Upon entering the resturant, a bearded man, in his 40s or 50s, approached me. "Excuse me, but are you Mozart?" he queried with a rich European accent. The man took it well when I confessed that I was not Mozart, and he went back to ordering from the take-away bar. It never occured to me before that I may look like a great composer, although my uncle has been asked many times if he was John Lennon.

My parents, Jacinta, and myself sat at a table in the corner. We talked a little about the menu when I heard someone calling my name. "Excuse me? Paul?" An old collegue of mine from my Computer Science days was sitting on the table next to me. "Didn't you just submit a couple of patches to GnuCash?" Oh dear, my toying with accounting programs is starting to have influences on the real world. Should I be worried?

At first I thought the distorted sound, bright lights, ghostly voices, and the distinct impression of an anal probe were merely the side effects of eating extra-hot curry after a few too many beers. After some careful reflection I feel that I cannot dismiss this incident out-of-hand, no matter how normal and trivial it may seem to be.

My only vivid memories were that of things that were humanoid in shape. I distinctly remember one of them having a beard, but did not catch sight of the rest of its face. They were wearing white lab-coats, did not speak, and appeared to be drinking instant coffee. I remember trying -- without success -- to convince one of these creatures that the ground coffee was much better, even if it took longer to brew.

My next memory is that of waking the next morning with a blocked nose and a strange desire to read TaxPack 98-99. I suspect that I may be suffering from the effects of mind-control, mood-altering drugs, or even DNA manipulation transmitted through a virus vector.

The virus-vectored genetic manipulation scenario is unlikely, but must not be ignored. While I believe that I am no longer contagious, I may have unwittingly affected others with my illness. This could prove disasterous, and could cost the Australian Taxation Office hundreds of dollars in claims that replacement nerf-darts and mini-pumpkins are work related expenses.

I am investing in an Aluminium Foil Deflector Beanie to guard against mind-control, and sipping lemon-and-honey to combat the mood-altering drugs and sore throat.

Work/GnuCash/Quote.pm
Nothing to report as my illness is adversely altering my mental capacity to write code. Will be spending the day in bed. Dancer was kind enough to send me a get-well e-mail. I'm glad to see that my workmates care about my health and continued well-being.

GnuCash
Spent a good part of the evening confessing to GnuCash all my dark financial secrets. I now know how much I own (a bit), how much I owe (a bit), and how much that all works out to be (a little bit). For some reason this makes me feel good, as I didn't really know all this before.

Hardware
My webserver is emitting a funny `burning-plastic' kind of smell, possibly because it's been covered with programming references, newspapers, and old financial statements. I've unearthed the webserver to give it a bit more room to breathe. Since my nose is blocked I can't really mind the smell.

I was very much looking forward to rockclimbing, as I haven't been in a while. Ian starts at SchoolsNet next week, so I should be able to drag him to the VicRanges a couple of nights to make up.

GnuCash/Quote.pm
My finances have never been better documented, and I now feel I have a better understanding of why accountants seem so very sad when money goes missing without reason.

Have added OO-methods into Quote.pm to provide a nicer interface. I've also made an effort to tidy up the documentation, although there's still a bit of work to go. I've applied for space on SourceForge to develop the project and keep track of its bugs and foibles.

Geek Musings
Last night Jacinta asked me if I could remember the first time I had heard Shakespeare. After a moment's reflection I realised that I could indeed remember. The quote was `To be, or not to be...' (the whole passage), and I was young enough to be in primary school.

What makes the experience peculiar is that the quote was read to me by a voice synthesizer called SAM for the Commodore-64. SAM bolstered the C-64 BASIC command set with a function called SAY, that took a phonetic string and spoke it. SAM did a surprisingly good job, and I ended up memorising the entire passage from having the SAM repeat it to me many times.

It dawned upon me that I've been a geek for a very long time, much longer than I would have normally thought. I remember at least two English assignments that I completed by writing code. Once I wrote a driver for my C-64 printer to allow it to print Dwarven runes from J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings. The second instance I did a rough port of a space-faring board-game (the name of which now escapes me) for my `Communications Project'.

By my estimations I've been a geek since I was eight years old, when I was given my first computer and actively participated in a role-playing club I helped start at Primary School. I'm glad we had such a forward-thinking principal back at Williamstown North -- he thought grade three kids playing Dungeons and Dragons was superb, and made sure we had a place at lunchtimes to run the games. This was at a time when current affairs shows were trying to show links between RPGs and suicides.

GnuCash
After many package installs I have GnuCash running at home. The latest CVS trees seem to have a problem with configure if no --prefix= is set, but otherwise is working fine. I've started using GnuCash to track my finances.

I've never thought that accountants could possibly lead interesting lives, but for some reason I've got a strange urge to learn more about the art. It must be a symptom of the flu I've picked up.

Talking of accountants, my ex-landlord still hasn't called back regarding where we're going to have dinner. I'll have to give him another call.