The last few days/weeks have been busy for most people. For me, they’ve been filled with work, social events, issues at home and a general need for downtime in which it’s either just me, my PC and some uplifting music or my bed and a good book.

Let’s see, where to begin…

May as well begin with work as it is where I seem to spend most of my time these days!

I love my job. People think I’m odd, but I look forward to going to work, to see what new challenges await me. And they often do!

You see, I’m a relative newcomer to the security industry… having been primarily involved with systems administration, web development and design, ANSI development and some minor DBA work before this… And when I joined, I was initially there to look after one of our anti-virus products more than anything else. Except, me being me, I had to go and stick my nose into other things and jump feet first into the firewall tickets and try my hand at log analysis…

Now, I spend most of my time abusing my workstation’s processor and memory, building pivot tables, running SQL queries and pulling reports from client log files, trying to make head or tale of what I see before me… is this a botnet I see before me? A portscan perhaps?

Management have also gotten me involved in some of the research and development projects, which makes for some interesting times as I sit and research topics that I may have glossed over before or never even thought of.

I work with a good bunch of people as well. On the AV side of things, I have Reshan to lean on when my own knowledge of F-Secure fails me. On the Checkpoint side of things there are many talented and knowledgeable people, like Matt, our technical manager and primary Checkpoint trainer, Gary, Clive, Marcel and Teper. All of these guys have helped me when I’ve gotten stuck with an issue and have been patient enough to explain it to me without treating me like an idiot.

We all work hard. And we play hard as well; Matt provides music during the day and we often take breaks for coffee or cooldrinks, go stand in the bar area and play a round or two of pool, throw some darts or discuss World of Warcraft, something many of us play, though Marcel and Reshan are supposedly rehabilitated… We’re trying to rope them back in though. Those breaks afford us a well-deserved mental break from the stresses of concentrating on some rather intricate configurations and mystifying security incidents.

Between work and play though, we end up working long hours, seeing to the demands of clients… I think most nights the tech team leave work well after 6:30pm, if not later.

For folks like Matt, Gary and myself, it’s then time to drive home and log into World of Warcraft, to our guild, “Thunderwalkers” on Dath’Remar, US Oceanic. That keeps up busy until the next morning when our work cycle begins anew.

Beside “Thunderwalkers” though, I still belong to “Awakened Guardians” on US Stormrage, where I have most of my characters and play a role in guild management by running their website and forum which I host under this domain.

We’ve gotten together a few times offline, as the photo to the right shows. Interesting to put faces to names and voices…

Aside from my usual routine of work and play though, I also have the dubious honour of living with 4 women who keep me on my toes. Sharlene and Cari have stayed with me before, as two of the original tenants that moved into the commune shortly after I did. The two newcomers, Renee and Tarryn, have brought their own chaos to the party.

Some folks joke with me that I must be a very lucky man to live with 4 women… My response usually surprises them… It’s certainly not the ideal many would think, as there have been some spectacular blowups and unspoken issues… but for the most part it’s peaceful and it’s company… Something I’d gotten used to since I moved out of my bachelor flat and moved in with other people in a sharing arrangement. It’s taken some getting used to, but for those that cannot afford to get their own house just yet or cannot stand the idea of being alone 24/7, it’s not that bad.

It’s actually quite nice to come home, sit with someone and have a cup of tea or coffee, hear about their day, relate your own experiences, etc. This is great most of the time, but I’ll admit there are some days when I am feeling less than sociable and all I want to do is make myself some supper and go lock myself in my room, put on my headphones and forget about the world outside.

Something I need to do again is get back into my photography. I’m still working through a backlog of photos for Sheelagh’s wedding, my company’s last year-end function and several other spools I’ve had lying around and finally had developed.

And I’ve found some new subjects to photograph as well… just need to make the time to go and take some proper shots that aren’t shot with my little HTC P4350 smartphone…

The shots below were taken one evening when Rob was up from Cape Town and we’d gone to see Alien vs Predator 2… we stood outside the movie theatre area in Brightwater Commons and were treated to this colourful little display, though the accompanying music was badly distorted through very tinny and bass-intolerant speakers.

Makes me realise that I really need to get back into things again… I haven’t managed to beat shots like these and some of them are well over 3-4 years old now.

Time to get back into the habit, I think…

For anyone that works in the IT industry, the old saying, “no rest for the wicked” could not be truer… You work your allotted time at work and perhaps a little more than necessary (I know I do, as does Rob and Rozz) and then go home and generally do one of two things… either sit down in front of a PC again to play games or surf the ‘net or try and switch off in front of the TV or some other distraction.

Usually I watch some anime or whatever is playing on the TV for a bit, research a little and maybe update this blog a bit, browse deviantART for new wallpapers or inspiration, then try get an early (or earlier than usual) night, knowing the next morning I need to be up before most people, a) to avoid traffic and b) to get a head start on the day’s tasks.

Lately though, I’ve been doing upgrades on my forums, from phpBB version 2.0.22 to 3.01, fighting with South African latency while uploading a million and one small files to my internationally hosted server, creating backups (just in case, you know!) and trying to puzzle through the documentation to see where I am going wrong…

Or building an old server up into a general workstation for the girls at home to use, as Tarryn is starting her new job soon and will lose her old laptop, and frankly, I’m a little wary of letting anyone other than a work colleague, that I trust, use mine. Last night I managed to get a majority of the work done on the server, but it was painstakingly slow-going as it’s an old Pentium III, with 512MB RAM and two SCSi 20GB drives… Windows XP runs on it… or should I say, it ‘jogs’.

I’ve loaded all the chat programs they could want on there… MSN, GoogleTalk, Yahoo… and most importantly, antivirus. AVG is perhaps not the best, but hell, it works… And I made each of them their own limited privilege profile so they don’t have to stress about anyone else reading their mail from the dating sites they’re so fond of frequenting.

Need to sit down with Tarryn as well, sometime, and teach her Adobe Photoshop. Think the poor girl has jumped into her new job without really knowing what is expected of her… if she’s going to be doing design work, I think she may be in over her head…

Other than that, now that my one set of forums are upgraded, I need to tackle the other one. And then figure out how to integrate all the other php packages  such as phpRaid, etc back into the new boards…

When I will get a chance to play again, I don’t know… we’ll see what happens end of the month. By then things should have settled a bit more. Right now, all I seem to be able to manage is getting home, feeding myself, showering then collapsing onto my bed, watching a few episodes of anime (recently finished “Eureka Seven” and “Fate / Stay Night” and about half way through “Ergo Proxy“) then drifting off into an uneasy sleep, only to wake up a few hours later, feeling like a truck has hit me…

Johannesburg suburbia, however does not always offer the best subjects for photography. So I either need to range a little further, or I need to go in closer, ignore the scenery or rather the lack of it, and focus on details or individual subjects again. Like animals and children.

Something I miss from my time in Cape Town… just rambling along, either in my car or on foot, letting my eyes wander over everything until something catches my eye. Sometimes you find something. Sometimes you don’t.

Here… either the roads are too busy to wander aimlessly, or you’re wary of wandering the roads on foot in case someone either thinks you’re trying to ‘case’ their house for a break-in or you yourself may become a victim of a mugging.

However… that shouldn’t stop a once-avid shutterbug from getting back into the practice of taking good photos. If anything, it should be more of a challenge.

That, and there is nothing stopping me from doing events and other more commercial type photography in the meantime to get some practice in.

So if you’re in the Randburg area and surrounds and you need some event photography done, or you want portraits of you or your kids or even your family pets, drop me a line and we can talk business.

I shoot 35mm film, colour or black and white. Postwork on PC is also available. Web galleries too.

My first discovery was Dave’s Lounge. (Subscription details to be found here.)

Dave Warner introduced me to the likes of Natalie Walker, Lovespirals, Dive Index, Raul Ramirez, Bitstream Dream, Karmacoda and Endless Blue.

His shows aren’t long, averaging 30 minutes or so, but there is very little talking in between the tracks and what is great is that he keeps his show notes up to date with links to artist sites and free downloads where applicable.

My only gripe is that we cannot buy from the iTunes store as there are a few songs he’s played that I would love to download.

Through Dave, I discovered, quite by accident, Miss Anji Bee, vocalist of the group, Lovespirals, and hostess of her own shows, the main one I follow being The Chillcast.

Anji also does an all female vocals show called Lovely Ladies and is one of the 7 hosts of the Showgirls podcast, along with Cali Lewis from Geekbrief TV, Share from Rock and Roll TV, KFC from the Podchick podcast, SoccerGirl from SoccerGirl Incorporated and Karla and Karen from Rumor Girls. Check them out…

Last, but not by any means least, I found Mark Smith’s Ambient Falls podcast, which has some of the music that Dave and Anji play and more.

Again, his shows aren’t long, averaging 30 minutes, but there is no speech, no preamble and the tracks flow smoothly from one into another. Perfect for iPod queuing for a long trip or to fall asleep to.

After some casual banter, we got to work and were doing pretty well until I screwed up and closed the file I was working on… meaning we started again. From scratch.

In the end, it was probably worth it though, as it provided a few laughs and a chance for Craig to tease me about saving as often as possible. We also discussed Microsoft’s Silverlight and a few of the other goodies that Craig has been playing with lately.

We finished up around 12:30am… this is the finished result. Front and back.

Sure, it’s not E3 or any of the other overseas gaming conventions… but my word… it’s impressive nonetheless.

The plan for the day was to head through to rAge with Rozz and Nick (Kellia and Ulat from my old Affliction guild) but Rozz ended up going through alone earlier and I followed by about a half-hour… the drive through to Northgate (just up the road from me) was uneventful, until I tried to find parking. 3/4′s of an hour later I eventually gave up on the idea of trying to find parking near the Coca-Cola Dome and parked underground… on the other side of Northgate. My legs and feet are still complaining…

Anyway, I eventually got to the Dome, stood in the queue to get my ticket and started wandering around. I found it rather amusing that the first thing I saw that caught my eye was the female Night Elf Druid statue at the BT Games stand. Clearly I’m more addicted than I thought… though that purple hair does stand out a mile.

Anyway, getting back to my tale… Lo and behold, the first familiar face I run into is my good buddy, Craig, videotaping a presentation about Assassin’s Creed (I want that game so badly, it’s not even funny). Chatted to him for a bit before he headed back to his Xbox 360 stand then resumed my meanderings. Shortly after that I ran into Rozz who then proceeded to act as tour guide for me. We went to go see Louise (a.k.a Chronic) at the Intel stand where she was Tournament Director for the weekend. Poor girl was looking somewhat flustered by the time we got there.

On with the tour… I got to see the new Playstation 3… nothing spectacular in my mind, but still a pretty piece of hardware. The Wii… now that looks cute… some fun looking games. But by far, I think the star of the show was the Xbox 360. Sure it’s been around a bit longer than the other 2 platforms but damn, I have to admit that Microsoft have done a good job on this one. Halo 3, the other big attraction (they even had a Master Chief actor marching around), looked pretty damn good, even though I’m not the biggest fan of FPS games. Transformers caught my eye though…

Let’s see, what else… ah yes, the obligatory expo bag to collect brochures and cards in. Well, mine has a bit more than that in now. I subscribed to Popular Mechanics while at the show, getting the latest issue free and a cap. I got a copy of the new look SA Computer Magazine (SACM now)… and somewhere in there are my entries into several competitions. So if Lady Luck feels like being nice to me, I could walk away with… let’s see… a HP Laptop, the Xbox 360 Elite, a copy of Halo 3, a portable movie player… but who am I kidding… not with my luck.

Ran into some guild mates from Affliction (Sythenia and his lady) and Awakened Guardians (Jakalas, Papillon, Kiteena, Malystra, Serpentza, etc) there as well. We ran around for a bit, looking at all the things we could not afford (Oh to be a rich man!) before they went off and I looked up Rozz again and kept her company for the rest of the afternoon.

Had a look at the AnimeWorX stand as well as they seemed to be hosting a mini-comic con as well. Saw a lot of anime that I would love to get my paws on… but it will have to wait for a bit. However, I think I need to get AWX to book Ghost in the Shell : SAC2 and Solid State Society for me. Was quite amused to see some cosplay going on as well.

Oh, the one negative thing I have to say about the show… the pricing of their drinks and food. R8 a tin seems a bit steep for me, and R8 for bottled water is even worse. Or R30 for a hotdog that is more bread than anything else… the only real value may have been in the pizza’s from the mobile pizza van, but they were so damn slow it was painful. That and the fact that they seemed to screw up more orders than get them right and often the end product was burnt.

All in all, though, it was a good day, which I enjoyed with good friends. I will definitely make a plan to go again next year.

For an insider’s viewpoint on rAge, head on over to Craig’s blog entry.

I first heard the term WoW-verse used in a podcast called WOWCast, where the hostess, Alachia uses the term to describe the metaverse that is the World of Warcraft. For those that don’t recognise the term metaverse, refer to the novel “Snowcrash” by Neal Stevenson.

The reason for this blog section, is a need to validate, somehow, the time I spend in my choice of metaverse.

Why I come home, cook my dinner, chat briefly to my housemates about issues of the day or hearing their work warstories, then log into WoW and live my virtual life, in an attempt to escape my real life.

Alachia’s latest podcast discusses this issue in depth, and she brings up many really valid points for the virtual life. And she also discusses what to do to balance that virtual life with the real life. VL vs. RL…

I play World of Warcraft on the US server Stormrage, having started playing in February 2006, thanks to my best friend, Rozz, who bought the game for me as a belated Christmas present, so that I could play with her, a dream we’d had since the days when her and her then boyfriend ran the local South African Blizzard RTS servers for Warcraft III, Starcraft and Diablo II. She even bought me the Diablo II game and expansion and I did play, but never online as I could never afford to have broadband until January 2006.

I remember the days preceding the arrival of the game in the mail… She’d call me or PM me online, and ask me what class I was going to play, what professions I was going to take, etc.

Having come from a roleplaying background, something I’d done since college days, and having read fantasy and science fiction since my early teens, I was keen to try my hand at a druid, one of my favoured roleplaying classes from Dungeons and Dragons. Admittedly, my choice was also biased toward the druid due to the fact that Rozz’s main ‘toon’ was also a druid, hence she could help me and guide me as I played.

I was also really keen to play as a skinner and leatherworker, the idea of a druid, a man of the wild, living off the land and crafting from the land, quite prominent in my mind. At the time, I was still very much under the impression that druids were more like their Diablo II:LoD counterparts. Rozz, however, soon taught me otherwise and suggested I change to herbalism and alchemy, again something she could advise me on and as I would probably end up being the healer in any group, I’d need potions as well.

At the time, Rozz was already a high level druid, starting to get involved in guild raids and busy farming herbs for potions and trying to earn enough gold to get all the things she needed to be a ‘successful’ player. So I rolled Nyctan, my male night elf druid, and started levelling, and she helped me where she could, either coming to my rescue on difficult quests or financially with gold donations. Slowly but surely, I made my way to 10, then 20… and hit a wall.

So I took a break from my druid and rolled my rogue, Ksenia, a female night elf rogue.

Why a female, you may ask?

Sure, I heard it all before…

G.I.R.L – Guy in real life…

M.M.O.R.P.G – Many men online roleplaying girls…

I never roleplay my female toons. I’m not THAT into roleplaying. But, in using an old excuse, one used by many of my real life male friends that do play online with me, ‘if I’m going to stare at something for hours on end, I’d prefer it to be something I enjoy looking at’.

I do love my little rogue. She’s a very pleasant break from the norm. And I put a lot of time and thought into her creation.

I modelled the character off the main character from Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell : Standalone Complex series, Major Motoko Kusanagi. While the female night elf is not the most anime looking of toons, I took the blue/purple hair from Motoko, her hand to hand combat style, mobility, agility, etc and chose a rogue as the final character that fit that mold. As with many things in WoW, unless you were there first, most of the big names from fiction or mainstream media are already taken. So ‘Motoko’ was out. As was ‘Kusanagi’…

So I turned to another source for names. My friend, Rozz, is of slavic origin, and I’ve always been fascinated with slavic folklore, from the rusalka to the vodyanoi, their naming conventions and I also happen to find many slavic women to be exquisitely beautiful. So I chose a name from that background. Ksenia.

Later, I would use more names from that background. And even one from Hindu folklore, Dushana, one of the demon rakshasa, for my warlock.

So I played my rogue. And my friends that had bought at the same time as I recieved mine, shot ahead on their toons, Rob on his mage, Andrew on his paladin, Sean on his warlock. Then Sean and Andrew both rolled hunters and replaced their mains with these ‘alts’, playing until all hours of the morning.

And I took my time, doing my own thing. Skinning anything in sight. Doing leatherworking… My ‘old’ dream I’d had for Nyctan, now transferred to my rogue, a self-sufficient, hard-hitting, tough survivalist.

It eventually got to the point where Rozz asked me which ‘toon’ I was planning to make my ‘main’… the druid or the rogue. I think I bowed to the pressure of wanting to be more like her, so I continued my druid, leaving the rogue behind for the moment.

So, Nyctan made his way painfully from 20 to 30, 30 to 40… and finally I got my mount, specc’ed Balance tree for moonkin, and suddenly I was rocking again. At the time, Rozz’s guild was fracturing and she was going through a tough time. Now, I’ve known this woman for many years now, so when it comes to her, I’d drop everything to help her. Eventually her guild split and those that split off, formed a new guild, Affliction, and she asked me if I was willing to join and be power-levelled to 60 to help fill sorely needed healer spots in raids.

And so I left Awakened Guardians, at a time when they were ready to make me a guild officer for things that I’d done for their forums, etc. Admittedly, I could have left in a better way, but I guess at the time I wasn’t as close to them as I have since become. I joined Affliction and Rozz and one of the guild masters, her friend and now boyfriend, Nick, helped power-level me to 60. And I started raiding.

Raiding… new places. New bosses. New loot… new gear. Great.

Raiding… pressure to perform, repair bills, lots of screaming and shouting and negative remarks… Not so great.

It’s had it’s highs and lows. Right now I’m happy not to be raiding. Specifically raid healing. Hell, even feral tanking was a nice break from the monotony of healing.

When I wasn’t on the druid, I resumed levelling the rogue. I also got bitten by the PvP bug and was trying to gain ranks and honour in order to get gear, seeing as I was not likely to get raid gear on my rogue anytime soon. And, in the time that I did PvP, with our South African latency, I managed to work my way up to Master Sergeant. I would have liked to go higher, but I was not about to take time off work to PvP AND raid AND sleep…

Eventually, I got tired of my druid. So tired, that I petitioned my guild to allow me to change over to the rogue instead. But I think the idea of them losing a raid-specc’ed, epic’ed out restoration druid that could off-tank when needed, to a rogue in blues and greens that would need Molten Core runs for fire resist gear, Zul’Gurub runs for other gear and rep, before being ready to go back into Black Wing Lair, Ahn’Qiraj 40 and Naxxramas… well, let’s just say it was too much effort.

So I distanced myself from my druid, slowly but surely. And then I moved to Johannesburg from Cape Town and was without broadband for a while. And then The Burning Crusade came out and I made a decision. I was well behind everyone else at this stage, so I made a post on the Affliction forums, stating that I was retiring from raiding for the foreseeable future to resume playing the game on my own terms, on my rogue. I removed my rogue from Affliction, moved it back to Awakened Guardians, my original guild, where I had been helping their pre-60′s group, called the Omegas, led by another friend of mine, Louise, playing her hunter, Shadane.

And I’ve played, sometimes solo, sometimes in duo teams with my friend, Rika, on her retribution paladin, Bracye, where I generally end up rogue tanking and hauling her out of trouble and bandaging her paladin… a standing joke between us as she sometimes forgets she can heal, let alone ‘bubble’.

And as of tonight, I’ve made my way to 68… in fact I’m about halfway to 69 now, I’ve explored most of the Outland maps, power-levelled my druid’s alchemy and cooking with all the mats I’ve sent to him from my rogue… I’ve helped kill a fel-reaver… I’ve gotten my first dungeon set 3 piece, my Assassin Shoulders…

And we’ll continue the story from here… Right now, my bed calls. I have to be up in 5 hours time.

G’night.

Well, work has been, well, interesting at times. The joys of corporates : politics, backstabbing, favouritism, brain-trusts, ducking and diving…

I’ve met an old IRC acquaintance at work though, so all is not lost. Makes things a bit easier when you have someone to chat to during the day.

Other than that, life at the Big Brother house, as we’ve come to call our little commune, has hopefully settled down finally. We’ve had an interesting past few weeks, having to ask one of the girls to leave due to her abusive nature towards the other housemates, her alcohol problem and her cat. On top of that, one of the other girls’ ex-boyfriends has made an appearance and threatened us all with violence, phoning us on the house phone, stalking her, forcing his way onto the property, etc.

Let’s see, what else. Ah, yes, I’m back online playing World of Warcraft, now in The Burning Crusade, with my little slicer and dicer rogue. Been listening to a lot of game related podcasts from the folks over at WC Radio. Ah yes, that was other thing. The iPod. I love my little iPod. It’s my precious!

Hmm. Ok. Think that’s about it. Ah yes…

It’s Easter Weekend this weekend so hooray for public holidays and long weekends. Time to relax, play some games with friends, watch a movie (I think 300 is on the menu), drink some Amaretto, lime and lemonade, turn up the volume and unwind.

Catch you on the flip side!

Done your shopping yet? I haven’t. But then again I haven’t had much of a chance to do much other than work lately. It’s good to be busy again. Busy enough to get home at night and feel exhausted. Busy enough not to feel bored. Busy enough to keep my mind occupied so that it doesn’t dwell on other things.

Anyway… we had our company function this last Friday so things are quiet at work as many people have gone on leave. I’m busy doing website tenders for my company and listening to music (E Nomine) recently acquired from a gaming buddy of mine.

Some sites of interest:

Adobe’s Colour Scheme Planning Online – http://kuler.adobe.com/

Promisance – online, turn based empire management – http://www.wgamezone.com/

Adobe’s JamJar, online collaboration tool – http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/jamjar/

While you’re there, if you’re a shutterbug, take a look at Adobe’s Lightroom - http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/lightroom/

More to come later…

Ciao ciao