yesterday i did a quick tally of my cycling this year, and it looks like i rode between 2700 and 4000km (26km 'standard trip', never less than twice a week but more commonly 3-4 times, all year round).

not too bad, considering my slacker nature...

Exactly ten years ago I arrived in Australia.

*ring ring* goes my (private) mobile phone.

me: hello, alex speaking.

her: hi it's <female, australian> with telstra, how are you?

me: fine, thanks. (that's a polite lie: i hate the telco monopolist and avoid them wherever i can. they shouldn't have this number, btw.)

her: that's great. please note that this call may be recorded or monitored for training and quality assurance purposes. are you ok with that?

me: no, i'm not. i do not want this call to be recorded.

her: *brief pause while some thoughts scramble through her hamster brain, which is obviously completely lost when things leave the crib sheet path* oh, but why do you not want that call recorded?

me: i do not want this call to be recorded.

her: but what's the problem?

me: i do not want this call to be recorded.

her: ok, i won't be able to continue this call then. have a good day. *click*

me: *happy*

Next time I think I'll ask for extra anchovies with my pizza (if male sales weasel) or request some telephone sex (if female).

See also: It's Lenny, a recent development by an Australian BOFH with my kind of humour. VOIP rocks :-)

acute angle, doubleplus-uncute pissed-off human, acute pain.

why? i highsided my bicycle just an hour ago: i chose too acute an angle when passing from the grass onto a concrete pathway, the grass was high and hid the large difference in height, the front tire caught and stayed down on the grass and i got tossed over the frame and deposited onto the concrete.

one big bruise on my hip, a skinned knee and forearm/elbow. not too bad but still annoying. the second half of my usual 26km round was not exactly comfortable - but i did not shorten the distance.

For sysadmins, that is. (automation, robustness etc.pp.) For people in solo households (like me) it's not so definite.

I dislike cleaning, but I like it when the house is clean. Specifically, I dislike scrubbing the kitchen sink/washbasin strainers and their surrounds: always somewhat grotty and lots of brushing required to keep them nice.

But yesterday I found out that there's a super-lazy solution for that: put in the stopper, pour in some bleach, let it stand for an hour or so, then unstopper the drain and you're done. Results were shiny and dirt-free.

would you please send me a kill switch for my give-a-shitter? I need that to survive work without going mad and committing mega-idioticide... Oh, and a set of human-rated gills, please, too: to survive the cruddy weather this "summer.

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Can you think of something more ridiculous than this? Imagine: a cyclist riding up to a traffic light, not getting out of his clipless pedals in time and falling over like a drunk chicken.
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i hate having neighbours close by, or sharing a wall. more specifically, i hate my neighbours except for A+M+M, but the others more than make up for those good people.

i hate the goddamn noisy brats - there's a difference between 'happy kids' and 'loud tantrum-throwing fucks', and i don't mind the former at all.

the rest, they can all die as far as i'm concerned, and soon, please.

Conny has left the building. Still in transit: yesterday BNE-AKL, a few hours in Auckland, then AKL-LAX and many boring hours to be whiled away in Los Angeles. Now she's close to boarding her last flight, LAX-PHL, and should arrive back home in Philadelphia tomorrow morning local time.

...

And it's pretty empty in this here house, without her around.

Tokyo's oldest living man was actually more like the oldest undiscovered modern-age mummy: dead for about 30 years.

Now this couldn't happen to me: first this climate is too humid for meat staying fresh long (and my ceiling fans wouldn't suffice for making me into biltong), and furthermore my money would run out, my house would go back to the bank (but that's only for a few more years) and so the vultures would find me. Sky burial by bank clerk, anyone?

Sort-of bad: there aren't many other scenarios for me being discovered.

Today, after reading up on couchdb I decided to take a break from vapour-ware and high-flying ideas and Do Something Practical, like finally take apart my whipper snipper to figure out why it doesn't start (different kinds of vapours are involved, this being a cheap two-stroke FPOS).

Enthusiastic tool application quickly demonstrated one big issue with any metal FPOS (remember, I said cheap): very rough edges. Slipping and sliding the back of your finger along such edges is highly counter-indicated.

Well, there must have been a caterpillar lurking beneath the skin on my index finger, because this not-so-deep cut was dribbling red juice beyond what I'd have expected; and the motor oil, petrol and other assorted grease-suspended gunk on my hands didn't exactly make my journey to the bathroom any cleaner.

But the icing on the cake came later: I did, of course, finish the disassembly after wrapping up my finger - only to find out that the whipper snipper engine is beyond salvation. Just about zero compression, most rubber/plastic parts rotten. A new one will likely cost less than the replacement parts, never mind the time and effort for a potential repair.

WAAAAAAH!

...of having extremely few friends, no girlfriend (and no hope of finding one), absolutely zero social life and of having an apparently abrasive personality?
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...first, I'd get a muzzle for the damn howler monkey neighbours' dog. Not because of the barking, but because of the dog being one of the root causes for the everlasting bloody aggravation: see, he's got some Doberman in the mix, and his owners are total assholes, so he's decent-sized, frisky and badly educated. That makes him pinch the damn kids when they yell and scream too much, eliciting more screaming and howling, which generates more pinching and screaming and tantrums...Oh Joy.

Next, I'd cut all the howler monkeys' vocal cords, and thus earn the everlasting gratitude from the other neighbours around - who are all fairly quiet denizens.

And finally, I'd shoot all the monkey neighbours for good measure - 'it's the only way to be sure'.

No, I'm not angry, not at all. Why do you think so?

From the bottom of my heart I wish the plague and a quick, quiet death on these neighbours.

The first day of the trimester at work, and I've got an 0800 lecture... for the one (inherited) subject I dislike teaching the most. Bah. And the projector in the room is squirrely. Aaaaaargh! And the room is generallylousy. Double-bah. And my brain is fogged up enough so that I'm quite sure I'm making more of a hash of the subject material than necessary. Sorry dear students! My best efforts at 0800 today weren't really quite good enough.

What a lovely way to begin the week!

*drumroll*

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Two days ago was the eigth anniversary of my arrival in Australia. Sometimes that feels like yesterday, sometimes more like three lives ago.

Today is also the sixth anniversary of moving into this house. For lots of Australians six years in one place is three lives ago; many deal with houses like crab shells: too small, ugly, whatever? then let's molt^Wmove and forget the old carcass. The housing industry obliges by mainly offering shoddily built disposables. *sigh*.

To round out a fairly crappy weekend, this afternoon my washing machine decided to eat its drive belt - of course while spinning at full speed, so as to maximize the damage. Picture me sitting peacefully in the toilet (which is adjacent to the laundry), *bang* and lotsa thumping and crashing and the lights are out.

Suppose I'm sorta lucky, the wiring loom is ripped apart but not totally wrecked, and the motor bearings seem to have survived their chewing exercise without damage.

I'm not "normal" - and I like it that way!
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...seeing seven round ice lumps floating tightly packed in your drink glass makes you pick up pencil and paper to determine if this tight packing is possible only when all balls have the same radius.

(Yes it is. Trigonometry is fun.)

You know that you live in a Banana...well, non-Republic if the exchange rates between your lifeblood and real money looks like this: Source: Werner Antweiler's Exchange Rate stats

Last Thursday Conny, Rob and I went for a day trip to Nth Stradbroke island, with a bit of fun (of all kinds) in the preceding afternoon.

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We're back, connected once again: some techie must have been in the neighbourhood saturday night, because Saturday 2138 line-sync suddenly reappeared, and today I finished setting up the remaining bits (e.g. inbound POTS-to-VOIP etc.) and verified that Internode didn't make a mess of their part of the service conversion.

Looks all mostly good, except line attenuation has jumped up 10dB (without the previously required inline filter), which makes little sense, and sits now at 50dB downstream. This sucks as it severly limits the achievable sync speeds and makes things a tad more brittle. Ticket open, we'll see.

When Conny went to brush her teeth tonight before bedtime, I suddenly got a fairly urgent/distressed Request for Assistance: she stood mesmerized at the bathroom door, and a meter from her sat an (equally mesmerized) huntsman spider of less that minimal size (maybe 10x10cm with the legs). She strongly dislikes spiders.

And so do I. Usually, smaller specimens I don't bother; they eat bugs and thus are not exactly welcome but tolerated household members (if they stay hidden and out of the geckos' way). But this one was too large for my liking, so it got the bucket-on-top-and-then-poison-inside treatment (huntsmen are very fast). Sorry fella!

Conny asked for this note to any future spider visitors to be posted on the web (maybe spiders use google? dunno): Small and tiny spiders tolerated, large ones very unwelcome. May be dealt with harshly!

Oi, get your minds out of the gutter!
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Yesterday was lots of fun.
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Conny has pretty much settled in, but my brain is close to pastel overload already.

I've had to move just about all my stuff from her room so that she can make it into her den. She brought three fat and one slim suitcases full of things, and her room is unrecognizable.

The only remainder of my things are my Tektronix scope, the HP function generator and a bench vise on the desk. Cognitive dissonance: the shelf above the TEK and the HP now contains mainly pink boxes, makeup, dolls and other girly gear (instead of soldering station, multimeters, charger, bench PSU and other tools).

School seems to be fine and fun; she has gotten lost (slightly) between home and there twice so far.

Whenever I am optimistic and not expecting trouble, this state of oblivion usually gets cut short, badly, when it rains problems. On the other hand, if I expect bad things and worry, a lot less trouble finds its way to me. This sucks.
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Juhuuuuh! Heute hat die Post endlich mein Weihnachtsgeschenk aus Ö vorbei gebracht: Alle 19 Kottan-Folgen, auf 8 DVDs.

Ah, Nostalgie pur. Böse Wiener Gfrasta. Inspektor gibt's kan. 70er Jahre Schädelweh-Tapeten. Danzer-Gstanzln. Ambros. Wunderbar.

Danke, liebe Frau Mutter!