is_apposite

We've just moved offices and I have to say everything is not totally perfect. But it is pretty hard to complain when you view is like this:



That is the Sun Princess pulling out of its berth- which is 200m over the water from where we sit.

For one reason and another I've started up another blog. I'm focusing it mostly on very dull geeky things and my latest post is no different- a proposition to build out privately owned, publically subsidized last mile fibre to the node as financial stimulus.

Kris is 17 weeks pregnant and we just found out it is a boy! Welcome to the family my son.

It is with huge amusement that I listen to the end credits of the NPR: Planet Money podcasts when the credit comes through from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business:

Asking the question: What were you thinking?

(And as a bonus this comes at the end of podcasts about the financial crisis.)

After arriving in good time for my 9:30am flight I have moved from irritated to frustrated to furious over American Airline's handling of delays. 12:05pm now. Be nice to board sometime. Sadly this isn't my only AA flight today. (My original arrival time in Atlanta of 16:40 is a distant and fond memory now.)

Grrr. There are many things AA could have done to make this more bearable and they've done none of them. Particularly galling since I have a 'first class' seat. Apparently that doesn't mean anything.

I'm on my way home again after a month in New York. I'd already be home except for a missing manhole cover.

On the way to JFK airport two expressways converge from about 10 lanes into 3 and pass under an overpass, under which a manhole went missing. The New York authorities leapt into action and parked a van and some witches hats around the hole. This meant of course that traffic flow was cut since there were fewer lanes but what really killed it was everyone SLOWING DOWN TO LOOK. ITS A MISSING MANHOLE COVER. THERE'S LITERALLY NOTHING TO SEE. So my 45 minute taxi ride took 2 hours and I missed the plane by 10 minutes (since it was running on time).

Today, rather than be stung again I left ridiculously early, got there in plenty of time and the plane was running late. In fact, so late that my flight, due to arrive at 7:15am in Sydney will now arrive at 9:25am.

So the whole flying thing has been a bit of a bust this time round.

Luckily Google have iPass so at least I can vent on the Intrawub while waiting.

I'm scheduling my last couple of weeks in New York for this trip and I was most amused that in Google calendar the example event text was exactly the thing I was scheduling: "Breakfast at Tiffany's". In homage to Audrey, no doubt like thousands of tourists every year, I thought I'd do a Coffee and Danish while window shopping at Tiffany's. Google knows all.

So here is a long, possibly boring, discussion about the New York roadmap. More than most of my blog posts, this was written for me, not you. But you are welcome to read it. I won't mind if you get bored and stop reading.

New York is an easy city to find your way in- for a big chunk of Manhattan Island the Streets are numbered from 1st through to 242nd St and orthogonal to that the Avenues are numbered first through ninth. Fifth avenue is the 'middle' and if you are on a Street (as opposed to an Avenue) West of fifth you say something like "160 West 24th St", or if you are East you might say 65 East 113th St. I happen to be staying at 160 W 24th St which is on the corner of 7th Ave. Catching the subway "downtown" means going to streets with smaller numbers (say from 77th st to 23rd street) whereas going "uptown" means going to streets with bigger numbers (say from 13th St to 112th st). After two weeks here the St/Ave grid is second nature- I can confidently place things "over on 4th Ave between 13th and 14th" or "up on 42nd St on 7th Ave".

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I have been guided in my walks by my reliable, pockets sized and ultra-convenient New York 'popoutmap' which folds out something like this:


The pocket sized map unfolds to a map of the subway system both sides of which then pop out (using a very nifty origami-like "flower unfurling" system) to a much larger and more detailed map of streets and tourist highlights. It is incredibly useful.

Riley gave it to me for my birthday. Kris was looking for birthday presents looked at this map and showed Riley and then went to put it way because I would have access to Google maps and wouldn't need such a thing- but Riley insisted on having it because it was Just So Cool. And he was absolutely right.

New York is a walking city and walking around New York everywhere you go you'll see street vendors selling 'I (heart) New York' caps, shirts, pyjamas and anything else a tourist could possibly want. As time goes by I'm increasingly inclined to agree with the motto.

The nice thing about New York is not that it is a dynamic slick and polished metropolis but that it isn't. New York is a very human place full of very human people. Its well lived in, the streets are irregular and everywhere you go something is being knocked down, rebuilt or repaired. For every building that is a monument to clean lines and a modern aesthetic there are a dozen that a tired, boring, classic, hokey, decrepit, funky or simply monolithic.

Actually I love the buildings of New York- so much so I've given them their own album in my Picasa gallery. Since some of you may not be in to building porn I'll just include a few thumbnails here:



I also have a gallery that is less building oriented for those so inclined:



There are stories in these pictures, but I probably won't tell them tonight. I will say, however, that Strand Books (18 Miles of New, Used, Rare and Out of Print Books) is a seriously great bookshop.

On Wednesday night I left work turned right rather than my normal left and went for a walk. I walked to the shoreline closest to work, along the shore to Hudson park then inland for a while and back up Broadway to home. In all 4 hours of walking. It was a fascinating walk because of the name recognition factor- the Monopoly moments. (Named after the moments when you walk around London going 'Look Kings Cross!', 'Angel of Islington', 'Park Lane!'- funny how they named all those streets after places in Monopoly.)
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Last night I wandered down to Greenwich Village with one of the other new Googlers and we ate at a Mexican near where he lives. The food was just excellent but I was grossly overcharged for the drinks which took the shine off things- but only the next day when I went back and looked at the receipt. It was a great evening though- he's a nice bloke, just out of University and we've been having very enjoyable conversations.

Tomorrow, more walking.

I'm in New York at 160 W. 25h St (between 6th and 6th Ave). The flight was OK, the queues were terrible, the company was good.

The bad: I got my flight times wrong so the whole family got up at 4:30am to get to the car at 5:00am to get to the airport at 5:30am to check in in time for my 7am ish flight. No traffic, the queues were fine except... my flight was actually at 10:20am, just as I'd entered it (correctly) in my PDA. But my brain decided it was an early flight and... sigh. And of course the night before Riley had thrown up and I'd been up late doing last minute things and... so I didn't actually get to sleep till 2am and I woke at 4am. Anyway I taxied back to the airport, queued for about 2 hours in the Qantas check in ("Oooh, your flight boards at 9:50am, you'd better hurry!", "Yes, thanks, I've been queuing for 2 hours.")

The good: A lovely American couple were siting next to me. He's a writer and she's a film maker. They were lovely company and Justin commentated the approach to NYC in a very underplayed but interesting manner. Not bad given they'd started in Adelaide that 'morning'.

I also met a very nice chap in the queues at LAX who wrote RFC 5139.

I've also, in no particular order, skyped back to Kris and Riley with great success, had a Chicago Burger at New York Burger, broken the toilet, had a shower and had a walk around the local bit of New York (its very pleasant- a warm 28C and lots of people out and about- especially in Madison Square Park (not to be mistaken with Madison Square Garden).

Interestingly, it was my birthday on Saturday. I left on Sunday morning but it was my Birthday again during the flight (at least, when it was when I flicked the clocks on my phone and computer forward to LA time). So I had a quite protracted and altogether eventful birthday.

Now I'm almost sick with exhaustion so it's time to sleep.

I loved it.

Great people, a great feel and there were lots of things that were just 'right'.

I have a bit of a rant about starting at a new company which goes: Ideally when you start at a company they should put their best foot forward and make you feel a bit welcome. So on your first day someone would be there at reception to greet you, shake your hand and say 'hi!' then they'd do an introduction to the company, introduce you to your mentor, walk you to your desk and pass you the piece of paper with your username and password so you could log into your desktop. Then you'd be directed to the internal 'new starters page' and given the chance to go through the necessary checklists and introductions. In other words, they'd make you feel like they didn't want to waste your time.

I've never, previously, had that experience- my normal (as in previous to Google, every single time) experience is that there is no desk, you get a desktop about a week after you arrive, your account takes about that long or longer to set up and no one is assigned to take care of you- actually everyone is really busy and desperately needs you to be up and running yesterday. There is an internal new starter check list, but you won't find it till you've been at the company for a couple of years and the checklist will be wrong anyway.

Well Google got it right. Not only was my mentor in reception waiting for me when I walked through the door but my manager too, the HR induction was actually good and had videos, my desk and desktop were waiting for me. My username and password were ready although I broke the process by asking for my username to be changed which meant I didn't actually log in till the next day- but the username and password were ready. The internal 'new starter's page' is an active 'CGI' page which allows you to tick stuff off as you go through it and, sensibly, it links to all the things it should link to. The IT guys who gave me my laptop were really friendly and competent, acknowledged I knew what I was talking about so they didn't waste my time with basics, kitted me out with a spare power supply ("one for home") backpack and, at my request, headphones and mouse- no problem.

Later in the day I was given a "Welcome" helium balloon anchored to a pack of jelly beans. While wandering around the floor with this in my hand I struck up a conversation with a gentleman who, by chance, happened to be processing my change of username. Since I was there he updated me on where it was at, why it would take a little while and later it turns out he kept a watchful eye on the change and fixed several problems that cropped up.

That sort of coincidental good fortune happened all week- I'd randomly chat with someone who would be incredibly helpful and (for instance) give me a t-shirt or tell me some useful piece of advice that I just happened to know enough to understand and appreciate. I had a string of discussions with people where the first person would explain a piece of infrastructure, then the next person I spoke to would without any previous collusion, lead on from that discussion ("So do you know about infrastructure A?", "Why yes, yes I do.", "Great, so, using that we...") which was very satisfying and a great way to learn.

And, on top of that, in the first three days I heard about four really cool projects that I can't tell you anything about but are really cool, in a 'Wow, I can't believe we are doing that!' kind of way.

So, for the first time in a long time, I'm looking forward to going to work tomorrow.

Oh, and next week I'm off to New York for a month for training. That'll be cool too.

Since it is a bit of an important change in my life it is probably worth mentioning that I finished up my contract with Optus a week ago and I've been on holiday for the last week. More importantly I'll be starting at Google tomorrow as an SRE.

Amongst other things this means that it will be a 22 minute walk from my front door to the Google Sydney office in Darling Harbour. Google Sydney will be changing offices at the end of the year to a new building on the other side of Darling Harbour which means it will probably be more like a 21 minute walk.

It also means that I'll be spending about 3 months overseas on training- in New York for 2 months and Mountain View for 1 month. (I might even manage to scam a trip to Zurich at the end of the Mountain View visit.) That means I'll be away from Kris and Riley, which is going to be very sad, but the training isn't optional and the opportunity is too good to pass up. My overseas travels should be broken up into three 1 month stints: New York, New York and then Mountain View. First visit to New York is roughly from the 18th of August to the 18th of September.

I am, it has to be said, quite excited.

Riley is now quite vocal and has a good and expanding vocabulary. As a good learner he likes to practice so every now and then he spontaneously bursts into a monologue- which is generally more of an assemblage of words or phrases than a coherent narrative. He speaks fairly well so his monologues are generally comprehensible- with the occasional notable exception.

One oft repeated fragment went something like "Crash bang clatter. Evil nose! Crash bang clatter. Evil nose!" The "evil nose" wasn't totally clear and bugged both Kris and I for ages until he muttered about Toffee and I finally put it together: there is a book called Toffee's night noises which tells the story of a cat out in the night listening to the different sounds. When the neighbour's dog knocks a rubbish bin lid off the book reads:

Then there is an even louder noise. Crash! Bang! Clatter!

His version is abbreviated but he's got the important bits. With bonus evil noses.

He's also be trained to be polite with lots of 'pleases' and 'hellos' and 'goodbyes'. Being a smart young lad he has also attempted some shortcuts on these inconvenient conventions. So rather than go through the whole 'Please may I?', 'Yes you may.' palava he tends to shorcut this to (what sounds like) 'Yes a may!'- usually as he beats a path to the computer.

It is far weirder when as a parent you don't even know where he has learned the word. A little while ago Riley pointed at a motorbike and clearly said 'Ducati'- which it was. Of course if he'd said 'Ducati Monster' we'd have been more impressed.

(edited to fix spelling of 'Ducati')

I'm posting this as Google fodder- I was asked to post this so that search engines might index the document. Basically this is a link to a thoughtful discussion of how to be prepared for an emergency which might require evacuation. The discussion is focused on Canberra (where the people who developed this document live) where there have been enough recent runs in with nature that evacuation is a real consideration.

To quote from the document:


"We considered what we could do about our concerns, and decided that we should start with ourselves. What emergencies might we have to face? Were we prepared for these emergencies? How might we prepare ourselves?
Although the work evolved somewhat haphazardly during 2007, eventually we reached a position where each of us was comfortable with our preparations for the risks we felt we faced.


Each of us placed different priorities in our preparations, with some focusing to a greater extent on water storage and recycling while others emphasised long-term survival at home and yet others anticipated a more short-term emergency and the necessity of evacuation.


The end of our process was to prepare ourselves for the risks we perceived. However, we thought others may be interested in some of the main ideas that guided us. This document presents those main ideas. It does not pretend to be comprehensive.


Our purpose in publishing this on the web is simply to allow our efforts to be of assistance to others. If you do not find them helpful, so be it and we wish you well. If you do find them useful, please pass on the useful bits to others."

We have, of course, been sick.

Suspected Glandular Fever (Kris) but actually tonsillitis, gastro for Riley and myself, a brief round of colds for all. With the prospect of glandular fever we called in help and Rohan (Kris' Dad) came up to help out which has made a huge difference. Sadly he also got gastro but that just extended his stay which was very nice for us.

I also made it Tonga and back complete with data projector and XBox. It was good and great to do something a little different and rather spontaneous. And excellent to catch up with good friends- only sad it was so short.

On Thursday I join the cabal in Tonga. Alison and I will fly out at about 2:40pm to arrive in Tonga for the critical anniversary (even if everyone else will be elsewhere in Tonga- at the Royal Sunset Island Resort which is inaccessible after 5pm without your own water transport). I, however, will be traveling with some extra equipment: an XBox 360 and a data projector.

Way, way back when I was heavily involved with the Macintosh side of life a little company called Bungie made great games like Marathon which I faithfully bought and played. Eventually they announced their next big project and I waited eagerly for its arrival. But before it arrived they were bought out by Microsoft, their big project was channeled into the XBox and Halo never arrived on the Macintosh. And it all took a lot longer than I had originally expected.

Fast forward to the Halo release date when I'm sharing a house with syncretin who I drag into my enthusiasm. We buy the system and the game at midnight and proceed to finish it over the next 12 hours or so. And again on legendary. Precedent established we repeat for Halo 2.

Halo 3 was released a few weeks back on the 25th of September and the perfect storm of Halo, my campaign partner and time of work fails to eventuate because syncretin has been lured to San Fransisco by Google.

Separately we commiserate to our partners who then sensibly, suggest the obvious: if I just went to Tonga we could finish the game- nay the story arc!- together.

Which is what is going to happen.

I'm cutting out the humming and hawing by syncretin and myself as we hedge around the obvious and total abandonment of our partners to a game. I'm cutting out the back and forth over purchase in the states vs hire vs purchase in Australia, the questions about sound and video compatibility, availability of televisions or BYO data projectors, the indulgent expenditure on a short trip, what power standard is used in Tonga and, wait, did I mention the guilt of abandoning our families to go and play a game?

Luckily we have very cool other halves- they had no doubt that this was the right thing to do. Hopefully Riley will forgive me because right now I don't he'll understand the explanation.

Just between you and me, I'm looking forward to it. It is silly, it costs money, it is very indulgent. But I'm going to catch up with some people I value, finish a task- even if it is a game and have another crazy story to tell.

Thanks Kris! One more reason I love you. Not just for encouraging me to go- but also for knowing that I should.

I have this horrible memory. Or more specifically: I remember things very well, I just can't recall them.My recall is worst when I'm put on the spot without context. This manifests at its most extreme at quiz nights when random questions are thrown at me and- horror- I really should know the answer. So there I am, computer geek, at a quiz night and it is left to some random non-geek to answer that 'isn't it called something like ping?' to the only clear computer question of the night.

My own life is a little bit of a mystery to me. I know I've done all this stuff and with the right prompting, like a photograph, I can even recall it. But creating some kind of continuity out of it all, some greater story arc, is well beyond me. So I have this minor hording instinct around paperwork. My day to day bank balance- I don't care. I can throw out ATM receipts easily. But that receipt for the hotel in the Blue Mountains that Kris and I stayed in when we went to the Blue Mountains? Well... one day I might go back and reassemble my timeline. Work out what I've been doing all these years. So that receipt gets filed for later.

Which brings me to the topic at hand, which is, of course, Riley. What I know, although remember less well than I should, is what I've been doing for the last twelve months. And it is almost precisely 12 months because Riley's 1st birthday is coming up on the 20th of October. And I believe in that time I've blogged about 3 times. Which is a shame because blogs are exactly the right means of prompting recall for me- which is why I decided I'd start a blog. Not for your benefit, but mine.

Which is a long way of saying the next bit of what I have to say is mostly for my benefit. I'm mightily proud of the little man but I'm quite aware that there is no reason why you should be.

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I don't know how much of this I'll remember ten years from now. I'm sure a lot more will happen in the intervening years. But right now I'm having no problems with recall.

Sadly loki is currently down and while I am trying to get it back up again ASAP it could be a little while.

In the meantime you can contact me by email at gmail username appositeit

My normal apposite email address isn't currently working.

Dunq- I've spoken to Yeap and he is getting someone else to try a restart before we get hands on.

Alison- yes! It would be lovely to see you! Email me!

Mikolaj, Comrade, Dunq, Rob- could you email me an alternate email adress at some point.

Riley started crawling on Friday- 2 days shy of 7 months old. His crawling got derailed by his discovery that he could sit up and we were concerned that he might end up transitioning straight into walking. (I am lead to believe that in some children this is problematic and can lead to later learning difficulties- apparently related to cross connections between the hemispheres not being developed- but I can't substantiate this claim. And I can find other sources indicate it isn't a problem. Suffice it to say Kris and I were concerned in that nebulous way that parent's get to be concerned about everything!)

On Friday I got home and Kris said 'Look at this...' in a very odd tone and sure enough he crawled over to me when I jangled my keys. I then entertained myself for about a quarter of an hour luring Riley to crawl around the apartment. Apparently Kris' tone was uncertain because he had only pulled everything together minutes before I had arrived home. He mastered cross crawling in the first minute or so after I got home. Very proud Mum and Dad!

Of course being a bit of an overachiever at times (like his Mum) he more or less shrugged it off and focused on standing- which he is getting better at. He still isn't strong enough to be able to simply lift himself into a standing position but he can on the odd occasion get upright on his own.

Between crawling and his fierce focus on standing it was clear what we had to do: we spent the weekend working out how to baby proof the house.

Anyway: well done Riley!