He's in Parties (and in the news). Also, Jihad Presentation and a bit of gaming

[tcpip]

Went to frou_frou's fourtieth birthday bash at the Moorocan soup bar, which included an insane number of livejournal persons. To save my fingers for the inevitable RSI that would involve mentioning everyone (and along with my poor mind's eye trying to remember everyone) I'll simple cite that the evening was outstanding and I spent most of my time chatting with the aforementioned birthday girl, drzero, bobstar, Glenn, drjon, mordwen, leadgend and, of course, caseopaya.

I must confess I was weighed down by a small mountain of CCNA/CCNP/Cisco Router configuration books that I picked up on the cheap from a Telstra network engineer. Female too. Amazing. What's the IT world coming to?

The following eve I went to severina_242s "James Bond" theme cocktail party. Had a couple of gin martinis which wrecked my head for the next twenty four hours. Spent some time chatting to _zombiemonkey and horngirl.

Saturday was also the Labor for Refugees rally for Petro Georgiou's private members bill. The quirky nature of ALP members demonstrating in favour of a Liberal MP attracted some media attention with coverage. I was interviewed and shown on Channel Ten, Sky TV, The Herald Sun, The Australian, the ABC news. The ABC "Insiders" programme and the Sunday Age provided some coverage as well.

On Sunday I gave my presentation on the Unitarian Jihad: An Internet Phenomenon. On a related topic, from the unitarian_jihad; What if leaders of the world's major religions got together one and denounced all religious violence--and no one cared?. Too bad for secularists in Iran these days! Vigilantes let off the leash as religious conservatives show thuggish determination to remain in power.

Finally, on Sunday I ran episode two of Outbreak of Heresy which involved the local noble engaging in some Victor Frankenstein-like experiments with almost dead and almost ex-wife's and caseopaya's character. dukeofmelbourne's Puritan character and former member of the New Model Army also causes great mirth. But we expected that. Scene Eleven (a) of Ten Thousand Islands has just been posted (Pambaran plains). Almost to Borobudor!

I did some work related stuff during the week, but it's not worth mentioning.

Comments

[shorxrore.livejournal.com]

IT IS ABOUT GODDAMN TIME

for the love of christmas.

anyway, your posts rule by the way.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Yeah sorry about that. Been distracted by other things. Work in particular (bleh, I work too much) and the game system rules, which of course, have been a lot more important in the F2F game Outbreak of Heresy.

Mostly fixed, so I'll spend more time now on 10K Islands.

[shorxrore.livejournal.com]

hehe woot

yea...i'm not working at all. so i have basically unlimited free time. i'm going to work soon though if things go according to plan. i don't know how it is out there in other countries, but the job market here (and the job themselves) are HORRIFFIC

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Unlimited free time eh? Ahh, I expect lots of news from Topeng then! Remember I'm pretty liberal with players taking "Director's Stance" in this game, so feel to push the plot in a way that you think is interesting.

(ATM, I'm trying to think of a way of rigging an interview between Topeng and Hanuman, the monkey-god from the Ramayana)

The job market in Oz isn't terrible atm, but working conditions are about to take a turn for the worse. Pay rates are not brilliant and social security has taken a bit of a savaging over the last several years.

Australians are, as a nation, working too hard. New Zealanders are actually doing it harder. The rat-race is in full swing (come to think of it rats have it a lot easier).

[shorxrore.livejournal.com]

heh, the rat race here is ridiculous. most of my friends are barely scracthing out a living at the normal 40 hours work week. finding a job is near-impossible unless you know someone who knows someone etc or just end up being one of the lucky few to get randomly chosen. and of course, we're getting rid of social security, so that's nice.

[kafechick.livejournal.com]

Glad to hear the Labor for Refugees Rally went well on Saturday! I was hoping to attend, but ended up leaving Frankston about the same time you guys were starting.

And what a weekend it's been for you - do you ever just have a chill-out weekend where you read the Saturday Age over coffee? :-)

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

And what a weekend it's been for you - do you ever just have a chill-out weekend where you read the Saturday Age over coffee? :-)

*thinks*

Not in living memory.

But I do manage coffee and The Age (online text version) every morning.

[kafechick.livejournal.com]

Online newspapers = the way to go!!

[zey.livejournal.com]

"This man is a massively influential factional powerbroker in the Labor Party, Mr Leigh said."

Mr Leigh's got a time machine.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Heh. I was more influential then than I am now....

I often wonder what Mr. Leigh is doing these days. When Labor romped home in the last election he had this great policy of extending zone 1 tickets right down deep into the SE 'burbs. I really thought that would have (a) kept his own seat and (b) held the Libs down that end of town. Turns out they lost the entire region.

[zey.livejournal.com]

From the Hun article:

Mr Lafayette said the Labor party supported the proposed bill because it was very close to Labor party policy.

He said Australia's treatment of refugees was "an issue which crosses party political boundaries and where all decent Australians can band together".

From what I've been reading, I can imagine the ALP's Shadow Minister for Immigration (Laurie Ferguson) would be seriously choking on his coffee right about now :-). He's on record for having opinions like these. Excellent stuff :-D.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, we've taken the opportunity to remind Laurie Ferguson what ALP policy actually is on more than one occassion.

To his credit, he is obviously sensitive to the issue because he does reply to all his emails.