Wyrmlog

Well how about that, Finnish horror glam rock group Lordi (or as the Wogun calls them ‘The Orcs’) seem to have won Eurovision. Well done them. The best Eurovision entries are always the ones where everyone just decides to be extremely silly, and Lordi are the silliest thing I’ve seen in years. I mean the lead singer (‘Mr Lordi’ apparently) has wings! Wings!

Anyway there’s been another long gap between entries (for which I must apologise) but at least it means I have more to write about.

First up, I got the results of my sleep study. Apparently I snore for 70% of the time I’m asleep. Great. I also stop breathing an average of 11.7 times an hour, which works out to just over every five minutes. During these events my blood oxygen level drops down to about 87% meaning my brain isn’t getting enough oxygen – which pretty neatly explains why I’m so gorram tired all the time.

Most of the events are down to Obstructive Apnoea, which is where the soft tissue of the throat relaxes too much, collapses and blocks airflow. However some of them are apparently the result of Central Apnoea, which is where the brainstem decides breathing is optional and stops telling the lungs to work. This can be caused by all sorts of exciting things like brain lesions, brain tumours and degenerative neurological disorders – but sometimes just happens for no reason anyone can figure out. According to the doctors I almost certainly don’t have any of these things, but I’ve got an appointment with a specialist in a few weeks to check it out.

The specialist will also figure out some form of treatment, the most common of which is being hooked up to a breathing machine*OK, yes, technically it’s not a breathing machine, all it does is maintain pressure in the airway to keep it open – I was simplifying, satisfied? while you sleep. This is apparently quite inconvenient but most people find the improvement in sleep quality more than outweighs it. I have to admit I’m looking forwards to trying it out because frankly I don’t think I’ve had a proper night’s sleep in about twenty years.

One upshot of the diagnosis is that I’ve finally got my plan to take time off work working. For ages I’ve been planning to take one day off work a fortnight (so I’ll have time to actually DO stuff) but haven’t had the opportunity (or guts 🙂 to bring it up with Dale. But a story on Triple J’s Hack about negotiating in the workplace gave me some tips and I finally broached the subject – using apnoea induced sleep deprivation and possible brain tumours to generate sympathy. And it worked! Starting in two weeks I’ll be taking every second Monday off. Caloo calay!

This will give me more time to work on various projects. The latest one I’m all excited about is an old school computer game (development title ‘Monkstorm’) where you control a 14th century French Monk armed with warhammer, incense and holy water battling his way through hordes of zombies in a cursed monastery to rescue sacred relics that can ward off the plague (sort of like an ecclesiastical version of Resident Evil :). I’m looking at building it in Game Maker, which I’ve been fooling around with – it seems like an excellent program for this kind of thing. I’ve also been throwing together some graphics (compiled largely from the RPG Maker series), which I may post below – if I can be bothered 🙂

If Monkstorm ever does get up and running it won’t be for a while because I’m waiting on the actual Game Maker book. It’s much easier to learn a program when you’ve got a physical manual on hand. And it will of course be released as freeware – to minimise any potential problems with copyright infringements.

(Now I’ve just got to find some character sprites that don’t look like pokemons or manga midgets *sigh*)

Now, what else was I going to write about? How about Purdey? Things still seem to be going great, we spent much of last Sunday over at the folk’s place for Mother’s Day (my family didn’t freak her out too much I think :), then went out for dinner with Rebecca and Dom. We were supposed to meet them at “Wogga Mamma’s” in Subiaco, which I’d never heard of but presumed was a small Italian place – possibly with an amusingly stereotyped “Mamma” character on the menus. As it turned out the place was actually a chain Asian fusion place named “Wagamama” which really shows just how fantastic my hearing is over the phone. But it turned out OK because the food was pretty good and the prices very reasonable. We’ll probably be going back again, especially since Rebecca forced us to join their frequent diners scheme (any half hearted objections on my behalf were quashed by Rebecca’s pointing out that she forced me to join RSVP, and look how well that turned out).

She (that is to say Purdey) is coming over this afternoon and we’re heading off for high tea at the Hyatt for my brother’s birthday. I really like it that she’s willing to traipse off to these kind of ridiculous family events with me 😀

What else was there I was going to talk about. The Prime Minister staying six nights in a $10,000 a night hotel in Rome perhaps? There’s our tax dollars at work! No, that’s right! Black Books. I treated myself to the season one DVD of Black Books, a show that I saw the first episode of some years back, then consistently managed to miss right up to the start of the third season. For those unfamiliar with it it’s a rather insane British sitcom about an alcoholic misanthrope named Bernard Black who runs an eccentrically sinister bookshop in Bloomsbury, and his (quite possibly only) two friends. Manny – a balding, bearded, well meaning weirdo who works in said shop, and Fran – the semi-alcoholic, man-obsessed proprietor of the fairly crappy gift shop next door. Now, OK, that doesn’t sound terribly entertaining, but this is more down to my poor powers of description than anything else 🙂

The series veers a rather erratic path between rather dark humour and completely inane silliness. First season plots for instance include Bernard trying to get himself seriously injured to avoid having to do his tax (a feat he achieves by taunting some Millwall fans) and Manny getting locked into the store overnight and having to eat bees. It’s fantastic! 🙂

I guess the real reason I enjoy the show so much is twofold. Firstly Bernard runs his bookstore exactly the way I would. Eccentric opening hours, trying not to sell anything because then he’d just have to restock and herding customers out the door with a megaphone whenever they get two annoying. The second reason – Tamsin Greig 🙂

Anyway I’d best be off to prepare for high tea *shudder*. At least the sandwiches aren’t bad I suppose.

Yesterday a number of goodly things occurred.

Telstra have finally got their act together and I have “broadbands”. Hooray! The downside is I’ve now got to think of something to do with it. After a year and half (or so) of living with slow, unreliable dial up I’m used to hopping online and then franticaly trying to achieve a few brief things before the connection dies. The luxury of always-on, speedy access leaves me kind of stunned. I spent a good ten minutes (OK, maybe 30 seconds) just sitting there looking at the screen thinking “Well what do I do now?” 🙂

My fancy ergonomic mice arrived. I’ve been getting pains in my wrist and arm, and rather than bothering to get in shape or spend less time on the computer or adopt a healthy lifestyle or anything I plumbed for a band-aid solution and bought two vertical mice. One for home and one for the office. They look very cool and funky, and (at this early stage) are about as easy and comfortable to use as a house brick on a piece of string – but no doubt I’ll get used to them. And they seem to be doing some good – I’m still getting arm pains, but they’re in different places, so I figure that’s an improvement.

I discovered that I’d somehow managed to misplace two Wonderfalls DVDs – meaning there’s eight entire episodes I haven’t seen (as opposed to none). Well, I know what I’m doing this weekend!

I still have no hot water, but this may be down to the gas problems which are supposed to be fixed today – so maybe I’ll be able to have a shower tonight.

Oh, I almost forgot, two new additions to the client stupidity file emerged this week!

Example 1

Client: I was wondering, I’ve been taking orders from my website for the last year and shipping the goods – when do I get the money?
Us: Sorry?
Client: Well I’ve sent out $4000 worth of goods, when are you going to give me the money?
Us: Ah… You have been clicking the ‘Process Credit Card’ button when you process your orders – right?
Client: No – What’s that?
Us: The button you click to actually charge people.
Client: Oh. Can I do that now?
Us: Well, yes, except for the orders that are more than 6 months old because they won’t have credit card details anymore.
Client: Oh.

(For the record, all our clients receive full training on how to process orders, get a manual including full instructions on how to process orders and when they have their first order come through we phone them up and step them through processing it.)

Example 2

Client: Thanks for spending the last two months building our database driven website – the $3000 has been really worth it. Can you talk to these Suppliers? We need you to integrate their search form into the site.
Us: No worries
Supplier: Right, this is how you add the search form.
Us: OK… right that’s working fine.
Supplier: Great. Now how are we going to switch the rest of the site over to our systems?
Us: Sorry?
Supplier: Well I’ve had a look at the site, and they’d be much better using our database system. We can offer them a lot more.
Us: Right…..
Supplier: We can set up the rest of the pages the same way at the search results – that way they’ll be getting a lot more value for money.
Us: Er….
Supplier: Our system works a lot better than the way the site is currently set up. I can run you through some examples of other sites using it if you like. They’ll find it a lot easier to use and maintain.
Us: Uh… I think you’d probably better talk to them about this.
Supplier: Really? Are you sure?
Us: Well, considering we’ve just spent the last two months building their website and setting them up on our system…
Supplier: But our system has a lot of advantages. They can get figures direct from our database and integrate them…
Us: Yeah, um, look, talk to them OK?.
Supplier: (surprised) OK…

Now that’s optimism. Attempting to steal a contract by pitching the idea to the actual people you’re trying to steal it from. Been to one too many sales seminars I think 🙂

LATER: Podcasts! Of course! Thanks Ryan 😀

OK, woke up this morning with no hot water – which isn’t too surprising since various workmen seem to have spent much of yesterday digging great holes in the gardens, drilling small holes through the concrete footpaths and generally creating an almighty mess. It seems that even more ruptured water pipes have been discovered and that the entire complex is in iminant danger of either floating away or sinking.

There also seem to have been some gas problems. When I got home yesterday every unit had an Alinta notice shoved under the door saying that the gas had been shut off and explaining how to turn it back on. There was also a noticable gassy smell around the place which persisted until at least this morning. Hopefully I won’t arrive home tonight to find the complex reduced to a smoking crater after my downstairs neighbours inopportunately try to light their bongs.

(Inopportunately. Is that a word? Am I using it right? Am I spelling it right?)

Holes in the water pipes, holes in the gas pipes. The only explanation is the complex is constructed over a nest of subterranean Mole Men who’ve recently invented the hand drill. Soon we’ll all be besieged by Morlocks!

You know, now and then something comes along that’s just so wonderful that you have to share it. Like this – a transcript of the speech delivered by one Stephen Colbert at the White House Correspondents Dinner last Saturday. A dinner that by the way included the President and First Lady in the audience. Some highlights include…

Someone at the White House press office is in so much trouble! 😀

Returning to my own insignificant life there was hot water geysering up from beneath the footpath when I set out for work this morning. While I’d like to put this down to rambunctous geothermal activity, it’s more likely the sign of yet another fractured pipe, which means I may or may not have hot water when I get home tonight. The Strata Company have arranged an Extrodinary General Meeting later on this month to approve a once off $150 per unit pipe levy to get the problem sorted once and for all. It’ll be interesting to see how many people turn up – the usual attendance at these things is about 6, but the prospect of having to pay money might stir up some democracy (by which I mean people yelling things like “Why should we have to pay to fix the pipes!? That’s the Strata company’s job!!” and “Why weren’t the pipes built right in the first place!?” or “Why didn’t the Strata Company see this coming and fix it!” and “I’m not paying anything until I have hot water!”).

*sigh*

Stumbled over this the other day.

Damned impressive effort (requiring an equally impressive effort to read all the way through 🙂 but there is no way in Arda you could fit it all into a three hour movie. A six hour TV miniseries perhaps (although the budget would obviously suffer). It would be a good sight better than that appaling attempt at doing Earthsea a while back at any rate (Let’s make everyone white! Let’s completely ignore the author’s opinions! Let’s publicly state that we’re ignoring what the books say because we’re not interested in an audience who read!).

But hey, it’s not like it’ll ever get made anyway, will it?

It’s weird. The more of a life I seem to get, the less inclination I have to write about it. This is fairly normal I guess – after all the blogosphere is renowned (regardless of the actual reality) for being populated by pathetic nobodies whinging about their awful existences. When one’s existence becomes slightly less awful, what’s the point in sitting in front of a computer screen typing on about it when one could be out actually enjoying it? It could be an interesting subject of study – correlating the frequency and length of blog entries with the various bloggers’ standards of living, and seeing how altering those standards upwards affects their blogs. I smell grant money – anyone want to co-author a paper? 🙂

Anyway I’ll start with politics because that always gets me riled up.

The federal environment minister (who suffers from such a total lack of personality that his name escapes me) is trying to get laws passed banning wind farms unless the local population all agree that they want them. This is apparently because wind turbines occasionaly kill a few birds, and there are people who think that they look ugly. Indeed.

Well, speaking personally I totally support these laws, as long as they apply equally to other power sources – coal fired power stations for instance. No one should be allowed to construct a coal fired power station unless the local population all agree that they want it. After all they look pretty damn ugly with those big smoke stacks, and the clouds of soot and sulfur dioxide mess up the washing. If even one person nearby a proposed coal burner objects, the minister should veto the proposal – the same as he’s gearing up to do for wind farms. It’s only fair isn’t it?

(On the bird strike issue, wind farms don’t actually kill that many birds – most are smart enough to steer clear – and quite serious work is being done worldwide to reduce the small numbers that are being killed. Claims that wind turbines are “parrot mincers” are about as accurate as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion)

The Government is also looking at tightening up immigration laws – administering tests to potential immigrants to make sure they have a decent grasp of English and support “Australian values and culture”. Hmmmmm. Kind of reminds one of the old White Australia Policy doesn’t it? Up until the 1970’s anyone wanting to immigrate into Australia had to pass a test in a European language. Not just any European language – the specific European language the examiners happened to choose on the day. So, if you were Italian for instance, and the examiners decided they didn’t want to let any more damn wogs into the country that particular week, they would be perfectly within their rights to test you on your fluency in Polish and kick you out when you failed. It was a very useful way of ensuring that Australia remained full of decent, white, anglo-saxon protestants and preventing our proud English blood from being polluted by the awful huns, gooks and dagoes.

The point is language doesn’t matter. English is the dominant language in Australia and will be for decades – if not actual centuries – to come. Immigrants will arrive in the country speaking all manner of foreign tongues and learn just enough English to get by. Their kids on the other hand will grow up speaking English. They’ll have to in order to talk to their friends, go to school, deal with the Government, watch TV and movies and just generally live in an English speaking society. They’ll learn enough of their parents’ and grandparents’ language to be able to talk to them and speak English everywhere else. THAT’S HOW LANGUAGE WORKS.

As for the whole “support Australian values and culture” thing, as soon as someone can explain exactly what those things are I might be prepared to listen. Answers in one thousand letters or less without using the word ‘mateship’ please.

So yes, basically it’s just another example of the Government’s absolute terror of those foreigners with their funny clothes and funny coloured skin who stand on street corners in groups sneakily talking in their funny languages just so you can’t understand what they’re saying. You know, the kind of people you don’t want in the neighbourhood because they lower the property values.

Idiots.

Right, I’m obviously all riled up now 🙂

So, things I should write about. I’ll start with the sleep study, which I did the Thursday before last.

In the olden days a sleep study meant going in to a lab and trying to sleep in an unfamiliar environment while hooked up to all sorts of strange and bulky machines. In this – our age of modern enlightenment – a sleep study means going in to a lab, being set up, having to make your way home, and then trying to sleep in your own bed while hooked up to all sorts of strange and bulky machines. This is what is known as progress.

My appointment at the sleep clinic was at 3:00pm. Thankfully the strata company managed to get the hot water running around midday, so I was able to have a proper shower (the first in just over a week) before heading off. I had convinced my dad to give me a lift over and back because I didn’t relish the idea of negotiating public transport attached to God knows how many bits of beeping and humming equipment (not to mention the possibility of being identified as a suicide bomber by over-zealous rail guards). We arrived, and after a suitable wait of about twenty minutes I was ushered into the consulting room where the doctor measured my height and weight, filled in a few forms and proceeded to hook me up to enough boxes and wires to make Locutus of Borg jealous.

To start with there were two elastic belts – one around the chest and one around the abdomen – to measure breathing. Attached to the left hand side of the lower of these two belts was a data recorder, about the size of a pack of playing cards. From this a thick, grey cable ran up to the front of the top belt where it met a similarly sized junction box, and here the fun really began because this had round about a dozen sockets of various sorts, each with a tube, pipe or wire emerging from it.

These tubes pipes and wires consisted of – a wire to each of the elastic belts – three wires going to heart monitor thingies on the lower abdomen and either side of the chest – two wires going to EEG brain monitor thingies on the right forehead and behind the left ear – a breathing tube running up behind the ears and down to the nose where it went into the nostrils to monitor snoring – a long wire extending to the index finger of the left hand to monitor blood oxgen levels – a short wire to a ‘position monitor’ on the front of the top belt to show if you were standing up or lying down – a pair of very long wires going down to sensors attached to the calf muscles of each leg to check for spontaneous leg kicking – probably some I’m forgetting.

So, wired up like some kind of techno-marianette I had to go home and find something to do for six hours or so that didn’t involve anything as complex as moving or breathing (why in the name of all sanity was the appointment for 3:00!? Why don’t sleep clinics do this stuff at 6:00!?).

I did make a stop off on the way though. I’d looked up the minimum system requirements for Civ IV and discovered that my computer didn’t have enough RAM to run it. This was obviously a situation requiring immediate remedy so despite my Borg-like state I got Dad to pull into Ross’s Digital Computation Emporium (not its actual name sad to say, I think its actually something simple and boring like “Ross’s Computers”). They had what I needed, but didn’t comment on my EEG probes and finger monitor*The breathing tubes were tucked away for later. which was a shame because I’d spent the entire car trip figuring out things to say if they did (the best one was ‘It’s part of my bail conditions’ :).

So I got home, installed the RAM, watched some Firefly and got so appalingly fed up with the whole ‘waiting around in extreme discomfort’ enterprise that I went to bed at 7:00pm.

Needless to say I didn’t have a particularly restful night. The belts and boxes were restrictive and pokey respectively and the entire system seemed to be making some strange buzzing and beeping noises in my head (it sounds crazy I know but I got up to see if I could find the source of them and they went everywhere with me – some kind of EEG feedback maybe?). I got some fitful sleep, but finally got jack of it all at 6:00am – which is when I’d be getting up on a normal workday anyway – so got up, took it all off, and went back to bed for another two glorious hours of actual slumber.

I got the train back to the sleep clinic later that morning to return the equipment and am currently awaiting the results.

So, that was the sleep study.

Hmmm, now the problem is that after that effort I’m all written out and don’t have the creative energy to write a decent account of all of the other stuff I need to catch up on – on top of which I need to clean up, cook dinner and ventillate the lingering paint fumes from some work I was doing earlier. I shall provide a brief summary as follows and elaborate over the next few days.

1. A Most Enjoyable Date with the Lady Purdey at the Red Orchid during which Books were Examined, Crocodile was Consumed and Gelare was Procured
    
2. A Most Horrible and Demanding Return to Work under the Watchful Eye of that Most Dastardly of Employers Lord Carter
    
3. A Bohemian Evening of Entertainments Most Novel at the Church Gallery and Moon Eating House in the Company of the Lady Purdey and Various Friends and Relatives where Art was Appreciated and Many Good Impressions Made by All

That’s it – I’m done 🙂

Well, I just spent a quite enjoyable ANZAC Day trussing up wires, sorting recycling and doing long delayed washing up. If you have to go back to work after a holiday, then working a single day then having a public holiday is definitely the way to do it.

Now, there’s at least three things I should write about today – the sleep study, the date on Friday night (which went pretty well I think), and high tea on Saturday (please don’t ask) – but it’s been a long day and I only have so much energy. So I’ll cover what I got up to today and write about them tomorrow. Or maybe Thursday. Or Friday 😀

So, today.

Today was of course ANZAC Day. For years I’ve been saying I’ll go to a Dawn Service. I intended to go to the local one (just down the road) last year, but this didn’t actually happen as I woke up that morning with the worst migraine I’ve had in over a decade. This year the same plan was almost foiled by the fact that I lost the bit of paper saying when the service actually was. Now, if I was thinking straight I would have just looked up when dawn was – you know, Dawn Service? But instead I went with a vague memory of 5:20am and hence set my alarm for 4:00.

I got down to Halliday Park at 4:45. As it turned out the service was at 6:00.

This wasn’t as bad as it sounds. There’s something pretty cool about having a park all to yourself early in the morning (hmmm, that sounds a bit suss doesn’t it? :D) and I got to watch everyone arrive and set up – all of the back stage stuff you normally miss. Lots of muffled up figures walking around, flashing torches and talking in low voices, and the local cadet unit marching round the oval and practicing their manouvers in the pitchy dark. And above it all the crescent moon was riding high – the dark portion spectacularly lit up with Earthshine – with Venus burning like a flake of magnesium just on top. It had been a wet night and there were a few brief showers, but as the dawn got closer it all cleared up. So all together it was a pretty nice way to spend an hour.

By the time things got underway – just as the sky was lightening – about 300 people had turned up. The service went off without a hitch – unless you count a few bum notes during the Last Post which is virtually traditional at these smaller services. The surprising thing is how short the service really is – you tend to forget the simplicity of it when you don’t go for a few years. The cadets and/or soldiers march in and take up their positions, the wreaths are layed around the memorial, the Ode (the fourth stanza of For the Fallen) is read, and the Last Post is played while the flag is lowered to half mast. Then it’s over. We got a short speech about the Gallipoli landings from the head of the local RSL and that was it, unless you wanted to hang around for the sausage sizzle. I decided against it – queuing for sausages with 299 other people isn’t exactly my idea of a good time. So I walked back home – all done by 6:50.

I spent the rest of the day playing Civ III, listening to JJJ, arranging the gorgon’s hair tangle of wires behind the computer so they’re no longer a tripping/strangling hazard, sorting out the recycling and doing the washing up that I couldn’t do all last week due to the water problem. Oh, I also watched an episode of Firefly. There’s only two left now, I’m stretching them out by watching epsiodes I’ve already watched with commentary, but sooner or later I’m going to have to watch the last ones. Boo!

Anyway given that I was up at 4:00 it’s been a long day and I’ll be having an early night, so I’ll cut this short. Expect details of the Sleep Study, date and other important things soon.

Oh, before I go though I thought I’d take the opportunity to do something ANZACy and post the lyrics to the Herd’s cover of Redgum’s I was only 19. They did it for JJJ’s “Like a Version” last year and it’s been going absolutely nuts for them ever since – they’ve recently done a studio version. I’ve had the lyrics kicking around for quite a while because I was particularly impressed with their rewrite – a hip-hop version of a song needs a lot more syllables – and I was always intending to post them as soon as I figured out a few problematic bits. Thanks to the aforementioned studio version I now have them, so today seems appropriate.

(By the way, these are the words of the version they performed live on Like a Version. The studio recording is a bit different, but I prefer the rawness of the original)

Currently entering day seven without hot water…

I really don’t know what the strata company are up to. They managed to get the water flowing again yesterday (after being off since Monday) but far from being hot it’s ice cold. I strongly suspect that the plumbers forgot to turn the heaters on once they were finished – I mean the water’s had all night to warm up so why hasn’t it? Come 9:00am I’ll be making a very disgruntled phone call.

I can’t remember when I last blogged, so probably it’s been a while and this is the first entry I’ve written about the water crisis. Or at least this water crisis – we seem to have one every two weeks at the moment. It began on Thursday night when the supposedly hot water turned distinctly chilly. This state of affairs continued until Monday afternoon when it stopped flowing completely. Hence we arrive at the current juncture.

A week without hot water. Did we lose a war?!

I haven’t had a shower since Sunday (at my parent’s place). As I have my sleep study tonight (for which you need to be clean and showered so the electrodes will stick) and a date with Purdey tomorrow night, this is a problem. I’ll have to boil the kettle and do the sponge-bath-out-of-the-sink-thing I guess. Bah!

Anyway, I supposed I’d better record what I’ve been up to. Wednesday evening last week I headed around to Purdey’s new place in Rivervale for dinner and Smallville (on tape). It’s a really nice complex right on the river – we hung out for a bit down at the riverside listening to the wail of bagpipes floating across from the police complex on the far bank while the non-spaghetti spaghetti was cooking. We watched the video, listened to some music and spent some time cuddling on the couch, so a most enjoyable evening all up 🙂

(We’re going to the Red Orchid tomorrow night, which would be our… fifth date? I should probably stop counting now 🙂

Friday. Friday was the Good Friday public holiday. Normally a combination of Catholic Guilt and maternal dissaproval would have me spending the entire day kneeling in the dark starving myself – but I decided to go to work instead. Got a fair bit of work on the new page editing system done, which is good because it’s been a monkey on my back for months now. A few more days should see it finally done.

Saturday was a day for recovering from the awesome effort of working on a public holiday, and watching Firefly and Wonderfalls on DVD, my Amazon order having finally arrived. I’m trying to pace myself on both of them because there’s only one season of each – damn network execs! Even so I find myself talking like Mal (or possibly a character from Mark Twain), so I reckon I’d best go cold turkey for a spell.

(See!? SEE!?)

Sunday was church in the morning then off to the folk’s (folk’s – I’m not kidding on the talking like I’m in Firefly people!) place for the yearly Easter get together (I almost typed ‘shindig’). It went pretty well, even if my brother did give me a can of SPAM rather than chocolate. His justification was that I’d said I didn’t really want much chocolate because I’m trying to lose weight – apparently SPAM Lite is an acceptable low fat substitute. *sigh* 🙂

On Monday it was into town for lunch with Rebecca and Dom. We met at the Art Gallery then headed over to a Korean place on Barrack street (located in the old Hungry Jacks). I had a sort of seafood fried rice thing which was good – although not spectacular. I’ll certainly go back to the place, but I’ll try something else next time.

The restaurant has two notable features. Firstly the background music which seems to be the Korean equivilant of… well I don’t know what skinny teenage girl is at the top of the pop charts at the moment (an advantage of not listening to commercial radio) but whoever she is, they were playing the Korean equivilant of her. This isn’t as annoying as it sounds because mindless pop songs sound a lot better when you can’t acrtually understand how banal the lyrics are (example – Ricky Martin singing in Spanish is almost listenable).

The other is the rather strange poems written on the wall hangings. I quote – “Such a fine time to dine, With fine food and wine, Melodious chime”. We were just puzzling over the ‘melodious chime’ bit when a loud “DING!” came from behind the bar – I’m not entirely convinced that the staff don’t have a bell back there merely to justify the poem.

After lunch we went for a wander around the city looking at all the closed up stores. We were under the impression that they might have opened up in the afternoon (they often do on public holidays) but no such luck. Which was a pain because we all had things we wanted to buy. Once the entertainment potential of wandering was exhausted we headed back to the train station and went our seperate ways. On the train however I ran into Katie, which was great because I’d been meaning to catch up with her. We scheduled in lunch for Friday.

On Tuesday everyone went back to work after the Easter break. Except for me because I had the week off. Yey! 😀 Justin was meant to be dropping around in the morning to pick up some books for a uni assignment, and to hook up his mobile phone to my computer (long, complicated story that doesn’t need to be gone into here). As is quite often the case he didn’t show up. In the afternoon Ryan was meant to be coming around with his van to help me recover my old filing cabinet from the folk’s place. He didn’t turn up either. All this dissapointment got me in such a foul mood that I thought I might as well make it fouler by exorcising the fridge (when your fridge gets as bad as mine was, you don’t merely clean it). I set to with bell, book and candle and eventually got it cleared out – or at least disposed of all the stuff that was no longer edible, which basically left some cheese.

Ryan eventually turned up in the evening, just as I was cooking dinner. We watched the Firefly episode Bushwacked while I ate, then went and retrieved the filing cabinet – which required quite an effort getting it up the stairs. It’s now safely ensconsed in the spare room though and shouldn’t have to be moved again until doomsday.

Speaking of doomsday however… well, once we got it in to the apartment we naturally had to take a look inside. And in the bottom drawer we discovered a remarkable relic of the last century. My emergency Y2K stash! 🙂

In the run up to the fake-millenium (or willenium even) I thought it prudent to put aside a bit of food just in case there was any disruption to services. I’m not talking about the collapse of society – I just figured that there might be some shortages or price rises – mostly from people panicking and rush buying or maybe some trucks not making it over the Nullabor for some reason. So a few months out I spent about $50 on assorted tinned and preserved goods, just as a precaution. I put these in the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and – when the change over all went smoothly – forgot about them. On Tuesday they emerged into the light of day for the first time in six and half years!

Some of the stash seems to have survived quite well. The rice and pasta look good enough to cook up and eat. Most of the tins are a bit faded, but seem intact. The main exception are the two tins of beans, which have swelled up like small cannonballs. It would be an interesting experiment to open some of the cans and examine the contents – I’m not quite that nuts though. After a suitable period of contemplation they’re all going in the bins – possibly labled with biohazard stickers. A waste perhaps, but it’s got to be better than salmonella poisoning 😀

Wednesday morning I spent organising broadband and grocery shopping. I’ve signed up for ADSL with Westnet (don’t tell Eftel!) but because Telstra did something Really Clever(tm) with the phone lines back in the late eighties I can’t actually get broadband at the moment. Telstra needs to go into the exchange and sort out whatever kind of unholy mess they made first. And it’s going to be 6 to 8 weeks before they deign to even say if they can be bothered or not. So, until then I’m stuck on dialup. But at least the wheels are in motion (Telstra are very bad men! Very bad men!)

The grocery shopping was a trip down to Maylands to replenish my now empty fridge. Nothing interesting happened at all, so I don’t know why I’m mentioning it.

So we come to today. I’ve actually called up the strata company now and it turns out that the plumbers have no idea what’s going on, which is reassuring. They’re coming back though, so maybe we’ll have hot water by the end of the day. Maybe. *sigh*

I’d better go get cleaned up. As best I can.

In light of the current diplomatic problems with Indonesia over asylum seekers, the Howard Government is considering changing it’s refugee policy. Apparently from now on when someone claims political asylum, Canberra will supply all their details back to the Government allegedly carrying out the persecution so they can say whether they’ve been persecuting them or not. Wonderful idea guys, let’s consider the implications…

Scenario 1:

Elbonian*Hopefully Scott Adams won’t mind me borrowing his generic foreign country too much – particularly since the proposed policy change is exactly the kind of thing the Elbonian Government would do. Refugee: My government is persecuting and torturing me!

Australian Government: OK, what are your full details please? (gets details, phones Elbonian Ministry of Torture and Depravation). Hello, have you been torturing [refugee]?

Elbonian Ministry of Torture and Deprivation: No, we’ve never heard of [refugee]! (sotto voice) mwahahaha!

Australian Government: Sorry, your government says they’re not torturing you. Here’s you plane ticket home.

Elbonian Refugee: NOOOOO!!!!!!

Elbonian Ministry of Torture and Deprivation: (waiting at airport) We’re going to torture you twice as hard now you horrible little defector!

Scenario 2:

Elbonian Refugee: My government is persecuting and torturing me!

Australian Government: OK, what are your full details please? (gets details, phones Elbonian ministry of Torture and Depravation). Hello, have you been torturing [refugee]?

Elbonian Ministry of Torture and Deprivation: We were wondering where he’d got to!

Australian Government: Yes, your government has been torturing you, so we’ll allocate you a place in a detention centre for the next 6 years.

Elbonian Refugee: Well, it’s better than the thumbscrews…

Elbonian Ministry of Torture and Deprivation: Well, he slipped away – but thanks to those helpful Australians we know about it and have all his personal details so now we can make an example of his family and friends! Glee!

And continuing with the general stupidity, the Americans may be drawing up plans to bomb Iran, possibly using nuclear bunker busters. Now I know Americans have no sense of irony, but surely even they can see the problem with bombing a country to stop it aquiring evil nuclear weapons, using nuclear weapons? Unless of course American nuclear weapons are ‘good’ nuclear weapons – which frankly is exactly the kind of feculant sewage masquerading as reason that seems to pour out of the Whitehouse these days.

Oh well, if Georgie wants to start the world’s second nuclear war, then who are we, the people, to stop him? 🙁

In conversation today I had reason to refer to Alyson Hannigan, however in a moment of abstraction I ended up calling her Alygan Hannyson.

I find this so amusing that I may well call her that from now on 🙂