Packing in Melbourne Diaries

Got ready to move into the new house yesterday by putting 700+ DVDs and equal numbers of books and CD into various plastic cases - these are now piled up in a fortress-like construction in the dining room. Going through this exercise for the first time in two years gives me a clear picture of just how much junk I’ve accumulated over the years, as well as how difficult it is to dispose of anything that can’t be crammed into a bin. I’m chucking out a 36” TV, an old microwave, a heater, a fan, a vacuum cleaner and two large paintings simply because I have nowhere to put them. And why the hell do I have over 700 DVDs in the age of Netflix (at least the last CD I bought in two years old)? Some of them I can’t even remember buying.

While doing this I’m feeling pretty ill, having had a cold for the last eight days. This is pretty unusual for me, as I can generally shake off colds and other ailments within 24 hours. But in the middle of a bad winter, I’ve been hit with my worst period of health ever, not helped by my decision to run 12k through a rainstorm yesterday.

I haven’t written here much. In part this is because the nature of my job is becoming more specialised and more secretive - I simply can’t talk about what goes on where I work any more, even in code, and given that work is pretty all-consuming this leaves out a lot. It’s nothing too important - just IT stuff in the end, but it does make the news occasionally.

As a general observation though, I’m increasingly coming to the view that the IT industry is about 90% bullshit. Two months ago, a completely useless ‘IT Advocate’ was sacked. He achieved absolutely nothing in his time here, and was borderline corrupt. Since then, he has gone ‘round various industry forums telling people how hopeless we all were, and then went on extended leave to ‘design apps’, joined by his equally useless adviser. There are vast numbers of people in the IT field who are like this. They have some programming experience, but then get a Steve Jobs complex and re-invent themselves as online visionaries, dressing in tight skivvies and jeans to work and expounding their far flung dream to those who will listen. And, in almost all cases, they achieve bugger all. Sad to say, but I think my brother has become one of these - he ‘quit’ his job last months to ‘design apps’, none of which look like seeing the light of day. Most of his time is spent maintaining his girlfriend’s vegan website and boasting how fit he is now he doesn’t work for a living. There a lot of people in Brighton like that, often the non-working girlfriends/wives of sports stars - they spend all their days in gyms and jogging by the beach and look incredible, even in their forties or fifties. They then go online and lecture others about their physical laziness. My parents are fed up with my brother, telling him that at 37 he is on a “middle aged gap year” and is too close to his nutty Polish girlfriend. To quote Game of Thrones, “How does it feel to be the disappointing one?”

Move into the new house, my little wooden Hobbiton of a house in leafy, secluded Eltham, on 20 August, and will update then.