Played at the Kings Arms last night - I'm pretty sure it was the best and tightest we'd sounded live, but was a little bit of a tough crowd (really awkward when nobody clapped after our first song...lol!)

but who cares it was fun :P

Finally! I can cross off seeing Dream Theater live off my list of things to do before I die...

Awesome bits are:

• mike portnoy (come on lol such a show off!!! TOO GOOD TO BELIEVE)
• jordan rudess vs john petrucci, keytar vs guitar showdown!
• amazing lighting crew (they must have the most rhythmically gifted lighting techs ever)

please come back earlier than 20 years this time.......

Got one of those Inland Revenue student loan summary things in the mail, which I'm sure all of you are familiar with;

Currently I have $5,349.98 left on my student loan. Every month, I pay about 190 dollars off that. So at this rate it will take me about 28 months, or 2 years and 4 months, or until February 2012. (i think my maths is right)

Coincidence, or the end of the world?!?!?

You decide.

This is awesome, my fish went into a panic when they saw food coming down into their fishtank...

wtf stupd fish lol

Finished Borderlands

its fun, but there a ton of UI problems,which is quite depressing considering there are like at least 6 people listed in the credits for UI...

its been fun but this quote says it all abut borderlands

"I’m a merc sent to find pieces of a key on an alien planet that opens some giant vault that’s supposed to make me rich and famous. Along the way there are crazy bandits from Mad Max and evil soldiers from Fallout 3 to make things more difficult for me. I open the vault and instead of getting rich, a giant monster comes out, and I kill it and it never drops any good items. The end." (from http://unrealitymag.com/index.php/2009/11/05/the-borderlands-journal-day-15/)

having said tat though - i still had a great time, abnd will definite ly get the dlc

Gym Explorer

Okay, so me and Arron have decided to join a gym recently - I mainly wanted to counteract the lethargic blah-ness of sitting down 8 hours a day so we joined Les Mills last Tuesday as part of their current promo (gym membership free until January 2010, but we did sign up for a super long 3 year term, yay for contracts...)

But yeah, it's been quite exciting! I have never really properly set foot in a gym before but Les Mills has made the introduction quite easy. 

Did the cardio explorer on Thursday (where they show you how to use the bike, the rower, the cross trainer, the treadmill, and a couple of stretches using the beam), then weights explorer on Friday (lat pull down is the only machine i remember the name of but there were heaps), and then yesterday we took a group fitness class, which was like sort of a Dance Aerobics sort of thing with latin and hip hop moves or whatever, pretty hard to actually follow and do the moves so we looked like douches but it was a good workout...

As a result though I am pretttty sore today! Was pencilled in to do some more today but dont know if that is agood idea.

ANYWAY yeah     to summarize

for some bizarre reason i am exercising and going to a gym now

i wonder how long this will lassst????

Why ACC Levy increases are, frankly, a crock of shit

1. Email from Jim Anderton

Thank you for your message regarding the proposal to increase the ACC levy payable by owners of motor bikes, in some cases by several hundred per cent.

I am opposed to this for two principal reasons:

The first is that it is not necessary. The ACC fund is not in a financial crisis as the current National led government claims. The scheme as originally constituted was a ‘pay as you go’ scheme i.e. the levies received in any one year meet the requirements for payments in that year. In fact the recent history of the scheme has been that the income more than meets the payment requirements. The same applies to, for example, national superannuation. In that case the identification of the effect of the ‘baby boom’ generation coming to retirement and creating a demand ‘bulge’ on the commitment to pay universal pensions at a reasonable level can be anticipated and planned for ( the so-called ‘Cullen’ fund). If the ACC funding was in crisis this could be handled in the same way, but it is not in crisis and no amount of insisting that it is on the part of the present Minister can make it so.

The problem arises because the current government insists that all of the future financial obligations of the fund must be funded in the present. That would make sense if the ACC was an insurance scheme - which it is not and was never intended to be. It makes even more sense if the government has a hidden agenda - which looks increasingly likely - to privatise the ACC or farm parts of it out to insurance companies. In those circumstances, a fully funded scheme in which the fund has been paid for by taxpayers would look a very attractive proposition to a private insurer, but it is one to which I am entirely opposed.

The second reason is that the ACC scheme was never intended to be a user pays scheme in which those who allegedly incur specific costs must, as a group, also meet those costs in full. The scheme is intended to draw upon the overall resources of the community to ensure that those who suffer an accident do not find themselves disadvantaged because they cannot afford treatment or rehabilitation, or meet the expenses associated with a lengthy court case. I note that Sir Owen Woodhouse, whose report led to the setting up of the scheme in 1973 has very recently said precisely that. Saying that motor cyclists must pay much more than presently because they are ‘responsible’ for their accidents not only breaches the principal behind the scheme, it also re-introduces the notion of fault into the scheme when it was set up in the first place to avoid it.

Please be assured that I will be opposing the proposed increased levy and that we in the Progressive Party are committed to restoring the scheme to its original basis when we return to government.

Warm regards,

Jim Anderton
MP for Wigram
Progressive Party Leader

2. Read this: http://www.thestandard.org.nz/first-manufacture-a-crisis/

(but if not, then well you jsut need to know that  "the cost of new claims isn’t rising (steady at $1.7 billion for the last 2 years)." and pretty much they are increasing the levy because they are attempting to change the acc model from pay as you go to fully funded, which requires a massive amount of savings if they are trying to do it by 2014...

3. Car drivers are not subsidising motorcyclists as much as you are being led to believe

"ACC said that in 2008/09 it paid more than $62 million for accidents involving motorcycles. It collected $12.3m in levies from motorcyclists in the same period." (NZPA 16th Oct) This has also been quoted by both Nick Smith and John Judge and means there is a $50m shortfall which must be funded from other means.

"Dr Smith said motorcyclists were 16 times more likely than car drivers to be involved in accidents yet car owners were currently subsidising their ACC bills by $77 each."

The MOT Annual Vehicle Fleet Statistics for 2008 states there are 2,584,509 light passenger vehicles in New Zealand (light passenger vehicles are defined as cars and vans) - See here:

http://www.transport.govt.nz/research/NewZealandVehicleFleetStatistics/

So here is the problem.

$77 x 2,584,509 = $199,007,193 which means car drivers are paying $149m more than the total ACC cost supposedly incurred by motorcyclists.

THIS FAR EXCEEDS THE $50m SHORTFALL claimed by ACC for 2008/09. Given this is supposed to be a fully funded model of compensation one would hope motorcyclists are NOT paying for the tail of accidents hanging over from 1999, an aberration caused by the National Government’s 1998 change to ACC.

4. what about cyclists

In 2008 there were 1,475 motorcycle accidents and 50 deaths, and motorcyclists paid approximately $12.3 million in levies.

In 2008 there were 1,170 bicycle accidents and 36 deaths. Cyclists paid no ACC levies.

5. motorcyclists causing all the accidents

well for a start, ACC is a "no-fault" system, but ignoring that: 

"From research conducted at the Australasian Institute of Motorcycle Studies (AIMS) based at Lincoln University 67% of all accidents involving motorcycles involve other vehicles. Sixty percent of those (or 40% of all motorcycle accidents) are caused by the other driver. "

---

so yeah i am pretty certain that acc levy increases are dumb.

most of my info is obviously heavily biased and comes from http://www.bikersagainstacc.org.nz

FIGHT THE INCREASEEEEE PLZZZZZ :( ITS SO RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSE++ ;_;

Playing on the radio tomorrow morning :)

Thanks bfm :)

Listen in 9:30 am if you are interested :)

What is up with this ridiculously cold weather in October? It was promising for a while, warming and stuff, but then BAM today and yesterday, supercold. At work, our toilet is super cold, which is great; just great.

Band practice is pretty regular! This is the way Fist Full of Fives should have been; just need a bit of new material now. Radio show on bFM tentatively booked in for 22nd October Thursday morning ~9.30am (listen in! I think they stream it live; or listen to the recordings later), then recording an EP the weekend after that. I think my drumming has gotten a little better; obviously still a lot of room for improvement, but the drumpart for Lazybones goes from like double time to half time to normal time to what is going on

I am flying down to Wellington for the day for work tomorrow, which means a super early wakeup (pretty much a bad thing) but also means I get some time to study on the plane, cause I totally won't be tempted to play PSP, no, not at all.

How is everyone? Does anyone still read this friggn thng? I am not really that sorry thatmost of my stuff is on twitter now; I really only joined cause my boss had one, and now it's just so much easir to txt something to twitterthan to make a post here.

But the great thing about this (or the bad thing about twitter) is that you can (can't) do THIS

And I'm too lazy to undo it. Okay, anyways, hope everyone is doing well!

Awesome trip down to Tauranga and the Mount; Saturday was a bit of a crap weather day, but today was sunny as and the views from the top of Mt Maunganui are awesome - it's such a random mountain as well, like it was plonked on randomly to the beachy peninsula.

Academy also played my piece and it sounded 900% better this time than the last time they played it; I got to conduct bits of it and it made me smile :D

I hate daylight savings cause now I'm sleepy as

Also; why would you have a website but not an email address?? DIE

You know what reallly needs to stop?

Website login forms which auto-focus on the username field when the page finishes loading. I can't remember how many times I've entered my password into the PLAINTEXT username field because someone was trying to "save me time". All 'autofocus on pageloads' should die, because lets face it nobody waits for the page to finish loading before starting to type.

One table is occupied with a group playing Magic: The Gathering, a card-based game that requires a 20-sided die and, evidently, the ability to make voices in the high-pitched style of Monty Python. Magic is an RPG, or role-playing game, and the guys in the cafeteria morph into elves and trolls and other sorts of fire-breathing characters.

This is wrong, right??? (from http://www.seattleweekly.com/2007-07-11/news/testing-video-games-can-t-possibly-be-harder-than-an-afternoon-with-xbox-right.php/2)

Epic epic sql working today.

This little thing calculates the first day given a year and week number, and the start day of the next week. I have no idea whether it's US week number compliant or ISO...whatever the number is...

but this is what im using anyway;

DECLARE @iYear AS INT = 2010
DECLARE @iWeek AS INT = 1


DECLARE @compareTo AS Datetime = CONVERT(datetime, CONVERT(varchar(4),@iYear))
PRINT 'Date from given year: ' + CONVERT(varchar(100),@compareTo)

print '---------'
print ''

PRINT 'First day of week of specified week: ' + CONVERT(varchar(100),DATEADD

(week, @iWeek - 1, @compareTo))

DECLARE @oldYear AS int = DATEPART(year, DATEADD(week, @iWeek - 1, @compareTo))
DECLARE @oldWeek AS int = DATEPART(week, DATEADD(week, @iWeek - 1, @compareTo))

PRINT 'Year + month of old week: ' + CONVERT(varchar(10),@oldYear) + CONVERT

(varchar(10),@oldWeek)

print '---------'


DECLARE @newYear AS int = DATEPART(year, DATEADD(week, @iWeek, @compareTo))
DECLARE @newWeek AS int = DATEPART(week, DATEADD(week, @iWeek, @compareTo))

IF (@newYear > @oldYear)
BEGIN
PRINT '## a year has been skipped, so specifying date as first week of

next year'

PRINT 'First day of week after specified week: ' + CONVERT(varchar(50),

CONVERT(datetime, Convert(varchar(4), @newYear)))
END
ELSE
BEGIN

PRINT 'First day of week after specified week: ' + CONVERT(varchar

(100),DATEADD(week, @iWeek, @compareTo))

PRINT 'Year + month of new week: ' + CONVERT(varchar(10),@newYear) +

CONVERT(varchar(10),@newWeek)

END

Exclusive Meet and Greet with Dream Theater
Personal photograph with the band
Autograph session (includes 8x10 photo)
Official Meet and Greet Laminate
Exclusive Dream Theater Bandana
Set of Dream Theater Guitar Picks
Collectible Dream Theater “Black Clouds & Silver Linings” Patch
$25 voucher to the official Dream Theater online store

$250.....,.....do i want it? HMM SO UNDECIDED

A reserve tickets $120, IM SO THERE

but why is it a Tuesday night :z

maybe im not extreme enough of a fan for a meet and greet i dunno what i would say to them anyway (oh ya i luvv ur musizzkks, hey mike portnoy can i steal your talent)

so for some reason in vista all of my usb devices started failing and shit

so i installed windows 7. YAY! :)

If you've ever wondered how to get a different footer/header in a Word 2007 document on anywhere other than the first page, if you create a section page , you can unlink the header/footer so that the content for them is unique (instead of coming from the previous section) - then you can edit it to your hearts content!

Yay for word! (took me way too long to work this out)

Lol so this morning I got woken up at 7.40 by NZBus (who Metrolink fall under) following up on a complaint I made about yesterday and the day before's incident....

so they get points back (some)

but the bus driver's still a tard

Metrolink Bus Driver Fail - I was in line and got on the bus as usual, but this driver for some reason decided that it would be okay to shut his bus doors on the last person in line, and drive off, citing 'I'm late' as a suitable excuse (even though it was him who was late to the stop.) That's bad enough on its own, but this was even worse because it was just a child that was waiting.

This morning, the same child was there and it was also the same driver, and when accused of driving off yesterday which I clearly saw him doing, he denied it all.

Already knowing he is in the wrong, he then decides to accuse the mother and child of not paying the right fare, which is quickly disproven when he looks at her ticket.

His demeanor was generally rude and confrontational, and puts a black stain upon Metrolink's reputation - a bus driver that does not look out for the welfare of its passengers, and especially children, should not be carrying passengers.

METROLINK FAIL

So this has taken me like...an hour to figure out at work so I thought I'd share with everyone;


The problem is, I have to select things from a database, and they always have a start date assigned, but not all have an end date. So how do you properly select everything that falls within those ranges?

THE RULES FOR DATE SELECTION
============================

If there is an END DATE

The Date you are selecting from has to be before or equal to the data's StartDate
The Date you are selecting to has to be greater than the data's EndDate


If there is NO END DATE

The Date you are selecting from has to be before or equal to the data's StartDate
The Date you are selecting to has to be greater than the data's StartDate

To be honest this is more a reminder to myself so I won't forget something so trivially simple made me feel retarded. Yay for solving problems!