Taming the Jungle

Published on Aug. 19, 2008 in Australia

Most weekends closely mimic each other: drinking a lot of wine, playing the the computers, eating lots of food. However, this past weekend was pleasantly eventful.

Saturday night we met up with some of Yan-Shih's co-workers in Windsor, a tiny suburb on the way to the blue mountains. After a stunning dinner of fish curry with numerous sides, we drove into Richmond to watch a local guild's play, A Dark Winter Night. Having been spoiled in theater since a small kid, I still really enjoy the performance. It was humble but entertaining. They even served free coffee and biscuits at intermission!

After the play we stopped by a local pub. Two beers later we were on the way back to Windsor, and shortly after saying goodbye to Markus and Marion, we fell asleep.

At 9:00 we woke up, feeling totally rested, and ate a yum breakfast. Remco and Daisy (our hosts) had some wonderful aged cheese, which when put on crumpets, was simply delightful. The previous night I had been complaining about the need to mow our lawn, and our lack of a lawnmower. Remco and Daisy immediately volunteered to not only donate their lawnmower, but to help us mow the lawn!

As you can see, our lawn had turned into a bit of a jungle. We moved to the side lawn, yet the mower started to slow down. We figured it was full of sticky grass and subsequently turned it upside down and scrapped out the basin. For those of you paying attention, you must be thinking 'you turned it upside down!'. No gas fell out, but oil spilled out everywhere. Upon next start it just chugged and spat, and wouldn't start. We cleaned the oil filter, tried again, but no luck. I borrowed a wrench from a neighbor and we dismantled the lawnmower, tried to find a problem, and tried again: no luck. Finally I decided to consult Yahoo Answers and found exactly what I was looking for. We ultimately cleaned the spark plug and the cylinder that the plug is in, and also cleaned the cylinder going to the muffler. Both were cleaned with lots of q-tips dipped in gasoline. On next start, it worked!

Remco and Daisy ended up donating basically their entire afternoon to us. We tried to repay them with cookies, wine, chocolate and lunch -- but I honestly don't think that is enough. I'll have to think of something special. But until then, thanks!

My GF and Vista

Published on June 3, 2008 in Australia

My girlfriend's laptop has 1GB of memory, and Vista. I just heard a classic quote from her today: "I think Vista plus Office equals Monster."

Followed by... "I just clicked the exsomething.exe with the somethingelse.exe and hit end task. Now my desktop went black."

Into the New House

Published on May 27, 2008 in Australia

I have a mere 12 minutes until my Laptop (running Ubuntu 7.10) is fully upgraded to the newest release, so it seems like a perfect time to spew a few updates of my own life.

The last few weeks have been pretty chaotic, to say the least. Yan-Shih and I found our own place -- yay! We are located out in Pendle Hills. The commute to work isn't really that much different, and taking the bus is actually likely even a tad quicker. Living in a house again, as opposed to an apartment, is nice. Yan-Shih is warming to the idea rapidely, and generally appears to be enjoying herself.

We did the move in one day, which considering we don't have that much stuff, isn't anything to brag about. However, we also picked up a few couches from Bondi that day, and more shopping at Ikea in the afternoon. Last weekend we picked up a fridge and washing machine. Both are in very good order, and we acquired them at bargain rates.

This last Monday we had two of our friends come in from Taiwan, so have been enjoying playing host. They have been the most excellent of guests, and we are doing all we can to get them to move here. They seem to be warming to the idea.

So, in just a few paragraphs, that's the latest update from the life of Kelvin. Work is tiring, as one should expect, but generally rewarding. I'm also working (as I always do) a webapp on the side -- even by only etching away an hour at a time here and there, I'm making great progress. Django still rocks my world.

Off to bed I go.

Hard Drive Bugs

Published on April 6, 2008 in Australia

This is a pretty pointless entry, but I found this incident amusing. I put together my external enclosure this morning and noticed that there was some bug crawling around inside it (I haven't used it in a while). I couldn't really be bothered getting rid of the bug, so I just closed the enclosure and hoped for the best.

About an hour later I was moving some files off my laptop onto the drive and I heard this really dreaded "blugrrrrrrrrrrrr" -- even Yan-Shih looked over and said "oh no!" For a few seconds my thoughts were of a failing hard drive, until I realized the bug tried to crawl out the little fan.

Oh, the little amusing things.

I Caught a Fish

Published on April 6, 2008 in Australia

Yesterday I was lucky enough to go on a boat ride with my co-workers -- a "team building" activity. Although we didn't do the typical team-building stuff, I think everybody generally had a great time. Clinton and I brought a case of beer, Alanna brought the wine and food, and James was the designated boat driver.

The fishing was medicore. Our boat caught maybe 7 catfish, 2 little fish, and 1 flat looking thing. Obviously I don't know much about fishing!

After the trip I feel like I learned a little bit about every person in the team, which is what team-building is all about.