December 2003 Archives

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We had lunch at the all-day breakfast restaurant Smitty's yesterday. Wonderful fried North American food. Steak and eggs and potatoes and toast, yum! Steak for breakfast, what a concept. I hope to visit Smitty's several more times before we return to Australia and try some other dishes.

This looks useful, but I'm too tired to play with it just yet: MTPhotoGallery

Just completed my CCNA Networking Basics 3.0 Bridging final exam, and scored the 90% I needed to pass. I'm once again qualified to work as an instructor. Previously, I had bizarre technical problems eat my final five questions, so that I was wrongly scored at 80%. I'm sick and jetlagged, and the PC I'm borrowing went on the fritz for 30 minutes just before I decided to start the exam, so its a *huge* relief that its all over for this year! Now I just need someone to employ me to teach Basic Networking...

After flying from Sydney to Honolulu going through US customs and signing away all my rights just to go into another departure lounge and security check to fly to Vancouver with more security checks, to fly to Montreal, where our flight was delayed by 5 hours due to snow.

Snow. crystallized water falling from the sky, like slow rain, or fast feathers.

The flight before us was cancelled because their crew decided it was too dangerous to try. However, come midnight, our intrepid crew boarded, and I was faced with real live snow to walk through to reach our little plane to Charlettetown. Half melted and refrozen snow. Slippery. I was trying to balance after 36 hours without sleep, 24 hours without being able to eat, with a backpack, a bag on wheels to drag, and 45 tired Canadians rushing to get into the plane to get home. I really can't afford to slip on the ice with my back injury.

Conclusion: Snow is icky, wet and wrong. I'm here for another seven weeks.

As we left a store today I snagged the pamphlet above from the counter. I think its self-explaining.
I also got to see for myself the legendary Hungry Man's Breakfast. this is not only extremely artificial eggs, bacon, potatoes, sausages, pancakes and maple syrup, but its nutritional panel lists 231% of recommended cholesterol per serve. Thanks to Dave Ennis for pointing me to the review.

I just finished "Market Forces" by Richard Morgan. *WOW!!!* Intense, brutal, insightful. Modern globalisation politics. It really is all about the rich staying rich at the expense of the poor. I'll have a longer review later, but I recommend this book highly, as long as you're warned that the central character you identify with will be performing acts of brutal violence. Its in his job description. The CEO of a British multinational corporation speaks in this excerpt:

I've added new photos to the photo galleries Making last use of our free Iburst broadband before we have to return our user terminal and leave for Canada.

Photo taken in late 1997 when I was a Systems Programmer in the IT Faculty at UTS, taking staff and student photos for the database. Naturally I had to play a little and learn something new. Its an animated GIF, which was an idea that has lost currency, your browser may turn its nose up and refuse to animate it for you. Click on the thumbnail for the larger version.

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We leave next Wednesday! We will be available via !http://linus.it.uts.edu.au/~iwoolf/pix/myemail.png! In keeping with the usual balance of things, I have a nasty chest cold and laryngitis, which must be cleared up completely before we go to the world of wet and ridiculously cold. This is ironic, because in the last two weeks my health has otherwise improved for the first time in 12 months. I still can't add up the dice correctly in Settlers, but I can *just* kick Emma's ass for strategy. :-) Thanks to Iain and Llyn we have a traveller's edition we can play on the flight.

BTW, my web page has been updated a little, the front page is now a menu instead of a hypertext document, with my stuff on the left, and links to other sites on the right, and a new picture. Easier to navigate links to my radio show sound files, photo albums and writing. I have a link to my personal TheThingsIWant wishlist for your amusement, and I've even linked this blog. "http://linus.it.uts.edu.au/~iwoolf/":http://linus.it.uts.edu.au/~iwoolf/ !../../pix/spaceme3-thumb.jpg!

Played around with adding some style sheet colours. Its not a skinnable site yet, but its a good imitation.

I finally put a blog live, after sifting through Moveable Type, with encouragement from my friend Matthew. I've put off trying to put my whole website into Moveable Type management to some other time. I've given my wife Emma her own blog to play with. We finally got Emma's bridging visa B yesterday after much hoopla, and we're visiting Canada VERY soon! Like in less than two weeks!!!!!!!!! Without this piece of paper, she wouldn't have been allowed back to Australia. It turns out the call center's advice was wrong, and it only takes 10 minutes to get the document if you go into the office, rather than the five weeks we waited on the "quick" postal application - which was then cancelled or lost. I'm glad I offered to keep Emma company, and had my credit card handy. Emma's wallet went missing last weekend, so she would have been stuck with only cash to pay the fee. Naturally, the office refuses to take cash. We get to try out IBurst wireless 1Mbs broadband before we go for *free*, which is an excellent deal. Its very smooth and very fast. I hope the ISP they go with has an uncapped plan.