Since last Monday's progress report a lot of further progress has been made. If all goes well Rob will help me getting started with the tiling around this weekend. Read on for the gory details.
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Looks like my pam_recent module is actually used by others out there and liked as well. For a maker/hacker/tinkerer like me that's very satisfying, especially considering the source of the most recent comment/suggestion.

Self-aggrandizement aside, there's a slightly updated version of pam_recent.c (v1.6) available, which uses pam_syslog and thus creates different syslog entries (for those of you using logcheck).

(See also: Hinterholz 8.)

Well, there is progress in my bath, not stellar but not to be sneezed at either.
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Oh how I hate the cheap bastards who built this place! The QLD building codes seem lax enough already and still these folks didn't leave many building sins uncommitted.

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...seeing seven round ice lumps floating tightly packed in your drink glass makes you pick up pencil and paper to determine if this tight packing is possible only when all balls have the same radius.

(Yes it is. Trigonometry is fun.)

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should you ever have any excess baggage to ship overseas, use anybody but worldbaggage.com.au: they're bumbling fools and waste time left and right.

after one primary mistake on my side (not realizing that the qantas freight office is n/a on a saturday, when conny left a month ago) i was in need of getting her second suitcase to vienna, somehow.

qantas would have wanted $1300 for sending it with her as excess baggage (that's for 18kg...as her ticket cost $1500 i conclude that the humans themselves are treated as worthless encumbrances while their baggage is worth gold...to qantas). pack and send quoted a ridiculous $550, and qantas themselves would have charged $350 airport-airport (as the unaccompanied baggage discount is only available when you submit your unaccompanied stuff before you leave yourself) - and you'd have to pick the stuff up at the vienna airport, home of truly obnoxious customs bureaucrats.

worldsnails looked fine, at $305 or so for airport to door and so i booked the suitcase with them, hoping for speedy delivery for my good money.

that was on the 19.1. as an aside, they shafted me nicely with insurance fees (their online calc doesn't reflect what they really charge and the fine print was suitably badly worded to trick me out of a nice extra $150...my own mistake).

on the 21.1. i learned they had lost the paperwork, so i resubmitted that. on the 22.1. i finally got the rotten bill.

and then...nothing, for a very long time.

on the 9.2. the first signs of life reappeared, as in "the suitcase is somewhere around amsterdam". after the customary wrangling with the fucking austrian customs the suitcase was finally delivered on the 13.2.2009.

19.1. to 13.2. - even carrier pigeons would have been faster! not even australia post needs four weeks for airmail from oz to at.

...I vote for Sergey Lukyanenko's "Night Watch" cycle (Night, Day, Twilight and Last Watch). I'll also mumble the word "bookchan" if need be.

And for the more visually oriented, I definitely recommend the "Night Watch" and "Day Watch" movies - but enjoy them in the original Russian with subs, the American/"International" cuts of both films are crap.

Even more interesting: I found the movies no letdown when compared to the books.

cheddar rubber: from $7.5/kg
the absolutely cheapest camembert: $21/kg
blade or rump steak: about $8.5/kg
whole rump: about $7/kg

As you can see QLD is a good place for carnivores and a bad place for cheesivores (or at least not for people on a reasonable budget). Fortunately I like meat, and so does Conny - if it comes in the right form. This is about one such form: dried meat goodness.
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