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Today I reached the rather surprising forty-seventh annual revolution. Surprising in the sense that it mentally sneaked up on me; only last week I had to be reminded by ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
caseopaya that today would be the day, although this is far from the first time I have engaged in such forgetfulness. I have received many messages of congratulations and well-wishes on Facebook, Google+, at work, via email, and even a few 'phone calls. All of these are much appreciated, especially for their affirmative value. Never one to pass up an opportunity to be child-like (as distinct to childish) I organised a Freddo ice-cream cake with some of the immediate staff at work, which was also saw Deb Nicholson of the Open Invention Network drop as an international guest speaker to give a presentation on patent trolls (she was actually pre-arranged, but just so happened to turn up at the right time). The OIN engaged in defensive patent acquisition for the public domain as a method to squash trolls or, in the academic parlance, "non-producing entities" (i.e., companies that don't actually produce anything, but sue others for real or imagined breaches of patents).
The past few days has witnessed a couple of visits to Anthony L., and Robyn M., as I've attempted to fix various networking and hosting issues for their personal and business IT systems which had a few quirks to say the least. In what has been a continuing merging of personal life and work life, Saturday was the annual Linux Users of Victoria Penguin Picnic which had some forty people attend. I had managed to do the necessary shopping the day before and cooked up a storm on the BBQ over a couple of hours. Unlike a number of other hard-nosed LUV meetings this was certainly a more social occasion. Also of high conviviality was last Thursday's game of Masks of Nyarlathotep which included a nuclear powered yacht, Deep Ones and an invasion on a secret base in a volcano, rather like the James Bond film You Only Live Twice. Last Sunday was another session of GURPS Middle Earth, which involved a dungeon-crawl and various undead. As a political-technical contribution, wrote a brief article on nanosocialism. Finally, apropos the last journal entry, the new rats have been named: Rover, Scamper, and Tramper (in order of age and alphabet, see?).
caseopaya that today would be the day, although this is far from the first time I have engaged in such forgetfulness. I have received many messages of congratulations and well-wishes on Facebook, Google+, at work, via email, and even a few 'phone calls. All of these are much appreciated, especially for their affirmative value. Never one to pass up an opportunity to be child-like (as distinct to childish) I organised a Freddo ice-cream cake with some of the immediate staff at work, which was also saw Deb Nicholson of the Open Invention Network drop as an international guest speaker to give a presentation on patent trolls (she was actually pre-arranged, but just so happened to turn up at the right time). The OIN engaged in defensive patent acquisition for the public domain as a method to squash trolls or, in the academic parlance, "non-producing entities" (i.e., companies that don't actually produce anything, but sue others for real or imagined breaches of patents).The past few days has witnessed a couple of visits to Anthony L., and Robyn M., as I've attempted to fix various networking and hosting issues for their personal and business IT systems which had a few quirks to say the least. In what has been a continuing merging of personal life and work life, Saturday was the annual Linux Users of Victoria Penguin Picnic which had some forty people attend. I had managed to do the necessary shopping the day before and cooked up a storm on the BBQ over a couple of hours. Unlike a number of other hard-nosed LUV meetings this was certainly a more social occasion. Also of high conviviality was last Thursday's game of Masks of Nyarlathotep which included a nuclear powered yacht, Deep Ones and an invasion on a secret base in a volcano, rather like the James Bond film You Only Live Twice. Last Sunday was another session of GURPS Middle Earth, which involved a dungeon-crawl and various undead. As a political-technical contribution, wrote a brief article on nanosocialism. Finally, apropos the last journal entry, the new rats have been named: Rover, Scamper, and Tramper (in order of age and alphabet, see?).
