It has been much too long since I last wrote anything here. There are some good reasons, but they themselves are news deserving of publication, so:

1. I have a new job! If you have seen neither hide nor … um … absence-of-hair of me in the city recently, that’s because I no longer work there. I’m still a sysadmin, but now I work for a certain Very Large Australian Supermarket Chain. This has a number of awesomenesses to offset the loss of decent coffee and plentiful company that the city provided: A five minute commute, Real work which is mostly not thrown away when complete or shortly beforehand, Innumerable systems which, while oppressive, mostly work and are (in some cases) actually documented! This is so different from my former employers as to have resulted in a fair degree of culture shock.
2. I have been variously sick… I always associated “bronchitis” with an extreme form of the-hacking-crud, but I have come to know it rather as the slight pervasive nagging illness that makes one lastingly tired and miserable and will not die.
3. …and broken. I recently attempted my first Big Motorbike Tour with my brother (Heffa) and two of his work colleagues (lets say SM and SJ). It was to be a week-long ride through some of the most beautiful parts of Victoria, pausing in such scenic places as Myrtleford and Raymond Island before joining the Barry Sheene Memorial ride from Bairnsdale to Phillip Island (it concludes with a lap of the Grand Prix circuit there). The last three days of this trip were to be spent at the 2009 Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix.
   It did not go badly, or even horribly badly.
   It went disastrously.
   Before we even began, we were forced to abandon our original route because, as we were told, the unseasonal depth and frequency of snow on mount Hotham meant the mountain was closed to motorcycles, period. We revised our route to go further east and less north, but less than an hour into the ride my elderly little bike suffered a snapped clutch cable. My noble brother, SM and SJ spent two hours seeking a replacement (the first of which failed after about 20 meters).
   That fixed, we were mostly OK for several hours, and had a rather fun ride through Healesville to Marysville. We dodged a bullet in Marysville by detouring for petrol (we had no excuse for imagining that there would be petrol for sale in Marysville this year). Around Reefton, however, it began to rain. A failure of planning contrived between me and my brother led to both of us getting soaking wet despite our rainproof gear, and I almost gave up in Warburton. Alas that I did not.
   By around 5pm, we had almost made it to the tiny town of Noojee when, in my soggy and confused state, I took a corner slightly too fast and rode into a patch of slippery leaf-mush, slid off my bike and bounced down the road a little way. Miraculously though, I was merely bruised, my riding gear and bike largely unharmed. After many enquiries of “are you sure you’re ok?”, we all remounted our bikes and rode on… for about ten more minutes.
   We were not yet outside of Noojee when the final blow was struck. SJ, spooked by my recent road-surfing attempt, was checking his mirrors at the precise moment that my brother (not far ahead of him) abruptly stopped to check the map.
   The result was a spectacular high-speed collision.
   My brother was unharmed, but SJ was not so fortunate, severely breaking his leg and largely destroying his bike.
   The rest of that wonderful week was spent recovering at home, feeling stiff, sore and systematically disheartened. SM and Heffa eventually went on to the GP, and I hear, had a whale of a time. SJ was eventually released from hospital.
   A restful recuperative sojourn  it was not.
4. A recent brush with RSI, perennial adversary of IT workers everywhere, plus my new employer’s all-too-efficient zeal for preventing ‘recreational’ computing among their employees have led to a whole new layer of dust on my home PC and most especially on this blog. I have sympathy for Pah, and am cautioned by his example: RSI is to be taken seriously.
5. For all my methodical obsessing about the latest and most innovative and forward-looking PDAs, I have finally sold out to The New Evil, and purchased an iFool. It has had its ups and downs, and I will write more about it in another post, eventually. Suffice for now to say that the availability of a WordPress app for it has not led to a revolutionary increase in my ver-blog-bosity, but it has led to a resurgence in my use of LikenessTome, and finally driven me to sign up with Blather.
6. Now that E has (we hope) finished being Examinatized (YAYZ!), our plans to be wed next year have become steadily more and more palpable. More on that later too.
7. [last-minute edit] I almost forgot: I have once again signed up for Movember, and will be sporting facially-mounted industrial abrasives again in the name of mens health, free burgers and vile humour. Please PLEASE PLEASE Sponsor Me!

That is all.