The interesting thing to note at the moment is that time seems to be moving slower. I have been in this country just under three weeks now, and it seems as if it has been a few months.

The other interesting thing is the lack of any noticeable culture shock. It can be boiled down to a few major differences and several minor ones, but nothing that is causing my neurons to pop and fizz. Measurements are in metric. I learned this in junior high school. No big deal, although I have to smile when I see a speed limit sign saying '100'. Yo - we're flying, even though it's 62 MPH in reality. We drive on the left. And the locals pronounce 'a' and 'r' a bit differently than Silicon Valley, but it's no different conceptually than listening to conversation in Appalachia, which I've done. That's all the big stuff. The little stuff has to do with a different set of laws and governmental structure. There are different products in the supermarket. But as far as culture shock, I had more of it going to New York City for a week than I have out here on the other side of the world. 

Today is a major holiday in Australia - the commemoration of a disastrous battle against the Turks in WW1. It's similar to Veteran's Day in the U.S. - except the differences are huge. In the U.S. it's more just a work holiday, with the president laying a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier - and which nobody really watches. 

In Australia, every town has a wreath ceremony. Every town has a list of the fallen in a prominent location. Everybody is involved. A parade in Sydney that's bigger than the Macy's parade in NYC. And at every occasion you are reminded that people died in wars obeying orders (good and bad) - and you should be grateful. A continuous stream of military remembrances on TV.

And at the end of the ceremonies (right after the Australian national anthem) is a rousing rendition of 'God Save the Queen'. I'll have to admit I'm not quite ready to belt that one out. But I hummed along anyway since it's the same basic tune as 'My Country Tis of Thee'.    

The last week has been spent mostly getting settled in and acquiring all of the necessary things to function in this country. A bank account (I mean one that can be used with local currency). A car (Toyota Corolla - hey it was cheap). Picking it up tomorrow. Medicare, which is the state health care system; not just for the elderly. Today was the driver license. I think that's all the important stuff. At least now I can claim to be a legal functioning adult person instead of in some transitory state.

Now to find a job.

The quickest way to immerse oneself into Aussie culture is a day at the Sydney Royal Easter Show. Think of your typical American county fair, but with maybe half a million participants. But ag is what it's all about. Horses, cows, sheep, dogs, crops. Riding contests, polo matches.  

The interesting thing to a fresh mostly foreign observer from California is that a) the majority of the population is of European descent, and b) the majority of the population have no evidence of eating disorders, being mostly average body mass. This is in stark contrast to any California audience of similar size.

The first thing to get used to here is that you're a day ahead. We just had our Easter. Yours hasn't arrived yet.

The next thing that hits is the fact that everybody is driving on the wrong side of the street - just like England. Now I haven't driven here yet, so I'm glad to be an observer before I have to get about on my own. And I honestly don't think I'll have a big problem with it. See - I'm left handed. I do everything backward already. My brain has no problem thinking in mirror images.

Here in the Southern Highlands, it's been miserable cold. I'm told that it's not always like this, but they say that about Minnesota too. With luck the sun will come out in the next few days.

Tonight we had a couple drinks at the bowling club. Very fifties establishment. They hold a raffle every week and the winners take home about 30 worth of meat or veggies. When you're paying $5 a gallon for gasoline, little potential bonuses like this take on added significance.

Still finding out what beers are good. I'm really not fond of the local favorites, but I think I found one I can live with. Now I just have to figure out where to buy it.  

Now that I've actually had to try and work with it, I have to say that Vista is certainly the most annoying operating system I've ever had to deal with. Especially if you ever have to (gak) edit system configuration files or something like that.

Somebody wishes to change a system file. Is that OK with you? Well, yeah, that would be me that's doing it you dumbass. I'm sorry, but you don't have the requisite privilege to tweak that file. Would you like me to give you the necessary privilege? Well, yeah that would be nice. Somebody on the system is trying to elevate their privilege. Is this OK? That would be me again, dumbass. Somebody is trying to change a system file. Is this OK? Didn't you already ask me this? Oh but now I'm somebody else so you have to ask again. And then finally I get to edit the file. When I finish, it's another round of idiocy. Somebody just changed a system file, is this OK? (Sigh...) 

I remember Apple had a pretty funny commercial about this recently, but it's the first time I've had to deal with it firsthand. But once again it shows how completely full of holes this system is. This is all to prevent bad guys from doing bad things to your machine.

But they put the 'triggers' in the wrong place - when the questionable action is being done. You wouldn't need to ask these questions if instead you were to trigger on the source of the action, how is it being invoked? Who is doing this? If a script that got downloaded from a web page wants to mess with system files, you should definitely ask what the heck is going on. But if the source of this was somebody sitting at the keyboard clicking on a file, this isn't something you need to verify. And if it is, the machine owner has more serious problems than viruses. But then if you could trigger on the source of the action, it wouldn't be all that hard to prevent it from happening at all, now would it?

 

Somebody named 'mike' is about to save a blog post. Is this OK.... mike?

 

Down to the final count now. Unless one of my neighbors was stupid enough to leave their wi-fi channel unprotected, I'll likely wake up with nothing but 'Destination Unreachable' messages. There's always metro-fi, but it really sucks rocks. I'd probably prefer to do without.

I'll be too busy to write anyway.  

But you probably realize it's not going to be that easy to get rid of me. I'll still be here, except I won't really be here, I'll be there, or maybe someplace in between.  

Time now for a last beer or three. Oh what the heck. I've got to finish everything that's in the fridge anyways. If you think I'm going to throw away any perfectly good beer, you obviously don't know me very well. So I propose a toast. Here's to the good ol' U.S. of A. It's been good. Well at least before George, anyway.

And another toast to everybody here in the valley that still has dreams. Stop dreaming. Live those dreams. Just do it.

So until next time....

Hasta la vista, babee.

Later, dudes.

 

I went ahead and bought a new laptop anyway. In any scenario I can come up with, I'm going to be a road warrior at least part of the time. And a laptop down under is going to cost twice as much as it does here. So I picked up one of those cute little Toshiba Satellites. Had my eye on it for a long time. The reason I didn't do this before was the length of time it would take to get a development environment setup and working.

But when you get right down to it, it's no different from trying to get a working version of SunOS 20 years ago. I 've got a basic operating system (Vista, yuck!!!!!!!!). But I really don't care about the operating system. Honestly, they all suck. Some just suck more than others. But I just need something/anything that will load and run a handful of tools.

So what tools do I need?

• Firefox

• Thunderbird

• Filezilla

• ssh

• emacs (and my 20 year old .emacs startup file that I can't live without)

• UnxUtils (especially gunzip so I can unpack emacs) 

• Xampp (Apache, MySQL, PHP, phpmyadmin, etc.)

• the GIMP 

• ... my web development tree

• ... my databases

It isn't a huge list. I managed to get copies of all of them onto the laptop in under 2 hours. The hard part is configuration and customization. But that isn't as important as I thought. I've got time to configure it. Once I've got everything on the above list, I can unplug at any time and configure at my leisure. At the airport, on the beach, in a tree. You get the idea.

And this is a good thing because the time to unplug is fast approaching. Uhm, that would be tomorrow... 

OK - so anybody have any good April Fools to share?

 

Nice warm spring day. For me, it's gonna' have to do for summer because I won't get a summer this year.  

Today was the official first of the last days. It could be the last time that I'll do many things. Last trip to the stables. Last trip to the local music store. And it goes on and on. 

After leaving the stables, I had to buy a new pair of shoes. Toss the old ones. The old ones have been near livestock, and this causes fumigation and perhaps quarantine issues. So I went through Target for the last time. I remember going through Target at the peak of the Silicon Valley recession in 2002. I think there were three people in the entire football-field size store. Today was a sharp contrast. It was bustling. Good to see the valley alive again. It's been a long recovery.

Then over to the music store. I picked up a Blueridge and serenaded the Washburns and Martins with it. Used to sell Blueridge. This turned out to be the finest sounding guitar in the entire store, very pleasant. Said goodbye to the clerks who all know me by name. Even a former customer of mine out shopping for Strats wished me well.

Some of the last times have already happened. But today was the first day that I've started to take notice.