Sage advice. To enjoy crap rainy weather: come to sunny Queensland.

Last week was pretty wet, the weekend was hot and humid with low clouds and since yesterday we've got storms and rain. The gutter on the northern side of my place decided to rip out of its mounting clips during the night; it's hanging down crooked at the moment but I'll have somebody in for that this afternoon. The pest control people were around last week, no termite nasties found, and I'm developing a new push towards house improvement things: currently replacing the ugly curtain rods, and planning to install indirect lighting in the living room: fluorescents and blinds on top of the cupboards and along the other side of the wall (lighting ceiling and wall).

Not much other news around here.

My old home, Vienna, is populated by at least 14.9% idiots. While this is down by 5% since the last election, it still sucks that those people believe in a xenophobe neonazi. Sigh. But the city council is finally developing some technical clue: they're now offering public servants their debian-derived Wienux platform. Cool!

My new home, Australia, is governed by a vicious garden gnome about as bad as the Austrian suckers; but there's occasional bright spots. Like this one: mod-chips are confirmed legal in Oz. Despite the FTA (aka. "fuck the aussies"), a bunch of high court judges ruled that region control and preventing backup aren't part of the rightsholder's copyright monopoly and thus and thus circumventing these is fine.

Spain and the Netherlands are starting to show a bit of spine: the Dutch refused extradition of an American to the US because the US is a totalitarian regime now, while the Spanish have issued arrest warrants for some US soldiers involved in killing a number of reporters in Baghdad.