We went to Matthew and Marion's wedding last weekend. Loads of fun. After the reception, lots of people ended up at our place for the after party, including the bride and groom. Much fun had by all.
Photos here.
Last night I made fajita for dinner. Apparently it's supposed to be the diaphragm muscle of a cow, but we had some rump steak in the freezer that needed using, which I cut into strips. I marinated the meat for an hour or so in lime juice, sugar, Susan's chilli jam, ground cumin, soy sauce and a little salt. I fried up some sliced onions, mushrooms and capsicum (sweet pepper) and reserved, then cooked the beef strips over high heat.
Served as a serve-yourself dish with tortillas, lettuce, cheese, sour cream and avocado. We didn't have any tomatoes, but a spicy salsa would do well with it.
Very very yummy! Next time I'll do it on the BBQ to reduce washing up and because there's more space than our fry pan.
It seems the media has finally caught up with the real story behind Telstra's rants and raves. If I were a conspiracy-minded person, I'd suspect that the proprietors were waiting until Telstra had booked all those lucrative full-page ads before reporting the story. Much more seriously, it's because the media really doesn't get the telco business.
For the benefit of foreign readers, Telstra is the incumbent telco in Australia. UK people think BT with a much more toothless regulator (LLU is still something of a dream here). Americans think if AT&T hadn't been broken up and was still in control. Telstra are frothing at the mouth in an attempt to get the government, in an election year, to make some kind of grubby deal that entrenches Telstra's monopoly and locks out their competitors. Fortunately, and this is unusual for our current government, they've stared them down so far.
And so today we have Why we all hate Telstra, where Mark Pesce (the guy with the American accent who's introduced, cringe-worthily, as a "futurist" on The New Inventors) bemoans the pathetic Internet access in this country. "Everyone in Australia's internet industries hates Telstra, ranging from quiet passive-aggressive fury to spit-the-dummy, foaming-at-the-mouth passion", he says. Something that certainly mirrors my experience.
I remember back when my brother and I got our first phone line installed, paying $300 (this is 17 years ago, so it was a substantial amount of money back then) to get the line installed, then coughing up $30 a month in "line rental". For this exorbitant fee, we were guaranteed nothing in terms of data speed. If our modem couldn't get top speed, tough luck. Telstra claims it invested to build the network. That's just crap, we the consumers paid through the nose for it!
Next is an anonymous editorial from the Courier Mail, Bully boy amigos which interestingly picks up on the xenophobic aspect of Telstra's advertising. Every time they mention Optus or the G9, they never fail to include the terms "foreign owned" or call it "Singtel-Optus", a formal name never used with consumers. What I always found ironic is that this is coming from foreigners Sol Trujillo, the CEO, or the PR flack Phil Burgess, both of whom are foreigners. It's quite amusing seeing them go for the jingoistic approach when they're both "not from 'round here".
So it seems the tide is turning. People are sick of the hysterical ranting from Telstra. I wonder if they're smart enough and will change the tone of their campaign?
I want to learn how to weld, as I think it's a useful skill to have. So I go to the obvious place for tertiary education, TAFE NSW who provide exactly this kind of thing. Sure enough, they have what looks perfect and in the right location for me, this course. Now do you think I can work out when the hell this course actually runs? All I can tell is that it's part-time, runs in the evenings and is 8 hours per week for 18 weeks.
So how do I work out what evenings it's on? There's nothing that I can find telling this kind of practical information on their. Doesn't give me a whole lot of faith in some of their courses.
Update: Will, you're commenting in exactly the manner I envisage. I don't have comments on my blog. I have too much to worry about without stopping blog comment spam. Send me an email! Your return email, as entered in the form, doesn't work.
We're looking at houses and we've encountered plenty of real estate jargon. Here's some handy descriptions to benefit others.
- cute and cosy: tiny
- easy maintenance courtyard: concrete courtyard
- stroll to shops, transport and ameneties: on a major road
- great for first-home buyers: a lifetime of repairs or knock it down and build your second home on the land (courtesy of Kaz)
- studio: answer the door, put the kettle on, change channels on the telly and surf the net all without having to get up off the toilet (ripped off from Guardian some years ago)
Got any more to add?
My colleague just pulled out one of these health food bar things called Just Nuts. I was skeptical as it looked like more than that. When I turned over the package, the first item on the ingredients list reads "Nuts (60%)".
That's just nuts. I guess no nuttier than buying a shirt at Just Jeans.
Huw Lynes has a much
better justification for MILF, sorry Hilf's
comments:
In my more charitable moment I imagine Bill dragged around south-east asia by a brutal MSFT minder, forced to say things he doesn't really believe: "It spreads the FUD or it gets the hose again."
Brilliant!
The community if abuzz about Hilf's provocative comments. Let's be realistic, comments like "The Free Software movement is dead" are solely designed to get headlines. Nothing more, nothing less, and anyone who quotes it back to you as a way of making a point isn't worth talking to. Too bad I initially read the headline as "MILF says free software is dead".
But he is right on one point: Apache, MySQL and PHP are the "Visual Basic of open source." Yep, it's just as easy to write buggy, shit code with a toy database behind it as with VB and Jet. Perhaps the only difference is that unlike with VB, you probably don't have work around so many bugs in the actual programming environment.
We went out for Matt's bucks night on Saturday night, and a good time had by all. We started in the Australian Youth Hotel in Glebe, then headed to the dogs at Wentworth Park. After the races we had a quick one at the AYH again, then wandered up City Road and King Street.
By 3am the only place that would let a large group of drunken blokes in ended up being The Imperial. I'm not much of a fan of empires, but I've always had a soft spot for this place. Where else can you stagger into at 3am to watch the World's Worst Drag Show (no really they were that bad!) and keep drinking until 5am?
All in all, a great night out. Amazingly, Matt got up at 09:30am to go and play football!
Those of you who are overseas and interstate but know Matt and Maz, get your telegrams into me for the wedding.
I've built a web site for my mate Hanesy's film, The Truth About Weapons of Mass Destruction. Check it out. I'm still working on getting the blog embedded inside the design properly. And Hanesy hasn't yet put the film itself online, but it will be soon.