Rabbit
We've decided that a good name for our rabbit/lawn-mower is Shadow, as he actively avoids sunlight. As a black rabbit, this makes a lot of sense from a staying cool/avoiding detection standpoint.

I'm considering investing in a water-pistol of some sort to give the local cats a bit of extra encouragement not to visit. I've always chased them from the yard as a matter of course, but now that we have Shadow I need to be particularly alert. It's a shame we can't let him roam unsupervised.

Jenni
jenni doesn't seem to be updating her diary at all, so I'll take this moment to do so for her...

Purchased a house the other day, big three bedroom thing with gold-embossed walls, marble statues, and landscaped gardens. It's much better than PJF's house (which I still haven't seen yet), although I did have to pay a little extra for it. Talking of PJF, now that I have a house and am feeling so rich I'll have to buy him lunch again.

Lawn-mower
After much talk of how long the lawn is getting, and after much prodding from Jacinta, I finally went out and bought myself a lawn-mower. It's low-maintance, self-cleaning, mulches as well as mows, and instead of producing grass clippings turns them into a high-grade plant fertilizer. It can be operated with minimal supervision, has big ears, and a cute fluffy tail. We got one in the stylish colour of black, and I've affectionately called it rabbit. Except for one small incident where its bladder control on the doona left something to be desired, we've been very happy.

Rabbit's favourite food is grass, favourite game is go-to-sleep-behind-the-cannas (where it's almost impossible to retrieve), and has made it quite clear to us that shredded newspaper is for its litter tray, and most certainly not a bedding material. Rabbit likes to chew on bits of pruned plum-tree.

I'm trusting Rabbit not to try and take a bite out of my network connection as I lie under my plum tree and work.

Ex-work
It would appear that JS, CEO of my previous workplace, has resigned. Interesting news.

Poker
Jacinta and I ran a poker night last week which was quite successful, and we're doing a similar thing tonight. Currently our friends are still a little hesitant to be playing for money, but I'm sure that we'll be able to overcome most of them soon.

Source-based routing
Oh my goodness. It was just too easy. By far the hardest part of the entire operation was getting syslinux running, in order to get around a BIOS bug in the firewall box which stopped it booting from the hard-drive.

Okay, it's been a while since I've written. Sorry about that. Here's a catch-up on what's been happening.

Mojotoad Visits
Jacinta and I met with with mojotoad the other day, who's doing his world-victory-lap after being published in The Perl Journal along with yours truly. We had a few pints and went out for Indian. Talked about everything from computers and geek stuff to biblical fruit and erosion of privacy. A very enjoyable evening.

New T-shirt
I now have a new SourceForge T-shirt that arrived the other day. Giving feedback can be worthwhile sometimes. :)

Consluting
The work that I have been doing has started to dry up a little, and my next project is due to start "any day now". It's been starting any day now for a few months, so I'm not holding my breath on the timelines. I'm very certain it will happen because they've sunk so much work into it, I just need the green light. (Actually, I'm thinking of starting work now and getting to the milestones a little early.)

Been also calculating how much full-time work I'd need to do at modest consulting rates in order to support myself for a year. If I wanted to take a bog-standard contract I could live most comfortably working five months each year. Whilst working for five months at once is unattractive, the thought of a seven month holiday without the thought of work is most attractive indeed.

House
Been looking at getting some repairs done to the house. The gutters need replacing before autumn/winter begins to rain in earnest. Having spoken to one particular builder about how he can bring in approximately $AU450,000 tax-free in a good year, I'm considering changing industries. :)

Computer Security
One of my old old servers which I should have finished decommissioning ages ago got cracked. Still investigating, but it looks like the other machines on my network are unaffected. I'm currently in the process of doing clean-up and locking-down. The machine in question that was compromised is now removed from the network and will almost certainly go into the spare parts cupboard. The moral of the story is (a) Don't get lazy because the O/S makes it a pain in the arse to upgrade packages, and (b) Don't use an O/S that makes it a pain in the arse to upgrade packages, because you will get lazy.

Hooray for apt-get. :)

Consluting
Well, I'm certainly not short for work. That's good, I think...

Bandwidth
Flakey network links are so annoying. Bad network links. Bad.

Games
After watching kevinl and Susan playing a certain multi-player game, I went and purchased a copy for myself. It's heaps of fun, so I'm not surprised that people get addicted to it.

Schnet
Visited Schnet last Friday for Kat's birthday. Kat looked extremely happy, which is great. Never got my coffee off Nate, but I know he's a busy elf. Played lots of hacky-sack and drank plenty of brewskis at the pub.

Had Kevin cycle in on Friday for a meeting in the city. He looked as if he loved it, so I'm certain he'll be cycling even longer distances soon. ;)

Girlfriend
Jacinta mentioned that I never write about her in my diary. Hi Jacinta!

Buffy
Buffy (and her moping wuss ex-boyfriend of a vampire Angel) are back on TV. Yay.