Becstarr: APECapalooza

The circus was in town and we went to join in. Saw the riot squad and water cannon, naked men wearing 2 pairs of socks (promptly hauled into the converted jail-buses by the police... they know party people when they see them!), and Grandmas Against War.

G&A's "APEC a-party" was the evening fun, and it was great to see a bunch of people there. And I hear that October is shaping up to be a month of many birthdays! Huzzah! I'm looking forward to it.

Jen - Big screen goodness

Got woken up by Dante every ten minutes from 6:55am until we finally got up at 8am (when he woke up his siblings)... grr. Visited my brother at Rookwood, had lunch at the noodle shop at Flemington, then had a visit from Grandma who stayed for dinner (Dan's chicken wings in tar) along with my folks and brother Tim and his family. Dan bought a new 24" monitor (Acer - $599 from Officeworks. Bargain!) which goes very nicely with my laptop... *grin*

Jen - Ratty day

Took the kids to go and see the latest Pixar film, Ratatouille since it was the APEC public holiday for those of us in Sydney. Quite enjoyable. The cinema surrounds and shopping centre were packed when we came out of the movie. The kids had a very late lunch and way too much lollies which made for a ratty afternoon (pun intended).

Evelyn - Quiet Night In

We had a quiet night in to let someone recover. Apparently full-time work is tiring.

David - Hell, Stupidity and Travel

The last few weeks have been remarkably interesting. Interesting in the sense of having a hand grenade constantly exploding inside your skull from the shenanigans. Political warfare exploding all over the shop. Am now staring down the barrel of 7 weeks in the Trafalgar Hilton in London. On the one hand "London, YAY!" - on the other hand - "7 weeks in a hotel - CRAP". So far this year I have spent a third of my time in hotels. Getting. A. Little. Over. It.

Ben - All work and no play

Stupid goddamn rain! I was going to slack off this week and catch some rays, but this stupid rain has kept me indoors, and working no less. Assignments driving me crazy - I'm supposed to explain the importance of 3d geometry in the syllabus with reference to recent research. So far as I can tell, there is no recent research to prove that 3d geometry is important. 3d geometry is important because we live in it, and not even the most pedantic and obvious of academics seems to find it necessary to say in more than a sentence. My other assignment is about Aboriginal health, which is less frustrating, but very depressing.

Next semester, I think I'll take Cheerful Studies 101, and write some essays about puppies and balloons.

Tancred - teh winner is me :)

Spent the day setting up and deploying Nortel switches into edge roles. The Nortel CLI is really crap, but Nortel does have an interested graphic application for switch management. You end up having to use it as it seems impossible to get detailed port information on the command line. Grrrr

I did get to shine at work today. For several hours other support people could not ping a laptop and could not work out why even though DHCP worked. I suggested the laptop must have a firewall badly configured. I was right :) and the other guy said D’oh hehe. Teh winner is me :)

Shannon

Still getting use to the new, but slummy, apartment. Am very happy to have the interweb and telephone back.

I am choosing to believe that I feel like death because I was rude to a gypsy lass in the shadow of Notre Dame, rather than because I drank too much.

Jen - Sleep catch-up

Yay for longer long weekends! Dan took the day off work today and hence I was able to catch up on some much needed sleep while he went for a walk with Elora.

Becstarr: Editing and quizmaking til late late

Big meeting with Rob D for Abattoirs this morning-- we'll open the site to students either this weekend or Monday- exciting! Spent the afternoon making edits and building the quiz we worked out this morning. We're planning pre- and post- placement evals and hopefully a paper out of this, which I'll get my name on! WOO! This would be a first paper for me... so I'm pretty keen to make it happen. :)

Shoshe: 4/m 3bar 2/m or 622?

Sunday: made excellent salsa with my department.
Monday: dropped Quantum Mechanics and Geochemistry classes -- yay! Noticed that the trees are starting to turn colours
Tuesday: went looking for bookcases
Wednesday: trying to figure out Hermann-Mauguin point group system so I can do my Mineralogy problem set (due tomorrow). Makes no sense at all :( Also, got free pizza for dinner. Pizza here has a whole lot of cheese. And often comes with dipping sauce.

Jaime: We're back baby

The internet is back and the water is fine. New apartment is ok, but kinks to iron out... I have a sneaking suspicion I just ran two sayings together and caused an accident. Right now the little people are running around on fire. Maybe I can get an inappropriate comment in there to really get the fires burning high.... ya mum! There that will do nicely.

Yen Li - still no rain.

Never have I been so keen for rain to test the leaking windows. I've decided to sell the apt, organised agent & am moving. These medical text books are damned heavy. As soon as the window is rather fixed, I get to move on with my life. It looks like my family might break even on the sale of this apt. This would be a good thing.

Tancred - first day at a new job

Finally started my new job today - Network analyst at Queen Margaret University. It's all a bit of a mess at the moment. The University has just started to move from buildings scattered across the city to a new purpous built campus. At the moment it's a building site with a small area for the IT group to work in.Yup I have a hard hat and safety vest to walk around in.

My first task is to learn all about the BlueSocket wireless LAN solution and deploy about 100 of the access points. The cool thing is they run POE, the problem at the moment is there is noone has run any UTP to where I need to deploy them. The other "interesting feature" of the new campus is the buildings are all "green". This means all the acadamics will be working in open plan offices. I wonder how many of them know about this

Jen - Still coughing

Picked up Dante from school and bought him a few books at the Book Fair. Then took him to his piano lesson. And coughed all day, again.

Sitting around waiting to be offered work, accomodation, etc. is proving surprisingly effective!

Jen - Visit from Eugene

Had a visit from Eugene today, who borrowed my father's ute. Atticus found a "pet" butterfly... let's call him "Squashy". R.I.P. Squashy.

Becstarr : Reunitions

Finally got out of meetings at 2pm and escaped to lunch at Macro. TWO PEE EM!! Afternoon, reunited with bike (now with shorter stem so hopefully less wobbling), ipod (so much RN to catch up on!) and gym. Evening, jelly with Joel and Zoe.

falsedan - parks

Taking Aija on an extended tour of London parks, and currently trying to find a place in Islington that will sell me Tom Yum—only 3 Thai restaurants on Upper St WTF!

Jen - Typical day

Nothing of note happened today. Just the typical day at home with the two youngest kids. Still knitting that cardigan and coughing my guts out.

Becstarr : Last minute abattoir dash

Last minute dash to get all Rob's post-China readings and links up for the abattoir modules.
The site is looking V Good. Skipped Combat again and went straight to Dave's for dinner and ate a large pile of oranges. Wei keeps them in the fridge, which I find strange but on the other hand, he does always seem to have the most delicious oranges around, so I may have to try it!

Joe - No need to huff and puffa

Great weekend. Did things. And also stuff...Actually spent entire weekend on cough drops and Bex Powders. No idea what the hell went on. Woke up this morning with a traffic cone and a tattoo of the Dutch national anthem in 12 point font across my thighs.
I blame APEC.

Guy - They pay me to be mean to kids

Tired, tired. The weekend was spent sleeping/recovering. Today I got to do the lesson where you divide the class up to represent the rich and poor in the world. Most kids either didn't get a jelly bean, or only got one. But the four kids representing the 23 wealthiest nations in the world got 26 each! They objected that I was being slack, I told them they'd gotten the point of the lesson.

Bez - That which should not be fried

Went to the State Fair yesterday, and ate things. Terrible, terrible things. Suprisingly, I balked at the deep fried Oreo/Twinkie booth - I have grown weak! Today was Salsa Day, which involved many more vegetables.

Anna : Cooking

Guy's old's were coming over for dinner on Saturday so that meant the morning was spent rushing out to Flemington Markets, buying huge amounts of food and then rushing back to help Eugene move. Afternoon was spent playing Okami to calm down before the cooking began and then frying eggplant, tossing salad and baking a WHOLE salmon ... mmm fish!

Ben - Summertime, and the living is easy

Went to the beach yesterday. Water still cold, but I did some sunbathing and took a nice walk out to the lighthouse, then around the cliffs. My home internet's down for the count, but I'm getting so much more work done I don't think I'll bother fixing it until the holidays.

Dan - Chaos: Theory and Practice

Got to sleep in! Got woken up by Dante cheerfully and excitedly poking the Fathers Day card he made into my face. Later, hordes of Wongs arrived next door and we all ate too much food while 8 children ran screaming around the yard destroying all in sight.

Jen - Day for Dads

Let Dan sleep in until 9:30am! Had a Father's Day family BBQ. My dad's cousins, no. 4 (from Singapore), 6 (from the US) & 8 came, as well as his brother (no. 7) and sister. Ate lots. The kids played and played and got on really well (the eldest two grandkids are off skiing - amazing what a difference their absence makes). Got tipsy on the tiramisu.

Becstarr : Sociable stinkbug

Took Dad for a Fathers' Day coast walk and picnic at Rose Bay. Rach brought excellent Vietnamese fresh spring rolls. A stinkbug came to the party and set up camp in the garlic dip. Went on to Dave & Wei's housewarming in Darlo and admired the LARGE study. Mmm...space....

Nerida - Father's Day

Chilling out at the parents. Loving the long weekend (took Friday off). Waiting for America's Next Top Model to start on Fox8 - Tyra is so wrong!.

Did a bit of gardening. Contemplated housework then figured that anything is better than that. Still getting over the weekend of non-stop birthdays.