qm2 - The Twilight Report

About the only time Russel Crowe's house looks small is when the world's largest ocean liner is parked next to it.

• 17 February 2009 09:53am: Waited for the train just one minute after, skipped the arm pit to nose treatment and scored a seat on the bottom right out of town hall :)
• 17 February 2009 10:16pm: Saw a guy go out of his way to step over a homeless guy instead of walking around him.
• 18 February 2009 10:08am: Bristol want's to be, like, an advocate on the, like, issue of teen pregnancy, but she doesn't, like, want to get into details. like.
• 18 February 2009 07:16pm: Sun comes out and it's hot again all of a sudden. Dear Mr. Weather, we're at war. Pick a side.
• 19 February 2009 10:02am: Laughing at my boss' inability to write hello world in C without help.
• 19 February 2009 01:22pm: Whoohoo we're #1 we're #1 we're #1 http://tinyurl.com/d2dgr5
• 20 February 2009 11:59am: My work is blocking port 70. No Gopher! Aaaieieiiaiaaaa!
• 20 February 2009 01:47pm: slicehost has a debian lenny image now. Think it might be time to migrate iacon to dallas. already?
• 22 February 2009 10:08pm: Shouldn't gopher, and not http be the default protocol for server that starts with "gopher"? I'm only saying.
• 23 February 2009 07:23am: Last night I dreamed the Capitalists were going to turn everyone into credit default swaps.
• 23 February 2009 09:20am: My Australian hosting provider blows.
• 23 February 2009 12:03pm: I'm installing perl4 so that I can compile black perl. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Perl I'm a dork.
• 23 February 2009 02:46pm: Allison apparently thinks that the universe revolves around her. "Where's OB? Oh he's in that meeting."
• 23 February 2009 05:14pm: No mention of Heath in the mX. Must have gone to press too early to call it. The mX and I were the only ones didn't know it was sure thing.
• Today at 05:24pm: It amuses me that practically the entire Australian Navy has to skip town in order to make room for a cruise ship.
• Today at 05:25pm: It's the largest ocean liner in the world, but still.

twitter.com/plicease

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!

Sydney was in awe as the Queen Mary 2 and QE2 arrived yesterday. Walking through the gardens afterward was a mess. Brits have a reputation for being good at queuing (waiting in line; I don’t know if it is actually well deserved). Australians... not so much. What ensued resembled a free-for-all. Maybe because it was.