Wireless
Now the proud owner of a 18dBi connifer antenna. Many thanks to Ian and Jacinta for their assistance in its de-installation from a neighbouring rooftop. The previous owner had signed up for a one-month free trial of Galaxy-TV and then cancelled. He thought it was great that he was being paid for an antenna that cost him nothing to start with.

I thought it was great that I didn't have to shell out lots of cash for a new antenna. Big smiles all around.

Work
AIIIIEEE!! I'm everyone's favourite sysadmin, developer, technical writer, technical liason, trainer and advisor. Even more than I was before. Busy busy busy!

Rabbit-proofing
The new office is mostly rabbit-proofed, with the exception of the phone-cable. That'll need to be done soon, since Shadow has a fondness for telecommunications equipment.

Tip of the day
Don't say "good luck" to the nurse who's about to stick an inch long needle into your vein, as she might just break into laughter and miss.

I really should donate blood more often. I always end up having a great time whenever I go. Today I discovered that I both lost weight and hit an all-time-high with my haemoglobin levels. In addition I discovered that lots of nurses really admire long hair, and that if you turn white and feel dizzy after refreshments you'll get the free wheelchair ride, even if you don't have a workmate around to broadcast your onsetting faintness.

Geek pets
Chickens make good geek pets. They don't need their owners to play with them, they don't mess up the house, they put themselves to bed at night and wake themselves up in the morning. They're cheap to feed, and will happily eat two-week old pizza and turn it into eggs. Eggs are great. You can put one into boiling water and when you remember that it exists it's probably done. Chickens are good.

House rabbits make bad geek pets. Rabbits like to chew things, especially long thin things like grass, twigs, branches, network cabling and power adaptors. Currently, our awfully cute rabbit has chewed through the following since he first arrived:

• 3-4 x phone cords
• 3-4 x mobile phone chargers (repairable)
• Endless meters of UTP cabling
• Numerous vegetables and small trees (including half a sapling orange tree)
• Speaker cord (into multiple small pieces).
• Power cord
• Ariel cables

Rabbits get on surprisingly poorly with modern electronic equipment. While our bunny has suffered no ill effects from his adventures, there's only so many times you want to shorten your patch-leads or re-solder your mobile phone charger.

On the up-side, rabbits are very friendly and quiet pets. They toilet train nicely, and once you get a grasp of rabbit body-language they're a pleasure to deal with.

You know you're at a geek housewarming party when...
A person throws an item into the air and catches it again, and asks at what point in the air it undergoes maximum accleration (trying to trick the non-physics types). The answers from the floor were (in order):

• Duh, acceleration under gravity is constant;
• We're not in a vacuum, so acceleration is most when air-resistance is zero, at the top of the object's flight, when it's stationary;
• The gravitational field is not constant, so ignoring air resistance, the accerlation is at a maximum at the bottom of the flight, when it's closest to the earth.

These answers were then discussed and unified into a single answer that the acceleration is greatest at the start of the objects flight, since the gravitation pull is strongest at that time, and the force from air-resistance is in a downwards direction.

The conversation then proceeded onwards to discuss what effects a lowering of the speed of light would have on the amount of energy present in the universe, an attempt to explain entanglement and its use in quantum communication, and deciding who should play in the first game of twister.

Geeks, all of us.

Selling items on eBay
Pentium 100MHz CPU: $5.50
Socket-7 Motherboard: $9.51
16Mb EDO RAM: $4.25

Selling the hard-drive that caught fire for more than all the above? Priceless