Really Too Wet To Ride

I did my 12k bike ride this morning and though a delightful morning, the seepage and puddles covering the pathway in places were too much to make it really pleasant. This photo of the pathway shows some of the seepage, other sections were a couple of centimetres deep.

Click on the photo for a larger view.

I bought several 'wireless' mice for Trish's Laptop, for my older PC and one for a Computer Club member. They were around $4-80 each. They arrived over the last day or so and they work perfectly. Importantly they have an on/off switch which will lead to better battery use. Trish's "Microsoft" wireless mouse didn't have such a switch so was a little heavy on the batteries.

The items still to arrive are a Hdmi/DVI lead and a case for the new camera. The lead should be here in the next couple of days but the camera case is still a couple of weeks away.

No News, I Just Wanted To Play With My Camera!

To ride or not to ride, that was the question! I awoke early to watch the T20 game between the West Indies and Australia on TV this morning.

As daylight appeared there was a beautiful blue sky but I noticed the pool surrounds and road were wet from overnight showers. There were 14mls in the rain gauge.

We have had almost 750mls during this month so far, that is around 30" of rain! Our progressive total for 2012 is currently just below 68" and our Annual Average is around 64". Already we are above the amount of rain we receive on average in a full year and the year is only 25% gone!

Just as things were drying up, a black cloud appeared and another shower of rain fell. The two photos were taken around the same time and gives you an idea of what today may be like here. Lovely sunshine, mid 20's but a few short and sharp showers of rain. Needless to say the pathways will be wet and I won't be riding.

Click on the photos for a larger view.

I jumped on eBay again last night and the leather case for the new camera will arrive in around 3 weeks time and my Paypal account is down $5-75.

Trish has a bus tour today with the ladies from the Arts Centre Association and is out all day.

We had been told about a good Chinese Restaurant at Golden Beach so we gave it a try last night. The descriptions on the web said good basic fare, BYO and not too expensive. I always get worried when I see Chow Mein on the menu. It takes one back to when we were kids and the Chinese food we used to get as take away. This restaurant had Chow Mein on the menu. The food was basic and a little bland but it wasn't too expensive and the serves were generous. However I don't think we will be rushing back.

In today's 'junk' mail I spotted my new camera 'on special' at Dick Smith's. I paid $98 for mine which is a special 'online' price. This one is on special for $137! I am well in front.

Time For An Update

The weather has been much kinder the last couple of mornings which has enabled me to get back on my bike. I only rode around 8k's yesterday but I managed the full 12k's this morning. I continue to have a sniffly head cold and break into a coughing fit from time to time.

This morning I was the best I had been for some time so the bike ride was enjoyable as well. I even enjoyed my swim afterwards. With all the rain and cooler temps the pool temperature is close to 24 or 25 degrees so not quite as inviting as in mid summer.

Yesterday I did some work on the Community Association website, bottled another brew and then delivered my 110 Community Association Newsletters.

I noticed a photo I took the other day (Friday's pool photo - see below) was way out of focus. I took a couple of others as well and they were no better. I noticed a red !AF on the camera screen which I checked out in the manual when I had a chance. It said the light was so bad that Automatic Focus couldn't work. However the days on which I was taking a shot weren't that dark.

I found that if I manually panned in on the subject, then panned back I could take a shot which was in focus and there was no red !AF sign. The camera I use for everyday shots gets a bit of a hiding as far as use is concerned so I reckon it may be time to swap it over. Trish and I were both going to keep our eyes open for a sub $100 camera to buy for these everyday shots.

The internet was my friend and Harvey Norman had a lower end Canon camera (Ixus 115HS) for $98 'online'. The regular store price was $148. I am now the owner of one and the photo here shows the new sub $100 camera while the battery charges.

The photo below left is the 'first shot' taken with the new camera! As you can see today was a sunny day with a max around the mid 20's.

We are going to try a 'new' Chinese restaurant we have had recommended to us this evening. I guess it is BYO but we will find out when we get there.

I had some bad news today regarding a cricket mate of mine who now lives up here named Fred Pereira. It seems Fred has been ill and booked himself into Nambour Hospital. He eventually got around to telling his daughters a couple of days later. I was due to drive Fred to the airport next Monday but I was advised today he will be too sick to travel and that his illness may be terminal. Not good news at all.

I had some of my online purchases arrives today. One was a good quality 1m HDMI lead for under $5 delivered, the other was a pair of nail scissors with 'long' handles. I have never been able to touch my toes and as I get older bending is not a strong point. Nowadays, cutting one's toenails requires all sorts of tricks, contortions and pain! The long handled nail scissors do the trick, $8-50 delivered from the UK. They work very well! They are great.

I am still waiting on 3 wireless PC mice. They are from the USA and cost US$4-95 each! They are due next week!

Kind Of "Back To Normal"

Things seem to have reverted to a form of normality. I haven't needed to make an entry onto my rainfall chart for several days. There is about a 1ml in the gauge right now but that is the summary of brief showers we have had the last few days. For example it rained this morning for around a minute, enough to make puddles etc on the roads and pathways but hardly enough to register in the rain gauge.

Wet roads means I don't ride my bike. With so much recent rain there would be seepage across the pathways making it unpleasant to ride. It is now well over a week since I last rode. It is cloudy and breezy today with a top temp around 26 degrees.

Friday drinks was great again, this time around at our place. The other two guys are rugby league fans so everyone headed home around 7:30 pm our time so they could catch the game on TV. Their game was from Perth so it fitted in perfectly with the time difference to this part of the world.

Our AFL stuff is on TV hour earlier because of the time difference with Melbourne and with daylight saving. So the first big game of the yearnext Friday gets in here at 6:50 rather than 7:50 as it does in Melbourne. We only have one week to go until daylight saving time finishes down south and times get back to normal again. However this will disrupt my listening to SEN in the mornings on my internet radio, I will need to sleep in!

Computer Club yesterday was a mixture. I was able to fix half the things and but couldn't help with others. Mainly because the things people wanted help with I had never done. Like connecting a laptop to the TV to show a slide show or creating a Powerpoint Slide Show but not using Powerpoint!

One guy had all sorts of problems connecting to the Club's wireless internet connection. He eventually caught up with me after an hour or so and told me he had tried everything. I had a look for him, found his wireless on off switch and turned it on! Bingo he was online again. I already knew about this problem as I had been stumped for half an hour exactly the same way once until someone came along and switched the laptop's wireless on.

Wet Wet Wet

We have survived the recent deluge here without too many problems. When we have a strong wind and heavy rain we tend to get a small amount of seepage through the "Beer Garden" sliding door and that happened during the heavy rain yesterday and overnight.

It has almost stopped now with just some drizzle outside at 8 am in the morning. It was so wet yesterday morning I didn't take my rainfall reading until around 10 am, a little later than usual. Since 10 am yesterday I have tipped a total of 293 mls out of the rain gauge. If you add the 52 mls from overnight Wednesday/Thursday we have a total just short of 350mls or 14" in the old scale.

Over the past fortnight we have had 549mls or 22" of rain.

When you looked at the weather radar yesterday you saw a storm hanging over the Sunshine Coast between Maroochydore and just south of us, a distance of around 20 or so kilometres. The radar had it at yellow and light green signifying very heavy falls. However despite being such heavy rain, the Pay TV only went off for around 10 minutes. You would expect the storm to move on after 30 minutes or so. This time it just sat there for hours and hours dropping especially heavy rain on the small coastal strip. While we got around 12", Nambour, around 15k's inland, received 2" so localized was yesterday's rain.

Today we expect to see the sun again and there will be a top temp of 29 degrees. As the photo shows the pool has fallen from full back to its peak depth with the 'pool overflow' working well for us. Needless to say the pool again needs some salt as the level has fallen with so much pool water overflowing out into the street and out to sea via the storm water drains.

Our street didn't flood to anywhere near the extent it can do. The road out the front was a few inches underwater but a brief lull in the heavy showers allowed excess water to get away and leave the road clear.

I have updated our 2012 online rainfall totals sheet, you can get to it HERE.

Another 6"

It is late in the afternoon on Thursday and so far today we have had 4" (100mls) of rain. This morning I tipped over 2" (50mls) out of the gauge. And we have more to come. So far this year we have had almost 1500mls or 60 inches in the old scale. Our yearly 'average' is around 1550mls! It has been extremely wet as this soggy photo shows. The rain is expected to clear for a fine and sunny weekend.

It has been wet over a few hours so the rain does have time to get away. The last couple of hours have seen 3" fall and things are beginning to struggle to keep up. The pool is filling slowly.

Our friends from Melbourne Carol and David arrived a little later than they had first expected on Tuesday. It was after 4pm when they drove up our drive. But we had a great chat, a quiet beer (as David had to drive) and caught up with the gossip. We did introduce them to a TV Comedy called Mrs Brown's Boys which is the funniest thing I have seen on TV for quite a while. I burnt a DVD copy of the two series for them.

For our evening meal we tried the new Bellvista Tavern. It was a wonderful success. It was a 2 for $25 night and the food was just great. I may have preferred a larger serving but I wasn't hungry when we left. They headed off fo the Gold Coast around 8:15pm.

An elderly neighbour had shown his media player off to another chap. Well he wanted one! They were $115 for the latest model so the neighbour bought him one, a 500GB hard drive and I had a $5 HDMI cable. We copied a heap of movies and TV series (including Mrs Brown's Boys) onto the drive and headed around to their home to set it all up. I was a bit worried because the latest model searches for an internet connection and my neighbour had said they didn't have one. I took my spare older model media player with me just in case.

I was right. During the setup the new box searched unsuccessfully for an internet connection, stopped and rebooted back into Setup again. I set up my 6 month old version (Generation 2) of the media player so at least they could watch movies. The guy was so impressed he said he would rather have my older model and I could keep the new one.

They were delighted and I had a brand new latest model WD TV Live Streaming media Player! It is running beautifully on Trish's 32" TV in her sewing room. It is so clever it can even read and play movies off the hard drive attached to the media player on the 'big' TV which is in another room. It does it all via the wireless network we have for access to the internet.

Last night we headed to the RSL with friends for a "Rolling Stonez" show. We all had a wonderful time, lots of laughs and were really well behaved. By the time I hit the bed around 11:15 pm I was ready to sleep after a big day!

Trish usually sets off for Trivia tonight but the weather outside isn't safe for any unnecessary driving so she will be staying home instead.

Bike Is Going Rusty!

My bike will begin to go rusty if I can't get on it for a ride soon! It must be the best part of a week since I last had a full ride. Consistent showers, especially around dawn, means the roads are always wet when I usually ride. Another 5 mls from the gauge this morning and most of that fell around 5 am this morning. It is so wet there would still be seepage across paths anyway making the bike experience less than enjoyable.

Another brew went on this morning just to keep supplies going. As usual a washing and bottling will follow. The photo shows 400gms of sugar which goes into the brew.

The amount of sugar determines the alcohol content. 1kg of sugar means the beer will be around 5% when finished. 400gms equates to around 3.5% (or mid strength) which is what I usually make my brews at.

Not a lot else is happening. I was around at a friend's yesterday to do some computer stuff and then spent much of the day enthralled in the Sheffield Shield Cricket Final. It was great to and fro cricket with first one side on top and then the other.

We are expecting a visit this afternoon from Carol and David, friends from down in Melbourne who are currently holidaying on the Gold Coast in a time share unit Carol has. They have a lady friend with them who has a relative at Moffat Beach so this gives them the chance to do a couple of flying visits before heading back to the Gold Coast tonight.

We watched the mini-series Mildred Pierce on Sunday. It was 5 full episodes. We began at 6:30 and finished at 12:15 am. We both thought it was OK. Kate Winslet won a TV Show award for her role in the mini-series. Last night we watched another 3 part series called Silent Scream. The script was adapted from a Lynda La Plante novel.

Big Wet Continues

Another 60 odd mls were tipped from the rain gauge this morning and it remains gloomy, overcast and drizzly outside.

Just 'as usual' the last few days with little to report. I am watching the Sheffield Shield Final on TV and I remain amazed they have had so much play. The Gabba is around 100 k's from our home and I can't believe the amount of play they have had. We have had 'actual' showers of heavy rain, yet the Gabba remains incredibly shielded from it all.

Friday drinks was another 'classic'. There were 6 of us. Tony is always invited but always fails to get there. He used to go to drinks every Friday but we haven't seen him for some time now which is disappointing.

Ian (one of the Friday night drinks attenders) contacted me via Skype Saturday morning with the message "What happened, I can't remember!" They are great get togethers.

Trish went to Trivia which is now at our local Bellvista Tavern. The place was full and that did not include just the teams there to play Trivia. The locals enjoy a night out there and the ability to have a few drinks and then to get home safely

Visits by me to doctors late last week mean I am now being referred to the E.N.T. Specialist to get rid of the ear infection. It needs professional treatment to clean it out so the anti-biotics can work 100% on removing the last bit of infection.

Computer Club was busy but great fun

A Few Coastal Showers

Who possibly knows what a few coastal showers really means in a weather forecast? This is what we were told last night on the local news, "A few coastal showers" is what they said. This morning I tipped 36mls from the rain gauge and it seems to have been belting down since then with another 16 mls.

Recently I have been tidying up everyday loose ends. Yesterday for example I grabbed a haircut and later I cleaned the car. The second job was a doozy because of recent roadworks around this place and tar on the roads. That means I was in the pool 3 times, once after my ride, secondly after a haircut and finally after cleaning the car.

I had to go back and sort out that internet problem again yesterday, it was Bigpond's fault, the promised service overnight was delayed by an full day and didn't kick in till this morning.

Trish and I grabbed lunch from the RSL yesterday. With a cheap meal, 2 'pots' for me and a glass of red for Trish at under $20 was good value.

We saw the end of 'Homeland' last night and enjoyed it a lot.

Trish is into Brisbane tonight with a few friends for a show and then tomorrow she has her Trivia Night. This time the Trivia Night is being run by the guy they say is the best around and it is on here at our local Tavern for the first time. So it should be good.

I have been a little busy with online purchases. I had a small case given to me by the Hearing Aid place to 'trial'. The unit is heated and is used to store my hearing aids.

Rust is a constant problem here so being able to fully dry both of my hearing aids is a real help, especially when I have just done 13 kilometres on the bike on a hot and steamy Sunshine Coast morning. The little units cost around $100 each if not a lot more.

It has a small power pack which plugs into it with a thin plug like a 3.5mm audio plug. It is a very uncommon connection. The unit stopped working recently and it appears the problem was the power pack. However I would need to buy a whole new unit and the cheapest online price was over 50 pounds from the UK. However I spotted this adapter unit at a local shop. I eventually purchased one on eBay for under $20 delivered. It works perfectly.

I also bought a new case for my Galaxy S phone for $1-60 from China. At a $1-60 delivered they obviously don't last a long time so I grabbed this one as a back-up.

This morning I purchased a wireless mouse from the USA for $4-90 delivered. It gets pretty good reviews from users both here and in the the USA. I will use it on the old PC which lives 'under the desk'. Hopefully it will cut down on wires etc every now and again when I start the old PC up. I got the deal via a website called OzBargain which is always on my daily list of websites I must visit.

Trish is at Stitchers this morning. As president she has been sorting out a few problems between members. One lady declined to do a demonstration on a particular thing for the benefit of any interested ladies. Instead she went around the corner and did one for around 10 of her friends. Needless to say she was spotted by the others and they went to Trish to voice their concerns. The lady then denied she was doing a 'demonstration', she was just showing a few people how to do it.

The phone has been going all week with poor old Trish the meat in the sandwich. She is handling the situation pretty well.

A Few Very Light Showers

The humidity has remained lower than what would normally be expected for this time of year and the temp is in the high 20's, all in all just glorious. We had around 6 mls in the rain gauge this morning but I did get an abbreviated ride in after the roads dried out a little.

I have been passing on some movies and helping people out with their PC stuff recently. So far I have been given 4 home brew cans so it looks like my supply will be OK for the next couple of months.

I returned to the elderly lady's place yesterday to sort out her internet package with Bigpond. As she is an older lady they were quite lenient with her and now she has moved to 5GB per month, had her speed lifted from 1500 to 8000 and is not on a contract. The new plan was to be available to her first thing this morning and, as I haven't received a phone call, I am guessing all is OK.

Not a lot of news, just the everyday business of enjoying our lifestyle here. Things like mowing the lawn and general tidying up with a trip to the tip is keeping us on the 'go'.

We are watching the TV series "Homeland" at the moment and we are both enjoying it enormously. We plan to watch the last 4 episodes to end series 1 tonight and can't wait. We both agree it is easily one of the very best things we have watched on TV for some time.

Perfect The Last Few Days

Still not a lot of news from us up here on the Sunshine Coast. Just 'the usual' comings and goings.

A large electrical store chain has gone into receivership and was having a Closing Down Sale beginning on Thursday. Trish wanted to visit Maroochydore and the Sunshine Coast branch of the store was nearby so we decided to pop in and check for any bargains.

The traffic was horrendous, we didn't even stop to check out any deals but just headed on to Maroochydore to complete our chores.

Friday drinks was conducted at our place this time. Friends Ian and Kerrie had other friends from NSW up. The four of them had just had a week on the Gold Coast. Ian and Kerrie were now hosting them for a few days at their place. So all six of us had a rousing time and enjoyed a chat and a few drinks in just delightfully perfect weather.

Amazingly the humidity has been down around the 30% mark the last few days as we have had very dry south weatherly winds which is most uncommon for this time of year. The temp has been in the low to mid 30's but with the low humidity it has been extremely comfortable. Today the wind is again coming off the ocean from the east so we have overcast skies and humidity back into the 60% range.

Last Sunday I helped one of our older Computer Club members get her new wireless modem/router set up. She wanted the freedom that a wireless internet connection can bring. Her grand daughter had visited recently and wanted to know why she didn't have a wireless local network. All went well during the setup but it struck me that it was an awfully slow connection. She said it is like that on Sundays! She was also having problems getting her emails through as well so I checked all the settings and everything seemed to be as it should, it was just slow.

I again had a call to see if I could pop in again as here internet wasn't working. Her emails were still slow so we got into her Bigpond Account Webmail and deleted all the larger emails and started again. Emails came through but it was still so slow. I rechecked the settings, put the old modem back on again and still things were slow.

I even went as far as to disconnect everything and taking the new wireless modem/router downstairs to another telephone point and seeing how that worked. It was still slow. I had been on this job for over 4 hours now during my two visits.

The problem had to be with the internet provider so we jumped on the phone to check the line and the service. After around 10 minutes on the phone it turned out that she had used all her internet allowance for the month and he speed had been throttled back to 'dial up' speed. This had never happened to her before. We later suggested that as she only had a 2GB per month allowance, the recent visit by her grand daughter had seen her eat up the whole 2GB.

For the same price she can now get a 5GB per month allowance. Unfortunately if she goes down this path she is again locked to her provider (Bigpond) for another 2 years, something I do not recommend!

Skies Blue Again

The rain has eventually cleared altogether now but we did have a few short showers yesterday and this morning. I only tipped 4 ml out of the gauge today.

The early morning shower were enough to keep me off my bike this morning. Anyway with around 7" of rain there will still be heaps of seepage and wet spots around the usual course I take.

I ventured back to the doctor yesterday as my stuffy cold wasn't improving. It seems the congestion is delaying the removal of the infection in my middle ear so I am on another course of strong anti-biotics. I am also on a stronger anti-histamine to dry me out and allow the anti-biotic to work more effectively. This is drying me up but it also making me drowsy. I will now take the anti-histamine at night rather than first thing in the day!

A Home Brew bottle washing day today as the photo shows. The brew should be ready to bottle sometime over the weekend.

A fair bit of yesterday was spent on Community Association business with updating the website after our Public Meeting. As our Secretary was absent from the meeting I wrote out the minutes for her as well.

When I look at the rainfall figures so far for 2012 I see we have already had 1130mls out of an annual average total of 1570. So far we have had around 45" of rain in less than three months .... but it is the wet season!

Trish is at Stitchers today and then is out with the girls for cards this afternoon.

Around 3pm she has a "Famil" (Familiarisation Tour) for some of the Tourist Info Centre volunteers. This is where a group of them are escorted around some local attractions and shown the ropes and given a taste of what the attractions have to offer. Today they finish with a short ferry trip around Caloundra. She really enjoys these. It should be all over by 6pm so that means Fish N Chips for tea!

Trish's Birthday & 7" of Rain

I didn't realize it was so long since I posted.

We are all safe and well here on the Sunshine Coast. We have had heaps of rain during the last 36 hours with over 180 mls now tipped out of the rain gauge. If you do the Maths that means 1" (or 25mls) every 5 hours which is steady consistent rain but not enough rainfall quickly enough to cause us any grief here at home.

The scene out the front door looks quite grim but all the time the temperature has stayed around the mid 20's.

We gave the newly opened Bellvista Tavern a try for lunch to celebrate Trish's birthday yesterday. It isn't a budget meal at all but it is very handy to take a 10 minute walk to the 'local'. The food was quite OK and they allowed us to set up a 'tab' so as we ate and drank it was just added to the bill. The $15 for a 'seniors' meal was OK. It must have been OK as we only required sandwiches for tea last night.

With the wet weather Trish and I watched "The Grey" with Liam Neeson during the afternoon.

I was out last night but Trish wasn't lonely answering numerous phone calls on her birthday from friends and family.

Otherwise it has been 'as usual' around here. The rain began Sunday so the pergola came down late Saturday afternoon. Prior to that we had our meetings, drinks on Thursday night last week and a lovely night out on Wednesday at a local Chinese Restaurant followed up by a trip to the RSL to see a Bee Gees "Tribute Band".

Last night I chaired a public meeting for the Community Association. Numbers were down owing to the extremely wet weather but it was a wonderful meeting with controversial speakers and issues for our local community. We have Council elections coming up here and we had all 5 candidates for our vacant position present. We also had a speaker to Crystal Ball Gaze the future of the local Airport. So it was all good controversial stuff enjoyed by all.

I am back to the doctor this morning regarding my persistent sniffly head cold which seems to be heading to my chest. I can wake up with a nasty cough and I tend to cough when speaking as something gets caught in my throat.

We are expecting a few showers today and then this afternoon I have an International One day cricket game to watch. With footy and cricket on over the weekend I hardly noticed any of the rain!