June 17, 2001 (idea)

An interesting couple of days for me. I drove off to Sydney at 6am on Friday morning, to make a 10am meeting at my prior place of employment (where I'm contracting back with a bit of ecom architectural work). We met with the client's technical team, (which I was kind of dreading, 'cause this client is your typical tier-B telco pain in the arse) -- what a refreshing reminder that the geek shall inherit the earth. My respect for the software engineering guys on the inside has renewed my faith in ecom (again). Managers: honour thy geeks, for they shall save your arses.

Spent most of the rest of Friday sitting in the cafe on the street opposite my old workplace, enjoying the broadband internet feed via my wireless laptop that they've forgotten to disable access for (duh). Lucky I'm an honest guy. With a table in the sun, a mobile phone and wireless broadband (and a constant flow of espresso), who needs an office? :-)

Met my best IRL friend for breakfast on Saturday, then drove back to Canberra to attend the Australian Open Source Symposium 3 at the ANU, which was fantastic. Talks by Andrew Tridgell, Alan Modra, Hugh Blemings, Chris Yeoh, Martin Pool, etc. A good day was had by all.

Then home to Gemma and the maltese terrorists, and a cheap meal at the local Italian restaurant (mmmm, gnocchi...)

"...Ello there luv, I'm enjoying myself here in England. I'm actually riding back from Stratford upon Avon now where we got to see the birthplace of Shakespeare. Yesterday we got to see all of the famous London buildings. Super cool....