It's About Time

Winter is but one day away and we can sure feel the cold in the air this morning.  It was single figures this morning as we awoke to a crisp but bright sunny day.  A cold south westerly wind has arrived meaning bike riding is off the agenda until it gets to the mid teens anyway.  This usually happens around 9 am or so.

It has been some time since I last posted on the blog and really there still isn't heaps of news to relay to you.  We did have four or five days of rain overnight in a row which meant the bike was put away.  Neighbours popped in one morning I was planning to ride to have some documents signed.  This delayed the ride and gladly it did so.  While the visitors were here a very heavy shower of rain passed over head.  The document signing saved me from a drenching!

We totaled around 80mls of rain over the four days as we experienced the 'showery weather'.

Trish has booked flights to Melbourne for August and will be in town for around a week.  I'm staying here while she heads south.

We have visitors this weekend with the couple who are to be married in the Philippines in December visiting us this weekend.  Peter and Vecy live in Brisbane and are driving up to visit.  We haven't seen Peter in some time, possibly going all the way back to our days of tripping around in the caravan.  So it will be great to see him and to meet the bride to be Vecy.

As they know Manila very well, we will be depending on their advice for our AirBnB accommodation while there.  We are looking forward to it very much.

Friends June and Keith from Melbourne have a caravan and are visiting Hervey Bay around 200k's north of us.  I am guessing lawn bowls is involved as Keith is a keen bowler. Gympie is around midway between here and Hervey Bay and that is where we are catching up with them today for a get together and a meal.  I guess the Gympie RSL will be the venue.

I have a Public Meeting to Chair on Monday night for the Community Association.  One of the the presentations on that evening will be from the Caloundra Arts Centre Association of which Trish is the Secreatry and will be the major presenter.  So that meeting will be a real "Thomas Affair".

With us travelling to Gympie for lunch and it is still mighty cool outside, there won't be a bike ride this morning.  Tomorrow is a "Brew On and Bottling Day".  With visitors over the weekend it will probaby be Monday before I get back on the bike for a morning ride.

Yesterday the lawn got a mow and I dragged the pressure cleaner out to give the border stones in the front garden a tidy up and the bike a quick clean.  We are planning to remodel the front garden to hide the nasty drop which has developed between the drive and the front lawn. There is a photo above.

But I can handle that OK!

A Non Footy Post!

Both Trish and myself have banned AFL footy talk for this week after both of our teams were defeated over the weekend!  And that is the end of the footy news for this post!

Last week we had a shower rain around 10pm one evening.  All week there had been lines of showers running due north around 30 or so k's off the coast.  They were like a single file of soldiers just marching from south to north.  If you were under the direct line then you got wet.  If you were 10 or so k's either side you didn't get a drop.  And they had been running off the coast all day for much of the week.

Until one such line eventually found its way to be  directly above us. And so it started around 10pm or so.  By 8 am the next morning we had almost 50mls of rain.  The picture above doesn't do the line of rain we had justice.  Our line of rain was much narrower and red and yellow indicating high falls of rain.

I suggest 15 to 20k's inland from us would not have got a drop!

So that was almost the highlight of the week, a spell of rain like we hadn't seen for a long time!

The rest of the week was the same old news as almost every other week.  Gorgeous sunny days, mid 20's and cool overnight.  The doona has come out of hibernation and is back in use.  Most nights while watching telly it will be a long sleeved shirt but still shorts and thongs.

I rode most mornings getting around 15k's in on most days.  Sometimes it would be a couple of k's more, other days a k or so less.

A brew went on on Friday and I bottle washed as well.  With the cooler weather the method of finishing off drying the bottles has been updated as the photo shows.  The final few drops of water seem to take forever to dry but using the clothes line sure fixes that.

Computer Club came and went with emails and photos taking the most time for me to help out. 

I have updated my Computer's Malware and Anti Virus programs and suspected my Windows Activation had been knocked out and would eventually require redoing to activate my Windows 10.  After yet another mighty Windows 10 update, I saw a little notice saying my copy of Windows required Activation.

So a quick trip to the WarezBB website and a download later I now have a full copy of Windows 10 Professional again.

So that's about it for today, not a lot of news.  We are both well and haven't been struck down by a cold as yet this season, unlike many of the people we know.  We've been enjoying the TV Series Seven Seconds which I believe is a Netflix Series.  As with a lot of these 10 part series, it probably could have been shortened to 8 parts.  But it was OK.

So that's about it for today, until next time .......

And Winter Has Arrived.

It is a delightful 23° or so outside this afternoon, there isn't a cloud in the sky but the wind out of the south west has that wintry feel about it.  So the cooler weather has now arrived with these being typical autumn conditions.  The 13° overnight means the quilt is in use on the bed.

It will need to get a little cooler and then we will press the doona into action.  You can tell the nights are getting cooler as the pool has dropped sharply to around 17°.

The Ethernet over Powerline (EoP) unit I bought and was using, though it served its purpose, it wasn't a strong and continuous connection.  It was usually fine for regular movie and TV Show watching but when I wanted to move a big file to the Nvidia Shield, invariably it dropped out a little after copying over around 200mb.  I would get a pop up on screen telling me the transfer had stopped and to check the network connection.

A few times a movie we were watching from a file on the Seagate Cloud drive would just stop and freeze as if the connection had been lost.  Then around 20 seconds later it would begin to work again and we would continue our watching.

I did some research on the TP-Link EoP and discovered a small utility program on the TP-Link website that enabled me to set it up a little better.  The fastest transfer speed via EoP was a round 4MBps, 5GHz wireless gave me 12MBps and ordinary 2.4GHz gave me around 2MBps.  After the 'tune-up' there wasn't any freezing of movies or TV Shows, it all worked perfectly again.

It's not that far from the modem router to the Nvidia Shield but there is a wall in the way.

Well, not any more!  The photo above shows one of the two new Brush Wall Plates I installed today costing around $8 each from Bunnings.  I now have a direct connection  from the router in the Computer Room to the Nvidia Shield in the lounge.  It took around an hour or so to cut the 2 sets of holes in the wall and to fit the 2 brush plates.

Cutting the holes was the most difficult as I had to move the computer table and ALL the wires and power leads attaching stuff so I could get to the wall.  The lounge room was a little easier!

I watched a YouTube Video beforehand which showed how to do it and almost everything went to plan.

There was nothing in the YouTube video about the sheet of 3 play wood just behind the plaster in the computer room!.  But my trusty drill and a pruning saw saw me get through that OK.  I now have come to expect that not everything will go smoothly to plan and that there will be some hiccup along the way.

After setting it all up I transferred a 2GB file from my PC to the Nvidia Shield very quickly indeed.

So with everything back in place I switched stuff back again and everything worked ..... except we had limited internet connection!

It appeared that in moving the computer table and all the wires something had happened to the wires connecting the ADSL from the wall plug to the modem router.  I replaced the line filter and the telephone lead and now things are working pretty well again.

As I said earlier, things very rarely go perfectly to plan!

And keep your eyes on Gum Tree for a hardly used 1 month old TP-Link EoP setup at a good price.

And Now The Wind!

Much of SE Australia is in the grip of cold strong winds and plenty of rain.  The footy on telly tonight is forecast to be played in wet and windy conditions.  That strong wind is finding its way here to SE Queensland and is now making its way across the Sunshine Coast.

By the time the wind arrives here all the rainfall has gone and we are left with dry and cold windy weather.  But it is as clear as with gorgeous blue and sunny skies.  So find a spot out of the wind, sit back and relax and soak up the sunshine.

The first really cooler day is expected tomorrow though today is expected to be one of  the coolest we have had so far this season.  So it looks like wintertime is about to arrive.

But the photo above of me in the pool after a bike ride was taken yesterday, May 10th!  It was around 21° in the pool so the swim wasn't an extended one.  But here it is approaching mid May and I still get a swim in the pool.

I am guessing that swim will be the last for the season.  I switched the pool chlorinator over to "Winter Mode" late yesterday knowing the cool winds were on their way.

With the expected windy weather I decided to ride earlier than usual today.  The longer the ride went the stronger the winds from the south west became.  But I still managed over 17k's but stuck to the pathways with the most plant growth which helped protect me from the wind.  In the newer areas around here the plant growth is still young so it doesn't supply the same level of wind protection.

My next computer will be a laptop, something I can just pick up and take with me if we head south or go overseas.  I have heaps of stuff connected to the current PC such as hard disk drives, dongles which add wireless keyboards, Bluetooth and even cameras for Skype chats.

I know a laptop comes with much fewer USB ports so I have been watching out for good quality USB 3 powered hub.  If it is powered it means can more successfully run more USB ports at the same time.  So I grabbed an MBeat 7 port powered hub off eBay with 4 x USB3 Ports along with 3 x USB2 Ports.

It arrived yesterday so I set it all up.  Now one of my 4TB hard disk drives is very touchy and is not always 'recognized' by the PC.  If you get it running, you don't touch it.  Moving it or swapping a cable is usually enough for it to lose connection.  Yesterday I moved it once and it decided to stop working!

It took trying 3 different USB leads as well as 4 different USB 3 Ports and numerous examples of inappropriate language before it eventually worked again.  But we got there in the end.  The 4 powered USB 3 Ports all work great but I can't get a lick of life out of the USB 2 ports.  That is much less of a problem for me as I have ways around that.

The problem I am having right now is my current Desktop PC is running beautifully and doesn't skip a beat (touch wood).  It is 4 years old in September and still doing everything I want it to do.  And I am sure you believe me when I say the current PC does a fair bit of work!

But I will begin to keep my eyes open for an appropriate laptop replacement befor the end of the year.

And The Rains Came

We have just had a long weekend in this part of Australia.  Unlike most other States, Victoria has its Labour Day in March while here they follow the more traditional first Monday in May.  They had been forecasting a 'major rain event' for Monday (the holiday).  Despite it being quite windy there wasn't any rain till mid afternoon and by 8 am this morning we had received a decent 65mls with more showers forecast for today and tomorrow.

I was going to give the pool a top up Monday morning but I am glad I held off.  Needless to say that after 65mls the pool is full and the gardens and lawn are well watered.  This is the first rain we've had since the lily pilly trees were removed and I am hopeful of seeing some grass growth in the front lawn bare patches where previously the trees had sucked all the moisture out of the soil.

Despite it being windy yesterday I did jump on the bike for a wind blown 14 or so kilometres.  It was great with the wind but very hard work riding against it.

Things are kind of back to normal with the long weekenders enduring a long drive home to Brisbane through heavy traffic.  It is great to see a promise from the Federal government to fund extending the Bruce Hwy from here to Brisbane to 3 lane all the way.  Currently it is only 2 lanes each way to from here to Caboolture which is about half way to Brisbane.

It's a pretty crappy photo above as it was taken from a webcam but indicates some of the hassles holiday makers had getting back to the City yesterday.  By the time the wet weather arrived, much of the traffic should have cleared which was good.

It is expected to fine up Thursday before we get our first taste of wintry weather on Saturday.  In this part of the world winter is usually sunny but cool which is why it is popular with those from down south.  Wintry days can be very cool overnight but into the low 20's during the day.

In winter the wind tends to come from the south west which means it has travelled a long way overland and has dropped any moisture it may have had.  By the time it gets to us the wind is dry but cool, thus the sunny weather for winter.  On Saturday we get our first south westerly for the winter along with a promise of a morning temperature around 9°.  After lows 20's and high teens, 9° will feel very cold.

However by 9 am the sun has been out and the temperature gets to the high teens.

A Windy Sunday Morning!

I am just back from my morning bike ride and I managed around 16.5k's today despite the wind.  As with much of the east coast it is a little on the windy side here.  It is blowing off the sea from the south east which means there could be the odd shower or two.  These showers we are yet to seen however.

News continues just perfect and on the quiet side.  My computer keeps me occupied for a few hours most days and harvesting stuff to watch off the internet is the major task.  Many of the TV shows we watch don't come on free to air TV though if you are a Stan, Netflix or the like there would be some we rather enjoy available from there.

We have just watched a couple of series of "Suits", the TV series with Meghan Markle.  In the final episode of the last season she was written out as she has other interests at this stage named Prince Harry!

We went to our favorite little semi Vietnamese restaurant for lunch on Thursday.  By the time you total up the bill it works out at a similar price to the great cut price $7-50 roast lunch we enjoy at a local hotel.  Trouble is by the time you add a few drinks onto the price it is almost the same as the Vietnamese which is BYO.

Community Association business kept me busy on Thursday when we met with the Parks and Gardens Supervisor from Council along with his Contractor Co-ordinator.  We have concerns over how the new areas around us are being maintained.  Up until recently the developer has pulled out all stops to keep the area looking pristine.  Now this area has been fully developed.

The site has been handed over to Council to maintain and there has been an obvious fall off in attention the place is getting.  It will be a week or so until we see any change though after our onsite discussion as the work is programmed and carried out by contractors who are not due for the next rotation for a couple of weeks.

I have a couple of meetings next week as well as a Newsletter to get written up for printing.  Much is copy/paste from the website but as we have meetings next week these will need to be written up to the website and then across to the Newsletter.  All up it is around 4 hours or so to put it all together if everything goes to plan.  Experience shows things don't often go to plan!

I bottled my latest brew on Friday so stocks are again very high.

I am delighted with my footy team from Friday night especially after the disappointment of the week before.  Trish is smiling still as well.

The photo above was taken on today's bike ride.  We have numerous pathways similar to this around the area which makes cycling fun, safe and enjoyable.