if they have been out of the loop more than a day it can take the 24 hours to settle and be happy again.

THis can mean that we are unable to fully test that we have fixed somethign until the next day, many people are unaware of this and think we should know straight away, and sometimes you can, the newer the faster the server is the quicker it will settle back down but it really depends on the problem the server had to begin with.

Why am I talking about servers? well that has been thebane of my job for the last couple of days old servers taking time to settle down and it reminds me of people too, when we fix a problem say we are sorry, we often don't get a instant reprieve, some people like servers take time to settle down. I suppose in a way it is after all a human that designed servers and the OS they use.

What I see around me at the moment is Gereation Y going deaf due to there over use of ear buds on there iPods and the volume they use them at, if I can hear there song clearly standing next to them in the lift or on the train then how loud is it in their ears?

I read something recently that said those survayed thought that the ringing in their ears and other signs of ear damage was normal. Somehow we need to get through to these people that once it is gone it wont come back?

There is already, if the survey is to be believed and I think it maybe at least close to the mark, a large number of generation Y and Z that are suffering industrial deafness.

I have been finding lately that I am struggling to blog apart from not having a lot of time at the moment I am not finding that I am getting the outlet that I used to and I am longing to paint to use colours and I also am thinking the things I want to talk about when I have not way of recording it and then, when I have I can't remember what I wanted to say.

I am not sure what this means as yet but time will tell.

today is busy, scary busy! basically I am looking after all a lot of servers on my own, so all hell of course is braking loose and the Domain Controllers have had a falling out and nolonger wish to talk to each other, to top that off we the server is AWOL I can't physically find it.

Oh well I suppose I can go home 4 hours time, something to look forward to.

While I am annoyed that there is to be a transport strike in Sydney that will make it almost impossible for me to get to work on Thrsday next week.I am not mad at the transport workers for the strike, although I do not support strike ction or unions, but neither am I happy with the government for not spending money making the transport systerm in Sydney better, for a lot of years Sydneys rail system has been at maximum capacity and a lot of work has been done in the last few years to improve it and enable it to take more people, as the city grows and more and more we are told to go green and use public transport over personal vehiles, I must say that I am disapointed at the government withdrawal of funds here, they want to tax our cars as a eco tax but were is the transport that gives us the option to ditch the car?

Badly done Mr Iemma. We want a greener NSW that means better transport in all its citys and that means much better for its biggest city.

It seems that people no longer have a voice in government all election promises are not worth the papers they are printered in.

Your your money where your mouth is NSW and make public transport a priority, if you want to help the already hurting families out there, make sure we have great transport systems so households can go back to only one car, or no car, without worrying about being able to get to work or not.

Now I normally try to stay out of politics but this example of government budget cuts makes me wonder about the intelligence of those we have in government, I mean isn't it a no brainer?

I have the flu, I cough, my head is fuzzy and I am wishing I had got that flu vacination injection I had planned on, although I know of a couple of people that got really sick with kidney infections this year after getting the flue injection.

Today I'm thinking it may have been worth that risk to not have the flu like I have had this weekend, it was going to be the first weekend I have had in ages just to have a weekend not to travel or anything like that. And so I have spent the weekend in bed and not even my own bed but in the bed I am using at my sisters place.

To add to my flu worries I had an allergic reaction to the cold tabs I normally take, they sent my heart racing and had me quite worried - it took 5 hours for it to fully settle down again. meanwhile it makes me feel 100 years old. 

Here I am stuck in the server room doing battle with a backup tape with the hope of restoring some of the data on them they are old tapes - last years but the new backup tape library won't read them as they are a different tape type, the old library died and instead of getting another library to do restores with I have a single drive and human arm instead of robotic, which means I have to be in the noisy server room while it all happens and be the tape monkey. There used to be a lot of tape monkeys before tape libraries became affordable.

In an industry that is ever changing it is difficult to kept up with the trends of the industry. And one can never get comfortable.

Since Michelle AKA wordsofwisdom has been dragging out old poems she has me going through some of mine too “without the comfort of a bottle of wine”, It shows me just how mellodramatic I was... In fact I was pretty mellodramatic when I started this blog... OUCH!

looking at 3 (www.three.com.au) the mobile company's website I was looking at the music downloads - still a fan of the humble physical medium that is a CD myself, I like to keep intouch with what is happening in this area, my discovery today has not deterred me from this fanage. Three's downloadable music has a limited life, if I download tracks from them, they will only last me a year and they expire??? what the?

I am not the type of person that gets rid of CDs, the 4 full boxes I have just packed of them is testiment to that fact, and I know there are others out there like me that get albums they like and play them for the next ten years. Now this is not to say that I don't go through music fads like everyone else but mostly I have music that I will listen to for a while and then put away, a couple of years down the track it will come out again for a spin in the CD player.

I have albums that you can't get easily anymore and I might be talking to someone about something and talk about music I was listening to at the time, I was experiencing whatever. It is noce to be able to dig the CD out and put it in the player and let them experience it too, hand them the album cover so that they can  read about the artist etc.

How is it supposed to work if my track expires I go to the person wait a minute while I search the internet for it - will only take me 20mins!

When it costs me as much to buy an album as to download it and the files expire, why would I spend the money downloading it? when I look at the sums it only pays me to download if I can't get to the CD store. $1.69 for the track X 10 or albums worth $16.50, plus each song cost between 3-5mb of my download allowance lets say an album costs me 45mb so it cost me 45 cents of my allowance cost unless i am over the limit then it costs me 60, then if I want to do other things on my PC and not have it's performance effected and not have the tuners gliching I need some more guts for my PC probably about $300 worth or and MP3 player worth about the same, but then how do I decide how much to charge each CD now if i burn it it will cost me 40-50c per CD maybe more if I want printable and then there is the ink... all that when on the weekend I bought a CD for $22 so time money and effort wise I think it is almost even stevens and I get the CD and artwork and all....

They may call me out of date but I think I'll stick to CDs while I can.

I also would like to see banks not send out credit card applications that are already half filled out so I have to not just throw them in the recycling I have to shred them, and if I wanted your credit card citi bank I would have ordered it 10 years ago when you first asked did I want one.

And could everyone send me my bills as PDF I hate the waste of paper and all the scanning and shredding.

My conclusion is that computers waste much more time than they have ever saved and the waste much more paper, with the, oops, that’s not quite right print it again attitude we all have developed.

2000 was one of my prolific poetry year it sort of started in 1998 and continued through 2001 it has eased since then. Partly because I was struggling with some major issues at the time and partly because I was waking up, as I am again now I lived more in the moment it was the only way I could survive, where as now learning to live in the momment is more a choice...

anyway this is the other poem that happened from the same first verse as the last one I posted it was kind of weird but it headed in a slightly different direction to the first one...

Floating

I'm curled up in a boat
Looking up at the sky
I threw the oars away
Sure that I could fly.

So peaceful did it look,
That wonderful blue sky
I wanted to soar and
Watch the world go by

But the wings I had were fragile
And the wind was way too strong
Now my wings are broken
But my heart it does still long

To soar in that blue abyss
That seems to never end
That is so clear and peaceful
To float gently on the wind

I thought I would also post this one cause I have always liked it it was actually written for a friend in Sept 2000...

Here In The Dark

I have travelled long across,
This strange and foreign land.
And this new terrain is making it,
Very Difficult to even stand.

I search for the meaning,
How did this journey start?
Suddenly the light is gone,
And I stand here in the dark.

Afraid of this unknown terrain,
Afraid to move in case I fall.
I can't go back, or forward,
For I'm afraid to move at all.

Don't leave me in this place,
Please tell me you understood.
That which, I was trying to say,
When I told you what I could.

I don't want to loose you now
So close yet so unsure, insane
But can I ask you what you heard
I can not, I will not ask again.

I feel like a tree today, not that I want to make like one and leave or anything like that but more to do with me wearing a green shirt and brown pants, and that has more to do with my aversion to ironing than anything else. I am still getting used to wearing corporate attire and not longer being able to wear jeans, my feet are still trying to fit back into normal shoes after spreading as little in boots (all that extra space they have). I( have been on ebay looking for clothes and shoes last night and have found a couple of things, what is hard is finding corporate wear that is not too expensive... with the current fashon all t-shirt fabric it is not as easy as one would have thought.

Anyway I suppose since the 1pm has ticked over I should get back to work.

I have been thinking about changing my tag after all, I am pretty sure I am now out of mining for good, it is strange that I am thinking about it as not so long ago I felt so strongly about it that I even bought the domain so that the porn sites wouldn't.

I am begining to re-invent myself again... as we all do. But what next where am I headed and what should the new tag be? Much to think about until them I am still Girl On A Gold Mine without the Gold Mine... Oh well life is not always as we plan it. Just like people are never what we think they are.

So anyway I was reading through some things I wrote along time ago thinking about my poetry after reading michelle's log and I find it interesting most of my poems I now longer idnetify with to the point I wonder who it is that was others like this one I am posting I remember the feeling, even though I don't feel this... It is Called "The Lake" and I wrote it in Nov 2001   

The Lake

I'm curled up in a boat
Looking up at the sky
I threw the oars away
Sure that I could fly.

In the middle of the lake
So far am I from the dock
The water is getting rough
My boat begins to rock

The clouds are getting darker
The sky is turning black
Lightning flashes across the sky
A shiver slides down my back

Huddled in the boat
I am here in the dark alone
Escape not an option
The oars now long gone

and if anyone out there says.. "I saw that on another site" I hope it was my other site that you saw it on... if not let me know.

while mining under the ocean is not new, we have had oil rigs for decades I have to wonder about the possible mining of the under ocean volcanos that has been reported by the ABC today. what will the mining of such minerals as lead, zinc, copper and gold out of the ocean do, we are already seeing coral die from sediment from cleared land what would disturbing millions of tonnes under the ocean do to the marine life and to the structure of the planet!

Now I am the last person to want to ban mining altogether but how can what effect this kind of mining would have on the planet?

Show me how you can possibly guarentee that it won't damage the planet mining at 1,100 metres and 1,500 below sea level

The Question I ask myself is… where is the limit? On many days in IT we have to ask ourselves, how far do we go? What is our interpretation of the policy we are enforcing? Most of these policies are built around a safe, harassment and discrimination free work place.

I have many times done the email filter, going through each email caught and either letting it go or deleting or if outgoing email breaches the policy. In some cases I was probably harder than the guys and in other cases the reverse would be true. Basically I looked at each email, if it was incoming porn it was gone, if it was child porn I would have had to report it to the police (which luckily so far I have not had to deal with). If it was jokes, and pictures, unless they were semi pornographic (enough to offend someone) or derogative in some manner I normally let through unless they where a huge file size.

So last night after finally getting my laptop going (every screw is in a container literally I had to pull it apart). I was not impressed to find comments removed from my blog. It is one thing to remove comments from ones own blog and another entirely to have it done for you.

To delete blogs of an advertising manner is one thing but to go into someone’s blog is another. What is next? Can the Moderator delete a Post he doesn’t agree with or Censor this or that with in it.

And while the comments were that of a persistent person Trolling the site they were on my blog and leaving them there I was making a point to not really the Troll at all but everyone naive enough to believe the what the Troll was saying about law and the internet. so while the intention may have been good for better or worse Moderator you censored MY blog.

I have been thinking about this overnight and I am still not sure how I feel, I know I am not comfortable with it and it does make me wonder… Am I comfortable to continue blogging in that sort of situation or should I move the blog all together currently the jury is hung and I can’t make a decision.