The Twilight Report

Your Home For Snappy Repartee

day 2

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NYE is over, but the cleanup remains...

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in case of fire

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reflection

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building I work in

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holes
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old years last days photo fragments

My new years resolution is to take more photographs this year. Here are a few from the last days of the old year...

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tweet

twitter.com/plicease

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two nye's ago

For New Year's Eve 2006 / New Year 2007 my friends Joe, Cicely and Brian came out for a visit. I am not sure how, but somehow Joe managed to score tickets on one of the boats in the parade of ships which offer the best view of the fireworks.

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...a three hour tour. This is the boat that we watched the fireworks from.

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Here are the 9 o'clock fireworks they set off for the kids who can't stay up for the real deal.

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There were tones of boats in the “parade” like ours, all dressed up like this sailing ship with lights and pizzazz.

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More baots in the parade. The bridge's diamond jubalee (75 years) was one of the themes of the evening so there were lots of diamonds about.

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The bridge is sometimes referred to as “the world's largest coat hanger”.

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Of course there was something going on at the Opera House.

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We all thought they had shurely set off all the fireworks for the early show since it was so impressive. We were about to be blasted with something way more exciting, starting with a few warning shots off the bridge.

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Then to our left the city started to erupt in sound and light.

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Finally everything went crazy.

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It only took me 22 months to get around to processing these images.

cicely @ nx1 commented:
These are awesome! Even better than the ones we purchased!
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nye

With just a few hours left in the year, I feel like saying that I think 2007 was pretty good to me, and that I am looking forward to the next one. It just struck me that it being 2008 tomorrow, we are closer to the close of the decade than the opening of it. Time flies so fast. Happy New Years everyone :) С Новым Годом! I will see you next year.

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Visitors!

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!

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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.



  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
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nullray.wdlabs.com

I told Chuck that I was moving a couple of months ago. We agreed that nothing had to change, that I could do my job running the server as easily from down under as anywhere. I was nervous that he'd freak that I was leaving, but when he didn't it was one less thing that I had to worry about in the move. Then New Year's day I get this phone call from him and an e-mail telling me, more than asking, that the server billing needs to be transferred him, and that I need to show Jay how to do the few several tasks which are required to be done manually. Apparently he sent me a snail mail asking about it just before I went to Salt Lake for Christmas, but I never got it. I felt blindsided by this whole thing.

Anyway, I suppose I should have expected it. When I originally started the account with RackSpace (who have been wonderful, btw-), Chuck would insist that he get the bill and I'd say, "but that is not what we agreed to." Then a couple of weeks later he'd be back at it. It died down for a while. It hadn't come up for years.

So I've decided to get my own server. Everyone with belmont accounts (there are like four of you out there) will get an account on the new machine instead: nullray. The downside is that I have to configure the system to support all of the services that belmont currently takes care of. The upside to this thing is that the new machine will be much faster (2.4GHz), have more memory (1GB), larger hard drives (2x160GB) and newer operating system (Fedora 4).

For those of you with email or shell accounts I will let you know more when there is more to know. I expect the transition to be largely transparent, but you will at least have to remember to ssh nullray instead of ssh belmont during the switchover.
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I Cannot Be Hurt by Anything this Wicked World Has Done

What was 2004? It was a year of stolen and disputed elections in Georgia and the Ukraine, the rise and fall of Howard Dean and John Kerry, the first private space flight and the end of the "X-Prize," disaster in Darfur, prisoner abuse in Iraq, expansion of the European Union, the death of Ronald Regan and a month of flags at half mast, the return of Greek Olympics and a very smug presidential victory. In less political but tragic terms, the worst natural disaster in my memory has occurred in Asia as Tsunami death tolls top 135,000 according to CNN.com.

For me, the year started out as a bleak one in the coldest New York winter I have ever experienced. My mother came to visit me for her birthday. We stayed in Manhattan and it was bitterly cold.

Lowel and Johanna
I took a lighting class at Dutchess which was a blast. Some of my friends from Black and White II were taking the class and I met some other cool people. It was so much fun working with those people, including the teacher, Lowel Handler.

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In Short, 2004 was A Great Year and I have high hopes that 2005 will be even better.
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Paper Clips

I'm thinking about cooking some pasta for dinner, which of course brings up the whole low carb thing. It's a serious inconvenience that pasta is now worse than slathering your blood red cow stake with the thickest bacon grease imaginable, because when cooking for people you have to think up something more complicated to make. So I send Tyler an IM asking: "are you on any of those funky low carb diets?" in hopes that if he comes out to visit me in New York I can make something simple like pasta. But he doesn't answer me right away.

I decided I really needed a paper clip. I riffled through my desk drawer, but come up with nothing. I decide to go buy some and tell Tyler: "i need to go get paper clips. i'll be back in a bit."

To which he responds: "no; they don't work. my dad actually wrote a book which describes why"

I was about to walk out of the room, but I stop with a feeling of dread in my heart. Suddenly I had been thrust into some strange universe where Mr. Spock has a goatee and for some reasons all paper clips have become non functional. I wonder what else is different about this parallel universe? And why did Tyler's father write an entire book on why paper clips don't work? I've been so wrapped up in the future and being an optimist and all that B.S. that I have made myself susceptible to believing it just may be true when somebody tells me something like "paper clips don't work."

"huh? what?" I type.

Then I remember the question before that. "oh. heh. cool. got confused there."

Tyler responds with: "the diets"

"i thought you were saying PAPER CLIPS didn't work."

Relieved that I wouldn't have to double check my Star Trek DVDs to insure that Spock didn't have any extra whiskers (except of course for that one episode that he did), I went off to get some paper clips.

On the way back I'm listening to a CD I burned with just music that I like to listen to and none of the extra chaff which is on those CDs that those musical corporations expect us to buy. It struck me recently that with the exception of the first ("reptile") and last song ("suicide notes") it is all "happy" music, and that I haven't been much interested in listening to the "unhappy" tracks. Guthrie used to imply that the fact that I used to listen to depressing music made me unhappy. I contend (as I did then) that I listened to depressing music because I was depressed, and now that I prefer to listen to "happy" music because I am optimistic.

For a second there it didn't even bother me that I still don't have plans for New Years Eve. It occurs to me that New Years Eve is really Old Years Night... and is so about the past, not The Future.
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