birthday - The Twilight Report

Happy Birthday Mum!

It was 41 degrees today.

Saw Slumdog Millionaire.

All of that was hard work and I am tired now. Goodnight.

• 31 October 2008 11:18am: Monthly birthday lunch at work. The ladies talk about weddings and the guys talk about babies. How to contribute? Linux servers are easier.
• 31 October 2008 01:27pm: Boss is going on vacation. That makes me Captain Inview for two weeks.
• 3 November 2008 04:49pm: Being Captain Inview is stressful when a misconfiguration causes the stats queue to explode and it takes two hours to clear.
• 3 November 2008 09:28pm: mmmmm good and plenties may be good, but they are not plentiful when you have to fly to America to get them.
• Today at 03:48pm: I just realised that I already implemented the feature that I am working on. Either I am just "that good", or my memory is not.

twitter.com/plicease

(click to see in Google Earth)

Yesterday, I got to the Hudson Valley and I hiked around Nuclear Lake with my old hiking buddies Kathy and Becky, along with some new fry who got lost on the way to the train head, but did manage to show up before we left with out them. Nuclear Lake is very pretty and fairly isolated. Years ago we had a surprise birthday party there for Kathy and saw a beaver paddling by our picnic spot, so yesterday I declared that we had to see a beaver! Although there is lots of evidence on this hike of busy beavers in the form of broken sticks and dams, I don’t think we’ve actually seen a beaver since... until yesterday! It was off in the distance, and unmistakeably something that could have maybe been a beaver. I am going to call that close enough :)

...or "happy noodle day" as my friend e says. The beautiful part of Chicken Noodle Day is going to my favourite French restaurant where the food and the wine are delicious. I can’t wait for more of my friends to come visit me down under so that I can take them to this restaurant. My godmother insisted that I have that second glass of wine, so I obliged. That’s all for now. Good night.

Anybody else think its weird that for a year nothing happens, and then in just one day you’re a whole year older?

What’s up with that?

In 1932 my grandma crossed the Sydney Harbour Bridge when it opened. She was being pushed in her pram (she was about 8 years old, mum decided). Today, 75 years later Sydneysiders, myself included, celebrated the anniversary by closing the bridge to cars and doing it again. Walking over the bridge was fun. The ABC had big speakers set up along the length of the bridge blaring historical spoken and musical passages which gave the impression of walking through history. They were giving out free caps in this hideous shade of neon yellow green. Almost everyone was wearing one, which made for an impressive sight as the hats flowed and surged. On the back of the cap was written “our bridge.” I have decided that “our” is the Australian national pronoun, as Australians take any excuse to claim ownership of family, celebrities, buildings, bridges or anything that hails from the land down under. There were lots of people, but it wasn’t over crowded. Kudos to the organizers for pulling it off. The state government has gotten a lot of flack over a few recent fiascos ahead of the state election, so I think they were holding their breath hoping that nothing would go wrong! (like when the QE2 and QM2 came to town and the city had no plan for the huge amount of traffic they caused, and last week when commuters were stuck on the trains for 3 hours because apparently there wasn’t an evacuation plan; good thing the trains weren’t on fire or anything). I’d like to be here in 25 years to do it again, celebrating the bridge’s 100th anniversary!

2005 was supposed to be the year that Decepticon's attack Autobot City on earth (as chronicled in The Movie. I took this as a sign that it was time to quit my job at The Company and go back to school and study computer graphics and distributed computing and maybe one day get a job at Pixar. I still think even being a "lowly" system administrator at Pixar would be a fun job. Being a software developer for the rendering farm would be awesome.

Appropriately enough, last Thursday, the last Thursday of the year, I went to the MoMA with e and they had a special exhibit on the art of Pixar. Most of what they showed was models and sketches that were made before anything gets done on the computer. Seeing the artists' names and countries of origin clearly labeled by each piece, one is reminded that computer animation is not just a form of entertainment, but also an art form. It's fascinating to me, because I have always been passionately interested in the interaction of expression and technology.

Highlight had to be seeing the early sketches of the Edna "E" Mode character from The Incredibles, who has been my favorite Pixar character since I saw the movie because of her energy and humor. I had one of her quotations engraved on the back of my iPod to remind me that "I never look back; it distracts from the now." In the gallery e told me she was her favorite character, to which I responded, "really? Me too."

Anyway, 2005 is coming to and end, and Unicron never attacked Cybertron and as a result, the Decepticons were not driven off as was for told in The Movie, and I'm not going back to school, just yet, but I am on my way back to Australia. (many more words and things...)

According to James Ussher, the universe was created on this date in 4004 BCE at 6:00pm. Two hundreds years later Dr. John Lightfoot corrected this estimate by 15 hours, making the Universe's birthday 9:00am tomorrow. I wonder if that was EST or PST? Everyone knows that God is an American, so it couldn't be GMT. Either way, what is 15 hours between universes? Happy Birthday Universe.

It is now official. I am definitely for sure maybe going to Australia next February. I say definitely for sure because I am definitely going, but I say maybe because the last time I said was definitely going to Australia I decided later not to. Mum has a meeting the week of 11 February 2005.

I can't wait for it to be next year, because I will be able to say "The Year Is 2005..."

Anyway, Mum has this meeting down under and she can probably get me frequent flier ticket, so the price is right. I noticed that the meeting is the week of my dad's birthday, so it seems like the perfect time to go visit Dad and that side of my family. I thought dad would be thrilled to hear that I would be coming out for his birthday, but he didn't seem to be so particularly. I'm going to be there in February when it is cold here, but warm there, so I will have to contend with this kind of weather:



I know, I know... it's a tough assignment, but I'm willing to make the sacrifice.

Hopefully I will get to see my friend Tyler, as LA (no... the other one, not Los Alamos) is on the way. It's been way too long since I saw him.

I was in Houston over the long weekend, visiting an important friend. Think I mentioned this whilst I was out there. I don't know why I get accused of always seeming to be go somewhere (I think Ian (of photo lighting class fame) usually make this charge). I only went as far as exotic New Paltz for a birthday party this weekend, and I don't have any genuine plans for the weekend coming up. At least, as the sierra interpter used to tell me: Not Yet. I miss going to class every friday and hanging out, and incidentally doing some photography. It was such a pleasant experience with such fun people that it was hard not to enjoy the week. I think I'm beginning to forget what actual photographers are like.

This was my birthday.