Nath's Blog

Well, its Monday morning and I’m back to the usual activity for a Monday – work. Such a dull contrast when compared to the vibrant excitement enjoyed over the last 4 days, due entirely to a fantastic weekend. This year our annual study weekend was held in April, a departure from its usual slot of the June long weekend.

The study weekend was on Jehoshaphat, led by Jonna Lawson from Blackburn, Melbourne. A fantastic speaker, who really brought Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, to life. An incredible example of a man who led by example, enthusiastically removing idols previous kings had left untouched, and leading Judah in their service to God. A man who made monumental mistakes in his life, but learned from them, turning to God for help in his times of distress. A ruler who involved the people in his decisions, who in turn supported their king when he needed it.

The weekend itself was very nearly perfect. The venue was great, and provided a good amount of much-needed shelter from the vast quantities of rain which fell on Thursday and Friday. Apparently, it had been raining all week, which provided the perfect environment for much mud-enhanced footy. The girls started off playing basketball or netball (I don’t remember which) but that quickly degenerated into full-on mud slinging.

We went to mini-golf on Saturday morning, which was great fun. The course was massive, the biggest mini-golf course I’d ever seen. In retrospect, I think that was probably just as well – a smaller golf course wouldn’t have been able to handle the 120-odd crowd of young people descending upon it.

The variety evening on Friday night was fantastic, the committee did an awesome job with it. It was basically a trivia night, with a few fun and demeaning (for the people involved) bonus sections, such as a pushup competition, drinking some foul european version of coke, and the alltime favourite, raw garlic eating.

It seems the Guinness world record for most cloves of raw garlic eaten in a minute was five (Note: I am unable to verify the veracity of this record – a search on the Guinness site reveals no such record). The premise of the particular bonus round was that chewing and swallowing 6 cloves of raw garlic one after another was surely not that difficult. And it seems that was a valid premise. Several people managed to sweat through six cloves of garlic, in under a minute. Incredible!

Eating raw garlic apparently produces a strong burning sensation, initially in the mouth, and down to the stomach. This much was evident by the red and contorted faces. The other downside to this particular exercise is the renowned odour associated with garlic. Those who participated in the exercise were studiously avoided for the next day or so, the smell remaining prevalent even the next morning.

Another benefit arising from the weekend is the newly revamped look for the Sydney CYC website. The availability of unsecured wireless internet permitted those involved to collaborate on the new look, during the free time available.

Last week I ordered a toroidal transformer from ebay.  The seller was great, responding quickly, and letting me know when the item was being shipped.  The item was shipped registered and insured, with fastway couriers.

The seller of the transformer is located in Sydney, and I was getting the transformer shipped to Canberra.  An easy three hour drive, maybe up to as much as four with heavy traffic in Sydney.

The parcel was picked up by fastway couriers on 11th April.  Fair enough, that was the date given to me by the ebay seller.  Shortly afterwards the status changed to being in transit.

Five days later (including three business days), the tracking system still indicated the parcel was in transit.  For a three hour drive, that’s a pretty poor effort.  This morning the status finally changed to indicate the parcel was in Canberra.  Quite fortunate for Fastway, since I was about to ring them up and question why exactly the parcel was taking so long.

It remains to be seen just how long it will take for the parcel to be delivered, now that is actually in Canberra.

First of all, some background to this story. I bought a Yamaha stage piano (CP33) a while ago, and while it works wonderfully, and sounds great, there was one glaring deficiency. It didn’t come with a music stand.

Consequently, I had to try to persuade any music I was playing from to lean against the wall in such a fashion that it didn’t slip down and cover the keys. Not a trivial task, and frequently an unsuccessful one. It made playing the keyboard more than a little frustrating.

A little searching on google revealed that Yamaha sold a music rest separately to the CP33. No problem I thought, I’ll just get one from the retailer I bought the keyboard from. No such luck. In fact, not a single music store I could find online in Australia even acknowledged the existence of such a product. The only place I could find it was in some US-based music stores. Not even on the Yamaha website!

So I sent off an email to the retailer, who professed to never have heard of such an item, but promised they would contact Yamaha about it. Some weeks pass, and I hear nothing. So I resort to google again, this time to find online music retailers in Australia. I get the contact email address, and send them an email about the music rest.

Only one of the retailers contacted in this fashion had the good business sense to reply. They were under the impression that the music rest was included with the keyboard, an impression I soon corrected. Fortunately they were able to locate this devious little item, and after providing my details over the phone, an order was placed with their supplier.

Yesterday afternoon I picked up a small, triangular-prism shaped package from the local courier depot. With great joy I fitted the music rest to my keyboard, and was delighted to be able to play without fear of sheet music slipping down and covering the keys. In short, my keyboard now brings the joy and pleasure it was originally intended to provide.

Well there would have been a nice long post in here, but wordpress ate it.

So I’m lying across a massive double bed, typing on my laptop in the semi darkness of a subtly lit room at the Hilton hotel, in Sydney’s CBD.  The music channel on the widescreen LCD tv in the corner fills in the silence that would otherwise deafen me.

It’s 10 o’clock at night, and I’m in town for a Citrix conference about Xen.   It’s the first time I’ve spent a night in Sydney’s CBD, despite residing in this city for nearly all my life. It’s the first time I’ve gone away with just one backpack to store all my clothes and gadgets.  And it’s the first time I’ve just spent half an hour wandering around this city that never sleeps, looking for a place to eat, before walking into a nearly empty sushi bar.

Don’t get me wrong – I’ve eaten sushi before.  But I’ve never had the nerve to sit down at a sushi bar, selecting various example of Japanese cuisine almost entirely at random, and enjoying the delicious newness to be found therein.  I’m not entirely sure what I ate tonight, although I did recognise the calamari rings, and the salmon nigiri.  What I do know is that the randomness, and the bursts of virgin flavour in my mouth, were received with joy and surprise.

I have discovered that Sydney is transformed into an entirely different place after dark.  The view out the two narrow, tall windows of my room encompasses centrepoint tower, as well as various high rise office buildings lit in varying colours.  The people on the street are similarly different from those I’m used to.  Gone are the business professionals in their dark coloured power suits, scurrying to the next important meeting, the scores of people surrounding nearly every coffee shop, seeking the next burst of energy-inducing caffeine.

Instead, the street level is the domain of the young, the energetic, the adventurous.  Instead of coffee ships, people linger outside cinemas, bars, and video game arcades.  Crowds of friends laugh and chatter excitedly as they migrate from place to place.  Uni students doing the week’s shopping at the local Asian grocery store, filled with multitudes of items, incomprehensibly labelled in various non-English languages.  Couples stroll hand in hand, or perhaps enjoy a romantic dinner for two at a small cafe.

All in all, life is quite different at night here in Sydney.  It remains to be seen whether this is merely  an artefact of the weekend, or normal for this time of night.

As some of you may know, my sister Sharon had been engaged to her boyfriend Jonathan for some months. Yesterday saw the progression to the next phase of their relationship – marriage.

The day went quite smoothly, although it was a little disappointing that it rained. Fortunately, there were contingency plans in place if the weather proved unsuitable for the planned garden wedding. Some 140 odd guests showed up to share the happy occasion – a number of whom I knew, many I did not.

Sharon, of course, looked absolutely beautiful in her long, flowing, white wedding dress, and her two bridesmaids looked equally stunning in two shades of pink. The groom and his groomsmen wore black tuxedos.

Residing in the same house as the bride finally had an advantage – I was fortunate enough to witness (some of) the secret inner workings of beautification that goes before a wedding. Actually, about the only inner workings I saw was the application of make up. But it was interesting nonetheless.

I arrived at the wedding venue long before other guests – I had to prepare the necessary equipment for playing the requested walking-down-the-aisle music, as well as concluding music. One of the main positives resulting from the rain was the ability to use a gorgeous white baby grand piano, in stark contrast to the electronic keyboard that would have been utilised outdoors.

The wedding ceremony went smoothly, and the reception was great too. The food was delicious, and I got a chance to catch up with a number of people I rarely get to see. In between the ceremony and the reception came great multitudes of photos. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to take many photos at this time, being occupied organising other people, and even being in a few of the photos myself. The photos I did manage to take will be in my photo gallery after I get a chance to post-process them.

The official photographers were my uncle; the husband of my cousin; plus another person from New Zealand.  There were many, many other people there with cameras (I wouldn’t deign to call them photographers). The customary kiss after the exchanging of rings was bathed in a brilliant sea of camera flashes, barely a single film camera among them.  My uncle has shot quite a number of weddings in his time – I’m quite keen to see the resultant artwork.

Following the reception, there was more of a chance to catch up with people I rarely get to see. As with most good things, however, this opportunity was all too brief. After saying goodbye tonight to the last of the interstate visitors prior to their departure, I suddenly feel very lonely. It’s been so awesome to see so many people and have a chat and a few laughs, and even play a few fun games.

But now it is all over – the preparation and buildup of the last six or so months, the culmination of those plans yesterday, and the fleeting chances to cram in years worth of each other’s lives in a few short conversations. Oh how I wish it could have lasted longer. Bring back the seven day wedding feasts I say. At least then I would have had a chance to become thoroughly reacquainted with the many people so dear to my heart yet so far away.

Some time ago now I purchased a lovely 24 inch aluminium iMac.  It came with OS X 10.4.10 – also known as Tiger.  On the weekend (well, last Friday to be more precise) the next major version of OS X – Leopard – was finally released to retail stores around the world.  I therefore decided to upgrade my iMac, and what follows is the story of that upgrade.

My Saturday began rather more unpleasantly than usual.  I had to get up at 6am to be at work by 7am.  Some work was being done that necessitated the shutdown of all servers in a particular datacentre I look after as part of my job.  I was tasked with shutting the servers down beforehand, and ensuring everything still worked after powering them on again.  That task was due to finish sometime around 12pm – I didn’t end up leaving till 1:30pm.

That caused me a fair degree of consternation.  I had decided to visit the Canberra computer markets in order to buy an external hard drive.  I needed the external hard drive to create a backup of my Tiger install, before upgrading to Leopard.  The consternation I felt was due to the time the markets close – 2:30pm.  I had just one hour to walk to my car, drive to the Exhibition Park in Canberra (EPIC) – a place I’d never before been – and find what I wanted.  It was around a 30 minute drive from where I was.

Fortunately I got to the markets before they closed.  I was unable to find a Firewire to SATA enclosure, so instead I settled for an USB 2.0 to SATA enclosure, and a Seagate hard disk. Thus equipped, I drove home.  If I had have been more organised, I would have written down the name of the Apple reseller I planned on visiting, and I could have gone straight there.

As it turned out, the local branch of the Apple reseller had run out of stock of leopard (if they had any in the first place).   I was told to try the city store.  I drove there after confirming they had plenty of copies of leopard in stock.  I would have nearly passed this store on my way home from the markets, which was somewhat annoying.  I bought the family pack of Leopard, since I also own a mac mini and a 12 inch ibook.  It is much cheaper to get the family pack (which allows for installation on up to five computers in the one household) than to buy even two single user copies of Leopard.

In between coming home from the markets and going back out to get a copy of leopard, I plugged in my new external hard drive, partitioned it identically to the internal hard drive, and configured my clone tool of choice – SuperDuper! – to clone my current install while I was gone.

Once the clone was finished, I booted from the external hard drive to confirm it was all ok.  Then I began the relatively painless upgrade to Leopard – a process that took around an hour.  At the end of the upgrade, I had Leopard installed, with all of my applications and settings intact.  In fact, if it wasn’t for clues like the different background on the login page, the 3D looking dock and the semi-translucent menu bar at the top of the screen, I might have thought I was still running Tiger.

Applications seem to load slightly quicker under Leopard.  The new finder interface is taking a bit of getting used to.  Other than that, I quite like Leopard.  It’s different enough so that one realises they aren’t running Tiger any more, yet similar enough that one doesn’t have to relearn how to use their computer.  All in all, I’m quite happy with Leopard.

I figure that, since I now have this nice fancy wordpress instead of the hideousness that was my previous blog, I should take the time to update it more often. So what happened in my life today? Not a great deal that was interesting, but that’s not going to stop me writing about the uninteresting stuff.

Today I finally bought a new pair of shoes. I’ve been looking for a replacement pair of shoes for my black Colorado size 13 destroyers, but up until recently I hadn’t had much success. I was used to these big, clunky comfortable shoes, and I wanted to get another pair. Unfortunately I bought that pair about 5 years ago – they were actually sitting in my cupboard for a year or two before I even started wearing them.

Since they were Colorado shoes, I figured it would be logical to go to a Colorado retail store to get another pair. Unfortunately, the Colorado stores I went to didn’t have the same shoe on display. On Tuesday I finally went to my now-local Colorado store. I was overjoyed when I found a similar pair – not so chunky, but still black, and comfortable. I asked if they had them in size 13. I was told that particular store didn’t, but another did, and it could be ordered in.

Yesterday I got a message saying that in fact, no Colorado store throughout the whole of Australia had that shoe in a size 13. I was advised instead to visit Mathers shoe store, which had arranged to hold a pair of these shoes for me. So at lunch time today I visited the Mathers store. I was feeling pretty happy when the shop assistant returned from the storeroom with a large shoebox in her hand. But that happiness soon disappeared. Once she opened the shoebox, I saw a pair of size 13 black shoes alright, but in a suede finish. Not at all what I wanted.

After pointing that out, the assistant said she’d take a look and see if they had the shoe in a ‘normal’ leather finish. A short time later she re-appeared, carrying two boxes. I was delighted to discover that one shoebox actually contained a pair of size 13 black destroyers! The very shoe I was after originally. It seems strange that a 3rd party retailer would stock what a Colorado store had no access to, but I’m not going to complain too loudly. I’m just happy I have some new shoes at last.

Anyways, in a rather anti-climactic finish I would like to say that it rained very heavily for about 10 minutes, shortly before I was due to leave work this afternoon. It was both cool, and annoying. The cool factor came from the rain being so prevalent, that I was unable to see the ground from the window on the 14th floor. The annoying part came from the rain happening so close to when I was about to go home. It seemed that I would be walking to my car in torrential rain. But fortunately the rain eased off to virtually nothing by the time I left.

Also, Murphy reared his ugly head today. I had just pressed the “Close door” button in the lift, ready to go home, when I realised I’d forgotten something. My precious newly purchased shoes were still at my desk. I had to go all the way to the ground floor, and then take a lift back up to the 14th floor to retrieve my shoes.

Next week I’m planning on going away on a photography trip. Given theres a public holiday (ANZAC day) on the Wednesday, I figured it was the perfect opportunity to take two days off work for 5 continual days away from work.

I’m going down to the south coast of NSW. I’ll be staying in Batemans Bay, at Del Costa in one of their apartments.

I plan on driving around and taking photos of anything interesting I see. Hopefully I will be able to catch some great sunrises/sunsets, visit some national parks, and just wander aimlessly through rural NSW looking for that perfect photograph.

At this stage my only definite destination is the waterfalls at Carrington tops, although I plan on trying to get to Montague Island and take a cruise along the Clyde River.

I’m really looking forward to this trip, and taking heaps of photos, especially now that I have my nice new lens.