Pitch

Construction going on literally right around the corner from me:


Sweet! The condition of the grass looks so good it almost makes me want to weep.

Rainbow

Rainbow over George St which the garage in back of our house opens onto:


There's lots of these sorts of streets in Melbourne, that are pretty much all garage doors.

New company

Ever see that photo of the Microsoft team way back when they were a startup?  Here's ours, taken yesterday in my boss's living room (while he's off traveling the world):

I suspect we'll be bigger.

Backyard

Marjorie and friend.

Nice

Lovely day lying back looking at the sky, listening to music the backyard:


This weather we know won't last long...

Albert Park

Bopped down to our old neighborhood today to take Laika to the beach:


And to have lunch at our old regular restaurant, Dundas and Fausett:

Pixies

The Pixies last night at Festival Hall:


What's with all these people liking MY band?

Food and Wine Festival

Marjorie and friend Fleur at the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival:

Birds on wires

Twelve red-rumped parrots spotted near our house:



And a tawny frogmouth, silhouetted against the streetlight (about the only way to take a night shot with the iPhone camera):

Hockey

So, yesterday on a whim I went down to Melbourne's awesome new skating facility for an intro to ice hockey. A little late in the game to be starting a physical sport like this, but I enjoy skating and used to REALLY enjoy playing intramural floor hockey in college.

It was a lot of fun. From pictures on the web site I expected to be given just a helmet and a stick, but they ended up giving me full pads - helmet, gloves, elbow pads, knee/shin pads, shoulder pads, and padded pants. This proved useful as I'm not the best skater in the world, especially in hockey skates (I'm used to figure skates with the sawtooth in the front that I used both for stopping and accelerating). So I ended up going down maybe five or six times, but no pain thanks to the pads. It was quite a lot of fun. The instructors were good and kept things organized and moving. A great deal at only $20 for the hour too, including skates and equipment.

I really, really need to learn to skate better. Particularly stopping, which I don't really have worked out.

Marjorie came by and caught the last ten minutes. She's going to join the fun next week!

Moonlight cinema

In the botanical gardens, waiting while the Moonlight Cinema screen (in the background) is inflated:


Saw "Bright Sun", which was pretty good.

Calexico

Calexico, who we caught at the Thornberry Theatre last night:


Really good show. As their name suggests, their music is a mishmash of American and Mexican influences. Venue was interesting, kind of a banquet hall, with assigned seats at big round tables:

Pierogies

Had lunch today at Court Jester, a very interesting hidden-away Polish food restaurant:


Food was... not bad, but we won't be in a hurry to go back.

Skating

Marjorie, yesterday at Icehouse:



I'm a stinker.

Library

Hard to capture, but this is my favorite room in the state library. I gasped the first time I stumbled into it.

Protest

The Internet filter protest in front of the state library:





Smaller crowd than I was hoping for. As you can see, several different political parties were represented...

Jobless

So - we all knew this was coming, but yesterday our Melbourne FAST office was officially let go by Microsoft. They had decided to discontinue our product, a year and a half after acquiring us, since it wasn't really in line with their corporate vision. A lot of that was due to the fact that we are developing in Java on Linux and Mac machines, instead of using Microsoft products.

No one in the office was terribly concerned; my boss is working on acquiring the software rights to what we were making are starting his own company, which would be a Microsoft partner company but otherwise unaffiliated with Microsoft. I think everyone in the office would be happier working without the constraints that Microsoft put on us anyway. That said, Microsoft was VERY nice about the severance, even going so far as to provide us a career counseling service to help us find new jobs, even outside of Microsoft.

So, I had really been looking forward to the time off. I've been coming up with a big list of things I want to accomplish during my "Autumn Of Mark". But then today, on my first official day off, I got a call in the morning from the FAST office manager about a job opportunity, and I couldn't really say no. So tomorrow I'm going in for an interview. If it works out I will have some Java temp work for a few months until this other company gets off the ground. But I definitely didn't want it to happen this soon. Sigh...

Paintball

One of my bruises from our company paintball outing last Friday:


It's turned a particularly lovely yellow over the past day. Tons of fun though - boss supplied us with unlimited ammo on the company expense account, so the air was dense with paintballs. I came home with 17 different welts!

Botanical

Our friend Trisha's 40th birthday party at the Royal Botanical Gardens.


I don't know why I didn't take any shots with the beautiful plants in the background.

Mueck

Ron Mueck exhibition at the NGV: