Gbazz

I seem to have slipped into that twilight zone that sucks people in on the weekend. You know, that time just after midnight where you’re just flipping through TV shows and reading random blogs that have interesting names. It’s that time of night where you know you should sleep, but you just can’t be bothered to walk to the bed, so you stay on the computer and putter around playing with that layout that you were sure would be finished by the weekend.

One unfortunate side effect of this condition is that you suddenly decide that something is a great idea, something like signing up for yet another social networking site. Yes, I now have a Twitter account, and that joins my Myspace, Facebook, Friendster, Youtube and Stickam. Too many? Probably true, but how can anyone resist using Twitter, especially since you can update it via sms.

I also signed up for a Pownce account, but can you believe that you have to go onto a waiting list before you can open up an account? How exclusive is that?

Supricky06 talks about Internetalsocialisticnetworkalitis in this video:

Mmmmmm…supricky06

Ok, so I have to admit that clinicals aren’t as bad as I thought they would be.

After six months of placements in community nursing, mental health, aged care and ICU, today was my first day back in a hospital ward. Needless to say, I was terrified inside, because it’s easy to forget how things work on the ward after a semester of not being on there.

Thankfully it was an afternoon shift, which is never as busy as the morning shift since showers and towel baths have already been taken care of. If you asked a nurse to write down a list of activities that they did each day, and to rank them in descending order according to how much they liked them, I’m pretty sure that giving showers will rank pretty low in the list.

Anyway, enough about showers, I’m just glad I didn’t have to do any.

I think I’m falling back into the bad habit of changing layouts every couple of weeks. I know it’s bad practice, because constantly changing layouts can drive away readers who like consistency, but I want my blog to look pretty!

Another motivating factor is that I don’t really like using the layouts that other people design, pretty though they may be, because I personally feel like I’m stealing it. (I dunno, it’s probably just another weird Brian thing)

Assuming things go ok time-wise, the basic layout should be up by the weekend, with small changes being made over the next few weeks.

OK, enough about me, how have you been?

Longfall: Click

Sanity saving laughter: Click

My make up clinical starts up again tomorrow! Not that it’s a good thing, at the moment I really, really despise just the thought of going into a hospital to do stuff that I do not like doing, and not get paid for doing it. Sure clinicals are meant to be a learning experience, but what can I learn in Day Surgery that I don’t already know?

Ok, so Day Surgery isn’t the worst spot to be in, you’re never really bored, you meet interesting people most of the time and the day goes by really quickly.

Alright, now it doesn’t sound so bad, but I honestly don’t feel like nursing is the way I’m meant to go. Even though I’ll be finished at the end of the year, I’ll still have to do a year or so of it before I can start studying something else.

I know, it’s crazy how it took me two and a half years to realise that I don’t like nursing, but regrettably it did.

Oh well, I guess the only thing to do is to take it all one day at a time, and deal with everything when there’s less on my plate.

Here’s a quote from the TV series Reaper:

If you find yourself facing a steep uphill bloody battle, there’s only two choices you can make: quit or put one foot in front of the other and tough it out.

We had our last exam today! w00t!

Some people had the bright idea of going to the beach afterwards and having lunch there, and I must say that was a great idea. A few of us got fish and chips, Bien brought four chickens and Connie cooked heaps of sausages on the barbeque.

Of course this was a great photo opportunity for everyone, so you could hear the sound of cameras snapping everywhere you turned.

If you want to see some of the photos we took today, click here.

That photo gallery there is the beautiful product of the Silas Partners, and it takes your pictures directly from flickr, and puts them directly onto a page on your site. How cool is that!

Needless to say, I’ll be updating my flickr more often now. (I’ve even upgraded to a Pro account^^)

Now for all you sicko’s out there that are reading this because you’re expecting some crazy R rated story. Sorry that I sucked you in. If this is the case I guess the title has served its purpose. This is the story of me losing my blog virginity.

Although I am usually a man of less words and more action I’ll trying to articulate my words with plenty of action to keep you amused. I feel that the first time should be just as good for you as it is for me! So many things I want to say that I don’t know where to begin. Lets start at the beginning. . .

I didn’t even want to do this blogging thing but the more I looked at my desk top and saw QUAMANA staring back at me the more intrigued I became. I can tell stories, I’m good at that, because I can bend the truth and make it sound interesting with noises, sound effects and flashy hand movements. But here it’s just the keys and me. No effects, no sound, just me!

Its just me slumped over my keyboard, bad posture, crazy thoughts and no one to give me affirmation. Right now I feel raw, I feel naked, I feel like I’m about to lose something. . . something special.For the first time in a long time I feel lost for words. I might not be good with words but I’m usually never lost for words. It actually feels good.

“The truth will set you free”

This is me being truthful. I do have things to say, I have worries, I have crazy thoughts but now isn’t the time or place to voice them. Right now I’m happy, happy being lost for words, happy being lost in deep thought, and happy knowing I’ve lost my BLOG virginity!

So. Hot. Cannot. Sleep.

Ernie just came into my room and told me that the temperature forecast for tomorrow was 32 degrees Celsius. Earghh.

I took advantage of my non-sleeping-ness to try out the Windows Live Writer modification that Rob over at STUFFLEUFAGUS wrote about. This mod makes it possible to designate tags to a post before publishing, something that I used to do by sending the draft of the post to the site and manually entering the tags there. Hallelujah for smart people!

Another plugin I’m trying to use is the one by Adam Hill, edited by Limi, but it seems to be having some issues with Wordpress 2.3. Oh well, it’ll get fixed when it gets fixed. Looks like centralisation of my web presence will happen another day.

edit: It works!

Ok maybe not die, but we do have our first exam. Today wasn’t that stressful, even though some of us haven’t done that much study. It seems that just reading the lecture notes once and then having a big discussion helps keep the content in the brain, so if the entire exam consists of the different types of shock and the various levels of mechanical ventilation, then I’m all set^^.

Tired now! Going to sleep! But first read the picture to the right and heed its wisdom, which I myself have been a little bit guilty of lately. Oh and read this, its just so sweet it makes you want to grow old just so you can do that.

Keep an eye on Gbazz.net this week, because I will write the story of ‘Ricky’ and how he was separated from his finger.

Music wise,  I just discovered the beautiful works of Ingrid Michaelson. You might have heard a couple of her songs on Grey’s Anatomy, but the song that I’m currently obsessed with at the moment is The Way I Am. It’s just a beautiful song, and the sentiment expressed by the lyrics just makes me feel so—so—. Happy, I guess? And relaxed. It has been played 114 times since I bought it this afternoon, it’s been on repeat the entire time and I have not grown tired of it one bit.

If you want to bask in the beautiful-ness of the song, you can buy it in iTunes by clicking here or for an alternate way to buy it, go to her music page and buy the cd. Do it. If there’s one thing you won’t regret doing in your life, it’s buying this song.

Study is driving me insane! Thankfully not that crass, common type of insane where you run around screaming with your underpants on your head, no. My brand of insane involves contemplating jumping off small cliffs into large piles of elephant dung. It makes sense in my head, really it does. See, if I jump into elephant dung, some of it is bound to be fresh, and if it’s fresh, it’ll stick to my clothes.

If you’re still not with me, pay attention! This next part explains the whole plan.

If pieces of elephant dung stick to me, then I’m going to smell pretty much like a pile of elephant dung, and I’m pretty sure that no teacher wants a pile of elephant dung in the classroom. (Their classroom, anyway)

So if I get kicked out, I’ll be able to resit the exam at a later date! It’s utter genius!

Ah the sweet sound of an update. I know, I know, its a joyous occasion, but I can hear you asking, “Why do you look so weird Brian?” Is it because I still have eye snot stuck to my eyelids? My messy hair?

It is neither of the above. The reason I look so weird is because I am tired and phlegmy, (not a real word, but let’s roll with it). I seem to have gotten sick over the weekend, and just in time for study week too!

I think another thing that’s making me tired are the dreams I’ve been having. For example, last night I dreamt that my sister and I were packing our bags frantically to catch a flight to Papua New Guinea. It was 12:30pm Dreamtime, and the flight was at 1pm, so why we even bothered trying to pack and get to the airport in time, I don’t know. Then Dream-Brian received a phone call from my mother, telling him that the flight wasn’t until next week. Meh.

An here’s the weird part, I dreamt that I woke up, decided to go for a walk and found a pair of rollerblades in the hospital parking lot. It’s been years since I’ve rollerbladed, but it’s one of the only sporty things I can do, so I decided to put them on and blade around the hospital parking lots.While rollerblading I met several people and the most notable was a guy who was a combination of Tony from West Side Story and Desiprince786 (who I don’t really like). I also met one of my classmates whose Dreamtime alternate appears to have a prosthetic leg. And not an aesthetic prosthetic leg, I’m afraid that the leg was more along the lines of Tee Hee’s claw (Live and Let Die, James Bond, 1973). Poor girl. I also ran into three of my friends who were members of a marching band, four other friends who had gone grocery shopping at 6:30 in the morning and a strange man who was following everyone else.

Imagine coming home after a good hour of exercise, only to wake up and find out it was only a dream? All that effort for nothing, and you end up aching because of a stupid dream.

Anyway, I’ve got to go make sure Abel hasn’t been paralysed by a brain infection while he was sleeping overnight.

Really, he might have.

Makes me feel: Hilarious, Thoughtful and OMGBBQWTF, I need to update!

Funnily enough, I started writing a post last night, but never got around to finishing it. The title? “Procrastination, let’s begin!…later” A fitting end for a post about putting things off till later.

First there was Gunbound, then there was Myspace, and then World of Warcraft came along. While all of those were fun, they eventually wore off, proving that I do have an addictive personality, but it seems that my addictive personality has an attention span slightly better than that of a goldfish’s.

The latest in this long string of addictions comes in the form of Stickam, one of the newest networking sites that have appeared out of nowhere. The words under its logo read “The Live Community” which are a pretty much accurate description of what it does. Stickam lets its users communicate with each other using their webcams, either by having one user host a room which other people can join, or by someone forming a chatroom which anyone can join.

Now I personally like the idea of a web based video conferencing tool, but during the four hours I used it, I felt just a little bit like a creepy old man sitting across from a high school, watching all the kids do stuff as they left school. I mean, sure, it’s fun to sit there and talk to your friends, or make more friends over the net, but wouldn’t you be paranoid that someone was pretending to be something they weren’t while they’re talking to you?

Another thing that I noticed was the amount of people who leave their cams online 24/7. The whole thing feels like a few dozen mini-Big Brothers all squished together for the convenience of all the voyeurs out there who enjoy watching the drama in other people’s lives.

Anyway the whole thing got me to thinking about how the media has been talking about how the latest generation despise the chatroom and email as things of the past. Stickam seems to have given the whole chatroom thing a facelift, since they now have chatrooms open that can hold heaps of people, and stream video at the same time. So maybe the media was a bit hasty in giving chatrooms the “dead” label.

But I have spent way too much time on the computer. (Stickam is my life now) And I should be getting to bed. How weird would it be if I had a Stickam themed dream?