Time for something a bit weird. Have you ever heard of the Spanish baby jumping festival? Perhaps you know it by it's traditional name "El Colacho"? Come on, you must have heard of this one! 

It seems (I could be wrong of course, don't believe everything you read on the Internet) that there are some nutter parents in Spain who think that their babies are possesed with evil and the only way to rid them of this evil is to have Elvis jump over them. 

They have been doing this weridness since 1620. I have no idea how many babies have been squashed by overweight Elvis's who didn't quite make it.

Good news. A bit over a year ago my boss told me that he was going to send me to Brisbane to attend a vendor conference. It's called Networkers and is held by a company called Cisco. They sell most of the bits that make the Internet work as well as the networks of many businesses and stuff. The network that I look after is almost all Cisco kit. 

 Why is that good news now over a year later? Because this time last year I was told at the last minute that they had to cut costs and my trip was canceled. It was meant to be reward and recognition for something cool that I can't remember. Having that trip canceled didn't make me feel particularly recognised or rewarded. The good bit is that I've just been told that it's on again this year and this time I really am going.

I've booked my flights, accommodation and the conference so I'm as good as locked in this time. It's a four day event so I'm going to stay up there for a week to have a look around Brisbane. Mel and I have started to spend a bit more time together again, so she is going to fly up and spend a few days with me as well.

Now, Iron Mountain (IRM). It probably is a place, but it's also the name of an iron ore mining company that I'm holding shares in. If you click here and it's still somewhere close to August 2008 you can see that this company has dropped heaps in the past three months. This is the perfect example of how stupid the Australian stock market is at the moment. This company has over one billion tonnes of iron ore in the ground and are about to commence digging it up, and yet according to the current stock price the entire company is only valued at nine million dollars.

That's crazy in itself, but get this - they also have a heap of magnetite in Tasmania that's just pending the proper assaying results to confirm it. Is that not enough for you? Well they also have another two iron ore tenements that they don't have the resources to mine themselves, so they are selling them to another company. Guess how much they are selling them for? Ten million dollars. Yup, a company with over a billion tons of their own iron ore, an unconfirmed amount of magnetite, and a resource sale that's about to be closed for ten million dollars is only worth nine million dollars according to the stock market.

This is why I'm hanging onto the poorly performing shares that I'm currently holding and just waiting for the stupidity to end. Expect the little share graph to continue to fall before some sanity finally returns.

Hidden Fate. Watch out for em!

After Brad swore black and blue that he would never go in Tournament of Minds ever again guess what he has just gone and done? Yep, along with Louise, Noah, Josh, Ben and Katherine they entered into the Social Science section of this years event. The theme for their presentation was based around a newly formed rock band called Hidden Fate and their attempt to make it onto the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. The central part of the presentation was a performance of an original song that they all wrote together in the weeks leading up to the event. They didn't have time to work out the songs name, but "Tomorrow's another day" seems to fit. Brad played lead guitar, Josh did the vocals, Ben was looking after the drums, Noah took control of bass and Louise was their number one fan!

It was always going to be too hard to setup all the gear required on the day so they decided to record the song and then mime it for the judges, but the school stage performance was on that week and all of the teachers, equipment and music rooms were busy or in use so the guys had to improvise and ended up recording it on a portable cassette player (remember them!) with a Playstation Singstar microphone in the shed at Noah's place.

It was all meant to be tied together by Katherine, their narrator, but unfortunately she didn't turn up and the phone number we had for her was incorrect so we were unable to contact her. On top of that Josh was playing in a footy final and arrived one minute before they had to go "on stage". Brad didn't have time to fit his guitar strap so he had to sit on a chair to do his piece and Ben's cardboard drums were a bit low to the ground.

To their credit they put all of that aside and went ahead anyway, but it all fell apart without the narrator being there to tie everything together and they had to pull out. The judges were great and encouraged them to perform the rest of the piece anyway, so another Kingston High guy from the audience offered to read the narrators piece from the script.

They all did an awesome job and I could tell from the comments the judges made afterward that they were very impressed. They especially liked the fact that they wrote and recorded an original song all on their own and I think they would have scored well if they had all been there.

You can listen to their song by clicking on the little play icon below. Just remember that it was done by a bunch of resourceful 12 year old's on a little portable tape player with a toy microphone in a backyard shed (isn't that how all great rock and roll bands start?), so please excuse the quality! If any of the others want a copy of the mp3 then just ask Brad as he has it on his phone.

I stumbled across this very funny video the other day, but when I saw that it had been posted on YouTube by someone called SassyDonna I started to wonder if this might be where I went wrong!