• 11 January 2009 05:36pm: Beach in January is hot, wet, windy and sandy.
• Yesterday at 11:28am: I'm feeling as though much of my work before hols was a bit sloppy due to my wanting to get the heck out at that time.
• Yesterday at 11:30am: I just noticed that there is an overgrown graveyard across the street from my new windowd cube.
• Yesterday at 12:07pm: I need to better organise my digital photos. Right now they are spread over six computers. At least if one dies I only loose a fraction.
• Yesterday at 12:21pm: Arguing with Kim about digital vs. film. Well. She's arguing I don't give a flying...
• Yesterday at 12:38pm: Also: it must be nice to be so sure of everything. Seeing the beauty in things that everyone else seems to have discarded is exhausting.
• Yesterday at 02:05pm: Not hungry, so for my lunch hour I took a stroll through the creepy overgrown graveyard.
• Yesterday at 02:17pm: Realising camera set to ISO 3200 after taking pictures during sunny 16 weather irritates me.
• Today at 10:01am: Narrowmindedtwat er... I mean Kimbot is not at work today.
• Today at 03:59pm: Haven't been able to see season 2 of This American Life yet... anyone know when it will hit the iTunes and/or DVD?
• Today at 04:00pm: Andrew decides to tone down his snarky comment when responding to a client. I'll be glad to see the backside of this project.

twitter.com/plicease

Here is an old photo that reminds of the days when I would get up early to capture the morning light. Brrr. I think it was cold that morning!

Today, in contrast was quite nice! Weather wise I mean.

Today was the farewell lunch for Rory (not sure about the spelling), which I was sort of not looking forward to on account of having to be social and stuff, but it actually went pretty well. After ordering my lunch at the bar I got to the tables reserved for us, and all of the seats were taken at tables that had people so I had to colonize a new table. Sitting alone in a group like that is pretty disturbing, especially if you are mildly socially phobic antisocial. Some office folk with mildly recognizable faces came over to my table shortly after and introduce themselves. I think I talk too much in those situations. I can't think of anything to say so all sorts of irrelevant stuff starts to regurgitate without my thinking about it. I had this theory that it would be easier to deal with my shyness in a place other than New York, and I think I was right, or maybe I'm just getting older and more able to deal with this stuff.

Ah, but the really good news is that Cicely, Joe and (allegedly) Brian^[1] are coming out to visit for New Years Eve! NYE is, quite simply, the best time of year to be in Sydney, and Sydney is, quite simply, the best place to be for NYE. I was just thinking this morning that I really love Sydney and I am fairly certain that Sydney is the greatest city on earth (no offense to my friends in New York, which I also adore), but of course I miss my friends! I am super excited about having some friends out and being able to show them around and hang out with my friends.

Yesterday my new 23" Apple HD monitor arrived and I am using it right now. It looks really good. It's a new toy that is yet another reason for me to despise the inferiority of my work equipment. My friend e was telling reminding me that most places are like "that" ... and she's right to an extent (but at least she can IM from work!), but I think I will continue to complain about work anyway. It beats complaining about my personal life!

Not much else to report.

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1. I say allegedly, because he said we was "for sure" going to come to Salt Lake for at least one of those ski trips that I organized, but he waited till the plane ticket prices were astronomical

Today I climbed a tree in order to rescue Tristan's frisbee. It was a lot of fun, and felt like quite an accomplishment. It reminded me of two people I know who like to climb trees: Amber and Brad. It's fun to act young.

(more random thoughts that have collected over the easter weekend)

more pictures here

(and some more)

My farewell lunch at The Company was surprisingly pleasant. Pretty much everyone from the department showed up, except for my manager, but that was good because it gave Greg the opportunity to do impressions of him. There were even a few people from greater EDA who came, that I've gotten to know over the years.

When we were walking back to the building after lunch, people had bunched up into smaller sub groups, and I noticed that because of my pace I was sort of between groups, off by myself. I thought to myself: here I am the guest of honor and my anti-social tendencies have still taken over.

As I type this I just realized that I forgot to have Adil invite that cute Indian girl (the one that always seems to smile at me) to my farewell lunch.

Three

My lunch is culturally schizophrenic today. I ordered the Goulash Soup and the Texas Beef Brisket.

Two

Some of you already know that I run a web site for a retired marketing guy (henceforth "Chuck"). This is on the side, my day job is still working at The Company. The web site is www.idea-bank.com. Originally I did everything involved with the web site, except for write the actual content, of course. Some time back Chuck wanted to revamp the look of the site, and I recommend that he get someone else do the HTML. So now someone else is responsible for the HTML and I do the back end database and administrative tools.

This actually seemed like a pretty good idea at the time, because my philosophy toward HTML is somewhat old fashion. I don't believe in spinning or flaming logos, and I don't think every web page needs a fancy JavaScript driven GUI. I actually think those things tend to distract from the content, which is (contrary to popular opinion) why you actually go to a web site.

Chuck wants to improve the web site with some new features. As it turns out the back end (my part) is actually flexible enough that the changes required are minimal. A few weeks ago I asked our HTML guy to make some really minor changes, amounting to copying some files to a different location. I could actually do this myself... it is my server... but I want to stay out of the HTML code, and besides it would be rude. He still hasn't made these changes. I guess this is the downside to this arrangement.

Since the server is mine, I like to keep everything neat and tidy, and this guy is a Windows user, so he does little things to annoy me like using the short .htm extension instead of .html. We aren't running any sorry ass sixteen bit operating systems here; filename extensions do not have to be three characters, damn it!

One

Think I finally got Parallel Abstraction working. I'm stress testing it with test cases right now. This is big. This is proof that the Universe does not hate me.