Annoying phone calls
11:30am. Telemarketer: Hello is that Mr or Mrs Bowen?
Me: What are you selling?
Telemarketer: Oh, I’m not selling nothing.
Great. She followed on with some spiel about how my house was only one of five in the suburb to be chosen for a free offer… does anybody fall for this crap any more?
3:15pm. Later call.
Bloke: Hello, Peter?
Me: Nope. There’s nobody called Peter here.
Bloke: Oh, sorry. Bye.
A minute later the mobile rings.
Me: Daniel Bowen
Bloke: Mr Bowen!
Me: Didn’t you call me a minute ago?
Bloke: Oh. Oh right. Sorry. Sorry.
I mean, how bloody clueless would you have to be, to be scouring through the phone book. You find a listing for BOWEN D F and ring it, find out your mate Peter isn’t there, and then decide that maybe ringing the mobile number listed for the same name might be a good idea? And then when the victim answers stating his name, which is clearly not Peter, you presume it’s him.
Git.
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Daniel’s instant movie reviews
We’ve started a mini-DVD swapping scheme at work, so this weekend I watched two movies I missed in the cinemas…
Gladiator
– great movie. Best bit was seeing "Clavdivs" – Derek Jacobi in it! That and looking at Russ
in the Colosseum and thinking… Hey, I’ve been there!
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
– yeah, pretty good. Undoubtedly spectacular, but I found it difficult to get as "in" to it as with Gladiator. No doubt to compare the two movies is unfair, but inevitable for me I’m afraid. Also in the middle of the fight sequence where the chick is dressed as a boy, I had this strange flashback to Monkey… Hmmmm!
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One for the geeks
![[Screendump]](/images/2002/01pc.gif) Properties… No, Disable… Arrghh! |
At work. Need to check the configuration on the server… okay here we go!
Click, click, open Terminal Services, log on, click, start, Settings, Network, Local Area Connection..
Okay! Now to look at the Properties… click…
Whoops.
Got the other button.
Disable.
Disable network connection.
When I’m logged on remotely.
No confirmation. No dialog box. Just nothing. Terminal Services loses connection.
Bloody great.
Lucky it was a box just across the office partition, rather than in the super-secure hosting facility…
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Weekend of fun
![[Tennis]](/images/2002/01tennis.jpg) At the Australian Open tennis (Pic: Danielle)
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![[Arthurs Seat]](/images/2002/01seat.jpg)
I was awake around 5:15 on Friday morning to get into the city to meet Danielle on the 7am XPT
from Sydney. By about 6am it was apparent from an SMS that it wouldn’t be the 7am XPT – it would be more like the 9am XPT, because one of the two engines failed. I suppose that’s a better outcome than it would have been for an aeroplane.
After dropping her stuff at my house, we went off to explore. First we walked around the city, scouring bookshops before we jumped on the ferry to Williamstown. A group of tourists from Queensland managed to spend about fifteen minutes taking pictures of themselves on the back of the boat. I’m sure we’ll be in a few of their pictures.
The further down the river we got, the rougher the water. By the time we reached Spotswood the boat was rocking around a lot, and a fair amount of spray was hitting us. It was very like taking a cold shower, but with added salt. We reached Williamstown and explored for a bit, before heading back into the city on the train. That involved much less water.
That night we went to the tennis. The first game (Hingis vs Ritter) was very one-sided, but the second one (Henman vs Rusedski) was much more entertaining. Mind you the most enjoyable bit was when a seagull got confused and was flying around and around the stadium. The crowd were laughing their heads off, and play stopped while the seagull kept flying around. Eventually it got out, to rapturous applause. Henman went on to win the game, probably unintentionally helped by a couple of pretty bad line calls.
On Saturday we took off in the car down the Mornington Peninsula. First stop was the Arthur’s Seat chairlift, then we headed down the coast to Rye, where we lazed on the beach. Took a dip in the water too of course, though you had to wade out for about 10 minutes to get water any deeper than your knees.
Then since she lives in the general vicinity I gave my friend Natalie a ring and invited ourselves over for a drink. We got lost along the way of course, just like I thought we would. Well, okay, I got lost. I was the one driving and checking the Melway. Though of course I blame VicRoads
for not putting a proper sign on Elizabeth Avenue (coming north) in Rosebud, pointing to the freeway. We eventually found it, and Nat welcomed us in for a cold drink, then invited us to stay for dinner. Well, why not, you can’t beat spag bol!
After Nat’s daughter Hannah went to bed, us adults sat in the backyard, having adult conversations and doing adult things. Oh, I don’t mean to insinuate… hey, none of you reading were there (except for Danielle and Nat) – if any of you has any evidence of anything untoward going on, present your evidence! You can’t, can you? Right. Good.
So anyway we sat and chatted and drank wine and gazed up at the stars and got bitten by mosquitos.
And that night, I saw something I have never seen before. I’d heard about it, I’ve seen it on video, but to see it in real life – to see it right there in front of your own eyes, with two good friends, is quite another matter altogether.
A shooting star. I saw a shooting star. It lit up a tiny bit of the night sky for just a split second. Then it was gone. But I felt enriched having seen it. A lot of satellites passed overhead too.
(Hey gimme a break – there’s a first time for everything! -27/1/02)
By about 2am, after listening to the Pearcedale Hoons doing their doughnuts nearby, we’d decided to go home. We’d had a lot of fun. It’s a delight when I introduce people to each other and they get on so well.
And the fact that we’d arrived 8 hours earlier for a drink, and stayed until the wee hours… well, Nat’s hospitality was just wonderful. In fact, I know Danielle was touched.
On Sunday we hung around Melbourne again, St Kilda, South Yarra, Malvern, exploring places, shops, streets, before it was time to head back into the city to get Danielle back on the train. This time it was only about half an hour late leaving. Which more or less concluded a great weekend.
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Tennis
I’ve been watching the Australian Open tennis with rather more interest than usual, because I’ve got tickets to go tomorrow night. All the Aussie blokes have already bombed out of the men’s singles, but hopefully the matches on will be of interest anyway.
I’m off to bed early tonight to meet up with my friend Danielle from Sydney early tomorrow morning, at the highly uncivilised time of 7am. She’s down for the weekend… I’ve taken Friday off work, and apart from the tennis, we might head for the beach, do touristy things… who knows.
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Hop hop hopping
 Roos in the wilderness near Seymour |
I put on my political activist’s hat over the weekend, up at Seymour for a junket/love-in/planning weekend. Actually, it can’t have been a junket because we paid for most of the costs. Anyway we were up at this groovy place in the wilderness somewhere outside Seymour (far enough from Puckapunyal
that we couldn’t hear any gunfire), and what was interesting was that there were lots of kangaroos hopping around outside.
This is enormously refreshing for me, as I usually see roos in zoos. And in zoos, they’re usually quite tame, they’re not nervous at all, and have an air of laziness. They don’t do anything. They just lie in the shade, and you can see all the zoo visitors, especially the tourists who have come halfway across the planet to see a kangaroo do its thing, thinking "get up and hop you bastard".
These ones were calm, but active. And they got very nervous and active if anybody came towards them. Or if they felt like it. And they’d all go hopping around like kangaroos do in the wild.
It was cool. That’s all I’m saying.
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When I was a boy…
I’ve done it. I’ve actually done it. I can hardly believe it. I never thought I’d see the day. I never thought it would come to this. I did the "when I was a boy I used to walk…", speech to my kids.
It’s times like this when I realise that generation after generation is doomed to do the same old same old. I can’t remember exactly what it was that my mother used to tell me, but I’m sure there was trudging a mile through two feet of snow in the dark involved somewhere.
So, why did I resort to such measures? Well I was reading recently that research backs up what I’ve thought for ages – that kids aren’t as fit as they used to be, because among other things, they don’t get out walking enough any more because they get driven everywhere by car. I think that’s certainly been the case with my kids since I’ve had a car. So I’ve started making a point of getting them out of the house for a walk every day that they’re at my place. Even if it’s just down the street to the shops.
Kids invariably resist what they’re not used to, especially if it involves more effort. And on Monday they were whinging a bit about having to walk (gasp) to the supermarket (gasp) – all of 600 metres away (gasp), and I finally cracked, and found myself uttering those words. Telling them that we didn’t have a car when I was growing up. That I used to walk about a kilometre to primary school. And later on I caught the train to high school.
It had to happen some day I guess. Maybe despite our differences in musical taste, I am turning into my parents after all.
Anyway the strategy may be working. Today we walked to the supermarket, and they didn’t complain. We’ll see. I bet it’s doing them (and me) some good. I’d really like to prevent us from all becoming car-dependent lazy slobs.
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Week 1 wrap-up
I’ve been pretty busy this week, in a kind of lazy kind of a way.
On Monday I took the kids to the zoo. Heaps of fun. Heaps of animals. I couldn’t help but notice one curious family, some of whom were dressed rather oddly for the zoo on a summer’s day, I thought. To be precise, the three young women in the family were all wearing heels, hot pants and boob tubes. Looked quite odd exploring the rugged Australian wilderness in the kangaroo and emu exhibit. Okay, so maybe they were going out partying later, but personally I’d have taken the time to change.
On the way back home, my sunglasses broke. My good sunglasses. My precious Raybans. Snapped in half. Bugger. Bugger, bugger, bugger. They cost a small fortune. Looking around the Rayban web site, it looks like the warranty for USians is only for a year, and these are probably about 4 or 5 years old. I’ll be checking the small print on my paper warranty carefully, let me assure you, but I’m probably out of luck.
On Friday night I was vacuuming, and found a lizard in the livingroom. Probably about 8-9cm long including the tail. It was really hard to see – it blended right in with the carpet, kind of diarrhoea-coloured. It freaked me right out, because I nearly vacuumed it up. In fact, I believe my exact words to a friend on ICQ were: "FUCK! I’m vacuuming and there’s a fucking lizard in my house! Fucking hell! What do I do?!" As you can tell from this, I’ve decided I hate creepy-crawlies in my house. I herded it outdoors with a broom.
(Why does the spell checker totally fail to help me spell a word like diarrhoea? It’s the kind of word most of us use only occasionally, and it’s so awkwardly spelt that it’s precisely when we really need spell checkers to work well. It couldn’t offer any useful suggestions based on my best guesses at how to spell it. I couldn’t find it in the paper dictionary. I rang my ex-wife, who usually knows such things, but she wasn’t answering her phone. I eventually tried Google, which pointed me to the US spelling, from which I was able to find the Australian spelling back in the paper dictionary. It shouldn’t have to be that hard.)
On Saturday I staged my long-awaited clear out of the kids’ room. I found a small mountain of shoes in the cupboard. It was like cleaning out Imelda Marcos’s place. Probably about a dozen pairs of Isaac’s old shoes that I’d set aside with the idea of giving them to Jeremy when he was big enough for them. Except that I’d subsequently forgotten all about it, and Jeremy is now too big for them. Most of them weren’t very nice looking anyway – worn and dirty. So I chucked most of them out, saving a few good shoes to give to someone with a smaller kid.
And now it’s Sunday, and I’m sitting here, sweltering in the heat of Melbourne’s first proper summer day of the year.
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