WD-40 certainly Can

Today i learnt about the endless number of uses for WD-40.


This is the WD-40 Family. They have the catchy slogan: "The can that can."

Matty bought some at work cos he got sick of hearing my chair squeak. I pointed it in the general direction of my chair and voi-la! problem Solvered! (i'm a marketer's nightmare).

My mobile phone is the Sony W800i and the joysticks on these things suck bigtime. Mine's been dodgy for about 12months. The problems started about 6 months after buying it. This has been the first phone i've ever gotten where i actually pay for it specifically. Every other phone i've ever had i've either gotten someone's sloppy seconds or gotten the "free" phone as part of the phone deal. This one cost about $600 as well as the phone deal. I justified it because it had a pretty good camera and was a walkman, which meant i could forgo an ipod and a camera. I never had any real problems with any of my freebies, so much for the old adage - you get what you pay for.


I knew it was too good to be true - a phone that's a cool camera and an ipod - it does the camera and ipod things real well, just fails in its main function of being a functional phone.

Matty almost convinced me a few months ago to buy some WD-40 and put it on the offending part. I hesitated and pulled out, mainly because Matty wasn't convincing enough in that it would work.

But today, given the following circumstances:
- some sage advice: matty said, "You're phone's f##ked if you don't and it may be f##ked if you do, but what have you got to lose?" - although i did hesitate for a bit when i asked, "i know you'd do it given that its my phone, but would you do it if it was your phone?" He hesitated and then unconvincingly said maybe.
- some peer pressure - just matty going "Do it",
- and mainly just being sick of having a non-functioning phone that makes me wanna chuck it everytime i use it.
....I decided to give the WD-40 a go. And i gotta say the results have been pretty good. The toggle is still far from perfect but all the directions work a lot better than they did prior to the application of the wonder spray. One direction still is a struggle, but the rest are working pretty good.

Then Em mentioned about an email she received that showed a stack of uses for the wonderspray. and she said when she gets home she'll email it. Then matty goes - he could just google it, then Em gave him one of those looks, and then he said, or you could email it that'd be a nice thing to do.

So anyways, I googled it, and found this site that says it has 2,000 uses for WD-40 (it actually has 1,997 uses - which is weird because alot of the uses are similar and i'm sure they could have drawn 3 more uses out of it.) In hindsight i probably should have googled it before applying it to my phone toggle, but i suppose that's the difference between being Generation-XY and being Gen-Y.

Here's that 2000 uses website:
http://www.twbc.org/resources/wd40.php

Book Review - Dice Man by Luke Rhinehart

Its been a while between books for me. I generally don't make time to read. But have recently moved out of the city and am back in the public transport system. This means I again get about an hour each day to read. So given that i hadn't read a book in ages and i had a borders voucher to use i was really pumped for a great, interesting, funny read.

i find it really hard to pick a book. I'm really not sure what type of book is my style. For me its probably more about how the book is written. I definitely prefer if the author is witty. I like insightful. I like it to not be overdone with explaining - eg the rock was slightly oblong with a small crack to the left of..... I'm not a skimmer, i like to read every word. And therefore i get a little lost when books over use words.

Looking at a cover and reading a blurb make it a little hard to determine these things. And like most people I'm like a magpie - I see a shiny cover with a nice title and think "yeah, that looks like a bit of me."

That's what happened with "Dice Man". Had a good cover. Had some nice comments on it to say the guy was some sort of literary genius, and that it was one of the best books of the decade. It was about randomness, and this concept intrigued me a little. It had dice, i love games. So i thought, this has gotta be for me. Wrong!

The book had its moments, the dice made some funny situations for him to be in, but in the most part it was about sex. This guy was overly obsessed with sex. I'm pretty sure he should have been writing for Mills and Boons.

Now i don't think I'm a stick in the mud by any means (i managed to read American Psycho all the way through) but a sex scene every 20 or 30 pgs was just unnecessary. I got the picture that he liked sex and liked experimenting by about page 50, but to keep going on about it in depth was too much. It got very boring and monotonous.

The book never really went anywhere, which i suppose was partly what the writer was probably trying to show - he had given his life over to randomness. Which is fine, but when I'm reading a 300-400pg book I'd rather it go somewhere.

So yeah, i wanted to like it, i tried to like it. Unfortunately, I didn't like it. I just rolled a dice to decide what to give it as a rating - it came up a 2.

Will the Snow stories ever end? Its unlikely.

Seeing as i had quite an eventful week last week i thought i might give a list of some other highlights of my trip to the snow:

1. Ben's ski jacket - Benny was well proud of his brand spanker of a jacket. And as well he might, it looked the goods, and he looked the goods in it. Unfortunately for our boy Ben his jacket looked a lot like all of the Hotham ski instructors on the mountain. Therefore he copped plenty of ribbing from us. It was made even worse for poor Benny when he stood up and proceeded to start his run and fell over, whilst travelling all of about 10m and a guy standing next to us asked with a guffaw if he was an instructor. good times.

That's Benny on the right.

And here's a Hotham ski instructor:



2. My Ladies Boots - Firstly, a bit of back reference to this story. As some of you who may read this blog may be aware, when i was in Norway last year (or as Matty would say: "Back in Bolivia...") i bought a ski jacket from a local ski shop. Not being totally au fait with the Norwegian language (my first real attempt at saying,"do you speak English?" in Norwegian - which should have come out as "snucker-do engelsk", came out as "sunny-do engelsk") i accidentally bought a ladies jacket.

So I'm in the ski hire shop, and try on my boots. Three of our group before me had all told the girl that the size she chose for them was too small. Then she comes to me and i have the same problem. She goes and gets me the next size up. Proceed to 3 or 4 days later, and Shell is trying to work out which boots are hers from our massive pile. When we have it all worked out as to who's are who's, Ben looks at the tag of mine, and what does it say - Ladies, size-9.


These aren't the boots in question, but if you were an actual girl you'd be superstylin' in this pair of kickers.

3. Breakfast of Champions - The local store at Hotham Central had an awesome deal - for $10.50 you got a bacon egg and cheese roll with a hashie (which tasted awesome if you got the guy to slot it into your roll) and a can of Red Bull. I slapped on about a half litre of sauce (to the roll that is) and was ready to take on the mountain on day one after about 10mins sleep on the bus the night before. Also worked perfectly for the final day after a big night out and 7 previous days of boarding.

4. People stacking it - you just never get sick of seeing people go arse up. Another highlight similar to this is the out of control youngster who is flying down the mountain screaming - that's a bit sadistic I know, but funny as hell.

5. People that can board good - Man people that are good at boarding look so super cool. That's pretty much all i am aiming for as a boarder. I've got no major interest in mastering awesome tricks and jumps. Really just looking to be able to carve down the mountain looking as cool as i possibly can. You may say - that's a little egotistical, I may say - Yup it sure is.

There were many more highlights, and i reserve the right to bore you with more down the track, but that's all I've got for now.

Girt by Snow

Don't know about you but whenever I go on a trip with any of my mates we always end up with a few comments or words that become the latest buzz words/comments.

Last week's trip to the snow was no exception.

The two buzz words that got the biggest work out this trip were:

Hectic and Girt. (Ryan tried to get "Gnarly" back into the fray but he was living in the past with that one).

Not your signature words by any means, but managed to get a full and complete workout by us all.

These buzz words usually come about by one of two means:

- someone just blurts out a rippa of a comment/word that needs to be repeated ad-f@#king-nauseum.
- we sit there trying to think of something that's gonna be super funny to repeat ad-f@#king-nauseum.

The usual method is the first one - which was how "hectic" came about. The other method usually doesn't work because its generally the spontaneity of the situation that makes the phrase so funny. But with "Girt" it was different.

For some reason, which i forget - mighta had a few bevvies, unlikely, but possible ;) someone was reciting the national anthem or something and the term "girt" was talked about. Then someone said, "We should try and use this word as much as possible this week." In normal circumstances this blatant attempt at creating a buzz word usually falls on its head straight away. It just isnt cricket. But here's the kicker, someone came up with a beauty later that night when we were out at a pub. I think it was Ryan who said, "This place is girt by dude." - Oh, what a beauty!

The term "hectic" came about via Ben's bro and his mates. When ever you asked them how their day was the hectic term would get used in some way shape or form. It took on many meanings. For example, a response of "it was pretty hectic out there" could mean either:

a) There were a lot of punters.
b) I was pulling all sorts of moves
c) We had a massive day
d) the weather was bad, or good, for that matter

So to sum up our week in one sentence I'd have to say: We had a pretty hectic week at a place that was girt by snow, hi-jinx and dude.

Going Snowboarding

So i'm going snowboarding tomorrow. Wow! How wanky does that sounds. Makes it sound like i do it all the time. That's definitely not the case. Have been twice before. Sure, one time was in Norway and that makes me an instant champ.

Have been looking forward to the trip for a while now. This is unusual for me. Normally when i have something exciting like this coming up i barely think about it till i'm in the car/bus/plane. Things aren't going so well at work at the minute, so having this trip to look forward to has been a saving grace.

Its brought up some weird acts on my behalf. Firstly, I made a list yesterday of what i need to take. Secondly, I had purchased everything i need for the trip by a couple of days ago. Thirdly, I've been checking the snow report every day. Finally, and this is the weirdest act, i am already packed.

For the normal joe blow (clearly this isn't how you spell joe blow, but in the wise words of my sister - oh well), these are normal actions when one has an exciting trip coming up, but for me and my "she'll be right mate, i'll worry about it tomorrow" personality, these actions are totally unlike me.

Let me give you some examples from my 6 week, around the world trip i went on last yr to explain:

I started packing at 11pm the night before we were departing. Which resulted in me forgetting a few things and packing two shoes (that's two shoes, not two pairs of shoes) that look similar but are different and are for the same foot.
We went straight to Norway (in the middle of their winter) and I didn't buy a ski jacket until the 2nd week of the trip.

So these changes in me are possibly a result of me getting a bit older and wiser, or my girlfriend's organisational skills rubbing off, but i think its mainly due to me having this trip as one of the only interesting things to occupy my mind at the minute. Not sure i like the new me all that much, was much more fun flying by the seat of my pants.

I Blog therefore I am

So i decided to do a blog (well "ner-der" pretty obvious as here we are). Not sure what prompted me to do it. Was it the little voices in my head? my deep seeded need to publish my thoughts? My having something that had to be said to the masses? nah, mainly i was just bored.

Y'day I spent the best part of the afternoon wikipedia-ing (what is the verb for using wiki? is it wikiing, sounds like a cricket term, as in: I was wikiing last match and i took three catches) "blogs" in an attempt to find the best blog to use.

At first I was trying to find the most popular blog forum, but this seemed futile. As much as I tried googling (i'm not sure i'm super pumped about all these new internet words that are popping up, i think i'm ok with them, just need a bit of time is all - man i'm starting to sound old) different forms of "most popular blog" I just couldn't determine the "most popular blog".

Next I thought I'll google the word "blog" and use the first blog type that comes up. The first one up "happened" to be "Blogger". I 66/99 the word "happened" - because Blogger is Google's own blog site (stupid point i know, because we if you're reading this then you're on Blogger and you probably well aware of this, but at the time it was news to me). I quickly got over the initial thought of "Big brother is trying to trick me into picking this Blog" because i was wearing thin of the idea of searching for the right blog (patience in these matters is not something i'm overly renown for). Also I have a mate Darren who uses this site, so i thought bugger it and tried to start an account.

Then got to the point where you name your site. For reasons i will explain in a subsequent entry i really wanted to call my site "Fisho". Of course, "Fisho" was taken. This lead me on a personal vendetta to find out who stole MY name (wow! I'm starting to sound like Lola from Charlie and Lola fame, which is gonna happen from time to time when you've got a two year old). It was some dude that had not used his site for 4 years. Surely there are time limits on these things, like on Hotmail. Anyways, I digress (which i intend to be a theme of my blog).

Once I got over that (i found i was doing a lot of compromising for this blog, and to that point had been given nothing in return) I decided to push ahead with a slight variation. Then came time to write my first entry.

This is the part i'd thought the longest and hardest about. Firstly I wanted to decide what sort of a blog i was going to write. Most of the good ones that people actually read are themed towards something in particular. And I tried to think of something that i care about enough to want to write about often and keep interesting. So that idea got canned. I figure for you to be able to maintain something like that you need to be fanatical, or it needs to be based on your job, or you need to be well involved in it in some other way. And I figure no one wants to read about being a Business Analyst nor my exploits of playing sub-divvy-12 footy or cricket on a consistent basis, so that left me with just making it a random thoughts page.

With that in mind, out go any aspirations of being read my squillions. Pretty sure that was never on the cards anyways.