I almost forgot...

O'Riley's pizzas rock! Mmm...! Next time I get a pizza, it's going to be from there.

Scho tasty!

Nite ;)

Hopefully after this weekend, all of the plaster work will be finished in the office. The guy that's doing it has been, in my opinion, quite slack. On the other hand, the guy that's doing the external rendering has been really fast, so the front of the office now has its rendered finish and it looks quite impressive.

The plastering has been holding up the inside work, however. Obviously nothing can be painted before the plastering is finished, so that also means no carpet can be put down, no electrical fittings, no furniture can be constructed (such as the front counter and wrap-around desks/benches). The plastering was supposed to be done the weekend before last. Then it was supposed to be fully completed last weekend. Now it's apparently going to be finished this weekend. Anyone seeing a pattern here? ;)

Meanwhile my nephew, Ethan, has a few teeth! Two, actually. A few more will probably show up in the next week or so. Time flies when you're working yourself into the ground ;)

Speaking of which, today I found out that the work I put in to the rather large quotation and expression of interest response to USC last month (after they contacted me wondering if I was interested… that's why it's called an expression of interest, LOL)... has paid off! I received a letter today informing me that "you are the successful tenderer for the design of our international portal web site" and that "Cluster members were impressed with your understanding of our needs, the examples of your work and your competitive quote". Nice words eh ;) I wonder if that last part means that I did myself out of a lot of money ;) Heh, just kidding.



I took a lot of photos while I was heading to Noosa and Brisbane on the weekend. This shot is a few minutes outside where I used to live... the area is extraordinarily dry, as you can see. I'd probably say that it's just that people don't take notice when things are normal, but I always remember it being either very dry, or flooding.

That takes me to another point. I haven't witnessed a large electrical storm in a long time. I remember in the first six months after moving here there were many of them and the summer was very hot and humid. Since that time I don't remember there being any major storms... only heavy rain.

I miss the lightning.

I also miss the dry, hot and gusty winds of where I used to live. That's not to say I want to move back there, though ;)

"this baby's got a temper..."

Back again (6 AM?)

I was down in Noosa on the weekend for the scattering of my aunt Dorne's ashes. I'll leave that at that.

In other news, I have a few GB to download before the 27th (when my data is reset).

My Baby's Got a Temper CD arrived today :D

Looks like the plan now is to head to Noosa first on Saturday, then to Brisbane and stay there overnight, leaving Sunday evening. It's going to be hectic, but that's what makes it fun :)

Time to stock up the MiniDiscs with songs for the trip ;)

No net access for most of the day today: ATM link died in Brisbane and took out half the ADSL network there (and subsequently here).

This weekend I'll be heading down to Brisbane and Noosa... possibly from Friday night this time...

*ponders*

A few more late nights and I'm still not feeling back to normal... this cold has gained a cough that won't go away.

In other news my Baby's Got a Temper single is on its way from HMV. It should arrive today or tomorrow :) For those that don't know, Baby's Got a Temper is Prodigy's latest single (the first in several years now), which was released yesterday in Australia but two weeks ago in the UK and a few other places. For a long time, my friends and I (along with many other people worldwide, I'm sure) have been awaiting some new studio material from them... in particular the release of their fourth album, Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned, which has been 'coming soon' for years now, heh.

Once it finally is released (this year, next?) I'm sure it'll be staying in my CD player for a very long time... :D

More progress on work finally, getting some things finished and confirmed. Currently working on a nice little Flash intro (leaving the more serious database work for a few days, just to get a break from the coding).

By now, I'm probably the king of "info-mercials". Because I'm always up so late at night, the majority of TV viewing (after MSNBC's Today and The Late Show with David Letterman) consists of crazy products being sold by American presenters that are less-than-convincing in their promises about the magic resulst the products can produce. Regardless, I pretty much know all there is to know about the useless products that are advertised. Whether it's the Airofit Walking Machine, Food Saver Vacuum Seal, Steam Dream or the Le Presse Gourmet Food Styler, if you need the crazy details... I'm now the subliminally-informed person to ask.

Time for sleep, a new day awaits.

Who needs sleep?

Oh wait... I do.

*exits*

This probably doesn't make for fascinating reading material, but it took me until 5:30 last night to get to sleep... my nose and throat kept me up all night :/ Well, I got about 30 minutes of sleep but that was it. Then I finally fell in to deep sleep...

Then I woke up at 7. :|

After another hour, I got back to sleep until about 2 in the afternoon... LOL.

Now I'm feeling just as sick, so I better get going and let my body recover.

I've been feeling less than 100% for a few days but I thought it was nothing, until this afternoon when it hit me like a bus being driven by Sandra Bullock (or something). Now I have a sore throat and runny nose, I keep getting hot and cold flashes, sneezing and generally I feel exhausted. Bleurgh.

I should just go to bed :/ *exits*

Today wasn't as productive as I'd hoped, heh :) Well it was in some respects but not in others. Tomorrow should be much better though...

Slowly, I'm winding my body clock back to semi-normal.

Yesterday I forgot to mention that again, Ergon Energy did a terrible job of keeping a consistent power supply going. On Sunday night when we got back, all of the computers were off. It seems there was a blackout that afternoon that last for about an hour: how wonderful. Good work Ergon Energy, I can see that you've improved your service so much over the last year *extreme sarcasm*. Reading through their website is a real laugh. People powering people. Thanks for the alliteration, but all I want is power that's not going to drop out randomly and stay out for over an hour. Is that too much to ask?

If it's an overloading issue, shouldn't they be happy that people are using a lot of electricity? I know for a fact that they rejoice whenever there are large usage days: it means more money for them.

Oh well... time for an earlier night!

Well the other night I was up until sunrise because I was finally working out the routing for the wireless bridging between the home and the office network. Although the wireless link was active before and I'd been testing it, it wasn't actually joining the two networks in any meaningful way (it was just one large network). Now I have three subnets: the home network, the office network and the wireless bridge that connects the two.

This basically means that the networks act as though they're one large network, despite being physically disconnected. Data travelling to the other network is automatically routed over the wireless link seamlessly.

So after a lot of messing around, it's all working perfectly. There were some issues with things like the Windows networking, which doesn't automatically work across routed networks (the automatic discovery process doesn't work because broadcasts are localised to a subnet). That meant manually setting up the computers to 'see' computers on the other network.

Then on late Saturday we headed to Brisbane to do some things and catch up with my brother. It was one of those quick stop-overs where there's a lot to do and not much time to do it in (as always, heh). Then Sunday, back we came. Today I also hooked up the print server for the network and tested it to ensure it would work properly. It's a TCP/IP remote print server that can be configured using a web browser or applications that support SNMP. It works really well and makes 'network printing' a lot more convenient (as no other computers have to be turned on to print).

While we were heading in and out of Brisbane I remembered to leave the laptop running with NetStumbler scanning. I found around 45 different wireless networks (not bad considering there was no external antenna attached to the card). Of those, only around 5 were encrypted. I haven't had much time to have a good look through the details of the networks but I'll probably post a screenshot here just for interest some time in the next couple of days. By contrast, when I did a scan around here, I didn't find any wireless networks, LOL. I know there are one or two but they're council networks that don't respond to broadcast packets. In a way (although it doesn't make for much hacking fun ;) it is good that there are few networks here, because the air space isn't cluttered, so there'll be good clarity in the signal for my network.

I also finally did a little work on the pulsar.org.au site that Splash asked for a while ago. It's been one of those situations of there just being so much other stuff to get done. Today I probably should have been working exclusively on other things, but when there are projects I can carve out of the way quickly it's best to get them done so that there's less to think about.

Until more progresses with the office (the fit out) there isn't an urgent need to have all of the computers perfectly configured, so I can put that on hold to some extent. That means back to website design finally! :D

The vast majority of tomorrow will be spent working through the finer details of things and tying up loose ends. This week will be very productive.

For all of that to happen, I really should get some nice solid sleep, so that's what I'm going to do :)

Goodnight :)

It's of concern when you're working away on something through the night... and suddenly realise the room isn't being lit by a desk lamp any more... it's being lit by the sun!

I'll explain what's kept me up so late at a different time.

*heads off to bed*

Minority Report: excellent movie. I rate it as one of the most interesting movies I've seen this year - definitely one to buy on DVD.

Afterwards, standing around outside in the freezing air chatting around 1 AM, I see another local scene that really amuses me (on so many levels). A car slowly lurks around the empty carpark, eventually stopping. A few people get out with the engine still running, open the boot, look around as though they're going to dump a body in the garden, but then proceed to steal traffic cones/witches' hats off the side of the road...

Then, they guiltily look around a little more before jumping back in the car, speeding off down the road, stopping again and then picking up some more!

This behaviour concerns and amuses me.

Concerning because they're stealing something that's been placed there for a reason... but more amusing, because they obviously can't come up with anything more interesting and this is how they have fun on a week night (yeah rockin', get them traffic cones, yeah! LOL).

I guess it's a great thrill to go 'hunting traffic cones' or something? *shrugs*

Tonight, I better get some sleep earlier than last night (where although I said I was going, I stayed and it took another hour before I really went).

'night ;)

I think this is one of the coldest nights I remember experiencing here... I think it's about 3 or 4 degrees. That's still not as cold as where I used to live (where this time of year it's as low as -2 - currently 0 degrees by the way), but for a coastal area, 3-4 degrees is cold... *brrr*

The other night I had the strangest dream, about a person that I haven't seen in years. What was most strange was the colour of the dream. For the most part I can't remember there being any colour at all, however certain objects were very vividly coloured and they've really stuck in my head since. On some abstract level, the objects feel as though they're related to each other... but I just can't grasp what they have in common. I've had about 3 dreams that I can remember well from the past few days and they've all been fascinating. I think it has something to do with the temperature and quality of the sleep I've had lately... that is, cool nights and very deep sleep. It's actually allowing me to recover from the really late nights I've been having.

Anyway, I guess I should probably go and get some of that nice deep sleep now ;) 'night :)