Spring is gone. Literally. I found out today that Australians mark summer as starting the first of December, basing it not on astronomy, but on the months. Strange to me, but when I explained to my cow orkers that summer starts on the 21st for us, their response was "What? Why?".

So now it is officially no longer spring here. On cue, it rained for most of the day.

Our things have apparently finally arrived in Port Melbourne today. However, we shouldn't expect them to be delivered to our house until the week commencing December 13. I'm glad the stuff is here, but I'm more then a little bitter that delivery will take place a full month later than we initially expected.
In other news we saw PJ Harvey last night at Festival Hall in North Melbourne. The venue sucked, strange lighting, not very good sound, but PJ sounded good. Overall, I was a bit disappointed. I was really hoping for a bit more interaction with the audience and maybe an encore duet with Nick Cave (he lives here in Melbourne). Still, Polly Jean's so cool and her voice is amazing.

Spring has sprung, it seems. About time, too, as it's three weeks until summer. With the heat has come the mosquitos (aka mozzies, which seem to love me as much as North American and Asian mosquitoes) and flies. But the weather is still very nice, and there are lots of outdoor cafes and restaurants.

On Saturday we went to a housewarming party/barbecue for one of my cow orkers, on the rooftop deck of her new townhouse. It was beautiful and clear and the full moon made an appearance late. Fun bunch of folks I work with.

Sunday we saw Garden State, which was first-rate.

Tomorrow night, PJ Harvey.

We saw the Finn Brothers last night at the Palais in St. Kilda. It was an excellent show made better because of the brothers' obvious affinity to Melbourne (they both lived here for some time) and to the Palais (where Neil made his live debut with Split Enzs). There was a guest appearance by Paul Hester, former drummer of Crowded House. And towards the end of the show, Neil and Tim were joined onstage by Neil's sons Liam (of Betchadupa) and Elroy, which was very sweet. Most of the set list was material from the new album Everyone is Here, but they also played several from their Crowded House and Split Enzs days including:
Six months In a Leaky Boat
Message to My Girl
I Got You
I See Red
a brief rendition of What's The Matter With You
Dirty Creature
Four Seasons in One Day (which they had to play as the song is in part about Melbourne Weather)
Better Be Home Soon
It's Only Natural
Weather With You
There Goes God
Great show. I'm really glad we went. Hopefully P.J. Harvey will be as excellent next week.

Tonight we are going to Thanksgiving dinner with an American couple we've befriended in our neighbourhood. Should be quite yummy.

Elvis Costello is playing up the road right now, and somehow, I'm not there. It wasn't in the cards this time.

Tomorrow, though, we're off to see the Finn brothers. Front row!

This Thursday, we're invited to a Thanksgiving dinner at the home of some Americans we met. I'm excited. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, or at least my favorite meal.

Then, next week, we have good seats again for PJ Harvey. There are advantages to living in a country that doesn't have the internet saturation of the USA -- you can score good concert tickets if you're among the savvy.

Comparing countries. I made a couple of graphs, just out of curiousity, with a little help from NCES's Create A Graph.

First, here's a comparison of Australia, the USA, and China, in terms of area. Pretty close, yes?

Now, see the graph comparing their population.

The point? I have none. I just think it's interesting.

Book roundup. Recent reads:

Call Of The Wild/White Fang (Jack London). I've read a lot of London, but somehow, never these books. Now that I have a dog I figured it was about time. Good stuff. London knows his dogs.

Great Expectations (Charles Dickens). I'm reading this for historical reasons. Recently I came across a couple of separate references to this novel which refer to it as a cultural phenomenon of its time. Pretty much the whole world, it seems, was reading it when it came out, serialized in a magazine. So I thought I would too.

Singularity Sky (Charles Stross). Science fiction candy. The guy obviously reads Slashdot. Some seriously crazy technical references, not dumbed down. Still, his short stories are better.

Titan (Stephen Baxter). Timely reading. Written in 1997, the story begins with the Cassini/Huygens probe -- which lands a month and a half from now -- finding evidence of life on Saturn's moon Titan.

Odd goings-on at the local Borders. Browsing in the bookstore this evening, I came across a ball-point pen that someone had left on a shelf -- not a skinny, cheap one, but a big fat nice one. I picked it up, and hit the button to push out the tip -- and promptly got shocked. What the...?

Why? What purpose could it serve? My immediate (and far too overdramatic) thought was that it some sort of spy pen, like the briefcase that shoots poison gas at you if you open it wrong. Then I thought, maybe it's a self-defense device, like pepper spray.

Of course, like the dumber maze rat, I had to get shocked a second time before I learned.

An internet search cleared up the mystery; it's just a novelty.

I just hope I wasn't being filmed.

Resuming my job as a cultural ambassador, today I tried a famous Australian "delicacy". Composed of yeast and sea salt, vegemite is typically spread on toast at brekkie. The cafe at work has little packaged individual servings of it (surprisingly to me, made by Kraft). Taking the advice of the Aussies I work with, I spread a very thin amount on my English Muffin. It has the appearance and consistency of gunky axle grease.

Americans notoriously react negatively to it. I thought I might be different; yeast and salt don't sound like a bad combination to me.

I have to say though. Ick.

The other night I proofread fifteen OCR'ed pages of an old book about the influence of ancient Greece on modern times. Why? For Project Gutenberg, a project (started well before the internet) to make publicly available books of interest that are in the public domain. Most of the books had copyrights that expired, or were old enough that they were never copyrighted. Check out some of the amazing books that are available for you to browse or download.

I'm very depressed. We just found out that we should expect to wait another two weeks for our things to arrive. They are already overdue. We were told the move would take 45-65 days, now it looks like it will be 85 days. I believe this is breach of contract, but since they still have our things I'm reluctant to complain (yet).
We are so sick of not having anything. Camping at home was old a month ago, now it's becomming unbearable. And we have a good 15-20 days left.

Music. I think I've mentioned here a few times my plan to have a home music server where I would just start downloading everything, without even considering the quality. There'd be a lot I would never listen to -- but, so? Memory is relatively cheap; I think the tendency to be discriminating is merely a holdover from a time where a large number of albums would require lots of money and space.

Well, here's a story about a guy who's trying to do it. His goals are, at least on the surface, more noble; he claims to be an archivist. Interesting, though.

It's funny, 'cuz it's true. Today's Overboard. 2.4 seconds is maybe a bit of an exaggeration, but this morning Laika wolfed her bowl of food in under 30 seconds.

The comics I keep thinking about in relation to her, though, are a series of classic Far Sides. It's obvious that Gary Larson knows his dogs:

1. The one with the two dogs watching their food being prepared, with big smiles. The one dog says to the other, "Oh boy, it's dog food again!"

2. The one where the dog is picking up another dog for a date, and he says to her, "You look lovely tonight, Alice -- and whatever you rolled in sure does stink."

3. The one where the dog is riding in the car, and you can see that outside a nuclear bomb has gone off, and people are running around screaming in terror. The dog, though, is looking at another dog, who's just sitting there on the sidewalk. The caption reads, "Suddenly, Sparky saw something that interested her."

It's Friday evening here, and pretty nice out. We're sitting out in the backyard now because it's supposed to be rainy and cold again this weekend. Phoo. We just cooked up an awesome Mexican meal of soft tacos and beans, with Coronas on the side. Marjorie is reading over my shoulder and the dog is sitting next to me chewing noisily on a piece of bone.

Our stuff is supposed to arrive in port on the 17th, and then spend God knows how long in quarantine. But soon. We simply CANNOT WAIT.

We did get a box of groceries that Marjorie mailed from the states. Customs confiscated some of the stuff, like the black bean mix (because, apparently, it had chicken in it) and a Sante Fe rice mix, presumably because of the corn. They are seriously uptight about agricultural imports here.

The IOCCC winners have been posted; mine is under "schnitzi". Ah, the sweet buzz of fame. Actually, I haven't even shown it to anyone at work.

No chance to see the aurora last night. Actually, the sky was clear and blue in the morning when I woke up, so I missed my chance, I think.

It struck me earlier today how much the "Woy-yoy-yo"s in Bob Marley's "Buffalo Soldier" sound like the theme song to The Banana Splits. Coincidence? Conspiracy?

There's a chance that I'll be able to see something tonight that's on my Life List of Things To See. Heavy sunspot activity means that the aurora australis (a.k.a. the southern lights) should be visible from here tonight. If the weather cooperates, which it isn't. Bummer.

This is really interesting to me:

Democrats
* Richard Gephardt: Air National Guard, 1965-71.
* David Bonior: Staff Sgt., Air Force 1968-72.
* Tom Daschle: 1st Lt., Air Force SAC 1969-72.
* Al Gore: enlisted Aug. 1969; sent to Vietnam Jan. 1971 as an army journalist in 20th Engineer Brigade.
* Bob Kerrey: Lt. j.g. Navy 1966-69; Medal of Honor, Vietnam.
* Daniel Inouye: Army 1943-47; Medal of Honor, WWII.
* John Kerry: Lt., Navy 1966-70; Silver Star, Bronze Star with CombatV, Purple Hearts.
* Charles Rangel: Staff Sgt., Army 1948-52; Bronze Star, Korea.
* Max Cleland: Captain, Army 1965-68; Silver Star & Bronze Star, Vietnam.
* Ted Kennedy: Army, 1951-53.
* Tom Harkin: Lt., Navy, 1962-67; Naval Reserve, 1968-74.
* Jack Reed: Army Ranger, 1971-1979; Captain, Army Reserve 1979-91.
* Fritz Hollings: Army officer in WWII; Bronze Star and seven campaign ribbons.
* Leonard Boswell: Lt. Col., Army 1956-76; Vietnam, DFCs, Bronze Stars, and Soldier's Medal.
* Pete Peterson: Air Force Captain, POW. Purple Heart, Silver Star and Legion of Merit.
* Mike Thompson: Staff sergeant, 173rd Airborne, Purple Heart.
* Bill McBride: Candidate for Fla. Governor. Marine in Vietnam; Bronze Star with Combat V.
* Gray Davis: Army Captain in Vietnam, Bronze Star.
* Pete Stark: Air Force 1955-57
* Chuck Robb: Marine, served in Vietnam
* Howell Heflin: Silver Star
* George McGovern: Silver Star & DFC during WWII.
* Bill Clinton: Did not serve. Student deferments. Entered draft but received #311.
* Jimmy Carter: Seven years in the Navy.
* Walter Mondale: Army 1951-1953
* John Glenn: WWII and Korea; six DFCs and Air Medal with 18 Clusters.
* Tom Lantos: Served in Hungarian underground in WWII. Saved by Raoul Wallenberg.

Republicans
* Dick Cheney: did not serve. Several deferments, the last by marriage.
* Dennis Hastert: did not serve.
* Tom Delay: did not serve.
* Roy Blunt: did not serve.
* Bill Frist: did not serve.
* Mitch McConnell: did not serve.
* Rick Santorum: did not serve.
* Trent Lott: did not serve.
* John Ashcroft: did not serve. Seven deferments to teach business.
* Jeb Bush: did not serve.
* Karl Rove: did not serve.
* Saxby Chambliss: did not serve. "Bad knee." The man who questioned Max Cleland's patriotism.
* Paul Wolfowitz: did not serve.
* Vin Weber: did not serve.
* Richard Perle: did not serve.
* Douglas Feith: did not serve.
* Eliot Abrams: did not serve.
* Richard Shelby: did not serve.
* Jon! Kyl: did not serve.
* Tim Hutchison: did not serve.
* Christopher Cox: did! not serve.
* Newt Gingrich: did not serve.
* Don Rumsfeld: served in Navy (1954-57) as flight instructor.
* George W. Bush: failed to complete his six-year National Guard; got assigned to Alabama so he could campaign for family friend running for U.S. Senate; failed to show up for required medical exam, disappeared from duty; campaign workers and guardsman alike claim never to have seen him in Alabama.
* Ronald Reagan: due to poor eyesight, served in a non-combat role making movies.
* B-1 Bob Dornan: Consciously enlisted after fighting was over in Korea.
* Phil Gramm: did not serve.
* John McCain: Silver Star, Bronze Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart and Distinguished Flying Cross.
* Dana Rohrabacher: did not serve.
* John M. McHugh: did not serve.
* JC Watts: did not serve.
* Jack Kemp: did not serve. "Knee problem," although continued in NFL for 8 years.
* Dan Quayle: Journalism unit of the Indiana National Guard.
* Rudy Giuliani: did not serve.
* George Pataki: did not serve.
* Spencer Abraham: did not serve.
* John Engler: did not serve.
* Lindsey Graham: National Guard lawyer.
* Arnold Schwarzenegger: AWOL from Austrian army base.

Pundits & Preachers
* Sean Hannity: did not serve.
* Rush Limbaugh: did not serve (4-F with a 'pilonidal cyst.')
* Bill O'Reilly: did not serve.
* Michael Savage: did not serve.
* George Will: did not serve.
* Chris Matthews: did not serve.
* Paul Gigot: d id not serve.
* Bill Bennett: did not serve.
* Pat Buchanan: did not serve.
* John Wayne: did not serve.
* Bill Kristol: did not serve.
* Kenneth Starr: did not serve.
* Antonin Scalia: did not serve.
* Clarence Thomas: did not serve.
* Ralph Reed: did not serve.
* Michael Medved: did not serve.
* Charlie Daniels: did not serve.

I found this on Tom's blog, and don't really know how accurate it is, but it seems to match up with what I already knew.
BTW: Where is Colin Powell? Has he been heard from at all in the last several months. He seemed amazingly absent from the campaign. I suspect his conscience has kept him away.

Mall rats. Today we took a train a good ways out of town just to go to a mall. Marjorie convinced me by showing me on their website that they had a Wendy's, my favorite fast food. It turned out to be really quite a huge mall, and we had big stupid grins on our faces as we arrived, which we attribute to our being American. There's something fundamental in the American psyche that requires an occasional mall visit, and it's been years for me.

It turns out that the Wendy's was an ice cream store. Phooey. The excitement of being in a mall wore off rather quickly, in fact.

In the Borders there, though, I finally found a copy of the November issue of Dr. Dobbs Journal in which I am mentioned on page 16 for the IOCCC thing. Aw yeah.

Wow. How depressing. Well, I think we're here (in Australia) to stay now. It's a lovely country, and we have a guest room.

Could today be more nerve-racking? I'm feeling cautiously optimistic. Go Kerry go!

Cup day. Today is an officially sanctioned holiday here in Melbourne -- Melbourne Cup Day. Perhaps the only holiday anywhere that's based around a sporting event? Lots of big hats on the tram. I went in to work thinking there'd at least be some skeleton crew there, but there was nobody. So I left. Time to go play!