a post!

so hi everyone. I've been really slack obviously and not posted anything for a while, but I think I'll be getting back into it shortly.

news for us:

• We are moving house shortly, found a nice 1 bedder in the same area on the first floor for cheaper rent than we are paying now. the kitchen is slightly smaller, but everything else is about the same size.
• I've started a new job (on monday) which I'm absolutely loving (more below)
• Debbie lost her mobile phone in France so that's why she hasn't been returning your SMS's in case you wondered. (nor has she been on facebook for aeons so that's the reason she hasn't returned your messges on their either :-) )
• our police report on the robbery hasn't yet come back (should be in the next 2 weeks) so we havn't got our insurance money yet unfortunately.
• We're both healthy and although I tried my hardest to get sick during my last two weeks at work, I just couldn't justify it.

Job: it's awesome - it's on bishopsgate, (here) . if you zoom out, you can see it's right near the gherkin and liverpool street station. it's very cool to be working in the city finally, although the novelty of traveling on the tube to work rather than the overland train wore off about two stations allong on the first day. comming home from work today it took 1.5hrs to get home, 20 mins of which was stuck half-way between stations, squished like a sardine up against other people with B.O. and bad breath in the sweltering humidity.

speaking of humidity.... I never thought I'd say it, in fact I've always paid out the 'poor' english, who have to put up with extreme temperatures of up to *gasp* 30 degrees... but it turns out that yes, it is actually really bad. while in Australia, the heat is a dry heat. whereas the humidity forcast for tomorrow is 84% and 29 degrees.... this is really unbearable and neither debbie and I have been able to sleep properly since sunday night. this coupled with the fact that the aircon in all the office buildings was obviously put together by 2-year olds and breaks at the first sign of strain means that we're hot and sweaty 24hrs a day. I even got to work on my first day and all the servers had turned themselves off over the weekend due to the excessive 'heat'..... what a stupid lattitude to live in! give me sub-tropical anyday...

so yes, I'm very happy with the job though - everyone uses dual screens as a default instead of the developers having to push to justify them (or even go out and buy my own) as I have had to do with my previous workplaces. and it is casual dress all the time unless visiting a client's site (this is the only reason I've survived the heat the last few days). free coffee, free packets of chips, free chocolate bars and a subsidised coke machine! yep. I'm definately very much enjoying the job so far.

[computer nerd section]
ok, so the guys that I work with are so hardcore that they use vi to edit oracle pl/sql code and command line SQLplus rather than an IDE. now SQLplus I can sort of understand, although not my preference, but they actually PREFER to use vi. Of course you can understand that this meant that my self-geekesteem took a real hit and I have spent the past 3 days refreshing my memory on vi commands...... soon I'll be hacking pl/sql code on a black-and-green terminal window with the best of them and I'll feel like a self-respecting computer geek again.
[end computer nerd section]

so that's about all for now I guess.

oh - one of my work collegues went to see dark night on it's premiere night in London last thursday, he also went on the weekend.... twice.... when he came to work he said it was so good that every nation of the world should stop all scientific research and concentrate on bringing heath ledger back from the dead. Debbie and I went to try to see it on the weekend also, but all the sessions were all booked out everywhere we went. will try again this weekend I guess :-)

more photos and videos soon!

having just come back from france, we've got heaps of photos and stuff (from mum and dad's camera) to post here. still havn't got our own camera, in fact we pretty much don't own anything now apart from clothes, but at least we've got memories!

new blog comming soon!

no more photos or video for a while

so on wednesday we got broken into... they kicked in the door. took our still camera, video camera, laptop and computer monitor, speakers and keyboard from our new computer, my ipod, my leatherman the recovery CD's from the new computer (what on earth for I don't know). but most annoyingly a folder that had my passport, birth certificates, passport and visa application forms, national insurance number (uk equivalent of a TFN), my original oracle certification, my suncorp secure ID token and some other important documents.

Debbie still has all her stuff but obviously we don't have a computer at home so I'm posting from an internet cafe.

We got the locksmith arround he fixed the door so well that basically the it would split in half before anyone could open it. still we are computerless.....

travel insurance will thankfully cover most things, including the passport application fee etc.. it's just really really dang inconvenient. also quite stressfull. Debbie's been taking it better than I have, but Debbie isn't in real risk of identity theft.

I've signed up for a notification service with a credit agency so I'll be notified whenever anyone (including myself) tries to open a bank account or a mobile phone account or apply for credit or does anything significant in my name and dissalow it if it isn't me.

anyway. so depending on how fast we can get the insurance claim processed, we may or may not have a camera or access to the net from home for a while. I'll blog from net cafe's and friends places though.

At least we're both safe :-)

*ping*

yes, we're still here..

just still recovering from our belgian blog.

Debbie is still working and enjoying it. I'm still working and not entirely enjoying it - life is as normal. :-)

I've been put full time on a data warehousing project which is interesting. I'm learning a lot but the data warehouse is in Microsoft's SQL server rather than oracle, leading me to be glad I have a foam frustration brick sitting on my desk.

anyway, until next time.