My Blog Posts

Found, one gadget that I must buy. Sorry dear, I know I promised to be well behaved and reduce my expenditure on toys of a technical nature but rules are just made to be broken, aren’t they. The Archos Jukebox Player is just too good to resist. I saw the Terapin Mine and decided that my life wouldn’t be complete without one. Then I saw the price and decided it was time to suffer. Today, almost by accident I came across the Archos web site and discovered for less than half the price of a Terapin Mine I could get a portable MP3 player with 20Gb of space that could also act as a portable hard drive for my army of computers. The only thing the Terapin Mine has that it doesn’t is a fast ethernet connection, enabling it to be shared amongst lots of computers on a network. Luckily I don’t need that and the order for the Jukebox is going in tonight. Yee-ha.

As you have probably guessed by now, I’m a sucker for quizzes. I’ve even been known to spread the pages of Cosmo (occassionally, mind) to find out if I should really be wearing green leggings this season. Well, now I can share the joy around. Take the Andy Todd compatibility test and find out how similar we are. I got this one from AccordionGuy, and just for completeness he and I are 72% similar and 71% complimentary. I’m still trying to figure out if that means I should have his babies or not.

According to this article in the Register, it could be time for me to make a career change. Bugger. Anecdotal evidence from friends in the UK indicates that the job market there is not good at the moment. Demand for smashing people with IT skills is at an all time low and if the wife-to-be and I want to work in the mother country it could be hard actually finding someone willing to pay us a decent wage. Of course, it could just be that all of the people I know who are currently looking for gainful employment are just workshy fops (Gary), but I wouldn’t want to accuse them of that until I’ve actually tried to get a job myself.

On Sunday afternoon we are going to the Manly Food and Wine Festival. If you would like to join us in an epicurean feast then we will be on the plot from about 2pm. If you want to join us, call me on my mobile and I will tell you which stall to meet us at. Be warned, I shall have my digital camera and I shall be taking photos.

I couldn’t resist this one. mkandy47fs What’s yours? Courtesy of Danny O’Brien. If you like the outpourings on his blog, you will love his technical newsletter, NTK. Do yourself a favour and subscribe today.

You can’t make these up, really. An office wide email was sent around the place where I am working this morning. It said; “Would the person who left a box at reception please come and pick it up” Which was innocous enough. Until the follow up arrived in my in box about five minutes later; “Regarding that box, the contents are 5x1 litre bottles of artificial sweat solution.”

We have given the real estate agent notice on the lease of our house. The date of departure was largely determined by the dates of our free holiday. Did I mention that it is free? I did. We are leaving for “The Greatest Country in the World”™ on the 20th of June so we are moving out of the house on the 19th. Simple. For those not keeping track of our movements, fear not. Coming soon to this very web site is a page dedicated to our location over the next few months. It is tentatively titled “Where are they now?” and will be your on-line guide to exactly which pubs I will be frequenting on which days.

Now, whilst it is true that I am occasionally grumpy I wouldn’t describe myself as excessively bitter. The reason I say this? I had to think twice about getting an email address from biteme.com. Of course, it could just be that I am a skinflint and don’t want to pay $2.00 (US) a month for a mailbox at such a stylish corner of the internet. I will let you decide. The link, by the way, was courtesy of Matthew Thomas.

Once more the Australian banking system has singly failed to demonstrate its user friendliness and general dedication to customer service. I phoned the “customer care centre” of the Commonwealth Tossers with a simple query. Whilst I am overseas, I said to the badly programmed robot on the other end of the line, I would like to be able to transfer money from my account with your insitution to an account in another country. I have the ability to do this domestically by phone or the internet, there just doesn’t seem to be an option to initiate an international transfer. Well sir, the plainly flustered operator said, you can do this with an international money transfer. Marvellous, said I, how do I do that? Well, you go into your branch … before you continue, I said, I will be overseas its a little difficult to pop into my branch in Sydney whilst I am in London. So they put me on hold. When the barely more educated than an ATM operator came back on the phone line they said that my options were an international money transfer (already discarded) or a telegraphic transfer. Oh, said I, how do I perform a telegraphic transfer? Well, you go into your branch … Thanks for nothing - tossers.

What is this all about? You move twelve thousand miles and are still forced to watch this steaming pile of garbage. Life is not fair. The woman who is under the impression she is going to become my wife has just uttered the words “fun” and “Eurovision” in the same sentence. If that isn’t grounds to reconsider this whole wedding malarkey I don’t know what is. I am tempted to write something witty and piercing about the message that Eurovision embodies but I shall save that for another time. At the moment I’m trying to stop my ears from bleeding.

OK. I haven’t been working today, so Bobo will want to know what I have achieved. I have found out that Manly Pool (actually more accurately known as “The Andrew Boy Charlton Swim Centre”) is closed from the 21st of June until the 19th of August this year for its annual winter holiday. I hear this year it is going to South America for a little skiing. Lovely. I’ve also sorted out some storage space for all of our belongings whilst we are in the UK. I have reserved a unit at the Brookvale depot of Global Self Storage. All I’ve got to do now is start packing everything we own into boxes to take there.

This one is really for Mrs Palmer. Courtesy of the lovely people at MeFi and inspired by the generous spirit of Big Brother may I present you with “Which maid of honour is going to be made a goner”. I have now started working on the code to implement a similar feature on this web site before the middle of August …

Number 4 in an occassional series: According to the Bureau of Meteorology metropolitan forecast for today eighteen degrees celsius is “cool” Would anyone in Blighty like to disagree?

So funny.

I found this at b-may but it started at harrumph!. So here is my contribution; I have acted with someone who subsequently appeared in Coronation Street. I won $20 in the New South Wales jackpot lottery. I have never compiled a COBOL program, even though I got an A in my programming COBOL course at University.

Will someone in the UK with access to MTV please video The Osbournes for me. As an added bonus I’ll bring my DVD of Spinal Tap to the viewing and we can see how many rock cliches there are in each episode.

Today is Bobo’s birthday. Celebrate by giving her a call and wishing her all the best. Or just raise a pork rib in her honour, she will appreciate it.

Ciaran is showing as busy on IM and isn’t answering his phone at work. If he hasn’t got a good excuse for his whereabouts then you can be pretty sure that he has slipped away for a matinee screening of Attack of the Toss and I shall then have to rain vengance down on him. Sorry for going all biblical there, but I firmly believe that we shouldn’t give George Lucas any more money. It will just encourage him to make yet another not really very good movie. And that would be a bad thing, oh yes sirree it would.

Billy Bragg has got a bee in his bonnet. No, really, he has. We should all apparently buy the three different versions of his new record to protest at the British monarchy - yes Mr Molland, this post is for you. If you don’t believe me, take a quick look at the lyrics to Take Down the Union Jack. By the way Billy, its the Union Flag. It only becomes the Union Jack when you fly it from the jack staff of a ship (thanks for that Dad).

I have been chastised for using long words on this blog again. To which the correct response is, of course, go and look in the dictionary. Alternatively I did the trip for you; “misanthropy; n 1: hatred of mankind 2: a disposition to dislike and mistrust other people.”