The online home of Appleman1234 / Benjamin Southall

Hi, (Server is UP Now)
The Birthday, Christmas and New Years post is still in draft form (as I am waiting for photos to be developed, so I can scan and upload). All the while I have been shopping yesterday and preparing for LCA 2007 (lca2007.linux.org.au) which is a much slower process than I expected, I suppose it would be a less slower process if I focused more on getting ready than on helping people in #Sabayon on OFTC.net.

I actually managed to finish packing and went to the Upfront Club to listen to Cloudstreet, albeit an hour late. They were awesome, they played the “The Green Man” and their “The Van Song” had me in stitches. Out on the highway .

Finally I went to bed, only to wake up at 3am , as I couldn’t sleep, after waiting for a few hours, we went down the range to goto the airport, and I having taken the laid back approach, realised I had forgotten my suit. So we went back up the mountain and I rushed down to get my suit and we went back down again, only for me to realise that I had forgotten my aeroplane tickets, so we had to go back up, and we were now about an hour late. (as my dad had also forgotten his sunglasses, but only 10 metres from our driveway)

This caused a change reaction which resulted in me just missing my flight and having to get the next one, which was a pain in the rear given the circumstances, the lack of communication really stressed me and my family out. I finally got on the plane and all was well, I spent the journey listening to music and talking to person in the same set of three seats as me.

Upon landing I promptly got my bags (not wanting to have any more airport chaos), and waited for the 400 bus to bring me to LCA. It came eventually and I got on , and forgot to take my ticket after paying for it (I got it eventually), on the bus ride I talked to Wen (Who is /was also going / at LCA) and an old Sydney local that talked about the past and future.

We got off at the right stop, and as we were crossing the road, both my parents called me, I ignored the phone and rushed to the kerb in a life preservation technique. I finally got to International House, settled in and meet some people that invited me to lunch. We had Indonesian for lunch (So many memories). I am not going to recount everything else in detail else you will be bored off your faces.

Highlights of LCA So FAR

Bumping into people and chatting and bumping to them again

Jdub (Jeff Waugh)’s Welcome and Chris Blizzard’s keynote (I reckon all the keynotes will be awesome)

Jerub’s Flickr

Qtopia Greenphone Presentation

Getting to catch up with Quozl (James Cameron) and Jerub (Stephen Thorne) and their partners

Jdub’s Wii demo substitute for a Gnome.conf talk

Lack of wireless at International House causing me to sit on a table (underneath pavillon) in order to get wireless and power

Meeting Rusty Russell Face to Face and listening to his Wesnoth talk.

The Creation & Bugfixing (I need superglue, as someone other than me damaged a Gentoo chair) & Beautification (I need purple cushions) for the Gentoo Chairs.

Fellow Gentoo users at LCA, I need either a Koorora x86_64 install or a Sabayon 3.26 livedvd to upgrade my Gentoo (curse GCC4.1.1)

Have fun & Happy Hacking

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234

Starting from scratch…… (Wordpress / Firefox / Vector Calculus/ Goodness else knows ate my last two attempts at this post )
This post is later then it should have been sorry for the delay and I still have the mega Christmas, Birthday and New Years one to write, and it feels so weird to type it all down.

Last week I went to city with my dad to drop off my laptop to warranty repair guys and to inspect and apartment in Brisbane. After dropping off my ASUS A6KM (It has screen blemishes from pressure since I bought it (new retail I might add)), we were driving back to city and I was having one of my many occasional WTF, this going to be another deja vu day realisations.

The day continued onwards,

First of all I knew the lead computer repair guy, name and face from one of my dreams / premonitions, then we saw with blue ute, with the n00b driver but it had an Apple (company, copyright Apple) Logo sticker on it. We continued the drive to Brisbane, to inspect this nice and cheap 3 bedroom apartment. (This post and the other following it have taken ages to process are might be sligthly stale but still interesting read at your own risk, you might enjoy it)

We arrived with around 15 minutes to spare, so we went into West End, so Dad could bank the money I reimbursed him for linux.conf.au stuff, we then went back to the apartment building and waited around till the real estate showed up.

It was both fun and funny watching the other interested people show up, wondering why they wanted to see the property and who they were and what stage of their life they were at. There was a little girl and her mother, they were one of the earliest people waiting and the little girl was so cute trying to open the locked door to the apartment building.

More waiting and laughing and enjoying the breeze, looking at my watch and a few mutters about the tardiness of realtor later, She finally showed up 15 minutes late to a frustrated crowd of twenty strong. Then she tried to get in the locked door, just like the little girl, except she had a key which didn’t end up working.

In the end we were kindly let in my a resident of the apartment, and I was one of the few that bothered to say thank you (where are the manners of society these days). One of the elevators was broken and with such a large crowd, I of course got to check out the stairs of the apartment building.

Let me reinforce to all QUT UNI students, we have the most Leet stairs in Brisbane that I have seen, the stairs at these apartment made even the engineering building’s stairs reminiscent of the Hilton Hotel.

Anyhow, I beat most of the people in lift up there and the mob of us, waited will the young female realtor, knocked on the door, she knocked twice quickly and the proceeded to open the door and walk through, only to reveal a white cat, the entrance to an apartment that looker lived in, and a half naked old lady that was frightened near death, who hadn’t heard head or tail of the inspection. (which is unusual her being the tenant and all).

The rest of us, backed away while the realtor, closer the door with her inside and talked to the tenant. About 5 minutes of waiting in the Level 3 hallway, the realtor can out and here face spoke before her mouth and then she told us, the tenant wouldn’t let us in and we would have to reschedule tomorrow morning at 10 am.

The now disappointed, angry, gibbed mob of people quickly vacated the building after a few people snatching application forms (without seeing the property) from our young realtor. Tommorow morning didn’t suit my Dad, so we then went straight to the real estate office and talked to them in order to accommodate something.

After another 15 to 20 minutes we stepped out of the real estate office, everything arranged (Dad was going to the Thursday inspection (apparently you can’t apply without inspection) instead.) We then had gelatis, which were more refreshing as they took our mind of the scared old lady and real estate agentry which was an absolute Joke.

We then went home. (UPDATE: Our application for the unit got rejected, it went to someone else, that probably offered to pain more than the set price. Pity it was a really good unit)

The planning for my 18th is 98% complete, with Guest list, name tags, most rsvps, menu, contract, game details (Mafia and MAO FTW) sorted.

Also in this time period, for a lot of people I know that are year younger than me, they are finding out their OPs, which will only slightly effect their futures. Most of them have OP fever. You will all do just fine .

I would write more, but this post is already out of date and taken too long to write.

This post’s question is Can the future be accurately approximated using a number or a mathematical system or a logic system or a scientific system etc ?

Best of luck and Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays

Benjamin Southall aka Appleman1234