Journal imroy's Journal: Dreaming of a white Christmas? 3
Yes even though I am down here in Oz, I am dreaming of snow this christmas. But only because I'm heading up to Queensland to face 35C (~94F) heat. My family isn't from Queensland. My Dad got a contract job up there this past year and so that's where they've been. Although "they" is just Mum, Dad, and the youngest - Scott. I'm the eldest of four boys. Us eldest two have moved out, and the next one has been "minding" the family home in Bathurst while they're gone. They moved last year at the beginning of December, so this will be the second and (hopefully) last christmas spent in Queensland.
I know my Mum and Dad have about a million and one things for me to fix on the Linux server I've administered for them for over 5-6 years now. Being able to do things over a SSH link is great, but still not as good as being there. Especially when things go REALLY wrong. Recently the ancient 10G WD hard disk started failing and giving weird errors. Thankfully they got a brand-spanking-new 40G IBM disk in time. I was on the phone to my mum walking her through moving enough stuff over to get it to boot and get online, then I took over from there. The funny thing is that my Mum seems to be picking up the Linux CLI better than my Dad, as well as well as lots of hardware knowledge with upgrading memory and disks and things. The reason it's funny is that my Dad is an Electrical Engineer and from what he's told me, I gather he's had experience with computers since the 70's. And Mum is just an ordinary "house wife". way to go ma!
Anyway, I'm off on a train this thursday. It's a little earlier than I had wanted, but I left the booking a little late it's the only thing I could get. I get to spend 3 weeks with my family and my lonesome youngest brother. He's missed his big brothers since he's become a virtual only child. And I'm his favourite because I'm the nicest to him
How the hell do you kill 14 hours on a train? For a start, I'm taking my Discman and a good selection of CD's. (My personal stereo technology isn't up to MP3's yet. Hopefully by the time I can afford a new player they'll be some good Ogg Vorbis players). I'll probably put a dent in Cryptonomicron. Boy, I used to chew through books when I was working and had to commute on trains and/or buses every day. I've had Cryptonomicron a couple years now I think, and I'm only half way through it. Previously, I would have finished a book like that in a few weeks.
Tschuss!
Update: Damn, it looks like my Discman doesn't like 80min CDR's. It's only a few years old! I don't think I have any 74min CDR's any more. Oh well, I've got a good CD collection anyway.
I don't know whether to pity you or envy you! (Score:2)
35 degree heat at Christmas (or any other time of the year) sounds wonderful! I hate the cold, and I don't even start to sweat until it hits about 37 degrees or so. Ironically enough, I live in Canada, and it's about -12 here right now, and there's never enough warm weather for my taste. (Brr...) Wanna trade?
Re:I don't know whether to pity you or envy you! (Score:1)
Sure. I love the cold. I prefer it because you can always put more on when you're cold, but can't always take more off when you're hot. Well, not unless you want to get arrested. It gets pretty humid here in Sydney and I think it's still fairly humid where I'm going. Bathurst is nice - being several hours inland it's quite dry. So you can handle more heat because perspiring actually works, whereas here you just get sweaty. But Bathurst is not where I'm going, so it's looking like two showers a day for me!
As for getting motion sickness, I'd prefer a train trip to a bumpy bus ride.
Re:I don't know whether to pity you or envy you! (Score:2)
Yeah, that's what everyone always says, but obviously they never got stuck on a street corner in an industrial/sprawl-ridden area of town (no convenient doorways!) in a snowstorm, waiting for a bus that's 45 minutes late! I don't know, but then again, I don't get overheated until it's over 40 degrees C (I was rather too hot the one time it hit 49.5 where I was), and I find 35 to be slightly on the warm side of perfect.
And if you want humid, I'll give you a lesson in elementary Canadian geography: London sits almost squarely in the middle of that arrowhead-shaped piece of land that points (like a dagger) at the heartland of the USA; it's in a low-lying area, surrounded on three sides by Great Lakes (Ontario, Huron, St. Clair, and Erie), and on the fourth by the Niagara Escarpment, which is sort of like what happens when a moraine and a mountain range have illegitimate children. The prevailing winds come from the west, which means we get clobbered by lake effect from Lakes Superior, Huron, and Michigan, and the storm winds come from the east, straight off Lake Ontario. (You can see a nice simplified map here [enchantedlearning.com]. London is about halfway on a straight-line course between Toronto and Detroit.) It's quite humid enough here, thanks, winter and summer. (In fact, the wretchedly high humidity means southwestern Ontario winter cold is miserable cold.) Still want to trade?