bananas on toast

Alright, so this morning my phone rings:

Woman: “Hi, we saw an ad on the paper that you lost a Husky?”
Me: “Yeah, for real, have you found him?!”
Woman: “Yeah maybe, he is here. We have a Husky too and our friends bought your dog to us thinking it was ours, he’s been here since Wednesday.”

I thought to myself, ‘thank god he has been kept well,’ and got their address and went to find him. As I was pulling up he heard my car and I saw him through the door. I immediately knew it was him and apparently he knew it was me too. As he heard my car he bolted for the door and nearly knocked their security door off it’s hinges and scared the bajeezus out of them.

Me: “Well, errr… Thanks for returning my dog, I’ll see you guys around…”
Woman: *HUSKY COUGH*
Me: “Oh, shit… The reward!”
Woman: “Oh, riiiiight, I almost forgot!” (whatever!)
Me: “I got nothing on me, but if you give me your phone number, my mother will call you as soon as she finishes work.”
Woman: “Better give me your number too, just in case… errr… our dog ever goes missing… or… something…” (again, full of shit)

We exchanged numbers and I drove away with Shadow. I called my mother and she was so excited that I had to drive to her work so she could see him – she had been a wreck the last few days and has been crying so much more than I recall her ever crying in my life. I am so glad he is home for so many reasons, but now it is time to give the smelly guy a bath!

Update: This is a scan of the article that found my pooch. Yay!

Yesterday started out as a good day, but that soon came crashing down with one phone call. My family had all just got home to find that my dog, Shadow, was missing. I miss him like crazy already and he has barely been gone for 24 hours. When he was in the backyard I always did my best to be good to him, but I can’t help but feel that I took our time together for granted. I never realized how valuable that time was and how hard it would be to recall after he is gone.

I think the part that scares me the most is what is happening to the poor guy. If he walked off and got lost (which I highly doubt, he is a very smart dog) he is probably scared out of his brain and looking frantically for me. If he was stolen (which I tend to think is the case) he is probably twice as scared as if he just got lost and probably doesn’t understand why myself and my family aren’t around. The thing is, he is like an infant; he is a smart dog, yet he really does rely on us to do all of his common sense thinking. I bet he is just so terrified right now and that is the part that hurts the most.

I want my dog back. I am so sad without him.

After reading this article, I decided that Flick rocks! It’s a story (rather short) about how too Flickr users found each other on the web!

The FlickrBlog Coincidence

Ryan and I started the festivities last night with a few cold ones and this morning when we woke up we prepared for his place. We’re gonna barbecue some lamb chops and have some beers out at his place to celebrate this fine nation – the finest there is. Sometimes certain aspects of living in Australia might give me the shits (the 46C days mostly), but I wouldn’t want to be from anywhere else!

Now, time for me to shower and have a beer, I’ll talk to you all later. Make sure you check out the Official Australia Day Website if you aren’t Australian and want to learn a little more about this fine countries day.

The other day Ryan and I were discussing the best movies of all time. I have a lot of movies that I really like, but I think I can easily put my finger on my ten most favorite movies, so here goes starting from 10. This may contain a few spoilers and you might also notice that I am leaving out both Lord of the Rings, Back to the Future, Star Wars and Star Trek, purely because they make the top 19 movies of my all time favorites and that would be kind of a boring list.

10. Saw: A very new film and frankly one of the best scripts ever written. This movie plays out perfectly, not to mention that it treads in a lot of places where most movies fear to.

9. Pulp Fiction: Hardcore drugs, blood, violence and directed by the man, Quinton Tarintino. Definitely in my Top 10 of all time!

8. Waynes World and Waynes World 2: Two absolute classic movies, they combine awesome music, bad 80’s fashion and hair and two of the biggest tards to ever walk the earth. “Party on!”

7. Toy Story: One of the best animated movies of all time, this movie is just fantastic! Toy Story 2 is almost as good, but I think it ranks just outside my Top 10.

6. Cop and a Half: It sounds crap, and in parts it kind of is, but it’s actually comedy gold. Without a doubt the best non-animated kids movie ever made. With quotes like, “no, he’s been dunking for turds!” and half witted henchmen, how can you go wrong?!

5. Mallrats: Every single line of this movie is a memorable quote, there is nothing that the characters don’t say that Ryan and I don’t quote at least once a week. “Might that be the party where you fucked Rick Derris on a pool table?”

4. The Goonies: The most classic 80’s movie ever. I mean hell, it even stars a young Shaun Astin, so if that doesn’t make it worth watching nothing will.

3. The Austin Powers Trilogy: I’ve grouped these movies because I think they are all as good as each other and I think they are all good films. Good for when you just want to sit down and have a laugh without thinking too much.

2. American History X: The only movie that has ever made me cry. Ever. At the end when Danny is shot, I can’t help but think to myself how I would react if that happened to Josh and it almost brings me to tears every single time.

1. Fight Club: I think everything about this movie is just fantastic. From the casting, the script and the production, this movie is simply perfect. A good plot twist never fails to impress either.

I would also like to give an honorable mention to a short film Seth Whiley directed a while ago called The Good Things. It also starred my favorite writer, and he is a damn fine actor too, Wil Wheaton. It was 27 minutes of awesomeness, however I cannot find the movie anywhere and not even so much as a link to it existing on DVD or VHS. If anyone has any clues as to how I might find it, let me know.

Although I have yet to see it on televison, Diny was kind enough to laugh at us “Kangaroos” by showing me this link. Both Ryan and Liam have seen it on television, so I can only assume it’s a serious ad about Australia Day. Enjoy.

Being Un-Australian from your good friends at Kontraband

Tonight, while I had the cash and can afford it at the moment, I indulged myself in completing a project I have long wanted to do. I’ve always wanted to be the owner my name dot com, and now I am. My latest creation, Mitch Malone dot COM is basically an “about” site and launchpad. This will be from now on the page I will be linking to when people ask me about my website, because basically from this they can find my weblog, my art, buy my prints (and as you can see if you’ve had a look) find any links that regard me.

The actual site design itself is in it’s infancy as I have big plans for the graphical enhancement. Rather than my standard XHTML/CSS only websites, I decided to really branch out into some kind graphics intense sex-bomb of a website. Be sure to keep an eye on the site and update any “Mitch” links to this site please. I can’t wait until it starts getting some hits and I really can’t wait until the design has matured a little more.

Today I ate… breakfast. Okay, okay, don’t go just yet, I swear I will explain it. Apparently there is this crazy meal that you are supposed to start your day with and it’s not a mid-morning snack or lunch. Crazy, I know, but it’s true and apparently when you are being a good boy and trimming down, you need to do it. That’s right kids, number 2 of my new years resolutions is already underway! I also had some awesome salad sandwiches for lunch and I am currently waiting on some fish and salad for dinner, w00t!

In other news, there was a car accident today. Mum and dads new car is no long brand spanking and now has a lovel green dent in it (pictured below). I won’t divulge too much information here, it’s kind of personal, but I will say that it involved extremely wet weather, a 180 skid, a block of cement and a green pole. Fun for the whole family!

Alright, for all you crazy kids who listen to my ramblings and post comments, in the immortal words of Homer Simpson, “Here comes fun!” For those of you who do not know, one of the trendiest things to come out for us webloggers in recent times is Gravatar (Globally recongnized avatar).

Everyone has been to at least one forum in their life and seen users with avatars. And for those fortunate enough to become a part of such a community, you probably even had an avatar of your own. And for those who have not, well you still probably have the next best thing sitting on the right hand side of your MSN Messenger.

Sorry, I got on a little tangent there. Now, the point of Gravatar is to give you one avatar that you can use on any Gravatar-enabled website. For example if you create a Gravatar account and then upload your image, from now on when you comment here your graphic will be shown next to your comment. Or cooler still, if you go over to another site like Binary Bonzai, the same graphic will show up there too!

To quote the Gravatar website:

A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an 80×80 pixel avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Avatars help identify your posts on web forums, so why not on weblogs?

So, if you are a regular commenter, why not create an account and upload your avatar? Hell, if you want I will even help you create your own 80 by 80 and even help you with uploading it! So get cracking!

I was listening to The Ataris this morning, and more importantly the song “Your Boyfriend Sucks” and it came across a quote I haven’t heard in a while. In a guitar bridge, there is a quite from Robert De Niro from the movie A Bronx Tale. It’s an awesome quote and for any guy in the dating game, you totally should take heed.

Sonny: Alright, listen to me. You pull up right where she lives, right? Before you get outta the car, you lock both doors. Then, get outta the car, you walk over to her. You bring her over to the car. Dig out the key, put it in the lock and open the door for her. Then you let her get in. Then you close the door. Then you walk around the back of the car and look through the rear window. If she doesn’t reach over and lift up that button so that you can get in: dump her.
Calogero ‘C’ Anello: Just like that?
Sonny: Listen to me, kid. If she doesn’t reach over and lift up that button so that you can get in, that means she’s a selfish broad and all you’re seeing is the tip of the iceberg. You dump her and you dump her fast.

Wow, I just logged into movabletype and saw this:

bananas on toast
So geek it hurts!

Total Posts: 300
Total Comments: 362

And just for good measure, last months log stats:

Unique visitors: 2331
Number of visits: 10526 (average of 4.5 per user)
Visits to main: 5083

Unfortunately I must be writing the wrong things, because this is my top search responses, in order.

1. cross dress
2. bon scott
3. stardate calculator
4. bon scott s grave
5. bananas on toast w00t
6. new years eve photos
7. photos of christmas
8. bananas on toast
9. cross-dress
10. lpjz track listing

I am quite proud of those, apart from 1 and 9. Hahahaha.

While laughing at the second film clip by Joel Turner which features Anthony Mundine, I realized that I haven’t written any angsty hate in my journal for a while. Joel Turner, for those who don’t know, is a beatboxer/rapper/singer/guitarist with awesome talent who didn’t make it past the first round of Australian Idol. After he bombed off the Idol, he made the sound effects for the first DVD and went on to release an awesome song called “These Kids.”

The guy is talented, but unfortunately talent doesn’t mean you have brains. For some reason, unbeknown to anyone with common sense, he thought it was a good career move to team himself up with an absolute loser like Anthony Mundine. Anthony Mundine is the most conceited person I think I have ever seen grace television, so much so that when he left the NRL to pursue his boxing career/joke the never-capped footballer was quoted saying something very much alike, “I am the best football player ever, so I am going to try something new.” I am sure it was far less articulate than this, however it sums it up quite well.

Anthony Mundine is the current Super Middle Weight champion of the world. Of course, this is rather an easy title to capture when the only other contenders are punch-drunk has beens and never weres, but for “The Man” that doesn’t seem to matter. Apparently there is a lot of honor in pulling a never-was out of retirement, beating the shit out of him (of course, not knocking him out, Mundine only had 4 KO’s to his name) and sending him away again is the height of masculinity.

In closing I would just like to reiterate my hate of Anthony Mundine. Thank you.

Well it’s nearly time for Aussie kids to head back to school and begin their study for 2005. With that, a lot of students rush out and update to Norton 2005, buy the latest version of windows, upgrade their computer, buy the latest Microsoft office suite, and that is just for their computer. So what do you do if you don’t have a bazillion dollars to spend? It’s called Open Source baby and it works just as well! Josh is beginning his first year of University so for Christmas I gave him my second laptop and I am helping him get it all set up for the new year. Here is how we did it.

The first thing you need is an operating system. Ideally I would recommend a nice simple Linux distribution such as Fedora Core 3 if you were trying to save bucks, but luckily Josh and I had a spare copy of windows laying around and we shall use that. Josh really doesn’t have enough time to learn Linux, as much as I know he wants to, but maybe that will come later in the year. Luckily, almost all of the applications I have chosen are cross-platform compliant, so whether you are using Windows or Linux, it really won’t matter.

Next you need some virus protection. A good browser and email client as well as a decent firewall will go a long way, but frankly you just need something more. Sure you could fork out a few hundred bucks for a copy of Norton Antivirus, but why do that when Grisoft are prepared to give you AVG for free? While the AVG Free Edition does not get the priority updates as quick as paying users do, this is definitely adequate for an average user, so download it and give it a run. I’ve been using it since Mik suggested it at our last LAN party and I’ve been more than satisfied.

As Microsoft grows in many areas, one place it hasn’t grown substantially in a very long time is it’s office suite. OpenOffice however has had several updates (all free) this year alone and now currently supports almost 100% of Microsoft files, which is an added bonus. This was the second thing to go on Josh’s laptop after AVG, it includes word processing, spreadsheets, slideshows and even a drawing program. The only thing that Microsoft has in this area that OpenOffice lacks is an e-mail application, but personally no email application compares to Thunderbird, which I shall get to later.

OpenOffice installs like a dream and the only thing you might need extra to it is an install of Java from Sun. Again, this is just as easy to install, so throw it on there first just so that your install of OpenOffice is more complete. All in all the totally download and install time should take around 30 minutes to an hour on broadband, dialup users may wish to buy a copy of APC or another reputable computer magazine that has OpenOffice on the cover CD to make it a little easier.

We all know that Browse Happy has been around for a while and tells us not to use Internet Explorer. The last thing you want is an inferior browser downloading and running some viruses without your permission, so for your browsing you definitely want Firefox from Mozilla. Firefox is just as easy (if not easier once you get used to it) to use as Internet explorer, but comes with loads of features that Internet explorer lacks such as tabbed browsing and extensible features. I recently converted Liam from Lik-Wid and his exact words after he downloaded Firefox were, “I can’t believe I haven’t been using this all along!” and he then vowed to convert Mik too. Liam had a lot of hassles with spyware before using Firefox and as I understand it now, he is flying high now.

How do you download your email, if you download it? Outlook Express right? Sure, it’s easy and it becomes pre-installed on most Windows installations, but it’s about as safe as it’s counterpart Internet Explorer. It has a habit of trying to read your mind and running scripts it is sent. Obviously some security updates have been made, but this should just never have been a problem in the first place. Solution? Mozilla Thunderbird. It’s just like Firefox in that it is very secure and comes with a lot of extensions such as a Calendar, RSS readers and loads more. Download it, get used to it and make your email just a little safer. It also ties in nicely with AVG and your email will be automatically scanned when incoming, which is just beautiful.

How do you keep organized? I have a nice little calendar on my website which some of you may have noticed. This is a combination of having my own website, a free program called Mozilla Calendar and a free script called PHP iCalendar. All of these are readily available to the average user and easy enough to use. Of course not everyone wants to publish their calendar like me, but my point is that it is all free. If you need to keep track of assignments, download Calendar for Firefox or Calendar for Thunderbird. It’s a simple add-on and takes around 1 minute on broadband to download and it will keep you in check. You can even download it for both Firefox and Thunderbird at the same time, then tell both applications to use the same data source and share the files it creates!

Gmail is beautiful. Most people have a Gmail address, those who don’t most likely know someone who does and that someone just might have some invites to get you an address. I know that I have several invites in my account so if you are reading this, know me and want an account let me know. The biggest advantage of a Gmail account is that you don’t have to delete any important emails, as well as you can access your account as an extra hard drive on your computer to store your assignments and files you might want to use elsewhere, such as at a friends house.

Last, but certainly not least, everyone who travels or uses multiple computers needs a thumbdrive. These guys come in various sizes ranging from 32, 64, 128, 256, and 512 Megabytes to 1GB and soon bigger, and are made by a lot of different companies giving you a lot of choices. Most of the sizes from 128MB or less are pretty cheap to most people and should hold everything you need it to. Buy one, put all your program installs (so you can install them anywhere you might be) and put your assignments on them and you are set to study anywhere. Another useful idea might be to download an Offline Browsing add-on for Firefox, store your study material on the disk and take them anywhere you like with you.

Well this started as a small “how to” and ended up being somewhat of an essay, so I hope this isn’t too hard for anyone to follow. I am more than happy to help out with anything I have describe here, so feel free to comment if anything gives you trouble, but most of it should be easy to solve via a quick search on Google. Have fun with it and good luck with your study!

Tonight my dog hurt himself really badly. Not that he doesn’t do it every other day, but tonight was so much worse that I almost cried. He often lays on this slat chair we have out the back and he thinks it is just the best thing in the world. He loves it so much, but every now and then (and ever increasingly) his foot gets trapped between two of the slats and he hurts himself. Usually he can free himself, but tonight he couldn’t and I had to lift him up until he was okay again.

I was just rinsing my plate after eating dinner when I heard a whoosh as the chair slipped and his foot got caught. He was laying on the top, so his foot went down through the slats and went to the underside. After this happened he must have fallen all the way under the chair because his leg was rotated about 270 degrees, which is about 90 past normal for a dog. I ran out and tried to put my arm under to lift him, but in his panic he bit me (seriously hard) and I took a step back. I basically had about half a second to grab him, pull him out and get him on his feet before he would throw his teeth in again, so I grabbed his fur and lifted him out and to safety.

He cried and he was so scared when it happened that the poor guy peed all over himself and all over the ground. He came to me and cuddle up to me and he was just so scared it was heartbreaking. The poor guy, he really is such a baby and I hate to think what might happen if I wasn’t around one day when this happened. I’d be lost without him.

So as soon as mum and dad return from their trip I am going to buy some new slats to replace the existing ones and I am going to make sure these ones are wider so that there are no gaps so his feet can’t go down through it. If I don’t fix it, he might just break his leg next time and that would be really sad for him.

I wanted to write a wrap-up of my new years, but everything is so rushed right now I just don’t think I would have the time. Besides, so much happened. Let’s just say I drank a lot, partied a lot and had a whole bunch of fun. What I really want to talk about is new years resolutions and what mine is. Every year people think up some half-assed excuse for a “new years resolution” and never follow through with it, but not me, not this year. I know what I want to accomplish in 2005 and I know that I won’t do it without talking about it, so here goes.

1. My first goal is to prioritize my life. I want to know exactly what is and is not important to me and where all the is-important items stand. My important things are going to be my writing, my music, deviantART and my photography, and finding work. My not important list is much longer and at the top is all the hours I waste online. I couldn’t live without a certain time spent online chatting and speaking to my net friends, but I will no longer be spending hours on end chatting about nonsense when I could be playing my bass or writing. To all my net friends, I am sorry that I must cut this time down so drastically, but it just has to happen to get my life where I want it to be.

2. My fitness needs to improve drastically. I am going to lose the extra pounds and start taking care of this body and that is going to start with exercise. I haven’t walked the dog in quite a while, which in itself is disgraceful, but I also haven’t walked myself either, which is worse. I am going to trim down on the meals, exercise some more, drink a little less during weekdays and start losing the excess weight. I know once I do that I will be sleeping less, enjoying life more and accomplishing all my goals quicker.

3. University. I am going to slowly pull my degree back on track and start getting that qualification I have desired for so long. Right now I am way behind, but all it will take is a year of good work and I will be back on top of it all. I won’t be going back in full time because I will be still looking for work, but I also won’t be making any mistakes and I will be getting the subjects I need done out of the way.

4. Read more. Write more Cook more. Three major passions of mine that I haven’t made much time to improve, these guys are going to be getting some major visits from Mitch this year.

And as I wrap up these 4 projects, each with their own sub-projects, I would have to say that my 5th item is to keep this site up to date. The entries I generally write only take around 20 minutes of my day and I see no reason why I couldn’t keep a day-to-day journal of the things I am up to.

To all my readers, I hope your holiday season was terrific (however you celebrate it) and I hope you have a wonderful new year. Keep reading and checking on my progress, because with these 4 projects, my writing, and several secret projects (which will be revealed as they come to realization) I promise to entertain.