From Kazza the Blank One, ("the wishor") to you ("hereinafter called the wishee"), please accept without obligation, implied or implicit, our best wishes for an environmentally-conscious, socially-responsible, politically-correct, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the summer solstice holiday, practised within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practise religious or secular traditions at all, and a financially successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2010, but with due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures or sects, and having regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform or dietary preference of the wishee.

By accepting this greeting you are bound by these terms that:

- This greeting is subject to further clarification or withdrawal.

- This greeting is freely transferable provided that no alteration shall be made to the original greeting and that the proprietary rights of the wishor are acknowledged.

- This greeting implies no promise by the wishor to actually implement any of the wishes.

- This greeting may not be enforceable in certain jurisdictions and/or the restrictions herein may not be binding upon certain wishees in certain jurisdictions and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wishor.

- This greeting is warranted to perform as reasonably may be expected within the usual application of good tidings, for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, which ever comes first.

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So the little brother called me up today and said they'd be in town tonight.

For some reason I was dreaming about making a Mt Everest cake.  And stressing about how I was going to do it and did we have the necessary ingredients and equipment .. 

Putter, unzip, stress, RAGE, demolition, blah, ow, free lunch, blah, stress, Nerds!, blah, copy, fraggle, stress, crap, RAGE, misery.

Had a crap crap crap day today. 

A simple oversight (basically from me not RTFM) caused hours of stress while I tried to figure out why something wasn't working :(  Complete waste of time, and it was all my fault :(

The computer shop didn't have a screwdriver capable of opening the faulty Seagate disk (enclosure).  This is a disk that was dying with bad sectors so we took it back to Officeworks where we bought it, but they said it was fine and gave it back to us.  It was *not* fine, and subsequent attempts to format it resulted in all sorts of horrible noises coming out of it.  But because Officeworks is a pain in the rear end to get to, and we'd left it so long, and we hate that sort of thing, we never ended up getting it replaced.  So just want to rip the thing out of its enclosure and replace it with something else.  If we can get the screws out.  Have left it with them, they are going to see what they can do.

Spent the evening fighting with hard drives and computers.  Discovered I could have actually mounted the external hard drive with a writable ntfs mount.  If I'd done that it would have been much easier to get the files off it now.

Basically a grumpy crappy day :(

Spent 1.75 hours with the travel agent trying to book our flights today.  CrapJetStar's website was epic fail and the dude got all the way through twice before it just dropped him out with errors.  So he called CrapStar and even they were having trouble.  So in a way glad it was them and not me - I'd have been awfully stressed if I had been trying to do it myself online and had the same errors - not knowing if my payment had gone through..

Anyways.  Will go back tomorrow to make sure it's really happening...

Yesterday morning was pretty slow.  Slept in, washed my hair, read some news feeds etc. 

A bit before lunch headed into Hornsby where I met up with Daniel and Fee for lunch.  Wandered around til we found a cafe (Blu) and got lunch there.  I had a melt which wasn't bad, but probably not worth $13.  So chatted for a while and then wandered around the games shops in the shopping centre.  All in all a very pleasant couple of hours.

Then headed down to Rhodes where I fought the hordes trying to find parking :(  (This after not paying attention to my own golden rule - never go to Rhodes/Ikea on a weekend!!).  Seriously, parking at Rhodes shopping centre SUX!!!!  There's just too many people going there and not enough parking.  I don't know what on earth possessed Ikea to shut down their other Sydney stores, but I'm sure it's a dumb decision.  I didn't even consider buying anything because it was just too hot and stressful to even think about getting anything back to the car.  My poor little car was overheating too, which meant I couldn't have the aircon on while looking for parking.  *sigh*

Anyways, headed back to J&G's and jumped in their pool (which was 32C! eep!).  Still, it was still nice to clean off somewhat.

George cooked a very nomm roast dinner, and later we watched Mythbusters and then played Carcassonne (Ark of the Covenant edition (which I won by like 39 points or something)) and a few games of Fluxx.  I quite like Fluxx it's a fun game and you don't get too hung up about winning strategies (because the goal of the game keeps changing).  You win pretty much by luck only, which makes it just kinda fun.

Didn't sleep quite as well last night, but not too badly.

So yesterday I got ready then hopped in the car and drove to Sydney.  Stopping once for petrol and once for morning tea and a toiley break at Maccas in Goulburn.  Passed a sneaky speed camera trap parked in bushes just over a rise.  Checked my speed and it was pretty much exactly 110, phew :)

Got to my old work at lunch time to find they had already wandered up the road without me :(  But at least they hadn't ordered.  Got a caesar salad thinking it'd be lighter than my usual chicken kiev but it still filled me up heaps!!  Wandered back to the office to discover really not much as changed.  Stuff that's been in the same places for years was all still there!  The server room was pretty much unchanged.  More clutter in there, a few new servers, and a few servers that had been turned off.  The biggest change was all the new people heh.  Stacks of new people there, scary.



Hung around there for a bit, then wandered out to Paramatta to see the new cia offices.  Pretty swishy!  Although parking there sucks :( 



Left with Kirk and we wandered back to Ric's place.  Had a beer there before going for a walk to the Italian Forum, going to Caesars for dinner. 



I had a mushroom pasta thing (pappardelle alla funghi or something) which was quite yummy, but unfortunately I was still full from lunch, so didn't feel like eating it :(  Ric got a marinara and Kirk got a meat platter.  Was all pretty good.  Stayed chatting for a while before we wandered back to Ric's and then I left.





Survived the Warringah Expressway (I really hate that bit of road, you never know what lane to be in and constantly have to change lanes to keep on going straight ahead :( ), and arrived at James and George's a bit before midnight.  Chatted for a bit before collapsing into bed.  Can't believe how solidly I slept - closed my eyes and it was night, opened them and it was morning.  Have no memories of being awake in the night at all.  Pretty cool :)

The '/" key on this laptop is broken - very distressing!! :(

2008 was certainly a momentous year in the life of Kazza.

The first big news story of the year was that I got married to Stu in April.  I spent several months planning the thing, and planned pretty much everything myself.  In the end, the day went pretty successfully and everyone seemed to have a nice time.  I got the wedding I wanted for the most part, although I did get very stressed out by the reception venue, and they ruined the enjoyment of the reception for me.

Following the wedding we took off on our honeymoon, spending a night in Japan, then a month touring Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic.  Took six and a half thousand photos between us and generally had a blast.  Lots of places we'd like to go back to!

The other really big news story of the year is that we bought a house here in Canberra.  And seemingly at just the right time - right in the midst of the world financial crisis which was very scary, but the subsequent drop in interest rates will save us something like $12000 per year!!!  We still have a couple of messy rooms, but are very much enjoying the house and we've had several groups of people stay with us.

Work has been a bit variable.  The first couple of months of the year I was still feeling very overwhelmed by the place, yet didn't have too much to do so was very lost.  After the honeymoon I was put on call, which meant learning a lot of things by being thrown in the deep end.  I was also dumped on severely with work, and found it very stressful from time to time.  Can't see any sign of letup any time soon :(  After a particularly crap day one night in July, I starting drinking with the guys earlier than usual and finished relatively late, which really launched the weekly drinking sessions (which up until that time had been a lot shorter and quieter). 

Other travelling included the trip over new years last year to visit Chay and David, a weekend at the coast with Scott and Kerry, a weekend in Sydney in March and another in July to attend my Nana's 80th birthday party, visit James and George, and see Stu's grandmother and aunties.  Two days and ten hours of driving was pretty tiring.  Chay and David came down just after Christmas to stay, which meant we spent two new years in a row with them which would have been cooler had I not collapsed in a grumpy/depressed heap. 

In fish news, we cut the number of tanks from fourteen down to seven.  Fourteen was far too much work and fish were getting severly neglected.  Seven is a bit more manageable but we may still cull further.  Moving all the tanks to our new house was definitely not fun, but we got most fish moved with only a few casualties.  One of my original angel fishies is still alive, making her six years old now.  She has appreciated the big water change of the move and laid several batches of eggs after the move.

Eating out, we tried a few various restaurants.  We discovered Satis in Watson in the middle of winter.  Satis is vegetarian and we have been there three or four times, although not since we moved.  Then there is the Kingsland vegan restaurant in Dickson which is fantastic.  Have only been there twice, but will definitely be going again.  And Fortune Box in Gungahlin is still a favourite shopping day lunch spot.  Bella Vista in Belconnen and the Dumpling Inn in Jamison are favourites as well.  Fanciest restaurant we visited all year was Watersedge on Lake Burley Griffin.  This was two weeks before the wedding after I'd had my hair and makeup trial, so we got dressed up and went out for dinner.  Was very nice, but of course very expensive!

We tried to see Stu's brother every week for a "sci-fi" night.  We watched all of Firefly, Serenity and some Battlestar Galactica.  But towards the end of the year this all got too hard.  Hopefully we'll do something next year.

Movies seen this year:

• Juno - pretty good, if a little unrealistic
  
• Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - fun but too ridiculous and too much on the "yeah right" scale
  
• Appleseed Saga: Ex Machina - very well done, but hard to keep up with the subtitles and watch all the action
  
• The Dark Knight - good movie, but dark and very long
  
• Quantum of Solace - ok, was too tied to the last movie
  
• Australia - very enjoyable, but very long (really it's two stories back to back), so don't know how would stand up to repeated viewings
  

And finally, a few other snippets:

• This blog had its 5th blogiversary and was celebrated with a new design
• Visited the Planetarium before it closed and met Andrew
• Little Squishy was born
• Went to the balloon fiesta
• Bought an Eee PC
• Set off fireworks on cracker night
• Went to a six-day SANS course
• Got excited by snow falling in Canberra!
• Went to an astronomy night at Mt Stromlo
• Went to two trivia nights - one with Nat and Andrew, and one at work
• Had the house wired with cat 6 by my brother and Shane and Chris
  
• Took the booze train to Tarago
• Played Zone 3 for the first time and actually won a game
• Big family Christmas with all of Stu's family and Kerry's family
  

So that's about it for another year.  Hoping to be a little more organised next year and more relaxed about life...