Gastro, according to my just-visited local medical fiend friend, is usually viral and therefor effectively only symptomatically treatable. So have some more maxalon and call me in the morning, or words to that effect.

I did find out, however, that (following some significant poking, prodding and generally sticking fingers where fingers should not be stuck by anyone with whom you're not on a more intimate basis than he and I were) my blood pressure was 156/95 or some such.

Which is apparently a bit high.

Why, then, don't they take it before poking you in all kinds of unpleasant ways. I'm sure that all that fingering can't possibly have a lowering effect, now, can it. And it doesn't really matter how intimately acquainted you are with the poker.

Anyway, I'm supposed to "keep an eye on it" - which no doubt means "come back and get poked some more and then we'll see if we can get it even higher". Damn silly, if you ask me.

Anyway, because it's all viral (as in disease, not marketing which is (arguably) different), I'm not allowed to actually do anything tomorrow either. So sleepy-in-y time again.

With luck, I'll have something way more interesting to talk about when next we meet....

*sigh*

Ok, so I've done absolutely nothing of value today at all.

This is primarily due to the unfortunate fact that at about 3:20 or so this morning (or about 14 and a half hours ago) I woke up feeling like hurling most, if not all, of everything I'd ever eaten somewhere as far away from my stomach as is possible.

This is, needless to say, an unpleasant way to greet the world, and one that I attempted to put right with a quick whack of maxalon. While it rumbled around in the firezone, I typed up a quick email to work explaining that I'd potentially not actually be there bright and early - or bright at all - due to said impending explosive decompression.

Then went back to bed.

Now, when most of the content of your insides has decided that it'd rather be on your outside, lying down isn't necessarily the most comfortable position in which to pass the time, what with gravity suddenly being at best neutral in the whole in-out battle. It being 3:20-something am, though, my mind wasn't necessarily as razor sharp as it usually is (particularly as it was busily trying to tell the rest of me that it was really all a dream and to quit being such a wuss and get back to sleep because 3-anything am is so not an appropriate time to be doing anything). So lie down I did. This was, potentially, not the most effective way to get the maxalon to actually quieten things down so, but being determined to be a total idiot, I stayed there until, despite all indications to the contrary, it did in fact manage to settle the nether-region-based-unrest and I fell back into dreamland.

From which, only seconds later, I was awakened by a particularly unpleasant squealing coming from the general direction of the alarm clock. I used that brief moment of consciousness to announce to anyone that was listening (fortunately, my nearest and dearest was) that I was unlikely to be stirring any time soon and fell back into a drug-induced coma.

Some time later, I awoke and rang the Salt Mine to tell my boss that I had, in fact, not been dreaming when I sent the email some hours earlier and that I'd likely not be making an appearance. This was followed by an extra-strong dose of a concoction specifically designed to ensure that any explosive decompression that is going to happen does not happen orally, if you get my drift.

Then went and dozed some more.

Then got up and checked mail and discovered that much to my visa's disgust there'll soon be a nice shiny new version of Sony Vegas Pro out, and decided that that was quite enough excitement for one day and went and dozed again.

Then went and did nothing some more.

Note that there has been no further mention of decompression, explosive or otherwise. While there is obviously, and at times painfully, quite a large chunk of what may well be C40 plastique explosive or its equivalent now occupying my increasingly large middle section, nothing has actually made any attempt to move in any particular direction.

This bodes not well.

It also means that my abandoning any pretence at seeking medical assistance due to the perceived need to stay close to the smallest room in the house (a wise contingency, I thought) seems now to have been somewhat over zealous.

So I shall call the local "we're open till forever" local doctor and see if I can get in there this evening, and hope that the ride down there doesn't set off some terribly unpleasant Chernobylesque chain reaction. If it does, I'd suggest that a large swathe of Southern Brisbane may be uninhabitable for quite some time.....

Stay tuned for more. Pictures at 11.

Talk about serendipity.

Just as I was contemplating things like "how to let people at work use Social Media safely", Tel$tra come out with their very own version of what I was thinking about.

And, possibly surprisingly, at first glance it seems to make sense.

There is much goodness in letting employees be advocates for the good things their chosen organisations are doing (in my case Brisbane City Council), either "officially" or unofficially. People are proud of what they do, and they usually don't want to run their employer into the ground, any more than they want to run their country into the ground.

So let them talk about it. But set some reasonable guidelines. This protects you (the employer) and you (the employee) and at the same time lets both of you engage in the conversation.

And engaging in the conversation is what's important. Because it's happening whether you're there or not. And what you don't get involved in can hurt you.

FIRST!!!

Ok, hardly original nor particularly informative but everyone does it, right?

I really have no idea what I'm going to talk about, why I'm doing this or where it may lead. It's basically the result of a friend's request to recommend a spot where journalists in Fiji can get word out to the world about what's happening in that increasingly lawless dictatorship. Needless to say, Blogger was one of the sites I recommended.

So I set one up, just to make sure it was easy enough for a journalist to to (hey, I know journalists - they can write, some of them extremely well. But technology? Wellllll...that's what the tech department's for, right?)

Anyway, here it is. The FIRST POST. History in the making.

It remains to be seen if there'll be more....