Chilling out in LAX

Back in Fort Lauderdale it's currently 1:13am. This means that pretty soon I should be getting some sleep... yerr, that's just not going to happen. A couple of more hours and then I catch this bastard economy flight to Melbourne. I arrive at 12:30pm in Adelaide to a spanking new airport! It is working now, right??? Last time they were having fuel problems or something and we had to use the old building. Well, whatever, I never really had anything to say for this post, I'm only writing something coz I was able to find a free wifi spot.

An up and down Monday

Monday started off like any other Monday. Check e-mails received over the weekend, catch up with other people to see what they got up to, think about what had to be done for the week. There was one thing in the back of my mind though: the flight to Australia. Now don't get me wrong, I was sooooo looking forward to going back to Australia and meeting up with everyone I possibly can, but it's that damn flight that I was worried about. If you read this mess of words often enough you'd know I got bitten by a red-back spider a couple of days before flying back to the US. The bite got completely mis-diagnosed, I thought I was ok to fly, but in the end I wasn't. It's the only time I really thought I was going to die, and I say that in all seriousness. Since then I've had dizzy spells and numbness like I had on the plane, but nowhere near the severity. They've pretty much gone *now*, but I was still scared of getting on the plane, whilst going through my Monday morning thought process.

I mentioned this to my friend at work and said that it would have really been good to go on a couple of rollercoaster rides before I left, just to test if I was fit to fly. What happened next was amazing. He looked up the weather for Orlando - awesome day predicted. Orlando of course has all the major theme parks, "Islands of Adventure" being one of them. "The Hulk", one of my favourite rollercoaster rides, is also there. Orlando is also 3 hours drive away from Ft Lauderdale. It was 11am. The park closed at 10pm. We decided to leave work for the rest of the day and ride on rollercoasters instead. Totally random. Totally impromptu.

We went on "the Hulk" three times. We went on "Dueling Dragons" four times. We also went on the "Spiderman" and "The Mummy" rides. It was an awesome day, full of adrenalin. At the end of the night, while on the "Dueling Dragons" ride, fireworks were setting an awesome backdrop to an awesome ride.

I am fit to fly.

Going mobile and lacking sleep

It's currently past 5am in the morning. I didn't head out tonight, but I am at a mate's place (some dodgy Nicaraguan) working out some music stuff. At this stage I have had a few beers - Sam Adams and Presidente. I am loving my new laptop. I know someone reading this laughed when I said that I *needed* to buy a laptop. Well, I probably could have done my music course back in Australia by borrowing people's computers here and there, but that would be so damn inconvenient. Plus, now that I have a laptop, I am becoming a true geek. If I really want I could be one of those geeks who sits at Starbucks all day and surfs the net with their ultra-expensive T-Mobile access plan. There are two bad things about that - first, paying for the wifi access when many other coffee places have free wifi. The other one, oh so much more important, is that I still think that Starbucks' coffee sucks. Their frappuccino is the only thing decent there and if I drank them all day I'd probably turn out to be a pretty fat bastard, for some reason.

I try to adhere to a policy of not making blog entries when I'm tired and especially when I'm emotional or slightly drunk (I haven't been adhering to that lately, obviously), but what the hey. This site needed an update.

Hurricane season 2006

Alberto
Beryl
Chris
Debby
Ernesto
Florence
Gordon
Helene
Isaac
Joyce
Kirk
Leslie
Michael
Nadine
Oscar
Patty
Rafael
Sandy
Tony
Valerie
William

I'm going to be getting familiar with some of these names, I think. I should start a pool or something as to how many, and which hurricane/s is/are going to hit the east coast of Florida. I will bet on three hurricanes: Ernesto, Gordon and Patty.

I think if a hurricane is getting close and dangerous this year I'll head up to Canada - and probably have a snowstorm hit. Ah well, the powder will be good for snowboarding then I guess.

Another thing, the 10 most expensive hurricanes to hit the US (source = Wikipedia) (costs are inflation adjusted):

Katrina ($75B)
Andrew ($44.9B)
Charlie ($15.4B)
Ivan ($14.6B)
Hugo ($12.6B)
Wilma ($12.2B)
Agnes ($11.6B)
Betsy ($11.1B)
Rita ($9.4B)
Frances ($9.1B)

I've watched 6 of those come through while I've been here in the US. Daaaaamn.

Skype-ing it. Finally.

Sometimes it takes me a while to get around to stuff... like Skype for example. For those of you I know back in Oz, England, wherever you've gone, my Skype handle is daecks. So anyway, add me to your contact list! Or, let me know what other VoIP networks you may use. Or, continue thinking "PK, I don't really want to talk to you...". This stuff should be all operational within the next few days.

Brief return to Oz

I'm heading back to Australia for nearly 2 weeks at the end of this month. I'll be in Adelaide from the 22nd April till May 2nd. During the weekdays I'll actually be working but my weeknights should be relatively free. On the weekends I have to fit in a bachelor party, wedding and probably a 21st and a 50th as well. It would still be awesome to catch up any friends back there! Let me know if you'll be around by sending an e-mail to daecks@gmail.com. Due to me losing a lot of my contacts, it's probably pretty likely I don't have your number.

Some ultrafest pictures

are now online here. I don't know what I'm going to do about the movies yet. I'd like to post them but having a sort-of permanent hosting site for them is difficult. Well, perhaps I could try Google video or something.

Anyways, Ultrafest was awesome. I actually had to take my shoes off at one point because my feet hurt from jumping around so much.

There was only one thing that pissed me off that whole day and you know it's going to be one of those weird things that just get to me. In the Carl Cox tent there was a guy with some really expensive looking DSLR camera, much more expensive than mine. You know, he had the whole proper camera bag thing, the big hot-shoe flash arrangement, the I'm-too-cool-for-skool stance, a posse of fairly attractive women around him. I'm there with my point and shoot wishing I had my DSLR with me but knowing one had to have a special pass to bring such cameras in. Anyway, he was standing around the middle of the room, probably around 40 feet from the front of the stage. He brings out the camera to get a shot of the DJ, bear in mind it's pretty bright in the tent because of the insane lighting...

He uses his bloody flash. Looking down at the photo he's taken, and I could see the image result too, he sees some bright heads in the foreground reflecting the flash and not much in the background. The DJ couldn't reflect the flash coz he was just too bloody far away, wasn't he!?! I nearly went up to him and said "mate, forget the flash. Crank your ISO up. Set your shutter speed to something like 1/60. See what results you get". But I didn't, I thought I would have looked like a dickhead or something, or maybe he had a meat cleaver stored somewhere that he would have felt like using. Every shot he took he used the flash. Anyway, point is that's one of my pet peeves: people using flash for objects further than 10 feet away (perhaps 20 feet if it's a more powerful hot-shoe flash). It pisses me off. It almost pisses me off more than people who pull up at stop lights and are always moving forward trying to predict when the lights go green. Then, when the lights actually *do* go green, they stay there for like 5 seconds. That really pisses me off.

Pissed (the non-drunk meaning) Kristian signing off.