Back at work I thought I'd tidy up a little documentation so that I could add some IPV6 stuff to it.  Ha.  I'd underestimated how much there was to do, and ended up spending all day on it.  Whoops.

Work.  Yeah, busy.  What else is new.

Tuesday the sweetie and I had a flex day off together which was pretty awesome.  My plan for half the day was to pull out the old amplifier and replace it with the new one we bought last weekend.  But by the time I'd pulled everything out, cleaned it all, cabled everything up, and put it all back together, it was mid afternoon.  And by the time we got the amp configured it was 4pm :(  So what started off as a great day (take a random day off work - highly recommended!) became a bit frustrating at the end.  And I don't even have any documentary evidence of my work :(

Tuesday night we met Peter at the Dumpling Inn for dinner.  We had our usual shredded beef peking style, chinese broccoli, and something we hadn't tried - bbq lamb in shantung sauce.  That was a bit heavy, and not as good as the other stuff.  But we all had room for dessert!

Also on Tuesday our new buffet arrived.  So we moved that last night to its position in the lounge room.  The contents to adorn the top of it are still being decided upon ;)

Today I mostly just felt blah and not inspired to do anything much (like the whole cleaning of the house that I need to do).  So just read news feeds, organised photos and did a jigsaw I started on the last coast trip.

It took us *forever* to get up the mountain too, as they were forcing chain fittings just before Smiggins (Steve has an all-wheel-drive so at least we didn't have to do that).  So didn't get on the snow til 9:50am.

The morning was snowy and very cloudy, so terrible visibility from having goggles covered in snow and melted snow as well as no contrast.  The afternoon was basically hailing - little balls of very solid snow/ice.  So the day was pretty miserable.  But it did clear a bit later in the afternoon, with visibility much better, so actually enjoyed the last couple of hours.

Red in the morning, shepherd's warning?

Today discovered that the GPS turned itself off at lunch time.  Don't know if the sudden change in temperature/humidity after lunch confused it, or if it got switched off by accident.  Who knows.  But it would have been pretty boring anyway with only Perisher in the morning and Smiggins in the afternoon, so no huge loss (other than not knowing how many runs I did since some of the lifts don't have RFID on them).

Now for the next step.. culling them down for slideshows..!

I was a fan :)

"...ish", their first album was (and still is) one of my favourite albums of all time.  "The Other Side" I got as well but it didn't grab me in the same way.

I had this poster of them up in my room (at least I think I did, I don't have any photographic evidence)

I decorated the whole back of my Year 11/12 school folder with a poster of the band.

I carried a picture of Eric around in my wallet.

I saw them live twice.  The first time was at the NSW Institute of Sport at Homebush, probably in 1990.  We sat on the side and I meticulously wrote down every song they played.  The second time was at the Sutherland Entertainment Centre, aka "The Bop" one Friday night in 1991.  I was quite close to the stage that night but got annoyed at a girl in front who kept bopping sideways, alternately obstructing my view.

Then they disappeared.

The next mention I saw of them was over last new years in Sydney - they were to be the support act for Roxette.  But that was in Sydney and all too hard.

Then a few weeks ago Mix106.3 announced that they were coming to Canberra.  I put out a notice on the blog, but the only two people that showed any initial interest decided they weren't really interested after all.  I didn't really want to go by myself, so it all got too hard.  The sweetie said he'd go with me if I really wanted him to, but I was thinking as of the day of the concert that I probably wouldn't go.

But then late yesterday afternoon I asked Neil if I should ask if there were any tickets left and he said yes.  So I called and they still had tickets left, so I bought two!  At which point Windy came by and said Nanette and her friends were going and he actually might have been interested if he could find babysitting.  So he arranged that - win!

So he picked me up and we went and dropped off the laptop and on call phone to Neil (thanks Neil!!) and off we went.

We arrived a bit after eight and picked up my tickets.  We had 399 and 400.

They'd said on the phone earlier that doors would probably open around 8:15.  Met up with the others and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  In the end they didn't let us upstairs til ~8:50pm :(  But because we were in the foyer right by the stairs, we were among the first to go up!  So of course we took up position right in front of the stage :)

Then we waited some more.

We were even close enough to see the set list for the night..

Which translated is:

Finally, a bit after 9:30, they came out!!

It took me mere seconds to realise I was going to need earplugs.  I could *feel* the music, and the wind from the speakers.  And as soon as the guitars started I knew I was going to get deafened and stressed.  So put in the earplugs and that worked well.

So as it turns out, Eric (now known as Erik) is the only original member of the band left.  Everyone else is new.  When I saw 1927 the first two times, they were actually a little boring - they just all stood there and played their songs.  Erik seems to have relaxed quite a bit these days - he seems more like a muso just enjoying what he does.  There wasn't a whole lot of interaction with the crowd though.  

So I sang along to the songs I knew, and took photos during songs I didn't...

After the show we hung around a bit comparing photos.  I went and bought myself a tshirt and their latest cd.  And the keyboardist (above) came out, so Nanette dragged me over to get an autograph :)  I asked if the rest of the band would be out, and he said probably in around fifteen minutes.  So we hung around.

So worth it!!!

OMG I got to hug Erik!!!!!!

Very squeeeeeee ;)

And I got my cd autographed by the whole band :):):)

So thanks Neil for the kick in the butt to get tickets, and looking after on call for me, it was a totally awesome night :):):):)

The cafe is super dog-friendly - they even have a section on the menu for dogs!

There was Donkey Kong to be played (sadly the batteries were going, so couldn't see really well enough to play it properly)

The usual suspects (lots of others too, just not great photos heh)

I had a cheesy spinach calzone which was yummy

Damien had an enormous bowl of cheesy wedges

The service was a bit sporadic.  Actually it was completely inefficient and some people had finished eating by the time other people got food.  But they did very nicely split the bill up, even though it said on their menus they don't do that.  So that was nice of them.

We sat outside which was lovely in the sun, although a little chilly when clouds came over.

Lovely lunch catchup, happy birthday Damien! :)

We started with Bananagram.  Nat won two and Andrew won one.

Then Carcassonne which Nat won, but I got a bit depressed because they kept screwing me over so I couldn't finish cities.

Then a couple of games of Flux.  Nat won one, can't remember who won the other.

Then I went through several years of photos finding stuff that we'd all been to together and copying them for them.

Good fun night :)

Here's a couple of fun things..

My geotagging of Legoland in Denmark.  The big cluster of blue is "miniland"

The big circle across the globe.  Copenhagen->Zurich then Zurich->Narita

This is the furthest north I've ever been on (or above) the planet.  68 degrees, 29 minutes, 29 seconds.

And a photo taken near that northernmost point.

EXIF Date Changer to the rescue!

This little app gets in and adjusts the EXIF data in photos to whatever offset you need it to be.  It can also rename the photos as it goes to have the date/timestamp in the filename, which is what I do with all my photos.

So now all his photos should have the correct local time, and match up with all of mine.

Busy day today.  Finished geotagging all 18701 of my holiday photos.  Still have my parents' photos to do.  Rotated theirs today and had a look at them all (first time I'd ever actually seen them).  Also time spent cleaning the house (not that you could tell :/ ) and cooking dinner (a pork belly, following the recent Coles magazine suggestion to cook it skin down for the first 2/3 of the cooking time.  It turned out pretty well).  

Tonight I went to find our spare house keys for Peter, but can't find them anywhere :(:(:(:(

Edit.. just found them ... under piles and piles of crap :/

Oh, and still can't find anyone to go to 1927 with .. seems noone of my demographic in Canberra ..