Copyright ©
Carey Evans.
Last modified: Wed, 11 February 2004.
Well, 1999 rolled over to the year 2000 less than 24 hours ago, which makes this (arguably) the third millenium! The Y2K bug doesn’t seem to have caused any problems so far, except maybe a blackout in Central Otago, which is good to see, if maybe slightly disappointing from the lack of ‘excitement’.
I started celebrating the new year yesterday afternoon, by having a couple of glasses of wine at work, though this was just warming up, and an excuse not to slave away the last two working hours of the millenium.
After a few hours I met my brother and we went down to the Dux. At nine p.m. when we got there it seemed relatively quiet, but they were ready for a bigger night than Christmas Eve last week, with Portaloos, a tent set up to sell cans of beer, and everything except wine in plastic cups. This includes plastic shot glasses, and the glasses for mixed drinks like bourbon and coke, and the slightly dangerous vodka, lime and lemonade.
Despite all their preparations though, it stayed quieter than a normal Friday all night. This wasn’t too much of a problem since they still had good music, and there was still space to sit down. Maybe they should have had a cover charge to make it seem like it was worth being there.
In the end, the end of last year wasn’t marked by anything more spectacular than a short countdown. The start of this year immediately afterwards was better though, with the fireworks at Hagley Park clearly visible.
A while after the fireworks had ended, Tim and I walked into town to have a look around, and get something to eat. It wasn’t really that busy, although both KFC and Burger King were quite busy just doing takeaways (McDonalds was closed) and there were a lot of security guards around. While we were in KFC they made themselves useful by catching someone who’d been celebrating too hard and who was having a bit of trouble standing up straight by herself.
That was about it for a while, so we went back to my apartment to watch some more of the TV coverage. I ended up getting a bit more than an hour’s sleep, before Mum and Dad showed up to give us a ride out to the beach to watch the sunrise. I can now say that, “I was at the beach to see the first sunrise of the first millenium.” Unfortunately, the weather was really bad and all I actually got to see was the fog and low cloud get brighter, while we sheltered from the wind and rain.
I slept in again after that, and got up just in time to watch the coverage from London of their midnight celebrations. I haven’t done much at all for the rest of the day, but at least I got to see the first sunset of the new year.
It’s here! I’ve finally gone through and updated the look of my web pages, as well as some of the content. The changes I’ve made also make it easier to update my web pages, so I should be able to keep my pages up to date easier, too.
That only leaves the problem of what to write about here now. I guess I’ll say something about how my life has been going recently.
And the answer to that is, quite well actually. I’ve managed to run into quite a few old friends around town and catch up with them. I received an anonymous “missing you” email last Saturday. And on the Friday night before that, I was out with a girl from work and her sister.
[Which is not exactly what how sounds. — 18 Jun 2000]
Today was the start of a six day weekend for me. If you can’t figure out how I managed that, it’s because I took today off work to go to my brother’s University graduation. Then there’s the nornal four-day Easter weekend starting tomorrow, and finally ANZAC on Tuesday. Then it’s another three day working week! Woohoo!
We’ve both ended up with very similar degrees. I took three years to get a B.Sc. Honours first class in Computer Science, while he took four years to get a B.Sc. Honours first class (senior scholar), in Computer Science. I think the biggest difference is that while I’m working for a big retail company writing programs for an IBM AS/400 minicomputer, while he’s working for a small research and development company that gets listed on theonering.net’s special effects technology page.
I get the feeling something’s not right here.
I guess it’s about time I updated this, though I haven’t done a whole lot in the last two weeks. I’ve added a few pages here, and fixed up some others, but that doesn’t really count. Linux 2.2.15 having just been released doesn’t really count as interesting news for many other people either.
Maybe this is better. As a followup to the events described below that I can’t complain about, which again leads to a distinct lack of complaints, last week I had dinner with the sister I mentioned. Now you can just wonder when I’m going to stop being so vague that these pages can’t come back later and get me in trouble.
I’m not sure whether ‘interesting’ is the right word for how things are going to be at work for me. One of the guys I work with has resigned, and I expect to help everyone cope for a while. Wish me luck.
Changing the subject, I’ve bought a few CDs recently. To start with, I bought The Fragile by Nine Inch Nails a while ago, even though it cost $50. I quite like the music when I’m in the right mood, although it has to be played loud to sound right. I also bought Tom Jones’ Reload, probably just because of his duet with Cerys from Catatonia, and it was only $25.
I’m not sure which of these two worried my parents more.
On Monday, I bought another two CDs — Title of Record from Filter, and Return of Saturn from No Doubt. Filter’s album is another one that needs to be played loud. It’s got a few good tracks, but I don’t think it’s quite as good as No Doubt.
I’ve already got No Doubt’s previous album, so this helps to keep things going. The sound is still similar to Tragic Kingdom, but they’ve improved from then too. I think it was worth the wait.
Ex-Girlfriend has already been released in New Zealand, and it’s a bit more like the previous album. From having a look at their website, the next single released will tbe Simple Kind of Life, which in my opinion is better than Ex-Girlfriend. There’s definitely enough material on the album for a few more singles, too. I think that Artificial Sweetener and New could be released as singles, but what would I know?