They say that angry customers tell 3,000 friends, while satisfied customers only tell 3. A couple of weeks ago I got the regular helpful little card from my bank, reminding me that it was time to re-fix a portion of my mortgage. Like the brokers tell you to do, I’ve broken the mortgage into a couple of parts so that I’m not hit hard by large interest rate fluctuations. I opted to re-fix the maturing portion using the shortest 6 month option, knowing for sure that more rate cuts were in the offing. I fired off the card back to BankDirect and thought nothing of it.

Vijay – a previously anonymous call centre drone who is now my best mate – called me today to tell me that he received the card. He also told me that my selected rate would come into effect on the 13th of December, and inquired as to whether I would like him to hold off on applying the rate because there was a Reserve Bank announcement due out on the 4th of December. I follow interest adjustments with as much attention as any mortgage holder, but I don’t know the exact calendar dates of these announcements.

Let’s understand this clearly: it is almost definite that interest rates will be cut on the 4th of December. Therefore it is almost definite that this call means BankDirect will earn less interest from me over the next few months or years. There is, however, no “almost” about my reinforced adoration for my bank.

*sniff* I love you guys. I really do.

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In the spirit of Web 2.0 and user created content, I had a sudden realisation that rather than sit by myself and puzzle through some ideas, I should ask the community. That would be you fullahs.

So, let’s assume for the sake of argument that I’m going to present a tech/gadget segment on a mainstream national television show in the near future. Based on that assumption, I have a bunch of good ideas for themes, but I’d love some additional feedback and off-the-wall ideas.

Fire away in the comments, but here are some possible constraints:

• The show is mainstream, not a dedicated tech show. This doesn’t mean it’s all toasters and coffee machines, but it does mean anything presented/reviewed has to be engaging and have a mainstream ‘hook’. Would it be of interest to your father-in-law?
• On the flipside, if you (as a presumably highly tech-savvy blog/twitter reader), happened to be watching a mainstream TV show, I’d hope you’d be interested in the spot enough to stop and watch.
• 5-7 minutes, so barely long enough to cover off a head-to-head in detail, or gloss over 3 or 4 options.

Current ideas/themes to start you off:

• Hi-Def camcorder comparisons
• Kitchen gadgets
• Multitools/pocket knives
• Kids learning gadgets (leapster et al)

There you have it. I would massively appreciate any and all ideas.

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I’m probably completely, totally jinxing myself by posting this, but if everything comes together as I hope, this place is about to get a lot more interesting. Of course not that you, dear reader, ever found it uninteresting.

Watch this space!

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I was brought up as a fairly devout Catholic. During my late teens I became devoutly atheist, if that’s not a contradiction in terms. Lately I’ve started to feel a distinct absense of spirituality in my life. I can’t say why, but I can say that the daily drudgery had just seemed to be not enough.

Not that I begrudge anyone their beliefs, but personally I have an incredible aversion to Christianity and their One God. Though I’m happy with the concept of spirituality, I’m completely disinterested in faith, especially with a capital F. My heavily atheist period was centered around the fact that I had seen religion in general and “Faith” in particular as being the excuse of weak people too proud to say “I don’t know”.

I’ve become a lot more mellow in my old(er) age, and have no problem whatsoever with one’s personal choice of religion, or lack thereof. What I have missed is the introspection inherent in spirituality. I’ve drifted down the path of Zen, mainly because I was interested in the quiet introspection involved in meditation. The more I understand mindfulness, the more I’m able to observe, rather than get buried in, the variability of my energy and stress at work.

Today I stumbled across two quite brilliant items that riff on this theme:

• Steven’s post about Zen, spirituality, and work
• A twittered YouTube video regarding energy and work

In the former, Steven wonders about whether people should seek spirituality in work itself. I can see the point here. What’s the point in meditating, praying, or burying yourself in a hobby as a way to offset the negative energy at work? How about just not expending the negative energy in the first place? It certainly resonates with what I’ve been discovering with my (albeit informal) Zen practise.

Some Zen masters say that even the occasional “bad” meditation (where you are distracted) can be “good”, as long as you are mindful of the distractions. In this sense, even if you don’t particularly enjoy your work, is it possible that you can still find spirituality in the effort?

The latter link (which I’d highly recommend you set aside an hour to watch), talks about energy management versus time management. The concept being that it is better to intentionally lower you energy levels (take time out), while remaining positive, instead of dealing with highly negative energy (aka stress). The obvious problem is that low energy (aka mellowing out or relaxing) is usually frowned upon, whereas temporary stress is seen as “Ok”.

How do you deal with negative energy at work? And do you think you can find spirituality, or focus, or something else in your work?

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Not a lot of progress on the layout at the moment. New track arrived tonight, along with a nice (second hand) set of Alco FA1/FB1 locos:

I’ve re-laid the track including a couple of bridge sections to I can fine tune the gradients and work out where the stream/river is going to go. You can see how the bridge sections line up in the photo below. The stream will run under those. I don’t really know where it will go after that though… maybe a small lake for cooling/processing water for the factory that I’ll stick on the ‘ground level’?

Next thing to do is lay out the yard (right about where the laptop is), then I think I’ll just wade into fixing the track down. I have a bit of a problem with the camber on the left hand uphill section. The hot wire I used has left that whole side sloping outwards a tiny bit. Might have a go at flattening it with the wire, and if that fails I’ll work out some way to prop up the trackbed to it is flat.

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