Journal imroy's Journal: Still here.... 1
Hope you all had a merry christmas and will have a happy new year. It's coming up to midnight as I start this, so this entry will span two years
I'm still up here in little Kingeroy with my parents and youngest brother. The two grandparents each left a few days ago. It's been decided that I stay and help move back down to Bathurst. Oh joy of joys. That's next week. I'll only stay a little and then it's back to my lonely housemate in Sydney. I might relate her recent dramas in another journal entry. What's the consensus about how much I should write? I've been involved with both her and her ex for the last several years, but the split and stuff doesn't really involve me. Or maybe I'm just downplaying my part.
A slight correction since my last entry. The weather is actually quite nice this year. Apprently 'locals' have told mum and/or dad that last years summer was exceptionally hot. It's barely got above 30 degrees this year. The only problem remains that this house does not seem to be well ventilated. The partially-underground bottom floor is bad. The spare room that Scott and I have been sleeping in only has one small window. This computer room only has a small window into the garage. With three computers and at least two people in it, it can get kinda warm.
So what have I been doing? We travelled around a bit with the grandparents, but that always involves multi-hour car trips. Still, lots of scenery and photos taken. Here's a photo of me in front of Kingeroy, Peanut centre of Australia. You can kind of see the peanut silos behind me. So, am I as much of a mug as Interrobang?
I ended up playing lots of games on the familys' windoze computers. Little Linux geek me, I don't often play games. It's either StarCraft or TotalAnnihilation under Wine, or maybe even Loki's native Linux port of Civ:CTP. Anyway, lots of network TA playing with my 13 year-old brother (Scott). Then he introduced me to DiabloII on Christmas eve. By Christmas evening, my amazon was up to level 18 or something and kicking some ass. Maybe I shouldn't try to brag since I've never played it before and have nothing to compare my performance with, but it was a lot of fun. The only distraction was the almost constant crashing of windoze and/or DiabloII.
As the administrator of the familys' Linux network server, I've had a lot to sort out. Actually, not that much. But me being me, I end up breaking a lot of stuff before fixing it. LDAP, Samba, Cyrus, you name it. Samba has been a problem. For the life of me I cannot get the 3.0 alpha in Debian sid to work properly, even with an existing working config file. I would really like to use it because it has native LDAP support, instead of depending on the PAM-LDAP module for authentication.
Debian seems to have upgraded to version 2.0 of Postfix already, and that seems to have installed without a hitch. Email's still running fine.
I got to see LOTR:TTT the other day with Mum and Scott. I'd forgotten how long FOTR had seemed. Bloody good, but bloody long. The big battle was pretty awesome, but I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I had heard that it was big and everything. I kept watching it thinking "is this the big bit now?". Like many have said, the Gimli jokes started to wear thin after a while. He seemed to be more for comic relief than anything.
In preparation for seeing the second Harry Potter movie, I had to see the first one. My dad has managed to borrow a video projector from work for this christmas holiday. In the same "spare room" that Scott and I sleep in, they've set up a mini theatre. The picture is projected on a double bed sheet that is hung from a long (5m?) piece of wood and suspended from a drain pipe by a c-clamp. Unfortunately, this morning it decided to fall and hit me on the head as I was just getting up out of bed. We've also got a decent little stereo-with-sub-woofer speaker system. So it's not surround, but it's still pretty good.
Anyway, I got to watch the Harry Potter:The philosophers' stone DVD on this setup. It's interesting to see the contrast between the "hardcore" magical world of J.R.R.T in LOTR, and the "kiddy" magic in Harry Potter. Of course, Harry Potter doesn't even compare with LOTR, but that's not the point. It was very entertaining and a lot of fun to watch. And it's nice to hear some british/scottish accents on the big screen. Nothing personal, but the American accent gets a little annoying after a while. Don't tell anyone, but I think Hermione/Emma Watson is kinda cute, even if she does over-act some parts
Wow, this has been a long entry. I guess it shows how boring my life is the rest of the year. I might write more later, but this is the bulk for now.
Happy new year everyone!
So how is 2003 so far? (Score:2)
Americans have bad luck with our accents--we like other people's, but nobody likes ours. I myself think just about anybody's way of speaking English is "cool". The French and Italians are said to have sexy accents. The Brits sound sophisticated. (Most Americans can't tell Aussies, Ennzedders, and South Africans from Brits, IMO.) American Southerners sound as if they must know a lot of cool folk songs and jokes.
I remember one time I was stuck in a massive airport delay, chatting to another stranded passenger. She was Italian, but had been living in Australia about 15 years. All of a sudden she looked sad and said "I was planning to go back to Australia to die." I didn't know what to say--I felt terrible--this nice woman was the victim of some tragically fatal disease. Then I caught on--she was planning to go back "today."
God only knows what she thought of my accent!