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MikZ's LiveJournal

Mik's 16 most recent LiveJournal entries

Sounds about right...

Mon 2 Jun 2003, 11:37pm

Americans, already so ill-served by their mainstream media that they (a) believe that weapons of mass destruction have been unearthed in Iraq and/or (b) are turning to foreign sources such as the BBC, CBC and The Star, will see their news coverage sink from abysmal to abominable.

—The Toronto Star, Canada's largest-selling daily newspaper

Current Mood

disappointed

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Moved

Mon 2 Jun 2003, 9:26am

This weekend was one of the least stressful moves I've ever done. It got a bit crazy for a while when Ryder rang to say that the truck had been in an accident and was therefore no longer available, but they came through in the end. I know all too well how that sort of thing can make a move a move from hell. The same thing happened with U-Haul when I moved into the Oakland Hills, but they handled it completely differently:

• Ryder rang me to say that the truck wasn't available. U-Haul only told me when I rang them to check in with them about something—otherwise, I presume, I wouldn't have known until I turned up to collect the truck

• Ryder rang around to find a replacement truck for me. U-Haul did not—all they said was "how about tomorrow?" Yeah, as if it's easy to coordinate two households and a dozen helpful friends to do it all the next day, a work day

• Ryder compensated me for my trouble: they gave me a discounted rate and allowed me to return the truck to the most convenient location for me. U-Haul referred to obscure small print that was on some web page somewhere that said that their service was allowed to suck.

In short, U-Haul sux, and Ryder does business the way that business should be done: they fucked it up, but they fixed it up. (And it wasn't even their fault, really.) I'd highly recommend them, and it felt good to drive a Ryder truck into a U-Haul storage location to pick up the furniture that rosefox moved in on the same day.

You people rock

But the real reason that this was a low-stress move was that so many people turned up to help. I offer my sincere gratitude to annathebean, bdot and Meghan (Flopsie says hi!), brian1789 (and patgreene for driving him), brooksmoses, shadopanther, Cat, circusscreamer, deyo, sarahh, suzimoses, triskel and zyxwvut and Ms Vut, and of course hopeforyou, sinboy and Rose. A special thanks to karenbynight, for ringing around truck rental places when it wasn't a sure thing that Ryder would come through.

It all went fairly smoothly. A lot of my stuff stored in Oakland Hills wasn't boxed up properly because, unlike this time, only Hope and Sinboy helped me pack everything away back then. (I also had to move out about two weeks earlier than I planned, but that's another story.) Once I figured out that people were just having fun and weren't taking the piss out of me for having so much junk, I felt better. (And most of the stuff that looks like junk isn't even junk—you'll see, once I have my room set up again! And the stuff that is will go off to the Rabbit Warren for their eBay sales very quickly.)

Settling in

I was sick and feeling kinda depressed yesterday, because all of my stuff smelled like the garage in the Oakland Hills. It also looked like mould had grown on my 18-month-old ultra-comfortable bed while it was stored there. I'd stored it so water couldn't get at it, but my housemates had to move my stuff to get to circuit breakers. However, Brooks pointed out that it was only dirt from when it was dragged along the ground, and that it smelled like mould because of the mouldy ground. Scrubbing my bed with vinegar got rid of it. I also took a lot of stuff to a laundromat yesterday to wash the dusty/mouldy smell off, and I'm feeling less sick already. So today I start settling in properly! I've already painted some of the cyderblocks that got scratched. Woo-hoo!

Now, let's go see if the milk has thawed yet... even at its second-warmest setting, the 'fridge freezes it...

Current Mood

accomplished

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Funny signs

Fri 30 May 2003, 10:00pm

I'm on BART, heading for karenbynight's place. I don't pass through Lake Merritt Station very often. [mikz waves at dyradgrrl's house].

One of those things I never got to writing in my journal about was a sign on a different train, the last train I took in Australia. Suburban Sydney trains have safety signs that read "At night, travel near the guard's compartment, marked with a blue light". With a bit of white-out, somebody changed the sign so it read "At night, rave near the guard's compartment naked with a blue light".

That's even funnier than one of the first bumper stickers I saw when I got back in the U.S, with a U.S. flag on it. "These colors will never run" [sic], it said... but they had.

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Our House

Fri 30 May 2003, 9:50pm

I've never been as excited about moving into a new place before. This is because:

• This is the longest I'll ever be living in a place. It's all there in black and white on the lease, which doesn't expire until 30 May 2005!

• I'm moving in with hopeforyou, sinboy and rosefox!

There's not much else to say, really. We signed the paperwork, I drove the car into the garage (Garage! We've got a garage! And there's space for the car in it!!) and I put the stuff I've been lugging around for two and a half months into my bedroom. (For the first time since I moved out of GRiPZ's place in Sydney on 9 March, I've got a room!!)

And then we spent an hour wandering around the house, talking about where we're putting furniture and curtains and lighting features.

Current Mood

excited

Current Music

The BART intercom announcing our arrival at West Oakland

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You people are wonderful

Fri 30 May 2003, 12:09pm

Heaps of people have volunteered to help rosefox and me move tomorrow. However, every extra pair of hands makes the job easier for the rest of us, so we'd still love to have more. You'll get invited to Rose's special party for helpers if you do. =)

Everyone who's volunteered should have received e-mail from me by now, with the plan. If you haven't, please e-mail me.

Thanks!!

Current Mood

thankful

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FCC Protest

Thu 29 May 2003, 7:01pm

I was in high school when I went to my first protest. I was one of tens of thousands of students who truanted and went to the City to protest proposed cuts to secondary education. The state education minister at the time was a guy named Terry Metherall, so as angry fourteen and fifteen year olds, the thing we felt would make the biggest impact was to yell "Metherall's a wanker" over and over again.

This afternoon's protest was against watering down media ownership legislation, but about as much thought went into some of the chants thought as me when I blamed Dr Metherall for everything. A few people were displaying signs with sensible slogans like "media diversity protects democracy", but the majority were more questionable, like "only pigs monopolise". Most of the chants were just stupid! We may have been gathered around an office of Clearchannel, who in my opinion already have a much lager slice of the media pie than what makes sense, but I don't see the point in shouting down Clearchannel itself!

The point of the protest was to show that people are opposed to proposed new regulations that would allow media corporations to own larger numbers of print and media networks across the United States of America, and more newspapers and radio stations in regions within the country. (Refer you to www.mediareform.net for more details.) I, for one, was surprised to learn that such regulations existed here in the first place, because I've always felt that America suffers from a lack of media voices. Maybe the majority of those voices haven't been making the public aware of the issue, because I was disappointed by the number of people who were gathered—about 150, I'd say, certainly no more than 200. On the other hand, somebody claiming to be from Associated Press was there to interview people, so the mainstream media was making at least a token effort. (You might hear a sound bite of rosefox, triskel or me. I was especially impressed with Rose's blurb; you can tell she used to be a journo! )

Although half the speakers and most of the chants drifted way off the point, it's clear that some people were thinking. There was a woman who was handing out pre-addressed post cards with a message to Colin Powell—all that was missing was stamps, and Rose and I handed out the ones we had on hand. Then there were the people handing out free bread and fruit, to stop hungry protesters wandering off to get food. Later they started handing out tofu—Rose reckoned that the only thing that could have made it more Californian was if they started passing joints around the crowd as well.

But for the most part, I was disappointed with the function. The speakers should've talked more about media monopolies and less about offensive song lyrics. They should've talked more about the contrast in how the war was covered between here and abroad, and less about how wrong the war was. And they should've talked more about how diverse media facilitates an informed public, and less about bogey men trying to take over the public's minds.

But at least they didn't stop ordinary people from getting to work.

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** moving plans changed **

Thu 29 May 2003, 12:22pm

brooksmoses

sarahh

triskel

hopeforyou

brian1789

rosefox

Update

Current Mood

busy

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Just what we bloody need...

Thu 29 May 2003, 10:17am

My initial thoughts after reading this Sydney Morning Herald article, about an attempted hijacking of a flight between Melbourne and Launceston, Tasmania:

• This proves that, despite crazy levels of airport security, including the inane "no humour allowed" policy that Australia recently started copying from the U.S, doesn't stop weapons from getting onto planes

• This proves that people wearing head dresses and people with different coloured skin shouldn't be treated any differently from "just a normal-looking Australian"

• This proves that terrorist acts don't need to be sponsored by big terrorist organisations

• The Herald has become too sensationalistic in recent years

Current Mood

blah

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Squirrel fight

Tue 27 May 2003, 10:19am

Okay, it's been happening long enough now that it's worth a journal entry. There's been squirrel biffo outside of Dβ's bedroom all morning. As a result, the cat's going berko too.

I wonder if there'll be squirrels at D1.0...

Update

The squirrel that was causing most of the ruccus just got hit by the neighbour's sprinkler system. I saw him wandering off along the television cable, making a noise that can only be described as 'muttering', almost slipping off the line... )

(Oh, and D1.0 is House Dreamland, for those who were wondering.)

Current Music

wild rustling sounds coming from outside

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Big Brother is confused

Sun 25 May 2003, 10:53am

The primary reason why I laugh at those who believe that Americans have the most freedom in the world is their lack of privacy rights. It's amazing how much personal financial information my new landlord was able to obtain about me for twenty bucks, a bill that he passed on to me. The loan application I signed included consent for such an enquiry, but in Australia such enquiries would be illegal, and it would also be illegal to deny me rent or services based on my refusal to provide my tax file number (SSN equivalent).

He was kind enough to give me a copy of the report. I've seen these things before, but never before have I noticed so many things that were just plain wrong. They include:

• Dozens of misspellings
• Two home addresses that I have never heard of
• One $14,000 car loan that I do not have

All this is in spite of the "fraud alert" that's printed at the bottom of the report, stating that any enquiries made should be authorised by me personally, by ringing the supplied telephone number. (I never got such a call.) Yes, I've been the victim of credit card fraud in the past, and maybe it's happened again... or maybe somebody just fucked up.

Luckily I got to live in the place anyhow, and I'm certainly not in the market for any more credit at the moment. And luckily the mystery car loan doesn't have any defaulting payments on it or anything. But I could have been denied housing because of this. I know this can all be corrected and sorted out, but no doubt that will include hours of getting the runaround from the Ministry of Love, the name I give Experian and those other credit bureaus, where it's impossible to speak with a human being over the telephone.

At least it also says that I've worked for Sun Microsystems. I'm actually not going to correct that one.

Current Mood

aggravated

Current Music

sarahh--Sean Watkins: Let it Fall

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Calling helpers (again)

Wed 21 May 2003, 6:45pm

Oakland Hills

hopeforyou

sarahh

brooksmoses

Current Mood

hopeful

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How it's going (more on jobs, parties, socialising and hot tubs)

Wed 21 May 2003, 5:20pm

Life is good.

hopeforyou's mood swings are less frequent and less intense. The change in her medication appears to be working. This good trend progresses as my own mood improves, and as the weather improves. It's making it easier to talk to her, so it's making me feel as close to her as before. This also makes it easier for me to work on my own bad habits, habits I relearnt to cope with living with my parents again for those hellish weeks earlier this year.

It's pretty much what I expected, really: every time Hope and I are apart for a while there's a day or so of weirdness before we reconnect. That day or so was turned into a month or so by the extremes of our situation this time around. We're still not totally through it, but everything's okay, and in a few weeks, everything's going to be great again.

I'm still not in full-swing job-hunting mode, and yesterday morning I realised why: I don't feel ready for interviews. In this competitive job market, any interview for a half-decent job will involve me needing to know my shit particularly well, and I don't feel I do. Last time I looked for a Bay Area programming job it was just after the dot com crash, but I took some time out to do a Java certification course, so my knowledge of the language felt fresh and complete, and had me raring to go. So I'm going to take some time out and work on small personal projects again, to get me excited about programming again. I believe it's that excitement that will make the difference between getting a job and not getting a job. There are some setbacks, though: my web provider no longer supports Java servlets and never delivered on their promise to support JSP. Oh well, I'll just have to dig up Natasha and turn her into a web server.

Meanwhile, this afternoon, sinboy picked up a call from a recruiter looking for Hope. The skills the recruiter was looking for actually seemed to match mine reasonably well. I love it when work comes looking for me... actually, I'm used to work coming looking for me. Maybe that's part of the problem.

My laptop keyboard is also working now. After a year of putting up with it intermittently malfunctioning, I found out how cheap laptop keyboards really are—sinboy found a place selling keyboards for my laptop for only about $70! In my rush to purchase one, I didn't notice that it lacked the pointing stick, and I really want one of those—touch pads just don't work very well for me. It's okay though, because I can send it back, and the action of unplugging and replugging the existing keyboard seems to have fixed it. I'm going to wait a week or so to make sure it's not just going through a well-behaved phase, but if I decide it's fine then, I'll buy a bigger hard drive for it too. I'm struggling to clear space on my existing drive.

I'm happy with my social life too. insomnia and iceblink have set up a lovely little household and have regular get-togethers, and these tend to be attended by intelligent, interesting and friendly people. I've made a few new friends there and gotten together with them in other places, and I'm dating two or three new people too. Yes, two or three... I don't want to be presumptuous about who I'm dating and who I'm just hanging out with. The nice thing, though, is that I'm not finding myself rushing into the bedroom with anybody. Instead we're hiking or going out for dinner or watching DVDs. Even meeting altenra, who I engaged in a hugely intense campaign of internet lust with for the months that I was in Australia and Malaysia, didn't result in us screwing each other in the entryway to her house. (Of course, things may have been different if she wasn't in more or less monogamous relationship at the time. )

Over the weekend I went to a really wonderful party near Santa Cruz. The aim of the party was to allow everyone to see lunatravels and Rrrob during their week-long visit to the U.S, between living in Australia and living in France. The venue was a beautiful house with a heated pool and a spa overflowing with bubble bath. The pool had dozens of pool toys too: inflatable zebras, mechanical fish swimming around, several breeds of rubber duckies and two water falls. Many of my friends were there, like dyradgrl, akienm, dawnd and sarahh. I was particularly happy that Sarah was there, so I could introduce her to hopeforyou. Actually, the three of us hung out in a park in Palo Alto after lunch on Saturday, so they had a chance to get to know each other before the party, comparing notes on having geek jobs at well-known organisations like NASA and Greenpeace. But I enjoyed the party. I enjoyed the room full of funky lights and the train set. I enjoyed the fact that it was the kind of party where people would disappear into the bedroom for a while, but for the most part just hang out. I enjoyed saying overnight and waking up to a bubble-filled hot tub in the sun, the highlight of a relaxing morning. And I enjoyed the drive back over the mountain with Sarah, Luna and Rrrob, stopping by at joedecker's art exhibit.

More hot tubbing in store for tonight. It's great to be back in California!

Current Mood

good

Current Music

sinboy talking with the broadband company

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Birdies

Tue 20 May 2003, 5:34am

It's less than a fortnight before we move into our new house in the City. Offers to help move would be greatly appreciated! We're really looking forward to having more space, better public transport, and all the benefits of living in San Francisco proper, but one of the South Bay things that I am going to miss is the weather.

Summer has started. I don't know how it happened; last time I wrote in my journal it was still miserably cold outside, and Spring seemed to last little more than a week! But yesterday the temperature finally nudged 30°C, which they call "the mid-80s" here. Not a scorcher by any means, but not really spring anymore either. And it feels like it's going to be warm again today. I can smell it, and I can hear it! Tweet tweet!

The smell is the smell that I associate with Northern California. It's a fairly pleasant smell, sort of like dusty pine forests, and I smell it for the first few hours after I arrive in this part of the world, and my clothes and other belongings smell of it when I leave. But since it's a constant smell, I usually only notice it when the weather changes like this. (The only other time was when I drove the car I inherited from M, which had spent most of its life stationary in the Santa Cruz mountains with the windows open. When I first saw it, little plants were growing through the cracked upholstry in the back seat.)

I'm writing this from a different car, Bubbles. He's parked in the carport outside of Dreamland Beta, and I'm here because my lust for life is keeping me awake at a time incompatible with hopeforyou and sinboy. (Hope was complaining about the "noise" before, the aforementioned birds. To me it's the sound of the start of a beautiful day. Even the cat was excited about it.) So that brings us back around to looking forward to having more space. But it doesn't get hot in the City. Oh well.

Current Mood

bouncy

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Purity test score

Wed 14 May 2003, 8:40am

I still believe that the only real purity test is the benchmark 500-question purity test. (It's been at least five years since I've done it, and after going to a party with a check list I think I managed to get my score below 22.) This is the first test I've seen that is divided into categories, though, so I thought it was worth doing:

So if you're wondering what I haven't done: ( Read more... )

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The latest news

Thu 8 May 2003, 11:33pm

My life continues to be in a state of flux, and I'm still not getting around to reading or writing LiveJournal. I'm still applying for jobs at a slower rate than I feel I should be, too, but that continues to improve. I've figured out that part of the problem was that I was aiming to send out a certain number of job aps per day, and failing to meet those aims. Now I'm aiming to get interviews, and that seems to be going better. The other problem, I've realised, is that I'm not looking forward to working long American hours again and get bugger all time off for a life. I'm not sure what to do about that one.

The good news—bloody excellent news, actually—is that we got the house in Mission Terrace! I won't be counting my chickens until after we've signed leases this evening, but we got the nod from the landlord so it seems almost certain that House Dreamland is real!!! The discussions that the four of us have had about housewarming parties and commutes and what to do with the back yard have made it hard to believe that this ever wasn't a sure thing, but I for one am feeling a lot more relaxed now that one less thing is up in the air. rosefox is especially over the moon!

hopeforyou is still grappling with depression, though. This started a couple of weeks before I got back to the Bay Area, and sinboy is convinced that the primary cause is the current combination of medicines she's taking. That certainly makes sense to me, but I honestly expect things will also get better after we're all settled in Mission Terrace. She's definitely happier out of the house, and I don't blame her. It's difficult to be organised here, we keep getting in each other's way, things go missing and we're highly dependent on each other's schedules. Most of all, it's a fucking mess, despite everyone's efforts for it not to be. There just isn't the place to put things, because all four of us have belongings in this one-bedroom apartment, and things are continuously being packed away into boxes which clutter the space up. Or at least they should be. It's frustrating that I have the most time for packing and so little of it is actually mine.

I'm either not letting it bother me, or I'm not admitting that it is. The former would be good, and the latter, although bad, would be necessary. It's particularly hard given Hope's state; on some days it seems that any comment about her or the apartment makes her feel like her life is out of control, or that she's inadequate, or that people think poorly of her, or that she's responsible for absolutely everything that makes our lives good and that she's going to fail and ruin everything. She was in the middle of a particularly dark mood when Rose's call with the good news about the house came in; even that didn't cheer her up. These states are hard to deal with, but it's not like they're happening all the time so I'm coping with them. They do make me feel less free to talk to her about things though, and that really worries me.

But the future looks bright. In a few weeks, we'll have more space, so we won't be tripping over each other. Public transport will be adequate and there will be more than one bathroom, so we won't be so dependent on each other's schedules. It will take a while to get settled, but the house will be less of a mess. The house will have more light, which definitely will do my mood a lot of good. That will do Hope good too, and so will the fact that she'll have her own space to have full say over. And I'm absolutely confident that get to the bottom of the medical component of her depression by then as well. And I might even be employed by then.

Update

So we just came back from seeing the landlord. There was much hand shaking, standing around in the driveway and talking. sinboy and rosefox were less than happy with the rent we arrived at (it was variable according to the number of tennants) but my share will still be less than any rent that I've paid in the Bay Area before so I'm not complaining much. I would have been happier if there was something to sign, but I'll get a receipt for the bond in a few days and then I'll breathe easier.

Actually, I already am.

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General catch-up

Sat 3 May 2003, 12:39am

So it's about time I write in my journal again.

I've been back in the U.S. for about a fortnight. It was surreal at first, and for a long time it didn't really sink in that this was America... then again, the Bay Area never has seemed much like the rest of the U.S, and neither does California in a lot of ways.

I suppose the surrealism was from feeling like I'd never been gone. When I returned to Australia late last year, a lot had changed, but nothing's really changed here. They've finished a few freeway interchanges that they were working on and started working on others, but other than that, it's all pretty much the same. Even when I visited places that I visited every day up until nine months ago, it seemed more like nine days. There was no sense of homecoming, not until the first time that I dropped rosefox off at her place on 19th Avenue, and saw the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge over the next hill. That made me feel happy to be home again... this home, anyhow.

Finding housing...

The place that I dropped her off at is no longer Rosefox's place. She's currently occupying a room in a house that we're calling Little Ireland; the woman renting out the room is a gardener with a very strong Irish accent. It's a stone's throw from what will hopefully be the real-life House Dreamland next month... we hope we hope we hope!

The four of us started looking for housing before we really started taking it seriously, and found a place in Mission Terrace, which is at the back of Diamond Heights near Glenn Park BART Station. It's about 90% of what our ideal home would be, i.e. too good to pass up. We've pretty much got it, too, provided we can convince the landlord that our credit is okay. And we're fairly optimistic, even though there are reasons to worry.

The main problem is that I'm not employed yet. I was actually thinking we'd put off seriously looking for a place until I was, but hopeforyou and sinboy hate their current place, and Rosefox's lease has run out. The landlord of the prospective House Dreamland wanted copies of bank statements amongst other things, and we mailed them off today. The nice thing is that I've just been paid for the work I did in Malaysia in March and I've just received several grand in tax refunds, so my cheque account's looking pretty good.

Finding work...

The task of finding work is also plodding along. I'm trying not to be discouraged by tales of programmers giving up and leaving town. They probably don't have degrees, I tell myself, and I've been in the game for a decade now. (If you have tales of even more qualified people leaving town, please keep them to yourself.) dice is still full of job ads, I'm qualified for many of them, and some of them seem perfect. I've already spoken to a recruiter or two. I doubt that I'll be employed next week, but I honestly think we'll be okay.

Somehow I'm having trouble finding motivation, though. Today, for example, I found about half a dozen really good job prospects, but I allowed myself to get distracted from even writing an application letter. I'll make up for it tomorrow, but I need to finish switching from mikz_the_traveller mode to mikz_the_unemployed mode. The fact that the hopes and wishes of three other people would be helped along by it somehow makes it harder, not easier. However, Rosefox has been bouncing around the place all evening because she just got a job. Hopefully her luck will rub off.

Odds and ends

There are some things I want to write about, like our trip to LA, my first date(?) with altenra, my libido acting strangely and a rant or two. I'll write separate entries about these things in due course. Here are one or two things too trivial for their own entry, though:

I had to renew my LiveJournal membership last week as well. I knew that it was coming up to a year, but I thought I wrote my first entry in May. I was wrong. (It's about time I format my calendar page properly, eh.) Anyhow, while I was at it, I bought a T-shirt.

Sinboy, Rosefox and I went to a They Might Be Giants concert on Tuesday night. (Hopeforyou was in LA at the time.) It was a good concert, but far from the best TMBG concert I'd seen. I wish we'd gone the night before, though. Apparently they were their own cover band and played every song from their album Flood before their real concert, which mostly concentrated on the Apollo 18. On the other hand, if I didn't go on the night that I did, karenbynight wouldn't have flirted with me, and I wouldn't be having a picnic date with her next Tuesday.

I saw X2 with the other Dreamlanders tonight. It's yet another really good superhero film put out by Hollywood. Have my tastes changed, or have Hollywood films improved somewhat over the last couple of years?

Current Music

rosefox telephoning australian_joe

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