Saturday
12th February 2005 Today we looked around some houses for sale in this area.
It's come close to the stage where Ann and I need to start arranging to purchase
a house to be ready for our July deadline. We either have to renew the rental
for six months or buy a house. So this morning I got the newspaper, and we went
through all houses in the areas that we want, and selected ones that we thought
that we could afford.
The process in Australia is that houses are open for viewings for an hour to
30 minutes on the weekend, and the address and details are published in the
local paper - and the estate agents will put up signs on the street that direct
people to the open house, and there will be a large sign outside with a summary
of the house's best features and a few photos of the inside.
Of course there are a few people who are just nosing around and have no intention
of purchasing, but there are often a few people wandering around. The estate
agent gives us a floorplan and the details of the house (with no price on it
- that's in the newspaper), and we can wander around and poke in cupboards and
riffle through their drawers (although maybe that's just me).
You get a lot more for your money in Australia than in England - but pretty
much all houses are on one level and detatched. Outside areas are common, but
it can vary between patio and garden - but most places have a space for a barbeque.
Today was the second half of the pilot for the new series of Battlestar Galactica, which seemed reasonably enjoyable - if you 'suspend your disbelief'. The thing that struck me is the similarity that I saw between much of the imagery and action and one of the computer games that I have enjoyed in the last couple of years called "Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos". It seems that in a world of post-modernist images, nothing is completely new - even a re-make of an old series.
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This morning we went to Liam and Shirley's (I was requested to help sort out a technical problem with the video player). Thomas showed off his walking skills - walking unaided around the house. Shirley whipped up a tray of currant scones, and once they had baked, we had them with jam and whipped cream - Thomas loved it as much as we did, but he did get very messy.
We had a few more houses to look at today - it happened that
most of the ones open today were at the higher end of the price scale, and of
course they were all better than what we had seen yesterday.
The normal situation is that when a person views a house that is open, the estate
agent takes people's name and number, and asks them when they are interested
in buying. So we have given our details to lots of estate agents - but one property
that we liked quite a lot was a bit strange, because when we asked the estate
agent if he wanted our details, he just responded with a confused look and asked
'why?'.
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The fat bat is back today. My mother came back from her 10 days in New Zealand, with a few presents and lots of photos. The whole 'fat bat' thing is quite funny - Thomas has started to point at Eleanor and shout 'fat bat' at her. It's Thomas' first "sentence" and so we are all really happy, and Eleanor says that it does not worry her - it's better than "granny". So from now on, we are all going to call her the 'fat bat', providing Thomas does not add the word 'old' anywhere.
I had taken a day off work today, originally to do something
nice for Valentines Day for Ann, but we decided that due to the over-commercialisation
of the day and the excess costs of thing like flowers on this day, that we would
delay the celebration. So instead, we dropped Thomas off at the daycare and
went in to the city to do some shopping. It was good to see where Thomas has
been going, and to see the environment.
Shopping consisted of looking for clothes for Ann so that she has something
to wear to work when she gets a job, and also going to banks and getting quotes
for homeloans.
Ann and I had a very relaxing day, as it's the first time that we have been
out shopping in the city without Thomas. A meal in the food hall, a wander around
some fashion shops at leisure and choosing where to walk without finding a lift
or a ramp all made the day very relaxing.
This evening I took Ann out to dinner at the local Asian fusion restaurant, and we stuffed ourselves silly on sushi, samosas, curry and satays. The 'fat bat' looked after Thomas, but he was asleep after a day of what seemed like he was on drugs. Thomas had been at daycare, and had had a better day, but once we took him over to Liam and Shirley's he was rolling around and giggling for around an hour. Then when he got home, he was running up and down the house with his walker, getting very frustrated when he could not get what he wanted. He went to bed early and was happy to go to sleep.
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Today I had my first day at the Planetarium, doing my 10-week
course in Astronomy. I don't know quite what I was expecting, but I was stunned
by the number of people who were there - 35. The course is held on University
grounds, but it's an outside course - there was a huge variety of people there,
retired couples, middle-aged people and a young family with an 8-year old boy.
The course started with a lecture, which seemed very slow to me - the instructor
spent 25 minutes explaining in 4 different ways that the stars don't move, but
the Earth does… There was a lot that I already knew (as I expected from
the first day), but pleasantly there was lots of stuff that I did not know.
Once the gaps were all filled, we had a coffee break after the first hour. It
was a little uneasy with lots of people who did not know each other, but this
being Adelaide, the conversations started after a few minutes. We then went
into the Planetarium itself, which is only around 10 metres in diameter, but
just enough room for all of us to sit in the comfy reclining chairs and look
up at the ceiling.
The instructor who started the second hour was much more enthusiastic,
and very much into his names and facts and figures. He guided us around the
sky, naming individual stars as he went, telling us how big the stars were,
how far away, and how old they were. Some of the star names were truly rediculous,
and he seemed to know them all by heart. There is a well-known cluster in the
sky called Pliades - and he told us the name and mythological description of
the cluster in 22 different languages and cultures - from Aztec and Chinese
to Egyptian and some of the Aboriginal tribes. He explained how in some cultures
it is 7 beautiful women, in others a rattlesnake's tail, and in most other cultures
it is 6 women or goddesses.
The big difference with being in a planetarium instead of looking in books or
even looking up to the real sky, is that the lecturers were able to superimpose
slides that showed the mythological figures over the stars so that we could
see the patterns, and demonstrate the movement of the stars through the seasons
and the days. They also used a laser pointer to highlight individual stars (try
doing that in the real night sky) and to trace out patterns in the sky.
The course was really fun, and there are lots of great people there, so I am
looking forward to next week.
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Thomas has been showing off his walking skills today. Liam
and Shirley came up to the house to say goodbye to Eleanor ('fat bat') before
she heads out to Kuala Lumpur, and Thomas chose the opportunity to walk around
the house to demonstrate that he can do it. He stood in front of the pedestal
fan, gazing up at it in wonderment, and then walked over to the other side of
the house - it's more 
walking than he has ever
done, all in a few minutes.
To Eleanor's great relief, I managed to capture some of Thomas walking on her
new video camera, so she can show my father back in England. I also got some
good photos, which I will put up on the site soon.
Thomas had been difficult earlier today. Yesterday he had
another immunisation, which may be upsetting him today - but he also has a cold
and a very runny nose. Ann put him down for a sleep, and he woke up screaming
- and then he was inconsolable for quite a while, he was crawling around crying
and would not let anyone hold him, he crawled into a small corner and buried
his head into the floor and cried.
Ann and Eleanor were quite worried about his strange activity, but there was
little that they could do.
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Eleanor left Australia today. She was quite cut up to leave, and she has become quite attached to Thomas and so it's going to be quite a wrench for her. Eleanor had been with us for nearly a quarter of the year, and so it's only understandable that she had become settled here. She has even been talking about migrating to Australia to be closer to Thomas and us - at least her money would go much further here...
The weather is starting to improve recently, getting much brighter and sunnier. There have been quite a few days over 30°C, and every day there are blue skies. I joke to people at work that even the worst day in South Australia is better than the best summer day in England.
At work today an email was sent by my boss to the whole team, listing all major projects over the next few months, and half of them were assigned to me as the project lead. I think this is great - because I prefer to be busy than bored. I get more work done when I have lots on my plate because I can be more structured, when I have less to do I end up expanding the actions that I do to fill the time available.
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Yesterday I was pleased to be assigned more work and responsibilites,
but today I suddenly had a lot of work and responsibility land on me.
First some background - in non-technical terms - about how this all happened.
About 5 years ago, most organisations were using systems where there were two
ways to hold groups of people. The email system had groups called distribution
lists, and the server logon system had groups called security groups. This meant
that there would be two groups - for example 'sales' - which would have the
same people in them, one for sending emails to, and one for allowing groups
of people to access folders and files on the servers. Then, Microsoft integrated
the systems that hold distribution lists and security groups into one - and
many organisations then ended up with two groups in the same place with the
same members and the same name.
What happened today is that the senior administrator for the email system was
ready to delete some of the duplicated groups. The problem was that she chose
the groups that were still in use, not the unwanted duplicates. What was bad
was that it was over 50,000 groups. What was worse was that there was no way
to re-create the groups, they would have to be recovered.
Of course, the University has backups. But, the problem is that most backups
are designed and intended for "Disaster Recovery" - to recover everything,
not just a bit...
So, I was given the task of recovering the 50,000 deleted
groups - which is a task that no-one had done before, but everyone in the team
knew that it was possible. We all looked up documentation of how to do it, but
by 4pm, we had tried all the documented procedures, and there had been less
than favourable results - errors everywhere.
Part of the procedure was to restore the data from last night's backup tape.
But, the software to restore the data from tape needs to restore the date over
the existing files - but it can't because the files are in use. Then when we
re-started the server into 'recovery safe mode', the files are no longer in
use, but the backup software will not start - because it needs to use the network
security, which is not available in 'recovery safe mode'. So, these chicken-and-egg
scenarios continued...
At 8pm, suddenly we managed to get it all working. It was a complex combination
of moving files around, renaming files, entering recovery commands and synchronising
data. I got home late, but Ann did not mind.
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