More Wet Roads

This morning has seen the roads wet yet again. Wet roads and pathways make any bike riding here extremely uncomfortable. Though there is minimal in the rain gauge, the sky is again overcast and it is cool outside. It is a crisp 15 degrees at around 9:30 in the morning but worst of all, there sun is not out.

It has now been a few days since I last rode the bike for the traditional 12 or so k's in the morning.

Showery Today

Since I last added to the blog it has been a little damp one day and then perfectly fine and sunny the next. This means today is a bit overcast with a shower every hour or so. Yesterday was delightful!

Since I last added a post I have bottle washed and then today I did a bottling. I usually have to move things around when doing a bottling. I have 32 bottles to go into 'storage' so that means I must have 32 bottles to come out and put into my cupboard or fridge. Well one bottle slipped from my grasp this morning and split wide open on the floor of the computer room. There was beer and froth everywhere!

I cleaned it all up but noticed my trousers and shirt were covered in beer too! So it was a quick run through the washing machine then onto to the line to dry! That is how I know it has been showery today, I have been in and out to the line several times to try to get stuff dry. I have one eye on the sky right now just to check things out.

Our daughter Kate and the two grand kids are flying up on Saturday morning. Evidently the kids are packed already and trying out their roller cases all around the house! We are looking forward to it too. Arj will join Kate and the kids on Monday!

Most of the rest of the time I have been spent mucking around on my computer. I use Thunderbird version 2 for my emails. There has been a version 3 around for a long time but things just don't migrate easily between the versions when you do a program update.

I had to do a full new install of Thunderbird 3 on the old PC, set it all up with my 7 email accounts, and then transfer the newly created 'profile' to the new PC. I had backed up the old Thunderbird 2 profile so I copy/pasted saved emails, heaps of folders of saved emails and my address book into the new profile. Then I installed Thunderbird 3 over the top of Version 2. After a little more rejigging of folders and things it is all working beautifully now. I have upgraded to Thunderbird Version 3.

We ran the dishwasher again last night and it all worked perfectly!

I hope you enjoy the joke in the post below.

The Gynaecologist Who Became a Mechanic.

A gynaecologist had become fed up with malpractice insurance and HMO paperwork, and was burned out. Hoping to try another career where skilful hands would be beneficial, he decided to become a mechanic. He went to the local technical college, signed up for evening classes, attended diligently, and learned all he could.

When the time of the practical exam approached, the gynaecologist prepared carefully for weeks, and completed the exam with tremendous skill. When the results came back, he was surprised to find that he had obtained a score of 150%. Fearing an error, he called the Instructor, saying, "I don't want to appear ungrateful for such an outstanding result, but I wonder if there is an error in the grade?"

"The instructor said, "During the exam, you took the engine apart perfectly, which was worth 50% of the total mark. You put the engine back together again perfectly, which is also worth 50% of the mark." After a pause, the instructor added, "I gave you an extra 50% because you did it all through the muffler, which I've never seen done in my entire career.

Google To The Rescue

We have had a very light sprinkle of rain overnight. This means that the humidity level is up and warmer overnight temperatures for us. Last night it was around 12 degrees so not too cold at all. However the light sprinkle of rain made roads and pathways too wet for me to ride this morning. Days are in the low 20's.

Texas Lou is experiencing super warm temperatures and very low humidity in her home town right now. Read her comment from the post below this one.

The dishwasher had a flashing "Normal Cycle" light the other day. A quick read of the handbook suggested the heating element had gone or there was a heating element problem on the main 'board'. When we opened the dishwasher door there was heaps of steam and the dishes were still very warm. It seemed to us the heating element was fine!

Onto Google again to check out if there was a simple remedy! All comments referred to the water heating element had failed one way or another. One person did suggest removing the power cord for an hour and letting the unit 'reset' itself. To be on the safe side we disconnected the power lead for two hours. The dishwasher was full last night we gave it a try! It worked perfectly! Thanks Google!

Computer Club was as busy as usual yesterday. I added "True Launch Bar" for one person and did an install of Nod32 for another. I gave another lady a quick lesson on getting photos from her camera and other people had problems with recent Windows Updates failing to install. I was able to help most people.

As soon as I looked at one computer I saw there were Windows Updates waiting to be installed. He had over 250MB to bring his Windows 7 up to date. Some of these failed to install I later found out when he rang me mid afternoon. I couldn't help him from 8 kilometres away!

I have another guy wanting to know how to get movies off the internet. He is due here in a few minutes.

Trish is moving better now and actually down the street doing some grocery shopping as I type.

In her spare time she is working on a website for a friend down in Melbourne. You can keep an eye on it HERE. Come back regularly because Trish updates it with more information fairly regularly. When finished it will be transferred to its 'own' web address.

A Sunny Day After A Brisk Start

It has been a lovely sunny day with hardly a cloud in the sky. However the morning was very cool with temps again less than 6 degrees this morning. But as the photo shows it panned out into a delightful sunny day of about 20 degrees.

Click on the photo for a larger view, then click on "Back" to return to this page.

Being so cold meant I didn't get off for my bike ride till well after 10 a.m. Then it was over the road to check on an older neighbour's Windows Updates. He had heaps of them to do and was worried because of the number. He only has 256 speed and his updates were well over 100MBS. But time wasn't a worry for him.

Trish was up and about and feeling pretty good one minute to being not so good a few minutes later. She took it pretty easy and did a couple of things around the house. A load of washing went through and the dishwasher did a cycle. The dishwasher didn't want to finish the cycle and I am hoping that by pulling the power lead out for an hour or two then reconnecting will get it to fully 'reset' and fix it.

Later on Trish did some work on a friend's website she wanted made. Our internet connection hasn't been running so well with some websites seemingly taking ages to come up. We experienced some problems getting the website online. But eventually we got there.

I don't think Trish will worry about "trivia" tonight.

Trish Not feeling Well

Trish felt she had the makings of a cold yesterday. Today has been quite laid back for her after a sleepless night. She surfaced from bed late in the morning not feeling well at all and has been taking it easy around the house today. Hopefully it will just be a few days thing and she will be feeling better tomorrow.

Not a lot of news. This morning was around 10 degrees so a bit warmer than yesterday and the day before that.

I had a slightly shorter ride this morning as I knew I had a busy day. I did about 10k's on my bike ride. Then when I arrived back home I set into a 'bottling'. I bottled 32 large bottles of my home brew and then immediately put another brew on. In between the two tasks was a cleaning time when I cleaned the brew kits out after the bottling. Eventually everything was under control and a new brew was set up by about 1 pm.

With Trish feeling ill I was then on my bike and down to the local supermarket (only a few minutes bike ride away) to get milk, bread and some vegies for tonight's meal.

It was only after that and a quick bit to eat that I had time to do a bit of surfing on the internet.

Several weeks ago I sent away to my favorite 'online gadgets store' in China for a wireless network adapter. It is the white dongle thing you can see in the photo to the left. This little gizmo allows me to connect the computer (the old PC) to my home network by wireless. You just plug it into a spare USB port, Windows 7 automatically installs the driver, put in my network password and you are online! All of this for less than $10!

Remember you can click on the pictures for a larger view.

An added advantage is that this little gizmo also works with my WD TV Live Media Player. I plug the wireless dongle into the media player and it can then play movies which are stored on the new hard disk drive attached to my computer in another room. It does this by connecting into my internet wireless network and transferring the movie wirelessly from the hard drive to the media player in another room!

I had previously paid $40 for a dongle to do this, I could have used this one which was less than 25% of the price!

Under 6 Degrees This Morning

Monday morning was one of the coldest mornings we have experienced here on the Sunshine Coast. The temp was less than 6 degrees but there was a promise that it would get to a sunny twenty or so as today's top temperature. Such a cold start meant a delay to the day's bike ride. It is now approaching midday and all the requirements, (bike ride, breakfast, shower) have all been completed. There is hardly a cloud in the sky and it is extremely pleasant sitting in the sunshine out of any slight breeze there may be today.

Usually we expect it to be around 12 degrees minimum at this time of year!

Little if any news to pass on. It was a busy morning at Computer Club on Saturday but I managed to have a good chat with several mates. There were a few problems to solve but all in all it was a good morning. The rest of the day was spent sorting out some downloads and sorting out my regular PC tidy up.

I always do an anti-virus scan over the weekend as well as a full scan with Malwarebytes. Then it is the old faithfull "Spybot". With those three scans completed I run a 'defrag' program as well.

The rest of the weekend was spent getting my new backup disk drive all sorted out. I have my old archives of nearly all of my old movies (pre mid 2010) sitting on an old 750GB drive which won't work on any computer except my old PC. I can access this old drive via the old PC on my home "Network". However the connection speed is quite slow, the files go from the add on drive to the Old PC and then to the new PC via my modem/router.

I now have them all backed up and on my new 2TB drive.

We watched another good movie last night called "Monster", the story of the USA's most famous female serial killer. It was very good!

A Busy Day

My new PC is able to accommodate USB 3 external hard disk drives. I always keep backups of everything. It has been a wonderful life saver at times with valuable documents and programs always backed up in case of emergency. Keeping copies of my movies is another big space user as well. I have my new portable 1TB Samsung drive which is very handy when I go to someone's home. With my Samsung external drive with me it is as if I am taking my own PC with me and I usually do need it to access a program or some movies.

I have had a powered external drive as well which is my first port of call for backup on the new PC. It is a 1TB drive and remains attached to the computer 24/7. Being 1TB is a little limiting and led to me deleting quite a few older movies recently. A 2TB drive would set you back around $100 nowadays. I was very pleasantly surprised to see one of the electrical stores in Maroochydore (Officeworks) had a powered Western Digital 2TB USB 3 drive on sale for $114. My local Dick Smith store also had it on special but going for $124. They did a 'price match' for me so I grabbed one. It took quite some time to set it all up but now it is running perfectly. The USB3 feature is about twice as fast as a usual USB2 connection.

It has been a busy day getting the new drive all setup. On top of that I put in a 12 kilometre bike ride this morning. Then I washed and dried 32 bottles for my next bottling. This takes about an hour and a half to do.

I also used a spray mix of 1 part pool chlorine to 2 parts water on some of the grubby pavers around the pool. I then gave them a sturdy sweep with a soft bristled broom and later washed them down with the hose.

The pavers have had a rough trot and have had extensive work on them(by the supplier) to get them looking reasonable. We suspect they were a poor lot from the manufacturer. So right now they look pretty good!

The new Hard Disk Drive (HDD) comes with a power adapter. I use a large power board with individual switches for my PC stuff. I just find the PC seems to work better if it is totally removed from all electrical power when I shut it down. We also use it as a power saving feature. Unfortunately the larger power HDD adapter wouldn't fit so I had to move the whole board about 4cms to the left.

It is in a rotten position just under a shelf on the "Office" table and getting the two securing screws into the rear of the table in exactly the right position took, time, energy and patience. The latter isn't one of my strong points. I had to crouch and carefully maneuver the board and re adjust the screws before I got it to fit properly! It wasn't one of my favorite jobs!

I have decided I am not as young as I used to be!

It is a nice sunny day with the temp around 20 degrees. It is quite blowy outside today making it a little less pleasant than other recent days. Still it was extremely comfortable out there as Trish and I ate our lunch today. There are some cooler mornings due over the next few days with one morning expected to be around 5 degrees. Most days will be into the low 20's though.

Sunny Thursday

The weather has been typical Queensland winter weather the last couple of days with hardly a cloud in the sky and temps struggling into the low 20's. But find a spot in the sun out of the wind and it is sensational right now.

I have been doing some Community Association tasks the last couple of days. The newsletter has been printed so I shuffled off to Kawana to collect it. Then yesterday I dropped all 1300 copies off with the distribution coordinator. Overnight Trish and I folded my 110 newsletters and then I delivered them this morning.

The home brew continues to bubble away. The problem this time of year is to keep it warm while it brews away quietly.

The "Photo Gallery" BeCA website page had a big makeover the other day. I hadn't done much to it for about 6 months so it really did need a fair bit of it being scrapped and a whole new page put online. That job has now been done.

I had the end of my internet month yesterday so there was a mad panic to download stuff. We have discovered the Scottish Detective drama series "Taggart". I have now downloaded about 18 episodes of the most recent 3 series. Previously we had found the Scottish accent too hard to handle but now because we both use headphones when listening to the TV, we can understand the dialogue a lot more clearly.

The pressure cleaner came out this morning to do the border stones in the back yard. This sort of place means there is always a build up of mould. But now they have been cleaned. I will do the front drive way sometime next week.

I sprayed the broad leaf clover that has sprung up in the front lawn and it is beginning to die off.

Trish spent a quiet day on Tuesday in "Recovery Mode" after being busy all weekend with her "Fair". She had Stitchers Wednesday morning and a little "Spotlight" shopping to do in the afternoon.

Trish has a new job. She is going to collect Census Papers. She had to apply for the position and attend an interview. There were well over 60 applicants for the 6 or so positions and she was fortunate enough to get one of them. Did I forget to mention our local Census Coordinator who did the job selection is one of the guys we enjoy a few beers with most Friday afternoons!

Right now she is sewing up a red cape for James the youngest grandson (he turned 4 yesterday) for when they visit us in a little over a fortnight.

It has been very wet in New South Wales the last week or so and a rogue shower from down south hit Caloundra after dark last night. A sweet 4mls of rain just to freshen the garden and lawn up was most welcome. The weather bureau thought there was the odd chance of a shower overnight.

I have been getting my 12+ kilometre bike rides in the last few days. After being ill and not riding for about three weeks, I am now slowly getting back into the swing of things.

Winter Hits

It brought back memories of living in Melbourne. On Thursday the max temp was a record low of 14 degrees. At least in Melbourne you have proper heating, unlike here where you may need a heater for 6 weeks of the year! It was a record low Max temperature for this part of the world. The sky was gray and it drizzled all day! We closed the blinds to keep any warmth inside and then ran the air con in reverse cycle just to warm the house up.

Friday was a little better but not much. By Saturday the max was back up to 19 or so and then on Sunday it was around 20. But both Saturday and Sunday was sunny and it was glorious sitting in the sunshine out of the wind.

My cold has all but gone, no more dizziness, just the occasional sniffle every now and again. Computer Club was busy again but I was able to help people out.

On Friday I went around to a mate's place (another computer club member) to do some stuff on his PC. He had some pop ups on his screen from his anti-virus which were worrying him. That took a few minutes to sort out but we managed to get rid of them. He wanted me to install Photoshop for him. He had failed to install it despite using an official CD with the program on it.

He couldn't find the CD, he tipped the place upside down looking for it unsuccessfully. In the searching he knocked my 850GB external hard drive off the table onto the floor. I managed to get it to go again for a short while but after that it was dead! It had cost me $126. He was upset and I wasn't too happy either.

I managed to copy the install folder across to his PC before it died. I installed it and cracked it for him. However a call the next day told me the crack had failed. He also wanted to replace my drive. In the end we went halves in a replacement. I got a bigger and better drive.

Harvey Norman had 1TB portable drives on special for $98. He drove me to the store and we could only see a $199 model on display, not the $98 model advertised in their junk mail. They sold me the $199 model for $98. The Photoshop crack had failed on his PC so I had to do it again, this time manually. It now seems to have worked.

It took about 8 hours to copy the stuff back onto the new drive.

Trish and my football teams clashed on Saturday night. The last 6 games have been very close matches with my team winning all six of them. This match was no different with my side winning by 5 points! It was a cliff hanger.

Today is a home brew day. I haven't had a brew on for a month, mainly because I wasn't drinking while I was sick. But I have put a brew of "Gold" (a lager) on this morning. The mandatory bottle washing will occur later in the week and most likely I will bottle next Monday.

Trish has been out all weekend. Her Arts Association had a Fair over the weekend where members were able to sell some of the things they had made. The Association takes a percentage of whatever is sold. Trish was at the fair on both Saturday and Sunday. She made some small flowers and sold most of them. She will collect about $90 from her sales.

This morning (Monday), as a Committee Member, Trish is at the "reconciliation meeting'. This afternoon she is doing another volunteer stint at the Tourist Information Centre. She will be back home around 5 pm.

Today is a public holiday here so I have just finished a 12k bike ride, I have made a brew and I have updated my blog. Next I will jump in the shower, then check out the internet and this afternoon there is a footy match live on TV from the MCG. I will sit back, enjoy a couple of ales and watch the game!

A Top Of 17 For The Coast!

Boy but it is cool today. There is heavy cloud outside and it is a grey day. I only managed three k's this morning before a sprinkle of rain sent me heading for home. Right now it is 13 degrees as I type while in Melbourne it is around 10 degrees.

Trish has been moving pots around in the garden. Some had been there so long that their roots had grown through the bottom of the pot and into the soil. Needless to say these plants didn't enjoy (or survive) being moved. Therefore our small back garden is looking a little bare right now. The photo was taken this morning but don't be fooled by the 'brightness' of outside today. The camera has compensated for what is a gloomy dull day.

It has been a 'computer week' for me with helping out on other people's laptops on Monday, on Tuesday and then again yesterday. Needless to say I have had a ball! Even this morning I have been over the road helping out with file downloads and passing on some movies.

Meanwhile Trish is at the Tourist Info centre this morning helping out. She has a new project on her plate as well working on a website for people we know in Melbourne. It is a small website so not overly complicated. The easiest way to do websites is to download a 'template'. However it can be hard finding the template which is best suited to the needs of the project.

So everyone around is tucked up inside with their winter woollies on. We might even need the heater going later on today!

Cooler weather On The Way

Monday was sensational and around the mid 20's. Today Tuesday is overcast and more like 20. By the weekend we can expect it to be wet and rainy!

But what a beautiful day Monday was. As my cold and middle ear infection has cleared up I am back to feeling my old self again. Just after lunch on Monday I was back to the hearing aid guy for a quick check on how the new hearing aid is going. All seems to be fine with it.

One of the Computer Club guys has 'special needs'. Though in his late 40's, he loves the chat and banter of others around him. However I have become his first port of call when he has a computer need. Yesterday morning (Monday) he visited me with his new laptop which he wanted me to help setup for him.

Michael doesn't really know his passwords and settings so it is a little hit and miss at times. By the end of the morning I had sent him on his way with everything setup for him and ready to go.

When helping people set up their email I now tend to use a service such as Yahoo or GMail for sending emails (outgoing server settings) via a program like Windows Live, Outlook or Mozilla's Thunderbird. I do this in case people travel a bit. It doesn't matter where in the world you are, you can always send via GMail. If you are a Bigpond user you usually have to be connected to Bigpond to be able to send emails. By using GMail for sending emails it doesn't matter who you are connected with.

This morning around 8 am the phone goes and it is a distressed Michael on the phone saying his TPG emails aren't working! After cooling him down and explaining stuff to him he is once again a happy chappy! And he found he can get his TPG emails after all!

And today I have been doing another laptop for an older couple here on the estate. It is now ready to go for them. All they need is their 3G wireless dongle to arrive from Bigpond and they too can connect to the internet. Their new laptop downloaded over 500MB of updates today. Their new Bigpond 3G wireless connection will only give them 1GB per month download.

And guess what, I have another laptop to do tomorrow!

The other night we watched a movie called "Sarah's Key". Certainly it is one of the best movies I have seen, a sensational story set in Paris and telling the story of a young Jewish girl who was taken by the Germans to a concentration camp. However she escaped and lived the rest of her life in misery for what had happened to the rest of her family. The movie has subtitles for about 60% of it.

Last night we watched "Unknown" another very good story!

Sensational Winter Weather

Days are in the low to mid 20's in our protected small backyard so we are enjoying gorgeous weather. Our friends who are departing the area for South Africa had a small part of their packing held up on Thursday so they left 24 hours later than expected. This meant Friday drinks was able to go ahead.

I even had a few beers myself on Friday as I begin to fully recover from my recent middle ear infection and heavy head cold.

I thought I was almost back to 100% until I went to Computer Club Saturday morning. Although I was feeling pretty good, once I got into the hustle and bustle of helping people I soon realized I am not 100%.

Weekend in winter of course means watching AFL footy on TV for me and this weekend was no different. My team had another good solid win.

It is around 8:30 am as I type this and it is still low teens outside.

When it warms up a little more I will head off on a shortened bike ride. I rode almost 10k's on Friday, my first ride for over two weeks. I took my camera with me and grabbed some photos from around the estate to give the Community Association website quite a big update.

I rang the Pay TV provider to tell them I wanted the service disconnected. Rather than see me go ahead with the disconnection, they offered my a "Loyalty Discount" of $15 per month. Over 12 months this totals almost $200 which is better in my pocket than theirs! I have the new deal for 12 months!

A Warmish But Blowy day

Awoke to cloudy skies but that has all cleared to a gorgeous day around 23 degrees. It is a little windy though. The great weather is expected to continue through next week. However into next week the weather though fine and sunny will be better described as 'crisp'. That is lovely in the sunshine but very cool in the shade.

I was out and about a little this morning catching up with neighbours. I still get a little woozy from time to time but overall feeling much better.

Made some phone calls this morning to friends down south and was distressed to learn a former Education Dept colleague I had know since teacher's college days had died. We were in the same year at college and had been principals at neighbouring schools.

I am again feeling a little better than I thought I was!

On The Road To Recovery

As I have said previously, each day I feel better. I am regaining some hearing in my right ear now. The ENT Specialist said to wear my hearing aid. He feels the more action the ear has the more likely things are to begin to clear. I repeatedly 'yawn" and stretch my jaw to try to clear the tubes. Things are progressing OK.

We had a night out at a small Thai restaurant on Kawana Island last night. It was from Paul and Linda who wanted to thank us for the help on getting their three computers sorted out for them. Everything seems ready for them now and all computers are up and running.

I especially enjoyed the Ginger Duck and the Chilli Chicken we had at the restaurant. We also had a Thai Omelette with prawns. It brought back delicious memories of the Oyster Omelettes we used to get in Penang!

I only had a single glass of wine to drink, just looking after myself with my illness.

We are expecting about 22 today, the first day of winter. Meanwhile Lou Ann in Texas is putting up with temps around 43 degrees. It is overcast outside and there is a chance of a shower or two this afternoon. While out last night we had a bit of a 'show' with lightning flashes from storms off the coast. It was quite a show!