Varrqnuht.net

I have an account on Google's GMail service, and I have one invitation available to give away. I was just going through the list on GMailSwap looking for something cool to swap it for, when I thought that I may as well ask the people on my friends list first.

So does anyone reading this want a GMail account? Does anyone read this?

Here's the deal. I don't want anything of value in return, as I got my invite for nothing from somebody I ran into at work. It'd be nice if i got *something* though, just for the coolness factor of having something worthwhile to give away.

So hit me with your suggestion of what you can give me for this invite. A photo? A postcard? A fridge magnet? It doesn't even have to be something I can touch, just be creative.

I'll give my remaining invite to the person with the most interesting offer, and if I get any more then I'll come back to this list first when looking to give them away.

If I get any suggestions at all, that is.

I had a pretty good break over the long weekend. I think it's funny that we celebrate the Queen's birthday when they don't even do it in the UK, and especially because it's not actually her birthday. Aussies, any excuse for a holiday, eh?

On Sunday we went up to Oatlands for a picnic, to meet up with a few people we've been chatting to online. Leaving Hobart it was a chilly but beautiful day, with clear blue skies. By the time we got to Oatlands it was grey and dreary, and our choice of picnic spot left us exposed to a chilling breeze beside a lake.

There's some nice scenery up that way though - the mill was close to our picnic spot, although I got a lot closer for the photo on the right. I'm pretty certain that this is the first time I've been to Oatlands since they built a highway around it, and that was long before I was old enough to drive.

I took the camera along primarily so that I could take photos at the picnic, with the intention of sticking up a gallery online afterwards, for everybody else in the same group (but different states) to see. I'm pretty click-happy when I get behind the camera though, and I took over 160 photos while we were up there. That's the main reason that I love digital cameras - I can just keep clicking away without having to pay a cent for film. I'm still a very average photographer, but I'm getting a lot better since I've had a chance to experiment like that.

After sitting around and freezing our butts off, we eventually decided to head into some tearooms and grab ourselves a hot drink. Not a moment too soon, as it started to rain just as we got there. Most people opted for an Irish coffee which seemed a sensible choice under the circumstances.

Hrmm.. more to say about our trip but I'm out of time..

I've either been too busy or too whingy to update my journal lately. I've had a busy couple of weeks, and various things have been getting me down.

On the busy side I'm still working on the contract job. It had reached the point where I was on the verge of taking out a loan, paying back the part payment and telling him to forget it, burning all bridges in the process. I wasn't happy about this as it would have been a lose-lose situation (not to mention phenomenally unprofessional) but it was having too much of a negative impact on my life. It has really been pissing Lou off too, which isn't good.

In the end though I just had a phone conversation with the guy and got all this off my chest. That was extremely cathartic, to just cut the bullshit for a moment and have us both be honest about the fact that things hadn't turned out the way we planned. We also decided to get creative about resolving the technical problems I was having, and he agreed to pay for a consultant if necessary to sort it out. In the end I found a guy in Melbourne on a mailing list we're both members of, when he serendipitously posted a reply to somebody else that revealed he knew the software I'm using. I got in touch and it turned out that he knows the software very well and was able to sort me out. All it cost me was a nice bottle of tassie wine, and I have a useful contact out of it too.

I sang in two concerts with the TSO last week, a short one on Wednesday evening and the "TSO goes to the Proms" concert the Saturday before that. That was fun - the Brits sure know how to write an anthem, and the crowd were really into it. It's pretty unusual for the audience to be cheering, whistling and throwing streamers at an orchestral concert, in my limited experience..

The concerts were great fun but I'm glad to be having a break - we don't have any more rehearsals scheduled until October, as the next concert isn't till November. I'll probably be missing it before then, but for now the break means I have one less thing to worry about in the evenings.

The whingy bit isn't worth going into, but I've been frustrated lately and not quite able to pin down the cause. A number of things have been annoying me - the amount I've time I'm spending on this work in the evenings, the fact that Lou still hasn't shaken this cold and is sick again for the third time in about 6 weeks, my general lack of progress toward my longer-term goals.

We're supposed to be planning a move to the UK, but we haven't even got our passport applications in. Every time we get a bit ahead in the savings account something goes wrong and we end up needing the money.

I'm also planning to go to a conference in Brisbane this year, but I haven't figured out how I'm paying for that yet. If I have to pay for it myself it'll take a serious chunk out of our savings, which I'm pretty sure will result in Lou hitting the roof. I think I can convince my work to pay for a fair bit of it, and it sounds like they might have some sponsored positions which I can apply for. I'm really hoping I can manage to get there without paying at all.

I'd originally planned to speak there (which would have got me free registration) and hopefully present a tutorial (which would have given me some money toward the travel and accomodation costs) but the CFP deadline was right at the same time as I was changing jobs and speaking at a local conference. I'm really regretting now that I didn't find the time to get it done somehow, given that speaking at conferences is something I want to be doing on a more regular basis.

Whoa, this is turning into an epic. It always happens that way, once I can actually sit down and start writing it just comes gushing out. If only I had something more constructive to say..

The photos are ones I took this morning just outside the front of our unit. The fog gets pretty crazy here sometimes, although it was very light this morning. When it's thick you can't see those trees across the road (in the first picture). In fact you can't see across the road at all. Oh, and I think there's just something pretty magical about a big moon in the morning. They were taken at about 180 degrees from each other, although I had to move a bit to get the other houses out of the frame.