Category: Random observations

Tennis got rained out today, so Boggo and I went to the Pig ‘n’ Whistle instead. There was a half decent band doing covers, and quite enjoyed the music.

We’ve settled on a house mate. She will move into the room in two weeks, because she has to give two week’s notice to her current house mate/landlord. Her name is Sylvie Elsa and she’s from France. She speaks Spanish and she’s vegetarian, which is excellent for me! I’m sure I’ll get along with her, and I hope Nigel and Riko can get along with her as well.

Riko suggested we have a BBQ at South Bank last night. It was very pleasant, and we should make more use of the facilities at South Bank because it is so close. The BBQs are electric. You just push a button and let it go. However, the first BBQ we tried wasn’t heating up properly, so it took us rather longer than it should have to cook our dinner! The second BBQ we tried heated up straight away, and cooked our food in a matter of a few minutes.

The allies have started using cluster bombs against the Iraqis. It was only a matter of time before they resorted to horrible weapons like these. It is such a strange situation: the allies are using banned weapons in an illegal war that has as its objective to rid Iraq of banned weapons.

Turkey looks to have accepted $US1 billion in bribes from the US. Turkey have agreed not to get involved in northern Iraq. I suppose bribing Turkey is a outcome than the possible mess that could have eventuated if Turkey had decided to cross Iraq’s northern border. I wonder whether Saddam Hussein would have accepted $US1 billion in bribes to step down as President of Iraq. I don’t suppose so, since he lived in luxury anyway. I don’t suppose more money would have meant much to him.

I have instituted a backup system for my blog database. It consists of a cron entry that runs every Sunday and dumps all the data in the database to a gzipped file. This will protect my blogging system from my stupidity, but it won’t protect it from a crashed hard disk or a fire etc. I’ll need to backup the backup somewhere. Hmm…

I just watched a documentary spoof on SBS called Dark Side of the Moon. It was one of the most elaborate April Fools’ Day jokes I’ve ever seen. I also can’t believe the number of really famous people they managed to convince to participate in the joke: Donald Rumsfeld, Alexander Haig, Henry Kissinger, one or two ex-Directors of the CIA and many others. It was very well done, but it had me cracking up a little prematurely.

Riko is helping Sebastian to find accomodation. I still feel like a bastard.

I feel like a complete arsehole. Riko and I went to meet Sebastian, the guy who thought we’d given him the room, at the Youth Hostel he was staying in. He was ready to leave. Riko tried to explain that we had not agree to him moving in. He couldn’t see why he was not allowed to move in, as there was a room available, and he wanted it. We explained to him that there had been a total misunderstanding and lack of communication on our part. I explained that when he introduced himself to me as ‘your new housemate’, I understood that Riko and Nigel had already agreed that he could move in, and that I was going along with this. Then I explained that subsequent discussions revealed this not to be the case at all. I feel really, really bad for him. I can’t explain how bad. I think I would have gotten on quite well with Sebastian.

We have now instituted a strict house mate vetting policy. It will be made clear to all potential room mates from the beginning that before accepting them, we all need to have a chat together first. The documents need to be signed, and only then can the person move in. For some reason, both the potentials that Riko has brought to our house have automatically assumed that they can take the room on the spot. Riko says that it must be because of the way he is telling them about the room.

I guess we could always tell the guy it was an April Fool’s Day prank, but I don’t think it’d go over too well somehow. A volatile mixture of language barriers, naiveity and pizza is to blame for this mess.

Today is a new day. A new month. Over the past month I think I have let a number of things get to me in a bad way. I have been very depressed about world affairs. My Ph.D has been going OK I guess. But I’ve been grumpy, and far more terse with people than I normally am. I’ve also been far less laid back. I’ve decided that it’s no good being depressed with the general state of things. It doesn’t solve any problems, it just makes me and the people around me miserable. So while I am still far from happy with the way the world is going these days, I’m not going to let it take control of me, and make me a depressed person. While I’m totally peeved with the way I stuffed up my blog, it might be a good thing that it got wiped clean.

We’ve had a slight misunderstanding with a potential house mate. I had dinner with a guy who introduced himself as my new house mate. I should have said something right then and there, but me, being the easy going person that I am (most of the time) decided just to play along. I incorrectly assumed that Nigel and Riko had already decided that this guy was moving in with us. Apparently not. But neither Riko nor Nigel spoke up when he introduced himself to me. As such, the guy thinks he is moving in tomorrow, when, in fact, none of us want him to move in. It is a very awkward situation. This was a situation where I shouldn’t have been so laid back. I should have said something. I don’t know what is going to happen now. We can’t get a hold of him on the phone, and he thinks he is moving in tomorrow.

Eeek! No backup either. I’m screwed.

This is a warning to anyone who might get it into their head to employ me as a systems administrator or a database administrator. Do not employ me. If you let me anywhere near a database, I will surely destroy it and all the data it contains. You have been warned! This is why I decided to do a Ph.D. In this domain I can only do damage to myself, and not take everyone else down with me. (I’m not developing nukes).

This is how the story goes. I noticed I’d made a rather silly spelling error in one of my previous entries. Being clever, I thought I’d perform an update statement on that particular entry. Unfortunately, even though I’d planned it all out properly, I hit ‘enter’ before typing in the condition that would restrict the update to one particular row. Result? I overwrote every single one of my previous blog entries! I haven’t implemented a backup strategy for my database yet, so everything was lost. That’ll teach me to

1. ALWAYS BACKUP MY DATA
2. NEVER TRY TO CIRCUMVENT THE TOOLS I WRITE TO PROTECT MYSELF FROM MYSELF
3. ALWAYS BACKUP MY DATA

Oh crap.

Found the following advertisement for Unknown News, an independent news provider.

Just got back from a weekend up at Caloundra. We took Riko with us, and he swam in the Pacific for the first time. Today we went to Mary Cairncross reserve and Kondalilla Falls. It was a very nice weekend away from the troubles of the world.