Cricket and Then More Cricket

The footy season was over on Saturday so now it is straight into Cricket. My mate John arrived lunchtime on Monday and from the airport it was straight to the cricket!

South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania Cricket teams are visiting the Sunshine Coast to play a series of matches as a warm up to the 2009/10 season. There are some test class players among the groups here. Graham Manou is the captain of South Australia and he wicket kept for Australia in the 4th Test in England this year. Also Jason Krezja is playing, the off spinner controversially omitted from the recent tour to England in favour of Hauritz. The photo shows young McDermott bowling. He is the son of former Australian opening fast bowler Craig McDermott.

The cricket has been great, the weather perfect and the games spectacular to watch with some lusty hitting going on. Sunny days of about 26 has made the conditions for watching the games just perfect.

Today the action shifts to Caloundra where two 20/20 matches will be played, the second will be under lights. Trish is driving us so we are free to relax and enjoy ourselves.

Geelong Win The Grand Final

Friday afternoon saw me enjoy a few beers with Tony and Paul before I returned home and to the TV to watch the first of the Grand Final footy matches over the weekend. Nowadays they have the U/18's and what used to be the "Seconds" play their Grand Finals on Friday night. In the past, these two games would have been crowd warmers for the big game on the Saturday.

So Friday was a footy watching night.

Saturday was going to be the big day with panel coverage beginning on TV at 8 am. I was not going to Computer Club today! The 'big game' was due to start at 2:30 in the afternoon. Trish and I enjoyed hot dogs as an early lunch as we followed preparations for the big game on TV. Just before 2 o'clock we enjoyed our 'late' lunch of prawns and oysters (as well as several beers of course!) They look pretty good don't they?
Our weather was windy and 32 degrees with some more dust due later in the day. In Melbourne it was a wet, cold and windy day with the temperature expected to peak out at 13 degrees!

In a thrilling game my team Geelong managed to get over the line by 2 goals, thus giving them 2 premierships in 3 years. I have seen them play live in about 5 grand Finals and they have lost every one of them. The two games I haven't attended has seen them win the premiership! There is a message there!

More prawns for tea and several more beers capped off a great day. And what do you know, there was live cricket from South Africa with Australia playing against West Indies after the footy finished! I had a great day!

Today Sunday has seen the floors cleaned yet again from the dust yesterday. It was nowhere near as bad as mid week, but it was bad enough to need to do the floors again. Instead of washing down the patio this time I vacuumed it! It seems to have come up OK.

A mate of mine John Logan flies up tomorrow. We are spending much of this week watching cricket together. Three state cricket teams are playing a series of new season warm up matches here on the Sunshine Coast. The teams are from Queensland, South Australia and Tasmania. There will be players amongst them who have represented Australia so the standard of play will be excellent.

Back To Normal Weather

After the dust storm Wednesday afternoon, Thursday morning was spent 'cleaning'. I hosed the red dust from all the pavers, some of which ended up in the pool adding to what was already deposited there. The pool has now been vacuumed 4 times and at last all the fine dust has gone.

Trish and I did the floors yesterday morning too and later she did the dusting. All the soiled rags from cleaning are taking up a full bucket while they soak. The place is certainly looking better after the cleanup.

Trish enjoyed her trip to Brisbane on Wednesday and seeing Irene. However the inclement dusty weather meant they spent much of their time indoors.

Thursday morning saw only Paul and me ride, Tony is back to the doctor with his sore foot. I spent a couple of hours with them both and enjoying a few beers on Thursday afternoon. Paul and I rode again this morning doing almost 14k's. As you can see from the photo, we were down at Pumicestone Passage again as a part of our bike ride.

The Grand Final weekend begins later today. We are even getting the VFL Grand Final live here in Queensland this evening and I am looking forward to that. Trish is at Stitchers right now and is due home at lunchtime.

Today is my sister's birthday and I rang her this morning to wish her a Happy Birthday.

From Sydney To Caloundra

This morning I wrote in this blog about dust in the sky around Sydney. These photos were taken in my backyard and out the front just a few minutes ago at about 1:30pm. It is eerie outside with a strange early afternoon light. It is over 30 degrees but the humidity has dropped to about 35% which is most unusual for this part of the world. I have closed the house up with windows and doors now all shut to keep the dust out.

The wind has swung to the south west bringing this dust with it. The outlook is for the winds to ease overnight and eventually swing around to the south east tomorrow. This means the wind will again be coming in off the sea, the dust will clear and the humidity will climb again.

Crazy Weather All Over Australia.

It is blowing a gale here, strong winds are coming down from the north west. Later today we are expecting a dry south westerly change which means the winds will remain but the humidity will drop away. Cleaning the pool right now is a bit like painting the Sydney Harbour Bridge, it is so big that as soon as you finish painting it you have to go back and start all over again straight away. However it is warm (about 27 right now at 10 am). This photo was taken a couple of hours ago and shows the palms in our backyard bending in the wind. It was too windy for me to ride!

Sydney, 1000k's south of us also has strong westerly winds which are blowing red dust from Central Australia all over the place. Sydney is having a 'red out'. This photo below was copy/pasted from the internet this morning.

Some parts of Victoria are having heavy rain and other parts of south east Australia have reported hail as big as tennis balls.

Trish is into Brisbane today to catch up with Irene who is visiting relations there. Irene is from Victoria. I will just 'bum around', cleaning the pool and enjoying the warm weather. Hopefully the pool will crack 26 degrees today as it warms up in the warm weather.

Fire Restrictions In Queensland

On Sunday afternoon Trish and I enjoyed a lovely BBQ with friends Tony and Angela as well as Paul and Linda. We had enough to drink, some lovely food and excellent company. Monday was spent with me having a good look around the Sunshine Coast Home Centre while Trish was off looking at material for hand made Christmas gifts. It was sunny and mid 20's both days. Tony was back on the bike again beginning Monday morning. It was good for me to have company again as we rode.

Today, Tuesday, saw a Total Fire Ban implemented for South East Queensland. There were strong northerly winds and the temp was up to 29 degrees by 11 am. As soon as the afternoon sea-breeze kicked in at about lunch time the temperature dropped back to about 26 and the humidity went up to 65% thus lessening any chance of a fire near where we live.

I haven't had any new glasses for about 5 years now. A trip to the optometrist last week said it was time for the old glasses to go and for me to update to some newer ones. "I can see clearly now." There is quite a change to the prescription and I have been advised it will take a few days for me to get used to them.

With the nice warm weather I spent about an hour in the pool this afternoon. According to the new thermometer the water temperature was a just under 26 but that may be a little warmer than it actually is. It was certainly warm enough for me to swim as you can see. I hope I am not 'red' from any sunburn tomorrow!

I had another swim earlier this morning when I returned from a 11k bike ride.

A Successful Saturday

Saturday is Computer Club day. Tony is away at the moment, usually we head to the Computer Club together.

There was a lady there who had two computers, one a Vista laptop she brought with her, the other a desktop PC running XP which was back at her residence. She was unable to get her laptop to start up and connect to the internet, she kept getting a message about an incompatibility 'vector' problem between a driver and Vista. The message went on to say connect to the internet to solve the problem but the incompatible driver was one which was required to get on the internet.

The Club President is also a Computer Repair guy and we needed his expertise to solve the problem. It turned out the problem was with her firewall 'Zone Alarm'. As soon as we uninstalled Zone Alarm she connected to the internet OK and her computer began working flawlessly.

Her PC at home had a pirate version of XP on it and she was unable to get Internet Explorer or Firefox to work and get on the internet. Microsoft had identified the pirate copy (see photo left) and every now and again she was getting a pop-up message regarding her pirate copy. She was looking to get a 'real' copy of XP and install it. She thought the Microsoft message was not allowing her to get on the internet. I tried to get her to run a small program which would remove the 'pirate copy' notification. However she couldn't get on the internet as both Internet Explorer and Firefox would not run properly and just shut down.

As a last resort I got her to check if she had Zone Alarm installed on the PC. It was installed and as soon as it was uninstalled she was able to access Internet Explorer and Firefox which worked perfectly. Her problem was Zone Alarm was stopping Firefox and Internet Explorer from working, not that she had a pirate version of XP! She was very happy to have both computers working again and that she was able to access the internet.

Later on Saturday evening I had a phone call from my brother. It was great to have a chat.

Finally my footy team had a great win Saturday night and is now set to play off for the 2009 AFL Premiership next Saturday!

Not Bad!

I was having trouble with my computer. So I called John, the 11 year old next door whose bedroom looks like Mission Control, and asked him to come over.

John clicked a couple of buttons and solved the problem.

As he was walking away, I called after him, 'So, what was wrong?

He replied, 'It was an ID ten T error.'

I didn't want to appear stupid, but nonetheless inquired, 'An, ID Ten T error? What's that? In case I need to fix it again.'

John grinned. 'Haven't you ever heard of an ID ten T error Before?''

No,' I replied.

'Write it down,' he said, 'and I think you'll figure it out.'

So I wrote down: I D 1 0 T

I used to like the little s#!t.

It's Thursday And Spring Cleaning Is Completed.

Now the beer bottles are all washed and ready for Friday when I plan to bottle.

Remember to click on the photos below for a larger view. Then click on "Back" to return to this page.

Wednesday afternoon saw me complete the annual outside tidy up. The last major job was to clean the gunk off the path which goes beside our small home. For much of the time the pathway is in shade so mould and other gunk builds up over time. Here is a shot to the left of just starting the job yesterday afternoon and the shot below was taken this morning. It is a bit too clean now!
I did about 13k's on this morning's bike ride and at last was able to welcome in the magpie swooping season. It must have dived a couple of times before I even realized I was being swooped. It glanced off my helmet a couple of times, a bit like the helmet hitting a low hanging leaf or two so not really distressing. Sometimes they can be more vicious and give you a peck as well. A couple of years ago I was pecked and blood was drawn! The photo is one I found on the internet.

It is now warm enough for me to again have a quick swim when I return from a bike ride. I jumped in this morning along with an old rag and some spray on cleaner and gave the area between the water line and the pavers a tidy up. Grime builds up on the water line and requires some elbow grease to keep things looking spick and span.

After breakfast I was again around at the home of one of our Computer Club members helping her get connected to the internet as well as sorting out her new email address on her second laptop.

The pool water temp is nudging 23 today with another glorious day of 25 following a reasonably warm overnight of 15. They are expecting 30 degrees for early next week.

DealExtreme

DealExtreme is the name of an online store I have recently found. They have the most incredible range of stuff there. I can spend plenty of time just looking through the weird stuff they have for sale.

The prices are always $US so a quick conversion is required. Postage is always included in their price too. The other day we cooked roast pork in the BBQ. We guesstimated how long to cook it for and what the BBQ cooking temperature should be. Trish said that she wished we had a meat thermometre to confirm the pork had been properly cooked. I jumped on the computer, went to DealExtreme and the new meat thermometre will be delivered in a week or so and costs AUD$7.74!

The pool thermometre 'died'. I bought this small electronic digital "Aquarium Thermometre" for AUD$5.50. It was delivered today. The photo below shows how I have set it up in the pool on the small 'safety' step which goes around the inside of the pool! I think the temperature it gives is a little more accurate than the old one I found in the shed! If you want to have a look at DealExtreme, just click here. Be aware the electric outlet plugs supplied are usually for U.S.A. I bought 5 adapters to Australian outlets for about AUD$6-50 on eBay!


There is another post I put on Blogger today just below this one. I must get back and finish washing those bottles!

Spring Cleaning

The last couple of days have been spring tidy up days. The fence at the end of the pool has been 'stained' again. It is a bit dark but at least it looks better now.

Our rear patio is surrounded by blinds. For 6 months of the year the blinds remain 'up'. During this time they build up some grease and grime as you can see from this photo. So each spring they need a good going over with the pressure hose. I need to do the blinds' outside, then inside and finally do the windows. It took quite a bit of time to get the blinds cleaned up on Monday but they looked great when finished. Only once did I do the windows first ... what a mistake that was!

I have been riding on my own this week. Tony's doctor has advised him to keep off the bike for a week to let his foot rest up. I managed to get a ride in on Monday and still have yet to be swooped by a magpie. It is a bit unnerving as you ride along and you get a glimpse of a moving shadow out of the corner of your eye and instinctively duck down!

Later on Monday I slipped in to Caloundra and helped a Computer Club Member with her computer. It seems to be running fine right now.

On Tuesday it was a splendid morning for a ride so I set off for Pumicestone Passage. It was like a millpond as you can see from this photo. The photo below looks across towards Caloundra where extensive renovations are going on to revamp the 'coastal walk'. A new board walk is being built including new BBQ facilities and a new fishing platform. It is expected to be finished well before the Christmas holidays.
Later Tuesday morning the spring cleaning continued. I did all the outside windows and some of the inside ones too. I was hot when I finished so I had a quick swim. The old pool thermometre had died so I found another one in the shed and put it to work. It was saying it was 20 degrees but it didn't quite feel like 20, usually 20 is way too cool for swimming.

Later on that day I had my eyes tested again. It is 5 years since I last had new glasses and I have been having a problem or two recently. The new specs should arrive in a week.

Another great ride this morning, it was just glorious again. The weather has been low teens overnight and low to mid 20's during the day. After getting home it was again bottle washing time, it looks like I will be bottling about Friday. With such a lovely sunny day the bottles will dry quickly in the afternoon sun. I have been doing my brewing stuff in our small garage recently and I think things work well there.

Today is the 7th anniversary of the day we moved into this house on the Sunshine Coast!

A Glorious Sunday

I put another brew on after I did my post yesterday. This brew is a lager and has a lemon in it as it brews. It should be ready to bottle about Friday I guess. That gives me time to get the 32 empty bottles required! If the weather stays like it is right now, sunny, cloudless sky and about 25 degrees, getting the next 8 or so empty bottles and therefore up to 32 won't be a problem.

Watched a great footy match last night when Collingwood just got over the line to win from Adelaide. My team Geelong plays Collingwood next Saturday night with the winner into the 2009 Grand Final. My team has had some 'problems' playing Collingwood in the past so it could be a tight match next weekend.

I rode on my own again this morning and got the usual 10k's in. I rode outside the estate today down streets surrounded with tall gum trees. It is magpie nesting season and they swoop down on anything they suspect is trying to hurt their young, especially older bike riders with blue helmets I reckon! Not a problem today, maybe the season is still a little time away. This 'drain' used to filled with reeds and sticks but it looks like the Council has cleared it out.

The pool wasn't quite warm enough for a swim today after my ride. However I decided to give the side fence another coat of 'stain' getting ready for the new swimming season. Painting is not one of my favored pastimes! However when finished the backyard does look better.

Saturday Afternoon And NO Football!

It is Saturday afternoon and there isn't any footy to watch on TV. We are in the Finals and there are only two games on this weekend, one last night and the other is on tonight.

Friday was another day spent getting back in to the swing of things. I had downloaded a couple of movies overnight and these required 'processing'. It was then time to sort the pool out and this required a trip to the "Pool Shop" where they test the pool water for you and tell you what chemicals you need to get it back into tip top condition. Usually this is a $100 trip but I got out of it for $30. I was quite happy about that.

Later it was around to Tony's for the weekly "Bellvista Home Brew Appreciation Society" meeting. Paul is away so it was just Tony, me and the dog Max. Max enjoys a little home brew too! We tried a couple of each other's beers before being joined by Ed who is nearing 80 and has been brewing for years! Now he is getting on a bit it is down to 2 'tallies' per night. When Ed was younger it used to be 6! He only makes full strength stuff too.

This morning it was Computer Club again where I was able to help a few people out again.

Home On The Sunshine Coast

Tuesday was spent doing last minute bits and pieces before Kate took us over to Chris and Wendy's home for an evening meal and for us to spend the night. Our other daughter Kim was there too. We had a good time all together.

We were travelling with a budget airline "Tiger Airways" and we were due to take off at 8:10 am. We had to check in 45 minutes before take-off. After a short detour to a local newsagent. we arrived at the airport at about 7:10 am to be met by quite a lengthy queue. Trish had a chat with the lady in front of us who in the queue who was going to Adelaide. It seemed we would probably make it OK before 7:25. There was then an announcement saying Sunshine Coast passengers could move to the "Express Check-in" for speedier service. There were two passengers in front of us. Both were overweight with their luggage and had to pay extra. One lady was feverishly repacking clothing from one bag to another. The other lady had an over-sized article and had to pay extra and have special labeling for it.

Eventually we got through and made our way to the waiting area. As we lined up to pass through Security we saw that the lady who was going to Adelaide was about 15 people in front of us!

We were back home about 11:30 am. The rest of the day was spent getting sorted out with washing to be done while I had computers to update!

We both slept quite well last night.

I enjoyed my 10k bike ride this morning while Trish went to a volunteer's breakfast!

The pool has been vacuumed, the pool filter has been cleaned, some palm fronds have been tidied up and incidental weeding has been completed! I will sleep well again tonight!

Nearly Time To Head Home

The weather has been pretty grey for most of the time here in Melbourne. It has been cool but not the bitter cold you sometimes get in mid-winter. I guess travelling down late winter early spring has made the difference. And so it wasn't so cold when I returned to the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Sunday to watch St Kilda defeat Collingwood by almost 5 goals. Kim and Trish had headed to Chadstone. Still leftover take away for tea that night as Kate, Arj and the kids went to Arj's parents' place for Father's Day.

On Monday it was down again to Drouin for a lovely lunch and afternoon with Russell and Irene. We had a great chat and plenty of laughs. A few drinks helped too! We managed to get Office 2000 onto Irene's new laptop and saw that they too had a beautiful new large screen TV. On the way back to Berwick we sorted out a few problems June and Keith were having with their digital TV. June can now enjoy watching SBS again and the people on Keith's TV are no longer short and fat! Then back to the kid's place to finish off the last of the takeaway and our last night with them .... thank heavens the take away is now all gone!Later today we will leave Kate's home and head over to Chris' home near Tullamarine airport to stay there the night. He lives only a few minutes from the airport so it will be easy to catch our 8:10 departure flight tomorrow morning. We expect to get to Maroochydore at 10:25 am on Wednesday where Brian will collect us and take us home.

Off To The Footy Again

Friday evening saw friends June and Keith come over and bring 'take-away' Vietnamese food. Keith loves his footy too so we would enjoy the footy match on TV. Kate and Arj headed off for a night away with friends so we were at home to baby-sit. It was a pleasant night but the footy was a disappointment with Essendon going down easily.

On Saturday I went to the MCG to watch my team (the Cats) play along with 74,000 others. Their recent form has been indifferent but they played well enough yesterday to account for the opposition. They now have a week off prior to the Preliminsary finals. I caught up with Chris and Andrew at the footy. Andrew is pretty keen Cats fan too.

I grabbed take-away for tea on the way home and our daughter Kim joined us to. Kate and Arj returned from their night away so they were at home when I got there.We had another footy match to watch Saturday night and Arj's team was playing. They went down after leading for most of the night.

Kim grabbed a heap of movies and TV shows from my external hard drive too. She and Trish have now headed off to Chadstone Shopping Centre while I do the blog prior to heading back to the MCG for another game this afternoon. Kate will join Trish and Kim later and bring Trish home.

There is left over take away for tea!

It's Friday

We had planned to spend Friday morning looking around the Springvale markets but unfortunately it never happened. Trish did some local shopping and then we headed around to Pat and Graeme's home (it is quite close by) for a pleasant lunch and enough beer and red wine. We seem to catch up with them each trip to Melbourne and it is always a lot of fun and we manage to squeeze in several drinks. Trish and Pat worked together as theatre nurses.

Yesterday I caught up with former colleagues Gordon and Anne Atkin. A few more beers and a very pleasant afternoon was enjoyed by all. Our evening meal was spent at home this time.

During today a cold front passed through Melbourne. the wind blew, the sky was grey and the rain and hail pelted down. The central heating is working overtime as I type. There is footy on TV tonight and friends Keith and June are coming around to watch the footy on TV and bring some take away with them for tea. Kate and Arj are heading to the Mornington Peninsula for the night with friends while we babysit Charlie and James.

Home on the Sunshine Coast sounds pretty good to me right now!

A Pleasant Sunny Wednesday

The two grand children have never been on a train before so on Wednesday we eventually found a carpark near the local suburban train station and set off. There was a fair bit of excitement as a Melbourne bound train rumbled in to the station, eyes were wide and mouths hung open too. A few minutes later it was our turn to hop on a Pakenham bound train for a 15 minute ride to the end of the line. We saw cows, sheep and horses (and plenty of new homes being built).

It took a little time to understand exactly what was happening but slowly broad smiles crept over the faces of Charlie and James as they took it all in. We arrived at Pakenham late in the morning and left the train for a walk around some shops. The hot chips were great for lunch too.

Later we returned to the station for the 15 minute trip back to Berwick where the car was parked.

Later in the afternoon the Trish and Kate prepared for a "Linen Party" Kate was hosting. There were over a dozen people coming. I believe the Linen Party provider found the evening to be quite profitable.

It was great to see Carol and David Tuesday afternoon. Our calendar is now almost full with people to catch up with before we return home next Wednesday. I managed to get a 500GB 2.5" external drive for Arj at a great price on Tuesday.

Kate and Arj have a new big screen TV. It has a built in media player which is fantastic. Arj loves his movies off the internet as well as having ready access to his music. You just plug the external HDD into a USB connection and hit the "Media Player" button while the TV is on and there you have full access to everything musical or film on the drive.

I have been spending some time here finetuning my web sites, especially the site on how to access movies from the internet. I did have downloads of pirate programs there but I have removed them and left links to websites which have the downloads rather than have direct download links. You can check out my "Movies How To" website HERE.

Tuesday In Melbourne

We drove to Castlemaine yesterday to see my brother Geoff. He seemed quite bright and breezy when we left to return to Melbourne. It is a 300k round trip to see him but well worth it. It poured on the way there and was very gray on the way back home. The weather back up north was quite cool too according to the news on the internet. We timed our trips to miss the morning and afternoon peak traffic periods.

I then set about reformatting Arj's computer. About 5 hours later all was running smoothly with it again. It runs Windows XP and only has an 80GB drive so it can't be really loaded up with software. Things went fairly well, usually there are a few hiccups but there is only one hassle remaining and that will work out in time. It now starts perfectly where as before it would hang on startup and take three or four tries before it was usable.

Today we are baby sitting this afternoon and I hope to get a bit of shopping done this morning. Already our 'calendar' down here is filling rapidly. I have two footy matches to get to this weekend and we are baby sitting Friday and Saturday nights.

We are hoping to get back to our favorite restaurants again as well as spending a night out with Kim.