On Saturday I drove my sister Susannah and her husband Adrian to the airport. They’ve only been visiting here from London for a couple of weeks, alas, and already they’ve gone back. The Melbourne weather put on quite a performance. As we drove up the freeway the threatening grey skies opened up, and it poured ... [More]
06:44 – The paper in the driveway. Unfortunately the vital picture of the dastardly newspaper thief didn’t come out, dammit. 06:25 – Get out of bed, spend a few minutes waking up, then throw on some clothes, shoes, brush my teeth and equip myself for the stakeout with the camera, a notepad, a book to ... [More]
Once again the shadow of crime stalks my suburb, putting innocent citizens in fear. Someone is stealing my newspaper. Twice this week it’s gone missing. Once could be put down to the carelessness of the paperboy, but twice in one week – nope. Apart from the missing newspapers, I found a wrapper on the nature ... [More]
ABC Online’sstandard picture of John Howard. It seems whenever John Howard makes the news, the ABC Online people pull out the same photo of him from the archives to use… one which leaves him looking just slightly crazed. It was on their home page last night, and I saw it once or twice last week, ... [More]
Last week I watched Being John Malkovich on DVD. I’d originally seen it a few years ago, and thought I’d enjoy it again. I didn’t, really. It had its moments, but overall wasn’t as fun the second time around. And even odder than the plot is the interview with director Spike Jonze, shot as he ... [More]
Last week I met up with Coralie, a Brisbane web diarist — I’m not totally sold on the term "blogger", but oh, what the hell, everyone uses it now. Hold on, start again. Last week I met up with Coralie, a Brisbane blogger of reasonably prominent stature (although her site is currently on hiatus, I ... [More]
What’s stressing me today: That my dad isn’t very well. That I ran into my ex-girlfriend on the street this morning and she was charming, rather than matching the sadistic bitch image I keep trying to paint of her in my mind so that I’ll miss her less. The deadlines at work from two distinct ... [More]
Mr Howard said he believed many Australians were "not feeling strongly either way at the moment" about potential war against Iraq. – The Age, 24/1/2003 Well I think if that were ever true, it’s changed in the last few weeks. In what could be a first, police and organisers were *not* an order of magnitude ... [More]
My anti-terrorism brochure and magnet arrived in the mail yesterday. I have stuck the magnet to my fridge, and now feel alert, but not alarmed. Terrorists will have to go elsewhere if they want to steal any milk. It’s meant to go with the TV adverts – you know, the ones that sound like John ... [More]
Josh and I rest on a couple of handily placed bollards, midway through a slightly exhausting hike in the Brisbane Ranges National Park. This morning I woke up disgustingly early, to meet up withJosh, Cathy and Pete to go hiking. I met up with them around 7:30 and we squeezed into Pete’s car for the ... [More]
I had a couple of vivid dreams the other night. My dreams are pretty far and few between, so here goes a description. One was that I was house hunting, and to do this, was riding through my neighbourhood on a kind of go-kart thing. No motor, just powered by pedals. The terrain was much ... [More]
The ever-deepening money-pit that is my car has struck again. This time, it was rear brake pads. The guy at the service place said they needed to be replaced pronto, before the next service. I happen to think that working brakes are an extremely useful thing to have on a car, so I felt I ... [More]
During the week I discovered why my bank account seemed so low in December, when my credit card bill arrived. Because I paid last month’s credit card bill twice. Ah, the dangers of Internet banking. Apparently I paid it in mid-December, but failed to write down (as I usually do) the payment details on the ... [More]
Outside it got up to 40.2Ă°C today – for you in the undeveloped world, that’s 104.4Ă°F. But I was inside, working in an air-conditioned building. And I actually got cold. That’s just silly!
To me, the year has rushed by. Probably because I’ve been so busy for most of it. There’s no shortage of work, and during the rest of the time I’ve been juggling all the other aspects of my life – kids, girlfriend, friends, parents, voluntary work, and trying to keep my home from falling into ... [More]
After enduring many months of my spare computer playing up regularly – crashing, losing time, losing its CMOS settings – I finally decided to take a look under the hood yesterday. And found an obsolete video capture card in there, one I haven’t used in years. I don’t think I even have any drivers for ... [More]