August 30, 2003
It appears that someone has tried to destroy the "what the poo?" message
on one of the billboards by ripping the poster to make it illegible. This
sort of vandalism must not be tolerated! Thought: I wonder if
anyone has registered whatthepoo.com.
August 28, 2003
I should really do something with this site. I don't update it much because
I prefer to post my diary
here. Maybe I'll just get rid of everything except photos. Any thoughts?
Email me using the address at the bottom of this page.
August 27, 2003
There are some billboards near my place with ads for a
crappy radio station. The retarded
breakfast announcers are dressed in stupid
costumes, and the caption underneath says "what are they up to now?".
However, some clever person has sensed an opportunity and removed letters
to make it say "what the poo?" instead. This has happened on at least
three billboards near me. Well done sir!
August 17, 2003
Last week I was back in Sydney again, working hard to further increase my
frequent flyer balance.
And it seems to be working... I've just topped 100,000 points. That's a
nice number of points to have. I played tennis today, and last weekend as
well. The nice weather is starting to return. My SLR camera is going well,
but I need to take ten more photos before I can look at the results. Then
I think I'll have to buy a scanner.
August 3, 2003
I accidentally bought a Motor Ace CD
on Thursday. By accidental I mean that I wasn't going out to buy it, it
just happened. But it's ok, because I didn't buy the the new
Dune book. I'll get that some other
time. I haven't got any new photos to put on here. I need to take more
photos I guess. I hope we get a sunny weekend soon, I miss tennis.
July 26, 2003
I've just spent another two weeks in Sydney for work. It wasn't much fun.
I got back to work in Perth yesterday to find that I had eleven problem
reports assigned to me, all with a due date of yesterday. So I did six of
them and then went home. It will be interesting to find out how other
people feel about that, considering that yesterday was theoretically the
code deadline.
June 25, 2003
Work is slightly annoying at the moment. We're at a stage in the project
where we're spending most of our time reworking features because the
customer have changed their minds or remembered something they neglected
to tell us previously. We're meant to be having interim performance reviews
this week. Interim refers to the fact that they are essentially meaningless,
but it's not like we get rewarded for good performance anyway. It's like
Dogbert says: You're underpaid even
if you do good work. It's funny if you think about it. Indeed.
June 22, 2003
A couple of weeks ago I was on holiday in Sydney and Melbourne. I've
uploaded a few new photos of the Bridge at
sunset. We also spent a day at Mt Buller, where we went tobogganing and
frolicked in the snow. Great fun! This holiday provided my first (and
hopefully last) experience of Virgin Blue, Australia's dodgy discount airline.
Four hours is a long time to go without food or entertainment to break up the
monotony, and it doesn't help if you've just spent three hours at the airport
waiting for the plane to depart. Take a look at
this photo to see
Virgin Blue's departure information from Melbourne. Not good.
I've made some exciting purchases this weekend. In recent months I've been thinking that my digital camera doesn't give me as much control as I'd like, and on Friday I bought myself a new SLR camera, the Nikon F55. I haven't had much of a chance to play with it yet. My other purchase was more fish for my aquarium, I bought two Zebra Danios and eleven White Cloud Mountain Minnows to complement my two existing fish. So far they seem happy in their new home.
June 1, 2003
I went to the Burswood Wine and
Food Festival today, and quite enjoyed it. First up there was Chuck Hahn
presenting a half-hour beer-tasting session. I finally got to try several
of the James Squires beers. I liked the pilsener and the IPA, and was
pleasantly surprised by the Porter. Plus there were ten wine-tasting
tokens to get through and an enjoyable curry for lunch. Yum! I've started
trying to research working overseas next year. It's going slowly so far,
Seek doesn't work properly in
Mozilla, and
Flight Centre seemed reluctant
to tell me about the different round the world airfares. I have to remember
to have a good look at Seek when I'm at work on Tuesday. Tomorrow is the
Foundation Day public holiday for us - I like long weekends. Then four days
of work, then I'll be on holiday again in Sydney and Melbourne.
May 28, 2003
I went bowling tonight, after an absence of four weeks. I think I did
surprisingly well in the circumstances, reasonably consistent and close to
my average. My team had done well while I was away, moving up to first
place in the league, but I doubt we'll be there next week after tonight's
disappointing performance. Citibank
are frustrating me with their special balance transfer offer. I only did it
for the two points per dollar. They have somehow managed to put the transfer
onto the new credit card without taking it off the old one. That doesn't
seem like much of a transfer to me. I'll give them a call about it tomorrow.
There's some new content on harshbutfair this week, so head over to the
rants section and read all about Bruce.
May 24, 2003
No updates recently. First I went to Sydney for a week for work. Then I had
one day back at work in Perth, then had a four day holiday in Margaret River.
Margaret River was great - I came home with six bottles of excellent wine.
It rained a bit while we were down there, but it didn't really matter. Then
I went to Sydney again for another week. I don't like travelling for work,
but it has given me silver status on my
frequent flyer membership.
And lots of points of course. In the few days here and there when I've been at
home, I've been working on a new design for this site. I think it's better
than the old one.
April 24, 2003
Uploaded a new photo of a bee on a tree in my
backyard. I've used The Gimp to convert
the entire image to greyscale, with the exception of the bee. I think it's
come out looking pretty good.
April 19, 2003
I split the movies pages into years, having it as one page was
getting too long. Tragically I'm back on a 56k modem after spending
six months with ADSL. I can't get ADSL in my new place due to dodgy
line quality. I have a new ISP as well -
Westnet. So far they haven't
been as good as iinet, I'm
thinking of changing back. And don't get me starting on my hosting company.
Dzones have been completely crap
recently. I asked about a lost password a week ago, and they still haven't
got back to me. No wonder I'm trying to change to someone else.
February 16, 2003
I've added a bit more content this weekend. In the
software section, I've added a new program called
discreader, a very simple CD ripper
for Linux. It's useful in situations where the CD's table of contents
is corrupted, for example with some copy-protected CDs. I've also
added a list of DVDs that I own. Plus I've
updated the music page to
include my new Massive Attack CD - this CD was the reason I wrote
discreader. Stupid copy protection.
January 26, 2003
I've just spent another two weeks in Sydney for work. It felt like
the work went badly this time, but other people seemed impressed with
how much we achieved. Once again I took the opportunity to take some
photos, and I appreciated the
frequent flyer points.
Today is Australia Day, so that means I'll be heading down to
the river tonight to watch the fireworks. And it also means the
Triple
J Hottest 100 is on the radio all day.