Tomorrow is Invasion Day.

In August 1770, Captain James Cook discovered Australia and claimed in ‘No Mans Land,’ dispite the existence of the indiginous people, the Aboriginals.

On the 26th of January 1788, Governor Arthur Philip arrived leading the First Fleet and ’settled’ Australia.

Now, at this stage, the white settlers would have you believe that they just arrived and set up and we became an amazing country, just like that.

In actual fact, the 26th of January was the start of hundreds of years of oppression, mis treatment, murder, stolen babies, stolen land and more. Hence the title ‘Invasion Day’ and not ‘Australia Day’.

In Australia, at any given time, you will see cars driving around sporting an Australian flag, or the Southern Cross somewhere on it… Either in the form of flags, or a sticker. Guys walk around topless with their Southern Cross tattoo’s on their torsos or arms or where ever.

The level of patriotism in this country is super high, in fact as high as I have ever seen. I haven’t seen people do this in other countries (apart from the states.) What on earth do we have to be proud of? I see nothing at all. We live on stolen ground with a tainted history. We do nothing special as a country. Ever.

As a side note, if I was not born in this country but were now living here, I would be offended by the flags on all the cars and feel as though this country could never be shared with people not born here. It sends a very strong ‘this is MY country’ message that cannot be ignored.

Why do people feel so strongly about the country they live in? Its a block of land in the middle of the ocean. You’re not saying ‘Yay Australia,’ you’re saying ‘Yay our oppressive and overly aggressive governments.’

I love my rugby team. The Wallabys are just my team, I read about them in the off-season and I dont miss a game in the on-season. Its the only aspect of ‘Australia’ that I like, as a whole. Don’t get me wrong, I am talking of Australian representatives, idols that demand respect. Not individuals, businesses, etc.

I am semi ranting again in this post. I am just cranky at people feeling proud of this country and what it has ‘achieved.’ Also, I used the Aboriginal flag in this post as I refuse to use the Australian flag. Ever.

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@TheNDM Meh, you could always just have Hot Cross Foun'n'Twenties. in reply to TheNDM #

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I have started using twitters web interface again instead of Tweetdeck because I dont have the spare memory for it anymore. #

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Just saw the video of the Ady Gil incident and am disappointed to see that it was in fact moving forward.. http://bit.ly/4xpoRP #

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It arrived quickly, suspiciously quickly. I wasn’t entirely convinced that 3 decades had indeed passed since I was born… But alas, it was correct and I enjoyed a few beers and some bloody red meat with friends and family at my house. The way everybody should see in 30.

I am my own biggest critic. I give myself a hard time for everything, I seriously cannot be happy with myself, so when I realised that I had made a lot of plans that I had wanted to have done by this age and that none of them had been accomplished, I got really down on myself. I wont go into what they are, mainly because they’ll seem silly and people will say “but what about all these other things you’ve done …. ” and its not for other people to comment on.

A few other things struck me when I turned 30…

• Its been 11 1/2 years since I have seen my mum. She passed in 1998 after battling cancer for 12 years.
• Its been 12 years since I had the accident. I lost three fingers on my right hand and spent a lot of time in hospital having a lot of different procedures that still make me feel like a scar-covered freak.
• Its been 13 years since I met my beautiful wife and the backbone of my life. Yes, I was 17, we were only together 8 months before my accident and 13 months before my mum died. She is my everything (well, her and Abbey.)
• Its been 19 years since my parents split. This is a big one, I couldn’t believe it had been that long.

While I may occasionally be guilty of wallowing in my own misfortune while having a glass of wine and listening to nostalgia provoking music, I am not one to want or tolerate peoples pity of me. Others in the world are more deserving of that and I don’t write posts like this in an attempt to go ‘fishing’ for comments. I write them because I feel better when I put my feelings into words.

I dont feel thirty. I sometimes hear my voice and think I sound like a 13 year old. I don’t feel like I should be old enough for a mortgage, children, married life…. Its a hard feeling to describe. I’m not saying 30 is old, I’m saying I don’t feel 30… Or old… whatever.

I’m a seriously lucky guy, I have a beautiful healthy family, I live in a great city within an even greater country. I am the ultimate optimist, I hate negativity, the glass is *always* half full and I sometimes fear I haven’t entirely grasped the situation when I am positively moving forward while others seem to be going mad in their stress.

I created an email address for Abbey the other day so I can email her my thoughts and feelings (yes, I know she is 2) and I will hand over the login details for her when she is 16. I tried to keep a book for her, but I never had it on me when I had something to add into it. I also started a new site just for her… AbbeySays.com – somewhere for me to log her amazing adventure through speech.

Buenos Noches friends, I hope you’ll be here when I post about my 40th.

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@tekchic Ok, it didn't take much, but you've twisted my arm. in reply to tekchic #

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RT @Iconic88: Congrats to @booneoakley for an amazing website! http://bit.ly/8YyyS0 [Agree - Brilliant!!] #

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@brop Thanks! Its definately a looker! We do know, but we are not revealing it. At least not yet. in reply to brop #

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The script is very, very simple;

while [ "1 -eq 1" ]
   do
    if [ ! -e "/var/log/searchd.pid" ]
    then
    searchd
    fi
    sleep 2
done  

Basically, we have an infinite loop, we check that /var/log/search.pid exists, if not, start it, then sleep (’pause’ essentially) for 2 seconds before starting again. You can change it to alert you too, if you’d like.

To get an idea of how screen works, check out this post.

Thought it might help some of you.

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