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.