It’s been a pretty busy week. But it hasn’t been particularly funny, which is usually what I look for in what to write about here. Well, either funny or tragic. Keeps people interested, you know. But nothing of any note on either count from this week really springs to mind right at the moment.

Oh, my brother-in-law did write to say he had hiccups. For several days on end. This may not sound particularly interesting, but apparently so many hiccups passed his lips that he felt he had to do some research on the Net about it (probably to find out how to get rid of the bloody things). To his surprise, what he found was a web site for… err… well, people who have hiccup fetishes. Hmmmm. 

Today I had something of a more frantic afternoon than I expected. I was taking it easy, sitting at my desk in the study, having a little lunch. It was about 12:45, and I decided to take a look at my e-mail, to confirm the location of a 1:30 meeting in the city. Except it wasn’t a 1:30 meeting. It was a 1:00 meeting.

Ah. Panic mode. Should I grab the car and drive in? No, parking and traffic are a hassle and the train is faster. So five minutes later I was sprinting out the door through the rain for the station. Not exactly drenched, but undeniably damp, I arrived at the station just in time to hear a PA announcement that the 12:55 train had been cancelled. Cue Homer saying "D’oh!" 32 times.

I almost went back home to get the car and drive some of the way, but realised it would just result in a lot of stress and no saved time, so I phoned ahead to say I’d be late, and caught the next train 15 minutes later. The people in the meeting didn’t seem to mind that I was half an hour late. Not that I’m planning to make a habit of it. 

Both bad news and good (no, great) news. First the bad.

I am feeling something of a sense of loss right at the moment. Something very dear has gone from my life: my sunglasses. My precious sunglasses. Very precious actually, more precious than I’d like to remember, so I’m trying to forget how much they cost me. Quite a pretty penny. But they were the only sunglasses I ever truly loved. They were the only sunglasses that ever properly fit me!

I’ve had them for almost three years. But sometime in the last 10 days, they vanished. Maybe they are somewhere in the mess of bits and pieces that could loosely be described as "my house". I hope they are. I hope they are hiding underneath some unsuspecting pile of junk, shortly to be found when I… hey… could they be under that? *rummage* *rummage* No. Damn. 

I’ll keep searching for them, but it’s not looking very good. Knowing my luck they’ll show up the day after I shell out for a new pair.

But better news. My sister has finally revealed to the world: she’s getting married, to her boyfriend Adrian. He’s great, she’s great - I’m sure they’ll be great together. In fact they already are great together. Getting married will give them a bit of paper to say they are officially great.

I must admit, I should have known for a while about this - she dropped hints about a month ago, which I totally failed to pick up on. What with one thing and another, I don’t think weddings have been high on my agenda in the past few months - at least that’s my excuse. Or maybe I’m just Officially Clueless.

Well, Olympics fever has officially hit the country. Iris and I went to the Olympic soccer on Wednesday. Along with 93,250 of our closest friends, we squeezed into the MCG.

There was a great atmosphere. I don’t normally get too excited about this kind of thing, but there was something just a little bit special about going to an actual Olympic event. There was a nice opening ceremony thingy (obviously not the opening ceremony, which was two days later in Sydney), with lots of kiddies running around in different national dress, flags, fireworks, the full bit. Taxiride
played a couple of songs, there were giant inflatable globes, and the Roulettes flew overhead.

After the singing of the Italian and Australian national anthems (which thankfully was a crowd-based effort, rather than some hideous half-talented celebrity massacring them) the game itself began. For a while it looked like Australia would actually come away with a semi-respectable no score draw… until Italy managed to nudge the ball over the line for the only goal of the night.

A few minutes later it was all over, and we joined the mass of people heading back to Richmond station. It turned into a massive people jam, as tens of thousands of us tried to squeeze through the ticket barriers. There was a Connex
employee with a PA system to keep us all informed as to what was happening, and who obviously fancied himself as a bit of a comedian. But the real comedy came from the crowd, like the teenaged Italy fan who, rising above the crowd on his mate’s shoulders, laughed and joked for a while before, with superb comic timing, peered into the sea of people and in a small pathetic voice said… "Mum?… Where are you mum?"

I had cause to go into the city today. It may seem like a bad idea to go to a client meeting at the offices of (insert big corporation here) on a day when anti-globalisation protestors have flooded into nearby streets to protest the World Economic Forum being held at (seemingly quite appropriately) the casino.

Before I went, I pondered: should I wear casual clothes, or my usual business wear? Within reason, either would be acceptable at the meeting. But who did I fear more, anarchists roaming the streets lynching anybody wearing a tie, or the temporary corporate security guards in the foyer this week? I decided on the latter.

When I got off the train at Flinders Street I could see plenty of protestor-type people. They’re easy to spot - they wear much more colourful clothing than most other city centre inhabitants, and have more interesting hairstyles and earrings. And that was just the men.

I’m sure it was a different story over the river by the casino, but here they and tribes of cops were busy going to or from wherever they were going to or from, generally keeping out of everybody’s way. At the offices I was going to the security guys didn’t give me a second glance. They probably have orders not to hassle anybody with a tie. I did notice that they had removed the sign from out the front proclaiming which moneygrabbing huge corporation the building belonged to.

Some of the others at the meeting were having a chuckle, claiming to have seen some of these anti-globalisation protestors clutching McDonalds takeaway. And at one point somebody claimed to see a water cannon go off, though this didn’t appear to be substantiated by news reports, so now I wonder if it was just a fire hydrant or a water main bursting. Heck, I didn’t even know our cops had a water cannon. Maybe Jeff got it for them for a Christmas present a year or two back.

After the meeting we went up a few floors to get a better view across the river at the casino. There didn’t seem to be much happening within view - just protestors and police milling around blocking off a couple of roads, and a chopper or two flying overhead.

Then I went up Elizabeth Street to my favourite record shop to buy a CD. The rest of the city seemed to be running as normal: cops were buying their half price food at Maccas (hmm, in the circumstances, an interesting image), the mall was packed with shoppers, the trams were packed with people, and a fire alarm had gone off in the building above the station, sending hundreds of office workers trudging down fire escapes and flooding out into the street.

Yes, just another day in the city.

By the way, S11 probably need to fix their JavaScript countdown. At the time of writing it claims there is "-1days -15hours -46mins -42secs" until 9am on the 11th. (What do we want? Bug free JavaScript! When do we want it? Now!)

I’ve had a cold for the last few days, which I must say is an absolute delight. There’s nothing nicer than having almost constant coughing fits, interrupted only by the dribble of snot coming out of my nose. See, it’s even delightful reading about it!

There is a bright side though, it brought back happy memories of the Star Wars Name game - my Star Wars name being Danbo Bosyd, Newmagna of Strepsil.

Before the cold reached its peak, I got a chance to have a look around the IT 2000 expo with Iris. Some interesting technology, but nothing particularly amusing, so instead I’ll just mention the displays from two very foolishly named companies, called DCNUT Pty Ltd and ARES Interactive respectively. I think that’s just asking for trouble, in a French Connection UK kind of way. On the other hand, maybe they wanted their company names to be misread constantly as … err…. words possibly (or definitely in one case) inappropriate in a business context.

I also have two observations to share with you about Windows 2000. One is that the default start up music (WAV format, 485Kb) sounds like the theme heard at the end of a soap opera commercial break.

The Registry Editor. What’s your favourite key?

The other concerns the RegEdit program, the haven of extreme geeks with a wish to fiddle with configuration settings the messy, dangerous, no safety harness way. The version of RegEdit in Windows 2000 features a way of remembering particular locations in the humungous configuration tree known as The Registry. (They should have called it The Matrix - what would have been way cooler). Anyway, this feature is called "Favorites" - another victory for American Imperialist spelling, no matter what your English language settings on your computer, it won’t include the U. But that’s not my point. Favourites. Favourites?!?

Does anybody literally have a favourite spot in the Registry that they like to visit? Some little hideaway in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE to go on a rainy day, away from the maddening crowds, where you can create new keys and values to your heart’s content?! I’m sorry, but in the real world, nobody but nobody uses this thing for fun!