Waiting!

It is Friday and after setting out for a bike ride yesterday at around 8 am, I am waiting until it is a bit warmer this morning before heading off.  We are expecting a top of 24° today with only a little breeze.  It was low teens when I rode yesterday but the wind chill factor made it feel much cooler.

But the icy wind is due to leave us today with warmer northerlies expected over the next couple of days.

As the photo shows, I rode down to Pumicestone Passage yesterday. That is Caloundra you can see in the photo over to the left and the Pacific Ocean out through the entrance. Click on the photo for a larger view.

Little news again I am afraid.  Kate, Arj and family finish their European holiday today and are due to venture back to KAUST in Saudi Arabia.  There is a direct flight from Paris to Jeddah so their trip home should be completed easily with a non stop flight.  Are you keeping up with their adventures on Arj's blog?  He has had a bit of fun in a carpark with a boulder.  It seems it would be pretty easy to do what he did. (HERE)

Trish and a few of the ladies from Stitchers are heading away for the weekend.  One of the others owns a holiday place at a spot called Lake Cootharaba.  The house is beside the lake and it is picturesque and peaceful.  They will enjoy a few drinks together, have a good chat and sit quietly, possibly playing cards.  Trish enjoys it very much.

I will prop at home.  I have Computer Club tomorrow and there is heaps of sport on TV for me. I also have a bottling to complete most likely on Sunday morning at this stage. 26° or so is our expected top tomorrow.  It cools off a bit come Tuesday.

It seems I won't have much cricket to watch with the Aussies performing abysmally overnight in England.  The match should be all over overnight tonight.

Around a week ago Trish went to cook a cake or something in the oven at around 7 in the morning.  After pre heating the oven, she opened the door to put the mix in and was almost overcome with smoke.  Smoke billowed out everywhere and a few minutes later the smoke alarms throughout the house sprung into action.

Neighbours even came knocking on the door just to make sure the elderly couple weren't trapped inside.  Doors and windows were opened and fans turned on.

The smoke alarms eventually stopped and some sort of normality returned.  After around 30 minutes the smoke had cleared but there was an ominous black mess bubbling on the bottom shelf of the oven.

Last night both Trish and I got stuck into cleaning it up.  We scraped for 20 minutes or so removing as much of the gunk as we could. Trish then got the "Gumption" cleaner and some water and got stuck into it all over again.  The mess that came off the shelf despite being scraped earlier was incredible.

Right now the oven is about as clean as it has been for some time.  With Trish being away for a couple of nights, I needed the oven to heat up my Pizza Slices didn't I!

Trim, Trim, Trim

Try not to let the photo fool you.  Yep, it looks ideal and with temps in the low 20's it isn't too bad.  What the photo doesn't show is how cool the breeze is.  It may be 21° but it feels somewhat cooler if you are in the breeze.

The lawn has been mown, the lillypillies across the front of the house have been trimmed and I have had my first haircut since my experience in Thuwal Saudi Arabia.  It must be close to 8 weeks since I fronted up for a haircut in Saudi, so short was it cut.

Even this time I went for a hair cut slightly shorter than the usual.

Kate, Arj and family are winding their summer holiday up in Europe.  Now the have left Italy, been through Switzerland and are back in France.  The other day they did Disneyland there.  It is also the place where they hand the car back and get a full refund before heading back to KAUST and the new school year.

The guy a couple of doors up here in our street does tree removals and we help each other out from time to time.  I help him with computer stuff and he does things for me at 'mates' rates.  He has the equipment to do it all as well with pole saws, hedge trimmers and petrol blowers.

And he has a tipper truck to put all the stuff  on so in one foul swoop the trees were trimmed, the rubbish tidied and stowed on the back of his truck and carted away.

I have been able to bike ride most days, computer club was reasonably busy and we have been watching plenty of sport over the weekend.  The cricket from the UK returns this evening as well.

Trish's Quilt Show in which she was heavily involved with went very well over the weekend and she slept like a top on Sunday night when it was all over.

Our fresh meat supply was running a bit low so we made a trip down the highway to Costco on Tuesday.  The meat there is pretty good though you wouldn't call it bargain priced.  It is a good chance to resupply with coffee, sauces, mixes and other groceries.  There is food to buy there as well for a snack for lunch if you want.  The quality is reasonable at best but is extremely inexpensive.

I had a brew which wasn't quite right recently.  If I mix a little lemonade with it it is passable.  This morning I was busy tipping a bit of it out as I wanted the empty bottles for my next bottling which is due around Friday.  Because it is so economical when you make it yourself, to toss out a dozen or so bottles isn't a real hardship.

Our neighbour Bill across the road is a spirits man.  Bill works hard, drives heavy road making machinery and works terrible hours as most of the roadwork he does is overnight stuff.  I got Bill a couple of bottles of alcohol from my contact Rod at the Computer Club.  Bill made some rum with it and thought this was OK. Later he bought 10 litres of alcohol for $100 from Rod to make some more rum.

It didn't take him long to realize this would eventually prove expensive.  So he has spent around $900 and bought his own equipment and is busy distilling alcohol in his garage.  He sells a 1 litre bottle of his home made rum for $30 to his mates who just love it!  Bill dropped a 1.25l bottle of alcohol over the other day!

So, life just potters along nicely with nothing over exciting happening.  Trish and a few of her friends are away this weekend to a friend's holiday place at a nearby lake.  They will enjoy it.  I will have to sit at home, bottle another brew, and watch the footy and cricket on TV.

They are forecasting into the low to mid 20's for early next week.  It seems our winter might be on the way out for 2015.

Still Quiet

Not a lot to report.  This is the same photo as I had on the blog the other day.  The reason I have it there again is the view from our front door has been the same each morning!  Today is no different.  Usually there are a few showers around 6 am each morning but clear up by mid morning.

Today is a little different as the sky is now clear and it is 8:30am.  The pathways should be dry by 9 am and I might get a bike ride in at last.  Today's rainfall total will be around 1 ml while the last few days have been 5 or 6 mls.

Trish has been busy getting things ready for a big Fair being held over the weekend by the Arts Centre Association.  For the last three days he leaves home around 8 am and gets home again by 6 pm.  She is loving it.

I do a few chores around the house, nothing too exciting.

There is a new post on Arj's blog if you wish to catch up with their trip.  They are currently in Venice.

Click here.

Wet Again But Not Cold

We have lived here on the Sunshine Coast for over 12 years now and we both agree this has been the coldest and wettest winter we have experienced here.  We arrived back from overseas just after the first week of winter and it has been cold and grey ever since.  The photo shows what we were greeted with this morning!

Bike riding wasn't even considered especially when you saw this.  Though the top temperature of around 22° was most acceptable.

Usually we get our cold mornings or wet days during winter previously, but these quickly left after a day or two for clear skies and days into the low 20's which usually went on for weeks on end.  The spell of extremely cold weather we experienced the other week which lasted for at least a straight fortnight is so 'out of the ordinary'.  We could expect one or two nights of cold in a row but not two weeks straight like we have just had!

But the pool is full, the grass is green so at least some things are positive.

I am keen on my movie and TV watching from files I have 'acquired'.  I use my WD TV Streaming Media Player to play them.  The little box sits beside the TV with a hard disk drive attached.  The unit is wifi so I can also stream from phones or tablets via the WD TV and play stuff on the TV and through the 5.1 sound system.

The WD TV does show its age at times and gets 'stuck' requiring a reboot to get it running again.  The firmware hasn't been updated for some time so it seems WD are no longer 'supporting' it.  On some of the WD Forums there are strings of users complaining their player no longer works properly.

My WD TV still works fairly well but I have been keeping my eye open for a replacement unit.  I did find a gadget called a Tronsmart Orion (Click HERE).

Watch the info video HERE.

It is an Android powered TV Box.  Being Android powered means it can feasibly do all the stuff an android phone can do.  It can play your movies, your music and show your pictures.

But it can also run android apps such as web browsers, games etc and all on your TV. It has connections for HDMI, Usb, Ethernet, SD Cards and wi fi.  It can run your Stan, Presto or Netflix apps for streaming media.  It can run a program called Xbmc which goes online, finds all the info about your movie or TV episode you want to watch and displays it for you.

It will play all your movie files and should do so without any hassle.  There are some new file types the WD TV won't play but this unit plays them all.

The model in the photo is an OK model and runs at around $135 imported from China.  They had a special deal going and I managed a 50% discount.  By the time I had paid my Paypal fees, I got one for $70 delivered.  The downside is delivery can take up to 6 weeks to come through.  So I will continue to wait patiently (I still have up to 5 weeks to go for mine to be delivered) and drool with anticipation!

Monday's News

At least it has warmed up noticeably!  On Saturday after getting home from Computer Club I tidied up a lot of leaves from around the pool and even gave the pool a clean.  It was possible to get outside and do some stuff without being frozen.

My PC continues to operate OK following the ransomware attack I fell for last week.  I am doing a presentation at Computer Club this coming Saturday on the need for people to back everything up onto external hard drives.  This saved me from disaster, I just replaced any encrypted files with files I had backed up.

The sport on TV yesterday (Sunday) was mind blowing!  We had Australia's sensational win in the Davis Cup tie and several good footy matches to watch.  All this was followed by live cricket from the UK last night and the golf from St Andrews in Scotland.  We concentrated on the tennis and then the cricket.

We had a sunny day yesterday but later on the clouds rolled in and we got 7mls of rain overnight.  Today is reasonably mild (low 20's) but has turned cloudy again and there could be a spot or two of rain about. I did get a 12 k bike ride in later in the morning after bottling the latest batch of home brew.

The wet roads this morning were enough to deter me from a bike ride.  My tablets need new prescriptions so I have a doctor's visit this afternoon.  I have a flu jab to get.

Then there are a couple of smaller chores to do in town as well.

The old car was an embarrassment to drive as it had a loose fan belt.  As the photo above left shows, the paintwork is well passed its best.  We had the fanbelt fixed last week so that car has become the preferred mode of transport recently.  It certainly runs a heap better than it looks, and it is economical as well.

Still Cold!

On the Sunshine Coast we get our cooler weather each winter.  It is not unusual for us to get winter minimums of 4° which is usually followed by a top that day of around 20° or so.  We could get a couple of cold mornings in a row but then things go back to the normal low double figures overnight.

Right now it is approaching 8:30 am and the temp is in the picture above left!  You would have expected it to be around 16 or so.  The temp doesn't take any wind chill factor into account.

The current spell of cold weather has been quite different than usual with an extended period of continuous low single figure minimums over a couple of weeks.  This has meant the house has got cold but has stayed cold.  The coldest day of the year here usually has a maximum of only 17° but today we have been promised only 16° and a fine sunny day.  Needless to say there will be a gusty southerly blowing all day making it feel even colder!

The bike hasn't come out yet again today as it will be just too cold to do so.  I am waiting for it to get a little warmer and I have bottle washing which must be done later this morning.

I used to go to the the coldest ground in Melbourne to watch the footy when we lived there.  VFL Park was noted as the coldest and wettest venue for footy.  I bought some thermal underwear to wear to the footy to try to keep warm.  Luckily I never threw them out when we moved here, they are getting a rebirth of use during this exceptionally cold spell.

Following my ransomware attack the other day I did a PC search for files ending with .encrypted to see if I had missed any when I was cleaning my PC up.

I found heaps of them but as I had reinstalled a particular program, in the folder were duplicate files, one with encrypted in the title and the other without, the performance of the program wasn't impacted upon.  I haven't noted any adverse effects on my PC....... yet!

Back Ups of Back Ups

It is probably the coldest morning of this winter so far this morning.  My not so accurate thermometre was telling me it was 5° in the backyard this morning, whereas the local weather said it was 3°.  3 was probably the closest.

Around  10 am this morning the Blue-tooth Speaker I ordered was delivered.  It was usually priced at $149 but had been reduced to $27 delivered.  I don't use this sort of stuff very much at all but at such a discount it was just too good to pass up.  It is a fully portable speaker and you can play music or any audio streamed from your phone or tablet so it can be heard by everyone.  It will be possibly handy when everyone is outside and you want some music or something in the background.

People tend to have a go at me whenever I buy yet another external hard disk drive.  I have a couple of external hard drives and keep backups of my backups!  I backup heaps of stuff just to make sure if something goes amiss, it is straight forward to get it all back again.

Trish is doing a beading demonstration for her group at Stitchers.  She has been to several local shops to buy stuff and also to Polly's Beads, an online store for some things.  She expected the delivery yesterday but as far as I know, it has been delayed.

When I quickly checked my emails this morning there was one from auspost saying no one had been home when they tried to deliver a parcel yesterday.  I immediately thought of Polly's Beads.  All the instructions to collect the package were on the attached .pdf document.  I downloaded the document and clicked on the link provided!  Suddenly my anti-virus started going berserk!  I had been duped!

I deleted as many 'intrusions' as I could as well as the offending email and turned off the PC.  Upon restart I saw many of my documents and videos now had a different extension name, mainly that they were now encrypted or locked and I was unable to open them!  I couldn't open any of them, many documents, photos, and videos.  There was a message with each file giving information on how they may be decrypted and a link to a website.

To cut a long story short, they wanted $640 AUD to provide me with a key to unlock them all.

I don't write a lot of documents on a day by day basis but I do update them weekly.  When I get a new movie or TV show, it gets uploaded immediately to the hard drive on the media-player in the lounge room.  I tend to back-up these new movies every other day to my back-up drives.

Within an hour all the encrypted files had been deleted and replaced with 'clean' files from the backup drives.  Upon restart, those files remained OK and able to be read.  So the encrypting part part of the problem had only been active following the initial attack.  I ran my anti-virus and did a full scan which came back clean as well!

All appears to have returned to normal now, both with the computer and with my stress level.

We finished watching a TV Series called "The Syndicate" and enjoyed it very much.  It was 6 x 1hour episodes, we watched 5 episodes last night.

I had a return appointment with the Ear Nose and Throat Surgeon yesterday for my "Glue Ear".  It has now fully recovered which was good news to get.

Still An Icy Blast

It was bloody cold on the bike this morning.  I found my 'cycling' gloves, resurrected my 'spray' jacket and headed off at around 8:30 am with the outside temp about 13° but the wind chill factor dropping that somewhat.  The additional clothing was adequate and I finished the 12.5k ride around an hour later.

Though cold, the ride hadn't been too bad with the updated clothing I was wearing.

A few of the people around us have been here as long as we have or even longer.  Especially our neighbour Bill and his family across the road.  We have seen their kids grow from just into High School to now being young adults.  Bill is a keen outdoors man as well with a boat, rifles etc.

He, his wife and some other family members have just returned from a week 'up north' fishing.  Yesterday he knocked on the door and offered us a very large mud crab, one of many he had caught on the trip.  We gleefully accepted the gift and set about having it as a major part of last night's evening meal.

Google was our friend for all the preparations.  I cleaned the crab in the laundry and eventually it made its way into a large pot of boiling salty water. Sorry about the photo quality which I took through the steam with the tablet.  But I think you will get the idea of what it was like.

After cooking it Trish broke it up and I cracked the shell with a hammer.  Then it was into it, fingers and all.

I only require one word to describe how the meal went, it was "fantastic'!

16 But Feels Like 11

That is what is says on my phone this morning, the morning temperature is 16° but it feels like 11°.  The sky is crystal clear blue but the wind is quite strong and blowing from the south.  It feels like the wind is coming directly off Antarctica!

I tried to capture the wind with this photo but trying to get a perfect photo is hit and miss.  And after all, the photo is just for the blog!

So the bike remains in hibernation for the day and I get to cruise the internet.

Watching live sport on TV over the last day or so is best described as being disastrous.  My footy team at last admits they are in a stage of rebuilding with some of the experienced players showing their age and many of the inexperienced players showing how inexperienced they are.

Watching last night's game was not a pleasant experience.

And then there was the cricket from England.  Enough said after a dismal batting performance.  Why some of those players are continually selected defies logic.

And to make it worse, the only coverage available is on free to air TV and we have to put up with commentary of Ian Healy and co who say something just for the sake of saying something.  Regretfully, the vast majority of what Healy has to say borders on drivel and the bleeding obvious!

Computer Club was reasonably busy yesterday.  A major problem is the type of internet connection many of the older club members have where they like to use their 'wireless' dongles and connect directly to the mobile phone network for their internet.  This is a very convenient way to connect, but it is the most expensive, it can be patchy and slow and you get little download allocation for your money.

They are paying $5 per GB download, while I with my ADSL connection via my phone line pay 60c per GB.  So for them to update to Windows 10 will be a trial.  Windows 10 is 3+GB just to download so that will use nearly all of a 4GB download allocation!

I have been playing with my tablet and phone (not surprising you say!).  I have installed a couple of apps which allow me to send SMS messages via my PC or my tablet.  The tablet is wifi only so doesn't connect to the mobile phone network.

But with the right apps installed, the tablet can 'talk' to the phone and allows me to send SMS messages from it.  The keyboard on the tablet and PC is heaps easier to use than the phone's so it makes replying to any text a breeze.  And it is fun to do as well!

"Crisp"

It is late in the week so it is time to get the blog updated.  Again, the same old stuff.  You could almost take one week and superimpose it over the next and there would be heaps of similarities.

I do love the new tablet.  It is great to have sitting beside my chair to quickly access emails or anything else.  I can even have a quick check of Google if needed.  I have set up news feeds on it as well so a few clicks and I can catch up with what is happening with several of the newspapers.

The weather has been sensational the last few days with daily temps in the low 20's.  Overnight hasn't been very cold either but the weather bureau says this is all about to change.  It is a crisp 14.5° right now and you would have expected it to be getting close to 20° at this time of the day.

We can expect cool and showery weather for the next few days and then a cold blast early next week.  They are talking about 16° for Monday but by then the sunshine will have returned.

So on Monday the weather will be sunny and "crisp".  The temperatures predicted in the photo are from "Weatherzone".  The 'official temperatures' from the Bureau of Meteorology are slightly warmer.

Good friends from down south, Russell and Irene are out and about in their caravan.  They expect to arrive in Caloundra on a cool and crisp Monday of next week.  They will be staying in a caravan park at Dicky Beach.  Out of the wind it will be very pleasant indeed.

As the photo above (top left) taken at around 8:45 am shows we have had showers overnight. I will let a bit more time go by before deciding whether I will ride today or not.  I did a bike ride the other day and there was a pretty stiff southerly breeze and the wind chill factor was substantial.  It just isn't fun to ride in those conditions.

The fry pan I used one of my $50 eBay vouchers on was delivered on Monday.  The high cholesterol roast chicken which was cooked in it last night was sensational!

There was a Community Association Management Committee meeting to chair on Monday night and the following day was the mandatory website update.

On Tuesday afternoon four of us from the Association met with a two people from the State Government who were here to discuss social implications in regard to the huge Caloundra South development which is very close to getting underway nearby.  With smaller house sites nowadays these people were keen to discuss "Community" and what makes for a happy vibrant community.

Eventually they let out that they were really wanting to know what possible support structures may be required for a new community which services the lower end of the property market.

The lower end of the property market can't be too low as I collected a couple of pamphlets from the local Land Sales Office showing new homes on blocks of land about the same size as our small block were available locally at around $440,000+.

They were aware of the Doveton Cluster and I got a couple of raised eyebrows when I mentioned I had been a former president. But we will just wait and see.

There is heaps of sport on TV right now with either cricket or tennis from the UK keeping the remote control in regular use.

You can catch up with Kate and Arj's recent exploits during their summer holidays and their current car trip all around Europe here:   http://behindthekeyboard.global2.vic.edu.au/  

Just click on the Recent Posts links on the page's right hand side. 

This Post Will Cure Your Insomnia!

Things really do just continue to potter along.  Nothing startling has happened, same old same old all over again.  I guess after our recent trip away, anything following that is going to be quite unexciting.

But here we go then!

I bottled on Friday around lunchtime.  With cooler mornings I tend to do the bike ride later in the morning after the sun has warmed things up a little.  Bike riding on a chilly morning helps one to understand the real meaning of 'wind chill factor'!

So if I set of around 10 am for an hour on the bike (usually 12.5k's) which probably includes a couple of stops for a chat, the time is getting on to 11:30 when I am home again and have had a shower!

Therefore the lunchtime Friday for the bottling!

I am getting a heap of enjoyment out of the tablet.  It has opened up a new world for me to play with.

Our pergola in the backyard for all intents and purposes is separate from the back boundary fence except for a couple of 'stays' which are easily removed.  There is a gap between the fence and the pergola which allows a stream of sunshine through at certain times late in the afternoon.  In this part of the world, any sun during the day can be extremely hot to sit under. People sitting under the pergola on a late summer's afternoon are continually repositioning their chairs to avoid the rays of sunshine peaking through the space.

Last summer I bought some plywood which I used to fill the space.  I gave the plywood a decent coat of paint to keep any moisture out and hopefully stop the plywood from warping.  Needless to say this plan didn't work and the timber had begun to warp.  With all the building going on around this area I kept my eye out for any thing not required by the builders and dumped in an on-site skip for removal to the tip to use to fill the space.

I found the perfect fit for my needs, a piece of concrete sheeting which was being used for cladding on one of the homes being built nearby.  This piece of sheeting fitted my needs perfectly and had been tossed into a skip for removal to the tip.

The concrete sheet has now been painted and  is drying in the backyard.  Monday looks a bit busy at this stage with appointments in the morning and a birthday lunch engagement so it may not go into place until Tuesday.

So nothing really exciting to report, just the same old stuff as usual.

OK, so I am impatient!  It took just a few minutes to screw into place.  Another few minutes to 'touch up' some spots scratched and with some paint missing and all is now in place.  I am extremely happy with the way it has turned out.  And I took the photo with the new tablet!

Limited News

Everything is pretty quiet here and the weather is much improved.  Low 20's today with plenty of sunshine is more like what we expect at this time of year.  Bike riding is back on the agenda for the last couple of days and it is good to get out and about again.

Whilst riding about I put some notices up at our local small shopping centre this morning and got caught chatting away.  I would farewell one person when another would come out of the supermarket and another chat would follow. A great way to spend the early part of the day.

The new tablet leaves any former devices I have had for dead.  It is a great device and all for less than $250 after my bonus $50 voucher to spend on my next eBay purchase came with the deal.  I have loaded the tablet up with stuff, I can even watch our Pay TV on it.  This will be handy when I decide to go to bed I can just watch a few more games of tennis or overs of cricket in the bedroom.

The Pay TV download to the tablet  does not come off my broadband allocation either as the Pay TV is part owned by the ISP!  I am delighted with the purchase.

And the eBay deal with a $50 voucher for my next eBay purchase was there online this morning as promised.  I went ahead, ordered and collected the kettle earlier today so Trish will be pleased. It is just what she wanted.

I have no idea why but this morning I was given 2x$50 eBay vouchers when I checked my eBay account so I still have a further $50 discount to come somewhere.  Best thing I ever did buying that tablet!

Those of you who live in Australia may have heard about the young fellow who tragically died in a recent Rugby League accident.  He lived right here on our estate, around 500 metres from our home.

I have been engaging myself within my home brew since returning from our trip overseas.  I am guessing almost three weeks in Saudi Arabia and Dubai has rekindled my liking for my home brewed beer again.  I put a brew on on Sunday and bottle washed this morning prior to the bike ride.

I will bottle either Friday or Sunday, I will see how the brewing process is going before deciding on what day to bottle.