Following Meg and Harry

I am not sure we'll get the "Royal Suite" but we are off to Fraser Island this week and staying at the same place as the the Royal Couple!  Trish grabbed a ticket from a "Luxury Escapes" website, three nights accommodation with breakfast included.  We are on the 3:30 pm Tuesday ferry across to the resort and will spend 3 nights there.

We've booked a Fraser Island all day bus tour for one of the days and it had better be nice and sunny! At $150 per head it would want to be a great day out.  You can't go over to the island and not 'do' the tour on this once in a lifetime trip for us.

So this week is pretty well sorted.  As the photo shows I've managed a bottling around a week ago and today I put another brew on and bottle washed.  The bottling should go ahead upon our return from Fraser!

We bit the bullet and one of the guys at Computer Club put a totally new version of Windows 10 Pro install on Trish's 5 year old laptop for her.  I spent most of yesterday (Saturday) putting Office and all the other stuff she wanted back on again.  We managed to re install 95% of the stuff back, luckily it was all the important stuff she needs.  It sure seems to load and shut down a lot more quickly after the reformat.

The weather has sure warmed up the last week or so here with a week of around 30° each day.  Some days were hotter, others a little cooler.  10 days ago the pool was 22° and a bit chilly.  Today it is over 28° and just delightful!  I usually swim a couple of times each day.

Bike riding has now been joined by a daily walk of a couple of kilometres. I'm wanting to get ready for our trip to the Philippines and Manila early in December where we expect to do a lot of walking.  So I thought I would start off with a couple of k's each day and slowly work my way up.  So I do my walk and follow up with a slightly shorter bike ride of around 12k's or so.

After that bit of exercise a swim goes down very well indeed.

On Thursday's walk I just wore my cheap scuffs and managed a blister on a toe on my right foot.  So walking gave way to bottle washing this morning!

Luckily we aren't into the full swing of summer as the ceiling fan in the lounge room just stopped!  I've rigged up a pedestal fan in the short term and it is OK at this time of the year.  Someone is expected to come around and check it out for us.  I guess we'll be up for a new ceiling fan.

There is a Cricket Australia android 'app' which has live TV coverage of the Sheffield Shield matches.  Being Android means it can also be installed on my Nvidia Shield box and I can watch all the matches live and on the big screen  There is also a Cricket Australia addon in Kodi which gives me yet another chance to sit back and enjoy the day's play at the MCG or the like.

So we are both well and enjoying life here on the Sunshine Coast.  The warmer weather now means several jumps in the pool each day.  So mow the lawn, into the pool afterwards.  And then I can always enjoy the odd cool drink or two .... or three!

Online With The NBN

I received an email around 3pm Tuesday afternoon from Telstra advertising all their NBN services and to 'connect now'!  I really don't think that it was the formal notification that my NBN connection had gone live, but I plugged all the bits and pieces in anyway, connected the landline phone to the modem/router and waited.

I noted the 'Connected' light came on almost immediately after I powered the NBN Connection box.  Then another "DSL" light came on.  I then powered up the modem/router and suddenly my PC indicated I was online!

My modem/router is now just used as a router and distributes internet across the house via Ethernet cables or by wifi.

A quick trip to the Speedtest website showed I was getting 47MB as a download speed which is pretty good. I didn't mind the connection being a day earlier than I had been told.

Around 45 minutes later I received a call from Telstra, this time checking that all had gone well when I connected.

We are on a Fibre to the Curb (FTTC) connection while most of our area will be on the standard Fibre to the Node (FTTN).  Many locals continue to wait for their FTTN connection to go live. They have been told to expect connection by November 1.

Has it made a difference to my downloading habit?  The answer is yes by quite a bit but not as much as I had hoped.  There are two limiting factors to downloading, how fast is my connection and how fast is the website with the download releasing the file.  So my 47MBps download speed is hindered if the source site is releasing it at 30MBps.

Some sites release files much slower than others so it is a little hit and miss.

Overall I am delighted with our move.  The landline phone (which we only use for incoming calls) works without a hitch.  Some NBN users with different suppliers can experience problems with the old 'landline phone' connection.

The rainfall up here has been incredible over the last week or so.  We have now had well over 10" or 250mls of rain.  We have gone from a dry year to one which is around average.  Areas about 50k's to north of us (around Noosa) have had twice the rain we have had.

I managed a bike ride yesterday but today's ride was thwarted by a very light rogue shower.  It was enough to make the roads and footpath wet.  Today there aren't any mudguards on bikes so a bike ride on wet paths means you get sprayed all over.

Back To The Mundane Stuff

The photo to the left shows the first bit of sunshine we have seen here on the Sunshine Coast for several days.  Despite it being  wet on and off over the last 8 or so days, I did get a fair bit of bike riding in knocking over around 70k's in between any wet mornings last week.

However with the recent downpour, especially over the weekend which saw us receive over 180mls (or over 7"), the bike has been put well away.  All told we have received almost 10" (238mls to be exact) since the previous weekend.  A strong wind is accompanying the rain which is whipping up huge seas at all the closed local beaches.

So to see some blue sky this morning is a bit of a change.  We've been sitting around 20° over the last 3 or 4 days while Melbourne has been up to a balmy 28°.

We have gone from a 'below average rainfall' 2018 to an 'on average rainfall' year in the matter of 8 days or so. With the sun out just now between the showers, you can really feel its warmth telling us summer isn't too far away.  Give me 30 minutes of that sunshine and the towels on the line will be dry!

So what else is new.  All of our computers 'played up' after a recent Windows Update.  Fortunately a restart on most occasions eventually managed to 'fix' things.  Bill over the road turned his PC on and he appeared to have lost everything, it was as if his PC had just been reformatted.

I reinstalled the stuff he wanted so he could get up and running again when I eventually worked out that his PC had just created a new startup 'profile'.  I found his old profile with his favorite settings, shortcuts and all his photos and downloads so just copy pasted that to the current 'new profile' and hopefully all should be fine again.

My Computer did the exactly the same thing but everything returned to normal with an immediate restart.

Mr NBN is still to be connected at our place.  We are getting are getting a Fibre to the Curb (FTTC) connection and it seems each FTTC customer is timetabled as to when they will be connected. FTTC requires an extra piece of hardware which of course had to be delivered.  It's the small white box in this photo left.  Ours arrived on Friday and our FTTC connection goes through sometime on Wednesday this week, around 48 hours away as I type.

The larger box on its side is the new modem/router while the larger black box on the left is my 4TB Seagate Cloud Drive.

Again the guy over the road had his connection go through late last week and he is with the same company as I am.  After getting connected and now on a 50MB speed internet plan he clocked a download rate over 47Mb.  He is delighted!

The bottom of the range but extremely handy Dyson stick vacuum we have has been great for smaller cleaning up jobs around the house.  However the 'trigger' sticks and at times keeps on cutting out making it a pain to use.  With an online 20% off sale at a local Electrical store we bought a Bosch stick vacuum to take its place.  It isn't quite as portable and light to use as the Dyson but is more like a heavier 'real' vacuum cleaner.  And it is heaps more powerful though much heavier than the Dyson ever was.

But at 2/3 the price of the Dyson, the Bosh Stick vacuum is just perfect for our smaller house.

The Community Association celebrated its 10th Anniversary on Saturday night.  We had a subsidized meal and a great night.  All the current Management Committee (and most partners) were there but only 1 or the 'original' team came along.  Kerry loved the night and had a great time.

 Trish is mulling over the idea of taking over the Presidency of the Arts Centre Association.  She has completed her allowable terms as Secretary and has to resign later this year.  Needless to say she is keen to see who offers to take on the Secretary role in the new setup prior to making any commitment re the presidency.

So that is all our news, bits of this and bits of that.  I can hear again now my hearing aid has been repaired again.

All we need now is for the sun to stay out and dry everything up.  Some showers are predicted for each of the next few days, fortunately the forecast is for 'showers decreasing'.  We can only hope so!

Roll on Wednesday!

Storm Season

This time of the year is known as 'storm season' here in SE Queensland.  When the conditions are right, humidity builds across the day and can then erupt into a fierce thunderstorm.  Thunderstorms in this part of the world can be hit and miss, a location 20k's away gets 25mls and you get a few spits of rain.

Last night we received 28mls of rain in around 30 minutes.  It just bucketed down with a wonderful display of flashing lightning and loud thunder.  We survived OK without a hassle but this morning it is sticky and slightly overcast.  It seems the stormy weather maybe hanging about. My phone weather app tells me the humidity is well into the 90's.

And it feels it too.

So what have we been up to?  One of my hearing aids died and is in for repair.  I pay an annual fee to have all repair costs covered so it won't be damaging to my pocket.

Last week was busy as it was 'Newsletter Week'.  I only have one more newsletter to go for 2018.

The new PC goes well but I have had a problem with Microsoft's OneDrive program.  OneDrive is an online storage service from Microsoft but the service began uploading heaps of stuff I didn't want it to such as all my Documents.  You have to be careful because if you then delete Documents from OneDrive, it deletes all your documents from your Documents folder as well, many of which have been collected over years. It wanted to do the same with Pictures as well.

You would turn synchronization of those folders 'off' but if you tried to remove them from OneDrive it just wouldn't do delete those folders.  Then a few days later they would be updated online again.  The Documents synchro process had turned itself back on again.

So OneDrive has now gone (uninstalled) and its job has been overtaken by DropBox.  It is doing the job nicely. I can easily swap files between my devices using DropBox.

Trish continues busy with heaps of projects at the Arts Centre Association  She attends up to four handcraft sessions there across the week as well as being heavily involved with the administration side of things.

Being spring it is cleanup time around the place.  Yesterday I cleaned the pavers all around the pool and removed all the built up mould from them.  I use a mixture of 1 part chlorine to 2 parts water and broom the mixture across the pavers.  A few minutes later the chlorine has killed the mould and I can wash the pavers down with the hose.  The 28mls of rain last night ensured all chlorine had bee removed as well. The photo above shows the pool area after the cleanup.

The front lawn got a mow as  well and I am now waiting for a fine dry day to let the Weed n Feed do its job.

That leads us to our upcoming connection to the NBN which is due for connection in "October".  I had to complete some forms at the local Telstra Shop which I did.  I then expected to be given a FTTC Connection Box, race home, put it all together and bingo I was online.

But no.  The Connecting Device is being sent out by Courier any time from Friday.  Then I kind of think someone from the NBN will connect it all up for us and I suspect this is to happen the following Wednesday.  I will make a call and find out more later today.

But as you can imagine, I find it a bit frustrating.  Fortunately my ADSL service is pretty reasonable so waiting for the fibre access isn't so bad.

I continue to bike ride but I am becoming more selective on what days I ride.  With the overcast skies around today is a wait and see day before riding.

There is now plenty of cricket on the TV for me to watch.  The cricket doesn't excite Trish too much so we go back to watching series I have obtained from online during the evening.  Currently we are wading through an older TV Series called "The Big C" with Laura Linney.  She won awards for her role in this excellent series.

We have seen it before but I came across a high quality version a few weeks back so we have been watching it.  It i a great series.

Some of the Pay TV services such as Amazon, Hulu and the like are replaying some of these older series again which usually means that soon after there will be a great copy available for download and playback.  The Big C is one such series.

I find I am using my VPN service sparingly.  It is handy at times but mainly just to find links from some of those sites which have been blocked to Australians.  There are numerous backdoor sites which allow users to gain access to these blocked sites.  A quick copy/paste of the link you want and it is all go to get the stuff you want to download.

So that's about it.  It is time for another check outside to see if a bike ride is on the cards for today.  Magpie swooping season is all but over which is another reason to jump on the bike.