06:44 - The paper in the driveway. Unfortunately the vital picture of the dastardly newspaper thief didn’t come out, dammit.

06:25 - Get out of bed, spend a few minutes waking up, then throw on some clothes, shoes, brush my teeth and equip myself for the
stakeout with the camera, a notepad, a book to read, and a drink.

06:41 - In position, about a hundred metres north up the road, facing my place, sitting in my car. Trying not to look too conspicuous to the passing joggers. While I was getting the car into position, I saw the paper delivery bloke go past, but I didn’t see if he threw the paper in.

06:44 - Confirmed - the newspaper is in the driveway. Get back in car, keep the camera by my side, and read my book. Wonder what I’ll do if the paper thief turns out to be a 6 foot 5 rugby player.

06:52 - An old grey-haired but balding man approaches, wearing trackie daks. I see him go into the driveway. As he walks out again with my newspaper, I snap a photo of him with the zoom lens. Damn automatic camera fires the flash. I have no idea if this picture will come out. (New roll of film… damn, I need to get a digital camera.)

06:53 - I get out of the car and confront him on the street corner. I demand my newspaper back, and rant a bit at him about how it’s gone missing twice before this week and I paid for it. (Okay actually the newsagent replaced the missing ones, but he doesn’t know that. And it’s annoying for me to have to contact them for a replacement). He initially denies it, despite the newspaper sitting there in his hand. I tell him I’ve photographed him, and the picture will go to the police if my paper goes missing again. He gives me the newspaper, says Sorry and walks off.

06:54 - Head back to my car. A passing motorist in a blue Ford has stopped, and asks me what happened. At first I wonder if he is the police, or just interested, but I think he just saw the camera flash and wondered if it was a speed camera. He concurs that the thief is a prick, then drives off.

06:55 - I take the car back to home, go in, have some breakfast, write up this entry, then read the newspaper.

Once again the shadow of crime stalks my suburb, putting innocent citizens in fear.

Someone is stealing my newspaper. Twice this week it’s gone missing. Once could be put down to the carelessness of the paperboy, but twice in one week - nope. Apart from the missing newspapers, I found a wrapper on the nature strip just a few metres away down the footpath towards the station. Some scum sucking vermin walking to the station early in the morning is nicking my newspaper and reading it for themselves. My precious Age, which I need to keep up to date and in tune with the world around me… well, apart from the dozen or so news-related web sites I invariably hit all day.

Cheeky bloody… does he or she think I won’t notice, and won’t mind? That I won’t do anything about it?

Not on your life. I’m seriously thinking about holding a stakeout. Park my car just up the street, and sit in it with a camera early tomorrow morning from about 6:30 when the paper generally gets delivered, and see who bites.

ABC Online’sstandard picture of John Howard.

It seems whenever John Howard makes the news, the ABC Online people pull out the same photo of him from the archives to use… one which leaves him looking just slightly crazed. It was on their home page last night, and I saw it once or twice last week, too.

Doug’s blog entry "Life Admin Day" a few days ago got me thinking. I too could use some time to just get myself organised. My principle failing in this department is that I never seem to have my workers compensation insurance (akaWorkCover) dealt with to the satisfaction of my insurer. That may be because I can never quite come to fully accept that I need it. Oh sure, it’s a legal requirement for someone such as me who is a contractor. But really, my work is consulting and programming computer systems. What’s going to happen to me? Is a server rack going to collapse on top of me? Am I going to get strangled by an errant LAN cable? Not bloody likely.

But then, that’s what insurance is all about - paying in advance in small instalments for the consequences of things that may never happen.

It’s all so damn complicated. It’s based on remuneration (a fancy word for wages plus super plus everything else), so rather than just send you one invoice every year, they send you a form to estimate your remuneration and pay a premium based on that estimate, then a form at the end of the year to confirm your remuneration, then an invoice to adjust the premium up or down depending on what the final result was, and by this time there’s another form for estimating the next year’s figures. Add to this another letter every time they fiddle with the terms and conditions, and another one every few months trumpeting some safety initiative and including a poster to stick up in the workplace. Ha, yeah right. Or else you can get fined. Okay then, up it goes on my noticeboard, so when that server rack does fall on me out at a client site and I’m lying in need of first aid, I can tell whoever’s nearby that they just need to go over to my office and check on the noticeboard, then they’ll know how to resuscitate me.

Anyway, all this adds up to a good few letters coming through the mail from this mob, I can tell you. More if, like me, it all gets too much and you stick them unopened in the in-tray for extended periods of time. I bet that pisses them off. You can sense it in the reminder letters that arrive when I’m overdue in filling out one of their damn forms. Right now, I swear, there are five waiting for me. I suppose at some stage I should read them and find out what they want of me.

One letter a year, with a bill attached. That would satisfy me. Then I might get it all paid on time. As it is it makes me think that the workplace accident most likely to befall me is drowning under letters from the insurance people.

And don’t get me started on the dozens of other things on my "to do" list.

Last week I watched Being John Malkovich on DVD. I’d originally seen it a few years ago, and thought I’d enjoy it again. I didn’t, really. It had its moments, but overall wasn’t as fun the second time around. And even odder than the plot is the interview with director Spike Jonze, shot as he drives his car, looking very unwell, until the end when he gets out of the car and throws up in the street.

This morning I woke up appallingly early (though not as appallingly early as two weeks ago) to see Harry Potter 2 with friends. It had to be early - if you want to see this movie in the cinema now, you have to be there at 10am, or it’s gone. I found it very enjoyable. I’d read the second book, but forgotten most of the plot… it all came back to me as the movie went on. Most enjoyable. I couldn’t work out where I had seen the actor who playedMr Weasley before… turns out a long long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, he played Dave Lister’s mate Peterson, in Red Dwarf.

And tonight I watched Amelieon DVD. I’d been told by a couple of people that it was good, and I really enjoyed it. I like something that’s quirky and unpredictable enough that it can make me laugh out loud, and this certainly did. In fact, IMDB’s readers have ranked it as the eighteenth best movie ever. This time I recognised one of the actors, and was able to identify him without looking on IMDB (other than for confirmation) - the guy who played Joseph was also in
Delicatessen.

Last week I met up with Coralie, a Brisbane web diarist — I’m not totally sold on the term "blogger", but oh, what the hell, everyone uses it now. Hold on, start again.

Last week I met up with Coralie, a Brisbane blogger of reasonably prominent stature (although her site is currently on hiatus, I mean in popularity terms, rather than physical height - actually she was a little shorter than I expected) when she was in town for a few days.

And last night I met up with a bunch of fellow Melbourne bloggers at an organised "meetup" (.com) event at the Gin Palace over a few drinks. What a marvellously friendly bunch of people. What was a bit off-putting was that many of them appeared to have read my diary. Not just skimmed, but read. Like they were paying attention and everything.

Sometimes I wonder if anybody’s reading. Okay, so I know I get e-mail responses from time to time, but to actually meet several of them in a room simultaneously who all seem to know what I’ve been up to was a bit unnerving.

It also leaves me wondering if I should do some kind of makeover on this diary thing of mine. It’s long overdue, this design is so 1990s. Maybe I should try outBlogger or one of
those other bits of neato software that automatically formats everything and allows visitors to comment, that kind of stuff. But if I do, I promise not to make it put the pages in some microscopic font with garish colours. At least, no more garish than currently.

• The thing about an event attended by people who write blogs is that some of them are bound to write about it:
  Doug /
  Marcus /
  Vlado / Dee / Erin

What’s stressing me today:

• That my dad isn’t very well.
• That I ran into my ex-girlfriend on the street this morning and she was charming, rather than matching the sadistic bitch image I keep trying to paint of her in my mind so that I’ll miss her less.
• The deadlines at work from two distinct projects I’m juggling.
• That the guy at work in the executive corner great-window-view (so he must be important) nearby office uses his speakerphone with the door open.
• That someone who sits nearby at work hums, which when all of the above is stressing me too, makes it difficult to concentrate.

Mr Howard said he believed many Australians were "not feeling strongly either way at the moment" about potential war against Iraq. -
The Age, 24/1/2003

Well I think if that were ever true, it’s changed in the last few weeks.

In what could be a first, police and organisers were *not* an order of magnitude apart when they estimated crowd numbers from Friday evening’s huge anti-war demonstration through central Melbourne. I was there. Well, kind of, for a little while. And I would estimate that the crowd numbered at the very least "a shitload".

Had I not been on my way elsewhere, I may have joined in properly, but as it was I needed to get across Swanston Street, which at the time was a sea of people. As I’m one of the estimated 88% of people in this country who don’t want non-UN sanctioned military action, I did chant "No war" with the others as I crossed. It took a few minutes, but I eventually got there, and wandered further up a closed Lonsdale Street, passing march latecomers as the throngs behind me continued to head south.

An article in today’s paper takes a swipe at dating web sites, basically suggesting that the people who use them are either boring and/or weirdos, and that’s why they can’t meet anybody in real life. I think that’s a little unfair.

Okay, I admit it, my view is probably a little skewed, especially today. I realised I’ve been single on the last four Valentine’s Days. Yeah, get out the violins.

Sure, some of the people on there probably are boring and/or weirdos, but some aren’t. Personally, I’m terrible at meeting people in real life. No, really bad. I have the type of shyness which means I’m hopeless at introducing myself to strangers. If I’m introduced, than that’s fine, once I get talking I’ll chatter way like anything. But it’s that first step which cripples me in the game of lurve.

Maybe my confidence has improved a bit since I was last single, but right now I don’t exactly feel like going out cruising bars. Apart from feeling distinctly uncomfortable in that sort of environment, I also find the smoke really irritating. Maybe that’s why the article mentioned most of the people on the dating sites are non-smokers - they don’t like it either? I reckon someone who opened a smoke-free bar would make stacks of money.

What surprised me about the article is that the journo was cruel enough to single out an individual woman’s profile in the article, even quoting her nickname, and making fun of her favourite music. I checked on the site, and sure enough found her profile. I wonder if she read the paper today. To my mind it’s a little cruel to do that - even if she did put down Celine Dion as a favourite!