This is my last week at work before I start my 9 week long vacation. And last night I finally booked a trip to go to the US in April. The trip will take in Palm Springs, Columbus Ohio and San Francisco. I can’t wait to get back to the States again. It will be good to catch up with a few friends there too. This shot was snapped by a self timer camera sitting on the roof of a hire car just outside of Palm Springs in 1997.

When I saw strange posts in the Tagboard this morning I went to clean it up on the server. Only then I found that the tagboard is no longer on the server. So I suspect someone has actually hacked into the site somehow. It might take a little bit to sort this out. Maybe we’ll replace it with some kind of message board that is a little more secure.

I had Tyson come over to help me install some new hard drives into my Mac Pro yesterday. And while we waited for the data to copy over we gave the large main loft space a makeover. Firstly we got rid of all the junk that had accumulated around the computers over the past 2 years… and man there were some surprises under all that stuff. And then we moved the whole set up to the are that was previously known as the junk area. I really like the new set up. The old PC and the printer no longer takes up half the desk, and I now run two screens from the Mac. I still have to get rid of some of the junk from in front of the desk. But I quite like it over here. I no longer sit with my back to the room. Oh… and how handy is it having a mattress in my office… I can flip it down and take a nap at any moment. Thanks Tyson for getting me moving!

I’ve placed an ad on Home Around The World to see if I can organise a house swap with someone during my vacation. Ideally I’d like to swap with someone who has a place in a big or interesting city for up to a month during March/April/Mat this year. You can check out my ad here: http://www.homearoundtheworld.com/properties/show/535 I really hope I can make it work. It would be great to experience living in another city for a month. And I’m sure it would be fun for someone to come and live in Australia for a month as well. Those are some of the nicest months in Melbourne.

I finally had my request to take 2 months off work approved at the office yesterday. It was kinda tough getting whole team to agree on the leave. And now that it’s done I’m wondering what to do with all that time. I’m thinking I would like to spend half of it working on projects at home, and the other half travelling. Now because I’ll be taking a pay cut to get that much time off, it will need to be a cheap trip. I think a trip will to the US will be best because I can visit friends there. So I will post updates as the time gets closer on the final plan.

I’ve been busy with visitors and getting out and about the past couple of weeks. I had Greg from Wollongong visiting me. I was really glad he made the trip down. I actually made him help me sort through all my junk and work out what needed to be thrown out. It was funny when he arrived because there wasn’t even any place to sit down. And thanks to Greg I now have lots more space in my bedroom and the place got a good clean out. I’m not sure I can explain these photos though.

After seeing Jake take off with all his belongings in just 2 bags I decided it was time to have a big clean out. And I started by bringing everything out of my room into the loungeroom. And I succeeded in getting rid of half my clothes. No one could believe how much stuff I had packed in there until I brought it all out. I also want to try the house swap thing sometime this year. But I needed to make the place a little more inviting first so I could make nice pics for my house swap ad. The bedroom pic is one of the photos I will use in the ad.

This took me by surprise when I heard this news last night. Qantas has announced that it will stop flying from Sydney to San Francisco in May. Instead it will send one of it’s 747s from Sydney to Dallas and returning via Brisbane. I didn’t actually think any air plane could fly that far. But the 747 long range plane can do the 16 hour flight. They say that the change was better to meet more American Airlines flights to other cities in the US. Soon we will be able to take Qantas flight numbers to a holw lot of places like Cleveland Ohio, on AA aircraft. It will be sad not being able to fly directly in to San Francisco anymore. Perhaps I should take one more trip there before May.

This photo was taken at San Francisco International Airport in June 2009.

It might be good if the kids went without for a few days. This is one of the McDonalds outlets flooded in Queensland.

It seems that the new is getting worse each day for Queensland. My family seems to be living in one of the very few corners of the state which is not under water. They have been very lucky. I read today that the area under water today would cover all of Germany and France. It’s pretty amazing. Today the capital city is certain to be flooded as the major river around it swells with water coming from the inland rains and flooding. All the inner city workers were sent home for at least a couple of days to avoid being trapped in the city. Check out Couriermail.com.au for videos of the floods.

Again a little humour from the Queenslanders…