End Of The Week

It is just before 7 am on Saturday, the end of the week but the beginning of the weekend.  Our cooler weather has continued and we even received a surprise drop of rain overnight Friday with 38mls ending up in the rain gauge.

The lawns are all mowed and the grass is nice and green following all the recent rain.  The pool is full and this photo shows the sort of day we are looking forward to today.

A nice and sunny 33º is expected this afternoon.  And if all goes to plan, it will in the be low 20's and very comfortable overnight.

I helped out a neighbour's mate yesterday and tidied up his computer for him.  There is an increasing amount of internet browser hi jacking going on.  I just managed to get rid of one hi jacker on his Internet Explorer yesterday on his computer when another web browser hi jacker took over.

And what they do is that almost every icon that you click on to get on the internet has been changed into a link to a certain search engine which will only lead you to the sites they want you go to.  So you click on the icon to get onto Internet Explorer, and you are taken instead to a rogue search engine site albeit via Internet Explorer.

The only way to fix it is to get a shortcut from Internet Explorer itself in the "program" folder and swap it for every IE icon you can find on your desk top or in the Start Menu!  It can take some time to check them all out.

Anyway it is fixed now.  I also installed Malwarebytes and ran it.  The program discovered and quarantined over 700 suspicious files!  All is even better now after I also installed an anti-virus program for him.

The guy uses the computer mainly for downloading via Bittorrent and he didn't even have an Anti-Virus program installed!

We have a State Election today so I have to go and vote somewhere.  I will do that on my way to Computer Club.

We still have plenty of sport on TV with the Ladies Australian Open Tennis Championship on tv tonight along with the final of the Asian Cup soccer match!  The remote will sure get a workout.  The pool looks good for this afternoon as well.

I am hopeful my replacement modem/router will be available this upcoming week.  The older one I am using continues to 'lose' items on the local network.  It requires a restart around 4 times a day when I need to get things back.  Hopefully the replacement I receive will fix that.  It is due next week or the week after.

Cloudy, Overcast and Gloriously Cool!

It has been cloudy with intermittent light showers throughout the day today.  We have probably had around 4mls of rain.  But the temperature has struggled to get above 26º.  I did manage a quick swim this morning and it was warmer in the pool than out of it.  But then the clouds came back and it cooled off again.

We believe we are due for a delightfully cool day. Recently we have sweltered through 34º and high humidity!  At 4pm today it is a comfortable 24º. I didn't get a bike ride in this morning because of the rain showers, but I did get to bottle my latest brew. Home Brew supplies are again running at 100%.

The kids from the street outside have all gone back to school.  We don't mind the sound of them playing and enjoying themselves, it is just that little bit nicer when they are not at home.  Even the young autistic boy from next door has started 'special' school.  That gives his Mum some free time.

We celebrated Australia Day on Monday with friends around for prawns, snags, lamb chops, salads and one of Tricia's famous Pavlovas.  It all went down very well indeed.  We had our friends around who have moved house to around 5k's away.  They both enjoy their drinks but Ian spent the day on Light Beer.  I don't think he enjoyed the day as much as the rest of us.

We expect we'll be invited over to their place next but with the laws and restrictions on drink driving means that probably won't happen.

The TV remote has been battling again.  With the Australian Tennis Open Championships, the one day International Cricket, and the Asian Soccer Cup all going on right now in Australia there is heaps to watch on TV.

We have all these great movies to watch but the sport on TV means they remain quietly on the Hard Disk drive!

My internet connection remains OK but I need to reboot the modem/router several times a day to get access to the network printer and the media player.  I recently had to reboot the modem router so I could transfer the photo above from my phone to the PC via the wireless network.

I managed to bamboozle a couple of mates from computer Club who popped around to see how I downloaded my movies.  I have setup an RSS feed program which monitors all the new movies which come to their websites.  This program then filters the TV Shows I want to get so that I get when a show I want is available to download.

They were busy jotting down notes and taking photos with their phones trying to keep up.  I kept on telling them ALL the informations is here:  http://mediahowto00.blogspot.com.au/

Right now in the US there is a series on the History Channel called "Sons of Liberty".  So whenever a copy of a new episode of "Sons of Liberty" becomes available for download, I get a notification on my desktop!  The 3rd and final episode isn't available until Thursday morning our time.

And The Rains Came!

Two posts in one day!

It is mid afternoon and we have totalled around 130mls of rain (or over 5") since it first began overnight last night.  And we have just had one almighty heavy shower of rain.

Our backyard has been setup to cope with heavy rain and that recent shower was perfect to see how well our planning had worked. There is a 'drain' beneath these stones in the photo.  It connects to the house' storm water drainage system.  The pool overflow also connects to the same pipe.

The drain under the new 'pergola' connects into the drain underneath the stones.  Everything connects into the one storm water drain along the back of the house. So the water build up you see in the above photo is made worse by the new pergola drain emptying into it.

This photo shows the pergola drain.  If you look carefully at a larger view of it, you can see the build up of water under the pergola is almost but not quite overflowing back into the pool.

The area under the pergola is like a large spoon and is able to hold water until it has been able to drain away.

The shower of rain eased and within two minutes all excess water from around the pool had disappeared!  So no water flowed into the pool.

The designs to handle heavy rain have all worked very well indeed.

Friday

It has now been almost 48 hours since Chris, Wendy and family headed back home to Melbourne.  Things here couldn't be any more different.  The misty photo right shows what we have awoken to this morning, a cool and very wet day is in store for us.  Already I have tipped 39mls (an inch and a half) from the rain gauge and it is teeming down again now as I type.

Yesterday Trish was busy washing sheets and towels and putting things 'back' again. Despite a few rain showers, most of the washing is pretty dry.   But we did have a great time with the family up here and we hope they enjoyed themselves too.

I have turned off the water harvesting from the house roof to the pool!  The pool is quite full at the moment and the harvested water is just being fed back into the pool and then from the pool overflow back into the storm water system and out into the street.  I have now removed the pool overflow plug which 'manages' excess water without flushing it out of the pool.  This plug is currently fully removed and assisting the excess water in the pool to drain away.

Ants have been on the move and the 'anti-ant spray' has been in full use.

I have worked out a temporary fix for my home wireless network.  After a while the home wireless network 'loses contact' with the printer and the media player.  The computers can always 'see each other', but other periphery devices tend to drop off.

So if Trish wants to print from her laptop via the wireless networked printer there are times when it just doesn't work because the printer has disappeared from the network.  It is still 'there', it is just that the modem/router can no longer 'see' it.

To get the printer or the media player back on the network usually I just restart the device and after a minute or so it reappears on the network and can be used.  Another way to fix things is to restart the old Billion modem/router I am using while a replacement for my newer but not working properly TP-Link modem/router is being processed.

I have set up this 'switch' between an extension lead and the old Billion modem/router power pack and I have placed it within easy reach of my keyboard.  Every now and again I flick the red switch off, wait 10 seconds and then switch it back on again. Within a minute or so the Billion has been restarted, the network and all its devices re established and everything is up and running again!

Things may stay that way for several hours before they slip away again.  I quick flick of the switch off and back on gets all sections of the network available again.

Off Back To Home

Chris, Wendy and the family set off to return home to Melbourne this morning.  Trish drove them to Brisbane Airport where they are currently winging their way back to Melbourne.

On Tuesday they all went off to the local smaller than anything on the Gold Coast "Fun Park" known as Aussie World.  It is certainly less expensive for a family of four but doesn't have the range of fun rides that the larger theme parks have.

But I don't think that mattered one iota.  The park had its final ride over by 5pm, their "Closing Time".  The kids drove home around 5:20pm!  Andrew estimates he had around 50 rides all together.  There was minimal queuing up and at the end of the day you could just walk up and get on the ride.

The "Giant Redback" was a big hit with them all. The day was a great success.

This morning the kids had a 'final' swim in the pool prior to packing up and heading off to the airport.

I think they had a great time and I know we just loved having them here.

A Break From The Sizzling Summer Temperatures

Though yesterday (Monday) had a top temperature of the low 30's, it was a welcome change from the high humidity and oppressive conditions of the previous few days.  The air-con is back in hibernation but the ceiling fans continue to get a workout.

Yesterday was partly cloudy where as today is all over cloud cover.  There is a strong north easterly blowing cooling the place off marvelously.

With so much oppressive humidity there has been the mandatory heavy thunderstorm which has cleared the atmosphere.  The only problem was the thunderstorm came through at around midnight last night putting on a tremendous light show with flashes of lightning going on for around an hour.

The were some enormous claps of thunder as well, one which seemed to sound in the street just out front!  That was enough for Emily, she sought the safety of mum and dad's bed until the storm subsided.  We received around an inch of rain which was sorely needed after the recent hot weather.

As you can see from the photo above, kids sleeping conditions are a little crowded but they seem to get enough sleep OK. Andrew likes the couch which just so happens to be directly below the ceiling fan!  Emily is more than happy with the blow up mattress on the floor.

They only need sheets at this time of year which are folded after they wake making tidying up quite straight forward.

Yesterday they drove to Noosa (around 60k's north) then worked their way slowly back stopping at Coolum and Mooloolaba for a swim!

Today is their last full day with us.  The fly home tomorrow.  I suspect the beach is the planned destination for today but right now it is quite overcast.  It certainly isn't cool!

There is loads of sport on TV right now.  The coverage of the tennis is great with 2 separate channels covering the tournament.  One channel focuses on the one sided matches on Centre Court with all the highly ranked players playing against much lower ranked players.  The second channel focuses on other close matches.  Then there are live cricket matches going on as well.

The modem/router went back to the place where it was bought from for replacement yesterday.  I may have to wait some time (like several weeks) until a replacement arrives.  I plan to totally reset the modem/router I am currently using to see if I can get it to 'hold' network settings.

Another Hot Day

It is 33º outside right now with around 60% humidity.  At 11 am the air conditioner just went on again!  Last night it was on for much of the evening after the gang returned from their day in Brisbane.

The water in the pool is over 30º as well.  So though the pool is a great place to escape the heat, it isn't enough to really cool you off.

Chris, Wendy and the family are doing well to handle this spell of hot weather up here.  By this stage you would have expected a thunder storm around 4pm clearing the humidity away and cooling the place down. But as yet there isn't a thunderstorm and there doesn't look like being one.

It is the 'wet' season so this length of dry weather is out of the ordinary!  Even our regular after lunch sea-breeze has deserted us.

There is a cricket match on TV this afternoon so that will be my major focus.  Chris will be joining me I am sure.  A couple of 3D movies I downloaded have been very popular with the kids and kept them occupied.

This morning we did the Caloundra Bulcock Street Market.  The photo above shows a random general shot of some of the shoppers walking up and down the various stalls.  We did a quick tour of the market but didn't buy anything except for some fruit and soft drinks before heading home again.

The air con will be great and provide a haven from the heat for the rest of today!

A Hot Saturday Afternoon

It is around 34º in the backyard right now and it is a bit sticky as well.  The pool water is 31.7º so you really don't go into the water to cool off.  You do go in to escape the heat.  I have the 3m umbrella set up to give shade to the seat end of the pool and that is where I have been for the last 20 minutes.

Trish, Chris and family have gone to Brisbane for the day.  They went by train  after driving from here to Caboolture.  Caboolture is to Brisbane like Pakenham is to Melbourne. Brisbane city car-parking is described as the most expensive in Australia.

With 5 going meant all could fit into one car.  I went to computer Club instead.  It was both quiet and extremely hot there this morning!  Fortunately the attendance numbers are down so it is a leisurely couple of hours just helping out a little here and there.

Yesterday was to the beach in the morning for our visitors and our pool for the afternoon.  It was a little warmer yesterday so the beach and the pool were the spots to be.

A few nights ago we went to King's Beach for a late swim and then had fish 'n chips on the beach.  It was very pleasant as the photo above shows.  The photo was taken with my new 'cheap' $115 phone!

It has been a busy day or so for the Community Association as well.  We have a State election coming up.  I received a call from the local MP inviting me to attend a Media Release.  The two local TV News TV Stations would be there.  It was to announce the new temporary Satellite Helicopter Training Facility.  This is not new "News" and is something which has been around the 'traps' for a while.

We are still waiting for one final approval from Council before it is all signed sealed a delivered. But this doesn't matter during an election campaign!  Any good news from the State Government immediately is usurped by the "Electioneering" system and becomes swept up.  The photo shows the local MP during the TV recording.  I had just finished my bit for the TV.

There was even a bit in the local Newspaper as well.  See HERE,  I decided to watch the cricket on TV last night rather than any of the local TV News Services!

This morning I received an email from TP-Link, the manufacturers of my poor performing modem/router to begin warranty proceedings so I can get a new replacement.  I will make a couple of calls on Monday morning and see where I stand!

We Remain Connected

It is certainly a lot livelier around the small Thomas household right now with Chris and his family here with us.  The pool has been sensational and you just notice the huge improvement in the kids' water confidence even in the short time they have been here.

Yesterday they went to Australia Zoo.  They saw everyone, Kerrie Irwin, Bindi and Bob Jnr all were on stage.  Chris wasn't too keen on the $170 entry for his family but 8 hours later when they arrived back home exhausted they said how much they had enjoyed it. They checked out all the animals and the various activities available across the day.

Today they have all gone to Montville (see above) which isn't my favorite place to visit.  Especially as today is a 'scorcher' with temps around the mid 30's.  And there is some humidity as well.  There are plans of the beach later on and Fish 'n Chips there for tea.  I reckon the pool may be the best plan.

I continue to fiddle with the internet connection.and th modem/routers.  Currently the old Billion doesn't seem to miss a beat.  I updated the TP-Link's firmware this morning after they had all gone to Montville and reconnected it  for a short time.  I did a download via Usenet on the TP-Link.  The download speed varied from rock solid to just OK and I began getting error messages from several of the bots (connections - you connect 15 connections at a time with Usenet).  The error messages said "Unable to contact Server".

I disconnected the TP-Link and reconnected the Billion.  I continued the same download again and it came through pretty much full speed and there weren't any error messages. So I guess I know where the problem is.

The TP-Link has a 3 year Warranty so I sent an email back to TP-Link support asking the what was my next step after updating the firmware. Hopefully I will get a brand new replacement!

I did take a few minutes to go through the TP-Link's settings and copy down mine as carefully as I could.

Every time I reconnect the TP-Link it again takes over all the local area network settings.  So I no longer can print nor can I see the media player to easily swap files across the house.  So when the TP-Link goes off, I have to go back and sort out all the devices on the network again.  Trish comes up and says she can't print her files.  A few minutes later and it is all sorted.

Things Appear To Be Much Better

Things are certainly on the improve.  Chris, Wendy, and the grand children Andrew and Emily arrived here at our home around 3:30 yesterday (Tuesday) afternoon.  Trish had collected them from Brisbane airport after they flew in from Melbourne, they grabbed some quick lunch and then headed here to the Sunshine Coast.

If they arrived here at 3:30pm, then the two grand kids were in the pool before 3:45pm!  It wasn't long before several of the adults joined them.  The day was overcast so they arrived to a relatively cool day.  It will certainly be hotter over the next few days.

After a BBQ tea they were back in the pool again enjoying an after dark swim.  The two kids slept on blow up mattresses in the lounge room under the fan.  However 14 year old Andrew decided the couch was a better option for him and that is where he eventually slept.

Right now they are on their way to Australia Zoo.  Now we have the 'old' car here on the Sunshine Coast they are off using that.  Chris is very afraid the car will break down and he will be stranded despite the same car recently travelling around 2000k's from Melbourne back to the Sunshine Coast.

We expect them home around mid afternoon for a cool swim!

Now to my internet connection.  The small picture above is graphic representation of a download coming through the internet.  And that is how it should be, rock solid green.  I am currently using the old 'Billion" modem/router.  I can't say there hasn't been a dropout because there has.  There appeared to be one dropout yesterday (Tues) during some extensive downloading.

I have just now (Weds am) 'reset' the modem/router after updating some settings.  I now remember at one occasion we returned this modem/router to "Factory Settings", erasing the settings I had added.  I like to set a 'fixed' LAN address for the Media Player and also the printer.  After adjusting these settings, the modem/router must be restarted so therefore it goes off line and reconnects on restart. This will show up as a dropout at my ISP.

I have the 'dead' TP-Link modem router sitting beside the fully functioning Billion.  I rang TP-Link yesterday about the problem I was having and before they will replace it under its 3 year warranty they want me to update the 'firmware'.  They believe this will confirm if the problem is software or the modem/router hardware has failed.  This task will have to wait till after Chris and family return home.

Better But Still Not Right

My internet connection is better but still not right.  I was speaking with Internode Support early this afternoon and the lass I was speaking with described my connection as unstable.  I continue to get dropouts but it now reconnects by itself.  Previously it would reconnect sometimes.  And when it wouldn't reconnect, then it wouldn't reconnect at all but would require a 'reset' from the wholesaler.

We are trying something 'new'.  As it seems the internet connection is more consistent, if unstable, we are currently running on one of my older modem/routers.  It is set up on another phone plug near the kitchen bench in another room.

That now means everything is connected 'wirelessly'.  The white dongle you can see in the photo is a cheap wireless adapter I bought a long time ago from China for under $10.

It is currently connecting the main PC to the internet wirelessly, via the local wireless network (LAN).

By everything being connected I now mean, our phones, the media player, my internet radio, the printer, all laptops and the main PC.  I had to go to all these things do a search of all networks they could find, select the new SSID (Wireless Network Name) and type in the password.

I will call "Support" back tomorrow and they will report on further instances of 'dropouts'.  If there are no dropouts, the culprit will be my 'new' wireless modem'!

I wouldn't be surprised if this is the problem!

No Letup On Internet Woes

Arj has just updated his blog page in Saudi Arabia.  It is setup a little differently now as you go to this page, then click on the title of the latest blog to get the latest news.

The photo shows them on their Desert Bash they did recently when some of visiting Arjs's relatives in Abu Dabhi where they spent Christmas.

The bottles are now washed for my upcoming bottling which I will do tomorrow (Monday).

It was around 10am yesterday Saturday that the internet dropped out yet again.  I wasn't happy as you could imagine as it meant another 25 minutes waiting on the phone again to get through to "Support".  This time we tried most things all over again except for the need for me to get under the office table.

I have a third modem/router so we set it up as well but the same fault continued.  I had the adsl light shining brightly on my modem/router, but the internet connection light stayed blank.  Around half an hour later I was told the fault would be passed onto the wholesaler for attention yet again.

In the past this means another couple of hours until things are reconnected.  But this time it was almost 12 hours until we were back online!  We were 'out' most of the rest of the day so that didn't hurt too much. Hopefully the extra time prior to reconnection means they tried to really fix the problem!

I turned my PC back on around 10pm on Saturday and the wireless keyboard started doing all sorts of weird things, I couldn't type and at times when I clicked on a link I got a series of options I had never seen before.  On top of my internet woes, I now couldn't 'converse' fully with my PC because of a malfunctioning keyboard and mouse.

It was all too much for me.  I could feel the blood pressure rising and a feeling of illness began to overwhelm me.  These familiar sensations took me back to the days when I went off on leave from work because of a stress related illness.  It is not a pleasant feeling!  And just when you think that 15 years afterwards I am fully recovered, I am again reminded this is not the case!

During the afternoon we were invited to attend a birthday party at the local tavern for one of our friends up here.  It was a financial rip off with an overpriced set menu forced upon the party organizer.  I don't think we will be back there any birthday party again. The steep price meant several family members from Brisbane declined to attend, especially those families with young teenage children.  Each person was to be charged $27 for a meal!

We finished the evening back at their home where the party continued.  We were the only non-family members in attendance so we felt just a little left out at times.

But it was good fun!

It is now Sunday and I have had a very ordinary night's sleep.  I feel a little better but still not 100%.  I found by removing the batteries from the wireless keyboard had managed to 'reset' it and it began working again as it should.

The internet still remains connected.  Today will be a quiet day moving between the pool and my recliner to watch even more tennis or now soccer on TV.  I do look forward to a good night's sleep this evening.

More On The Internet Connection

I received a call from a Telstra Technician yesterday afternoon in relation to our repetitive internet dropouts.  Telstra are the wholesaler for our ISP.

He confirmed the problem was an authentication problem.  That means the internet connected OK, it just had trouble logging in to our internet supplier Internode.

He scratched his head and looked a little perplexed.  These are the most difficult problems to solve and could be caused by a myriad of circumstances.  Our internet connection to just outside the house is full speed for our area.  However internet speed is not the problem, the problem is the occasional dropout.

He has a quick check of the house and how we were setup.  He just made suggestions on what we could do to eliminate possible dropouts.  He suggested we move the modem/router.  It used to sit on top of the fridge but he has had cases where an older fridge would cause modem/router problems as it clicked on to start or stop.

He suggested we update our internet filters as well.  He said if we could do without the wall phone we could remove it as well its the attached filter.

As a final step he arranged for us to be moved to a new port at our local "RIM".  We now have a new internet filter, the modem/router no longer sits on the fridge but has been moved.  The port has been swapped.

Now it is a case of wait and see.

The showers have gone away and we are enjoying warmer and drier weather.  I managed a bike ride yesterday before settling down in front of the TV to watch the cricket.  As the cricket is on Free To Air TV I can watch it in the 'office' as well.  There is heaps of tennis to watch as well.  The Asian Football Cup soccer competition is on too so I have international soccer to enjoy.

The TV remote is going berserk.

Computer Club begins for 2015 today but I won't get there.  We have a friends coming over at around 11 am and then we have a lunch commitment.  The cricket is at a vital and interesting stage as well.  And I do have a bottle washing to complete.

Yesterday the pool had its mid season check up at the pool shop.  The water sample I took indicated the pool needed a bag of salt and 1kg of Stabilizer.  This is par for the course at this time of of the season.  The pool is now in readiness for Chris, Wendy and family arrive on Tuesday for a week with us. Final sorting out of things is underway in preparation for their visit.

Now to my bottle washing ....

Still Online

We are 'officially' online again but practically our internet connection is best described as tenuous. I noticed this morning as I was acquiring some large files that the download would suddenly totally stall.  When using free download sites this isn't uncommon.

When I checked the modem I saw the ADSL light was shining brightly but the "Internet" light was off when this happened.  And when I lose the internet this is what is happening.  However a few seconds later the light returns and I am back online 'officially' again.

The download was stalling because the internet connection was dropping out!

I have a program on my PC which shows graphically how any download is going.  When in action, the download shows up as green on the graph.

During the dropout observed in this screenshot, you can 'see' when the download stopped and then when it recommenced as the connection returned.

So I am having repetitive short drop outs of my internet service, especially when it is under some load.  So it was back onto my ISP "Support" on the phone again this morning. They verified there were several short dropouts and that the internet service was still not operating properly.  A further escalation of the fault was created seeking further attention again from the wholesaler.

In this country Telstra are the major supplier of telephony services.  They have built much of the infrastructure and they 'own' it.  So my ISP has to 'rent' its internet connections from Telstra to onsell to me.  It is only in the larger centres where various ISP's have installed their own equipment in telephone exchanges. Needless to say, internet access through a private company's own equipment is less costly!

I still get a slightly cheaper deal with my current ISP rather than using the Telstra's "Bigpond" internet service.

At least this time I didn't have to climb under the office table again to manipulate plugs and things at the phone point!

There was quite a few great movies to acquire today, one being "The Imitation Game".

Off and On, Off and On!

Off and on, off and on describes our internet connection over the last 36 hours.  Around a month ago we lost our internet connection.  This meant ringing our supplier, lodging a request and they get onto the wholesaler (in this case the national carrier Telstra) to fix the problem.  In all cases it takes just a matter of a few hours for things to be reconnected.

We lost our connection again on Monday evening around 6pm.  Not much could be done at that time of night so I had to again call "Support" the following morning.  The call was answered quickly and we go through all the hoops and jumps again to try to determine where the fault is. This usually means removing all attachments from phone points around the house, turning equipment off and then back on again or trying a different phone point or phone lead connector.

Our phone point here for the main PC is situated is under the table.  So it is on my back, crawl under the table with torch in hand and remove or add telephone connector plugs as requested. Later I will have to get back under again to put the connections and leads back how they were when we started!

In our case I have a second modem/router so I am usually asked to set that up on the phone point in the kitchen and do all sorts of things.  Despite all this I know the problem isn't here in my home.  It is like playing a game.

In every case recently, the fault is with the wholesaler and nothing to do with my home setup!  So Tuesday morning a fault was lodged around 7 am by my supplier with the wholesaler.  By 9am the internet was up and flying again!

Then today (Weds) at 11:20 am the internet goes off again.  Back onto my supplier to be told there is a 30 minute wait before my call can be taken.  Eventually I get onto someone and again we go through all the hoops and jumps but as per always, a fault will need to be lodged with the wholesaler.

Under the table again I go again to pull out plugs and reconnect them again.  Again I get out and set up the secondary modem/router, recheck my internet settings all to discover the problem probably isn't at my home!  Then when they eventually decide it is a wholesaler problem, back under the table I go yet again to put everything back how it was before!

Luckily I am not old!

This time they decide to lodge an 'elevated' fault request with the wholesaler who obviously isn't fixing the problem properly in all cases!

By 2:30pm the internet connection is restored..... but for how long?

Quietish Weekend

Today we look like having a respite again from the very hot weather.  Showers are forecast across the day.

It was a ho-hum but busy weekend.  The new freezer was delivered around 9 am on Saturday morning.  Our home isn't that big and some 'creative' and 'brutal' storage was required.

"Brutal" means some hard decisions needed to be made.  If it isn't used, most likely it will need to be tossed out. So some rearranging and compromise was required to put the freezer into our small single car garage.  Now my home brewing setup isn't quite as accessible as it used to be but it will be OK.  I am putting another brew on today so the proof of the pudding ...

Now we had the freezer we needed to put something in it!  On Sunday we took a trip down to Costco and items in the freezers we had previously walked by because we didn't have the freezer space at home, now took our full attention.  Meat we had previously declined to purchase because it came in large lots was now targetted.

It isn't an overly large freezer so we didn't need to go overboard with our purchases.  But it is now stocked with meats, fish and frozen goodies in preparation for Chris and his family who fly up early next week from Melbourne to spend a week with us.

My new phone is now in full operation.  It took much of a day for me to set it up as I wanted.  Regretfully my 'special' phone Gmail address for email copies didn't want to work properly.  It seemed to take ages for a copy of an email to come through while the original had already come through on my PC.  I have the vast majority of my email accounts (around 7 of them in total) send a copy of each new email onto a 'special' email account set up for the phone.

I managed to stuff up the email address for forwarding on half of the accounts.  After resetting them to a new "Yahoo" account rather than the former special phone GMail account, all is now working perfectly.  I even discovered I have another Yahoo email address I didn't even recall creating!

Today is Monday and I was planning to put a brew on after my bike ride.  Before I ride I usually take a few minutes to tidy up the backyard, perhaps vacuum the pool, put towels away from off the line and ensure all my washed bottles from the previous day are out for drying.

Some heavy showers are predicted for today and one arrived just as I was about to mount the bike.  The photo left shows the backyard after the short heavy shower of rain this morning. This meant the roads and pathways would be wet and not fully suitable for a ride.

I took the photo with my new $115 phone!  I was able to 'share' it. I selected the recently installed ES File Explorer app for the sharing and copied it directly to my PC desktop via our home wireless network. For such a cheap price it is a very clever piece of technology!

Even if it only lasts 12 months who cares.  I just go to a China seller and spend another $120 and get the latest updated model again.

With the bike ride cancelled, I went and decided to put a new post onto my blog!

Garage Cleanout

We have talked about a having a small upright freezer as possibly a good idea.  So far we have managed with 2 fridges, one with an OK freezer, the second with a smaller freezer.  However when there have been 'specials' and bulk deals at the supermarket, the first thing we would do is see what freezer space we had available.

Recently when travelling to Costco we saw so much stuff to buy that was not only a good deal and great quality but found it always came in large sizes or large helpings.  So the thought of buying a small upright freezer hit our agenda.

You are dead a long time. We thought, let's find a good enough, cheap enough smaller freezer that wasn't going to bust the bank.  The well known brands were certainly dearer but the economy lesser known brands still received great online reviews from people who had bought them and it looked like they would suit our needs.

We settled on a Hisense 176L frost free upright freezer.  According to the internet the average price was around $595.  We had to add almost $50 delivery on top of that.  The online reviews were quite positive.  I reckon if I could get away with spending a total of $600 for the freezer delivered I would have got a good deal.  The first place we visited quoted us $629 delivered and that was as low as he could go.  I said I wanted to pay $600.  "Good Luck" he said as we headed elsewhere.

The next place we checked out was a having a huge sale.  They had the same freezer for $593 delivered!  "Good Luck", I was quite happy with that price.  It is being delivered tomorrow.

Our house isn't that big and the only place it could go is in a corner of our small garage.  So a space was required!  My home brew setup had to be moved around, boxes gotten rid of, stuff off to the "Brotherhood" for sale, fishing gear was headed to the guy over the road who has a boat, and there was a general cleaning out!

All is now done!

I noticed a bit of an aroma as I moved my home brew bottles around during the garage restructure.  One box of home brew bottles was decidedly 'sloppy'.  The photo shows you why!  The base of one bottle had exploded out.  The bottle had been lifted upwards with the explosion and had punctured a hole in the lid of the polystyrene box I had them stored in!

So the brew boxes required washing and the bottles being dried and repacked.

On top of all this my new $115 phone arrived from China at 7:30 this morning!  But I have been so busy I won't get to have a real play around with it till tomorrow.  I want to be sure I had plenty of time to check it all out and set it up!  It was a job I didn't want to rush!

It has been low 30's today and quite muggy.  It has been slightly cooler than previous days.  We had a slight shower of rain this morning and for the best part of an hour afterwards it was delightfully cooler.  The pool continues to hover around 30º.

This morning's bike ride was over 15k's.

I think I need a swim after such a busy day!  And probably a nice cool drink as well!

Warm Again

Have a quick read of the comment in the post below.  It certainly puts everything into perspective regarding our recent spate of hot weather.

But after another hot night we entered a day which was forecast to be hot though not quite as hot as yesterday.  We had an overnight low around 26º which is most unusual for us here on the Sunshine Coast.  Usually we would expect the low 20's.

We had decided not to go out anywhere on New Year's Eve.  With that pressure off we decided to have a few quiet drinks mid afternoon.  In hindsight this was a mistake.  But come 10pm and just leaving the pool after another cool off, my bed beckoned!  The few quiet drinks had been extended into a kind of 'session'.

Anyway, come 10pm, this little black duck was looking for a spot (under a ceiling fan) to bed down for the night.

Today started warm again,but at long last the sea-breeze managed to make its way in around mid afternoon, enough to cool things down even just a little.  The photo shows just how warm (and humid) it was at 7:30 on my bike ride.

It is now around the same temperature (late afternoon) but the sea breeze is in and is just delightful.  The house is wide open and welcoming the cooling breeze.

Regular readers will know I keep our older neighbour up to date with all the latest stuff to watch.  Currently they are in USA visiting relatives so I haven't had to rush across and do an update of video files for almost three weeks now.  I have reformatted his PC as well just before they set off and usually after a few days there is a huge Windows Update to do.

It took around 3 hours for me to update his movie stuff and for his computer to download and install 766MB of updates this morning.  I must confess his PC is around 4 years old and does not have USB3 which allows quick copying across drives and computers.

It turned out to be quicker for me to leave the PC doing its Windows update and bring his new USB3 portable hard drive to my home and for me to copy the stuff across on my USB3 computer.  But it is all done now!

Trish and I have been using the pool quite a lot as you can imagine.  The pool water temperature peaked at 31.7º today.  It hasn't been over 30º for a couple of years from memory so we really are in a hot spell of weather.

But with the sea-breeze now in, the prospects for a good and sound night's sleep tonight are looking brighter!

There has been no movement on the phone currently awaiting customs in Brisbane.  Today is New Year's Day and a public holiday!