Andy Oakley

I can’t go without mentioning Kris Leija, the unfortunate guy who saved four children from a burning building, only to be tossed into jail. A Salmon Day, if ever I heard one.I wonder if heroic acts work as credit against your debt to society.

I had the pleasure of making my first sale of shares yesterday, a process which through it’s simplicity is plainly confusing. It all seems a bit artifical doing it over the web, I’d far rather bark ‘sell, sell, sell’ over the phone to someone; maybe you to pay for that service, I’m not sure.All this in preparation for a little jaunt to the southern hemisphere – I’m leaving Seattle Friday to arrive in Sydney, Australia on Sunday morning to meet up with Lauren on her worldwide trip. We’ll make our way up to Cairns over just two weeks, a marathon perhaps, but a fun journey I’m sure.

I rediscovered the journal our team made during our 1997 trip to Madgascar recently. Plenty of interesting memories.Newcastle-under-Lyme School Madagascar Team 1

This isn’t a weblog, I’m just not good/disciplined/free enough to record and link to relevant web content (brainmunchies is the closest to that). This is a journal. The distinction is purely artifical, but after finishing Fahrenheit 451 I’m feeling scared we’ll forget everything if it’s not written down. In truth, it would probably work the other way around – too much information that the importance of certain things gets lost. Embedded reporting fuelled the warnography craze for a while and now it’s the Scott Peterson trial that the most important event of the moment. The irony is there – on the one hand I could complain about only ever getting a single point of view (that of the reporter), on the other I perceive the subject matter to be far more important than it really is (several vocal points of view, none of which necessarily agree).

Seattle is preparing for the biggest civil disaster drill ever conducted in the world. South of downtown, by the freeway, they’re gradually building a disaster scene as it would appear following a dirty bomb detonation for a drill next month, all courtesy of the federal government. Ahead of time it seems like a great idea, but if the exercise doesn’t go well, is that a good or a bad thing?Despite the chatter of the possibility since 9/11, it doesn’t especially weigh on my mind. I honestly don’t believe the likelihood has increased, merely the perception. In any case, if I’m lucky, I’ll be in Redmond, if I’m not, there’s not a huge amount I can do. Shit happens. Of late, more people have died from suffocation in their chemical-weapon-proof rooms than through the attack they fear, the world continues to turn and maybe ignorance really is the best policy.

Maybe I’m being pedantic, but it really amuses me when people try to use a cliche and get it wrong. Two gems today: My debt is over, it’s a relief off my shoulders and Very satisfied customers are my top priority.. and the displeased ones?

It’s a sure sign you’ve been in the bar too long when you stand in the cold for thirty minutes absolutely convinced they’ve simply torn down the shelter and the bus will come around the corner any second. A quick trip to Dicks helped me realize I was waiting on the wrong street and the rest of the journey passed without event. It’s that attitude of ‘it must be here because here’s where I remember it last time I was in the bar’ over ‘maybe I don’t remember perfectly’ is precisely why there’s a problem with drinking and driving – the definition of ‘drink responsibly’ changes somewhat during the process of drinking responsibly.

Dave and I have just spent a thoroughly enjoyable four hours on IM trying to better each other with web sites that revive memories from years gone by. Even when the memories of a place may be vague, it’s amazing how quickly they come flooding back so vividly from just a single photo or recollection.When young, a two storey building looks and feels like a skyscraper, playing fields seem to go on forever into the horizon, and walking distances always seemed further. Why does that size change so much as you get older?

Today is the first day I’ve abstained from any news in almost six weeks; as a conscious decision, I knew it was bound to bring some mixed feelings. At 5.30 this morning, I sat down with my usual cup of coffee and wondered what to do, surely there was ‘knowledge’ to be gained from CNN, but I resisted the urge. I followed up on some mail, wrote part of a spec and headed off to work. The day passed, happy hour came and went and the night wound to a close.The world could have ended today and I don’t know it yet. Of all the things I feel like right now, from the special fry up, Dicks burger or sweet dreamy sleep, nothing is quite going to hit the mark until I know.My intense interest in current affairs is somewhat of a recent habit. For several years I’ve kept a fairly close eye on world affairs, but it’s become far more than that. I watch several cable news channels concurrently, flipping between them almost desperately trying to figure out the ‘real’ story. In truth, I’m realizing it simply doesn’t exist – for every opinion you see in one direction, how do you know there aren’t ten times as many in another. Sensationalist stories see, no doubt about it; what’s worse is that I’m still running on the belief that if I see enough of them I’ll get a balanced picture. And I even know about the Emperor’s Nose.Live videophone footage may be compelling viewing, but it is to the detriment of the larger picture. Realistic extrapolation is not a strong point of most human beings, one tends to belief what they see, rather than what they’re told or know. The ability to take all that information and see the forming trend is a highly valuable skill. Maybe top politicians and commanders have it, maybe they don’t. Good judgment only counts when luck is on your side.All said and done, I still know that everything I see on CNN is true. I guess I’ve not learnt anything today.

It’s been far too long without any posts, things have been somewhat hectic of late. The war came and went, overall it’ll probably go down as a fantastic success, but there’s still a way to go before Iraq has been fixed. I’m not quite sure where the sudden urge to move on and ‘liberate’ Syria has come from, but I seem to recall the same sudden urgency around Iraq many months ago. So many interesting things came out of the media coverage, maybe I’ll bring a few of them up over the next several weeks.Just came across a report about sleep deprivation, which I completely believe. It concludes that six hours or less per night has serious effects on performance and cognitive ability, no surprise there. My discovery that I genuinely feel better after four hours than six is probably not helping my state of mind, but it’s definitely keeping sleep up there as my number one hobby. I’d be intrigued to know the effects of binge sleeping (ah, the joy of weekends) but I don’t imagine it’s a worthy replacement. Starbucks has just bought Seattle’s Best Coffee, so at least there’s not going to be any shortage of the bean in this city.