Forgetful
So, I left my access token thing at work last night by mistake, which renders my laptop basically useless (can’t access anything without it). I went in to work today to get it, and cleverly managed to leave my swipe card at home — so I can’t get in to the building. Takes a special amount of stupid to do all that. 
In happier news, I’ve found that Dan Murphy’s stocks the St-Germain liqueur I’ve been looking for – at an almost reasonable price! I now have a bottle of the stuff at home. 
- zac.
Good News Week
Watching the good news tonight – it would appear that Kelly Clarkson doesn’t quite get how this show works..
- zac.
Another big weekend
- Avenue Q finally made it to Australia – as always, fun to see what they’ve changed (Swine Flu! is only for now…) – great cast, definitely worth seeing.
- Drinkies afterwards at MoVida Next Door – had a really nice Tempranillo and several plates of tapas – mostly stuff I couldn’t eat, but the roast potato with salsa was outstanding!
- Dinner was at Karen Martinis’ St Kilda restaurant mr. wolf – laid back, friendly service, menu divided in to ‘Pizza’ and ‘Not Pizza’, wonderful bar next door (they have St Germain!)
- The drinkening continued afterwards at Bar 362 – not really my sort of place, a bit too clubby for me – but they were being generous with the booze (which is never a bad thing! ) Several G&Ts later I said my goodbyes and walked (stumbled?) home.
- zac.
Auckland 09 trip notes
- Qantas Platinum privileges are very, very nice indeed. Premium check in, express immigration cards, First lounge access, exit row seating, seats blocked next to you – no better way to start or end a trip!
- The Skycity hotel is OK – certainly better than Rydges, which is where I stayed last time – but still pretty bland. Skycity Grand hotel is much nicer, but definitely comes at a price premium. Internet access is obscenely expensive (NZD10 for two consecutive hours with a 20 megabyte data limit). Would I stay there again? Probably not, unless I got a really good deal.
- Friday night was rounded out with drinks at Suite bar, which served up some outstanding cocktails and introduced me to St-Germain elderflower liqueur. Finding a bottle of the stuff may turn out to be harder than I thought… none to be found duty free and Vintage Cellars don’t know what it is. Hmm.
- Auckland Zoo was heaps of fun. The Kiwi birds I saw are bigger than I thought. I tried to take photos, but they didn’t work out (bad lighting). Highlight of the visit were the Meerkats – completely adorable, I want one of my own!
- Saturday night was massive. Gin fizz’s to get things started, followed by a late dinner at dine by Peter Gordon – some outstandingly good tortellini, a v tasty Sauvignon Blanc (that I completely forgot to get the name of) and a few glasses of Perrier Jouet. Yum. A few of us kept going at Honey for some tasty cocktails, and then on to another bar on K Road. This is where memory starts to get hazy … though apparently I am a messy drunk!
Still, I held it together enough to not disgrace myself, get thrown out, lose anything or do anything I might really regret.. - Sunday was hangover central and flight home. Probably the first afternoon/evening flight in a long time where I’ve been completely sober and not at all tempted to have a drink of anything!
A successful weekend!
- zac.
Chat program updates ahoy!
Brand new beta of Adium, newish beta of aMSN for Mac .. well, February-this-year newish, at least.
Additionally, Safari 4 beta was updated some time recently. Seems a little less memory hungry now + it renders the Acid3 test perfectly (somewhat pointless but it’s cool anyway!)
Speaking of updates – engineer types at work made a pretty major change to one of our largest products over the weekend, which affects all new sales of said product going forward. I’m pleased that the world hasn’t ended!
Yet.
- zac.
Mail.app and the curious case of vanishing certificates
So, it seems that Mail.app helpfully prevents you from using an expired or otherwise invalid digital certificate (for the purposes of digitally signing and encrypting e-mail). I went to encrypt a mail to my work address and found that the digital signing and encryption options that were previously available had … vanished. No immediately apparent reason, just simply gone.
It turns out I had cleverly ignored an e-mail from the CA I use telling me the certificate was due to expire and I should probably get a new one. Ergo – certificate expired, no valid digital signature, no signing or encryption options.
Simple enough, just annoying that the answer wasn’t immediately obvious.
- zac.
More entertainment from the Internets
Quoting The Register on a current hot topic:
…The principal swine flu vectors are: Airborne contagion, unprotected email and Facebook. Accordingly, issue staff with flimsy paper masks, confine them to their cubicles and ban them from social networking until the World Health Organisation says otherwise…
- zac.
CSR creation tool for Windows
So, I was looking for a nice way of creating a CSR and private key in Windows for a customer that didn’t involve icky command line stuff or installing more useless server software (read as: IIS) – Googling lead me to My Certificate Wizard, which is a seriously neat little utility for exactly this purpose.
Even nicer – it’s hippy software open source, so it’s completely free (though donations are encouraged).
- zac.
Possibly the best thing I’ve read today..
From Drew’s blog at Toothpaste for Dinner:
In other news, more people read my Twitter than my blog. I know there are some grumblefucks who don’t like Twitter, but it’s the same group of frowners who didn’t like Myspace a couple years ago. Boo hoo, how I hate this new thing that lets people talk to each other online. Life was so much BETTER when there were only TWELVE of us online and IRC WAS JUST FINE THANK YOU. Now if you’ll EXCUSE ME I have a NETSPLIT to ride so I finally get the CHANNEL OPS I DESERVE.
Heh.
- zac.
Boxer
I was searching for recommendations on running DOSBox on my Mac, and Google directed me to Boxer instead. And it’s freaking awesome. 
- zac.