That's It 'Til Next Season

The AFL season has now come and gone with the Grand Final played yesterday and The Eagles coming out on top in a tightly fought match in Melbourne.

My attention had been drawn to Cricket anyway with the departure of my team from the Finals race early in the procedure.  With PayTV now having rights to most matches we can enjoy many of them on the PayTV platform.  Those we can't access on PayTV we can enjoy via the Cricket Australia app which has been incorporated as a Kodi Addon.

Grand Final day meant an earlier than usual departure from the Computer Club to get home to plant myself near or in front of the TV to keep up with the Grand Final happenings.  The Home Brew went down very well and brought back memories of previous Grand Finals I had attended with mates back when we lived in Melbourne. A few cold beers was a major feature of those great days.

Around 8pm last night a row of thunderstorms rolled across the Sunshine Coast with a display of lightning and some serious thunderclaps.  Despite the grandeur of the show, we were left with just 1.5mls of rain.  This morning we still have the odd clap of thunder and we do have a very strong wind blowing.

This means a hold on bike riding for today with possible storms and windy weather.  I have recovered from a puncture the other day when I was about to set out on a ride and saw the front tyre was as flat as.  Nowadays you don't really repair a puncture, you just put in a new tube.  At around $6 for new tube, it is a genuine easy way to overcome a puncture.

My newer hearing aid started playing up yesterday so it will go in for repair.  With the Monday coming being a holiday, it probably means I will have hearing hassles for the week and beyond next weekend.  This is a pain!

The pool is up to the low 20's nowadays with the nights warming up considerably.  Mid to high teens are the current overnight minimums.  I had a quick swim on Thursday following a haircut given to me by Trish in the afternoon.  I swam up and back a couple of times but that was enough in the 21° water.

Our visitors have now arrived safely back in Newcastle with the caravan all sorted.  It was great having them here and I suggest they are delighted with their new acquisition.

The new computer is running beautifully.  My only regret is the lack of USB ports but I now have a couple of USB hubs along with 2 usb extension cables giving me ample access.  The given to me laptop is working great as well despite a low to mid powered processor and a sticky keyboard.  Both shortcomings are more than compensated by the extra 4GB of ram it has and the incredibly cheap $15 Logitech keyboard from the Dick Smith fire sale which works perfectly.

The old laptop has become a great backup to have 'just in case'. Also it is the perfect thing to take to Computer Club so I can actually now show people on my machine how to do things.

And my latest computer acquisition is a 2 year subscription for a VPN a Virtual Private Network.  More and more I am landing on websites to which the Australian Government has closed.  In Australia you are unable to access some websites, usually websites which access illegal downloads.  Your internet address supplied by your ISP tells anyone online which country you are in which allows the government to block certain addresses.

However when you connect to a VPN it re routes your internet address through to its servers which it has scattered across the world.  You can pick and choose which country you want to be connected to the internet through.  These countries do not have the same laws as in Australia so you can access all internet sites.

The downside is that your connection via those countries can be markedly slower.  I joined a VPN service yesterday and tried half a dozen or so countries.  Many are painfully slow but I found Brazil OK and Taiwan was marginally slower than my Aussie connection.

You can add your VPN to an android TV box as well via an app and 'pretend' it is connected via Taiwan.  The TV box can then look for stuff to play for you, unencumbered by government restrictions to banned websites.  The VPN is turned on and off from your android app or via your PC.  I can use the VPN service on up to 5 devices.

It seems pretty nifty and at about $1-50 per week, a handy service to have.

So that is about all of our news.  Our next getting away is later this week when we have three nights on Fraser Island.  There is a possibility we will be there at the same time as Harry and Meghan.  We have nights there as well as a full day bus tour planned.  It should be fun.

We are both well and getting on with things OK. The Arts centre Association keeps Trish busy and enjoying the company of many friends there.  Right now, life is pretty good!

Visitors Now Heading South

The footy for Trish and me is now all over for 2018.  Both teams were defeated and now are preparing for the 2019 season.

Mick and Janet arrived from Newcastle with their car packed to the limit with stuff to go into the new caravan.  There were pots and pans, clothes, blankets and all the things you need to set off on a holiday.

There was too much home brew consumed, too much home made spirits drunk, but not too much friendship and laughs.  It was great having them here as they waited to pick up their new snazzy Rave caravan.  It was ready enough to collect late Tuesday but still things needed doing.  Around 48 hours later and all was done and a few teething problems were overcome.

They are now newbies on the caravan scene and winding their way slowly over a couple of weeks back to Newcastle.  It gives them the ideal chance to sort out their roles, how towing works, backing into a site and working as a team.  It is a little trial and error but if you take your time there shouldn't be any troubles.

Their tow vehicle is a 8 cylinder diesel Volkswagen Toureg which will do the job in a breeze.  It's a top of the line tow vehicle pulling a top of the line caravan.

So they are now in northern NSW leaving us to get on with things.  The pool is almost ready for swimming and I was delighted that all the water needed was a couple of bags of salt and a 'blocker', a chemical which helps to stop the chlorine 'flashing off' and disappearing.  At well under $40 worth it is the cheapest it has ever been for this beginning of the season top up!

At around 19° to 20° first thing in the day it is a little on the sharp side for swimming.  While we continue to get our overnight temps of 12° and above, the pool loses any heat it has gained during the day overnight.

With friends visiting we have been to Miss Hoi An a couple of times.  On all occasions the food was excellent, we really have stumbled onto something great in this foodie desert called the Sunshine Coast.

Trish is a busy as always with CACA stuff while I have the new PC up and running just as I want.

Plenty of cricket coming up on the TV, brews to bottle and getting ready for summer stuff to do.

We are both well, Trish is over her Melbourne cold and luckily enough she didn't pass it onto me.

Thursday PM

We've had almost 25mls of rain since I last added a post to the blog.  We need all the rain we can get as it has been unusually dry.  So we've had a couple of showers today with another possible shower looming.  But it isn't cold with the temp around 24°..

I was installing another program earlier this week on the new PC when a pop up message said the program could not be installed until Office 2016 had completed installation.  I clicked on a couple of buttons and before I knew what had happened Office 2016 was gone!

Eventually I downloaded another 3+GB version of Office 2016 and the install looked totally different as the photo shows.  Within 5 or 10 minutes 2016 had been installed and a minute or so later it was fully activated.

A bit of Youtube searching showed the problems I was having with the previous Office version installs where it stalled at around 90% were not uncommon.  And it even showed a way how you could get it to complete the installation.  But I am happy with it all now.

So it's over a week that I have had the new PC and I am quite happy with my choices and purchases.  The 8GB of Ram has seen an improvement on speed and the ability of the PC to do a couple of things at once.

Right now it is all great and running how I want it.  I have successfully added the 4x usb3 hard drives via a Hub and have added a usb3 extension cable to give the leads a bit more room.

Friends from Newcastle are coming to the Sunny Coast to pick up their brand new caravan.  The van is ready for collection on Tuesday and they will get here around lunchtime Saturday and spend a few nights with us.  It will be great to catch up and I am sure we will enjoy a couple of drinks.

We have received a couple of letters from NBN suppliers saying to sign up with them now for when the NBN gets connected on Friday October 19th, around 6 weeks away.  I have done all that but now we have an 'expected connection' date.

Footy for Trish and me tonight and tomorrow night.  A loss for my team means the end of 2018 while Trish's team gets a second chance.  They play the top team who are favorites at this stage to take out the premiership ...... but we will see!

Sunny Sunday

With an expected top temperature of around 26° we are in for a delightful day.  Usually temperatures like that in early September mean a bit of wind around.  That is why I got today's 18k bike ride out of the way early! I was also hoping to catch a couple of magpies enjoying a Sunday sleep in but no such luck.  I suffered no harm as the long wavering cable ties attached to my helmet made any swooping magpie think twice about getting too close.  It is nesting season and father magpies are out and about ensuring their young are safe and sound.

The new PC is just about sorted.  I have had enormous hassles getting a recent copy of Office to install.  2010 goes on fine but it took around 8 goes before I got a 2016 version to install.  Even then it installed without me really knowing.

The green installation progress line that goes across the screen stopped at around half way.  The activity indicator light on the hard drive just seemed to flicker as if the who process had stalled.  Usually I would get impatient after waiting for 5 minutes and then roll back any changes.  I had downloaded an official Office Removal Tool and it got used around 8 times or so.

We were heading down to Brisbane later that afternoon so I just left the PC with the installation progress line at around half way to see what would happen.  We returned home around 8pm to see the green line monitoring the installation still only half way across the screen.  I was able to do a couple of things but the PC then locked up requiring a power off via the power switch on the wall which I did.

The PC restarted fine but then a Russian website automatically popped up in my web browser I immediately shut the browser down.  I checked the PC's program menu and lo and behold, Office 2016 had been fully installed. And I can now guess where my Office 2016 Installation file had come from!  I am pleased to say all seems to be working perfectly.

I received a text message from our soon to be married in Manila nephew Peter and his lovely Filipino partner Vecy.  They were heading to a Brisbane outdoor eatery called Eat St.  It was something we had often wanted to do so we went along as well.  It was setup in colorful and excellently done up shipping containers.  It was huge affair, much bigger than we had guessed and even getting a table to sit at a bit of a raffle.  There we several large halls, a couple of live bands on two outdoor stages and a wide range of food to try.

Needless to say we had heaps of Filipino street food which Vecy chose.  We are learning that if you eat with anyone Filipino, you don't walk away wanting more to eat!  But as the photo shows it was a huge concern with lots of people there. It was a short sleeve sort of night with quite a busy crowd.  It must get packed when it is a 28° night!

We arrived home around 8pm.  It is a long drive of well over an hour to get there so it is the sort of thing you would do after spending time in Brisbane and a spot to eat before heading back up the highway. Not the kind of "where will we eat tonight?' sort of thing.

It was then after I arrived home I was delighted to see Office 2016 had eventually installed!