Personal on Sine Qua Non

Outdoor plant destroyer

Sat, 08 Nov 2025 14:53:00 -0500

One of my outdoor plants had been flattened. I found the culprit (say “hi!” to Timmy).

Kite flying

Mon, 21 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Alanis Morissette and Garbage @ West Palm Beach

Tue, 21 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Alanis can still wail

Penny and Nickel - rescue kitties

Wed, 03 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Our new additions to the family

On working from home

Sun, 21 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I follow DHH (creator or Ruby on Rails, among other things) on Twitter and he always has great insights on tech. I found myself one day reading the Basecamp (of which he is a co-founder) employee handbook, thinking it was going to be something like the one from Valve, but to me this was so much more. I stopped reading every now and then to think “wow, can work life possibly be like this?” and was left wondering how I as a small cog in a corporate machine could hope to make any changes like this.

Google+ can't be updated - oh no!

Fri, 22 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

A 2019 reading list

Tue, 08 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Here be the books I’m attempting to get through this year. Most have been sitting in my book case forever. I was going for one a month, but decided to add a few more, since: I got to the last part of “The War on Science” nearly a year ago; have already read the first edition of “Wolfenstein 3D”; and have already started “Algorithms to Live By” and “The Disaster Artist”.

Proximity

Thu, 13 Mar 2014 00:00:00 +0000

IMG_20131011_163512.jpg

… after which it moves to an undisclosed location.

A quick photo update

Thu, 24 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Here are some photos that Adriana took recently, first of me playing with Connor, and then the aftermath:

And then one containing the many faces of Maya: serious, spooked, happy, chipmunk, goofy, and pissed-off.

Music time

Sat, 05 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Here is Maya and Connor having a bit of fun in their favourite play spot while listening to the song “Wolf” by Pyramid.

Just chilling

Sat, 21 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

IMG_20130921_130707.jpg

Photos by Elzee photography

Sun, 08 Sep 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Recently Maya and Connor had a photo session at the excellent Elzee Photography, who specializes in photos of newborns and children.Â We got a fantastic set of photos back, and it was totally worth it in every respect.Â We are definitely planning to take them back there again for upcoming milestones!Â Â I have uploaded the photos to my flickr account, available here (web versions) and here (print versions).

Some early baby photos

Sun, 25 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

*very* early, when they were only a hundred or so cells in size. Of course, we have no idea which is Connor or Maya.

Welcoming Maya and Connor

Sun, 25 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

On August 3rd at 9:30pm, after a long and arduous journey, our twins Connor (left) and Maya (right) were delivered at the Baptist hospital of Miami.

The three weeks since then (and it only seems like this all happened a couple of days ago) have redefined how much sleep you really need to survive, although recently it’s pretty obvious I am ‘broken’ and find myself walking around in circles due to constantly switching between all the tasks I need to get done. Although we’re extremely exhausted, we’re also overjoyed and are so unbelievably happy. The fact that Maya and Connor are our children is slowly starting to sink in - for a while it felt like we were renting them. They are both very, very distinct in their movements, the sounds they make, the way they feed, and right now it’s hard to see how they could be brother and sister. However, Maya definitely has some of Adriana’s traits and Connor… well, his head size reflects mine that is for sure.

Cover your ears

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Ages and ages and yonks ago, we went on a drive up North to Georgia and South Carolina. On the way we stopped off in St Augustine and among other other things, saw Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fort in the US. They were firing a cannon, so I filmed a somewhat shaky video of it.

I procrastinated for ages in fixing up the shakiness, never bothering to fix it offline. Today Youtube came to my rescue by adding some new editing features. I used the powers of Youtube against the video and I’m pretty impressed with the results (I ain’t doing anything about the child-like glee at the end). I did notice a funky 3D-like parallax effect in areas where there was a lot of camera movement, but I think that also depended on the strength of the effect. Also, the higher the amount of shake reduction you want, the more cropping that will occur. Note that the brightness difference in the edited video below is intentional.

I am: blue glow-stick guy

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Seen at the Hybrid DJ set at Revolution, downtown Ft Lauderdale.

Wedding Photos!

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I have created a Flickr collection containing photos from each of our wedding events. These are the full-size versions of the photos, much better for printing than their counterparts floating around on Facebook.

Click here to go to the collection.

I'm on a boat!

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Well, I *was* on a boat. A few days before the wedding we had the opportunity to go on a boat around the bay of Miami with my family, courtesy of friends of Adriana’s parents. It was awesome.

The full set (including a few photos from Wet Willie’s beforehand) is here.

Here are some sample photos from the ride:

Ideas and thoughts

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I haven’t been able to be much of a couch potato lately, what with all the wedding organising going on and due dates for work deliverables shouting out “you’ve forgotten about me!”

I haven’t, dear deliverables.

So some part of my brain, the part that likes to be a couch potato, came upon an idea at lunch time. How about creating a device that replaced your dreams with your Netflix queue, or the contents of your DVR while you slept? Then, your dreams wouldn’t be dreams anymore but rather what you wanted to be watching while sitting on the couch, but of course you don’t have the time to do that anymore… but you do while you sleep!

STS-128 launch

Sat, 29 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

It finally launched! Adriana and I spent the better part of a week trying to see this thing lift off (weather problems, followed by a valve problem), but it was completely worth it. This was a night launch, and while it was much ‘shorter’ than a day launch, it was soooo much prettier. A shuttle launch still is, by far, the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. Click on the image below to go to the set.

Farewell, wisdom teeth.

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I just had all my wisdom teeth removed. Before being injected with the novocaine, I attempted to see how low I could get my pulse. I guess I did an ok job, hovering around the mid 60s, especially since I was freaking out a little.

The whole procedure took 45 mins, with three straight pulls and one impacted (soft flesh, so it hadn’t come right through yet). I remember the dentist saying “now you’re going to feel good”, and then after that, being wheelchaired out to the car.

The Snuggie

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Fulfill your Monk-like desires.

Funeral picketing

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I would like to see them try… just to see their arses get kicked. Although you have to wonder if they know how far away Australia is, or even where it is, or even if they realise it will be there *rolls eyes*.

Time for an update, eh?

Fri, 04 Jan 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Well I hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year break. I made the mistake of attempting to work during that time, and was not as successful as I would have liked. Since this has turned into more of a photo blog rather than random musings/bitchings (stated right after a bitching post), here are some photos.

Trip to Washington, D.C.

Bitch time

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 00:00:00 +0000

It’s bitchy PK here. I can be in a completely good mood, and all of a sudden on comes a commercial with a song that has the most stupid lyrics ever. Take one of the new iPod Touch ads, with lyrics like these how can you go wrong?!?

“Music is my boyfriend
Music is my girlfriend
Music is my dead end
Music is my imaginary friend
Music is my brother
Music is my great-grand-daughter
Music is my sister
Music is my favorite mistress”

Just so you know

Sun, 21 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

PK is PK right now.

I’m on Corona #5, drinking with a bunch of Peruvians, making squashed frogs for the girls, and I’m running low on Midori.

Update: Midori is finished. )-:

Adriana's b'day party

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Photos from Adriana’s birthday party held on the weekend are online. The star of the party (apart from Adriana)? Squashed Frogs.

The rest of the set is here.

Photo used in online publication

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I just got an e-mail from an online publication re the use of one of my pictures in their article! I’m always stoked about something like this. The picture is one I took of a kid in Nicaragua in the Granada islands area. He was one of the sons of the tour operator.

Here is a link to the article, it’s in Spanish, but it talks about how a study conducted by Stanford university showed that post traumatic stress during childhood makes people more vulnerable to stress, anxiety or depression later in their lives.

What is Ben smiling about?

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Can you find it? Click on image for larger version (or here for the answer, you cheat).

July 4 fireworks

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I took the opportunity to practice some firework photo shots.

Fireworks at Tamarac:

Fireworks at Hallandale Beach:

The set is here.

An update

Fri, 22 Jun 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Obviously I have been back from Europe for a little bit now. Let’s just say I spent most of last week being exhausted and a little unwell. I spent most of this week catching up on work. Family celebrations over here have also been occupying some time.

I have been working on the 2600 or so photos I took whilst on vacation. A lot of these were experimental, some panoramas, some HDR test shots (for the record, I hate how some people are seemingly abusing the HDR concept on sites like Flickr. Some of the photos are just god-awful). One thing that I am kicking myself about is that a lot of the photos had dust marks on them. It’s taking me a while to remove such spots. I tried cleaning the lens whenever I could, but sometimes in the excitement of it all I forgot about that, not that I could see such spots when reviewing photos on the small screen of my D70.

Countdown

Thu, 17 May 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Let people download

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Something that has piqued my interest lately is how labels are reacting to the fact that people are downloading music rather than buying CDs. Some labels are reacting to this. One of my favourites, Distinctive records (the label for “Way out West”, “Hybrid”, “General Midi”, among others) has embraced music downloads and I’ve downloaded several albums from there (if only they’d tag the damn mp3s properly). Thankfully, I can play those mp3s on any device as there is no DRM (Digital Rights Management) on the files. iTunes is now offering DRM-free music from EMI, so as an aside I’m glad about that too.

What's going on?

Wed, 18 Apr 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Things have been especially busy lately. I’ve been hanging out with my girlfriend Adriana a lot. Yes Mum, I’ve met the family, and they’re absolutely hilarious! So things are good there.

I recently helped organise a “baby shower” (I use the quotes since it had guys there too, and showers as such are normally a female-only affair) for my friends Jessie and Omar, and I took pictures at another shower party for friends Maha and Matt.

Wedding in South Beach

Tue, 20 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

On the weekend I attended a double first: a Cuban wedding, and a wedding in South Beach. It was an incredibly short church service, but that just meant more time to party afterwards. Which they did. A lot of. I’ve never seen so much dancing (and good dancing at that) at a wedding. Congrats go out to Milly and Val!

Some pictures are included below, click here for the set slideshow.

Tornado in South Florida

Wed, 28 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Apparently there was a developing tornado spotted in South Florida this afternoon, specifically forming over Tamarac, where I happen to live! It didn’t touch down, and not much damage was caused, apparently, but I’m curious to see what damage was done on the drive home tonight.

UPDATE: Absolutely no damage whatsoever. Yay!

I have to add, and this is the craziness in me becoming more apparent, but as soon as I heard there was a tornado forming I wanted to go home, grab my camera and take some pictures. I didn’t do that… perhaps next time.

MySpace

Wed, 10 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I gave into this phenomenon, which is an exercise in usability frustration, a long time ago. If you got sucked in like I did, let me know at http://www.myspace.com/daecks.

Update on birthday madness

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Here are some pictures from the Thursday night. Looking at the first picture we have Eddie, Andrea, Jon and PK! I’m pouting/pursing my lips in some of the pictures (as are the other guys) because Andrea’s ex never smiled in any of his photos, and always did that with his mouth. We are always paying her out about that. I’m particularly impressed with my effort in the second photo.

Happy birthday to me!

Fri, 08 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Shameless plug, yes.

I am tired. Really tired. Last night I got back to my friend’s house and crashed on the couch at . . . 4:30am. So I guess I really got back this morning. My project group this morning was serving up breakfast, so I had to be at work at 7:30am. That hurt a lot, especially now that I’m 28! OMFG my bones are giving up on me, I’ll need a walking frame soon and where the hell did I put my falsies???

Congratulations Javi and Glenda!

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Recently my friends here in Florida, Javi and Glenda, had their first baby. Her name is Veronica. Congratulations Javi and Glenda!

I took photos at their baby party recently, so now you know who I’m writing about.

Congratulations Kynan and Debbie

Thu, 16 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Recently my friends back in Australia, Kynan and Debbie, had their first child Cooper, a healthy looking baby boy. Congratulations Kynan and Debbie!

K-9, someday you’ll have to teach your son to do this. None of us standing there could believe you did it:

Scrubs at work

Thu, 09 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Oh, this is great. A recent episode of ‘Scrubs’ had Colin Hay, of ‘Men at work’ fame, singing ‘Overkill’. Outstanding!

Thanksgiving?

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I had many good plans for this year’s thanksgiving, even backup plans. Over the last few days I’ve watched each plan get struck down. Now I just don’t know what to do at all. I certainly don’t want to go somewhere I’ve already been, I really hate travelling by myself, and I sure as hell don’t want to stay in Florida.

(puts thinking cap on)

hmmm . . .

NO BLOODY WAY

Mon, 23 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

“THE United States has slapped a ban on Vegemite, outraging Australian expatriates there”

Link to news story

If I needed an excuse to leave this country, this is it.

I HAVE TWO LARGE JARS OF VEGEMITE, BITCHES!!!! COME AND GET ME!!!!

Miami at night

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I took this HDR picture of Miami the other night. It’s a few pictures taken at different exposures slapped together with photoshop. I ended up forgetting that each photo taken for a HDR really should be one-stop different from its ’neighbour’, and the highest exposure photo wasn’t nearly enough to bring out the reflection in the water. Also, I was in the sort of spot where I didn’t feel completely safe, so I didn’t hang around for too long.

Top Gear presenter in crash

Fri, 22 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I am a massive, massive fan of the BBC car show “Top Gear”. The trio of presenters work just so well together and make it absolutely hilarious to watch. Frosty (who at one time maintained his blog!) used to have screenings during work back in Adelaide, something I always looked forward to.

Richard Hammond, one of the presenters, was recently in a car crash while trying to beat the British land speed record. I’m not surprised at that, I’m surprised he actually got injured (and pretty badly too). Here’s hoping he recovers soon!

Cafe Tacuba

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve really, really been getting into the Spanish/hispanic thing lately. I’ve started listening to a lot of the music, local bands like Minimal and now branching out to some other groups like the superstar Mexican group Cafe Tacuba. My fav song from them so far: Eres. Even if you don’t know a lick of Spanish, it still sounds damn good.

Felicidades Omar y Jessie!!

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Wow.

One of my best friends over here in the US, Omar, and his wife, Jessie (who is also a best friend), just informed me that they are six weeks pregnant. I was informed of this via a text message today that said:

(news)We’re pregnant, talk soon!"

It took me a little while to recover from falling off the floor. Awesome, awesome news. Congratulations again Omar and Jessie! I know you never read my blog but what the hell I just had to write this down anyway!

Nice conversations

Tue, 19 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Americans like having discussions while occupying the toilet. It’s a fascinating if slightly disturbing habit. Americans also like guns. Also fascinating, also slightly disturbing. Now that I’ve got those major generalisations out of the way, let’s combine them: talking about guns while in the toilet. Today there was a three way conversation about guns going on. One guy was talking to a fellow gun-toting dude over his phone, some other guy recognised his voice and love of guns and decided to join in. “have you bought your gun yet? … all I need is a .45 and my collection will be filled out…”

Wassup, PK?

Wed, 13 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Time has been… interesting, lately.

So I went to Nicaragua, again, “to see what I missed out on last time”. The photo set I recently uploaded to Flickr is here. The set consists more of people shots than anything else. It’s not complete (the sets never are, it seems. There are many pictures where I think “hmmm, that needs to be edited a bit…” or “ok, I have to turn this into a panorama”), but it’s a start.

The Fifth

Fri, 01 Sep 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I’m currently chillin’ in Miami airport waiting for my flight to Managua, so thought I’d upload a video of a recent night out at “the fifth”. It’s a very SoBe sort of club. Very expensive too (da, that’s SoBe as well). The music was a bit dodgy earlier on, but once the DJs decided to do away with the “hey, we’re a club, let’s play hip hop” cliche and actually play some decent dance music, then things got a little better.

Thank God for ears!

Tue, 29 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I’m lying here on my bed (no work today due to the storm) listening to Hybrid’s latest studio album, “I choose noise”, which got released today. In a word, it’s fan-friggen-tastic. It’s everything I hoped for in an album of this genre (think a symphony having a head-on collision with break beats). Listening to it is like diving into a massive pavlova and finding Tim Tams at the bottom. It’s available for download in a “quite unlike iTunes” non-restrictive audio format, called MP3, from their label, distinct’ive records.

GO AWAY!

Sun, 27 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I have some plans to go back to Nicaragua next weekend. Ernesto, don’t you fcuking dare…

Bad Friday

Fri, 25 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Today I am just in the worst, most depressed mood ever. I don’t even know what to blame it on . . . many things I guess. No, I’ll blame it on distance and the fact that work is sucking right now.

But anyway, for some reason I am inspired to take pictures of bugs and maybe a Miami skyline at night. I’ll see how I go with that this weekend.

Fatality in South Beach

Sat, 19 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I was having dinner with friends down at Lincoln Mall in South Beach and couldn’t help but notice this…

a fatality. broken. wasted. it not just any broken bottle, it’s a broken bottle of Evian water. oh, so SoBe.

New blogger: cool

Wed, 16 Aug 2006 00:00:00 +0000

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/08/new-blogger.html

I’m not one of the special people who can do the switch to the new version of blogger yet, but a new funky layout could just be what this site needs. Of course, ‘funky’ is completely in the eye of the beholder. Some people around here are still convinced that wearing brown belts with white sneakers is totally funky.

(whatever, pk).

Lambada

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The forbidden dance, and Kaoma’s song is one of my favourite songs from growing up in the 80’s.

Check out this page and get your 80’s fix today!!

Favourite news story of the year

Wed, 12 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

From http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13825566/?GT1=8307

“Paleontologists say they have found the fossilized remains of a fanged killer kangaroo and what they describe as a “demon duck of doom.””

The guys here at work are loving this story. Australia must seem like some magical mystery land of killer creatures.

Demon duck of doom. That’s awesome.

Still alive

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Believe it or not, I’m still alive. The last couple of weeks have been especially hectic, with me finishing up part of a music course and work being insane. Oh, and fit a supermassive road trip up through South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia in with all that on the past July 4 weekend. I’ve again been updating Flickr with pics from the trip so if you click on the badge to the right you’ll get to them. I have some weird arse stories to share from that trip…

GO HEAT - AGAIN!!!

Wed, 21 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Woohoo!

This is insane. Miami Heat. NBA champions.

People are going insane around here. Cars everywhere honking horns.

And just announced - Dwyane Wade - MVP.

Awesome, awesome, awesome.

Gotta go now, gotta go party.

GO HEAT!

Mon, 19 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Wow. What a game of basketball with a final scoreline of 101-100 in favour of Miami. This is the second time today I haven’t been able to sit down to watch a sports game, the first being for the loss of the Socceroos against the Brazilians in the World Cup. I swear I need new feet from all the pacing that I’ve done in front of the TV. I definitely need a good strong liquor right now.

GO GERMANY!!!

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

So I’m sitting in my cube, watching in disbelief the matchcast of the Germany vs Poland match. I took this screenshot because I didn’t believe that Germany could have so many shots on goal and not get anything:

And then I saw it. Such a beautiful thing. In the last moments of the last minute my screen updates beautifully to show this:

Go Germany. After Australia, this is my favourite team. Ich liebe Deutschland (und Australien!)

GO SOCCEROOS!

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Woohoo!

I’m sitting here in my very grey cubicle at work looking at the final score between Australia and Japan, and it’s all good baby! I’ve got my green shirt on today and combining that with the face colour of my watch and maybe a few post-it notes, it’s green and gold all the way. Pity I couldn’t watch a live telecast as I had to be at my desk, so I ended up refreshing the main page of the Fifa website over and over again to get match updates.

They start 'em young in Oz

Mon, 12 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

From this link
“The 10-year-old and his brother, 6, decided to take the family car for a 100km spin to visit their grandfather in Moree, in the NSW northwest, about 12.30pm on Sunday.”

This reminds me of my cousin Levi, who is quite adept at driving a car as well (click on pic for details)

That doctor visit...

Fri, 09 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I got the results for my tests back.

According to the results, there is absolutely nothing wrong with me at all. Nada. Nichts. Jack $hit.

So now I ponder and wonder what the hell went on, whether I get a second opinion, or whether I ignore it ever happened. My doctor told me it was probably an anxiety attack of sorts.

Whatever the case, it’s time to move on in some direction, albeit more cautiously than before. I’m sick of staying home. I need to get out and do some stuff again.

On the other side

Tue, 06 Jun 2006 00:00:00 +0000

So I’ve come through what seems to be a rather weird ride. Whatever caused me to pretty much collapse and have difficulty breathing, resulting in a rush to the emergency room, has gone. I have not been able to link it to anything that I ate. I’m thinking that somehow my body was telling me to slow down a bit. Perhaps.

I’ve had a CAT scan, 24 hour heart monitor and blood tests done. I’m getting sick of all these blood tests. My arm skin is a slightly yellow colour around the region where all the needles have gone in. I feel like a pin cushion.

Down memory lane

Tue, 23 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Whilst I’ve been bed-ridden recently, I’ve summoned the energy up to entertain myself with a little surfing of the internets. This post is a whole lot about nostalgia, so see if you remember these little youtube gems that I’ve found.

Anyone got any more? Ones that I just can’t find are “AEIOU”, with those little characters drawn in the sand who fight some dragon or something. Another is “Robo Story”, where the white leader keeps calling everyone else “imbeciles”.

What's up with PK?

Tue, 23 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

So Sunday night I found myself in the emergency room of a hospital. Three scoops of icecream is all it took to turn me into a mess of a person who had difficulty breathing or swallowing, was very light-headed, shaking, had a high pulse rate and was just about to collapse. I scared the hell out of my flat-mate, but rest assured, he wasn’t as scared as I.

I’ve been talking to doctors, venom experts from Australia, etc. etc. etc. to see if this had anything to do with the bite I got in January. The consensus was that no, it didn’t, and that the venom only lasts for 5 days anyway. So whatever I’ve got now is supposed to be unrelated to the bite, supposedly.

Complainers, whingers, whiners

Thu, 18 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

We’re all allowed our fair share of whinging and whining and complaining I think. You know, people have to get that stuff off their chest every now and then. But hell, the number of times I hear people complain about the weather around here. I actually like weather in general. I like its unpredictability. The day we can control the weather is the day I’ll start complaining about it.

But seriously, I can’t even get people to sit outside when it’s slightly humid. They’d rather stay in the air conditioned building and when they leave work they get into to their air conditioned car and when they get home they get into their air conditioned house. I constantly hear about it being too humid, too rainy, too hot, and they hardly spend any time outside.

Recently

Thu, 18 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Recently something happened… I can’t remember what it was…

nice one pk.

P.S. Although I haven’t been making too many posts lately, I have been taking quite a few pictures. Like, the flickr badge to the right has been in a state of constant update, pretty much. Apart from that I’ve been pretty flat out. Some major stuff coming up in the next few months. Hope you’re having fun y’all.

Weird Saturday stuff

Tue, 09 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Last Saturday was a pretty weird day, in that everything I had planned didn’t work out. The original plan was to:
- go see Fiona Apple at Sunfest in West Palm beach.
- drop in at a friend’s birthday party in Plantation.
- have dinner at Thai Orchid in Coral Gables.
- see Mimimal play at I/O lounge in downtown Miami.

That plan was pretty damn ambitious, since it involved traversing three counties in one day. I like the ambitious plans though, so I was all for giving it a shot. Unfortunately, as the day wore on, I realised that I just wouldn’t be able to get to see Fiona Apple. I had to drive to Sunfest the next day anyway to shoot photos for another of Hilary’s concerts. I couldn’t be bothered. I also wanted to spend more time at the birthday party so I cancelled my dinner and told the people I’d meet up with them at the Minimal gig. No real drama.

I'm back

Wed, 03 May 2006 00:00:00 +0000

And I’m bloody exhausted. I had accumulated about 2 hours of sleep when I arrived in Miami last night - I just can’t sleep upright. Period. Sleeping pills (which I tried this time around) made me feel very tired but then I couldn’t fall asleep.

I watched some cool movies on the way over though - “House of flying daggers”, “Capote”, “Good luck and good night”, and my favourite of the flight, “Enron: The smartest guys in the room”.

An up and down Monday

Wed, 19 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Monday started off like any other Monday. Check e-mails received over the weekend, catch up with other people to see what they got up to, think about what had to be done for the week. There was one thing in the back of my mind though: the flight to Australia. Now don’t get me wrong, I was sooooo looking forward to going back to Australia and meeting up with everyone I possibly can, but it’s that damn flight that I was worried about. If you read this mess of words often enough you’d know I got bitten by a red-back spider a couple of days before flying back to the US. The bite got completely mis-diagnosed, I thought I was ok to fly, but in the end I wasn’t. It’s the only time I really thought I was going to die, and I say that in all seriousness. Since then I’ve had dizzy spells and numbness like I had on the plane, but nowhere near the severity. They’ve pretty much gone *now*, but I was still scared of getting on the plane, whilst going through my Monday morning thought process.

Going mobile and lacking sleep

Sun, 16 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

It’s currently past 5am in the morning. I didn’t head out tonight, but I am at a mate’s place (some dodgy Nicaraguan) working out some music stuff. At this stage I have had a few beers - Sam Adams and Presidente. I am loving my new laptop. I know someone reading this laughed when I said that I *needed* to buy a laptop. Well, I probably could have done my music course back in Australia by borrowing people’s computers here and there, but that would be so damn inconvenient. Plus, now that I have a laptop, I am becoming a true geek. If I really want I could be one of those geeks who sits at Starbucks all day and surfs the net with their ultra-expensive T-Mobile access plan. There are two bad things about that - first, paying for the wifi access when many other coffee places have free wifi. The other one, oh so much more important, is that I still think that Starbucks’ coffee sucks. Their frappuccino is the only thing decent there and if I drank them all day I’d probably turn out to be a pretty fat bastard, for some reason.

Hurricane season 2006

Thu, 13 Apr 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Alberto
Beryl
Chris
Debby
Ernesto
Florence
Gordon
Helene
Isaac
Joyce
Kirk
Leslie
Michael
Nadine
Oscar
Patty
Rafael
Sandy
Tony
Valerie
William

I’m going to be getting familiar with some of these names, I think. I should start a pool or something as to how many, and which hurricane/s is/are going to hit the east coast of Florida. I will bet on three hurricanes: Ernesto, Gordon and Patty.

I think if a hurricane is getting close and dangerous this year I’ll head up to Canada - and probably have a snowstorm hit. Ah well, the powder will be good for snowboarding then I guess.

GET MOTIVATED!

Thu, 30 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Today I attended a motivational business seminar as part of a team building activity for work. In a nutshell it was one of the weirdest experiences I’ve had while over in the US. The end result is that I’m not really any more motivated than when I got up this morning but I did learn a few interesting things.

The speakers that I saw today included Steve Forbes, General Colin Powell and Zig Ziglar, apparently the #1 motivator in the US. There were other speakers I didn’t get to see including Rudolph Giuliani, Don Shula and Jerry Lewis. I wasn’t feeling too well (6 days straight of going out finally got to me) so my friend and I left early.

I think I should move to Miami

Fri, 24 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Don’t get me wrong. I love the Ft Lauderdale pub scene and the general laid back feeling that you get in most of the places. However, if I start from Wednesday night I was at the Hotel Victor for a Hilary McRae gig.

Thursday night I was at The Road for another Hilary gig.

Today I had a lunch meeting at the Ritz-Carlton in Coconut Grove for a breast cancer walk I’m participating in with friends.

One heck of a cool movie

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

V for Vendetta. Just go see it. I can’t remember the last time I’ve wanted so bad to go and see a movie again. If I can get to see another session tomorrow night I will. It genuinely had me shaking in a couple of scenes due to the just how powerful they were. What an amazing film.

The things that surprised me the most though? There were teenagers afterwards debating if what V planned could be classified as a terrorist act. It actually got people talking. I actually caught myself thinking that maybe there was some hope still… sometimes I feel that isn’t the case. Sometimes I think I just need to chill out.

Star-spotting

Mon, 20 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

It’s always cool to see famous people out and about. I had great difficulty getting a picture of this guy, coz the damn bouncers kept on getting in the way…

P.S. You do know who it is, right?

News reporter of the millennium

Wed, 15 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Sorry Sandra Sully…

Melissa Theuriau - bonjour!

http://www.ryoni.com/news/123/ARTICLE/1099/2005-01-07.html

Calle Ocho

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

As I type this I am absolutely buggered. I have been running on a minimum of sleep for a while now. This, of course, is entirely my fault.

I can’t remember what I did Friday night anymore… something.

Saturday night we headed out to the lovely South Beach area to check out some cool places. There were a few spring breakers about but not as many as one would expect since South Beach can get bloody expensive. We ended up at a really, really cool hotel on the beachfront called the Shore Club.

A warning

Mon, 20 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

If I ever happen to call you and get your voicemail, and I’m within reach of my computer or iPod, you will get a power ballad left on your voicemail. I promise. Recent victims have received Michael Bolton’s song mentioned previously, Heart’s “Alone”, Pat Benatar’s “Love is a battlefield” and Def Leppard’s “Love Bites”.

Ho hum

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I’m bored at work, well, it’s 6pm and I feel like dribbling on my blog. You’re reading this so you must be bored too. Or maybe you’re finding something to kick start your day. Look elsewhere!

I like to start my work day with a bunch of questions and my objective is to get answers to all of them by the end. Today is not one of those days as I haven’t answered any of the questions and I actually have more questions than I started with. yay!

Yay yay for Valentine's Day!

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Hold on… this is sounding a lot like last year.

Actually, this year was a little better. I ended up giving someone a Valentine’s gift, and I dropped it off at 7am on their front porch on one of the coldest Florida mornings I can remember. Of course, we ain’t getting blizzards down here so I can’t really complain.

So last year I actually listened to some Rammstein. Maybe if I listen to the right sort of music, I can actually convince myself that everything is ok. How about “I feel loved” by “Depeche Mode”?

Lou, the goldfish battler

Thu, 09 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

UPDATED: Lou is actually looking normal now! He/she/it got rid of the buoyancy problem and is discovering the bottom of the fish tank.

I’ve posted about this fish before, but Lou’s resilience and battler attitude has impressed me. It’s a sign that even though something bad in your life may have happened (in this case, the swim bladder is all screwed up), then you can still keep charging along.

Or maybe the fish is just thinking “when the hell are they going to let me f#%ken die?”

Updates

Wed, 25 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Have been made to this post. I somehow got my iPod working again and another third of the pictures have been processed and the ones I like uploaded.

Spiderman

Sat, 21 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I could not stop laughing when I came into work last week and found that someone had modified a Spiderman poster in photoshop by replacing Peter Parker with an image of myself. Hats off Mark!

Knight rider

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

This is awesome. iTunes has picked up some classic NBC shows and one of them is Knight Rider. I couldn’t really remember what happened in the episodes anymore - all I can remember is enjoying watching the show as a kid. It’s so 80’s, it’s awesome, I love it.

Scared

Mon, 12 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Last Saturday (as in Dec 3rd) I had my birthday party and unfortunately, people got to see the bad side of me. Well that’s if you call throwing water at people and cursing in German *bad* *things*. I also spent a bit of the night dancing around a sombrero and throwing packets of tim tams at people.

Problem with all the above is that I can’t remember doing any of it. I can remember up to the short cricket game we played outside (short because we were hitting neighbours’ cars with the tennis ball and decided to get back inside before the police got called), but after that the night is pretty much forgotten as far as I’m concerned. Forgotten that is if it were not for cameras. Some people got pictures of me doing these things and looking rather unwell and I’m scared. I haven’t seen any of these pictures yet. God knows what I’m doing in them. I have a feeling that pretty soon I’m going to get some pictures in my inbox and I’m going to think “ha, what a dic…. hold on, that’s me.”

Shameless plug for...

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 00:00:00 +0000

my birthday! Yay!

Good on ya December 8th.

Sunrise in Florida

Sun, 27 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve just confirmed occurs at 6:45am, or thereabouts. This has been a pretty good thanksgiving weekend, and although I didn’t originally plan on going out at many nights as I did it’s always good when things work out for the better.

I’d like to thank Starsailor for getting me home this morning with their cranking new album. Guys, I didn’t like the second album too much - couldn’t get into the choones - but it’s nice to see that you’ve fully redeemed yourself with this third album “On the outside”.

You might be a redneck if...

Mon, 21 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

You go and watch NASCAR! Which is exactly what I did on Sunday.

I came away from NASCAR not really getting drawn into the whole thing that much. In fact, I left half way through because I was bored couldn’t get into it. The tickets that we got were free, thank goodness, because at $90 a pop I really would have felt ripped off slightly disappointed had I actually payed for them.

Hot chicks

Thu, 17 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Now that I have the attention of half the people reading this, I will write hot *nerd* chicks. There is something about an attractive girl and maths equations that I find particularly alluring. I’d write a maths equation to describe the relationship but I think these equations are better.

Farewell

Tue, 15 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Back in February I made this post about a picture I had located from a night out in South Beach. That night was excellent and I’ve had other good nights out with people in that group since then. I learnt today that Azadeh, the girl in the green top, died in a car accident last night. A person driving under the influence (in fact he had been convicted of DUI 3 times prior) was driving the wrong way on an interstate highway ramp and hit her car head on.

A road safety notice for Floridian drivers and bicycle riders

Mon, 14 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Part 1: The flashing traffic lights.

This has really been getting to me recently and in a lot of cases is making driving more dangerous than just after Wilma when we had virtually no working traffic lights. Some lights at intersections are still not working properly and as such the lights flash yellow for one flow of traffic (eg northbound/southbound) and flash red for another flow (eg eastbound/westbound). If you are travelling and encounter a YELLOW FLASHING traffic light you may proceed with caution. If you are travelling and encounter a RED FLASHING traffic light you must treat it as a stop sign, hence, you must ALWAYS give way to those drivers who are encountering a YELLOW FLASHING traffic light, who by the way should be travelling through the intersection with caution.

Frobros

Sun, 13 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I was browsing through my computer and found some pictures from what seems like another lifetime. Ok, it’s actually only a couple of years ago and these pics are from one of the infamous social club nights my company had. This one had a blues brother theme and stars the Chief and CJB as my fellow fro-bros, da Boss, and Nav. I’ve only got a few pics and they are here.

An apology

Thu, 10 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I have an apology to post to this blog. It has been brought to my attention that I’ve been using “cell phone” instead of the correct term “mobile phone”. I’m sorry.

I would like to point out though that I still like the letter U and I use it whenever possible to honoUr my upbringing in the proper spelling of words in English. I would like to apologiSe if I have accidentally left that little bugger out.

Get to know your neighbours

Thu, 10 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

This is what I was able to do during Wilma, and this was one of the conversations I had.

(I’m babbling to my flatmate about something)
Neighbour: Hi! Where are you from?
Me: Australia.
Neighbour: Where in Australia?
Me: South Australia
Neighbour: Where in South Australia?
(I’m starting to raise my left eyebrow at this point)
Me: Adelaide.
Neighbour: Adelaide? Really? I used to work there on the railway lines.
Me: What? You’re kidding me!
Neighbour: I used to work there back in the 60’s for a little while. I’m from England originally and moved to Australia for a while and then back home to England. I wanted to move back to Australia but they wouldn’t let me back in so I moved here instead. I really want to go back there.
Me: Wow. I didn’t think I’d be living next to anyone who knew where Adelaide was.
Neighbour: Yeah, yeah. Lleyton Hewitt comes from there, right? Tennis player?
Me: Yeah, that’s right.
Neighbour: I also did some work for the railways out in the bush.
Me: Oh really? Where abouts?
Neighbour: I used to work in a town called Barmera. Lake Bonney.
Me: WHAT? You know about Barmera? My Grandma lives there.
(Barmera has a population of around 4000 people. It’s not huge, so I’m amazed at this point this guy knows about Barmera).
Neighbour: I also used to work in this little town on the way to Barmera coming from Adelaide. You had to go past Kingston and then you had to turn off not far from there.
Me: You mean Moorook?!?
Neighbour: Yeah, that’s it, Moorook.

Must stop, must stop...

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

The partying has taken its toll. I’ve been out every night since Wednesday now and I pretty much finished up on Saturday night by going to Voodoo lounge in downtown Ft Lauderdale. They were actually playing some pretty decent dance music, what I mean is, they played some Mylo which makes them about 7 or 8 months late. Well, whatever. Good vibes that night and good people.

I decided to finish the weekend by visiting a friend’s place last night for an excellent BBQ. I was pretty stuffed and they decided to watch “Revenge of the Sith”. They’re real hardcore Star Wars fans, that’s the only reason I could think of why they’d do that. Normally I’m complaining about the acting every 5 minutes and the only way to shut me up is to either gag me or promise to show me scene 14 from the movie “From dusk till dawn” afterwards. I was so tired and exhausted though that I only complained about the acting once; that part where the Stormtrooper hands back Obi Wan’s lightsaber just before order 66 is executed. “Oh, here, I found this” or whatever the hell he says. That acting is primary school play quality but without the parental attachment that makes it watchable.

Stargazing in Fla

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

While the power was out during Wilma there were fantastic opportunities to do some stargazing as most of the street lights were out in the ‘burbs. Although there is some overlap between the constellations I could see in Australia there are of course many new ones to look at. Below is a shot I took out the back of my apartment with my camera mounted on a tripod. This pic has notes so move your mouse over a box to read a description of the constellation. You can see the original without lines or notes here.

Calling all can't stoppers!

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I’m going to take Annie Mac’s “can’t stopper” tag and run with it here for a bit. I’ve been going freaking crazy lately. After the whole hurricane business and getting cabin fever and so forth I’ve decided to make up for that. Wednesday night I went to see Youssou N’Dour with an Egyptian orchestra backing him. That was just simply amazing. Thursday night I went to see Depeche Mode. Might I add that they weren’t playing in Fort Lauderdale - that concert got cancelled - but they were playing in Tampa which is over a 3 hour drive away. Not bad for a Thursday night. Big props to the driver for keeping us all awake with the cool music. Tonight is Ozomatli in South Beach. Tomorrow night I’ve been given a tip that “La Covacha” would be a good place to check out. It’s a full-on Latin club and I’m wondering if they understand Australian there.

Hurricane Wilma photos

Fri, 04 Nov 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Most of them are online here.

Back at work

Mon, 31 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Most of this morning has been spent catching up with workmates and what their experience with the hurricane was. Although many have had their power restored, some haven’t (including myself) and it actually shows. I made a fairly good effort to make it look like stuff was normal by shaving this morning and this has fooled people into thinking that I have power back. It is taking me a while to get any sort of intelligent thought back into my head though.

Riding out the storm

Mon, 24 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Hopefully I’m able to hit “publish post” before the power goes out this time…

Wilma is nearly upon us (as in, the worst is yet to come) and not long ago I was woken by the howling winds outside my bedroom window. It’s still pretty dark outside. I added another notch to my belt of experiences in the US, that of putting up hurricane shutters. I was able to convince my flatmate yesterday that this would be a good idea so we spent a few hours figuring out how the shutters got put up. That was a downright pain in the arse but we got the big windows on the bottom floor shuttered up as well as a top floor window that was pretty large.

Florida Panthers, Hurricane Wilma and other stuff

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve just gotten back from another Panthers game, and this time they won! This doesn’t happen that often when I go to watch a game. It seemed for a while there that I was not going to see a Florida team win in any of the baseball, basketball, college football or ice hockey games that I went to watch. One thing I was hoping to see was a bit of fighting action. Call it the neanderthal in me but there is a saying that goes: “I went to watch a fight and a hockey game broke out” - and a bit of a fist fight always adds a bit more to the game. Yes, how primitive of me. However I must let it be known that I do not enjoy watching boxing. Not in the slightest.

Friday morning therapy

Fri, 21 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Ok, so I’ve just arrived at work and I’m feeling a little better this morning, but I think I need some music medicine to get the rest of the bad demons away. I’m going to see if this little concoction will work:

Writing to reach you - Travis (to match my mood)
Easy - Faith no more
I feel loved - Depeche Mode
Sweetness and light - Itchy and scratchy (classic track that one)
I still haven’t found what I’m looking for - U2 (awesome, awesome song)
Last train to trancentral - KLF
Anything but you - Way out west (awesome dance track)
No leaf clover - Metallica
Hold your colour - Pendulum (wickedly awesome DnB from some Oz guys)
Feelings - Shy FX and T Power (nice DnB track)

PK is still in da house

Thu, 20 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000

It’s 12:20am, I’m in a writing mood. I actually went to see Santos Renuentes play at a place called Hoy Como Ayer in Miami. The section of Miami this place was located in is known as “Little Havana” and it lived up to its name as I was surrounded by Cubans and the place had a very Cuban-like atmosphere (well, that I could imagine anyway. I haven’t actually been to Cuba yet). But hey, the DVDs they were playing before Santos Renuentes began sounded a lot like Buena Vista Social Club. Santos Renuentes were good again of course. So I won’t elaborate any more on that.

Congratulations Steven and Carrie!

Sun, 09 Oct 2005 00:00:00 +0000

My long, long, long time friend Steve W called me from Australia just before I was due to leave for New York to inform me that he was now engaged to Carrie. This didn’t come as a shock to me at all of course. But heck, it does make me smile a bit when I think back a few years to a particular pub crawl… Steve did you really know what you were getting yourself into? Haha! I kid, I kid :-)

Florida Panthers

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000

The NHL ice hockey season is back and so I went to go watch the Florida Panthers play the Carolina Hurricanes. Unfortunately the Panthers lost in penalty shoot outs 1-2 but it was still a pretty good game. There was even a fight where gloves came off, as did helmets, and some fists got thrown about. All in all, just what I expected :-)

Start spreading the news...

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Well, I actually leaving tomorrow, but *finally* I am heading off to New York. This ain’t a real short trip either as a friend and I are going to be there for 6 straight days. This is also the most unprepared I’ve ever been for a trip as well, in terms of planning what things to see and do. But I really don’t think too much preparation is needed, right? Apart from the obvious places to visit (statue of liberty, times square, empire state building, yadda yadda yadda) these are some of the other things I want to do:

I now have my car

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I finally picked up my car last Friday. Over the weekend I’ve been pinching myself because it really doesn’t seem true. It took such a long time to get the car, mainly because the title to the car got lost for a while. Without that title I could not do a damn thing.

As it turned out even though the title arrived on Friday, I nearly didn’t get the car that day because I forgot about state tax on the car and didn’t have enough cashola on me. I had to go to an ATM and withdraw more cash. I had hit the limit for that day on my US bank card so I tried my Australian bank card. It did not work. I tried it in several more ATMs. Still no go. I had to go back to my bank at work and withdraw more cash from my US account. Over the weekend I found out why my Aussie card was not working. Apparently the bank had blocked the card because some wankers in Malaysia were fraudulently using my card details. Nice.

Old skool

Mon, 26 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I just learnt that Ministry of Sound have released a new album called “Back to the old skool” and it’s got some wickedly old tracks on it. Saying that though must mean I’m getting old. Is 26 really that old?

Anyway, I think this album would be most appropriate for a rollerskating farewell party.

Farewell Robbie

Thu, 08 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000

This is somewhat of a sad post. I just learned that an old friend who I went to primary and high school back in Australia died in an motorcycle accident last night. Although I didn’t keep in contact with Rob much since I started Univerisity, there are things that come to mind when his name is mentioned:

- Him not allowing me to play on the play equipment with the other people in my class back in early primary school. I don’t know why he did that, but I remember standing up to him one day and saying something like “I will play with my other friends because I want to!” We got along fine after that.

The return

Tue, 06 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000

This is the first post from my new apartment in the US. My flatmate and I just got the wireless network up and running and everything seems to be working a-ok.

From the gap in the blog postings you may have thought that I had run out of steam. Not so. I’ve just come back from a long weekend of partying in Key West, frolicking with alligators and having an awesome sing-a-long/play-a-long session at a friend’s birthday party. Prior to that I very busy with work and trying to tie up loose ends over here in the US. To those of you I have promised things or have e-mails to reply to - you know who you are - you’ll be hearing from me in the near future.

Monday

Mon, 29 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I honestly could not think of anything more appropriate than the above title. Honestly.

Yes, Ft Lauderdale and surrounding areas got hit by hurricane Katrina last week, which meant we got Thursday and Friday off of work! Of course, that didn’t really mean you could do anything… it was too dangerous to go outside not only because of what might be lying around, but because a lot of traffic lights were out and that’s just scary.

Here we go again

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Righty, another storm looks like it’s going to hit here. Whether it will be a hurricane by the time it makes landfall is another story, however from the brief visit to the Target store I just made I could plainly see that some people were in a state of hysteria again. It was all “hurricane this… hurricane that” at the cash registers and people were stockpiling big time.

Onto other interesting things, there was a discussion with my lunch group regarding gay marriage and whether it should be allowed or not. The discussion got very heated but I didn’t really join in as I have not formed an opinion on the issue yet. I don’t think I ever will actually as I don’t really care about it. Some people in the discussion were against it because it would indicate to people that being a homosexual was normal, when in fact they argued it was not. Others argued against that saying that it’s their right to get married if they want to. The counter arguement to that was that the only real rights we have are to food, shelter and safety or something like that. This went on for a while and it sort of got into a “think about the children” case.

A tiring week

Fri, 19 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Right now I am completely and utterly exhausted. Hold on, I think I’ve written a post starting like that before. During the week I sealed the private purchase of my new car. I’ve sent the cheque off to the seller’s financing company but I won’t be actually picking up the car until next week. Once I get the existing title, but more importantly the insurance sorted out, then I can pick up the car.

Attack of the drones

Tue, 16 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Today when I arrived at work I witnessed something quite amazing. What I saw could be best described as a sure-fire way of finding redundancy candidates.

At my work there are boom gates such that when an employee pulls up next to one, access into the facility is granted via waving an ID in front of the scanner to raise the boom gate. Sounds complex? No bloody way.

So what do you think would happen if there was no boom gate? What if the boom gate had been broken off by some fuel guzzling SUV earlier on in the morning? Do you think people would analyse the situation and not bother scanning their ID because it isn’t fricken required? Some people would, BUT, statistical analysis showed over half the people wouldn’t. If you want comedy that comes in the “I can’t believe I’m seeing this” flava, all you have to do is watch this for 5 minutes to see that over half the people at your work are drones.

Insane

Sat, 13 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000

This week has been absolutely insane, hence, no updates. I think I pissed off a lot of car salesmen last weekend when I went looking for cars. That tired me out a lot. I think for most of the day I was saying “no, I’m not interested in buying!” They are extremely persistent buggers over here, much more so than what I experienced in Australia. Once they actually realise you’re not going to buy they turn into incredibly rude people. Mind you, I was looking at used car dealerships where they’re not really interested in forming a relationship with the customer so maybe that had something to do with it.

Crazy lightning

Mon, 08 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Crazy Lightning

Flickr: Crazy lightning

Over the weekend there have been some massive thunderstorms here in South Florida. Today in fact there was a strike so close that it made my speakers squeal from all the interference. Here is one of the shots I was able to get. The lightning in this shot was striking ground somewhere behind the apartment. Still pretty damn close though.

Err, pick another consulate

Fri, 05 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000

A little while back I had to book a Visa renewal interview at a consulate outside of the US. This interview was set for early September at the consulate in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico. I actually would have liked to have found one in Canada because that’s further away and I can visit Mexico pretty easily from where I live, but I couldn’t even find free slots in Canada before the end of the year for some weird reason. It seems I’ll be trying Canada again though.

Car purchasing

Thu, 04 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I’m now getting pretty excited about the whole car purchasing thing, and I’m finding it quite fun to go about looking for cars. I felt I was restricting myself to the Pontiac Vibe/Toyota Matrix thing too much because I really hadn’t researched what else was out there.

So I went for a walk around in a caryard to see if I could find anything that I liked. What was the closest caryard? The one just outside. There are probably a couple of thousand cars in the parking lot and this gives me the perfect opportunity to go around and look for something that fits the above criteria. I found one that caught my eye: the Mazda Protege5. This is based upon the reliable Mazda Protege platform and from what I’ve been reading on the Internets is pretty good value for money and very reliable. I’m leaning towards a second hand version of whatever car I get because, believe it or not, I’m in money saving mode at the moment and I’m really tightening down the screws so I can afford to travel around.

Percentage of valid voice mails

Wed, 03 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000

To my work number: 0%

Every damn phone call I get is not addressed to me. It’s either to someone who no longer exists (1% of the calls) at my number, or some damn telemarketing company (99%). I get about two of these calls a day and always have some on voicemail when I get to work. I actually ended up putting my work number on the “do not call” list. Fingers crossed that works, although I’m not holding my breath…

One year in the US of A

Mon, 01 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Today marks exactly one year of me living in the US, up from the original 3 months I was supposed to spend here. By the end of August I will have officially severed the ties with my job in Australia and will be paid in US dollars. This also brings to an end the fantastic benefits of being an expat: free car, free accommodation and a daily spending allowance. I have already made plans to stay with a friend either as a flatmate or until I find somewhere else to live. I haven’t decided yet, but that decision can wait.

How to nearly miss a shuttle launch viewing

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Get up at 3:30 in the morning. Have a quick shower and then get the hell on the road because I’ve got to get to the Kennedy Space Center at 7am (3 hours is normally plenty of time. I’ve done this before. I’m a professional.)
Cruise north along the I-95. When going through West Palm Beach, get delayed for over 1/2 hour due to a traffic jam at ~5 in the morning!

STS-114 Shuttle Launch

Wed, 27 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Edit - me from 2025 came to say: they’re fine. Here are some of the photos, no Flickr jump needed

(original post below)

Some of them have been uploaded to Flickr.

Liftoff!

Tue, 26 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Wow wow wow.

I saw the Discovery Shuttle launch just over 6 hours ago and my hands are still jumping around with excitement as I type this (or perhaps that’s from the Jolly Rancher ‘Screaming Sours’ soft and chewy candy that I just ate). Whatever is causing this feeling, I know that what I saw today was just freaking amazing.

Cross another item off the “things I’ve always want to see and do” list. Pics coming later. I am f#%ken stoked.

I need access to this when choosing movies

Sun, 24 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I’m a sucker for blurbs on movie rentals that I haven’t really heard anything about. If something says “Fantastic! A wild ride” by even some anonymous John Doe sort of reviewer, I’m prone to being wooed in by the review snippet and I’ll rent the movie. After I’ve watched some movies though using that method as a guideline however I tend to end up thinking “that reviewer must be on crack”, but I don’t end up changing my ways. There are two people who may be reading this blog (seriously people, get outside and get a breath of fresh air or something, it’s much more beneficial) that I know of who are probably nodding their heads right now. Nav is one of them.

What the?

Sun, 24 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I was sifting though the documentation for a new power supply I had been given at work when I came across a gem of a cartoon regarding lightning protection, which is oh so appropriate for Florida. Note this piece of equipment is made by a reputable company so I’m wondering why they have an offbeat cartoon like this. Not that it’s a bad thing of course.

Yes, “Unprotected power/control lines and antenna installations can be hazardous to equipment and personnel” (and your butt).

Shopping at Bal Harbour

Wed, 20 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Update: Google maps has been updated again. Now you can see the Bal Harbour shops from above hybrid stylie

I had to get a new Amex card recently which required me to travel to the Amex travel centre at Bal Harbour shopping centre. I only got a quick glimpse of what this place was like at the time, but hell, the fact that I had to pay to park and that everyone looked like millionaires made me want to check this place out some more. I did that recently and holy crap, I’ve never seen stuff cost so much before.

Damn fuel sensors

Thu, 14 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I will say no more (for today) :-p

Don't try this at home

Thu, 14 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

For some reason, I had not eaten since last night when I had a red bull at 3pm today.

DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME! THIS IS A BLOODY STUPID THING TO DO!

Although I was typing at a rate that seemed like 100 words per minute and thinking relatively clearly after consuming the Red Bull, at 5pm I can safely say I can no longer think straight nor can I even type. My mind is wandering off far from home base. I have all the symptoms of being drunk but I have not consumed any alcohol. This is fricken weird.

I am fricken stoked

Tue, 12 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I did not expect this at all, but the launch viewing tickets arrived in the mail today. That’s fricken awesome.

The last straw

Tue, 12 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

After a long day sometimes one just wants to retire for the night and do absolutely nothing. Firstly though, one must find a car park. This was the only car park “vacant” near my apartment:

Seriously, who “parks” their mountain bike in a car park?

At any rate, I bought the perfect thing to take my mind off the real world on the weekend and take part in a virtual one. 100 big ones got me a Nintendo Gamecube, controller, memory card and 2 games (Metroid and Zelda). This should keep my mind off of trashing people’s mountain bikes, for a little while at least.

Difficulties

Mon, 11 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I was really, really looking forward to seeing the shuttle launch at Kennedy Space Centre this Wednesday. I was going to tie an Australia flag around my shoulders and shout out
“Go Andy! Go you good thing go!”… and yeah, he’d hear that from 6 miles away. However as things go it seems I’ll be observing the launch from somewhere else. Call it my stupid absent mindedness but the tickets I purchased way back when (beginning of April I think) were valid for that launch and the next rescheduled launch, if that happened. I know the launch has been rescheduled at least twice, but for some reason it never clicked with me I’d have to order more tickets. I think I just plain forgot at the time about the rescheduling terms.

Weird day

Fri, 08 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t know what other people were doing but I spent most of my day just watching the news regarding the terrorist attacks in London. I was extremely grateful to get e-mails from people who I knew were in the area, telling others that they were ok. So to those of you over in London, I hope you continue to remain safe.

It’s times like these that Wikipedia (that free, online encyclopedia for those not in the know) really shines. They have an excellent summary of the situation as it stands, and I actually found myself wandering off to other parts of the wikipedia site to, for example, read about Pan Am Flight 103. I do this because I’m an information freak and I like to try to understand the reasons why people do things like this. Plus, the poet Sylvia Plath wrote some poetry about the macabre nature of humans and how we are in awe of tragedy. I guess I’m expressing that part of myself by monitoring the Internet.

July 4 Fireworks

Tue, 05 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I have to quickly blog on what is probably the most impressive fireworks display I’ve ever seen (well, the year 2000 fireworks display in Sydney was pretty good too). It’s not impressive because of the fireworks themselves, it’s impressive because from my lucky vantage point everywhere I look I see fireworks. Suburban South Florida is putting on a heck of a free show.

Independence day weekend

Sun, 03 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Is already off to a good start. I woke up this morning with a painful feeling in my mouth that indicated the slice of pizza I had at 3:30am this morning was indeed hot. I spent last night in Fort Lauderdale with some friends mostly attempting to dance to RnB. I succeeded for quite a few hours and then I just got sick of it.

What was most surprising about last night, for me anyway, was that Karma lounge is in fact not dead. I spoke to one of the people behind the bar and they said “yeah, that person who wrote the article got it wrong… we don’t know where she got that information from. She was actually here last week…”. So, there you go. I think they’ve actually turned down the volume by a few decibels too, but there still weren’t many people there.

A "what the heck is that person doing now"

Sat, 02 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I sometimes get curious and find out what people are doing today who I remember from my childhood. Can any of you remember the movie “The Wizard”. I can remember loving this movie at the time because it had Super Mario Bros 3, a huge gaming screen, and a Nintendo Powerglove. Mind you, I haven’t watched it since then… I didn’t want to ruin the childhood memory of it being a great movie. Anyway, there was a girl in the movie, Jenny Lewis, who apart from the guy with the powerglove is one of the people who I remember most from the movie. I even forgot the movie had Fred Savage in it, but I only associate him with “The Wonder Years” and facial moles these days.

Turtle power!

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Allow me to introduce the hero in a half shell in my car today:

As I was turning into my apartment a guy was crossing the road with turtle in hand saying to me “dude, do you know where there are any sewers ponds around this area?” I did in fact, so I took the little charger under my wing and transported it to the closest one I knew of. As I was releasing him back into the “wild” I was able to take one final farewell shot:

I don’t know why my arm was turning purple. Someone told me it may have to do with radioactive ooze in the area, although I was supposed to keep that a secret.

Karma Lounge dead

Sat, 25 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I found out from this article that Karma lounge in Fort Lauderdale has shut down because I was thinking of going out to it last night. I haven’t actually been there for a while but it was probably the coolest place to hang out at in Fort Lauderdale. It played pretty good music and on Wednesday nights even played Drum and Bass, which in Lauderdale made it stick out like a sore thumb. I’ve posted previously though that it couldn’t work out what it wanted to be - with the volume the music played at you’d think you were supposed to be dancing, but there was nowhere to dance. So you had to stand around instead which led to talking, but you had to shout because the music was so loud. Good idea, a nice refreshing vibe which set it apart from the normal Ft Lauderdale commercial crap, but very poorly executed. I guess I’m not really surprised that it shut down.

Frenchie, please clean my shoes

Sat, 18 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000

So in my quest to find some good eatin’ food in Ft Lauderdale (the past two times have been somewhat ordinary, IMHO) I went with some friends to a restaurant called “The French Quarter”. Oh, quick disclaimer, I ain’t going to review this place like Chi-Hoong could at his website. He knows quite a bit more about food than I do and can probably pronounce the food on the menu better than I could ever hope to. However even if I can’t pronounce the damn food I at least know if it tastes good, because I eat a lot of food and have a good sample size to draw from.

What to write about?

Tue, 14 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000

For those of you I’d call ‘regulars’ you may well have noticed that updates are not coming as often as they used to. I think I’m burned out from blogging. Well, not only that, I’m just burned out in general. 70 hours last week at work really took out any remaining energy I had. My energy levels have not been this low for quite a while. But maybe this is all just a short term thing that I’m going through because I’m so exhausted.

New territory

Thu, 09 Jun 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Pfft, I really don’t know what to write for this post. My mind is absolutely fried and I warn you I’ll probably dribble on a bit. So far this week my shortest work day was 13 hours. I’ve been getting home just in time to watch the Daily Show and then I’ll fall asleep until, say, 6 or 7 the next morning and then get up and get ready for work again because I’m worried that I’ll get deported or something… well, not really. I just don’t want to let the team down. But I was pretty chuffed that I got the private call functionality, which normally operates only on a trunking system, to operate in conventional mode too! Like anyone would know what that means! What I mean is, I HACKED code like I did in uni. Thing is, now that code has to be inspected by a group of people who know far more than I do and I reckon it will provide them with comedy for weeks and weeks to come.

I'm back

Tue, 31 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

You know, I thought my post last night regarding this actually made it into the blogger brain… but obviously not. Pity that, actually. It was full of wit and humour that would have left even the most discerning critic wondering why I spend my time monkeying about with code rather than writing jaw-dropping literature.

Illusionary world aside, yes I’m back from New Orleans, Nawlins, the Crescent City, Big Easy, whatever you feel like confusing people with. After driving 1850 miles this is a quick-arse summary of my thoughts of my extended long weekend of travel:

It's done!

Tue, 24 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

So, the future is going to be even more exciting. In the next couple of months I’ll be going through the motions of buying a car, finding a flatmate, getting a fortnightly salary (compared to the monthly one I’ve gotten so used to) all American style. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t make this move for the money. I won’t be much better off here than I was in Australia, but the difference is I *won’t* be in Australia. Mexico is only a couple of hours away by plane. Jamaica ain’t that far either. South America - just a wee bit south. Problem is that due to my Visa extension I won’t be going outside of the US for another few months until processing has been completed.

Muvico

Tue, 24 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

There is a huge movie complex not far from where I live called Muvico. Actually, there are a few of them around the place. This one has 24 cinemas - nothing to write home about when you come from a city that had a 31 cinema complex - but this place is all Egyptian themed and tries to be impressive in that respect. These cinemas weren’t as good as the 31 cinema complex though. Maybe it was the crowd.

Change

Fri, 20 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I’ll put it sort of cryptically - tomorrow I hand in a piece of paper that says ’next time, my flight from Australia to the US won’t be return'.

Update on change

Fri, 20 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve given myself the weekend to think about this and do some more figures. I should know myself better. Although I’ve been thinking about doing this for a while, I have a gut feeling that says something isn’t right with the current terms and conditions. I’ll update how things go on Monday, which is my deadline for replying.

(Kristian == nerd) == TRUE?

Wed, 18 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Noooo! Lately I’ve been feeling it… I’ve been working absolutely ridiculous hours at work and I’m nearly getting used to it. I’m coming to expect it of myself. This has to change, and it has to change now. I admit I may be a little nerdy - heck look at my bloody blog icon - it’s from a bleedin’ 1986 Nintendo game. I used to read microprocessor spec documents ‘for fun’. Shit shit shit.

Winky vs Trinidad

Mon, 16 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I went to a friend’s house Satdee night to watch a boxing fight on HBO pay per view. Now let me get this straight - I ain’t the biggest fan of boxing. Actually I’d usually go out of my way to avoid watching fights because I just think it’s sort of cave man like but I tucked all those thoughts away and just watched the damn thing. The fight was between Winky Wright and Felix Trinidad. The ’local’ boy Winky ended up winning, even with a rather distracting boil or whatever the heck it was on his neck. Dis-gust-ing. Check the link here for some more fight details.

Bro's causing problems again!

Wed, 11 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

At the moment my Bro is lying in a bed in the Royal Adelaide hospital and has been there for the past few days. He’s had multiple CAT scans and MRI scans. I’ve been talking to him and he seems fine at the moment but has to stay in hospital once results from all the scans are in. The doctors said they actually found something - a brain! I say check again!

Cinco de Mayo pictures

Wed, 11 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

There was a Cinco de Mayo celebration at Tobacco Road last Thursday night and Santos Renuentes were playing there again. I’ve got pics from the night uploaded here.

Hard Rock casino

Tue, 10 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I went out Saturday night to the retail area around Hard Rock casino which has all the clubs and shopping stuff. I’ve been here a few times and it’s pretty good, all things considered. I hadn’t been out with that group for a night out before and damn, I ended up having a blast. I think seeing chicks riding mechanical bulls really sealed off the night.

We started off at an Irish pub that was playing songs like “Loveshack” by the B-52s. . . yeah. The “DJ” there could not mix fricken salt and water. It was absolutely terrible. I was glad to get out of there. Next we tried getting into a club called “Pangaea”. It seemed a group our size was not going to have any luck in getting in without buying a couple of tables though (at $250 each).

Kung Fu movies and beer

Mon, 09 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Don’t mix them. Especially don’t mix beer and “Kung Fu Hustle”. A friend and I did that Friday night and I think it was the weirdest movie experience I’ve ever had. That movie probably doesn’t need the help of alcohol to make it interesting anyway.

Ft Lauderdale Air and Sea show

Wed, 04 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

On Sunday here were the reasons why I hauled my arse out of bed at 7:00am in the morning to get a good seat for the Ft. Lauderdale Air and Sea show:

F-117 Nighthawk
B-2 Stealth Bomber
B-52 Stratofortress
A-10 Warthog
F-14 Tomcat
AV-8B Harrier
V-22 Osprey
last, and certainly not least, F-22 Raptor.

None of those planes showed up the whole damn day. I haven’t seen any of these planes in real life yet. Exactly these planes were supposed to be there (pending operational availability blah blah blah). Was I disappointed? Yeah, a bit. I did get some pics though and a tan and I did get weirded out several times during the day. What I mean is, the show was obviously very American. Duh. The whole “support our troops” slogan was getting compressed into my ears and that just made me realise I really was over in the US. I go by every day not really thinking about that too much. Then a reality spin thing happened when I didn’t really believe I was here and everything seemed to do a 180 degree turn. I also got that tinnitus or ringing in my ear just to help with the outer-body feeling. It was weird.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!

Sun, 01 May 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Yes, the birthdays are coming in thick and fast it seems, so while I’m at it:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SEAN!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAHA!

Dang nammit!

It’s currently 4:42am Sunday morning in Florida. I have to be up in 2 hours to get ready to go to the Fort Lauderdale Air and Sea show. How much do you wanna bet that I sleep through my alarm???

Bring your kids to work day

Thu, 28 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

That’s what day it is today at work. It’s a day that makes me feel especially old, even though I’m really not that old at all on the scale of things. The kids are coming into meetings, they’re playing with their parents’ PDAs and running around and having fun. And then I’m trying to get work done. No, I am by no means angry, but I just wish I was a kid again. I remember the days playing in the sand pit, creating a spaceship out of a fallen tree, playing kiss-chasey and constantly falling over for some reason, 1-2-3 saw ya, “socc-quash”, finding “bush tucker” on the Gum tree leaves, seeing my friend get his head stuck between two pieces of wood on a piece of play equipment . . . *sigh*

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRO!

Thu, 28 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Yes, it’s April 29th over in Oz and my brother is the big two-zero today. He’s not a teenager anymore, and here’s hoping he starts acting his age!!! Just JOSHin bro! Have a good one.

The gift

Thu, 28 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Because I’ve been a supporter of Flickr while it’s been in beta I have a free pro account to give away to someone (free for one year, anyway. After that it’s $25 US a month to maintain your pro status). To those who don’t know what Flickr is, it’s an online photo storage service that I use and now love. Much better than the crappy webshots I was using earlier (and which I still have to completely migrate away from). Send me an e-mail if you want one. I’m not going to give it away to anyone though. Here are the conditions:

The popularity question

Thu, 28 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

So I was driving to work this morning and I noticed that just about everyone I saw was talking on their mobile phone. All people seem to do over here is talk on their bloody phone. I looked at the total amount of time I’ve spent talking on my Razr and it’s 7.5 hours. That’s nothing. That’s like what some people spend talking on a mobile PER DAY over here. I think I’ve already posted about Lincoln Mall in South Beach and how all the model-type people have a phone welded to their ear.

Weird stuff

Tue, 26 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Lately I’ve been feeling a little. . . unusual. Maybe it’s because work is just plain bloody hard at the moment. Well, allow me to clarify that for a moment - it’s bloody hard for about 1/7th of the time and for the remaining 6/7ths it’s an exercise in pure frustration as I try and make all the required changes across, firstly, 380 pages of architecture documentation; 100 pages of design documentation, god knows how many lines of code, unit tests to make sure it all works and finally, integration tests to make sure it all works *together*. Actually, I don’t think that would have clarified anything for anybody outside of engineering circles. I thought I had to modify one application when I started this a couple of weeks ago. It turns out that application was actually 7 separate applications. I was originally supposed to finish this all in the space of 3 weeks. That’s just crazy talk.

I rock!

Sun, 24 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Not a bad $25 souvenir

UPDATE: I was looking at this post again and was thinking “Wow, you got a parking ticket. That’s. . . exciting”. Well this is my very first parking ticket either over here or in Australia. I left my car overnight in some open space car park and apparently it ‘closed’ at 2am, which to me seemed rather stupid. Any signs indicating this in the carpark weren’t very noticeable. Maybe I should have contacted one of those companies that specialises in trying to get your parking ticket revoked? It’s not like there is a shortage of them over here.

Dr Who

Tue, 19 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I heard that BBC was broadcasting the new Dr Who series over in the UK. I was a big, big fan of Dr Who as a kid. I’ve seen four episodes of the new series so far and what can I say - it’s bloody awesome! It’s got lots and lots of British humour which I just can’t get enough of. I can’t wait to see the next one. Oh, having Billie Piper co-star is also a help.

Bloody big tree

Sun, 17 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Stuff seems to be finally trickling in from the many people who have been hoarding the pictures on their cameras. This is one of them taken in front of a Giant Sequoia tree in Yosemite national park late last year that I’ve stitched together. You can see us standing there way, way down the bottom.

Big tree

I’m also in the process of moving photos from stupid Webshots to flickr so you’ll see my flickr bar on the right of this page being updated as I find time.

Online cricket game

Fri, 15 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been invited to a hat party in a couple of weeks and I immediately thought “cork hat”. I couldn’t be bothered making one myself so I looked around for one on the net. I happened to stumble across this site: http://www.stickcricket.com/game.php and I’ve been playing it for the past 1/2 hour (at work). After working a lot of hours in the past week, I don’t care if anyone sees me playing this.

Refer to last post, put "NOT" at the end

Wed, 13 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been reading a heck of a lot of stuff lately and even in the past day my views on things have swung around greatly because I haven’t digested stuff properly. I was thinking last night about my last post and why I said I wouldn’t comment on politics, even if I thought it was important. I now think that’s a stupid idea, so to that end I *will* post the odd political story/comment *but only* if I feel it’s important enough. I’m leaving the previous post as it is though, just to show how quickly my point of view can swing around when I haven’t thought stuff through enough :-)

My last political comment

Tue, 12 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

on this site, anyway. People who have been keeping up to date with this little distraction of mine may have noticed that I haven’t written anything regarding politics for a while. Actually, I only ever wrote a couple of posts. I certainly didn’t want to turn this blog into another political rant site. I haven’t written anything regarding religion either, nor will I ever. Instead, it’s now another site ranting about what stupid/cool/not so cool things I get up to. It will I hope become an outlet for other things sometime in the future… but that time is not now.

Weird state of mind

Mon, 11 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

It happens when you spend most of your weekend inside. I’m like solar powered - I need my sunlight to function properly, or I at least need to step outdoors. This state of mind is completely self inflicted though. I purchased Half Life 2 Friday night and downloaded the game from Valve Software’s ‘Steam’ content service that same night. Thankyou cable internet. I finished it sometime Sunday. What else did I end up doing? Well, I went to work for a few hours both Saturday and Sunday night. Yeah, my project is pretty intense at the moment. So you can pretty much say I spent my whole sunny Florida weekend indoors. Idiot. Actually to be fair on myself I haven’t played a computer game for yonks so I had to get it out of my system. Plus, I was evaluating the in-game music that Half Life 2 offered. I wasn’t too impressed with it actually. The graphics on the other hand with all the features turned on high - wow. Really nice to look at. I did notice some inconsistencies with water reflections though - some objects just weren’t reflected. Maybe I could pimp myself out as a quality consultant. “Here sir, try our Razr V3!” Response: “Yeah, it’s a slick phone and all but the menus are too slow! Speed them the hell up!”

I'm counting on you...

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

So says my project manager. So tonight and last night and probably the next two weeks I’ll be burning the midnight oil at work. Yay!

Geez, it feels like ages since I last posted. Nothing much interesting has been going on. Well, hold on, I did get those tickets to see the shuttle launch. Hopefully the dates for the launch don’t change around too much, if at all. Apparently you can see the space shuttle shooting upwards from here in Plantation. Keeping in mind that the Kennedy Space Centre is about 200 miles away from here, I’m pretty stoked that I’m going to be only 6 miles away when it does launch. Awesome.

I'm in stitches!

Fri, 08 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Seriously, I am. If you ever thought things were going bad or just felt a little down, just watch this clip. It’s some bloody funny 70’s music video diamond in the rough.
http://www.zeronews-fr.com/flash/70s.php

Another thing I'm pretty stoked about

Mon, 04 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Tickets for the next Space Shuttle launch go on sale tomorrow morning here in the US. Although it doesn’t really matter if I don’t get them - there are still places I can go to view the launch for free - the tickets get me the closest to the launch (6 miles away). That will be absolutely friggen awesome I think. Plus, Andrew Thomas from Adelaide is one of the astronauts. Even more awesome.

Nothing to see here, move along now

Fri, 01 Apr 2005 00:00:00 +0000

If you’ve been watching the news, Florida has been in it again. Damn, a lot of stuff goes on over here… or at least the media would have you believe that. What I have seen just made me sick, and everyone thinks they should have a say in what happens. It’s really not anyone else’s business. Let the people who are affected be in peace. But I’m not going to comment on that any more :-)

Pretty stoked about this

Tue, 29 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Here is a quick pic of part of my living space over here in the US. What I’m exceptionally happy about is that thing sitting to the left of the picture, for which I’ve finally found a power supply and is now working. Yay!

Also, the Ultrafest dance music festival was awesome. But I’ve gotta get the pics and movies from my friend’s camera before I write a dedicated post about it. I was a bit unhappy that I didn’t get a movie of Chris and Mike from Hybrid doing their DJ set - the battery on the camera I was using was too low. I did get a couple of pics though. Anyway, more about that later.

Radioshack sucks

Thu, 24 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Well the one at 8249 W Sunrise Blvd does anyway. I’ve been trying to locate a power supply for my piano (yep, I’m still talking about it) because the power supply I have from Australia can’t run on 110 volts. I went to a piano store today where I got some extremely good service and I bought at very good prices a heavy duty keyboard stand as well as a 12 volt 2 amp power supply for a technics keyboard. This is exactly the voltage and amperage that I required! However I knew I’d have to change the plug for it so that it’d fit into my digital piano. No problem - I thought I’d quickly pop by a Radioshack and get a DC plug adapter kit or something similar.

Back in Florida

Wed, 23 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

If someone could tell me what the hell happened in the last 2 weeks (well, it wasn’t even that) then I’d feel a little more at ease at the moment. I really do not know what the hell is going on. I entered my apartment last night at 2:30am, slept until about 6pm and then have been wondering around in a daze for the last few hours. It certainly does not feel like I was just on a holiday.

You're pretty cool for a guy who wears a kilt

Wed, 23 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Goldberg is a champion of drinking, there is no doubt in that. For his size I just do not know how he stays upright. I guess the only explanation is he has had a lot of practice.

This story begins with the wedding of Adam and Emma. Matt was drinking hard at the reception and was getting more and more drunk. He came to me at some point and said “hey dude… doooo ya reckon youuu can dddrive me into town tonight?? ?? I need a liffffft in becosh I’ve been drinking a little too mussh.” (ok, it wasn’t quite that bad). I had no problem with this as I wasn’t really drinking at all (if you don’t know why then read back a few posts).

Where am I?

Sat, 12 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I’m back in Australia.

Yes! It is true! I was keeping quiet about this because I was going to surprise some people but my cover was blown and so I’m telling everybody this now. I’m currently in Sydney hanging out with Nav and his mates. It’s all really fanbloodytastic here and I now realise how much I love and missed Australia. It’s an awesome country.

I arrived here on Friday morning and will be heading off to Adelaide on Sunday afternoon. I’ll be hanging around Adelaide for about a week and then heading back to the USA. I’ll try and catch up with as many people as I can while I’m here!

Remember to pay your bills

Tue, 08 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Especially if you run a business. *Especially* if you run a nightclub! Angry webmasters have easy ways of getting their revenge. This is a screenshot of the website for “Life”, a club down in Miami:

You can try checking out http://www.lifemiami.com for yourself. According to Google’s cache this website has been like this for at least the past 2 weeks.

Trawling the internets on a Saturday night

Sun, 06 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

While I wait for this flu that I’ve got to go away, I’ve been finding crap on the net. Here is some of the crap I’ve found so far today:

Starbucks craptastification of Starship’s “We built this city”, which I actually used to like listening to as a kid (the Starship version, not this shite). Oh, and don’t get me started on Starbucks! I’m not a huge coffee drinker but I’ll have a couple of cups a week. My god the coffee over here is generally crap. There are a couple of Euro-themed restaurants that seem to get the coffee right but not much else does. I was working late one night and one of my colleagues asked me if I’d like a coffee. I thought “Yeah, that’d be sweet!” I really started looking forward to my coffee. When he came back I saw that he’d visited the local Starbucks. My mood hit the brakes and swung in the opposite direction. Let me say this: I really, really hate Starbucks coffee. I drank it anyway because he’d gone to all that trouble to get it for me but I think that was the worst coffee I’ve ever had. I was even worse than when I had a Starbucks coffee in Australia.

Something's going right

Thu, 03 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

You may wonder why the hell I’m making this post at 5:18 in the morning. Well, I got back from work last night as sick as a dog and fell asleep straight away. I woke up about an hour ago but have so far been unsuccessful in getting back to sleep, so I thought I’d strum the guitar and crank up the compy. I then saw my dead iPod sitting on my desk. I remembered I was supposed to take it in for a warranty exchange a couple of days ago. I thought ‘well, there is no harm in trying to charge it again’. I put it in its dock and paint me green and call me Gumby, the bloody thing started charging. As you could imagine I’m pretty chuffed about that! I’m also at a loss to explain why it didn’t charge before, even when connected to my friend’s proper charger. Weird.

Calvin and Hobbes

Mon, 28 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

A while back CJB started sending out Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. I had never really read the comic strip before, and it took me a little while to get hooked, but I rather enjoyed reading then after a while. This website has a whole stack of Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. Now someone just needs to do something similar for Footrot Flats, the comic strip I used to read as a kid.

WTF is going on?

Sun, 27 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Ok, so I must be suffering from some stress symptoms or something. I went to work around 3pm today and just got back 1/2 hour ago. It’s a freaking Saturday. A lot of stuff wasn’t working again, and it’s really pi$$ing me off. Or maybe my liver really is stuffed. No! My liver has to be stronger than that. It can’t be that wussy.

I rang about 20 piano stores within a 15 mile radius of home looking for my Kawai ES3 digital piano. You know what? None of the buggers stock it. The only place that does is ‘certified’ to and they charge US $1600 for it (pre tax). Blood sucking bastards. Considering I can get it for just over AUD $1800 back in Australia… well that’s just dodgy. I’m going to walk in there on Monday with a printout showing the Aussie price and let the guy know that I know he owns the only place that sells such pianos in South Florida (as far as I know know know know). He has two choices - either sell me the piano at the equivalent Australian price or lose a sale. I’ll bring in cold hard caaaaaaash too to put a bit more pressure on him. And you know what else? I didn’t talk to one nice person out of all of those people I spoke to today. At least in Oz people would sound nicer over the phone. Bastards. The Yanks aren’t getting tipped so they can justify treating you like crap over the phone. Wankerchops.

A worse day... than yesterday?

Sat, 26 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I couldn’t believe how bad today was. It was just absolutely, undoubtedly, the worst work day I’ve had over here in Florida. I swear to God I was nearly in tears when people were going through pointing out mistakes I had made in resolving merge conflicts, and why the program could not be built. Err, merge conflicts. Basically you have many people working on fixes/improvements to a program. Each person has their own separate work environment and eventually all the work done has to be brought together. That’s where I stuffed up. We were hoping to release the version that had everyone’s changes today, and I stuffed up. Yeah, good work K. My tech lead trusted that I could do the work in his absence, I thought I could do the work, but it was shown that I couldn’t. I guess I’m being pretty hard on myself since I’ve never done this before - and it’s not straightforward text source code files that I was merging either. For those who know, I was trying to resolve conflicts in Rational Rose Realtime code models. A nightmare. Incredibly complex, but hell, I thought I could do better. Oh the humanity!

A depressing day

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve just arrived back from work. Let’s see… nearly a 14 hour day. Not bad, not bad. It’d be a lot better though if I actually felt like I’d achieved something today. I wish I could just laugh at things when they get like this but I just don’t have the energy to at the moment. I swear I was going flat out the whole day and then spent most of the night fixing problems arising from the day’s work. I discovered a lot of the problems weren’t mine - which is sort of a relief, but then it’s also a pain in the ass because I’m the one who worked the overtime. Ahh well. At least I’m back in time to watch the Daily Show.

Stupid things I realised I'd done today

Thu, 24 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

- Put the icecream in the fridge.
- Put the margarine in the freezer.
- Failed to declare $VOB_ROOT in my rational rose realtime environment, thus causing me an amazing amount of pain over the last 2 days. It never told me it wasn’t declared!!!
- I had one beer. C’mon, it was only one and it was happy hour! Wanna know what I ate? No? Well don’t read on. I ate the same damn thing I eat every damn time I go to Wednesday night happy hour at the Davie ale house. Zinger Caesar Salad, medium hotness.

New stuff, great stuff

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

A change is in the wind. You know, I actually used to believe my mum when she said “Don’t pull a face like that or the wind will change and you’ll stay that way forever.” Ahh the pure innocence. From that to being told by a doctor to stop drinking 20 years later. Nice.

The reason for this post is to alert you to a new sidebar I’ve created. This sidebar will be updated with the latest pictures that have been posted to my Flickr account. Yes, I’m about to ditch my Webshots account in favour of Flickr. Thats what you get, Webshots, when you’re shit. Sure, the professional photographs are nice but hell. I’ve already found Flickr to be an order of magnitude better. Thanks though for the suggestions that people have as to what other options there are out there. Flickr won hands down for me though. So what I’ve uploaded are some pics from my visit to the Kennedy Space Centre. They aren’t edited yet as I’ve just put them up there for the moment for a bit of testing. Album is here.

The problem with PK

Tue, 22 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

When I first went into the doctor about a month ago my resting heart rate was 80. That was the bloody highest resting heart rate I’ve ever had I reckon. I weighed 179 pounds (approx 81 kg) which for being a tiny bit over 6 feet this placed me within the medically safe region. My blood pressure was in the normal region. I considered this bad because I normally have a low blood pressure.

End to a great weekend!

Mon, 21 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

If you classify not doing anything as being great, then yes, this weekend was great. I read some books, surfed the net, read some books, slept, listened to music, slept, read, slept, played some music, slept, read.

Ok, I sort of lie. Today I did venture outside because my face was looking relatively normal again. It just looked like I had a lipstick malfunction (I’d believe this too if I did actually wear lipstick. Not in this lifetime.) I played a game of Tennis today because it was too much of a nice day not to. I think Javi, who I played against, may have felt sorry for me as he let me win by a 6-0 6-1 6-1 margin :-p Thanks Javi!

Rock star no more...

Fri, 18 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I have to say that for the past couple of weeks I have been living like a rock star would… well, sortof. There hasn’t really been a night out where I’ve gotten home before 7am. Awesome. I had more of the same planned for this weekend until I woke up Thursday morning and noticed… a cold sore. I was left thinking “where the f$8k did that come from?” I can’t remember the last time I had one. If anything it would have been in primary school I’m guessing. That’s even if I actually have had one. I had to leave work early Thursday because I had a heck of a fever. Had my lifestyle finally caught up with me? Were the gods trying to strike me down? At any rate, there is no way I’m going out in public. Not at all. I’m not going to leave my apartment. I have enough supplies to last me until Monday at least. I’ve got a few books in storage to read so that will see me through ok.

Still at work

Thu, 17 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

It’s nearly midnight and I’m still at work. No! Hold on, back up. I’m *back* at work. I’ve already been out for a couple of drinks tonight and I had to come back and get some stuff done before tomorrow morning. The problem is, I’m finding nearly everything and anything is distracting me at the moment. Plus, I’m still listening to Rammstein from Valentine’s day. It’s pretty difficult to head-bang and code at the same time, ya know?

CJB-1000

Wed, 16 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Inspired by my previous post, I have released the CJB-1000 v1.0. This thing has been sitting on my computer for a while and Picasa found it for me again the other day. I’ve tweaked it a bit but can’t be bothered tweaking it anymore. I could have sent this out via an e-mail, but where’s the fun in doing that?

[CJB-1000 animated GIF - image missing from migration]

* For those of you who don’t know WTF I’m talking about this is an animated picture of one of my mates, CJB, that I created from a photo taken at one of the social get togethers that my company had a while back. That was back when life was easy and work was breezy. Oh yes, it was good back then. We all danced like that at one stage. Well, not all of us actually. I lie. Just CJB.

Elevator music

Wed, 16 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I wish I’d tried this at University. I think the only thing we ever ended up doing was turning all the chairs in a lecture theatre so they were facing the rear wall. Maybe we put a stack of chairs in an elevator as well. Anyway, cool elevator music link is here.

*sigh* this reminds me of the fro-bro days.

Yay yay for Valentine's day

Tue, 15 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I just love this day of the year. Nothing screams out “sucked in for being single” more than today. Luckily around work with a bunch of nerdy engineers you don’t notice anything different. Well, no, I might have noticed something different if I moved from my desk today. I stayed firmly planted in front of the computer screen blasting tunes away on my iPod. Nothing says “I love you” more than Rammstein screaming out “Bestrafe mich”. Anyway, I actually feel sorry for the people in relationships who look forward to Valentine’s day because they know they’ll get roses/chocolates/hand made Teddy Bears. Because, you know, Feb 13th and Feb 15th aren’t good enough days for that. If that’s the only day they actually receive that sort of attention? Well… I pity them.

Nerrrrd

Sat, 12 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve just completely nerded up this site. I think it’s not too difficult to see what I’ve done to accomplish that.

That shit is whack

Sat, 12 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

So we’re heading west along the 595 to Fort Lauderdale last night at around 11pm, looking forward to hitting the town after a hectic week at work. At the intersection of the 595 and the Florida turnpike traffic had slowed to an absolute crawl. All I could see ahead of me were flashing lights everywhere and my mate and I were speculating as to what it could be. “Wow, there must be a huge pile up of cars ahead”. Emergency vehicles were bloody everywhere. There were a couple of smashed cars along the side of the road but as it turned out that wasn’t what was causing the problem. We looked towards the exit ramp for the 595 leading onto the turnpike and there were 30 or 40 emergency vehicles parked the whole way along. Then we looked a little more to the right and there were bloody flames everywhere! I don’t know how we missed that to begin with. We didn’t know what the hell was going on. We thought it could have been a plane crash or a petrol tanker. As it turns out a petrol tanker had overturned.

To the rescue!

Sat, 12 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Noticed this little charger in the outdoor area not far from my cube:

I don’t know what type of bird it was, but it sure was small:

He was puffing a little bit, but after a while he flew off to a tree. I hope this little charger finds his little charger friends:

Time for a change

Fri, 11 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I’m getting sick of using Webshots. I think it sort of sucks a little. The uploading service is pretty flaky, it’s bloody hard to reorganise photos in an album, it crops my photos automagically, and it’s been the same ever since I started using it.

I’ve been investigating another online photo album provider, Flickr and am thinking of switching over to that. Does anyone else use it or use a different online photo storage provider they can give a good review for? Now is the time to use the comments section! Or you could just do nothing. Your choice.

A man and a parrot

Wed, 09 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

This story made me laugh a little because I intially thought it was a joke, but then I felt a bit disturbed:

“POLICE in the US state of Florida charged a 34-year-old rescue worker with cruelty to animals after a weekend incident in which he bit the head off a parrot.”

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,12196119-401,00.html

Found the pics from Rumi in South Beach

Wed, 09 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

You can find the pics here. Go to picture 127 which is on the last page for Rumi restaurant. You’ll see me looking like a goose in a red shirt. The guy next to me is my mate Sean from work (aka Saeed). The people are all Nina’s friends AFAIK (1). I think they’re all Persian except for the girl with the light brown hair. I think she was from Peru. Nina is the one all the way to the right in the brown top.

Pet peeve

Tue, 08 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

People talking on their mobile phones in the restrooms whilst sitting on the toilet seat. Not cool guys. Not cool.

Things that I need to work better

Tue, 08 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I think the most important is a phone conversation recorder, and I don’t know why it isn’t automatically built into the phone systems that corporate engineering companies (well, this one at least) use. When I’m having a technical discussion over the phone with my tech lead or something (and sometimes these conversations can go for over an hour, especially when a group discussion is going on) I always miss stacks of points. There are a couple of ways I know of to record what was said during the conversation: make notes while you’re listening, or listen very hard and try to understand so no notes need be taken. If I’m doing the former I’ll miss key points without realising it because I’m concentrating on getting down on paper the information in a form I’ll understand later. If I’m doing the latter I’ll just forget stuff. Why don’t they give us a “record” button on the phone so I can play back the conversation later to see if I missed anything? Maybe there is stuff out there that can do this, but they don’t supply it to us by default.

South Beach - finally

Mon, 07 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000

*Finally* I went for a night out in South Beach. Only one word describes that night out: awesome. When you’re kicking on to breakfast at 6:30am in the morning and making sure that a friend is ok as they’ve been getting sick in the toilet, you know you’ve had a good night. I *think* we ended up in a place called “Pearl”. The name of the place was “Rumi”. Check out the pictures of this place! They played some bloody good music but only towards the latter part of the night. It seems that the music has to be dumbed down a lot earlier on in the night to please the fickle part of the crowd (err, rethink that. It’s South Beach. The fickle part of the crowd is the crowd) and they only play the non-commercial, actually good-to-listen-to stuff later.

Stuffed

Sun, 30 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Err, thought it would be time to update my blog. Well, I’ve started up tennis again. Yah! I haven’t played a game since I got over here and now I plan to make it a weekly thing. I was missing it so, so much. The only sport I’ve been doing is the odd swim and I don’t do it often enough to get anything out of it. Anyway, it’s been good to get away from the computer for a while. I sit all day in front of one (which I hate doing… well, all day at least). I hate, hate, hate that part of my job.

Australia Day

Thu, 27 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Heh, happy Australia Day by the way. Geez, I nearly forgot. I don’t know how I could have, it was on the news constantly over here.

A close call

Mon, 24 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I was setting up my new computer on the weekend, and I nearly lost all my pictures that I’ve taken so far. Yeah, most of them are on the web but they’re not the full resolution pics. Not all of them are backed up yet either. I couldn’t find the pics after I did a re-install and I swear to God I was nearly in tears once I realised what I had done. So tonight, the first thing I’m doing is uploading all of the pictures I have to the web and doing massive amounts of backing up *and* creating an automatic backup plan. Geez, I don’t want to ever feel like that again.

Stupid

Thu, 20 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I was in my third project meeting on Monday, having been on my new project for two weeks. Things weren’t going so well. My computer was set up completely wrong for the sort of work I was required to do so I was working with the systems support group to get those problems resolved. Plus, as with any new project, there is a thing call ramp up time. Or, time taken trying to understand what the hell you’re supposed to be doing. That takes a while. So, combine computer not working properly with ramp up and you’ve got a bad start.

When bad things happen

Tue, 18 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Well, here is the first one. The northern gate of my apartment block got taken out last night by someone trying to get out of the complex. This happened between midnight last night and 8 am this morning. Likelihood that it was someone from the party on the floor below me last night? Pretty high!

But this is even worse than what happened above. I’ve run out of milo.

Fair dinkum, good work NASA/ESA

Mon, 17 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Yeah, you can already tell this post is going to be full of all things nerdy. Well, I gotta say it, but hats off to the folks at NASA/ESA/Uni Arizona for getting a space probe to land on Titan. That’s just freaking amazing when you consider what must be done to accomplish something like that. I had to laugh though when they only got half the pictures they wanted because someone missed a command. Hehe.

Things that go bump in the night. And then die.

Mon, 17 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Right, it’s nearly 2:15 am and I’m pissed off. There is something in the exhaust duct of my clothes dryer that keeps on making a tap-thud sound. I heard this sound a few weeks ago but then it stopped. I thought it was the wind at the time and there was some sort of valve that was loose or something but it can’t be that tonight because it’s as calm as a Hindu cow… and don’t get me started on Indians! There are a bunch of them having a party on the floor below me and they’ve got their freaking balcony door open. I think they work at my company, I’m not sure. It’s bloody 2 am in the morning. Shouldn’t they be programming or something!?! Bloody hell, I’m trying to get some sleep so I can do good work so I don’t become a victim of outsourcing. Jesus!

Rum Barrels - aka Baby Elephant killers

Sat, 15 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Last night I cruised along to a 33rd birthday party at a Thai themed place called “Mai Kai”. It used to be one of the biggest and best places to go to in Ft Lauderdale back in the 50s and 60s and today it still rocks. Apparently there was a deal going on that if you bought one rum barrel you’d get another one free. Awesome. So I bought two, giving me 2 free drinks later on. A couple of points must be made:

Quote of the day

Wed, 12 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000

My friend said this to me whilst I was talking to him on the telephone. I didn’t actually realise this myself…

It’s not easy making lots of money

Damn. Damn. Damn. Oh well, I better save up some money for those lottery tickets.

North Korean hairstyle guidelines

Tue, 11 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Found this link: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4157121.stm whilst trawling the net, where North Korea has launched an ad campaign against long hair. My favourite part of the article, because it’s just so stupid:

It stressed the “negative effects” of long hair on “human intelligence development”, noting that long hair “consumes a great deal of nutrition” and could thus rob the brain of energy.

How the hell does long hair consume any more nutrition when hair comes out of the scalp dead? I’m looking for some “gotcha” phrase. I can’t find one. The mind boggles.

A supercharged weekend

Mon, 10 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000

NOT! This has been the biggest weekend of nothing I’ve ever had. I was feeling like crap all of last week at work. I think it *may* have had something to do with my trip over to California. Hmmmm… So I spent the whole weekend recovering in bed. I also discovered cable TV this weekend. Normally, I’d only turn the TV on to watch “The Daily Show” on the Comedy channel (oh, and Reno 911 and Drawn Together). But this weekend I watched the History channel as well and I watched a 3-hour special on stealth technology in the armed forces. Fascinating stuff.

It's by the friggin' Monkees!

Sat, 08 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000

There have been a few songs bugging me my whole life coz I like them a lot but I don’t know who the hell they’re by (and I don’t know enough of the lyrics to google them). One I don’t think I’m ever going to figure out until I actually hear it on some CD coz it’s some Spanish song from the mid 80’s or something like that. I’ve just solved the identity of one of the others however. I used to listen to this one when I was in Year 1. Yeah, a long time ago. There was a tape player out in the shed and I used to play this song over and over and then sing it at school. The name of the song is “Listen to the band” by the Monkees. I got it wrong at the time, I used to say “Listen to the fan.” It didn’t make much sense back at the time, and last week I thought about it again and determined that it must have been “band” instead of “fan”. A quick google and a download of the song and voila! Mystery solved.

Holiday nearing an end

Mon, 03 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been heaps out of touch with everyone lately, but my Christmas 2004 vacation is nearing an end. Most of the time I’ve been away from Internet access to update this website. I hope everyone had a great Christmas and New Year! I’ll be updating this website with what I got up to over the break in the next few days and believe me that’s going to take quite a few posts.

Merry Christmas to all!

Fri, 24 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000

To all who are reading this blog, I wish you a merry Christmas! I don’t know where you’ll be spending yours but I’m seeing what San Francisco has to offer in the way of Christmas festivities. Alright, it’s been a hell of a ride so far and I have to go now for some sightseeing before I get called a nerd again.

Checkya later.

Christmas gifts

Sat, 18 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I’m going to a Christmas party tonight and I’m trying to decide what to buy for a secret Santa gift for a woman who has a good sense of humour and a couple of kids. Three options are currently buzzing around in my head:

America: The Book
Heidi Klum’s Body of Knowledge: 8 rules of model behaviour
“Has Been”, by William Shatner

The Heidi Klum book is just up there for a laugh. I could just imagine a mother wanting to take life advice from a model.

Lincoln Mall

Mon, 13 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000

This mall is one of the most awesome malls I’ve ever been to. It’s the premier mall in South Beach and it’s as pretentious as hell. Everyone there looks and walks like a model. I’d probably be looking like a kid in a candy store or something like it coz there are just so many good things to look at. The girls are absolutely stunning! Hehe.

Everyone is always talking to someone on their mobile phones because they like to appear just so damn busy and important. When I went last week for my birthday I saw one girl walking around for about 1/2 hour with her mobile phone to her ear constantly. She didn’t say a damn thing the whole time. It seems either a way of her avoiding being spoken to or a way of feeling important. Maybe I should set up a phone line that people can call and have some automated service dribble $hit to them (and not your typical phone sex service, that’d be just too plain expensive and, I’m assuming, not required for the ladies?) just so they feel important. Maybe I’ve already been beaten to that actually. Hmmm…

Slow motion day

Mon, 13 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000

It seems that today is one of those days that just seems to drag on forever. I’ve been trying to get motivated to do my work but so far that’s taken nearly 7 hours to do. My body just feels like it’s a ragdoll.

I went to see Santos Renuentes play last night at a place called Broadway in Aventura. They were awesome again. They have a new lead guitarist who’s only 24 but he added a whole new dimension to their sound. It was a really, really good performance. I was talking to the band members commenting on how good they sounded afterwards and everyone seemed pretty pumped from the performance. They’re hoping to get a record contract in the near future. Good luck guys!

I... am... stuffed...

Fri, 10 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000

There are just so many things that are stuffing up at the moment. Things getting lost, things just not going to plan, it’s hard keeping track of it all. I’ve been getting virtually no sleep in the past couple of weeks thanks in no small part to the air mattress I’ve been using at night. It’s something I should have gotten rid of a long time ago because every time I move it makes a god awful rumbling plastic squealchy sound (Ed: pfft, nice explanation mate) that is freaking loud! I can’t understand where all the sound comes from. Anyway, if I move during my sleep I’m woken up, guaranteed.

72 97 112 112 121 32 66 105 114 116 104 100 97 121 32 116 111 32 109 101 33

Tue, 07 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Yay! Well, it might not be quite that day over here but it is in Australia anyway and that’s pretty much what counts for me. So what will I be doing? NOTHING! Actually, I’m going to celebrate by having lunch down at South Beach and then maybe I’m going to go do some shopping or something. Of course, I’ll be having the typical Wednesday night happy hour drinks at the Davie Ale House so I’m looking forward to that too. Yay!

WHAT!!!??? YEAH! OOOO-KAAAAY!!!

Mon, 06 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I must admit, I didn’t know much about Lil Jon until I saw Dave Chapelle do a skit about him on his show. That was a couple of months ago now, and it’s weird to find that I’m actually seeking out Lil Jon’s music just so I can hear him say “What?”, “OK!”, “Yeah!” in his or other people’s songs. It’s awesome. And yeah, my family has been getting an earful of it while they’ve been over here. You hear A LOT of him being played on the radio… partially because the rap/hip-hop/rnb stations here like to repeat a lot of the same music… partially because he’s an East side artist. You could imagine my joy when I found this soundboard. The samples are of Dave Chapelle impersonating Lil Jon, but it’s still cool.

Enchanted

Sat, 04 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000

To all the people who were going to enchanted this year back in good ol’ SA: I HOPE YOU HAD FUN!!! I really wish I could have made it. Unfortunately, due to circumstances out of my control I couldn’t be back at this time. Nav, CJB, Ben, I spammed all your phones and Nav I left return phone numbers (the 75225533 number was “PKCALLED”, the other number was my real number here in the US). I couldn’t call from my Australian mobile phone as my family were using it in New York.

Jump

Sat, 04 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I’m completely cracking myself up at the moment. I just found a really cool synth sound that reminded me of Van Halen’s “Jump”, and I played along with the song for at least 1/2 hour. Cool.

What’s cracking me up even more is the South Park episode that’s on TV at the moment. Paris Hilton has opened a whore store in South Park, and the writers are taking the piss out of Paris really well. It is one of the funniest episodes I’ve ever seen. One really bad/sad thing I noticed during one of the breaks in South Park though - an advert for an electric jar opener. What are us guys going to do now? Our job is to open jars. Men are slowly being replaced by machines. I feel lost.

A nice sunny day

Fri, 03 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000

it’s about 23C outside, nice and sunny but I also happened to notice the smog hanging about, and then the number of SUVs around with only one person driving. Which bothers me a little. I used to car pool a lot when working back in Adelaide. So if it’s one thing I’ve noticed while I’ve been over here, it’s how incredibly wasteful American society is. It’s just downright amazing. The number of SUVs is just the tip of the iceberg. The fact that I’m not even given the option of recycling paper and cardboard at my apartment is another ice crystal in that massive iceberg.

The mind of a player

Fri, 03 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve mentioned “the player” on this site before, and through discussions I’ve had with him recently we may as well be from different universes. First a background profile on “the player”. He got divorced about a year ago after a 7 year marriage. He has 2 kids, aged 5 and 7 years old. He’s in his early 30s.

“The player” for the past year has constantly dated women. He has a problem with being alone (as in, not dating) for more than 2 weeks at a time. He has no problem with dating more than one woman at a time, but he will will be honest with his date and tell them he is dating another woman if they ask (and if that is the case). His thoughts on dating are that it’s ok to date more than one girl at once, so long as you are honest with them. Furthermore, he says his time is mostly spent on thinking about dating women, and he is completely and utterly absorbed in experimenting with chatting up women and finding that recipe of words that will make them his. He seems pretty confident that he’s nailed most of that, and seems certain that for any given night he will pick some girl up. He also has no fear of being rejected, which would obviously help.

Sports update

Thu, 02 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000

On Tuesday night I got to see another Miami Heat game. They lost again, and I’m beginning to think I’m some sort of jinx or something because at every sports game I’ve attended, the team I’ve been barracking for has lost. Heat went down to the Raptors 92-94. That was a pretty damn close game and the whole stadium was electric. Everybody was standing up and making a huge noise, and Heat nearly did win the game - a shot from the three point line in the last second hit the basketball rim.

The day I nearly became a redneck

Wed, 01 Dec 2004 00:00:00 +0000

This post is already a little weird from the headline, but I was a little apprehensive when I walked into a barber yesterday to get a haircut. My view of the US and haircuts was not a good one. I don’t know where I got that perception from, but it’s been stuck in my mind for ages. The barber spoke very little English and I was trying to tell them step by step how to cut my hair, because it seemed the Spanish-speaking barber didn’t understand “one-inch off the whole way round”. Anyway, I finished with the ordeal and walked outside. I put my hand on the back of my neck and felt something weird… something I hadn’t felt since the 80’s. Something that I thought I’d put behind me a long time ago. I had a mullet. I looked at the reflection in the barber shop window and saw a redneck. I had an urge to smash my front teeth out and buy a check shirt and braces and call myself “Cletus”. I fought the urge, raced back inside the barber shop and said “This won’t do!” and got that mullet removed. Thank God for that.

Home sweet Floridian home

Sun, 28 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Ok, let me try and sum up the Bahamas in a few short points:

- The most rubbish lying around I’ve ever seen.
- The most run-down places I’ve ever seen.
- The clearest water I’ve ever seen.
- The most stray dogs I’ve ever seen.
- The most pot-holes in roads I’ve ever seen.
- Surprisingly expensive.

Actually, that summary only applies the New Providence and Paradise islands. I have approximately 700 more islands to visit to get a real feel for the Bahamas.

Time for an update, me thinks

Tue, 23 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I am soooo bloody tired at the moment. I drove my family back from Orlando last night. It’s about a 3 1/2 hour drive (the actual time of course depends on if you feel like driving 20 MPH over the speed limit, like everyone else does) and we only left DisneyWorld at 12:15 am. Yeah, the Magic Kingdom is cool and all, but I found myself going on the Space Mountain rollercoaster-like ride three times. It was the only ride there that could appease my desire for rollercoaster thrills. I probably did the wrong thing at one stage by driving past Universal Studios’ “Islands of Adventure” and saying “look, there’s the Hulk ride!” After that everyone didn’t really want to go anymore, and it seemed fairly pointless going to Islands of Adventure after that :-(

Hats off family (and Arnott's)

Wed, 17 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I picked up my family from Miami airport last night and took them down to South Beach for a quick drive. My bro seemed to take notice of the rims on the cars quite a bit, and Mum was trying to get over me driving on the other side of the road. Dad was pretty chilled out it seemed. The extra bonus of my family coming over was they brought a lot of cool stuff with them (at my request)

Weird day at work

Tue, 16 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I met my technical lead for the first time today. She looked absolutely nothing like I thought she would (well, I only ever had a faceless person in my head like the people who appear in dreams), but heck, it was a bit mindblowing. I’ve been working with her for 5 months now and this is the first time I’ve seen her. Of course, I made myself look like a total dumb-ass on several occasions today. Here’s to tomorrow and more opportunities to make myself look stupid!

F-A-U!

Mon, 15 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve got a bloody FAU (Florida Atlantic University) College football chant in my head now. I’d like to thank the girl (who sounded very much like a guy) sitting right behind me during the game for getting it stuck in my head. FAU got absolutely flogged by New Mexico State, but hey, it was still pretty cool to see a game of college football. I got the tickets for free too!

NBA game - Heat vs Mavericks

Fri, 12 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Wow! I just came back from watching the Miami Heat play the Dallas Mavericks. Heat got whipped, but I did get to see Shaquille O’Neal, which was pretty cool. The game entertainment was pretty cool and the whole place was pumped up so much! They play a whole lot of power songs throughout the whole night to keep the vibe going. It’s just amazing how much energy there is going around the place even before the game has begun.

Fantasy Fest pictures - part 2

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

The non-worksafe ones. Ok, some of them are probably sorta worksafe in some parallel universe, but whatever. Click here to see them in their raw glory. Note: Yes, some of the pictures contain nudity, so don’t click on the link if you’re easily offended!

I'm a rollercoaster junkie

Mon, 08 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Orlando absolutely rocked again. On Saturday the Kennedy Space Centre was just amazing. Today (or Sunday), the Islands of Adventure at Universal Studios were just plain fantastic. Although after going on just about every ride there was, and going on “The Hulk” rollercoaster 3 times and the Dueling Dragons rollercoaster twice, I can safely say my voice will not be with me tomorrow (oops, I mean later on today). I wouldn’t be surprised if I slept all day through Monday. Hell man, I gotta get to sleep.

Fantasy Fest pictures!

Fri, 05 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Well, the reasonably worksafe ones are here

IQ vs President voted for

Fri, 05 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Heh, I know statistics can be used and abused to make any point, but I couldn’t help but chuckle at this table showing US state, IQ and who they voted for. Also, another table showing US state, average income, and who they voted for

Wow

Fri, 05 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Talk about a trip down memory lane. I found this website that had scans of the original Zelda 2 manual from all those years ago. I remember playing it when it came out, and it was the best game ever. I was so innocent back then that even this picture from the manual wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow.

What the heck is going on?

Wed, 03 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I’m sitting here watching TV, monitoring the Internet here and I just can’t believe what is going on with this freaking election. I’m trying to understand why so many people are still supporting Bush, globally seen as being an incumbent fool. I was talking to some Americans today who I thought were quite well versed with what was going on in the world, and they’re voting Bush. I’m like (swear word warning) “what the hell are you doing that for? You’re being fucken lied to! Where the fuck do you get your information from???” Ok, I didn’t say that but I put it through a nice language filter so they didn’t get too offended. And yes, politicians lie - but can you really top the Bush administration? Lying to go to war? Nobody could answer my question by the way. I got these paltry answers of “going by gut feeling”, “choosing the lesser of two evils” (WTF?). I just don’t understand.

Wow

Wed, 03 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I just watched Senator John Kerry give his concession speech, and I thought it was just amazing. I nearly caught myself saying “Go America!”, and temporarily forgot that he wasn’t going to be President. He sure spoke and acted like one. Damn.

To mum...

Mon, 01 Nov 2004 00:00:00 +0000

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

from Kristian.

Little charger of the week!

Fri, 29 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Le weekend

Tue, 26 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Was pretty darn full-on. Like I said, I went to Swap Shop on the Friday night. I wouldn’t say that the place was Florida’s 2nd largest tourist attraction because of the drive in theatre part though. They’re crap. We were watching “Team America” on some shoddy screen with a shoddy projector and shoddy sound. Oh hold on, people don’t go to a drive-in to watch the movie anyway. Anyone who has watched “Grease” would know that. Doh! Ok, next time I go to a drive-in theatre you won’t be hearing about it. Mwa haha. Unfortunately this time I was there with fellow nerds. You can find the best bits of “Team America” on the ads, I swear. I did laugh a couple of times but only at the fact the movie has freaking marionettes walking about, I didn’t laugh at any of the actual dialogue much. Hearing South Park voices everywhere is sorta off-putting since I’m pretty much over South Park.

YOU'RE JOKING ME!!!

Tue, 26 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

During the time Florida was getting bombarded with hurricanes, there was one guy we all watched to give us the low down on what the hurricanes’ plans were: Bill Kamal. Bill was the man! We watched him for hours on end coz basically that’s all that was on TV at the time. He always wore a pin-stripe suit and was so precise in what he said I was thinking “now there is a guy who knows his hurricanes!” He was a fountain of hurricane knowledge.

Swap Shop

Fri, 22 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

(I’ve got the theme song to that ABC show from yonks back in my head now). No, that’s where I’ve planned to go tonight, the world’s largest drive-in complex to watch Team America. Of course, I’ll be visiting Hooters in Fort Lauderdale first coz a man’s gotta eat. I have to get a sorta early night tonight (anything before 1am) because I’m leaving at 5:30am tomorrow morning to go on a full day kayaking trip in the Florida Keys. Woo hoo! I plan on going to an Apple store after work tonight to get an iTrip so I can annoy the heck out of the people I’ll be travelling with. What, you want more Roxette? No problemo! How about we follow that up with some 2 Unlimited and then to cap it off, the KLF. Hehe.

Hats off Bro!

Tue, 19 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

This post is for my little brother: CONGRATULATIONS for blitzing the technical test, the passing of which is one of the requirements for entrance into the Airforce. I knew you could do it! Good luck for the remaining tests that you will have to do.

From a very proud brother.

I forgot

Tue, 19 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

to add this picture to the St Petersburg album. Oops.

Is it really that difficult?

Mon, 18 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

To send my bankcard to the right address?

Thankyou BankSA for sending my bankcard to my address back in Australia. This is after I called your hotline for people currently *overseas* who had their cards lost/stolen. I then explicitly gave details on where I was living in Florida so you could send it to *that* address. How the heck did you stuff that up, after I even had you repeat the address details to me? And where the heck would my PIN have gotten to? Somewhere in Mozambique perhaps?

Lucky I like driving

Sun, 17 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Coz I drove nearly 800km today. The trip to St Petersburg was FANTASTIC. It’s amazing how each town has it’s own feel to it. The Salvador Dali museum of course was the highlight. I’ll definitely be making a trip back there when the new exhibits roll in. After checking out some art I went to St Pete Beach to get an awesome view of a sunset over the gulf of Mexico (whilst drinking a Corona, of course :)

More little chargers

Fri, 15 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

http://www.hello.com/
These little chargers are everywhere, just like the other little chargers I previously posted about.

What to do, what to do

Fri, 15 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Tomorrow I’ve planned a bit of an adventure for myself. I’m hoping to make it to St Petersburg because there is a Dali art gallery there. That should be pretty cool. I’ve been informed that on the way I’ll be going through real southern hick country, which should be even *more* cool. It’s supposed to be a 4 hour drive there so I plan to leave around 8 in the morning. I have to check if my new Multiaccess card has come in as well. It’s bloody inconvenient not being able to withdraw money out of my account you know, especially when I’ve just been paid.

Cool stuff

Thu, 14 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I see that the new Motorola Razor V3 (or for more info look here) is coming out very very soon and god dammit, I’m getting one. I’ve been reading a few forums and lots of people are complaining that it’s too expensive and they’re not going to buy it and Motorola made a bad business decision in pricing it the way they have. Note to those people who are complaining: YOU DON’T HAVE TO BUY IT! If you can’t or don’t want to afford it then don’t get it! I think it’s quite obvious which market segment Motorola is targeting this phone at, and whatever certain people would like to say about would be purchasers of this phone brings a big care factor zero from me :-)

What an uninspiring day

Tue, 12 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

It’s one of those days where sticking a needle in your eye would almost be more entertaining. I obviously didn’t get enough sleep last night so I’m in a super-fantastic sarcastic mood. I’ve actually discovered a few things about myself and others while I’ve been over here:

I really can’t relate to full-on nerds all that well. They really don’t like going out and partying, and they probably believe beer should only be consumed while participating in a LAN party. I only consider myself a *partial* nerd, and really, I only make nerdy comments “for a laugh”. Honest.

The seesaw

Sun, 10 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

It really has been a seesaw while I’ve been over here. I’ve had some extremely high highs but some really low lows. If you’ve been reading this blog you’ll know what some of them are. Whenever something good seems to happen something bad will happen just to even things out. I actually found some people who liked going out - much unlike a lot of the other people I’ve met here. I was so glad to meet some other people my age who were like this. A lot of other people at work are either married or in a steady relationship or just plain uninterested in going out. So Friday night was a really good night because I went out with some of the party people from work. Today I was planning on going to Key Biscayne for a swim and to get some pics because I really liked it last time I was there. There is a spot where I could get a really good shot of Miami at night. Anyway, I left at lunchtime today and I had to go fill up with fuel. I got to the bowser and couldn’t find my credit card. It wasn’t in my wallet anywhere. Ok, maybe it’s somewhere in my car. Nope, not there either. I found this really curious because I don’t carry my credit card around without it being in my wallet. I spent the whole afternoon looking for it and I can’t find it anywhere. This is really bloody weird and also highly inconvenient. So, the seesaw strikes again - good Friday night but that’s been overshadowed by losing this card. Bloody hell…

How to dress like a nerd in Florida

Fri, 08 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

and you don’t even need a pocket protector. These notes are taken from my observations here at work.

Wear sporty sneakers. The whiter the better. Sneakers like Asics Gels will do fine.
Wear a pair of denim jeans. The lighter blue the better. Basically whatever your mother bought you for last Christmas from the bargin bin will do.
Wear a belt. This will not coordinate with your sneakers at all of course, so it can’t be white. This basically leaves you with brown or black. It can be pink if you want to suggest something.

Koenigsegg is coming to Oz!

Fri, 08 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Firstly, props go to Frosty at http://tvrfreak.blogspot.com for alerting me to this. This is way cool. I’ve always looooved the Koenigsegg and I non-stop dribble about it. It’s always been the desktop wallpaper of choice for my computer, and OMG, it’s coming to Oztralia. I wish I could go see it at the Australia International Motor Show. If you live in Sydney or are even planning to go there for this, please go and appreciate this awesome supercar for me.

Little chargers

Fri, 08 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

At night these little chargers can be found jumping around just outside my apartment. This one is about the size of a 20c coin.

I haven’t stepped on any… yet.

I just blew up a power supply at work

Thu, 07 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Oops. Credit where credit is due though, that’s normally a pretty hard thing to do.

I passed my driving test

Thu, 07 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Yay! I passed a Florida driving test today. All in all, both the written and practical exams only took 3 hours, which is supposed to be pretty good. I aced the written exam - that was pretty darn easy though. I got deducted 2 points in my practical exam however because I failed to indicate whilst reversing out of a car park. What the? Anyway, I receive my driver’s licence in about 3 weeks, which will make for quite a nice souvenir I think.

This is one of the funniest news stories I've ever read

Wed, 06 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Click here.

A bit unusual

Mon, 04 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Did anyone see the debate between Kerry and Bush? I watched parts of it. I thought Kerry trounced Bush, which I thought was good. At least now people here may start thinking “that Bush guy, I ain’t too sure about him…” if for some reason they weren’t before. If you’re even vaguely interested in politics, you should read this excellent article about the WMD that never were. Yeah, I’m fairly interested with what happens in this election. I think it’s because Australia seems to align itself with the US so much that this election is more important than one back in Australia. The thing is, will Kerry do a better job? I really hope he has the balls to make some tough decisions coz he’s got to fix up a lot of the Bush administration’s “mistakes”. It’d be good to see some heads roll in the “Intelligence” community too.

My dream job

Mon, 04 Oct 2004 00:00:00 +0000

If you’re like me you’ll be plodding along in your current job but in the back of your mind you’re always wondering what it is you’re going to do next, coz you sure as hell don’t want to do this for the rest of your life. I was thinking about this today and I was reading my latest computer music mag (instead of doing work - I sent out an e-mail that will get me an hour of free time at least) and there was an article about a guy who wrote the music for the PC game “Far Cry”. While I was reading it I thought “Eureka! That’s it!”. I have always loved music in computer games, even from the tinny, bass lacking sounds of the original NES. I remember I’ve been in conversations with people talking about such and such a game and I’d mention something about the music in that game being good or bad, but I mostly get raised eyebrows from them. I can remember feeling pretty disappointed if a game had bad music. In fact, the music is what I remember the most about any game I’ve ever played.

A bit cryptic this one...

Thu, 30 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Well, this has been a pretty weird week. The *big* thing that happened this week has caused me to seriously think about where I’m going to be and what the hell I’m going to be doing in the near future… coz I sure as hell don’t have a freaking clue at the moment. Some people would think ‘dude, you’re ok - nothing happened to you’, but that’s just it - now I don’t know when it will happen. I know I can’t believe anyone’s promises to the contrary, because they seem to have very little control over the situation anyway. Am I being cryptic enough yet? Some people reading this would know what I’m talking about… I just want to get up, walk away, and not come back.

Another weekend, another hurricane

Mon, 27 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I’m completely and utterly exhausted. God knows how I’d be if I actually *lived* here. It seems that just about every weekend a damn hurricane hits Florida and it’s back to the bunker. What ever happened with hurricanes hitting *during* the week?

Hats off to the Power for winning the grand final on the weekend. I know a few bogans who would be pleased with the result. I was actually watching it live with a few Aussie mates in an English pub on Friday night. We were trying to explain the rules to a few other American people in the pub. They thought it was pretty cool how free flowing the game was and how there was a bit of biffo every now and then. I hear that there was just as big a celebration in Adelaide as when the Crows won a few years back so that is good. I saw little Johnny in the crowd at one point and said “look, there’s our PM!” The Americans couldn’t pick him out - he sorta blended in with the crowd. One thing I couldn’t explain to the Americans there was the pre-game entertainment. I know the people who organised this were probably taking the piss out of footy, but I found it hard to explain the following to the Americans in the bar: a bunch of gay-looking guys wearing AFL uniforms; a slew of Human Nature wannabes (c’mon guys, aim higher than that); Kath and Kim; and of course Guy Sebastian.

Settle down dude

Thu, 23 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Whoa! I’m in a sleep deprived state of mind at the moment. Another hurricane is heading this way (apparently), which I don’t really give a damn about anymore. A group of women in their mid thirties are in the aisle next to my cube giggling about what singles bars are good. I’m trying to listen in but I’m just so spaced out at the moment I can’t really understand what they’re saying. I’ve been advised that taking Melatonin for a couple of weeks could help me out a little with this sleep problem. Oh God, they’re getting really loud now. A guy has joined the group. I bet he thinks he’s the bomb. Hats off buddy, and whatever.

A sad day

Wed, 22 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

This is probably the one thing that makes being on the other side of the world really suck. My mum called up this morning to say that our family’s cat had died. His lungs had filled with fluid, the vet thinks this may have been due to cancer, so it was decided that he had to be put down to save him from any more pain. Up until the last couple of weeks he was still being the larrikin cat he’s always been, but his condition deteriorated rapidly.

American media is pathetic - a rant

Wed, 22 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

This has been really, really bothering me lately. I am getting sooooo pissed off with the two completely and utterly different worlds that exist in America. I believe that the American media can be given a huge pat on the back for most of this. I thought Australia was getting a little bad, but over here it’s ridiculous.

I cannot believe how censored the media is over here. Every swear word, no matter how tame it is, is “beeped” out. I watch a few shows on the comedy channel where the sound channel is nearly a constant “beeeeeeep”. There is no blood shown of incidents for where there should be lots of blood. They’re very careful not to show that because that would indicate, heaven forbid, that someone could have died. Most importantly, no-one seems to be pointing out enough that Iraq never had any weapons of mass destruction… which is the whole reason why innocent civilians and Americans over in Iraq are getting killed right now, isn’t it? Where is the media asking the hard questions to get the people thinking? Why has president Bush got such a high approval rating at the moment (47%)? Are these people who make up the 47% doing their research? Are they really analysing why Iraq was invaded? They were lied to!!! The Bush administration itself says they were “misinformed” (or so they would like us to believe). That’s a big f%$ken cock-up. Now they’ve got a hell of a mess to clean up. But take a step back and look at the situation: they went and invaded another country WITHOUT APPROVAL FROM THE UN. These people in Iraq didn’t pose a threat to them. North Korea poses more of a threat by saying “look here - we have nuclear weapons!” but they’re silently ignored. American has killed thousands and thousands of innocent people in Iraq and they’ve gotten themselves killed in the process. Do the people back in America realise this? Do they really believe that by being in America they’re doing the right thing? Do they really believe the bullshit that Bush is saying? Sure, some would believe that ousting Saddam Hussein was a good thing. Was it America’s right to go and do that? They have replaced him with a US puppet. A lot of people are pissed off because these Americans have come and invaded Iraq, because they don’t believe America’s reasons either and they want the US to get the f*$# out of their country. Howard decided to support the US because they’re big and powerful and if in the future Indonesia or someone opposed to us decided to attack Australia then we could say “hey we helped you in Iraq, remember? … help us”. Oh, and then there is that free trade agreement thingo too. It’s just a big game of chess.

No Internet

Mon, 20 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Heck, what a weekend. I’ve got a bit of a headache today (very unusual for me to get one unless I’m listening to an annoying person) and I actually didn’t do much to cause it… honestly. The good thing is that I did receive most of my stuff on Friday. Yes, I finally have a digital camera! Problem is I didn’t receive a memory card in the time frame promised by Amazon so I couldn’t do anything with it anyway. The instruction manual looks nice though. I also received some Event TR5 monitor speakers for music production stuff. For the moment though they’re doing a fine job of being a part of my improvised stereo system until I actually have the equipment/skills to use them for their intended purpose.

Insomnia

Fri, 17 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t know what the freaking hell is wrong with me (there are probably some people who could give some suggestions… wisearses) but lately I seem not to be able to get to sleep. I’ve been lying in bed for the last couple of hours trying to get to get some shut-eye but it seems impossible. My mind continues to race. I get up for a bit and play a few chords on guitar, and then I end up wishing I had my piano. Next I’m listening to some songs on my ipod, sampling anything from Rachmaninoff to Roxette to Rammstein. I’m freaking jumping around my apartment like the people in the iPod ads (except to Rach - can’t really jump around to classical… at least I haven’t yet figured out a way to yet). Why is this? Is it because the succulent, sumptuous, salivacious (???) pork ribs over here are just so good? Is it because the amount of fat in the food I’m eating is much more than it would be over in Oz? But hey - it’s all “low carbs”… yeah, whatever that actually means. Take the stairs every once in a while instead of the lift pilgrims. Maybe it’s not the food. Maybe it’s the humidity. Maybe it’s the fact that the air conditioning isn’t working properly at work and I’m so bloody cold I have to wear a jacket. Then I get outside and instantly I’m covered in water from condensation. Maybe the sudden changes in temperature are causing the meninge of my brain to expand and contract weirdly which could somehow adversely affect the sleeping centres of my brain, if they’re located on the periphery of the brain… which they probably aren’t… wtf am I talking about now???

Sinking feeling

Wed, 15 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I don’t know why, but every place I want to go to or have been to in this part of the US seems to get hit by a hurricane. Orlando (Disney World) got hit a week before we went. Palm Beach got hit by Frances just last week. Jamaica got pummeled and now Ivan, not content with killing 60 odd people in the Caribbean, has somehow sneaked into the Gulf of Mexico and is poised to hit New Orleans. Of course that’s what everyone at work is talking about at the moment. I was reading this story this morning and that picture of traffic looks all too familiar. Apart from reading that article I was also reading the latest advisory on Ivan which I’ve got an excerpt from here:

A stupid weekend

Mon, 13 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

If anyone asked me what I did on the weekend, I’d have to be given some time to think about that. I sure as hell know what I felt - incredibly pissed off. In fact, I haven’t been that angry in a long time. Long story short, someone was supposed to catch a flight out on Saturday and we couldn’t find them anywhere as we were going to drive them to the airport. I spent 5 hours trying to locate this person and nearly got to the point of calling local hospitals. The hotel didn’t know where the person was - they were supposed to check out but hadn’t changed their hotel booking. At 8:30pm Saturday night, just as I was about to drive to work to attempt to find out flight details, the person showed up. They’d changed their flights till the next day and had spent the afternoon having fun in South Beach. The person didn’t let us know this because they didn’t want to wake us up. F$#K OFF! That has to be the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard and when they told me that that I got in my car and sped off back to my apartment. I tried to spin the wheels but an Oldsmobile Alero is too gutless for that. I was just so angry I couldn’t actually say anything. Not only did that incident stuff up my whole Saturday afternoon it also stuffed up my whole Saturday night. I was planning on going out and meeting some people in South Beach but of course that didn’t happen because it was too late to get ready and head off to Miami. Yeah, I’m still pretty angry about that.

Time to get the hell out of dodge

Sat, 11 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Nobody really knows where hurricane Ivan is going to hit. Whatever the case, we’ll probably feel some of the effects here. I and a cow-orker are contemplating getting out of Florida for the weekend through to early next week and heading to somewhere like… ooh New York. A few reasons for this:

It’s far enough up North that the hurricane couldn’t hit us there.
It would be cheaper flying North than West (so we’ve been told), also taking into account the considerable costs in getting a ticket at such short notice.
It’s New York.
Due to the emergency situation, the company will pay for all costs (within reason - it may turn out that New York is too far - or too wishful thinking).
The Sheraton that I was going to shack up in for the weekend has recently had an influx of what I would call ‘questionable’ people. Ok, they’re here to fix up things that have been damaged from the previous hurricane and their company has provided them with accommodation. Normally it wouldn’t worry me at all. There are, however, over 100 of them. They will be locked down like the rest of us in the hotel for the whole weekend and they’ll probably have copious supplies of alcohol (hell, we did for the last one). Yes it’s cliched and you may think I’m being pretentious, but I don’t give a shit what anyone else thinks at the moment. I’m not going to take the risk of being in the same hotel with them. They’re snorting and belching already and I feel like I’ve already been sized up. I just wouldn’t feel safe staying there.
The other choice of course is my apartment here, but if a hurricane did hit I am on the top floor and on the corner. That’s practically one of the most exposed apartments possible. Plus, there is no backup power here.

So, I’m in for another interesting weekend. I’m curious to see how this one pans out.

Potentially another hurricane to deal with

Thu, 09 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

This is unbelievable. This link *should* spin you off to a saved image of the predicted track of hurricane Ivan. I’ve marked a red cross indicating my approximate location. If the image link doesn’t work, this site has the latest updates on the hurricanes that may be threatening the region.

Ivan is currently a category 5 hurricane (the worst you can get) with wind speeds up to 165 mph (~260 kph). That is bloody fast. I was reading up on hurricanes and I think the worst winds recorded have been 200 mph (320 kph) so Ivan has a way to go yet. If the hurricane continues on that predicted track then it could be worse than Frances was. I was lucky with Frances because I was on the south-western side of it. Plus, I was a little south of where most of the damage was. *I think* the north-eastern side is typically the worst in anti-clockwise hurricanes/cyclones, and it looks like it may be that side that hits here. We’ll see what happens.

Thank god for (insert your favourite mp3 player here)

Tue, 07 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

If you have one, I guess that is. I’m amazed it took me this long to get one. I gots me a new 40GB iPod yesterday and I friggen love it. I’ve been walking around everywhere listening to my music collection, probably looking like a bit of a wankerchop, but oh well. I also realised how disorganised my mp3 collection was. A lot of the mp3 tags are all screwed up and iTunes reorganised the directory structure… shit. Now I don’t know where a lot of my music is hidden. I’ve half filled my iPod already and have currently around 4000 songs to choose from. Would you believe *most* of them are actually legit? I forgot some of the music I had, which was probably a good thing. I think my mind was actually protecting me in some way by doing that. Ooh - INXS is playing. Gotta love that shuffle function :-)

I'm a-ok.

Sun, 05 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

G’day everyone. I’m safe and well! I just arrived back from the hotel to find my apartment still intact. There isn’t a huge amount of damage around the place - a few downed trees here and there but in my neck of the woods we seem to have gotten off pretty lightly. I didn’t even lose power at my apartment. I’ll be writing some more stuff later - I have to get ready to go out now :-)

The calm before the storm... or not?

Sat, 04 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I need to see something happen here. My mind normally races at a million miles an hour, and I have some mechanisms built in place to filter out a lot of the crap that could come out. I do it for all you lovely people out there. If I didn’t of course, you probably wouldn’t be reading this because you probably would write me off as being ‘a bit of a weird wanker’. But, my mind is racing and I have nothing to occupy it with. I’m turning into a freaking psycho here. I’m going to turn into one of the performers at Key West, sprouting out mis-guided gibberish at harmless tourists passing by for measly tips.

Hurricane Frances

Thu, 02 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

This thing is bloody HUGE with a 185 mile radius, which is quite unbelieveable. Coverage on this hurricane is on every channel there is, and at work yesterday the *only* thing I heard people talking about was the hurricane - where they were going to get enough wood to shore up their houses, making sure they had enough supplies, where their evacuation zones were. Theoretically, I should be at work today. However, the office has been closed down for today and possibly tomorrow. Given that it’s also the labor day weekend over here, that’s 5 days I’ve potentially got off. I have to find some good reading material I think…

Wed, 01 Sep 2004 00:00:00 +0000

This category 4 hurricane (max sustained wind 140mph) has a few people in Florida a bit worried… including myself.

Fraud on Ebay

Fri, 27 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I came very, very close to being done in by a fraud on ebay. My undying want of a digital SLR camera was nearly the undoing of me, and I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Luckily I stopped any transactions that could have gone through to this guy but what is left are some interesting e-mails between him and some of the other potential buyers on Ebay I have been corresponding with. Here is one such e-mail thread:

Remember to slip, slop, slap

Wed, 25 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Freaking hell, I remember the ads with that stupid Pelican. Slip on a shirt, slop on some sunscreen and slap on a hat. Do you think I paid any attention to that at all? No! I didn’t wear sunscreen, or a hat, or a shirt when I was at the waterparks on the weekend. My back and shoulders are the most burnt I think they’ve ever been. I am an idiot. I deserve this. Thank *God* for Aloe Vera gel though.

This is insane!

Mon, 23 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I went to Disneyworld on the weekend with a few friends, and “this is insane!” was pretty much the only comment that was ever coming out of my mouth. I have to say, we absolutely fluked the whole weekend. I don’t think we could have planned it better. There were the hugest thunderstorms I’ve ever seen each afternoon, but if you waited through them you pretty much could go on any ride with little waiting time. Awesome.

Milo - it's all good

Thu, 19 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I went to a Jamaican diner today for lunch. The whole place probably wouldn’t have been more than say 7x10 metres in size. It was very, very simple but I liked it. The thing I found appealing about it initially were the speakers they had that made up some sort of divider. No kidding, there were 2 massive speaker cabinets with *at least* an 18-inch driver in each of them, plus another 4 speaker cabinets that had a couple of 12-inch drivers per cabinet. They must have some bloody massive Rastafarian parties there! The place doubled as a small (very small) convenience store, and I saw that up on a shelf next to the ovaltine and other crappy substitutes for milo was, in fact, a few tins of milo itself. The heavens opened, choirs sang, so I bought some. I’m the happiest Aussie alive I reckon. *tear.

That was another big weekend...

Wed, 18 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I was waiting on some pictures from somebody else’s camera before writing this update, but due to technical difficulties, that’ll have to wait!

Friday night I didn’t have anything planned. I was sitting home, absolutely buggered from the week and I nearly went to bed. Note that I said nearly. There is a switch in my brain that comes into effect on the start of the weekend. It says “Don’t stay home on a Friday or Saturday night by yourself you friggin loser or I’ll give you nightmares and make your sleep general hell”. I payed heed to that switch, so I called up some friends and met them at Delray Beach. It’s half-way to Palm Beach and I found it was a pretty nice place to go to. Beers were a flowing everywhere when I arrived at the pub, so I joined in. A couple of hours later we moved on to somewhere else and I had a couple of Jagermeisters. That’s because they didn’t have any Absinthe (it’s prohibited) or Chartreuse. So after all that I couldn’t drive anywhere and I had to get a lift back to my apartment, which was ok since the people I was out with were staying in a hotel not far from me. The problem is I had parked my car next to the beach in a pay-zone, and I was worried I would get a fine the next day…

I just turned down a reality show opportunity - I had to

Mon, 16 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

This is all a bit surreal as I write this, but Saturday night (at line dancing of all places) I was asked if I wanted to try out for a pilot of a reality show. I thought I may as well check it out first and so I called up the production company involved. The deal is a printing company who were funding/creating the show were looking to cast a white, single, heterosexual male. They couldn’t tell me much more than that because of the non-disclosure agreement. The thing is I couldn’t take the opportunity due to the Visa conditions that I’m over here on. Bugger, eh?

Fort Lauderdale - Part II

Thu, 12 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Fort Lauderdale - the return. This time around I spent a bit more time actually walking around and enjoying the sights rather than trying to find some place at some address that was completely wrong. I had lunch at some European cafe and they actually had a pretty decent margarita pizza (or margharita - I see it spelt every possible way under the sun) - booya! I didn’t think I was going to be able to eat all of it, but my stomach thought otherwise. There was also a pretty good jazz band playing next door that provided a nice backdrop. The cars going past this place were all class - BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar, Porsche, Corvettes, and nothing like the equivalent of a Commondore or Falcoon.

Roundup - it's more than just a herbicide

Wed, 11 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

This entry is coming in late - mostly because I’ve been busy as heck at work and I’m just plain buggered.

I spent most of Saturday recovering from the previous night since I only ended up getting home at 4:30am or something like that. Saturday night I didn’t have anything planned - but that didn’t particularly worry me at 2pm in the afternoon. At 8pm however, I was starting to get worried so I called Chet the player to see what he was up to. He was at this place called “Roundup” - a country themed bar out west of where I live. I was told there were lots of guys wearing cowboy hats but hey, I wanted to meet some new people so I didn’t really hesitate. Chet the player hadn’t been there before either so it was all new for him too.

A MASSIVE weekend

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Wowsers, I think I just had the hugest weekend in a while - my first real weekend in the United States. I’m going to have to break it into several posts I think. I made it into work this morning, so that’s a good start I guess.

Fort Lauderdale - Part I

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Friday night I was due to hook up with a few people from work at a place called the Baja Beach Club. Here was the invite I received:

Baja Beach Club, Riverfront. Upstairs, just past the movie theater. 3 for 1 from 6-10, with full dinner buffet. Come on out, and bring anyone you can.

I hadn’t been to Fort Lauderdale yet, but this sounded as good an excuse as any to go. Because I was uber prepared, I decided to do a quick internet search to find out where this place was, just in case. No problemo, I had an address and I said I’d try to arrive at around 8pm.

There are some crazy-ass drivers over here

Fri, 06 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I thought Adelaide drivers were supposed to be bad! Things I’ve noticed:

The indicator is just a novelty item and rarely gets used.
If a person driving in an adjacent lane notices that their vehicle will fit in the gap between you and the car in front of you, then they’ll take that gap. Refer to (1).
There is no such thing as a safe distance between cars. If you can count “1001, 1002” you’re too far away from the car in front of you. Refer to (2).
Don’t expect anyone to safely let you in even if you have your indicator on. You’ll have to barge your way in. Refer to (2)
Stop signs are red and octagon shaped. That’s about all people notice about them though.

Then there are some other things I’ve noticed - like the number of crashes between my residence and work (a 5 minute drive). I’ve seen the result of three crashes so far, and the one this morning was a doozie. It looked like an SUV had rolled a couple of times and was lying on its side - and that was in a 45mph zone!

I need to learn Spanish

Wed, 04 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Especially if I want to spend a couple of days in Miami, I’ve been informed. Ok, so learning Spanish is probably not essential, but it would probably help to know a bit more than just “Yo quiero taco bell”.

I met a guy today who works here, Omar, who is in a band called “Santos Renuentes”. If you go to their website you’ll see pics of the whole band. I’ve listened to a couple of their tracks and it really can be best described as Spanish alternative rock. There are a couple of links to their tracks on their website, and it sounds like really cool stuff. Apart from being the bass player of the band, Omar does the mixing too. That then got us to discussing all things Reason, Cubase, Logic and VST plugins. He is also involved in a trip-hop band (think music that sounds like Morcheeba). Actually, I just had a quick look at the Morcheeba site - they actually mention the Adelaide show that got cancelled just over a year ago. This is what they had to say:

Second "work day"

Tue, 03 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

It’s funny how some things just don’t happen sometimes. Even though there were lots of delays in getting to the US, there still isn’t a computer ready for me and I’ve had to use another computer whose owner is currently on holidays. Of course, this computer doesn’t have any of the tools I need to do my work, but oh well.

I had lunch today with some American guys plus a couple of Aussie blokes at pizza place. The waitress we had was pretty darn friendly, and the service was so good I could see why the American guys always went there (no, this wasn’t a topless pizza place in case you were wondering). Everyone was ordering pizzas with toppings I haven’t really seen before, for example, pizzas with sausages on top (and I mean full sausages just laying on the pizza base. WTF?) One of my Aussie workmates tried ordering a ham and pineapple pizza but they didn’t have any pineapple. I went for my normal Margarita - except the waitress didn’t know what a Margarita pizza was. I told her tomatoes with basil on top. The American guys sitting with us looked at me a bit weirdly, although I must say that one guy there knew what I was on about. I got back a pizza that had ham and basil instead. The waitress said “that’s not what you ordered, is it?” I shook my head and she got me another one, this time with the correct toppings. I ate both of them anyway, and it only ended up costing me a few bucks (I had 2 large cokes as well).

I'm here!

Mon, 02 Aug 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I can’t actually believe that I’m in the US at the moment - it’s all sorta a bit weird still.

I think I most enjoyed the flight from Adelaide to Melbourne - mainly because it was the shortest. The flight from Melbourne to LAX was just plain painful. For over 14 hours I was right at the back of the plane and a Mexican dude in front of me had his seat right back which cramped my legs up. I lost count of the number of times I had to get up and walk around. I tried getting sleep on this stretch but it was just plain impossible. I chatted a lot to some Australian guys next to me who were biologists heading to Oregon. There was also an Australian girl, a vegetarian who was planning on hiking through South America. Talking to them made the time pass a little faster. I got to watch “Starsky and Hutch” and “The Girl next door” on the inflight entertainment channels, as well as a couple of documentaries. Woo hoo!

Received Visa and passport this morning!

Fri, 30 Jul 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Nuff said I think. Now, the back of the Express Post envelope says “If we do not deliver as promised, you will receive another C5 Express Post envelope free”. Wicked man, wicked.

In all honesty, this sort of thing (having an express post not arrive the next day) hasn’t happened to many people at all - it’s certainly the first time it’s ever happened to me. That’s why I firmly believe that someone is using voodoo powers against me.

Please, put that voodoo doll away

Thu, 29 Jul 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Do not believe Australia Post’s “Guaranteed next day delivery” service. It didn’t work for me when I most needed it. I was keeping track of the progress of the posting of my Visa and passport using the express post tracking number. The US consulate posted the Visa/passport package out a day later than expected. That’s ok - I planned for this and had delayed the outgoing flight by a day. Actually, that plan would have worked quite well if Australia Post could have delivered the package in time (or to the right place). I called up Australia Post five times throughout the day and they said varying things like “It’ll probably arrive at 5 or 6pm” to “It was scanned in this morning at 7:30am” to “It’s been delivered already”. I interpret this as “We don’t actually know where it is”. Actually, a lot of the times they asked “Have you checked your mail?” Well, yes I had. I couldn’t find it because it hadn’t been delivered yet. That’s why I called you. Then I started thinking “Maybe I put the wrong address on the express post envelope” and “Maybe I put my address on the wrong side”. Well, no, I’m pretty darn sure I put the right info down. I can remember checking once, checking again, and checking a third time to be sure. Anyway, the package had made it to my state and to the closest post office sorting facility to my workplace. I don’t know of any other addresses out that side of town either.

Am I really in Melbourne?

Tue, 27 Jul 2004 00:00:00 +0000

The reason I ask this question is that the news’ weather on the plane trip over predicted it to be rainy and 14, but it’s been sunny the whole day. I absolutely love this city, and I still reckon it rocks just as much as the Coldplay concert did here a year ago.

So, the whole point of me being in Melbourne was to visit the consulate to apply for my Visa - and the darn thing has been approved! What a trial. Anyway, I should receive it tomorrow and then I can move on with the rest of the process. I can’t believe I’m leaving this Friday! My feet are absolutely killing me at the moment. I walked from the Spencer St station to the consulate which is located way, way down St Kilda road. I think that was about a 4km walk or something crazy like that. I heard some guys at work mentioning how long the walk was, and I was thinking of cheating and taking the tram, but not when it’s sunny in Melbourne!

Just when you're about to leave

Sun, 25 Jul 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Ok, so the countdown to Friday begins and I decided to take a break from cleaning up and getting everything packed by updating my blog.

I couldn’t help but find what was happening across the road as being a little ironic. You know when you leave primary school or high school and then they build better buildings and generally improve the place, and you’re left thinking “hell, why didn’t they do that while I was there?” Well, I thought my current abode had a pretty good location. There’s a huge supermarket across the road, as well as a video store, chemist, doctor, dentist, chinese takeaway, Domino’s pizza, Chicken takeaway, newsagency, hairdresser and post office/hardware store. This is all a 2 minute walk away. Ooh, not forgetting there is a huge reserve out the back of my place - sort of like a backyard that is maintained by the local council. Well, not being greedy or anything, but I always wished that there was some 24-hour store or something across the road. My wish has come true! A 24-hour servo has recently been built - with hold on - a 24-hour Subway! That is great, but if only they could have built it a little sooner then I could have gotten more use from it. To all those who have to drive anywhere to have such luxuries, I express my deepest sympathies :-)

I'm not anti-US

Wed, 21 Jul 2004 00:00:00 +0000

but if I’m anti-anything, it’s people abusing power. There are likely many examples that do not involve the US, but hey, I couldn’t let this one go by. This is a link to an unclassified document created by the US government in 1962. In it there are various suggestions on how the US Government could justify an invasion of Cuba - by setting up scenarios in where it seemed that Cuba was attacking the US. A snippet:

Documentaries rock

Sun, 18 Jul 2004 00:00:00 +0000

They’re the only thing I can watch time and time again, and thank God, they have saved my arse many a time when the only other things to watch on television are those God-awful afternoon soapies (Passions being the worst of a very bad bunch). So I went to see “Fahrenheit 9/11” and “Supersize Me” on Friday night. F9/11 was absolutely awesome! The cinema it was being shown at was packed, the first time I’ve ever seen it that full, and I swear the whole room was getting hotter as people in the audience were getting more fired up (me DEFINITELY included). I think one of my favourite parts was when Michael Moore was asking members of Congress whether they’d like to enlist their sons/daughters into the defence forces. Ooh, that, and all the parts where George W. Bush was looking like an idiot. Some people would no doubt disagree with the viewpoint that Moore put across, probably saying that it was polarised to being anti-Bush, but I think that we’re in a better place now that doco was made. I was completely unaware of a lot of what was presented even though I thought I knew a bit about what was going on, and it’s made me go and research it on the Internet. As an aside to all this corruption talk, a while back I found a de-classified document which described plans from the early 60’s that the then American government had drawn up to make it appear that Cuba had attacked the US. It’s a pretty amazing read - I’ll put in a link when I find it again.

Musak

Sun, 18 Jul 2004 00:00:00 +0000

You know how you get music that is so bad it’s good again? Wesley Willis is one of those people who has created such music. I heard one of his songs when I was watching “Supersize Me” and thought “I know him!” The guy is dead now unfortunately, but he did leave a treasure-trove of interesting ramblings. This website has the “Chicken Cow” mp3 that you can download of Wesley’s, as well as some other rather twisted, spaced out musak from other various “artists”. Here are some of the lyrics for “The Chicken Cow”

Tickets are booked!

Thu, 15 Jul 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Well, this is sort of weird. I’ve actually got to the point where I have now booked my flights to both the consulate in Melbourne for my visa and for the actual trip to the US. The visa interview is on the 27th July and the day I fly out is the 30th July. That doesn’t leave a lot of time for all the stuff I want to get done, but we’ll see how it goes. I’ve organised transport of my guitar, amp, computer and extra clothes via air freight to the US but I still have to organise a place to live as well as a rental car. Most of this is handled by other people though, so it should be ok.

Farewell pictures online

Tue, 13 Jul 2004 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve added all the (sort of) non-incriminating pics from my farewell to my webshots account, which you can find here. Yeah, I felt compelled to write comments for each photograph, and I really was running out of ideas.

Farewell party postmortem

Sun, 11 Jul 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Holy crap I had a great time at my farewell party last night! Thanks to all of you who came along (you know who you are!) One of my mates got some pics from the night so when I get access to them I’ll post some of them. My rollerskating party farewell was held at the St Clair recreation centre in Woodville - which turned out to be an awesome venue. Parking turned out to be a bit difficult because 500 or so nerds were also having a LAN party in another part of the building. Actually, calling them nerds is a bit tongue-in-cheek really because since I’m an engineer/programmer of sorts you could probably technically claim that I am a nerd as well. Ahh well. Put it this way though - I’d prefer to fall on my arse ten times more than I did at rollerskating last night than go to something like that. The whole LAN party thing just doesn’t appeal to me.

One small step...

Fri, 09 Jul 2004 00:00:00 +0000

What witty words will I write for my first weblog post? Hmmm, I can’t think of anything now (nice alliteration for the first bit of that sentence though). Luckily I can come back later and edit it if I feel inspired.

I decided to start blogging because, well, maybe I like jumping on bandwagons. No. I have always wanted to do something like this but the thing is I seldom say what is really on my mind. I guess it’s because the whole idea of letting everyone know what I am thinking was a bit, well, scary. It shouldn’t be, but that’s me. Also, my fingers are much better at getting wit out of my head than my mouth is (thanks to all that extra thinking time) so this seems the perfect forum to do it.

That bites

Fri, 09 Jul 2004 00:00:00 +0000

It seems that yet again my application for an L-1 Visa has been delayed. I got my application package back just after lunch today with a big fat yellow Visa rejection slip on the front. The application was rejected because they could not fit me in for an interview before I was due to leave - I think I’m about to set a record for my company in that I’ll have the longest Visa application time ever! My interview has been scheduled for the end of July now, which bites even more considering the interview is supposed to take all of a minute. Eh, I guess I should be happy enough that I will eventually get there.