They take one couple from each of Australia's major capital cities (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth) and make them open a restaurant. People vote (?) on which one is best. Then they take away the restaurants of everyone except the winning couple. Seems like a stupid concept to me, so no doubt it will be immensely popular.

Gentoo

I think I've got my Gentoo Linux installation back on the rails. For weeks it has been refusing to play nicely, refusing to install the new versions of python and portage. I posted a plea for help on the Gentoo Forums, but in hindsight maybe referring to Gentoo as a steaming pile of poo was not a good strategy when asking for help.

The problem turned out to be that one of the configuration files for python had not been installed correctly for either python 2.2 or 2.3 The solution was to start emerge python, then ctrl-c it part way through and copy its makefile into the directory that holds the python config files. It was that simple.

Sydney

Flying over to Sydney for work again this week. There are two test engineers going as well. We're flying out at the amazingly civilised time of 11am Monday morning, so we won't have to go to work at all on Monday. I will be performing the engineer's victory dance to celebrate:

Speaking of pay, it looks like we're waiting at least one more month before our pay "rises" come through. The wheels don't move too fast at work when it involves giving more money to the employees. Strangely, one of the other software engineers discovered he'd been given a one cent pay rise this month.

I was curious the other day, so I counted up how many flights I've been on in my life. I don't know the details of all of them, but I concluded that it's over 50 by now. And there are another ten coming up in the next three months.

Engagement party

We had our engagement party on Saturday night. Setting everything up was hard work even though my fiancée's mum organised most of it. The party itself was great fun, except it went way too quickly. I must have been talking to people all night because I only got through four beers in five hours.

We had an interesting discussion about what limitations I would place on a buck's party. I agreed to provide a full list prior to it being planned. Ideas:

• No part of the groom may be shaved.
• No part of the groom may be permanently marked in any way, including but not limited to tattoos and brandings.
• No removal of clothing from the groom.
• No transport of the groom against his will via means of trains, planes, boats, or vehicles of any kind.

This morning we unwrapped all our presents. Lots of good loot. This afternoon we transported nearly all of it to my house. Some of my mates pooled resources to buy us a huge wooden trunk. Most of the goodies have been put inside for storage until we have a house of our own.