April 2003 (Month View – Displaying Summary)

 

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01.01.2003 – Wednesday 1 January – New Year’s Day

Morning

• The first day of 2003

Evening

• It rained. I’m not sure how much rain as I slept in ridiculously late, but rain it did. The ground was wet and the creek is apparently up. It continued to sprinkle throughout the day. Mum and I watched Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life in the evening. I phoned Silas but he was still out at the reef somewhere. He phoned me back later in the evening, we are still planning to go to Cairns tomorrow evening or possibly early Friday morning.

This file

• I’m also messing around with the format of this xml file and its associated xslt and css stylesheets. I like the way it is now – with separated content with time attributes. Unicode is good too – no more limitations on what characters I can use. If it exists in Unicode and can be saved as utf-8, then I can use it. It’s then up to the browser at the other end to display them.

02.01.2003 – Thursday 2 January

• I’ve lost track of what happened today, but I believe it wasn’t much.

03.01.2003 – Friday 3 January – Drove to Cairns with Silas

Morning

• Silas came in the morning, and we drove to Cairns. It was a four hour drive and rather uneventful. I made the foolish mistake of playing with the air outside my window all the way down – resulting in a rather severely sunburnt left arm. When we arrived in Cairns it was a tad warm. Very hot actually. We went around to Silas’s brother Eric’s place, and probably did a few other things but I don’t really remember them.

Evening

• Eric, Silas and I went and saw “MY BIG FAT GRΣΣK WEDDING” at the City Cinemas and then went to the Cock and Bull for dinner – then slept at Eric’s. Both Silas and I had a fitful sleep, due partly to the bright lights streaming in the windows, the traffic driving noisily past – and also the slight apprehension from a story one of Eric’s flatmates had told us...

The Story

• Eric has two flatmates. Some time ago, one woke up to find the other had got the two sharpest knives and two garbage bags and was going to kill the other and put him in the bags. The reason? Who knows? However it made us mildly uneasy.

04.01.2003 – Saturday 4 January – Watched Lord of the Rings – The Two Towers

Morning

• Silas, Eric and I drove to a bakery and got some breakfast coffee and baked croissants and a sweet stick thing for me. Silas and I then went to an internet café and checked our emails and such stuff. Silas had a few friends he wished to visit and I had a few movies I wished to see so we separated, Silas going to see his friends and I heading towards the cinemas where I saw “The Fat Chick” and “The Tuxedo”. The Fat Chick is incredibly stupid, which was roughly what I thought it would be like. The Tuxedo isn’t a great deal better, but contains the usual Jackie Chan excitement and was a fun watch. I also did the shopping which needed doing.

Evening

• Silas and I went and saw “The Lord of the Rings – The Two Towers” in the evening. It was, as expected, superb – although I was somewhat disappointed at how they’ve glossed over certain parts and indeed totally excluded others that I felt were vital to the storyline. Nevertheless, the acting, the scenery, the realism – it is hard to beat. I can’t think of any other movie offhand that I’d say would beat this one.

Night

• We then went back to Eric’s and went to sleep.

05.01.2003 – Sunday 5 January – Saw James Bond

Morning

• Silas did some more visiting and I did some more movie watching, seeing “Sweet Home Alabama”. We drove out to Josephine’s to use her Mum’s car to pick up some furniture from Eric’s as he is moving to another place. The furniture didn’t fit in the car, but we picked up Josephine instead.

James Bond

• I drove Silas, Ben and Josephine to the Esplanade, and then drove out to Earlville cinemas where I saw James Bond – Die Another Day. I quite enjoyed the movie, although it is always disappointing to see how they’ve let the Bond character down and how americanised it is – I would like to see more of the British style, and less of the extremely blatant American style in the Bond movies... but it was nonetheless typical Bond, with lots of action, lots of large explosions and incredibly improbable events (which, unfortunately, are all too predictable at times – another downside to the American movie style). They should have got someone better than Halle Berry too; I’m not a fan of her.

Midnight

• After the movie finished I drove back in to the Esplanade where I rang Silas. He was at the Woolshed, so I went and got a thick shake for dinner and then headed to the Woolshed. After circumventing the admission charge, I spent an hour or two (I think we left around 2:30 but I’m not sure) there with Silas and Josephine. We then went for a walk around looking for other nightclubs and then drove back to Amy’s place and went to bed.

06.01.2003 – Monday 6 January – Returned home from Cairns

Morning

• Silas and I both awoke late, followed shortly thereafter by Josephine. Once we managed to summon the energy, we drove Josephine home, stopping at a bakery for some food on the way. We stayed at her house for a while during which time it clouded over and began to rain.

Lunch

• Silas and I drove back to Amy’s and did some cleaning up, sweeping, the dishes and such. We then went to Cairns Central where I bought a falafel roll and some fruit juice, Silas a Dona Kebab and some coffee, and a doormat for Amy. After lunch we drove back to Amy’s and left the mat and began the journey home.

Evening

• We left Cairns and headed for Mareeba, managing to arrive there without any accidents or other nasty incidents. Silas had to buy some milk, and we fuelled up. The drive home went well, it being overcast and not too hot. It rained on and off. We stopped at Lakeland where I was going to phone Mum, but the phone was faulty.

Night

• I arrived home just after dark, and just as it began to rain. Silas and I watched “mullet”, a DVD which Mum had got from town. Silas then went to bed in his swag inside, while I went on chat and wrote this. I am very tired as is Silas.

07.01.2003 – Tuesday 7 January

• I slept. Then I woke. Then I slept again. I am very tired, and have a sore neck. I think the few days in Cairns with broken sleep at night and the eight hours driving have worn me out.

10:40pm

• It is raining lightly. Maybe the wet season is finally upon us? I am worn out again. I still haven’t caught up on my sleep. I put Silas’s monitor on my old PC, started up, and the video card couldn’t find enough resources to run... After disabling various other things, and reinstalling the drivers, I managed to get it to work. I then connected its crossover cable to my new PC – no link lights. I cried, banged my head on the wall, sacrificed some chickens, rebooted several times, installed the drivers for the network card in the old PC, re-setup the “Windows Home Networking”, suspended my new PC, unsuspended it – and it worked. I’ll have to do some more tests to work out what’s going on.

08.01.2003 – Wednesday 8 January

Morning

• I woke up and started my PC as per usual. It wouldn’t accept my login password – and the password was many letters too long. This was weird. For every key I typed, three characters were appearing. Because passwords don’t show the actual characters, just ••••••, I couldn’t see what was going on. I rebooted. I changed the keyboard from USB to PS/2. Nothing helped. I plugged my old keyboard in and booted up my old PC which doesn’t require a login. Now I could see that for each key press, it was typing seemingly random characters. Fortunately my old keyboard worked, so I used that and pulled this one to bits. An hour later and after cleaning it all, I had it back together again – and it worked. I’ve no idea why but I’m glad, it’s a $100 keyboard.

Evening

• Jean Haak phoned. Her printer won’t. I went for a walk down to her place and fixed it all. I met Dad walking, while I was walking home, so we stopped and talked for a while. I have to try to remember to remind Mum that Jean needs a lift to town on Monday for a doctor’s appointment. Mum is quite sick and has been in bed all day. She says she feels as though she has some type of flu, with an upset stomach and aching.

Night

• It’s late and I’m tired. I’m going to bed. I’ve spent ages fighting Dreamweaver. It corrupts xml files and I can’t work out why or how to stop it. It is all too complicated with Unicode, utf-8, ansi, weird fonts, the same file appearing differently in different applications... argh!

Oh... and...

• I also applied for a credit card from the Commonwealth bank online. Maybe I’ll get one. I hope so as they are the only way to pay for many things nowadays.

09.01.2003 – Thursday 9 January – QTAC Offer Received

Day

• I had a quiet day, spending most of it at my PC and online talking to my chat friends and messing around trying to revamp my journal site and get XSLT and XML to work. Robert installed Sablotron (an XSLT plug-in for PHP) on SolidInternet but something had problems, and Apache had to be recompiled, then the server had to be restarted and I don’t know what else, but it was down for maybe fifteen minutes and some very weird things happened, but eventually it all worked and I could get to work on my journal site. I hope to have it all finished and working – or at least functional, by tonight.

Evening

• Shan dropped in on his way home from town, where he has been doing tech for his apprenticeship. We talked for a while and then he went home.

Night

• I’ve just spent hours hacking code and getting my revamped journal website to work. It now works! I’m very happy with it, it’s all glossy, shiny, functional, neat, ordered, validating and so on and so forth.

2:46am

• It is technically Friday, and I am about to go to bed. I am a bit excited, because I’ve just logged into QTAC’s Applicant Online Services, and received an offer in Bachelor of Information Technology, The University of Queensland.

10.01.2003 – Friday 10 January

Day

• I had a fairly quiet day. I went up to Dad’s in the morning to see if I could catch him before he went to baby-sit the insect man’s place, but he was already gone. I messed around with the website for this journal, and chatted to my friends on IRC. It was very hot.

Evening

• I drove over to Joneses and took the DVD “The Bank” over for them to watch, and borrowed two DVD’s which they had. I ran over a large snake on the way home.

Night

• I attempted to make a RSS feed for this journal, which I have managed to make, but it doesn’t look very pretty. I’ll have to mess around with it some more later. Now its bedtime and I’m very sleepy. I think I will sleep in tomorrow – that should be a refreshing change from all the midday sleep-ins I’ve been having recently.

11.01.2003 – Saturday 11 January

Evening

• We have power – at least temporarily. The power has been on and off for the past two hours, not very handy for my PC and the UPS-without-a-battery. After my shocking sleep-in (I didn’t wake until 2:30) there wasn’t much day left. Jade and Shan drove over in the evening on their way to buy the paper and stayed for a while. Mum and I watched a DVD, “The Wedding Planner”. Neither of us were very impressed. As Mum said, it is “eminently forgettable”. I also managed to get RSS versions 0.91 and 1.0 feeds, as well as a CDF feed available for syndication.

PS

• Oh, and I forgot – Silas phoned earlier and says he may be able to get me accommodation in Brisbane, and that I should be able to get a lift down with him when he returns.

12.01.2003 – Sunday 12 January

• Not much happened today. I drove over to Joneses and spent the afternoon there. Later on, Mum and I watched “The Bank”, it isn’t the world’s best acting, but a good storyline and enjoyable. It kept my interest throughout, and the twist at the end was a refreshing change from the average boringly predictable movie endings.

13.01.2003 – Monday 13 January – New RAM and HDD’s

Morning

• I woke up to hear a strange noise, like a loud lawnmower flying around. I went outside and had a look, there was a helicopter flying around in circles overhead. It was black and with a large pole of some type poking several metres out the front on one side, but it didn’t sound like any helicopter I’ve heard before. It didn’t have the typical beat which a helicopter has, but just a strange high pitched whine. I thought maybe it was a gyrocopter. It flew around three times and then flew away to the south west. I went back to bed.

2:46pm

• I woke up and looked at the clock. 2:46 PM! Eek! That is way too late to sleep in, even if I had already been woken by the weird helicopter noise. I guess I need to get to bed earlier. I stayed up until a quarter to four last night, and it shows.

• I went for a walk up to Dad’s in the evening, meeting Vince and Sarah on the way up there. He still isn’t home but I met Mum as I was walking home and as she was dropping Jean home, so I got a lift back with her.

• I installed the new 512 MB of RAM and put the two 80 GB Western Digital 8 MB Cache HDD’s in. I also drove over to Joneses to get some HDD screws and an IDE cable. I haven’t got enough HDD power plugs from the PSU to actually run the new HDD’s (I want to run them as a striped RAID array). I have just noticed that the HDD LED is on dimly all the time, so I might shut down the PC and unplug the IDE cables from the new drives and see if that helps.

14.01.2003 – Tuesday 14 January – New CD-RW

Day

• I walked up to Dad’s early in the morning but he’d already gone to work at Ron’s so I walked to Ron’s meeting Dad there. I then spent the middle of the day on chat and at my PC, and went to Joneses in the evening as my late birthday present from Shan had arrived; along with the parts for a new PC Shan is building for a friend. I helped Shan put the PC together (well... truth be told I just watched and gave advice...), and then brought my new PCI modem, floppy drive, case fan and birthday present – 48/24/48 CD-RW back home. A quick call to Silas to confirm that I would like to go to Cairns with him on Friday and then into the hardware install.

PC

• I installed the floppy drive but I need to wait until tomorrow when I can get a few adaptors for the power supply plugs before I can plug it in. I installed the fan and swapped the other ones around, managing to make the PC lots noisier in the process. I then installed the CD-RW and NERO Burning Rom (which came with it) and thought I better test it out.

• First up, the basics, does the door open? Yes, of course it does. Do disks go in and work? Yes they do. So, how does it go with audio CD’s? It freezes up the application trying to read them. Hmm... that’s no good. Disable digital audio, ahh it works now. So what’s it like at extracting digital audio? A full 59 minute, 16 tracks CD ripped in 1 minute and 54 seconds at a maximum of 43.8x (average 31.1x). This is using burst mode (and a clean CD) in Exact Audio Copy (currently the best CD ripping program). Wow that’s fast. I can’t detect any audible errors either.

• I’m now going to try an extremely scratched CD now and see what happens.

• I just ripped my Placebo CD. It is very scratched – I mean severely scratched. I don’t think it even works in my other drives. I ripped it using burst (non secure) mode, averaged around 8x ripping, so far I can’t find any errors. Amazing. I’m now going to find my most scratched CD.

• I just ripped another scratched CD using the insecure burst mode – ripping around 16x and so far it seems no audible errors. Very good.

• Testing burning a CD-RW now. Successfully burnt a 10x Verbatim disc at 12x, so that seems good. And... the burner has a dual-colour LED which glows green when reading and red when writing, just like my old drive so that’s good too. Call me silly but I really wanted a dual-colour LED rather than how some drives do it – just a normal LED that flashed on and off. Thanks Shan!

• I just reconnected to the internet and happened to have my headphones on – and I heard the modem dialling through my headphones. That is cool. I’ll have to test it tomorrow and see how it works, maybe I can use the modem as a phone call recording device.

15.01.2003 – Wednesday 15 January – Received QTAC Confirmation

Morning

• Mum woke me up and we went to town nice and early. I checked my mail and also went to the computer shop and bought the power adaptors I needed for my new hard drives, and another IDE hard drive lead. I got “The Matrix” out on DVD as it’s been ages since I last saw it. I met Bob and Peter at Peter’s shop and had a short talk to them, and then Mum and I drove home again.

Evening

• I received my QTAC confirmation and enrolment information from UQ, with lots to read and lots to think about. I found out the key dates – orientation week is 24th to 28th February and the actual course starts 3rd March. That’s not all that much time, I should start panicking now. The other letter I received wasn’t so pleasant. A notice from Centrelink to repay approximately $1300 which they claim was wrongly paid to me because I wasn’t studying at Cairns School of Distance Education during the fourth term last year. I never claimed I was. I was studying from Brisbane School of Distance Education. This has happened several times now; I thought that this confusion between Cairns and Brisbane schools had been sorted out last time I had this problem. Theoretically it should be easy to sort it out as Centrelink are quite obviously wrong – but unfortunately there are complications. Centrelink has said they require proof that I was enrolled and proof that I was returning adequate work units to be classed as full-time. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem but... During that period I was in hospital, and after I was discharged from hospital I contacted the school to discuss my options as there was no longer sufficient time to study for and sit the examinations. The school told me to send them a doctor’s letter and they would continue my enrolment until the end of the course, after which I then sat the STAT test rather than the examinations I would otherwise have sat. So it would appear that I have accidentally violated a Centrelink’s definition of “full-time” study, but satisfied the school, and now I have a problem. I should be able to provide proof that I was enrolled during that term, but I can’t provide proof that I was returning work – because I wasn’t (or at least not enough to classify as full-time, I was in hospital). I guess I am supposed to have informed Centrelink that I was in hospital and unable to study, but I didn’t. I really don’t have the money to repay them, and I especially don’t need this on top of moving to Brisbane and UNI. Oh well, I’ll contact Brisbane School of Distance Education when they open on the 23rd of January.

Night

• I installed the power plugs on my new hard drives and the floppy drive, created a striped RAID array and formatted the disks. So far everything seems to work although I haven’t actually had time to do much with it. I also began using XMLSpy to create the XML source for this journal as DreamWeaver and EditPlus both have separate UTF-8 issues. EditPlus seems to incorrectly read or write certain UTF-8 characters and DreamWeaver (seemingly randomly) corrupts or deletes parts of the data. I also created a schema which validates this file.

16.01.2003 – Thursday 16 January

Former Day

• Wow what a day? Where do I start? The beginning I guess... Well... I woke up. Beat that. Then I had breakfast, followed by a period of inactivity. I mean – inactivity. You can’t get better than that. Then I had lunch. Yes, you read it right. I had lunch. Just like that – I had lunch. Followed by a period of inactivity. So, I guess that just about concludes it, I’ll start another section for the latter parts.

Latter Day

• I drove up to Dad’s and dropped off some UNI stuff for him to look at, stayed an hour then came home and drove to Joneses, dropped off Shan’s IDE lead and “The Matrix” DVD, stayed a while then came home, watched “The Matrix” with Mum, had dinner, did a few things to get ready to go to Cairns tomorrow and went to bed.

17.01.2003 – Friday 17 January – Silas and I drive to Cairns

Lunch

• Silas phoned around lunchtime to let us know he would be arriving around 2 o’clock, which he did, with his younger sister Renae. We stopped at the Lions Den Hotel, where Silas and Renae had a few beers. Then, an hour or so later we stopped at Lakeland Hotel where another beer or two was purchased, enough to get us to the Palmer River Roadhouse, the beer from which just about got us through to Mount Carbine hotel, by which time I was driving and Silas was resting in the back...

Evening

• It started raining not long after Mount Carbine, and was pretty wet all the way from there to Cairns. It makes it much harder driving at night down the Kuranda range when it’s wet, with the poor windscreen wipers on the Falcon, the slippery and very windy and steep road, all the too-bright headlights... but we made it safely and dropped Renae off at Josephine’s where Silas, his brother Eric, and Renae had dinner. I didn’t eat anything as it was meat. After dinner Silas and I drove to his Cousin Amy’s place and went to sleep.

18.01.2003 – Saturday 18 January – Cairns

• Silas and I drove Amy to work and then went to a nearby bakery for breakfast, then on to an Internet Café to service our vital communication needs. After leaving the Internet Café Silas and I went and did lots of shopping for his family, spending hours in the supermarket and driving around to a few places, then it got too late (as places tend to close half day on Saturday). Silas and I then drove over to the van park where his brother Eric is staying and him and his friend came and we all went and watched James Bond (the second time for me – it is an enjoyable movie to watch). Interestingly Silas agreed that the first half is ok but the second half has become too americanised and Halle Berry wrecks it to an extent by the way she’s portrayed. I then went and watched "Analyze That" at night while Silas and some friends went to some nightclubs. I joined them after the movie finished (around 11:30) and we talked for a while and then the friends went home and Silas and I went to “The Woolshed" (which is a night club) and stayed there, getting home 4 AM. A bit boring for me because I don’t drink and wasn’t trying to pick up a girl, having instead to avoid some, but it was all interesting. We then drove back to Amy’s place (Silas’s cousin) around 4 AM and went to bed.

19.01.2003 – Sunday 19 January – Cairns

• This morning we both woke late and eventually went and got some breakfast from Cairns Central (I had a falafel kebab) around lunch time, then went back to Amy’s (she’s working) and stayed there up until late afternoon, when we went to Rusty’s Markets (an Asian type fruit market) and bought some potatoes and onions, then bought a milkshake and headed for an Internet Café to once again service our vital communication needs. Silas and I ate dinner at the Night Markets and then headed out to Earlville Cinemas to see “Catch Me if You Can” with Josephine and Renae. It’s an OK movie, but that’s about all I’d say, but nevertheless it was enjoyable. We then drove back to Amy’s and watched “Waiting for Godot” on SBS, getting to bed late due to watching that.

20.01.2003 – Monday 20 January – Arrive Home

Day

• Silas and I woke up in time to get Amy to work by 9 AM. We then drove the short distance from the café she’s working in to Cairns Central and had some breakfast. A milkshake and apple croissant look-alike later and we headed off to start shopping. Firstly back to Amy’s place to unload a few things from the car to make space, then off to do shopping. We drove all over the place, getting a new tyre, water pipe fittings, cistern parts, electrical cabling clips... and many, many other things. Around 2 PM we arrived back at Amy’s place, as did Amy (having got off work early). After a short rest Silas and I packed the car and headed off to Eric’s to drop off some food, then on to Josephine’s to pick up a few things (and have a cup of tea), then up to Mareeba. We arrived at Mareeba just on five o’clock and went to the supermarket to buy a few cold goods. I bought some chips and soy milk and Silas got a pie from a nearby takeaway shop, then we headed for home. A few hours, and several million bumps, later we arrived home. I had some mail – I have received a credit card, so now I should be able to purchase things which only accept credit cards.

Night

• Silas is sleeping out in the yard in his swag and I am about to go to bed.

21.01.2003 – Tuesday 21 January

• I had a quiet and restful day. Silas slept in the yard in his swag last night and it rained, so he got a little wet. He left here around 9 AM after having written a few emails, and headed off to Bloomfield. I checked into the UQ (University of Queensland) site and set up my personal details and HECS information and such. I spent the rest of the day resting, going for a walk up to Dad’s in the evening to get some papers I needed to check my uni enrolment and walking back just after dusk had fallen. There has been a little bit of strong rain today and it is very overcast, maybe the wet season is finally here?

• I am quite tired; I guess still worn out from the trip to Cairns, so it’s off to bed I go.

22.01.2003 – Wednesday 22 January

Morning

• I actually managed to wake up at a normal time for a change – before 10 o’clock! I phoned up and enabled my credit card, then got it linked to my statement account, then had it linked to my NetBank. And all this before lunch – I’m on a roll.

Evening

• Marriette phoned to say her PC no longer works. It says it has files missing. I walked up to her place and diagnosed the hard drive as terminally sad, and took it out and put it in another PC to try and copy any files off it. I managed to get most of the documents off it at slower than floppy drive speeds. Then I walked home again, by which time it was rather dark and I had to feel my way down the road. When I felt leaves I knew I was off the road. Fortunately I didn’t break any toes on sticks or stones, or poke any eyes out on branches.

23.01.2003 – Thursday 23 January

Morning

• Mum woke me up in the morning and we drove into town. I went down to Peter’s shop and talked to him for a while, and then got a lift up to Peter’s place around lunch time where I edited some pointers to non-existent files out of the registry on his computer, then we went down to Ken’s and picked up my monitor. It cost $80, and Ken said it has the best picture he’s seen in a while and is also well designed and built. Unfortunately I seem to be unable to find its stand. I think that I may have not received a stand when I got its replacement, so I may only have one stand. I also got two DVD’s, “Braveheart” and “Rain Man”. Sadly my DVD drive won’t recognize the “Braveheart” DVD.

Evening

• I drove over to Joneses and took my old 15 inch monitor over for Shan to use as I now have my other old 17 inch monitor fixed. Shan’s DVD drive can read the “Braveheart” DVD with no problems yet mine won’t even recognize it as a disc – so I’m not really happy about that. I did a bit of reading and ended up downloading a few files and then flashing the DVD drive’s bios. My Sony DVD drive is no longer a Sony drive – it’s now a LiteON drive. It sort of cuts down the “It’s a Sony” impression when you realise that this drive is made by LiteON, is identical to the drive LiteON sells, but has a Sony front-plate and Sony bios – or did have until about half an hour ago. Regrettably the drive still wouldn’t read the DVD, but it does now rip audio CD’s much faster and much more reliably. Sigh. I wanted to watch that movie too.

24.01.2003 – Friday 24 January

• I had a quiet day, with nothing particularly interesting happening. I messed around with my webpage and phoned BSDE regarding my Centrelink issues (I spoke to Marylyn Temperton and she said she would fax a letter to Centrelink). Hopefully that will sort out my Centrelink problems, although I’ll just have to wait and see. I stayed up adding some geeky humour to my amused website.

25.01.2003 – Saturday 25 January

Morning

• This morning was quiet. I slept in and spent the morning online.

3:33pm

• At 3:33 PM I noticed that Outlook was unable to connect to my email server. A quick check showed that many sites on the Internet were experiencing problems, and it was getting worse. Ten hours later and my site still isn’t available. Apparently there’s a worm going around which infects MS-SQL servers, spewing out a lot of data and clogging up routers. In the meantime I walked up to the shop, but it was closed. Apparently they now open at 8:30 and close at 5, so I came home and had a shower, then Mum and I watched “Rain Man” on DVD. It is an evocative and moving movie, and well acted, although not at all my style. But I enjoyed watching it. I was then unable to connect to Telstra Bigpond Home. Phoning them didn’t help much either, they said to wait until midnight and try again. What’s the bet they’re patching all their MS-SQL servers?

26.01.2003 – Sunday 26 January – Australia Day

• I am listening to Metallica’s “Master of Puppets”. And wishing I had some doughnuts. I really wish I had some doughnuts right now. I have been eating “Mississippi Cheese Straws” and “Mississippi Mud Puppies”, both very strong.

• Obey your master. Your life burns faster. Obey your master – master – master of puppets, I’m pulling your strings – twisting your mind and smashing your dreams. Hmm, a good song, anyway back to the food. I still wish I had some doughnuts. Or is that donuts? That’s one of the problems of being Australian. I never know if I should be using the Americanised (or is that Americanized?) versions of words, or if I should be using the British equivalent. Oh well, I guess there’s larger problems in life than that. I’ve been over to Home Rule to see Shan this evening. I nearly hit a tree on the drive over. I came around a corner and there was a tree in the middle of the road. Quite a rude tree it was too, refusing to budge. The road was wet and muddy, probably something to do with the rain, so I only just stopped in time. Fortunately for the tree, I managed to squeeze around one side.

• Woe. No doughnuts.

• Anyway, Shan and I played Unreal Tournament for a while; using the new PC he’s made for Jass. These songs bring back memories. I was probably 13 or 14, living in a remote valley out West from Gympie. My best friend Aaron and I used to “camp out” most weekends in an old caravan. It was quite a way from anyone else, in a very scenic location beside a small creek. Their block had a road down the middle of it – the road in fact, as there was only one. Their house was on one side, the caravan on the other, and probably a kilometre or so apart. After school Friday’s I would walk over to Aaron’s place, or he mine, and we’d play around doing not much. We were both into electronics in a very basic way, so we’d pull things apart. Then, as it got late and after dinner, we’d get two litres of milk, drink some, mix ice-cream topping in as flavouring, collect lots of batteries, some chips, our walkman, some speakers, many candles and a few other things and jump in an old Nissan Patrol and drive down to the caravan. We were both interested in candles at that time too. Aaron had a metal bucket full of wax and wicks, and I had some metal tins with a wax/kerosene mix in them which would burn without a wick once lit. We’d light up our candles, open the chips, drink the milk and listen to Master of Puppets. When I hear it now, I remember those carefree times before I reached year ten and exams. The past has such a rosy glow to it, even events which at the time left me aghast, now seem so trivial and all I remember are the good times.

• Time for another Mississippi Mud Puppy I think. Chock-full of fine chocolate chips, sweet cream butter, pure cocoa, flaked oats and pecans... Apparently “krapfen” is German for “doughnuts” – funny people the Germans.

• I am surrounded by moths. They come to the light of my monitors. The rain seems to bring more moths. I guess they don’t like getting wet. I wonder where moths go when it rains. Maybe they hide under leaves. Somehow I can’t imagine rain being very good for them. At least I haven’t swallowed any yet.

• I slept in this morning. I really do have a sleeping-in problem. Hardly surprising considering I stay up late, and probably not going to change until I take the “problem” part of the preceding sentence seriously. At the moment I don’t mind, although it is a waste of daytime. I’m up to the track “Orion” now. I like instrumentals. To me, vocals often tend to destroy good music. Unless the vocals are really good and really fit in, I find they detract from the instruments. But on the other hand, if the vocalist is up to the task, it can really enhance good music. There’s so much mediocre music available. A synthesizer, a few loops, a beat – and a sensual video clip with enough Latin women and you’ve got yourself a number-one hit – for a week if you’re lucky. But to be so popular and so famous years later – then you know there was some substance to the music. Hence the saying, “stand the test of time”.

• I appear to have spouted a considerable amount of nothing. There, my modem just disconnected. I’ve been connected for ten hours. It’s probably time for bed.

27.01.2003 – Monday 27 January – Australia Day Holiday

Miserable

• I feel miserable. Firstly I didn’t go to sleep until after 7 AM. Then, as is to be expected, I didn’t wake up until the afternoon. But that’s ok. What isn’t ok is that I have hay fever – severe hay fever. I drip. I sneeze. My nose runs, my eyes water. My nose is red and raw. I can’t think. I can’t breathe. Ok, maybe I can breathe a little bit, but I don’t feel all that good.

Unicode

• ⓐⓢⓒⓘⓘ ⓢⓣⓤⓟⓘⓓ ⓠⓤⓔⓢⓣⓘⓞⓝ ⒢⒠⒯ ⒜ ⒮⒯⒰⒫⒤⒟ ⒜⒩⒮⒤

28.01.2003 – Tuesday 28 January

Lunch

• I received an email from Silas regarding accommodation in Brisbane. It seems he’s back in Cairns again. He said he’s phoned his uncle and I could probably stay there temporarily, but he’ll talk to me later.

Evening

• Silas arrived. He’d driven to Cairns, and then driven back up with Eric in Eric’s car, then back to Cairns again and now back up here in his car. Apparently his uncle doesn’t want a permanent tenant but is quite happy to have a temporary one. So I can stay there until I find somewhere better. That’s a relief, as that was the most immediate problem I had with moving to Brisbane – hopefully now solved.

Previously

• I upgraded SmartICQ to the latest version – it really is an amazing script, and began using Shan’s MSN script. Both are mIRC scripts, allowing me to chat to ICQ, MSN and IRC people all from the one application and in a common environment. It does make it easier, and also allows for easy scripting for add-ons and such.

29.01.2003 – Wednesday 29 January – Doctor’s appointment

Morning

• I phoned Doctor Hill and made an appointment for 11:15. Mum and I then drove in to town, where availed myself of the Internet services at the library, which for a humble four dollar fee, allowed me to check my webpage on an older version of Internet Explorer and chat to my friends for nearly an hour. I then rushed off to the doctors.

Evening

• After my doctor’s appointment, Mum and I went to the video shop and got a few DVD’s. “An Everlasting Piece”, “What Women Want”, “The Man Who Sued God”, “L.A. Confidential”, “Lethal Weapon” and “Lethal Weapon 2”. I copied them to my hard drive to watch later, and plan to take them over to Shan’s later this evening, along with a small food grinder of his Mum’s which we had borrowed.

Night

• Mum and I watched “Lethal Weapon”. It was refreshing to watch some fairly mindless action, and refreshing to watch a movie in this genre which actually has a semblance of a plot. We both enjoyed it. I then had some chocolate cake, and now I’m quite full and ready for bed. Shan says his old hard drive is dying. It makes nasty noises and reads slowly... Anyway, bedtime for me.

30.01.2003 – Thursday 30 January

Sunrise

• The sun rose, as it is wont to do.

Sunset

• The sun set, as it is wont to do.

31.01.2003 – Friday 31 January

• Shan came home from work early and had the rest of the day off because he had gotten a bit of metal in his eye. I drove over in the evening, taking our DVD’s over and returning their grinder. Argh! There are mosquitoes in the van and attacking me. Bad! I stayed over at Joneses until dark, then came home and watched “Lethal Weapon 2” with Mum. It’s about the same as the first one really. We both enjoyed the mindless action. I had my journal website tested with the latest Mozilla and Lynx running on Linux, and Internet Explorer on a Macintosh – fearing that my use of “smart quotes” wouldn’t work on a non-Windows machine. It seems I need not have worried; they worked fine – even in Lynx.

01.02.2003 – Saturday 1 February – US space shuttle Columbia disintegrates

Morning

• Mum and I walked down to the markets in the morning. I bought a piece of cake and an icy-cup, and then a UHT strawberry flavoured milk from the shop on the way home. Flavoured UHT milk is not a good idea. I felt sick after drinking it.

5:09pm

• My web server was upgraded. Unfortunately the upgrade didn’t coexist peacefully with the extensions I require to perform XSL transformations on my XML files, so my journal has been offline since 5:09 PM.

Night

• I had an argument with lulu on chat. Then Mum and I watched “L.A. Confidential”. I enjoyed it, but Mum didn’t. We then managed to have an argument about why I enjoyed it and she didn’t. After that, I joined chat again and found my website still wasn’t working, so I had an argument with my web host.

02.02.2003 – Sunday 2 February

Morning

• It is another hot day, so I’m taking it easy.

5:09pm

• My site has been down since 5:09 PM yesterday evening, almost exactly 24 hours. HTML and PHP work, there’s just no XSL support. They’re trying another compile now, and hopefully this one will work. I’m using Sablotron under PHP. Sablotron is a fast, compact and portable XML toolkit implementing XSLT 1.0, DOM Level2 and XPath 1.0. Needless to say, I’m not overly impressed with the response time, but I am impressed with the level of support I’ve received considering I’m using the budget “no support” plan, which offers support only via forums. It hasn’t helped that one of Myacen’s data centres in New Jersey have been experiencing power problems (so much for their backup power, apparently the third floor backup power failed as well...), and that this is where the support forum was hosted. Add to that the fact that the support tech who was supposed to be on duty in Australia also had a power failure (which is heading into its ninth hour now) and his backup is operating from a dial-up modem as his DSL modem is away for repairs. Call it bad timing, I guess.

Night

• Mum and I watched “What Women Want” – an amusing comedy for all the family, starring some actors and stuff.

03.02.2003 – Monday 3 February

Day

• I enrolled in some uni courses today. I’ve no idea what I’m doing, but so far it goes: Introduction to Programming, Internet Interface Design, Mathematical Foundations, Discrete Mathematics, Information Technology Project, Introduction to Information Systems and Calculus and Linear Algebra I. All in all, it sounds a bit too mathematical for my liking.

Evening

• I went for a walk down to the shop, buying a watermelon and pineapple icy-pole, and then heading down to the Home Rule Bridge. I met Ric while I was walking down, and seeing as there weren’t any togless women swimming, I walked home again, and then up to Dad’s. I met Mum on her way home with Jean just before I got to Dad’s and got a lift the last part of the way. I stayed up there until dark, walking home and having a shower, and then phoning Silas – but he wasn’t home. Mum and I then watched “The Man Who Sued God” – not the most inspiring movie I’ve seen, but amusing nonetheless. I think I need to improve my writing, I may not have anything to write about but I doubt anyone could manage to write in a more uninspiring manner.

Unrelated

• In totally unrelated and irrelevant news: Jas got the PC Shan built for her today, and is apparently setting it up as I type.

04.02.2003 – Tuesday 4 February

Morning

• My lung was a bit sore. I hope its ok. It has been good so far – I’d really hate for anything to go wrong now, just before I move to Brisbane.

Afternoon

• Ella went to the doctor’s. Apparently she has severe tonsillitis, and they did a blood test for Glandular fever. She’s on antibiotics now, and hopefully it will clear up. It was too hot to do much else so I re-watched “L.A. Confidential” to see if I could understand the plot properly this time.

Evening

• Mum went down to the creek to start the pump. It wouldn’t. I went down and did a cursory check. Everything seemed ok except that the pump wouldn’t run. It will start with the choke on, as usual, but will stall as soon as the choke is turned off. Hopefully we can get it fixed before we run out of water.

Phone

• An old childhood friend of Mum’s phoned. Apparently she’s now in Cairns, and has heard that Mum is also up here – fairly close considering she was in southern NSW before. Shortly after, Silas returned my call from yesterday. He’s still got a bit of work to do on the bathroom he’s building in Bloomfield, but is hoping to have finished the majority of it by Thursday. I may phone him Thursday night and possibly spend the weekend down at his place.

Night

• I’m a bit hungry – I should go inside and see what there is to eat.

05.02.2003 – Wednesday 5 February

Morning

• I had a quiet morning. Dad cleaned the carbie on the pump, but it still wouldn’t run. Then, typically, it just ran. I guess we’ll have to wait until next time to see if it still runs.

Evening

• I went for a walk down to the shop, meeting Shan who happened to be there buying a drink. I bought a Hava-Heart ice cream, talked for a while and then walked home – and that about sums up my achievements for today. For some reason I got very tired and had a lie down, inevitably falling asleep for nearly an hour. When I woke I went on chat, and started talking to a friend, who had not long ago woken up and was getting ready for her workday. Halfway through our conversation, and for no apparent reason, she started to ignore me.

Python

• Pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space, ’cause there’s bugger all down here on earth.

06.02.2003 – Thursday 6 February

• Dad, Mum and I drove to town to do our shopping. Nothing interesting happened. I got out a few DVD’s in what is starting to become a habit. “Lethal Weapon 3” and its sequel “Lethal Weapon 4”, “True Lies”, “The Blues Brothers” and one of Mum’s picks – “Chocolat”. When I got home I found that “Lethal Weapon 4” (which is a double sided disc) wasn’t recognized by my drive, and “True Lies” wouldn’t read past 50%. I wasn’t very pleased. I’ll have to buy a new DVD drive, it seems this one isn’t working as well as I’d like anymore. Shan’s PC is in even worse shape – he’s got one hard drive almost dead, and it’s the drive he boots off. I drove over to his place and made his other drive bootable but for some reason his PC just reset itself with that drive as the master. We brought his DVD drive over here and used that to copy the DVD’s to my PC – without any problem, then took my hard drive over to his place to see if his PC would boot from that one – which it didn’t. I arrived back home just on nine and phoned Silas, but his Mum answered and said he’d gone to bed so I’ll have to give him a call in the morning. Speaking of morning, I better get to bed before it finds me.

07.02.2003 – Friday 7 February

Day

• I phoned Silas and arranged to phone again tonight. The day then passed, another hot day it was too. I went for a walk out the Home Rule road to the half way spot, passing the shop on the way and buying an ice cream and some chocolate. I sat down the creek at the half way spot for a while and let the little fish nibble my feet. They seemed to like it when I stirred up the stuff that grows on the rocks for them to eat. Thousands of them came and nibbled around. I met Jade, Shan and Ella just on their way home from the house next to Jack’s when I was walking home. They drove down to the Home Rule Bridge and we sat there and talked for a while. Ella was practising her driving; I think it might be the first time she’s been allowed to drive on the road.

Night

• I rang Silas and tentatively arranged to go fishing tomorrow, weather permitting. Mum and I then watched “Lethal Weapon 4”. We both enjoyed it, and that’s all that matters. I’ve now got to pretend to be sleepy and go to bed.

08.02.2003 – Saturday 8 February – I go to Silas’s

Morning

• Silas rang in the morning to let me know they weren’t going fishing early, so I could come down at a civilised time. I arranged to meet him at Bloomfield Wharf at ten o’clock. I packed a few things and left here at nine thirty, arriving just on ten. The road is fairly bad at the moment. I managed to avoid all the large rocks and didn’t fall in any huge ruts and nothing’s flooded so I guess it’s not too bad by Bloomfield standards. It is something the city folk who buy shiny four-wheel-drive cars should see though. Silas showed up shortly after, and we drove (in his car) down to the fuel place and got some fuel, then up to the Ayton store and bought some food, then boated down to Silas’s place. I managed to get quite sunburnt on the way.

Evening

• Silas and I messed around fixing outboards and bits and pieces. We went out to a close reef and did some snorkelling, where Silas speared a fair sized (5 to 6 kg) but unknown bright orange speckled fish. The jellyfish were so thick in places that visibility was down to about 2 metres. I saw at least ten types of jellyfish ranging from tiny worm-like things to quite complex and colourful ones. Unfortunately most of them seem to bite.

Night

• Someone phoned Silas to let him know the interior light in my car was on. It has never worked before; I guess the bumpy road fixed it somehow. This was a bit of a problem as it would have already been on ten hours or so, and by the time we got there tomorrow evening the battery would almost certainly be flat. It is about fifteen minutes from Silas’s to Bloomfield Wharf on a good day, and longer in pitch dark at low tide trying to avoid the reef. I don’t know how he does it, but he managed to miss all coral in the pitch black, although we nearly hit a log and a submerged boat. There was a lot of phosphorescence, which makes a nice backdrop against some lightning in a storm out to sea. To make matters a bit more interesting, after I’d turned the light off and we were on our way back it began to rain – heavily. Not only was it now pitch black, but we could no longer see any lights on shore. Silas headed straight out to sea until he was sure we must be around most of the reef, and then using the angle of the waves as a guide, headed back towards where he hoped land would be – and specifically his beach. He was pretty close, when the rain eased off enough for us to once again see lights, the light’s we saw were those of his neighbours, so we headed to the next beach down, navigating through the reef with the help of some bicycle reflectors on a stick and a torch. I think I might smash the bulb in the interior light tomorrow. After our ordeal, Silas and I went down to their creek and turned their turbine on, as it is now flowing again. This is the first time the creek has flown in a while. Then we had hot cocoa and went to sleep.

09.02.2003 – Sunday 9 February – I return from Silas’s

Morning

• It rained during the night. Silas and I woke had toast for breakfast, and it started to rain again. Silas phoned his friend Jamie to see if he wanted to go fishing, but we decided to wait and see what the weather did. Silas and I climbed up the creek to move some piping in case it flooded, and then climbed up a gully to chop some wood, getting soaked by the rain in the process.

Evening

• Jamie and Melanie arrived and we had lunch, discussing whether to go fishing or not as it was still raining. We decided to go, so packed a few things and headed down to the boats. We headed out to Hope Island, trawling a bit on the way and watching the rain pass down from Cooktown through Rossville, past Cedar Bay and down towards Bloomfield. A few hours later we arrived on Hope Island, which is actually two islands. The larger island doesn’t have any ground, it’s all mangroves, so we stopped on the smaller island and ate a small afternoon tea, after Silas forgot to bring any matches or cups. Luckily he can make fire and we found two plastic cup-like things and shared them. I jogged around the island, and then we headed back home. We did some more trawling, and stopped for a while to line fish, then it began to get dark. All up they caught two marlin, three cod and many small fish.

Night

• We motored back towards Bloomfield as it got slowly darker and rainier. Once we got to Silas’s I ran up and got my bag and left for the wharf with Jamie and Melanie. It was nearly nine o’clock by the time I got to the car. I was a bit worried that it may not start after leaving the light on last night, and when I first turned the engine over it only tried for a second or two and then died, but (much to my relief) when I tried a second time the car started straight away. I think I was pretty fortunate as the battery must have been fairly flat to have only turned the motor over a few times and stopped. I drove home very slowly, peering through the foggy windscreen and the rain and mist at the ruts and potholes in the road. I got home around 9:30 and had some dinner.

Unfortunately

• I am now very sunburnt and have a sore back and butt.

10.02.2003 – Monday 10 February – Shan buys his first car

Day

• Shan told me via IRC that he’s bought a new car. That was where he was yesterday – in Mareeba purchasing it. He has a ’94 model Commodore sedan, dark blue with tinted windows and raised suspension. It looks nice and seems to go well too. I forget how much it cost him, but it seemed cheap for a ’94 model. He drove over in the evening and I had a look and took a few photos. He also got to see Kylie-Anne while he was in Mareeba so I’m sure that made him happy too. I’ve got itchy bumps on my neck and hands from all the jelly fish which bit me when I was at Silas’s, but my arms aren’t peeling yet.

Night

• I watched “True Lies”. I’ve seen it a few times now and I still really enjoy it for some reason.

11.02.2003 – Tuesday 11 February

Morning

• I phoned Centrelink to see what was going on with my repayment issue. They were short staffed from flooding, and had me phone back at 3 o’clock – which I did. No one knew anything so I’m to phone again Thursday morning. Apparently Shan fell from a roof or through a roof or something similar today and is all sore and unable to walk.

Philosophy

• I’ve just finished having an argument on IRC about time. If there’s one thing which is fixed, exact and unarguable... that would have to be time. It started out as a discussion about daylight saving time and its effects on poultry farmers. I quoted a poultry farmer from an article on the history of daylight saving time which I happened to be reading. One of the women in the channel disagreed. Ironically her boyfriend is a poultry farmer and she got him to come in and tell me how daylight saving time doesn’t affect poultry. I made the mistake of pointing out that the quote was about it affecting poultry farmers, not their poultry, and he began to tell me all about time. Apparently it comes from an atomic clock. When it is daylight saving time, the clock is changed one hour, then when daylight saving time finishes, it is changed back one hour. I mentioned the sun – but apparently the time comes from the moon and the sun. This was too much to bear, so I had to point out that the moon plays absolutely no part in timekeeping. Our instructive poultry farmer then informed me that months come from the moon. I pointed out that calendar months aren’t the same length as a lunar month, and was told that months should all be 28 days long. When told that a year isn’t an exact multiple of 28 (although it is pretty close), I was advised, in no uncertain terms, that the year we have is based on the Julian calendar and has nothing to do with the sun or the moon, but that it should be based on the moon. I reminded our friend how the earth goes around the sun, and, in an attempt to simplify such a mystifying concept a little, pointed out how summer comes at the same time each year – I think it was when he stated that the climate is changing and asked (with the attitude of a man who knows he’s clinched an argument) how I’d explain the hotter periods in March/April that I gave up.

Night

• Mum and I watched “The Blues Brothers”. It’s a good laugh and we enjoyed it. I’m not really a blues fan, but the movie was fun. I’m sure the police learnt a lot about high-speed chases from that movie.

12.02.2003 – Wednesday 12 February

Blah

• Blah. People suck. I don’t like people. I prefer animals, trees, plants, even rocks.

Morning

• Mum and I drove to town this morning. We did shopping and boring stuff like that. I checked freight prices to Brisbane.

Evening

• Shan drove over in the evening and we talked for a while. He took the DVD’s which Mum and I got in town today.

Night

• Mum and I watched half of “Terminator”. That was all I could stand. Firstly Mum kept muttering comments about some interview she’d seen with Arnold Schwarzenegger, where he said he was a nice family man – but the movie was violent so obviously it was all lies. Then we had a large and voluble argument about her feet on the knee rest on a chair. This ended in Mum storming outside swearing and driving off, and me watching the rest of the movie. I then managed to get banned from a few channels on AustNet and piss off a few people. I have decided that I am not nice and that I don’t get on well with people so will avoid them. I can get on well with people in a professional manner, I have no problem with that, but forget friendships – people are too stupid.

Late Night

• I am supposed to get up early tomorrow, but I have no alarm clock. I’m not in a sleeping mood either.

13.02.2003 – Thursday 13 February

Morning

• I phoned Centrelink and found out that they’ve not received anything from BSDE, so phoned BSDE. They said they’d fax something to Centrelink. I hope this gets this sorted out, as I’m now having my payments docked.

Evening

• I went for a walk out to the “Half-Way Spot” on the Home Rule Road, buying an icy-pole at the shop on the way.

Night

• Mum and I watched the ending of “Terminator” which she didn’t see last night, then we had dinner, followed by “Payback”. Robert messaged me that he’s got my DVD drive and Shan’s hard drive, so I payed the postage and he’ll post them tomorrow morning.

14.02.2003 – Friday 14 February – Valentine’s Day

Day

• Shan drove down to Ravenshoe to see his girlfriend. He’ll be back Monday night apparently.

Night

• Mum and I watched “Chocolat”, a heart-warming (and almost certainly fattening) romantic comedy. It made a pleasant change from all the Schwarzenegger action.

Later

• It has begun raining, quite heavily for a while but easing up a little now.

15.02.2003 – Saturday 15 February

• The power just failed, and auto-recovery didn’t auto-recover what I just typed. Typical. Anyway, I was saying that nothing’s happened today. I slept in. I went for a walk to the Home Rule Bridge. Mum and I watched “Ordinary Decent Criminal”. A good movie. Entertaining, amusing, good plot – we both enjoyed it. I better save this before the power fails again.

16.02.2003 – Sunday 16 February

Today

• I had another quiet day. Mum went to town and got out “Lord of the Rings – Fellowship of the Ring”, which is still an overnight hire. I had a midday nap. I went for my daily walk down to the Home Rule Bridge. We watched “True Lies” – and that about sums up another day in the life of Ned Martin. I wouldn’t mind one of those Harrier jets for personal use; although I’ve got a feeling they’d have a nice sized fuel bill. Half way through the movie a large beetle walked up onto the mouse wheel and paused the movie. I couldn’t help but wonder how city folk would handle this remote life. The beetle is over three inches long and looks remarkably like Darth Vader. Earlier a large snake-like lizard (which Mum mistook for a snake) startled Mum by running out from under the stove while she was cooking. This reminds me of a while back, a few years ago during the wet season. My sister, Bianca and I used to go tubing down the creek when it was flooded. This time we took along another girl – Gillian. She had just arrived from Melbourne a few weeks before, having lived all her life in the city. Once in the water she was too scared to get out without Bianca. There were too many scary things that could be out there. Anything from killer cows to woman-eating beetles, snakes, lizards, grasshoppers, biting ants... to her it was just too scary to be in the bush alone. To us it wasn’t even bush, it was just the creek bank, right near the road and not at all scary. I have been “out bush”, several hours from anywhere else, and hurrying home through the gathering dusk hoping to make it back while I can still see where I’m going. I’ve never yet got stuck out bush, but it has been close. A few times I’ve had to feel my way back along the road once I get out of the jungle. After that I took to taking a torch. I’ve even been a few hours into the jungle after midnight with only small maglights – I doubt a lot of city folk could handle that. The thick darkness, the omnipresent rustles, the myriads of unseen movements all around – a dingo howls in the distance, sounding worse than any movie ghost. A catbird screams overhead, so like a woman being murdered that they still startle me – and something large rustles by in the bush. Glowing mushrooms light up the tree trunks, whole areas of ground glow softly in some areas. Fireflies move through the trees like lost souls, sometimes flashing, sometimes staying lit and sometimes flying up close and bright – they can be bright enough to read by. I got good at walking in the dark. I could sense where a root would be (occasionally before I tripped); sometimes I would even manage to see the tiny but deadly wait-a-while tendrils in moonbeams which penetrated dimly through the thick canopy, before they could rip into me. I was always worried that one would get me in the eye and puncture my eyeball, as I had plenty get me on the forehead. I took to wearing a beret to keep them out of my hair. The spikes have a nasty habit of snapping off under the skin and going septic. I guess I must have been crazy. No sane person would walk around in the jungle at 2 AM. But I enjoyed it.

11:47pm

• It is raining a little. It has, in fact, been wet for a few weeks now but we still haven’t had any flooding and our rainfall is down quite a lot on the average. If we don’t get more rain soon it looks to be a grim dry season, with the water table already low from the past years lower than average wet seasons and the almost non-existent wet season last year.

17.02.2003 – Monday 17 February

Morning

• Mum drove Jean into town. I slept in.

Evening

• Mum came home. I went for a walk to the Home Rule Bridge as per usual. Mum brought home some mail from Centrelink – the review of my repayment debt which I requested has been successful. Due to information sent from BSDE, Centrelink have reversed their previous decision and will reimburse the money they reclaimed. This is good news for me, in a time where I really need as much money as I can get.

Night

• Shan got home from his girlfriends place. Mum and I watched “Sneakers”. I remember now that I have seen it before. It’s not overly memorable or inspiring, but I’ve seen worse. After staying up all night last night, I should probably try to get some sleep.

18.02.2003 – Tuesday 18 February

Morning

• I began the unpleasant task of sorting out all my stuff.

Evening

• I drove over to Shan’s and stayed there until dark.

Night

• Mum and I watched “The Debt Collector”. What a movie. I have nothing good to say about it whatsoever. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth, and has one wondering how they got the funding. Depressing, unpleasant, violent, incoherent – the plot fails to entice, the visuals disappear into a blackness of low-light compression artefacts, the soundtrack was so inspiring that I don’t remember it. I highly recommend this movie – for any aspiring movie producers. Learn from your mistakes.

19.02.2003 – Wednesday 19 February

Morning

• It rained on and off today. We’re not getting a great deal of water, but when it does rain it has been coming in short, sharp downpours, and just cloudy and wet for the rest of the time.

Evening

• Shan and Ella drove over and picked me up and we went to town. Shan had to go to the court house and change his car over into his name. I got an application for Austudy in the mail, which I’ll have to read tomorrow. We got a few DVD’s out from the video store – “Thirteen Days”, “Eraser”, “Kiss of the Dragon”, “Eyes Wide Shut”, “The Fast and the Furious” and “The Art of War”. We went down to Ricki’s to see if Jade was there, but as she wasn’t we picked up Ricki and went into town to wait for Jade. We then drove down the wharf and had hot chips, driving home after.

Night

• I began to copy the DVD’s onto the hard drive so that I could take them over to Shan’s tomorrow for him to watch. So far I’ve not been able to copy “Eyes Wide Shut”, “The Fast and the Furious” or “The Art of War”. I’m not very impressed as I bet Shan’s drive will read them all with no problems. I can only hope my new DVD drive arrives very soon and that it works better than this one – preferably before I have to return these DVD’s to the store. On a non-technical note, there have been myriads of mosquitos over the last few days and I mistakenly left the caravan door ajar and some have gotten in and are biting me.

20.02.2003 – Thursday 20 February – First flood

• I am so very tired. I had a wet day, ending up getting the car stuck on the wrong side of a flooding creek.

Morning

• I phoned Centrelink and found out that the Austudy application forms which they had sent me only apply to people over 24 years old. I need Youth Allowance forms, which they said they will send poste haste.

Evening

• I walked up to Cassidy’s and installed a new hard drive on one of their PC’s and fixed the graphics problem on their other. I pulled the card in and out a few times, seated it firmly, and it worked – typical for up here. While I was up at Cassidy’s it rained, heavily. I drove out to Joneses once Shan got home from work. The water was fairly well below the bottom of the bridge when I crossed it. I stayed out at Home Rule for a bit over an hour talking to Shan and dropping a few things off for Ric, then drove back home just as it was getting dark. When I got to the Home Rule Bridge I was surprised to find the water a few feet over it. I reversed the car into a small clearing above the bridge and walked across before the water got too high cantankerous. Fortunately for me Brett had just dropped in to check the level of the creek on his way home from town and he gave me a lift home.

Night

• Mum and I watched “Eraser”. It is yet another Schwarzenegger movie, much like most other Schwarzenegger movies – I enjoyed it. I was going to walk down to the creek and see if I’d be able to get the car back across the bridge yet, but it began to rain a little and the thought of the metre high pile of sticks that I’d have to clear away from the bridge in the dark wasn’t really all that appealing. I’ll just hope it doesn’t rain too much during the night and get the car in the morning.

11:00pm

• It is raining, but not too heavily. My computer just froze – fortunately for me auto-recovery actually worked this time. I’m off to bed.

21.02.2003 – Friday 21 February – I go to Cooktown

• Silas arrived without phoning me first due to a small misunderstanding. When I phoned him on Wednesday he got the impression that I wasn’t coming to town with him, so didn’t bother to phone first – so I had to run around getting ready while Silas checked his email. We drove into town. I checked my mail. The DVD drive and Shan’s hard drive had arrived, as did an overdue notice for a few videos and such from BSDE, which I’m fairly sure I have already returned. I met Sarah at the supermarket. I used the Internet at the library for an hour and then went up to her place. I went down to Ricki’s later in the evening and we went for a walk through the bush and along the beach, ending up at the wharf where we had chips for dinner. I slept at Sarah’s.

22.02.2003 – Saturday 22 February – I stayed the night in Cooktown

Morning

• I went down to Peter’s and said goodbye to him, then made my way down to the markets where I met Sarah and Vince. We stayed there an hour or so, then I went walking and visiting a few people. I bought some lunch from the supermarket and visited Ricki and Sarah at various times and had a shower or two as it was so hot. I also managed to get a bit sunburnt.

Evening

• I met Silas driving by on his way to visit some friends, so I got a lift towards Ricki’s place, where we once again went for a walk down to the beach and arrived at the wharf, also meeting Kay who was taxi driving but managed to spend some time talking.

Night

• Ricki and I had some potato wedges from the shop down at the wharf for dinner, and sat down there talking for a while. We walked back up to Vince and Sarah’s where I slept the night.

23.02.2003 – Sunday 23 February – I return home from Cooktown

Morning

• Vince and Sarah went spear fishing. I sat and waited for Silas. Once Silas arrived, he and I went to the supermarket, then down to the bakery where I bought a vegetarian pasty. Then we headed back home, via the service station. Silas checked and sent a few emails from my PC and then headed back to Bloomfield.

Evening

• I tried phoning Shan but the phone was first engaged, and then rung out. However, Shan phoned me. His PC has died. It has some type of hardware error at random (and quite frequent) times. I drove over and took my old PC over. We stripped Shan’s PC down to its components and put a few of them in my old PC and set his up how it originally was when he bought it so he can take it to Cairns for warranty repair. I also gave Shan his new hard drive. Jade and Ella joined us for a swim up at the Blue Marker, which was rather cold but flowing fast enough to be enjoyable, although there were a lot of antelopes trying to get into our mouths. Not long after, Shan and I drove up to Jim’s with Ric to see what was wrong with a new PC which he had bought from Cash Converters. The monitor was out of focus, and at around $90 and only 15 inch, it wasn’t cheap either. The computer itself was an IBM desktop of some sort, and there was also a printer and scanner. The scanner had no power supply, so was useless. I don’t think he got a bargain – far from it. After we got back to Joneses Craig wanted some tobacco, so Jade, Shan, Ella and I drove down to the Lions Den Hotel. Unfortunately they don’t sell tobacco anymore, only cigarettes, so we drove on into Cooktown – where we bought a tub of ice cream and ate that on the way home. It was a nice evening and a nice way to spend it.

Night

• I drove home and installed my new DVD drive, accidentally set it to region 2 (thus wasting one of the 5 region changes allowed) and tried copying the scratched discs I’d been unable to copy with my old drive. This drive at least reads the discs – which is more than the old one would do, but it still couldn’t perform any miracles. A scratched disc is a scratched disc, and once the data has gone, it’s gone. It’s now rather late and I’ve finished watching “Eyes Wide Shut” which, sadly, was too scratched to watch completely, and I think I missed some rather important scenes as it didn’t make a great deal of sense. I suppose it is bedtime now.

24.02.2003 – Monday 24 February

• I’ve decided to write this backwards, just because. I went to bed, and then Dad, Mum and I watched “The Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring”. They both appeared to enjoy it. It really is a long movie, and very good. I was engrossed the whole way through. Shortly after, I drove over to Joneses. I had to hurry as we wanted to watch the movie before it was too late. I took my old DVD and CD-RW drives over so Shan can put them back in my old PC when he’s going to send it down. I also picked up my old demo DVD which my old DVD drive wouldn’t read. I’m pleased to announce that the new drive has no problems with it. Then I spent the afternoon watching “The Fast and the Furious”. The disc was badly scratched in one part so I had to skip over that, but I enjoyed it although it’s very obviously aimed at car enthusiasts. After that I spent a lot of time messing around on my PC doing not much, thinking about packing and what to pack and how and why and when and where and so on and so forth ad infinitum – except I did eventually finish. Afterwards I phoned both Cooktown Overnight Express and BSDE. BSDE about my loaned calculator and video’s which they say I haven’t returned (and they would be right), and Cooktown Overnight Express about sending some stuff to Brisbane. It’s all drawing very close now, leaving Thursday – I better start packing soon. Next, of course, I woke up.

25.02.2003 – Tuesday 25 February

• Well... I’ve finally started packing, or at least sorting stuff.

Morning

• I spent most of the morning doing not much.

Evening

• I drove over to Joneses to say goodbye. I stayed for a while talking to the kids, then said my goodbyes and left.

The Plan

• Tonight I mess around doing computer backup and things like that and then go to bed. Tomorrow morning Mum wakes me up earlyish. I put my big new monitor in its box ready to send off. I then sort out all my junk, basically everything I want to take which isn’t vital. This could take some time. I’ll basically just be going through everything in here and putting what I want to take into a pile and throwing the rest back. I then put this all in another box. We then drive to town and send these boxes to Brisbane. We go to town and back as quickly as possible, maybe say another goodbye to Sarah if she’s home. Once I get home, I then pack the vital things which I am taking with me in the car. These are my PC, one of my old smaller monitors, keyboard etc, clothes, toiletries etc. I then go up to Dad’s and spend the evening with him. Then I’ll go to bed. In the morning I’ll pack the last few things which I couldn’t pack before, my toothbrush and all that and wait for Silas to come. He said he’d try to come "early". I have a feeling this just means "not late" and he’s not likely to turn up too early, but he’ll try to come before lunch... but I don’t know. He may very well come early. I’m leaving everything right to the last moment. If something comes up tomorrow that I find and have to sort through and it ends up taking ages then I’ll have a problem. In one way it sort of doesn’t matter. If I get down there and realise I’ve forgotten something important a simple phone call to Mum or Shan (if it’s something technical Mum won’t recognise) and they can post it down to me, express post if need be and I should get it within a day or three.

Night

• Mum and I watched the “The Art of War”. We both enjoyed it. It seems very slick, well edited, the scenes flow into each other well. I then spent a few hours sorting through all my old bits of paper, throwing out a lot and keeping some others.

1:10am

• Bedtime.

26.02.2003 – Wednesday 26 February – I send things to Brisbane

Morning

• Mum woke me up, and I began panicking. That’s supposed to read “packing”. I use a simple technique. Start at one end of the caravan, pick up each item and either place it in the garbage pile, the “to take” pile or put it back where it was – or get preoccupied seeing if it still operates. This worked well for most things. My hundreds of CD’s took a while to sort through. My quadrillions of papers took even longer. I ended up with three garbage bags full of rubbish, mainly papers and boxes, and two smallish boxes of things to take, plus another small pile which I’ll try to take with us in the car.

Evening

• I packed up my nineteen inch monitor and my boxes and headed off to town. The monitor’s box won’t fit in our car (or practically any other family car) so I had to take it folded up. This meant I had to put the monitor into its box in town. That didn’t sound too hard. Unfortunately I didn’t take into account the midges – the myriads of bloodsucking midges. They nearly killed me. There is a limit to how many midge bites I can sustain. It’s somewhere around the million mark, and after that I begin to feel a bit itchy. Then I start scratching and swell up, develop lumps, and run away screaming. But, due to the imminent rain, I couldn’t leave the monitor out in the open and run away, so I had to endure. Luckily I lived, although it was a close call. The boxes I posted and the monitor I had to freight as it’s too large to post. It cost me $44 to send the monitor to Brisbane. I said goodbyes to Bob and Peter, met Sarah and Vince at the Mad Cow Café, took our DVD’s back to the video shop, checked my mail and renewed my post box for another year for the princely sum of twelve dollars, bought a thick shake and felt sick afterwards, then drove home.

Later Evening

• Ron dropped in on his way home from the Den with Dad. Shan then drove over. Shan and I found some files which I have and he lost when his hard drive died so we went and picked up a few blank CD’s from his place as all mine are in a box on their way to Brisbane, and put the files on them so he can get them back. We sat and talked for a while, then said goodbyes and he left.

Night

• I phoned Silas, but the phone was engaged. I phoned Silas, but the phone was engaged. I phoned Silas, but the phone was engaged. Sarah phoned. I decided to watch “13 Days”. As my speakers are also in a box on their way to Brisbane and Dad and Mum were inside talking to Ron I decided to watch it alone. Silas phoned. He says he’s been chopping timber all day and spent the last hour packing and now he’s tired so he’ll pack in the morning and I need not expect him before midday tomorrow. This is good news for me as it means I too can stop packing and pack in the morning. I only work under pressure and now the pressure has eased so I watched the rest of “13 Days” and quite enjoyed it, although the action wasn’t very actionable. In fact, it wasn’t very existent at all. Excitement wasn’t this movie’s redeeming feature. I tend to enjoy good action movies best, closely followed by good movies.

Later Night

• I decide, after due deliberation, reflection, thought, and consideration, that the best course of action (or inaction as the case may be) is sleep. Based on the assumption that sleep is good for me, I figure I must be very good – and not wanting to blemish this record I shall retire to rest.

27.02.2003 – Thursday 27 February – I leave Rossville

Morning

• I spent most of the morning wasting time. I then packed everything as fast as I could, just finishing by midday – which was when Silas might come.

Evening

• Silas arrived around one, and we packed my stuff into his car. It all fit, although there sure wasn’t much room left over. I hugged Mum goodbye, shook hands with Dad, and without further ado Silas and I drove off. We drove the four and a bit hours to Cairns and headed for Pam’s place. She’s one of Silas’s friends, and it ended up that Jack lives with her, so I knew someone there too. We had the traditional coffee and waited for Silas’s younger brother Eric to arrive.

Night

• Eric, Silas and I went down to the night markets where we had some dinner. Some vegetarian ravioli later and we headed back to Pam and Jack’s place where Silas and I stayed the night. We tried to get their computer to work before we went to bed but were unable to. Silas had a very poor sleep due to the coffee he’d had, but I slept well.

28.02.2003 – Friday 28 February – I begin travel to Brisbane

Morning

• Silas and I went down to a bakery where we bought some croissants and I had an apple turnover with cream. We ate these back at Jack’s place and then headed into town to find an internet café. Silas found he had a fee due today, and I needed to print out my lecture timetable, but right about then the university’s server died. Silas and I bought a BIOS battery for Jack’s computer which we took back and installed – and it worked. We then headed back into town to find another internet café as Silas was worried about getting a late payment fee. This time the university servers worked and I printed out my timetable.

Midday

• Silas and I left Cairns at Midday and drove south. We stopped every 400 to 500 kilometres for petrol, but apart from that drove non-stop.

Evening

• We drove and drove and drove.

Night

• It began to rain after Townsville and as Silas and I got sleepier and sleepier and it got later and later it got wetter and wetter. Finally, as 1 AM approached and about 40 kilometres north of Rockhampton the rain stopped. Silas and I pulled over onto an old gravel pit on the side of the road and rolled out our swags. Many mosquitoes instantly descended onto us, but we figured that we were too sleepy to be bothered by them. They were extremely large mosquitoes, the type which crackle and splat when hit. Several million came. Silas found some liquid mosquito repellent. I popped the lid open. Unfortunately it was very warm and runny and a large amount went all over my hand. Unfortunately it was too dark to see so I wasn’t aware. Unfortunately I assumed a small blob of fairly rigid mosquito repellent would be on my hand. Unfortunately I went to rub this into my face. As you would expect, I got mosquito repellent all over my face, in my eyes, and all over the swag. Unfortunately I dropped my torch into the spilt repellent and unfortunately I then put the torch into my mouth to see what was going on. Now fully mosquito proof, both inside and out, I wrapped myself into my swag and tried to sleep. Unfortunately the mosquitos began to lick the repellent off to get to me, so Silas and I got some old plastic mosquito nets we had with us and I placed one of them on my head, all piled up. This kept the blood sucking beasts a little way away although they made a loud noise trying to get at me. Silas, meanwhile, had put his mosquito net over his entire swag condom style. He had also found some insect repellent in a spray can so he sprayed his swag and himself with this, all over his hair and all, then crawled inside his swag and mosquito net. The mosquitos buzzed around his nose, unable to bite him through the net but enough to stop anyone from being able to sleep. Silas, being the brainy man he is, closed his eyes and sprayed all over the net (which was only inches from his nose). When he opened his eyes it dripped in them. Then it began to rain. I lay and willed the rain to stop, but it didn’t, so I moved into the car. It was very hot. I had all the windows and doors closed and began to swelter. My brain, in ways it only can when extremely tired and half poisoned, began to wonder how oxygen would be able to get into the fully sealed car. The more I wondered, the hotter I got, and the harder it became to breathe. I pulled the door open and rushed outside to get some much needed air and cool. The mosquitos didn’t allow me to stay out for long, so I rushed back in and tried to forget about my impending suffocation. Just before I suffocated fully I rushed out for some more air, but a few hundred mosquitos managed to get back inside with me so I couldn’t risk letting them in to the only safe place I had. I decided suffocating was the lesser of the two evils, wiped the sweat off me and the next thing I remember is waking up.

01.03.2003 – Saturday 1 March – I arrive in Brisbane

Morning

• Silas and I awoke, amazingly still alive. After discovering one of the headlights was falling off and taping it back on, we continued on our way.

Evening

• We drove and drove, taking turns. We passed through Gympie, saw the turnoff to where I used to live, and continued on. The small two lane highway changed into a four lane freeway and we drove into Brisbane. We passed over the Gateway toll bridge, got lost by missing the right exit, drove around a few suburbs and found an alternative route, found the right road and once we were close enough Silas’s memory kicked in and he recognized where we were and we found Joe’s place. We said hello and headed upstairs for a much needed shower. I don’t remember exactly when we arrived, but it must have been close to six o’clock.

Night

• Silas’s uncle, Joe, had a few whiskies and Silas had a few of his home brews and we all talked then went to bed.

02.03.2003 – Sunday 2 March – My first day in Brisbane

Morning

• I awoke just before Joe had to go to a meeting. Silas woke up a while later and we talked and messed around all morning until Joe got home just after twelve.

Evening

• Silas and I walked down to the train station so I’d know where to go tomorrow morning. It is only a five minute walk from here, and about a half hour journey by train to Dutton Park Station, which is close to the university ferry. We walked on to the supermarket and bought a few supplies. When we got back Melanie (Joe’s daughter) and Tim (her fiancé) were here. We all talked for a while and then they left. Silas, Joe and I had a barbecue, although seeing as I don’t eat meat it wasn’t much of a barbecue for me, and then Silas left to go to Melanie and Tim’s place, which is where he stays. Joe and I walked the dog. It is a funny dog, very scared of any men it doesn’t know, but not at all afraid of women. It wouldn’t come with me for a walk, so Joe had to come as well. Hopefully it will get used to me quickly as I’ll probably be looking after it for a while. Joe is a bus driver, and works from about 2 PM until after midnight, so I’m going to be feeding the dog (and the cat) in the evening when I get home from university, and in two weeks Joe is going to Sydney for a week or two, so I’ll be looking after the dog and cat fulltime then.

Night

• I watched a movie (or the ending of a movie), and then headed upstairs to type this and make myself something to eat. The house has an upstairs and downstairs. Joe lives downstairs. He has everything he needs down there and apparently rarely comes upstairs. I have a room upstairs, and can use the kitchen, toilet, shower etc. up here while he has his own down there. As I will most probably be going to university most mornings and as Joe works most evenings, we won’t actually see each other all that much. This sounds good to me, as I’d like to just do my own thing as much as possible and keep quietly to myself, at least until I’ve settled in a bit. I think I’ll go cook up something for dinner now.

11:39pm

• Seeing as I have to catch the 6:27 train tomorrow morning, I might go to bed.

03.03.2003 – Monday 3 March – My first day at University

Morning

• I woke at six when my alarm went off. I got up at ten past six, when my brain woke up. I had brushed my hair, got breakfast, and looked at the clock.

6:22am

• I ran out the door and headed towards the 6:27am train. By the time I got to the stairs over the overpass I was about to collapse. Walking up the stairs wasn’t easy, and I don’t think I should run so soon after eating either. I just managed to buy a ticket when the train came. Half an hour later I was at Dutton Park Station and Silas arrived there shortly after I did. We walked past the dead centre of town, down a path through a nice park towards the river and to the ferry station.

University

• $1.20 got me across the river on a ferry, and then Silas and I walked around the university until it was time for my eight o’clock lecture. It was mainly an introductory thing. This was followed by my nine o’clock lecture, which was also an introductory thing. After this I went and sat in with Silas’s two hour lecture. After that we went down to the computer labs and messed around. I couldn’t gain access as it wouldn’t accept my login so I had to use Silas’s. ICQ works, IRC doesn’t. Fortunately my email works, even though it uses port 2082. I guess they have a strict firewall.

Evening

• Silas and I left university and walked to where Silas stays. After a cup of tea and a chat we walked down to the post office, and then the train station where I caught a train home. I fed the cat and dog, fed myself, and collapsed exhausted.

04.03.2003 – Tuesday 4 March

Joy

• I slept in.

Day

• I planned to arrive at uni around eleven, and headed down to the train station at the appropriate time. But it was not to be. The train was delayed forty five minutes. I arrived at my lecture just as it started, and I just about had to run to make it too. After my lecture I met Silas. We caught a bus to Indooroopilly shopping centre and did some shopping. I bought some lead and some pencils, ring binders, paper and lecture pads. I wanted to buy a twenty five metre telephone extension lead but couldn’t find one. Silas bought a few similar things and then we caught a train back. I continued on to my station and walked back here. I then walked to the local shopping centre. I managed to find it straight away, which I thought was good. I did some shopping, loaded my backpack up and still had two bags left to carry, and decided to be brainy and find a shorter way home. I am quite sure you can guess what happened. As the frozen things in my bag slowly froze my back, and the sharp things poked into me, I walked across a toxic waste dump, down a street, around another street, up another street, down another street, up another street, across a road and found my street. Just as my legs were failing I arrived home. I fed the dog and cat, had a shower, got my things ready for the early train tomorrow and went to sleep.

05.03.2003 – Wednesday 5 March – I bought my textbooks

Morning

• Another eight o’clock start at uni. This time I didn’t need to run to catch the train, but I did walk fast. I think I need to allow more than fifteen minutes before the train leaves. I can’t wake up, eat, brush hair, and wake up again in that time. Today was lots of math, Yuk.

Evening

• Silas and I caught a bus out to QU Books to buy textbooks. It was fortunate for me that I had Silas with me, as I’d never have found it otherwise, and the books are cheaper than at the uni book shop. I spent $222.85 and got “Calculus”, “Java Genesis” and “Discrete Mathematics”. Yuk. They were heavy too, and I was tired of carrying them by the time I got home.

06.03.2003 – Thursday 6 March

Morning

• It was raining lightly, so I got slightly wet and cold. Some of the lecture theatres at uni have very cold air conditioning, which is even colder when I’m wet. However I survived.

Night

• Joe ordered some Chinese takeaway, which was delivered shortly after, and we ate that. I then went to bed.

07.03.2003 – Friday 7 March

Morning

• I needed to be at uni by nine, so I headed down to the station fairly early, after a quick breakfast. I had a one hour math lecture, followed by two hours of Internet interface design lecture, and then an hour of programming. I then headed down to the computer labs to use a PC to sort out my timetable, as I’ve discovered I need to add another two