Time For An Update!

Yes we are still both well and getting about OK!  It has been some time since I posted so here we go with all of our mundane stuff!

Firstly, and as usual a weather update!  It has been very, very cool first thing in the morning, sometimes taking till midday to become very pleasant and sunny!  We have had almost a whole week of things like "Is 6.6° but feels like 3.4°" first thing in the morning.  And it has taken to well after 10 am to warm up enough to even consider a bike ride!  As a result, I haven't ridden at all for most of this week.

But I have had a couple of walks.  I think I need to do quite a few more.  I have learned that bike riding uses very different muscles to walking!  But I can have a 30 minute walk on a windy day and not find it unpleasant whereas getting on the bike on windy days isn't much fun.

It was OK weather wise to ride this morning but it was a bottle washing a put another brew on day today which kept me busy up until well after 10 am.  Maybe I will head off for a walk after lunch.

I help this older guy (Mick) out with his computer and his Nvidia Shield box.  Mick has a small office set up in his garage where he has his computer and usually I head there first to update whatever needs updating.  With heaps of Windows 10 updates recently he repeatedly loses links and stuff so I usually try and put stuff back where he likes it.

Updates often knock out his "Start Is Back" program.  It's a little program that makes Windows 10 look and behave like Windows 7 and makes his computer experience a lot more familiar.  His laptop is getting on now, some of the keys on the keyboard work intermittently and he is looking to update.  We are keeping our eyes open for a good deal for him.

He wants me to have this old laptop (with an AMD8) after he replaces it.  I have a wifi keyboard which I would use to bypass the laptop's sticky keyboard.

I updated his addons on Kodi for him and he seems quite happy.  I pulled the garage door cord to open the garage door to go home and nothing happened.  It wasn't the right thing to do as pulling the cord doesn't get the door to open, it disengages the motor from the door.  After about 10 minutes hunting around he found the manual for the roller door and the whole thing had to be reset again.

I could reach up to the controls where as Mick needed a step ladder to reach.  Mick is a Vietnam vet and being small in size he usually headed up the patrol when they were in the jungle.  I can't imagine me doing anything like that.  Anyway after about 30 minutes trial and error reaching well up above my head to fiddle with and press buttons, we had it all set up again and working well.

That night I noticed pain in my lower right leg and come around 2am it was to the medicine cabinet for a Mobic (muscle relaxant) and Panodol as the leg was aching.  Repeatedly reaching up to the adjust the garage door had knocked my back out of whack!  I am off to the Chiro this afternoon.

We have had a minor problem with playback on our old PayTV box.  We record very few shows but do like to watch a great footy panel program (AFL 360) the next day at around 4pm.  But we get major pixelation throughout the playback for a short second or so and up to 6 times each playback. It isn't anything major but a little annoying.

So I rang the provider and they asked me to monitor the box for a week, note the problem over that time and if the problem persisted, they would replace the box with the latest model.  A rang back a week later, the problem hadn't improved so they sent me out a replacement latest model whizz bang  box as a 'self install".

Our current paytv box is much older and the wiring connections are almost the same but not exactly!  The old box has 4 connections on the back, the new box only has only 3!  And of course there aren't any instructions on how to upgrade from our current model box to the latest IQ3.  Fortunately there was a Help Forum where I managed to get some advice and how to get around the hassle.  It meant using a 'splitter' to divide the current Free To Air connection, now one goes to the new IQ3, and the other to the TV.  And it works fine.

I will swap it all around on Monday, after this week's footy has finished.  The new box has access to streaming programs and needs an internet connection.  The hole in the wall now has 2 leads passing through it.  It works fine!

I won't bore you with the bank sending us new cards which required trips to the bank and activation online.  I suggest the banks website was built by someone who never was going to use it to try to activate a card.

The instructions told me to go online, put in a range of numbers and I could set a PIN for the cards.  Just prior to putting in my new PIN number and after messing around online for 20 minutes I was told to put in my Bank Client Number.  So I put in Trish's number as I don't have one!  It was only then a message popped up and said that I had to personally go into the bank and get my own Client Number as I couldn't use Trish's number!

So after we sorted all that out, a trip to the bank, wait in line to be served, get sorted and then back home, online again and go through everything, set my PIN number and I was ready to buy!  So this morning I head into Bunnings, I buy the TV lead bits I need for the new PayTv box self install and to the self check out to use my newly activated with its new PIN.  All goes well until I use Paywave and the purchase is cancelled as there is a fault with the card.  The second Amex card I also sorted works fine.

Off to second shop to buy a lead, Paywave again doesn't work but slotting the card into the reader and the sale goes through!  So there will be another trip into the bank, wait in line to be served, get the card sorted and so on ........

My new watch is great.  It is telling me I need to walk more and not sit around on the computer all day!  I already knew that!

Lucky I have plenty of spare time!

Don't Let The Sunshine Fool You!

The photo here looks wonderful, a neighbour is out mowing his lawn wearing a T-Shirt and there isn't a cloud in the sky.  It is another one of those 'but it feels like' days.  I was watching the Aussie Rules footy from Brisbane yesterday and the commentators were saying how the warm humid weather and around 25° was effecting the team from Melbourne.  They weren't used to it being mid winter and so warm.

All that blew away last night when a cold, gusty, dry southerly arrived this morning.  Today around lunchtime it is one of those is 17° but feels like 12° days.  There is a strong wind blowing from the south and it is cold!

So what's the news?  The young guy doing the front garden for us eventually got back to me after 10 days or so.  I told hm we didn't want anything done as his failure to communicate with us meant we believed he was no longer interested and we went ahead and did all the purchasing and planting by ourselves!

All we need now is to put wood chips over the garden.  You can buy that in bags nowadays so a few bags here and there and all will be done.

The new brew (brewed as a backup) has been bottled as well.  The cloudy brew which I suspect won't be any good at all has been allowed to settle and is looking a bit more like it should.  I have another week to go before it may be ready to have a test drink.  But I have heaps of supplies right now.

Trish and I are both interested in the footy again with both teams recording wins so far this weekend.

Last Monday's Community Association Management Committee meeting has come and gone.  The killer is getting the information onto the website the next day which can take some time to get right.  But that is all water under the bridge now.

My latest electronic toy has arrived from China.  It is an allegedly unbranded Iwownfit Watch Band.  They are different prices all over the internet ranging from around $33 to over $100 at Amazon.  It came in an Iwownfit box, has an Iwownfit instruction booklet and uses the Iwownfit Android App!  Of course I bought it at the $33+ price!

It works OK, may need an occasional good shake to get the watch face to light up.  It can tell me there is an email or a text message for me.  It transfers the time, weather and day and date info from my Xiaomi phone and shows on the watch face.

I do like the color screen  Click here: EBay Link

It kind of tells me how I slept last night, gives me the current temperature (if it has updated) and a weather symbol.  It will also record my steps and I believe it will tell me how far I have ridden on a bike ride.  OK for $33 delivered.

The version of Paint Shop Pro I now use on my computer keeps giving me the message that I am using a pirated copy of the program.  Following a little web browsing and Google/DuckDuckGo, those messages have stopped appearing at the moment.

I find the Internet Search Engine called DuckDuckGo allows me to visit and search many of the websites I want to visit.  Google is filtering out many 'pirate' sites while DuckDuckGo let's me research what I want to research, not what it wants me to research!

I have also discovered an incredible web family at "Reddit".  It is a series of forums covering many subjects and pieces of interest.  It takes me an hour or so to work my way through some of the forums I have found.

So life progresses along nice and quietly here on the Sunshine Coast.

Let's Forget All About the Footy!

For both Trish and myself, this was yet another weekend to disregard the footy.  But there were plenty of turn ups this round with numerous lower ranked teams toppling their higher ranked opponents.

So what's news?  Well I did a bottling the other day.  I noticed the brew I was bottling was extremely cloudy so I reckon I have messed this one up!  With the cooler mornings lately I have put on the heat pad to keep the brew between 25° and 30°.  There isn't a thermostat or anything, you just keep an eye on it and turn the heat pad off if it gets a bit too warm.

First thing one morning I wandered in to have a look at how things were going and saw it was close to 35°.  The yeast is a living thing and I reckon the 35° was too hot and killed off the yeast.  It may not be a complete failure because I imagine if the brewing process was completed prior to the 35° it may still be drinkable.

But I am not keeping my hopes too high.  But what it did mean was Saturday, another brew went on and 19 bottles were washed, sanitized and put out to dry.  Sunday was almost 100% cooler and overcast so now being a lovely sunny Monday I am hoping they will dry and I can put them away ready for bottling!  I am keeping an extra close eye on the heat pad and using it sparingly!

With Bunnings around 1 kilometre from us it was no problem to spend $100 on new plants which now adorn the upgraded front garden.  Today is around 24° and lovely and sunny, good growing weather.  Even the lawn seed planted to fix up a couple of bare patches in the lawn is now sprouting.

Friends John and Raelene host international students.  Steena is from Germany and has spent 6 months here attending the local High School.  She is being hosted by John and Raelene and is just about to finish her 6 months time here and fly home again.  She has a surfboard to pack into her luggage to take home.  The nearest beach to her home is around a 500k return trip. So the surf board may not get a lot more use!

A few of us got together last night for a few drinks and to farewell Steena.  A new exchange student arrives in a few weeks time!

I have a Management meeting to chair at a private home again tonight while Trish is off to a CACA Craft group.  So we are both out this evening.

It has been quite cool here so there hasn't been much bike riding.  Despite the chilly misty weather yesterday I knocked off around 18k's yesterday and managed another 16k's this morning.  Today's weather is just magic but overall it hasn't been the usual bright sunny weather we are used to in winter.  But in another 2 weeks the weather begins to turn a little warmer again.

This winter we've had the heating on for a couple of evenings while last year it didn't get turned on at all.

I have been called to lunch so that's it for today.