Work over the past week has been a bit testing. The server at one of the company's office in regional northern-New South Wales failed, which has involved us totally replacing the thing, and honestly it hasn't gone too smoothly. I also did the monthly network maintenance on the weekend as well, so i'm a little worked-out at the moment (but the IT Manager was the one who had to drive down there and physically replace the server!(poor him))

On Sunday we had the wedding of some friends who have been going out for the past 10+ years, so most of … Read more →

So comes an end to a long weekend (today is May/Labour Day in Queensland). As you can probably tell from the title we ended up doing a fair bit. We saw two movies, attended a wedding, and attended two birthday parties.

We started the weekend by seeing Forgetting Sarah Marshall on Friday night. Although it wasn't as funny as I was expecting it to be, i still enjoyed the movie nonetheless. I think Despina will be watching How I Met Your Mother in a different light from now on after witnessing the all-too-frequent full-frontal nudity of the movie's star, Jason … Read more →

I've just completed a small change to the blog script: i've retooled the CAPTCHA image for the comments form to make it a bit more robust.

I've done this change mainly because there have been a fair few spam comments in the past few weeks that have made it past the previous one. Strangely enough, it's been over two months now since there has been an actual legitimate comment on this blog, which has to be some kind of record since i started blogging. Have i become less provocative, or is the one person that actually commented regularly now too … Read more →

Christ Is Risen!

So goes another Easter. After being sick for a bit of Holy Week last year, it was good to make it to all the evening services as well as the Good Friday morning service this year.

Having Friday off from work (ANZAC day public holiday) was a fantastic help in terms of just recovering from working for 8+ hours each day and then being at Church for 1.5-3+ hours each night. I think for future years i'm definitely going to take Good Friday off on leave if it isn't already a holiday.

In this past week i've … Read more →

I know that this is probably the last thing I should be posting about in the middle of Holy Week (for the 'Westerners': Orthodox Easter is this weekend), but one the main reasons for my lack of blogging recently is that i'm having internet issues at home.

Specifically during the peak periods of the night (usually from 6pm-11pm) my internet connection is largely unresponsive. Download speeds don't seem to be an issue once it gets going, but the uploads are atrocious. This means that pages are frequently timing-out, and general web browsing has been tortuous.

I originally thought that it … Read more →

Today I played in our indoor division's grand final, and as you can tell from the title, we emerged victorious!

It was a tight game in muggy conditions, and it showed on both teams. The pace of the game made it not feel like a grand final match, as it was played a bit slow and without too much energy.

I felt it pretty bad, as I had to sub off quite a few times throughout the match. We were never behind in the game, and at half time we were 2-1 ahead, although we should have had more and … Read more →

This month I'd actually thought I'd give my internet data transfer quota a real run for its money (literally). With a week to go in my billing period, i kicked of downloading some torrents that i've been wanting to download for a while. Quickly enough, for the first time ever I hit our 12GB quota on Friday.

For a lot of people reading this from overseas, the notion of 'download/transfer quotas' for an internet service would be totally foreign (pun intended). But such is the state of internet service in this country that we actually have them.

Anywho, so hitting … Read more →

As part of the 'Earth Hour' event on Saturday night that encouraged everyone to turn off lights and appliances for an hour to save electricity and prevent global warming, the priests at St George decided to do the Saturday night liturgy without a single light on in the Church.

Although it was potential health-and-safety nightmare, it was a fantastic experience. Other than the presanctified gifts service (only in the afternoons during lent) and the Resurrection service (only for a few minutes once a year), this doesn't really happen.

As the inset photo (taken from my phone) indicates, with was pretty … Read more →

After finishing the work we had to do on Friday's public holiday, I've actually had a really good long weekend. I've actually managed to watch four Star Wars movies on DVD this weekend, after being somewhat 'restricted' from watching it in the past two years since the wedding ;).

It was really great watching the original trilogy again, especially after seeing the recent Robot Chicken and Family Guy Star Wars specials (especially lols @ this Admiral Ackbar skit from Robot Chicken).

This latest Star Wars viewing is not really a coincidence: lately i've gotten into a bit of Star … Read more →

It's been a while since i've blogged, and March is turning out to be a slow month in the Costi blogging arena.

On the weekend I played indoor and we ended our run of successive draws by winning a vital game quite convincingly. Unfortunately Arsenal couldn't do the same and ended up with their 4th successive draw, this giving Man Utd a three point lead at the top after being five points in front themselves, so it looks increasingly like Arsenal have thrown the title away with these draws.

Despite this week being a four-day week, it isn't really with … Read more →