Flooding everywhere. Couldn't even drive through to work: too much water on the roads around here. Uni has cancelled all classes today. The Pacific Fair shopping centre is closed. No mail. About 7000 people on the GC without power. 300mm of rain in the last 24 hours...

This here is not a lake but my back yard. I'm somewhat lucky to be on reasonably high ground, but I get all the crap flowing down from the hill and one of the storm drains (of course the most crucial one!) is blocked. The neighbours down the creek, a meter lower than me, are not in an enviable position.

I don't know when before (if ever) I slept as badly as tonight; got up and out at about 0200 to clear two storm drains of leaves clogging the covering grid, then dozed until about 0830. My attempt at getting to work at 0915 wasn't successful: after driving around a bit trying to avoid the worst obstructions, I gave up: the water was just a bit too deep for my Falcon. At least I made it back home without getting the car flooded, and my net connectivity works still fine :-)

(Not a surprise for anybody with a shred of common sense; but this instance at least is funny.)

On Friday, Ms Robertson sent a letter to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, near Los Angeles, asking directors to take fish off the cafeteria lunch menu, adding: "Serving fish at an aquarium is like serving poodle burgers at a dog show."

Now what's wrong with that? I guess if poodles tasted any good...

I hope the members of this "Fish Empathy Project for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals" (Judean People's Front, anyone?) show their empathy with the fish by not breathing any more air. Soon, please.

Link to the news article

The murkins are one truly fucked-up society, with an even worse legal system. One of the recent bad moves of said legal system was to allow seizure of private land if giving it to another sucker would generate more revenue for the city/state/gvmt.

Now a private developer is using this decision to get a hotel built on one of the responsible judges' private land. How very sweet! I would so very much love to see that actually happening. (Yeah, as if there was any chance of the corrupt bastards bending over. But one can dream.)

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Last sunday was pretty crap - (this weekend, too, but in a different way): rain, rain, rain, drizzle, rain.
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Today was my birthday.

This is how I felt today: Today was an absolutely shitty day and bloody tomorrow is about as promising. And I hate all of you bastards who do not have to work for a living!
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Well, they may need this capability in my care. But more on the plants later.
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The EU-constitution is going dead and the Oz dollar surges against the Euro (but of course two months too late for my most recent transfer). ATS 8.50 per AU$ is the highest in a few years... And of course there's these rumours of the Euro zone breaking apart.

Some of the newly planted shrubs around the house are dying rapidly. Others thrive. No pattern; my non-green thumb strikes again. I've got a new toy, a standalone DVD/DIVX player. And I'm done with the kitchen tiles, just did the silicone around the joints. Photos when I'm finished rubbing off the remaining grout haze and the silicone is cleaned.

The usual global stupidity abounds, the Murkins now make laws worthy of bad old Stalin: be as stool pigeon - or be a jailbird for 2 years. Samizdata has a nice discussion on that.

In local breaking news, the Tenterfield Shire (about 250km SW from here) has noted that hanging dead dogs from trees offends the tourists and that people therefore shouldn't do this anymore. What a surprise.

Over The Hedge, one of my favourite comics is no longer readable via RSS stream. dailystrips comes to the rescue.

And, to really top off the Interesting Times stuff there's lousy news at work: group A has just borged group B. I'm a part of group B. Uni council favoured group A's appetite for power. Council via group A may or may not want us to run any of the Group B stuff anymore in the medium future. Which would make the place smaller by a good third or so, and us minus jobs. Which obviously sucks.
Stephan Pastis ran the career counselling theme recently in Pearls Before Swine. That strip (a/v up to a month) fits a bit too closely for comfort.

You'd better, if you want to pass the HGFA exam for an advanced rating (paragliding or hanggliding). I found this quite amusing.
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This is "Bad Table", a piece of real-world furniture made and sold by a Vancouver Company (fittingly called "Straight Line Designs"). (To the designers of their flash eye cancer webshite: here's a nickle, kids, get yourself a real editor and a copy of the relevant RFCs.)

If only I had the money for such practical jokes...dream

and I reach the 100 hour mark. And all of it is inland flying.
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Had a lecture before noon today, not too bad. On my way back to the office I'm very much ready for a mug of coffee and a trip to the toilet.
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Great. Now I'm stuck in the elevator and there is no power (just the emergency dimbulb). Campus security tells me everything is out and just wait a bit. About 10 minutes later the diesels kick in and the elevators wheeze back into action. A trip to the dark potty later and I'm ready for the rest of the day. Most of the campus is without juice, as are some of the surrounding suburbs. I'm doing some stuff on paper, because dead trees do not fail.

The plan for the rest of the day? Another lecture, supposed to happen at 1400. In a lab which is pitch-black right now. With no more than an extremely vague idea of what I was supposed to talk about, because my notes are on my desktop box. Which is power-less. (And on the web, which I can't access banging rocks together - maybe I need to learn to whistle V.34?)

About 15 minutes before the lecture is supposed to start the power comes back. Everybody rushes to the kitchen - think coffee deprivation in a place with electric kettles without electricity.

Back at my office, my desktop refuses to turn on. Fritzed PSU in the Dell piece-of-shite. FUCKFUCKFUCKFUCKIHATETHISTDAY. Ok, no lecture preparation then. I'll get my slides off the web (as all the students do, too) and start talking, seats of the pants operation.

The lab (which we were stuck with as Central Services are a bunch of headless chickens) is a lightless dungeon (therefore disliked for lectures; lab-work is fine). At least that lab is under my full control (including wiring cabinet and firewall).

The firewall is dead. Everything else blinkenlights fine, but not that box. And without it, no login (LDAP) and no net. Having had enough go wrong already, I had such premonitions and did bring the key to the cabinet where the firewall resides - and it does turn on (not a given; two weeks ago its mainboard had gone fritz and the Dell idiots took 3 days to come up with a spare - despite everything being on 24hrs support contracts...SEP).

I survive the lecture, with (as usual) lots of content uncovered.

My desktop is still dead, Dell promises some sod coming on-site tomorrow (as if that promise was worth a damn) to replace the PSU (not as if we couldn't do it, but the gear is leased so we're supposed to keep our grubby fingers off it). In the meantime I can't do any prep work for tomorrow which is - of course - the busiest day of the week. Great.

On a more positive note: I've finished tiling and grouting my kitchen tiles yesterday night. More on that later.