I’m in a hurry, so here’s just a few snippets of neighbourhood news…

• Tonight we lost an hour of power, again. The electricity company didn’t tell us why, and you can bet they won’t give us a refund! While the power was out we took the opportunity to run down to the supermarket and get a new torch battery and some candles. (Why is it you never think of those things until you need them?)
• Speaking of electricity, a possum has fallen foul of it on a wire just outside our house. It’s now hanging dead from the pole, and what a lovely sight it makes, too.
• Our street got new lines painted on it. Wow. That’s our taxes at work. Impressive, huh?

Nobody seems to know what happened to the allegedly expected delivery of the alleged PCs on Thursday. They’re also trying to decide whether or not to extend our contracts beyond May. Although we haven’t been exactly productive so far, were they to actually put PCs on our desks, we’d be able to have a crack at building the system they hired us to build. But it seems they’ve had second thoughts on whether or not they want it, and are now unable to decide.

Not that it’s worrying me now. The money’s in. As long as they cough up for all the hours they’re making us wait for those PCs, I’m happy.

Well it’s official: I’m a bit colour-blind. So now I have an excuse for all those hideous combinations of clothing I turn up to work in. And for putting such garish colours onto the Web pages I build.

It was my sister who suggested I go to get my eyes checked. A good idea, since my right eye has been almost blind from birth; I need to keep an eye (ha!) on my left. I did well on most of the test, except for those weird patterns of splodges that are meant to have numbers. I only got the first one! So either I’m a bit colour-blind or the doctor was playing a practical joke…

6am.
As I write, the dawning of week eight, day four, approaches. Each dawning of a new day brings with it new ideas, new hopes, new miracles.

The idea: that handing the task of getting our PCs at work from the guy who is currently responsible (who has attracted various nicknames including "IN-Action Man", "The Invisible Man", and of course that well worn Frontline term "Soft cock"; and who has taken the week off sick) to another department who are not quite so happy that we’re not getting our jobs done.

The hope: that their declaration yesterday that we would get PCs today actually holds water.

The miracle: I’ll let you know of the outcome tonight.

7pm.
Bzzzt. Maybe Monday (tomorrow is ANZAC Day). And that’s the end of week eight.

It’s rare that I like graffiti. Okay, so some of it is quite impressive, but most of it is completely illegible nonsense. So to spot something that is simple, clever, and thought provoking makes a pleasant change. In Tooronga Road, Tooronga, just south of the station, there is a "FORM 1 LANE" sign. To the last word, someone has added a P to the front and a T to the back, to make "FORM 1 PLANET".

Week 8: No PC news.

Meanwhile, our PC at home is having its monitor fixed. Weird lines were starting to appear on it. Either aliens were trying to tell us about their invasion and colonisation plans or the monitor needed some attention. Suspecting the latter, we called the computer shop, rather than try and contact the UFO research people. They’d probably have thought we were strange.

After some confusion involving a wrong phone number that changed two years ago, the computer guy came round, took our monitor away and gave us a loaner one. This is a problem. It’s better than ours, even when ours works okay. So now we’re hoping they lose all our details and forget whose monitor they’re fixing.

The newspaper a couple of days ago confirmed what I’d heard by email from Brisbane - the Whitman’s Blimp is no longer following me. It’s in Queensland, following someone else. (Either that or they’re chasing that false lead I gave them.)

This is the second week of school holidays. School holidays are a wonderful thing - they make the bus trip to work so much more bearable. And not just for me. Last Monday:

Passenger, to bus driver: "How are ya?"

Bus driver: "I am very happy this morning!"

Passenger: "Oh, I wonder why!"

Ah, it’ll be a rude shock next week when the school kids are back. But in the mean time, it’s relaxation and peace and quiet in double-seat city!

Computers at work: Now quoted as "sometime next week". Yeah. Right.

As for my fifth (wooden) wedding anniversary present, I got L three wooden photo frames. I mean, they were wood except the bits that are glass - if the bits that are glass were wood, you wouldn’t be able to see the photo. L got me an extremely spiffy wooden pen.

And tonight to celebrate, we’re heading out to our first movie in about two years ("Kolya"). Why has it been so long? Because Isaac is almost two, that’s why. I don’t think I need to spell it out. I’m sure all the parents know exactly what I’m on about. Everyone else will discover when they have kids that this is the way of the world. But tonight after Isaac drops off to sleep, we’ll head out and leave Aunty to hold the fort.

Just to recap on the PCs at work situation: Two weeks ago, we were told we’d have PCs last week. At the start of last week, we were told we’d have PCs at the end of last week. At the end of last week, we were told Monday. It’s now Wednesday, with no sign of the PCs. We have now been waiting for them for a month and a half.

It might be worth mentioning at this point that this contract goes for three months.

Thankfully it’s based on time and materials used, not deliverables completed. Presumably the relevant people in the organisation know this too, in which case I can only conclude that for them, money is not a problem.

But after 6½ weeks of waiting for the equipment we need to do our jobs, we’re getting to the conclusion that not even a very special effort of incompetence could have achieved this outcome. We suspect that darker political forces are at work here. But surely soon someone has to realise that having six people being paid but unable to do their work is not such a great idea.