Midwinter, Harry Potter, Labor Party, CCNA, Hack the Army, and Space!
With the passing of midwinter (which, for some unfathomable reason, always seems significant to me), I've taken stock with my activities for the year. Surprisingly, because I always tend to overextend myself, I'm on target. My thesis is on target. My publications are on target. My skills are improving at the rate that I wanted them to. The only thing that is out of whack is my budget and the inability of AVI to find me another overseas placement - not that I entirely blame them - the organization has been defunded for all of their state offices and placements are now "competitive".
On Sunday,![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
severina_242 organized a little group to see Harry Potter at the Gold Class cinema (i.e., recliner seats). I went as Professor Snape of course, and played his demeanor sufficiently well that I was asked whether everything was OK. As far as enterainment goes, the Potter thing is OK, certainly better than most rubbish that is churned out under the name of 'culture'. One must also appreciate the marketing skills involved - I can easily see one book per year, one film per year after the book and we'll have Potter for the rest of our lives.
The following night I found myself in the role of guest speaker as president of Labor for Refugees at the Williamstown branch of the ALP - unbelievably it is the first Labor Party branch meeting I'd been to since I'd returned from Timor. Maybe I'm getting a taste for politics again. The branch were an extremely smart bunch, well aware of the tactical issues involved, and asked all the right questions. I was presented with a box of chocolates at the end of it, which was thoroughly unexpected!
Another unexpected event this week was some linguistic institute asking me translate some phrases into Tetum, which I carried out with a minimum of fuss. Guess my knowledge of this obscure Austronesian language is finally paying off (literally!).
My CCNA reseach and course preparation goes well, although I'm getting much more out of the CCNP books. Whilst more or less on topic, I'm must confess I'm in a bit of a quandry. What do I specialize my programming efforts on? C/C++ is something I've had a lot of history with and it has enormous flexibility. Java/J2EE has that incredible pre-existing webpresence and it's good to know if you want tohack build dynamic websites whereas PHP is a clear and simple language that works very well with databases. *sigh* I'll probably do all three.
My social calendar for the upcoming week is too busy!![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
ruthalas has birthday drinks on Friday, there's the Kilmore Celtic Festival where smilesnspiders will be on Saturday, ditto for Tim's fourtieth birthday gathering, Tariq Ali on Monday, reynardo is having a birthday dinner on Tuesday....
Thanks to the generosity ofravensbreath I now have a gmail account. One gigabyte of storage. I guess that means my speedymail's (paid) life is limited.
So, now there's no weapons of mass destruction and it's been shown that there were no links with 9/11. Meanwhile Australia resumes links with the biggest and most dangerous terrorist organization in south-east Asia -
Kopassus. Seems to fit well with our policy of knowing about torture and not doing anything about it. And, on a technical notes, an opportunity to hack the Australian army....
Brain breaker. Possibly caused by recent viewing of a 12-part 'Space' series on video. Nearly seventy percent of college students claimed that matter existed before the big bang. Personally, I think answering a question like this wrong should exclude one from voting. Or something like that... Grrr...
On Sunday,
severina_242 organized a little group to see Harry Potter at the Gold Class cinema (i.e., recliner seats). I went as Professor Snape of course, and played his demeanor sufficiently well that I was asked whether everything was OK. As far as enterainment goes, the Potter thing is OK, certainly better than most rubbish that is churned out under the name of 'culture'. One must also appreciate the marketing skills involved - I can easily see one book per year, one film per year after the book and we'll have Potter for the rest of our lives.The following night I found myself in the role of guest speaker as president of Labor for Refugees at the Williamstown branch of the ALP - unbelievably it is the first Labor Party branch meeting I'd been to since I'd returned from Timor. Maybe I'm getting a taste for politics again. The branch were an extremely smart bunch, well aware of the tactical issues involved, and asked all the right questions. I was presented with a box of chocolates at the end of it, which was thoroughly unexpected!
Another unexpected event this week was some linguistic institute asking me translate some phrases into Tetum, which I carried out with a minimum of fuss. Guess my knowledge of this obscure Austronesian language is finally paying off (literally!).
My CCNA reseach and course preparation goes well, although I'm getting much more out of the CCNP books. Whilst more or less on topic, I'm must confess I'm in a bit of a quandry. What do I specialize my programming efforts on? C/C++ is something I've had a lot of history with and it has enormous flexibility. Java/J2EE has that incredible pre-existing webpresence and it's good to know if you want to
My social calendar for the upcoming week is too busy!
ruthalas has birthday drinks on Friday, there's the Kilmore Celtic Festival where smilesnspiders will be on Saturday, ditto for Tim's fourtieth birthday gathering, Tariq Ali on Monday, reynardo is having a birthday dinner on Tuesday....Thanks to the generosity of
ravensbreath I now have a gmail account. One gigabyte of storage. I guess that means my speedymail's (paid) life is limited.So, now there's no weapons of mass destruction and it's been shown that there were no links with 9/11. Meanwhile Australia resumes links with the biggest and most dangerous terrorist organization in south-east Asia -
Kopassus. Seems to fit well with our policy of knowing about torture and not doing anything about it. And, on a technical notes, an opportunity to hack the Australian army....
Brain breaker. Possibly caused by recent viewing of a 12-part 'Space' series on video. Nearly seventy percent of college students claimed that matter existed before the big bang. Personally, I think answering a question like this wrong should exclude one from voting. Or something like that... Grrr...
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