Dugie’s Pensieve

Yes I’ve been hiding under a rock, but I’m alive and well.  And tomorrow I’ll be doing even better, because it’s Australia Day!    …and probably my all time favouritest holiday of the year.

It’s hard to mess with perfection, so I’ll just repost-my-post from last year; which was the same as the year before :)

It’s Australia Day here in Oz, and the rest-of-the world wonder with sometimes morbid fascination on our ability to celebrate our National Holiday with a good old BBQ (and might I add I do a pretty good BBQ Brunch)

So What is Australia Day?  Well, a perfect Wiki definition is “Australia Day is Australia’s official national day, January 26. It commemorates the landing of the First Fleet in Sydney Cove on that day in 1788.”

Personally, I reckon the end of Sam Kekovich’s controversial commercial Buy Lamb for Australia Day says it nicely:  Whack on the BBQ, invite everyone over — if you can’t pronounce their name, just call them “mate” –; and celebrate living in the best bloody country on Earth.

Havagoodaustraliadayeveryone, I’ll be celebrating, kicking it by the Pool, chillin near the BBQ, and enjoying the company of friends!

BTW:  MikeFitz, if you’re reading this - we make it in the top 5 google hits for "australia day bbq"

Yes you can, and it’s awesome.  It took about 10 minutes, and about 10 screws.  But why would you?  Well I’m glad you asked!

I robocopy all my DVD’s up to a couple of Western Digital My Books.  That way all my DVDs are at my fingertips, and it stops my little man from putting vegemite toast in the DVD drive of the Media Centre :)

But Christmas Santa gave me quite a few DVDs.  So it’s time to copy them up, but I’m out of space.  So I bought a couple of WD 750 SATA disks on special.  $200 AUD each, a bargain!

The upgrade was quite painless:  popped of the chassis of the My Book, removed the cage screws, removed the drive screws, one screw out of the PCB.

Then I just popped in the new drive, put it all back together, plugged it back in and Voilla!  The My Book is now 250Gb larger.  I’m just copying over all the content from the old disk now.  ….23 minutes remaining.

Hi Folks, I just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a Happy New Year and hope all sorts of exciting things await you! 

I also wanted to say thankyou to everyone who has supported the Brisbane Infrastructure Group — and all the wonderful, talented blog readers who took the time to stop by and leave comments.  In case you forgot who you are:

Aaron, Alan, AP, Ben, BG, Brad, Brendon, Brett, Chas, Christian, Clive, Daniel, Dave, David, Davo, Eileen, James, Jeff, Jim, Ken, Laurent, Leon, Lucas, Massimo, Mike, Mike, Mitch, Murray, Nick, Nigel, Ozzie, Peter, Phil, Rob, Sean and Tobi.

Thanks guys, this next drink is for you! =)

It’s now the week of Christmas, and the year is nearly at an end.  With that it’s time to post my final update for the year.

I won’t recap the full story for the year, instead you can read those occasional updates at your leisure.  =)

So in short, I’m well pleased with the changes I’ve made and everything I’ve accomplished this year.  At times it was a struggle.  …but I managed to read more books, get out more on weekends, meet lots of exciting and interesting people, as well as get a deeper understanding of all things virtualization in and out of the data center.

So what’s planned for next year?  Well I have some ideas, but I’m not sure yet.  That’s why I’m in the middle of packing my gearsack for one last bike ride for the year.  Personally, I find all the best ideas come to me when I’m on the bike, enjoying a twitsy backroad on a mountain in the middle of nowhere.

See you all in a couple of days when I get back.

It was a tough call, but I am defiantly, Indy geek:

For all the 56 different geeks, see the "56 complete geeks poster".  These were the other geek contenders for me:

Damn, where did this year go?  Wherever it went, it went quickly!  Today’s my birthday, and although it has only just started and it feels good to be me.  Being a December baby I’m close enough to Christmas for it to be cool, but not that close so that you get the ’single syndrome’ - Other Decemeber babies will understand :)

I woke up this morning to a cup of (my favourite) freshly made coffee in bed and a couple of presents to open.  I got some really good stuff - but I have to wait until this afternoon for everything else.  And tomorrow I’m having a Birthday BBQ lunch with fiends, and  ‘roadtest’ the arcade machine. 

But now on to the SCOTCH!  Mmmm. 

Last weekend I went over to a friends place for our quarterly scotch night.  It usually once a quarter because that’s the only time when we’re all in town.  It’s a great night to enjoy some great conversation, and some great scotch. 

I bought two new scotches for the occasion.  Both bottles I have never tried before.  Being new, I paid a reasonable amount, but not too much.  It would be such a waste to have to drink them with dry.

One of the bottles was Glenwood Malt Scotch 8 years - strangely enough its a scotch from Spain!?   I was particularly impressed.  A very pleasant aroma and taste.  So much so, that today, I’m going to stop on the way home and buy another bottle!! 

Cheers for now :)

Ok, enough tech blogging for today.  Time for something a little more mindless. 

After the workshop today, we went out for dinner at the Seattle Aquarium.  I think we got the best seat in the house, and sat right in front of a 12m x 7m fish tank.  It was pretty cool.

Anyway, we started chatting about Australia, and I tried to convince everybody, that’s it’s a lovely place.   Lots of nice beaches, places to visit, and of course good roads to ride a motor bike on.  :)

…and then a few moments ago somebody sent me this:

*grins*, Australia is still a lovely place , really it is!

My trusty KJam is dead.  For a couple of years now it’s been my faithful companion through both the good and the bad.  Perfect for “for sifting out my thoughts Saturday morning over coffee“, as I used to say.  (Some of you may even get the in-house joke of “Dugie’s Pensieve“)

But now it’s dead, and it hurts.  I kinda knew it was coming though.  For a little while now the bluetooth light has been ’stuck on’.  The phone wouldn’t ring, , but I’d get the SMS saying I’d missed a call (WTF?!)  …and some other bizarre stuff. 

Now she don’t boot no more.  If I take the battery out, and speak nicely, I’ll sometimes get a spark of life.

So now I’m looking for a new phone.  I’m also on the hunt for a new voicemail service too.  One that can email me the voicemail as a WAV.  I’ll keep you guys posted with how I go.

Taken from today’s Courier Mail, here in Brisbane, “Left side v right side of the brain test“:

THE Right Brain vs Left Brain test … do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise?

If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa.

Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it.

LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS (anti) - RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS (clockwise)

• uses logic - uses feeling
• detail oriented - “big picture” oriented
• facts rule - imagination rules
• words and language - symbols and images
• present and past - present and future
• maths and science - philosophy & religion
• can comprehend - can “get it” (i.e. meaning)
• knowing - believes
• acknowledges - appreciates
• order/pattern perception - spatial perception
• knows object name - knows object function
• reality based - fantasy based
• forms strategies  - presents possibilities
• practical - impetuous
• safe - risk taking

So are you a lefty, or a righty?  I was originally a righty.  I had to leave it for a moment, and come back to it, but now I can see both ways and switch between with no worries.

 Uhhuh.  I went camping over the weekend, and it rained.  Then it poured.  Just when I thought it couldn’t get any heavier — it hailed.  The rain demolished the annex between the tents, and made a mess of anything nearby.

The rest of the family was fine.  Thankfully, they were over in the main tent, safe, and dry.   …and now I know the main tent is hail proof.

So I spent a couple of hours late in the night, (and well into the morning) huddled under a tent awning, with two dogs who are both petrified of lighting and thunder.  Luckily I had a small gas burner that I could use to keep warm — obviously given the circumstances, I wasn’t at all worried about the tarp catching fire  =)

Anyway the morning after, I got up early and lit a campfire (this shouldn’t be any surprise to those who know me) and Thomas helped cooked some breakfast:  bacon, eggs sausages, tomato and coffee.  Then we cleaned up and came home earlier than planned.

So I didn’t really get a chance to do any serious cooking, photography or worse still any serious scotch drinking!!

I did, stop and take one photo of an interesting ‘mailbox’ I saw.  One of the locals has been very resourceful and used and old microwave for his mailbox.  Made me smile.

So shaken, but not stirred, I’m planning the next trip.