Howard won again. Nobody's really surprised. In my electorate of Perth, there was a 4.1% swing to the Libs, but Labor still won comfortably as they do every election. The Greens picked up 9.2%, which probably didn't do Labor any harm.

Now we're left with the unfortunate prospect of either a Liberal majority in the Senate or Family First holding the balance of power. It's a sad situation either way, but I think the Libs would screw us less than Family First would. They're a bunch of right-wing religious nutters. I blame South Australia for voting for them. I can just imagine doing a deal by supporting the full privatisation of Telstra in exchange for their stupid national porn proxy. Nutters.

Pay rise

Not for me, but for nurses. Since my fiancée is a nurse, that's good enough for me. They're getting 15% over three years. Not too shabby.

House

We've just received the results of the structural inspection of our new house, and it's achieved the highly coveted Structurally Adequate rating. We've also had final approval on our loan, so now it's pretty much a done deal. We're still waiting on the pest inspection, but if there's a problem I think the vendor has to fix it and we still have to buy it.

Weird network utilisation

Over the weekend we were monitoring our network utilisation. For over an hour, network usage basically ground to a halt, then had a huge peak for 20 minutes, before settling back down to normal. I've spent all day trying to work out why. It's bizarre, and I've never seen anything like it before. And I'm meant to be working on something else.

Chat with the boss

On Wednesday we each have a 15 minute meeting with the new General Manager. He supposedly wants to meet all of us and get ideas on how to revitalise the organisation. I'm going to try not to be too negative, but I might mention forced holidays over Christmas and the pay situation. Not complaining, just making sure he's aware.