Max Merritt, Wilson Pickett, Ray Charles. These guys rocked last night. The first support act, Max Merritt, was someone I’d never heard of before, but recognized his songs. Cool. There was this sax player who was the most unco person I’ve ever seen, but he sure showed a little tenderness.

Wilson Pickett had a really, really strong band, which was lucky, because he was as sick as a dog. Pickett’s act was awesome, and for me, the highlight of the show.

Ray was Ray. A legend with a great gift.

There was this crazy lady behind us who yelled out such gems as:
“Christopher Columbus went to America to find Ray Charles!” and
“We want Volcano Ice on CD!”
both of which were met with disgusted sighs and stony silence from the audience at how dumb this woman was. She was singing along and shit, and eventually Edward turned around and asked her to be quiet.
She set a dumb precedent. This meant to the other stupid people in the audience that it was ok to yell stuff out while people were playing. Case in point, Ray’s band were playing a few numbers before he came on, and this was interspersed with such gems as “Where’s Ray?” “I thought this was a Ray Charles show?” “We want Ray!”
The other precedent was that there would be no gaps between songs for small talk with the audience, in case crazy lady yelled something else stupid out.

Oh, did I mention dinner at the Foo beforehand. It was good too.

And afterwards, we headed back to the office and opened a bottle of 96 Penfolds Grange. We watched a couple of episodes of The West Wing, before heading home at 3am.

Great night.

Right, I’m just back from a long lunch with Leyton, during which we ate HJs and watched The Office on VCD. This is an amazingly irritating show, but once you get hooked, you just can’t stop watching it.

Tonight is Ray Charles, which I’m going to see with Edward. Should be good … hopefully he will permit a trip to the Foo for dinner beforehand. Tomorrow is soccer. And with this schedule, we need to start thinking about 24-Part 2.

Ok, for the bbq boat, I’m thinking of $20 per family unit. That is to say $20 for single people, $20 for couples. Sound good to everyone? There are some people who I’ve invited who don’t read my page (can you believe that?) so I’ll have to email them about that. (Mental note made.)

I’m currently working on a problem with Novell’s iFolder, which I’ve now spent about 20 hours on this week. Almost there … almost there.

This info is hard to come by, so I’m storing it here where I know that I’ll always be able to find it:

NetWare 5.1 SP4 (NDS 7)– DS.nlm v7.57
NetWare 5.1 SP 4 (NDS — DS.nlm v8.79
eDirectory 8 — DS.nlm and DS.dlm v8.79 — NetWare 5.0,Win NT/2K
eDirectory 8.5.x — DS v85.23 — NetWare 5.x,Win,Solaris
NetWare 6 (eDirectory 8.6) — DS.nlm v10110.20 — NetWare 6
eDirectory 8.6.1 — DS v10210.43 — NW 5.1,NW 6,Win,Solaris,Linux
NetWare 6 SP1 (eDirectory 8.6.2) — DS.nlm v10310.17; NetWare 6
eDirectory 8.6.2 — DS v103xx.xx — NW 5.1,NW 6,Win,Solaris,Linux
eDirectory 8.7 — DS v10410.xx — NW 5.1,NW 6,Win,Solaris,Linux,AIX

So TSLOU was a bit contrived last night … hopefully they’ll pick up their act on that shortly. As Bek commented, “We’ve just come off 3 months of crap TV, and they hit us with a backwards-running episode?” My sentiments exactly.

Now hear this: For Sunday 23-Feb-03, there’s a bbq boat hired from Swan Boat Hire at Maroochydore. We’ve got it from 10am - 4pm, so it’ll be a nice day to fish, swim, bbq and so forth.

It’s to celebrate my birthday, or Geburtstag as the Germans say. I am officially calling for volunteers to help me organize this event, as work is fully stressing up towards the April event (mentioned yesterday) and I don’t really have the time or mental capacity to do it by myself.

Anyone who reads this blog is invited to attend, but RSVPing is mandatory, because I want to minimize vehicles, because it’s in Maroochydore.

So that’s that. Email me confirmation that you can come.

Reminder to all who care: we’re watching TSLOU at my place tonight … be there or be square.

And now I will continue with the rest of my ramblings. Friday was an interesting day - Edward and I took the afternoon off to go and see the new Star Trek movie in Gold Class - $11 to see with the plebs, or $14 to see it in waited-on comfort? No contest. Now, I’d done the Gold Class thing before, but not the way Edward does it - 3 course meal served throughout the movie. It was a pretty awesome way to spend an afternoon, and only came to $40 ea including the $14 for the ticket. And we were like kings … it was great!

However, that did use most of my fun money for the weekend, so I had to skip the markets. The fact that I’d gone to M&D’s place to spend some quality time with Simba and Chaz the night before and ended up staying there also had some bearing on this outcome. Saturday I went to the movies to see About Schmidt with Blacky. Good movie, sad, but good. I was planning on doubling-up with Analyze That, but Blacky talked me out of it, and after an iceblock at M&D’s, we went home and watched the first half of Startup.com over dinner. I remembered that I left a roast out at M&D’s that I forgot to bring home, so I had to leave suddenly to go and refrigerate(sp?) it.

Sunday, the roast was cooked, and John came over. Hadn’t seen John for a while, and it was good to catch up. We got a West Wing-fix, and feasted on Roast topside and then Baskin Robins icecream. mmmm.

The 24-shanigans finished that evening, with some people’s predictions coming true, others not. Leyton’s insisting that Jack would die was unlikely, Bek’s prediction that Palmer and Patty would get it on was likely but didn’t happen, my prediction that the phone the bad guys gave Jack was a bomb was correct, Bek’s prediction that Mason was a mole was likely but didn’t work out, and my prediction that Terri died was right on the money. So, the problem is that the new 24 starts tonight, and instead of watching it at the pace the TV network dictates, we’ve decided to download each episode and watch it at our own pace. So we’ll be finished that series pretty soon, too, you can bet. Nachos, popcorn and chocolate biscuits really added to the “Veg out in front of the TV” atmosphere. It’s gotta be said, however, that once Bek were completely unable to follow what was going on in anything that we watched thereafter.

I am going to Salt Lake City, Utah for Novell’s big hooplah again this year. The conference itself runs Sun 13/Apr - Fri 18/Apr, so I’ll need to be organizing to leave Australia on or about the Wed 9th or Thurs 10th/Apr. Now, Fri 18/Apr is a public holiday in Australia, so I’ll take a day in lieu for that. Mon 21/Apr is also a public holiday in Australia, and, you guessed it … Fri 25/Apr as well. And I don’t have to fly back on my time, so that means I could leave the flight back to Mon 28/Apr if I wanted to. So I could get 9 days in America for the cost of 2 days of annual leave.

I’m just not sure if a) I want to, and b) I can afford to. I recall fondly the completely awesome time I had in New Orleans last year, but as great as it was, I wouldn’t want to do it again so soon. And I’m moderately over the whole “flying around America” thing that I ended up doing last time, so this time it’d be more likely that I’d spend those 9 days in Utah, Nevada and California, which are all within easy driving distance. And I’d be by myself, having spent the previous week on a trade-show stand with only customers and the occasional visit from Edward to keep me company. America is a great place, but it’s no Australia - I think I’d rather take holidays in Australia (or near Australia: Bali, Thailand, NZ) with friends than visit America by myself. As always, I’m keen to hear other people’s opinions on the subject.

I’ve got a whole bunch more interesting stuff to say, but I’ve got a meeting to go to. Perhaps I will update again this afternoon. In the meantime, you must check out Bryce’s Notes, as he has updated with a whole bunch of entries since his exams have finished.

And, lastly for those keeping score at home, I will be 24 in 12 days. My youth is vanishing with every passing moment.

I figure I must have an addictive personality - lately it’s an Ice Break and 2 fruit scones for breakfast. Every morning. You’d think I’d get over it. I don’t. Sigh.

Oh this is a classic. My mobile phone has been disconnected. Because work ‘forgot’ to pay the bill. Hmm. Why is it that everytime I start to feel comfortable in this job, something comes and asses it up. We have an “accounts” department, fer chrissakes. How can they “forget” to pay bills? The simple answer is that they can’t. And don’t. They obviously don’t have the money and/or “ok” from the boss to pay them. Which has me nervous. Not looking-for-another-job-just-yet nervous, but nervous none-the-less.

In happier news, my new hard drive is happily whirring away in my home PC. I don’t quite know how I will manage to fill the whopping 80Gb I now possess, but I’m sure I’ll make a good fist of it.

Here’s something that all people should study completely. Strongbad Emails are often seriously funny stuff, but sometimes they’re kinda “eh.” I hope you enjoy them.

I missed a doctor’s appointment this morning - and not even because I overslept. For some reason I was up bright and early, but checked my calendar some 30 minutes too late to make it to the appointment. And this wasn’t some quack, either - this is the kinda doctor who you schedule your appointment a month in advance for when you will eventually be sick. I’m not sick now, sure, but I should re-schedule for next month in case I’m sick then.

There’s two new bits I’ve implemented on the right.

The first is the Birthday Calendar feature. Please add your birthday and I’ll make a big deal out of it.

The second is the search feature, so you can find previous entries that have your name in it, amongst other things.

Enjoy.

Oh. I’m tired - some customer in Michigan needed someone to talk to him about a problem he is having with our software, and that someone was me. Yay. So after a huuuuge night of 24 (4 episodes we got through last night), I was up at half-past-ass to come into the office and call this dude.

Last night was fun though. Bek and Leyton brought food and drink, so they will certainly be invited back - so much food and drink that we didn’t get through it all, but this just means that there’s leftovers for next time, which is shaping up to be Sunday.

We grabbed dinner at the Red Brick last night before Leyton arrived, and because it was Schnitzel night, we each ordered that. The serving staff were un-buh-liev-uh-bly dumb, and charged me the wrong amount, forgot to give Bek her drink, then served each meal to the wrong person. They couldn’t have gotten it more wrong if they’d tried. But, luckily the food itself was ok. Even if the cheese on top was cheese-slices-fake-cheese instead of the real thing. This perplexed us, somewhat - why would they use crappy cheese when it costs the same as normal cheese and a grater?

In a disasterous development to my TSLOU party, I’ve discovered that the new series of 24 is on at the same time. So the resolution is to tape 24 and watch TSLOU, and recap on the 24-thing while fast-forwarding through the ads. So that’s the plan to the moment.

I have just arrived at work after taking the morning off to ensure my parent’s hasty departure went relatively un-noticed by the authorities. They will still be gone when my birthday rolls around, but that’s ok I’ve decided. I’ve got a secret project that I’m working on here too. Stay tuned.

Tonight is 24-a-rama, so I’ve been encoding my ass off. I’m going to go and work on my secret project now. Later.