emotions, mixed — i’m not sure why i’m having to remind myself approximately every two hours that yes, it’s only to be expected that i’d be alternating between (literally) jumpin’ up ’n’ down ’n’ grinning & staggering about on the verge of tears, but apparently forgetfulness is another symptom of moving from one country to another, so… but yes, my moods over the last week & a bit have been, shall we say, a little changeable…

bonus radiohead concert — linda & dave & fiona & simon & jimbo turned up for the weekend with a spare radiohead ticket in tow & would i be interested in seeing radio-YOINK!-head… (the YOINK!, of course, being the sound of me swiping the spare ticket faster than the eye could follow…) so, yeah, i got to see radiohead. twice. they were brilliant again on saturday… different set list, a little more of the bends, a little less kid a & amnesiac, but yeah, wow…

metacruft: magicdog vs sydney
26/04/2004 @ 21:55 | comments disabled

unemployed at last! well, it’s taken me about thirteen & a half years, but i’ve finally left university… nine years at JCU, about three at UTS, two & a half at USyd… i was about to say i’ve learnt a lot in that time, but you’d hope you wouldn’t spend thirteen & a half years at university without learning something…

radiohead — were phenomenal… thom yorke is such a twitchy little hobbit, & yeah, we were sitting way up in the nose bleed section & the sound was occasionally a little muddy, but wow, they were just brilliant. in no particular order, they did: there there, 2+2=5, myxomatosis, morning bell, my iron lung, pyramid song, planet telex, sit down stand up, you & whose army, backdrifts, go to sleep, exit music (for a film), paranoid android, where i end & you begin, i might be wrong, the national anthem, idioteque, how to disappear completely, climbing up the walls, karma police, sail to the moon, everything in its right place… i think my life in sydney is now complete… thank you everyone…

metacruft: magicdog vs sydney
24/04/2004 @ 07:16 | comments disabled

こんにちはすみえ.

お-げんきですか. ぼくはげんきです.

work plan — escape velocity in 5, 4, 3…

• meet people for coffee (ongoing);
• try not to gloat too much (ongoing);
• finish briefing papers (today);
• attend official farewell (today);
• tidy up desk & immediate environs (today/tomorrow);
• unsubscribe from mailing lists (tomorrow);
• disable administrator accounts (tomorrow);
• accelerate to escape velocity (friday)

that’s right, sometimes a parrot talks — awk! awk! awk-awk! aw-aw-aw-awk!

metacruft: magicdog vs sydney
21/04/2004 @ 13:57 | comments disabled

that whistling noise — is time rushing past… still lots of things to do & organise, but it’s all happening…

breathing — must remember to keep breathing… last week was kinda permeated with a deep, free-floating anxiety… this week i’m feeling a little calmer… sort of walking around saying goodbye to things & almost enjoying myself now… & you know, sure, it’s all a little bit sentimental & self-indulgent, but yeah, sydney has been fantastic for me over the last few years, & it’s nice not to be totally frantic as i’m leaving…

metacruft: magicdog vs sydney
20/04/2004 @ 19:13 | comments disabled

turn the key — just signed off on the new system. it’s live. fingers crossed that no one finds any new & interesting bugs before the 28th… ;p

let’s count!

1. six more working days!
2. eight days to radiohead!
3. twelve days to tokyo!

metacruft: magicdog vs sydney
16/04/2004 @ 06:18 | comments disabled

system nigh good to go — well, it’s still a little rough around the edges, but i spent much of yesterday afternoon & this morning testing what could well become the first production version (fingers crossed) of our new database… of which i wrote the spec, built the proof of concept, & wrote the data migration tools… so, you know, yay for me… as a possible added bonus, the data migration appears (fingers remain crossed) to have gone smoothly… (the final lot of data came out of the legacy system & into the new system at 9.30 last night…) so yeah, this is kinda cool…

& i may find myself, in another part of the world — it’s getting increasingly difficult to stay focussed on the tasks at hand… like finishing work with a degree of dignity, & finalising all my packing, & contacting all the organisations & companies & so on that i need to contact…

petrolhead — forgot to mention the hire car i scored in townsville… i asked for a compact hatch, but they didn’t have any, so they gave me a V6 all-wheel-drive mitsubishi magna sports model at the compact hatch rate… sweet. deep shiny blue with a wing on the back & one of them new-fangled 5 speed sequential automatic transmissions… it went like a rocket… not that i was hooning around or anything…

metacruft: magicdog vs sydney
15/04/2004 @ 14:41 | comments disabled

shidoni ni kaerimashita — returned to sydney after a brief easter sojourn in townsville… did the family, friends & mountainbiking things while i was up there… mikalya is getting big & starting to talk… dawn is keen on jumping up & down on the spot & does a very good impersonation of a cat… & my mum is keen on visiting tokyo…

mokomoko — warwick lent me his kona mokomoko over the weekend… last year’s top of the line race bike is this year’s loaner now that he has his scandium-framed salsa… (he was gonna lend me the atx that i rode in the triple-r last year, but it had a flat, so…) the mokomoko was totally sweet, weighed next to nothing & smoothed out the bumps like a flying carpet… dave & i hit the tracks out behind the university a couple of times & i managed not to bend or break anything, which is always nice, but even nicer when you’re on someone else’s bike…

gogo shichi ji ni nemashita — gozen hachi ji ni okimashita… totally crashed when i got back to coogee… fell asleep around seven last night & crawled outta bed about eight this morning…

tokyocycling.com — hey, cool…

metacruft: magicdog vs sydney
13/04/2004 @ 16:19 | comments disabled

26,832 things to do — 20 & a bit days in which to do them…

makes happy little data cleaning noises — as scripts run in the background…

we are the champions — sydney kings 90, west sydney razorbacks 79… the kings win the championship 3 games to 2… (my boss bought me a ticket to the last game of the NBL finals series as a going away present… on one level it’s probably kinda symbolic that we’d choose to spend a social occasion chanting DE-FENCE! DE-FENCE! but there you go…)

it was a freaky game — the kings were nowhere for most of it… the pigs opened up a lead in the first quarter & held it pretty much throughout… the kings offence was completely scrappy, there were long periods when they couldn’t buy a basket… & they were woeful from the foul line… every so often they’d make a bit of a run, but the pigs would jump away again…

uh oh — so it gets to about three minutes to go, the pigs are up 79-72 & it’s just not looking good… (my boss & i being kings fans…) cue the kings to light up an 18-0 run… ebe eri hit some threes & c.j. bruton started icing free throws… game over… the pigs looked like they couldn’t believe it…

of course, it’s not just about winning — i mean, that was tidy work by the townsville crocodiles in finishing ninth…

school’s out — also had my last beginner’s japanese class last night… it was a great course, with a fantastic teacher… honestly, learning japanese is so much fun, everyone should do it…

metacruft: magicdog vs sydney
07/04/2004 @ 17:50 | comments disabled

apologies for delayed transmission — have been/still am exceedingly busy…

happiness — had a fantastic week exploring sydney with Sumie… day tripped to the blue mountains, visited the zoo, walked through the botanic gardens, dinners in chinatown & darling harbour, swimming in coogee, walked around bondi, proposed… (she said yes…)

daveness — his royal daveness was in town earlier this week on business… we caught up a few times for dinner, coffee & conversation… finally got to eat at fuji-ya, which i’ve often thought about doing but never done for some reason… it was good, although the takoyaki wasn’t great… on the other hand, the tempura & karaage were very good, & dave recommends the plum wine…

various travel plans:

• will be in townsville over easter, leaving sydney on the thursday & flying back on the monday…
• going to tokyo on the 28th…

close now — it’s all starting to feel a little freaky… totally exciting, but it seems like there’s about a zillion things to do… i guess i just gotta get in & do them…

data recovered — got everything back off my dying hard drive, which was a huge relief… took a few days, but it’s all there… & yes, it’s all backed up now…

metacruft: magicdog vs sydney
02/04/2004 @ 17:39 | comments disabled

another of life’s little warnings against complacency — things have been going more or less swimmingly… yesterday’s system demonstration was well received so the project remains on schedule… & Sumie arrives tomorrow morning, about which i’m obviously very happy…

this calls for a hard disk failure — good (in the ironic sense) old (in the literal sense) speedpig went down in a (metaphoric) ball of flames last night… the drive appears to have one or more unrecoverable errors… again? hurrah. checks date of most recent backup… aw, crap. i’d been meaning to do something about that for a couple of months now… like, about eight… runs through mental checklist of things i really don’t wanna lose if it can be avoided:

1. about eight months worth of writing… (unfortunately, it’s not like i have hard copies neither — my printer’s been living in the cupboard since i’ve been in coogee on account of lack of desk space… & my ratio of writing on computer to writing on paper is about 60-40… & i generally tend to bin manuscript as soon as it’s been typed up…)
2. about eight months worth of photos & assorted images… (losing the images wouldn’t be such a wrench, but i’d prefer not to lose the photos…)

could be worse — could, obviously, be a lot better… you’d think, after the last time this happened, that i would’ve learnt… back those systems up, people.

metacruft: magicdog vs sydney
12/03/2004 @ 12:08 | comments disabled

gosh — that went well…

metacruft: magicdog vs sydney
11/03/2004 @ 16:34 | comments disabled

not so hot — much more pleasant in sydney today, although it’s clouding up, so i’m not superconfident i’m gonna make it home without a drenching…

work continues apace — so here i am in the middle of the first week approaching sanity after two weeks of major granting scheme deadline hell, & as usual (oh my, i actually started typing yousual… what the…?) there’s about two weeks worth of catch up to get through… plus the usual ongoing project stuff… of course, it’s all exacerbated by the fact that there’s just over five weeks to go before i finish (& during those five weeks i’m taking next week off & the easter break’s in there somewhere…) so really, there’s less than one working month remaining… cool…

beyond cool — Sumie arrives from tokyo on saturday morning for a brief visit, so magicdog vs sydney is likely to be off the air next week… (in the sense of not being updated, as opposed to the usual…)

metacruft: magicdog vs sydney
10/03/2004 @ 15:33 | comments disabled

きょうはにせんよんねんさんがつここのかかようびです.

すみません — slight error in my japanese at the first attempt… march would be sangatsu (third-month), as opposed to nengatsu (which would be something like year-month, & as such not even a word), but it’s fixed now…

hot — wow, it’s been insanely hot today… i just got home from japanese & it’s about 10.30 & still totally boiling…

metacruft: magicdog vs sydney
09/03/2004 @ 15:53 | comments disabled

sometimes bad teeth happen to good people — el davebot has announced fiona’s gotta date with a general anaesthetic in april to have some wisdom teeth removed… this is one of those things that just sucks, but you know, hopefully the suck factor will be as low as possible, & the glories of post-extraction life will provide ample recompense… in a show of solidarity, & in order to provide as much assistance as i can, i will go to tokyo! what? i am too helping.

uh, so anyway, curious & all that — i went for a brief surf to find out more about wisdom teeth, since the whole subject was basically shrouded in mystery to me… why, for instance, are they called wisdom teeth & not incredibly painful useless teeth that will require surgery? apparently, they’re called wisdom teeth because they “usually will try to grow in at around age 18 to 20 years. Since that is considered to be the age when people become wiser, third molars gained the nickname, ‘wisdom teeth.’” hmmm. i can’t specifically recall becoming much wiser between eighteen & twenty (nor perhaps in any of the years hence), but i’m prepared to let that go…

obviously written by a dental surgeon — i also discovered (& fiona may or may not like to skip to the next paragraph, although i’m sure she’s already across all of this) that “extraction involves accessing the tooth through the soft and hard tissue, gently detaching the connective tissue between the tooth and the bone and removing the tooth.” all of which, with the possible exception of “accessing… through the soft & hard tissue” kinda renders the whole deal in waiting room pastels & might almost lead you to suspect the procedure is (if you’ll excuse the expression in this context) a bit of a yawn…

</flippancy> — well, that’s clearly more than enough trivialising of fiona’s pain for one day… [searches for an encouraging cliché... considers & discards as inappropriate keep your chin up closely followed by variations on grin & bear it... also considers & discards as inexplicable good news everyone, i’ve taught the toaster how to love. abandons search for encouraging cliché... resorts to beginner’s japanese: ganbatte kudasai, fiona-san!]

björk stjörker — rob reports that christopher has breezed through tokyo & was last sighted on his way to further ports european…

metacruft: magicdog vs sydney
08/03/2004 @ 20:10 | comments disabled