Expectations versus Reality

March 23, 2010

There’s a great scene in the movie “(500) Days of Summer” where they show two versions of the same scene side-by-side. On the left is what the male lead thinks will happen (“Expectations”), and on the right is what actually happens (“Reality”). And of course, reality doesn’t come close to matching his expectations.
When I started [...]

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Pleasure and pain

March 22, 2010

Today I got a taste of what it would be like to write for a living. Or, in this case, edit.
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’m editing a book manuscript for a friend of mine. So far it’s been a bit hard finding more than a few hours amongst everything else going on—the [...]

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The best laid plans

March 21, 2010

I just checked some stats on my blog (the ones I really care about).
This will be my 80th post, and when I finish it I’ll have cracked the 35,000-word mark. That’s about 30,000 more than I expected to write (I’ve tried blogging before and failed miserably), and I’m sure every one of them has made [...]

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The perfect birthday gift

March 20, 2010

This time two years ago I was walking the corridors of a nearby hospital, dazed and confused.
No, I hadn’t been in an accident. I’d just become a father.
In my arms was my son, less than an hour old. My wife was still in the recovery ward, and so it was just the two of us, [...]

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Just what I needed

March 19, 2010

Today I finally caught up with a friend of mine I haven’t seen in months.
We met about five years while she was doing some PR work for our organisation. (That’s one of the great things about doing IT work—you get to meet pretty much everyone in the place.) We got along straight away, and she [...]

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Care factor

March 18, 2010

A few days ago I talked about the editing work I do in my regular job. About how much work it can be sometimes. About how much I enjoy doing it, and seeing the results.
Well, right now I’m just about ready to give it all up.
No, not because of the work that was taken away [...]

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Don’t use that (ring)tone with me

March 17, 2010

So you’ve got a new mobile phone. Congratulations.
I can understand you’re excited. Chances are it has a million more features than your last phone, and you’re eager to try them all out. So go ahead, play with the compass, the GPS, and whatever else it has.
But please, wait until you get home before you start [...]

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Energy crisis

March 16, 2010

It’s a bit of a ghost town where I work at the moment.
No, we haven’t sacked half our staff (in fact, we’re about to get a whole bunch of new people in the office), but right now we’re the only people on the floor, and so it’s really quiet. I half expect to look up [...]

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Letting go

March 15, 2010

If you’ve been reading this blog over the past week or so you’ll know I’ve been in quite a good mood lately. Well, today that good mood was tested to the limit.
One of my roles in our organisation is to make sure any “official” documents being sent from our IT department can be understood by [...]

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Screen reader

March 14, 2010

If there’s one thing I’d like my son to be good at when he’s older, it’s reading.
It’s certainly not the only thing I’d like him to be good at. I’d like him to be good at everything from solving maths problems to making friends. But reading would certainly be near the top of the list.
Whenever [...]

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