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Year View| Summary| Highlights| May 2008 (Month View)
Jan ‘08 | Feb ‘08 | Mar ‘08 | Apr ‘08 | May ‘08 Jun ‘08 | Jul ‘08 | Aug ‘08 | Sep ‘08 |
01.05.2008 – Thursday 1 May – Ironman
- Night
- • Had a Hungry Jack’s Veggie Baguette at Maz’s with Bronwen and Kieran, then watched “Ironman” with Bronwen.
02.05.2008 – Friday 2 May – Driven
- Morning
- • I drove Bronwen back to her place, then Mi to work, and then myself back home.
- Afternoon
- • I drove Stella to uni for an exam, then Grace to the city, then picked Stella up from uni, then picked Maz up from his place, then Kieran from his work, and drove them to the airport. Traffic coming home was awful. I managed to miss the worst of it by taking back roads, but still awful.
- Evening
- • I drove Stella to work, and dropped past Woolworths to replace the cream and ice cream she kindly finished for me.
- Night
- • So far, I’ve watched the news and eaten 2 minute noodles, complete with corn and peas.
- Later Night
- • I watched a few episodes of Heroes with Grace, then picked Stella up from work.
03.05.2008 – Saturday 3 May – Buddha’s Birthday Festival
- Morning
- • Drove to Woolworths at Toowong to buy some laundry detergent and Milo.
- Afternoon
- • Drove to Officeworks so Grace could look for butcher’s paper. Then caught a bus into South Bank to get some food at Buddha’s Birthday Festival.
- Night
- • Stella went to work. Grace cooked a stir fry, and we watched Heroes. I don’t normally watch poor quality TV drama, but now that I’ve been watching it for so long, it’s frustratingly annoying how they don’t tie up any loose ends. One more episode to go. In other news, I’ve been slowly adding my Tasmania trip to my online journal.
04.05.2008 – Sunday 4 May – Buddha’s Fireworks
- Afternoon
- • I drove to the airport where I found Maz and Kieran, and drove them back to Indooroopilly, where I found Hungry Jacks.
- 7:30pm
- • After a rushed trip to Paddington Woolworths and a subsequent nachos dinner courtesy of Grace and Stella, I rushed off to Maz’s, then we all rushed to the bus stop, and managed to get to South Bank just a bit too late for the 7:30 fireworks—except they were quarter of an hour late starting so we got to watch them.
- Night
- • I drove down to Bronwen’s—who had just got back from her bushwalk—and brought her back here.
05.05.2008 – Monday 5 May – Rainbow Eels
- Afternoon
- • Bronwen, Grace, Stella and I drove to UQ. The studying ones went to the library, and Bronwen and I wandered around the campus for a while, finding large rainbow-coloured eels in the lake.
- Evening
- • Grace, Stella, Maz and I went rollerblading along the Coronation Drive/Riverside bikeway. Unfortunately the rubber on one of Maz’s wheels peeled off—not very impressive considering that he hasn’t had his blades for very long.
- Night
- • Stella, Maz and I drove to Maz’s via Macdonald’s, where Maz took my phone apart to tighten up its sliders.
06.05.2008 – Tuesday 6 May – Lazing
- Day
- • I feel guilty for having done almost nothing all day. I slept in. I posted Mum’s photos to her. I had lunch. I watched half of “Leon the Professional”, and so far that’s it.
- Evening
- • I drove Stella to work, and stopped at Maz’s. We went to the video store, got out some James Bond DVDs, and picked Bronwen up from Kangaroo Point. 387km last week.
- Night
- • Bought, and ate, pizza.
07.05.2008 – Wednesday 7 May – Unsleeping & Evil Media
- Morning
- • Off to the city to meet Bronwen, and return Maz’s faulty rollerblades.
- Evening
- • Drove to Indooroopilly with Grace and Stella to do some shopping.
- Night
- • Found that my media centre has lost the ability to play DVD’s. It simply doesn’t. PowerDVD works just fine, but Media Centre and Media Player don’t work. Last time I fought it, I lost. The TV tuner would not work, and I had to roll back to a previous Ghost image, which for some reason, does work albeit apparently without DVD support. Now I’m going to try again. Step one: Install Vista slipstreamed with service pack one, with the TV tuner card removed from the computer.
- 4am
- • This really is insane. I have spent an unbelievable amount of time trying to fix this crap media centre, and it’s going exactly the same as last time—it’s not working. I install a clean install of Vista, slipstreamed with SP1. I ghost that. Ghost fails. So I use Acronis True Image instead. I then install Winrar, PowerDVD, the sound drivers, and reboot. I then put in the TV tuner card. Windows finds drivers for that from Windows Update. I fire up Media Centre. The TV tuner doesn’t work. Neither can I play DVD’s. Windows Media Player says my DVD’s are the wrong region, and can’t be played. They happen to be region-free DVD files on my computer. And the tuner service can’t start; it can’t find a required file. Basically exactly the same as last time. So it appears I cannot have a Vista-based media centre that plays DVD’s anymore. I can ghost back to the old install that will play TV, but I don’t appear to be able to play TV if I reinstall Vista. Perhaps it’s time to roll-back to XP, though the TV tuner didn’t work in that either last time I tried. This is horrible. Why would DVD’s not play? That doesn’t even make sense. Needless to say, PowerDVD can play them just fine, as can my Vista-based desktop machine.
- 4:45am
- • Vista cannot play DVD’s from an external hard drive with UAC off. I kid you not. Workarounds include turning UAC on, copying the DVD’s to an internal drive, or mapping the external drive as a network share and accessing the DVD’s via that share. Don’t ask why, just believe, and take a slow, deep breathe. It’s better than screaming. Oh, and DVD support is in the box, I didn’t need to install any DVD players or codecs.
- 5:24am
- • I now have TV tuner and DVD support at the same time. For future note: Install the old, outdated drivers that came on the CD with the tuner card before installing any other type of tuner driver, and then prevent anything from ever updating those drivers. That seems to have worked so far.
- 7am
- • Five minutes after going to bed, Bronwen called me. I picked her up from the Convention Centre.
08.05.2008 – Thursday 8 May – Sleepy
- 7am
- • Went to bed for about five minutes, then picked Bronwen up from the Convention Centre.
09.05.2008 – Friday 9 May – Blading
- Afternoon
- • Drove to Indooroopilly with Grace, Stella and Maz.
- Night
- • Watched Blade, and Blade II with Grace.
10.05.2008 – Saturday 10 May – Computering
- • Drove up to Bronwen’s parent’s place, and helped Bronwen order parts from Umart to build her Mum a computer. Then drove to Umart to pick up aforementioned parts, and on to Maz’s to use aforementioned parts to build aforementioned computer. This took most of the afternoon, and a large portion of the evening. Maz, Bronwen and I had dinner at Chez Tessa, and spent some time at my place in discussion. I also drove Grace to the city, Stella to work, picked up Stella from work, drove Stella to the city, picked up Grace from the city, drove Grace and Stella to the valley, and several hours later, picked up Grace from the valley and drove her home, then drove Bronwen up to her parent’s place, sometime around 4 o’clock in the morning.
11.05.2008 – Sunday 11 May – Shopping
- Morning
- • I woke up scarily close to nine o’clock—extra scarily, considering I didn’t get to bed until after four o’clock, a mere couple of hours ago. I did manage to snooze on and off for a lot of the rest of the day though.
- Afternoon
- • Stella, Maz and I drove to Indooroopilly to do some shopping, and that’s about all that happened today. I spent some time chatting to Maz; I recoded several DVD’s for my media centre, which seems to still be sort of working, and ate dinner, not forgetting to phone Mum to wish her a happy Mother’s day, in retrospect.
12.05.2008 – Monday 12 May – Chillin’
- Day
- • Had a cruisy day, chillin’. Drove Stella to Eckersley’s a few minutes after her assignment was due, then to a printing place, then home, then back to the printing place, then off to Griffith to submit it. Gave up on the media centre (again), and rolled back to a previous ghosted version—which works so far. It’s really not worth the effort.
- Night
- • Drove to Maz’s, off to the IGA for iced coffee, back to my place, back to Maz’s, chatted, and so forth.
- 3:53am
- • I’ve found the ultimate Winamp Visualisation—a Milkdrop preset, “Rovastar + Giess – Snapshot of Space (LSB Mix)”. It’s fantastic. I’ve been watching it for the past... far too long. Off to bed now.
13.05.2008 – Tuesday 13 May – Pizza
- Night
- • Dropped Stella at work. Went to Maz’s. Got Bronwen from Kangaroo Cliffs. Bought pizza. Ate pizza and watched comedy at Maz’s.
14.05.2008 – Wednesday 14 May – Broken Chargers
- Evening
- • I picked up my USB charging cradle for my phone from Maz’s, only to find that it doesn’t work – the charging plug in the cradle part is broken.
15.05.2008 – Thursday 15 May – Indooroopilly
- Evening
- • Maz, Bronwen and I drove to Indooroopilly so Maz and I could buy vacuum cleaners, but the vacuum cleaner man told us that the cute purple one would be half price on Saturday, so we delayed our purchase until then.
16.05.2008 – Friday 16 May – Traffic
- Morning
- • I drove Bronwen back to her place, and did some shopping down there.
- Midday
- • Raymond and I had Hungry Jack’s for lunch.
- Afternoon
- • I’ve just been stuck in traffic for nearly an hour. I drove Stella to Griffith/South Bank Campus, with Raymond. Traffic there was fine. I attempted to drive back over the William Jolly/Grey Street Bridge, but traffic was not moving that way. It wasn’t just slow, it wasn’t actually moving. After being stuck at an intersection for several light changes with absolutely no movement, I managed to escape and sat at the river for a while with Raymond, who wisely chose to walk to a City Cat to get home. I then tried the Victoria Bridge, which was moving, but incredibly slowly. It took so long to get to the start of the bridge that I escaped via the South Bank parklands car park and headed south, avoiding the expressway entirely and driving through the city via the Story Bridge, which was fine. It took a little over an hour to drop Stella off at uni—and, ironically, I picked her up again as I was driving south, having wasted over 45 minutes trying to cross William Jolly and Victoria Bridges.
17.05.2008 – Saturday 17 May – Purple Vacuums
- Morning
- • Drove to Indooroopilly with Maz, and we both bought cute purple vacuum cleaners.
18.05.2008 – Sunday 18 May – Coomera Circuit
- • Up at seven o’clock, ready by ten past, spend the next forty minutes ensuring Bronwen and Stella get ready, then off to Maz’s, the IGA and a bakery for food. We then drove to the Binna Burra section of Lamington National Park, and walked the Coomera Circuit. It was very windy and extremely cold in shorts and short sleeves, but overall an easy eighteen kilometre walk along a marked track—and unlike last time, it didn’t rain, there weren’t any leeches, and we didn’t have to turn back covered in blood.
19.05.2008 – Monday 19 May – Blank
- • This day intentionally left blank.
20.05.2008 – Tuesday 20 May – Stargate
- Day
- • I applied for a few jobs off Seek.
- Night
- • I dropped Stella at her work, then continued on to Maz’s and from there to the video store for Maz to drop his videos back. After watching some Stargate at Maz’s, we drove to Kangaroo Point and collected Bronwen, drove back to my place, ordered pizza, and drove back to Maz’s to eat it. Stella arrived later after work, and I drove Bronwen back out to her place.
- Late Night
- • I went for a wander through the bottom level of what used to be Milton Bowl. There’s a lot of water leaking from somewhere.
21.05.2008 – Wednesday 21 May – Interviews & Rollerblades
- 5pm
- • Interview with Hays.
- Night
- • Rollerblading with Maz and Stella, in to South Bank via the Goodwill Bridge and back again.
22.05.2008 – Thursday 22 May – Interviews & Hungry Jacks
- 2pm
- • Bus into the city with Bronwen, taxi from the city to Herston, interview with QLD Health. Bus back into the city via the new Roma Street bus platform and new tunnel and George Street Bus Station or whatever it’s called, and an interview with Sapphire Recruitment.
- Night
- • Drove to Bronwen’s, then to KFC with Maz, then to Hungry Jack’s for dinner for myself, then back home.
23.05.2008 – Friday 23 May – Caramel
- Evening
- • Went to Maz’s. Bought caramel slice. Felt caramelled.
- Night
- • Went rollerblading but didn’t go. Bronwen, who did go, along with Maz and Stella, fell over.
24.05.2008 – Saturday 24 May – Indiana Jones
- Evening
- • Watched Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark with Bronwen and Grace, which is not very good.
- Night
- • Kieran’s with Bronwen, Maz, via Hungry Jack’s.
25.05.2008 – Sunday 25 May – Brisbane Zombie Walk
- • Photograph Brisbane Zombie Walk. Stella, Grace and Jamie are zombies. Jamie stays the night. Curry at night with Bronwen, Grace, Stella, Jamie.
26.05.2008 – Monday 26 May – Leg Scrapes
- Morning
- • I drove Bronwen back to her place, via a bakery for breakfast.
- Afternoon
- • I moseyed around, getting coffee at Park Road with Stella, sitting in the sun, and relaxing.
- Evening
- • Rushed off to Toowong Woolworths with Stella, then on to Maz’s, then back to my place to go rollerblading with Bronwen.
- Night
- • Rollerbladed into South Bank and back again with Bronwen, Stella and Maz. Managed to hit a concrete wall and go through a metal fence, scraping my leg a bit.
27.05.2008 – Tuesday 27 May – Laughing Pizza
- Day
- • I walked up to Bronwen’s parent’s place with Bronwen, watched some The IT Crowd on my media centre, ate lunch, drove to Woolworths at Indooroopilly with Grace, and so on and so forth.
- Night
- • I ordered pizza from Eagle Boys, and turned up just before their closing time to pick it up, only to find that their oven had stopped making pizzas and I didn’t have a pizza to pick up. Fortunately, Dominos is open until midnight, so I had slightly inferior Dominos pizzas instead, which I ate at Maz’s while watching Stargate until Stella arrived. We then listened to her laughing for a while, discussing the pros and cons of euthanasia and capital punishment, before heading home to sleep.
28.05.2008 – Wednesday 28 May – Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
- Day
- • Nothing of particular interest happened.
- Afternoon
- • I drove out to Bronwen’s, bringing her back to my place.
- Night
- • Bronwen, Maz and I went rollerblading to South Bank and back.
- 9:30pm
- • Bronwen and I watched “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, which was roughly identical to the previous Indiana Jones movies, as expected—pointlessly enjoyable action without being particularly memorable.
- 1am
- • I drove Bronwen back to her place.
29.05.2008 – Thursday 29 May – Socks
- Morning
- • Woken by a call from a recruiter.
- Evening
- • Drove to Indooroopilly with Stella and Maz, where I bought some socks, amongst other less exciting things. It is raining.
30.05.2008 – Friday 30 May – Bourne Again
- Morning
- • It’s a grey and wet day, the sort of day you don’t get out of bed—which is precisely what I’ve done so far.
- Afternoon
- • I was eventually prompted to get up by a call from a recruiter. I drove Stella into South Bank, had lunch, watched an episode of Firefly, and have been messing around on my computer and looking through job vacancies since. It’s still raining on and off.
- 5:17am
- • Stayed up all night watching the three Jason Bourne movies with Bronwen on my stupid media centre—which refused to play the first one until rebooted, and froze towards the end of the second one. It did, however, play the third just fine. Bronwen and I went for a walk along the river between the second and third movies, and had a break to pick up Stella and get iced coffee from the IGA just before midnight.
31.05.2008 – Saturday 31 May – Kebabs
- Midday
- • Slept in until midday. Bought a kebab from the shop near the IGA with Stella and Bronwen, and ate it in the park. Dropped Bronwen off at her parent’s.
- Night
- • Dropped Stella at a party in St. Lucia and bought some chips with Bronwen, before driving up to Kieran’s, where we stayed with Maz, until late.
Jan ‘08 | Feb ‘08 | Mar ‘08 | Apr ‘08 | May ‘08 Jun ‘08 | Jul ‘08 | Aug ‘08 | Sep ‘08 |