Don't concentrate on the last idiot, concentrate on the next one.

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We have a house
After an awfully long wait and last minute 'exchange by cob tomorrow or it all falls through' kerfuffle, we exchange contracts on 374 Oakleigh Road North yesterday.

In other possibly more exciting news, I scored a ticket to a Box seat at Arsenal tomorrow! Yay!

Victoria fires at the moment
From the cfa feed I've created as up to date map as possible. It looks pretty bad out there. Small going fire around monash!

http://p4-8057.uk2net.com/ChampionSystems/swiftFF/lee/cfamap.html?xmlloc=128805541953772176.xml

and the wind and weather THAT day
Horrifying, stunning and hypnotising

OK, that finally gives an idea of exactly what happened and when. It's spooky how the kinglake and Maryville labels get obscured. The time from fire starting in Murrindindi[1] at 4 - 4:30 and Marysville going is amazing considering how far apart they are.

[1]No idea how this is pronounced.

Wind change?
Can any one confirm what time the 'cool' change came through? I'd also like to know at what time each community was hit. On the face of it and looking at google maps it's easy to believe that Flowerdale is really close to Kinglake. It isn't. It's 15km away. I find it hard to believe that the Kilmore East fire spotted down to St Andrews at 4pm and then the wind spread it to Kilmore and then all the way to Flowerdale.

a few things
One thing that has been bothering me, since I first heard about the fatalities in the bushfires, is why so many seemed to leave it until the last minute to flee. Surely they should have started evacuating as soon as the radio broadcast 'residents of x implement your fire plans now.'

I've used 1 of my days of unemployment to try and uncover how much time people had to implement their fire-plans and unfortunately that info was removed from the cfa website as it became out-dated. What I did discover is that the fire hit Strathewen at 4:20. From what I can gather the cool change had not hit and the fire was still coming from Kilmore, so Kinglake West would have been hit some minutes earlier. What the google cache of the cfa's website does have is the current incident summary at 16:01 that day. It does detail a large fire at Kilmore East (approx 30KM away), but all other fires are listed as small. This page is very unstructured as it's just an extract from their Incident Management system and is only useful if you have time to study it and know every town in the vicinity. In order to make sense of it I've plotted it on a google map. It's clear that Wandong had already been hit by then, but not so clear that Kinglake was minutes away from the inferno. It's mentioned 3 times (one of which a false alarm). 2 hours later Kinglake has 29 mentions.

I also find it bizarre that the fire is listed as multiple small fires in the same area (even 2 hours later when it has spread through Kinglake). I know that Kilmore East was listed as a Large fire, but it seems like it did not affect Kilmore East much. Medium is only used once in the entire page. The Murrindindi Mill fire that ended up wiping out Marysville is only listed as 2 small grass fires.

After I did all this research I then came across the best article written about it, which explains that Kinglake and St Andrews had already been wiped out before they were mentioned in the radio updates of towns in danger. My god... I mean my god!

Longest day
I got a skype call today and to all intents and purposes I've been made redundant.[1] I have been expecting this call all week, so it was no great surprise.

What was a surprise is they left it till 5 minutes after their self-imposed deadline to send an email telling us we would hear tonight. 5 minutes after that I got the call (thank god I changed my surname to an A).

25 minutes later I got a job offer for 5k more than I was on. Again not a terrible surprise as I had been told I had blitzed the interview and they were very keen on me.

It's been an incredibly long day as I got to my desk at 6:20 (due to taking the yesterday afternoon off for the interview). I've delivered precisely 1 line of code, but spent most of the day waiting for other people to do stuff, so although I've been busy it's been mostly spent checking for email.

[1] Of course they haven't said so in so many words, I've been invited to a consultation tomorrow.

Waiitng
Today I am waiting to see:

a) If I have been made redundant
b) If I have a new job elsewhere (Interview went well, feedback was great, thought I might have it by now).

This is interminable!

Current Mood: Impatient

Great speech but...
know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and we are ready to lead once more.

Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks...

So, if you seek a future of peace and dignity, then America is your friend... unless you are a communist. (One uses the wikipedia definition of fascism to assume that fascists cannot be peace-loving)

Overall I was very impressed. This was a speech that reached me (the first time he has done so) and I liked the tone of 'reaching out' very much.

Quiz question
From the very shit pub quiz last night: "If you see someone type 'dyku' on the internet, what would that mean? Anyone heard of this one. Answer in the comments:

pending information update
internet on the go came in handy this morning as I left the house and headed toward Palmers Green. I checked national rail to discover 2 cancelled previous trains and a 'no report' on my train. A swift U turn to Southgate and I was only at work 7 minutes late.

Current Mood: sick

Well thanks a bunch facebook!
Your friends have voted on your strengths and weaknesses:

STRENGTHS:

most attractive
most likely to succeed
person with the best hair

WEAKNESSES:

most trustworthy
smartest

Everyone seems to think I'm a salesman or something. Seriously what is with this person with the best hair lark? My hair is lightweight, impossible to manage and most of the time unkempt and scruffy. How on earth does anyone think I have nice hair?

update
I have some time traveling on a train this morning on my way up to Hinckley for training. 2 weeks ago I got a new job as an IT consultant. I took it mainly because I think I will learn a lot and get my skills up to date. The downside is that it does involve a fair bit of travel.

Previously I had my own company that didn't work out, mainly because most of my clients were in the sub prime loan industry.

Otherwise things are going well. We have had a couple of house guests recently. Both from Australia and at different times, but this has given us an excuse to see more of England and we have now joined the national trust which should give us more of an excuse to travel. Bank holiday weekend was excellent; we got to see Churchhill's ex house, Dover castle, Bodium castle (fantasticly stereotypical with moat), Rye, Hastings, Winchester, stonehenge, Avebury and the house where Netherfield was portrayed in the film version of pride & p.

Someone's cats like toys!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ugHp6TS_Po4

New reality tv game
Kill the lawyers:
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/pakistan-faces-clash-over-judges/2008/03/10/1205125818889.html

I know I really shouldn't laugh at such atragic situation, but that picture and caption just struck me as funny.

Melbourne
5 full days in Melbourne flew past so quickly. We stayed with Claire's mum, Jennifer. Jennifer has recently moved down to Melbourne from Sydney to be closer to Claire's sister, Alison and Alison's 2 kids (my nephews). We saw a lot but not all our friends, but most of the time was spent with Claire's immediate family (and that was the purpose of the trip after all). We baby-sat Nicholas (4y 2m) and Christopher (18m) (Nicky and Crickey) on 2 occasions. Crickey is surprisingly developed for his age. I remember that Nicky was just about walking, while Crickey is now using the 3ft slide with ease. Crickey is also a great communicator and you sometimes look at him and wondering why he isn't speaking. He definately lets you know what he wants though. When Crickey is happy, he really is the happiest baby in the entire world and the world is a happy place, when he is upset however...

Nicky is a quiet kid, very deliberate. We had an argument when he called an Alsatian a shepard. I replied that it was a German Shepherd, but he was having none of it... "It's a DOGGY shepherd". Later I told him off when we were out walking, for running across a road. After that he continued walking all the way to the shops (and most of the way back) with his hands completely covering his eyes and saying nothing. Funny thing, especially when he walked into a bin.

Went out with

essjayeff,

hnpcc ,

astrocave and Dean on my final day.

hnpcc and Dean's place is really neat. I love their deck out the back, although the Kitchen needs a bit of work. We then finished up at

essjayeff 's house and played with her kitten/cats. Butch does this great thing of jumping up to the high cupboard and leaning over to the top shelf and fishing his toys out. Took some great video and it will be on youtube shortly.

I flew out on Saturday early morning to fly to Queenstown, NZ via Sydney. I got to the airport early (5:40) and walked straight up to the domestic counter. My 6:30 flight had been canceled, so she booked me on to the 6am. This meant a brisk walk through security and up to gate 1 (the closest gate). As I approached, they started announcing boarding, so I walked straight on to the plane. If I was in the terminal 5 minutes I would be surprised. Of course the qantas plane then stayed at the gate for a further 25 minutes. The flights to Sydney, then Queenstown were pretty uneventful.