I spent the day with my mum and nephew yesterday. I went to visit them the night before because mum wanted me to set up some computer games for the boy to play while he was staying with her. I wasn’t averse to a free meal and agreed readily. I stayed the nightin the caravan because I was incredibly tired, verging on passing out in the living room.
The next day I woke up to the most horrible morning ever; pools of sweat drenching the sheets, and not a window open to speak of. I stumbled around in a sleepwalker’s daze trying to open vents and turn on the fan, managing to do none of these things. I slept for what seemed like about five seconds before mum came outside and started rocking the van backwards and forwards. I sat up, wrung out my hair, and took that as my queue to get up.
I spent the morning updating my parents computers and sitting around, until I was tasked with getting Dad’s GPS juving with his laptop. Always (sometimes) up for a challenge, I got to it and eventually got the device working. It was some kind of really obscure hardware choice, an USB dongle with some kind of strange driver eventually registering on the system as a serial device, but that’s another story.
Once I finally got everything going, I booted up dad’s copy of OziExplorer — his Christmas gift from mum. It’s a really unpleasant piece of software, and I don’t know why someone hasn’t written something free and better, but it’s apparently the “it” thing in the GPS scene. Despite appearances and only being a six meg download, it actually has an awesome feature set that may just — okay, it doesn’t, but nesarly — justify the steep entry price.
I spent a fair portion of the morning tinkering with the damn thing and as a consequence rediscovered OpenStreetMap in the process. After that I spent the rest of my morning updating OpenStreetMap, and I’ve vowed to participate more in that effort in the future as well.
Today I spent most of the afternoon shopping with Paul. We were supposed to just go out for lunch, but he managed to peer pressure me into going out. I’m a little frustrated, because I’ve got a bit of work to do, and I’m not going to get an opportunity to do it over the weekend now, but I’ll manage.
Tonight we’re going out with some work friends — apparently they’re pub bishes — and I can’t wait. I haven’t had a drink for a few weeks now, and I’m starting to feel sober, even straight edge. I’ve got to attend the anti-‘net cersorship rally in the city tomorrow so I don’t think it’s going to be too big a night, but we’ll see.
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