February 4th, and all's well!

My dearest Bloggaz,

Not much to report today. Mum and Dad are coming over for the weekend which will be nice. First time they'll have met Kristen etc...

Birthday was fun - dinner @ Piccolino's was followed by an awesome chokkie mudcake at our house from a really upmarket cake shop - I think it's called "Coles". :-) Lots of pressies too which was lovely (and unexpected!). At last I have a couple of new books to read - I was almost going to pick up Lord of the Rings for the fourth time in 3 years. Thankfully Zen gave me Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons" which preceded his "Da Vinci Code" bestseller. Woowyams also gave me the "Great Aussie Bathroom Reader" - good on ya Woowyams! Lots of fascinating trivia in there. (For example, did you know that the ABC's address of "GPO Box 9994 in your capital city" is a tribute to Don Bradman's batting average of 99.94?)

Mum and Dad gave some nice dollars too - I'm tempted to grab the "Live Aid 20" DVD set. Andreas tells me it's gold. (I must go see him - I've been back since July and still haven't caught up. Shocker...)

Work issue: When in a team-lead position, how do you manage a resource who is constantly going off on wild tangents and wasting project time and money? In a perfect situation I could introduce a new development methodology like Agile (although Agile somewhat leans towards "micro-management" IMHO) to better manage resource time. However, I have nowhere near enough clout for that. So, when you have a resource who is meant to be documenting some future strategies, and you can see that they are actually repeatedly reviewing past-project code that they just can't "let go", what do you do? Do I have to stomp this guy, or even worse send him back to the bench? Or is there some way that I can re-focus his attentions on the here and now? Perhaps the tenth attempt at the latter will work... >:-( (Perhaps I actually DO have to send him back to the bench.)

Other things: Nothing to report apart from the fact that I'm about to start up a new gym membership. Having now cracked the 110kg mark (OH MY GOD!) and been formally placed into the "fat bastard" bucket, I have been motivated enough to join Aqualink Nunawading's gym. A thoroughly humiliating fitness assessment will be first up, followed by a fitness program that I will no doubt completely ignore. As long as I can get married in Fiji and go swimming at the beach there without massive fat rolls hanging over the edge of my shorts, I'll be happy! :-)

Melbourne has been swamped by some truly zany weather. Tuesday was 36 degrees at lunch time and had plummeted to about 13 by 6pm. Wednesday was a top of 14 before the heavens opened up and it didn't stop for 31 hours! The Yarra nearly burst its banks, and the river actually rose up so high that it was lapping over the lower footpath at Southgate. A mate who is contracting @ Crown told me that jellyfish were washing up on the footpath. Anyway, 120mm of rain in a single day is apparently the all-time record here. Crazy stuff. I was waiting for Dennis Quaid to burst through the door and rescue us all! :-) (See here if that last comment lost you.)

Today's Dictionary.com Word of the Day: discursive \dis-KUR-siv\, adjective:1. Passing from one topic to another; ranging over a wide field; digressive; rambling.2. Utilizing, marked by, or based on analytical reasoning -- contrasted with intuitive.

The first entry somewhat sums up this blog, don't you think?

Justin