The Last Day Of Spring

Life continues along quietly! We have a Test Cricket match on TV at the moment where Australia is playing New Zealand. This keeps my day filled very easily. Trish is still in Melbourne and is due to fly home on Wednesday. Her time in Melbourne has been very busy catching up with people and enjoying the grandchildren. She loves it!

Today Trish has organized a "Family Day" for her side of the family down in Melbourne. She has four older brothers and an older sister. Her eldest brother is in his mid seventies and is suffering from Parkinson's. He is in a "Full Care" facility near New Newcastle in New South Wales. Hopefully if he gets the all-clear, he is attending the 'reunion' today in Melbourne. Fingers are crossed for a nice day down there.

Our great little Fuji Compact camera is not behaving itself, with difficulty recharging the battery. It seems the battery no longer makes good contact with the camera so it can be difficult to recharge . I have ordered a replacement camera 'online' from here on the Sunshine Coast. One shop assistant in Melbourne described the newly ordered camera as one of the best models she has ever sold and the price I can get it for here is an absolute bargain! It is a Canon Ixus 860IS. Like the Fuji, it has a huge 3" screen (see below).

This model is being 'phased' out with a newer model about to be released. Therefore the price of it is excellent. It has a RRP of $599 and I can get it for well under half that price! General current price appears to be between $350 and $450!

I went to the Computer Club again yesterday morning and got caught up with a couple of members who are having problems with their laptops. One lady has a problem with Windows Mail in Vista (I don't like it at all!) while the other probably needs a reformat of her hard drive. She can access the internet with Internet Explorer but not with Firefox. I reckon the problem is with her McAfee Internet Security Firewall not giving Firefox permission to access the net!

Another 10k bike ride this morning. The sun is up well before 5 am nowadays so it is difficult to lie in bed! I gave the pool a quick clean and watered all the plants. I set out for my ride at about 6:45 and the temperature then was already 25 degrees! It was about 26 degrees when I got back home. Then it is into the pool, clothes and all. After a quick swim the clothes go on the line to dry ready for the next day's ride!

I was able to get good copies of Quantum of Solace (the new James Bond movie) and the action movie Eagle Eye off the net yesterday.

Visitors Head Back To Melbourne.

It was great having Barry and John visit for the week. We had a great time, drank too much and relived old times. John was able to get away from the world of finance and have a good break. The Test match finishing early meant we had to fill in a few days which had ramifications for me with Australia's Drink Driving laws. One day we went for a walk along the boardwalk at about 10 am. We eventually arrived back home about 5 pm. We found a couple of good 'watering holes' and had a long day.

But I managed to get them to the airport on time to catch their flight then set about getting myself back home for a tidy up. Several loads of washing, the floors needed a bit of a tidy up and of course I had to set about replenishing my home brew supplies. It is now over 24 hours since the guys headed off and the tidying up and replenishing has been completed. A new brew is bubbling away quietly in the garage and I have 32 washed bottles drying as I type.

The weather remains warm and humid. Impending rain and storms mean lots of grey clouds with some sunshine from time to time. The temp is around 28 degrees but the pool is only about 22 degrees. Yesterday was sunny allowing me to get all the washing dry! It is back to cloudy again today.

Today I was back to the audiologist to have my hearing aid checked, tomorrow the car is to be serviced.

The phone via Voip hasn't played up for a while, but we don't get that many calls. My uncle's second wife Lola who is in Canberra is ill. They are in their 80's and any trip to hospital is a concern.

Trish continues to enjoy herself in Melbourne visiting friends and catching up with the grandchildren.

She has organized a family reunion for her side of the family this Sunday. It is amazing, here we are living 2000 kilometres away from Melbourne and Trish has to do the organizing for a family reunion! Ah well, as long as everyone has a great time that is what is important!

Sunday Update

It has been a hectic few days. Trish is has flown down to Melbourne for a fortnight and I have Barry and John spending a week with me here at Caloundra. It has been pretty busy with reliving old times and enjoying possibly too many drinks. The weather has been great except for today which though fine has been extremely windy and not hot. The pool has had a fair bit of use and we have watched the recent Australia vs New Zealand cricket test match!

Things got off to a bad start when we found the beer I had put in my portable fridge had all frozen! I had some of it for over 12 months and it had 'gone off'. Therefore we were glad it had been frozen! The situation was 'recovered' and all went along nicely!

We have been to the RSL for a meal and to the Golden Beach Tavern for a great steak. Today we had breakfast at the Bowls Club. We have eaten superbly but simply! John has been able to catch up on his sleep! John is a Financial Adviser and has been working hard and enduring hard times with the current financial situation. When here he relaxes (and drinks my home brew!).

The early finish to the cricket meant Barry could watch some of his car racing. He doesn't look too stressed does he? John 'promised' his mum (who also lives on the Sunshine Coast) that he would spend a night with her and that looks like being Monday night.

The guys fly home to Melbourne on Wednesday.

I had a Computer Club member catch up with me yesterday looking for either Vista or XP to set up his daughter's new PC. I was able to help him out before we set off for the RSL!

Phone And New Router

I am experiencing a few problems with my new Voip Router and receiving some calls. Most calls come through fine but from time to time the phones attached to the router don't recognize there is an incoming call. We get only dial tone when we answer so we have to rush to the wall phone for the call.

We don't always make it.

People generally ring straight back and the call always comes through fine the second time. These intermittent problems are the hardest to fix. We are using a bit of trial and error to sort it out.

So if you ring our landline and there is a problem, just ring straight back again!

At last some sunshine today despite another 22mls overnight. More storms are forecast for tonight, and tomorrow night ... and Friday ..... and Saturday!

Trish to Melbourne this morning and two mates Barry and John here today for a week.

Our nephew Marcus is in town doing a store renovation and setup and we caught up with him last night.

Still Raining!

I tipped another 21 mls (almost an inch -25mls= 1 inch) out of the rain gauge this morning. We are quickly closing in on the annual average for Caloundra and may get there in the next couple of days. The forecast is for showers this morning tending to heavy rain overnight. Then more showers and storms tomorrow afternoon and overnight into Thursday. Sunshine is due to return on Friday! This link will take you to my rainfall figures for 2008. For this month's figures you need to click on Q4 (4th Quarter of 2008). Click on "Back" to return to this page.

The map shows where the most damage from the storms occurred on Sunday, all to the west of Brisbane. Caloundra is almost 100k's north of Brisbane so we were a long way from the areas which were hardest hit. Some Brisbane homes are still without power 36 hours after the storm went through. Prime Minister Rudd visited the damaged areas this morning on his return from the US.

I bottled another batch of home brew this morning. Trish flies out for Melbourne tomorrow morning and Barry and John fly in for a week's RnR at the same time.

The first cricket test Australia vs New Zealand is due to start in Brisbane on Thursday! I reckon the start will be delayed!

Storms Across SE Queensland

As forecast, storms rolled in late yesterday bringing heavy rain and destructive winds. All of South East Queensland was affected. I just tipped 23mls (almost an inch) out of the rain gauge this morning. The photo to the left shows the storm clouds rolling in at about 6pm last night. However other areas around Brisbane wore the brunt of the strong winds and damage.

The photos below show some of the damage caused by cyclonic like winds and heavy rain around Brisbane suburbs. One person died when swept down a storm drain! (Why would you be standing in a storm water drain with a storm just about to hit?) We certainly didn't get any weather like that up here on the Sunshine Coast which is about 100k's north of Brisbane.


More storms are forecast for Wednesday evening. We are getting close to our annual rainfall total for the year. Another couple of inches of rain and we will hit the annual average!

Sold!

Being on a 'new' estate there are always new homes for sale. With the recent economic downturn, the sales of new homes across Australia has fallen. When on a bike ride a few weeks ago I noticed quite a few new homes with For Sale signs up. Today when I was on my bike ride it was interesting to note that about 50% of these new homes for sale now have "Sold" signs on them (like this one above).

The government has introduced measures to support young couples in the purchase of new homes and this seems to be having a positive effect here on house sales on the Sunshine Coast.

It was about 26 degrees at 7:30 am this morning when I headed off for my 10k bike ride. I was hot when I got back home. However we have storms forecast for this afternoon and cooler weather with showers for the next couple of days so I gave the lawn a quick mow. Otherwise I would have had to wait till later in the week to mow based on the forecast. After mowing, it was into the pool before breakfast for a cool off! The pool is about 23 degrees most mornings at the moment.

I will give the half the lawn that took most of the traffic from the pool installation a few years ago another feed during the week. The soil underneath in this area has been compressed and doesn't hold water too well. I have been aerating it to try to break up the compressed soil. The grass is not quite as lush in this area.

A Quickie.

I went around to a fellow Computer Club member's home this morning. Graeme wanted to get some ideas on what he should be looking at for his next PC. The last one he had was a lemon! Nothing but trouble from start to finish though he did confess it was his own fault to a certain degree.

He was looking at something like this, a great over the top processor, plenty of RAM and a huge Hard Disk Drive. It also has a reasonable Video Card. (Click on the picture for a larger view)

He isn't interested in the keyboard, mouse, monitor, Vista (he has a copy of XP) or speakers so could probably come out of it all for $1000. As I said to him, I am great at spending other people's money!

Trish went to Stitchers again this morning and she and a few of the ladies are getting together for a social afternoon and a chance to 'make' a few Christmas decorations.

My Home Brew is bubbling nicely and at last we saw the sun today. I tipped another 18mls from the rain gauge this morning. More storms are tipped for Sunday and showers returning for most of next week! We are only half way through the month and we are just a whisker below the monthly rainfall average already!

Hopefully we will both get a bike ride in tomorrow morning before I head off to Computer Club!

Pool is around 24 degrees this afternoon.

It's About Time!

It's about time I put another post onto my blog page! I didn't realize it had been so long since I last posted! We have had a much cooler and wetter week this week. Unlike down in Melbourne where they have had 30 degrees plus the last two days, here we have struggled to get to the mid 20's.

On Tuesday we drove over 50k's up to Noosa where we caught up with Carol and David, friends from Melbourne. They were staying in an apartment there overlooking the bay and just beside a National Park. Carol's daughter Sian was there with her husband Craig and their two girls, Jade and Lilly! We had a great lunch with them at the apartment and enjoyed the afternoon chatting and having a few drinks. It was great to see them all again. The two girls are growing up now!

Noosa is at the trendy end of the Sunshine Coast and generally caters for tourists from overseas and interstate. And the price of things there reflect that! Most local visitors, i.e. tourists and families from Brisbane seem to visit our end of the Coast. It seems to be more 'family oriented' and certainly less expensive at this end! However Noosa is the epitome of a lovely sub tropical tourist paradise with an idyllic beach and plenty of trendy shops and boutiques.

Trish is getting ready for her trip down to Melbourne next Wednesday and I am getting ready to host a couple of mates who are coming up while Trish is away! Barry (a former neighbour from our days back in Melbourne) and John our finance guy are visiting.

I have been busy getting another batch of Home Brew on and I expect to have it bottled before the guys get here on Wednesday. They are staying for a week.

We had 20mls of rain (80pts) overnight from a few forecast "showers". We are enjoying another shower right now as I type! The front lawn certainly needs a mow right now and the pool is full! We haven't been for bike ride for a couple of days now, it has been too wet. The photo here was taken just a few minutes ago as the latest shower commenced!

Click "HERE" to see the current loop from the Brisbane Weather Bureau for radar of the showers coming in from the south east off the ocean. Caloundra is up near the top of the screen. Here is a screen shot!

I can now say the computer is fully up and running again! The new modem (once packed back in its box and ready to be returned to the shop where I bought it) has not missed a beat in the last week or so since I worked it all out. I have just got 'person to person' file sharing to work on it. I won't go into much detail but my former modem took only one step to set up, this one took about 5 steps! And of course there aren't any instructions! That was the end of 4 days frustration (and enjoyment with the challenge of solving a problem).

I haven't had a computer freeze or any sort of start up problem over the last week, it runs quickly and smoothly!

Another Inch Of Rain Overnight

A long range forecaster has said the Sunshine Coast was in for a wet summer this year. So far we have had 70mls of rain this week alone, almost 3 inches! Lawn is greening up again and the pool is full!

Yesterday I did another tutorial at the Computer Club on How To Select An ISP. (Internet Service Provider). Several in the audience later caught up with me to thank me. One lady wished I had given the tutorial 3 weeks earlier. It seems she has just 'signed up' for a plan and is already regretting her decision.

I mentioned that people should get more download limit rather than what they thought they would need. I also said to be careful of 'free' modems etc, there isn't any such thing! I also talked about the period of the contract. One ISP is selling 3 year plans! Who knows what their internet needs will be in 12 months let alone 3 years! I suggested 6 months was a good length of time.

Here are a couple of screenshots of the presentation. If you want you can download the full Powerpoint Presentation I gave from the link to the right in Les' Links (or click here). Most of the presentation was based on the Broadband Choice website here! There is lots of great information at the Broadband Choice website as well as support for anyone who has a problem or a question about their modem or connection to the internet. There are also suggestions on which is the best modem to suit your needs.

US Elections All Over The Place

After some great weather we had a "Melbourne" day yesterday. Though the max may have been 23, for most of the day it was hovering between 19 and 20! We had black clouds and rain. This morning I tipped 50mls or 2 inches out of the rain gauge. The pool is full again, the garden is watered and the lawn is beginning to green up again.


News reports here are full of the election of Obama as the USA President Elect! Evidently the first 8 pages of one Aussie newspaper were devoted totally to the election of Barack Obama. Even newspaper online websites are full of the news. The photo to the left is a screen shot from an Aussie Newspaper website!

Texas Lou and family are just delighted with the new President, despite their state Texas eventually having its college votes go to McCain.

The news has does nothing to help the poor old share market with Australia following Wall St's lead and dropping several percent.

Cricket from India on TV today so that will fill in my day nicely!

It's "Cup Day"

Melbourne Cup Day on the Sunshine Coast is fine and sunny with temp a sticky 28 degrees. The fans are whirling overhead keeping everyone (Trish and me!) cool.

It has been a busy couple of days. The new router went crazy Monday morning and turned itself off and then had all sorts of problems reconnecting to the internet. Later that morning we had a phone call come in and we couldn't answer it on any of the phones connected to the new router's voip connection! Voip is where you can use the internet part of your connection to make cheap calls Australia wide. So the new Billion router came off and the DLink went back on again.

The setup on the DLink is all made via a wizard, you type in a few details and the thing sets itself up! The new Billion router needs each little bit to be set up in each section, firstly Internet Connection, then the Local Network Connection (Trish's Laptop), and finally setting up the Voip and fine tuning your phone connection so it can differentiate between ordinary calls and Voip calls. There were some heated exchanges via email between myself and Billion Support! I also created a discussion thread covering my issues on "Whirlpool" where I got some good advice. A bit of trial and error and the Billion is now back on and working perfectly ... I think! The PC has not skipped a beat either over the last few days!

Did a 10k bike ride this morning. The photo above shows how quickly the grass is growing beside the pathways (or how long it takes the Council to get around to mowing it!) I ride past the Caloundra Air Museum and here is a quick shot I took today. Pretty warm stuff so I enjoyed a 10 minute cool off in the pool when I got home. Then a bottling to do. Now all is done and the rest of the day is free.

The new router cost me about $140 when I picked it up on Saturday after buying it online. This is a great price for a modem router with wireless connection and Voip! With the Aussie dollar dropping over the last few months, prices of goods from overseas have been going up. Other online retailers were selling the same model unit for over $170, some over $200. I checked the price of mine at the online site I bought it from and saw that on Monday the price had gone to almost $180! I got in just in time!

We will stay home today and watch the Melbourne Cup on TV at about 2 pm our time!

What's Happening!

Life continues to amble quietly along on the Sunshine Coast. The weather is getting warmer with the pool temperature now nudging 23 degrees. It is now OK for a reasonable swim, especially after a 10 kilometer bike ride!


Trish has returned this afternoon from her 2 day Sewing Outing. I think she would have preferred it was a Social/Sewing Getaway rather than a Sewing/Sewing Getaway! But she enjoyed getting away. It is a pretty spot up in the hills behind the Sunshine Coast. It is a Baptist Camping Facility with a pleasant pool (see above), cabin style accommodation with room to do their sewing (below). Being a Baptist facility, alcohol was not encouraged but a few of the ladies enjoyed a quiet glass of wine in their rooms.


My computer reformat had another hiccup on Friday with a massive freeze up again. It took about 30 minutes before I could get it running again. It will be a trial and error thing to see if I have overcome it. I reckon it is something to do with the Firewall I installed. It seemed to freeze up just as the Firewall icon was coming on in the system tray and just as Skype was starting up. I have uninstalled that firewall and no longer do I get Skype to start up automatically.

And I have got myself a new VoIP router modem. It is now connected to the computer and seems to be running OK. It is a bit hard to get a decent photo of it. It does all the things I want it to do and is known for being a very good solid model, exactly what I want. It is a Billion brand, BIPAC 7401 VGP-M.

Since Friday night, the PC has not skipped a beat and loads and runs beautifully! Hopefully with a solid modem and a new Firewall installed I have overcome the "freezes".

An article in the local paper warns of the Sunshine Coast having an extremely wet few months in front of us. A long range weather forecaster is predicting flood like rainfall for the Sunshine Coast between now and Christmas! Heavy rain will continue into January too!