One Week Later
Well it has been a week since I have been back from Australia. It hardly seems like only a week, it feels like a month! Returning home to an empty house is never fun after spending 24-7 with travel companions. I jet lagged the first few days and was glad to get back to work – just so I could have something to do. I will admit to it being strange to be back at work as if nothing happened at all. I guess I always hope that something will have fundamentally changed since I have been gone, but in reality nothing does.
There are some changes while I was gone and not all of them good. Some of the problems I can’t go into details on such a public forum, but rest assured they don’t have to do with me. However, they are a bit of a downer to me, since I had gotten my hopes up that certain things would fall into place for people and they haven’t. Also at work, things are up in the air since they have not settled our union contract and we are working on a day-to-day basis with the old one. I guess no one in the union cares about us since there is no communications or updates that are easily accessible to the rank and file. Just a random flyer that says a federal mediator is involved. I don’t think we will go as far as a strike, and in reality it is just a bit of a pain for everyone involved.
One thing that has happened in Australia since I left is that Cyclone Larry hit 50km south of Cairns and basically leveled the place. I don't think damage was extensive in Cairns, but I think of people like Hans-Jorg as well as the lady who sold us the Quicksilver tickets and all the rest of the residents we came in contact with and I hope they are all OK and managed to weather the storm just fine.
On the home front, I was glad to come home to a clean-for-me house, which I promptly messed up. I have had a lot of free time these days. Seems most of my friends have been busy or otherwise working opposite schedules so I have been being a bad boy staying up to all hours of the night. One of the bonuses of staying up is that I get to chat with Chris from Brisbane. He is usually coming home from work at the same time I come home when I close at Disneyland late. We usually chat online, and he’s actually called me as well with his phone card. I need to get a phone card to return the favor because lord knows how much it would cost if I called him direct. It sucks that we live so far apart – I think we would have a lot of fun if we got to hang out.
I think the important thing I need to do with my free time is to not waste it by just vegging out or sleeping in to all hours of the day (Ok, I am still working on the sleeping in thing haha). It is difficult because of the hours that I work. This time of the year I open early on the weekends and then close late on Monday thru Wednesday, which doesn’t leave much time to get projects done. It is almost like I should take an extra day off sometime and work around the house – assuming I don’t just sleep in and be lazy.
On the Club Josh front, I have found a new hosting service Text Drive. They have a package called Mixed Grill where you can get 2GB of hosting space plus a 9GB storage area, and a hosted application suite called Joynet. All for the low price of $499 lifetime! That means in two years or so it will have paid for itself – and it will allow me to move stuff like Charo and Doingworld to their own domains.