An Update

Since I last put a post here we have a new Convection Microwave Oven. As I said in the previous post I followed all of the directions given by the shop (ring the manufacturer) and then the manufacturer who told me to take it to a local Sharp Repair Centre. Tuesday afternoon it arrived at the Repair centre. The guy booking it in said it was brand new and he thought the shop would have replaced it for us.

I raced home and rang the shop again and this time was asked to be put through to someone in charge. The shop policy was change overs would only occur within 14 days of purchase and the oven was over 3 weeks since purchase. The lady understood our problem, we thought everything was working OK with it, we had never had this sort of appliance before and the convection part is mainly for roast meals anyway. She was prepared to waive the 14 day return policy in this situation.

I was directed to whiz back to the repair shop, collect the oven and return it to the shop where it was replaced. First thing we did when we got the new one home was to 'burn' it in. It was sure working as we could smell the oven as it was heated up and burnt off any oils etc left over from manufacture. We have roast lamb tonight so I will let you know how it worked!

I did a bottle wash today and I expect to bottle most likely on Monday.

We went out for tea with friends on Wednesday night to the local Thai restaurant. There were 7 (one of the guy's wife is in Sydney still on a Nanna visit) in the group and we had a great meal for under $20 per head.

On Wednesday I helped a local chap set up his new LCD flat screen TV. He didn't have a clue what to do and was going to wait till his son came over to help him out. I offered to help him set it all up. He just loves the new TV, the new digital channels he can get and the sensational picture quality.

Thursday was spent helping one of the older Computer Club members get a new laptop. She finished up with an Acer Laptop, 500 GB HDD, 4GB RAM, Windows 7 Home Premium and a fairly powerful i3 processor all for $850. She won't know herself when it gets up and running. It was getting a 2GB RAM upgrade and they had to order the RAM in. She should have it early next week.

Last night as Trish headed out to her Trivia night, the 6 stacker CD player in the car stopped working. This car comes with a 5Yr warranty so it is booked in for the CD Player to be looked at under warranty on Tuesday morning.

Lovely days here right now, mid to high 20's, sunny days with cooler nights. Yesterday I got a 15K bike ride in, today was closer to 11k's.

A Lovely Sunny Tuesday

Though the weather is just glorious today, top of 26 and hardly a cloud in the sky, we had a reminder this morning that winter is around the corner. The morning temp was down to 14 degrees which came as a shock to us early morning bike riders. I did about 14 k's this morning and it was certainly brisk when I first hopped on the bike. A couple of hills later and it had certainly warmed up.

Footy wasn't good news for either Trish or myself this weekend. Ah well ... there is next weekend now isn't there!

The photo above shows the front lawn prior to Christmas and before we had all the rain. The photo to the left was taken this morning. Just goes to show what 40" of rain can do! It looks different with the palm being removed too. It was mowed yesterday so there are some brown spots where the top was 'shaved'.

Trish is doing work at the Tourist Information Centre this morning and this afternoon the new Microwave goes to the repair shop. Hopefully we will have it back and working perfectly in a week or so.

Put another brew 'on' this morning so I will have bottles to wash later this week and I will probably have to bottle early next week. This is a home made lid tightening handle used to tighten the lid to ensure it is airtight.

Trish's team were runners up in the Trivia Night she went to last night. Trouble is there were only 3 teams! She now goes to trivia twice each week.

I am enjoying my new ISP (Internet Service Provider). The added download allocation I now have saves a little when required to pick and choose what I want to download. My ISP is announcing 'new' plans tomorrow and the tip is we will get a faster connection for the same monthly cost.

The ground is still quite wet in some areas of the estate. these puddles were there yesterday after the rain had stopped several days before. The forecast is for a dry week coming up. However we are entering the "dry" season so rainfall is expected to drop off.

I am assisting one of the elderly Computer Club members to buy a new laptop on Thursday so we are going 'shopping'. I enjoy helping to spend other people's money!

Roasts Not Cooking Properly!

We have had the new you beaut Sharp Convection Microwave for about three weeks now. The User Manual which came with it isn't the easiest document to read but Trish has now tried three roast dinners in it, each of which has been OK but seems to us to be undercooked. I suggested she ring Carol (a friend in Melbourne) who has had a convection microwave oven for over 10 years and she just swears by it.

Last night Trish cooked a roast chicken which didn't seem to come out the way it should again so we rang Carol and compared notes. The outcome appears the new microwave is faulty!

The User Manual has some steps to check the oven is all running OK. The first check (microwave function) was to put a cup of cold water in the microwave and run the oven. The water was quite warm at the end of this test. The second test (the convection function) was to run the oven for 5 minutes at 180 degrees Celsius and then check to see if the oven was warm enough. A quick put your hand in afterwards was a warm outcome, it certainly wasn't hot! We put a meat temperature sensor inside and it only recorded 44 degrees.

Therefore the oven has been faulty since we first got it, the convection oven function doesn't seem to be working properly. We will be in contact with Sharp Customer Service first thing tomorrow, today is a public holiday in most parts of Australia.

It's Friday And It's Not Raining!

Things have been quiet. Tony's wife is on a "Nanna Visit" back to Sydney right now so I wandered over to his place yesterday afternoon for a chat and a drink or two. Trish headed off to Trivia again last night where her team of 6 finished 2nd. However there was some sort of Jackpot they won and the team received $80. She was very pleased with it all.

Yesterday morning we tripped over to "Kawana Central" where I bought a water proof coat to wear to the footy when in Melbourne. I usually wear a sort of 'ski jacket' which is bulky and a bright crimson color. It is no longer water proof so I reckoned it was time to swap it over. I will take it with me when we both head to Melbourne, mid August.

I have been busy with the Community Association website this morning. The new Shopping Village being built here is well underway (See pic left) and the lake has some algal bloom (See below). It is expected the algal bloom will disappear naturally. It was caused by all the rain we have had recently. I have put these pictures into the BeCA website. The pool needed a bag of salt today as a lot has been lost due to the the rain causing the pool to overflow.

This afternoon is our usual Friday afternoon 'meeting' but I will get there early to show Paul a few more clues about Usenet. Trish is at Quilting this morning. Nice to have a dry sunny day and I managed to get a 12.5k bike ride in as well.

Footy on all over the weekend again and Computer Club Saturday morning! Sounds pretty good to me.

Heavy Showers Continue

This morning I tipped another 33mls out of the rain gauge. We are a currently a ml or 2 under the average for April with well over a week still to go. It rained quite heavily this morning, so heavy in fact the poor old pool overflow had trouble getting rid of some of the water. You will need to click on the photo for a larger view to see things a little more clearly. Then hit "Back" to return to this page.

Yesterday was a Computer day. I spent a fair bit of the morning at a mate's place going through downloading movies with Usenet. You can learn more about this if you are interested, in the Movies, How To website I have built. There is a link to it under Les' Links to the right of this page.

Then during the afternoon I was busy updating the Bellvista Community Association website with all the happenings from the Public Meeting held the night before. There is a link to the Community Association website under Les' Links as well. I was pretty well computered out after all that!

Trish worked at the Information Centre yesterday morning and this morning she is at Stitcher's.

Still Showery

There were another 15mls in the rain gauge this morning so we have now had about 5 inches of rain over the last few days. I tipped a total of just over 4 inches out of the rain gauge on Sunday morning. We are now getting towards the end of the rainy season here so this rainfall is not unusual. Caloundra is still about 2 inches short in total to reach the April average of about 7 inches. Daily top temps are around 26 degrees.

Sunday was a watch footy on TV day where my team had an excellent win. Most weeks we get all 8 AFL matches live but this week we only got 7 games. My team's match wasn't televised here at all so I had to record it last night to enjoy today.

Another bottling finished this morning so my beer supplies are now back to normal.

I continue to discover new things about my new ISP. Mainly extra services which are available to subscribers and everything seems really good. The extra download allocation I now have is great, I don't have to pick and choose quite so much.

Trish has a "Stitchers" Committee meeting this morning while this evening I have a Community Association Public Meeting to attend.

And Then It Rained!

We have had over 3" of rain so far today and it is just after lunch as I type. The pool is full of water with the overflow struggling to keep the pool from overflowing! I have just arrived back home after spending the morning at the Computer Club. It was a good morning, I enjoy being able to help people out with their computers.

Yesterday was a bottle washing day and in this photo you can see the tops 'drying'. The are sprayed with a sanitizing liquid and then left to dry. I will possibly bottle tomorrow.

Friday afternoon saw Trish and I head around to Tony's for 'drinks'. It was a bit fun but a little on the cool side. What we feel as cool is not necessarily the same as people who are not locals call cool!

Check out your email box, there is possibly an email in there saying we have swapped ISP's and giving you our new email address. The change occurred at about 3 pm yesterday afternoon. An SMS came through on the mobile phone saying the change had been completed. All I did was a few new settings in the modem/router and a restart and we had swapped ISP's. All seems to be working OK.

I have updated "Les' Links" too with several websites that I have created. I have also added a link to the Bellvista Community Association website which I maintain.

A Day In Sunnybank

Sunnybank is a suburb to the south of Brisbane, about 100k's from us and is known for its Asian Community. Trish and I took a drive to Sunnybank today mainly to have a nice Asian meal for lunch. We thought we might travel through the new Clem7 tunnel recently opened which travels from the north under the city of Brisbane and the Brisbane River to emerge south of the city. It is a new toll road. Today as we drove through the tunnel there was very little traffic. It was a quick quiet trip. The south tunnel is only two lanes wide with limited stopping lanes on either side. Each tunnel going under Melbourne is a full three lanes wide one way with full emergency lanes on either side.

On our return trip we missed the tunnel and finished up driving around the city using the Inner City Bypass road. The trip back was quick with no traffic holdups. I think the new toll road will suffer from lack of patronage because the holdups outside of the peak period are minimal!

It was a short drive to Sunnybank when we emerged from the tunnel. This was the first restaurant we spotted and having lived in Malaysia our mouths began to water in anticipation. We had a brief walk around the cluster of shops looking in and enjoying the wonderful aromas. The grocery shop had heaps of chilli paste, curry sauces and other Asian cooking necessities. It did remind us of Springvale, a suburb we always visit when in Melbourne and well known for its wonderful Vietnamese food. The photo below gives a quick glimpse of what Sunnybank is like.

"Little Singapore" was the name of the restaurant at which we ate. We ordered a huge serve of Char Kuay Teow, our favorite Malaysian dish followed by Hainanese Chicken Rice. The Char Kuay Teow was sensational and the chicken rice was OK (we had better in Penang, Malaysia). After paying the bill of $24 we walked out fully satisfied! The bill included drinks too.

On the way back home we had a quick stop over at Chermside Shopping Centre. This shopping centre is to Brisbane as Chadstone is to Melbourne.

It appears our ISP change over will occur tomorrow, Friday.

Swapping Internet Service Providers (ISP)

Sometime in the next few days we will lose our internet connection for an hour as we move from Netspace to Internode as our ISP. I can get 25% more download with Internode and save $10 per month. The plan we are moving to is called "Easy Broadband" and it is one of the most popular plans across all Australian ISP's.

I have been quite impressed with the Internode website, all the information you want on how to set up your modem/router is there for various models. Currently I am using a Billion Router and all instructions I require are available.

I loved to use Outlook Express for my emails but there isn't Outlook Express available with Vista. So I use Mozilla's Thunderbird email program instead. The Internode website has illustrated step by step instructions available to set up Mozilla Thunderbird and add a new Internode Email account. Thunderbird Version 2 is as close as you can get to the old Outlook Express program.

Right now we are with Netspace so our Netspace address is the one to use.

I will send out an email when our ISP change comes through with the new Internode email address

Cooling Off Again

There was 6ml of rain in the gauge overnight following the arrival of a cool wind change. Outside right now (mid morning) it is about 20 odd degrees. It is grey and there is drizzle. The doors to the house are all shut to keep the cool southerly wind out!

The water diverter has worked well and there is a constant dribble of water into the pool and it is just about full right now. Again cane toads had visited the pool (dropped in for a swim) and this morning I dispatched another two of them. It is expected to fine up this afternoon. The photo shows the water diverter doing its job and one of the unwelcome visitors.

Trish and I have a little banking business to do this afternoon. Right now Trish is doing some volunteer work at the local Tourist Information Centre just for the morning.

Still A Little Warm

Life has progressed quietly. I am really pleased with the way my PC is behaving. It starts up and closes down beautifully. It seems that external DVD burner has been the problem all the time.

I attended the Bellvista Home Brew Appreciation Society meeting on Friday afternoon. It is always good to catch up with friends and have a chat about things. In between watching AFL footy on TV I did attend Computer Club Saturday morning and deliberately took a lower key role and felt much better for it afterwards.

Then it was just footy, footy, footy! Both Trish's and my teams suffered losses on the weekend. My team has had an incredibly good run over the last three years I need to prepare myself for leaner times.

We have done a little revamping of the setup in the backyard, nothing major at all, just moving things around a little (above left). This morning I put on another brew. I can do this in a little over 30 minutes now. That will leave me bottles to wash later in the week.

Hopefully the weather will cool a little. it was up to 35 degrees for a short time in our little backyard recently. It is always hot there especially in the morning before the sea breeze comes in. However high twenties is expected and possibly a few showers is expected for the rest of the week. The hose is connected to the water diverter placed in a downpipe because the pool water level needs lifting. All I need is a decent 20 minues of rain and all be right again.

Last Thing Before Bed!

It is just about bed time for this old fella! Saw I hadn't posted for a couple of days (mainly because not much has happened) so I thought I had better do something.

I have been helping several older Computer Club members out with Skype, getting Winrar to run properly and configuring Mailwasher Free (it is now the Pro version) for them. Other local friends needed anti-virus programs so I have installed NOD32 for them and everyone seems quite happy. Neighbours over the road had a major disaster with their PC when the power board the ADSL modem was plugged into 'blew up'. The computer lost heaps of files and it has been necessary to re install several programs to get everything up and running again.

I set up Usenet downloads on a mate's PC as well. Also provided some long distance support to my sister Judy down in Victoria in setting up her Skype. She couldn't get her microphone to work. She later discovered the microphone connection was plugged into the headphone jack by mistake. It worked perfectly when she plugged it in to the right spot!

I have ridden the bike most mornings and then had a quick swim afterwards. It was down to 24 degrees in the pool this morning. Today was a glorious 31 while overnight is now in the high teens. I have 175 Community Association Newsletters to deliver tomorrow morning.

I have had it confirmed the neighbour I had a verbal joust with earlier this week is moving to another house about 5 doors down the street. We are delighted that they will no longer be our next door neighbours!

Did some autumnal cleaning today with the pressure spray. I tidied up some border stones and gave the canvas awning screen a good clean where the BBQ smoke had left a mark.

We went out for a meal with friends on Wednesday night to the Thai restaurant in town and had an excellent meal. From there two couples went on to the RSL where a Roy Orbison 'tribute artist' was performing . He was pretty good we all reckoned!

Trish's knee is slowly coming good but I reckon she still needs to see the doctor for a professional opinion.

Trish is out tonight at the Trivia night which she really enjoys. Usually she is home by now but I am sure she won't be too far away! There goes the garage door now so she is home so I had better go!

Happy Easter Everyone

I am certainly getting grumpier in my old age. I had words with a young neighbour yesterday over kids playing on our front nature strip. They were a bit noisy and leave rubbish there from when they are playing. I asked them to move to their front lawn and play. The young neighbour went on about nature strips being public property and the kids could play there. I bit back and we had a good old verbal joust. I sometimes find kids climbing on top of our letterbox, I find lolly wrappers etc on the lawn, I find berries etc which have been picked off the plants and then left on the lawn. I am certainly getting grumpier the last couple of years!

I managed a 12k bike ride again this morning. The gears need adjusting just a little as sometimes it slips. I gave the gears a 'service' today, (that means a quick spray with WD40) and the quick test ride seemed OK. Tomorrow will tell more.

There is footy on TV over Easter and my team Geelong plays Trish's team Hawthorn this afternoon. I am not at all confident so I may be even more grumpier come 5pm this afternoon. Daylight saving has finished so all Eastern States are once again sharing the same times.

I have discovered a new way to download movies via a service called Usenet. It is only available for free through 5 Australian Internet Service Providers and Netspace is one of those. Otherwise it is a $10 monthly charge. If you want to learn a little more about it click HERE to go to the Australian Usenet Guide website and have a look at the Tutorials. For a start I would suggest looking at the Grabit Tutorial and then using the http://nzbmatrix.com/index.php website to hunt for downloads. You will need to 'register' for nzbmatrix.com

Do I Now Need To Extend The Kitchen?

Our kitchen here is not known for how big it is! It is certainly just a one person working area! It can get hot especially if using the oven. You just don't use the oven in summer here!

I have been saying to Trish, "Why don't we consider a convection microwave?" Carol in Melbourne has one. She is a great cook and swears by her convection/microwave oven.

On her recent trip to Melbourne Trish caught up with friends Pat and Graeme (as usual). Pat has just got a convection microwave oven and is extremely pleased with it. So Trish and I decided to look at them yesterday morning! Needless to say we bought a 42 litre Sharp Convection Microwave oven. We decided on the bigger one believing it is better to be too big than too small! I admit I was a little worried when we had trouble fitting it into the boot of the car to bring home.

It doesn't fit in to the 'hole' especially built for a microwave but we were never going to put it there. We had concerns of removing hot dishes from a spot above head high on safety grounds. This is where it has finished up! Do you reckon it is big enough?

A lovely day today with a top temp of about 28 degrees. I did get a bike ride this morning (about 12.5k's) followed by a swim in the pool ( a fraction under 26 degrees). I saw this magnificent tree while on my ride. I am not a tree person but it certainly brightened the street I was riding in. As nice as they do look, I guess they drop their flowers eventually creating a big cleanup job for someone.

Trish left the doctor's surgery fed up with waiting the other day. She was there to see about her knee. It seems to be getting better.

I had enough bottles to wash for my next bottling. The brew continues to bubble albeit slowly so I guess I will probably be bottling about Monday! The bottles and tops are drying out in the sun right now.

Yesterday afternoon we were around at Paul's having a quick meeting to discuss agenda items for the upcoming Community Association Public Meeting. Needless to say we enjoyed a couple of 'frothy tops' as well.

Later last evening Trish went to her weekly "Trivia Night" where she and another 5 ladies in her team had a great night. They came fourth overall, but being April Fool's day the results were reversed and turned upside down. Therefore they officially came second! (There were only 5 teams.) I stayed home and watched the Aussie Rules footy live on TV!

Our daughter Kate's car was belted in a severe hail storm down in Melbourne a couple of weeks ago, It went in for insurance assessment last weekend and the outcome is that the car is a 'write-off'. They are in the market for a replacement vehicle and have their eyes on a small 4 wheel drive. One of Kate's work colleagues Tamara has a boyfriend Kane whose Dad owns a large car yard. Through Kane, Kate and Arj have their eyes on a 2002 Nissan X-Trail TI. TI means it is top of the range, leather seats, sunroof etc. It has only done a little over 60,000k's. Though a little on the older side it has averaged a meagre 7500k's per year which makes it a good buy at under $20,000. They are still awaiting the final pay out price (and cheque) from the Insurance Company before finally purchasing. Looks pretty good doesn't it!

You can read a review on the 2002 Nissan XTrail TI HERE. Press on the yellow buttons to progress to the next page of the review.

Welcome To April

March was one of the wettest months on record here in Queensland. April has started off with a wet April 1st as well. Overnight rain saw us receive 14mls (just over .5 of an inch). Some extremely dry parts of the state had their wettest day ever during the month. Birdsville is well known as a dry, dusty, and hot town in the state's west but it recorded a record 150+mls in one day in March. 150mls is about 6" of rain!

In Caloundra we had 430mls in March, about 17", and our yearly total is now over 830mls, well over 33" of rain already!

It is another wet morning here, I haven't been on a bike ride for about 5 days now.

The wet weather brings out the cane toads too. I fished three out of the pool yesterday and another one today! The 3 iron has had a bit of a workout.

We have watched a few movies recently with Leonardo DiCaprio in Shutter Island being the biggest disappointment. It came with a great 'score' too. On Tuesday night we watched Mel Gibson in Edge Of Darkness. As with many of his movies it was highly implausible but great entertainment. Both Trish and I enjoyed it immensely.

We have a phone setup here which works well for us. Trish and I both have our own mobile phones (on the cheapest plan possible) and each plan has one hour for free calls each day.

Our 'regular' landline phone service is with the national carrier and all incoming calls come via the landline. However our outgoing calls are all voip calls (Voice Over Internet Protocol) which means they go out via the computer part of the phone line. People can call in on this number as well. (Voip calls are considerably cheaper to make than regular landline calls). Most people have heard of Skype calls and Voip is a form of Skype. Others use phone cards for cheap calls and these cards use the computer voip system as well.

We still have a regular wallphone but the other cordless phone system is connected to the Voip setup. The cordless phones can receive incoming landline calls as well as incoming voip calls. Sometimes (about 1 in 20 incoming calls) the cordless phones get a bit mixed up. Even though the voip phone rings for an incoming landline call, we hear dialtone when we pick up. After about 12 seconds the call is connected and everything is perfect. Meanwhile all the incoming caller hears for 12 seconds is silence!

So if you do ring us and suddenly the phoneline goes blank, just hang on, we will be answering as soon as the phones sort themselves out.

I have been tweaking the voip settings so hopefully there won't be too many incoming wait for 12 seconds calls! The reality is the cordless phone system is almost 5 years old and was a 'cheapie' special. A better quality cordless phone setup would probably fix the problem.