flexed off early on friday to have plenty of time before the ball... it was such a strange yet somehow liberating experience to be walking around in the early afternoon and *not* be thinking about work (at least for the rest of the afternoon and weekend). sat around with some friends over lunch, then ran some errands on the way home... don't make the mistake of leaving a girl alone in your car with a digital camera while you run an errand, for this is what happens ;)

- - - - -

the ball itself wasn't *that* good, but i did generally have fun hanging out with the other yfers - we comprised two tables of seven, so it wasn't all that big an affair. food was ok, entertainment so-so, dj/music rather ordinary... and things got a tad boring towards the end. it was funny (not in the "ha ha" sense) that many of the others chose to be segregated along gender lines for a large part of the evening - i'm not sure what the deal is with that, but when you go to a ball, and you (happen to) have equal numbers of guys and girls in your party, and all the girls decide to sit at one table, with all the guys sitting at the other table... something about that picture doesn't seem right. anyways, speaking of pictures... photos from the night are in the pipeline...

wow... almost a week without an entry...

work's been fun... spent pretty much all of my working day on monday and tuesday dealing with a breakout of security incidents. this basically involves looking at the reports that come in (mostly from external parties, some internal), trying to track down who owns/admins the machine in question, and telling them to go fix. some days i feel like a neutered monkey - it's about all i do and all the "power" i have. which is ok, if people are only expecting a neutered monkey... but that's hardly ever the case.

two more months, i say... that's when i get out of the frying pan, and into... hopefully not the fire! nothing official yet, but my manager knows...

still sick... bleh...

trying to organise transport for some friends, for the hksa "starry night" ball tomorrow. maybe i should consider a career in logistics? looking forward to it :) (uhh... that's to the ball, not the logistics!)

ok i'm definitely sick... again... *sigh*... currently sucking on a blackcurrant flavoured strepsils extra lozenge (for the sore throat part). dunno if it's helping any, but at least i feel like i'm doing _some_thing...

weekend coming up - sleeping time!

the news is not all bad however... i felt heroic-cinema's joy at the number of news items that broke this week, in the world of asian cinema down under. read this week's news (follow link within 7 days of this post) to find out why.

oh why don't i just share with you the ones that apply to me :p

• japanime 02 i mentioned last week, and found a few other ppl who are keen on the genre so bonus :)
  
• the 2002 korean film festival (free!), a few minutes' walk from my office!
  
• the 6th japanese film festival (also free!), details TBC. saw sabu, one of the program screenings, a few years back. it was pretty funny.

so i'm basically like... ooh, ooh, can't wait... hehe

but wait, there's more... last sunday night i went to this wierd sounding show called "sticky", which turned out to be quite entertaining. photos from the night have been placed online; i took a few mpegs / short movies of it too, but am yet to find (ie start looking) for somewhere online where you can upload stuff like that, besides which they're somewhat larger than my scaled down photos...

umm... i think that's about it. back to work now.

pop quiz: how easy is it for someone to delete stuff on your hard drive(s), without them requiring access to your computer?
answer: if you're running windows xp, and you haven't installed service pack 1... VERY! thanks to the help centre flaw.

i first heard about this last thursday afternoon, and couldn't help thinking that this is too easy. and apparently microsoft have known about it since june. so now there's a fix (included in SP1), but most people wouldn't even know that there was a flaw to begin with, if not for the media picking up the story recently. still, how many people out there don't follow IT news, use XP, and would be inclined to click on a link or two during their web/newsgroup/email sessions?

speaking of SP1, i installed it on my work laptop last week, and it took all of nearly 3 hours... and i'm on a 100Mbps network. imagine trying that at home, over a dial-up modem connection. fun.

i love microsoft. not.

hmm... looks like i need to retract my comments on my friend's sunglasses - they're not just an expensive pair of fashion lenses, they do actually provide 100% UV protection, but they still aren't a great fit :p

- - - - -

valley finally sent me the pics from her camera, so i have updated my birthday photo album, 26 red, with the extra shots.

also up are some shots from yf's sisters night 2002, which took place on the weekend. didn't manage to capture everything, as some of the shots turned out to be too dark and/or too blurred... guess my hands ain't steady enough :( 'twas a good night for one and all, methinks :)

- - - - -

mooks has been car shopping/browsing, i think the honda jazz would be a goer :p

- - - - -

my head hurts... my throat's feeling funny... might have a slight fever? *sigh* i have a sinking feeling i'm starting to get sick again... will be aiming for an early night tonight...

japanime 2002 hits brisbane at the dendy next month... looks enticing :)

life is nebulous.

i'm falling asleep in class...

away, heavy eyes!

was harassed by a bird while walking to the carpark on the way home last night... was ready to swing my bag at it as it came in for a second close fly by, before it decided to leave me alone. 3 minutes later i realise my sunnies had fallen off... so i hurried to my car, got in and drove back to the place of the "attack". couldn't see much (it was dark, and the area not terribly well lit), and my torch battery had died... so was about to return to my car to turn on its headlights for assistance, when i stepped on something... yup, you guessed it... my sunnies. except i didn't really step step - more like clipped it with the toe of my shoe... so it's safe and sound. don't you love happy endings? :p

- - - - -

more photos are online (now that i've got the hang of things)... if the listings below don't mean much to you, then the photos in the respective albums probably won't either. up to you...

• August 2002 graduations
  
• dav & irene's thank you BBQ
  
• CCCB garage sale (the night before)
  
• some of grace's handiwork (jewellery)

finally... a new photo album is up... check out 26 red if you want to see some birthday-related stuff. unfortunately you'll have to sign in to view them, which means you'll need an account with imagestation if you dont' already have one. more (albums) to come, hopefully... if you're really bored there's two older albums there as well, both from last year.

friend of mine got some new sunglasses the other day. i was much saddened to find that they appeared to be nothing more than a very(!) expensive pair of fashion lenses. fashion lenses meaning that while they look good, they contribute nothing in terms of protecting one's eyes from sun damage. more than contributing no positives, fashion lenses (with no UV protection) typically contribute negatively to the health of one's eyes.

how do i know this? because not too long ago my optometrist told me one of my eyes was showing (unexpectedly early) signs of sun damage, which was enough to stir me into doing some serious research into sunglasses, and thus i am now significantly more enlightened in this matter than i would have been a few months ago. i ended up going with a pair of maui jim sport sunsets from sunglasshut, because they were about the only pair i could find which fit my minimal criteria of must haves:

• 100% UVA and UVB protection
  
• polarized
  
• wraparound frame/lens
  
• tough, durable, lightweight
  
• fit my face very well and be comfortable to wear

... and then some! the technology in maui jim lenses are actually quite impressive... take a look for yourself, i was pleasantly surprised and in the end quite happy to invest in the product :) (and mine still cost significantly less than this other brand name fashion lens... go figure)

spring has definitely come quickly this year - winter's all but a distant memory with the warm weather that's accompanied the last few days. i've quite enjoyed and appreciated the comfortably cool breezes that were about earlier this week - they were especially refreshing after a wearisome day at work. it's good to be able to "stop and smell the roses" every now and then.

i think i'm stressed... my face is breaking out...

and now to subject myself to more of the same, since i'm not getting paid to post my blogs all day long... *sigh*

some guy (a self-proclaimed "MacGuru") in the states (with a "IV" appended after his name, ie mr so-and-so, the fourth) emailed me from my old (ie hasn't been touched in years) website, and tells me he has a new casio g-shock watch for sale on ebay if i'm interested. gee... thanks but no thanks. (one of the pages on my site was on the few watches i had at the time, one of which was a g-shock) i don't quite know what to make of it... i'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt, but struggle to class this as anything other than "what the.... ?!"

my car parking world is turned upside down...

it's 9:25am. i pull into my usual carpark to see one car exiting, and another getting into what turns out to be the last available spot. damn. what's going on? i think to myself... it's never been this bad all year. so i hook around to the other main blue zone (blue being staff-only access) carpark which also used to be have plenty of free space up to, and even past 10am. no go - it too is full. so is every other spot i pass. the only spaces i could see were red zone ones (red is only available to staff above a certain pay-scale; i don't earn enough to qualify for a red) and casual parking, ie pay by the hour. looks like i'll have to join the rat race and come in earlier, dirtying my wheels in rush hour traffic. not happy.

skimmed over an article in the local newspaper - something about (local city) council news, and how they're patting themselves on the back for the "success" of the busway which opened last year. funnily enough, they base this conclusion on results from surveys handed out to commuters using the busway. now i'm no expert on statistical analysis, but isn't that what they call a biased sample?!

you might think i'm sounding a bit negative. that's probably because i am.

a few poems by Tadashi Maekawa, as translated in 'The Wind Is Howling', an autobiography by Ayako Miura (originally in Japanese):

Walking together through a grove of trees in the park,
I had the impression that we were lovers.
I walked along the dark road with an innocent girl,
Wondering what would happen if I suddenly embraced her.

- - - - -

When I cautiously kept my distance in friendship,
One after another the girls left me.

car park was rather spacious this morning... or so i thought for a split-second before realising i'd come in early and it wasn't yet 8am. and i've been pretty much on the go since then. some days i really think i suck (big time) at my job, and wonder why people would ever hire me for this type of role. some days you are the nominated fill-in for another person who manages the high performance supercomputer (while he's away for a week), which might sound kind of interesting except that the pleb users on the system probably know more about it than you, as a systems administrator, do. that's bad. especially when a server (which i spent half a day tracking down) mysteriously died early sunday morning. if i had tears of frustration aplenty, i'd shed them. then i'd go finish eating my lunch.

on a totally different stream of consciousness... today i feel for garfield, who hates mondays.

to start, the carpark at work was unusually full this morning - when i entered, there was another car about to take the second last spot. i circled, and saw someone leaving from a better spot, so waited and took that one. as i was walking out, another car entered to take the last remaining spot. so... full carpark at 9:35am. let's just say i've never seen that carpark full... ever... close to full yes, but full, no. and i've been in later than 9:35am. not a good sign.

then, i get to my desk, and immediately have to attend to problems. people can't login to the high performance supercomputer. neither could i. but i find an existing connection, so i spend 2+ hours trying to figure out something of which i have close to zero knowledge, all thanks to being the nominated "stand-in" for a colleague on leave. finally i call his mobile, and he suggests a fix which seems to do the trick. all so easy when you actually know what you're doing! meanwhile, another guy from a different group continues hassling me about stuff carried over from previous weeks. i'm so ready to give this up.

anyway, it's lunch time... chance to breathe a little...

a quote from serendipity that i liked:

If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid. -- Epictetus, philosopher