An Ozzie in Boston

Letter to Home

Hi peeps at home.

Well, this week has been almost a complete waste. The flu got me pretty bad Tuesday, and it just got worse from there. It's Sunday now, and I almost feel back to normal.

It's kinda like that beginning scene in "28 days later", where the main character gets out of hospital and there's no one around, except for zombie. Only this time, everyone is around and I'm a zombie. And instead of brains, I'm after tissues for my nose. But the feeling of rejoining society is about the same. Being in bed for 5 days is a weird feeling, when you get out.

At least I was able to get some work done. I think I understand how to use workflows in sharepoint now. I could probably do a tutorial for that some time.

I've also been doing some apartment searching. Found a decent place right in Kenmore square for under a grand a month. I think it'll do. It'll be good to have a place to myself again.

Hope everyone back home is doing well,
Nathan

G'day!

To: family and friends at home
From: Nathan
Subject: Long time no see!

So, it's been a loooooong time since my last post, this is mostly becuase there's so much going on now, that I don't have time to post.

Everything is going well, did some volunteer work on Friday night, got to see Howie Mandell, who is a lot ruder in real life than "deal or no deal" suggests.

Also, interesting fact: he played Bobby in "Bobby's World"! I loved that show as a kid. He also played Skeeter in muppet babies. True fact!

Had one of my best mates over here two weeks ago, so we basically went on a five day bender. Took him to a Red Sox game, lotsa bars and got him to sing "Living on a prayer" to an audience of girls having their birthday party the same day as his birthday. Good times.

That's about it for now, what have you guys been up to? Feel free to leave a post below!

Letter to Home 14th July

From: Nathan
TO: Family and Friends at home
Subject: Damn Vista reinstall takes ages

G'Day guys, I can finally start writing again, as I've finished the three day process of reinstalling Vista on my latop. I have no idea why Microsoft made updates take so long to do. I think the computer literally installed over 100 updates over the past three days. At least Windows 7 is coming soon, so I might install that on the laptop instead. Or Windows XP. I'm trying out Windows 7 on the new computer I built and I'm pretty pleased with it. It's much better than Vista, and some of the stuff it does makes it cooler than XP.

But anyway, what stuff has been going on? Well, we had 4th of July here last weekend, which was pretty fun. Went to a party that had over 100 people, except those 100 people were all under 20. I felt like the guys playing poker during a party in the movie American Pie 2. Actually, I feel old just referencing American Pie 2. Crap. Went to Harvard to see the fireworks though, which was really nice. Next year I'll have to check out the Boston Pops for July 4th though, as I hear it's pretty amazing. Actually, I need to check the Boston Pops out regardless. And the Blue Man group.

The sun is finally out, so I've been swimming as much as I can, and reading my nerd programming books outside in the sun to try and get a tan. Haven't really had a chance to do any more programming, as I've bought a new game (Fallout 3) and it's basically just about all I'm doing while I've been waiting for the laptop to be reinstalled.... Ugh.

It's running much faster now. So hopefully there will be more posts in the future. Hurrah!

What have you guys been up to? Oh, my camera is now up and running again. Organize a time and I'll be there. E-mail, message me whatever. My Skype name is Octacon100.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Nathan

Letter to home

From: Nathan
To: Family and friends at home.
Subject: Phew - just finished an intense 3 days.

G'Day peeps at home. The past two days I've been learning as much as I can about Shatepoint. Sharepoint is basically this new "server" platform people use to share documents, organize tasks, and keep in touch with their company.

And our company uses a heavily customized version of it to look after our patients, store patient data, and set up tasks for those patients. So I better know it inside out.

The conference has been a big learning experience. Looking forward to putting it into practice.

On the social side, I went to the Beerfest last weekend, had a few beers with conference goers, and might sign up for a comittee member for the Boston Rotaract club. So there's plenty going on.

But how about you guys? What are you up to these days? Answers on a postcard to..... Naaah, just post a comment below. It's well easy!

Cheers,
Nathan

Update

Hi All,

Sorry for the long time between posts, I'm getting some cool updates done to this site and other website's I'll be starting up. I'll put up all my changes tomorrow!

Letter to home

From: Nathan
To: Family and friends at home.
Subject: Happy Easter Weekend!

So after waiting 20 minutes, I finally got a train to work. It's impossible to plan to get a train on time, because sometimes trains just don't want to turn up. But enough of my whinging, what's been going on?

Finally found a place that is open past 2 am here. So Saturday night was a big night. Didn't get to bed until 5 in the morning. Probably a good thing the place didn't serve drinks, else my hangover would have been even worse... It had really cool music though, and got to meet the dj there. Might have to go back some time.

Had an Easter lunch with a workmate's family yesterday, which was really nice. It's good to see that most families are as crazy as mine. Didn't to church yesterday, which caused an awkward silence among the family when they asked if I did. I wonder if I could have diffused the situation by saying I was praying to the Porcelin God?

Other than that it's business as usual. The game is going well. I'll get started on getting the dog into the game Kevin. It's probably a good start for me to work on the games AI...

Hope to hear back,
Nathan

Letter to Home

From: Nathan.
To: Family and friends at home.
Subject: Improv In Boston gets an A+ from me.

So this weekend, went out to the Improv asylum in the north end. Pretty damn funny. These guys can just bust out jokes from nothing but the seat of their pants and the scrawl written by some joker in the crowd. They offer lessons too, so that would be very interesting.

Got off my lazy butt and started looking into doing some volunteering again. A Rotary Club that meets after business hours has finally popped up, so I'm hoping I can get to those. Also hoping to become a volunteer for the GOTO group, as I really need to do more community work.

Also did a bit more on the game. Nothing worth showing yet. Hopefully have something worth showing by the end of April. The newway of doing graphics with WPF is easy to learn, but hard to tweak to be fast. All I know is that I need to always use the "Dispatcher" class to do any graphics changes...

Letter to Home

From: Nathan
To: Family And friends at home.
Subject: How's the weather down there? Cause it's bloody awful up here.

Guess the temperature yesterday? -2 celcius. Bloody hell. We get a nice semi fridgid weekend, and have it blown away by freezing cold yesterday.

But that's enough about the weather. Things are pretty slow around here at the moment. St. Patty's day was pretty fun, had a pretty unproductive weekend, and did a couple of additions to my game while playing faaaaar too many other ones. Really got to stop doing that. There's a couple of cool ones, which I might link to when I get out of this subway.

But that's about it. I'm more interested in what is going on with you guys, soooooo WASSUP?

New Years Resolutions: How are yours going?

So everyone makes New Years Resolutions, but do people really stick to them? It's a lot the same as the GQM charts that the Leadership Academy kids do. It's great to make the goals up, but sometimes you forget about them. It's always good to print your goals out and put them somewhere, so you don't lose sight of them. Like when your goal is to lose weight, and you decide at 2am in the morning that Cheesy bread is the most healthy thing you can eat right now.

Let's see how far they are going along:

1. Lose about 10-15 kilograms / 20-30 pounds. – Started at 215- now I'm 205. Getting closer..
2. Keep in contact with people from Perth more often. – Mmmmm. Damn. Sorta.
3. Get to the GQM goals I've set for myself. Hah, I still need to print these out…
4. Instead of playing video games, I want to develop one this year, two if I'm lucky. – About to get started on one, as I need to learn about the new WPF technology that Microsoft is using these days.
5. Ditto for medical software. Gotta start making my own IP. – Ditto, another WPF thing here.
6. Save at least $300 a month. This should be possible now with the move to a different place. –Going pretty well. Can probably save more.
7. Join a sports team (maybe Aussie Rules, maybe dragon boating.) – Joined a running club, so that's going well. Might join the Aussie rules club soon too, if I can get out there.
8. Join a volunteer organization/start doing more volunteering. (Peferrably at an Elder Care Center or Hospital) – This one is damn tough, almost joining something. Just gotta send an email…

The past two months had me with some random bug I've almost gotten rid of, so it's made it pretty hard to really do anything decently. With that almost gone (thanks to the power of the disgusting nasal rinse – don't ask) I can start being a bit more productive.

Also, I'm looking to go to Figawi this year, so let me know if you are interested. It's $359 until the 15^th, so let me know soon if you're interested. Details are at http://www.bostoneventguide.com/events/Figawi 09.htm

Hope your New Years Resolutions are going well! Are you sticking to them?

Letter to Home

From: Nathan
To: Friends and family at home.
Subject: I think I should plant a tree.

Why? I think I've blown my nose enough times in the past two weeks to at least take down two. I've got through two tissue boxes, and will probably go through one more before the end of this week. The cold has almost gone through. Definately a good thing, as I'm pretty sure that KK's sick of it by now.

Writing this on the T at the moment. I usually base how my day will go on how the trip is. Didn't get a seat. While definately have the ability to pull tip #4 at the moment, I don't think it's really a good idea, this train is packed. And it's not something I'd do in real life. So if you're a potential employer and you are reading this, it's ok, I'm normal.

Got the year review (finally) tomorrow. Should go well.

Oh yeah, in the past two days we got 30cm of snow. Guess I forgot to mention that. Dunno why, cause the stuff is everwhere. Can't wait for spring, but there should be some good photo opportunities this weekend. I'll put some up soon.

Take it easy,
Nathan