Back on-line. Upgraded the home computer to Windows XP, upgraded the RAM, installed a wireless network card, and we're back.

Not a lot new here. Weather has been awesome. Spring seemed to give us a miss, and summer wasn't much to speak of, but autumn has been just one spectacular weekend after another. This is the first weekend that's it's been cold at all during the day. Looking forward to playing soccer in it tomorrow. Somehow I ended up agreeing to play two games tomorrow, which is going to hurt.

I should be hiring on permanently at work soon (finally). The project is approaching the critical end stage, and I only recently learned how huge in scope it really is. More details to come.

What a mess. So, after the misadventures with the first repair place, I took it to another. After a week, they called to say it was ready. Of course, it wasn't; it was having the exact same problem. So today was another week later, and this time they said it was the memory that was bad, intermittently. Okay, fine. The replaced the RAM, and I tried it out in the store; it booted, but kept getting some sort of page fault when it tried to shut down. But at least it was booting, so maybe they were on to something.

I have it home now, and it's connected to the internet, so I'm a tiny bit satisfied. Everything seems really sketchy, though; I think there are problems with the registry. So, I'm in the process of uninstalling everything. Now the wireless card has stopped working. Anyone know any good diagnostic software?

The return of boring soccer reports. Dull cheers and golf claps, everyone!

First game was today. Inauspicious, in that it was way the hell out in whatever the Australian equivalent of Podunk, Iowa, and I tried to go by public transport. Despite leaving more than two hours beforehand, I only just showed up as the game was about to start. And I scraped myself climbing over the chain link fence to get to the pitch.

Luckily I had the first half to compose myself on the bench, since you have to clear it with the referee that your a registered player. This is a MUCH stricter league than in Singapore. Everyone has these large printed ID cards with their pictures on them, and scan codes that the referee swipes with a bar code reader whenever you get a yellow or red card. Finally in the second half I got called to go on, and the ref took my number and made me tuck in my shirt. Then, just as I was about to run on, he said, "I can't let you on with that earring..."

I didn't play horribly, but I didn't play well. It seems like a good bunch of folks, and I think my skill level is about right. Good to be playing again.

Phoo. Our long silence has been brought on by a sick computer. It gave me the blue screen of death mid-email, and simply refused to boot afterwards.

I took it to one repair shop, who promised to get back to me in a couple of days. After harassing them a bit, finally, a week later, they called me and said that it was all fixed, that the problem was caused by dust.

So I went to pick it up, and luckily I tried booting it before leaving the store, because the exact same problem was occurring. Not only that, the plastic around the display had a nice new crack in it. Which they denied responsibility for.

I was not pleased.

Now, I don't want to mention any names, but it was Phil's Computers on Pelham St in Carlton.

Anyway, now the computer is in another shop, and we have brought out our backup computer, and have connected using dialup. Soon we'll get it hooked up to the network proper, but for now, some access is better than no access.

Our friend Ken from Singapore (he of the art and the zoo is in town for a visit. Yesterday we drove out to the Healesville sanctuary, which turned out to be more zoo than sanctuary. But it was quite cool. Every exhibit featured wildlife native to Australia, which was good because we got to see some local things we hadn't ever seen before, like Tasmanian devils and pygmy possums. The koalas and echidnas were active as well, which is unusual. The highlight (at least for Marjorie and me) was the lyrebird. We had seen one of these before in the wild but this time we got to hear him display for a prospective mate. Lyrebirds are the best mimics in the world, capable of imitating barking dogs, chain saws, camera shutter noises, etc., but this one seemed intent on just imitating local birds. Finally, after a few minutes, we were presented with an uncanny imitation of an ambulance siren, that even transitioned between the slow rising/falling note and the alternating high-low sounds just like the real thing. Very interesting.

I joined the fantasy football league at work. That's fantasy Australian rules football, actually. As I can't name a single player, it's going to be tough. So I picked every player in the league who's named "Mark". My team name is the All-Marks.

Woo hoo!

Find soccer team (Mark)


I think I finally found my team -- Middle Park -- and they play just up the road. There's actually three teams; firsts and seconds that compete hard, and a third that is more of a show-up-and-play social team like I had in Singapore. They train on Tuesday and Thursday nights. I practiced with them on Thursday, and boy is my [everything] tired. Not used to doing actual drills and such. We did running drills as well as pushups and situps. Afterwards everyone went to the pub, and I chatted with just about everyone. There's guys from all over -- England, Chile, Scotland, France. They used to have an American, who was really good apparently, so everyone is calling me the "replacement Yank".

Although they take the game seriously, it seems more of a social club. To wit: at the end of the night at the pub, they said to me, "You should keep coming out. Oh, and if you want to play some soccer too, that would be great!"

The company I'm working for just landed a choice new contract with Lonely Planet, to do some work on their website. I'm hoping I get a chance to work on it when my current project is done. How cool would that be?

Flotsam.

It's Labour Day weekend here. Just like Labor day in the states, it's a three-day weekend at the end of summer. By good fortune, the weather is supposed to be in the 30s (that's a good thing here). We're going to try to hit the beach.

In chess news, I've been playing a guy who's a bit better than me, but who I can beat on a good day. But today I played a guy who just wiped the table with me, two games. A good dose of humility. Part of the reason that chess is fascinating to me is because you can follow all the supposed rules of strategy, and see them work, but then good players are still able to drive in a wedge and crash over you like a wave (to mix a metaphor).

The last great physicist of glory days of the first half of the last century died this week. This was the guy who figured out how the sun shines. I always wanted to meet him.

The Station Agent is a great little movie.

New Aussie term: "to spit the dummy". A dummy is another word for a pacifier here. So, like a baby would spit out a pacifier when pitching a fit, spitting the dummy is having a tantrum. Also known as "cracking the shits" or "having a tantie".

Besides taking first place at bar trivia tonight, we also learned an interesting additional bit of trivia: apparently, Guy Pierce and Hugh Jackman live right on our street. From what we heard, Guy has grown his hair and beard long to avoid recognition, and Hugh is a regular at a neighborhood cafe.

Aussie term. "Grog" is somewhat archaic slang for beer. To take "a bog" is to defecate. Hence, a "grog bog" is the equivalent of the "beer shits". Thank you and good night.

Caught Mudhoney last night at the Corner Hotel. A solid set, with a good mix of old and new. But overly smoky. Mudhoney is a band that I'm happy to have just grind out albums and tour, forever. Most bands have one essential member; they have three, in Mark Arm, the singer/songwriter, Dan Peters, the drummer, and especially (I decided last night) Steve Turner, the guitarist.

The dog's favorite food is, officially: cheese.

Geek alert. I made an interesting discovery recently. The building next door to my work is the State Library of Victoria. And, they have an entire room dedicated to chess. So, a couple of times over the past few week, I've started grabbing a quick lunch and running over to get in a quick game against random strangers. How geeky is that? Geeky enough, at least, to not even mention it to my coworkers yet.

Laika nearly dug her way out of the backyard yesterday while we were at the wine festival, as we were gone for thirteen hours. So today we took her with us when we went to breakfast at an outdoor cafe.

A bird pooped on her head.

Afterwards, we took her to the dog park.

A bird pooped on her head.

What are the odds?

Maybe we'll rename her after Steve Martin's dog in The Jerk.

Fruits of the vine. Yesterday we boarded a bus with a dozen or so of my cow orkers and headed out to the yearly Grape Grazing festival. We hit the first winery by 10:30 am. By the fourth winery, there was a lot less swishing and swirling; the Grape Grazing festival had become more of a Wine Swilling festival. Twice we ended up behind another bus full of women exhibitionists.

The festival was hosted by Honda, who recommend a nice Cabernet Sauvignon before getting behind the wheel.

We had a fantastic time.

Call me the man from Nantucket. I took third place in this year's Valentine's Day Limerick Contest. This year, your limerick had to reference medical pioneers, skin conditions, or microscopic life. So my limerick is about the little creature that lives in your eyelashes.

I had another submission that I thought was better, but probably got marked off because it was off-color, and maybe because the last line doesn't scan perfectly. You'll have to find it yourself.

If you're at all interested in the workings of the brain, biology, evolution, or conciousness, might I suggest getting a dog?

I mean, in addition to all the usual accolades of dog ownership, it's fascinating to this other mind, this other kind of mind, living in your household.

The communication barrier is between us and her is bewildering to me. There's just no way to tell her some things. It kills me that when she arrived home here, she didn't even know she was staying. When we go for a walk, she doesn't know which way we're going to turn, at every intersection. When we go out without her, she doesn't know if it's for a minute or for eight hours.

I was surprised to see her start exhibiting behaviours appropriate to her breed. She won't fetch things, except at the beach -- where she'll swim out and fetch (other dog's) balls and sticks, then come back and drop them on the beach, just like a good retriever should. I never realized such a specific behaviour could be bred for, even if it's substituting balls for ducks. But why not? Beavers build dams on instinct alone, and spiders spin webs. I tend to think of such specific behaviours as learned, not ingrained. Evolution in action, even if the selection isn't "natural".

Which makes me wonder -- why have they never bred dogs strictly for intelligence? At least, not that I've ever heard of, or can find with a web search. Why concentrate on floppy ears, miniature size, long or short hair? I wonder just how smart you can make a dog. (Just out of curiousity. Laika, bless her heart, is in the fat of the bell curve, methinks, but we have no plans to trade her in.)

Recording history. I have a kind of fascination with things that are lost to history:

The loss of the Library at Alexandria -- almost inconceivable.

Two whole Shakespeare plays -- Love's Labour's Won and Cardenio -- didn't survive to the modern era.

Lennon and McCartney sat down, early on, and knocked out about fifty songs, which have vanished into the mists of time.

Countless early movies have been lost, or survive in only partial or edited form. (I for one would love to see the orignal ending to The Magnificent Ambersons.)

Many movies are in the process of being lost. There are people trying to prevent that.

Most of early television is gone. People just didn't think it would ever be considered important. Even recently, most of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson from the 1970's is nowhere to be found, I understand.

Those who don't learn from history, they say, are doomed to repeat it. So, I often wonder if there's anything happening these days that's being lost, because we don't realise that future generations might be interested.

Which brings me to an idea for a web site I'd like to implement, if I had more time. It would be appealing in the present mostly to music geeks. In fact, most would consider it frivolous at best.

What I would like to create is "gigography.com", a web site that archives concerts. It would list the band, venue, and date at a minimum, but also trivia, band line ups, set lists, opening bands, audio files, etc. Not just new concerts but shows dating back in history. You could easily browse back and check out the Woodstock lineup, or the Beatles set list on the Ed Sullivan show.

Until recently, this would be an impossible task for one person. But now with the concept of wikis, where anyone can add content, it's quite doable. You would be surprised how many fans have already compiled similar lists (cough) for their favorite artist. But so far, nothing has been centralized. It would be a simple matter to put the plea out there to various music lists to get the ball rolling.

Pointless? Maybe. Historically necessary? Well, doubtful. Fun? Surely.

Life goes on. We drank a toast to Mike at the Rufus Wainwright show last night. (Don't know if Mike was a fan, but it wouldn't surprise me.) An intimate venue, and a fantastic show. I don't think I've ever seen an audience held in such a trance. While the songs were intense, Rufus was jovial in between, joking a lot about being on a diet because his mother said he was fat recently. And because it was just him, he was free to rearrange his songs on the fly, and skip over or redo bits at will. An enormous talent. I never realized what a good piano player he is, too.

We both thought about Mike again during a song Rufus did about Jeff Buckley, who died tragically at a young age. Who frew da ham?

By an odd coincidence -- I watched an old M*A*S*H rerun earlier in the day. It was the one where the nurses all get sent off, and it featured a folk singer that played a sad song in the officer's club. In the closing credits it was revealed that the singer was Loudon Wainwright III, Rufus's father.