Sunday 20 February 2000

Foreign affairs

Another long gap between updates... ::shrug:: My mind isn't really on this any more - I want to keep it going though - and my regular reader's aren't going to let me stop anyways :) Had a birthday since the last entry. Was a fun night - went to a party a friend was throwing for an unrelated reason and got completely slaughtered... 12 hours of drinking and then sitting around chatting until the evening of the next day. Very fun - a good Birthday... Thanks Lou - mucho fun, yes indeedy :) Made the decision to extend my holiday at about the same time - asked Charlotte on Monday and she was as excited as I am about the thought of me being there for 3 weeks now... ::bounce:: Only 10 days to go... gonna be the longest 10 days of my life... Dan's managed to get his flight out to see Eb at the same time - me and Charlotte will be going down to see them. 8 hour drive each way... That'll be the furthest I've ever been in a car I think. Quite looking forward to it. ::sigh:: I can't think what to write - my mind is elsewhere... My Valentine's day presents to Charlotte were a day late - which sucks - but she liked them, so that almost made up for it :). Well - just one more thing before I go...

I HATE BEING SO FAR AWAY!!!

::ahem:: sorry for shouting like that, but it had to be done...

Saturday 19 February 2000

Image of me

Friday 11 February 2000

Technology

Another morning.  Charlotte is going down to Melbourne this weekend, so she's not gonna be around for long phone calls :(  I'll call at Ebs though - I couldn't stand the idea of not speaking to her.  There has still couldn't stand the idea of not speaking to her.  There has still not been a day without speaking and we've been together for over 5 weeks now.  I hate technology.  Last night we both had email problems - Netscape stopped working on my home PC, in the end I set up fetchmail to grab my pop box and shove it into the local spool.  I then used mutt to send mail - which I haven't configured properly yet, so it was a pain to use.  And then when I did finally get my mail at shortly before midnight there was nothing from Charlotte.  I recieved an SMS moments later telling me that she was having problems with chickmail... Grrrr.  At least orange weren't having network problems again though - having no way to talk would be very bad :(  Sun in my eyes - I hate that.  Drinks tonight.  DaveE is leaving - and it's my birthday tomorrow.  I don't want to get pissed though.  I want to sleep at home tonight - not on Dan's floor.  And I certainly don't want another dodgy kebab. ::sad sigh::  I hate distance.  I hate timezones.  I hate the unreliability of email systems and of SMS.  The closer it gets to flying out the more I wish I was there right now.  Serious missage.  ::grin:: but random happy thoughts are happening too :) Spoke to Charlotte's sister through email last night - had a warning about hurting her. Last thing I want in the world. I hope it never happends.

Thursday 10 February 2000

YAWN!!!

::yawn:: I am so tired lately.  Got some extra sleep yesterday - but it didn't do any good - sleep doesn't help when you're ill...  Should never have gone for that kebab.  Lots happening all the time - many many things have happened since I last wrote...  But my memory is a blur.  All I remember is how me and Charlotte grow closer every day.  Finally got rid of windows on both my home and office PC - getting used to Gnome has slowed me down for a while - but I am getting back up to speed now - and I don't have to take reboot breaks anymore - which is nice.  Oooh, just noticed the construction of the millenium footbridge by the new tate gallery - they've probably been working on it for months and I just haven't noticed.  Damn - I'm gonna need to get my Palm synchronising with my PC so I can upload this - I installed jpilot last night, but didn't use it to sync because I didn't have permission to access the serial port, I didn't want to do the sync as root and I was in the middle of a couple of ICQ convos and didn't want to have to log out for new group settings to take effect...  London Bridge - time for a break...

Saturday 5 February 2000

This is world of shit

Yet another reminder of how shitty distance is.  I don't think there could possibly be a worse feeling than hearing my baby upset, knowing she needs me there to comfort her and to not be able to do anything because I'm on the other side of the world.

Friday 4 February 2000

The Joy of Trains

Well yet another major fuck up on the trains this morning - and all my fault. Damn email problems. Late night again... All my fault that I'm late. Got to the station about 10 mins late - had the choice of getting the 8:00 to moorgate or the 8:09 to Brighton... I'll get the 8:09 because it will go direct to London Bridge and I'll get there a couple of minutes early. Should have known that wouldn't be the case... Bloody 8:09 doesn't stop at London Bridge :/ I thought all of the Brighton trains did these days. Stupid mistake. Oh well - I'll just work late to make up - I've had people telling me I should be less uptight about the hours I work anyway - I'm not customer facing so I can move my hours by a bit and as long as I put the time in it doesn't make a difference. Still feels kinda wrong though. Other people have to be in on time or get in trouble - why should I be any different? ::sigh:: Mind seizing up again - random staring into space and grinning moment. Should be able to finish off the Linux install on my PC today - as soon as the Graphics card is sorted I'll be able to work without windows. Which is nice.

Wednesday 2 February 2000

Flopping hell

Scared. Confused. My life has flip-flopped. Things I always found painful before are now perfect. And yet I am finding myself unsure about what was previous the most stable thing in my life. I can't really talk about it here. Luckily I have a pair of ears. She is not around at the minute though. I miss her. Every second we are apart. Not that we are ever truly together, but the hours of the afternoon stretch out. Even submerging myself in work doesn't help. Not that I got much work done this afternoon due to an OS reinstall. Finally got fed up of the constant waiting in Windows. 128Mb of RAM in my PC at work, yet it still ran like lump the no-legged dog (see www.joecartoon.com).Defragmenting and resizing my Win98 partition took hours - during which time I had to work on someone else's machine, and then the Linux install took an age because the bloody install floppies were corrupt - meaning installing drivers for the wrong kernel version to allow an NFS install. Wheefunyay. Still all is not bad. The machine is nearly ready now. Bugger - I just remembered that I'm at an offsite meeting tomorrow - I won't be able to finish installing until Friday :( And even worse - a whole morning without ICQ :( :( Badbadbad. Should be a fairly interesting meeting. As long as it's not all marketing bullshit. Which I have a sneaking suspicion most of it will be. Need to think cheery thoughts. 4 weeks. Happy for 4 whole weeks and there are no signs of that changing. My heart soars constantly. Dizzy with the unfamiliarity of it. My head spins now. Thinking of her does this to me. Dan and Crazy Jo are official at last. And he is being teased mercilessly - just as he showed no mercy in his teasing of me. I am very uncomfortable typing now - someone has sat next to me and I have no elbow room. Keep hitting the wrong keys because I can't get my hands at the right angle. Still have a cramp in my leg - I woke up at about 4-5 am this morning with a bastard of a cramp in my lower leg - felt like someone was driving a red hot poker into the muscle. It had eased by the time I woke up for real at 6:15 (was on the verge of turning over and going back to sleep when I got an SMS from Charlotte telling me to log on and check my email) - didn't remember until I got to the corner of the street when the muscle started to complain about the movement. I hate that. Why are my muscles giving up? It must be the over tiredness I guess. Not really a lot I can do about it though. Staying up for good reason. Sleeping at weekends. I need to post Charlotte's present in the next couple of days... Grin. Corny present, cute present, useful presents, fun presents. A little bit of every thing :) Not sure if this keyboard is such a good idea - wrist acheing. As if I need another ache... Heartache is enough for me - don't need all these other aches to go along with it :( 7am in Sydney. I'll be home before she gets to work so I can write her an email after all. Damn PC being out of action all afternoon was a pain - worth it though. I must have wasted days worth of working time over the past couple of months waiting for my damn machine to respond. So slow. And it happened so quickly too. Wish I could run Norton on my PC at work - keeps my PC at home in check - I bed it'd speed things up no end. Wouldn't have taken half as long to run speeddisk as it did for running defrag either... But defrag is free and Norton isn't. Take care of the pennies and the pounds look after themselves. Is that really the best practice? OK, nearly back so I'd better stop. 90 mins or so until my baby is around. 90 mins to kill