Wednesday 13th July – Home Again
1pm
I woke up to find it was afternoon. I guess this is jetlag.
Afternoon
Bronwen’s Mum drove us out to Bronwen’s place. I tried starting my car—it started, but it wasn’t especially happy, running roughly for a while, and the battery was noticeably flat when starting it.
Night
Bronwen’s hair went frizzy.
Thursday 14th July – Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows (Part 2)
Evening
Bronwen and I drove to Kieran’s, though he not yet being home, we walked down to Woolworths at Indooroopilly and bought some drinks for the movie later on. Shortly after we got there Kieran arrived home so we walked back up to his place, had a chat to him and Daniel, and got my server—which has been working flawlessly the whole time it’s been there.
9:15pm
We drove from Kieran’s to Bronwen’s parents’ place. I had planned to drive straight home and install the server, but as usual everything had taken longer than expected and there wasn’t enough time so we stayed there until it was time to head to Southbank, where everything again took longer than expected. Parking under the cinema was full, so we drove down to Kangaroo Point, and rushed from there back to the cinema, expecting it to be a sold-out session and difficult to find seating… but it was nearly empty, and remained that way.
“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (part 2)” wasn’t very good. For the first time in a 3D movie, I was distracted by blurriness—though to be fair, this could well be because it’s also the first time I’ve seen a 3D movie on the extra-large Cinema 5 screen, though it also looked like they might have been intentionally blurring things to increase the effect—and at times I found myself wishing it was in clear 2D. But mostly, it shouldn’t have been cut in half—it felt very much like the last half of a movie, and without the build-up necessary, really didn’t have the impact it should have had.
Midnight
After the movie, we drove back home and Bronwen cooked up some pasta for a late dinner. I installed the server, turned it on, and it fairly promptly blue-screened and rebooted. It’s now going through the several hour re-sync process, and while it doesn’t seem to have had any errors yet, it’s extremely slow starting up the VM’s while re-synching the disks and I’m waiting up to see what happens.
4:30am
After spending half the night fighting my server (or more accurately, waiting for it), I went to bed.
Friday 15th July – Halim’s
Afternoon
Bronwen and I got up—she having had quite a lot of sleep, and me probably having had just enough, after getting to bed so late. After breakfast I discovered what was killing the server—connecting its Ethernet port to gigabit almost instantly caused errors, and I had to reboot it. Bronwen had an old, quite similar, “server” she’s been using as her media centre, and I have a media centre in bits which I’ve no use for at the moment, so we decided to swap them. After removing her wall-mounted TV so as to get to the “server” behind it, we pulled it out and I swapped the hard drives from mine into it… turned it on… and it didn’t start. This wasn’t entirely a surprise, as it had done it numerous times before in its previous life as a media centre—not exactly making it the best choice for a reliable server—but I’m stingy and don’t want to spend any money when I can use something else that’s not being used, and after lots of fighting, it finally turned on and has been working well ever since—though whether it’ll ever turn on again if it ever turns off is a worry.
Night
After getting the server to boot, quickly installing required drivers, and rebooting it, we rushed off to Maz’s place, and from there Maz, Kieran, Bronwen and I drove through the spitting rain to Halim’s, for a delicious dinner. Afterwards we drove back to Maz’s and spent a few hours chatting, before watching an episode of Top Gear, then driving back home—again through the rain—to go to bed.
Saturday 16th July – Shirt & Tie
Morning
Bronwen and I drove to Indooroopilly, where we met Maz and Kieran, and went shopping. I bought shoes, pants, a shirt and a tie—interview material. Other than that, the weekend is pretty much a blur, and I don’t really remember it.
Sunday 17th July – A Blur
Still a blur. Perhaps there’s more to jetlag than I’d thought.
Monday 18th July – Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Morning
I paid my car registration and bemoaned the relatively pathetic road infrastructure and absurdly slow speed limits that Australians seem content to accept.
Night
Instead of driving to South Bank to see “Transformers: Dark of the Moon” in 3D, we drove to Woolworths and bought Jaffas, and then rushed to South Bank, arriving with just enough time to park under the cinema (which, fortunately, wasn’t full) and rush into the movie. It was, as expected, not very good at all—but contained lots of action.
Tuesday 19th July – Eagle Boys Pizza
Morning
Once again, I slept in.
Night
I drove Bronwen to Kangaroo Point Cliffs to go climbing, and picked Maz up from work and drove out to his place. After Bronwen finished climbing, we bought what passes for pizza at Eagle Boy’s and ate that at Maz’s.
Wednesday 20th July – Smeagol
Midday
I got up late and Bronwen and I drove to Photo Continental, where I got the details of someone who could do up a warranty quote for a lens repair, and was hit by a truck.
After surviving the truck with mere scratches, we drove to Garden City and went shoe and phone battery shopping.
To be honest, it was a small truck, and it just grazed the front of my car—I was about to pull out of the Photo Continental car park when a truck came along mostly on the wrong side of the road and ran into the front of my car. Fortunately, a small graze on the front bumper, which would probably buff out if I was more concerned, seems to be all that’s happened.
Night
I drove to the city, picked Maz up from his work, drove to his place, then walked up to Kieran’s, where we met—along with Kieran—Smeagol. Several hours and a dinner (Nandos for everyone except me—Nandos having temporarily decided not to make anything that wasn’t chicken for no apparent reason—and Thai green curry for me) later, and Maz and I walked back down to Maz’s, where we spent a little time fixing his NAS, before I drove home and went straight to bed… closer to four o’clock than three.
Thursday 21st July – Camera Tech
9am
My alarm went off at nine o’clock, and—not wanting a repeat of yesterday where I got up in time to see the darkness set in—I managed to drag myself out of bed an hour or two later.
Day
Bronwen and I drove to South Bank and walked to “Camera Tech” (which is quite well hidden—you press 207 on the small non-descript panel, talk to the wall, go through the door, up the lift, walk down the long white hallway, and turn left through the door…), who took my Canon 17-55mm lens and will give me a quote on its repair when I come back to get it tomorrow.
Then, lens safely deposited, we walked to Govinda’s and had lunch, which was as nice as it was before we went overseas, and after went shoe shopping; shoe shopping, it turns out, is very thirsty work—and shoes, it turns out, are roughly the opposite to drinks. After shoe shopping I somehow managed to buy a pearl milk tea with unusual chocolate sludge jelly instead of pearls—quite possibly becoming the only person ever to do so.
Afternoon
After lunch we walked back to the car and drove to Bronwen’s parents’ place, and from there, back home. Once home, we found that somehow most of the day had gone, and that we had no ginger, so we walked down to Woolworths, where we found that Target only sold cheap 1.5 litre and 6 litre slow cookers—and very expensive 3.5 litre ones—so we left gingered, but slow cooker-less.
Night
Bronwen cooked us a nice pasta dinner and we watched (some of) the last landing of the space shuttle, and I tried making a start on sorting the photos from our holiday.
