Life, the universe and everything

Redirerction

2006-11-09T18:07:00.000+11:00

I've been playing around with different online blog servers, and Wordpress comes highly regarded having features that Blogger unfortunately does not, nor is on their roadmap. So until that changes, I shall redirect you guys to my new page at
fnurgle.wordpress.com
(please click on the link if not redirected automagically)

Changing face of politics

2006-11-07T09:00:00.000+11:00

The world watches the US political scene rather closely, and this week is no exception. From my limited understanding we are possibly looking at an election result that will shift the balance of power in the congress to the Democrats from the Republicans. Having the other majority party controlling the purse-strings can only be a good thing for the country, as this puts a "check and balance" on the laws being passed. Whilst it does restrict the governing party from passing laws and getting things done, it does limit the governing party pushing through anything that takes their whim at this point in time.

We have much the same situation here in Oz, where as the "Liberal" party (read: ultra conservative) are governing with a majority in the house of representatives and the senate. This enables them to push through any old guff, usually at a midnight sitting when no one else is looking. Laws touted as good for the country, but it is usually found out years down the track their private businesses made bucketloads of money out of the arrangement. The company providing the logistics for the Iraq troop support is a prime example in the US. Conflict of interest, or is it a case of being in the right place at the right time?

Having a shift in power in the US congress could mean a number of things to Australia, with one noticed in the reports yesterday being about Australian corporate involvement in the lead up to the Iraq war. This could be bothersome to the Howard government considering the timing.

edit: The verdict on Saddam Hussein has come in. Interestingly four days before it should have been announced. It seems rather convenient this be announced before the US election rather than after.

edit2: Have a look at this youtube video to see what the US administration think of their little war and the announcement GWB staged when it was "all over". Now GWB has announced Iraq was all about the oil... like that was news to anyone with half a brain? What's the next excuse?

Marley revisited

2006-10-28T09:42:00.000+10:00

I finished the book, and it did finish on a positive note -- I guess you can't really leave a book on a negative note as it might tend to upset your reader-base. :) It did encourage me to not take my puppy for granted as much as I was, and it helped me see the positive things she brought into our lives. -- not just the wanton destruction (of which she is slowly growing out of).

For any of you who have read the book, or are thinking of it -- you can visit the Marley & Me website. It has a few more details and anecdotes that were not mentioned in the book.

Marley and John

2006-10-24T00:50:00.001+10:00

I'm currently reading a book, "Marley & Me" by John Grogan. The book details the author and his new family's life and centres around their Labrador "Marley" and his antics. I can relate to it completely as my own Labrador is laying (and snoring) by my feet after a hard night of terrorising the kittens and chewing rawhide bones. Marley however has flaws that my lab does not possess, so for that I am grateful. Unfortunately Marley is not immune to the issues of aging and the book does become sad as he looses the spring he once had.

Because so many of the things he describes are so close to my experience, it's sad as he details Marley's later problematic years. I realise part of life is death, and we all like to hold on to what we hold dear. Unfortunately holding on is not always the right thing to do.

edit:
I'm not sure I can bring myself to reading the rest of the book. I have a vague idea of what the next chapter will be, but there must be more to it as there's more than the one chapter left.

Cole enquiry again

2006-09-30T09:56:00.000+10:00

This continues to be in the mainstream media in Oz.

If the AWB execs are charged under the new anti-terror laws, will their defense not argue there is no evidence of a connection between terrorist activities and the Saddam Hussein regime? If so, does that mean the Australian courts will have to decide and rule on this matter? What implications does that have to the current Oz government and our involvement in Iraq?

Ok, you may say I'm obsessed with this, but it makes me angry that an Australian company (or any company for that matter) can get away with this...

AWB in the news again

2006-09-19T11:22:00.000+10:00

The AWB is in the news again, this time the court case has been resolved about which documents can be used in the Cole enquiry. Interestingly, the judge made comment the AWB deceived the United Nations.

Of course, our politicians knew nothing of this...

What I can't understand is why GWB isn't pissed at Johnnie-boy for undermining his invasion of Iraq by supplying them cash before it all went down.

What has been accomplished in the five-year war?

2006-09-16T07:57:00.000+10:00

I just found an interesting article on terrorism and what actually is being accomplished in the current climate. It's something I may have iterated previously, and I feel reassured that others have come to the same conclusions as I have.

It's now five years after 9/11 and since that event our respective governments have participated in (to varying degrees) a fear campaign to help keep this subject in the forefront, perpetuated in many cases by the media. In our case in Oz, our government sent us all a fridge magnet. (The link is a joke, the fridge magnet was not!)

The newsletter I mentioned earlier, for those of you who may not have read it, suggests the goal of terrorism is to create terror in the wider society it is targeting, and the deaths of the victims are just collateral damage. If this is correct, why should we be giving the terrorists what they desire? Why should *we* change what we do in our daily lives? Why should I feel like I am doing the wrong thing if I want to take a photograph outdoors?

Surely our political leaders and their advisers can see this? Is there not a better way to handle this threat?

Politics and crocodiles

2006-09-08T06:41:00.000+10:00

This week showed some dramatic turns of events.

Steve Irwin, known as the crocodile hunter, was killed by a Stingray whilst shooting a documentary on the Ocean's deadliest creatures. Whilst not a fan of Steve myself, you could not fault him for his enthusiasm for his chosen path in life. Of course, this has been a huge media story in Australia, with the local media camouring for position outside the Irwin family's reptile park.

Our politicians, lead by their illustrious leader, PM John Howard, are backflipping on a deal whereby politicians superannuation contributions were reduced from 69% to a more reasonable level of 9%. It seems that newbie pollies are crying poor and "woe is me", so Johnnie has increased their contributions to 15.4%. Of course, this has bipartisan support. Not only that, it has now been reported that if pollies get "voted out" or fail to fulfill their duties and are dismissed, they get a payout of approx $30k.

About the only thing politicians can agree on is they are underpaid...

yah, me too.

The Iron Chef reigns supreme! (or I now have my plumbing sorted)

2006-09-01T17:18:00.000+10:00

The light is at the end of the tunnel. We now have functioning kitchen appliances. We have a new gas cooktop, electric oven, sink, and most importantly, a dishwasher!

I know this must not seem so exciting to most, but for a number of weeks we have been sustaining ourselves with only a vague semblance of a kitchen (for a portion of that we did not even have benchtops), comprising of an el-cheapo electric hotplate and a spattering of several other appliances such as Sam's family heirloom of an electric frypan that is celebrating it's 100th birthday this year. Needless to say, having a kitchen in this state did not inspire either of us to cook, nor when we did cook did it motivate us to cook well -- more so just to sustain ourselves -- not necessarily the most healthiest of dishes.

It's even exciting being able to wash the dishes in the kitchen sink rather than do the weekly load in the laundry tub. However now the dirty dishes can be hidden away in the dishwasher rather than create a mount everest on the laundry floor, much to the annoyance of the kittens who must have felt it had become their own private café with an oh-too-tiresome menu.

I'm even looking forward to doing some work on it this weekend, as no longer does it seem so overwhelming (of sorts). Because the end is in sight, everything is attainable... The battle is almost ovah!

The irony of it all

2006-08-28T23:58:00.000+10:00

A colleague just arrived back from San Francisco where he attended a conference. Unfortunately he was caught in the uproar and fallout from the British terrorist scare.

Interestingly it seems, currently passengers are no longer able to carry a plastic bottle of water on an aircraft, however they are able to carry on a flammable liquid in a glass bottle. I wonder if anyone has tried smuggling water on board in a vodka bottle?

Can no one recognise by causing all this upheaval to the general public, it is only furthering the cause of the "evil-doers" by causing us to alter our behaviour? So the answer from the government is a general environment of mistrust and fear...

Ploughing along

2006-08-20T08:42:00.000+10:00

Our kitchen appliances arrived yesterday -- nice new oven, cooktop and rangehood. They're all sitting out in the garage just waiting to be installed. So, motivated by this, we actually put some time into the kitchen and got a few things happening.

Today the sink will be installed, and we'll be putting a number of door handles on, so the vast majority of what was left over to do will be finished. At the very least, the fact the door handles are on will make it look finished! :)

We're still yet to purchase a dishwasher -- the initial reason we chose to renovate the kitchen!

Also, for any of you using ecto to write & publish your blogs -- don't switch over to Blogger Beta just yet. Authors of ecto don't have Blogger Beta supported at the moment, and have no timeframes as to when it will be.

Drivers and their like

2006-08-16T22:23:00.000+10:00

I've noticed over the past 15+ years of driving that some motorists fall into some interesting categories. Or perhaps I have just made all this up to pass the time...

Creeps - The ones who can't resist creeping forward when stopped at the traffic lights. You can toy with these motorists when they're behind you at the lights, seeing how little they will move forward at a time.
Drifters - These guys can be downright dangerous. They drift inside, and sometimes outside their lane, perhaps due to a number of reasons, one being a hard night on the turps the night before, or a mobile phone inserted on their orifice.
Leadfoots (for want of a better term) - These just have to get past you, no matter what speed you are doing or where they are going.
Pull-outs - These guys misjudge (or don't care about) the speed of oncoming traffic and pull out into it, causing the traffic to slow or make erratic collision avoidance maneuvers. These drivers are oblivious to the world around them.
Beamers - No, not the car. These guys, oblivious to the world around them (detect a continuing theme?), drive with their high-beams on, thus blinding everyone else on the road. Either that or they are oblivious to their own instrumentation, especially the BRIGHT BLUE LIGHT in the centre of their dashboard.
One-eyed beamers - These drivers deem that if one of their lights is out, they should drive with the remaining light on high beam as it makes up for the inadequacy.
UCD (unhealthy car disorder) - Ever seen those cars with the blue led's on their windscreen wiper jets? Or the ones with the personalised plates? Not only do these motorists pay an annual fee for the right to have the personalised plate, but their originality astounds with "RX7" or "GTS".
Brakers - The drivers who sit on their brakes, or touch them all the time, even when driving on a flat surface. This includes the drivers who simply MUST brake from 80 to 60 right at the road sign.

I'm sure there are more than these and I may return to revise the list from time to time.

A day of nothing

2006-07-28T17:56:00.000+10:00

Having a sickful day today. This morning was slept away as it was more pleasant than being awake. Im sure everyone knows the drill when winter comes in, the runny nose, the sort throat, sinus pain and headache.

Blergh.

Waking the neighbours on a sunday morning

2006-07-23T12:11:00.000+10:00

This just struck me as amusing this morning.

Up early on a Sunday morning (and not working for once) I hear Clio barking ferociously at something. Thinking it may've been a rodent of some kind, I didn't pay any great heed to it until she kept it up for an extended period of time.

Investigating what all the ruckus was about, she lead me out to the backyard, where a number of hot air balloons were meandering about in the sky.

Obviously these are things that must be told they are not welcome here, nor in our airspace, especially on a Sunday morning when people are trying to sleep!

A nice brisk morning

2006-07-22T08:35:00.000+10:00

The weather has been cold at best recently, which is unfortunate as I had a week of mild winter weather when I was in Queensland for a week recently.

Now normally I'm not one to discuss the weather incessantly -- that domain belongs to my parents, but 3oC is an extreme (for here). The annoying thing is I had thought we had reached the low point of the mercury and were over it -- we usually have a week of single digit mornings, then we warm up but no such luck this year as it seems it is a little longer.

I can remember as a kid walking to school and stepping on the "crunchy grass" that had frosted up that night and this year is the only year since my childhood that I can remember seeing it. Needless to stay, I stomped on the "crunchy grass" whilst reliving my childhood. Some reading this may disagree and say I relive my childhood more often than not, but I say pthbttbtbt to them and "you eat werms".

The cold weather isn't so bad, but when you're hurtling down the freeway at 100km/h and stop at the traffic lights there is an urge to hug the warmest thing around -- no it's not the other drivers -- even though they are in their climate-controlled metal beasts they still look rather cold -- it is usually the engine just below you.

The nice part of riding a motorcycle is belonging to the unspoken motorcyclists club. There's the casual nod as another rider passes you in the opposite direction, or a simple nod or a light conversation at the traffic lights -- usually regarding the weather!

Can't sleep

2006-07-05T02:09:00.000+10:00

It's 1:55am on a Wednesday morning and I've attempted to sleep to no avail.

Perhaps it is because of concern about one of our cats and his respiratory problems, perhaps it's due to the lovely new addition to the household, who has the habit of waking you with claws that require extraction from your skin, perhaps it's the big project I have to have bedded down at work before the end of the week. Or perhaps it's the coffee I had before bed.

My mind needs an off switch tonight.

Kitchen installations

2006-06-11T16:45:00.000+10:00

We have taken delivery of the flat-pack kitchen and have endeavored to put it together. For the most part, putting it together is not a demanding task but their have been hiccups.

One of the difficulties has been identifying the correct pieces as some have been incorrectly labeled or just not labeled at all. Add to that we have found two pieces/shelves that have the laminate on the incorrect edge. On top of that, there is a hinged opening under the oven, that has the hinges placed incorrectly.

So, we're at the stage where we have the pantry in its permanent location, and a few cabinets sitting in place. We've kind of stalled because we need a few things to happen before we can continue and get things moving again.

Things to be completed:

Pieces corrected that I mentioned earlier, so we can put together one of the more important cabinets as this one is responsible for providing a large amount of stability for the cabinets next to it.
Sink and benchtop in place and the trap/drain connected.
Appliances in place so the plumber can be called to hook up the gas cooktop and dishwasher.

As you see, there are still a number of things to do, and this is only but a part. For the moment, the world is my kitchen (or lack thereof).

Incommunicado happenings

2006-06-04T22:26:00.000+10:00

It's amazing the things that happen when you are offline from the Internet.

The Pirate Bay, a notable torrent site where links to questionable content can be found, has been raided in Sweden. After news of the raid had leaked to the 'net, it seems the Swedish Police website was DOS'd and the alleged source of the attack has been reported. A protest in Stockholm was organised, as it is widely thought the Swedish government has just caved in to the big American conglomerate that is the MPAA. Even though servers have been removed, The Pirate Bay is back online, and due to the global nature of the Internet, it has been moved offshore.

When will the MPAA realise the futility of it all?

What a week it was

2006-06-03T09:16:00.000+10:00

Our floorboards have now been sanded & polished and they look delightful and make the house look that little bit cleaner.

We've been out of the house since Friday last week, so we took the opportunity for a well-deserved break over the weekend then stayed the following week with a friend which worked out better than expected.

The dog & cats have been in boarding, which was a harrowing experience as the first few times the boarding kennels were called they just reported the animals as being "fine". It seems there are some less than enthusiastic employees working there. Now the animals are returned and there seem to be no lasting negative effects of the experience. Clio now seems just a shade less boisterous than she was before -- which isn't uninvited. Perhaps now the wave of terror will subside.

So now we're back in and slowly unpacking the contents of our garage and replacing it ever-so gently back into the house onto the still-hardening lacquer. There's still a slight smell, but that should fade over the next few days with some airing.

The kitchen carcasses (don't you just love that term?) arrive tomorrow, so the space is needed in the garage as the staging-point. :)

The way forward to new kitchen

2006-05-21T09:33:00.000+10:00

We have ripped up the ceramic tiles in the kitchen, only to find delightful 70's-style-brown vinyl tiles. Most of the carpet has also been taken up -- bar one room. We have demolished the kitchen -- luckily we have another one ready to be delivered! :)

Kitchen Before

Kitchen Now

We have found a tap, in the middle of the floor, underneath the old breakfast bar. This was unexpected, but hopefully we can tie it off without too much trouble and get it out of the way under the floor.

We need the house empty with all the floorboards exposed for this Saturday when the floor sanding will occur. After then it will be a few days without internet whilst we live in a less smelly location!

Iran and our track record

2006-05-17T07:38:00.000+10:00

This pretty much sums it up.

Look George, I dug a hole!

2006-05-16T16:57:00.000+10:00

Our illustrious PM has gone on another US jaunt, as he frequently does, to catch up with his mate George W and promise him a few more troops and various other secret things.

This time he dug a hole.

I'm sure there's a myriad of captions that can be added to this photo :)

Get yer back into it!
An honest day's work?
(As well as several derogatory versions I can think of!)

In other news, CNN turned on the cameras a little too early before GWB was ready

The Media circus

2006-05-07T08:57:00.000+10:00

The state of the Australian media is ridiculous.

There have been two miners trapped in a collapsed mine in Beaconsfield down in Tasmania for the last fortnight or so, and the Australian media have swamped the poor town, clamoring for interviews and even disrupting the rescue attempt on occasion.

On the plus side, miners in the local pub spun a yarn to an ABC reporter that was actually reported, indicating the media's desperation.

The PM must be devastated, as it has taken him and his ministers, the AWB and the Cole report off the front pages.

Renovation hell

2006-04-30T09:06:00.000+10:00

We're in the midst of renovation mode at the moment. The ceramic tiles in the kitchen and the carpet throughout the rest of the house is coming out, the floorboards will be polished and then the new kitchen will go in complete with lovely new stainless-steel appliances with a DISHWASHER! We've been without a dishwasher for about 18 months now and let me tell you it was really hard to going back to hand washing dishes again after becoming reliant on technology to do it. :)

In fact, a large part of the reason why we started the kitchen reno's was because we wanted a dishwasher. :)

Currently just under 50% of the ceramic tiles are up so the kitchen looks a little like a disaster zone. When that's done there's going to be some walls to pull out of the way before the floor polishing dudes can work their magic. We have to have everything out of the house for at least three days for that, including us, so that will be a logistical nightmare on its own.

It will be happy days when it's all done -- pulling up ceramic tiles is murder. :)

Cole, tips and noises in the night

2006-04-18T01:08:00.000+10:00

Our PM told the Cole inquiry that he was sure he had not been told of the misappropriations that the AWB had been up to in Iraq. He's a shrewd pollie, so either he is lying through his teeth or he had made sure there is no paper trail leading back to him. Either way it has been silenced in the news so the apathetic Australian news media have forgotten about the whole deal and as usual no one in government will be accountable for this.

We went to the tip today. Ooops I mean "recycling centre". A tip is a tip is a tip. It had the wind I remember as a kid, but it had far less seagulls. It also was staffed by delightful people who were only too pleased to help -- I think they needed to take a break from drinking tip juice. We were dumping various junk left from the previous tenants of our house, including an abundance of cardboard boxes. We also cut down some trees in the yard that were in various stages of diseases or decay before they infected other trees or fell on various structures. It's always sad cutting down trees, but it had to be done and it was fun to use a chainsaw. It reminded me of the original "Doom" when we would have chainsaw deathmatches. :)

It has been extremely windy tonight. I got up as the creakiness and scrapings caused by various wind noises stopped me from sleeping. Not that I normally have problems sleeping, it was more that I wanted to find out what the noises were and if something needed to be done about them before something came crashing through the window of something equally as disastrous. Needless to say, my paranoia was unfounded and all it was probably was a tree scraping on the guttering or something as simple as that.

I can't recall...

2006-04-11T23:51:00.000+10:00

It seems to be the defense of many a politician in hot water. In the 80's, we saw Ronald Regan using it using the Iran-Contra affair.

Yesterday it was the Deputy Prime Minister's turn to front the Cole Inquiry into the AWB paying bribes to the previous regime of Iraq and he fingered the blame elsewhere. Today it was the Foreign Minster's turn . Both basically said the same thing, "I can't recall reading specific memos or cables". These are senior ministers the Government of Australia and they can't recall basic events. Do we really want people who are not accountable running the country??

Thursday it will be the Prime Minister's turn. I wonder if he can't recall either...

We can rebuild him -- we have the technology

2006-04-09T09:48:00.000+10:00

I've embarked on the rebuilding-my-unix box project here at home. I've done some more troubleshooting and have discovered that it is indeed the hard disk that is faulty. What's worse, it is the /usr partition on the hard disk and unfortunately that's where all the user accounts are which means that I have lost anything there as it was not backed up. Before all of you fall over yourselves to comment "I told you so" -- I already know. :)

Oh well -- a time to start fresh. :)

I have an 80GB disk to rebuild with, and I have decided to stay with FreeBSD, but I have experimented with a few new FreeBSD projects that have surfaced recently designed to make FreeBSD usable as a desktop OS. These distro's are built on FreeBSD and have all the gui's sitting on top to make them usable "out-of-the-box" so to speak.

Desktop with BSD ain't gunna happen just yet...

PCBSD was my first choice, and it seemed promising. It installed without incident, (albeit slowly -- the guys who created the CD should be smart enough to realise if a CD has to seek from one side of the CD to the other it can take a LONG time!) and then I rebooted -- "can't find boot" it says. After some forum searching It seems it wants to live on the primary IDE controller, which is not the most efficient place for it to live in my system. After I installed it on the primary It told me "can't find kernel" -- the joy. I can't understand why it's so finicky on hardware considering its based on FreeBSD v6.0. That was enough fluffing around for me.

DesktopBSD was tried next, but that annoyed me before it even had a chance to install. It seems the installer does believe in partitions on the hard disk and wants to use the entire thing. This is great for the newbies who want to try it out, but they're seriously restricting their user base. It was based on FreeBSD v5.5 which is a stream that may go away soon in the future also. It booted, and displayed a the gui KDE interface, but the one huge partition didn't sit well with me so...

I dismissed the BSD distro's as gui "fluff" and installed good old FreeBSD -- v6.0. It installed (not with a pretty gui), booted and ran. It took a bit more work to configure, but if you factor in the troubleshooting of the distro's it would've been easier to just go with it in the first place. It's still not configured as a replacement just yet, but it is booting and ready for the finishing touches.

The linux distro's are streaks ahead with the desktop situation. A work colleague has SUSE linux on his desktop -- it allows him to do all his work -- even to the point of connecting to the Novell servers, and without all the extra fluff that needs to be installed on a WinXP machine such as virus checkers, firewalls and the extra things that work likes to run in the background of PC's to try and maintain a semblence of control.

I think I'll be doing the same soon.

Traffic flows

2006-04-06T22:20:00.000+10:00

Traffic flows are fascinating if not frustrating. I'm sure this is taught in Civil & Geo Engineering, and I am sure there is a branch of mathematics or statistics that specifically deals with this. For example, there's a 2km stretch of freeway that I daily travel on that invariably is busy. The stretch is straight, and there are no on-ramps or off-ramps. There is no valid reason why it should be busy, but it more often is than not. It only takes one driver to slow down some and gawk at something by the side of the road for the flow to be reduced and a ripple-effect made to all the rest of the traffic.

April fools jokes and time zones

2006-04-06T08:52:00.000+10:00

April fools jokes are great and can be quite amusing when done well, but time-zones really can cause havoc with the whole deal. I'm reading the usual newsfeeds this morning, it's April 2nd here in Oz but April 1st in the USA, and I'm confronted with a pink slashdot and umpteen articles about "OMG Ponies!". The content is questionable -- really guys is this the best you can do? Can't you at least present the pink page to me dependent on my local time? I should patent that idea -- an amazing concept!

I had my boot hard drive fail in my FreeBSD router here at home. It's the first real hard drive failure I've really had to deal with in a semi-important machine as this machine acts as a NAT router for the Internet, dhcp & dns server for the local hosts, and web proxy to keep traffic down. I had to turn off the FreeBSD machine and try and bring up a semblance of Internet normality using my WinXP/Games machine and Internet Connection Sharing. I have to say it doesn't work anywhere near as well, with my mac "falling off the net" if it goes to sleep -- never happened pre-ICS! Ugh.

The frighteners

2006-03-28T19:01:00.000+11:00

We have been locking Clio out the back, that is we have been closing the adjoining gate so she cannot "disrupt" the pot plants. Today however she could not be seen when I arrived home. She wasn't sleeping by the back gate as I would have expected. It's not unknown for her not to hear my approach. Granted it is difficult to not hear the banging and clanging of garage and gates, nor is it difficult to hear my motorcycle as it approaches. Nevertheless, there have been occasions where she has been caught napping.

Lots of thoughts ran through my head, and I was just about to go ask the neighbours if they had seen anyone lurking about (nothing else was out of place) or if they had seen an escaping black labrador (less likely). Perhaps due to her turning 12 months

She was indeed napping. Napping inside the outdoor toilet that adjoins the garage. She had pushed herself in, and due to the small size of the room and her clumsy big arse, she had wedged the door closed and she could not get out. I have no idea how long she had been there, but she was happy to see me!

Athletic asylum seekers

2006-03-25T09:28:00.000+11:00

The Commonwealth Games have certainly done alot for Melbourne. We have seen records broken and many faces of winners and the disappointment of athletes losing all at the last moment. Of interest though are the reports that as the Games come to a close, the size of the Sierra Leone team is rapidly dwindling as the team members go AWOL. They've lost 11 out of the 22 so far -- I guess they just don't wanna go back. It reminds me of the days of the cold war when we would see reports of the Russian and East German athletes scaling fences and squeezing out portholes in ships to claim asylum. This country however doesn't have a great record of treating asylum seekers well, with our government going to extraordinary lengths to avoid letting them in, not to mention the detention centres and the bad press they have always been receiving.

Jana wins by a mile

2006-03-24T00:14:00.000+11:00

The Comm Games this evening were interesting and would've been more enjoyable but for two things; the yobs that were in the seats in front out of us that were more interested in drinking beer, and the sound system in the bay of the MCG we were in was unintelligible -- if not for a handy FM radio, we would not have had any idea on what was going on. The hi-light of the evening was Jana Pitman winning the Women's 400m hurdle and the 80,000 supporters in the stadium going crazy.

Channel 9 coverage of Comm Games

2006-03-19T23:17:00.000+11:00

Watching the weightlifting coverage of the Comm Games tonight on TV tonight reminded me how much I dislike the commentary of Darrell Eastlake. He is so over the top it is off-putting and makes me either turn the volume down, or just turn off completely. I had thought he had chosen a different career, but unfortunately he's been let out of the asylum much to my dismay. Darrell, I'm not interested in your interpretation of what you think is going on in the athlete's mind as it is more often than not worth listening to.

This is the same Darrell Eastlake that was ejected from the 1990 Commonwealth Games in Auckland for "noise pollution".

Couldn't put it better myself.

Again with the games!

2006-03-19T00:45:00.000+11:00

We went to the track cycling today at the Comm Games. I wasn't all that interested in the track cycling before going, being more interested in the road events like the Tour de France, however the atmosphere was great and we saw some top cyclists and even witnessed a Commonwealth Games record broken. It was held at the "multipurpose venue" which is an odd and boring name for the venue, considering I am sure it was called Vodafone arena a few weeks ago. But then again, Vodafone aren't a sponsor of the games and Telstra are...

One of the more memorable pics from the days cycling

I am supposed to pull some overtime tomorrow, which may be interesting considering I need to get into the CBD and the Comm Games Marathon is on. We'll see...

Never say never

2006-03-18T08:06:00.000+11:00

Isn't that a bad title to an Ian Flemming film? Ok, it's more in reference to what our illustrious PM said on tv the other day about policy. It looks like he's strongly considering the sale of uranium to India, overturning current policy that doesn't allow such sales to non-signatories to the Nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

In other news, the AWB scandal is still heating up, with the AU intelligence agencies knowing about the kickbacks to the old regime in Iraq for eight years. Hard to believe the PM had not been informed or even took an interest in an Australian company breaking the UN embargo imposed on Iraq during the period after Desert Storm took place.

Commonwealth Games and traffic

2006-03-17T22:46:00.000+11:00

Melbourne is currently hosting the 2006 Commonwealth Games. The Commonwealth Games are like a smaller version of the Olympics for all the countries that have been "colonised" by the English in the past few hundred years.

Because of the games, there are many roads that have had lanes reserved for games traffic. You would think would have the effect of increasing traffic congestion, however there seems to be less traffic within the city itself. Drivers appear to be frustrated and less tolerant at the moment as I have witnessed many more road-rage and accidents than normal.

I'm going to a few events, however for some I am sure that the games could not end too soon.

Pets and motorists

2006-03-14T19:25:00.000+11:00

I've seen my share of crazy motorists in my time, but the irresponsible ones with the pets take the cake. I once rode past a Range Rover in one of the more affluent inner-city surburbs of Melb, when I had to do a double-take as there was a medium-sized "foo foo" dog sitting on the drivers lap.

Tonight, whilst waiting at the traffic lights, a car drove across the intersection. Nothing untoward in that, however inside the car on the front dashboard was a large fluffly white cat. Yawning nonetheless. Like this was a normal location for transportation. Not only that, but the driver (the only other occupant) was patting the cat.

"I'm sorry officer -- I was distracted when my cat lept off the dashboard and wrapped itself around my face like that scene in Alien"

Cartoon of the day

2006-03-12T21:31:00.000+11:00

This cartoon is from The Australian today. For those of us not in Oz, there's a new TV ad for Tourism Australia that has been banned from UK TV for offensive language. Amusing, considering.

Restaurants

2006-03-11T10:56:00.000+11:00

Thai is my favourite food, so my world is complete for the moment when the discovery of a Thai restaurant nearby is made, and we made that discovery last night. I'm in no way a food connoisseur, but I tend to judge the quality of a restaurant on the staples that I have compiled during my years of restaurant-going, so at Thai it's tom yum soup and/or curry puffs, and at Chinese it's sweet corn soup. The curry puffs whilst not the best, were passable and not oily so I shall reserve my judgement until our next encounter. :) The pad khing and the pad grapow were quite tasty however!

Jack of spam

2006-03-11T10:19:00.000+11:00

I have become sick of it once more. I have heard figures that 30% of email into work is spam. That's an enormous amount and a huge waste of network bandwidth that needs to be paid for!

Recently, or at least in the past few weeks, I've been getting a rather large influx of spam to my person email account. "not satisfied with ur unit"
is the most recent subject line I have been receiving, so they're less explicit than they used to be but no less of an annoyance. Usually the anti-spam filters at work filter it out, but for some reason it has been getting through and it has become an annoyance. So I've decided to re-implement my updated anti-spam system of SpamAssassin and we'll see how it goes.

It has hit the news as of late that the Canadian Olympic skier turned Australian, Dale Begg-Smith is the purveyor of such spam, spyware and malware. I wonder how much spam he gets?

Star Wars I on TEN Melb this evening

2006-03-10T22:51:00.000+11:00

They're playing that dog of a movie George Lucas calls Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace on free-to-air TV tonight. There's no subtitles for any of the non-humans in the movie! (or am I remembering it wrong?) Not that it makes any difference to the enjoyment or lack thereof in this movie, it just means they must have the trainee on the control room at TEN tonight. Why then am I watching it I hear you ask? Good question.

My fascination in all things Star Wars started waning after I saw this movie. We got gold-class tickets to this movie, believing all the hype. Needless to say the disappointment that I had after the movie got out was representative of the others in the group I saw it with. There was so much wrong with this movie that I can't even begin.

I wonder how George Lucas thinks of his more recent creations? Does he think of them like the black sheep of the family that are not spoken about in mixed company? :)

Returning to normal?

2006-03-09T00:28:00.000+11:00

Life is slowly returning to normal. However, since being off work and at home I have noticed that this home ownership is hard work! Even though the house is in great condition, there's still tons to do -- mostly niggly little things, like fixing the gate etc, but there's lots of these small tasks to get done. Some cost money, others are just time consuming. This tends to take the novelty off the new home. :)

In other news, it's being reported that our beloved PM is considering changing AU Gov policy and selling uranium to India.

Online at last!

2006-03-06T23:55:00.000+11:00

The ISP tech came out today and verified that my line did indeed not work with his equipment. That meant that it was their problem and not with my gear. :) It ended up being the port at the exchange and is now fixed. Life can now return to normal, at least that's how it feels!

My network at home consists of the ADSL modem that feeds into a unix workstation that functions as a file server, web proxy, dns & dhcp server. Unfortunately my ADSL modem is too ancient to perform some of the features the unix workstation can as some of the newer ones can. Might have to look at that if we need to save on power consumption. :)

Our cheesy PM John Howard is currently touring India trying to drum up trade and following GWB about. It seems the Indian PM is interested in purchasing uranium, however the AU Gov have a policy they will not sell to any non-signatory of the Nuclear non-proliferation treaty and he beat around the bush when the Indian PM mentioned it on the international news. Interesting news today had Hindu priests purify a site which GWB had visited. I'm sure there's a message in there somewhere.

Gardening days

2006-03-05T09:29:00.000+11:00

This must be a riveting read. :)

Today has been set aside for performing some gardening duties. This yard is much easier to maintain than the last place we were in mainly due to its size -- that and the knowledge that it's mine, all mine. Having said that, there's still plenty to do! We've reorganised the garage to make it usable, and there's less boxes stored out there now.

It's 9:30am on a Sunday and the Greek music is blaring from a house down the street. Such joy.

There has been other Clio destruction, but pictures will have to wait for my broadband connection issue to be resolved. Hopefully Monday afternoon will show me back online!

Still no 'net and our bond

2006-03-03T08:41:00.000+11:00

My ISP still hasn't got their arse into gear and got the ADSL going yet. Their computer says it's all done but it ain't working. I spent part of yesterday afternoon with their tech support on the phone going through the basics and it's like the Layer-2 is online, ie: the modem shows sync but I can't authenticate and I get the dreaded 678 error with WinXP. I guess we got the apprentice at the exchange this time. Funny thing is, last time I moved we had this exact same issue. It must be a complex task to organise, or perhaps I just have the shit touch in arranging these things. *sigh*. Besides, there are more important things to worry about.

The agent for the old place did his inspection and noted there were things that needed tending to. Nothing huge, just things that we (or I) missed when we were cleaning. We weren't interested in revisiting the old place and going through the rigmarole of picking up the keys and then dropping them off afterwards so we opted for just getting their cleaner to do the work and they take it out of our bond. We have enough around here to get sorted. *another sigh*.

Things to do around here (in no particular order):

fix two leaky taps with new washers
fix an intermittently dimming downlight in the lounge
curtain for the kitchen
hook for the rear blinds
remove "fishy" transfers from over the bath
finish setting up the surround sound amp
finish setting up the computer room
extend phone line to computer room
do the kitchen up, complete with new appliances and more storage space!

Life without 'net and movin' on

2006-03-01T08:28:00.000+11:00

Currently 'net connections have been the result of a modem dial-up, which is workable (as long as you don't want to do too much) albeit slow. My ISP say I shall be online by Thursday afternoon, and I've just tested and it would appear they work to tight schedules. Mornings have been kind of quiet and I've had to find other things to do rather than read the morning news.

We cleaned the old place, watched the carpet guy do his thing and then handed in the keys. The old place looks lovely and clean unless you look closely in certain areas. :)

Things I'll miss about the old place:

The space -- it was a big house on a huge block.. it's a shame they'll tear it down to build units
Location location location -- travel to work was probably a bit more direct than where we are now

Things I won't miss:

Maintaining the garden -- the block was an irregular shape, so it was a pain to mow
Tacks that poked up through the carpet joins and the crappy hard-wearing carpet
The mice, rats and possums that infested the place -- we even saw a mouse on moving day
The local council -- for no specific reason other than their recycle bins
The animals the neighbours allowed to run wild in the court

The above means we have now officially moved. Nothing of ours is at the old place, it's all here -- piled in the garage. So, today will be a day of unpacking said garage and rearranging it into the house somewhere. Not very exciting, but at least it doesn't involve going out, and doing things that have a time limit imposed. Clio has already been unsupervised in the garage and the wave of terror has ensued and I will update the destruction list when I get back online.

Moved in

2006-02-28T01:25:00.000+11:00

Wow. Such a trial and tribulation this move has been. The removalists office fooked oop and only sent one truck instead of two, hence the guys had to make a second trip and that cost us $$$ that could be better spent on better things! All the stuff is here, but most of the boxes are still boxed up and sitting in the garage until we start unpacking and rearranging.

The living room is repainted and it looks lovely. The walls are "shooting star" which is a greyish-blue, and the feature wall is "christallis" which is a dark purple. We got fancy with the feature wall and got one of those newfangled textured paints -- in our case, suede and Sam painstakingly painted the herringbone pattern. It's come up a treat though -- might post a pic if I get the inclination.

Sleepy time now. Tomorrow is do the usual vacating cleaning bizzo then we can drop of the keys and be free!

Oh yeah. Had to resort to modem tonight! How quaint.

Hitch Hiker's 20th anniversary and Infocom

2006-02-27T01:01:00.000+11:00

The BBC have put the Infocom adventure of the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy online for all to enjoy. For anyone who survived the 80's (and even the 70's) if you were involved in computers it was only a matter of time until you were exposed to these. The idea was that you used you imagination (does anyone have one of those anymore?) and from a brief description and some luck you worked your way through puzzle after puzzle until you solved the adventure, typing in commands for you adventurer/character to perform. Most of the adventures were notoriously difficult, but usually with perseverance they could be solved.

Infocom were bought out by Activision in '86, who didn't do a hell of alot with it, instead trying to morph the text adventure into something more glitzy and graphical which didn't sell all that well, so they let the game genre die. The games are still kept alive by some cult followers of "Interactive Fiction" on the internet. There's a good history of Infocom that is worth a read if you were wondering what happened to these guys.

Watch out for the grues when you turn the lights out!

Day of disconnection

2006-02-26T23:51:00.000+11:00

Tomorrow we move all our worldly possessions into our new house. We've already spent a few days back and forth already, taking over gear we don't require the removalists to move such as the more delicate things such as pictures and computer gear.

Tomorrow is also the day that we will loose our ADSL connection, and will probably be without until Wednesday as the ISP says "three working days" to ADSL-enable the new phone line.

Whatever did the world do without 'net.

First day as a home renovator

2006-02-25T22:35:00.000+11:00

Today was the first day as a home owner/renovator. We bought seemingly endless things, including paints and paraphernalia, putty/filler (to fill a large hole) and various other things we did not plan for. We bought an orbital sander to assist with preparing one of the walls for painting, and as you know, one can never have too many power tools. :)

Clio came over with us, and along followed the wave of destruction...

The keys!

2006-02-25T07:39:00.000+11:00

It seems this blog has become about moving into our new house. I'm not sure if that was the original intention, but it has worked out that way. :)

Annnnyway, we got the keys. Or should I say "the key". There was only one, and it was purple. We have things to do in the house:

remove horrid cork wall -- DONE 25th Feb
prepare and paint
fix garage door
wash/replace curtains
map out kitchen for a remodel
get rid of a horrid tasteless shelf/bench in the kitchen

Settlement date

2006-02-24T10:42:00.000+11:00

Well, today is settlement date on our house. So I'm basically waiting until I get the call to go pick up the keys and start moving things in.

It's a little sad leaving this place, it has after all been good to us. The estate agents are less conservative here and allowed us to have pets and they never bothered with inspections. It allowed us to save for our house that has today become a reality thanks to the hard work put in by Sam and the valued assistance by our valued friend & mortgage broker.

At the same time, it's very exciting moving into a new place that we will own -- or will be paying off... :) We'll need to find new take-away places, local supermarkets & shops, and dog-walking parks.

We'll be without internet until I wrestle with the ISP. :( I don't expect it will be noticed though as we'll be too busy moving things!

Inspection successful

2006-02-23T23:20:00.000+11:00

We had our inspection, albeit delayed by a day. The power & gas company came through and had us connected. All the appliances seemed to be in working order, the only thing we couldn't test was the central heating as it had a control panel that is going to require some figuring. The double garage contains a second stove & sink, and there's a garden/tool shed up the backyard that will serve as a workshop nicely. There's plenty of well established fruit trees that are bearing fruit in abundance.

Whines for the day

2006-02-23T15:13:00.000+11:00

Cyclists who don't stop at red lights. I'm a cyclist myself, and I have a great disdain for "fellow" cyclists that expect the road rules don't apply to them. A cyclist this morning, adorned in the usual colourful lycra and shaved legs -- let's not get into that discussion -- sailed past me through a light that had been red for a number of seconds -- through an intersection on a major road.
Cleaning ovens. Yeah, I know it has to be done. So it's done.
ANTS!

Invasion!

2006-02-22T22:57:00.000+11:00

Nope, it's not GWB looking for WMD's.

The ants are still invading! Please tell me why, in the name of all things great and small, ants would be congregating en masse, in of all places, the bathroom! There is no food, nothing sweet, nor anything that would attract ants in that room. All I can think of is maybe they are regrouping in there, in preparation for an attack to be mounted elsewhere.

We have no defensive weapons available. They're all packed! We do however have bathroom cleaner that is made with orange oil and that seems to be effective in stopping them and clearing up their scent trails.

Blogging, and electoral obligations.

2006-02-22T11:08:00.000+11:00

Entering blog entries with blogger is ok, but I found the interface to be a little messy and slow. I found a nice application called Ecto that interfaces with blogger and is much nicer to use. They even make a Windoze and Mac version. It may be worth a look-in to anyone wrestling with bloggers' interface. It has other features too, like iPhoto and flickr interfaces that I am as yet unsure how to use.

We both received an "Apparent failure to vote notice" yesterday. Voting is compulsory in this lovely land of Oz -- even useless local council ones, and it seems they wish to ensure we know it. It seems we "apparently" failed to vote in last November's local council elections. The elections were held via postal vote, so they mailed you a voting slip and you filled it out, got someone to witness it, and sent it back. The only thing is I recall filling them out and posting them! I don't know exactly when, but I know it occurred. So, we shall put that on the forms as the "detailed explanation to support your response" on the back of the form and hope they don't fine us. Acording to the Monash City Council's website, it's a $50 fine... which isn't a huge amount but it's more the principle of the thing!

House woes/annoyances

2006-02-21T23:22:00.000+11:00

There's been an annoyance with the house. We were "supposed" to have our final inspection before settlement tomorrow afternoon, where we walk around the house and "kick the tyres" so-to-speak. This includes testing that all appliances are working and functional. Well, the tenants have left (yay) and as one would expect, they disconnected the utilities. One would've expected the owner to take them on in the interim and make sure the new buyers (us) are happy that all is working. This apparently has not been the case, and *WE* have had to get onto our providers and try and get the utilities connected so the inspection can proceed. Because the providers typically need *some* notice, they can't connect until Thursday, so our inspection is now shifted to Thursday afternoon. *sigh*

We don't expect there to be a problem, and like all tenants (including us!) they would have bitched if something was less than functional.

I hate ants!

2006-02-21T23:05:00.000+11:00

I have a loathing fascination of ants. I think it stems from my childhood where I had a number of negative experiences with ants' nests. I can appreciate them, and they are fascinating with their social structures but they nevertheless cause me much annoyance when they traipse through my house!

Overtime

2006-02-19T08:54:00.000+11:00

It was a looong day yesterday. I work as one of two senior network tech's for a large organisation and we had a major network design upgrade scheduled yesterday. I won't bore anyone with the technical details, suffice it to say that it was a big design change that would provide much advantage to the organisation. Unfortunately our upgrade didn't fully succeed. We ran out of outage window for troubleshooting and had to (mostly) revert back to our previous configuration. There's obviously disappointment in that, and annoyance in yourself that you couldn't make it work.

However, after today I don't care! I will be off-call and on three weeks leave and shifting into our new house and the priority will be shifted there!

Broadband and its usefulness

2006-02-12T10:33:00.000+11:00

The state of broadband internet access in Australia is abysmal. I have a 512/128Kbps ADSL service at home (that thankfully work pay for) and it's barely passable for doing anything other than browsing the web. Elsewhere in the world, the entry-level broadband bandwidth is 24Mbps. The government is not encouraging the ISP's to provide faster service -- they've only just got Telstra to provide ADSL services to rural areas.

Telstra (the largest ISP here) are looking at embarking on a pay-per-view video over IP service in the coming months, and at the abysmal speeds of the service they provide I don't see how it can be sustained. Imagine this; you are at home and decide to watch X movie. You pay your $5 (or whatever), and six hours later it is ready to watch -- only on your PC screen. No instant gratification -- you'll need to plan ahead. Then after that download, your "soft quota" on your "unlimited download" account is filled for the month. How useful is that?

They'll have to make some changes...

Stalkings

2006-02-11T20:48:00.000+11:00

As new "home owners" we have taken every opportunity to drive past our new home (or stalk the house as we have termed it) whenever we were in the area. The house currently has tenants and we were concerned they may become difficult, pushing back the date when we would be able to move in. Today we "stalked" the house and saw a big blue removalist truck in the driveway. Hoorah!

Things are finally on track.

Clio the destroyer

2006-02-10T22:20:00.000+11:00

I have decided to keep a list. A list of things our 10 month-old Labrador pup has destroyed so far (in no particular order). Here is the evidence of the no-goodness -- I have provided photographic evidence where possible.

discrete rear entrance to veggie-patch
small shrub, freshly planted
electrical plug ducted heating
more pot plants
towels down from washing line
unserviceable fan
several bags of potting mix
various doggie toys
pot plants (several times over)
various plastic pots
garden plants
two netballs
daily water dish relocation
pottery food dish
bottle of charlie carp plant fertiliser
expensive flea resistant doggy mattress
snooza bed (only slightly chewed)
"clam shell" toddler wading pool
garden rake
watering can
new roll of masking tape
various buckets -- this is of one of two
kitchen tidy -- there's not much left!
potatos & safeway carry bag
hose fittings -- we now have brass ones!
more pot plants bought the previous day
the garden hose as the fittings weren't tasty

This is, by no means, a complete list!
Check back soon -- chances are there will have been an update.

World and local happenings

2006-02-09T22:46:00.000+11:00

The furor over some published cartoons in Denmark continues to occur throughout the world. It is difficult to believe something as simple as cartoons in a newspaper can cause such a backlash, and cause people to resort to violence. It has been reported that the cartoons published differed from a pamphlet that was handed out to the some of the protesters, the pamphlet containing more offensive cartoons -- so you can understand how it may be possible that these protesters were misled by "leaders" with their own agendas.

Locally we have our own scandal. The Australian Wheat Board is being investigated for $300M being paid the former Iraqi leadership in the form of payments to a bodgy transport company. Australian diplomats and senior ministers have also been implicated, with the former Australian Ambassador to the USA swearing to US Senator Coleman, that it was not occurring at the time. If they come out of this squeaky clean this time then there is something seriously wrong.

The AU Federal Senate has just voted to remove the Health Minister's veto over the controversial drug RU486. Meaning the minister no longer will be able to force his (and most of the non-female members of his party's) view on the Australian public.

Packings

2006-02-09T22:38:00.000+11:00

There has been lots of packing that has gone on in the past few weeks. We've packed most everything away in boxes that we don't deem as immediately neccessary in preparation for the move. Of course, there's still more to be done but the vast majority it done for the moment. It would help if we had the keys to the new house -- we could at least move a few things over before the removalists arrive to shift the heavy stuff.

We continue to drive by the house to make sure things still look ok and to continually remind us what the house we've just bought looks like!

Early adopting has its price

2006-02-04T00:11:00.000+11:00

I was an "early adopter" of Digital TV here in Melbourne. I had first bought a standard definition set top box almost on a whim and realised the benefits it gave in the quality of the broadcasts I could view -- lovely crisp pictures with 5.1 sound. I soon realised this device had its limitations -- yes the quality was wonderful, but if I wanted to record programs then I had to resort to my VCR that could only record inferior analogue TV. For anyone reading this who has moved forward to a far superior product will realise it is all but painful to have to take that step back.

I coped with this situation for a time, but did the research and finally purchased a Topfield 5000pvrt SD box with a 80GB hard drive. Now we were able to record TWO channels and watch a prerecorded show off the Topfield -- impressive. There were issues though. Not only would shows not record after the had recorded the previous week, but the timer would disappear from the list! Frustrating at best.

This seems to be now solved due to a recent firmware upgrade I have installed. The saviour of many a recent device. Whilst they allow flexibility, I've always been of the opinion that firmware-upgradable devices give manufacturers license to release beta-quality electronics on the unsuspecting public. I can expect this in equipment that has reason for upgrades, such as networking gear, but consumer electronics?

Expectations of service quality have been lowered. Even the mobile phone comes with a price. Next to the land-line, the quality of service is abysmal (it is getting better). PABX's (for land-lines) are rated with "five nines" reliability -- that's 99.999%! Yet we've all watched someone (or been there) wander about from one side of the corridor to the other like a crazed individual shouting into their "firmware-upgradable" mobile phone "can you hear me now? can you hear me NOW?".

West Wings

2006-02-03T23:03:00.000+11:00

The West Wing is refreshing. It has dialogue. It has storylines that can sometimes be thought-provoking. It also can be remarkably close to current world events.

It was moved from a reasonable time to the 11pm timeslot by the commercial channel that was showing it here in AU. It's workable, but it means recording and due to the late night timeslot the start time is invariably pushed back (sometimes as much as 45mins and more) by the overrunning more popular shows that are screening earlier. This means any recording has to finish up to two hours later than it originally should if you want to ensure you catch the end.

The ABC just announced it would be screening the West Wing this year. Whilst the ABC can also be lax with their time schedules, there is the added benefit that the ABC has no ads... At least for the moment! This is indeed good news for all Oz West Wing fans..

TV and the Internet

2006-02-02T23:58:00.000+11:00

I was never a huge TV watcher as an adult. Mostly my interests lie with the "boring stuff", documentaries and the quality TV that is available on the ABC and SBS networks in Oz. There does occasionally come TV programmes that do peak my interest, and this season it is "House". Perhaps it's due to the "English" satirical humour that shows through.

In addition to this I must put the free-to-air TV stations on notice. Get your act together guys or you'll be done out of business and no one will be left to watch your cruddy botflpybofl ads and the like. The internet is coming of age and becoming useful to the masses -- by having the latest TV shows available. Ok, so the picture quality is not exactly broadcast quality, and with our current abysmal broadband connections in Oz they take hours to download, but at least they are available and watchable. The consumers shouldn't be taken for granted, or left in the lurch by having their show left in mid-season with no explanation or they'll find other means. Indeed, some already have.

Housings

2006-02-02T23:49:00.000+11:00

Every day I get a reminder (I think I hear voices). *grin* A reminder that the day of moving shall once again be upon us. However, this time, we don't just move into just another crappy agent-controlled rat-infested hovel, we move into our own rat-infested hovel! And with our own outdoor toilet!

Contemptible

2006-01-31T20:30:00.000+11:00

I used to be one of those who held Mac users in contempt. If you make a computer simple to use, only simpletons would use it I thought. :) Not to mention the old MacOS was inflexible and the GUI way was the only way. Not that I was Windows user, I was mostly a Unix geek who toyed with *BSD and Linux and only used Windows for my work applications where there was no option.

Well. A while back I was given the choice of taking a Mac G4 PowerBook OSX to replace my aging Compaq laptop. The first few weeks were tentative and apprehensive, but I have grown to appreciate the Mac, and now find it far more flexible than my Windows laptop. Not to mention it looks far cooler. :)

Not really, but here's the inaugural posting

2006-01-29T07:41:00.000+11:00

Well, here goes with my first posting on this. Of course, I doubt you will find the meaning of life, the universe and everything here but it's all part of the journey. :)

Originally, I just got this blogger account to assist my partner with her move from an older, less intuitive blogging site to this one. However, lately I thought I should give this a go, just so I have an extra place to rant, and so I have more of an understanding.