I have come to the conclusion that my online presence is zero and I have no friends.
Despite the fact that just about every geek and his hard drive has one, I have yet to be graced with an invitation to join either Orkut or gMail.
Just because I don't use any sort of IM software and I don't spend any time on IRC or forum boards (not geeky ones anyway - I don't think KvR counts), does this mean I should not be welcomed by the warm embrace of online geekdom? Apparently, online geekdom is reserved for those geeks who spend the majority of their time online.
Sometimes life is so unfair.
(Edited 25-6-04, 20:27, to fix some links)
Friday, June 25, 2004
Thank you QANTAS
Just a brief note to publicly thank the Qantas staff who were working at the customer service desk of the Canberra Airport Departure Lounge on Wednesday morning. I was heading up to Brisbane for my grandmother's funeral to be held that afternoon but unfortunately there were lengthy delays due to fog surrounding Canberra. The Qantas staff did everything they could to try and get me to Brisbane in time to make the funeral, including finding me a Business Class seat on a different flight that, if everything went to plan, would get me to Brisbane in plenty of time.
Unfortunately it was not to be. There were several more delays and I only just missed the service. Qantas did all they could though, and I certainly appreciated the efforts of their staff, who made a very stressful day just a little bit less stressful.
Thank you Qantas.
(post edited 25-6-04, 20:18, to fix some links)
Unfortunately it was not to be. There were several more delays and I only just missed the service. Qantas did all they could though, and I certainly appreciated the efforts of their staff, who made a very stressful day just a little bit less stressful.
Thank you Qantas.
(post edited 25-6-04, 20:18, to fix some links)
Sunday, June 20, 2004
In loving memory
Eileen Doecke (1928-2004)
At around 11:30 this morning, after a long battle with cancer, my grandmother passed away. She'd been sick for quite a while so it certainly did not come as a shock, but there's an emptiness inside me all the same.
I made a quick trip back to Brisbane this week to visit her as I knew her time was rapidly approaching. Unfortunately I was not able to spend very much time with her at all as she wasn't up to receiving visitors in hospital. I think that both physically and mentally she had had enough, and it seemed to me that all she wanted was some peace.
Nan has always played an important part in my life as she and my grandfather lived in the same house. She was always around when I was growing up. I wish that I had been able to spend more time with her in the those last few months. There were so many things that I wanted to say. I wanted to thank her for teaching me how to read when I was three, bribing me with butter scotch lollies. I wanted to thank her for helping me learn my 12x table, bribing me with chocolates (there's a bit of a theme there, I will admit). Most importantly, I wanted to say that I loved her and appreciated every little thing that she had done to encourage and support me over the years.
I kept putting off flying back to Brisbane to visit her. Work was busy. I didn't want to miss playing soccer on the weekends. It just seemed like there was never a convenient time. Unfortunately, when I made the time, I had left my run too late. I guess the price I will pay is that I will always wish I had gone back home sooner, while there was still pleny of time.
I know that my Nana was not perfect (her two daughters would attest to that). Like all people, she had her faults. However, I will choose to remember her as a kind woman who helped instill in me a love of learning and knowledge, who was interested in the lives of her grandchildren, a woman who loved her garden and her pet dogs(spoiling them rotten in the process, but always out of love). She will always be my Nan. She will always live on, and I will cherish the memories that I have.
Saying goodbye is often the hardest thing to do.
Goodbye Nan. You're in a better place now (wherever that may be).
At around 11:30 this morning, after a long battle with cancer, my grandmother passed away. She'd been sick for quite a while so it certainly did not come as a shock, but there's an emptiness inside me all the same.
I made a quick trip back to Brisbane this week to visit her as I knew her time was rapidly approaching. Unfortunately I was not able to spend very much time with her at all as she wasn't up to receiving visitors in hospital. I think that both physically and mentally she had had enough, and it seemed to me that all she wanted was some peace.
Nan has always played an important part in my life as she and my grandfather lived in the same house. She was always around when I was growing up. I wish that I had been able to spend more time with her in the those last few months. There were so many things that I wanted to say. I wanted to thank her for teaching me how to read when I was three, bribing me with butter scotch lollies. I wanted to thank her for helping me learn my 12x table, bribing me with chocolates (there's a bit of a theme there, I will admit). Most importantly, I wanted to say that I loved her and appreciated every little thing that she had done to encourage and support me over the years.
I kept putting off flying back to Brisbane to visit her. Work was busy. I didn't want to miss playing soccer on the weekends. It just seemed like there was never a convenient time. Unfortunately, when I made the time, I had left my run too late. I guess the price I will pay is that I will always wish I had gone back home sooner, while there was still pleny of time.
I know that my Nana was not perfect (her two daughters would attest to that). Like all people, she had her faults. However, I will choose to remember her as a kind woman who helped instill in me a love of learning and knowledge, who was interested in the lives of her grandchildren, a woman who loved her garden and her pet dogs(spoiling them rotten in the process, but always out of love). She will always be my Nan. She will always live on, and I will cherish the memories that I have.
Saying goodbye is often the hardest thing to do.
Goodbye Nan. You're in a better place now (wherever that may be).
Friday, June 18, 2004
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Freezing My Tits Off For Love - The Australian Idol Experience
As most of you would know, my wife has quite a gift with music (she sings, plays piano and violin and when she feels like annoying me, "Everybody Hurts" by REM over and over again until my ears bleed) and she has a healthy confidence in her ability as a performer. Yay. More power to her. However, this story is not about her, her talents or her time in Sydney. This story is mine.
We drove up to Sydney on Saturday 29 May. I had played soccer that afternoon, where we beat Canberra City 4-1. It had been a tiring afternoon as I was only just starting to return to full fitness after a mysterious knee injury (first they feared that I had torn cruciate ligaments, which is season-ending, then they thought I had torn cartilage, which no longer seems the case and now they put it all down to inflexible muscles) followed by a tear in my quad. Still, we won so it was all good. Helen had taught her piano student in the afternoon while I was busy being a winner (and adding an own-goal/slight deflection to my tally - three goals this season and it's not even quite half way through) so after a quick meal, we were off in the car and headed to Sydney.
The drive itself was fairly uneventful. I didn't take first shift as the decision was made that since I had driven through Sydney a couple of times, I was the best man for the job. The fun started once we hit Sydney proper.
Driving in Sydney sucks. Big time. Despite assurances from a friend who grew up there, it's a bitch to navigate around. Lanes appear and disappear without notice. One way streets come out of nowhere and no one drives like they give a fuck whether you survive on the road or not. With a minimum of screaming, arguing and offensive finger gestures (and that's over which page we were supposed to be on in the map of Sydney), at about 8:30pm we finally arrived at the Convention Centre at Darling Harbour, where the auditions were going to be held the next day.
After parking the car in the Convention Centre underground car park and carefully noting where we parked (and carefully noting the $20 we would be paying to get the car back out again), we set off in search for what we knew would be a fucking huge line. We wandered all over the Centre looking for a long line of hopeful wannabes. We couldn't find a line anywhere. We walked around the Centre, looking everywhere and still couldn't find a line. We guessed where it would have to start in the morning, but there was still nothing there. Turns out that was because we were blind. The line was right in front of us, right down at water level. We had missed it and got confused because there was only about 50 people there at most. Not quite believing our eyes, we checked with our friendly neighbourhood dude in a black suit and walkie talkie who confirmed that it was indeed the Idol line. Woo. We would be able to get away early the next day.
Helen staked out her spot in the line and I was sent out to find food. That discounted McDonalds straight away and pretty much ruled out the Starbucks nearby as well. After about 10 minutes of searching, I found a Wok on Inn that served take-away, so dinner was sorted fairly easily in the end. I was now in desperate need of a coffee. I did a lot of soul searching, swallowed my pride and my principles and got a Starbucks coffee. I felt so unclean and dirty, but as a former smoker and now hard-core caffeine addict, I'm used to feeling like that. At roughly 9pm, I settled in the line next to Helen. The Wait Had Begun.
To Be Continued....
We drove up to Sydney on Saturday 29 May. I had played soccer that afternoon, where we beat Canberra City 4-1. It had been a tiring afternoon as I was only just starting to return to full fitness after a mysterious knee injury (first they feared that I had torn cruciate ligaments, which is season-ending, then they thought I had torn cartilage, which no longer seems the case and now they put it all down to inflexible muscles) followed by a tear in my quad. Still, we won so it was all good. Helen had taught her piano student in the afternoon while I was busy being a winner (and adding an own-goal/slight deflection to my tally - three goals this season and it's not even quite half way through) so after a quick meal, we were off in the car and headed to Sydney.
The drive itself was fairly uneventful. I didn't take first shift as the decision was made that since I had driven through Sydney a couple of times, I was the best man for the job. The fun started once we hit Sydney proper.
Driving in Sydney sucks. Big time. Despite assurances from a friend who grew up there, it's a bitch to navigate around. Lanes appear and disappear without notice. One way streets come out of nowhere and no one drives like they give a fuck whether you survive on the road or not. With a minimum of screaming, arguing and offensive finger gestures (and that's over which page we were supposed to be on in the map of Sydney), at about 8:30pm we finally arrived at the Convention Centre at Darling Harbour, where the auditions were going to be held the next day.
After parking the car in the Convention Centre underground car park and carefully noting where we parked (and carefully noting the $20 we would be paying to get the car back out again), we set off in search for what we knew would be a fucking huge line. We wandered all over the Centre looking for a long line of hopeful wannabes. We couldn't find a line anywhere. We walked around the Centre, looking everywhere and still couldn't find a line. We guessed where it would have to start in the morning, but there was still nothing there. Turns out that was because we were blind. The line was right in front of us, right down at water level. We had missed it and got confused because there was only about 50 people there at most. Not quite believing our eyes, we checked with our friendly neighbourhood dude in a black suit and walkie talkie who confirmed that it was indeed the Idol line. Woo. We would be able to get away early the next day.
Helen staked out her spot in the line and I was sent out to find food. That discounted McDonalds straight away and pretty much ruled out the Starbucks nearby as well. After about 10 minutes of searching, I found a Wok on Inn that served take-away, so dinner was sorted fairly easily in the end. I was now in desperate need of a coffee. I did a lot of soul searching, swallowed my pride and my principles and got a Starbucks coffee. I felt so unclean and dirty, but as a former smoker and now hard-core caffeine addict, I'm used to feeling like that. At roughly 9pm, I settled in the line next to Helen. The Wait Had Begun.
To Be Continued....
Monday, June 14, 2004
Stupid browsers
Don't you just love it when your web browser crashes, losing everything you just wrote in a text box? I know I sure do...fucking IE.
Of course, I don't normally use IE. I've been a Mozilla man for ages now (since 1.0 I think). However, Mozilla has been crashing fairly randomly lately, along with a number of other programs. As I was also unhappy with how I had partitioned my hard drives, I figured that it was about time that I started anew with a fresh Windows 2000 install. This would force me to backup all the important stuff and also allow me to let go of all those things I had installed but never got around to using (VST plug-ins and various demos being the main culprits here).
It had been so long since I had had to install anything major in the way of system updates that I had forgotten just how fucking big Windows Service Packs are and just how dial-up unfriendly these monsters can be. SP4 required a 35 MB download that was going to take over 4 hours. I scrabbled around looking for some of my old PC World cover discs and found one that had SP3 on it. After installing that I figured that I would have saved myself a heap of time. Turns out I saved maybe an hour, if not less. The SP4 download had been reduced to 28 MB which would take 180 minutes to download. 20 minutes later and it still says it's going to take 180 minutes to download. Fucking service packs.
If anyone's got an easier way of doing this, I'd love to hear it.
-s
Of course, I don't normally use IE. I've been a Mozilla man for ages now (since 1.0 I think). However, Mozilla has been crashing fairly randomly lately, along with a number of other programs. As I was also unhappy with how I had partitioned my hard drives, I figured that it was about time that I started anew with a fresh Windows 2000 install. This would force me to backup all the important stuff and also allow me to let go of all those things I had installed but never got around to using (VST plug-ins and various demos being the main culprits here).
It had been so long since I had had to install anything major in the way of system updates that I had forgotten just how fucking big Windows Service Packs are and just how dial-up unfriendly these monsters can be. SP4 required a 35 MB download that was going to take over 4 hours. I scrabbled around looking for some of my old PC World cover discs and found one that had SP3 on it. After installing that I figured that I would have saved myself a heap of time. Turns out I saved maybe an hour, if not less. The SP4 download had been reduced to 28 MB which would take 180 minutes to download. 20 minutes later and it still says it's going to take 180 minutes to download. Fucking service packs.
If anyone's got an easier way of doing this, I'd love to hear it.
-s
Sunday, June 13, 2004
Random rambling time...
Just trying out a new template. Not quite convinced yet, although it does look better than the last one I was using. I think the columns are of weird sizes though. Looking at the template code they appear to be hard coded to pixel width. I've always preferred to use percentages, but it's been so long since I played with HTML that percentage values for column width are probably no longer standards compliant.
I'll have to have a play around with them later and see if I can find something I like.
-s
I'll have to have a play around with them later and see if I can find something I like.
-s
Friday, June 11, 2004
Complete absence of Idol Update despite promise.
World shocked (despite the fact that no one reads this)
More at 11...
Um, the promised update on the Idol experience (or "Freezing my Tits Off for Love - the Australian Idol Experience" - I haven't decided which title is catchier) obviously hasn't happened yet. I'm slack, I know, but it's not like there is anyone reading this to get on my case about it. I'll do it soon. I will. Honest.
Random link time - XT HQ EnergyXT rocks! This little piece of software is a whole buttload of fun. One of the best things I ever bought. Actually, I got it free because I was a registered owner of it's predecessor Massiva (a screenshot of which can still be found here). Demo is almost fully functional (won't reload saved .ext projects until registered) and that alone is fun to play with. Go on, you know you want to.
More at 11...
Um, the promised update on the Idol experience (or "Freezing my Tits Off for Love - the Australian Idol Experience" - I haven't decided which title is catchier) obviously hasn't happened yet. I'm slack, I know, but it's not like there is anyone reading this to get on my case about it. I'll do it soon. I will. Honest.
Random link time - XT HQ EnergyXT rocks! This little piece of software is a whole buttload of fun. One of the best things I ever bought. Actually, I got it free because I was a registered owner of it's predecessor Massiva (a screenshot of which can still be found here). Demo is almost fully functional (won't reload saved .ext projects until registered) and that alone is fun to play with. Go on, you know you want to.
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
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