The USS Quad Damage

Having to use my crappy laptop rather than my desktop machine has really made me cut down on the time I spend online. I've gone from having several multiple Gigabyte files queued to download, checking my mail every hour or so and having around 20 tabs in Firefox open to not downloading anything, checking my mail every few days (ugh, webmail) and having no more than three tabs open. I'll try and swallow my distaste for using this machine and update more often in the future.

I recently bought Gran Turismo 4. I also have a steering wheel and pedal setup. Life is good. As I progress through the game, it has come to my attention that on my quest to attaining 100% completion, I will have to take part in no less than three 24 hour endurance races. Now, this game lets you speed up time and use an AI driver for any race, but I'd like to at least once achieve this task the proper way. Would anyone be interested, some time in the future, in helping me do this? I'm not sure when this can happen, and by what methods we will use (taking shifts? I do the entire 24 hours and everyone heckles me? Who knows!). If there is any interest, I'll start a new story on it later next week for ideas and so forth.

Voting is always a strange event. Werriwa has always been a Labor stronghold, and I was stuffed if I had any idea who the candidates were. As per usual, although every one the leaflet dispensers wanted to be my best friend on my way in, none of them wanted to know me on my way out. I'm sure you've all heard me make this observation a million times before - expect to hear it many more times in the future. Another source of amusement for me was seeing a member of the Christian Democratic Party (or whatever they're called) give a pamphlet to a clearly Muslim woman. Sure, a person of a different faith may agree with many of the ideas and see them as the party that best represents their interest, but I found the image really funny. Cute, even.

I also went to the Easter Show yesterday. Stupid election cost me an extra hour of getting badly sunburned! I look terrible. Giving it some thought, the severity of the burn isn't that bad, it is just the contrast with my pale, pale skin that makes me look like I'm going to die. I also managed to run into tim and Lynette, but I don't really like them, so we shan't speak anymore of it. Amy and myself were both amazed and very confused regarding the sight of a carpet/mat/weaving thing for sale bearing the Australian Hapkido Association logo. The hell?

Speaking of Hapkido, the next grading is in about two months. Fortunately, I feel confident in my falling, so all that's left for me to sort out is a certain kick (which I'm slowly getting better at), some self defense techniques, a tackle(!) and my overall fitness. As you progress, each grading becomes not only more intense, but goes for much longer. Perhaps us green belts will be breaking wood this time around?

When I finally get around to fixing my desktop PC, I intend on taking a lot more pictures with my camera. Expect to see some photo based stories in addition to my normal updates.

Edit: Elaborated on some stuff.