Glenn Butcher

In other news, we finally have broadband at home. I was about ready to stab myself in the face every time I had to use a 512 kb, 300 msec minimum latency connection.

Lunch Sydney
This is an interesting photo of the management team at my work serving lunch to employees.It's a cool place to work.

I will be away from home from March 1st to 18th in San Francisco, Minneapolis, St. Louis, and get back just in time to head out again to the Blue Mountains.

For anyone I'm not able to see I have one evening free in San Francisco, Wednesday 4th. Drop me me a line if you want to catch up.

Nicked from sagebee 

Four jobs I’ve had in my life:
1. Bricklayer's labourer
2. Manager
3. Consultant
4. Science lab assistant

Four TV shows:
I don't own a TV

Four places I’ve Been:
1. New York
2. Sydney
3. Kuala Lumpur
4. Los Angeles

Four favorite foods:
1. Indian curry
2. Thai curry
3. Any kind of curry really
4. Fluffing the blankets after a curry :)

We started our journey at a police station, strangely enough - but that is Sophie's tale to tell, if she chooses. Suffice to say she is Made of Awesome. We ran into my successor at Internode, Andrew Walton, driving past the station. Hearing him talk about the issues he has makes me glad they are no longer my own.

We had planned to drive half the distance to Melbourne on the first day, then drive half the remaining distance the next day in a kind of Zeno's paradox method of travelling. That flew out the window when we arrived in Mount Gambier.

We stayed at a lovely bed and breakfast called Lemon Gum in Mt. Gambier, being charmed by the chickens (providing half of breakfast), rabbits, cows, geese, dog, and horse all within 20m of our rooms. The rest of Mt. Gambier was similarly attractive, especially the blue lake and hand feeding a baby possum in a sinkhole in the middle of the night.


Day three was at the Twelve Apostles and parts in between on Great Ocean Road. The motel, located just a few kilometres from the Apostles, was run by a pair of ex-police officers, and was fairly rustic - dirt roads, resident animals, lamb chops and jaffles for dinner, etc. Charmingly simple and tasty.

The last night we spent at a boring corporate resort in Lorne, although one equipped with a great pool and restaurant and nice views of the ocean.

We arrived in civilization (defined as a 3G data connection) to some unfortunate news about my Brother-In-Laws father, so he would be flying out Christmas day to be with him. Otherwise, all is well here.

Rest of the photos here.

Posted on flickr as livejournal doesn't handle image rotation gracefully.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26992781@N02/sets/72157610944933756/

I spent Monday mainly going through the boxes of books in the garage which we haven't yet unpacked. Most of the books within are, of course, crap to be cut away. The local vinnies is pretty happy though. The largest problem is finding books I really want to reread - I've read 5 this week, cutting into my packing time more than it should. Speaking of which, back to work.

As usual by the time I get around to posting a blog entry much has happened. This was just one weekend. To summarise...

• japester  and dormant_dragon  's wedding in Perth was delightful. Held under a tree on the foreshore of Lancelin, with the reception party at a local restaurant (or should I say the only local restaurant) and the post-reception party at a holiday home. The wedding was surprisingly traditional for such a non-traditional couple :-)
• Seeing the family at sagebee  's place on the Friday night was awesome. It was just fantastic that so many people were able to come at such short notice, and equally fantastic that  sagebee  offered the use of her home to the horde. I probably spent most of the night telling everyone about my exciting new job.
• Speaking of which, 7 work days left here. Wow. Coming to the end of handover time for one job, about to start handover for the other two roles I have. I'm actually feeling relatively bored now I'm not responsible for a million things.
• Samantha and Fred's twins were great. The parents seemed happy but slightly overwhelmed by the crowd in the room.
• Seeing Wayne and Sophia, and especially there daughter Katelyn, was mind blowing. I looked at Wayne and saw how he had changed, but within 30 seconds had picked up 3 well-familiar speech patterns. Of course _I_ had changed totally and don't act at all the same. :)
• We had a very short time with Sophie's parents. They seem about the same as always.
• Finally catching up with Mike and Terry and my parents was great, and it was wonderful they went out of their way to see us. Really capped the weekend.

I should be packing, but I'm pinned to a chair by a cat. Good at wrestling, cats are.

Last Friday was our team building and training day here, where we had some training and also some fun stuff with people we  wouldn't normally get to talk a lot with. It was a fun few hours running around the city collecting business cards and performing antics (get a photo kissing and being kissed, busking, performing a human pyramid, etc). My randomly-selected team won of course.

It was also the day I announced my resignation. Perhaps not the best thing to say at a team building day. :)

I'm moving to Atlassian, Sydney, and NSW respectively. I will be moving at the end of November, alamark joining soon after.

Gave a presentation on the recent major outage we had at work to a bunch of sysadmins at the local sage-au chapter monthly meeting, held at as usual my place of work. While I'm not a terribly good public speaker, the audience was very interested in the information so it all worked out well.

Instructions:
Take a picture of yourself right now.
Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair - just take a picture.
Post that picture with NO editing.
Post these instructions with the picture.

(This is at work, during the middle of a major outage, after a very long night.)

Edit: At Luyer's suggestion I have flipped the image horizontally.

The silence is deafening. I never realised about the only noise in this house is music, the tapping of keys, a meowing cat, the ocean waves, and none of these are always present. No cars passing, horns, people talking, or roaring aircraft engines.

I'm just going to sit here and experience it.

Another blurrgg day. The doctor says I have 'a virus' and should get lots of rest. Last time he said that I had pneumonia.

3 weeks ago I posted how bad nine days of 35 C plus is. Now my browser tells me it's 10 C (50 F), wind gusts up to 40 knots, and snowing (actually it's hail. Not a lot of snow in Australia).

Those in colder climes can politely laugh now.

It's just too damn hot, even for an Australian resident who spent childhood in the tropics. Nine straight days above 35 C (95 degrees Fahrenheit) so far, with these temperatures expected to continue for another week. In autumn.

Thankfully our new place has ducted air conditioning, which at least keeps the temperature below 30 C. Back to the beach again tomorrow.

The big house move happens tomorrow. I'll be glad when when it's finally over - I'm tired of living amongst boxes.

My brother John also turned up in Adelaide last night. That makes three visitors in a week, normally a six month quota for us.

This weekend we have two visitors staying over. DF is staying for two weeks (which is just fantastic), doing some consulting. We also have unfoldedreality over just for tonight. Great to see some friendly faces.

The best, most relaxing part of our holiday was in Augusta for a week. Just looking at the pictures is calming.

Augusta pics

Crashed head first into work. More holiday journaling later after the release of the BIG PROJECT.