Today we get the keys to our new house! Woo. Well actually we’re not that excited, our current house is pretty lovely. But given that we have to move it’s better to get it over and done with so we can start settling into the new place, and make it ours.

The new place is in Dickson, 3 bedrooms, mid to late 70′s perhaps? It doesn’t have the gorgeous front porch of Scrivener St, but we’ll sort something out. Other than that it’s probably better as a house. It’s a bit newer, it’s brick (not weatherboard), has a new bathroom, and a nicer kitchen/lounge area. We just have to give it some character.

Those of you who’ve been to Scrivener St recently will know that it’s pretty well furnished and decked out for a sharehouse. That’s one of the things that makes it nice. Unfortunately all that crap has to be lifted onto a trailer and carted across town.

Wish us luck!

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Today some os us OzLab’ers had the pleasure of going to the National Press Club to see Professor Henry Chesbrough talk about Innovation. Owing to the fact that we have a pretty relaxed dress code around the office, the invitation made special mention of the fact that shoes and a collared shirt would be required for lunch.

I remembered my shoes, well if you call sandles shoes, but forgot the shirt.

So I had to do a dash home about 10am to get a shirt.

That’s a pretty boring blog entry you’re thinking. Well the exciting part is that because of some ridiculous section of the Tax law, it’s cheaper for Kelly if she drives her car more KMs over the year. Yes, we’re encouraging people to drive further – use more fuel etc, nice one.

Now I’m not much of a car head, but Kelly’s car is pretty cool, so I obliged. Here’s a pic of it outside my house.

Oh yeah, the Innovation talk. It was interesting listening, and an interesting crowd, we were more or less the only techies, which felt a bit strange. There were some interesting questions, including one that went through the keeper about the XXX XXXXXXX.

Apparently I was on the Tele too! Although one person said I looked bored, I claim that I was deep in thought.

There’s been much talk about Red states vs. Blue states and so on in the aftermath of the US “election”. There’s an interesting, and perhaps moderately scientific, analysis here.

The most interesting is this one I think, which shows that things are not quite as clear cut as you think:

But enough scholarly bollocks, it’s much easier to take the George W approach of “you’re either with us or against us”. And as Swami John Safran says:

“There are 2 kinds of people in the world: right-wing people, who are evil and left-wing people, who are good.”

And so we have these two gems:

This is a really interesting piece, nothing particularly revolutionary, but nice to have it all stated in one place, and eloquently so.

A bunch of us congregated at the “Muddle Bar” on Saturday night to celebrate Jess’ 30th. There were smiles all around and I managed to snap a few.

It also marked the return of Damian and Marissa from their world odyssey. And it was just as well, Ben C wasn’t up to his usual form, so luckily we had Damian to fill the void.

Most of us backed up that performance by turning up for brunch at 10:30 am on Sunday. Rumour has it that some of us were a little late.

On Sunday arvo a posse of us headed across the train tracks to see Jess do her Indian dance performance in Queanbeyan. The dancing was excellent and the Samosas were delicious. Unfortunately I forgot my camera.

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How foolish we were to think that any of:

• a failing economy
• a massive deficit
• an idiot AWOL president
• an illegal illconcevied deceitful war
• 100,000+ dead civilians
• the non-capture of Bin Laden

Would have any effect on the way Americans voted.

After all you can’t argue with god:

“I really believe I’m hearing from the Lord it’s going to be like a blowout election in 2004 … The Lord has just blessed him … It doesn’t make any difference what he does, good or bad, God picks him up because he’s a man of prayer and God’s blessing him.” – Pat Robertson

The Onion hits the mark once more, with it’s brilliantly satirical, and yet largely true “U.S. Inspires World With Attempt At Democratic Election”.

[U.N. official] Salman said he was “touched and gladdened” that voter turnout for the U.S. election nearly approached voter-turnout rates for Afghanistan’s first popular elections in October, when 69 percent of citizens cast ballots.

As I drove past the local church this morning, I noticed that they’ve changed tack a little with their message board. Normally it sports something like “Jesus died for your sins”, or “Satan is coming to eat your baby!”. But this morning it said simply:

If you can read this, thank a teacher!

Hear, hear.