Twenty two bottles of wine on the wall.. or added to the house’s recycling system this week..

• Monday, meeting with Tim about the NSBI (new scary big idea).. I suspect he thinks I’m a bit nuts, camera shopping, Audi meeting with Chris.. we saw the new v10 R8 which just arrived that day (makes a nice noise), a run from Bakoven to Glen Beach with Ingi, Ingi made a fire in the fireplace.. first one of the season, Chardonnay, hot chocolate.
• Funny, people bug me to find out about my new project.. I seem to get two responses.. 1) uhm, ok, sure, nice and 2) wow, awesome. I’m thinking the type 1 people get it, but they don’t see the impact.
• Tuesday, hot chocolate with Nikki at Vida in Camps Bay, Stellenbosch traffic dept to go renew my drivers license, visit to the Amobia Stellenbosch office, visited Mia.. tea at Andy’s parent’s house, dinner at Cath’s with Brandon and Ingi.

• “Porn is like music, there is something for everybody.” — Brandon

• Ingi got mugged, she’s OK, but her bag is gone.

• “Ingi’s camera.. where good photos go to die.” — about Ingi taking lots of photos but not publishing them.

• “Truth is free, but information costs.” — Anonymous, well.. me, about my NSBI

• I’ve rediscovered podcasts on.. my mobile phone, using my bluetooth car kit. Mostly ZAtech show.
• Wednesday, gym, swim, smoothie, email scrubbing, Kink with Cath.. to plan our birthday bash.. and she wanted to know how the Internet worked (*grin*), a Simply Asia supper.
• I received a “media” invite to a Gartner event.
• Thursday, Sandy Bay hike to the wreck, boerewors and mash for dinner, 2nd half of the banana banana game at Dizzy’s.. I don’t like watching soccer, but this was not too bad.
• I installed Ubuntu 9.04 on an HP550 laptop for Debby and it worked perfectly, no snags.. I guess Linux really is for everybody now.

• “It’s not that we don’t have success. We don’t even have failures. We have nothing.” — from Sarah Rice’s feed, about entrepreneurship in SA.. amusing.

• I seem to have developed a bit of a nail balm obsession.
• Friday, Camps Bay walk, dinner with Debby, Ingi, Marcia, Georg and Andy.. fillet, mash and 11 bottles of wine for the night, Fokofpolisiekar at Mercury with Georg.. awesome show.
• Check out the movie.. quality entertainment in the hedonist calendar.

• “Reminds me of my first Walkman” — Marcia, about MJ, RIP

• “As jy regtig wil weet, vra die main bra.” — Georg, bumping into Franscois in the bathroom and asking him when the show starts.

• “Kan iemand dalk ‘n god bel, en vir hom sê ons het hom nie meer nodig nie.” — Hemel Op Die Platteland, Fokofpolisiekar

• Saturday, a mountain of dishes to wash, 2nd SA-Lions rugby test at Carlyles with Andy, Georg and Rachel.. awesome game, Fireman’s Arms with Rachel, 27Dinner.. nice Stormhoek Riesling.. nice chats with Elodie, Rafiq and Graham, I did a quick open mic talk to pimp the OSA project, Porn Star Martini at Asoka with Cath.

• “Express the need” — Graham Knox, about making things useful for people.

• Seems many of my friends are a bit skint at the moment. Interesting times.

• “I think I’m about as attractive as a pile of dog poo at the moment, having no money and about to move back in with my parents” — Andrew, about being attractive relationship material.

• Sunday, fetched Mia, lunch at Deer Park with Georg, Beta Beach walk and playground session.
• Ever have the feeling that somehow you just want to hug somebody (in particular), but you cant? Two days in a row.

Have a fun week.

Ola.

• Monday, tea, rusks, Andy made porridge, puppet show, tea and cupcakes at A is for Apple.. we like the cute lady that works there, aquarium visit, gym, swim, dropped Mia off, Steers burger.. real bachelor food, to the office.. bit of a day in reverse in some ways, WordPress 2.8 upgrade.
• Tuesday, gym, smoothie, wheat grass shot, to the office for some out of phase work.. managed to clear all my inboxes for the first time in months, sunset drinks with Ingi, Marcia and Andy at the cable car contour road spot, Julia Jacobsen at the Waiting Room.. good show.
• Much more flow in working out of phase. Try it.
• Cape Town live music event planning annoys me. People say.. we are playing “tonight”. No time. You get there and the person taking your money tells you the show starts at 21:00. The show starts at 21:45. Muppets. I get that people are late and they want you to buy more drinks, but just say 21:00 for 21:30 like the rest of the world.

• “Do you want to go for an AIDS test” — Ingi, how she woke us up on Wednesday morning.

• “I have ravers back” — Ingi, about being a bit stiff.

• “When you go to bed 3 pages, when you go to the loo 2 pages” — Andy, about getting people to read more.

• Good to see a few people in my friend/peer group having children. Congrats Henk. I’m also thinking of Lauren and Ramsey. Get on with it people, we need a few more geeks.
• Amusing. If you email customercare@flysaa.com you get an “Acknowledgement of Receipt” email back.. but there is no tracking/ticket number so you can’t follow up.. I’m pretty sure this is by design.
• Wednesday, walked from Bakoven to Clifton 1, watched The Beach again.
• Thursday, Lions Head meeting with Dave, kicked a rugby ball on Llandudno beach with Andy.
• Received two public speaking invites this week.. iWeek and Wireless Broadband World Africa 2009.
• Friday, Lions Head walk with Debby, Ingi and Andy, very nice breakfast and fresh juice, fetched Mia, clothes shopping for Mia.. who passed out in the car on the way back.. early night.
• We drove past a McDonnals and Mia said: “That’s a Mia”.. well, yes, M for Mia. M for Monolith Burger.
• Saturday, fresh juice and pretzels, we met Guni.. Ingi’s sister, gym, swim, smoothie, company (rose) garden, mini full monty at Daily Deli, the Book Lounge, picked up some R28 Eikendal wooded Chardonnay.. good deal, watched the test rugby with Georg.. good game, burgers at Georg’s, bath, reading, sleep.
• Sunday, tea, Kung Fu Panda, fathers day waffles with fruit salad, gym, swim, smoothie, planetarium, dropped Mia off, Steers burger, office.
• It’s been a busy OSA week.

• Po: Uh… level zero? How about that, level zero?
  Shifu: [chuckles] There is no such thing as level zero.
  Shifu: [after watching Po getting beat up by the obstacle course] There is now a level zero.

• I think I’m feeling the next evolution… a new chapter, it’s my birthday soon, I need a new challenge.. last time I had this feeling was around 2004.

Later.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Mostly an Open Spectrum week..

• Monday, tea with Sven, new OSA website look and FB group, burger at Jamaica me Crazy with Jonathan.
• Join the Open Spectrum Facebook group to show your support for progressive and efficient frequency spectrum management in South Africa.. 40 people so far.
• Hub. End. Fuckit. More interesting less political battles to fight.

• “Other people are not like us” — Jonathan, about digital privacy

• Tuesday, gym, swim, ISPA photoshoot and media lunch at the Radisson hotel, nap, kicked a rugby ball around Camps Bay while the Tri club ran around us, ISPA dinner at Sevruga with Ingi.
• Tuesday was the 5 yr anniversary of the first photo I took of Naulene.
• Wednesday, WAPA exco meeting and WAPA general meeting at Asara in Stellenbosch, nice weather, beautiful venue, a productive first OSA meeting, got home and fell into bed.

• “We are the people we have been waiting for” — Steve Song

• Thursday, Knead hot dogs with Chris, walked up Lions Head with Andy, Signal Hill, beer at HQ (heritage square), dinner at Simply Asia, watched Vicky Cristina Barcelona again.. Woody should have called this movie.. Crazy Bitch Barcelona.
• Seems Dr. Ernst will be in SA again from July.. only snag is he will be in Jozi.
• Friday, chewed through some email, Mia time, Beta Beach session, Kung Fu Panda, Tuna pasta salad.
• Saturday, tea, rusks, Horton, gym, swim, smoothie, rugby at Lauren and Marco’s, big lunch.. awesome ribs, nice Sterhuis Chardonnay, party at Bev’s.
• Sunday, 4am.. could not sleep so I remembered to go register facebook.com/joebotha, tea, rusks, Kung Fu Panda, Mia and I made fresh juice, gym, swim, smoothie and wheat grass shot, painting, Mouille Point playground, ham-dogs (burgers with hotdog rolls), watched Big Trouble again, watched Pirates of the Caribbean 3.. and it sucked.
• A while ago we met some cool people at Julep.. Andy, Ingi and I were out on the town. These people also lived in a house together. I think it would be cool to coordinate more house-parties.
• ~450 Stalkbook friends

Have a fun week kids.

A while ago I attended a Heavy Chef meeting where the social media people from the DA and ANC talked about their projects. It struck me that some battles are just easier to fight.. some ideas are easy to sell. This is how revolutions work.

Choose the ideas you want to spread well.. some ideas just wont spread, for they have no forward momentum.

We can’t fight ideas and we can’t protect them. They have a life of their own.

The same goes for business ideas.

Back the idea that will inevitably win.

Problems you never imagined you would have..

At age 4 little girls can’t go to the mens dressing room at the gym. What now?

Well, it turns out the solution is to use the disabled persons’ dressing room.

A bit annoying, since it’s sometimes busy, there is no bench to put your bag on and I do kinda feel like the 1% that people don’t keep in mind when they design things.

Captains log, stardate 20090607..

Yes, yes.. this is very late.. this is actually from the first week in June.

• Monday, mostly an ISPA and WAPA day, Mouille Point walk.. bumped into Joerg, nice home cooked dinner, watched Pirates of the Caribbean.
• Tuesday, some inbox scrubbing, beer and pizza with Georg at Carliles.. with Jack Johnson background music, 12 hours of sleep.
• Wednesday, nothing like some Cure on a rainy day, gym.. on a two week project to bench my body weight again, swim, banana and maple syrup smoothie.

• “I’ve never wanted something rational” — Alanis Morissette – Head Over Feet

• Don’t you just love it when you scrub your inbox for a whole day, you start with 9 messages and you end with 10.
• “frogman of the information pool“.. haha.. don’t drink and blog kids.
• Trying to convince Mia’s mother that Homeopathy is absolute bullshit.. her stubbornness is amusing. Some people just can’t spot the logic traps in battlefield life. When a friend with a PhD who has had cancer tells you it’s useless.. it’s useless. Henk wrote a good post about this.
• Thursday, Westcon Data Centre workshop thing, tea with Chris at Origin, beer at Babbo in Obs with Andy, red curry noodles at Kauai in Camps Bay.

• “I just asked myself… what would John DeLorean do?” — Raoul Duke

• Friday, car mini service (again.. but I don’t complain too much, free valet), Moussaka for lunch with Cath at Neo.. bumped into Gaby, power nap, Grand Daddy to watch Dave, Boo Radleys with Cams and Aiden, dinner with Cath and Parri at Anytime.. rocket salad is pretty good, Jess’s house warming in Salt River.. not easy to find, Kink 80’s party with Andrew to watch Pierre play.. good fun.

• “If you want to make money, be disruptive” — Cath

• The Audi guys tell me they are expecting a v10 R8 soon.. also v12 Q7 and A5 Cab.. hmm.. A5 Cab should look good.
• “Construction time again” — cool name for an album, from a slide at the 80’s Kink party.

• “..that’s why we call her the body, not the face” — Andrew, about that girl at Kink

• First weekend without Mia in a long time. Her mother send me a text on Saturday morning saying I can’t see her.. I obviously had a bit of a sense of humour failure.. some things you just don’t do.. you don’t send somebody a text message saying they can’t see their daughter. ffs.

• “Hi, plans have changed. Meebs is staying here and going to school on Monday. C u next weekend” — Naulene

• Saturday, Mouille point walk with Andrew, we met Phil the kite guy, rugby and beer at Catu with Georg and Christo.. nice fish and chips pub lunch, sundown Delheim Chardonnay on the Beta Beach rocks, watched Police Academy.. very 80s, 12 hours of sleep.
• Sunday, awesome sunny winters day, tea and Pistachio yoghurt with Thomas at Neo, gym, watched the new Star Trek.. pretty good, Jade to watch Dave and Schalk and Gerald.. very good show.

• “Bread Head” — what Chris Roper calls people who are obsessed with money.

• “She could have had it all.” — Thomas, just something I like to remind Mia’s mother of from time to time.

• “Broadcasting is about politics, telecoms is about money” — Steve Song

• “Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism.” — Clay Shirky, yeah.. who reads them anyway.

• MPLS is for girls. Real men use Carrier Ethernet.
• I sometimes look back at the stuff I’ve written on this blog and think.. WTF? Oh well, at least I can ignore the old lame content on most days and move forward. Stay foolish.
• Interesting idea: five.sentenc.es
• People like good news. Don’t build a reputation for only contacting (phoning) people when you have bad news or you want something from them.
• I figure I’m lagging a bit. I had an always-on leased line in 1999.. I should have had fibre at home by now dammit!
• Two people upset me this week with statements they made.. mostly because they don’t get me.. the choices I make and the things I spend my time on. I figure it’s important to tag these gumption trap events and not get stuck on them. They are not ready to understand, don’t try to explain.

• “You should have a little comment section on your blog” — Andrew, hahaha, this kills me. Andrew.. scroll down to the bottom of the post.

• After Dave sent me a link to an article about work I realised.. I suck at forced work.. I’m much better at productive tangents.. I figure they often blend back into productive work in the end.
• Tunes of the week: Hotel Costes, Vol. 8, the first two tracks.

Have a fun week crazy kids. Live long and prosper (..that’s from Star Trek).

1) There should be no VAT on books in South Africa. Somebody start a Facebook group. Spread the word people.. to tax books in an education challenged country is not a bright idea. Muppets.

2) An SMS in South Africa should cost 10c (ZAR). More about that later.

I went to this Westcon Data Centre technology workshop thing this morning and listened to a few vendors give their data centre strategy presentations. The very short and sweet summary:

3com : Plumbing

Cisco : Arrogant

Juniper : Carrier Class

Huawei Symantec : WTF?

APC : Nobody showed up

Over and Over — Moloko, Statues.

I love this song. It’s an epic 9:54min masterpiece.

Statues, their 4th and final studio album, released in 2003, was made after Mark and Roisin’s breakup. The whole Statues album is good. The first track, Familiar Feeling is awesome, but Over and Over is spectacular.

Roisin’s vocals make you think it’s a song from a girl’s perspective.. but I think these are Mark’s words.

“The songs were mostly autobiographical,” Murphy says, “so it was bound to be emotional.”

I love the way about 7min into the song, it stops and continues again.. as if to say.. it’s never over.

The strings arrangement in this song seems so meticulously put together. I get the idea Mark knew that this would be the last song. His legacy. He knew he would never find somebody like Roisin again.

“Like a frozen tidal wave
Since that day I’m standing still
You brought me here and I accept
Though you regret I never will

Just one sweet word
And then a smile from you
Is almost worth everything
I’ve given all I had to give
But you gave up giving in

You are everywhere I go
All the places we have been
I can’t imagine where you are
For you are all I’ve ever seen

Over and over…..”

One of my little pet hates.. people who say “No”, but don’t suggest an alternative.

Muppets.

This often happens when you propose an idea or you propose a meeting time. Drives me up the wall when people respond with only “I don’t like it” or “Can’t make it”.

Please, share your ideas or suggest something better.

Forward momentum people!

I’ve written about this before.

Just another winters week..

• Monday, played with Mia’s Leapfrog Tag toy.. yes, software works with OS X, put up a basic website for the Open Spectrum Alliance, spinning.

• “What’s for you will not pass you by” — Familiar Feeling, Moloko

• Tuesday, Lions Head meeting, kicked a rugby ball around the field below La Med, nice home cooked dinner, read up about Carrier Ethernet.. and totally forgot about the GeekDinner.

• “Do you have sex music?” — Ingi, busy making compilation CDs after her breakup

• “Inside every working anarchy, there’s an old-boy network.” — Mitch Kapor

• Wednesday, haircut at Bianca’s, a sunset run along the cable car contour road with Andy and Ingi, Amobia meeting.. I waxed a large portion of ribs.. stuffed.

• “The cold-hearted boy I used to be..” — All These Things That I’ve Done, The Killers, probably their best song.

• “YOU are funny. You’re not a family guy. You’re Joe. You’re a great single dad. You were a bit of a crap partner.” — Naulene.. there you have it.

• Thursday, uber juice with broccoli and goji berries, checked out A is for Apple (the kids book store) and got Mia a cool book, watched Chaos Theory.. not bad, nice home cooked dinner.

• “I don’t often listen to my body, but when it tells me I’m thirsty …” — Andrew, while running.

• Helped plan a founding meeting for OSA.
• I sent ~800 emails in May, which is about double the April figure.

• “What’s for lupper?” — Ingi, about weird meal times

• I felt a bit bad about having 4 traffic fines outstanding.. until I mentioned it to a friend who claims to have 31.
• Wow, it’s June.. 1/2 the year gone.. that was quick.
• Friday, painful process of drafting and agreeing to a custody and maintenance document (only took a year to get to draft 3), Mia time, watched Kung Fu Panda, couscous salad, played with Mia’s new toys, hot choc, sleep.
• Saturday, tea, Incredibles, gym, swim, painting, Beta Beach sunset walk, pasta salad.
• Remember kids, always use some hand cream after washing the dishes. As Ingi says your hands give away your age.
• Sunday, tea, gym.. bumped into Gaby, swim, wholesome Sunday lunch at Vredenheim with Mia, Ramsey, Debby, Adrian etc, played 30sec at Debby’s, dropped Mia off, salad at Da Vinci’s, Asoka.. Wallaby sunday.
• I don’t get signatures. The pen and paper type. Does anybody ever check them? Seems so last century.

• “Not only in love, I was obsessed” — Simple Kind Of Life, No Doubt

• “I’ve knitted a scarf” — Andy, about Debby knitting in a bar

Have a fun week.