Friday, August 25, 2006

It's Friday, And My Colleagues Don't Have Enough Work To Do...

Currently they've built a 9 high tower of coke and beer cans on the filing cabinet and are throwing a frisbee at it. Their aim stinks. The best they've managed so far is knocking two cans off the top. Dearie dearie me. Maybe I should move out of the firing lanes...

In other news, I've spent a week in Auckland beavering away and actually managed to solve something. Sort of. Also, I'm -
OK, they finally knocked it down with a resounding crash, I'm glad I don't have to clean it up -
nauseatingly well rested and prone to waking up at 6 in the morning. I put this down to the fact that my hosts (the lovely Donald and Tanja) who are often a hive of social activity have had a fairly quiet week, so we're all going to bed quite early. (The hive is on hold for various reasons, including a frequent guest acquiring a new boyfriend, another buggering off to Scotland, and Tanja being dewisdomised yesterday.) As strange as it feels to be awake and chirpy at 6.30 in the morning, I can only say that it's a mug's game and I want nothing of it. Well, OK, maybe a little of it. Still, I like that dozy warm feeling you get in the morning when you're all snuggly and don't have to get up quite yet. Particularly if there's company...

In other other news, I was one of the GMs for a Mordavia day game on Wednesday - I spent most of it in the spiral stair case having private conversations with players. There's something about those player plots, they take a while to get moving, but once they're going they have an awful lot of momentum. ;-) Also, Adam gave me a ride there on his shiny yellow Triumph motorcycle, and it is a sad fact that it took me most of Thursday morning to find someone I could brag to who would realise how incredibly cool that was. (Like a Kourier from Snow Crash letting someone hitch a ride on their skateboard, maybe.) Fortunately, my boss who's on a school camping trip near Ruapehu checked his email that morning and was able to make appropriate Ooh and Aah noises.

Anyway, back to Wellington on Sunday. I should probably get some work done...

Saturday, August 12, 2006

Commonplace Book

Of Truth
"What is truth?" said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer. Certainly there be that delight in giddiness, and count it a bondage to fix a belief; affecting free will in thinking, as well as in acting. And though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain certain discoursing wits, which are of the same veins, through there be not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients. But it is not only the difficulty and labor which men take in finding out of truth; nor again, that when it is found, it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor; but a natural though corrupt love of the lie itself.

Bacon, Francis, "Of Truth" in ENGL308 Renaissance Literature Coursebook, Wellington: Victoria University of Wellington, 2006, p37.