Cheap Therapy

David C. 1983/84 onwards

In general I have many fond memories of not ever being a member of UNISFA. It is a credit to the friendliness and gullibility of all UNISFANS that I am ever remembered as being one of them.

1990 - staying awake through an entire terracon, finally succumbing to a bike drink container of mulled wine in the back seat of someones car on the way home.

1989 - missing out on actually becoming a member when Tom (Hobdaygoblin) H. stole my chair and used it to buy his membership.

1990 - almost dying of frigeht at Terracon when Martin (Mav) K. held me over a bridge, updside down, by one leg.

1984 - walking into UNISFA for the first time straight into an argument between Michael P. and Harry.

1984 onwards - easter egg hunts (environmentally unsound!)

 James M. 1992 onwards

 I’ve only been in UniSFA for 1 and a bit years but they’ve been a lot of fun, Pete stop reading over my shoulder. My only claim to fame, is that I’ve seen ‘Meet the Feebles’ twice, and survived a Paranoia game in Fon Con with The Fon as DM. Had a fine time and look forward to many more.

Keep The Faith (whatever it may be)

Signed James M. 

Listening to the Open Source Sex podcast on the bus, plus getting a delivery of ADSL routers can lead to very odd dreams.

I’m sure you’re not meant to use water based lubricant with ADSL routers.

“Thunderbirds fans hold candlelight virgil”

Well, before my wireless connection fell over and ate my post I was going to write something along the lines of

Tonight Media Watch showed off the Leunig cartoon about the Prime Minister that was banned by the Sydney Morning Herald.

Also, on Enough Rope, Andrew Denton interviewed Classics Major and US Marine Colonel Matthew Bogdanos, who  decided to stage an  (unauthorised) mission to recover antiquities removed during the pillage of the Baghdad museum. Such passion!

Saw X-Men III. Definitely need a stealth jet. Probably need more room to park it though.

Drilled out old rivets from the PowerShed(TM). Got to use the electric drill. Much more pleasant than the last one I used. Yay for variable speed, torque control and keyless chucks. Installed new rivets. Felt positively handypersonish. Wonder if MAKE would be interested in a write up? Discovered that having re-attached the metal cladding to the shed the door bolt no longer lined up with the bolt hole, thereby defeating the purpose of improving the security by attaching the metal cladding. Can’t move current bolt as it’s welded to the frame, and the world domination toolkit doesn’t contain a welder (or expertise Add “Add new bolt” to task list.

Cleaned gutters. Got 3 bucketfuls of crap out of them, no wonder they were sagging.

Ah, old e-mail archives. 10 years ago this month. It didn’t quite happen as planned though. Never made it to Interlaken, for example.

On a more personal note, here's my itinerary for the trip:

Saturday May 11th
-----------------
0620 Depart Perth (PER) -> (QF526)

1225 Arrive Sydney (SYD)

1730 Depart Sydney (SYD) -> (QF7)
1400 Arrive Los Angeles (LAX)
1710 Depart Los Angeles (LAX) -> (UA2956)
1822 Arrive San Francisco (SFO)

Rely on the kindness of strangers to get to Apple's World Wide
Developers Conference in San José where I will be staying at the
Fairmont Hotel.

Sunday May 19th
---------------
Chez Quinn

Thursday May 23rd
-----------------
Staying at 

Holiday Inn Fisherman's Wharf
1300 Columbus Avenue,
San Francisco, California
Phone: (415) 771 9000

Sunday May 26th
---------------
2330 Depart San Francisco (SFO) -> (US 80)

Monday May 27th
----------------
0709 Arrive Pittsburgh

0950 Depart Pittsburgh -> (US 336)
1025 Arrive Chicago /OHare

Monday May 27th
---------------
Memorial Day national holiday (USA)

Wednesday May 29th
------------------
1210 Depart Chicago -> (AA 6546)
1437 Arrive Toronto 

Sunday June 2nd
---------------
1659 Depart Toronto -> (US 2333)
1815 Arrive Washington

I will be staying at

Quality Hotel Downtown
1315 16th Street
Washington D.C.
Phone: (202) 232 8000

Wednesday June 5th
------------------
1815 Depart Washington -> (BA 216)
0625 Arrive London

I will be staying at

YHA City of London Youth Hostel,
36-38 Carter lane, London EC4V 5AD
Phone: +44 (171) 236 4965
Fax: +44 (171) 236 7681

Sunday June 9th
---------------
Leave London for Paris

Sometime in June
----------------
Leave Paris for Limoge
Leave Limoge for Interlaken
Leave Interlaken for London

Mon June 24th
-------------
1200pm Depart London -> (BA 11)

Tuesday June 25th
-----------------
1410 Arrive Perth (PER)

June 28th
---------
Depart Perth for Terracon with the UniSFAns->
Arrive Tone River

July 1st
--------
Depart Tone River ->
Arrive Perth

All times/dates subject to change.

It makes your hair curly, is an additive in bread and one of the 599 additives in cigarettes, and can be made by transgenic sheep. It’s cysteine.

It’s also the active ingredient in anti-cancer chewing gum.

So, I picked up a Sipura S3000 Analog Telephone Adapter (ATA). These let you plug your existing telephone into the interthingy, and have a passthrough port to your normal phone line so you can still dial out for an ambulance or fire engine when the power’s off. Assuming of course you configured the cryptic Dial Plan code correctly. Otherwise someone’s going to die. Here for example is my dial plan

(000S0< :@gw0>|1[38]xxx.< :@gw0>| 0[2-9]xxxxxxxxS0| < #9:>xx.< :@gw0>)

As far as density of settings v volume of equipment, this box has got to be at the top of the scale, it will take a while to come to terms with what can be set.
After reading Whirlpool for a bit I decided to sign up with Ozcall as my VoIP provider. Unfortunately, my ATA didn’t seem to want to talk to Oztell, so there was an evening wasted. Read Whirlpool for a bit more and decided to try signing up with Astratel. This did work almost immediately. Managed to get the phone to ring (very wierd, having a phone that’s not plugged into the phone network ringing :). Made a test call, and have now switched the home phone over to use the VOIP box. We shall see how it goes.

The evil (and tempting) Borders bookstore has just opened in Perth (St Martin’s arcade, where Lincraft used to be). Mmm…. Books!

Belgian painter I ran across on the web. NSFW if your workplace objects to naked women with skeletons (much better than without or a naked woman with books. Also a NSFW wikipedia entry