M.O.M.S.

I thought it'd been a while since I wrote anything about my own life on this blog, so today we answer the question, what's been going on in the world of Phil?

Well the reason there's been no posts about my life I suppose, is simply that I've not broken into anywhere, flown off on any random trips abroad, moved, or done anything remotely out of the ordinary.  Indeed, I seem to have become a normal every day human being with regards to my activities, and this is something I should really try to correct before it sticks.  Having said that - I've enjoyed life in normality.  A nice break.

I saw Batman the other week with Carl - that was brilliant.  I was going to mention it in this post but frankly if you haven't seen it or heard about how awesome it is already... you probably don't have access to the net... or... the world - so you wont be reading this blog.  While on the subject of Super Heroes, if you've not seen Dr Horrible's Sing-a-Long Blog you're seriously missing out - it's a video, about 45 minutes in 3 parts, and is a great little production from Joss Whedon.  It's free to watch but only available online for a limited time, after which you'll have to buy it to watch it (though I expect I'll be buying it anyway cos it rocks).  I'm not going to attempt to explain it really - it's just epic fun - give it 10 minutes and you'll be hooked.  I've made it the video at the top of my blog for now, but I recommend going to http://www.hulu.com/ and searching for 'Dr Horrible' - then from there you can watch it full screen. :)

I suppose work has become the central strut around which all things revolve.  I've worked for CWF for over 7 months now.  This sounds like a short time, but in the last 7 months, I've had 4 different people appointed as my manager, and have seen 5 people come onto/leave the 6-8 man team.  In CWF terms - I'm a vet now - one of the key developers with experience that outdates the majority of people.  The extraordinary turn over is not limited to the Development team either - I've stopped trying to learn the names of people in the wider organisation as they rarely last a probation period.  It's been difficult - the constant traffic is disruptive and the shifting team means erratic work loads.  The lack of stable line management leaves us open to the raw heat of senior management, external companies, and other departments.  It's chaotic, and stressful, and it can't hold for very much longer.  The most recent bout of resignations has at least driven that fact home to senior management, and the department is undergoing a complete 'shakeup' and 're-investment', but these efforts wont kick in for months yet, and things get worse before they get better.

I should be careful about how much I say on a public blog about stresses of work - to be fair, I'm sure every company has it's disorganisation and management issues - at least CWF has faced up to a need for change, and is discussing it with us... you know... assuming they're not just talking crap.

The last few weeks, I've found it increasingly difficult to concentrate.  I've filled my day with the small tasks on my list, which really don't fill the day if I'm honest and the larger jobs sit their looming.  It all needs doing, and I need to get my head in gear and just blitz it but I don't know if it's these package negotiations, resignations, or just that i need a holiday... I can't knuckle down to some of it right now.  I'm worried I might have resigned from my job in my mind already - there comes this point where you decide you're going and it's like a switch flicking in your head - you start looking for jobs and you lose focus for your work - like it's not your job any more and you're just filling in for someone temporarily now.  I feel like that, only I'm actually a pretty hard worker and I get really annoyed with myself if I'm not outputting what I should be.  It's especially ironic that in this time of low performance I'm likely to be given more pay and benefits to motivate me to stay and get back into gear, while for the last 7 months, I've worked my balls off and they've been happy not to reward that attitude at all.  If these raises and benefits had been rolled out 2 months ago under the guise of a 'well done', the company would have easily retained the whole team - nobody would have even thought of going.  Crazy.

I'm a bit close to saying too much again there.  Let's get off the topic of work and talk about... umm... ok, so love life is a blank right now.... recreation mainly features the x-box (on the plus I am now awesome at Halo3)... social life is same old... no crazy schemes going on.  Damn - we really need to work on this, or this blog is going to have no content for the foreseeable future.  I need to take a holiday, pull a heist, make a move, or explore some new social culture activities.  Or... I mean, I could do something like that, or, I could just re-subscribe to WoW.  Decisions decisions.

(Achievement Badge for completing Halo on Legendary)

While nothing's been going on in action, internally there's been a little overhaul going on.  I've been really strongly challenging every aspect of who I am, and I guess playing a few physiological experiments on myself.  Spiritually, emotionally, and in regards to sexuality.  Largely, nothing has changed.  Some things I'm more sure of as a result, and some things I'm still weighing up and looking into (the last post being a small tip of that I s'pose), but I'm finding my effort to continue 'The Overhaul' is slipping now - might be enough self assessment for one year.

Well... I feel I've probably made an entire post aimed at telling you what's going on with me, and managed not to convey any meaningful information on that topic at all!  And if that's not the very nature of a post about me, I don't know what is.

Maybe more coherent next time... be good!
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Phil
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I have some questions regarding our faith that I don't remember/am unsure of the answer to, and rather than look them up, I thought rather lazily I'd throw them out to ya'll.  If you happen to know the answer, or the question drives you to look up the answer, your comments would be extremely useful to me at this time of reflection.

1:  I'm trying to find any example shown by the Apostles, of un-invited evangelism.  That is to say, every example I can think of, the Apostle was petitioned by the crowd/individual to answer a specific question, rather than the Apostle making special effort to bring up the subject of Jesus and then focusing on evangelical conversation.  It seems, reading through, the Apostles were not 'Evangelists' by nature, but simply, honestly answered questions when they were asked.  What does does that say about evangelism?

2:  Leviticus declares that homosexuality is a taboo (Leviticus 18:22).  Leviticus also declares that eating seafood that lacks fins and scales (Leviticus 11:11), eating certain birds (Leviticus 11:12) and all insects (Leviticus 11:23 and Leviticus 11:41) and other biblically unclean animals (Leviticus 20:25) as well as remarrying the person one previously divorced (Deuteronomy 24:4), are also taboo.
Why are we unconditionally accepting that all verses are contextual rules, except for 18:22 which we are 100% certain without any level of doubt fixed for all time.

3:  RUTH 4: 9Then Boaz said to the elders and all the people, "You are witnesses today that I have bought from the hand of Naomi all that belonged to Elimelech and all that belonged to Chilion and Mahlon.  10"Moreover, I have acquired Ruth the Moabitess, the widow of Mahlon, to be my wife in order to raise up the name of the deceased on his inheritance, so (I)that the name of the deceased will not be cut off from his brothers or from the court of his birth place; you are witnesses today."
Does this make Boaz and Ruth married?  There's no vows, no minister, no 'I do's, no ceremony at all - what makes this a valid marriage?

That's all I'm wondering for now :)

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Phil
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The Xperia X1 is one of Sony's offerings to the mobile phone industry, and one I'm very much looking forward to with baited breath.  It's their first ever mobile phone to run Windows Mobile, joining the range of touch screen all singing all dancing smart phone.  When it's released in September 2008, it will be competing with HTC's models, which have dominated the marker for a long time (you might know them better as XDA's, SPV's, Vario's depending on what provider your with - but those phones are all actually made by the same people: HTC).  It'll also be competing with Blackberry's, and the iPhone.  So how does it match up?

 
HTC

Blackberry

 
Apple iPhone

Well first off - it looks hot.  Not everyone will agree there, but it's sleek enough to be cool and professional enough to be a business phone.  HTC's tend to look, well, they're for geeks and they look like geeks phones.  Sony have made something beautiful here and I appreciate that.  It supposedly will run a full version of Windows Mobile, and has a memory slot, sliding keyboard, touch screen, Bluetooth, wifi, 3G, GPS, yada yada - in other words, it can do everything a HTC can do - but it does it with a little bit of style. 

The interface is being given a facelift too - adding a little bit of smooth drag and dropping, swishy transforms, and multi panelled menus (this is actually a pretty clever new idea), making it nicer to use and cooler to show off.  In fact I'd say it looks like it'll be as pleasant to use as the iPhone, which is the sexiest of it's competitors, but the Xperia doesn't loose the business functionality.

Again, to better the HTC's, the Xperia has a headphone minijack socket.  At last.  I lose HTC's but it drives me mad that they have USB connections for headphones.  The USB socket being shallower does not last well in a pocket situation and they tend to break the USB plugs.  The Xperia has USB hosting like the latest HTC's (so not only can you plug it into a PC, you can plug a USB device *into* the phone), but it has the headphone jack as well.  Thankyou Mister Sony - you heard my cries.

The Blackberry's are of course, the most business suited phones of the three rivals.  HTC are the second here, but Blackberry have always looked more the part and had better support.  Sony aren't exactly small fry though, and the X1 looks more executive than any blackberry model, so market penetration is well within their ability - it remains to be seen how aggressive Sony will push this to business users.

So there you go!  As sexy as the iPhone, as smart as the HTC, and as professional as the Blackberry - The Sony Xperia X1.

The only niggle in the back of my mind is that Sony do have a tendency to screw things up in the final development stage.  They'll try to tie this into some kind of unpopular or unwanted Sony proprietary technology - like their own brand of flash memory of... I dunno - maybe they'll try to install a bluray player into it as standard.  So far they assure us it will use SD Cards like the rest of the world, and that the version of Windows mobile they use wont be cut down and limited to Sony based software but it would be a first if they did.  the other thing Sony are well known for is over pricing, but I doubt they'll be any worse than the iPhone for this.

I live in hope.  In the mean time, enjoy their promo video, which doesn't really feature the phone at all but has nice music so who cares?  Oh - and the website for the Xperia for full specs etc is: http://www.sonyericsson.com/x1/

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Phil
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While googling about, I discovered the SambakZa animation series (mentioned in a previous post) has a dis-owned younger brother.  'Step 0' if you will, entitled 'Hot Fish - Same, but different'.  It disappeared from the set because rights to use the music could not be attained.  The Internet being what it is however... the prodigal son of this talented animator is out there in the world... somewhere... for us to find on the back streets and dark corners of the world wide web.  On some distant unknown server in deepest cyberspac... alright... it's not hard to find - just google 'HotFish - Same, but different' and you'll find it easily enough.

You can never have too many bunnies and kittens!
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Phil
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