End Of The Week

Our night at the RSL was great fun.  We had a pretty reasonable meal for the RSL which isn't renowned for its food.  What it lacked in sophistication it made up for in quantity.  I had the Seafood Platter while Trish really enjoyed her lamb.

The company was excellent and the music was entertaining.  It was a Beach Boys tribute group and we danced and drank our way through the night.  It was either the size of my meal or the amount of dancing but I awoke Thursday feeling quite reasonable.

This was good because I was lined up to see the E.N.T guy for an ear clean which isn't the most pleasant of experiences.  I also had my new bike get its after sale 'free service'.  I can now get into 6th gear on the top range a lot more easily than before.  The brakes feel a lot better too.

In this area you have many walkers, some of whom like to walk around listening to their radios or music on their devices via earphones.  The bell I had put on the new bike was better than the one supplied but still not loud enough.  Yesterday I bought a bike bell which can be best described as "Big Ben".  Check out the photo!

It works really well.  It took some re jigging to get it to fit the chunky handlebars on this bike but it is now firmly fixed and in use.

Surprisingly the brew I put on a week ago continues to bubble away.  I was planning to bottle on Wednesday but elected to hold off for a day or so.  This morning, fully one week after putting the brew on, there remains the occasional bubble.

Friends Mick and Janet who we met years ago while caravanning, are staying several nights with us beginning tomorrow.  They both work and enjoy their annual Queensland holiday up from Newcastle.  They stay with us for three nights then head to their favourite resort on the Gold Coast for a chill out, sit back and relax.  It will be great to see them again.

It is a big few days for the Community Association as well. Though it isn't official just yet, we have learnt the old Land Sales Office, which is right on the lake, is to be renovated by Stockland (the developer) and given to the Sunshine Council as a Community Facility.  In turn the building will be passed on to the Community Association to 'manage'.  Press releases and photo shoots are being arranged for the big official announcement.  I am due for a photo at 4:30 tomorrow afternoon.

Also on Saturday there is an official opening of the new Bells Reach Land Sales Office.  Trish and I have been invited to it as well but as we have visitors, we have had to pass the duty on to another Committee Member and his wife.  Drinks and nibbles are involved with that one.

Then on Monday we have the association's first big Public Meeting for 2014.  The topic for discussion is the helicopter noise problem and we have the General Manager of the SC Airport coming to that.  He will bring everyone up to date on the latest developments on negotiating an alternative site for helicopter training purposes.

All of this is happening when we have visitors for the weekend.  I will need to keep an eye on my alcohol intake especially on Monday!

We have always had just one set of 3D glasses with our TV.  On Thursday I bought a cheap second set of glasses so last night Trish and I watched a 3D version of the Sandra Bullock movie "Gravity".  It was awesome!  You were ducking the space debris as it showered the astronauts during the movie.  I reckon this movie in particular lends itself well to 3D.

Footy on TV tonight when my team plays.  The cricket from South Africa returns to our TV screen tomorrow night.

Garage Smells Like A Brewery

I have been doing a brew so the smell of beer wasn't totally unexpected as I entered the garage Monday morning.  But the odour did hang around throughout the day which set me to wondering.  Later when Trish was out in the car and I again entered the garage/brewery and this time I noted an ominous wet patch around the pile of beer I have stored in polystyrene boxes.

The second bottom polystyrene box was where I discovered the source of the smell, a bottle (see left) with a section of the base almost blown right out.  Click on the photo for a larger view!

Beside it was another bottle, as taut as you would expect but with less than 5mls of beer in the bottom.  There were no holes or splits in the bottle though the lid was slightly askew!  There just wasn't any beer in it! The contents had 'disappeared'!

I cleaned it all up to the best of my ability but it remains a little off odour if you know what I mean!

I was due to bottle today but thought I might just let it go a little longer.  It is during the brewing process that lots of gas is given off.  When it has completed the brewing process, little further gas is created.  I am guessing the bottles that exploded were from brews I let sit for 5 days when perhaps one extra day would have been better for them.

The other week a neighbour asked I go over and have a look at his PC.  He was getting heaps of pop ups whenever online, his home page had been saved to something ridiculous and his PC was running very slowly.  I uninstalled three or four tool bars which had installed them selves onto his version of IE, I found several other adware programs in his "Programs And Features" in his Control Panel which I uninstalled.  We managed to get his home page back and he was happy.

I ran msconfig which allows you to get rid of stuff from the PC Startup process.  These extra but not required programs can slow the computer down as well.  I stopped around 7 or 8 things which were starting up each time on Bill's PC, things he didn't need!  If required these programs start up fine, they just take an extra 5 seconds or so to begin. But by getting rid of them from the Startup can make getting the PC up and running a lot quicker.

As a final ploy I installed Malwarebytes and ran a scan of his PC.  I get worried if I have 3 or 4 'Objects detected' after a Malwarebytes Scan, Bill had 176!  We deleted them all.  Later Bill was telling another neighbour Darren what a great job I had done with his PC.

Needless to say I am doing Darren's laptop right now.  His laptop is in much better 'nick' than Bill's PC was.  Malwarebytes has only been running for around an hour and there are only 6 "objects detected' so far.

We are off to the RSL tonight to spend our 'birthday' vouchers.  Each RSL member gets a $15 meal voucher, a free pot of beer, $5 of coins for the pokies and a few free spins on Keno.  Two of us have February birthdays.  My problem is I have an appointment with the E.N.T. (ear guy) surgeon tomorrow for an 'ear toilet'.  That's a nice way to say my operated on ear 'cleaned'.  It is unpleasant enough so to be hung over as well would make it an extremely unpleasant experience.

One Hell Of A Day!

I was sitting there at the bar staring at my drink when a large, trouble-making biker steps up next to me, grabs my drink and gulps it down in one swig.

“Well, whatcha' gonna do about it?" he says menacingly, as I burst into tears.

"This is the worst day of my life," I say.

"I'm a complete failure. I was late to a meeting, and my boss fired me.

When I went to the parking lot, I found my car had been stolen, and I don't have any insurance.

I left my wallet in the cab I took home.

I found my wife with another man... and then my dog bit me.

So I came to this bar to work up the courage to put an end to it all... I buy a drink, I drop a cyanide capsule in, and I sit here watching the poison dissolve…and then you show up and drink the whole damn thing!

... But hell, enough about me, how are you doing?"

Now you have read that, check out our latest news in the post below........

Enjoying The Milder Weather

The weather is much kinder to older people right now.  High 20's and not so bad humidity makes it extremely comfortable in this part of the world.

A couple of light showers overnight and during the day was enough to delay my bike ride this morning but nothing more.  With a little early rain around I bottle washed instead.  An hour later with the bottles all washed I was on the bike for my ride.

The cooler weather hit hard with the pool being around 23.5 this morning, a drop of several degrees from those stinker early mornings of last week.  By the end of the day that temp is usually up by around 3 degrees.  So come 4pm this afternoon the pool should be around 27.

With the arrival of the new tablet last week we have seen a spike in our eBay activity the last week or so.  A 16GB SD card was purchased along with the 'pouch' in the photo.  It is made from neoprene (wetsuit material) and set me back $6 including delivery.

Trish has loaned me one of her screen covers.  It doesn't fit perfectly but will fill the bill until my made for the Hisense Sero 7 Pro covers arrive from China.  They will take a few weeks to get here so using one of Trish's covers fills a temporary need.  I had to order her some new covers last week as I took the only spare she had.

Both of these items (pouch and screen covers) were ordered online via eBay.  They both were in the post today.

On The Tablet

We have a Melbourne weather day today. After the hot and humid conditions from early this week a cool and wet change blew in overnight. We had 19mls of rain last night and as today has progressed the temperature has cooled right off. It was 25 overnight but right now it is around 23 and showery.

For a bit of fun I am doing this on the new tablet. So we will see how it goes.

Last night we went out for a dinner party. There were 10 people altogether. We had seafood paella with heaps of prawns and mussels. There were large bits of pork as well.  The company was great. We had an excellent night out.

I had computer club today and was the victim of my own advice. Last week two members asked for advice on what laptop they should buy.  Dick Smith had a good weekend special going so both of them bought the same laptop and brought them with them to Computer Club this morning for me to help them set up.

I don't know who had more fun, them or me. 

We got a fair bit done and both laptops are able to be used OK. They will both see what software they still require and we will sort it out next Saturday.

We have a few cool days in store coming up and I don't think anyone will care. I know we won't.

A Right Stinker

It may be only 10 am here on the Sunshine Coast and it is almost 32 degrees outside.  But inside the humidity level is in the mid 70's.  Outside is a little better humidity wise but in the house and in front of a fan is sensational!  In Melbourne they call it evaporative cooling!  Without a fan the inside of the house would be stifling.

A cooler southerly wind change this afternoon should lower the humidity level and give us temps back in the high 20's again for the early part of next week.

I hope you enjoyed the joke below, it was one I am able to put on my blog (so many of the jokes I get I can't put here) and it gets a laugh!  I am not too sure Trish thought it was that funny though!

With today's hot weather the pool is a great spot.  The water is around 28 degrees.  It may have been a fraction cooler last night around 10pm but Trish stayed in for around 30 minutes prior to hitting the sack!  I was already in bed after a quick swim as the cricket was on the radio from South Africa.

A couple of us have birthdays in February so yesterday 3 couples had lunch at the Headland Golf Club.  The view there is sensational.  This photo gives you an idea of the veranda we sat on while we ate and enjoyed a few drinks. The breeze was just glorious.

Remember click on the photo for a larger view then click on the "X" to return to this page.

This lower photo gives a bit more of an idea of what the view is like from the veranda.  The tall buildings in the distance are on the beach at Mooloolaba.

This evening we are out again.  This time it is for a dinner party with 4 other couples.  I am looking forward to it.

It has been a busy day already despite the heat.  It is Newsletter Delivery time.  This time I only had around 80 to deliver but I managed to get that out of the way by 7:30 before it got too hot.  Then I had the Notice Board down at the shops to update and finally I wanted to mow the front lawn.

In between time the PC played up as I hadn't uninstalled a program properly.  I was trying a new 'beta' version 2 of a malware program I like to use.  However I preferred the previous version 1.7 so I decided to backdate to the earlier version.  I uninstalled the version 2 and was asked to restart the computer.  I elected to do that later.  I reinstalled version 1.7 and shut down my computer.

When I restarted my computer this morning one one version of the malware program was trying to finalize the uninstall, the old version was trying to start up!  In the end nothing happened, the PC just froze!  Eventually I sorted it all out.

And last but not least I put another brew on this morning so the regulatory bottle washing and bottling will occur sometime next week.

Enjoy the joke below!

Not Too Bad!

During a lady's medical examination, the doctor says:- "Your heart, lungs, pulse and blood pressure are all fine.

Now let me see the bit that gets you ladies into all kinds of trouble."

The lady starts taking off her undies but is interrupted by the doctor.

"No! No!  Leave your knickers on ... Just stick out your tongue!"

Another Year Older

My birthday has come and gone.  Yesterday was the big day but it was almost foiled by my recent purchase of a 7" tablet.  I ordered the tablet from W.A. around lunchtime Friday and surprisingly it was due for delivery sometime yesterday (Mon).

I had expected it would have taken longer than that to be delivered but come 12:30 it was in my hands.

This meant we still had time to head out for lunch.  We headed to the Mooloolaba Surf Club.  It is a really pretty spot overlooking the magnificent Mooloolaba surf beach.

The meal is best described as fairly basic pub fare but we sure weren't hungry when we left.  I had the 'Senior's Fish'.  For $15 you got your meal, an open go at the roast vegetable servery, and a schooner of beer!  The roast vegies meant you could have as much as you like.

I have had a much better meal but I have had a lot worse as well. The top photo is where we ate our meal while the other photo shows the beach itself.

Click on both photos for a larger view.

We had a quick walk along the beach and then we headed off for some shopping.

I had another media player to buy and set up for a friend of my neighbour.  Trish had some things to check out at Spotlight.

After a Vegemite Sandwich for our evening meal we watched the last 5 episodes of "The Tunnel".  We enjoyed the series very much.  It was a very good murder mystery!  That is we watched the five episodes in between phone calls from well wishers and members of the family.

To cap a great day off, we even had 11 mls of much wanted rain overnight.  Today the lawn is green again and the pool is quite full of water!  On top of this the plants have had a decent water as well. 

I just love the card I got from Trish.  I hope you get a laugh from it as well.

Tuesday was as expected after my purchases and delivery on Monday.  I had a media player to set up and then I had a new tablet to sort out.  From there we headed to the Caloundra RSL for a lunch.  The food was OK, as usual really for the local RSL.

It was a great couple of days.

The weather has been hot and very humid.  It doesn't take much to get a sweat up and a swim before settling into bed at night is a must.  Some more rain and showers are due over the next few days.  The pool was 27 degrees this morning when I enjoyed my 'after bike ride' swim.  I am about to head back to the pool right now!

Whirlpool BC to the Rescue

As many will know my birthday isn't far away.  I decided to buy myself a 7" tablet, and if you know me, I am looking for the best tablet at the cheapest price.  The one to go for at the moment is the Google Nexus 7, 2nd generation.  But it has a couple of drawbacks like being unable to take an SD card to extend its memory.

But it has a very good top of the range processor which means it should run quite quickly.  The Google Nexus 7 2nd generation costs around $285.

I do enjoy a website called Whirlpool BC.  It is a 'forum' where everyone can talk to everyone about most things electrical or computer.  There is a section there on Android Tablets.

I was reading through the forum and stumbled upon a 'thread' on a 7" tablet put out by Hisense called a Sero 7 Pro.  Its specs almost match the Google Nexus 7 in many areas but it does has an SD Card slot and is available from Betta Electrical stores for $159.

It is one of the very few tablets which also uses the same processor as the Google Nexus 7.

I typed the name of the tablet into Google and added the word review.  "Hisense Sero 7 Pro Review".

The reviews it gets for a $159 tablet are excellent.  One person wrote they went into to buy a 7" Samsung tablet but walked out with one of these instead and saved a heap of cash. They have had it for several months now and couldn't be happier.

Most people seem to be buying them from Retravision or Betta Electrical stores.  There aren't any Retravision stores in Queensland (only in W.A.) and there are only three Betta Electrical stores in S/E Queensland, the nearest were down in Brisbane.  I rang both Brisbane stores to be told they had been sold out  A third store in Gympie (100k's north) had one left at $159.  To buy it from that store online would add $48 postage and handling to the price!

I browsed the Whirlpool website and asked if anyone else knew of a place for me to buy one nearby. A Whirlpool guy suggested Retravision online.  I jumped onto the PC and the Retravision online store where I purchased one for $149 and $10-93 postage and handling!

I don't have to leave home and it costs me an extra 93c had I been able to buy one in S/E Queensland. It should be delivered early next week.

The weather is warming up here.  We are expecting 35 over the weekend.  I actually had a swim at the beach yesterday.  But they have this horrible yellow stuff called "sand" everywhere at the beach.  It sticks to you and is awfully uncomfortable.

Our pool looks a great option.  My beer wasn't quite ready to bottle this morning so it looks like I am bottling first thing tomorrow morning before I go to Computer Club.

The laptop I was working on went back to the owner.  I said I would be interested in considering to buy it but only for around $300.  You would be up for heaps if something went wrong and it was already over 2 years old.  I haven't heard anything from her so I guess she will continue to try for a better price.

Yep, It's Wednesday!

Things have continued to cruise along.  Not too many hassles and most days the max temp is around the 30 degree mark.  It's not too hot (unless you get outside and do stuff like mow lawns or something).  We have noticed a slight morning chill in the air the last day or so.  I did wash the car yesterday afternoon and found an icy home brew and quick swim in the pool a great way to cool off.

But still there hasn't been any extreme heat to contend with.

Mostly we have been unwinding after the hectic day we had on Friday with the success for the Community Association and the helicopter operators.  You can check it all out here.  There is even an online video of a report on the Forum Meeting itself.

The Committee Member who does the Newsletter is away in Sydney so I took that role back on for the February issue.  It is like riding a bike, once you have done it a few times you never forget.  We usually just copy/paste from website items and modify them slightly so the fit or read properly.

I guess it took me an hour or so to put it all together.  I then upload it online and invite committee members to download it and check it for me.  Trish has a close look at it as well so any hassles, misspellings or bits which don't make sense get sorted.  Then it is emailed to one of the local MP's whose staff print off 1400 copies for us.

Jess, who lives over the road, has a 17.5" i7 Acer laptop.  It was top of the range a couple of years ago and remains a top notch performer even by today's standards.  Now she goes to uni she is after something a little easier to set up on her desk.  The 17'5" screen is great but it is just too big for her current needs.

She wants to sell it for $500.  That seems a fair bit to me despite the specs of what it has.  Laptops after a couple of years can be great or the screen can die, the keyboard stop functioning or other smaller hassles.  The battery is probably close to its use-by date as well.  When you can get a brand new i5 15" laptop for $650 if you hunt around or wait for specials, the $500 for this one is a on the high side of what it could sell for.

She asked me to tidy it up for her and her dad dropped it off yesterday.  Well it took almost 10 minutes to load after turning it on.  Then I started getting pop ups saying this and that were not compatible with Windows7.  It was almost unusable.

I was able to create a set of backup disks (4xDVD's) which I created just in case.  This took almost two hours.  It had an inbuilt "Return to Factory Condition" function as well.  So around 3 hours later it had been returned to just like it was the day she bought it.  It loads in a little over a minute and now seems to work fine.  I spent almost 5 hours on it in total to get it 'back'.

But for all that it remains a two year old laptop.  I would be interested in buying it but not for the $500 she is asking for it.  The Computer Club used to sell its laptops for $200 when they were being upgraded.  They weren't as powerful as this one is but that gives a clue on how much I would consider paying for it.  I will tell her I am possibly interested but not at that price.

Today I bottle washed getting ready for Friday's bottling!  Everything has almost dried out in the backyard from the bottle washing so it has to go away shortly ready for Friday.

The AFL Pre season starts on TV tonight so that suits me fine!  I don't think Trish is so keen as there is a new game every day/night for the next 18 nights!  But let the footy begin!

Morning Showers

It is Sunday.  At this stage of life most days are like Sunday so it can be hard to differentiate.  Morning showers and an overcast sky mean any bike riding for today is put on hold.  We have had 5mls but that is enough to make things too wet to ride. And with the water harvesting device, the pool is again full!

My PC app tells me it is around 32 degrees right now (9:00 am our time) down in Melbourne and they are expecting around 40 today.  Here it will be more like 30 today.

It is the close of what finished up being a busy week.

The Community Association has been campaigning against the huge (and deliberate) increase we have had recently had of helicopter touch n go's.  At its worst we would get two very large helicopters doing repetitive touch n go's for 5 hours at a time.  Someone calculated this as 120 movements directly over homes in a one five hour session.

People couldn't sleep if shift workers, the TV needed to be turned up, phone conversations would stop till an aircraft passed by and many of our older residents were becoming visibly stressed by the constant barrage of noise.  The Community Association of which I am President began an email campaign to Councillors, Airport Management, the Helicopter Company operator and our MP.

In early December a delegation from our group met with the local MP and raised our concerns.  He was going to negotiate with the State Govt Forestry Minister to see of some satellite spot could be found away from homes for these aircraft to do their training.

It culminated Friday morning  in a Forum Meeting the local MP called to discuss the situation.  Over 300 noisy and concerned residents attended and the debate raged for well over an hour.  As President of the group which began the email campaign I was in the thick of it. TV stations were there gathering stuff for the Local News.

Eventually our local MP announced that several possibly appropriate spots had been identified and that we could expect to see the vast number of repetitive circuits by helicopters would disappear from over our homes.

You can read the full report on the Forum Meeting here.

Computer Club was 'same old same old' yesterday.  I deliberately slowed down a little rather than rushed about everywhere.  I helped as many as I could.  One guy arrived late and sought help.  I said I would try my best to get to him.  He left after an hour or so but I wasn't going to rush just to give him 'free' help!

There is a cricket match on TV today from New Zealand which will keep me occupied.  And later this evening plenty of recently downloaded movies and TV Shows to enjoy.

The PC has had Windows Explorer freeze and restart twice in over a week since I downgraded the Graphics Driver.  Previously this would occur several times a day.  And the dreaded "Blue Screen Of Death" has totally disappeared!  The PC is running very well again.

Lazy Days

Things continue to 'mozey' along quietly.  We have had a shower or two of rain, usually only a ml or 2 each day and generally sometime during the morning.  On Monday morning the rain shower arrived well after I was back from my ride.

And really there is very little to comment on.

Movies and TV shows are downloaded, processed and watched.  The pool gets cleaned most days.  We have had an easterly recently and with the new estate just a short distance away the strong wind has been giving us hassles with dust.

The Community Association  has been very busy lately.  I had a Committee Meeting to chair last night which was attended by our local Councillor.  He came in for a pretty tough time over the recent huge increase in helicopter flights overhead.  We have had around 50 complaints from residents and some very heated discussion on our Facebook page. Emails of complaint have been flying all over the place.

This piece appeared in the local Regional Newspaper today (HERE).  That was an interview I did last week.  I later last week had my photo taken with the State MP but it didn't make the paper this time.  I hear there are some possible follow up articles to come but we will wait and see.

After a Committee Meeting there is always an extensive web site follow up to do.  It is almost like I am back at work some days.  I had an elderly lady ring me yesterday almost in tears over the helicopters and their noise.  I get the feeling we are being used and pointed that out in a web article HERE from our Community Association website.

I received a letter from Hyundai late last week saying our car was in for a service recall.  A small switch needed replacing so I had that done this morning.  That is why I missed the rain today on my bike ride, I was off having the car done.

The PC has been behaving itself without a problem.  It seems reverting to the much older Nvidia driver has fixed the problem but we will give it a few more days before declaring all is well and 100% again.

But since Saturday afternoon there hasn't been a hiccup.

We have a T20 game on tonight and again tomorrow so the TV watching is sorted!

I might just give the pool a look and enjoy a cold home brew now to finish off the afternoon.

A Lazy Saturday Afternoon

There isn't any sport on TV and it is Saturday.  That has left me with time to mess about on the PC.  It hasn't been operating as smoothly as usual and I am trying a few things to see if I can sort it out.  It will freeze every now and again so I began keeping a record of what I was doing at the time of the freeze.  I discovered it was always the same program I was using when it froze. The program was "Mailwasher".  I tried different versions of it and still that was the program running when the PC froze.

Every now and again my Windows Explorer would crash, (that is all the icons, the bar at the foot of the screen and things on the screen would disappear).  All that was left running on the screen was the background picture.  Sometimes I would get a pop-up message saying that the Nvidia Driver had recovered from a crash. This driver helps run the PC's graphics card which looks after all desktop items and things on the monitor.  After a couple of coughs and splutters everything would reappear back on the screen again as the driver 'recovered'!

So today I have gone back to an 'older' version of the Nvidia driver.  The screen looks a little different and when things open on the monitor they look a different size to what they used to be.  I also got a couple of 'blue screens of death' which means there is a problem on the PC somewhere with the hardware and its driver.  I hoping this backdating of the Nvidia graphics driver will solve my problem.

I noted that Mailwasher froze my PC when I changed the program's theme color.

Everything works perfectly when I restart the computer.  I will see if the backdating of the graphics driver helps.

I had computer club today and the usual round of problems with people's laptops, tablets or android phones.  I reckon I sold 2 Huawei Y300 phones today and possibly a WDTV media player as well.  People want everything for nothing when sometimes all you really need is the right equipment in the first place.

Drinks was good fun again last night.  It looks like we will not be 'drinksing' next Friday as one couple is interstate and the other is heading out for the night.

I bottled the latest brew yesterday.  Later in the day I headed into the Home Brew shop in town for some mixers for Sambucca and Bourbon to be used on the 1.125l of alcohol I was given last week.  When I arrived at the Home Brew shop I was delighted to find someone I had helped left me $50 there on 'my account'.  The mixers all worked well and I have several cans of Home Brew mix in storage for future use.

The Sambucca not only requires flavouring it requires a 'thickener' as well.  The stuff I buy can be seen in the picture.

I was given a Coopers English Bitter to make and it tastes OK as well.  All my stocks of alcohol are topped up again now.