The differences between how one fuels one's car are quite pronounced, between California and Australia.

Firstly, if you're paying with plastic, it's a given that you can pay at the pump. I could count on my hands the number of times I've had to walk into a gas station to pay for gas in the US. Having a small child, I was not looking forward to having to either leave her in the car so I could pay for my petrol, or having to deal with all of the rigmarole of getting her out of her car seat, just so she can accompany me inside the petrol station to make a brief transaction and then have to get her back into her car seat again.

Not to mention how it drags out the whole process. Yesterday I had to wait for a pump while everyone leaves their car, queues inside to pay a single cashier, and then returns to their car and drives away. It'd be an interesting Productivity Commission report to see how much time is lost, just so people can be tempted by the high-margin items inside.

Then there's pumping the petrol. California, being all hippy, requires all the fuel nozzles to have these fandangled "vapour recovery" things, which basically fit over the part of the pump that goes inside the fuel tank and does some sort of, well, vapour recovery. The upside, you're not sniffing fumes while you're pumping your petrol.

The other fabulous thing about Californian fuel pumps is you can lock the handle down, so you don't have to stand there like a shag on a rock squeezing the handle while a $100 trickles into your car. You can get back in your car and listen to the radio. Or clean your windscreen. Or entertain your kid. I'd love to know why Australian pumps don't lock on any more. I have memories from my early childhood of them locking on.

So yeah, I think Australians lose out quite badly when it comes to the petrol station experience.

I was pleased to discover that the Woolworths branded Caltex petrol stations seem to have some sort of pay at the pump infrastructure, it just requires you to have their specific credit card or something. I need to do more research, because if I can pay at the pump, I will.

Finally, finally, I've got a car. I had this grand plan of using a friend of a friend who was a car buyer to source me a car and have it ready for me at the airport when I arrived. That didn't work out so well, so I resorted to carsales.com.au and found something very quickly. I could have bought it last Friday, if I'd wanted to forego the RACQ inspection, but I hate used cars at the best of times, and so I want to do what I can do avoid buying a lemon, so I had to wait until Monday for the inspection.

I got the report in the early afternoon on Monday, and the only thing it highlighted was a bit of oil on the front differential housing. I contacted the dealer and he said he'd get it looked at. I got an SMS from him on Tuesday morning saying the car would be ready after 3pm, but by the time I could arrange with Kristy for a ride, we just missed the bank, so I couldn't get the bank cheque to pay for it, so we rescheduled for this morning.

The shipping container was delivered to Sarah's place on Monday, and there's been a steady stream of boxes arriving at my place. It was good to be able to transport some of those myself today, and there'll be more to move tomorrow. I need to sort out storage options, because one thing I don't want is for there to be too much clutter in my home. I think there'll be another trip to IKEA in my near future. At least I can do that all on my own now.

It's so great to have independent mobility again.

I'd decided ahead of time that I wanted to use Internode as my ISP, and had ordered a Naked DSL service from them and also decided to bundle my mobile phone with them as well. For reasons that only made sense to me 7 years ago, I've been paying Telstra to keep my mobile number going, but I've long since lost the SIM. My current phone has a micro-SIM anyway, so I needed a replacement SIM.

My grand plan had been to order the SIM, order the number port from Telstra to Internode, and then, well, profit from the moment I stuck the SIM in my phone. Unfortunately the port didn't go through as planned, and I was left incommunicado for the better part of two and a half days. I felt like I had my hands tied behind my back not having a mobile data service. It was also mildly annoying not being able to call people or be contactable, given the amount of running around I was doing. But it got resolved and is fast becoming a distant memory.

The DSL service required a Telstra technician to come out (I'm not actually sure why) and that was scheduled for Thursday. I happened to catch him while he was at my building's MDF, and had a bit of a chat with him. He was a Scotsman, and I didn't get all the details, but he was going on about how he was only there to operate on the exchange side of the MDF, and I'd have to get someone else to jumper it up to my apartment.

This wasn't what I expected from an installation service, but sure enough when I finally got around to plugging the ADSL modem in on Saturday morning, there was no line sync to be had. A call to Internode confirmed that he'd only jumpered it up to exchange side of the MDF.

What was even more annoying was I'm pretty sure I saw him yanking out jumper wires from the MDF when he was working on it. Jumper wires that connected the exchange side of the MDF to my apartment.

I was not thrilled with the idea of waiting (and paying) for a cabling contractor to come out and hook up a couple of bits of jumper wire, so I put out a call on Facebook for a Krone tool and a tone generator, and Brent was able to come through for me. He dropped the gear around while I was out shopping with Kristy, and when we got back, I located the pair for my unit, and rejumpered the existing jumper wire that I'm pretty sure the Telstra technician had disconnected. Lo and behold, my ADSL started working. I felt pretty proud of myself. It's fun operating at Layer 1 every now and then.

The FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7270 is quite the beast of a box. Not only is it an ADSL modem, it's a wireless router, DECT base station, VoIP thingy and an answering machine! I've managed to connect my Engin account up to it, so once I get a DECT handset, I'll be able to make VoIP calls through it. I don't need to run Asterisk any more.

I was really not doing well by yesterday, I had developed quite the runny nose. I've discovered that it's neigh on impossible (from my sample set of two pharmacies) to get pseudoephedrine over the counter in this country. In the US, you have to provide ID and they report all purchases to the government and if you start buying too much, they come and kick down the door of your meth lab. Here, you seem to need a prescription. One pharmacy told me that 1 in 10 pharmacies will sell it over the counter. I ended up with the Australian equivalent of Afrin, which I don't particularly like, but it at least dried up my nose. Discussions on Facebook suggest that I may have been dealing with second-rate pharmacies, and the "big ones" would be more useful. I was also advised to try begging and pleading for Claritin-D. The damn meth labs have ruined it for everybody. It's too bad they can't come up with an additive that is safe to ingest, but would fuck up the meth cooking process.

Not content with only two marathon shopping days, Kristy came back for a third day of driving me all around town, as my quest for a sofa bed and a dining table continued.

It turns out that one does not simply walk into a furniture store and walk out with a sofa bed (or a dining table, for that matter). These things all seem to be on boats from China, or at best interstate warehouses, and most places can sell you something they know is in transit at best, but they're loathe to sell floor stock (for obvious reasons), and they seem to not have anything in a Brisbane warehouse (plenty of stuff was in Sydney or Melbourne and they'd ship it up). Plushhad a chaise sofa bed that had a nice sprung mattress, and was due in late this month or early next, and they would lend me something in the meantime, so they got my business. I look forward to having something to sit on.

We then had an epic time at Bunnings getting all sorts of random household stuff, with the obligatory sausage sizzle before and after. Oh, how I have missed proper sausages! It turns out I'm looking for something that doesn't seem to exist over here, Rubbermaid don't seem to make the plastic "shed" cupboards in Australia, so I'll have to look elsewhere (Clark Rubber seems to make something approximately like what I'm looking for).

Then I picked up some towels from Westfield Chermside and resumed the search for a dining table. I was really liking the idea of at least one bench seat, and we finally found a matching table, a bench seat, some shelving and a coffee table that would work as an entertainment unit, at OZ Design Furniture. They had a 20% off sale that made it all fairly reasonable. The entertainment unit was available immediately, and the rest of the stuff should be delivered in a couple of weeks. That just leaves finding some dining chairs that will go with it.

OZ Design Furniture had the most unusual delivery charging system. They charge by the flight of stairs. Living on the 2nd floor does have its disadvantages. At least I won't be moving out of here any time soon.

By the end of the day, I was totally done, but very happy to have finally sorted out the elusive remaining bits of furniture. I had my first night sleeping in my new home.

The jet lag, the lack of sleep, and the general pace of the week has caught up with me. I'm feeling decidedly run down today.

Leah volunteered to drive me around a bit today, and it was great to catch up with her. I decided to check out a white 2004 Forester that I'd found on carsales.com.au the night before.

I took it for a test drive, and it seemed fine. I transferred my NRMA membership back to the RACQ and upped it to something decent, and arranged for them to do an inspection on Monday. Depending on when the inspection report gets to me, I'll head back there with a bank cheque and I'll have a car.

I had another half-hearted look at furniture after lunch (I really wasn't feeling it) and then headed over to Woolloongabba to take a look at the condition of Sarah's apartment.

The low light of the day was leaving my packet of car-related paperwork (including my temporary driver's licence) on the roof of her car as we left Woolloongabba. It should only be mildly inconvenient, but I was annoyed with myself for being so dumb.

Tomorrow should be pretty quiet. I just have my bed getting delivered at 8:30am, then I'll stay in my apartment from then on. I think I'll just take it easy.

Today was spent at my apartment with Zoe. Harvey Norman were scheduled to deliver the fridge, washing machine and TV. Someone from Telstra was scheduled to come out and monkey with the MDF to get the naked ADSL happening, and my desk was scheduled to be delivered.

My parents drove us over in the morning, with some of our suitcases. Zoe was very happy with her new room and bed.

I was going to get a 1 hour advance warning of Harvey Norman coming, so we all went for a little walk around the neighbourhood to explore. It turns out there's a convenience store right next door, which is, well extremely convenient. I won't need to even hop in the car to get last minute bread or milk or anything like that. Very happy about that. There's also a really gorgeous little boutique deli/gourmet grocery that is easily within walking distance. The neighbourhood is indeed very nice.

Mid-morning, Brent dropped around with his daughter to say hi. Zoe had a good time playing with her as well, and we went out for lunch at the Hawthorne Garage. At the end of lunch, Harvey Norman called to say they'd be an hour away, which was well timed.

Zoe declined to nap again, so we just hung out waiting for the delivery. In the middle of them delivering, the desk delivery happened as well, and then as Brent was leaving, the Telstra guy turned up, so it all happened at once.

I set up the TV and DVD player and Zoe happily christened it all by watching some Play School DVDs, and then my Dad came back and picked us up.

So the apartment is now almost habitable. I just need my bed. That's scheduled for Saturday. I'm planning on sleeping there on Saturday night.

In the furniture department, I'm still lacking a sofa, a dining table and something to put the TV on. Leah has volunteered to help me shop tomorrow, but I'm starting to think I should focus on resolving the lack of a car, then I can do any further shopping myself.

Nick had set me up with a car wholesaler who was going to search for a used Subaru Forester for me, but so far he hasn't turned anything up, so I'm thinking I need to widen my net a little and use some other avenues as well. I'd really wanted for the car finding to be outsourced as much as possible so I could focus on other things, but it's not looking like that's going to be the case, and I really need mobility.

I got a notification from Internode after I'd left today that the Internet should now be working, so I need to configure the ADSL router when I next get a chance and confirm that's the case, then I'm all sorted for being technologically able to work from home.

Not content with just one day of driving all over town, Kristy came back for another day of it.

I decided that rather than specifically shopping, I needed to do some of the more bureaucratic stuff, so that I could ensure things like the electricity could get put on in my name. I determined that in order to get the electricity in my name, I'd need to provide either a driver's licence number or Medicare card number. Unfortunately I remember separating my expired ACT licence and Medicare cards from my other random cards while I was packing up my temporary apartment in the US, but I can't for the life of me recall what I did with them, so our first port of call was the Department of Transport in Zillmere to get a new licence.

Talk about a painless experience. The most annoying thing was that on Wednesdays they open at 9:30am instead of 8:30am. We got there at 9:10am. I had Zoe with me, and Kristy had her daughter, and they happily played while we waited outside.

I just had to fill out a fairly simple form, and I was called up promptly and there were no problems at all. In under 30 minutes of walking in the door, we were driving away with a temporary licence. Vastly different from my experience with the DMV. I'll get the genuine article in the mail in a few weeks.

Then we headed over to Westfield Chermside to go to Medicare, Medibank Private, and as I was growing frustrated with how long my mobile phone number was taking to port from Telstra to Internode, a Telstra Shop to try and get a replacement Telstra SIM.

This is where I ran into more of a bureaucratic brick wall.

For Medicare, I wanted to get my own Medicare card (and number) again, instead of a shared one, and so I essentially had to re-apply. They wanted more than just a passport entry stamp and something with an address on it. They wanted specific documents with an address on it, and an offer letter to show I was employed, so I had to leave there empty handed.

Medibank Private was even worse. In a "shut up and take my money!" kind of moment, they told me to prematurely unsuspend a suspended policy, I needed to request a document from the Department of Immigration that showed my international movements to confirm that I was indeed back in the country. I've always found this somewhat ironic, given I'm sitting in front of a Medibank Private employee when they're telling me this, and I'm trying to give them money.

So I left there empty handed as well.

I grabbed some cutlery and crockery from Big W.

The Telstra Shop had a 45 minute wait, and as I didn't want to over-stretch Zoe, we headed back to my parents. I took the opportunity to open an electricity account with AGL, now that I had a driver's licence number. Zoe declined to take a nap, and was having a good time playing with Kristy's daughter, and they both wanted to stay at my parent's place, so we left them there and dashed over to Ikea to rectify the bed slat issue.

While we were at Ikea, my number finally ported across and my phone started working, which was a huge relief. Being uncontactable during a period of many interactions with random people was highly frustrating for me. Not having mobile Internet access for a few days of extreme mobility showed how much my phone is an extension of my brain.

I also picked up a bunch of other random stuff from Ikea, stools that hadn't been in stock the day before, drinking glasses, that sort of thing. We then dropped all that off at the apartment before heading back to my parents' place.

So it was another busy day of running all over town, and again, I'm very grateful to Kristy for volunteering her time to make it happen. Most notable accomplishments: complete bed for Zoe, electricity, and a working mobile phone.

This was the first "normal" (i.e. not part of the Easter "long weekend") day. As it happened, Easter Monday was surprisingly retail-friendly anyway.

My friend Kristy picked me up in the morning, and we dropped past the real estate agent for my apartment to see if the tenants had happened to drop the keys back yet (they hadn't) and then we went to Ikea and bought a bed for Zoe a bunch of other random stuff. I also bought a bed frame and mattress while we were at the neighbouring Logan MegaCentre (it's not a bad shopping centre)

The bed frame is wooden and is taking 6-8 weeks to be made, so in the meantime, because I bought a mattress from them, they're lending me a mattress base. That's getting delivered on Saturday.

We then headed over to Harvey Norman in Fortitude Valley. We'd just got started there when the real estate agent called to say the tenants had dropped the keys back, so we stopped and headed back over to meet the property manager at the apartment and get the keys.

After that, we headed back to Harvey Norman and bought a fridge, TV, and a bunch of small appliances, and then headed back to the apartment to do some Ikea assembly. We'd just about finished putting Zoe's bed together when we discovered we'd gotten the wrong width slats for her bed. It turns out there are two widths of the "Sultan Lade" slats, and they're right next to each other in the warehouse. We'd picked up from the correct location, but I think the piles had become jumbled. Lesson learned: cross check the SKU as well as the pickup location.

It was a long day, and I was enormously grateful to Kristy for driving me all over the place, and generally helping me shop. I think it ended up being a 15 hour day for her.

So one of the first things I need to do when I get my apartment today is get the electricity on. I've actually already ordered ADSL, which shows you what I think is more important, but without electricity, there is no Internet...

It would appear that in 2007, Queensland opened up its electricity and gas markets to "full retail competition". According to Energex, they do the generation, distribution, and the retailer handles connections, disconnections, billing and green energy.

I still need to deal directly with Energex for power outages, reporting faulty street lights, requesting a tree that's near power lines be trimmed, and so on.

So if the retailers have no say in what price they're paying for the electricity that's being generated by Energex, I'm struggling to see what their point is. I guess they get to differentiate on customer service, but really, that's it?

It was also really hard to find a canonical list of retailers to choose from. I would have thought that'd be linked off Energex's "Choosing your electricity retailer" page, but no, it's buried in the FAQ.

Now it comes down to a case of doing a comparison between 11 retailers and trying to choose one. Or just going with the first one on the list. It's just electricity, people. It's a utility. I do not want to expend as much time on choosing an electricity retailer as I would my ISP (interestingly, it looks like Dodo has gotten in on the electricity retailing act).

But one could say that an upside of having jet lag and being awake since 3am, is that one has time to comparison shop the 11 electricity retailers, except I won't. I'll just write this blog post instead.

I have heard of one horror story, where a homeowner returned to living in his house, and had a nightmare time with one retailer because the previous occupants had an outstanding debt with that retailer, and he was trying to get a connection going with a different retailer, and lots of hilarity ensued. Except it wasn't hilarious. So I'll have to keep an eye on that.

My current thought is to go with AGL, because

• there is brand recognition there from when I lived in Canberra and used ActewAGL
• it looks like I can sign up online without having to talk to anyone (as soon as my damn mobile phone number ports over to Internode and starts working)
• they're first on the list of electricity retailers

What's pretty crazy is that at no point from quickly skimming AGL's landing page for Queensland pricing is there any indication of kWh or an actual price for anything. There's lots of noise about discounts, and flexibility, and other nonsense, but it seems like the actual cost of energy is so buried, it's incredible. It seems to be all about locking in on a contract, which is somewhat amazing. This is just electricity, but they seem to have turned this into a mobile phone plan type of situation. Amazing.

After more digging, it looks like I can pay 5.5 cents per kWh for 100% green energy. Maybe.

Well, we're back in Brisbane, for good. Now starts the long and involved process of bootstrapping a new life for myself. Fortunately it's slightly more familiar territory than starting up in the US was.

The tenants in my Hawthorne apartment have agreed to terminate their lease early, and I should get the keys tomorrow. The lease on my Woolloongabba apartment ends on Friday I think, and all of our stuff is scheduled to be delivered there next Monday.

My primary goal is to get my apartment habitable for Zoe and I as soon as possible. That means beds and a fridge, and Zoe's going to need some way of being kept entertained while I'm running around like a chook with its head cut off, which is most likely going to mean a TV and a DVD player.

This week is going to be spent doing a lot of running around. I need to get a car, get a Queensland driver's licence, get the electricity on, get the ADSL on, buy appliances, furnish Zoe's room, furnish my room, heck, furnish the whole apartment, really. It's going to be very full on busy. I don't want to race out and buy anything today, even though the shops seem to be open, because I want to measure up my apartment first.

The day's sole purchase was an electric screwdriver from Bunnings. There will be much Ikea assembly in my future.

Ever since I saw some videos from a team offsite somewhere on the East Coast, I've wanted to go zip lining. I have vague memories of riding what we call in Australia a "flying fox" in Scouts as a kid, and this looked even more fun than that.

I found the Mount Hermon Adventures Redwood Canopy Tours nearby in the Santa Cruz Mountains, and so I booked it for yesterday. Eric was the only one of my friends who ended up being able to join me.

It was good fun. It took about 2 hours all up, but that included gearing up and getting the safety training.

I think there were 7 lines in total, of varying lengths and speeds and heights.

I rented a helmet with a GoPro to capture the experience for posterity, and I'm currently in the process of uploading the videos here.

I'll soon be disposing of the Nissan Leaf that we leased a few months ago, so I thought it a useful exercise to write about my experiences with it.

I am not a car man. I am a gadget man. For me, driving is a means to an end, and I'm much more interested in what I call the "cabin" experience, than the "driving" experience, so this is going to slanted much more that way.

That said, I found the Nissan Leaf a fun car to drive, from my limited experiences of having fun driving cars. I liked how responsive it was when you put your foot down. It has two modes of operation, "D" and "Eco". I've actually taken to driving it in "Eco" mode most of the time, as it squeezes more range out of the batteries, but occasionally I'll pop it back into "D" to have a bit of fun.

The main difference between the two modes, from a driving perspective, is it seems to limit the responsiveness of the accelerator. In "Eco" mode it feels more like you're driving in molasses, whereas in "D" mode, when you put your foot down, it responses instantly. "D" is great for dragging people off at the lights. It's a very zippy little car in "D" mode. It feels lighter.

I've noticed that it has a bit of a penchant for over steering. Or maybe that's just my driving. If I have floored it a bit to take a right turn into oncoming traffic, I've noticed slight over steering.

That's about all the driving type "real car stuff" I'll talk about.

Now to the driver's "cabin experience".

It's absolutely fabulous. I love sitting in the driver's seat of this car.

Firstly, the seat itself is heated (in fact all of them are). As is the steering wheel. Nissan has gone to great lengths to allow you to avoid needing to run the car's heating system to heat the car, as doing so immediately drops at least 10 miles off the range. Unfortunately I found the windscreen had a tendency to fog up in the winter rainy periods, so I'd have to intermittently fire up the air conditioning to defog the windscreen. Of course, in the summer months, you're going to want to run the AC to cool down, so the range hit in that situation is unavoidable. I've only had this car from late Autumn until late Winter so far, so that hasn't been an issue I've had to contend with.

The dashboard is all digital, and looks relatively high tech, which appeals to my inner geek. It's a dashboard. It tells you stuff. The stuff you'd expect it to tell you. Enough said.

The audio system is nice. It supports Bluetooth audio, so one can be streaming Pandora from one's phone, through the sound system, for example. Or listening to audio from the phone. There's also a USB port, and it will play various audio files from USB storage. I found the way it chose to sort the files on a USB stick to be slightly surprising though. I haven't invested the time to figure out how I should be naming files so that they play in the order I expect them to play. The ability to play from USB storage compensates nicely for the fact that it only has a single CD player. (We have a 6 disc stacker in our 2006 Prius).

The car also came with a 3 month free trial of Sirius XM satellite radio. This was fun. The only dance music FM station in the Bay Area has a weak signal in Mountain View, and I hate dance music with static, whereas there was an excellent electronic music station that I could listen to in glorious high definition. As long as I wasn't driving under a bridge. There's no way I'd pay money for satellite radio, but it was a fun gimmick to try out.

The navigation system is really, really good. I haven't bothered using Google Maps on my phone at all. It gives such good spoken directions, that you don't even need to have the map on the screen. It names all the streets. I couldn't figure out a way to get distances in metric.

The telematics service, Carwings, is probably my favourite feature. This is what really makes it feel like a car of the future. Through the companion Android application, I can view the charging status (if it's plugged in) or just check the available range (if it's not plugged in). From a web browser, I can plan a route, and push the route to the vehicle's navigation system. If the car is plugged in, I can also remotely turn on the vehicle's climate control system, pre-warming or cooling the car.

It's a little thing, but the door unlocking annoyed me a little bit. I'm used to the Prius, where if you unlock the boot (that's trunk, Americans), or the front passenger door, all the doors unlocked. This was a convenient way of unlocking the car for multiple people as you approached it. With the Leaf, unlocking the boot only unlocks the boot. Unlocking the front passenger door only unlocks that door. It requires a second unlock action to unlock all the doors. I've found this to be slightly cumbersome when trying to unlock the car for everyone all at once, quickly (like when it's raining).

Another minor annoyance is the headlights. I've gotten into the habit of driving with the headlights on all the time, because I believe it's safer. In the Prius, one could just leave the headlights switched to the "on" position, and they'd turn off whenever the driver's door was opened after the car was switched off. If you try that in the Leaf, the car beeps at you to warn you you've left the headlights on. It has an "auto" mode, where the car will choose when to turn the headlights on, based on ambient light conditions. In that case, when you turn the car off, it'll leave the headlights on for a configurable period of time and then turn them off. This is actually slightly unsettling, because it makes you think you've left your headlights on. The default timeout was quite long as well, something like 60 seconds.

The way multiple Bluetooth phones are handled is just as annoying in the Leaf as it is in the Prius, which disappoints me, given 6 years have passed. The way I'd like to see multiple phones handled is the car chooses to pair with whichever phone is in range, or if multiple phones are in range, it asks or uses the last one it paired with. In reality, it tries to pair with whatever it paired with last time, and one has to press far too many buttons to switch it to one of the other phones it knows about.

Range anxiety is definitely something of a concern. It can be managed by using the GPS navigation for long or otherwise anxiety-inducing trips, and then one can compare the "miles remaining" on the GPS with the "miles remaining" on the battery range, and reassure oneself that they will indeed make it to where they're trying to go. The worst case I had was getting to within 5 miles of empty. The car started complaining at me.

The charging infrastructure in the Bay Area is pretty good. There are plenty of charging stations in San Francisco and San Jose. I'm spoiled in that I have free charging available at work (including a building at the end of my street, so I never bothered with getting a home charger installed). I've almost never had to pay for charging, so it's been great while gas prices have been on the rise.

The car's navigation system knows about some charging stations, so you can plan a route with the charging stations it knows about in mind. The only problem is it doesn't know if the charging stations are in use. If you use the ChargePoint Android app, you can see if the charging stations are in use, but then you have to do this cumbersome dance to find an available charging station and plug the address into the vehicle's navigation system. Of course, what can then happen is in the time you're driving to the charging station, someone else starts using it. I actually got bitten by this yesterday.

Would I buy a Leaf again? Not as my sole car. It makes a perfect second/commuter car, but as a primary vehicle, it's too limited by its range. They're also ridiculously expensive in Australia, and Brisbane has absolutely no charging infrastructure.

As my time in the US is rapidly drawing to a close, I thought I should capture the final count of US states that I've visited in the 7 years I've been here. I didn't realise it's been so long since I last did this.

22 states. Not too bad. I'd have liked to have visited Hawaii and Florida. Maybe in my next life.

Update: I omitted Illinois.

And we're all going to be back in Brisbane soon enough. April 1st is the date I'd like to be back by.

Movers are scheduled to come on the 14th and pack up all our stuff, and as soon as the house sells, we're good to go.

The last seven years have been an experience. I've loved living in this country, and this isn't the way I wanted to be leaving it, but sometimes (as I know well enough from painful experience) life doesn't always give you what you want.

I am looking forward to building a new life for myself with Zoe in Brisbane.

So, after just having run 10K, I'm going to sit on a train for 20 hours and completely seize up. I've got me some stretching to do!

I'm getting away to Portland for a few days. I'm taking the Coastal Starlight train up and back, and staying with Nigel and his family.

I'm looking forward to having some time to myself on the train, I'm looking forward to the trip, because some mutual friends did it, and I've wanted to do it ever since. I'm also looking forward to catching up with Nigel, because I've barely spoken to him since he left Google, and he's a friend and fellow countryman who I really enjoyed working with. I'd also like to check out this barber shop, because I'm weird and like the idea of someone attacking my face with a cutthroat razor. And of course, you can't go to Portland without visiting Powell's City of Books.

I'm probably spending as much time on the train as I am in Portland (I head back on Sunday), but I want to be back for Zoe's first dentist appointment on Tuesday.

Sarah, Zoe and I ran in the 10K Applied Materials Silicon Valley Turkey Trot this morning.

Apparently it's a bit of a Silicon Valley institution (people get dressed up, particularly as turkeys), so I guess it's up there with the Bay to Breakers.

This is the first time I've ever run a 10K fun run and actually run the whole way, so I'm feeling pretty happy with my fitness. In fact, I think I'm the fittest and lightest I've ever been. I'm actually a couple of kilograms under my target weight, and really pleased with myself for being able to run a 10K training run on Tuesday as well as the race today.

I managed to run it in a respectable 1:05. I think I'll set a goal for myself to be able to run 10K in under an hour. No idea if that's realistic or not, but it's a goal with a nice round number.

Sarah did her run in 1:06, which is impressive considering she was pushing Zoe in the jogging stroller. Zoe also did well putting up with being in the jogging stroller for that long. I think it helped having lots of things for her to look at, as well as a steady supply of food to graze on. She was having a great time running on the closed streets as we headed back to where we parked the car.

We might have to make this a Thanksgiving family tradition. It'll be nice when Zoe's big enough to run in the kid's fun run as well.

Last year (I think for my birthday) Sarah backed the Twine project on Kickstarter.

Well, to say the project experienced some delays would be a bit of an understatement, but in yesterday's mail, it finally arrived.

I'm planning on using it to replace the cat water bowl sensor that never got reinstated when we moved house.

I'm going to spare everyone all the gory details at this time, but I guess it's time to acknowledge the facts. Sarah has left me.

This has all come to a head extremely quickly (for me), but Sarah has been sitting on a horrible pile of emotions for months, so it's probably been an eternity for her.

I still love Sarah and I'm desperately trying to reconcile, but Sarah just wants to move on. Throw a child in the mix and the fact that we're married in Australia but most of our on-paper shared property is in California, and I just don't want to think about it.

I ask that our mutual friends not take sides (which I realise is difficult) and to please give Sarah all the support you can. This can't have been an easy decision for her. Of course, I'll also take any support you want to send my way.

I start my sabbatical from work on Thursday (I don't return to work until January), and my parents have a prearranged visit for pretty much all of December. I had all this planned before this came out of left field. I'd debated telling my parents not to come, so I could use the time off work to try and repair things, but Zoe needs time with her grandparents, and I can probably do with having them around.

Circumstances have required us to become a two-car family, and I've been very keen on the Nissan Leaf for some time. It's an excellent little car. A friend had leased one, and had positive things to say about the whole leasing process, so on Saturday we leased one ourselves.

Now that we've been through the process, I'm not sure why you'd ever buy a car instead of lease.

We paid $4,628 as a "down payment" (of which we'll get a $2,500 rebate) and it's going to cost I think $257 a month. Maintenance for the 3 years is included in those monthly payments as is any damage to the vehicle at the end of the lease. After the 3 years you hand the car back or pay out the residual. We plan on handing the car back. We get 12,000 miles a year, after which it's 15 cents a mile. There's no way in the world we'll do 12,000 miles a year in it.

The last three cars I've owned I've just paid for in cash, because I generally don't like debt and like to minimise my monthly outlays, but in the case of cars, I also don't like forking out a large wad of cash for something that instantly loses value the moment it drives off the lot. I also think that given the pace of innovation in the electric vehicle space, the new hotness in three years time will be even more awesome than the Leaf is today.

It gets delivered tomorrow.

It appears that a recent incident at a different campus of the "preschool" (I call it day care) that Zoe goes to has gotten the attention of the Free-Range Kids blog.

Firstly, I need to say that on the parenting spectrum, I definitely self-identify closer to the free-range end than the helicopter end. I'm not sure that I'd let an 8 year old ride the New York subway on their own, but Zoe's not 8 yet, so I really can't say.

Sarah and I received the same email that is reprinted on the blog, on Friday night, and we were both (very) mildly alarmed at the situation, but not particularly concerned, mostly because it wasn't the facility that Zoe goes to. I'm not sure I'd be that much more concerned if it was, to be honest.

I did like the statistics that the parent quoted in response. I thought that that put things into perspective, but didn't really take abductions by estranged parents into consideration.

My one reaction to reading the email was, "why did they wait until after the incident to escalate it?" but then, from my own experiences in dropping off or picking up Zoe, I could totally understand not all the staff knowing on sight all the parents or guardians that do pickups and drop offs. This does lead to one asking how they know who to buzz in, but that's another can of worms.

Anyway, I read the 50 or so varyingly indignant comments on the Free Range Kids blog, and since they were talking about the company that I give a not inconsequential amount of money to, I feel the need to write a response.

• it's a day care centre "chain". They have kids ranging from infant to pre-K (if I'm getting my grade terminology correct). It's not what I'd call a "school", hence they call themselves a "preschool"
• having actually been to one of the facilities, I can understand the request to not mingle in the lobby. It's tiny, and it blocks the view of the doors from the front office, where an employee is usually buzzing people in from
• I can totally understand the desire by the staff to not hold the door open for other people, even if we "know" them, because of possible changes in family circumstances. I would say that there's a difference between knowing someone by sight, because they're always dropping off or picking up their kid at the same time as you are, and knowing their name, where they live, etc. Having done pickups and drop offs, there are parents in both categories. I'll still hold the door open for a parent that we socialise with outside of "school", but I'll think twice now before doing it for someone who only looks familiar but I don't really know. I don't want to be the one who facilitates a future incident
• I think a lot of the conservative position the day care management has stems from liability. I have no problem with that. If the shoe was on the other foot, and an estranged parent had walked in and taken their child, and the centre had a "locked door" policy, there'd be some uncomfortable questions to answer. I'm paying them a boatload of money, they say they operate under a "locked door" policy, I expect them to keep my kid safe

The whole episode raises the question: who was this person and what were they doing there? Some of the commentators hypothesize that they were casing the joint for a future incident, or just giving themselves an impromptu tour before placing their child there (Zoe and I toured before we signed up, but that was an official, prearranged thing). It really is unfortunate that the staff didn't challenge this person, but as I said, they probably all had to review the video surveillance footage together to ascertain that none of them knew who the person was. I consider this a bit of a deficiency itself, but I don't really expect them to all have photographic memory, especially if one parent mostly does drop off and pick up. The other (expensive) option would be to issue each authorized person with an electronically revocable proximity card, so they can let themselves in, but I feel that that's taking things to the extreme. They staff all carry portable radios. If they don't have a discreet "code" they can call when one of them sees a person they don't know, I'm sure they will have after this incident.

I personally found the majority of the comments on the Free Range Kids blog to be on the extreme overreaction side of things. As much as I'm a believer in Free Range parenting, I think the day care provider has mostly reacted appropriately. Do I agree with their "locked facility" policy? It's my first experience with a commercial day care facility, so I don't have anything to compare it with. As I said earlier, I can totally understand where they're coming from in terms of limiting their liability. Previously, Zoe was in a "home day care" facility, without any locks, and I for one wasn't constantly worrying about someone wandering into that provider's home and abducting my daughter, so I guess the whole "locked facility" thing is on the more extreme end of the scale for me in the first place, but like I said, I'm uncalibrated for commercial day care centres.

I'd certainly like to see the primary school environment that Zoe goes to not be such a locked down affair.

According to my Amazon purchase history, it was Sunday, October 11, 2009, that we were lazing around with our friends Dan and Sue and we decided we'd just hang out and watch the first season of Dollhouse. I bought the whole thing on Amazon's Video on Demand, and we started watching episodes.

It got close to dinner time, and Dan was going through a home made pizza phase at the time, and we thought about making some pizzas. I wasn't sure if we had all the ingredients in the house, but it went something like this:

Dan: Got flour?

Me: Yes

Dan: Yeast?

Me: Yes

Me: Oh, and we've got a big bag of grated mozzarella from Costco. And we have a pizza stone and a peel, and a bunch of random stuff we can throw on a pizza.

So we totally ninja-ed up some pizzas from stuff we had lying around the house. It was awesome because it was totally spontaneous. You couldn't have planned it better, and we pulled it off brilliantly without having the leave the house.

Anyway, Dan had to calculate the ratios of water, flour, salt and sugar, and he wrote them all down on the magnetic whiteboard we kept on our fridge.

Fast forward almost 3 years later, and we've moved to our new home, and have a stainless steel fridge that we haven't been able to put this whiteboard on, so it got stashed away in a cupboard. The pizza dough recipe is still written on it, though.

So with Sarah away, Bill and Victoria are coming around for dinner tonight to hang out, and I thought trying to make pizza again might be a fun experiment.

So I dug out the whiteboard with the trusty recipe, and Zoe and I made some dough this morning, and it's currently proofing in the oven.

Unfortunately the whiteboard only had the quantities and not the method on it, and from perusing other recipes on the Internet, I may not have mixed things properly (I just kind of threw things together and made it into a ball), so this first batch might be a total disaster. I might go and make a second batch while Zoe's napping.

Here's the contents of the whiteboard, for posterity (I'm hoping it says 10g of salt and not 18g, not that I think it'll affect the outcome too much):

Sarah is back in Australia attending the graduation ceremony for her Bachelor of Business degree, at the University of Southern Queensland, an Australia University that specialises in distance education.

To say I'm immensely proud of her achievement is putting it lightly.

Consider for a moment all of the challenges she has had to face in the past 6 years since she started it:

• studying remotely
• working full time (for a bit)
• losing a baby
• having major heart surgery (with a staph infection complication)
• getting her sternal wires removed (with another staph infection complication)
• having a baby
• looking after a baby at home while continuing to study

Me, I'd fail at "studying remotely". Heck, I've had two stabs at a Bachelor of Information Technology on campus, and what do I have to show for it?

No, I'm so very very proud of her for sticking at it, and doing so very well (she twice received the Dean's Award for having a high GPA for the semester).

She decided to embark on a business degree after having a really hard time finding meaningful work when we moved to the US. She had been working in business project management for the Australian Federal Government (and really enjoying the work) before we moved, and couldn't find any project management that wasn't high-tech, which wasn't really her thing, and everything wanted a degree. She briefly contracted at VMWare, in a marketing position, and Google, in a Security Vulnerability Management role, but neither of these were really up her alley, so to speak.

So she went "bugger it" and enrolled in the degree. Ironically, mid-way through the course, she decided that nursing was more what she wanted to do, so she has also gone out and done short courses in health care. She has been licensed as a Certified Nurse Assistant and also a Phlebotomist, but never worked as either. She's just started an Emergency Medical Technician course at Mission College, and is keen to try and work in that field for a little while before starting on a post-graduate Nursing degree in Australia.

Sarah had indicated to me that she'd really love to go back for the on-campus graduation ceremony, since she's barely set foot on campus in the six years she's been studying at the university. I thought that was an excellent idea, so I sprang for a Business Class flight back for just her, and am staying behind to look after Zoe. It's only a flying visit. She departed Wednesday night, returns on Monday. As I write, she's probably at the ceremony right now.

Normally it would take 6 years to complete a degree externally, assuming two subjects a semester for 12 semesters. She's obviously had to take a few semesters off here and there because of some of the aforementioned challenges. To still finish the degree in 6 years, she's had to plow through the "summer" break (I say "summer" because it's during the Northern Hemisphere winter) and use the accelerated "summer semester", also known as "semester 3" to do an additional subject. That's meant that summers over here have been her shorter winter break.

This summer has been the first summer where she hasn't had to worry about studying, and it's been really wonderful to be a whole family again for an extended period of time, and we've had a jam packed summer as a result.

We bought a tent and did a small amount of camping. We've had weekends away with friends. We've been to Raging Waters. We've been to Disneyland (granted that was in between final exams). It's been go go go. So now that summer is almost over, I'm looking forward to the pace slowing down a bit more and things returning to "normal" (well the new "normal" is Sarah doing her EMT class a couple of nights a week until December). She's only just started, but she's really loving the on-campus aspect of it.

I'm also looking forward to getting a bit more "me" time. Since Zoe was born, I have sacrificed my personal time to facilitate Sarah's study. I haven't had much time to tinker and I've barely had time for Debian. I'm looking forward to trying to carve out a few hours a week for some of both, plus a bit of reading.

I can't remember exactly when, it was either pre-Zoe heart-related diagnostic imaging or during her pregnancy with Zoe, that it became apparent that Sarah had gall stones.

Apparently it's not uncommon for women to develop them after pregnancy, and it turns out that Sarah is slightly more genetically predisposed to getting them to boot. So it wasn't terribly surprising when she started having some pain recently. She had another ultrasound to confirm it, and went off to see a surgeon.

Apparently they care more about the symptoms than the number of stones in the gallbladder, and they don't bother removing the stones and keeping the gallbladder, so she was booked in for a cholecystectomy last Thursday.

It was a pretty straightforward procedure, she was out of the operating room in just under an hour, and awake a bit over an hour after that.

I've had a few friends need to have a cholecystectomy, and the photos on Wikipedia have always fascinated me, particularly this one. It seems so freaky to have a gallbladder full of that much gravel. It can't be comfortable. We're going to be able to pick up Sarah's stones on Monday, so it'll be interesting to see what they look like.

Sarah's recovering now. It's one of the few surgeries she's had under general anaesthesia where she hasn't been sick afterwards, so that was a good start. The procedure was done laparoscopically, using four incisions, and to give themselves room to work, they inflate the body with carbon dioxide gas, which then has to work its way out of her body over the following days. So she's dealing with some bloating, bruising and swelling at the moment, but not doing too badly. Apparently if you're vertical for too long, the gas can work its way up to your diaphragm, which causes some shoulder pain, so the trick has been to walk around a bit, then lie down for a bit, and then rinse and repeat.

She's not allowed to lift Zoe for 3-4 weeks, which presents a few challenges for us, but nothing insurmountable (hopefully). We converted Zoe's crib to a toddler bed a week before the surgery, and Zoe thought that was just the best thing ever, and has taken to it really well. I'm around at home for breakfast and dinner, so I can take care of the lifting into and out of the high chair for those meals, and Zoe can eat lunch at her little table. Zoe's also pretty good about getting into and out of the car by herself (not that Sarah can drive until she's off the painkillers) and she's normally in daycare two days a week. She's in daycare again on Monday, so Sarah won't have to deal with Zoe on her own until Tuesday, and we have backup daycare arrangements we can fall back on if need be. Zoe's been very good about Sarah not being able to pick her up, and been very gentle. It helped with the explanation that Sarah could show her all of her "owwies".

The surgeon was saying that only 1 in 400 people need to alter their diet after removing their gallbladder, so we're hopeful that Sarah will do just fine without it. She'll certainly be more comfortable in the long run.

Various security folks at work have been keen on a newer version of audit be in Ubuntu (preferably 12.04), but unfortunately the Debian maintainer has been too busy to package it for Debian, so I finally carved out some time recently to do an upload to experimental, with his permission.

It would have been really nice to land it in unstable before Wheezy froze, but as it involved a library transition, and I didn't get a chance to talk to the release team about it until very close to the freeze, they said it was too late.

That meant the grand plan of getting it into Ubuntu 12.10 and then trying to get it into precise-backports went up in smoke as well. Oh well.

It was a fair bit of work to package. A lot of the patches were no longer relevant, and the remaining ones all needed to be refitted. It was also my first attempt at touching a library package where a SONAME bump was involved. I think I did everything correctly.

Continuing in my better running through technology phase that I'm currently going through, I got all excited when I discovered that Polar make a Bluetooth-enabled heart rate monitor chest strap.

Prior to this, I'd be lamenting how there wasn't a large choice of ANT+ enabled Android phones (to my knowledge there's just something Sony makes)

So I got all excited and ordered a strap and it arrived today. This is my initial review (I haven't gone running with it yet, I've just had a tinker)

I'll start with the bad first

the battery cover is a bit dicky

I took the battery cover off to confirm it came with a battery and then had a whale of a time getting it back on. I haven't managed to get it on as flush with the back as before I took it off. This appears to be a common complaint in the Amazon product reviews also.

hard to tell what its auto off timeout is, whether it's on, etc

Basically there's a large lack of feedback as to what's going on. Is it on or off? Is it wet enough to turn itself on? Is it reading a heart rate, or is the Bluetooth pairing just not working? The most accurate way I've found to determine if it's "working" or not is to unpair it and then repair it again. If you get a PIN prompt it's talking. By accident, I've found indications that it will turn itself off after not reading a heart rate for 10 minutes, and to reset it, you detach it and wait 30 seconds and reattach it. This would have been good information to include in the manual

Now for the good

reasonable Android app support

Heart Rate Monitor for Polar claims to support it, but I haven't managed to get it to do anything useful yet. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that My Tracks has support for it. Noom CardioTrainer is one that I was already trying out alongside Strava Run (which doesn't have support for it). There's also Sports Tracker and Endomondo. The UI for both of these also show the battery level. I've found that trying to have multiple apps reading the heart rate monitor simultaneously seems to be an exercise in fail, and that the Sports Tracker app seems to start a background service which subsequently causes all sorts of problems for any of the other apps started after it has started.

And the ugly

Looking back at all the Amazon product reviews, they're pretty much split equally between 5 stars and 1 stars. The product seems to either work flawlessly or absolutely dreadfully. I was beginning to think I was in the latter group and that I'd bought a white elephant, but now that I've gotten to the bottom of the idiosyncrasies of talking to it from Android, it seems to be behaving fairly reliably.

Talking to it from Linux, and the reason behind the title of this post

One of the first things I tried doing after Android was being initially flaky for me, was to try and talk to it from a Linux laptop. This proved fairly straightforward using rfcomm. I didn't get anything human readable out of it though. Being curious as to how these Android apps were able to decode the data, I went looking for some API documentation, and a Google search led me to this sad forum discussion.

So the API information is not freely available, and their CEO personally signs off on who gets access to it. How ludicrous. Do they want to sell product or not? That said, I did also find this blog post which, courtesy of the aforementioned Open Source My Tracks Android app, lays it all out for you. So them being all anti-development with their information is kind of pointless. Polar's website doesn't mention anything about their management, so I have no idea who their CEO even is. Wikipedia is also none the wiser.

I'm looking forward to going for a run tomorrow and seeing how this thing pans out.

Sarah and I are running in the 5K Packard Summer Scamper on Saturday. Sarah's been working on her fitness for a few months now, and I belatedly started working on mine about a 6 weeks ago. (Sarah's fund raising, so if you'd like to sponsor her, her page is here)

I've been using the Couch to 5K program to get my fitness up, but I haven't managed to stick to it exactly, due to a combination of injury and wet weather. I have still managed to get myself to the point where I can run for 28 minutes solidly, which is close to 5K (I'm doing my last training run tomorrow, so I'll see what the distance comes out to).

I've been doing up to three runs a week at lunchtime around the Shoreline Amphitheatre area, using my Galaxy Nexus and some Bluetooth headphones, and I've got a pretty nice little setup. I'm using Pandora for some music to listen to, C25K Pro for the actual running intervals. It has voice prompts that tell me when to run, or to start a walk interval. Finally, I'm using Strava Run for recording the run and getting some additional statistics during the run (kilometre markers, split times and time elapsed). These also come through as voice prompts. I'm not currently wearing a watch, and I want to keep track of the wall time, so I've also found Audio Clock, which verbally announces the time (I've set it to do it every 15 minutes that a Bluetooth headset is connected).

What I really like about all of this is that I get spoken voice prompts and information, seamlessly mixed in with the music from Pandora, all while I'm running. I've got my phone strapped to my arm, and I don't have to look at it during the run, and there's no wires.

I'm a huge personal metrics junkie, and that was why I previously eschewed running outdoors. I wanted that information on the treadmill display so I could push myself that little bit further. Sure, I'm not getting the constant information as much as if I had a treadmill display in front of me the whole time, but I'll settle for running in the great outdoors and getting some feedback every kilometre (if I get really desperate, Strava will do it every half kilometre).

Not to diss optical augmented reality efforts too much, but I'd rather go for a combination of discreet audio announcements through a Bluetooth earpiece, perhaps complemented with something I choose to look at like a Pebble watch, than an in-your-face pair of glasses. My Bluetooth headphones are the around the back of the head variety that aren't going to bounce off during a run.

I've really enjoyed doing the runs during the week, and when I was doing the full 3 runs a week of a given week of the Couch to 5K program, I'd really notice a difference by run number 3. I'm currently planning on sticking with doing a 5K run hopefully at least twice a week after this weekend. It's certainly done wonders for my waistline.

I've received two separate emails now about a spammy looking tweet from Sarah's Twitter account, so I thought I'd attempt to head off any more.

Yes, it appears her account got hacked (weak password), but surprisingly the password didn't get changed. Sarah has changed her password to a stronger one and deleted the offending tweet. All is right with the world.

The Maker Faire is one of those awesome Bay Area things that always fills me with excitement and gets my imagination going.

Zoe and I went again this year to check it out, as best we could within the time constraints we had to work within (opening time and her nap time, minus travel time). She definitely enjoyed herself.

We took the Caltrain, because historically driving and parking has been a bit of a nightmare. The optimal train to get to get there before it opened (at 10am) was the 9:19 train from Mountain View, which was scheduled to get in at Hayward Park a little before 10am. It just so happened that there was a Giants game on in San Francisco today as well, and the train was absolutely packed. We only got a seat because one kind gentleman was getting off and explicitly gave his seat to us. One lesson learned: don't try and take the BOB stroller on the train. Even when collapsed, it's way too bulky. For future Caltrain outings, I'll take our City Mini stroller instead, as it folds much flatter.

I also took our macpac Possum child carrier backpack, and Zoe was pretty happy to just sit in it for the bulk of the time. I think it had novelty value for her, as we haven't used it for a while. I probably could have gotten away without taking a stroller at all. I was very glad I took the backpack, as it gave her a much better vantage point for everything that was going on than she would have gotten from sitting in the stroller.

There was supposed to be a free shuttle from the Hayward Park station to the Maker Faire, but there was a huge crowd waiting for it, so I decided to just walk. It didn't take too long. For the return trip, I think I exited from the wrong side of the fairgrounds, and couldn't figure out the shuttles, so I just walked to Hillsdale station. At least the return train wasn't crowded. Overall, using Caltrain to get in and out was successful. Zoe was very well behaved for the ~30 minute train ride each way.

The Faire was quite a bit bigger this year, and has spilled out into the parking lot on one side. I'd heard stories that O'Reilly had quadrupled booth prices as well.

Trying to abide by the program was too difficult, so we mostly just wandered through the main Expo hall and looked at various booths. I just did a full read through the website of all the exhibitors to see what I missed out on.

Here's some of the stuff I saw in person, or discovered via the website:

• there was a really excellent looking Dalek running around (way better than the photo on the page linked to here). I also learned that there's a whole Dalek-making website. Awesome.
• RAFT (Resource Area For Teaching) had lots of really simple, low cost projects for demonstrating various concepts in physics and science.
• Linux for makers was represented
• This Arduino-controlled automatic fish feeder looked cool. I didn't get to see it in person, I discovered it while I was trawling through the list of exhibitors.
• Shop-in-a-box. I'd have liked to have checked this out.
• Build a bug habitat. I'd have liked to check this out out as well.
• Solar bike trailer. My Dad would have liked this, as he has an electric bike. I imagine this wouldn't be all that hard to make. The trailer looked pretty long from the photo though, but hey, no pedaling.
• The water causeway. Now this looks interesting. I would have loved to have seen this one in person. I love clean tech. There's a whole bunch of videos linked off the page for this.
• Wave energy capture model. Another clean tech thing I'd have liked to have checked out.
• Roominate looks really cool. Something for Zoe when she's a bit bigger.
• There was a table extolling the virtues of growing your own algae for consumption (as spirulina) and bio-fuel. I'm interested in finding out more about the latter.
• I saw some HEXBUG-related stuff near the Geekdad table. This looked like a dressed up version of the "take a toothbrush head and glue an electric toothbrush motor on the back" type project. I'm curious to see how expensive the kits are, as they looked like a lot of fun.
• Ratduino sounds intriguing, but I can't find out much about it.
• Urban scale wind turbines. One that I needed to have seen in person. Unfortunately I missed it.
• GlueMotor looks cool.
• Low-cost push-button clicker. I'd have liked to have found out more about this. If it's what I imagine it is, this could be quite revolutionary in the classroom.
• Hardware Startup Showcase. I have ideas. I'd like to see them get out of my head and into existence. Turns out there's even a MeetUp group.
• Kits by Kids. I'll have to check this out to see what sort of stuff I can do with Zoe when she's a bit older.

Kickstarter is really becoming huge in the maker community. There were heaps of exhibitors there with (mostly robotics) projects that were past the initial prototyping phase and were seeking funding on Kickstarter to go into mass production.

Some of the talks I'd have liked to have seen:

• Every Child a Maker
• "Kickstarters," Equity and the New Maker Pro
• Making Professional Makers - Career Tech Ed Instructors Talk Shop
• Manufacturing Open Source Hardware - Get Your Stuff Made!

Zoe was really well behaved for the entire expedition. I don't think she really gave me any grief at all. There was a brief period where she wanted me to carry her, but I managed to negotiate her back into the stroller after not long.

I think her favourite was ArcBotics, which had a robot insect that would dance and wave at her. She kept asking for it to do more dancing.

Once again, another 3 months have flown by.

Honestly, it's been a total blur. What on earth has happened since February?

Well, heaps more travel of course.

There was the trip to New Orleans, which I already wrote about.

The other big trip we did was to Washington D.C. for a week, which I'm yet to write up. We stayed with friends in Alexandria for the week. Unfortunately, Zoe came down with conjunctivitis before Sarah's very eyes on the flight over (I'd been in North Carolina for work the week before, so they flew without me and I flew up to D.C. to meet them). She also developed an ear infection and a general cough/cold.

Fortunately, we caught it all pretty much as soon as it happened, and spent Easter Sunday at an Urgent Care in Virginia getting antibiotics for her, but her sleep was not so great the whole time we were in D.C.

Other than that, we've just been doing the normal stuff. Swimming classes have continued (she's very confident in the water now). Her speech continues developing well. Toilet training is continuing to go very well. There haven't been very many accidents at all. She's really loving the "new" day care. It was definitely the right thing to do to move her.

Physically, she's in the 80th percentile for height and the 50th percentile for weight, so I guess she's currently tracking to be on the tall and thin side of things.

We had another birthday party in the park behind our home, and this year the weather was much nicer, so we had people hanging around until about 7pm, and a good time was had by all. Zoe even successfully blew out her candle on the first attempt.

Her two-year molars still haven't come through. They seem to go through various stages of giving her a lot of grief, and then they stop messing with her sleep. I was beginning to think we'd never get back to an uninterrupted night's sleep ever again. It's still a bit hit and miss, but she usually settles down again fairly quickly if she does wake up, and doesn't always require intervention from us.

I've arrived at the theory that the "terrible twos" are largely the fault of trying to cut these two year molars. Her tantrums are so much worse when her teeth are actively giving her trouble. If she's had a good night's sleep and her teeth aren't driving her crazy, she's still pretty well behaved. If she's been awake half the night and her teeth are hurting during the day, she can be quite difficult. We seem to be currently at a point where they're not causing too much trouble at night, but she'll chew on her fingers like crazy if given the chance during the day.

I think seasonal allergies are also messing with her a bit. After she got over the cold she came down with in Washington D.C., she's still had a runny nose and a bit of a cough, but I don't think she's actually "sick" I think it's more related to allergies. She passed on whatever she had to me, and since I've recovered from it I'm also not feeling quite right.

I read somewhere that pollen counts are off the charts this year due to the weird weather, and Sarah's having a bit of a hard time as well, so I think we're all going to just have to ride it out with the judicious use of antihistamines.

Speaking of allergies, it's about time to re-test her for her egg allergy. We'll have to try that at a point when she's not regularly taking antihistamines for seasonal allergies, so it might be a while yet before we can do that.

I guess the next big development will be graduating from the crib to a toddler bed. I'm not in any hurry to do that though, so as long as she's not escaping the crib, her sleeping arrangements can stay the way they are. It'd be nice if she can cut her teeth first and then once she's sleeping properly, we can try converting the crib into a toddler bed.

Sarah's Mum had accrued too much annual leave and had to take some time off work, so Sarah did some (very mild) arm twisting and convinced her to come over for 3 weeks, and do a 5 day cruise to Mexico out of New Orleans.

Unfortunately, my annual leave situation wasn't quite so abundant, and I had a lot going on at work, so regretfully I didn't join them on the cruise, and instead went to New Orleans for a four day weekend when they returned.

From all reports, the cruise was very good. Zoe handled it well, although she did say "home" a lot. One of the two stops in Mexico was to check out some Mayan ruins, which looked awesome from the photos. The other stop involved a dolphin encounter. I was incredibly envious of all that they got to do, and would have loved to have gone with them, as I've never been on a cruise ship either.

I can also report that no cats were lost during this bachelor stint.

I had a night flight on the Wednesday evening to get there, which was scheduled to get in at around midnight, and I'd booked a motel room near the airport for that night, and we'd booked a vacation rental home for Thursday to Sunday nights. Unfortunately, my flight ended being delayed something like 2.5 hours, so I didn't get into New Orleans until around 2am.

The house we rented did the trick nicely. It was a small "shotgun" duplex in what looked like a nice neighbourhood. It was advertised as being close to the street car line, but they were doing some work on the tracks, so the street car didn't seem to be running as far down the line as it usually did, so it ended up being a bit more of a trek to get to it. It was also extremely slow, and there was a marathon on the Sunday, which closed everything down for a long time, making it a generally pretty unreliable form the transport.

We ended up renting a car for Saturday and Sunday, which was something of a saga in itself, as Enterprise didn't have any cars at the location we'd booked one, so after a couple of hours cooling our heels there (Zoe was incredibly well-behaved, all things considered), they shuttled us over to another location and we ended up with a minivan instead of a compact, which for the same price, allayed our concerns about being able to transport all of our luggage to the airport on Monday morning.

We had a very early morning flight on Monday morning to come back, which got into SFO at around 9am, and I went directly to work from there.

Thursday

We all arrived at the house, separately. It ended up taking them 2 hours to disembark the ship when it came back into port, with Customs taking an eternity to process everyone. I think we went exploring the local area that afternoon, and took a street car into the city to check out Bourbon Street, having a Cajun dinner at Remoulade.

Friday

In the morning, we went to check out Lafayette Cemetery Number 2. Sarah took Zoe back to the house for a nap, and Sarah's Mum and I continued back to explore the French Quarter some more, walking down the length of Royal Street (which was vastly different from Bourbon Street, just one block over). We had lunch at the French Market. The cemetery was interesting, as pretty much all of the graves were these huge above ground tombs, that seemed to have multiple family members interred in them. Apparently the cemetery filled up quite quickly courtesy of a Yellow Fever outbreak.

After lunch, Sarah's Mum and I continued wandering around the French Quarter. We went and took a look at the Mississippi River, and I had an encounter with a grifter who was so good at his job I couldn't bring myself to argue with him over the $20 he diddled me out of.

We tried to get to the Civil War Museum, but it closed at 4pm. We looked at the Robert E. Lee Monument, which seemed to be draped in drunks, and then I think we rendezvoused with Sarah and Zoe back on Canal Street for dinner at The Court of Two Sisters (which apparently we were under-dressed for, as Sarah and her Mum said we were getting a lot of dirty looks from other patrons).

Saturday

On Saturday morning, we had the aforementioned car rental experience from hell, and by the time we had the car it was lunchtime, so Zoe napped in the car after lunch on the way out to Oak Alley Plantation, where we were introduced to the delightful beverage known as the mint julep, and took a tour of the house and wandered the grounds.

Sunday

On Sunday, Sarah and her Mum did a swamp tour, and Zoe and I went to the zoo. As I said earlier, there was a marathon that completely closed down Saint Charles Avenue, which is where the street cars run, so after walking down to where the street cars started operating (which ended up being most of the way down South Carrollton Avenue), the driver informed me that the street cars were queuing up at the corner of South Carrollton and Saint Charles, and I should get off her street car and get on the one at the front of the queue. I did this, but the driver of the front street car informed me that she wouldn't be leaving for an hour and half. At this point, I started considering a bus instead.

Zoe and I went to check out the Mississippi River, which was quite close to where we were, and then I went back, and despite a street car having left (without any passengers) the driver of the current street car couldn't tell me when she'd be leaving, so I started walking down Saint Charles Avenue.

Unfortunately, Zoe's going through a phase where she wants to be carried everywhere, so I was lugging her all over the place on my hip. Sarah didn't take a stroller with her, and instantly regretted it. Lesson learned.

Eventually we managed to get onto a bus, which dropped us off at Audubon Park, which had Audubon Zoo at the other end of it. There was a playground near the Saint Charles Avenue end of the park, so Zoe had a bit of a play on that, and then we continued through the park to the zoo.

Mercifully, the zoo had dodgy strollers for rent, and there was no way in the world I wasn't going to rent one of them, so that made getting around with Zoe a lot easier on my back. We had a really good time at the zoo. There was some sort of a music festival on in the parklands within the zoo grounds, and that included a jumping castle, which Zoe expressed a desire to have a go on. She had a fabulous time on it. I think she probably spent about 15 minutes in there, without any tears. I was very impressed. I took a brief video of some of her antics.

It was getting close to Zoe's nap time, and she was getting tired, but fortunately Sarah and her Mum were able to pick us up from the zoo after their swamp tour and Zoe got to nap back at the house.

Monday

We had a very early start. Unfortunately, our flight (with United) was a couple of days after United and Continental officially merged, and despite having checked in online, we had to queue up with everyone else (for an extended period of time) to drop off our checked luggage. Then there was a 45 minute line for security screening. We pulled the "toddler going to melt down" card and jumped to the head of the line, but Sarah's Mum had to wait. The flight ended up being delayed because people were stuck in the security line.

Overall impressions of New Orleans

Fabulous architecture. There were so many gorgeous houses on Saint Charles Avenue and the surrounding area. I'd have loved to do an architecture tour.

Crap (but cheap) public transport. $3 gets you a day pass. The street cars are cute, but slow and unpredictable. The drivers were remarkably unhelpful. The buses were okay.

Great food. Zoe seemed to have a liking for the spicy stuff. I gave her some fresh alligator jerky, and after some initial coughing and spluttering at the spiciness of it, she came back for more.

Post-Katrina recovery. We really only saw a very small part of the city, but there were still some houses with boarded up windows, and some vacant blocks where buildings had been demolished, but largely you'd not have been able to tell that large parts of the city had been underwater, from casual inspection.

I really enjoyed the trip, even though it was brief, I feel like I got a good feel for the place. We were there just after Mardi Gras, and there were still beads everywhere. Draped all over fences. Over power lines. Trees on the parade route were absolutely covered in beads. I'd have loved to have been there for Mardi Gras. My friend Brandon, who is an excellent street photographer, took some great photos that capture some of it.

Photos from Sarah's cruise and our time in New Orleans are here.

I first learned that David Hicks had written an autobiography when I saw some press coverage of there being an attempt by the Australian Government to ban the sale of it, so I asked my sister if she could get me a copy for my birthday before any ban happened. The book doesn't appear to be available on Amazon.

I sat down and tried to read it almost immediately, but at the time found his writing style to be rather inarticulate, so I put the book down for a month or so. When I next had a platelet donation to make, I took it along with me, and forced myself to read it for duration of the donation.

On the second reading, I managed to engage with the book, and from that point on, once I made it through his early years in that initial forced reading session, it ended up being quite enthralling. I plugged my way through the 456 pages in a bit over a month I guess.

We'll never truly know the full story of David Hicks, because I'm sure that unless there's some sort of inquiry (and even then, there's multiple country's governments involved), the full story won't come out.

I was always sympathetic to Hicks' plight, since I don't believe that anyone should be held without due process let alone for anywhere near as long as he was.

Certainly, the way the book reads, Hicks comes across as a very young, naive, but principled individual. Like many Australians, he got the travel bug, and by way of it, got to interact with some different cultures, which awakened a hunger for social justice in him (at least that's my interpretation of his portrayal).

I guess I have a different mental image of torture than Hicks did, because I didn't really find any incidences of what I'd consider torture in his story. There was plenty of despicable, inhumane treatment though, so I can see how the line might get blurry, particularly if you're the one experiencing it.

Specifically on the (mis)treatment of the detainees: it was pretty bad, based on the book. I'm surprised there haven't been more whistle blowers that have come out. I can't believe that the many soldiers who were stationed there could treat detainees the way Hicks says they were treated and then can look themselves in the mirror. The ICRC seemed well apprised of the detainees conditions (since they seemed to have the most access to them of any non-military people). I don't know what confidentiality is imposed on them in return for that access, though.

The fact that he's able to string a sentence together at all after the treatment he describes for the length of time he received it, I think is pretty amazing. I couldn't imagine having to endure what he says he went through.

I did feel quite appalled by my own country's complete disregard for his plight, and similarly in the way the US Government treated these detainees for as long as they did. Given there are still 171 detainees in Guantanamo today, it makes me wonder what the conditions and treatment are like there now. It certainly seems to have fallen out of the mainstream press.

Overall, not the most well written book, but a fascinating and shocking account of what happened to one person. I think Hicks should be congratulated for the courage to relive his experiences to get them down on paper, and Random House should also be congratulated for publishing his work, which I'm sure put them under some political pressure.

I have no idea how well the book has sold, or how widely it has been read, but I certainly recommend it.

Paul Wayper writes about the merits of using toll transponders to pay for parking.

I can report that I'm able to use my FasTrak tag to pay for parking at San Francisco International Airport, and it does indeed rock.

I'm unaware of anywhere else accepting it as a form of payment though.

Wow, a lot happens in 3 months. I'm sure I've missed something...

I think the biggest achievement would be toilet training. Zoe's been using the toilet for some time now, but still wearing diapers, and just after Christmas (when she was sick and vomited on the carpet) we figured we had nothing to lose, so we ditched the diapers. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of accidents she's had since then. I'm really happy to have this out of the way so early. Using a toilet away from home is still more of a challenge, but she seems to have very good bladder control, and fairly predictable bowel movements.

Speaking of sick, she was the sickest she's ever been around Christmas time. It coincided with her top canines finally coming through. She had a cold, which progressed into an ear infection, and she had this dreadful persistent dry cough, which then progressed into a dreadful productive wet cough. You knew she was really sick because she was extremely cuddly and lethargic.

Since around that time, her sleep has gone completely to hell. We've had some really bad nights where she'll wake up after a couple of hours of going down for bed, or for a while, she was reliably waking up at 4am and taking a good couple of hours to settle back down. Lately she's been sleeping through again, but waking up at 6am instead of the usual 7-7:30am. We bought a clock that changes colour at programmable times, so we're trying to train her that if she wakes up and the clock isn't green yet, she should try and go back to sleep. Not a huge amount of success there yet.

Christmas itself was good, but fairly quiet because Zoe was sick. Sarah managed to get a fabulous photo with Santa, which just fills me joy every time I look at it. We had some friends around for Christmas dinner, and Zoe vomited all over her new Cabbage Patch Kid doll and I think she threw up a couple more times between that day and the day after, so that wasn't much fun.

She's becoming more and more independent. "Zoe do it" is the most frequent thing out of her mouth, but fortunately she still accepts help as well.

We've also been getting plenty of sneak previews of the Terrible Twos. Fortunately they're pretty short-lived, but it's definitely going to be a challenge to my patience.

We'd been intending to keep Zoe rear-facing in the car until she was 2, which is the current recommendation over here, but I caved in recently when she was getting in the car and refusing the sit down (she'd stand up facing forwards and it was next to impossible to rectify the situation). After she did this to me a few times when I took her out in the car, I had enough and turned the car seat around. It's improved things a bit, but she still has her moments.

We also changed her day care, from the one day a week at a home day care, to two days a week at a commercial place. We were becoming more and more unhappy with the existing day care, and so decided to move her. It's a lot more money, but after just a week, we were seeing a noticeable change (for the better) in Zoe's response to going to day care, and she seemed to have picked up a bunch of new skills as well (sitting crossing her legs, holding a crayon like a pencil). The place she's in now is pretty new and very shiny. There's a couple of kids in her class that she knows from the local park, so overall it's looking like money well spent and definitely a change for the better.

Zoe had her first hair cut last weekend, and it was fairly uneventful. We went to this cute place in Palo Alto called Snipits, which was ludicrously expensive and I'd only ever take Zoe there for her first haircut. There was another kid there who was screaming bloody murder, and I think that unsettled Zoe more than anything else, so she was a bit uncomfortable to start with, but once the hairdresser put an Elmo DVD on, it was all good.

Sarah's Mum is coming over to visit for a couple of weeks in a couple of weeks time, so Zoe will be very happy to see her Nana. They're going to go on a cruise out of New Orleans down to Mexico and part of the Caribbean. Unfortunately I'm too busy at work at the moment to burn a week, so I'll just take a four-day weekend and check out New Orleans with them when they get back from the cruise.

I really should write these a bit more often.

Wow, I can't believe it was over 4 years ago that I started having occasional face to face meetings with the ISC DHCP folks.

The entire ISC DHCP team (of 5) was in town for an all-hands meeting, and Larissa Shapiro, the Product Manager for DHCP (and BIND) suggested it would be a good opportunity for another catch up. Given the current (bad) state of DHCP 4.2 in unstable, I thought this was an excellent idea, and so we all had lunch on Tuesday.

I pretty much set the agenda, and it was

• general state of 4.2.2 in Debian
• situation with GNU/Hurd and their patch to fix an FTBFS (#616290)
• the current FTBFS issues with kFreeBSD (#643569)
• the embedded BIND sources in the DHCP source
• removal of the RFCs from the embedded BIND source (#645760)

The general state of 4.2.2 in Debian

In a nutshell, it's a bit of a mess. We've got release critical bugs, build failures, the whole cat and kaboodle. It makes me very sad, because 4.2.2 was the first 4.2 series that I had a chance to upload, and I was very excited to do so, because it contains the hotly desired LDAP patches merged upstream. Unfortunately, it's also got the beginnings of the BIND/DHCP merger that's going to be BIND 10, and that is all a bit of a mess. It's directly responsible for the kFreeBSD FTBFS and the introduction of the RFCs, which are both keeping 4.2.2 out of testing.

I gave the ISC folks a high-level overview of how Debian development works, and the normal progression of packages from unstable to testing to stable, and the release process and whatnot, and impressed upon them the implications of the current release critical bugs. I also showed them how Ubuntu development fitted into the picture. Finally, I showed them the popcon statistics for DHCP. I think they found it useful.

FTBFS issues on kFreeBSD

This was a good segue to #643569. The issue is actually with the embedded BIND sources. I'd already forwarded this bug upstream when it first happened, but I don't know what had happened to it. They seemed to act as if this was the first they'd heard of it. I'm hoping that they can get this fixed in 4.2.3, which is due around the end of the quarter.

Embedded BIND sources

Since we were already talking about an issue caused by the embedded BIND sources, we moved on to talking about #645760 and the existence of the embedded BIND sources in general. It should be pretty straightforward for them to strip the RFCs out of the source. They've already done it in the past for the DHCP sources, so I'm also hopeful that this will get resolved in 4.2.3.

The issue of the embedded BIND sources is apparently a bit more complicated, although the day before our meeting, Michael Gilbert filed #643569 and #645760, so I hope that the ISC folks can take a look at these patches and see if it's feasible to adopt them.

Patches for GNU/Hurd

Finally we talked about #616290, which I know is near and dear to the GNU/Hurd porters' hearts.

We probably spent the most time talking about this. The DHCP developers have concerns about accepting a patch for an OS that they do absolutely no testing on, and also questioned the viability of the OS in general. They stressed that they're fairly thin in numbers relative to what they have on their plate to achieve this year, and so pushed back pretty firmly on accepting the current patch.

I relayed the frustration that the Hurd folks were having about a lack of dialogue around the patch (most of the interaction has been via an ISC support person). There was actually a bit of a split between the developers, with one of them appreciating that the Hurd was unlikely to go anywhere as a platform without a working DHCP client, so in some regards, they were condemning the platform by taking the position they were taking.

They're going to go away and take another look at the patch and try to come back with some actionable feedback on what needs to change to make it more acceptable to them, so we'll see what comes of this. I'm not particularly optimistic that anything acceptable to the GNU/Hurd folks is likely to happen any time soon, but maybe if the patch gets cleaned up a bit more, I'll just bite the bullet and start applying it to the Debian package.

BIND 10

One of the guys is more involved in BIND 10 than DHCP, and asked if I could help out with the packaging of a build dependency for BIND 10. It seemed like #578387 was languishing so I offered to pick it up. I've not packaged a library before, mainly because the library packaging guide has scared me off it (I feel I lack the deep C fu that seems necessary), but I figured that this would be a good learning opportunity, so I'm going to dive in.

I had a bit of an adventure yesterday, which would have taken some explaining if the police had gotten involved. It went a little something like this...

My friend and former co-worker Sara was in the US Virgin Islands for the holidays. Her boyfriend, Karl, flew there separately for the tail end of her time there.

Yesterday, I received a phone call from Sara, saying that Karl had managed to fly out to the Virgin Islands without his passport. Apparently you can get there without one, but to get back into the mainland US, you need one. She wanted to know if I could get one of my lock-picking co-workers to break into their apartment and retrieve Karl's passport and mail it them. Karl was supposed to fly out the next day. Attempts by Sara to contact her landlord had failed, so they didn't have many other options (apart from mailing me a key, which would have cost them another day).

I asked one of my co-workers, Jason, who I knew was into lock picking, if he was up for it, and he offered to put me in touch with another guy who had dominated the recent lock picking night that he'd run.

So now I'm talking to David, who's on board with the mission, but doesn't have his lock picking gear on him. No problem, Jason says he'll lend me his, which was at work with him. So we have a plan.

Our friends Ian and Melinda are currently in Australia. They've lent us their car because it's leased, and they have some minimum mileage they're supposed to do and they're under it, so I've been driving to work in their car some days. As it happens, I drove to work in it yesterday.

So now David and I set out in a car that neither of us own, with a lock picking set that belongs to another person, to break into an apartment of someone who's in the Virgin Islands. What could possibly go wrong?

I'm told that it's not illegal to own a lock picking set, but if you're caught with one on your person and you're not a locksmith, you can get into all sorts of trouble. On top of that I'd have a hard time explaining the car I'm driving.

We get to Sara and Karl's condo complex. It has a common gate that visitors would normal get buzzed through. Turns out it's not that hard to climb over. It's got some benign-looking spiky things on top, but I could get a leg over from the left hand side of the gate and jump over without impaling myself. Then I let David in and we proceeded upstairs to Sara and Karl's apartment door, where David set to work.

Sara said that just the dead bolt was locked. David started at it with Jason's tools, trying to be as discreet as possible. It was about 3:30pm and there was no one around, but we could hear some noises from the neighbouring apartment (the two front doors were right next to each other).

After what felt like about half an hour without success (the last pin of the lock was particularly tricky apparently) David was having to resort to more noisy techniques with the lock, so I decided to take the up-front approach and just inform the next door neighbour what we were doing in case he/she (I think it was a she) decided to call the cops on us. I told her through the door why we were there and what we were doing. She didn't seem to care too much.

David then proceeded to start "raking" the lock, essentially brute forcing the pins with a lot of jiggling, and finally managed to pick it and we were in. I quickly found Karl's passport where it was suspected to be, and then we pondered how we were going to lock the door again.

We could have just locked the door knob instead of the deadbolt and closed the door behind us, but we weren't sure if Sara and Karl had a key to the doorknob (Sara said they always just locked the deadbolt). Sara was fine with leaving the door unlocked until they got home, but weren't so keen on leaving our fingerprints all over the place and then leaving the door unlocked.

David tried to re-pick the deadbolt so that he could lock it via the same means as opened it, and I scouted around for a key. I managed to find a key that locked both the deadbolt and the doorknob, so I took that with us and locked up their apartment. In David's defense, the deadbolt was a bit stiff to lock even with the key.

I dropped David back at work, collected my stuff (it was now about 4:30pm) and headed to the UPS Store to ship Karl's passport to him as fast as humanly possible. I just made the 5pm pick up.

Today I received an SMS from Sara informing me that they had received the passport. I was very impressed with how fast it got to them.

So that was all a bit of an adventure. I'm not sure how much longer Karl is going to have to stay in the Virgin Islands as a result. I'm going to suggest that Sara and Karl leave a spare key with someone in future.

Late last month our six year anniversary of moving to the US quietly came and went. This also makes it six years with Google.

I think if you had have told me at the start of 2005, that I'd be ending the year off by starting a six year (and counting) stint in Silicon Valley, I wouldn't have believed you.

Six years is comfortably the longest I've spent in any one place since I moved out of home (the four years living at the Central Park Apartments was the longest I've spent in any one home, also).

Six years is also far and away the longest time I've stayed with one employer.

I wonder what life will be like in another six years' time?

Wow, a lot (of travel) has happened in the last three months.

Zoe has been to Chicago, Langkawi, Brisbane, and is now back in Mountain View. I'm actually feeling really guilty about our carbon footprint for this year.

She spent the last about 3.5 weeks in Brisbane with Sarah after the wedding in Langkawi, until I flew there last weekend for my sister's wedding. Losing and finding Smudge helped pass the time, as did having Liam stay with me while he was visiting from Zurich. I could have done without the former, but really appreciated the timing of the latter.

There was quite a noticeable vocabulary difference when I finally saw Zoe again. I can't keep up with all the words she can say now, and she's starting to grasp concepts as well. For example, she opened a small cardboard box, and declared it "empty". Apparently we say "uh oh" a lot, as this is one of her favourite things to blurt out whenever anything happens, ranging from my sister's bridal train dragging on the ground at her wedding, to vomiting all over herself in the back of the car.

She's definitely not going to be a girly girl. When the flight from Brisbane landed in Los Angeles she yelled out a big "WHOA!" and then "Again!" while furiously doing the baby sign language for "more". Fortunately we were able to oblige for the flight from LAX to San Jose, and she again enjoyed the landing (she got to sit in her own seat for this one) and did a loud "Wow!" and "Again!" I'm looking forward to taking her on her first roller coaster ride.

Her canine teeth still haven't come through yet, but I think they've just started to make an appearance. We're still trying to de-jetlag her at the moment, so it's unclear if the wake-ups throughout the night are because of jetlag or teeth issues (or a combination of both).

She handled all of the travel fairly well, although she's now too long for a aeroplane bassinet. She didn't get a lot of sleep on the 12.5 hour flight from Brisbane to Los Angeles (which meant we got none), but she was pretty well behaved for the bulk of it. She's good enough on her legs now that she can just tear up and down the aisles without incident, so we made countless laps of the plane to keep her occupied. The return flight was on Halloween, and the cabin crew had gotten into the spirit with temporary face tattoos, some cabin decorations and some "costumes". The trip back home was actually epic in that it was littered with minor annoyances, but I'll save that for a separate blog post.

This Christmas should be a fun one, as she'll be old enough to be a bit more interactive about the whole thing. She may also freak out sitting on Santa's knee, so we may not get quite as nice a photo as we got last year.

A few months after Zoe was born, it hit me that we didn't just have to raise a baby to grow up happy and healthy, we were raising a girl, and had to worry about making sure she had a healthy self-image and mind as well, and having to worry about how the world she was coming into was going to have an impact on that.

I think it might have been around the time that I became aware of the book Cinderella Ate My Daughter that I had this realisation.

I started taking more of an interest in, what I guess I'd call feminist issues. I became a seed funder for the Ada Initiative, and I tend to prick my ears up when I hear about feminist issues.

So when an email went by on the parents list at work about a screening of an independent documentary film called Miss Representation, I watched the trailer, and since I'm currently swanning around sans wife and child, ponied up the $10 to go and see a screening of it in Palo Alto, which was followed by a Q&A session with the writer/director/producer.

I basically went along on the strength of the trailer, and being a father of a daughter, and didn't do much more reading into the who the writer/director/producer was. It turns out that Jennifer Siebel is Gavin Newsom's wife. I didn't figure that out until I got home and did my homework, so some of the references she made in the conversation after the screening didn't make a lot of sense to me at the time.

The documentary itself was very poignant, but I found that after about 40 or 50 minutes, I felt that the point was made, and I would have preferred to see more about what to do about it. But I guess what to do about it is to be aware of the problem. I had some trouble accepting the statistic quoted at the beginning of the film that the average teenager spends more than 10 hours each day consuming media. If they sleep for 8 hours, and go to school for 6 hours, that means they're spending every other waking minute consuming media, and I just don't buy that.

Apparently Jennifer is working on a couple of related follow-up documentaries, so it'll be interesting to see what they're about and what they're like, and how they're presented to the viewing public.

One of the things that disappointed me a bit was this film doesn't look like it's going to do any sort of mainstream theatre run. I'm not sure why, but it seems like the way they're going is for more of a grassroots, small screening thing, possibly as a way of trying to get it added to (I presume private) school curricula. It is getting a couple of showings on Oprah Winfrey's cable channel OWN, but that doesn't seem like enough to me. I think it'd really cause people to sit up and take notice if it got half-decent box office numbers and a bit more press coverage as a result. It's the kind of thing I could see going viral if it gets more exposure.

The other thing that really disappointed me was the lack of men in the audience. I think I could have counted on both hands the number of men there. But I have to say that I wouldn't have heard about it (yet, anyway) if it weren't for that email that went by on the mailing list at work, so maybe it just doesn't have much of a profile yet.

I view this documentary in the same calibre as Super Size Me, or anything that Michael Moore has put out. It's a documentary trying to highlight an issue with American culture. It should get as widespread a viewing as possible to get the conversation going. Instead, as best I can tell, there's two DVDs billed as "educational material", with what I consider prohibitive pricetags.

I want to purchase a copy of the film for posterity (if nothing more, it'll be interesting to show Zoe a snapshot of American culture from around when she was born), but I'd also like to get my hands on the age-appropriate educational stuff so that I can use it with Zoe. The likelihood of Zoe going to a school that incorporates the material into its curriculum is slim (she'll be educated in Australia), so I'd really like to be able to use it at home.

I'll end with this thought provoking article that also did the rounds of the parents list at work a few months ago.

I've been wanting to sponsor a child in Africa for many, many years. I remember seeing a photo of a sponsored child on a couple of sets of friends' mantelpieces in Canberra, and saying to myself how I should really do that too.

Of course, for no really good reason, fast-forwarding to 6+ years later, I still hadn't gotten around to it. Until last month. I was walking out of the Apple Store in Palo Alto. I was accosted by one of those people on the street, with the clipboard and all that.

I usually manage to brush these sorts of people off. I really hate solicited donations. I'd rather consciously make a donation to a charity, than do it because someone on the street was paid to ask me to, or knocked on my door, or whatever. But I was distracted, or in a good mood, or something, and so I missed the initial opportunity to deflect her.

I'm really glad I did, because as I said, this is something that I've wanted to do for years, so I barely hesitated, and signed up on the spot.

I received the welcome kit in the mail a couple of days ago. I've been allocated a 6 year old boy named Armando, from Mozambique. I'm looking forward to corresponding with him.

Our friends, and former neighbours, the Harvetts have moved back to South Africa, and I hope one day to be able to visit them. Since we'll be in the vicinity, I hope one day to be able to visit Armando as well.

I'm pleased to see that Save the Children gets a good rap in Charity Navigator. I was worried that I'd get home and find out I'd signed up with one of those charities that blows half their money on overhead, but that's not the case.

I'm indescribably happy to be able to say that I found Smudge alive and well this morning.

I was getting ready to head out the door to work, and I opened the shutters in the kitchen and saw that the trap that I had outside by the front door was closed. The trap itself was wrapped in a sheet, so I couldn't immediately see what I'd caught.

I quickly went outside, half-expecting to find a raccoon in there, and I was pleasantly surprised to find Smudge in there!

I brought the trap inside and got Smudge out and raced her over to the food and water, where she had a long drink of water and something to eat.

She's definitely lost some weight, but otherwise doesn't seem any worse for wear. She's currently sitting in my lap as I write this, so I don't think she's too traumatised by her ordeal. Lily was a bit standoffish this morning, hissing and growling at her, but I suspect that's because she didn't smell right. If she keeps that up, I'll put a drop of vanilla essence on both of them so they smell the same.

Yesterday, I'd received a report of a possible sighting three streets over (houses on one side of the street back onto the Hetch Hetchy trail, where there were also reported sightings), so last night I placed the other trap in the backyard of one of the houses where there'd been a sighting.

A couple of hours after that, I got another report of a possible sighting from someone else on the same street, further down. So I was pretty keen to substantiate all of these sightings on this particular street. Unfortunately, after two trips up there, I didn't see any black cats, so we'll never know if it was her or not.

The night before last, I'd upgraded the food in the traps to some sardines, tuna and some fresh wet cat food, to try and lure her in. I have no idea if that helped or not, or she just finally found her way home, but it was such a relief to find her in the trap this morning.

It turns out I caught an opossum in the other trap. Those are the funniest animals. They have a totally broken fight or flight reflex. This one would not leave the trap when I opened it. I ended up having to upend the trap and shake it out, and even then it just lay there playing dead - even when I shoved a bowl of food in its mouth.

I've just done the rounds of the neighbourhood and taken down all the posters I'd put up. It had been suggested that I might want to update the posters and say that I'd found her, but I honestly don't want to do the extra trip to then take them all down again after that.