Sarah's Journal

It’s been a while since I updated this. The server has been up & down a few times since my last post. I’ve been working almost a year at CVSDude.

Working from home is different. Its a bit lonelier than working in a big complex, but it’s also simpler.

It’s nice to be away from a lot of the things that bothered me at uni. I miss research a little, but in general its nicer to have construction projects where the goals are clear and the path to achieve the goals is well known.

Work bought me a macbook pro laptop. The iMac I got for free a while back won me over to MacOS X. Its a nice balance between the sensibleness of unix and “just working” without having to learn all about say lpr config files to get a printout. I’m also liking that I can use commercial software without any more complications than their proprietory nature provides.

I’m particularly liking the latest version, Leopard. The search tool, spotlight, has been perfected in my opinion. It was already my #1 favorite app, but it now has finishing touches that fit in with how I was using it.

Time Machine does the usual mac thing of taking an old Unix trick that was way cool, and packaging it so its usable and powerful and the only configuration needed is “on or off”. If your needs are simple then its nice to not HAVE to customize a backup script.

OK, the short version of our holiday. There’s a lot more detail but I’ll cover that in person.

The photos from the trip are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/satyrictim/tags/tasmania/

     g
___/\_   ______
\   f  \/     /
 \e     a    /
  \    b    /
    cd     /
     \    /
       \/

Basically we took the Spirit overnight from Melbourne to Devonport (a), which was a very comfy sleep. I slept well. Tim less so.

We drove via Cradle Mountain (b) to Strahan (pronounced “strawn”) (c). Strahan is a fishing villiage on Macquarie Harbour, which is twice the size of Sydney but a fraction of the population.

We went on a cruise on a catemeran to Sarah Island and the Gordon river, walked along the boardwalk through the rainforest of Huon Pines, and a wilderness train ride on and Abt rack rail train through the wilderness and over the moutain to Queenstown (d). We tried to find a cache on a 4wd track but couldn’t quite get near enough on roads our little car could handle. We also did the walk to Hogarth falls.

We went against advice and drove the Western Explorer Highway and took the ferry over the Pieman river (e).

We stopped off at Dismal Swamp and tried out the slide to the bottom of the sink hole (f).

Then we arrived at Stanley (g), a much smaller fishing villiage but more “rolling grassy hills” rather than the “rainforesty moutain” of Strahan.

In Stanley we rode the chair lift up to the top of The Nut, enjoyed views of boats and lighthouses from our B&B window, tried out the penguin crossing and walked with the penguins as they came in for the night.

Somewhere in that we also found several geocaches, got to sleep at about 8pm (Tasmanian time) every night, walked around a lot, went on quests for decent coffee, and took it all at a relaxed, leisurely pace.

What a great trip! I’ll tell you more about it soon.

On Saturday Tim and I caught two more movies at Nova:

The first was a documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth”, by Al Gore. At face value it is a very worthwhile documentary about global warming, how far beyond cyclic patterns it has already gone, how peer reviewed scientific articles about it are in agreement about this, and the only doubt appears somewhere between the journals and newsprint, etc.

Reviews of the film seem to fall into two camps: people who say it’s a valuable documentary and people who summarily dismiss the content because it is thinly disguised positioning for Al Gore’s likely attempt at running in the 2008 US elections.

Tim pointed out how it was the seats that were contested last time Al Gore ran which specifically featured in prediction animations etc… and I didn’t notice that at the time but he’s right.

All up I think the movie is both: a valuable documentary and election grandstanding. I wouldn’t dismiss one part because of the other.

It’s been a busy weekend. Saturday Tim and I helped W with a house move. Lots of heavy lifting… I still ache! Today was Cam’s Tournament of Minds thing for school, which was very good. He and some friends from school did a performance which went very well.

The throat infection that I almost got rid of a few months ago and has been appearing and dissapearing ever since is back with avengance. It’s hard to swallow, literally.

On the plus side, I’m settling in well and so is Kiki. Tidying and rennovating the place does a lot for one’s sense of being at home rather than a guest in someone else’s home.

Work is rather wierd still. We had a lightening fast meeting yesterday and I still have no idea what happened in it. The topic changed too often for me to keep up.

One of my favorite web sites has started posting some cool looking articles about “GTD” (David Allan’s method of Getting Things Done), which I tried to read last night but just didn’t have the attention span for. I know, I should talk to someone qualified about ADHD some time.

I’ve almost got an article ready to publish for Developing Programmers, but it needs two things before it hits the web site: some proofreading (which Tim has promised to do “after this battle” several times in the last couple of days, yet somehow it remains un-done), and the article also has to be sent to the two people I quote, to make sure they’re happy with how I’ve quoted them. Then I’ll have a great article ready to publish!

I had a “SigDial” workshop that was part of a conference in Sydney that I had to go to for work, so Tim and I drove to Sydney for the weekend.

We picked up 3 geocaches on the way there and 3 on the way back. That was fun.

The time in Sydney was good. We caught up with several of Tim’s relatives and explored the local cafes and cinema.

It was almost a pity that we had such little time there, I’d have liked to explore more. Having said that, I am very glad to be home.

I finally moved in with Tim on Thursday. Now I’m working through all the address change forms for lots and lots of organizations. And now I’ve told you too, although if you think you need my exact address you’ll have to email me, I’d rather not publish it on the web.

I did the SES 4WD course on the weekend. It was excellent! I was very glad I did it even though I’ve been stressing about having so much to do.

“This indicates that parsimony is sometimes superseded by persuasiveness”.

This was found proofreading a paper with my name on it. I think it means “use more words if they help”. But I’m not sure.

Yup, life is busy. I’ve been slowly getting back to all the things I had to drop while I was sick.

It all started with work, as that’s the least forgiving of absense. Then visiting people and SES. Next I got back on the bike and have been riding regularly, if not far. Finally I got another Developing Programmers article cranked out, although the site still feels poorly neglected.

Anyways, I’m almost back to my frantic overworked self again :)