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Weekly notes 50/2023

·933 words·5 mins
Life Sydney Weekly notes weekly-notes gaming museum Diablo IV
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Thumbnail image: Merivale Hotel CBD - when we moved to Sydney, the Merivale Hotel CBD was one of the few venues that were open after we checked into our temporary accommodation. Sadly, the kitchen was closed when we reached there. We had to settle for a few bar snacks the bartender scrounged for us.

What’s been happening #

  • It’s getting hotter as Summer gets closer. For the most part, the Vornados have been coping well, especially in the larger rooms (ie, the living room and the master bedroom). However, in the office, due to the smaller place and that my gaming PC can run relatively hot, it’s been getting uncomfortably warm. The aircon hasn’t been effective, and I’m not sure if it is because the aircon isn’t working or it’s so hot. I’m inclined to believe the former and have written to my real estate agent to get it checked.

  • When Jo & I moved to Australia, the one question that everyone would ask was “Have you come across any huge spiders or other such insects?” And till now, it’s been the same - “No, we’re in the city, so don’t see any spiders or such”. Last week, however, when Jo opened the closet she noticed a huge spider, pretty much the largest I’ve seen in my life. So that answer is going to change from now. It’s not clear why the spider made it in after so long - my guess is the outside heat and pest control done on the building might have forced the spider to come in via the window. Needless to say, Jo has not agreed to open the window in the past week.

  • We went over to the Australian Museum today for a Ramses II titled Ramses II & The Gold of the Pharaohs. The exhibit focused on the life, and accomplishments of Ramses II, often regarded as the greatest and most celebrated pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. Overall the exhibit was decent - we spent a couple of hours there, looking at some of the artifacts, watching a hastened summary of the Battle of Kadesh and reading up about Abu Simbel - an ancient temple built during the reign of Ramses II, originally cut into a solid rock cliff and then sliced into smaller pieces and relocated to make way for a dam. Here’s a longer video about this if you’re interested.

    Some pictures from the exhibit:

    Ramses II & The Gold of the Pharaohs Exhibit

    Ramses II & The Gold of the Pharaohs Exhibit

    Ramses II & The Gold of the Pharaohs Exhibit

    Ramses II & The Gold of the Pharaohs Exhibit

    Ramses II & The Gold of the Pharaohs Exhibit

    Ramses II & The Gold of the Pharaohs Exhibit

    Ramses II & The Gold of the Pharaohs Exhibit

    Ramses II & The Gold of the Pharaohs Exhibit

  • I bought the second-generation AirPods Pro for myself, engraved with my Memoji. I still have my Sony WH-1000 XM4 for my desktop & travels, I’ll be using the AirPods Pro for my walk to the office, as well as my office calls - with the current heat and summer temperatures, there’s no way for me to continue using the XM4 for my commute to the office.

    AirPods Pro
    AirPods Pro

  • Another purchase - I bought a couple of records. Why thought? For our Christmas gift at the office, I chose a record player (the Victrola Eastwood). While the record player will not be arriving any time soon, I wanted to have a record ready, and remembered there’s a record store nearby, so went over there. The staff was quite helpful in explaining the mechanisms of record players, how to handle records and other such questions. So what records did I get? While it was tempting to get the record of the best song ever, I bought the records of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of Moon and The London Chuck Berry Sessions.

    My inaugural records

  • Gaming update: I finally hit level 100 on my Stormclaw Druid in Diablo IV! It’s been quite the journey. I’ve completed mid-level 90 Nightmare Dungeon. Abbatoir of Zir eludes me, since I haven’t completed the Season Journey yet. I’m building a new Ball Lightning Sorcerer as a second character and try to get the last Season Journey with the Sorcerer.

Music of the Week #

I found an amazing cover of Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” - this piece being done by Andrew Belle. Give it a listen!

As I had posted on Twitter, Mitchell Hashimoto posted a note about moving on from Hashicorp. Mitchell’s projects were responsible for kickstarting my Infrastructure as Code journey when I started my first “devops” job at Styletag, automating developer box setup with Vagrant, and then diving into Packer & Terraform for automating cloud infrastructure setup. I wish Mitchell the best and look forward to seeing what’s in store for him.

Subscribe to my posts #

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