Sydneyness
Being a chronicle of the adventures of Pazu in the land of Mardi Gras! Rugby and Hookers!
So this is the page where I will do Lambeux style writings on the whole being in Sydney thing. Once I get there I guess.
For those who don't know or have forgotten: I leave with my ladyfriend on Monday the 20th, we jump on the boat to Melbourne with a car full of stuff and drive to Sydney. BBQness on the 18th, which is the Saturday before that - details on the calendar page.
Fellow Battlefield 2 troops: I shall be out of action for a while due to not having a decent computer. Everyone else: I shall be online once I organise the internet (not the whole internet, just my connection).
8/7/06 - Hello peoples! It's only been a couple of weeks but it feels like ages. I should mention that I'm writing this on Sarah's laptop which has a dodgy 'T' key so if there are any missing t's you know why. I'm going to upload this from an internet cafe later.
So, I'm in Sydney now, have been for a while. Sorry for taking so long to put something on here but it has been an INTENSE couple of weeks. I've only been online once for a few minutes to print a bank statement for rental applications. The first week was hells the stress what with living in a motel and trying to find an apartment during the busiest part of the year. One day we even saw an article in the paper that was all like "The rental market is especially hectic this year" fuckin hell, that was just what we needed to hear. Anyways, after applying for a bunch of places and spending a few days waiting for slack real estate agents to process forms and looking at many a crappy hole we put a deposit down on this place in Mascot (where the airport is). We got accepted and now we're here. Living next to the airport (its literally just a couple of minutes away) is pretty cool. I'm not yet over the novelty of seeing planes fly over really low and I'm already starting to tune out the noise which isn't as bad as The Castle would have you think. I'll have to get a little movie on my camera of a plane flying over for you guys to see. That is one thing I will never get used to in Sydney: not just here in Mascot but anywhere in the eastern suburbs, there will occasionally be a moment when you stop at lights and you see a bloody huge jet fly across the road in the distance and it looks like it's only 20m off the ground.
The flat is really nice. It's the perfect size for us (which is small but not cramped). It is much cleaner than all the other places we saw and the area is rather nice. The flat just got done up before we moved in so the kitchen is all new and stuff.
We haven't actually been into the city proper yet, we've been too busy. The Eastern Suburbs is basically the size of the Greater Hobart Area but completely packed with residential and commercial zones. Keep in mind that the Eastern Suburbs only forms about a fifth of Sydney. 'tis large.
I got the phone line hooked up yesterday, next step is getting internets. Hopefully shouldn't be too long and then I'll see you guys online heaps.
What else? It was my birthday yesterday! Yay me! I spent a good portion of it in the Bondi Junction Centrelink office changing details and applying for rent assitance on top of my newstart allowance. Now that we've settled in to our flat I can start properly looking for a job. Hopefully it shouldn't be too long before I find something. I'm not going to be very fussy, I'll take whatever I can get.
Mardi Gras was on Sunday, missed it I'm afraid... oh well. Television over here is weird, it's exactly the same but with different people reading the news, and just to make it even weirder the guy that used to do Sports in Tasmania is the Newsreader here now which threw me a bit. AFL and NRL have literlly swapped places in terms of coverage. NRL games get primetime and the NRL footy show is on at 8:30 while there is like one AFL game shown on Saturday afternoon.
I'll put some pictures I took of the flat on my Flickr page. We got an awesome old sofa from the salvos for a great price. Only just managed to fit it through the door of the flat. It is comfy and big so if anyone wants to come up and stay a few nights in Sydney they are welcome to crash.
Anyways, I'm settling in rather nicely. Sarah's doing great and is keeping busy at uni. Miss peoples and Battlefield 2. I shall live. I should mention that it is TOO HOT in Sydney. Everyday is like one of those five or so days we get each summer in Tasmania that is just too hot to do anything. Today is alright though...
Getting here - I just thought I should add some stuff about the trip up to Sydney. The cruise seats on the ferry are a joke. They have given up trying to stop people from sleeping on the padded benches in the lounge, it looks like a bloody hobo cruise. Driving from Melbourne to Sydney takes AGES. It was so hot on the way up that my suit bag which was at the back of the car under the rear window actually melted in spots. We passed though a bunch of towns on the way up. One of them is the dumbest theme town I've ever seen, it is hundreds of kilometres from the coast but some git decided to make it the 'submarine' town. It's named after some WWII submarine captian and has a huge bloody submarine in the central park (photo). It just struck me as the stupidest thing ever.
Once we got to Sydney it was an adventure in driving. There is nohing worse than driving in an unfamiliar city and when it's as busy as Sydney it just sucks. I've mostly gotten used to Sydney driving now but it's still odd. There are multiple lane priority roads everywhere. It's like having the Brooker Highway run through Sandy Bay. It makes sense given the riduculous amount of traffic that moves around constantly but it took a little getting used to.
That's about it for now. I'll update again when I can, either I'll pop into an internet cafe again or the next update will be the announcement that my internet connection is live.
20/3/06 - Gah, I am still without internets. Naturally there are problems as always. Modem was out of stock and they didn't tell me until I rang and they said they had got new stock and were sending them out. So if it doesn't arrive today then it 'should' arrive tomorrow. Either way internets soon. I'm at the library at the moment. Once I get the modem I'll post pictures and some movies.
Also, I hear that once I left EVERYONE ON THE PLANET AND MANNY TOO bought Battlefield. That's awesome... Sure I had the game for months and it was just Ling and me, and then Duncan for a while but no problems, I'll just play tetris on my digital set-top box. Now I really need to get a job so I can get a computer.
Speaking of jobness, there are a few positions I have to put in applications for. There is a school that needs a computer tech which is exactly what I was doing at Guilford so I'll try for that. I've passed on the idea of going for a programming position cos I'm not going to be here long enough to justify it. I'm thinking I just want something basic so I can get moneys without overly large amounts of stress.
Anyways, I'll update again when I have my own internets (or from here again if there are more delays). I have a movie of a Goliath Stick Insect crawling on my arm from the museum. It was cool.
21/3/06 - AHAHAHAAAHAHAHHAHHA!!!!!! IT'S ALIVE!!!!!
22/3/06 - Ok, I can upload stuff now. Here is a movie (2.6MB .mov) of a Goliath Stick Insect crawling on my arm. It was cool. This was at the Australian Museum. I'll upload photos of the flat and pics from the zoo onto my flickr account later today.
:o That is one mother of a bug!
23/3/06 - Ok, they're up now. You have no right to judge me. Every person who has ever gone to a zoo has taken a photo of two animals mating. It's like an unwritten law. Nice photos Mick. Your place looks cool (but still messy obviously). It's not a mess anymore, those photos were taken in like the first two days while we were unpacking. I'll get some new photos of the place when I can be bothered.
1/4/06 - I haven't updated here in a while. Not heaps to report. Looking for jobs sucks. I doubt i'll get anything before easter. That said i'm not too fussed, newstart is enough to cover expenses and the money i already had in the bank (whats left after all the stuff we had to buy for the flat) covers the occasional movie, dvd or play. It's good, I most certainly can't complain. Would like some extra money though... I've been thinking i should get a desktop instead of a laptop (moot point until i get a job). Sarah and I realised that we are going to have to send stuff back with a removalist so that aspect of the decision is removed. Basically i think it makes more sense to buy a desktop, seeing as it would save me like a grand. Also when i think about what i would use a laptop for games doesn't come into it. Also i would rather a get a mac laptop one day.
I did buy part of a computer. I got a 250GB hard drive with a USB external enclosure. Sarah's laptop hard drive was full and i figured it would be handy.
Also, i took a small movie of the flat to show you guys (19.3MB). It gives a better indication than the pictures of just how TRULY TINY it is. Dont get me wrong, i love it. Those of you that have seen my bedroom at home know that it is really small so I'm used to it.
Sarah and I went to a play at the Opera House. This makes us cultured. It was a production of The Importance of Being Earnest with two guys playing all of the roles, it was ridiculously funny. Basically it starts out with them just having to do quick costume changes but as the play progresses they have to do other things like using puppets. It keeps going until the end where seven characters are on stage at once and the guys are basically running around grabbing parts of characters' costumes to deliver lines. It sounds weird but it worked and was really funny.
We have tickets for Ross Noble on Monday. He is incredibly funny and you should all go see him when he is down in Hobart cos he's great.
Movies: V for Vendetta ROCKED HARD. See it peoples. Planning on seeing Inside Man on tuesday. I just had a thought, I'm going to start a page on the wiki where i can write a little bit about movies i see and people can say what they thought about them. Done.
27/4/06 - I'm not great at updating this thing. Anyways, yesterday I had two interviews. One with MYOB and one with NetRegistry. Both are for support type jobs. At the end of the NetRegistry interview they offered me a position (yay!) and when I got home I got a call from the MYOB guy offering me a position as well (:o). So anyways, I'm taking the NetRegistry one cos its better and pays more so I start work on Monday. My official title is 2nd Level Helpdesk Technical Support, which means I'm on the team that deals with client problems that the 1st level staff can't handle. NetRegistry is a small business internet hosting and domain name registry type company so I'll probably be dealing with lots of DNS and web application issues. It's kind of scary at the moment but I'm glad to have a job. Hopefully it goes well.
26/5/06 - I'm not intentionally doing monthly updates but there you go... Time is flying now that i am of the working dead. I've basically been spending all day at work and most of my free time setting up my old laptop to dual boot linux and xp - i only use xp to watch tv shows and stuff on the telly cos the tv-out doesn't work in linux. So basically i am on linux now. I've got ubuntu pretty much set up with all of the functionality i require. Those people that say linux is a viable alternative for non-technical people are on crack. I've got no problem with terminals (i spend heaps of time ssh'd into a unix box at work) but there is just too much fiddling required to do so many things in linux that someone who is not a computer type person would easily give up. I am a computer type person but i gave up on trying to get opera working with the plugins i wanted and am on firefox now (though i had to set a bunch of apt-get prefs manually to override ubuntu's firefox version limitations to get 1.5 installed - ubuntu 5.10 only supports up to 1.08, do you see what i am talking about?). The important thing is that being a computer person i take a curious sort of enjoyment out of spending hours tooling around and googling and experimenting to get stuff working the way i want. Regular people most definitely do not. Basically ubuntu is great for non-technical people who are happy to settle with the basic functionality given by the default ubuntu supported applications, but as soon as they want something that isn't available in synaptic they're fucked. I can't imagine the number of people who would be completely happy with the basic application set is very large at all. It's like the zealots who claim that linux is a viable gaming platform because it has tux-racer and that is a game - yes it is, but its a crap one and people want to play Oblivion. Don't get me wrong, there are bloody heaps of packages available in synaptic and these are ridiculously easy to install. It's just that invariably a user is going to want something not on the list.
I didn't intend to write a big thing of my impressions of using linux - especially not one that sounds negative. I'm enjoying using it, it's good. I just don't think it's anywhere near being a viable alternative to windows or OSX for non-technical people. Fundamentally windows is about layers of metaphors - the desktop etc. designed to keep the user seperate from the raw data and files that is the operating system. Linux is about not having anything between the user and the data - it's all right there. This is why linux is so powerful - by dealing with things at such a low level the amount or control is extraordinary, as is the ability of the user to completely fuck up the system. Ubuntu is trying to make an OS that is easier to use than windows but as pwerful as linux. They aren't there on the easy bit yet (the beta of dapper drake is available and apparantly that is a fair improvement), but the idea of an OS that is ridiculously user-friendly but still having all of the power of a linux system for the people who want it is nifty.
This post was supposed to be about my job... well, I'll keep it short. I like it quite a bit. I'm not sure I'll ever work in another place that matches this one in the coolness stakes. It starts with a ping-pong table ends with beer on fridays (not just after work beers, they literally bring in a carton every friday afternoon). No dress-code, i can shave as seldom as i like, everyone is exceptionally easy to get along with (except the sys admins who are scary-nazi-unix-freaks). They pay for up to five grand worth or training courses a year for all employees, you can salary-sacrifice to buy computers and the pay is good. My favourite part is that everyone can swear as much as they like. The job itself isn't quite as cool but i do enjoy it. It's basically flat-out, each day only feels like about three hours cos its just an endless series of problems to fix. It's dynamic and i certainly don't get bored because i dont have a chance to. The customer interaction part is something im getting used to. Most people are fairly nice, many are thick as planks. It's often too busy, the support 2 queue (basically the collection of technical problems and my main responsibility) gets too long too often - not really my fault i should point out, the business is growing faster than the customer service dept. I replaced a guy that left, they needed more people before that point and so they had to train me which further reduced the staff available to work etc... they're hiring more staff soon though, it's been so busy and Ive been having to learn what im doing in a ridiculously hectic environment.
Basically by not going down the traditional uni then entry-level programming route and instead jumping into a support role ive started out in a second level position (higher pay is awesome, being in a role that involves supervising level 1 staff is strange). Any one can work support - the thing that is hard to find is a person who has a serious understanding of computer systems who is willing to work support. Companies like mine need people like me because while many of their support calls/emails are from people who need help setting up outlook, some are from web developers who want to know why their ASP code isn't correctly posting data to the payment gateway. That's why they offered me the job in the first interview - it turns out that we lot are gold outside of the core software engineering field. I'm learning tonnes about e-commerce and different types of web applications and whatnot. I've just finished my fourth week and when i think about what I've been doing it's ridiculous how much I've picked up in that time. It's basically been a case of learning by doing. I like it, it's hard work but I enjoy it mostly.
ok, that's a long post. im going to see x-men 3 tomorrow and now im going to make tea - chorizo and mushrooms in a chilli and capsicum pasta sauce (admittedly the sauce is from a jar)
26/06/06 - Just a quick one. I'm getting put on ADSL2 sometime in the next few days :) I can't wait to come home one day and find my internet running at some ridiculous speed. I'll let you guys know what speed I actually end up with.
I've been playing lots of New Super Mario Bros. and Guitar Hero. Works still good. Sarah and I have pretty much decided that we will be back home before christmas so that's good. I like my job but it isn't good enough to make me want to stay in Sydney.
That's tops. You still need a Compy mind, BF2 BECKONS you back into the fold.
02/07/06 - 3MB down, 1MB up. I chewed through my offpeak quota in two nights... I'm going to upgrade my plan before the next month. I'm going to get a computer in early August. Work lets employees salary sacrifice for computers (i have to wait another month before I've finished my probationary period and am allowed to do it). I'm getting a 20inch iMac. I really want a Mac and it will handle all the games out now quite happily and I'll think about getting a proper gaming rig after Vista is out. I can live with the wait because getting it through work will knock about a grand off the price and I can pay the remainder off over a few months.
20/08/06 - I'm sore... It was so worth it though. I just got back from paintball. A couple of guys at work organised it. It is SO COOL, battlefield has nothing on actually having shit whizz past your head and jumping for cover. This is the place we went: Skipped annoying flash intro.
It is really expensive so I don't reckon I'd do it again for that reason but I'm really glad I tried it the once. I played pretty defensive like so I didn't get hit too much (some guys went full-on commando and got sprayed). That said I copped a few nice ones - and it does hurt. You certainly know when you've been hit as it stings like nothing else. The hits go red straight away and the good ones swell up after about half an hour. Pics below of the best one on my right arm (and you can see the result of me not getting a haircut since I left Tasmania...):
That and the fact that Michael is now emo :P
Emo for definite! omg stop cutting yourself and start cutting your hair!
Tada!
And the close up.
The first hit I took scared the crap out of me seeing as it was all of an inch and a half from the one place you REALLY don't want to get hit (definitely not posting pics of that one).
Anyways - it was sweet. I'll also take this opportunity to post a couple of pics that have been sitting on my camera for ages:
This is the Saturday paper up here. It is a monster. It actually takes all of Saturday to read the thing.
This is the coolest omelette ever. I totally nailed it - DELICIOUS!
So yeah - update! I've been meaning to write more often but you know, I'm lazy. Stuffs going well. Got a sweet new phone (works paying for my mobile calls so I figured I'd buy a nice new handset) It's a nokia 6131 for anyone interested. And with that I'm going to rest my weary legs and nurse my bruises.
03/09/06 - I've been setting up the computer I got given to me. My boss replaced a fileserver and it was taking up space in his office so he gave it to me. I bought a cheap LCD and keyboard etc and I've spent this weekend setting it all up. It's a 2.4ghz with 512MB Corsair DDR2 RAM. It's only got a Geforce FX 5600 though so I reckon a RAM and basic video card upgrade should have it running BF2 :)
Haven't really started setting up Windows yet, I've been getting Ubuntu set up properly first. Part of that was finally getting around to playing with Google Earth (I know, old news) which I'd never actually tried before. At any rate I set about flagging the major landmarks in terms of my life here in Sydney (at least the main ones, I haven't mapped the take-away chicken place I like yet...) and exported them so anyone whose interested can see how close my flat really is to the airport for example: clicky.
Also computer related: when I reported the speed of my ADSL2 connection I was a little off. Turns out I'd actually hit the limit of the old wireless card in the laptop, I've got the new comp plugged in via ethernet and it actually pulls down around 10MB :-O
10/09/06 - Wowsers... I've wanted to see one of these shows for YEARS. Now I have :)
Awesomely amazing is a start in terms of descriptions... the sheer ridiculousness of the talent on display is numbing. An amazing juggling act, one of the funniest clown routines I've ever seen and the russian swings are insane. It was great. Also, my parents are up here so it's great to see them and I spent the afternoon playing guitar hero and shadow of the colossus with my little brother. Tomorrow is zoo with the family (I've got the day off work) and tea at the revolving tower restaurant thing. Good stuff.
16/09/06 - The Dresden Dolls are one of the coolest live acts I have ever seen. Really great. They sound perfect and are heaps of fun. They also made great use of covers - War Pigs in particular was a highlight (they also played a Decemberists song and started the encore with Living on a Prayer by Bon Jovi which was tonnes of fun). The just mentioned Bon Jovi cover was made all the more awesome by the fact that they were joined by one of the support acts, a guy named Jason Webley. This dude was awesome - he got the crowd completly on his side (no mean feat for a support most people hadn't heard of). He was by himself primarily using a piano accordian and his voice was made for sea-shanties and drinking songs (one of the latter he led the crowd in after getting everyone to simulate drunkeness by spinning around). He was insane amounts of fun and so I bought one of his cd's at the merch stand after the show (dunno if it will be as much fun recorded but I'm certainly hoping). Once I've listened to it I'll post a track or two on here for you guys to hear (he's a little-known act and I'm trying to get my friends to listen to him so I'm sure he won't mind). The other support act (The Red Paintings - they're from Brisbane) were probably the most theatrical prog-rock outfit you could ever see. The members were mostly dressed in kabuki-type outfits and there were artists painting on stage (two of which were painting people) and there was a projector playing scenes from Tetsuo. At any rate I spent basically the whole set watching that screen since their music was insanely generic compared to their presentation. So yeah, The Dresden Dolls are great live. It was a great night and now I'm quite tired...
But first! - dinner at the revolving restaurant was nifty. The view was very impressive. From the ground it looks like there are several buildings just as tall as the tower but they really aren't. We went to what is now my favourite restaurant in Sydney the next night: Löwenbräu Keller. It's a full-on German restaurant and bar and it's awesome. They serve huge portions of food and it's delicious. The beer is great of course and you can order 0.3, 0.5 and 1 litre glasses. I had the biggest pork schnitzel I have ever seen with saurkraut and herb mayonnaise and it was the perfect combination. They even have an oom-pah-pah band playing. It's my cultural heritage and it's brilliant.
Mr Cook is arriving on Wednesday for Placebo! I've arranged for leave from work for while he's up here so we're going to live it up. Can't wait.
15/10/06 - If Nathan from Faker and Patience from The Grates had a baby it would be an unstoppable jumping around machine. So yes, saw The Grates supported by Faker (would prefer the other way around but what can you do). It was lots of fun. The Grates are really good live. They have a fourth member for live shows - it's a guy in a panda suit who plays keyboard, banjo and guitar where required. It was good to see them - I wanted to see them at the BDO but they were on first up at 11 in the morning. Faker were Faker and therfor awesome. Their new stuff was really good so I'm eager for the second album.
Just saw The Departed - thoughts on Pazu'sMoviePage.
Works going well. It's a bit insane - our customer service manager has moved into another department and the company has frozen hiring. The clever reader will have done the math and realised that the result is that there is no manager for our department. The management duties are now split three ways between the COO (the csm's boss) myself and the old csm who is going to keep doing some of the non-hands-on stuff (roster, stats etc.). I was the 2IC for the customer service department already so now it's basically the same thing just more of it.
25/11/06 - It's a good thing this isn't a real blog becuase I'm shit at updating it. Stuff is good. I'm looking forward to coming home for Christmas. We'll be back here for at least a few months into next year but probably not too long after that. Work is work, turns out they call it that for a reason.
I didn't get around to writing about it when I saw it but Children of Men is almost certainly my pick for best movie this year. It's simply amazing. The direction is nuts - it has these ridiculously long takes that have tonnes going on, the organisation required is huge. Visually it was brilliant and the story and acting were just perfect. I basically loved everything about it - see it if you haven't (though it might be a matter of waiting for the DVD now). Seeing The Prestige tomorrow - it's the last of the big three I've been waiting for.
I finally got that Soylent Green is people! t-shirt off thinkgeek that I've wanted for ages. I also bought a couple of Dropkick Murphys t-shirts and a pair of celtic green chuck taylors so I have an alarming injection of green in my wardrobe.
Sarah's finished her exams as of two days ago. She'll start looking for a job soon. What she ends up doing will basically determine how much longer we're up here. The plan is to spend some months both working and saving up some cash so that we have reasonably healthy bank accounts when we get back. Given that after I get back i intend to spend another two years at uni and only working part time if at all in that time money is good. While there are lots of things I'm very much over in terms of my job the pay isn't one of them.
Looking forward to the Big Day Out though I've got a few concerts lined up before then. Homebake is in a couple of weeks. November 15th should be a great night - I've got the work christmas party and The New Pornographers concert.
3/12/06 - Homebake was great. Not as cool as the BDO is though - the problem's not with the lineup but the organisation. BDO has paired stages so that while someone's playing on one the other is set up, the result being a wait of all of about a minute between sets. Homebake has four stages all with their sets in sync so that whatever you do there was generally a twenty minute wait between sets. Given that it was cold and wet that sucks.
Speaking of cold and wet it rained HEAVY. During a You Am I song when they hit the first chorus the sky opened up and dropped the fattest raindrops ever. It was amazing how it went from really light drizzle to such heavy rain instantly. Anyways everybody got saturated.
Highlights for me were Midnight Juggernauts (they rocked hard) and Silverchair played a really awesome set.
17/12/06 - The New Pornographers were totally awesome. Neko Case is really small. They sounded great and their songs are just awesome fun. I reckon Auron would like them cos they have one of the greatest drummers I have ever seen/heard. Basically they reaffirmed my opinion of them as my favourite band. I fly to Hobart on Tuesday the 19th (two days!). Looking forward to seeing peoples.
30/12/06 - Aww Yeah! I gots tickets to see the Dropkick Murphys in March. I seriously just have The Flaming Lips on my 'must see before I or they die' list now. I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone at the BDO since I only got the chance to see Mr Auron at Christmas. Fishbowls at Taco Bill!
Dropkick Murphys should be excellent (good work), where are they playing? Yeah I can't wait to bust-out some sangria at TBs.
The Roundhouse in Sydney (same place I saw The Dresden Dolls, it's my favourite venue here) They also have a show in melbourne.
3/1/07 - A few quick notes. New Years was cool - we were under the buildings the fireworks were being launched off (grainy mobile phone movies of explosions coming soon!). Got tickets for Ross Noble in mid-march, seeing Modest Mouse tonight. I put in annual leave for the Muse/Australia Day/BDO trifecta today - I've got from the 23rd (Muse!) through to the 29th off (goodbye last of my accrued leave...) so I'm set for the week.
17/2/07 - No update for ages even by my standards :(
Bunch of things to mention so I'll aim for rough chronilogical order. Shadow dropped past on his way home from Japanland. We ended up coming back to my flat and playing Wii and GuitarHero and drinking nice beer. He crashed on the couch for the night and it was an all around good time.
Mr Cook came up and we saw Muse at Horden Pavilion, truly amazing live band as always. A return to Lowenbrau Keller was undertaken and much food and drink was done away with in the best fashion. Then of course it was off to Melbourne for the Big Day Out and Taco Bill etc. As most of you were there you know that the level of awesome was of significant height.
Anyways, more recent developments: Wednesday was Valentine's day which is also Sarah's birthday. I took the day off without telling Sarah so that I could surprise her and we went to the zoo (elephants are really big). While we were at the zoo I asked Sarah if she would be cool with putting up with me for the rest of her life and she decided that she was so now we are engaged (yay!). This means I am now a Man of Responsibilities which I think just means that I keep doing everything I normally do but feel guiltier about some of them (like going to the pub after work for 'one' drink). So yeah. Stuff.
Haha congratulations Mick, that's awesome!
:D Congratulations to you both!
Congratulations Mick, consolations Sarah!
Congratumalations to teh (well 'soon' to be) Zees!
2/4/07 - Awesome overdose. Last week I saw two concerts, both of which were bands I've wanted to see for ages.
On Thursday was Dropkick Murphys which was a ridiculous amount of fun. Then on Friday I saw the Pixies and I'll be fucked if it wasn't the best concert I've ever seen. Those guys can sure as hell play. I'm glad I got to see them seeing as how when I first started listening to them they had been broken up for a decade and when they reformed they didn't come to Australia. Now I've seen them and it was sweet. The tickets apparantly sold out in a few minutes which was nuts - they also only went on sale a week before the show (i got in on a ticketmaster pre-sale that not too many people knew about since it wasn't advertised, blind luck FTW).
Not much else to report - continuing with the full-time grind. Last week I went to Melbourne for Monday-Tuesday for work (my company bought a smaller melbourne based competitor and I was observing support proceses) i swear food tastes better when work pays for it... I've started riding a bike to work once or twice a week, I'm kind of getting into it which is alarming as I'm the closest to being 'fit' as I've ever been.
Anyways, back to work.
I ride a bike!
25/08/07 - Wow, I haven't updated this for three months... Not much to report. Been on the tech team for a little over three months now, haven't spoken to a client since I moved :) Sys Admining is pretty cool - I've learned quite a lot about linux servers and whatnot...
Plans are afoot for Aurons next trip up here. We're all set for some Killers (sorry X-Sane!) and Muse. Should be an awesome week.
Anyways, this post was actually prompted by the following news - I got a sweet new bike:
It's a Felt Q620. It has disc brakes, front fork shocks and really nice shifters. Tonnes nicer than the bike I got for free with my health insurance... I've already put slick tyres on it and whatnot. Awesome.
Is it charging at the moment? How long do the batteries last? (points to the power point/cord)
That's the powerboard for modems and wirelessness and stuff. The bike runs on 100% eco-friendly PazuPower(TM)
26/10/07 - Today I officially passed the final test for graduation from Man School. Sarah got a flat tire and I went out and changed it. Pending the tire not falling off for at least one full week I am officially a Manly Man.
Holy crap - I can't believe you have gone this long without having to change a tire. I have lost count of how many times I have had to do that. I may have to slash the tires of your car as i leave just to give you a bit more practice :P
06/02/08 - This page has been rather thoroughly neglected... Oh well. This is probably the last post anyway seeing as we've finally gotten around to working out moving back to Tasmania. I put in my notice a while ago at work and Sarah has just put in hers. My last day of work is the 29th of Feb. As it currently stands it looks like I'll be arriving back in Hobart on the 7th of March which happens to be my birthday.
So yeah - I'm really looking forward to getting back. Sydney's great and all but I'm over it. It'll be good to see everyone more than twice a year.
Anyways - the business end of the news: I'm going to need a new job. While I'm all for starting a turf war with the bogans for the windshield washing territory near the elwick racecourse I reckon I should probably stick with IT. So if anyone knows of stuff that's going (programming or systems administration preferably) please let me know.
So I guess I'll see you all in a month.
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