enigmatic incomprehensibility

I have been, as noted elsewhere, been Having Thoughts(TM) about the usefulness to me of a device like the iPad. One might feel inclined to suggest that this is basically just a gadget-freak rationalizing why he's going to buy one, and one might be correct, but I am not in fact planning to buy one just yet.

But I am curious to see how the MUA has evolved, and how well it'll work as an SSH and VNC client. Because I can see that maybe, possibly, a 10" touch-based device might be large enough for me to use for casual shell work, like the sort of thing I'm sometimes stuck sitting around waiting to do at 10PM after the Hong Kong people are done -- that's often just a few commands. I'm sure it'd be big enough for people with normal vision.

To that end my to-do list has had "build an IPSec VPN server" tacked on the end, so I can fool around with the VPN support on my iPhone. If that works adequately, I could work around the lack of support for our cruddy proprietary boutique VPN by VPN'ing to my own box, which is itself VPN'd to the office...

The lack of multitasking may perhaps suck a little too much though: losing one's SSH sessions because one needs to grab some text from an email? Not cool.

Or at least it feels that way.

I quit caffeine on Monday. I've done this before and it's been a doddle. Not so much this time. I have spent most of the past week tired, cranky, with a headache, and occasionally that headache has moved into my neck and shoulders. I have also, rather oddly, had more trouble sleeping.

So last night was my first proper night of sleep. I am hoping very much that the worst is past, I'm less-tired this time today than was the case yesterday, and yesterday wasn't as bad as Wednesday, so...

In the middle of this we were told how much our bonuses for 2009 would be. We'd been led to expect it to be at most 40% of last year, but my group at least has had it hold at the same level -- the boss says that this is probably because senior (regional) management have gained some understanding of just how much work we put in, they now understand that when we work late or on weekends it's not just make-work, it's not us fixing our own mistakes, it's real genuine work the company needs done.

Anyway, it's not a huge amount of money but after tax it'll probably halve my remaining debt. Which is nice. I can see having it completely paid out this year.

The other news is that the chap in NY who was going to transfer to Japan has been told he can't, that there's a hiring freeze in Asia so if he wants to move he'll have to find a new employer. Mind you, this hasn't stopped the company hiring people right after doing layoffs in December, so who the hell knows what's going on there?

At any rate it means that the quick and obvious option -- do a swap -- isn't going to happen, or at least not any time soon. Just how the guy in NY is going to react is unknown, he may decide to leave it for a few months and try again, or he may just quit and find another job.

Either way it leaves me feeling like my goal is further away than it was, more uncertain. But the boss is still being encouraging, says that if the business picks up in the next few months then it'll be an easier sell whatever the other guy decides to do. How much of this is true and how much is trying to avoid me going out and finding another job, I can't be sure, but he's usually pretty honest. Except for that lie about "cutting edge technology" at the interview...

I don't really mean to sound catty, but I've noticed a bit of a pattern: women who list The Alchemist as a favourite book often seem to also really really love Adam Sandler movies.

(I'm sure there are exceptions, there has merely been a run of such profiles.)

Today's XKCD has that lovely melancholy that his best strips have.

I have been meeting the occasional new person of late. Not so much as romantic prospects but as "I rather need to find new (local) friends". And have noticed myself making a conscious choice to not "friend" them on Facebook, because that makes it too easy to background the getting-to-know-you, makes it a little too trivial, too easy for it to turn virtual.

BooksOnBoard, despite the absolutely woeful website, is giving away some parts of Gaiman's Fragile Things. You can find them here. I discovered this due to a reference elsewhere to his short story The Problem of Susan, which is included in Part Four of the excerpt series. I found the story unsettling, which was one suspects his goal.

The boss has provisionally agreed to have the company pay to send me to this year's SAGE-AU conference in Hobart. They'll pay for the lot, in theory. It'll not just be my first SAGE-AU conference, it'll be my first conference ever. The closest thing I've ever been to prior to this was the NSW State Diplomacy Championship in Sydney back in, hrm, 1992?

(Drew the short straw -- Austria -- in the first round and was eliminated.)

The current guilty pleasure is Frasier reruns. Something I am noticing for the first time is that while the main character is a pompous jerk and not really very likable, the supporting character of his brother Niles played by David Hyde Pierce gets a lot of rather good lines and is a whole lot more entertaining than I'd remembered. Paying more attention to him makes the show more entertaining.

It may come as no great surprise to all, oh, none of you wasting precious neurons on my "issues", but I've been thinking more about this whole cultural identity/patriotism thing. I had another of those "aha!" moments over the weekend.

When I was growing up Australians were generally not very publicly demonstrative. I can't really say if people were in general patriotic/nationalistic but they generally regarded public displays of such as being at best naff, at worst cringe-inducing jingoistic Americanism. Australia Day was just a long weekend. ANZAC Day was vaguely important but not reverential the way it is now, a day for old soldiers to remember their dead mates. Remembrance Day looms larger in my memory than ANZAC Day because of the "one minute silence" thing, almost everyone took part to mark the occasion.

The broader culture has changed. People are much more willing to be publicly demonstrative about all sorts of things now, and not just things that are important. Huge national mourning sessions over the latest celebrity death, or someone "unfairly" being eliminated from a TV cooking competition, that sort of thing.

Public displays of patriotism are no longer considered cringeworthy, they're becoming the accepted standard. Flag-waving/wearing, "Aussie Pride", not necessarily racist -- though there's been an unfortunate use of the symbols to that effect by some people -- but really in your face.

I didn't change with the culture. I still find that stuff naff and cringe-inducing.

What has changed for me is that I can accept it in other cultures as simply being part of what that culture is like. I don't like it, but I don't get all wound up by the old standard Hollywood "salute the flag" thing -- not that I've seen it in a lot of movies over the last decade. I think the underlying nationalism can be dangerous, you just have to look at the Chinese thuggery over the Olympics to get a glimpse of where it can go, but when it's Americans or Chinese or whoever I can simply say to myself "well, that's part of their culture" and move past it.

But when I see it with Australians, that's different, because that is ostensibly my culture. And it particularly bugs me, I think, because this is a really big difference between my identity and that of the mainstream of what is supposed to be my tribe. I feel excluded because I simply don't share this but it's assumed that I ought.

Having met the medium-term goal for the priest -- get to 70, move to Northrend, get the flying book -- I've gone back to the mage.

This is allegedly my "main" character. He's certainly the oldest still-active, and one of my merry band of 80s. Respecced back to Arcane and set some goals: finish leveling his trade skills, and -- having found this guide to jousting and discovering that it works, enough of the time -- getting through at least his home Champion line and nabbing the neato caster sword.

He's much of the way to finishing tailoring. He can make the first few epic crafted items now, though I'll have to spend time farming materials or cash (again). Enchanting is at a point where there are useful things, and not that far off the fancier stuff there too. So that's all good.

He got to Champion of Gnomeregan today, and will start on those daily quests to get enough tokens for the sword in a few more days.

On top of this I also did my first ever heroic dungeon. This was a lot easier than I'd expected -- it was a random guild run through Gundrak, the tank knew what he was doing, the healer was a bit out of practise but still quite good, and two of the three DPS (including me) were completely clueless. But it still worked well, with only one death.

Incidentally, the new "AoE everything" approach feels wrong to me, but then what little I've done with dungeons was years ago and the stakes were a lot higher so everyone was more cautious. Compared to an appropriate-level group doing Scarlet Monastery or the Deadmines, heroic Gundrak felt pretty trivial.

I'm still a bit dubious about using the random dungeon tool, mostly because I don't know any of the heroic instances. Well, except for Gundrak now.

I have had the rather interesting experience over this past week or so of going through my various stages of depression/anxiety/etc while being aware of what's going on. Typically this stuff will happen and the rational part of my brain goes on vacation, or is at least unable to examine what is happening in any useful way.

So, for each thing that my lizard hind-brain throws up, another part will go "well, no, that's bullshit, here is a clear demonstration of why", or "hm, that's interesting, I wonder why you feel that way?" followed by some sort of self-analysis that comes to a bit of an "aha!" moment.

And for some things it's "well, yes, that sucks, but you're doing what you can even if it is a long shot, so quit getting too worked up". Anything related to relocation goes in that basket: I've done what I can for the moment, it's in the hands of the Oompa Loompa hiring committee and various people in the New York office of my employer. If neither pans out, move on to the next step, but for now "don't get so worked up about it".

I continue to poke at random personals sites in a fairly desultory fashion. The "newest" is MyType, a venture from the Fairfax corporation trying to extend their existing RSVP brand to deal with people who want a little more privacy, a little less meat-market.

Their basic idea is that each day each member is matched with one other member who is supposedly "highly compatible". It's a little more in depth than the usual A/S/L scheme but not that much, so it keeps matching me with sporty women who are explicitly saying they want guys with body types which are very much not mine. Maybe it's a problem of a small sample, maybe it's that their algorithms are crap, but I have to say that I prefer the rather more honest approach of eHarmony, who gave me an FOAD after I did their personality test. At least they aren't pretending they're going to do anything for me in return for cash...

This video -- "How Can We Have Sex?" -- has been doing the rounds lately. It is very very mildly amusing but annoys me in any number of ways. Feel free to guess.

Small boost today: a colleague asked if I'd been losing weight. First time anyone outside my "intimate circle" has said a peep on the subject, so maybe it's more noticeable than it seems from my perspective?

Wore a hat to work today for the first time. Awfully self-conscious about it. Noticed that my hair comes loose while wearing the brown felt trilby, which is sub-optimal. It may yet come to a choice between hats and hair, and if it does I'm not sure which will win: the hair has been a part of my identity for a long time, but I like the hat aesthetic and maybe getting rid of the hair would be another "gateway" moment.

Or maybe not.

For those as don't do the Facebook thing but who may be amused by a small dose of silly-buggery in re Myki, please enjoy these photos.

Flight to Sydney was fine, if busy. It transpires that some genius (i.e., me) booked the designated "transfer to LA" flight for the day so it was packed.

Sydney was pretty much as expected, not that I really did much there. Got to the hotel, crashed, checked out and went to the interview on foot as the office wasn't that far from the hotel.

As to the office: the general area would be greatly improved by the casino not having major construction work underway, but the office itself is perfectly pleasant in so far as a visitor can tell. If I'd gone there straight from my last job I'd have been shell-shocked, but a couple of years in the commercial world of cube farms makes it seem less dire.

Can't talk about the interviews or the process. The only things I'll note are that I don't feel like I did at all badly, and that if I don't make it past this point it'll be my very rusty programming that did it -- I was eventually able to demonstrate that I can in fact produce some simple perl code but there were a few false starts on that front.

Am going to continue to regard this as a long-shot lovely-if-it-comes-off-but-don't-count-on-it sort of deal. They could think I'm awesome and still not offer a gig.

Trip home was just fine. Got back to a baking house, have enabled all of the cooling devices and hopefully that'll get things back under some sort of control.

A while back I got bored and created a profile on match.com. It started getting messages pretty much right away, and of course part of their scam is that they won't let you see the content unless you subscribe.

So, like an idiot, I subscribed.

The messages weren't just sub-literate, many were just a couple of words, and most of them made it pretty clear that no human had actually read my profile before sending a message -- they could've been automatic, or they could've just been morons.

And some had the feel of phishing scams. I tried reporting those ones to their support department but they weren't interested.

Anyway. Not a peep for a month or so, and today I remembered to cancel the account to avoid rebilling. And immediately I start getting messages again!

I know what conclusion I draw from this. Quite apart from it being basically a useless A/S/L listing I'd strongly recommend keeping the hell away from match.com, it has a strong whiff of dishonesty about it.