Clapboard - Full Frontal Nerdity

From me, myself and I to everyone who comes here or reads on their feed reader - Merry Christmas.

This is the first Christmas of my lifetime that I haven't spent at my parents' house back east, and while I do love not being cold and being able to be at my own house right up 'till the day, it's a little bittersweet to miss the fires in the fireplace and the folks that I'd always get to see when I was in Media.  I'll also miss the extended family at Christmas II this year - it's now on us to make new traditions.  I think we're up to it.

Anyway, I hope this year finds everyone in the bosom of family and friends, surrounded by all the love you can handle.

Boy, Howdy!  Time flies when you're living in the future!

Has it really been forever, or just about that?  Yes.  Well, it's been tiring, fun, and more than a little absurd, as you'd expect of a tour.  Yesterday was one of the best days I've had since this tour started, and I wanted to mention it because there are so many days when I'm tired or bored-but-unable-to-do-stuff or simply sans-internet.  Yesterday was an unexpected day off here in Perth and because of the time difference between New Zealand and here, I woke up early.  Quickly deciding to rent a car, I was just heading out to go wine tasting in the nearby Swan River Valley when I ran into Bobby. He was game to come when I invited, so we grabbed the car and headed out.

For the record, the hardest part of driving on the wrong side of the road is the turn signals.  Even shifting with my left hand isn't nearly as annoying as trying to hit your turn signal and turning on the wipers.  Also up and down do the opposite things (obviously, of course, but still strange when you're turning left and have forced yourself to use your right hand to reach for the signal stick). Despite the wrong-side driving and the traffic circles (that go the wrong way), I managed just fine.

Bobby and I visited Sandalford (who is providing wine consideration for our Australia tour, it turns out AND who opened a 1982 Port for us - once-in-a-lifetime taste!) and Upper Reach before having lunch at a brewery called Feral.  I took Bobby back into town so he could get something done, then I ran back up to the valley to visit Lancaster and River Bank.  Excellent stuff.  The prices were reasonable and the whole process was fascinating - an imperfect copy of the polished slickness of the Napa Valley.  I bought a couple bottles that are going in my kit in the vain hope that they survive the potential heat and then US customs.  Seems doubtful, but worth the risk.

Anyway, I took only a few pictures, but I'll post 'em when I get home.  I need to get one of those USB card reader thingies to drop in my kit here so I can use it when I'm out and about.

That's all for now.  Future-Matt, signing off.

Just a stupid little note to show a picture of a small box of cables that I threw away yesterday while going through my computer cable box.   The box was full of cables and part of all the tech crap from the living room that I was moving downstairs to my new server rack, and the contents in this picture are the remnants from several such boxes.  There's definitely the purple breakout cable from the (original?) Radeon All-in-Wonder card, some IDE and SATA cable, and plenty of other crap.

I also managed to liberate some things that'll go on my collage as soon as I can make space to work on it again.  I'm actually going to try to start that process by selling extra servers this afternoon.  Craigslist is my friend.  Anyone wanna buy the heaviest Dell servers ever invented?  It's a blade-style thing that fits 6 servers in a 3u space.  Cool, but I'll never find use for it.  I mean, I'll never find use for two.  I'm already thinking about all the awesome nerdy things I can do with one of them in my server rack.

Anyway, happy Wednesday.