Posts

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

Recently the canteen at work has brought in sushi to the selection of foods available. This makes a nice change from the salads that I normally prepare from the salad bar and I now have another healthy eating option for lunch. Thankfully though all the sushi is made by an external company, as I’m sure those in similar corporate environments could attest, the food made in the corporate canteen isn’t the best at times. I just wouldn’t trust them with sushi. ...

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. ...

Finally stuff seems to be working out, but only after a lot of effort and a few tears here and there (joking about the tears part). I have conquered part of the code and the damn radio seems to be doing what I’m telling it to do! Amazing, yes. God damn engineering is frustrating. I’m also amazed how much taking a step back from the work can be in getting it completed. Example, I was up till midnight trying to get this code working and then I gave up in frustration. I came back this morning and *bam* I instantly saw what was going wrong. ...

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. ...