Notes and Jottings

Interesting. Somebody from 194.223.200.65 was looking at my diary/weblog - and
actually showed enough interest to go through the archives Since this was
somewhat unusual, I did a bit of an hostname lookup/traceroute on that - okay
nothing came up initially, though the immediate parent hop was owned by
psi.net. Another look - this time, to check who owned that
network - TNS. And I
wondered at that - since Stella had given me a short briefing on this company
while at the Science Ball (actually, immediately afterwards). Are there other
TNS companies? But this
article shows that TNS and psi.net
merged in 2000, so it IS that company.

So… I hope I didn’t say anything too outrageous over the last few months,
for obvious reasons Not that I’m that worried yet about that kind of
issue - plenty of part-time work to keep me going for the next month or
two anyway. And I’ll start properly looking for a job aaaany day now.
Once I finish the work for Rod, and Finbarr, and Colm, and…

I must say, though, there’s something to be said for the life of a
contractor. IF you have the connections, there’s a lot more free time
in between the work bits! Like, work two days, a day or so off. And I can
sometimes dawdle in after lunch, as long as the work eventually gets done.
But permanent work excels in knowing if you can pay the rent for that
month, things like that! So… in the long term, getting back to a proper
job is very important, but I could work like this for another month or so
easily Or… there’s always the sea, the sea… umi! umi!! umi!!!!

The blog version of the
New York Times looks pretty cool!

I need some new dreams! Bertie rang me up to set up an Oracle server for
him… and he was quite enthusiastic, even though I told him I’d only
gotten to about page 300 in the Oracle administration manual

The Trinity Ball 2002 takes place on Friday - should be a
laugh We still have to decide what do to beforehand - as Juan might
suggest, we cannot enter the Trinity Ball stone-cold sober.

The Matrix reviews from Yahoo Directory.
Including, if you go about two-thirds down the list, a review by our very own
famous (or… notorious?) writer-in-residence - or rather he
would be if he
weren’t off in Belgium…

Oh I haven’t mentioned E4 yet… it’s a channel
which started to be broadcast on NTL at the
start of the month. And it’s brilliant! Okay, not
what one might call the most original programming - but it works. They play
the same popular shows over and over again all week, so you can’t miss your
show no matter how many evenings you’re out drinking And even if you ARE
out all week, on Sunday night they show them all back to back from 7pm.
Fun!

Coming up to the end of my second month in the new apartment - and finally
I have properly moved out of the old, my dad helped transport the final
set of books this evening. I’m very glad there’s plenty of bookshelf space
here - five bookshelf rows, and still not enough. I’m going to use the
desk for some books, and I’ve two piles which are going to whoever wants
them, or to a secondhand bookstore.

These beach guides
to North Wexford are uniformly cheery and make you want to go there. The
thing is, I’ve spent years and years down there during various summers,
and I can see slight exaggerations For instance, the Clones Strand
link (near Castletown)! Water quality award? Okay I could be wrong, but last
time I was down there, there were problems (and usually are) with sewage from
local farms and mobile home ‘estates’ which made the water quality of the
‘river’ less than wonderful. The sea seemed fine though, maybe that’s what the
award was for.
But besides that, I just have to go down there for tradition’s sake if
nothing else. I had a spot down by the cliffs where I couldn’t generally see
anybody else around, and all I could see for ~240 degrees around was sea
and blue sky. And grass to lie on - ah it was the perfect place for me to
sit and think

‘Tis the time of the year to start experimenting again, this time with
JBoss again. It’s sounding pretty
interesting, and I’ll try and get a good test application installed, perhaps
use it for Globalcafé if I can work out how to use it all?

For once, a nice day outside which didn’t have me running for an umbrella
every twenty minutes! I wish I’d been out longer, I even more wish I had
a car so I could drive off to the sea down in Wexford for the weekend…
it would have been so perfect!