Rabbit
No luck in finding our lost rabbit, Shadow. We've looked throughout the property, bombed the surrounding area with leaflets, and put up posters. We're in the process of contacting animal shelters, in case he's turned up at one of them.

I'm not confident that we'll get a result, especially since we can't find any means by which he would have left the property. We're also at a loss as to what could have happened. A fox attack is a possibility, except Shadow would have had plenty of warning hearing the fox as it came over the fence, and has a great many fox-proof hiding places to which he could have run.

Handover
Our primary sysadmin is dissapearing for six weeks, so some of today is going to be spent doing handover for all of our customers' systems. I'm expecting to have a very busy two months coming up.

If you live in Melbourne, are experienced with Debian, and have six weeks of immediate availability for irregular sysadmin work, then now's a good time to get in touch. Moonlighters need not apply.

Paperwork
Jacinta tidied my desk and sorted my paperwork into stacks based upon priority. This makes me feel much better, but I can still expect to spend most of the day sorting it out.

Diving
On Friday Jacinta and I travelled to Portsea in order to get a few dives in. We stayed at the Portsea Hotel, who informed us that while "we were not directly above the live band, some sound may travel". It was true that we were not directly above the band, but if we were to have taken three steps into the corridor we would have been. Luckily the live band was very good, and so I slept quite happily despite the walls vibrating around me until 1am.

In the morning (6am) I awoke and visited Dive Victoria, and discovered that the 9am dive we had intended to go upon was cancelled, so we could all go back to bed.

Later, after breakfast and buoyancy checks, we departed upon an 11am dive to a shallow (10-16m) reef out in the bay. The dive went pretty well, but I didn't properly apply defog to my mask beforehand (meaning I had to clear it regularly), and Jacinta experienced a few minor difficulties.

The first dive got away late, and so there was a bit of running to-and-fro for our 1pm dive, particularly to get replacement tanks of air. This dive was done in a kelp forest, and was one of the best dives I've ever experienced in Victoria. A wide range of ascidians in a variety of colours, and blue devil fish everywhere. I'm used to having to look into caves and under ledges with a torch to find a blue devil, not being able to swim nose-to-nose with them in open water.

Our third dive was at 3pm, and of course by this stage we had to keep a close eye on our nitrogen levels. This dive was out to Castle Rock, a site that we'd dived a number of times before. The water was lovely and clear, and we saw a cuttlefish near the start of the dive. We were sharing the site with a number of new divers doing their open water, and we generally kept out of their way. I sure hope their buoyancy skills improve with practice.

It's well known that heavy exercise (especially carrying around heavy tank and belts filled with lead) acts as a flavour enhancer for food, especially Mexican. So on the way home we stopped by a fantastic Mexican resturant and finished our meals very quickly, not too surpising considering we had also missed lunch. After dinner it was just a long and tiresome trip back home, and a morning of rinsing and cleaning gear to look forward to.

Missing Rabbit
Our dear pet Rabbit, Shadow, hasn't been seen since Thursday evening. It could just be that with the unusually warm weather he's been snoozing under the house, especially since he's now grown his winter coat. However Shadow is a very companionable rabbit, and so takes many opportunities to check in on Jacinta and I, and distract us from whatever task we're performing to be petted.

We're a little concerned, because if something has happened to Shadow, we're not quite sure what it would be.

Still a roleplayer
Went to visit some friends yesterday. Had a lovely BBQ, played dancing games later on during the evening, and drooled over some very nice maps and miniatures. You know your friends are into roleplaying when you find a plushy-cthulu doll with their child's toys.

However the moment of true enlightenment came when it was realised that not only were we discussing accounting practices, but we were discussing accounting practices so we could write a bot to automatically calculate ledger balances in a wiki for a roleplaying game.

The bot works pretty well, too. WWW::Mechanize is a wonderful thing.

Wetsuits
The business that shipped me the wrong wetsuit have been very polite and up-front about their mistake, and are very willing to fix it. I can keep my existing suit for a partial refund (tempting, since it's a really comfortable suit, and I want to go diving next weekend), or I can return it at their expense for a replacement, which unfortunately will take 2-3 weeks to arrive.

I'm choosing to return the suit, as it means I won't need to worry about finding a buyer for the old suit, and I also get relief from import duties as the second suit will be a replacement, not a new import.

In the meantime it looks like I'll be wrestling my way into tight and rigid hire suits, while Jacinta lounges around in her custom-fitted semi-dry.

New Wetsuit
Diving is an equipment-intensive sport. Having your own equipment rather than using hire-gear has a number of advantages, including both comfort and financial.

For anyone putting together a kit of diving equipment in Australia one thing rapidly becomes clear. The cost of equipment overseas is significantly cheaper than purchasing it locally. This isn't restricted to just diving equipment, books, electronics, software, and other products are often significantly cheaper overseas.

Purchasing items from overseas has obvious economic benefits, but carries some risks and disadvantages as well. Obviously postage is longer and more expensive, and there are import duties and taxes. These are easy to quantify.

Some risks are more difficult to determine. Obviously when purchasing anything to wear, the possibility of a mis-fit is high. So when I examined the possibilities of importing a wetsuit, I put considerable thought into sizing and what to do in case something goes wrong.

Eventually it comes down to a matter of risk-vs-reward. I'm very comfortable with risk, and can happily say that I've benefited from taking calculated risks on a regular basis.

Today the wetsuit arrived, and sure enough it fits — perfectly. It's extremely comfortable, very flexible, but most important of all, it's the wrong suit.

Without going into too much detail, I had ordered what's called a semi-dry that has seals around the neck, wrists, and ankles. The suit that had arrived was conspiciously missing these.

I've opened negotiations to work towards a resolution, but given the distances and timezones involved, I imagine that may take some time.

The worst case scenario is that I return the suit for a refund, and wear the costs of postage (potentially including duties and taxes). However I'm hoping this won't be the case.

This does put a bit of a hole in our diving weekend that's coming up.