Look Ma, no cord! With the help of a downloaded patch, our wireless internet connection now works, and I'm blogging from bed. Sweet!

We tried a new Mexican restaurant tonight, Los Amates in Fitzroy, as part of the monthly Dems Abroad meeting. It was just okay. We think the problem may be getting the necessary ingredients imported into a country with very tight agricultural import restrictions. Poblano peppers just do not exist here.

I really don't understand how Bush is still doing so well in the polls. It seems so obvious to anyone paying attention, Democrats and Republicans alike, that this man is the worst president our country has ever seen. It's mystifying to me. Are that many Americans really that stupid? I just keep hoping that on November 2 America proves the pollers wrong and elects Kerry in a landslide victory.
Oh, and if you haven't seen the video from Jon Stewart on Crossfire you owe it to yourself to check it out. Jon Stewart's on my hero list this week.

Fight the liberals! On another blog I commented that for the next election a foundation should be started to collect money from conservatives in the US to "help fight the Liberals in Australia!" (the Liberal party here actually being the conservatives). So he took the idea and ran with it. Too funny.

Atlanta, 1996. The Olympics are in town. At a neighborhood restaurant I end up dining at the next table over from Pierre Salinger. This is a year before his ignominious exit from ABC news.

I remember thinking, wow, those are some eyebrows.

I mention it only because I only rarely have brushes with greatness and now it seems he has died.

Laika Update: She's settling in well to her life here. Our afternoon routine usually consists of going to the off-leash dog park where she can run around like mad with the other dogs. She already has more friends here than we do, and it's very nice to see that she gets along well with other dogs. Today we went to the off leash beach where we ran into one of her park buddies and she was able to run like mad on the beach and in the water (definitely a waterbaby), and eat lots of disgusting things like starfish.
She's a funny girl, and she's fairly well behaved. We just need to work on a few things.

In other news, I'm looking hard for a job. Hopefully I'll get an interview soon. And we both really like Melbourne. I think once we get settled in, with two jobs and furniture, we'll be really content.

I love articles like this: Endangered species: US programmers. To quote in part:

Since the dotcom bust in 2000-2001, nearly a quarter of California technology workers have taken nontech jobs, according to a study of 1 million workers released last week by Sphere Institute, a San Francisco Bay Area public policy group. The jobs they took often paid less.

What they don't realize is that the quarter of the programmers they said were forced to take other jobs were the quarter who didn't belong there in the first place. The business was overrun by people from other fields who had no business or aptitude for the subject, but just wanted their piece of the pie in the dotcom boom. At my old job we rejected hundreds if not thousands of applicants.

Anyway, I really do love articles like that, because they tend to discourage other career opportunists. And as for offshoring, I know a lot of companies that have tried it once, but not many that have tried it twice.

My job here seems to be going exceedingly well, all in all. It's a good bunch of people, and they seem to be really happy with the work I'm doing. I've gotten my groove back, and have also discovered the key to happiness at work, for me: stop screwing around on the net. I've had jobs in the past with free reign to surf at will, and it's a dangerous lure. Without it I'm considerably more productive, and more content as a result.

This new work philosophy comes at a price, though; in idle moments where formerly I would wander out on the web, I now take to biting my nails. It got bad for a while, but I'm stepping up the battle -- I mark up my hangnails with a ballpoint pen so I don't bite them, and have even taken to covering them with band-aids.

Speed. Hoorah! Just got our DSL connection going. The hardware was delivered this morning, and Marjorie got it set up all by herself (almost). Speed is good. We also got the wireless modem, but are just wired in at the moment. Will try to get the wireless working tomorrow, which will be nice.

Yesterday at the dog park Laika noticed for the first time a metal statue of a dog that sits off to one side. It was hilarious -- she started by barking at it, then circling around it growling with her teeth bared and hackles raised. She was totally freaked out by it.

We're getting to know everyone who goes to the dog park regularly. The people we talk to, but no one knows each other's names, just the names of everyone else's dogs. Funny how that works.

Geek alert. I was reading in a book that the late great physicist Richard Feynman once invented a computer science algorithm for computing logarithms that's still being used. While I can hardly hope to match his brilliance in just about any area, it did remind me of an algorithm I came up with, way back in high school I think, that (as far as I know) is mine (although it's probably been invented independently a number of times). I doubt it's of any serious significance but I like it just the same. So here it is.

I was writing a routine to compute the average of a big list of numbers. The typical way you do it is to just sum the numbers, and divide by the size of your list, like this:


sum <-- 0;
for i <- 1 to n
sum <-- sum + number[i];
average = sum / n;


This routine didn't work for me, because I noticed that sum kept overflowing. But I realized that if you compute the average as you go along, you don't need to keep the the running sum, because sum is always going to be equal to average*i, where i is the number of items you've processed so far. So you can compute a new average by using that as your sum, adding the new number, and dividing by the new count of items, like this:


average <-- 0;
for i <-- 1 to n
average <-- ( average*(i-1) + number[i] ) / i;


But here average*(i-1) can just as easily overflow as the running sum we kept in the first example. However, at this point you can just manipulate the algebra terms so that no big multiplication needs to take place:


average <-- 0;
for i <-- 1 to n
average <-- average - average/i + number[i]/i;


So there you go -- an averaging routine that can compute the average of just about as many numbers as you want without overflowing. I've actually used this in real applications before.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled dog stories.

More language. Some other differences:

Entrée -- here, it means "appetizer" as opposed to main course. This is actually truer to the French meaning, I think.

Reckon, as "I reckon it's dinner time" -- actually this means the same thing back in the states, but it's considered more of a redneck term there. Here, everyone uses it. Except me; I can't bring myself to.

Fillet or filet -- this means the same thing too, but they pronounce it "fill-it" here, instead of "fil-ay".

Slab of beer -- means, a case of beer. I like this.

I also like the official country cheer at sporting events. America's is just "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" which generally gets derisive laughs from other country's fans for its simple-mindedness. But Australia's is just so silly that it practically makes fun of itself: "Aussie Aussie Aussie! Oy Oy Oy!"

The dingo ate my sunglasses. Laika did that yesterday when she was left alone in the house for an hour when I returned our rental car. She also has a tendency to nip at hands and sleeves when she's overexcited. But in general she's a good girl. She's walking fairly well on her leash with the help of her "halti" a mouth harness that works like a choker chain, but more humanely and more effectively. She's funny too. She likes to attack her leash when she's excited on walkies, and in an attempt to remove her halti (which she hates) she's turned more than one somersault in the grass. Inside she has a fondness for flipping her bed over and pulling it to other parts of the room. She's not perfect, but she's got the potential to be a very good dog.
In other news: I found both Kasari cheese and salt bagels here recently. Two items I love but couldn't find in Singapore. Now I just need a job.

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read." (Groucho Marx)

Laika had her first trip into the Albert Park Library today. Yes, into. I tied her up outside -- her first time being left like this -- and went in to get something to read. I was well inside when she broke her leash and came bounding into the library after me. Apparently she has some abandonment issues.

She's a funny girl. She keeps grabbing the side of her bed and dragging it and flipping it over, or sometimes just holding it, or thrashing it around.

All in all, though, not many behavior issues. She nips at you if she's excited by play, and pulls a little on the leash, but for a pound dog, if those are the only problems, that's pretty good. Even those problems should be fixed with the help of obedience class in a few weeks.

Laika came home today. She's two years old (almost) and was surrendered to the pound because her last people had young children and apparently not enough time or patience for her. She's a little unsure of herself here, but she's becoming more confident. We're a little freaked out too- we've waited so long to get a dog that it seems a little unreal that she's actually here and ours.

Her name, Laika, is an homage to the little Russian astronaut dog that went to space on Sputnik 2. Laika (the original) has figured into our thoughts on dogs for quite awhile and we toyed around with the name Sputnik, but Laika fits our girl better.

TV. We have satellite here now. We're not disappointed; many of our favorite shows are in heavy rotation. At any given time, the Simpsons, Frazier, or Seinfeld are on. Marjorie gets a lot of her shows which I don't like; I get a lot of the sports and such that she doesn't (NFL football, English Premier League soccer, etc.).

There's only one Australian show we've latched onto -- Kath and Kim. We actually discovered it while in Singapore though.

Weeknights at 11:30 we get The Naked News, in which women newscasters read the news while they take off their clothes. Full frontal. The news seems to be two weeks old, at least, but no one seems to be complaining. It's actually the least sexy thing you could imagine. Especially when they cover US election news.

For the second time in a month, I am wigging from an intense episode of Six Feet Under. It was the one where David helps the guy who runs out of gas. I had bad dreams about it all last night, and couldn't get it out of my head all day. Is this the best show on TV? Definitely the best acted.

Our new dog--

...is still out there somewhere. We visited the no-kill pound and the RSPCA today, but came home dogless. In a big city like this you'd think there'd be hundreds of dogs available, but there were maybe 20 combined at both places, and none of them were our dog. One at the first place almost was -- a very sweet black lab that was a little gimpy in his hind legs, they think from being crated too long as a puppy. We left to think about it, and later they called us and told us that they decided our living situation wasn't right for the dog, so there you go. We were kind of glad that they resolved it for us.

Vernacular. I've started incorporating some local phrases in my daily speech patterns. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes unconciously. A brief rundown of the more common ones:

"No worries." (Translation: "No problem" or "That's okay" or "You're welcome") Probably the most commonly used Aussie phrase. I've fully assimilated this now, and use it without thinking.

"How are you going?" (Translation: "How are you doing?" or "How is it going?") I say this now pretty commonly too. (Marjorie wondered aloud the other day why the remaining permutation, "How is it doing?" is never used anywhere. Maybe we can start a trend.)

"G'day." (Translation: "Hello") Relatively common. I've never been able to say this.

"Ta." (Translation: "Thank you") I've tried this a few times, but it always feels like I'm saying goodbye, as I think it means in England. It feels almost dismissive to say, especially when you're trying to thank somebody.

"Nice" (Translation: "Good") This still seems odd to me; I'm used to "nice" meaning "friendly". It's odd to be asked if the lunch you had was "nice". To pronounce it in true Kath-and-Kim Aussie style, say "noice".

"Haitch" (Translation: "Aitch", i.e. the letter H) I was advised that this is "low" Australian, but I have yet to encounter an Australian who DOESN'T say it this way.

"Mate" (Translation: "Friend") Marjorie doesn't like this one. I do, but I can't seem to describe my friends as my "mates". It sounds too British to me.

"Good on ya." (Translation: "Well done") I think I've used this a few times.

"Crook" (Translation: "Sick", as in "Mary is crook and will not be in today.") A more obscure one, that I've never used.

One other note about the cold house --

When Marjorie was gone, I found the perfect antidote to sitting around a old, cold, drafty, half-empty house, feeling a little bit lonely: Tom Waits. Specifically, "Alice". The last five songs had me just staring at a wall; I haven't been captivated like that in a while.

Internet at last. Dialup, at least. We got our phone line connected, at last.

The house is still quite lacking in soft edges. Hardwood and tile floors, wooden chairs, and still only an air mattress (we're still waiting for our bed to be delivered). It had never before occurred to me that cushions are a modern necessity.

Last night we escaped up to the bar at the Albert Park to play trivia. Marjorie nailed a bonus question before the whole rest of the bar (Announcer: "Who am I? I was born in 1967 in Smyrna, Georgia..." Marjorie: "Oy! Julia Roberts." The prize: three CDs of DJ mixes of songs by artists we've never heard of.) We did only average overall, but I met a couple of guys who play soccer in the area. The season doesn't start until March, but they might be doing a pick-up game or two soon.

There will be some new softness in the house very soon -- on Saturday we're getting a dog. Marjorie wanted to get this one until she realized that it's in a totally different area of the country. I have no doubt, though, that we'll walk out of the dog adoption place with the dog with the biggest ears.

Unbelievably, my parents and pretty much all of my extended family are busy dodging their fourth hurricane in a month.

My theory is that it's a warning from God not to let the state go Republican again.

Where we've been. No internet access at home means no regular updates. We'll have it hooked up soon, though, I hope.

We're just trying to set up house at the moment. It'll be another two months before our stuff arrives from the states, but in the meanwhile, we have to make the place more livable. It's a great house in a great neighborhood.

Job is going exceedingly well. I've managed to solve some problems that had been plaguing them for weeks, and it looks like there's every chance I'll be hired on at the end of it. We're building an application that ambulance drivers ("ambos", in the local parlance) will run on their tablet computers to enter all the information about the vital signs, treatments, and procedures followed for each case.

I had a good Friday night happy hour last week with about thirty people from work, and chatted with just about everybody. Good buncha folk.

Today the AFL (footy) Grand Final is going on, which is the equivalent of Super Bowl Sunday back home. Strange, but they only had about an hour of pre-game shows. Still, it is quite obvious a HUGE deal here. The town was overrun with people from Adelaide and Brisbane, all wearing their colors. I suppose we should have watched, just as part of our cultural indoctrination.

Camping. The house is empty and cold, and not because there's no furniture. Where is that girl o' mine? I'm hoping for a big strong tailwind for her flight home.

My time at home passes either sleeping on an air mattress on the floor, or huddling on a tiny little canvas chair in front of the TV. There's no point in unpacking our Singapore boxes, since there's no furniture to put anything in. I've turned on the oven once, to toast some bread.