After ....

Now that is an easy way to make a dollar!

As you can see from the photo, the tree removal guy was around today.  He arrived around 11:30am and was done by 11:50!  Two trees removed, they were chipped and the stumps were grubbed all in around 20 minutes.  $250 in 20 minutes just goes to show what can be done if you have the right equipment.

The neighbour two doors up also got the tree guy to remove two trees as well but the stumps were left behind.  Another $250 cash in his pocket.  Again two large wattles were chopped down, chipped and most of the mess was cleaned up.  He was on his way again by 12:30pm.

It took a text message this morning to remind him of what was to be done.  A text message back that he was in the area and could do it around lunch time if that suited.  Suit it did!

The weather has remained really nice, not too hot, around 27 most days and high teens overnight.  The pool was still 'swimmable' at over 22° this morning.

This week I have totaled around 90k's on the bike and that was over 5 mornings.  I gave it a miss this morning and put a brew on instead as well as washing all the bottles.  I will bottle in a week's time.

There still remains some minor debris from the tree removal so I will run the mower over it quickly just to tidy everything up later this afternoon.  Most likely a quick swim and a refreshing ale will follow!

Trish is away at Quilters this morning and is due home shortly.

We grabbed a $7-50 'senior's' roast lamb lunch yesterday at a local pub, a big enough meal to pretty well fill me up.  I enjoyed a couple of "Pale Ale" beers as well while Trish had an apple cider.  The Pale Ale is a bit dearer but when you are only paying that money for a reasonable roast lamb lunch, it isn't too much of an extravagance.

Computer Club tomorrow, footy most of the weekend and plenty of drinks to keep me going!  They are saying it will be a little cooler next week but then so it should almost into the last month of autumn!

Sounds good!

Anzac Day

So here we are a week after my last post and things are still the pretty much the same.  The rain has stopped thank heavens and we are back to sunny weather around 26° or 27° most days but now we drop to the high teens overnight.  The cooler nights aren't good for the pool as this morning it was around 22° when I first hopped in for a swim after the 15k's I rode today.

We had lunch one day last week the Mooloolaba Surf Club which was nice. But not that nice that we would rush back there again in the near future.  Most likely we'll do the Golden Beach Tavern and its $7-50 "Senior's Roast" tomorrow.

The Lilly Pilly trees are still there in the front garden but I guess the wet weather last week possibly put the tree removal guy behind the 8 ball a bit.  And when it's a smaller job he will squeeze in when in the area we need to be a little patient and flexible.

Computer Club was quiet on Saturday with a lot of regulars being absent but I enjoyed the footy much more than Trish did over the weekend.

I 'did' a couple of Kodi setups earlier this week for neighbours and that all went to plan ... eventually!

Today is Anzac Day and things around here are really quiet.  It is delightful as we wait for the traditional Anzac Day footy match to begin shortly a little later this afternoon.

I was pretty pleased when the lawn mower burst into life after a few starter cord pulls yesterday!  After a couple of sets of repairs it was a little reassuring when the engine roared into life.

But that is about all at this stage, still the same old same old!

Update

We still have our two rather large lilly pilly trees in our mini front garden.  And as the photo left shows they are getting a good water today with cooler and showery weather at last here on the "Sunshine" Coast.

As with much of the rest of our country, we have been experiencing well above average daily temperatures, so some cool and wet weather is very welcome right now.

But the rain has only just started and I had managed a bike ride and a swim earlier this morning prior to rain starting up.

There isn't a lot of news as per usual.

The Ethernet Over Powerline. units arrived eventually yesterday, have been installed and are operating perfectly.  I now get a great hard wire connection between the modem router and in turn the Seagate Cloud Drive where I store all my movies and TV Shows to the Nvidia Shield.  It works perfectly.  The speed is exactly the same as I get for internet on my PC.

This setup is 500Mbps where as the previous 'refurbed' set I had was only 200Mbps.  The refurbed set is a different brand as well as a different speed but I was still able to get a 'hard wire' internet connection from a powerpoint on the other side of the house on what I understand to be a different electrical circuit.  But the speed was way down from 18MBps to a little over 2MBps.

And the el cheapo $9 replacement garage door remote control arrived by mail off eBay yesterday and seems to work fine as well.  The $9 job is a little on the bulky and weighty side but works great!

We have drinks with friends this afternoon which we are looking forward to.  It is always good fun to catch up with others, have a chat and share what we have been up to.

We are working our way through the new current TV series "Bosch".  Harry Bosch is a character from the Michael Connelly's series of books.  The TV series is well done, gets great scores on Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB) and we are enjoying it very much.  It is a series from "Amazon" so if you have access to Amazon you can watch it there!

We are still waiting for the tree removal guy to come.

Before...

We have become quite conscious of where we plant trees and large shrubs to make the best of shade and provision of privacy.  As the photo left shows, the two Lilly Pilly trees planted in our small front garden sure keep the sun off the front of the house and do give us privacy!

But they also block the cooler north east breeze off the ocean which we get most afternoons in summer.  We spend $75 every year or so and a guy comes around and cuts them both right back.  Now they are so big they use all the moisture in the soil causing the lawn around the small front garden to die off the the ground there turns to something like concrete during the warmer months.

As you can see from the photo we are up for another $75 cut but we have decided to remove the two trees altogether.  The air con will do for those extra hot nights and we had new block out window tinting fitted 12 months ago.  That face of the house is toward the north east so there won't be any direct afternoon sun on the front of the house during the afternoon.

The currently blocked out cooler breeze isn't allowing the bedroom to cool off as usual and you don't want to be using the air con all the time.  For a tree removal guy it's the sort of job you do as you pass by or are in the area.

So we are waiting till a time suits him in the next week or so and he will come and do it.  When getting the quote from him I liked the way he said "$250 + GST."  In other words, $250 cash!

My recently ordered 2 Ethernet over Powerline connections are due tomorrow.

Trish broke one of the buttons on her remote control for the garage.  It has been temporarily fixed with some sticky tape which is doing the job until the $9 replacement via eBay arrives on Tuesday.  A new replacement of the original is $75 and the local key cutting guy in Caloundra wanted $45 for what seems nearly the same as what I am getting off eBay.

You can't go wrong at $9 even if it doesn't work that well.

I have been bike riding most days and clocked up around 90k's last week.  I managed around 22k's this morning.  The pool gets a work out as well though at around 23.5° this morning it was a little brisk to get in to!

The Hyundai which is over 10 years old now had a factory recall during the week for some electronic board associated with the ABS system and that was replaced during the week.

We finished watching the TV Series "Waco".  Then we checked out an easy watching series called "Burden of Truth" made up of 8 or so episodes.  Burden of Truth was the sort of series where you could nod off for 30 minutes during an episode and still not miss any of the story!

A home brew went on last week and I bottle washed earlier today.

Footy again on the telly after lunch should fill in the day nicely!

The NBN guys were in our are the last few days, checking pits and ensuring all is ready for the installation.  They are still saying late this year for us before we are connected.  But it is getting closer for us.

Home Now For A Fortnight

It is two weeks since we returned from Melbourne.  During that time my footy team continues to rack up losses while Trish's team does a little better.  It seems even at this early stage that neither of our teams will be heavily involved with any finals this year.  But there is still a long way to go.

The weather has returned to Sunshine Coast usual, that is high 20's during the day and high teens or low 20's overnight.  This afternoon the pool was over 25° and great for a cool off after doing stuff around the house and in the garden.  The lawn sure needed a mow!

I am well and truly back on the bike and riding daily.  I have managed anything for 22k's to 14k's in any one day.  It just sort of depends on what I feel comfortable do on that day.

I finally got the mower back today with the replacement coil and I am $90 lighter.  I was chatting with the next door neighbour and he said he has a spare mower if ever I need one.  There were a few utterances of poor language when the spring that holds the whipper snipper spool in place sprang off to who knows where.  Having a Bunnings a few k's away proved very handy in this case.

Trish continues flat out with the Arts Centre and seems to have something to do with them most days.

We have set up a couple of the Computer Guys and their wives for nights out.  Last week it was a local Indian Restaurant which was extremely busy with take away (school hols of course) and not overly expensive.  It was a great night out.

I run an Ethernet over powerline (EOP)setup to stream movies from the office to the media player.  This process uses your home's electricity wires to move internet or network stuff around the house.  I grabbed a refurbished setup a couple of years ago and it worked perfectly.  I now suspect refurbed is not the way to go when I noticed wifi was being used to stream local files rather than the EOP.

eBay to the rescue and two new EOP power setups are on their way.

Plenty of great stuff to download and watch.  The TV series 'Waco' was enjoyed and we have a couple of our detective series to watch too.

Life's pretty good right now.

Still Blowing A Gale Here

Cyclone Iris is currently sitting off Mackay north of us.  When I say 'north of us' it is around 900k's away which is around the same distance as Melbourne is from Sydney!  Despite being so far away, we are not immune from the strong winds associated with the cyclone.  So here it continues to blow strongly coming in off the sea.

As the wind is off the sea it means repeated showers between the sunny breaks for us.  We still have a strong wind warning for this part of the world.  This is not ideal cycling weather and with a new bike sitting under the verandah out the back it is a little frustrating.

I keep an eye on a website called Ozbargain.  This is a website where if someone spots a good deal whether it be online or otherwise they can 'post' it to this website.  From time to time they also have free apps from Google Play.  Usually these 'paid for' apps are just that, but in an effort to boost sales they provide them at no cost for 24 hours.

One such app is "Speed Viewer" which uses the GPS settings on your phone to pinpoint exactly where you are and at what speed you are travelling.  My attention was grabbed when I saw "Cycling" on it today.  I was intrigued so I downloaded the previously "Pay for App" at no charge.

This was yet a further reason to defy the inclement weather and give the new bike and the new android app a try!  So I did make it out for a short ride just before another shower scudded in to the area.  My bike speedometer said I did 4.7k's but the GPS powered app said a little over 5k's.  I guess the second GPS reading is a little closer to being accurate than the speedo reading which is calculated via your wheel size.

But the app also ties into "Google Maps" with a link you can email to yourself. A small screenshot of my shortened bike ride appears above and the link below will take you to the full detailed web page.  It is pretty nifty.  Oh, and the bike went perfectly!  If you click on the link below, it takes quite a few seconds to load so be patient.

http://www.gpxscan.com/gpxgooglemap_v2.jsp?gpx=f587e52c4fcd480e970ac538d68faa2d&share=share

On The Road Again!

Let's start with the weather for a change. 

Most nights as we head off to bed sometime after 10pm the outside temp is still around 25° and a bit sticky.  Though the days remain at around 30° it has been extremely windy ... and wet with showers almost daily. 

Up until the last few days anyway when we now may get a rogue shower from time to time.  But with cyclonic conditions prevailing off the coast bringing sheets of rain further north of us, the wind has been blowing consistently, day in and day out.

Not ideal bike riding weather at all.

The bike rear wheel saga continues.  The replacement wheel when I eventually got to pick it up didn't fit.  Into the middle of all this came Easter with holiday makers and heaps of traffic.  The place where I get the bike sorted is around 15 minutes away in a shopping homemakers centre.  So weekend visiting isn't a good idea.

Everything is kind of back to normal today with the end of the holiday break, so I took everything back yet again to the bike shop.  He agreed with me that replacement wasn't right and asked me what I wanted to do.  I asked could he do a deal on a new replacement bike.  He immediately cut $50 off the new price ($349) and added the $20 I had paid for the secondhand wheel. 

So I now have a new bike with new everything, brakes, tyres, tubes, gears, the lot!

I picked it up this morning and within an hour or so of getting it back home I have moved over my favorite bike seat, sorted out the carry basket, speedometer and bigger and better bell I always prefer.

As usual the move didn't go altogether smoothly but all seems great now.

Still no news on the mower at this stage.

My footy team played Trish's footy team yesterday with a 1 point result going Hawthorn's way.  I was always a bit scared that a defeat was on the cards as several of Geelong's crucial defenders are injured and with retirements from last year they really are just a group of kids playing there at the moment.  They were vastly undersized and inexperienced for some of the opposition's older and stronger players.

The fiasco with the cricket in South Africa continues.  The sooner it is all over the better.

This week will be busy again for Trish with the Arts Centre.  I have Community Association business this evening.

But at least daylight saving has finished down south which means the whole of our part of Australia is in step again!