Thu, 04 Jun 2009
I haven't posted anything in a while, since we've been pretty busy.
We spent a couple of days down in Melbourne over March/April.
We had a trip to Dora Creek with Steph, Eva, Denzil and Lu in March.
We had a trip to Nelson Bay over Easter.
We've been busy with work.
And of course, the main reason why we've been busy is our new son:
Bryson Luke Burton
3.89kg (8.9 pounds)
50cm
Born 27/5/2009, 2.25am
Sleeping soundly:
Getting burped after a big feed:
We posted more photos on Facebook as well.
He's been home now for 3 days, and we're still getting used to the night-time feeds. Last night I had probably 5 hours sleep over three intervals between 11pm and 7am... he's been pretty good though, hasn't cried much and generally he's only interested in eating and sleeping. We can tell he's hungry when he wakes up and gets all fidgety, and we can tell he's sleepy when he starts drifting off and closing his eyes.
We've had two outings so far, one to the community centre in Crows Nest, and another down to the little cafe near Wollstonecraft Station. It's a pity it's so wet and grey, but the weekend is looking better for sunshine and blue skies. We can't wait to let him out in the sun.
Tue, 13 Jan 2009
Matthew Hayden has announced his retirement from international cricket nearly 15 years after he was presented with his baggy green cap."
Looks like Hayden has been moved from his usual spot in slips to that most famous of fielding positions, Left Right Out.
I finally got around to filling in the form for a Sydney Water rebate, for a new washing machine we purchased in July just after the New Year.
Only to find, when I checked the website, that the expiration was actually the very last day of 2008, five days earlier.
Damn!
But I filled it in anyway, and a good thing I did, since it was actually honoured. I got the remittence notice via email today.
Thu, 08 Jan 2009
A crap day at work ahead can be signalled quite early by a lack of sleep the night before and a dry, scratchy throat that hurts every time one swallows.
The signs are more ominous when feeling hot and sweaty, even in an air-conditioned office. I think I'm coming down with something.
An even worse day is the above combined with having to present a training course to a number of clients. The combination of having to talk a lot, and be switched on all day, is incredibly tiring.
But luckily today turned out really well. My throat wasn't too sore. The students attending were excited by some of the new features in the product training, and that excitement tends to rub off on the trainer too! I can't wait to go out to their site next week and help put into place some of the things that came up in the class today.
Now I only need to get through tomorrow's class with a new group of students, and it'll be the weekend!
Mon, 05 Jan 2009
Ever since Kathleen heard the phrase "boy look" from my sister over Christmas in Hobart, she has been using it non-stop on me.
"Hey," I'd ask. "Have you seen the wrapping paper/sticky tape/scissors/car keys/mobile phone charger?"
"It should be there. Have you had a boy look or a girl look?"
"Oh yeah, here it is."
"A boy look. Right."
So annoying.
If you've never heard the terms before, they are both evidently dreamt up by a woman. A "boy look" refers to a search for a regular household object that comes up empty. A "girl look" is the subsequent look, usually by the girl, following the pronouncement by the boy, that the object cannot be found, where is it, you must've moved or hidden it. Incredibly enough, the object just somehow happens to be in the same place that the boy was just looking.
Huh.
But of course, the reason why men give up so easily is that they assume the object has been moved or hidden, usually by the woman in their life, in order to make them look bad and terribly short-sighted.
This is how the shockingly incompetent NSW Labor government fudges the figures:
Overcrowding will become accepted practice on triple the number of CityRail trains under a NSW Government bid to make its performance figures look good.
CityRail aims for no more than 5 per cent of trains to carry a "crush load".
But bureaucrats want to extend that target to 17 per cent after a review revealed 16 per cent of services in 2007-08 ran with such a load - whereby passengers exceed 135 per cent of seating capacity.
Just to summarise:
The official regulator target for overcrowding is no more than 5% of train services at overcrowding, which is 135% of seated capacity.
The current figures show that 16% of services are over the capacity target.
NSW Labor's solution? Make the target 17%. Problem solved!
The next state election, 2011, the next chance to vote this bunch of idiots out, is more than 2 years away.
*sigh*
Thu, 01 Jan 2009
We had some of our friends around on New Years Eve for dinner to see in 2009. We (actually Kathleen) cooked (and I helped prepare) a few dishes, and our friends brought some additional dishes over. As usual at our gatherings, there were so many leftovers we practically had to force foil-wrapped food into their hands at the end of the night!
Since we were hardly drinking, the only real excitement of the night came when the sliding screen door to the apartment was accidentally locked... with everyone outside on the balcony, we were locked out! Luckily, we were able to take the screen door off its railing, so didn't have to call out to the neighbours (who were out anyway), or jump down to the front door of the apartment building.
We walked down to the bridge near Wollstonecraft station at around 11.30pm, and it was packed. After ten minutes, we weren't even able to see the Sydney Harbour Bridge from our vantage point (though we could see the fireworks just fine). The crowd was happy and boisterous without being obnoxious or drunk.
And we finally got to bed at around 2.30am.
Hope your new years was good, too.
Tue, 30 Dec 2008
A few of the things that happened to us on our trip home to Hobart over Christmas:
We arrived back at Lindisfarne to find our relatives and loved ones looking out the window - not at us, but at the incident down the road, in which a crazy/druggy woman jumped on the bonnet of her boyfriend's car as he roared off up the road. See what happens when we leave? The whole place, gone to rack and ruin.
Other relatives and loved ones rushing up to lay their hands on Kathleen's stomach, only to stop short in disappointment when they realise that she's not quite that far along.
We have something to aspire to: the 500,000th Tasmanian had recently been born...
The family received a food hamper, certificate, travel voucher and carton of beer.
This provided much inspiration for the cartoonists in the paper the next 3 days straight.
Lunch at Muir's is still awesomely good. Hartz lemon lime mineral water also awesomely good. Am assuming La Bella Pizza, the pizza so good it resolved an uprising at Risdon Prison, is still awesome. At the other end of the scale, none of the Banjo's 'restaurants' that we went into had pasties available - this makes it two trips to Hobart in a row where this has happened. For shame, Banjo's, for shame.
We went out with Darise, but there was no one else we knew at Knoppy's on Christmas Eve - we seem to no longer be the generation that goes there. Apparently the Telegraph, formerly Brooke Street, is the place to be. We had a few drinks at Quarry Bar, to which my sister went "Pfft. Bloody yuppies." That's the price you pay for no longer living in Hobart - disdain. Realisation too that I've lived in Sydney for longer in my adult life than I did in Hobart.
I can't remember whether I'd ever been to Maldini's before, but that place has amazing coffee and cake late at night. In fact, it might even be the only place open for coffee and cake - excluding Jellies and the casino (and Hobartians will laugh knowingly) - at night.
Christmas lunch and dinner, and Boxing Day lunch were the usual fantastic food and family extravaganzas - the new New Years resolution is no food until March.
We went to the Taste. Avoided getting burnt - it was a warm, sunny day - despite sitting outside thanks to generous latherings of sunscreen. Of course, Tassie weather being what it is, we also had cold rain and winds during the course of a few hours.
The Taste still suffers from a lack of sufficient seating and the subsequent "Hey, are those seats taken?" whenever any of your friends leave their seats to get more food.
You know its Hobart when you pay $1 at the car park in the centre of town for 3 hours, and the attendant thanks you "Have a good one, champ." You also know it's Hobart when people will rather drive around for an hour to find a free park, albeit one where their car sits outside in the sun roasting for the entire day, rather than pay a grand total of $3 for undercover parking.
No more Believe Bars on sale, at least that we could see - Tasmania, don't tell me you've given up hope??
Sat, 20 Dec 2008
I found out about an internet meme, Beached Whale, from a newspaper article. I feel so... so... not geeky right now.
I did think it was hilarious, though: "I'm beached as!"
Mon, 15 Dec 2008
Unexpected fire drills suck.
Particularly if you are on Level 16 and have to walk down the stairs.
A few years ago I had one at Westpac in Melbourne - 22 floors up.
Kathleen's best - or worst - is having to walk down from Level 46 when she was working for Garrisons in Melbourne. And she was wearing heels.
Wed, 03 Dec 2008
Guilty as charged:
In most situations, white people are very comforted by seeing their own kind. However, when they are eating at a new ethnic restaurant or traveling to a foreign nation, nothing spoils their fun more than seeing another white person.
...
The arrival of the "other white people" to either restaurants or vacation spots instantly means that lines will grow, authenticity will be lost, and the euphoria of being a cultural pioneer will be over.
Tue, 02 Dec 2008
It seems as if as soon as we renewed our fixed interest rate mortgage at around 8% in June - once the previous fixed period had expired after the 3 year lifetime - that interest rates began to fall like a rock.
They're now at 4.25%.
This is the same principle as taking one's umbrella to work with the morning weather forecasts predicting rain. As soon as the umbrella is picked up, it virtually guarantees no rain. Conversely, leaving it at home guarantees there will be a downpour as soon as you step off the train.
At least it's only half our mortgage which is stil at the higher rate; the other half is a variable mortgage (but we'll leave repayments at the higher level to really hammer the amount owed).
Tue, 18 Nov 2008
The new list of the top 500 supercomputers in the world was just released.
Back in 2003, when we were in Japan, the number 1 on the list was the Earth Simulator, a weather simulation supercomputer, that happened to be in the same city, Yokohama.
I rang up, and managed to get a one hour session to come in and see it.
Without working for any particular company.
With no particular references or reasons, other than the fact that I mentioned I was "interested" on the phone.
In hindsight, I can't believe that the company managing the computer, Jamstec, actually let me anywhere near the thing.
But! The reason why I say this is that the supercomputer that was top of the pile six years ago is now as low as number 74. The Earth Simulator has a theoretical peak of 40.96 Tflops - 40 trillion floating point operations per second - and chews up 3200KW of power. By comparison, number 1 on the list has a maximum of 1456 Tflops but uses about 2/3 as much power: 2484KW.
Sun, 16 Nov 2008
I had to get some blood taken for a test on Saturday morning, so Kathleen and I walked up to the pathology labs on the Pac Highway on Saturday morning.
Now, the last little bit of the walk is a reasonably steep hill, and it was a muggy morning. Hardly any people were in the waiting room when we arrived, so I got taken straight into a consulting room by the surly nurse on duty and a needle jabbed into my forearm.
I really hate needles, so I was probably tensing a little more than I should have, probably holding my breath as well, so when she was done and the needle taken out (how do actors and actresses stand shooting scenes where they have to stick a needle into themselves?!), my vision started to blur, and I started seeing stars.
"I need a drink of water," I said to the surly nurse.
"Well, I don't have any water," she replied, "so I'll have to call the other nurse. Nurse! NURSE!" she called out.
Meanwhile, Kathleen's in the waiting room hearing this situation escalate from calm to mildly less calm, and is imagining me freaking out and going into shock or something.
A quick lie down and a rest for a couple of minutes, and I was ok (though still a little white).
"Funny, this happens quite regularly to the men," smiles the (female) receptionist.
Saturday night, we went over to Eva and Steph's place, where we had a Japanese Cuisine Reigns Supreme night - sushi and sashimi, okonomiyaki cooked by Steph and I on the BBQ, and cheung faan (rice noodle rolls) cooked by the girls. A lot of food, but we managed to eat it all! We were in danger of having a mountain of leftovers, but then Denzil arrived...
Spent some time afterwards untagging embarrassing photos of me cooking in Eric's Facebook page. He was just lucky I was too busy BBQing to hit him while he was taking them.
So, the last time I was listening to Appetite for Destruction on my iPod, I was struck by the thought that the album is 20 years ago.
Can you believe that? I have memories of something that happened 20 years ago... In another 20 years, I'll be 50. Urgh.
AfD was released in 1987, so the time difference between then and now would be like the difference between then and 1967 when it was first released... still an awesome album, though.
Kottke, one of the websites I read reasonably often, has a similar construct with Michael Jackson's Thriller, which was a pretty cool idea and prompted me to post this.
Thu, 13 Nov 2008
From today's SMH:
KEVIN RUDD caused a few grimaces on Tuesday by using Remembrance Day to declare "a war on unemployment".
Yesterday, he repeated his fighting words, and the manager of Opposition business, Joe Hockey, could stand it no longer.
Joe is our local MP, and apart from his supporting the Rodent, actually seems like a reasonable Liberal.
He marched to the dispatch box. There is something about Hockey's burly frame and carriage that conveys the faint impression, even in peacetime, of a military greatcoat.
"I refer the Prime Minister to his 2007-declared war on drugs, his January 2008-declared war on inflation and yesterday's declared war on unemployment," he began, then produced a sheaf of newspaper clippings, from each of which he read in turn.
"I also refer the Prime Minister to the 2007 'Rudd's war on whalers', the February 2008 'War cabinet to fight disadvantage', his February 2008 'War on downloads', his March 2008 'War on pokies', his May 'War against doping in sport' and his October 'War on bankers' salary deals'."
"Prime Minister, how goes the war on everything?"
Tue, 11 Nov 2008
It's been a while since I updated the website.
I blame a combination of working out in Gladesville (50 minute each way commutes suck), a new toy (MythTV HTPC) and a general combination of apathy and tiredness.
The worst bit is that I actually had things I wanted to share at particular points in time that are now either dated or irrelevant.
I'll try to do better.
Mon, 10 Nov 2008
The next morning after the Obama win in the US Presidential election, I'm walking to the train station on my way to work.
And who should round the corner in front of me than our ex-Prime Minister, on his daily constitutional.
Now as much as I disliked the lying rodent during his unfortunate term in office, I have to admit that there is something incredibly awesome about a country like Australia where you can bump into the previous leader in the street. A country where your place can be less than 150m away from his.
Could you imagine the security detail accompanying him if he was an ex-President?
Saturday, Kathleen went to the movies with her friends to go see some chick flick. I had a massive dose of the 'can't be bothered doing anything', so stayed close to home and went by myself to Ten Sun for tea. Sometimes its nice to eat alone.
Sunday, we strolled down to Kirribilli and visited CC at her market stall at the North Sydney markets. She managed to clear out her wardrobe by flogging the contents off for a couple of bucks each and made a pretty tidy little profit.
Afterwards, the usual gang ended up over the road at Kirribilli Hotel for a cold beer (it was a hot day, after all).
Wed, 29 Oct 2008
We're now watching significantly more TV than we were a month ago. The main reason is that I've bought a HTPC (home theatre PC) running MythTV. The HTPC has a dual tuner cards, so I can record two shows at once, while watching a third show through the TV.
All up, the installation was a little tricky:
- The hardware was pretty new - Intel only released the motherboard in June - so the software didn't support hardware acceleration (and it took me a few days and time browsing the web to work out what the problem was, let alone the fix). As a result, the software display was running slightly choppy for digital TV and really choppy for HD. Luckily, the software was updated last week, so now it all looks just like the normal TV.
- Sound doesn't work via HDMI. Again, probably related to the newness of the hardware, and for now I'm running the sound out via the stereo.
- The MythTV terminology is not the simplest thing in the world to understand.
- Had to make some configuration changes to have all the shortcut buttons on the remote work.
- A lot of miscellaneous tweaks to get things working smoothly.
I would have loved love to say that setting things up is something a novice user could do, but the reality is that the setup interface is still pretty unintuitive.
Anyway, now that it's 99% set up the way I want it I can start to appreciate some of the myriad cool things:
- Not having to dig through a bunch of different videos, trying to remember what was on each and how far in, is the most brilliant thing I can think of right now
- Ad skipping is pretty cool; it beats our old way of having to get up off the couch to press fast-forward on the VCR (damn broken remote control!)
- You can stream music from other computers in the house
- You can add your own videos, and have MythTV query IMDB to get the details
- A plugin called MythMovies can get a display of all the movie times for local cinemas
Now that most of the initial config and hardware issues are resolved, the WAF has gone up significantly.
