YL - new Star Trek movie

No surprise but I did love it in all it's bright shininess. =)

Ben - thing

Coming to Uni this morning, I saw an ad.

"Be careful putting your lipstick on," it said. "We don't want to have to put it on for you. Drive carefully." The ad was for a funeral parlor.

As if the poor taste wasn't enough, the ad was on the inside of a bus, where it doesn't even make any sense.

Jen - Long day

Spent 10 hours at work yesterday... 11 including travelling time. Blargh.

Actually, it was quite fun. There was a scheduled power outage. No-one allowed in the building. No computers. No printers. No network. No pressure! I spent the time weeding a network cabinet, stopping regularly for cups of tea and the occasional game of Zuma (we had one computer hooked up to the generator). I wish all work days were like that.

Came home completely exhausted, of course. Poor Dan had all three kids all day... and then I was pretty much asleep by 10pm. On a Saturday night! How times have changed!

David - The Definition of Irony

One of the fascinating things about having lived in America for the last 3 years is the radical shift from "there is always more stuff" to "oh crap, the environment". When I first moved here the car ads were all "look at my big manly manly car that gets .5 miles to the gallon", now the ads are all "look at my big manly car that gets 1.5 miles to the gallon because of magic ingredient X". Its an improvement, but not much. The key point of course being that, as usual, its all about the show and not the actual, you know, doing.

So there I am, coming off a flight from San Francisco and I land at JFK. I am walking through the endless miles of corridors and I come across what can only be called the Exxon Mobil Edifice of Irony. Its an entire section of the airport devoted to pointing out how wonderful and new energy Exxon Mobil is, how every day they are saving Americans all this energy and therefore the environment... as if that wasn't irony enough, how did they choose to impart this message? Recycled paper banners? Eco friendly water paints? Oh no, they used 40 plasma screens playing the same graphic presentation over and over again. 40 X 72 inch plasma screens all pointing out the Exxon Mobil is dedicated to conserving energy...

The less said about the current American Power = Clean Coal ads the better...

YL - definitely skiing

With the cold snap, I'm reminded of snow in the crisp almost-winter air.

I'm definitely going skiing this year. Anyone want to come along? =)

Ben - Feelin' good

Okay - It's an hour and a half before the deadline of an assignment. Weeks of work. 40% of overall mark. Suddenly, I can't access files on the network drive, and so I can't get to my
work.

So naturally, I go and complain to the helpdesk person. No joy.

"God damned university computer helpdesk monkeys!" I muttered. "Why are they never any help?

"Wait a second! I'm a useless damned helpdesk monkey! I can do it myself!"

So I fixed it, and now it's printed out and ready to hand in. Also, I helped a couple of other people with the same problem.

So, returning to the post title, I'm feelin' good.

Anna : Don't Stoppard ...

Went to see "Travesties" at the Sydney Theatre Company and enjoyed it thoroughly. Dada-ism meets the Importance of Being Earnest with a dose of commie-rhetoric for good measure.

Best line of the play? Lenin talking of the 1905 and 1917 Russian revolutions :

"To lose one revolution my be regarded as a misfortune, to lose both looks like carelessness"

Jen - It begins...

Dan and I were cleaning off the whiteboard a bit tonight whilst the littlies played around our legs.

Suddenly, Elora holds something up to me and says "What is it, Mama?"
I look down and she's holding up a plastic card. Dan's corporate card, no less.
"What?" exclaims Dan. "How did she get that?"

She'd managed to reach into the leg pocket of Dan's cargo pants and sneakily grab it out of his wallet all without him noticing.

It begins. The daughter raiding her father's wallet. We just didn't expect it quite so soon!

Jen - Cubing it up

Lawrence Leung has a lot to answer for. I spent all of last night and this morning figuring out how to do the Rubik's Cube. With help from the internet of course. And I still haven't broken the ten minute mark. Grr.

Jaime - Sick

Being sick sucks, cure please.

Dan - Longweekendtastic!

After the Easter long weekend I was a bit worn out, and decided to have another one. Starting today. Admittedly, it's also because of the horrors of school holidays this year (there's no vacation care for preschoolers, but also no spaces in childcare, so we have nowhere to send Superguy Dragon, which means Jen and I have to do a lot of staying at home, and grandmothers and Aunties are being conscripted en masse to look after him). Should be a bit easier next year, when he can go to vacation care, but I'm expecting to burn through a lot of leave this year.

It was an interesting work week, though, fitting a week's work into two days.

Ben - Computer go boom.

My computer broke down the other day, taking half an assignment with it. Fortunately, it was an easy assignment. Unfortunately, my computer is broken. I've been trying to play Age of Empires with plastic counters, but it's just not the same.

Dan - birthday shenanigans

We skipped Dante's birthday party this year (due to the One Birthday Party per annum rule), so I decided to take him to the movies with a friend or two. Which somehow turned into 4 friends and a bonus sibling. So I took six boys for lunch and to see Monsters vs. Aliens today, which was a lot of fun. The boys were good fun, and no trouble. Then we went up to see Jo and Vee at their get-together at the Coopers arms. All in all, a long and exciting day. Came home to a worn-out looking Jen, Atty, and Elora. Not sure what they got up to while we were out, but they were a lot more tired than us. I'm still looking for the keg and other evidence of the party they had while we were out.

Also, saw a 4WD drive into a wall this morning for no good reason. Have to call the police tomorrow as a witness.

YL - I'm not irredeemable!

Heh that's what one advanced registar said to me after the 1st week at the new job. Lol. I think it's improving Wk 2 and hopefully by the end I'll be sufficiently more competent. I did good on Thur. Real good.

It's so nice to have a 3 day weekend. =) My weekends are usually 1 day! Looking forward to seeing people tomorrow at drinks.

Anna : Website, website, website ...

Phew, new Arts Faculty website up and running ... I never have to look at it again now right?

Jaime - Flutter

Blggng.flttr.sck.n.ndrwr.

Ben - No longer disembenched!

I've been working on my studies, much of (but by no means all) the live long day. But I've also found the time to make myself a workbench. Which is a damned difficult thing to make, when you don't have access to a workbench. Kind of a Catch 22, I guess.

David - Surrendering to Technology

Given that it looks like I am going to be in New York for another 2 - 3 years (long, pointless, slightly psychotic story) I caved and bought an Amazon Kindle 2. For those of you who don't know what it is, its an 'electronic ink eReader'. Imagine a palm pilot twice the size with a grayscale display to read text. I have to admit, its pretty darn nifty. It has a wireless Amazon connection so I can buy 'eBooks' directly from the device itself and they download in 30 seconds.

A cool thing is that they have a bunch back catalogues for $1 - $3. So, I have been downloading a bunch of 1960's Arthur C. Clarke, 60-70's Harlan Ellison, late 1800's Jules Verne and PG Wodehouse!

And the better thing is that I now have 50 books on a device the size of a small diary, which will make the hours I spend in airport waiting lounges that much more bearable.

falsedan - G20 tomorrow

If I don't post something vapid about hippies in 12 hours, avenge my death.

YL - P plates

I am officially a fully qualified doctor. *happy dance*