10:20 (SAST), December 7, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Well yesterday ended in a pit of despair. Great way to start a week. At the moment I feel like I'm carrying a house of cards running towards a bus I need to catch. If I speed up I'll catch the bus. If I slow down the house of cards might stay in one piece.

It would be Alpha 13.

16:31 (SAST), December 4, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

I've put this off a few times in the past but eventually I got bored enough and put together my Geek Code:

		-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
		Version: 3.1
		GCS/M/S d- s+:>: a- C++(++++) UB+++ P++ !L E--- W++(-) N+ o+ K++ w++(--)$
		O M- V--() PS+ PE Y+ PGP- t 5-- X R- tv+ b++ DI++ D+ G e++ h--- r++ z+**
		------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
		

No idea what this gibberish means? Here's a decoder.

12:31 (SAST), December 1, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

I'm officially a house owner. Hooboy. Responsibility and all that malarky beckons.

08:54 (SAST), November 22, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

It could be days before I can type properly again and my kids are going to walk funny (and in all likelihood spell things phonetically). I'm stiff. We didn't quite manage the entire route yesterday. Strong winds (I mean strong as in 45 degrees into the wind and the oncoming traffic is still slowly approaching) made us decide to head straight back. All in all though, we still managed just over 1000km in about 13 hours.

Up at 4am to meet at the designated departure point for 5am. I woke up to the sound of pouring rain but it stopped quickly enough so that I decided I was still in. One of the other guys decided his bed was a better bet. Matt almost joined us but unfortunately ran into the back of a car on the way through and has very likely totalled his car. Throw in the fact that the car was full of Nigerian 'lawyers' who promptly took his license and then refused to give it back (weirdly enough though, they dropped it off at a police station later on). Matt couldn't remember if he had comprehensive insurance or not so he was pretty bummed. Turns out he does so he begins the Noble Fight of Justice^tm with his insurers today.

The trip itself was exhausting and exhilirating at the same time. The original route is posted here. We followed it until Swellendam at which point, instead of heading down to Bredasdorp we headed straight back to Cape Town because of the wind.

The most frightening part was probably the Du Toiskloof Pass, shrouded in fog with near zero visibility. And it was wet. And cold. But it cleared up eventually, although I think we kept cutting back and forth across the same showers making for the appearance of more rain than there actually was. At one point I tried Riel's tourer but to be honest, at this point I feel much more comfortable on my sportsbike than on his tourer. It would take some getting used to.

Oh, and at one point we passed Ronnies Sex Shop on the R62 (dig around on this page).

09:06 (SAST), November 19, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Bit of a gap between entries here. That's a reasonable reflection of how busy things have been. Ran into a deep pocket of tension yesterday morning and spent the rest of the day swimming through a dense mental fog with a thumping headache playing the part of fog-horn. This forced me into an early retirement last night and thankfully it seems to have abated.

Had to ask our resident bergie to leave this morning. The busy-body, er old lady who runs our block with an iron fist had one of the neighbouring trees cut down, revealing his presence to the world. Needless to say she had a fit. This is something I hate about these blocks of flats. The little autocratic wench who inevitably ends up with control over the crucial resources. Thanks, but no thanks.

I've agreed to join two of the local (as in company-local) bikers on Sunday for an introduction to long distance riding. They're planning to do 1100km on the day. Matt and I will be joining them for as long as our butts can take it (we're on sportsbikes, they're not).

19:00 (SAST), November 7, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

My toy has turned out to be an absolute winner. Given that it was entirely an impulse buy this pleases me no end. And finally I can have music while I ride.

Speaking of which, Matt and I headed out to Hermanus yesterday for the afternoon. The coast road is as much fun as I was expecting. I've been dying to head out that way pretty much since I got the bike. It's kind of like an abbreviated version of the Great Ocean Rd. Brought back a lot of memories. I really did enjoy my time in Oz. I think, given the right circumstances, and depending on what happens on the work front in the next few years, I'd definitely like to go back for a few years.

Over lunch in Hermanus Matt realised that I'd assumed his bike was a 600cc bike (they don't mark up the RR like they do with the 600F). Apparently this explained a few of my remarks that have puzzled him. It also explains why the bike feels zippier. It's got a significantly larger engine. What means is that my next bike will almost certainly not be a 600cc bike. It's actually amazing what the extra 300cc's gives you (although Matt was surprised at how similar their power outputs were). Yesterday I also discovered that I'm reasonably uncomfortable at 200 km/h in a high cross-wind.

Oh, and yesterday I managed 230 km/h. Go me.

23:39 (SAST), November 5, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Lots I want to say, but I always battle to get things down when there's so much going on in my head. It's like my brain is constantly being distracted by interesting turns of phrase, to the point where it's never quite got enough cycles left to actually assist in getting them down on 'paper'.

Watched Before Sunset this evening. The timing couldn't have been better (or worse?). Apart from being quite easily the best example of dialogue that actually sounds like it's unscripted, it ranges over a number of ideas that are recurring themes within the confines of my head. One of my favourite lines was (paraphrasing) that memory is a terrific thing except when you have to deal with the past.

I had a mini-revelation this evening. I'm not exactly the paragon of communication. I could easily be accused of actively fueling the male stereotype in this regard. It's not something I've really ever given serious consideration to but, like most questions that probe one's inner-psyche, why I'm like this is hard to explain. But I think it boils down to erring on the side of not saying anything because once said, a thing cannot be unsaid.

We had a long conversation this evening. It harked back to some of the conversations we had when we were just starting out and it reminded me of something I'd forgotten and for which I'm extremely grateful. You seem to deal effortlessly with the practical difficulties of being human and you manage it in a way that makes it easy for me to talk about them without fear of consequences.

Anyway, if you feel the need to understand me better I recommend you watch the above. You'll need to cross-reference it with whatever other information you can get your hands on because not all of it applies. Even if you don't care a whit about what goes on inside my noggin I recommend it. It's quite simply some of the best (realism being the metric) dialogue I've seen in a film to date.

Something else I've realised is that I quite possibly need to start writing more code. Close your gaping maw. Yes, more code. Work keeps me reasonably busy but code is my passion and I've felt more and more lately like I'm lacking exactly that in my life: things I feel passionate about. This shows at work. The best days I have are the ones with the highest ratio of work to 'other nonsense'.

Big announcement on Monday. I think it's good news but it remains to be seen how others will take it.

Hmmm. Longest entry in a while. Must be something to do with the phase of the moon. I think Venus and Jupiter are in ascension (not even sure if that's the correct technical term). They're supposed to be the closest they're going to be to one another (as perceived from our point of view on good old mother Earth) until 2014 (or somewhere around there). Yep, must be the phase of the moon.

08:47 (SAST), November 5, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

It would seem I'm in the grip of a particularly emphatic bout of nostalgia. Severe dream about an ex last night (no not one of those dreams). Yes, I know: it's a cardinal sin to admit you had a dream about an ex, but there you have it.

Problem is, it was one of those hyper-real dreams, where the details are accurate down to a near-atomic level, where the dream-state is so powerful it leaves you literally dazed and confused about where (and when) you are when you wake up. And regardless of the subject matter I always take a little while to 'recover' from these kind of dreams. It's like an immense context switch back into (this?) reality needs to happen but is always a long time coming.

22:08 (SAST), November 4, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

We return to a favourite.

Felt myself today for the first time this week. I don't know why, but the weekend really took it out of me.

I think I've been particularly stressed. I think I'm normally fairly stressed, I just either don't notice it or won't admit it. Today someone asked me why I looked so stressed, and to be honest, at the time I felt quite relaxed. Generally, though, I've felt like crap for most of the week. I suspect (but am extremely willing to be proven wrong) that much of it stems from a general lack of fitness. So off to gym again this evening. I have a new toy (a marvelous little mp3 player with the most terrific software I've seen in years; yes, I gave into technolust) so it wasn't quite as painful as it has the potential to be. But I'd still rather be doing a hundred other things.

But you know what they say, no brain no pain. No, I'm pretty sure that's not it. Whatever.

08:54 (SAST), November 4, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Just lyrics today.

16:39 (GMT) October 31, 2004, London Heathrow, England

Sometimes life forces closed books you may not have finished reading. Perhaps, if life does the closing, you're finished reading by definition. Either way these are usually difficult closures. But more difficult, are the books you have to close yourself. For me, the former is characterized by notalgia. The latter, regret.

I came awake at 7am this morning (technically 6am, the clocks rolled back last night). The room was still dark but there was no going back to sleep. This seems to happen periodically. Most mornings a bucket of ice-water would do just as a starting point for getting me up. But some mornings I come awake as though I'd never slept. These periods of quiet contemplation can go either way. Sometimes they're quiet pools of mental productivity. Other times they're spent thinking about what has been, what might have been, what might be, you get the picture.

This morning was of the latter persuasion. Mostly I find mornings like these claustrophobic. I'm horribly nostalgic, and not really in a good way. The past depresses me. Either because it's sad or because it's happy (but gone). Not really a glass-is-half-full-attitude but there you have it.

20:39 (GMT), October 28, 2004, Nothingham, England

English buildings are always too warm. I suppose they're compensating for the air temperature outside but it rarely takes more than a few hours before I'm ready to strip naked a roll around in snow. Well, maybe not quite that bad but it's certainly not my idea of comfortable.

Yep. It's not even 9pm and I'm sitting in my hotel closet, er I mean room, in Nothingham of all places. At least the trip has been a success. But I can think of a dozen things I'd rather be doing on a Friday evening.

Anyway, the magic of Friends beckons. I'll be sure to reign it in. Can't have too wild a night, the client beckons again in the morning.

16:13 (SAST), October 27, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Gah. Clients suck. Now I must off and fly to the uck. At least I should crack Silver status on Voyager after this stint.

09:46 (SAST), October 27, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

It would have been my mother's 50th birthday today. Has it really been that long? That means somewhere in the region of 15 years have passed.

Happy Birthday Mom.

08:42 (SAST), October 26, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

A guy pitched up at our front door last night asking if we had some food. He said he'd just come down from Joburg and asked if it would be okay if he slept on our front porch because it's off the street and he didn't feel safe sleeping somewhere at random.

So I said yes. And locked the gate on my front door. I hate it. I hate that we live in a world today where I'm too scared to invite a stranger who's clearly in need of some aid in and offer even just a corner of my lounge floor to him. Why should the world favour my ability to push around little electronic bits that really don't mean much in the grand scheme of things over whatever talents lurk between his unseemly exterior? He didn't even have historical racial oppression to fall back on as a 'reason' for his current state of affairs, not even that much distinguishes him from me.

The world is too full of crap like this. And all signs are that it's on the increase rather than the other way round.

21:43 (SAST), October 24, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Pizza with a crowd of nutters last night. It was supposed to be a small gathering but, without going into details, it turned into a group of about 15 covering 5 nationalities.

I realised last night that as I get older, and as I meet more people, it's becoming more and more apparent that there's no such thing as an 'adult', just big kids faking it. This is reassuring because I don't feel any closer to adulthood than I did when I was 10. It stops being reassuring the moment you ask yourself "Who's at the helm?".

14:11 (SAST), October 23, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Packing to leave a country with no fixed plans to return is incredibly liberating. All those things you try not to think about because they're painful, embarassing, etc, become things you think about with glee, because you can finally tick them off and forget about them.

I packed for Oz like this, which wasn't strictly correct because I knew I was coming back. But I nursed the possibility that I might not and wallowed in the sense of freedom that came with it.

I've got a friend who's talking like this at the moment, and it got me thinking about Oz, a little internal retrospective. The thing you forget is that while it's a chance to ditch all those crap little 'sore teeth' you keep avoiding, the good stuff goes with it too. Life, bless the little darling, doesn't give you the option of discarding the one without the other.

18:00 (SAST), October 22, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

The end of an extemely long week draws to a close. Well, it will as soon as this UK issue sorts itself out. Clients. Hell, if there was one thing I would have us ditch, it would be clients.

12:13 (SAST), October 21, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

I've been instructed to take at least 10 days leave at the end of the year. Apparently 40+ days of accrued leave is unacceptable. Eish, so much for loyalty ;-)

15:24 (SAST), October 17, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

There's a part of Ou Kaapse Weg that gets to me every time I take my bike over it. It's just before the big hairpin bend at the top as you're coming back from the Fish Hoek side. You come up a shallow climb and suddenly the world seems to fall away and it feels like you're about to fall off the edge.

08:50 (SAST), October 15, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

As I was getting onto my bike yesterday evening a guy, who was clearly the owner of a new Jeep Cherokee, remarked on what a nice machine it was. My bike that is.

A guy needs to be able to inspire envy in other men. This is important. God said nothing about not inspiring covetousness in others.

I realised today that, for better or worse, when you travel somewhere on a bike you almost always arrive alone. This has nothing to do with speed or mobility. It's simply the way it is.

There are days when I relish this. Yesterday wasn't among them.

08:45 (SAST), October 12, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

It seems we have a budding rock star in our neighbourhood. Although, by the sound of it his genre of choice leans more towards death metal. This wouldn't be so bad if there was the occasional inkling of a musical instrument in the background. I've heard a set of drums invoked from time to time but they don't count (remember the drummer jokes from school?).

Yesterday was a bit of a crap day. Nothing overtly crap, just pockets of sub-optimality that left me unpleasantly disposed towards the world at large. It seems to have passed though, and it's difficult to feel anything but peace when your mornings look like today's does.

10:43 (SAST), October 11, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Fizzers features heavily again last night. Sweet dreams? What gives?

21:58 (SAST), October 10, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Taking it up a notch, last night's R.E.M. session involved trying to convince my male second-cousin (appearing in this dream in a female form) to come out with his bike. He turned me down because his pet meerkat had died (having mistaken a nearby concrete pillar for its nesting pole and, as a result, starved to death). Don't ask me. I don't write these things, I just project them up onto the interior of my skull.

A reasonably serious bout of drinking last night (Irrit was down from Jhb for the weekend to partake in the loony addiction called running). Left me dealing with a rather nasty hangover. I have (once again) sworn off consumption (well, serious consumption anyway) of alcohol, for a number of reasons:

1. I'm no longer drinking fit and don't have the energy or capacity to regain the required level of fitness.
2. It's expensive.
3. It's seriously incompatible with biking: you shouldn't go near a bike under the influence.
4. It's seriously incompatible with biking: the morning fog that rolls in along with a hangover reduces my reactions to those of a near-comatose wombat that thinks it's an antique lamp stand.

A good long lunch today with someone I really enjoy spending time with. This kind of thing doesn't happen often enough. I fear that left to my own devices I would quickly become a recluse. I'm constantly amused at how much I enjoy time spent like this when I finally get off my lazy ass and actually make them happen (or, more often, allow them to happen).

And January looms. We're running out of time and not even close to running out of things that need doing. I think this one's going to be close.

18:25 (SAST), October 6, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Last night I dreamed I was attacked and killed by a leopard after eating my fill of fizzers.

09:01 (SAST), October 4, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Despite my best efforts this weekend I remain in one piece. New personal top speed on Saturday (I probably shouldn't be keeping score here, it can only end in tears) of 203 km/h.

And yesterday afternoon Matt and I spent at the Killarney race track. Every so often they run a track day where, for a moderate entrance fee, anyone with a bike and sufficient protective gear can blast around the race track for the afternoon. They arrange a medic/fire truck on standby and it gives you a chance to see just how fast you can go in a reasonably controlled environment.

After nearly coming off on the first serious corner (going too fast I admit) I stopped looking at my speedo for the remainder of the afternoon and focused on not killing myself. That would just be embarrassing.

18:28 (SAST), October 1, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Someone in the office with a copy of Microsoft Paint and too much time on their hands :-)

10:41 (SAST), September 30, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

An amusing site (if it weren't so damn sad): http://thedailywtf.com/

In other news, I stumbled across my first homepage the other evening and thought I'd dump it here for the world to (re)discover. Note the nice touches that date this page horribly: busy background (complete with a collection of backgrounds for download), animated gifs, a dedicated "cool links!" page. Quite embarrassing really.

08:27 (SAST), September 30, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Paul Graham offered an interesting definition of a nerd: someone who doesn't expend any effort on marketing himself.

22:10 (SAST), September 25, 2004, Cape Town

A small crowd of 'old favourites' has just departed, leaving small signs indicating an increase in entropy all over our place. It's been a while since this particular group has been together under one roof and I'd almost forgotten how enjoyable these gatherings were (they happened considerably more frequently while we were all studying). It struck me that as much as we enjoy each other as individual company, the group dynamic here is a perfect example of the whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Sadly, the group is currently spread quite widely and these kinds of intersections are likely to be quite rare over the next few years (after which the odds improve only slightly given currently active models).

14:00 (SAST), September 25, 2004, Somewhere on the N2 between Arniston and Cape Town

I tend to drive in much the same state in which I ride. I like to drive in silence. That's not to say that I don't like conversation while I'm driving, often driving time is prime conversation time. But in general, given an option, I'd rather drive in silence. On a bike, that's easy. For those of you who've just joined us, I really like long drives. With or without a passenger. I enjoy the chance to just sit and think, with no physical outlets. I enjoy an immense sense of achievement having clocked up another few thousand kilometers on a nearby odometer.

A bike makes this both harder and easier. It's harder because it's so much more physically demanding. This is especially true on a sportbike which, let's face it, isn't exactly built for long distance riding. A few hundred kms and you have to stop for gas (which is fantastic because at this point you've usually lost all communication with your rear end and your legs are usually aching). So distance wise, it's much harder. I can do (and have done) 2000kms in a near continuous drive (stopping only for fuel). That's just not possible on my bike. But a bike makes it easier too, because you don't notice the distance. There's too much else to take in to track trivia like the number of kilometers you've covered.

12:00 (SAST), September 25, 2004, Arniston, South Africa

It's been a pretty busy week from a nocturnal neural activity point of view. Dreams of ex's and whys. Who knows if it means anything and, if it does, what it's supposed to mean.

21:40 (SAST), September 24, 2004, Arniston, South Africa

Just walked back from the local restaurant. Was struck by my own shadow in the moonlight. It's vaguely disconcerting (but in a weird way somehow reassuring) how it's position remains constant relative to mine. It was almost hypnotic to watch, so much so that I don't remember much of the (brief) walk back.

It's been a bit of a nostalgic day. A realised the other day that our first floor offices still smell the way they did when I joined, just under 5 years ago. We used to rent only that floor (we've expanded over the years to fill all four floors in our building). I think that's what set of the recent wave of nostalgia (I'm prone to it). There's a song on the Shrek 2 soundtrack which is stuck in my head. It's a remix of that old "I need a hero" track from the 80's. This version has a somewhat more mournful aspect to it (just the way it's sung I guess). I'm not sure why it's stuck with me. I think it's because I've always had this strong need to be the night in shining armour to women all over the world and I suppose the woman who most needs a night in shining armour probably has this song as her anthem. This new version sounds almost a little cynical. It's almost as if the new singer has rendered it with a subtle, darker, undertone. It's almost as if she's singing "I need a hero but these days, what are the chances?". It makes me a little sad.

14:02 (SAST), September 16, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Today someone asked me a simple question. Or rather, I thought it was a simple question until I tried to answer it. "What part of your job do you enjoy the most?"

I had (and still have) no answer. Unfortunately, the problem here is not that there are so many things to choose from. For a long time that might have been a problem. But it's not the reason I had no answer this morning.

13:35 (SAST), September 16, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

As of yesterday evening I'm under a legal obligation to hand over a tremendous sum of money to someone in exchange for their current residence.

Hoo boy...

16:09 (SAST), September 13, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

It occurred to me on Saturday that pulling my visor down must look like the start a cruciform (as done by most Catholics). Maybe I should complete the motion?

16:07 (SAST), September 13, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Absolutely marvelous weekend of riding. Glorious sunny Summer days like only the Cape can offer. Went out to Franschoek yesterday for breakfast. Two of us were on bikes, myself (naturally) and Matt, on his CBR600RR Fireblade.

Bikes are meant to be ridden in pairs (at least, more is better). Unfortunately, the nett result is usually a lot of egging on. As a direct result, yesterday I set a new personal best straight line speed (195 km/h). Stupid, probably. Fun, definitely. Am I going to do it again? Do you even need to ask?

Matt and I swapped bikes for the ride back. The Fireblade develops more power (it seems to have more grunt). But the riding position is far more aggressive and I'd imagine it would get quite uncomfortable on a long ride. The fuel tank is wider too, which I think contributes to an increased feeling of stability, and it felt easier to swing around on, which might be a lower center of gravity.

There was a moment coming back where it could easily have been a year ago, in Oz, with Pete out in front. What can I say? I'm a sucker for nostalgia.

All that's left now is to convinced the other vacillators around me to buy a bloody bike.

08:44 (SAST), September 9, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Sometimes, even though you may not feel up to it, you have to be the strong one.

16:53 (SAST), September 8, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Took el diablo (aka The Machine Of Death^TM) out for a spin over lunch. I've decided I'm tired of waiting for the weekend only to have a cold front move in and blanket the peninsula.

I'm sure I've droned on about this before, but one of the things that I enjoy most about being on the bike (and I hope this doesn't change with time) is how much more aware you are of the journey. Every aspect stands out vividly (and of necessity; good old survival instinct). It's amazing how much more detail the road seems to pick up when you're on a bike. Things you'd never even notice (much less pay attention to) in a car become matters of crucial importance on a bike. Slick bits of road, large plastic bags, wind shear, roads that exemplify counter-banking, to mention just a few.

Another thing I really enjoy is the degree of focus involved. My brain seems to run on auto-pilot and I seldom ever really get a chance to stop thinking about things (usually, unfortunately, work). When I'm on the bike (and I found this with Tai Chi too) the level of concentration required makes it one of the few occasions where I don't think about whatever it is that's on my queue at the moment. I suppose in some respects this is why people gym, or run, or get involved in sports (apart from all of the other 'benefits' they tout, like fitness and group interaction, and blah blah blah).

But one of the most enjoyable times I've had on a bike so far was the ride I took out along the Great Ocean Road while in Melbourne. And one of the best aspects of that trip was having a riding partner. It's great to have company, especially since being on a bike means you don't actually have to interact (except in the looser keep-an-eye-on-the-other-guy-on-a-death-machine sense) while you're on the road. It's like having the best of both worlds. And great things are all the more greater when there's someone else you can share phrases with that start with things like "Did you see ..." and "I thought I was done for ...".

10:45 (SAST), September 8, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

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And just like that, *poof*, they were gone. Bah.

12:30 (SAST), September 6, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Got this song rolling around in my head. Not sure if that's an unconscious ICMP packet.

Took my bike out yesterday for the first time in almost a month. What with last minute travel requirements and Cape Town's usual accomodating Winter rainfall, it's been tough to find a patch of sunny weather that coincides with my own availability. I would have (should have) taken it out during the week, when it was usually sunny. But let's face it, I'm too involved in my work. In fact, that's something that I may soon have to address (not taking my bike out during the week that is).

Between the lunatic motorists (many of which don't even see bikes) and natural phenomena like the Testosterone Vacuum Effect, it's easy to see why so many bikers come short eventually.

17:20 (SAST), September 1, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Filched this link from another blog.

This collection of images had a pretty significant impact on me. I don't know if this is a measure of this guy's skill as an artist (Wes seems to think so lending weight to this possibility), a measure of the general human response to visual stimuli, or just a measure of my own sensitivity to imagery. I know I'm a born nostalgic and I have a suspicion the two are linked.

11:08 (SAST), August 26, 2004, Kruger National Park, South Africa

Drove up to the Park today. It finally dawned on me what I enjoy so much about these long drives. It's the uniqueness of things. It also explains why, although sometimes breathtaking, landscapes never really hang on in my memories. The things about the world that have the greatest impact on me are little things. They're not pretty things. They have no special meaning and bring no new profound insights into life. It's their uniqueness: the way a particular gate leans, or the position of a broken branch. They all represent a very small, but very individual, part of the world. Often they're something you'll never see again.

I finally met a close friend of the family this evening. There's an incredibly strong attractiveness about her. It's something ephemeral; hard to explain. But it drove home once again that physical attraction is such a minor part of it. So much of what we deem attraction is tied up in the intangible. More often than not it seems to come down to how someone presents themself to the world over the shell they've been provided with.

12:26 (CT), August 18, 2004, Florida, United States

Florida. Well, it's certainly green. How could it be anything else given the heat and humidity. But pretty is not something I'll forever associate with Fort Lauderdale (or even Miami). Admittedly, I haven't seen much outside of the board room we've been holed up in for two days. First time in front of an Internet connection for days. Waiting for what is likely to be a few thousand emails to come down.

Still a tad jet lagged. Hits me around 1pm (so this is all on auto-pilot). Experienced the East Coast Burrito Factory last night. Something of an institution within the company. Pretty good burritos but not exactly haute cuisine. Maybe I'm just a luddite. Often I don't feel I see what it is so many within the group appreciate about some things. Of course I sit here in the wake of two of the most enthusiastic travellers I know of.

The states holds little or no appeal for me.

15:37 (SAST), August 9, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Finally, the new camera and new bike timestreams intersect.

09:27 (SAST), August 9, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

As luck would have it, we've seen nothing but rain the whole week. In fact, last week saw some of the worst flooding in Cape Town in the past 50 years.

Camera arrives today. Finally I should be able to get some pictures up on the web.

09:22 (SAST), August 2, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Well, having suffered at the hands of the weather gods all through Saturday (it sheeted down with short breaks just long enough to tempt me to my feet, but alas), I finally got her out yesterday.

And there aren't really words to describe it. It's something like sitting on top of a Boeing 747 turbine. Or at least that's how I imagine sitting on top of a turbine would feel.

There's a stupid amount of power in that engine. At one point it was literally all I could do to hang on. I took her up to 145km/h on the M3 yesterday and let me tell you, 140 on a bike is a completely different story to 140 in a car. But what joy to have those monstrous luxury german vehicles pull out of my way. Coming through! (insert maniacal laughter.)

One of the things I enjoy about a bike is that it gives you new appreciation for the journey. You experience the trip in minute detail. Every little bump in the road, wet patch, oil slick, crack, lunatic driver. It's all extremely up close and personal. Sometimes a tad too up close and personal. Cape Town's inner city road system is far less bike friendly than Melbourne's. I can't think of two points in the city that aren't separated by something hair-raising. Hospital Bend (aptly named?), De Waal drive (this is a thing of beauty on a bike let me tell you), Ou Kaapse Weg, Boyes Drive (the final descent into Kalk Bay is something else). Hell, even pulling out onto Belmont Rd turning right at the library is cold-sweatsville.

Needless to say I finished the day with a tension headache of epic proportions. The same way my first day out biking in Oz finished actually. But it's all good. I wouldn't trade it for anything. Now let's see if I can actually concentrate on work today. Hoo boy ...

16:41 (SAST), July 30, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

My faith in the world is restored. She awaits in all her 600 cc glory.

16:00 (SAST), July 30, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Unfortunately, I've now completely run out of any impetus to get work done. I think I'm being taunted. My bike's ready for me, just waiting for the registration to come through. That was supposed to happen 'sometime after lunch'. I thought last night the gods had it in for me when rain all day was predicated. It seems the prediction was off, but instead I'm starting to get the feeling that my registration is sitting on the desk of some lazy bastard governmental minion who took an early lunch because what the hell, I'm a government employee, I don't need to work more than a few hours a week to keep the country functioning.

I'm bitter.

And I don't even know for sure yet.

Imagine how bitter I'll be if I have to wait until Monday. Especially since, if that doesn't happen we'll no doubt have the most glorious weather this weekend.

Bah.

10:03 (SAST), July 28, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Apparently, buy the F4.

10:39 (SAST), July 27, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Gah!! Options! A new CBR 600 F4 has arrived at Honda Cape Town. Considerably more kms than the F3 (27000 vs 300) but pricewise the difference is negligible. Choices choices. The F4 is a slightly nicer model (in my opinion), the F3 has fewer kms and I think I prefer the colour scheme. But the F4 is here, now. Eish, what's a boy to do?

And the voices in my head are chanting F4, F4, F4.

21:16 (SAST), July 24, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Most makeup ads are IQ tests. Most people fail them.

21:01 (SAST), July 24, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Doing my best to subvert international trade regulations. Well, local customs at any rate. Of course, having purchased a replacement camera less than few hours later saw me in the thrall of buyer's remorse. Well, not strictly speaking, but it only occurred to me after the transaction went through that I should have purchased a BIGGER (read more expensive) camera, given that insurance was covering it. Doh.

I've consoled myself by confirming that only one camera is really an alternative without straying into SLR-land. And the R500 difference is too small for me to really be prepared to put up with all of the crap involved in returning the one that just shipped and ordering this one instead. And I'm not convinced the average human eye can tell the difference between 4 and 5 megapixels.

14:16 (SAST), July 19, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Now imagine every strand the spider spun correlated to a line of code you wrote on caffeine.

09:54 (SAST), July 19, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed being on a bike. And it's amazing how quickly it comes back to you (just like riding a bike, hohoho). Of course now I can't wait for my bike to come.

19:00 (SAST), July 17, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Warning: This is probably going to wax somewhat philosophical, so if that isn't your cup of tea then hit the eject button now and pop in something mindless like this, this or this.

Took a walk up a nearby mountain this afternoon. Those of us fortunate enough to live in a city like Cape Town can do that. It gave me my first real chance in what feels like an awfully long time to think. My problem is that a keyboard (especially with an Internet connection on the other end, although this isn't mandatory) acts to some degree as a mental anaesthetic. Sure, what I do for a living involves a fair degree of thinking, but very little of that happens behind a keyboard. Producing code is nearly entirely an automatic operation.

This project seems to be stretched out into infinity at the moment. I know a lot of that is simply because it's largely on hold at the moment. But, like today's walk, there's always a mountain top. Eventually there isn't a next step and you're done. We'll lose our way a few times trying to get there, and we'll no doubt have to backtrack a few times as a result, but we'll get there. Of this I have no doubt.

I was on a high until about an hour ago, having written a stupendously funky piece of code last night. Nothing like finding a bug in code you just put into production (a stupid bug at that) combined with road tax (in the form of a speeding ticket) to pour ice water over a good mood.

Taking a friend's bike out for a run tomorrow. I figure before I hand my soul over to a CBR600F I should probably get on a bike again and make sure I remember how to avoid falling off. At 140 km/h the tar is anything but forgiving.

I hope the weather holds out until I take delivery. It's been beautiful the past few weekends. A bike would have been a welcome diversion.

09:08 (SAST), July 8, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Paracetamol is your friend. Well, it's mine anyway.

Bizarre dream last night featuring a barren, empty landscape that looks so familiar that I think I must have been there before. There's a large chunk of my early years, mostly pre-Cape Town that keeps coming back in bits and pieces. It almost like in the process of moving down here with my family, I erased the first 16 years of my life.

They seem like another person's memories.

16:28 (SAST), July 7, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Put down a deposit on the bike. Everyone I've mentioned it to keeps mishearing it as house. Bike people, bike. Anyway, given that step has now been taken, today would be a great day if

1. My team weren't continually being raped of resources;
2. I wasn't facing yet another long evening in front of yet another document/project plan/client eventlog.
3. The guy operating the jackhammer just behind my right eye would lay off for a bit.

As they say in the classics: eish.

11:25 (SAST), July 6, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Wrestling with a Decision^TM. It's the toughest decision of all the decisions this project has forced out of me so far. For the most part it's a lose-lose proposition anyway. Whichever way we go there will be problems, and the worst part is that because we will (by definition) not implement the alternative there won't be anything to counter the "I told you so" naysayers that crawl out of the woodwork when the inevitable problems do surface.

I take some comfort in the fact that someone recently confided in me that he's extremely happy that he no longer has to make these decisions.

16:36 (SAST), July 1, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Seems my audience is still growing. Somewhat unnerving but such is life. (You know who you are).

16:52 (SAST), June 27, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

I'd just convinced myself that the sensible (as sensible as buying a bike gets) route of a 400cc (probably a Honda VFR 400 or something along those lines) was the right thing to do when gorgeous and slacker talked me into buying a CBR600F I'd been drooling over.

(Un)fortunately it was sold the day before I called the dealer about it. But perseverance (and a large bank account in this case) will get you what you want. I found a potential replacement yesterday (due in end of next month). A beautiful looking CB600F3.

Needless to say I slept terribly last night. Dreams of a big yellow (?) monsta-bike drawing crowds. Bit of an odd twist though. I only managed to collect it four days after buying it because I couldn't get away from work!? Eish, what does that say about my priorities?

18:15 (SAST), June 22, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

A long bit period of outage there. Indicative of how much more is now crammed into my daily todo list. Without a connection from home (dialup is not a connection) I fear my blogging activities may tail off to nothing.

Things right themselves just in time for A Deep Thought^TM. Do men and woman love differently, or do they just express love differently? (I'm talking principally about agape and not eros). If I look at the women in my life and listen to them talk about friends and family, it seems that they experience what they typically term love in a completely different way to me. It seems to consist of this all-consuming emotion. In some ways its almost like they feel it while I only seem to experience it academically.

Something to chew on.

12:33 (SAST), May 21, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

As part of the current project we have (ambitiously) developed a parser that converts the majority of our in house TSQL code into PL/SQL code (on Oracle) and SQL/PL code (on DB2).

Daily it gets more intelligent. At this rate I give it about a week before it declares it's sentient and files for citizenship.

18:02 (SAST), May 7, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

I just got spam with the following title:

Re: You are about to become an ordained minister

I kid you not.

10:24 (SAST), May 4, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

I think Java is at its most useful in the hands of a generation of programmers that is starting to disappear. These are programmers that began their 'careers' without Java and so have been forced to wrestle with things at a much lower level than Java typically exposes you to. The result is a very competent group with a very powerful language (Java makes quite a few generally tough things very simple). This extends to many of today's scripting languages too (Perl, Python, Ruby etc).

Programmers who started with Java and who use it (or an equivalent new language) exclusively are seldom exposed to the underlying world of goodies. This generally means they're entirely ignorant of how things work at the levels beneath their world. While this isn't their fault entirely I think we'll soon be seeing the end of an era (if we haven't already).

Witness the class of programmers who thought they could pack a long into a byte array for transmission across the wire using something like this:

		new Long(long_value).toString().getBytes();
		

I think the problem here is not so much stupidity, as it is a combination of a lack of understanding of what's going on underneath as well as a familiarity with a different paradigm. The above is pretty much how everything else works in Java. You expect utility methods for everything because they exist for just about everything.

08:20 (SAST), May 3, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

On the way up to the top floor this morning, I noticed there are a number of scratch marks on the inside of our lift doors. These doors are made of metal leading me to one of two conclusions: either someone with a metallic bobby pin is having regular sex up against the lift doors, or a forgetful claustrophobic with incredibly strong nail varnish keeps using the lift.

Okay, then you give me a better explanation.

16:20 (SAST), May 2, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Been a while since I posted anything substantial here. Certainly anything positive (he says casting a critical eye over the last few postings).

I suppose the principal reason is that work has taken it out of me. There's a lot of it, but that's hardly new. I think what's really taking it out of me is the amount of new things to take in. Not new in terms of information, but rather in terms of new responsibilities. Both technical and fluffy. I am middle management. Hear my minions roar. :-P

A secondary reason is probably that the only other thing of significance in my life is something I haven't said anything about up until now because I'm keeping it quiet. But I think at this point the only people who deign to cast a beady eye over these soporific writings are now "in the know". So it's safe to come out with it, so to speak.

Executive Summary: I'm seeing someone. Yup, James, the unstable element has bonded again. She's terrific. Marvelous. Which is another way of saying she puts up with my shit. The only down side is that she's far away, temporarily albeit, it's sub-optimal (sidenote: I wonder how Taylor is doing?). A month. I can wait. (Who am I kidding? This from Mr Instance Gratification himself?)

No photos for a while. Camera grew legs and appears to have crawled through the nearby open window (the only plausible explanation I have to put forward). Insurance have agreed to pay out and have even very kindly agreed to let me pick one up next time I'm in a real country (by which I mean a country with a thriving consumer electronics industry) and invoice them then.

Apart from that, been down and out with the flu for the longest period I can remember being sick, ever. Incredible frustrating to spend your days trying to prevent what appears to be your brain from falling out of your nose, or trying to cough up your lungs. Especially not in the middle of a project like this.

08:38 (SAST), April 6, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

I've been trying to tell people this since we started this project.

Ant != A better make

11:52 (SAST), April 2, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Phooeee. I hope never to have to do that again. But for an adrenaline rush, it can't be beat ... :-P

18:44 (SAST), March 31, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Ever had a test you absolutely had to pass? I don't mean in the sense that it would suck immensely not to. I mean one where failure is essentially the end of the line. It sucks. Immensely. :-(

14:04 (SAST), March 29, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Booked. The moment of truth is cast in stone. The rational part of the brain has nothing on the primal rat-brain.

07:59 (SAST), March 29, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Fear. Anger. Denial. If it's legit I have no one to blame but myself.

08:44 (SAST), March 24, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

So much for out of sight out of mind :-)

11:02 (SAST), March 14, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Sunshine! Warmth! Above average IQs!

19:33 (CT), March 10, 2004, Rochester, Minnesota, USA

Phooee. A long, long, long (did I mention long?) day. Came fully to at about 3am and after tossing and turning for a little decided to get up and check mail and get some work done. Have just got back from the IBM campus. Success :-)

How often can you develop a complete cross platform solution targeting hardware, OS and software that you've never seen, only have reference manuals to, and have no access to, and (within a tolerable error range) achieve success first time round?

Apart from some minor remaining tweaks, we are installing on DB2 on the iSeries. This is good. Food. Sleep. Code. In that order.

06:10 (CT), March 10, 2004, Rochester, Minnesota, USA

Some people are important enough so that their loss results in a sort of physical pain. My subconscious has spent the better part of 48 hours reinforcing this using a bizarre juxtaposition of dreams, weird dejavu like moments and general mental chaos. I suppose the end result is that I need to make sure that the person in question doesn't slip away.

You know who you are.

21:50 (CT), March 8, 2004, Rochester, Minnesota, USA

Arrived. Finally. After 30 hours of continuous travel. Holy extended layovers Batman!

Flying into Minneapolis was pretty cool. We came down through a thick bank of clouds until I thought we were going to attempt a blind landing. At the last minute we broke through and there was this land covered in white stuff. It took a few seconds to register that the white stuff was snow. Minneapolis actually looked quite pretty (although I suspect if you take the snow away it would look quite the opposite).

Unfortunately, that same snow meant a delay which, coupled with the delay at departure (literally bumper to bumper traffic queuing up to use the runway; never seen anything like it) meant I missed my connecting flight, which meant a 3 hour delay. Flew in to Rochester in a little (I mean little) twin engined plane. Propellers I tell you! Upside to that was that we kept to a pretty low altitude which meant scenery. Snow gets tedious.

Well, until you step out into your first snowfall. Apart from being bitingly cold (we're in a warmer part of the year, it's never more than a few degrees below freezing at the moment they tell me). Dinner with the IBM boys. Interesting American perspectives on all and sundry.

It's going to be an interesting week. As usual, the techies have very fixed ideas about how things will be done and who's going to do the work (them of course; a good techie trusts no one). Boy are they in for a surprise. Basically I have a list of deficiencies in their platform(s) that they're going to fix for me.

Oh, and free Internet access from the hotel. Nice :-)

16:50 (SAT), March 6, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Sudden, unexpected, definitely unwanted, wave of depression. It's been quite a while since the last mood swing of this magnitude. They haven't been as prevalent in the last year. Perhaps that's simply because the last year has been so busy. Noise masks things very effectively. I'd like to believe it's because they're on the decline.

It's certainly not as bad as it sounds. I've no inclinations towards suicide, no tendencies to cut myself. No burning desire to subject myself to Barry White. Nothing that tragic. But there's definitely a change. It's usually pretty sudden. It's certainly not something I can switch off although I've met with reasonable success simply by choosing to ignore it. Doesn't alter the fact that it's there but it does generally make me more sociable. Okay, more apparently sociable. It normally hits when I'm alone. Not always physically alone, sometimes just when I'm dissociated from a nearby group. But there's definitely a form of isolation involved. It's a little difficult to explain. On the face of it, it even sounds contradictory. A naive assessment would suggest that the isolation is the initial trigger. Once it sets in though, the last thing I usually want is any company. Often I'll even refuse to take calls and go out of my way to avoid contact. So isolation begets mood change begets isolation seeking behaviour. Hey, I never said it made sense.

The initial isolation isn't really a trigger. I think it's more of a necessary environmental condition. In this particular instance I know what the trigger was. A stupid white lie which I was caught out in. So small and trivial that I suspect the other person isn't even aware that they caught me out. But the really weird thing is that it doesn't even feature anymore. It ceased being significant after a matter of minutes. The bulk of the 'weight' at this point is entirely unrelated. Well, I could draw tentative tendrils of association between the two if I wanted to. So I suppose they're not entirely unrelated.

It's a big bag. There's space in there for self-doubt. I see some fear in there too. Plenty of pending sadness, an odd kind of potential emotion; something that I recognise as having the potential to be sadness but not something I'm currently experiencing as sadness. There's also anxiety. Maybe anxiety and pending sadness aren't so different. Maybe the latter is just a different way of looking at the former.

I feel like a bit of a fraud. There's stuff I won't admit to others, haven't even admitted to myself until now. And I know why I'm hiding from it like this. I'm scared that admitting it means admitting that maybe I'm not up to the task. That maybe you'll realise that and in your own pragmatic way decide that the risks outweigh the potential benefits. And that that will be that.

In a way this couldn't have come at a better time. The next week is going to put me about as far away from everything here as anything possibly could. And although it's going to be a hectic week, professional engagement doesn't preclude isolation. In fact, these kinds of trips are a perfect example of isolation. You don't have time, or the context, to be anything other than a blip on the radars of the people you meet. And they on yours.

There is a real danger here too. It took me many years to realise it and, more importantly, to recognise the importance of controlling it. This is usually a particularly destructive period. This is where I start to do things that sever bonds. It's only the really strong connections that survive the kind of things I do here. The newest ones are the most vulnerable. And perversely they're usually the ones I go after first.

And having said that I can now remember the last time this happened. It was just over a year ago. It was very destructive. The wrecking ball was a little too effective that time round, and I was too long in recognising it.

I'd like to say I feel better for having vented. But I'd be lying.

12:21 (SAT), March 5, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

After much rangling and quite a few missteps, I almost have my tickets for next week's trip. Hopefully nothing else goes wrong. Barring that I'm off next week to spend some time with some IBM-types in Rochester, Minnesota. Woohoo. The ass-end of nowhere.

That said, it should at least be pretty interesting. Certainly I expect it to be one of my more challening trips to date. I'm a little bit anxious since I'm representing the company at a technical level. Although I've been doing this for a long time now, these guys will still probably have years on me, and this is their turf. I've never even seen an iSeries (AS400, thank the marketroids for the misdirection).

And of course there's the timing. It's going to be tight. I've got a ton to try and get round to but I only have about 4 days to do it in.

So here goes nothing.

19:37 (SAT), March 2, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Well doesn't time just scream by? I've been meaning to dump a whole lot here pretty much since I left Pretoria on Saturday morning. Not sure I'll remember all the little bits and pieces I wanted to put up here but I'll have a go nonetheless.

I spent last week in the greatest place on the planet: the Kruger National Park. The park encapsulates the best of the bushveld, which was probably the hardest thing to leave behind when we left Jhb to move to the Cape. Fortunately, I seem to have done something right, because my step mother (well, technically I suppose that title no longer applies but she's always going to be my stepmom) and her husband currently live there. Easily two of the most welcoming people I know. I actually can't think of a better way to escape the daily grind than spending time there. And that applies to spending time with them as much as it applies to spending time in the park. Played with my camera's video functionality too. Will put up proper links when I get a chance, but for now these will have to do.

But if I were completely forthcoming on this page I suppose I'd have to start this entry with Saturday. But that would be telling and I'm not going to tell that story here. Not yet anyway. Besides, no one reading this is seriously interested in my personal life, are they? ;-)

On that front I'm battling a little with some demons from my past. In a nutshell when I went to Oz I spent a little time in the UK first. Just having regained the freedom of singledom, and being in a different country for only a short period of time, I figured it was a good opportunity to let my hair down a bit (only a bit, can't let it down much further). But I was there with a colleague who turned into a reasonably good friend. Unfortunately, this means that that was pretty much all of me he's been exposed to. He seemed to find the whole experience pretty amusing (don't blame him, it was for the most part) but he has this annoying habit of harping on about it. Constantly. Endlessly. Most days I simply ignore it, but this has been a hell week (he says on Tuesday - sigh) and he got the short end of the stick. And I feel bad about it, especially because if I'm completely honest with myself it's not really his harping that bothers me, but more that the period in question is hardly something I'm going to wave around in the face of the some recent developments.

Ultimately what it comes down to is I'm not particularly proud of something and I'm worried it will jeopardise things. Ah shit, if it does then what can I do? I certainly can't be anything or anyone other than I am. Take it or leave it. But still, it would suck if that happened...

Work. Work, work, work. I woke up on Monday morning with a feeling in the pit of my stomach that took a while to identify: I felt the way I used to on the first morning of final exams in high school. I can't tell you how great it is to start the day that way. That was sarcasm. No really.

Back to the office to find utter chaos. That's not completely true. But last week isn't what I'd call an example of plain sailing. So I spent Monday morning shouting at upper management authorities who stepped in and cocked my well laid plans up at various points, and putting the emotional wrecks that were my team back together one by one. Hell I didn't even get around to the 600+ email messages waiting for me before lunch time. And now I'm trying to get everything in order for my trip to the US next week so that the same thing doesn't happen again. Boy am I glad to have the support system of friends around me that I do. I don't know if I'd manage to keep it together if they weren't here. I suppose it's times like these that make you appreciate their value.

Speaking of which, have I mentioned how much I enjoy long road trips? As long as you have appropriate company of course. I'm blessed with more appropriate road trip companions than I think I deserve. A good road trip buddy provides challenging, stimulating conversation when it's appropriate, and is happy to drive on in silence when you've passed out after a 5 hour stint behind the wheel. These are hard to come by.

Off to the US next week. Bit of a marathon trip. Spending a few days in the glorious city of Rochester, Minnesota, at an IBM training course. I get to play with Linux on the iSeries. We get our first chance to find out just how badly we've cocked up this project. That's not really appropriate. I'm pretty pleased with the progress. Things have come along splendidly. We're a little behind schedule but not to the point that I think it's significant.

Other than that, I don't really have much more to say. There was plenty on the road. There always is. That's the beauty of almost 5000 kms on the road. There's plenty of time to think about things.

Fortunately, in my world, there always seems to be plenty of things to think about.

16:47 (SAT), February 14, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Why do gyms seem to be the focal point for any and all uses of exclamantion marks in the surrounding area? Join us on Wednesdays!!!!; If you can't feel it, it's not working!!!!; You're limited only by your own determination!!!!; and my recent favourite: Thanks for answering our incredibly tedious and inane, oh and not to mention pointless, customer opinion poll regarding the preferred colour of our new bins!!!!!

Physical evolution gave up on our species about five thousand years ago. Let it go people. Let it go.

13:59 (SAT), February 10, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

WOTD: Many things currently bombinate about my skull.

But I have a new fridge. I don't think I've ever seen one in its original packaging.

14:17 (SAT), February 8, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

A weekend spent (among other things) getting OpenBSD 3.4 installed and configured to handle the ADSL connection we're serving these pages over. Of course, that included getting the other odds and ends up, apache, samba, the firewall, etc.

The thing that gets me, time and time again, is that no-one else seems to realise the degree to which I'm winging it. Typically at least a year elapses before I really get my hands dirty again, that seems to be our mean time between upgrades. In between I do very little beyond patching the installation from time to time. Other than that I really don't stay very involved with the box, or the OS, certainly not to any significant depth. So each time we go through this exercise this is all pretty much brand spanking new to me. One big learning curve. Keeps me on my toes but I have to reiterate that I'm winging it. Big time.

But I suppose that's a large part of working in this industry. It's not really about what you know. Well, maybe it is, but only up until a certain point. Beyond that, it really is about how convincing your bullshitting skills are.

16:20 (SAT), February 6, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Today it seems like everyone has a bee in their bonnet about a particular component we rely on. It's expensive, generally badly written, and because the assholes who wrote it have no notion of backwards compatibility and we didn't think to wrap it in our public SDK we've been stuck on an old version for years now.

Now while I agree in principle, this is becoming a bit of a recurring theme: "While we're going through this massive exercise why don't we fix/replace/rewrite/ditch/migrate off X?".

To which I have only one response. We've already bitten off a substantial piece of pie. Chew. Swallow. Then look around for more. Sheesh.

12:31 (SAT), February 5, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

So you're skipping merrily through the field of poppies that is life when you see one you like and think wahay, maybe this time it won't be laced with arsenic.

Sucker punch? Sure, I'd love some. Make it a double, I'm feeling strong.

08:51 (SAT), February 4, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

It seems Google has some competition. Altogether now, "We love boobies!". Or something to that effect.

08:48 (SAT), February 4, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

And so we dream about unhealthy fixation number 3. Oh, and a beat up old bakkie featured prominently for some reason too.

In other news. What would I do without The Internet? Even in this backwater country you can accomplish a tremendous amount without leaving your nearest outlet of uisge beatha (and no, I'm not talking about the eminently drinkable liquid gold).

16:38 (SAT), February 3, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

I need a new life rule: "What are the consequences of this action?". I also need a before-trigger to ensure this rule fires.

23:32 (SAT), February 2, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

And life steps in and optimizes the plan.

I'm flabbergasted it didn't try to sabotage it. But perhaps it's too early to make statements like that.

19:07 (SAT), February 1, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

A plan is hatched.

21:13 (SAT), January 31, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

A successful morning's worth of credit card dowsing. This is a stupendously satisfying activity. The basic idea is to walk into a favourite class of shop (book shop tops the list for me) and wander around until you realise that you have a parcel in your hand. If your credit card feels slightly warm you're done, if not, rinse and repeat. At no point should a purchase involve conscious thought, that's grounds for immediate disqualification. It's more fun when you get home if you have little or no idea what you now own. I think women have this down to a fine art.

Today I ended up with a copy of The Rough Guide to South Africa.

I think that constitutes success.

12:11 (SAT), January 30, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

So of course I dream about the unhealthy option. Bah.

23:18 (SAT), January 29, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Well, since I'm dialed up to fetch mail I may as well provide a state of the nation. Sucks not having a permanent connection at home anymore but we'll get that sorted before too long I suspect.

So where are we? Where to start? Work, work is going well. The current project is a tad immense in scope (porting our application framework from Windows/SQL Server to Linux/Oracle and Linux/DB2). I'm tech lead for the project. To be honest, I never expected to enjoy it this much. The technical stuff, sure. That's a given. It's what I do. The part I'm enjoying most is the 'extended reach'. I can tackle bigger problems with a small team of devs than I can alone. And I'm really enjoying being caretaker of the 'big picture'. So work's going well. We're making good progress. Pretty much on track so far, which is pretty unusual in software ;-)

On the personal front, there are some interesting developments. Early days but contrary to the standard pattern, relatively healthy too :-) Watch this space.

Apart from that, injuries seem to be sorting themselves out. Am nearing full, unhindered mobility. New toy acquisition: a DVD player with support for DVD-Audio, DVD-Video, CD-R, MP3, CD-Audio, etc. No milk frother though. That's the next model up. Go go gadget milk-frother.

16:07 (SAT), January 29, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

The rate of posting to this page is inversely proportional to the work on my plate. So enough said. But I have to put this down. If things work out the way I want them to this is going to be a stupendously good year instead of just a great one.

17:42 (SAT), January 21, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Phoooeee. What a week. And it's still only Wednesday. Juggling more than I ever thought I would possibly be able to manage (well, maybe it's too early to use the word manage; attempt probably belongs in there somewhere). But learning a tremendous amount on a daily basis, about tech, about myself, about my team, about the rest of the world. Which is all good. We're still on track, which is the most important thing and is pretty rare for any software development project. With luck and some effort it may even stay that way.

'Trouble' heading my way this weekend. But we're going to try to be proactive about avoiding it. Hahahahahahahaha ... whooeee ... sorry ... yes that was a joke. Busy weekend, even discounting said looming storm front. I so need that week in the Park next month. Focus on that Jim, focus on that.

Fogged our house this morning. This amounts to flooding a small enclosed space you live in with a huge volume of extremely lethal poison and leaving it to stew for a few hours. With luck it kills everything that should be dead and doesn't induce the growth of spurious organs in the next generation. I'm prepared to accept that roachs, fleas, ants, et al are a fact of life. There's plenty of space on this planet for all of us (well, maybe not all of us, mosquitoes can piss right off to the depths of hell), but, when one of said little fuckers (I use that word with no reservations whatsoever) wakes me up at 4am by scurrying across my face then it's war. If Bush can bomb the hell out of Iraq then a few crawlies are not getting away from me.

16:34 (SAT), January 19, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

What a weekend. Much confusion Friday night. Much potential for pissing in your own watering hole. Not recommended. Backed out of that one quietly and ran for my life.

14:11 (SAT), January 12, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Like most men I know, I suffer from mandatory-toy-acquisition syndrome. And I stand no chance if there's a milk-frother attachment.

13:26 (SAT), January 9, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Or perhaps a toxic bachelor?

13:09 (SAT), January 9, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Are you a metrosexual?

10:19 (SAT), January 8, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Reflecting on my base-jumping effort, I'm intrigued by how little effort I exerted to protect myself on the way down. I suspect this actually helped. Basically I went over the edge like a limp ragdoll. I'd like to claim credit for this at a conscious level, but to be totally honest, that was my natural reaction. I just kind of watched myself tip over the side in slow motion.

12:36 (SAT), January 6, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

Tried to go into work yesterday but got my ass summarily thrown out of the office. But they neglected to hang on to my laptop and since we finally got ourselves organized and had a landline installed I can get to my email (although wading through my daily spam in a 56kb stream is proving to be somewhat slow-going).

The bits of my body that took the brunt of the fall seem to be sorted themselves out slowly. This morning I got out of bed because I wanted to rather than because the pain was too much. And I'm no longer completely dependent on myprodol to be sociable during the day. Walking's still a bit tricky though. Oh, and sneezing. Laughing is pretty unpleasant for that matter.

But thank god for laptops. I'd have gone nuts by now otherwise. It's not like I've been incredibly productive, but you can only count skin cells on your left thumb for so long before you go nuts.

08:56 (SAT), January 5, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

At least the year seems to have started on an interesting note. Took a little walk up Table Mountain and then came down Skeleton Gorge into Kirstenbosch botanical gardens. The descent was a little faster in places than usual.

The end result is about 15 stitches (I'll confirm once the bandages come off). Somewhere on the path down I stepped into a wet patch and watched my foot leap out into space. Unfortunately, said space was at the top of a drop of a few meters. I bounced a few times on the way down (I was pretty sure I was going to break my back, I distinctly remember that being the dominating thought on the way down) but fortunately my head took most of the knock :-P.

I was pretty lucky. It could have been much worse. It was one of those falls that could easily have been fatal. I don't know how I got off so lightly.

08:42 (SAT), January 2, 2004, Cape Town, South Africa

A cow, a combine harvester, a long sad story. Steak Africa style :-)