15 Oct 2000 »
hackery
I got Simon’s XFree86 patches. I was so happy once I had them. I am still cutting new ground, as his alpha server (which works) is statically linked. The patches slot in nicely to the current CVS, with one minor tweak and a bit of work. The dynamic loader stuff I was working on is about 95% complete and this will mean once the two sets of patches have been combined, the new server will be a new supported platform for XFree86. Excellent. I hope 4.0.2 comes out soon.
birthday
I’m 30 on Tuesday. My goal of getting to 115 kg by my birthday has about 5 kg to go, but I’m still on track to make 110 kg by the end of the year, pending any eating- related disasters.
life
Bought Alien Legacy when I couldn’t get my hair cut. I’m trying to go short and blond as I’m sick of my current style.
Last night, went to a friend’s 28th birthday. He was having a 80’s evening. Dan (my housemate) had gone shopping at the op shop and had got a great Cyndi Lauper look for Ang, his girlfriend. He got a grandfather shirt and a tartan waist coat. I simply browsed through the clothes I used to wear during that time, and came up with a white brocaded grandfather shirt and beige waistcoat and beige trousers. Surprisingly, I still fit them. Dan was not impressed as he had been shopping, whilst I had merely delved.
When we got there, the party was everything I feared: dress check to get in; the hostess was a bit peeved that I didn’t come as someone famous. One day, I’ll be more famous than I am now, and hopefully in a good way. I got away with it when I told her that the clothes were from that era.
The music was too loud, and I can’t hear very well in those conditions. My hearing is not what it used to be, and music and crowded rooms confounds me more often than almost everything else. I was very uncomfortable.
At one point, Jan, the birthday boy, asked me if I wanted a shiela (ocker for woman). I thought this was very generous, but at little bizarre as most of the women there did not know me.
I ummed and ahhhed for a bit and asked “Sheila?” and looked confused. Jan didn’t understand me due to the noise. He shouts,
“Do ya want a sheila?” I just looked surprised. There are plenty of nice girls there, but this may be a little presumptious of me as I am still a fat bastard, and most people are put off by the extra tyres before they get to meet me.
“Sheila?”, I said again, with even more confusion on my face. He looked at me funny, and laughed. It turns out he was offering me a “shooter”. Ooops.
There was this nice Canadian lass that a friend had brought along. Unfortunately, due to the loud noise purporting to be music, I didn’t get to talk to her as much as I’d liked.
I still don’t like what passes as popular 80’s music. The really original stuff, like Jean-Michel Jarre’s Zoolook, the stuff that Prince did towards the end of the decade (still as Prince, then, remember?) or some of the nascent techno that I have just doesn’t mean anything to these proto-old farts. Yello doesn’t get a mention, either. The genres I mentioned as being progressive are still with us and influence today’s music. Banarama and Rick Astley do not.
work
I Shipped.
189 pages of documentation representing 4 months of my life I cannot get back. If my security architecture is followed, customers using our next generation Internet (fscking big pipes) will be the safest from tomfoolery on the planet.
Security architecture is a wonderful thing. (Note: not risk free, not absolutely secure, but the equivalent of a hefty safe rating (check out the burglary classification area towards the bottom).
Went for drinkies afterwards in slightly damp (read: it was raining) mid-spring twilight conditions at the pub near work in North Sydney.
The pub was a converted Church. Whilst I was getting my Boag’s at the bar where once rows of wooden pews lay, I thought this is the true Church for Australians. Worshipping the mighty beer god. There were a lot of worshippers in attendance that night, and most of them very cute indeed. I’ll have to go again.