cat slave diary

Blog

  • Procrastination

    Let me tell you the many ways I’ve frittered away my last two days

    I should be out there having fun and doing Stuff(tm). Oh well, maybe next time.

  • Web services fun

    Been playing with web services and ws-security. It’s all good once you find the right tools.

    http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/

    Click on the Web Services Enhancement 2.0 preview and get it. Makes signing SOAP transactions… easier. .NET framework 1.1 is fundamentally broken and majorly hard to do this with.

    Still, even WSE is far, far, far too hard if you want to use it for real work, like I did today.

    My head hurts.

  • Evil meter

    Meebles has been extra evil recently. This gives you some clue:

    The carpets are getting a bit shaggy in areas, and he knows he is being bad… he makes sure I’m watching before he really digs the claws in.

  • Weekend

    Talked crap with Paul on Friday night, but missed the drags (bummer).

    Helped my parents move on Saturday. Buggered!

    Had breakfast with Margaret. Did some retail therapy at Target. Had dinner with Andrea and watched Office Space for the nth time. Blogged.

    I need more weekend.

  • Shiny happy thoughts

    I’ve decided that I got the rant out of me, and so I’ve removed it.

    Think shiny happy thoughts.

  • lightning – cool!

    Cool day yet again – lots done, and no major hassles. 🙂

    Dinner at Inger’s (Luke is away at Usenix), and Colleen was there (surprise! :). Friends who have nice friends are so cool.

    Inger is taking the opportunity to eat meat whilst Luke is away, and she gave me some yummy casserole. Brendan lived up to his nick (TR) towards the end of the night, but he has one nice positive: he’s learning to say my name rather well. We’re up to “nnnn – drew”. 🙂

    After dropping off Colleen, I managed to feel like an old fart. People were overtaking me left right and center, and I didn’t care. What’s happening?

    Driving across the Westgate late at night is fun as well – the lightning was literally rolling across the suburbs. As I was pulling into Point Cook, it barrelled down from Hoppers Crossing to the bay, just like very very large, ultra fast approach beacons for a runway.

    Love lightning. 🙂

  • When the cats are away

    Went back to work today. Freaky feeling driving to work – I seriously thought it was Monday.

    That illusion was shattered when I arrived at work to a nearly crushing pile of work. It’ll take me the better part of a week to get through it. 🙁

    Was going to go out and see a film, but my neck was just not up to it. Theoretically have dinner tomorrow night with Inger and a surprise guest, but I will see if I’m in the mood. I’ll know in the morning when I get up.

    Almost finished porting putty to .NET. Converted it away from using its own 64 bit integer classes and only have one more struct to get the linker to believe in. I reckon with a bit of clever manipulation, I can put putty on a bit of a diet even from its current lean and mean size.

  • ewwwwww redux

    Spent the day at home today. Initially, I thought that my neck was good enough to go to work, but as I started using it, that dissapated quickly.

    When I changed the dressing, just ewwwwwwwwwwww! It was painful to get off, and painful to replace.

    I’ll be glad when it no longer needs dressings. At least now the packing is out, which is good.

    But other than that, achieved nothing today.

  • We’ve got a bleeder!

    My sebacious cyst finally got the better of me.

    I had it “dealt” with this morning by three doctors with roughly a year’s experience between them. I showed up at the hospital bright and definitely far too early. I was shown in pretty promptly, which is cool – I took along a book expecting to be all day.

    Then the needle came. Strangely enough, although I am a complete wuss when it comes to needles, I couldn’t feel it. Either the pain from the neck was so intense that the needle was lost in the noise, or the skin is dead.

    After a bit of slicing and dicing, they started squeezing. Imagine a huge whitehead and six sets of fingers all going for the same thing. About an hour, some nitrous oxide gas, and many bloody gauze swabs later, it was significantly smaller. The pain was extraordinary.

    At one stage after an extra incision, all hell broke loose – the pus / blood started coursing down my neck and torso and they pressed real hard on my neck. I could almost hear them thinking “whoops!”.

    I now have a 2cm slice (no stitches) in my neck, and it hurts to look left or right or up or down. Although I feel like someone has torn me a new hole in the side of my neck, it’s so much less painful than before.

    I hope I never have to do this again.

  • Historical documents

    [ Mon Apr 07, 11:17:49 PM | Andrew van der Stock | edit ]
    I love coming home at night. The Westgate has a panoramic view of the western suburbs, and it looks like you’re flying…

    Learnt tonight that a friend has broken up with her partner of many years. These things happen. Hope they both get back on their feet soon.

    [ Tue Mar 18, 03:38:18 PM | Andrew van der Stock | edit ]
    Looking through my web logs, and I notice the kitty chasing domokun image is the most heavily linked image on my site.

    The range of forums and what not that link to it are amazing. One of the funniest is panterachat.com. I went and read the thread where it is linked, and the topic is masturbation, which is fair enough, considering the image’s message. 🙂 The messages are fairly low end humor sorta funny, particularly one about a guy who wanked 18 times in a day and ended up bleeding. All the avatars are really cool and I thought, maybe this is a cool goth web site. But no, it’s a forum on the 80’s heavy metal band Pantera. Most of their members seem to be homophobic racist rednecks… Sad really.

    [ Tue Feb 25, 10:42:06 PM | Andrew van der Stock | edit ]
    Drove home tonight as the terminator was descending over the freeway, with the sun a large red mirage ahead like you see in the movies, descending rapidly into clouds. It was like watching a real life Powaqqatsi, without the fantastic music. One second, long shadows for all, the next, dusk.

    Been thinking too much recently and not getting enough sleep.

    [ Mon Feb 03, 12:49:58 AM | Andrew van der Stock | edit ]
    Another sad day for the space program. I have a funny feeling this might be one of the last times we ever see the Shuttle fly. With so little real telemetry during the radio blackout, it’s going to be next to impossible to determine an actual cause, although I’m sure they’ll find someone or something to blame. Hopefully, they’ll bring forward the Shuttle replacement program.

    I think accidents like the Columbia shuttle disaster (and the Sydney train accident last week) bring home how little time we really have on this excellent little blue planet. Life is definitely for living and I plan to party hard until I drop.

    In that vein, I had a great day out with Luke and Inger and Brendan. We went up to the Dandenongs and had afternoon tea at our favorite cafe, Churinga, which was nearly completely empty. Totally weird as today was such a nice day, warm without being hot, sunny without being harsh. I think the red haze from the smoke had something to do with the gentleness of the sun. The rainforest areas up in the hills were nice and cool, which is always a blessing on hot days.

    Still no news on the snakes.