Family Lunch

Met up with Mum, Dad, Michael, Diana, Cliff, Maia, and Milo at D-17 Chinese restaurant in Dominion road. As far as I can tell, after Valentines it's Mum & Dad's favourite eatery, so we seem to end up there a few times a year. Dad was really bad. Very white, red eyes, he seemed to have no energy. Except that he ate, I wasn't even sure he knew where he was. On the other hand he seems to like chili oil so I fetched him a side plate of that so he could dip his dumplings. I also slipped across the road to the Chinese supermarket there & bought him a jar of it so he could enjoy it at home. As Mum says he has so little in his life now that every little pleasure is appreciated. The funniest thing is Mum, who doesn't like (spicy) hot food asked me if the chili oil was hot & I said it was very hot. Later she took some of the oil from my side dish & put it on some of her food. After tasting it she said in a pained voice "You weren't joking when you said it was hot". The lunch was OK, but I kept looking over at Dad & didn't enjoy my meal as much as I have on previous occasions. Went back to Mum & Dad's afterwards. I stayed about an hour then cycled home. My body didn't like that & at the hilliest bit of Pah road I had to get off and walk for a bit. I've definitely got something. When I got home I reached in my pocket for my keys & pulled out Mum & Dad's car keys. I was so glad when Mum told me they have a spare set so I didn't need to cycle all the way back. I'm meeting up with Mike tomorrow & can give him the keys then.

Mike

Arrival

I cycled over to Mum & Dad's to see him but there was some confusion. When I got there I was greeted by a "Who's that" call from Mum. Apparently Diana was having trouble finding him at the airport and Mum was afraid that he had had the same trouble and ended up coming over under his own steam. I phoned Diana & she had found him and was in the process of bringing him over.

Back together again

Was good to catch up with Mike. Milo was pretty good for the first hour or so but then got bored & Diana took him off somewhere. Mike & I had a look around the bottom of the section where the new neighbours had chopped down the huge trees that dominated that corner and cut off so much light. Mum had said the neighbours could use the bottom of the section to get access for the felling & they obviously had. It was the first time in years I've been down there and not had to constantly watch for twigs trying to poke my eyes out. Then mike helped me get my dressing table back here -- finally. Haven't got the mirror yet, but that's a much simpler, one-person, job.

Dinner

Diana & Cliff arrived back with Chinese take-aways. Nice meal, but I was starting to get pretty tired. Afterwards I realised that I really-really-really did not want to cycle home. Luckily D&C have a people mover, so I was able to sit in a spare seat & they dropped me off.

The end of an era?

Morning

Took me all of it, but I finally managed to get everything switched across to my new machine. Test databases loaded, a couple of the versions of the product compiled up, necessary software loaded up, I know I haven't got Cygwin fully loaded, but I can live without that for a day or two.

Afternoon

Mid afternoon I noticed that the power cord was missing from the new intranet server I'm getting ready to replace the old one. It's been semi-live for a while and I've been waiting for a chance to upgrade the operating system on it to SuSE 9.2 Even with my amazing ability to miss the obvious, I could see that with no power cord nobody could be using it. So I grabbed my chance.

Final Farewell

Four thirty came around and we stopped for presentations and farewells. First Donald's 10 years with the company was noted then David's stepping down. Everyone that could be there was, including Aruna who managed to get in to the office ... when I went out for a smoke at one point I found out how, her husband had left work early to drive her in and look after their daughter. Aruna doesn't drive, and naturally you can't leave a 2 year old unattended. We all faithfully promised that is we ever got to the UK we'd call in and say "Hello" to David. By the time I left the office I was starting to feel really tired. I wish I could shake this. When I got home I just didn't feel like dinner, so I had a couple of bananas and left it at that.

And so to sleep

No need to point out that I'm having an early night tonight.

Back in the Office

Office

A fairly quiet day in the office. Steven had set up my new PC, but I had a few day's worth of email to take care of first. Then it was copying files off the old computer and onto the new. At lunch I popped down to Queen street and changed my Aussie dollars back to Kiwi. As always I lost on the exchange rate, but c'est la vie. I worked late, and at the end of the day I really felt like I hadn't done anything useful. Perhaps I did, it just doesn't feel like it.

Farewell Dinner

The penultimate act of David's stand-down was played out over a restaurant meal. Me, David, Steve, Grant and Donald sharing a rather nice Italian meal at Una Lira. We talked a lot about how good it had been to work together these last five years. Being me I had too much to eat. But I do so love fegatelli, then you have to have the main. Then who can resist an Italian dessert, this time cassata. Finally the espresso, and final thanks and we went our separate ways. Of course, Italian food is deceptive. You think you've had a meal, you feel full. Later that evening you feel really bloated, but you manage to find the one position that doesn't cramp your belly and you get to sleep. Then during the night the stuff keeps expanding, you wake up and hear your ribs creaking as they attempt to contain forces normally only found in the hearts of stars. A week or two later and you can walk without waddling.

Flying High

Breakfast

Got up. Showered, eventually. I couldn't find any soap. After looking around a bit I discovered that there were sachets marked "Cleansing bar" I think this must be PC for "Soap". Really!! Anyway, the stuff worked like soap, looked like soap, smelled like soap, and I passed on the taste test. 7:30 and we were all waiting outside for a quick ride to (I think) the James Street deli where I had ... yeah, ok, don't laugh ... the full cooked breakfast including bacon & scrambled eggs. The place is a delicatessen and cafe. While I was eating I spied some squid ink on sale. I've been wanting some of that since a couple of years back when I saw I saw an Irish cooking program on TV where they used squid ink in a pasta dish. Actually I think it was cuttlefish ink, like it's going to make a difference. I've tried making it with soy sauce, it would be good to try the real thing. I decided to risk MAF confiscating the stuff and bought some. While I was at the counter I saw a little tub of 'Zohra's Tamarind Chilli Jam' -- You know me, how could I resist. Smiles.

Office

Went to the office for about an uneventful hour & then off to the airport for the flight home.

In flight entertainment

There was a chick-flick showing on the plane's movie screen, so I turned to the entertainment I'd brought. In other words, I finally finished Frederik Pohl's O Pioneer!. The basic story has a futuristic computer hacker join a sponsored immigration to a "peace planet" shared by humans and five other species of sentient aliens. I was disappointed. Firstly the plot was very predictable, like watching an American TV program, you knew almost immediately who the bad people were, and the ending when it came may have been pulled out of a hat, but you knew it was coming. Secondly it seemed as if he had hastily cobbled together two drafts of the book. For example fairly early in the story the protagonist decoded the alien TV coding so he could watch their programs for a mixture of amusement and to learn more about how his neighbours thought. Later under plot pressure he hastily learned how to decode the aliens news broadcasts. Huh? Finally the story stopped. Yes all the loose ends were wrapped up, yes the bad guys got arrested, but it was as if Pohl decided he'd written 250 pages and it was time to finish. In my opinion this is definitely not one of his best works.

Auckland

I may buy some odd stuff overseas, but I always declare it & let the Agriculture & Fisheries (MAF) people sort out if I can bring it into the country. This time was no different. The man from MAF was bemused by my squid ink and quizzed me about why I wanted it. Eventually he conceded that he'd heard of Greek cooking using it too & let me through. He wasn't worried about the jam at all. A taxi home, phoned Mum, and I decided I was too knackered to do anything except get fish & chips and hit the sack. Still it was nice to be home.

Conference Day 2

Polar Bear's Picnic

The day started with another cooked breakfast. I have to admit that I went for the same as I had the previous day. Sorry, but I do love my bacon. Lucky I don't keep it at home or I'd be even heavier than I am now. After breakfast we assembled by the monorail station again & walked through to the polar bear enclosure. This time I had my camera. There are two young male bears at Seaworld, but they had a little accident and one of them was sporting a broken leg, so only the other one was out. He was a complete clown. He also liked performing around the window to the underwater viewing room, eventually he found a chewed rib cage on the bottom, so I suspect that the keepers encourage the bears to play there by lacing it with treats. Who cares, it was a great show, and I got quite a bit of video footage.

Conference

Much the same as yesterday. I got into far too much detail in my v.19 presentation and lost my audience. Luckily we were on a light timetable & had to cut it short before my audience resorted to gnawing their own arms off to escape.

Good news, we picked up a couple of potential beta sites for v.19. Finally!

Dinner

After the conference and the clean-up we all got ready to drive back. Unfortunately Chris left earlier & had to be phoned to return. He was needed to co-sign the cheque for the conference. We had to wait about 20 minutes for him to return ... Just lucky he hadn't left earlier or he would have been even further north. The drive back to Brisbane was fairly uneventful. We checked into the motel we were staying in and went off for dinner at Breakfast Creek Hotel. We were all still wearing the conference polo shirts & got asked by someone leaving if we were a cricket team. I assured him that, no, we were netball fans. I added parenthetically for my companions that I am a great fan of netball -- for all the wrong reasons. I forgot about the Australian tendency to overcook meat and asked for medium rare. When my rib fillet arrived it was on the well done side of medium. Next time I'll ask for rare, of course with my luck I'll end up with a blue steak. And so to bed.

Conference - Day 1

An early bird? Moi?

Woke up at 4:30 AM, or 7:30AM New Zealand time, and managed to doze a little until 5:30 when I finally gave up and dragged myself out of bed. Mucked around showering and getting dressed as long as I could but still found myself at the restaurant just after 6:30 AM. Cooked breakfast with Jo, David, and a couple of others from the con.

Formal sessions

Leonie & I had two sessions, back-to-back; GL integration and then Sales Order Processing (SOP) changes. Quite a baptism by fire. As it turned out, I was the one doing most of the talking with Leonie just there in a supporting role ... Definitely not how I wanted it to play out but such is life. One embarrassing moment in the first presentation came when one of the slides went up on the screen & I looked at it and got something like stage fright. Three bullet points, the night before I knew what they all meant but at that moment my mind went blank & I had no idea what the middle one meant. Luckily Leonie was able to come to my rescue. The SOP session wasn't too great. The presentation went well, barring one question from the floor for which I was unprepared. Luckily the customer that had originally requested that feature was in the audience & when I looked pleadingly in his direction he answered the question. During the break I made sure I went and thanked him. Another question was why we changed the system to give another option on saving virtual locations. My response wasn't considered, just a simple "A customer asked us for it (pause) I looked at the request & said 'That's a reasonable request' so we did it (pause) We do listen to our customers sometimes." Laughter from the audience. Unfortunately technology let me down. I was planning to end with a quick demo and the technology let me down. The database server decided to go down. At least it wasn't our product.

Evening - Formal dinner

This started when we were walked through Seaworld to their penguin enclosure for drinks and canapes. I hadn't taken my camera with me which was a shame. The dinner was a fairly good buffet. Lots of seafood, which I really tanked up on. They had crab-legs but nothing to crack them with, I must confess to making a bit of a mess using a table knife for that. By about 10:50 I was feeling that early start & a bit jet lagged, so I excused myself and went back to my room. Again I slept like a log.

Who Links To Me - Test

Just testing this out. Who Links Here

To Brisbane

Awake early

I was off-line for a few days, I'm backdating this and the next couple. Needed to be at the airport by 8AM this morning, so I decided I should arrive by 7:30; working back from that I booked a taxi for 6:45 and set the alarm for 6AM. Packed the night before, realised that I only filled a small portion of my back-pack, so I decided I could squeeze everything I needed into my day pack ... Great, nothing to check in. In the morning I was ready to go at 6:30, so I turned the computers, microwave, and video stack off, attempted to drown the pot-plants and stepped outside at 6:35. I just lit a cigarette and my taxi arrived 10 minutes early. While I was finishing the smoke a second taxi arrived. I can only assume that they had a hiccup & despatched two cabs. Had a dream run through and was in the check-in line by just after 7AM. Grrrrrrrr, I would have liked a bit more sleep, but never mind.

Killing time

What's to do at airports? One of the great dilemmas of the modern age. I ended up having breakfast at Macdonalds and wandering around aimlessly. Then I went through customs. I'm always cautious about what I take so, as usual, my pack went through the X-Ray without a hitch. One small amusement of the morning was watching the man at the next inspection station trying to explain the large pair of sissors he was carrying. Turkey. The flight was uneventful as was the drive down to Seaworld.

Lunch

We arrived at Seaworld early and our rooms weren't yet ready. We had already planned to go off and get lunch. Unfortunately Kathy and her passengers didn't arrive, and didn't arrive, and didn't arrive. It seems she took the scenic route. Smile. Eventually we were all there and took off to Southport for Fisherman's Wharf Bar/Restaurant. Foolishly I ordered the tempura whiting - definitely not tempura as I know it. It would be good old kiwi fish & chips, except the wedges were obviously cooked in oil that was too cold. Other wedges we had on the trip were much the same, I wonder if that's the ocker way of doing chips?

Evening

The conference started with a brief greeting to the customers and then it was onto the tall ship for a cruise. Despite having to play at hosting the customers, it was a nice little cruise & I quite enjoyed myself, but by the time it finished I was getting pretty tired. It may have only been 7:30PM local time, but it was 10:30 by my biological clock and I needed food & sleep ... Preferably in that order. It was a free evening, so my colleges & I could dine together without having to circulate among the customers, one of the did join us, but he's a former employee anyway so while we talked shop we could relax. Our dinner was at the Hatsu Hana Japanese restaurant in the resort. I had the sashimi which was tasty, balanced, and very nicely presented. Included with it was a fair sized serving of tuna, the obvious salmon, a white fish I'd not met before that reminded me of ruby fish more than anything, and a rolled up fish that seemed cooked, but was still flexible ... no idea what this was ... it was topped with some roe that made it almost into a cup. I enjoyed the dinner. The restaurant also has a tepanyaki table that was in use. It would have been nice to have tried that, but I suspect that my companions would have been a little non-plussed by that. As it was I got a few strange looks from Donald over my choice of raw fish. He's a strange one, very inhibited and conservative which wouldn't be so bad if he didn't try pushing his world view on others. When I got to my bed I had no trouble dropping off.

Saturday

Today started out fairly normally , until I flooded the kitchen that was. Water was everywhere. Including through my cutlery and cupboards. So everything has had to be rewashed, and the cupboards washed out with bleach, and so-forth. The draws are still wet, I'm hoping they will be dry enough to restock before bed. I really don't want to leave everything out while I'm at the conference. I was planning on listing this blog in the various blog directories around the net today. I guess that will just have to wait. I did register with Globe of Blogs and Blogwise. There wasn't any special reason for picking them to be first, that's just how it happened. Still have to pack, but my heart really isn't in it. Sure I'll get it done before bed, but <shrug> Might write later if I get a chance. Otherwise I'm not sure when I'll next have an opportunity.

Chardonnay

Tired

It's been a long day at work, so there's not much extra-mural stuff to report. I feel pretty tired & reading this before posting I can see I'm not my normal chatty self. Today was Campbell's last day. He kept busy finishing off open issues until the end of the day. It was a sad occasion for him, but he kept sounding positive. We had a few drinks to say goodbye to him. And so it goes. My day was kept busy with administration, getting ready for the conference (making sure I have everything I need), and a meeting to discuss the development projects plan for the rest of the year. Doesn't sound like much, but I'm getting worn out by it. I'll be so glad when it's over and I can do some programming. Sean's doing a sheet that will take 3 or 4 days of solid coding. I'd love to be doing that one. If I wasn't so pre-occupied with the conference I'd probably still have given it to him, but it would have been so nice to have had the option.

For the first time in 7 years

In 1998 I got glandular fever. Before I realised I had it, I had three glasses of chardonnay after work one night. With the illness, my liver couldn't tolerate alcohol & I reacted very badly "Throwing up in the gutter" is how I usually describe it. After I got well, my body remembered the incident and if I as much as held the stuff to my nose I felt ill. So I've been avoiding it ever since. Tonight I had a glass of wine. It was nice. I looked at the bottle & saw it was chardonnay. This means I've finally got over the reaction. It's so nice to have the choice back in my life.

Administration

I had a brief play with webmin tonight. Downloaded it & installed it on a machine inside the firewall. Had a brief play. Not enough study to really judge, but it could be interesting.

Google Sitesearch and more cache

Interesting night struggling with a few options. Well, probably a boring night struggling with a few options, but it kept me amused.

Google Search

I've been playing with the Google Adsense version of their website searching tool. I've seen them all over the web, you get a Google search box on your page and have the choice of searching the current site, or the whole web. The search in PHP-Nuke isn't great, so even before I signed up for Adsense I thought it would be good to incorporate Google search, it wasn't a high priority, but it was there. Then when I signed up for the ad program I discovered that many of these search boxes are actually part of the Adsense program, so webmasters that employ them get something back if someone searches from their site and then selects an advertisement. Wahoo. Count me in. So far I've made a small number of cents in a single click through from my sites. That's right, one click through. Maybe if I put the search boxes up, I'll get people using G to search from my site, and I'll get a second person clicking an ad. Maybe one day I'll actually get my cents earned up into the double digits. Seriously, I wasn't even expecting a single click yet. I'm surprised I got that. Early days yet. If I'm not getting close to having my costs covered by September, then I'll worry. So, I've tried it out, configured it to my taste and put a search box into the page header of the bad.co.nz pages. Another interesting thing is that while I'm not allowed to put Google Ads on a 404 page, I am allowed to put their search box there. <smile>

More on Google Cache

I went back to have another look at the weird search result I mentioned the other day. To recap, someone had got to an error page on 168.co.nz by following a Chinese language link from Google search. So just out of interest I went back tonight & searched Google for this domain. I thought I might find a dozen or so old pages. Wrong. It said "Results 1 - 20 of about 7,010 from 168.co.nz". What have I stumbled on here, an abandoned portal? Then I looked again. This wasn't my Domain. LOL. So I tried my domain 168.net.nz. This was much more believable. 27 pages. I wouldn't have the luck to pick up something potentially that valuable. The content is all (apparently) Chinese. I couldn't duplicate the content, but I wonder is it ethical for me to put up pages of the same name? Oh well, that's a problem for another day.

LOL Left hand, right hand.

Before publishing this entry, I just went to check for typos it using the spell check tool on the Blogspot authors page. It complained that Google wasn't a recognised word. Ha! Blogspot AKA Blogger is owned by Google! Google, Adsense and probably one or two other words I've used are trademarks of Google.com.

Work - Phew

Well I got my presentation slides done ... almost. For the GL presentation I'd previously joined Leonie's slides with mine to make a joint presentation & sent it off to her to see what she thought, she decided that the combined set was far too long & chose to just use my slides. So I cleaned them up, reformatted for the conference and asked her to reword one of them that I wasn't happy with & that was done. David was sick today. I knew that I needed his input for the joint presentation, but couldn't get it. I tried emailing his CompuServe.com account, but mistyped it as "compuserv" (no 'E'). Well, what do you know? There's a sleazy typo-squatter that owns that domain name and likes reading other people's mail. I'll break my rule about giving clickable links. While I was waiting for David to not receive the email, I worked on the third presentation, the one on sales order changes. I got it done, and was just sitting back at my desk; hands on head when David arrived. He decided he liked my slides & has taken them to do a couple of changes to his bit. He'll forward them on to Chris for inclusion in the conference CD-ROM. So all that was left for me to do was to forward the other two to Chris. Typically, I sent him the wrong version of the GL presentation :(. Luckily I was the one that spotted the mistake & got the real version off. Left work at 5 with a clear conscience. Yeehaa!!!!!!!!

Posting by email?

I found this option on blogspot to publish to the blog by email.

Inveterate fiddler with technology that I am, I just had to try it.

Here's a quote that appeared in my in box, so at least I have a little content.

"We must practice the skill of listening instead of speaking, of acknowledging and celebrating difference instead of recoiling from it, of putting ourselves, as squarely as we can, into the experience of others." -- Andre Carothers, Writer and organizational consultant

--

(Added later) Well that was ugly. I think I'll avoid posting by email for now

Working ... Working ... Working

Day Job

I'm feeling disorientated at work this week. The week before last we had consultants and implementors from our international branches in town for a conference. My regular routine was shot as I had to do a couple of presentations and sit in on a few sessions. I expected that. What I didn't expect was that I'd end up sitting in on several extra sessions and be asked during the week to present on a technological "futures" idea for our premier product. That plus my boss was supposed to phone & warn me if a preceeding session was running over time. He often managed to do that. The one time I was really quite annoyed was when I came in from home on the Saturday for my last presentation to find that the previous session was only just getting under way.

Then we have a customer conference coming up next week. So again, more prep. I've been scheduled for 3 presentations, more than any other developer. But I think I'm on-time for getting them done in time. Need to have my slides in by Thursday so they can go on the CD-ROM for the delegates, but I can do it.

Complicating the week, David, the CTO, has come down from the UK for the user conference & his six-monthly catchup with his staff. First thing Monday the team leaders were summoned into the conference room & he announced that he had decided to step down as boss of the software team & concentrate on being CTO for the hardware business. A new "MIS" CTO has been appointed and my boss' position has been disestablished.

So, it's David running around doing the David things, Campbell running around doing the Campbell things, and at the end of the week they both stop being my bosses. I keep thinking about a portion of Jonathon Dimbleby's The Last Governor where towards the time of Hong Kong's hand-over to China when the Chinese had made it clear that new laws passed by the British administration would not carry on, when relationships between the British & the Chinese were at a low ebb, Chris Patton continued with "business as usual" and was hurt that increasingly the Hong Kong Chinese turned towards the mainland. The same mainland that was about to resume control of their island. I feel a bit like those HK Chinese civil servants who had to go through the motions of supporting their outgoing boss while knowing that the real future lies with the new boss.

And the home business?

Nothing much really. Too cabbaged by the day job to be creative. I did sign-up for Amazon's affiliate program though. The way I read, I might as well build links to their books

Relaxation, then?

Ha! Blogging. In a quiet moment I did press the see next blog link on my blog before. It took me to a blog by someone calling herself Falsafah. Her site says "Falsafah means the love and pursuit of wisdom and knowledge. Serenity ; Calmness." I like that sentiment. Good luck with the job search Falsafah.

And that's all from me tonight.

Getting Serious About The Web

Domain Portfolio

I've built up a portfolio of "investment" domain names I've "banked". OK, it isn't much of an investment, because all I'm doing is sitting on them & paying renewal fees. The idea was to turn them into real sites, and do a little business, maybe use them for information and make a little of advertising, in a couple of cases it was just for support of a cause. Some I'm getting serious about turning into domains, as for the rest I've though about my exit strategy.

The idea I've come up with is rather than just abandoning them, or trying to sell a raw name, is to to make them into real "mini-domains". Useful content, a bit of traffic. Then sell them on.

Finding Hosting

So I've experimented with finding some hosting. Now that was a job and a half. There's thousands of little resellers out there all trying to make themselves look like real hosting companies. Complicating the issue I needed to host multiple domains.

After a few nights of staring at hosting offers until I went crosseyed I gave up. I found an interesting site at forums.devshed.com I placed a description of the type of hosting I needed. The little resellers clustered around and placed answers to my queries. This whittled it down to about 20 replies. I then checked each of them against my stated requirements. Most of them were dreamers. They had non-functioning sites, didn't offer all the features I said I needed, or their terms and conditions disallowed what I said I wanted the hosting for. This got it down to a very few sites; then I used "feelings" this got be down to two I felt comfortable about. Eventually I made my decision.

I'm not associated with devshed, just a happy customer of their free service.

Domains

I've started shifting the domains. It's slow work, but each time I do one, it gets easier.

Some little funnies have popped up

• I got a google hit on my main domain for the search term "Albanian Musak." Totally blank look from me, how on earth does my little domain about pacific rats get a hit like that. Google cache to the rescue. I had a random quote dongle on the page, turns out that when the google spider came through, the quote it got served contained exactly that phrase. Won't happen again, I've put rat related quotes in the file it uses. There's a small irony there, "Kiore" is also the name of a town in Albania.
• I also found a 404 on 168.net.nz. When I went to look at the referring page it was Google ('natch), but in Chinese. I asked a Chinese co-worker. He said the search was about AUT, and so was the page in the google cache. He said the page was unusual. It was written using simplified chinese characters, but the wording suggested that the person writing was more at home with traditional Chinese. We then had a conversation about how it's just a transliteration (or to coin a word, transpictoration) and how a simple search/replace could do someting like this. Programmers, huh?

Missed opportunity

I got caught up with some stuff at work today & clean forgot that the local Linux users group had its meeting tonight. I finally remembered at around 6:50 when I was in Broadway standing at the bus stop opposite 277 with 4 supermarket bags of shopping. At the time I was annoyed at myself, I have an interest in virtual servers, the subject of the talk, but I also realised that by the time the perishables were in the fridge and I'd eaten it would be too late to get there. Luckily I've since realised that the virtual servers being talked about are the cluster style, joining many machines into a super computer, not the partition one machine into several virtual slices. Still would have liked to have gone, but never mind.

Ellipsis

Quite a while has elapsed

I'm living in Epsom North, been here 8 months. Had one brief relationship. Right now I'm not meeting anyone, but I'm not really looking either. I don't know, it all seems too hard. I guess I'm settling in well to the single life.

I'm back playing bridge again, this time at the Royle Epsom bridge club. LOL. Getting back to how I used to be before the November 12th event.

Dad

Dad's fading, Mum's soldiering on. There's been a few scares with Dad's health. I don't like to think about it, but I have to accept that one day not too far off he won't be with us. I can't remember when I last said I loved him. Weird. I'm 47 and I don't know if my Dad knows how I feel. I remember a few years back when I gave him a hug and he didn't know how to react.

Michael's coming back from Australia for a week's holiday in a couple of weeks. He'll be staying with Mum & Dad. I don't know if he'll be coming over for their 50th in December.

I'm backdating this a few days because I wanted to set the scene for a couple of recent pages.

A Google Operating System?

I wrote this article in 2005 as part of a Slash Dot discussion "Google Planning Web Browser? ", I've decided to add it in here as part of consolidating significant writings I've done in other forums and have added it here in October 2008. From the 2008 perspective we know that Google did, in fact release their own browser.

The original discussion's header was"John Dvorak has just posted a very interesting, albeit hypothetical, analysis of Google's future directions. Citing the 'unusual' hires of Rob Pike (from Bell labs), Ben Goodger, and Darin Fisher (both from Mozilla) and the acquisition of the gbrowser.com domain, Dvorak speculates that a Firefox based Google browser and Google-OS may soon be coming to a cluster near you."

Rob Pike was the principle author of the Plan-9 operating system and is a world expert on distributed operating systems

---

Let's assume Google is acting rationally

They might want Rob Pike for other reasons, several have been suggested elsewhere in this discussion.

On the other hand, they may actually want him to develop an operating system. That is one of the things he's done before, and one of the things he's well known for.

Why on earth should Google want to develop a new (or highly modified) operating system? What strengths would Dr Pike bring to that project?

Google have a very large number of servers. They won't reveal how many they have, but admit to more than 10,000 servers [baltimoresun.com], another another estimate [tnl.net] suggests between 31 and 158 thousand servers. That's a lot of computing power. Presumably the people at Google are highly interested in getting as much work out of this hardware as they possibly can.

Enter Dr Pike. He's well known for Plan 9 [lucent.com] "The Plan 9 system is based on the concept of distributed computing in a networked, client-server environment. The set of resources available to applications is transparently made accessible everywhere in the distributed system, so that it is irrelevant where the applications are actually running."

I have seen passing references [screamingelectron.org] that Plan 9 is strong on clustering and load balancing. Unfortunately I can't get Google to give me a good citation, so this may be a myth.

Google have a large number of computers, and have hired an expert on writing distributed operating systems. I feel it's likely that they want him to improve the operating environment of their servers, or possibly of the Google appliances they sell.

It doesn't take much thought to realise that Google would be well served by a stripped down operating system that supports the work they do highly efficiently, and supports non-core activities relatively poorly, or even not at all.

OK, let's assume that they are writing an OS for their own internal use. An OS that makes their servers carry out the core business of their company more efficiently. Why should they either sell or give away that operating system?

Spidering, organising, searching, and delivering information is what Google does. Why should they let their competition have access to the tool that lets their 10,000-158,000 computers do their core business better?

Not many facts to back it up in any depth, but my best guess is that whatever it is that Rob Pike does for Google won't be released for a long time, if ever.

Kaukapakapa to Wellsford

Getting going

In the morning I wanted to get going, but neither the custodian nor the owners were anywhere to be seen, so I loaded up the bike and sat down to have a cigarette and a coffee. While I was doing that the owner turned up and I was able to settle my bill.

The muscles are a bit sore, but soon loosened up.

Nightmare on wheels

Ourshop describes the road to Wellsford as "Wellsford, Provincial Highway 16 meanders its way to Helensville." and helpfully adds "Watch out for the logging trucks using this stretch of road." Add monster hills and killer heat to that description and it's pretty good. Yesterday was overcast and while cycling could never be described as a pleasure at my level of fitness, at least it wasn't too bad. Today I was bleeding sweat and needed lots of breaks, but I decided that even when I needed an extra break I'd keep going. 5 km per hour isn't getting me anywhere fast, but at least it's getting me somewhere. Rabbit, tortoise, that kind of thing. About the 5th time I saw her, a policewoman that had been patrolling the road stopped her car and asked me if I was OK. I assured her I was & had plenty of water. I think she was afraid I was near to collapse.

On the other hand, I did allow myself my scheduled breaks. Originally the idea was ride for 90 minutes and then rest for 10. I decided that this was too much, so revised it to ride / walk for 60 minutes then rest for 20, but every time I was due for a rest I kept going until I found a place with shade and somewhere to sit or lie, so probably closer to 70 minutes.

About half an hour out of Wellsford a very nice young lady in the front paddock of her farm said she'd seen me coming in the distance and that I looked completely knackered. She asked if I'd like a dip in their pool. I would have loved to, but as I said to her, if I stopped I didn't think I'd have the strength to get going again. And so I got to Wellsford, turned left to get onto State Highway 1 and headed north. Wellsford is built on a hill and at the top of the hill I looked out over the countryside and decided that although it was only 3 PM I really didn't want to go any further today. There was accommodation up that end of town, but I thought about a tidy little motel I'd see at the end of highway 16, so I turned around and went back.

Rest

This was the right move. I was in a reasonably modern motel, with friendly host and after a swim in their pool and a hot shower I walked down to the shops for some fruit for tomorrow, then to the local bistro bar for a take-away pizza.

Again I slept well