The Yellow Brick Road in Oz

Currently Roberta and I are in Australia at a little beach town called Byron Bay. If you were to take downtown Ashland and move it to southern California and put it on the beach then that would be Byron Bay. There are almost more crystal shops here than people. It has a good vibe.

Here are some maps to get your orientation on places in Oz.

Byron Bay Map

I originally came to Oz last week for a security conference called AusCert which was really thought provoking. It will require a whole post to itself when I get back. But in the short of things, I realized that the security concerns in Windows might drive me to get a Mac.

AusCert Conference

There was a very interesting talk from an engineer on the One Laptop Per Child project. He designed the hardware and security requirements of the project. If you have not heard of the project it sounds like a good thing.

One Laptop Per Child

Expect more updates when we get back to NZ.

Lost cat == found cat

We recently got a cat door installed so the little terrors(cats) can practice their interrogation techniques on birds when they choose. It is one of the cat doors that has the magnetic lock so that only our cats can get in(or any other cat with a magnet) but we haven't been using it yet.

About a week ago I was walking upstairs in the morning and saw this big black cat in our house. Needless to say Haka and Tica didn't like the idea of sharing their food bowl with this guy. He slinked outside when I yelled at him but I could tell that something wasn't right. I went outside and found that he was extremely skinny and his collar was wrapped around his leg and had been for some time. You could tell by the look in his eyes that he was damn hungry and need a vet quickly. I tried to get his collar off but it was too tight and worn into his skin so I ended up cutting it off with a pair of scissors. He seemed fairly happy about that. Roberta went down and got a small bowl of cat food and some water which he scarfed down. It looks like he hadn't eaten in days.

I ended up taking him to our local vet who handed him off to the SPCA. I got word yesterday from our vet that he got reunited with his owners. Woohoo!!!

I doubt that they will be letting him outside again for a long while.

Blow Jobs in the Viaduct

Last night I went out with some co-workers after work. We ended up in the Viaduct. I had not been to the Viaduct yet, been meaning to do so. Quite the happening place. The Viaduct is this mini-harbour place where fancy boats are parked and there's this walkway around it with lots of bars and restaurants.

We came around the corner and there was this girl giving a blow job in front of all the restaurants and everybody is pointing and laughing. Whoa, didn't want to see that! They stopped after a few minutes. Neil my co-worker turned to me and said last week they saw another couple getting it on full stop!

Well I guess this is where the exhibitionists go. Adam's first thought was "was she a prostitute?" I have no idea, but prostitution is legal in NZ. I just don't know about public acts of sex.

At this point I'm more traumatized by my hangover and the fact that I have to go play a soccer game in a half an hour. My stomach feels like a gurgling, stuffed up and flowing sink. ugh Ah, yes, this is why I don't go out too often...