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Year View| Summary| Highlights| March 2007 (Month View)

Nov ‘06 | Dec ‘06 | Jan ‘07 | Feb ‘07 | Mar ‘07 Apr ‘07 | May ‘07 | Jun ‘07 | Jul ‘07 |

01.03.2007 – Thursday 1 March – Gold Coast

• I attended a meeting at work at two o’clock, before heading home and back to the Gold Coast.

02.03.2007 – Friday 2 March – Packing

Morning

• I’m very, very sleepy after not sleeping much down at the Gold Coast.

Afternoon

• I had lunch with Maz.

Night

• Maz picked me up from work with Clint. The theory was that this would be much quicker than walking home, and as I didn’t finish work until near midnight, had had very little sleep up until now, and had to pack for my flight early tomorrow morning, I could get more urgently required sleep. In practice, however, we ended up driving all over the place, stopping at South Bank for a while, and it was approaching the wee hours of the morning by the time I got home and began packing. It was well and truly into the wee hours when I got to bed.

03.03.2007 – Saturday 3 March – Cairns, Tulani, & Silas

Morning

• I caught a Virgin Blue flight to Cairns. Tulani picked me up from the airport and we had breakfast at a coffee plantation near Mareeba.

Afternoon

• I had lunch at Tulani’s place, and went and saw “The Illusionist” with her at Cairns City Cinemas, which turned out to be an unexpectedly good movie, and an expectedly uncomfortable cinema.

Night

• I had a pleasant dinner at an Indian place with Tulani, before heading to Silas’s, where I spent the night.

04.03.2007 – Sunday 4 March – Silas, Mossman Gorge & Moonlit Pizza

Morning

• I spent a pleasant morning chatting to Silas. I’m far too slack keeping in touch with my friends.

Afternoon

• Silas and his girlfriend went for a walk somewhere. Tulani and I went to Mossman Gorge for a swim, followed by a walk along the Esplanade.

Night

• Tulani and I had a pizza dinner at Trinity Beach. It was quite scenic—sitting watching the moon rise over the ocean, silhouetted by palm trees—and was quite late when we left, returning me to Silas’s, where I again spent the night.

05.03.2007 – Monday 5 March – Cooktown

• Tulani drove me to General Aviation, from where I flew to Cooktown in a small eight-seater Cessna Titan. Dad and Mum picked me up from the airport, and I spent the day in town with them.

06.03.2007 – Tuesday 6 March – The Family Thing

• I spent the day with my parents in town, meeting my sister and Vince, and generally doing the “family thing”. It’s nice to be back, but I don’t think I could live here—not at this age anyway. It’s just too small.

07.03.2007 – Wednesday 7 March – Rossville

• I drove out to Rossville, dropping Dad at the Lion’s Den Hotel on the way, and headed out to Home Rule. I stopped at Craig and Mandi’s for a chat, before walking up to the Home Rule Falls. It was nice to be in the rainforest jungle again, where everything is wet and there’s a huge amount of spider web across the track, and subsequently my nose. On the way back, I stopped and had a chat to Ric, before heading up to Dad’s, where my old caravan is stored, filled with all my old junk. Sadly, the time has come to get rid of that junk, so I went through it all, collected a few things I didn’t want to leave behind, and left the rest there, to be disposed of as my parents see fit. It’s a little sad, but I haven’t needed any of this stuff in the past few years so I’m unlikely to ever need it.

08.03.2007 – Thursday 8 March – Rain

• It’s raining here in Cooktown. I pop down to the post office to lodge a few documents, and head up to the Top Pub to chat to the publican about a website she wants me to build. I then spend a quiet evening with my family.

09.03.2007 – Friday 9 March – Cairns & Kebabs

• I was very tired when I left Brisbane, from working late shifts combined with staying at the Gold Coast, and I haven’t had much sleep since, so I’m now spastically tired. I had a nice lunch with my family, drove out to the airport picking Sarah up from work, and flew to Cairns in a 32- or 36-seater Dash . We all waited at the aerodrome for quite a while, wondering why the hostess hadn’t called us out to the plane, only to find when we were out there, that they’d been waiting in the plane wondering why the ground staff hadn’t sent us out to the plane. All the seats on one side of the plane seemed to have been allocated to two people, and none of the seats on the other side.

Evening

• Tulani picked me up from the airport, and we bought kebabs for dinner at the Esplanade, and watched emergency crews recover someone who had fallen off the esplanade onto some mangrove and mud covered rocks.

10.03.2007 – Saturday 10 March – Shan & High Humidity

• I spent a quiet, but very hot and humid, morning with Tulani, before being dropped at Shan’s, where I spent the night. It’s absurdly hot and humid in Cairns. Moving—even thinking about moving—results in sweat.

11.03.2007 – Sunday 11 March – Mareeba Motocross

5:30am

• Shan, Kylie and I got up quite early and drove to Mareeba, where we attended a Motocross event. I bumped into Clayton, Jake, Amos and Justin, took many photos, got sunburnt, got wet when a thunderstorm blew across, and watched the carnage. One man broke his hip when his bike landed on top of him, and a few others were carried off on a stretcher. The rest just broke their bikes.

Evening

• Tulani picked me up from Shan’s, and we had dinner at a restaurant on the wharf.

12.03.2007 – Monday 12 March – Brisbane & Virgin Hilarity

• I spent most of the day with Tulani—Shan and Silas being at work—doing some shopping at Cairns Central and trying not to move too much because of the heat. She dropped me off at the airport in the afternoon, from where I caught a flight back to Brisbane.

4:30pm

• The flight back was interesting. The plane itself was blue, and had people’s names alphabetically printed all over the inside—Virgin Blue’s special fiftieth plane, apparently. Ironically, I’d had a conversation just prior to leaving about hostesses, and how Virgin’s hostesses are more attractive than Jetstar’s, only to find that this flight had three male hosts, one of whom was in his forties, and a single female hostess—and it was her first day.
  It doesn’t sound quite as funny after the event—you really had to be there—but it was the funniest flight I’ve ever been on. It began by the older host telling us that this was a special flight and a special crew, as he was flying with his wife—the young female hostess on her first day. He then said that the second male host was her ex-husband, and that the way she’d been looking at the third host, he was likely to be her next husband. At this, all the male hosts couldn’t stop laughing, preventing them from performing the safety announcements.
  A rough transcript of the normally comprehensive and boring pre-flight safety announcements was “There is a serious side to flying [pause for laughter]. We have life jackets, doesn’t [the female hostess] like them? [Points to the female hostess and breaks into uncontrollable laughter] And they have whistles [male host performs an impromptu ditty on his life-jacket whistle, followed by most of the aircraft laughing]. You can blow in here, and [a pause for more laughter], and there’s exits, if you see me running and screaming, exit after me”. Almost everyone in the plane was laughing, and while it was probably illegally brief, it was by far the best pre-flight safety announcement I’ve ever had.

6:25pm

• I arrived back in Brisbane, to find it wasn’t anywhere near as hot and humid as Cairns, and was in fact somewhat overcast. A slow train journey later, and I was home—very sleepy, somewhat traumatised, emotional, sentimental, stressed, and generally worn out, as per most relaxing family holidays.

13.03.2007 – Tuesday 13 March – Working

• Well, here I am, back at work. I’m not very happy—too tired I think. I’m working seven to three in the fishbowl, though Wade was there today for some reason, so I worked downstairs with everyone else.

14.03.2007 – Wednesday 14 March – Chez Tessa

• I’m much less sleepier now, despite having to get up before six to get to work on time. Maz printed a few photos for me today, which I’ll have to post off to my parents.

Night

• Maz and I caught a bus to Chez Tessa, and had our traditional uni dinners, just like old times.

15.03.2007 – Thursday 15 March – Cold Rock

Work

• I had a generic day at work, other than attending some new training sessions they’re putting on at the moment. They’re all very positive—we’re the best there is, apparently, making me one of the best of the best in my field, or so they’d have me believe. I suppose the figures speak for themselves, but I don’t feel like one of the best of the best right now.

Night

• I walked to Woolworths with Maz, via Cold Rock and a cookies and cream, vanilla and chocolate super shake with whipped cream on top. I’ve decided to add photos to my journal more frequently. It seems a little silly keeping a daily journal, and carrying my camera around with me, but not putting photos in with my journal—so I shall.

Late Night

• I should really be sleeping, but I have to get this Stone site up and running.

16.03.2007 – Friday 16 March – Sleepy

• I’m really quite sleepy, but nothing cashews and Milo can’t fix. Work went by in a delirious haze of sleep-induced efficiency. Evening came and Maz and I walked into the city, as a bus through the traffic on Coronation Drive would have been slower. I bought a slice from Michel’s and a veggie baguette from Hungry Jack’s, filling myself with their refillable post-mix, and feeling suitably sick.

17.03.2007 – Saturday 17 March – Breasts, Power Failures & The Computer Crocodile of Death

Morning

• So, like, there I was—just sitting there, you know, trying to get something done? And, like, there they all were, just watching, like hungry crocodiles; not helping, not doing their job—making fun of me. So, like, I just stared back, sullenly, defiantly—but not giving in, you know. You have to be strong; they’re waiting—they’re waiting for you to give in, and once you do, they will laugh. They will all laugh, and that’s the worst thing. But, in the end, the crocodile of death, he got me—he waited, and he won. You can’t win, when the crocodile of death comes. You can’t win, when the crocodile of death is in your computer.
  It all began when I noticed I had no volume on my primary Windows output. I reset the sound card, which BSOD the machine, as usual. Crocodiles one, our valiant hero, nil. To make matters worse, I was halfway through an interesting conversation, and my computer, being the dinosaur machine it is, takes a long time to do anything, particularly when there’s crocodiles around. I figured this could be related to hard drive failure due to a lot of disk related errors in the event log. Then Bronwen came over to get a copy of the photos I took of her new house, and I discovered that ACDSee wouldn’t work, no matter what. Crocodiles 2, our extremely intelligent and rather attractive hero, nil. Needless to say, had I not urgently needed to use ACDSee, it would have worked. Much crocodile hunting later, our now thoroughly disgusted hero left for work.

Evening

• I don’t mind working on the weekend. Working on the weekend isn’t too good—but the work itself I enjoy, because I’m by myself and in charge of a lot of expensive things. Tonight was interesting, as we had a series of brownouts, switching over to generator power several times. For some reason, every time the power failed and everything switched to panic mode, the immortal phrase “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” came to mind. I’d seek psychiatric evaluation, but I’m too sleepy.

Night

• It appears to be the patron saint of alcohol’s birthday. The tract of vomit between the city and the valley is covered in legged-breasts, closely followed by drunken staggerers. I’m reminded of when the Pied Piper de-ratted Hamelin.

18.03.2007 – Sunday 18 March – Photos & Hot Fuzz

Morning

• I slept in a little, but not heaps. I picked 59 photos, took a few pictures of my flatmates, Maz came over, and we went and printed them for 15¢ each at Harvey Norman’s. There’s thousands there—they won’t be ready until Tuesday, they reckon.

Evening

• Maz and I pulled Nandini’s laptop apart to see why it didn’t work. As it turns out, it’s a miracle it is working. It’s rusty, and everything is physically broken—actually snapped, cracked or missing. I then watched “Hot Fuzz” at South Bank. It’s quite entertaining and amusing, in a British-humour sort of way. They’ve installed a new water feature at South Bank, complete with a rather odd water-tipping thing. Due to our foolish water restrictions, all the water has been imported from outside the Brisbane catchment area, apparently.

19.03.2007 – Monday 19 March – Pop Unwell

Morning

• It turns out it wasn’t crocodiles. It was lzx32.sys. It’s apparently a root-kit known as Backdoor.Rustock.B, which no doubt tries to do bad things, and results in the computer dying. I’m not sure how it’s being installed, but turns out it’s easy enough to remove. I then put some photos on my the-i.org site, ordered a new torch, and caught a bus into the city. I tried to pick up Maz and my photos from Harvey Norman, but they’re not ready yet. I then bought a Canon 75–300mm f/4– lens, which must be about their second cheapest lens at a guess. It’s listed at $249, but with a $100 off deal, cost me $149. It’s not as crappy and plastic as I was expecting either.

Evening

• I’m the only one in the fishbowl tonight. Mina is sick. I got an email that Pop has been to the doctor and isn’t well, which, at his age, is not what one wants to hear.

20.03.2007 – Tuesday 20 March – New Torch

Morning

• It seems I still have lzx32.sys. I suppose I’ll have to figure out how to entirely remove it at some stage, but that sounds like a lot of effort. In other news, it’s hot and my torch, a Fenix L1D CE, has arrived. It’s a bit hard to say when it’s not dark, but it seems it’ll satisfy my peculiar torch craving for a while—it’s over twice as bright on its brightest setting as my current torch, and lasts over twice as long on its dimmest setting, which isn’t much dimmer than my current torch. In other words, it’s over twice as efficient. It’s amazing how far torches have come really—this will run on a single rechargeable AA battery for nearly twenty-four hours at a brightness that’s better than a mini-Maglite, or burn away phenomenally brightly for an hour and a half. It’s also got a strobe setting, which isn’t particularly useful but might be fun—and all in something half the size of a mini-Maglite.

Afternoon

• Bus to near Harvey Norman, up 2 escalators, collect Maz and my photos, down 3 escalators to the eatery, vanilla milkshake, punnet of potato bake and pumpkin pasta, punnet of dhal and curry, up one escalator, walk across road, catch bus to work. Work. Chocolate, milk, biscuits from Woolworths. Walk contemplatively home.

Night

• Quite humid out. Walking home results in sweat. Just cooling down now, before bed. Greatly impressed with new torch—very bright. Low setting could be a bit lower, but is better than my other Fenix. Funny how strongly attached to certain music memories—and their associated emotions—can be. Rammstein’s “Du Hast” reminds me of “Pulse FM”—a local Cooktown radio station—a few specific incidents there, and that period of my life in general. Almost all of Metallica’s earlier work reminds me of the numerous nights I spent out in the Mary Valley with Aaron, camping in a caravan in the corner of his parent’s small farm, getting up to crazy pyrotechnic things and running around the bush in the dark. I still think Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” is one of my favourite songs (along with a myriad other).

21.03.2007 – Wednesday 21 March – Uneventful

• I had a quiet morning, doing a bit of work on the Stone site, heading to Toowong for lunch with Maz, and heading to work from there. Work was uneventful, as was the walk home, and now I’m cooling down for bed.

22.03.2007 – Thursday 22 March – Generically

• The generic—get up, mess around online, go to work via the city (where they had a rally car display, for some reason) to collect some cheap food, work, walk home, mess around online, go to bed.

23.03.2007 – Friday 23 March – Bus Woe

• Slept in. Worked on Stone site. Waited for bus for work. Bus did not come. Caught another bus. Bus did not go where it said it should go. Bus was invaded by prams in the city. No wonder people don’t stop driving and use public transport; it’s a mental health liability.

24.03.2007 – Saturday 24 March – Coomera Gorge

• I got up at five o’clock, and was ready shortly after half past. Clint arrived a little after six, having already picked everyone else up, and we drove a couple of hours south. Our walk started easily enough—Clint, Maz, Eddie, Bronwen and I walking down a well-marked track, but we soon left this, bashing our way through the wait-a-while and stinging trees. Maz, Clint and I managed to get stung. As the sides of the creek we were approaching began to get steeper, it became increasingly difficult to claw our way through the prickles, so we made our way to the creek and began to walk up the gorge. Once we’d got used to the feel of walking in the water, it was actually quite refreshing—it sure beat the normally dry, hot and sweaty clamber up some death-defying rock.
  Roughly four hours of sliding up the creek on rocks later, and we arrived at the base of the falls, where we could see, far above us, the lookout easily attainable by an hours walk on a marked track. An icy swim later, and we headed back down the creek, spending another four or so hours pinching our feet between concealed rocks and trying not to fall in the water, destroying thousands of dollars of camera equipment. The hour or so walk back up the steep, but marked, track to the road was probably the hardest of all, on tired legs.
  All up, it was a very enjoyable walk—I much prefer rainforest to the drier “Australian” bush—and I managed to stay less injured than the rest, only getting two leeches, falling only a few times and not badly, and getting stung by one stinging tree. My jungle-skills from up north prevented me from becoming stuck in the wait-a-whiles that attacked everyone else, and even though very sleepy, I’m more used to navigating rocks.

Night

• Too exhausted to even consider making dinner, I had Thai from the nearest Thai place, and fell into bed.

25.03.2007 – Sunday 25 March – Relaxing

Morning

• I had a quiet morning. I’m a little achy, after my walk yesterday. Interestingly, my shoulders are bruised from my pack, which hasn’t happened to this extent before, even though I’ve carried it far further and when loaded far heavier.

Afternoon

• Feeling guilty for sitting inside all morning, despite being a bit sore, I caught a bus into the city with a view to take a few photos and get some lunch. Typically, as soon as I got to South Bank, it began to rain, though I managed to get a Hungry Jack’s Veggie Baguette and a bus home, without getting too wet.

Night

• Maz and I had curry from the Indian place near here for dinner.

26.03.2007 – Monday 26 March – Sleepy

• Up at a quarter past five in the morning, catching the city cat to work (early shifts at EB this week), working, finding that the server my site is on has been downgraded to PHP 4 by accident, yelling at my web host, working some more, catching the city cat home again, walking to Woolworths, shopping, and eating a nice dinner cooked by Krish. Just a few of the annoying things I had to do before bed.

27.03.2007 – Tuesday 27 March – Taxi

5:15am

• I woke up, having got around four and a half hours sleep, and decided it was worth paying twenty dollars for an extra forty minutes sleep. While rather expensive, it was a lovely forty minutes. It takes about a minute to get a taxi to my door at this time of day, and just under twenty dollars to get to work, as opposed to the fifteen-minute walk to the city cat, followed by the relatively slow, but quite pleasant and scenic, city cat ride.

Day

• I worked.

Afternoon

• I played around with some photos I took on Sunday, trying to figure out why it’s so much harder to make panoramas from photos from my new camera.

Evening

• I did some more work on the Stone site.

Night

• I had a late dinner, and rushed to bed, excessively late—I’ll get less than five hours sleep, again.

28.03.2007 – Wednesday 28 March – Sleepier

Morning

• I woke up shortly after the city cat would have left, again having got around four and a half hours sleep, and again, had to catch a taxi to work. This is getting to be an expensive habit. I then worked, while other people sailed.

Evening

• I walked to Woolworths with Maz, where I bought his groceries, he having forgotten his wallet.

Night

• I decided that I must get to bed early tonight, so as to avoid abject conjunctive liver and kidney failure, or whatever it is that happens to people that work more than they sleep, but things happened, and when they had finally finished happening, Clint needed to do an emergency food grab from the IGA. By the time I got to bed, it was again after midnight.

29.03.2007 – Thursday 29 March – Sleepiest

Morning

• With minutes of sleep now valued higher than chocolate biscuits, I decided that the fifteen-minute walk to the city cat is an inefficient way to get to work, so caught a bus that’s only a minute from my door. I then proceeded to get lost, walking a long way in the right direction, only to find that it was a different right direction to the actual right direction. For some reason the city planners built the city pointing in the wrong direction here.

Lunch

• Today I learnt that it takes a little over three times longer to make extra cheesy spaghetti as hot as extra cheesy baked beans, in the especially angry microwave here at work.

Evening

• Fixed an annoying problem where IE displayed white “speckles” or seemingly random pixels in the opaque resulting image from the image-fade-in loading script I’m using on my journal.

Night

• I got to sleep a little after midnight, which was not what I should have done.

Comment by Maz – Monday 2 April 2007, 3:46 PM

  Make a new label for it that says "Radiation king" or something?

Comment by Ned – Monday 2 April 2007, 6:39 PM

  Exactly why it has that label I don’t know. Nearly everything is labelled. That’s what happens when you let people work all night and leave labellers lying around.

Comment by Maz – Thursday 5 April 2007, 11:23 AM

  Yeah. We have a few Dymo labellers here and have a similar problem but people don't have such a sense of humour. Or I just don't get the insider jokes.

30.03.2007 – Friday 30 March – Work, Complaining & Cold Rock

Night

• I dropped past Cold Rock on the way to Maz’s, before heading up to Café E, for a pasta dinner.

Comment by krait – Sunday 1 April 2007, 11:51 AM

  Hmm, your rss feed said come here to read the article because of the addition of photos, but I don't see any... Additionally, the length of the entry is actually *shorter* than the message in your feed redirecting me here ;)

Comment by Ned – Sunday 1 April 2007, 10:56 PM

  That is true. No photos here explicitly, but photos in various entries now, which, mostly due to needing cookies, can’t be put into RSS. Also, I enjoy the design of my sites, and RSS defeats the purpose of that.

Comment by Maz – Monday 2 April 2007, 3:45 PM

  RSS would only defeat the purpose if by reading it, people were not encouraged to visit the site for some reason or another. Perhaps you should have something that says [image removed] or something so people come here to see the images.
  Maybe having something that says more than "Went to cold rock" too? And as Krait has shown, the rss actually gets people to visit the site, (thus not defeating the purpose of design).

Comment by Ned – Monday 2 April 2007, 6:38 PM

  That is essentially what it does now–it basically says “image removed”. If nothing else, it’s an experiment, and, not to sound provocative, the reason today’s entry is so short is that the rest is hidden as it involves work. People with a login can read it.

31.03.2007 – Saturday 31 March – Crazy Gothish & Missing People

Morning

• I finally had a little bit of a sleep-in, though probably not as much as I should have. I got up sometime after nine o’clock, walked up to the real estate to deliver a request for maintenance form, and caught a bus into the city to post photos to Mum. The crazy Gothish seem to gather in the mall now that their park has been turned into a bus-tunnel-construction-zone.

Afternoon

• I wandered slowly home via the Botanical Gardens, where the SES were hunting for a missing person, and South Bank markets, where I couldn’t resist taking a photo of a “no photos” sign.

Night

• I have had a relaxing, albeit somewhat geeky, night chatting online and fighting the JavaScript that lets me add photos to my journal. It’s a horrible mess of child nodes nested in child nodes, and wasn’t handling the case where an acronym was contained within an image link, which was itself before text where another image link was to be added. It’s crying out for some amazingly clever recursive function, but I dislike JavaScript and hope to never have to look at it again. Now I should consider getting some sleep, so as to be recovered for next week.

Nov ‘06 | Dec ‘06 | Jan ‘07 | Feb ‘07 | Mar ‘07 Apr ‘07 | May ‘07 | Jun ‘07 | Jul ‘07 |

Year View| Summary| Highlights| March 2007 (Month View)