Well, here we finally are, the eve of the year 2000.

Will the Y2K bug (design decision, actually) destroy civilisation as we know it? Somehow I doubt it. I think there’s going to be a lot of embarrassed survivalists on Monday, humming and haa-ing and wondering what on earth they’re going to do with all those cans of baked beans.

Actually, it’d be funny if someone running the “Year 2000 Today” global broadcast thought it would be amusing to fade the picture and sound to black just as the first time zone goes past midnight. Then ten seconds later, just as the viewers at home are really starting to panic, they put up a caption saying “Just kidding!”

Actually, since it’s a computer problem, wouldn’t Y2K be 2048?

Well, it was a sometimes cloudy, sometimes sunny Christmas. We woke early, let the kids unwrap their presents, throw paper around and generally make a big mess of the livingroom, which is definitely a Christmas tradition.

For lunch we went over to my mum’s boyfriend Peter’s place and sat in the garden and stuffed ourselves full of copious amounts of food. Then we opened more presents, leaving Peter’s livingroom a big mess too. And then we stuffed ourselves full of yet more copious amounts of food.

And we indulged in the Christmas tradition of pulling Christmas crackers, having them fall apart rather than fire off properly, and then groaning at the utterly terrible jokes which are always inside them, and trying in vain to put on the paper hats that are also always inside, and which by tradition are 10% too small for you, except if you’re a little kid, in which case they’re about three times too large.

After we got back nobody felt like eating dinner, and the kids were in bed pretty quickly after wearing themselves out running around the garden all day.

Christmas Day, 8pm - All quiet on the streets of Glen Huntly

I went for a short walk down the street to mail a letter and stretch my legs. It was only about 8pm and still light, but there was virtually nobody around.

We rang my sister later in the evening - she and her boyfriend are spending Christmas in Verona with his relatives - Shakespeare plot country. She said it was snowing - yes, a real white Christmas, though apparently it loses its appeal as soon as your feet start to get wet. Fair enough.

Phoned my dad, who’s still in hospital - has been for several months now, on and off. Rotten way to spend Christmas, but then, he rarely observes it, so maybe it doesn’t make much difference. At least he seems to be on the up.

I also phoned my grandad in England, who told stories of 15 metre waves coming off the beach and over the fence, and a near-evacuation on Christmas eve. Hmm. Christmas certainly tests the el-cheapo phone companies, I can tell you. Their lines were chocka. We ended up having to call with good ol’ Telstra - hopefully the phone bill when it arrives won’t be too crippling.

So, what did I get for Christmas? Some CDs, some books, some clothes, a gigantic block of chocolate… the usual thing!

Well, just one sleep until Christmas… the gifts have been procured - well, all but one, which is somewhere between being ordered from an online music site and being physically delivered to the mailbox. Oh yeah, and I really must try and get them wrapped in the next few hours…

Father Christmas aka Santa has apparently been given clearance by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (have a read of the press release; quite amusing), which is something of a relief. Be a bummer if the RAAF shot him down or he got fined for flying illegally over Australian airspace.

The weather’s looking fine, 29 degrees C for Christmas Day, which is pretty acceptable. My sister is in Italy and reports that Europe is pretty damn cold. Must be odd for her, experiencing a cold Christmas. A quote I read in the newspaper the other day (I’ve been reading the newspaper a lot recently; you could tell, couldn’t you):

We can’t replicate an Australian Christmas over here. It’s too cold. Sometimes it snows. You can hear sleigh bells. Nah, it’s not like Christmas at all. — Lee Tulloch in New York, The Age, 22/12/99

I remember it used to be that on Christmas Eve, you’d knock off early, have a few drinks with your workmates, then shake everybody’s hand (or give a hug to the ladies) and wish them Merry Christmas and set off home. Everybody on the tram or the train home would be smiling, thinking of getting home to celebrate with their families, a kind of atmosphere unique to Christmas Eve. But now I work at home. It’s about time to knock off now. So I’ll slurp down the last of my water… wish myself a Merry Christmas, and set off to the rest of home, down the hall to the livingroom, where I can already hear the kids gearing up for a big Christmas Eve…

Couldn’t resist having a swipe when I saw this article in Saturday’s Age.

I hit pay dirt at the library on Sunday. Earlier in the year I’d been looking for a book… not a book essential to my work or way of life, but a book I was reasonably keen to borrow and read. It was out and overdue. So I bided my time, I waited for it to be returned, keeping an eye on its status via the library’s catalogue on the Web.

The very fact that I can check my local library catalogue on the Web is a marvellous thing. Scott Adams once wrote a highly amusing essay arguing that life won’t be like Star Trek… in a lot of ways he’s right, but I think in its own way, the Web fulfils just a little bit of the future as predicted by Star Trek and countless other sci-fi shows. Do you remember when someone would hook into the databases of a far away computer for information? Most people probably never thought very much about it, but at the time this was the stuff of fantasy.

Well, now you can do it. Information from all over the world is accessible to anybody anytime through the web. And when I say anyone, I mean anyone with the requisite software and network connection, obviously - - there’s parts of the world where people barely have enough food to get through the day without starving to death, let alone any sort of computer equipment. And when I say anytime, I mean anytime that your computer, your network connection, the computer you’re trying to reach, and all the computers and network connections in between the two of you, are working perfectly.

So, yes, thanks to the wired people at Glen Eira Council, I kept an eye on the book from their catalogue on the web. And eventually the book was returned. I strolled into Caulfield Library a few days later to look for it and… couldn’t find it. It wasn’t there. The catalogue said it was, but it wasn’t. A librarian helped me look, and couldn’t find it either. He said it had probably been mis-filed, and marked it as lost in the catalogue. Damn.

Months passed, and I happened to be back in the library last Sunday. I idly wandered to the shelf where the missing book should have been located. And there is was. I snatched it, dug through my wallet for my library card and went to borrow it.

The librarian wrestled with his computer, but couldn’t find it in the catalogue. It had vanished. He called over a colleague, and they studied the screen intently. He asked if he should enter it back into the system. The colleague picked up the book and inspected its aging spine. Then, perhaps with paperwork-minimisation in mind, she turned to me and said “would you like to buy it for a dollar?”

I’d been waiting months for this book. It would have cost me $2 to reserve it. “Yes!” I replied.

And the deal was done. They had to find a “Withdrawn from Glen Eira Library Service” stamp, but since it was already missing from the catalogue, that’s all they had to do, apart from take my dollar and rub it on the alarm neutralising magnetic thingy. So the book is mine. Woo hoo!

While other Australians are off seeing the world, some of them journeying off to obtain the world championship titles in cricket, netball, hockey, rugby union, baseball or tennis, I’m just sitting at home. Working from home in fact. Yep, new job, new challenges.

I only started doing this a couple of weeks ago, so it’s early days yet. But it’s going well so far. If I need to I can drown out the noise from the kids by playing a CD. Despite having no colleagues present, I can connect to the Net to avoid feeling isolated from the rest of the world. And it’s finally given me an excuse to clean up the spare room a little bit - though not so much that you’d notice.

And I can use my Bungee Jumping Jesus screen-saver without offending anyone…