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80s meme

You Know You Grew Up In The 80s if:

  1. You can sing the rap to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and can do the Carlton
    No. In fact, that particular show was one of the things which made me realise how seriously fucked our culture was getting.
  2. Girls wore biker shorts under their skirts and felt stylishly sexy.
    I wouldn't know how they felt. Probably a tad warm where I grew up.
  3. Two words: Hammer Pants
    Big pants, yo, stop, hammer time. I was always kind of amused how the baggy pants covered up his energetic leg moves. It kind of defeated the point, really.
  4. If you ever watched "Fraggle Rock"
    Dance your cares away *clap clap*...
  5. You had plastic streamers on your handle bars... and spokey-dokes or playing cards on your spokes for that incredible sound effect
    No streamers, but I had a couple of spokey dokes - mainly for the challenge of not going slowly enough to hear them.
  6. You can sing the entire theme song to "Duck Tales" (Woo ooh!)
    No, but I can hear the tune in my head.
  7. It was actually worth getting up early on a Saturday to watch cartoons.
    YES!
  8. You wore a ponytail on the side of your head.
    No, but I know someone who did...
  9. You saw the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the big screen..and still know the turtles names.
    Donatello (purple), fought with a bo staff and was the gadget/geeky one. Michaelangelo (orange), fought with nunchucks and was the comic relief. Rapheal (red), fought with paired sai and was the cynical/sarky one. Leonardo (blue), fought with paired katana and was the leader.
  10. You played the game "MASH"(Mansion, Apartment, Shelter, House)
    No, dunno what you're on about there.
  11. You wore stonewashed Jordache jean jackets and were proud of it.
    I think I may have had stonewashed jeans at some point, but that's about it.
  12. L.A. Gear....need I say more?
    I have a vague memory, but I think the general concept was 'anything with "LA" in the name must be cooler than anything produced in Australia'.
  13. You know the profound meaning of "WAX ON, WAX OFF"
    Banzai, Daniel-san.
  14. You wanted to be a Goonie.
    Not sure how, but the Goonies passed me by. I was aware of them, my friends had the poster. But I don't think I've ever seen the movie.
  15. You ever wore fluorescent clothing.
    Probably, yeah. Although I think it was fluoro *plus black*.
  16. You can remember what Michael Jackson looked like before his nose fell off and his cheeks shifted.
    Yeah, but I need to see a photo of it now to call it to mind ;)
  17. You have ever pondered why Smurfette was the only female smurf.
    Yep, and why did only Papa Smurf get to wear colour?
  18. You still get the urge to say "NOT" after every sentence.
    Shhhyah! And monkeys might fly out of my butt!
  19. You remember Hypercolor t-shirts.
    Yep. I think I got about three wears out of it before the Queensland heat killed it. Ever notice that they always settled back to the crappier of the two colours?
  20. You thought She-ra (Princess of Power!) and He-Man should hook up.
    No, actually they both pretty much shat me off.
  21. You thought your childhood friends would never leave because you exchanged handmade friendship bracelets.
    Umm, no. I remember people making friendship pins though.
  22. You remember owning roller skates.
    No. Didn't go skating much.
  23. You ever got seriously injured on a Slip and Slide.
    No, but I'd say that was dumb luck.
  24. You've gone through this nodding your head in agreement.
    Mostly, anywya :)
  25. You remember Popples.
    No. Actually I first read that as 'Poppies' and they were more 90s.
  26. Don't worry, be happy
    Not the worst song ever, but it really made a lame bumper sticker.
  27. You remember watching both Gremlins movies.
    No actually. I'm not sure I've even seen both Gremlins movies.
  28. You thought Doogie Howser/Samantha Micelli was hot.
    Ahhh, no, sorry.
  29. You remember Alf, the lil furry brown alien from Melmac.
    HAAAAAAAAharrharr!
  30. You remember New Kids on the Block when they were cool...and don't even flinch when people refer to them as "NKOTB"
    Wooooo-oooo-oooo-oooo-oooo. Hanging tough. It does get a twitch though.
  31. You know all the words to Bon Jovi - SHOT THROUGH THE HEART (YOU GIVE LOVE A BAD NAME).
    \m/ \m/
  32. You just sang those words to yourself.
    Oh bugger. Yeah.
  33. You remember Homemade Levi shorts.
    Nope.
  34. You remember when people thought mullets were cool!
    I don't think people thought they were cool, although I suspect they thought they were fashionable.
  35. You had a mullet!
    Nope.
  36. You tight rolled your jeans.
    Don't think so. Sounds pretty painful.
  37. You owned a banana clip.
    I suspect this is another question for the girls.
  38. You're still singing shot through the heart in your head, aren't you!
    Umm. Yes. But it's one of those stick-in-your-head songs, whether you like it or not.

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holy crap

Road network in chaos | The Courier-Mail: TWO inner-city freeway onramps and parts of the Riverside Expressway and North Quay have been closed until at least the end of the week after engineers discovered a new concrete crack.

I occasionally wondered what would happen if the Riverside Expressway was closed. Seriously, Brisbane's road system is in trouble and that entire expressway needs to be seriously upgraded. No politician would ever willingly cause that kind of disruption. It would actually take a collapse to get the population to buy it.

Kind of glad I don't have to do that commute any more..! ;)

weekend

  • Friday night - drinks after work. People kept handing me beer, it was awesome. I didn't know if I'd been paid yet, which was not so awesome.
  • Saturday - got paid and got broadband, which was awesome.
  • Then left the house and wandered to Festivals of Japan, saw some incredible drummers but baked in the heat. All the stalls seemed to be 'come visit Japan' travel agenty stuff though, which was disappointing. So we left.
  • Met up with friends from Brisbane and caught the ferry to Manly for dinner and drinks at the Manly Wharf Hotel. Good, but they stuffed up our order which put a dampener on things. Then we went to Max Brenner and people damaged themselves with chocolate. Started a walk along the beach afterwards but realised the howling gale was making things too cold! Ferry back was interesting, people outside kept screaming as they got covered in spray.
  • Got home, set up broadband then both of us stayed up stupidly late on the net. It was not a good idea! Realised we'd also missed Bloodlust in favour of the Manly expedition. I don't regret the choice, but I do still feel the need for some stompy tunes and a room full of people who appreciate them :)
  • Sunday - Got up and went to late breakfast with friends from Brisbane. Waddled off to the Rocks Markets; bought a dragon artwork (it's being framed, need to go pick it up). Then headed out to Oxford Street for continued shopping.
  • When the feet gave out, it was time to head back for high tea at the Victorian Tea House (or something), which was fun. Incredible interior, you just wouldn't know it was there.
  • Monday - no hot water this morning :( Day kind of went downhill from there (although the office prank did put a little bit of spark into the morning). But! things picked up when we...
  • Met up with more friends from Brisbane and went and damaged ourselves with chocolate at Max Brenner again! The original plan also called for another mission to the noodle markets, but they piked and ate at the hotel instead.
  • I parked by stopping and reversing half a block back up the street, to avoid driving for about a year to get back the same distance. Shit. I think I'm turning into a Sydney driver!

sweet, sweet connection

Finally we have broadband. Huzzah! *plugs network cable into arm*

Man, all web developers should be stuck on dialup for a month. That'd teach us to use big images and heavy scripting. Feh!

Gmail kept giving slightly snarky messages like - and this is pretty close to the exact words - this seems to be taking a long time, do you want to switch to the plain HTML version? Take it from me, it didn't help. Google's authentication is a particular weak point - that will often fail on a slow connection.

Flickr was not fun on dialup and you can forget YouTube. Download the latest episode of The Chaser? NO chance. Hell, even system updates were crapping out.

So, hurrah for broadband!

yep, still alive!

Still no fucking broadband. Bloody Telstra have been cheaping out in my new neighbourhood and installing some cheaparse not-copper solution (pair or RIM or something). So the initial ADSL application got rejected. Instead of doing the obvious and checking if they could swap our line with someone else's copper-but-not-being-used-for-ADSL line... Tardstra just rejected the job. So now we wait another week for them to come out again.

So anyway, this post is trickling out via the 56k modem - glad I kept it. I really do feel disconnected without broadband, kinda sad but kinda not. My people are split to the four winds and the net provides contact with them. Dialup doesn't really keep up.

So... other than trying to get broadband connected, some stuff has indeed been happening:

  • Unit turned out to have been trashed by previous tenants. The carpet was replaced just before we moved in, which would have been great if the carpet guy had vacuumed up the masses of fibre offcuts.
  • The first Monday morning found me dressed for my first day at the new job, frantically trying to vacuum the unit (with a borrowed vacuum cleaner - ours was on the truck). It was all quite absurd and probably helped keep me from freaking out with nerves.
  • Real estate agent sent extremely weird cleaner to clean the unit, on the same morning. He didn't seem to grasp the concept of 'the removalists will be here in 20 minutes please get your own vacuum cleaner out and start in the other rooms'. How L resisted the urge to throw him down the garbage chute I do not know.
  • In the middle of cleaners, removalists and me running off to my first day; L got a job offer! So now she works at the College of Fine Art (COFA), surrounding by crazy academics and arteeests.
  • Apparently cockroaches are a problem in Sydney. Far more so when the previous tenants were grotty little fuckers (everyone from the real estate agent to the maintenance guy clearly hated them). Looking forward to getting properly unpacked so we can get full pest control done (initial treatment plus lots of baits has made some progress, but the full treatment will be better). Locals advise that the best solution is 'weird packets of stuff from chinese supermarkets', which we will seek out this weekend.
  • Removalists broke and damaged stuff, including my prized silver outdoor table and both our white bookshelves. They managed to punch the shaft straight through the base of my metal table - quite a feat, really. Allied Pickfords, the careful movers indeed! They're not worth the price apparently. We'll see how we go claiming on their insurance.
  • So apart from all that, the unit has some good points. It does have a large city glimpse from the lounge/kitchen; and we're about a minute's walk from the maritime museum etc... and most of that minute is spent waiting to cross at the lights. Two minute walk to work is quite a novelty as well.
  • The noise of stuff clanging down the garbage chute hasn't stopped amusing me so far. I know, simple things for simple minds.
  • Web Directions South was incredible. I got a lot of great feedback about my presentation and have been tagged frighteningly helpful... so I'll take that as a good thing :) There's an ever-increasing raft of photos on Flickr of web standards geeks getting thoroughly trashed. Yes, including me...
  • Only down side of WD06 is that it had to end. Really weird feeling was actually staying here while other people left - not quite used to being 'a local' :)
  • OK, so when you move to Sydney and your team makes the NRL grand final... it's either a sign, or at least a happy coincidence. In any case, when the ref blew full time on the semi-final I got on the phone to my dad. Long story short, he flew down and we went to the grand final together! GO BRONCOS!!! :) Being there as your team wins the Grand Final... as a fan it doesn't get much better :) Plus it was Webcke's last game and I was pleased to be there for that too.
  • So, the new job! Well actually with WD06 and the public holiday I'm still in that awful early stage of not knowing enough about systems etc to be really productive. That aside, it seems to be going ok. There seem to be some really exciting things in the pipeline so I'm trying to stay positive and ignore my moments of feeling totally stupid. A lot of the sites are a real mess so maintenance tasks can be bloody awful, which isn't helping.
  • Although not as social as the Griffith crowd, people seem pretty friendly. There have been a few lunch missions - lots of options around here, compared with Griffith at least. Today was cheap-but-good sandwhiches sitting beside the water at Darling Harbour. The weather has actually been really nice; wonderful blue skies without being horribly hot.
  • Yesterday we had a knowledge sharing meeting in the afternoon with some of the web guys at Westpac. We finished with sunset drinks on their 23rd floor terrace overlooking Darling Harbour. I could literally say 'I can see my house from here!' :)
  • Tonight I finally found the Broncos spirit glasses I was given when I left Griffith, so I cracked open the single malt scotch I was given when I left Griffith :) Damn fine stuff. The Broncos mug is already in residence at work - someone has to fly the flag, especially since I'm just next to some of the Fox Sports guys.

Anyway, I should go and get some sleep. I'm hoping to get some emails out to people when time and energy allows; but hey feel free to drop us a line if you have a moment :)