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Year View| Summary| Highlights| February 2005 (Month View)

Oct ‘04 | Nov ‘04 | Dec ‘04 | Jan ‘05 | Feb ‘05 Mar ‘05 | Apr ‘05 | May ‘05 | Jun ‘05 |

01.02.2005 – Tuesday 1 February – Wherein they refer to themselves collectively

• They had a quiet day, doing some washing, some grocery shopping, talking to Silas when he phoned, and sorting pictures. They then ate too much dark chocolate, felt unwell, and went to bed. They wish to point out before their mother reads this, that eating dark chocolate is not unhealthy, and has actually been shown to be the opposite. In fact, according to something that they read in a trashy magazine while at Bronwen’s, some of the secrets to a healthy life are beer and wine, dark chocolate, and laughter. These struck them as very well known secrets, but they wish to know if milkshakes are perhaps one of the lesser-known secrets to health.

Comment by Mum – Thursday 3 February 2005, 9:03 PM

  Their mother reads this. Chocolate...smooth and dark. A bit like lawyers. Healthy? Milkshakes...froth and bubble. A bit like yankee TV. Healthy? Wine and beer...indicators toward that state in which some of us find ourselves so disgustingly healthy that we cannot contain........which leads to Laughter. (Good old fashioned state). Is this "good old fashioned state" healthy? Will have to log off for a while until I can contain my belly rolls.....must be something wrong with me.

Comment by Mum – Thursday 3 February 2005, 9:11 PM

  Laughter is the best medicine. A good old fashioned pursuit

02.02.2005 – Wednesday 2 February – Bronwen

Day

• I did very little, breathing regularly and occasionally blinking.

Night

• Bronwen arrived. We went on a hunting adventure, involving complex and long-winded descriptions of roads, speed limits, and missed turns. We then ate through an electric storm, which was nice, although I found the mushrooms to be a bit on the tasty side. I discovered that the oscillating feature on my oscillating fan features a random, and noisy, slipping – perfect for clicking loudly at indiscriminate periods throughout the night, just in case I’d accidentally fallen asleep.

Comment by io – Sunday 6 February 2005, 12:22 AM

  Aww... Pretty.

Comment by Ned – Sunday 6 February 2005, 10:25 PM

  She is.

03.02.2005 – Thursday 3 February – Meet the Fockers

• I showed Bronwen how I miss trains, before heading into uni, where I saw Peter Robinson for academic advising. It was a little pointless without having received my graduation check yet – I’d assumed they were near instantaneous, but obviously not. Many of my questions received answers “You’d have to ask the faculty, or Philip Machanick”, so I will. After these exciting revelations I sat in the sun under a bush, had a short chat to Shazia, and waited for Maz to come pick me up. We did exhilarating things like sit in front of a fan, before we both realised we had to have Cold Rock – the alternative was unthinkable. Fortunately, Maz isn’t scared of dying, so we drove to Indooroopilly, bought Cold Rock super shakes, and felt suitably sick. We then did the gentlemanly thing and dropped girls at chemists without their prescriptions (meaning they couldn’t actually get what they went to get) and jewellery stores, before deciding to breakdown in a no-standing zone. I’m not really into breaking down, so I abandoned Maz and caught a bus to Indooroopilly where I made the mistake of watching “Meet the Fockers”. Holly told me it was good, but it’s only worth a half of the latest Bridget Jones movie, and that’s not good – she will be reprimanded.

Comment by Maz – Saturday 5 February 2005, 5:47 PM

  You had better hope Hollie doesn't see how you spelt her name... That could be a death wish.

Comment by io – Sunday 6 February 2005, 12:25 AM

  My sister's cat is called Molly. What did you chat to Shazia about?

Comment by Ned – Wednesday 9 February 2005, 12:54 PM

  The weather.

04.02.2005 – Friday 4 February – A Series of Unfortunate Events

• I trained to Maz’s, and we went and saw “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events”. It started quite well, but was unable to maintain its plot throughout, falling prey to the all too common Hollywood “sucky ending” syndrome, although it still managed to match five fockers, topping twenty two cat women. We then drove around to use up potentially faulty petrol and overheat the car, passing Bronwen’s, going up Mt Coot-tha, which has quite a nice view, and making illegal right turns, before I trained home again reading Nick Earls’s “Zig Zag Street”.

05.02.2005 – Saturday 5 February – Bronwen & BBQ’s

• I caught the train to Maz’s, for rather complex reasons, staying there for a while before heading over to Bronwen’s, where I finished off my book and had a lovely evening and stayed the night. It has been so hot, and it doesn’t seem to cool down at night, as it should.

06.02.2005 – Sunday 6 February – Bronwen & DVD Burners

• I had a pleasant day at Bronwen’s, followed by a pleasant evening at home. I had planned to buy a DVD burner tomorrow, but I made the mistake of doing a little bit of “quick research” to find out which model I should purchase, which went on for hours, and now I can’t buy any until I’ve figured out which is the very best for the money because none of them are perfect. I’m also sick of hearing about DVD’s and DVD players.

Comment by Jojo – Wednesday 9 February 2005, 10:59 AM

  let us know which one you buy and the reasons for it. i started research, but gave up when i realised i didnt actually 'need' it and therefore could not justify it... thanks

07.02.2005 – Monday 7 February – Ghosts, Invalid Debiting & The Secure Hash Algorithm

Day

• After sleeping for a ridiculously long time, I headed into the city, driving around with Maz finding computer places in faraway industrial estates. I also withdrew some money from an ATM – just once. I have, however, been debited the amount twice. I am not at all sure how to prove this, but I’ll drop in and have a chat to someone at the bank tomorrow. If they make an ATM eat my card again, I shall become incensed.

Night

• After developing several Hollie-powered complexes at Maz’s, I rushed home via Cold Rock, getting there just before they shut. I had planned to negate this excess with a healthy dinner, but when I arrived back here, Michelle was here, and as we’re both intelligent vegetarians, we had to eat lots of chocolate and drink strong coffee. After some Tim-Tams, a cream-filled chocolate egg, and three score eight chocolate-coated nuts and some “wog bread”, I felt too full to eat a healthy dinner. Joe regaled us ghost stories, including more information I didn’t know, or want to know, about why people won’t sleep in my room – not exactly what either of us needed to hear before bed, and I then escorted Michelle upstairs so the ghosts wouldn’t get her, and bravely shut myself in my room. Then I filled out Centrelink forms and replied to email, ghosts notwithstanding.
  Come to think of it, that’s quite enough about ghosts – I am not sure it’s just the coffee keeping me awake anymore, and I’m not sure whether I should look behind me to “face my fear” and prove it’s obviously ridiculous to even consider something could be there, or if looking around is admittance that something could actually be there, and hence not a good thing to do. Why does my room have to be full of windows and mirrors? I must play loud music and think about pretty butterflies and nice iced cakes... this is the first time I’ve freaked myself out since moving to Brisbane – even Winamp is teasing me, why can’t it pick mindless songs about nothing? Perhaps I’m reading too much into the randomly chosen song titles “Limelight Mix”, “Up around the Bend”, “Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing”, “Angel”, “Only You Know and I Know”, “The Ghosts that Haunt Me”, “The Nobodies”, “Graveyard People”, “Live and Let Die”, “A Warm Place”, “Real Things”, “Signs” – they’re probably not all supernatural references, but... why couldn’t they be totally boring titles about love or something? I want to open the door to see if Michelle is still awake, but I am not going to because the hall is out there, and it is long and dark. Ok – this is stupid, I’ve just gone through over a hundred songs, and my imagination is good enough that I can find a supernatural reference in almost every single one – although I’ll admit that the UFO reference in the farcical “I Saw Elvis in a UFO” is stretching the association a little.

6:10am

• I’ve just spent the past few hours messing around and re-implementing the authentication system used for my online journal. It’s now a much securer SHA1 based challenge/response system, which should, as far as I can infer in my current insane and sleep deprived state, be immune to all types of attacks, other than the obvious fact that someone could intercept the actual HTML coming back from the server allowing them to be able to view the page content – but that is not really a flaw with the login system.

Comment by Maz – Tuesday 8 February 2005, 3:43 AM

  BOO!

Comment by Mum – Tuesday 8 February 2005, 9:42 PM

  Beware the jabberwock my son. The slithey tomes that grimble.....

Comment by Damian – Friday 11 February 2005, 9:11 AM

  Ned, I wish you would turn your hand to writing some fiction, some poetry, some sort of prose. Have you read any Roald Dahl stories?

Comment by Reubot – Wednesday 16 February 2005, 7:03 PM

  Ironically, SHA1 has now porported to have been cracked.
  http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/02/sha1_broken.html

Comment by Ned – Thursday 17 February 2005, 12:27 PM

  Collisions are not particularly relevant to the security used here.

08.02.2005 – Tuesday 8 February – Banks, Libraries, the Government & Bronwen

• I entrained for Maz’s, meeting him at Toowong, where we went and joined the city library and I discovered that it costs 55¢ to put a hold on a book. Due to this preposterous cost on something I had assumed was free, I didn’t get any books out – although I did spend 40¢ photocopying documents for Centrelink. After the exciting trip to the library, Maz and I went to the bank, where I complained that they’d charged me twice for an ATM withdrawal. It ends up that it was most likely a delayed withdrawal on Friday showing up at the same time as another withdrawal on Monday. After this further excitement, Maz and I made our way to Centrelink, where I stood in a big queue until someone came and took my fares allowance claim from me. I then spent a little time at Maz’s place, before he dropped me over to Bronwen’s, where I spent the night.

09.02.2005 – Wednesday 9 February – Samuel

• Woke up at Bronwen’s, went into the city, did some shopping, trained home. Drove and got chips for Joe.

10:58pm

• It’s remarkably hot. It has been nastily hot all day, but it should have cooled down by now.

10.02.2005 – Thursday 10 February – Quiet & Relaxing

• Quiet morning, slept in, did nothing, began reading “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” and completed the first chapter, which is not much of an achievement as it is only one page long.

11.02.2005 – Friday 11 February – Courses, Vampires, The Closet & The Amazing Multifunctional Bronwen

• I had planned to do many things today, but instead I woke up at midday. I found I had an email from Philip, so I rushed into uni to see him. Rushing via public transport is a very relative concept – a couple of hours later I arrived at uni and had a discussion with Philip about the role of the microkernel in a secure operating system, along with the IT degree’s role in the greater concept of things, and my role within it. I managed to bump into Lachlan as I came out of the lift, and as he was just about to open the sacred BITS closet, I hung around. My conversation with Philip went for a lot longer than I’d anticipated, and I ended up talking to Lachlan for a considerable time as well, meaning I got to Govindas far later than planned. A quick email and timetable check later and I was rushing to catch the one bus that would still get me to Indooroopilly in time for my movie, but I bumped into Michelle and got distracted, arriving too late. I also met Alex along with some geeky cohorts, making today a bumping into people from uni sort of day. Having missed the movie, I once again emailed and timetabled, heading back into the city, unsuccessfully phoning Bronwen several times before she answered (people who consider others in movies are all very well when I’m in the movie, but it’s a bit inconsiderate when I’m not) before meeting Tracy, Cassie and Sophie. They were, perhaps unsurprisingly, in King George Square, surrounded by confused Goths, at least one of which was unsure if she was a vampire or not because she only drank her own blood. Leaving them to their dilemma, I headed onward to Bronwen’s, who I’m fairly sure isn’t a vampire, and spent the night safely with her.

Comment by trace – Tuesday 15 February 2005, 2:22 PM

  pfft she wasnt a vampire. i am the TRUE vampire. but she is just crap. yayy for awesomeness!

12.02.2005 – Saturday 12 February – Topic temporarily out of order

• Having got up around lunch time, and not feeling remarkably energetic, we lazed around the house until early afternoon, at which precise moment we walked to the valley, met the makers, admired a fishnet wedding dress, wandered around some more, saw dragons, watched what may have been a wedding and got bitten by ants, ate a pleasant meal, bumped into Cam, sat behind a church overlooking the city and admired the pretty lights (and me my stunning Bronwen), before wandering back to her place.

13.02.2005 – Sunday 13 February – Intimacy, Footballs & ...

• After another energetic morning not getting up, followed by an afternoon of relaxation, I made my way home, being hit in the head by a football on the train, as one does on Sunday evenings. Michelle and her beau, Michael, are here. In order to recover from my alarmingly geek-free weekend, I spent the night updating my iLog mIRC log viewer to support the fine and still progressing year two thousand and five, as well as adding an auto-updating thing that auto-updates a thing.

2:43am

• It has just struck me that Metallica’s “Fade to Black” is an amazing song – redolent of Aaron and my early teen years.

14.02.2005 – Monday 14 February – Saint Valentine’s Day

• Michelle and Michael are still here, and Joe and they are getting quite boisterous downstairs, while I’m having a quiet day inside doing computer things, phoning Bronwen, and emailing Mum.

15.02.2005 – Tuesday 15 February – Passports & Alexander

• Despite my alarm, I managed to sleep in, getting to the city later than I’d planned. It seems doing more than one thing per day is too hard, and even that one thing ends up harder than it should. Today was renewing my passport day, so I went to the passport office, queued with my fancy ticket, and eventually talked to the passport office man in window number five. For anyone else, that would have been the end of the story – he’d have stamped the application, smiled politely, and wished them a nice day, but not for me. Starting by telling him that I did have my previous passport with me, but that I was pretending I didn’t because I didn’t want it chopped up may not have been the best way to start, but it was when he was unable to determine whether there were two of me, or I was born twice, that it became interesting. After going and chatting with his manager, his manager decided that he’d have to contact Perth to find out just how many of me there are, so we moved onto the next step, which was photos. Now, a normal person provides two signed photos, but not me – I needed more, and because it had taken so long to decide how to find out how many people I am, I had to run to a photo place, get four more photos, and run back before the office closed. I then handed over lots of money, and went searching for Citibank, which was remarkably difficult to locate, and remarkably unhelpful when finally located. After that it was a rush into uni to put a hold on some books, then back via Indooroopilly and “Alexander”, which wasn’t too bad – getting itself five Fockers.

16.02.2005 – Wednesday 16 February – Three Months

• I went shopping, which was hot. I then caught a train into the city, which was air-conditioned (the train, not the city, unfortunately). Once there, Bronwen and I wandered around, arriving at the botanical gardens on sundown to see “Hero” at Bailey’s Moonlight Cinema, before heading back to Bronwen’s place, where I continued to forget that I had to be at uni by eight o’clock tomorrow morning.

17.02.2005 – Thursday 17 February – Lecture Theatres, Mobile Phones & A Drastic Lack of Sleep

• After not sleeping very much, I realised at some ridiculous hour that I had to be at uni by eight o’clock. This was something of a problem given the circumstances, but Bronwen drove me to uni and I got there just on eight, and made my way down to Prentice, where I was given a tour of what I’ll have to do in the mornings. I then made my way to Govinda’s for sustenance, bought a mobile phone, and trained to Fairfield where I went to the library to pick up “The Snow Leopard”. It was here that it all of a sudden hit me – and I realised just how little sleep I’d had over the past few nights. I had just bought a milkshake, and got lost out the back of the supermarket somehow, so had just walked through a small service corridor and out into a courtyard – where I walked directly into another man. I literally walked right into him – our faces hit. I didn’t even see him, I’ve a feeling I may have been sleepwalking, although I’m not sure what he was doing. Unsurprisingly, my milkshake didn’t stop as fast as I did, and much of it shared itself with my unintended protagonist, who found himself in a dazed state of shock and wandered off insisting he was ok. I wiped myself off with a rag provided by a cleaner who had, ironically, just cleaned the area I cleverly sprayed with milkshake, and went and hid under a stairwell at the train station and had giggling fits.

Night

• Once I arrived home I found out that Joe had, coincidentally, also bought a mobile phone today. I also found out that my dinner was essentially inedible, so I essentially didn’t eat it, after essentially eating most of it, which essentially made me feel sick.

Comment by Reubot – Thursday 24 February 2005, 10:19 PM

  Did you get a job at ITS or something?

18.02.2005 – Friday 18 February – Stradbroke Island

• Today, the great search for a phone case was begun. It seems my model is relatively rare – at least, none of the major phone shops had cases to suit, and I’d all but given up when I was walking past Dollars and Sense on the way to Maz’s, and popped in there – finding a case and hands-free kit, well below the cost the phone shops would have charged anyway. Loki was at Maz’s, where I stayed a while before being dropped at Bronwen’s, packing things, and heading out to Stradbroke. It was fairly late by the time we arrived, so we pretty much just put up a tent and went to bed.

19.02.2005 – Saturday 19 February – Relaxing in Paradise

• A morning walk and swim in the ocean set the mood for a lovely and relaxing day, followed by a pleasant evening with Bronwen’s friends, sunburn being the only downside.

20.02.2005 – Sunday 20 February – The Case of the Great Gender Stereotypical Door

• A morning walk and swim again set the mood, followed this time by a wonderful breakfast with Frank and Shirley. After this, I spent the afternoon helping John, apparently in a very gender stereotypical way, complete and hang a large door. We then risked bogging ourselves and missing the last ferry back, for an enjoyable final swim before catching the unmissed ferry back to Brisbane. Fortunately, we didn’t hit any left over mines from the war, although just as I was commenting to Bronwen on this, something moved and made a rather large bang. We moved away from the railing after that, just in case.
  Once back in Brisbane, it being late and we tired and a bit sunburnt, we slept.

21.02.2005 – Monday 21 February – Kieran & Hot Curry

• I got a lift into the city with Bronwen on her way to work, wandered around buying a felafel roll and new hands-free thing for the phone, having apparently lost my other one at Stradbroke, before phoning Maz and catching a bus out to his place. Kieran came over and we drove in to uni where we had lunch, then to his new place, and then I came home. Amy is now here, so Joe and I go for Thai food, ordering half the shop. Michelle arrives, I phone Bronwen, the earth rotates, and my curry is remarkably hot.

22.02.2005 – Tuesday 22 February – Indian Curry

• I had a relatively relaxing day, heading into the city around lunchtime, and eating a pleasing dinner at an Indian Restaurant in Paddington, followed by a pleasant night.

23.02.2005 – Wednesday 23 February – Market Day & Main Hoon Na

Morning

• I headed into uni to see “Market Day”, the day that the various societies on campus show off to lure students to join them. It was hot and not that interesting, but I spent an hour or two wandering around, met a few friends, and joined BITS so I’d have a leg to stand on when banned from their IRC channel.

Afternoon

• I went and saw “Main Hoon Na” at the Bollywood Masala Indian Film Festival at the Dendy. I had planned to watch a few films over this festival, but other things happened and I didn’t get the time. “Main Hoon Na” was a bit basic, and almost immature in spots, but had enough of a plot, coupled with suitable humour and action, to make it an engrossing movie – but only a quarter as good as Veer-Zaara, or three quarters of a true lie.

24.02.2005 – Thursday 24 February – Constantine & Microsoft

• Up early after a late night, sleep in, and nearly miss train – good preparation for uni. Go to Microsoft security conference, but only attend keynote and first session, finding second session to be too Microsoft-orientated. Meet Clint, Kipps, Flash – sadly geeky, and Corrosive, at South Bank for lunch. Go to “Constantine” on Australia’s largest cinema screen. Walk around city with Corrosive, go to Maz’s, and go to “Constantine” again at Indooroopilly, surprisingly better second time around.

25.02.2005 – Friday 25 February – The Spook

• I trained into the city, where we ate at Govinda’s and then saw “The Spook” at QPAC, which impressed me.

26.02.2005 – Saturday 26 February – Joe’s Barbecue

• They’re doing track works, so trains aren’t running all the way, which actually turned out good, as we were able to catch an express train, which doesn’t normally stop at my station, but today did. Joe was just beginning his barbecue when we arrived, and as the evening slid into night, more people arrived, drank, and became increasingly stupid – but a pleasurable night was had by all, with no one sleeping alone, or sleeping at all for that matter. At some very early stage of the morning, much loud house-shaking banging on floors and walls was done, accompanied by joking shouts to silent others to keep quiet – by those making the noise. Fortunately, Joe was suitably anaesthetised, as I don’t think he’d have been very happy. Amy’s boyfriend had to fly back early in the morning, so people were up remarkably early after only two hours semi-sleep, and I didn’t feel sparkling bright myself.

27.02.2005 – Sunday 27 February – Tropfest & Joe’s Departure

• Joe left on his holiday, and we left here for Brisbane, getting lunch at a small place in West End, where I appear to have lost my hat. We then watched sixteen short movies at “Tropfest” in South Bank, meeting Clint, Clus, Maz, Scruff and an Elliot I’ve not met before. However, of the five, only Maz was cultured enough to stay longer than five minutes, the rest disappearing towards inexorably beer-wards.

28.02.2005 – Monday 28 February – Uni, Work & Sleep

5:30am

• I attempted to wake up, got ready, and propped myself against a pole at the bus stop. I then made my way sleepily onto a uni-bound CityCat via Hungry Jacks, arriving in uni just on time.

7am

• I presented myself for my first day of work, on time and not entirely asleep.

10am

• I went to my first COMS4200 lecture, still mostly asleep. I had found myself apprehensive about the start of this semester, as I didn’t think I’d like any of the courses I had enrolled in, and wasn’t at all sure that attempting COMS4200 was a good idea. After the lecture, though, I found myself thinking ahead to what I’d do during the semester, and what I’d learn, and almost looking forward to it. I guess I should seek counselling now before it’s too late.

Afternoon

• I discovered that it’s now impossible to access my email from the labs, and that they’ve implemented a quota system, which gives us 150 MB per month. While this new system has presumably lifted the annoying rate limiting that was previously in use, 150 MB seems amazingly stingy given the fees we’re paying and the status the university pretends to hold. Maz turned up for me to whinge to and we went and saw EPSA to figure out if we were able to undertake the course we’re enrolled in, and then went and found Clint so I could whinge to him, and check my email. Clint wanted to go to Umart, so we did, stopping off at Kieran’s on the way back, walking to Indooroopilly, and then a bus and train home. For the first time ever, I slept and missed my station, waking at the next station and having to wait for a train back.

Comment by Maz – Thursday 3 March 2005, 12:42 AM

  HAHA. i didnt know you missed your stop.
  You convinced me to do COMS after i missed the first lecture, it had better not be too hard.

Oct ‘04 | Nov ‘04 | Dec ‘04 | Jan ‘05 | Feb ‘05 Mar ‘05 | Apr ‘05 | May ‘05 | Jun ‘05 |

Year View| Summary| Highlights| February 2005 (Month View)