mja blog

  • Twilight series – New Moon

    Jo and I caught the latest Twilight movie on Saturday – based on the second book in the series, New Moon. Kind of interesting vampires v. werewolves v. teen angst. Jo has all the books, kindly let me borrow the third in the series – Eclipse, because the movie left me wanting to know what happened next! Finished the book overnight, and now waiting to read the last book.

    I wouldn’t say it is that good a story, the attraction I think is all the emotional stuff, the romance – it’s compelling and really hooks you in.

    Looking forward to the next movies.

  • Laryngitis

    Hubby has been crook for the past few days, lots of coughing and congestion. He’s had a couple days off work, went into the doctor today and laryngitis was the verdict. No idea how he got it.

  • WordPress the best opensource cms 2009

    Congrats to the team at WordPress for winning the award for best overall opensource CMS – WP is a great website package and keeps getting better.

    My only gripe – hopefully the rate of updates and upgrades will slow down. Our work web site is hosted on a Windows server, and I haven’t been able to work out the correct permissions to make automated updates work. Manual updates are a major pain.

  • Witcheypoo prank

    I’d like to know how Hubby’s seargent copes with all the pranks he and his colleagues pull on her. The latest involved some creative use of lost property – one pair of shoes, one pair of striped “witcheypoo” stockings stuffed with scrunched up paper to make them look like real legs. The result – something out of the Wizard of Oz. But instead of Dorothy’s house it was the boss’ desk that crushed the Wicked Witch of the East.

    KICX1855 KICX1856

  • IR Seminar

    Last night for work I attended an industrial relations seminar covering the new Fair Work legislation. Part of this legislation is already in effect, some of it is not far away – 1 Jan 2010.

    I guess in a way we are fortunate in that we have been working on our enterprise bargaining agreement and have already had to pay attention to the new legislation. We’ve got the jump on what is happening in the industrial relations arena. A lot of the other attendees were completely in the dark about it. There was uncertainty, fear and anger.

    Despite that it was still a useful session, the presenter was very good and invited us to fire questions at her throughout the evening and although we were the only not-for-profit there I managed to find out a few things that affected us directly.

    The message from the seminar was that if they don’t already have them, employers must have processes in place to systematically handle and document all employee conditions and work-related issues. It is ridiculously easy these days for an employee with a grievance to lodge a complaint with the ombudsman, it can be done via a website. If an employer does not have records or systems to back up its case in most instances the matter will be ruled in favour of the employee.

    The industrial relations system seems very biased towards the employee, and most of the attendees were business owners – there was a lot of grumbling about the Labor government. Having worked for a large corporation years ago and experienced the full power of human resource management machinery in motion I had to bite my tongue a couple of times – my thoughts are that if you take on employees you take on the responsibility for properly managing them – to protect them and the business. No matter how small a business is, once you start to employ people you just have to know this stuff.

  • My squishy

    On Sunday I was full of discontent – and this after Mass too, when you would expect some reflection and prayer would have shed some of the distractions and obstacles that were weighing so heavily.

    I poured my complaints out to Mum, and felt relieved, and a little disloyal to my man, he being the chief cause for complaint at that time. But having got it out of my system, when I returned home I treated him kindly and it was returned and my heart glowed again.

    Early this morning I couldn’t sleep. He was also awake and I placed my arm around him and breathed in his presence, feeling warm and squishy inside and thankful that he was there.