A Busy Week

Things have been pretty hectic this week with both my involvement with the Community Association and updating Trish's laptop to Windows 7.

I have been pretty pleased with how the main PC has been going after moving from Vista to Windows 7.  Trish's laptop, which also came with Vista, has been getting slower and slower and was due for a reformat.  It came with an update to Windows 7 deal and we have had the disk for sometime.  It took a fair bit of Wednesday to get everything back as it had been prior to the reformat.  I reckon it opens up much more quickly now it has had the upgrade to Windows 7.

As we both now have Windows 7 the file exchange between our two computers seems to work a lot more easily than before.  Needless to say I have had a ball doing it as well!

I have also had a couple of meetings with our local MP on the need to duplicate Bellvista Blvd which is the one and only single lane road into the estate.  One meeting was onsite, the second was with a local newspaper reporter.  They are after a photo this afternoon so we are all meeting during the peak time when the large school on the estate closes for the day around 3:00pm.  The road is bedlam as almost 1,000 students are collected or bussed from the estate.

My computer has been working very well with the refusal to power off occurring rarely nowadays.  I possibly have the problem once per week.  After shutting down I switch everything off at the power board anyway so the failure to power off after shutdown really isn't a problem.

Everything seems to be updating as well.  The way I do the blog has been updated and even the web browser Firefox that I use has been updated to Firefox 4 as well.

Keep your eye on www.caloundraartsandcrafts.org.au as well.  The website Trish has created is about to go online too.

It looks like it is 'there', it now needs looks like the website itself has to be uploaded.

Cooler weather yesterday with a top of only 22 degrees.  A bit closer to the high 20's today.  We have had quite a lot of rain yesterday but I was back on my bike for a ride this morning.

Late Sunday Afternoon

I took my bike to the local "Cycle Shop" Friday afternoon for a bit of an idea on which way I should go. The bike has been slipping in its gears recently and is probably in need of a good service after carrying me around for about 5 years! The bike guy checked it out and suggested it needed all new running gear as well as replacing the bike chain, the crank and the pedals. In short he really said your bike has had it, you need a new one.

Just 'luckily' he had one there he would let me have as a special price of $310. While waiting for Trish on Thursday I had spotted a bike shop near Maroochydore and was attracted in by the 50% off signs! I checked a couple of the 50% off bikes out and saw something there for around $250. I was a little concerned about the 50% off. Anyway I travelled back to the shop later on Friday and bought a beaut bike for $277.50. He 'said' the original price was $575 (which I took with a grain of salt).

I have had a couple of rides since and it sure travels smoothly and is extremely comfortable to ride. It is a Fuji Monterey 2.0.

I did a search on the internet on a Fuji Monterey 2.0 and discovered the actual RRP is $575! I saw a couple of other sites where the same bike was for sale at $499 and $399 respectively.

Fuji are relasing a new range of bikes which are quite different in design to what I have now purchased which explains the 50% off. I am extremely pleased with the bike and the deal I got.

I nearly had a heart attack watching my AFL team play on Friday night. They won by one point in a heart stopper!

The Computer Club was fairly busy on Saturday morning while the afternoon was spent watching even more footy. Then later on Saturday we welcomed a friend named Betty who was staying with for a couple of days and then to attend a funeral on Monday. She used to live in Bellvista but has since returned to Canberra to find work and re establish herself there.

More great footy to watch Sunday afternoon and a chance to have a chat and a few beers too.

Trish Is Home From Melbourne

Trish arrived home from Melbourne yesterday a little tired and with just a hint of a cold. She flew in around 1 pm and we were back home by 2. I think she found arriving back to a 32 degree day a little intimidating but after a good night's sleep she seems fine. It didn't stop her attending Trivia last night or Stitchers today!

Kim arrived home from India yesterday and she and Trish had a couple of hours together at the airport before Trish's flight was due to takeoff. Kim had a wonderful time and has heaps of new experiences after visiting this incredible place. There were certainly some 'down' sides to her trip. Just image over a billion people crammed into an area half the size of Australia!

I picked up my 2GB of RAM yesterday and plugged it in to my PC. This will certainly help the computer in times of real stress when it is asked to do a couple of things at once.

I have still got a couple of bike rides in the last few days with about 12k's today and almost 15k's yesterday. I have had a bit of an ear infection so my trips to the pool are little quieter than they have been previously. I added a bag of salt to the pool the other day and the chlorinator is now working flat out. When the salt level is low then you need to lower the chlorine output. Now there is plenty of salt, the chloring output level has been returned to "Full".

The fron lawn was mown this morning and there is plenty of 'live' AFL footy on over the weekend.

The weather continues to be lovely and warm with temps in the low 30's. The humidity is down around 50% making for very pleasant conditions when outside.

Nice & Hot!

It has been unseasonally hot the last couple of days. We cannot expect any respite from the heat for another two days or so. It was around 33 or so today but the good side of this was that the warm wind was blowing from the west, from over Central Australia and therefore was fairly 'dry'. So a day with 33 degrees and humidity around 50% isn't too bad!

I recently wrote in the Blog about the keyboard problem with Trish's laptop, you hit "i" and the laptop typed out "io"! Quite a few of the keys were behaving badly. I had rung Dell about it on Monday morning and the Tech popped in last night (Tuesday) and replaced the keyboard. The keyboard was still a little strange yesterday but a lot better than it had been on Monday. The Tech called me about 4:45 pm and said he was on his way. I said I would turn the air con on and I would also have a cold beer for him!

He was delighted with that. It turns out he lives a bout 1klm from me and he just loves messing around with computers. I said I was interested in possibly getting a new one myself. He asked what I wanted and I showed him a quote I had received. He was straight on the net checking prices for parts and said he would build it for me for the cost of the parts + a slab of beer! He just enjoyed doing this sort of thing and helping people out.

He had a quick look at my PC and said that if I put another 2GB of RAM into the PC it would make the world of difference. 2GB of RAM costs $50 and you just plug it in to the motherboard, real easy to do and it would make the world of difference to the way the PC would work.

I pick up the 2GB of RAM in Maroochydore tomorrow. I pass the shop on the way to the airport when I go to pick Trish up upon her return from Melbourne.

So with Trish returning tomorrow I have put two loads of washing through, I have given the house a vacuum, I've cleaned spots from the floor and the dishwasher is empty! It will be great to have her home again, this time she has been away for a little over 2 weeks.

Australian Rules footy starts this weekend. My team has been near the top of the ladder for some time the last few years. They are due to drop back a little. Still, during their time on top they have won two premierships, a fact not to be sneezed at. There are footy shows on TV tonight as well as the World Cup cricket finals. I will get some fish and chips for tea and settle back to watch the TV and enjoy a few 'brews'.

5" Of Rain Later!

Saturday was the wettest day of the weekend. I tipped 4mls out of the rain gauge on Saturday morning, 119mls on Sunday morning and another 7mls this morning which gave a total of 130mls all together or a little over 5" in the 'old scale'.

5" means there was a lot of water overflow from the pool which finishes up going down the drain. With the water goes the salt. The salt chlorinator is telling me the pool needs another bag of salt of the latest rain.

It was quiet at the Computer Club on Saturday with only a few minor hassles to address. The local First Class cricket grand final has been on TV over the weekend and took up much of my spare time.

My computer has powered off every time except for once late yesterday so I am putting the 'power off' problem onto the 'solved' list. I reckon there is a minor connection problem with the computer which only becomes a real problem in very humid weather.

The green you can see in the bottom right hand corner of the screen seen above is a program I use to show 'downloads' on the main PC as they come through. This is for a movie I downloaded yesterday afternoon.

I rang Trish this morning for a chat. She asked that I hop onto her laptop and her Facebook page to send a message to Kim who is returning from India on Thursday. Trish is catching up with Kim at Tullamarine airport. Kim flies in to Melbourne after nearly 4 months in India and Trish is about to head back up here to home. Trish will take Kim's car to the airport and then Kim will drive it home.

I began to type out the message on Trish's Dell laptop and saw there were heaps of typos. As it turned out when I hit the "i" key on the keyboard it typed out "io" and the DVD Drive door popped open. Other keyboard keys did strange things too. I checked out the documentation which came with the laptop and saw it was just over 18 months old and that as a 'special' it had come with 2 years warranty and in home repairs! I expect a call from a Dell tech in a day or so to arrange for him to fit a replacement keyboard.

The photo shows the external keyboard I have temporarily fitted to confirm the problem was the laptop keyboard and not some other internal part was the problem. I was very happy it was to be repaired at no cost to us!

A lovely sunny day today after the rain with temps into the low 30's. It is a little sticky as the sun soaks up some of the 5" of rain we got over the weekend.

A Wet Weekend Is On The Way

Tuesday evening was extremely pleasant. We manage to fix everything on "Peter's" new Windows 7 PC. He had a list of queries and all of them are now answered or were attended to. I put a 'back-up' program on his computer which two sets of folders one being the 'originals' and updates the second set on an external hard disk drive. We also installed Office 2010 for him and updated a couple of other programs which he uses.

Peter is a keen (and very good) cook and prepared a lovely satay dish for our meal. A few beers and a good chat ensured a pleasant evening was had by all.

I have always had a problem with my right ear. I have had the eardrum replaced three times and I am always wary of any infection it may have. I felt the beginnings of an infection on Wednesday so I had a hasty trip to the doctor for anit-biotics and drops. Today everything feels pretty good and getting to things early was the best idea.

I have live coverage of the Sheffield Shield cricket final on TV so I have been propping in front of the TV a fair bit yesterday and today.

My PC has powered off perfectly the last 16 times! Ever since Monday morning it has performed perfectly. I reckon the humidity level was the problem. Even when I bottled my recent brew on Thursday, I noted how sugar doesn't 'clump' like it did during the wet and humid weather over summer. It poured just like sand during the recent bottling. My beer supplies are well and truly up to date now.

We have had some wonderful warm sunny weather all this week. It is beginning to cloud over today and a wet weekend is promised by the weather forecasters.

The front lawn may need a good water. I sprayed it last weekend to get rid of the Mullumbinby Couch weed it had contracted. I was told the spray would cause some problems (but shouldn't kill) my Queensland Blue Couch lawn. Hopefully a good sprinkle of rain will fix these ominous 'brown spots' and help the lawn to bounce back.

Another Lovely Sunny Day

I rode over 16k's this morning. There was a suggestion of drizzle for part of the ride but not enough to stop me. The few drizzle spots cleared to a lovely sunny day.

The pool was 25.5 degrees this morning so the swim was refreshing.

I headed into Caloundra and got a quote on a hand built PC to my specifications. Then to the doctor for prescription renewal, sign off on my hearing aid being maintained by the government now I am a pensioner, and to get a flu jab as well.

This afternoon I am around to a mate's place to check out his PC. He installed a program, something to do with Nero. After that every time he went to open a program a sign popped up saying "Nero is unable to open this file". When he tried System Restore he got "Nero is unable to open this file".

He has Windows 7 and there is a spot in there during boot up where you can get the option to use System Restore after tapping th F8 key during loading. He got everything back OK again but now every file or program has the same 'icon'.

I will see if we can fix it and then I am invited to stay for dinner!

A Sunny Monday

The weather has been quite reasonable the last few days getting to the high 20's. We still have been getting the odd shower a couple of times a day, the sort of weather that makes getting washing dry a bit difficult. But today is lovely and sunny. I have been bike riding most mornings and today got over 13k's up before arriving back home.

The pool is down to just under 25 degrees in the mornings so my swims are usually over in a few minutes! It is extremely refreshing now though!

After our return from Melbourne at Christmas time I noticed a new 'weed' in the front lawn. The weed is called "Mullumbimby Couch". There is quite a lot of it all over the estate right now. I took a 'sample' with me to Bunnings on Saturday where it was identified and I was directed to the appropriate spray ($12) to deal with it. I checked out the instructions and saw it wasn't suitable for Queensland Blue Couch lawns. I have just that lawn!

There was another bottle of stuff there which wouldn't harm Queensland Blue Couch lawns at a mere $32 per bottle! I was then told the cheaper version may knock the lawn I have around a little but won't kill it. I spot sprayed with the $12 product on Saturday afternoon.

This morning I saw that the areas I had spot sprayed the lawn were browning off a little. I hope the weed is feeling a bit sick too!

My PC "Power Off" problem continues. I began to keep count yesterday and right now out of 8 shutdowns, the PC has failed to "Power Off" on 3 occasions. I can live with that. As long as it isn't a problem which will worsen things should be OK.

I had a call from a Computer Club member saying her laptop had "jammed" and how could she fix it. I explained how to press and hold the power button which she did and she restarted it.The laptop then 'jammed' again. So we went through a few things until she discovered the 'pad' was working and she could move the cursor around the screen that way. We had a few problems discovering if the mouse was USB powered or was it wireless.

It is all fixed now, the mouse battery had gone flat!

Coming To You From A Windows 7 PC

Trish is in Melbourne as I type. I dropped her at the airport Wednesday morning and I have already heard from her a couple of times. Once was to say she had arrived safely, the other was to say the battery in the old car had required replacement.

My PC is heading towards 3.5 years old now and beginning to cause some minor problems. It shuts down beautifully but it won't 'power off'. This isn't a huge problem because the wall power switch right beside it. The computer shuts down and the monitor says it isn't getting a signal but the front PC light stays on and you can hear the fan whirring inside. I jumped on to my favorite Computer forum and put my problem online for people to read and offer suggestions. One suggestion was to re install Windows again but this time don't use Vista, try Windows 7 instead.

I had downloaded a top version of Windows 7 but the secret was how to get it 'activated' so it becomes a 'real' version. There is a little program available for download which fools Windows 7 into believing it is activated! I installed Windows 7 and then installed the little program which 'activates' it.

Bingo, it works as the photo here shows. Right down in the bottom left hand corner is the "Windows is activated" statement! Click on the picture for a larger view, then hit "back" to return to this page.

So much of the rest of Wednesday and much of this morning has been spent setting my computer up again.

But will it power off after shutting it down and installing Windows 7? The answer is NO! It still stays 'turned on' and needs switching off at the wall. I have got it to successfully turn off the last 3 times by following a tip from a guy on the forum I spoke about above. The PC can do this, it can turn off perfectly for a day or so then spend the next few days not powering off at all.

Of course it has all been great fun getting the computer all up and running again! My PC needs a good clean out every 12 months so this reformat has been a job worth doing. Windows 7 is so much quicker to start up as well as shutdown. All the features work again so I am quite pleased with myself.

Much cooler and showery here the last couple of days, so much that I even had the doona over me last night. Days are mid 20's or so, even the pool is now down to about 25 degrees. I got 10k's of my bike ride in this morning till it again began to drizzle.

Now back to 'cruising' the internet!

A Quiet Monday!

The cooler weather arrived just about the same time as a second nephew (Paul) arrived to spend a few days with his brother Beau who is in Mooloolaba. The weather turned wet and stormy which is a shame as both boys are into surfing especially on body boards.

With the weather a little damp they decided to confirm the rumours regarding my Home Brew were true. They arrived after lunch Saturday and left about 9:30 that night! We had a great day. Trish went to her Genealogy afternoon and left us at home to chat and taste. She arrived back around 4:30 and as it was her birthday she moved into a bottle of white followed by a red.

We had take-away Indian delivered for tea which was OK. Trish received a phone call from Kim in India, just after she had checked out the Taj Mahal in Agra. Trish enjoyed the call.

Beau's girlfriend Jess arrived about 7 pm to take the boys home. It still took a couple of hours until they were on their way.

I bottled one lot of beer on Sunday and did the second lot today. Supplies are getting back to normal right now.

Trish flies down to Melbourne on Wednesday and will be there for 15 nights. I possibly have my brother coming up to stay but haven't heard anything just yet.

Much drier today but quite windy. We will get to about 27 degrees and will get the odd shower scudding through!

A Warm Spell

We have had it over 30 degrees the last few days. Even the pool is around 30 degrees right now! Not a lot of news to share. Trish has been busy with Stitchers etc as well as her volunteer stuff at the local Tourist Information Centre. It is her birthday on Saturday!

I have two brews on the go right now. The one on the left in the photo (a 'Gold' lager) has been bubbling away for well over a week now. Usually they are ready to bottle in less than a week. But I check the 'readings' using a hydrometer and it still has a day or so to go. It bubbles every now and again through the air lock so it is still brewing OK. The other one is a "Black" and is bubbling along nicely.

I'll do some bottle washing in the next day or so. And a bottling if the "Gold" ever decides it is ready to do so!

It is certainly warm enough for using the pool, even a swim before retiring is a great way to freshen up and head towards bed.

Storms and rain are expected over the next few days and top temps around 26 or so are due for the weekend.

What A Long Day

I feel like I have just flown in from Asia after my one day trip to Canberra for the funeral of my aunt.

So as not to confuse things too much I shall recount my day using Daylight Saving times. I awoke with a start round 4 am. A quick shower, something to eat and I was on my way down to Brisbane to catch a plane direct to Canberra. We had arranged to use an "Airport Parking" company as the Airport Parking charges were ridiculous.

I arrived at the Parking Service, paid my account and was whisked to the airport by 5:45 am, an hour prior to my take-off time. I spent time reading the paper and waiting. The flight down to Canberra took almost 2 hours. We left Brisbane airport at 5:45 am and I arrived in Canberra at 8:30 am where I was eventually collected by Peter and Judy (my sister). They had been caught up with a traffic accident so I spent over 30 minutes waiting for them to get there.

The morning was spent chatting, having a coffee and then a quick lunch. We were joined by my brother Geoff and his son Jason who had driven 650k's from Melbourne. We arrived at the church, had the service and the burial and attended a 'wake' at the Gungahlin Lakes Golf Club. Soon after 4 pm Judy and Peter wanted to hit the road to get as far as possible before dark. They were heading to Omeo ( a 6 hour drive) and dropped me at the Canberra Airport before 4:30pm

My flight to Brisbane via Sydney wasn't till 6:30pm. After a 25 minute flight to Sydney we landed amidst some thunderstorms which eventually closed the airport and delayed my return flight from Sydney to Brisbane. The final leg of the trip was late getting off the ground and my arrival back in Brisbane wasn't until about 10:50pm. This was followed by being picked up again, getting driven to my car and then the one hour drive back home arriving around 12:30am. It took about 8 hours to get back home from Canberra.

The funeral was brief and to the point, the wake was great but catching up with a lot of relatives was really good.

I received a small parcel in the mail yesterday with a DVI to HDMI adapter in it all the way from a place in China. It is the light colored plug piece in this picture. My old TV only has one 'digital' DVI input at the back of it. The black box you can see in the photo allows me to connect 4 HDMI devices into 1 TV Input. It is a bit like a power board for TV connections.

I am pleased to say that after a fair bit of messing around everything is working perfectly! Even this photo shows the mess of wires behind the TV used to connect everything up!