It's Saturday morning, 7am and I'm up. Damn. I suppose my body is all 'you've had eight hours sleep, more than you usually get, now, out of bed!' The past couple of weeks on early shifts has given me a good idea, at least at this part of the year, what happens at what time. When I awoke, I knew it was 6.30am, got up to check, and sure enough, it was. I know 'cause at 4am it's dark and quiet, and 4.25am when I leave the house it's dark and quiet (unless my iPod decides to play Master of Puppets), when I get to work at 5am it's dark and quiet, when I sometimes pop out at 6am to get a V from the bakery across the road, it's dark and quiet. So to wake up to dark and birds chirping, I figured it was 6.30am, and no later, cause at 7am it's dark but with hungry cats meiowing.

Our friend Ice McGunface broke the terms of his bail - he was under 24-hour curfew at his place, and he wasn't there when the police checked - and they apparently don't think he is going to turn up to his hearing on Wednesday.So combine that with the deleting of his Facebook, and I guess he's trying to disappear or something.

It would suck, for him, if someone who worked in the newsroom of a television station happened to get a hold of any incriminating photographs...

There's nothing on TV at this hour of Saturday morning. TV One's Best of Breakfast is pretty lame, and as often happens in times of crap TV, I've landed on Fox News. It's amusing to hear the presenters twist everything to suit their station's views, sometimes blatantly, but sometimes more subtly and awkwardly. Like the guy on now, struggling and hesitating to describe global warming as, at the very least, 'partly' man's fault.

Being up this early on a Saturday sucks.

GORBACHOV: THE MUSIC VIDEO - BIGGER AND RUSSIANER from Tom Stern on Vimeo.

I'm sitting here waiting for a call from the pro vice chancellor of research here at AUT. I know he's not going to call, becuase he's foiled my investigations once before already, sending me on a wild goose chase after someone else, only to find out he, the PVC, is the only one taking enquiries from 'the media' about the issue.

On that wild goose chase though, I didn't find any geese (nor the guy I was looking for), but I did find something of a ghost floor here in the tower. Floors one and three were blocked off entirely, and there was no lift access to two but I got there by using the stairs... only to find nothing. Just a bunch of dark, empty rooms and electrical equipment. Cooool...

Anyway. Tariqa and I broke up on Monday night. She came back on Tuesday morning. That's all I'll say about that. Buried here in this post about ghost floors and...

iGoogle! Has anyone else here used it? It's pretty cool. It's like having a summary of all your favourite websites and blogs and things on one page. And a reminder list thingee, which I need pretty badly. I've even remembered to bring my USB drive to uni two whole days in a row! WOAH.

Dragonforce are coming to NZ. I want to go, mostly to see what kinds of people go to Dragonforce shows. I want to go to GnR too, mostly to see Axl's ginger braids.

I've uploaded the next two tracks from The Siren and Trigger Happy Little Finger to my myspace, they should be downloadable.

Hardly anyone showed up to our gig at the Dogs Bollix on Thursday. I blame the Pigeons of Shit Metal for playing the same night. Anyway, those that did turn up seemed to enjoy it - particularly the two Brits who were reluctant at first to pay $2 each just to see the Megaheroes (who were on last), then left saying it was the best $2 each they'd ever spent.

I managed to accidentally bump off my compression pedal half way through, then not realise exactly what was wrong with my sound for two songs, and kinda screw up our grunge/punk crossover Big Stick. We got Matt from Amy Racecar/Megaheroes to play keys on one of our songs with a minute or so's learning... and I've no idea if it worked or not, as I couldn't hear the Korg through the foldback at all. I suppose only twenty or so people saw it, so we can't've lost too much mana. Or gained too much, if it happened to be awesome.

There's a good chance it was awesome though, if the Amy Racecar album is anything to go by. I've seen them a fair few times, never really got into what they were doing but 'appreciated' it nonetheless... but wow. Conclusions, their first full album, is something else. I always thought their melodic side (as evidenced by the scant recordings I'd heard) was lost in the live performances, and after enjoying but not being blown away by their set at the Vegas Girl last weekend, I thought yeah, good band, but maybe not for me. After hearing the album though, I'm thinking maybe I should've paid more attention at the shows...

I interviewed local band Phony Bone earlier tonight, they said their copy of the Amy Racecar album is in the mail apparently. Provided the article I write for them gets published, I'll be following in the illustrious footsteps of my fellow zine-publisher Emma and identical-qualification-twin Kiran by being published in NZ Musician.

Had lunch today with my old school friend Simon, which turned into a lunch / I hang behind the counter and chat to him while serving the odd customer afternoon. He's been living in Dunedin for a fair few years now, just moved into Hillsborough, which he assures me in angry voices is NOT Manukau, but just six kilometres east of Onehunga. Which if you squint your eyes, is pretty much Manukau. Or if you're looking at a bad enough globe, could be Tajikistan. Simon said that walking down the main street of Onehunga, it could almost be Fiji. But he didn't mention the army presence, so it probably is just Onehunga.

But anyway, was good to see him, he's as cynical and sarcastic as ever which is excellent. If he reads this he's gonna kill me maybe, but back in our high school days, Simon was a metalhead (into Megadeth and Iron Maiden, not a metaller/metlar, which at least I believe is a significant distinction to make) while the rest of us geeks were into either Oasis, the Presidents of the USA or the Who. That was about 1995 or so, and today, though I suppose I should know better, I asked Simon about this band I've seen on Alt TV I like called 'DragonForce'. He said he had no idea who they are, and instead said he liked the new Shins album, and had recently got into the Kaiser Chiefs.

Marty, who I work with, just laughed, and said DragonForce suck. But he hasn't seen the video with the picture-in-picture soloing, so he might be wrong.

And to close with a trade me story, a guy whom I sold a game to who never paid or got in touch with me and whom I gave a red angry bad feedback face... just gave me a happy face and said "good trade thanks". WTF?