There are three rather spectacular waterfalls within a few minutes of home. Here's the 'little' one...

Apologies for the lack of clarity. It's a cell phone picture.

Nothing spectacular today. Well, ok - there was that head-on collision at the top of MacQuarie Pass this morning. Guess that counts for something. Glad it wasn't me.

Dug into the mysteries of 'udev', or why your Linux box can't seem to use 'eth0' ever again with another hardware address, insisting on eth1, eth2, etc... Well in fact it can re-use eth0, but you've got to find the file (/etc/udev/rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules) where they store the MAC addresses of every adapter that ever gets plugged in and fix it. It's not exactly something that comes up on a web search for re-configuring net adapters under Linux. You kinda' haveta' figure out that 'udev' is the culprit and track it down from there.

Worked a bit more on this website. Lots of under the covers changes that will make a lot of people happy. But I'll let them figure it out.

Now I'm settling down to a homebrew. It's done. It's not the best I've ever cooked up, but considering what I've got to work with - it's absolutely the best beer (the first decent one) I've had in this country. It'll do (quite nicely). I've got 5 cases to go through before I have to make some more - and I can only drink a couple bottles at a time before the walls start spinning. So this should last a month or two.

It cost me about $15-20 a case all told. Over time I should be able to make it better and drop the cost to about $5/case. If you consider that anything better than toilet-water beer costs $50-$60 a case - and lasts about a week, it's a pretty fair savings overall. Should be able to trim my monthly beer budget at least in half, and not have to drink the disgusting swill that sells as 'premium' beer here.

Looks like we've got a new prime minister. That would be Kevin Rudd - although I learned from the last couple of elections in the states not to call a winner until the court has spoken. Last night the Liberal Party spokespersons were taking care not to admit defeat or make concession speeches - holding out for every last vote to be counted.

Labor unions are still big here, and the Labor Party is big with the unions. So even though Mr. Rudd won the election on platforms such as global warming which appeal to all voters, deep down, you can hear the Labor Party leaders talking about how they've now got a 'mandate' to rewrite all the workplace agreement laws. This is no different than the states, where a republican victory is usually declared a mandate to change abortion or school prayer laws.

When I took my current job, I was offered a choice - either an individual contract or a collective contract. Taking the collective contract pretty much makes you a union member. I chose the individual contract. This choice is at the heart of the workplace agreement reform Labor's talking about. They really don't like the fact that individual contracts are offered as a choice and want to make joining the union more opt-out than opt-in. 

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There was a big sign out front of the hardware store yesterday. Chook manure. Translated: chicken shit.

Thanksgiving came and went here yesterday without much fanfare. Just another work day. We had a ham dinner at the pub - which is the only place in town that serves food after 8PM. We'll probably have something a bit more traditional tonight (Friday) to go along with the U.S. holiday. 

But all eyes here are on the Australian election tomorrow. Kevin Rudd seems to have a strong lead. He's Labor Party or what those in the states would call a 'democrat'. The Liberal Party here is John Howard and would be what would be called a 'republican' in America. 

Howard has made some pretty bold moves in the last month, but 80% of it is pure financial bribery to get re-elected. Most people are genuinely tired of him. If he comes out on top, it's going to be expensive to make good on all the financial promises he  has made. His main argument for staying in power sounds reminiscent of Bush in 2004. Stay the course - you are a fool if you want to change horses in the middle of a stream.

Well, yes - valid point. But I personally think it's OK to jump off a horse in the middle of a stream if in fact you had no intention of being in the stream in the first place, and the durn fool horse just decided (against all better judgement) to go swimming in flood currents. 

My neighbor asked me - are the flies this bad in the states? Nope, not at all. The closest thing I can think of is the bees swarming your summer barbecue in the California foothills. But that's nothing compared to these bugs. A fly will seek you out, and then chase you down the street, swarming your face the entire way. There's nothing you can do about it. You can't shake 'em or wave 'em away.  No repellent will deter them. They keep coming back for more. They make it a point of buzzing your face, an inch and a half in front of your eyes where it bugs you the most. They'll keep at it for an hour or more - or until they've found somebody else to bother. They'll land on your nose and do a walkabout. Sneak up from behind and crawl around inside your ear when you least expect it. Don't even think of opening your mouth - it's like handing out invitations to a party with naked girls and free beer...

Nope, I've never experienced anything quite like these tenacious little buggers before.  

I'm not exactly thinking about Thanksgiving. It isn't celebrated here. Even less than Halloween. A non-event. But everybody has been pushing Christmas here since about six weeks ago. However, it's hard to think about Christmas in the middle of summer. It just doesn't seem natural to be looking at Christmas decorations and beach towels at the same time. The university is preparing for graduation next week, about the time y'all are gonna' be carving turkeys. Today we went to the Frensham Iris Festival. Frensham is a private girl's school and this is their spring/summer event. Hotter than blazes.