7:00 pm - Sunday 5th November 2000

My computer screen is giving up the ghost again. I guess it is nearly three years old, but still…

10:45 pm - I'm fairly tired, but I figure that I'll get some good sleep tonight.
Last night I went and saw "The Emperor and the Assassin" which was pretty good. Today I didn't get up until noon and I did very little for the rest of the day. I disassembled my stereo, but couldn't solve the problem of why it wouldn't let me record onto a tape cassette.

Late in the afternoon I went jogging over to Burt St to say hello and then back to do laundry, miscellaneous domestic tasks followed by shopping and phoning home. Told Mum how happy and buoyant I was because of how much I liked my hair and her opinion was not to get carried away by a "Honeymoon" period. I sighed and tried to explain just how long I'd been waiting for this to come and asked how long should I have to wait again. Still, we had a good talk which was important and I related my news for the week.

I'm lucky to have a fairly understanding mother, I know of friends who tell their parents they are T* and are greeted with outright rejection or words like "Satan", "Hell" and "sin".

7:45 pm - Monday 6th November 2000

Today was (to use classic Australian understatement) rather ordinary.

When I reach three and a half years in my Ph.D., my scholarship runs out (15th Nov 00). Although my supervisor will continue to pay me, it will now be subject to tax, compulsory superannuation and so on, with the net result being a drop in pay by about a third. I certainly shouldn't complain because I know a few people much worse off then myself, but the further income shrinkage was a bit demoralizing.
I also found out that the computer I mainly use at work had been illegally set up as an FTP server and several gigabytes had been downloaded through it. No one blamed me for it, but I spent much of the afternoon cleaning it up and running a check for any Trojan viruses like "Back Orifice".

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