“RT @wilw: If your pro-#SOPA argument starts out, "I don't know anything about this, but..." just stop right there. Your argument is invalid.”

—plicease at 25 January 2012 23:42

“Doing my taxes and weirdly enough can't get my rate down to 13.9%.”

—plicease at 26 January 2012 20:32

“If Newt Gingrich becomes president and Tony Abbot becomes PM, where do we go then?”

—plicease at 24 January 2012 19:59

“Happy New Year to all Water Dragons like my parents and everyone else from a Fiery Dragon.”

—plicease at 23 January 2012 12:55

“They just played a chiptune from original NES TNMT on Kojo Nnamdi for no apparent reasons sans explanation.”

—plicease at 19 January 2012 12:23

“Going outside now and I realize strangely I can't wear shorts and a t-shirt.”

—plicease at 8 January 2012 14:57

“Last lunch down under: forgot nobody opens for lunch before 12 here.”

—plicease at 6 January 2012 20:54

I don't think I have ever looked forward to going to Australia so much. I think maybe because this is the first time I was coming back since living here for four years. Living here wasn beutiful, but sometimes not quite right. I told my mum that I wanted to live in Australia for three months of the year with more conviction than usual. Maybe in a year or so I can make an arrangement with NetCon for this. Ideally it would be before my mum sells grandma's house so I'd have a place to live. I think we'd keep the house so long as there was someone to live there. I was living there until I moved back to the states.

I have a few more days left down under. I've done everything that I wanted to do on this trip and I have enjoyed every day here. I'll be ready to go back when it is time.

“Tomorrow rain.”

—plicease at 4 January 2012 02:56

“So far the New Year has brought Lena and I three glorious days at the beach and four swims in the ocean.”

—plicease at 4 January 2012 02:56

Smokey Sydney after the fireworks.

Same shot this morning.

Happy New Year!

Lena and I saw in the new year in Sydney. Hello to everyone stll in 2011, catch up already :)

“Yesterday we saw a platypus by the caves.”

—plicease at 30 December 2011 01:59

“First day down under a success: meat pie at Harry's and a stroll through the gardens”

—plicease at 24 December 2011 02:14

“@lenviol oh?”

—plicease at 22 December 2011 23:49

“SFO: landed waiting for evening flight over the Pacific.”

—plicease at 22 December 2011 18:48

“IBM to keep tabs on you and make sure you pay your taxes”

—plicease at 22 December 2011 10:14

“http://m.smh.com.au/environment/weather/santa-tipped-to-deliver-some-sun-for-a-day-20111222-1p77h.html summer here I come :)”

—plicease at 22 December 2011 09:47

“@plicease LOL”

—lenviol at 22 December 2011 09:07

“DCA: found a place to park my laptop labeled "Power Up". I have expect to find a mushroom or fire flower here.”

—plicease at 22 December 2011 09:05

“Packed. Headed for Sydney tomorrow via DCA ORD SFO.”

—plicease at 21 December 2011 19:38

“I think the Chester A. Arthur $1 is the one dollar coin I definitely want to have because there won't be as many as Lincoln or Washington.”

—plicease at 14 December 2011 16:24

“this reminds me of Room Mate IV (aka Lysol Boy)”

—plicease at 14 December 2011 16:22

“Verified the accuracy of a tweet from @TheDailyShow by going to http://cnn.com, but I really feel like it ought to be other way around”

—plicease at 13 December 2011 22:02

“@planetmoney if they want to get Americans to use $1 coins they have to remove $1 bill from circulation”

—plicease at 13 December 2011 14:18

“I got defect 9999. No future bug will ever have four digits again.”

—plicease at 13 December 2011 13:20

Rumor about the Nikon pro level camera replacement (commonly referred to its probable product name “D4”) popped up today on the usually reliable nikonrumors.com. The D800 (which will be Nikon's replacement for the D700, which I own) is expected to be announced at about the same time, probably early next year. I jokingly told Lena that she might inherit my D700 if the D4 specs are sufficiently drool worthy. The differences between the rumored D4 and D800 seem to be more significant than the differences between their predecessors the D3s and D700, as Nikon attempts to differentiate the two lines. The D800 will have a higher megapixel sensor aimed at gear heads who think that is important whereas the D4 will have high fps and low light capability which professional photographers appreciate.

“When I find stuff, it is NOT in the last place that I looked. I keep searching just in case I put things somewhere where they aren't.”

—plicease at 9 December 2011 20:08

“I had to open a tab to make that tweet, but I don't have to cut down until 2012 so it is okay.”

—plicease at 9 December 2011 14:41

“In 2012 I am going to cut down on the number of tabs I have open.”

—plicease at 9 December 2011 14:40

“My long term plans”

—plicease at 8 December 2011 16:54

“Ten working days till Sydney and the beach.”

—plicease at 8 December 2011 01:15

“I just found out our princess is NOT in another castle, they just redressed that level eight times!”

—plicease at 4 December 2011 11:40

“Fish skull”

—plicease at 3 December 2011 16:45

“Dusty old bones at the Smithsonian museum of dusty old bones”

—plicease at 3 December 2011 16:30

“Smithsonian's new Zamboni was so newsworthy it was on the NPR”

—plicease at 3 December 2011 15:00

“We're skating in the sculpture garden in Washington DC”

—plicease at 3 December 2011 14:45

“Through the vent in the bathroom you can hear upstairs neighbor. This morning: "Ohhhhhhh god it burns. Ohhh it burns."”

—plicease at 3 December 2011 10:11

“Mushroom avocado rocket blue corn taco”

—plicease at 26 November 2011 18:15

“Taco Time!”

—plicease at 26 November 2011 18:00

“Get out your ark, this is going to be a wet one.”

—plicease at 22 November 2011 17:29

“Debt Reduction Super Committee agrees to not Debt Reduce. I think that is a matter of being more "Committee" than "Super".”

—plicease at 22 November 2011 09:52

“My goal for this three day week... is to leave my work computer at work.”

—plicease at 21 November 2011 16:58

“@plicease pretty”

—lenviol at 21 November 2011 14:12

“Morning fog”

—plicease at 21 November 2011 09:30

“omg, the super committee only has five days to accomplish nothing!”

—plicease at 18 November 2011 19:53

“A highlight of the Nixon Library was the video of the JFK/Nixon TV debate. They should also show some of the Frost/Nixon interview.”

—plicease at 18 November 2011 11:55

Electronic gadgets I plan on taking on the flight to Australia with me for entertainment:

1. Nintendo 3DS + Super Mario 3d Land
2. Kindle Fire (for movies? I won't be getting it till Monday probably so not really sure how useful it will actually be)
3. Kindle 2 (for books)
4. Thinkpad T500
5. Bose QuietConfort 3 Acoustic Noise Cancelling headphones

... and I will probably just sleep through the flight anyway.

I was listening to the radio yesterday and someone made a comment about 2007 being the stone age of technology, because we didn't have “apps”. Call me crazy, and phone apps are handy for some things, but I still appreciate having a computer with enough processing power to run applications without having to use trendy abbreviations. Do I sound like an old person yet? I know that the rate of change on technology accelerates that process.

“Debian Testing version of Linux Mint doesn't seem to want to install onto a KVM Virtio disk.”

—plicease at 17 November 2011 19:59

“Off the plane we are going down to Harry's for a meat pie with chili con carne and a bundaberg ginger beer and consume by the navy base.”

—plicease at 16 November 2011 21:03

Way back, between when I was working on ChipBench and when I was working on EinsTimer at The Company, I had a temporary assignment with the lawyers to clear a third product (BooleDozer) so they could sell the source code to another party. A lot of the other developers I talked to disparaged the lawyers, and having to work with lawyers. I enjoyed the work and the lawyers, or at least one of the lawyers that I worked with. It was a nice change from the work that I normally did, and it wasn't random, I was qualified for the work.

Today I was asked to do some testing, which turns my usually approach to everything on its head. Usually as a Software Engineer, I get defects on my code, or worse yet on Bad Code or His Highness' code and I have to fix it. As a Test Engineer, I get to push buttons and try to break stuff and open defects when I find broken stuff. The best part is that defects instead of feeling like a burden feel like an accomplishment. I opened three defects today. Awesome. And I don't have to fix them. Awesomer.

Will I want to go back to being a Software Engineer tomorrow?

Oh, and I sent the defects to Bad Code. Awesomest.

“Watching the Aussies play the american anthem for the Obama and my first thought is Hawaii Five-0”

—plicease at 16 November 2011 10:53

“I miss Australia more now than I used to when I had never lived there as an adult.”

—plicease at 16 November 2011 08:34

“I have some funny ideas about software engineering, like our product should be easy to use and not crash.”

—plicease at 15 November 2011 10:39

“Remaining at work are some lingering fake spider webs from All Hallows' Eve. I think they may have gotten a little carried away there.”

—plicease at 14 November 2011 09:20

“RT @denseclarity: Food for thought: what happened to the FPS?”

—plicease at 9 November 2011 18:24

“@plicease we're not going too far, but it's always helpful to be prepared with all kinds if lenses :P”

—lenviol at 10 November 2011 11:15

“@plicease :)”

—lenviol at 10 November 2011 11:14

“I told him Lena wouldn't tell me where we were going and therefore didn't know which lens to bring so I have them all.”

—plicease at 10 November 2011 11:06

“Unintentionally impressed PHP guy with my glass (Nikkor lenses).”

—plicease at 10 November 2011 11:05

“I am excited to hear about the new version of Firefox, as I have switched to different browser and don't have to upgrade.”

—plicease at 8 November 2011 19:08

My dad once told (I think it was) Lena that I was a film snob. In some respects I take it as a sort of back handed compliment, yes, I do think film is an art form, but no, I can enjoy trashy films too in the right context. I've been watching the Robocop movies for example, the first one was surprisingly deep, although they look really dated. It's like the future except people still have wood paneled station wagons and laptops the size of desktops. I wouldn't really recommend any of them, but ever since I read an article explaining that the first movie was full of Christian symbolism I decided I needed to see it. My mum downloaded the 25th anniversary episode of the (Australian) ABC's At the Movies for me, because I can't download it being outside of Aussie, and I really appreciate the thought. David picked two movies in his best of the last two and half decades that I had actually seen, All About My Mother and Lantana, both of which were good examples of film as art. I really miss their reviews. They consist of detailed analysis of the film, followed by a heated argument about the relative merits of the film, and then they rate them to within half a star of each other despite said heated argument. I care less about the stars though, and more about what they have to say. I like how they deconstruct film as an art form. Lantana was such a good film that I invited my friends over when I was still living in New York and fed them Australian lamb while forcing them to watch it. I thought the film was amazing, and my friends were too polite to say otherwise if they didn't like it.

Australian politics explained using youtube cat videos.

“RT @wilw: It's raining, which means driving in Los Angeles is essentially a reenactment of The Road Warrior, as done by blindfolded ferrets.”

—plicease at 4 November 2011 16:32

Dreamt that I was flying to Sydney on Qantas, only there was a mix up in the booking and when I got to Kingsford Smith International I got transferred to a regional airport which didn't actually have a landing strip so I had to take a bus. They didn't let me get out at SYD, even though that is where I needed to go. When I got to hicksville, a gay bar tender was hitting on me, to which I responded that I was flattered but not interested.

Qantas was probably on my mind because of the recent lock out and government intervention, or maybe because they just signed up with NetCon as a customer. The last time a gay man was interested in me in that way though was way back in college when creepy Clint and and creepy Trina followed Guthrie, Tyler and myself around, apparently because they lacked anything better to do in their directionless lives. Trina was engaged to an unseen character who by all accounts was the punch first and ask question later type. She had the unrequited hots for Tyler who was at the time already spoken for, but even if he wasn't probably not interested. Clint and Trina initially took a dislike to me, but one day Trina called me up pretending to be Clint to play a trick on me, but she got to know me better in the course of the call and decided that I was not a bad person. I retrospect the whole calling me up pretending to be someone else thing should have been a red flag, but instead I told her not to do it again and forgave her. I was the unwanted fifth wheel in a love triangle mostly between Guthrie and Ellen and my sad tale of woe somehow endeared myself to Clint in particular. He decided that not only was I gay, but my friendship with Guthrie had homosexual overtones. I've always been comfortable with my sexuality, so you can make up your own mind. In short, Clint and Trina are the sort of train wreck that really ought to be avoided by anyone with any sense. Tyler recognized this almost immediately. I was sort of neutral on the two of them, being obsessed with my own drama hinted at by the whole Guthrie and Ellen situation. Guthrie though, he was the one who let them into our lives. That train wreck was his fault.