End Of The Week

It is just before 7 am on Saturday, the end of the week but the beginning of the weekend.  Our cooler weather has continued and we even received a surprise drop of rain overnight Friday with 38mls ending up in the rain gauge.

The lawns are all mowed and the grass is nice and green following all the recent rain.  The pool is full and this photo shows the sort of day we are looking forward to today.

A nice and sunny 33º is expected this afternoon.  And if all goes to plan, it will in the be low 20's and very comfortable overnight.

I helped out a neighbour's mate yesterday and tidied up his computer for him.  There is an increasing amount of internet browser hi jacking going on.  I just managed to get rid of one hi jacker on his Internet Explorer yesterday on his computer when another web browser hi jacker took over.

And what they do is that almost every icon that you click on to get on the internet has been changed into a link to a certain search engine which will only lead you to the sites they want you go to.  So you click on the icon to get onto Internet Explorer, and you are taken instead to a rogue search engine site albeit via Internet Explorer.

The only way to fix it is to get a shortcut from Internet Explorer itself in the "program" folder and swap it for every IE icon you can find on your desk top or in the Start Menu!  It can take some time to check them all out.

Anyway it is fixed now.  I also installed Malwarebytes and ran it.  The program discovered and quarantined over 700 suspicious files!  All is even better now after I also installed an anti-virus program for him.

The guy uses the computer mainly for downloading via Bittorrent and he didn't even have an Anti-Virus program installed!

We have a State Election today so I have to go and vote somewhere.  I will do that on my way to Computer Club.

We still have plenty of sport on TV with the Ladies Australian Open Tennis Championship on tv tonight along with the final of the Asian Cup soccer match!  The remote will sure get a workout.  The pool looks good for this afternoon as well.

I am hopeful my replacement modem/router will be available this upcoming week.  The older one I am using continues to 'lose' items on the local network.  It requires a restart around 4 times a day when I need to get things back.  Hopefully the replacement I receive will fix that.  It is due next week or the week after.

Cloudy, Overcast and Gloriously Cool!

It has been cloudy with intermittent light showers throughout the day today.  We have probably had around 4mls of rain.  But the temperature has struggled to get above 26º.  I did manage a quick swim this morning and it was warmer in the pool than out of it.  But then the clouds came back and it cooled off again.

We believe we are due for a delightfully cool day. Recently we have sweltered through 34º and high humidity!  At 4pm today it is a comfortable 24º. I didn't get a bike ride in this morning because of the rain showers, but I did get to bottle my latest brew. Home Brew supplies are again running at 100%.

The kids from the street outside have all gone back to school.  We don't mind the sound of them playing and enjoying themselves, it is just that little bit nicer when they are not at home.  Even the young autistic boy from next door has started 'special' school.  That gives his Mum some free time.

We celebrated Australia Day on Monday with friends around for prawns, snags, lamb chops, salads and one of Tricia's famous Pavlovas.  It all went down very well indeed.  We had our friends around who have moved house to around 5k's away.  They both enjoy their drinks but Ian spent the day on Light Beer.  I don't think he enjoyed the day as much as the rest of us.

We expect we'll be invited over to their place next but with the laws and restrictions on drink driving means that probably won't happen.

The TV remote has been battling again.  With the Australian Tennis Open Championships, the one day International Cricket, and the Asian Soccer Cup all going on right now in Australia there is heaps to watch on TV.

We have all these great movies to watch but the sport on TV means they remain quietly on the Hard Disk drive!

My internet connection remains OK but I need to reboot the modem/router several times a day to get access to the network printer and the media player.  I recently had to reboot the modem router so I could transfer the photo above from my phone to the PC via the wireless network.

I managed to bamboozle a couple of mates from computer Club who popped around to see how I downloaded my movies.  I have setup an RSS feed program which monitors all the new movies which come to their websites.  This program then filters the TV Shows I want to get so that I get when a show I want is available to download.

They were busy jotting down notes and taking photos with their phones trying to keep up.  I kept on telling them ALL the informations is here:  http://mediahowto00.blogspot.com.au/

Right now in the US there is a series on the History Channel called "Sons of Liberty".  So whenever a copy of a new episode of "Sons of Liberty" becomes available for download, I get a notification on my desktop!  The 3rd and final episode isn't available until Thursday morning our time.

And The Rains Came!

Two posts in one day!

It is mid afternoon and we have totalled around 130mls of rain (or over 5") since it first began overnight last night.  And we have just had one almighty heavy shower of rain.

Our backyard has been setup to cope with heavy rain and that recent shower was perfect to see how well our planning had worked. There is a 'drain' beneath these stones in the photo.  It connects to the house' storm water drainage system.  The pool overflow also connects to the same pipe.

The drain under the new 'pergola' connects into the drain underneath the stones.  Everything connects into the one storm water drain along the back of the house. So the water build up you see in the above photo is made worse by the new pergola drain emptying into it.

This photo shows the pergola drain.  If you look carefully at a larger view of it, you can see the build up of water under the pergola is almost but not quite overflowing back into the pool.

The area under the pergola is like a large spoon and is able to hold water until it has been able to drain away.

The shower of rain eased and within two minutes all excess water from around the pool had disappeared!  So no water flowed into the pool.

The designs to handle heavy rain have all worked very well indeed.

Friday

It has now been almost 48 hours since Chris, Wendy and family headed back home to Melbourne.  Things here couldn't be any more different.  The misty photo right shows what we have awoken to this morning, a cool and very wet day is in store for us.  Already I have tipped 39mls (an inch and a half) from the rain gauge and it is teeming down again now as I type.

Yesterday Trish was busy washing sheets and towels and putting things 'back' again. Despite a few rain showers, most of the washing is pretty dry.   But we did have a great time with the family up here and we hope they enjoyed themselves too.

I have turned off the water harvesting from the house roof to the pool!  The pool is quite full at the moment and the harvested water is just being fed back into the pool and then from the pool overflow back into the storm water system and out into the street.  I have now removed the pool overflow plug which 'manages' excess water without flushing it out of the pool.  This plug is currently fully removed and assisting the excess water in the pool to drain away.

Ants have been on the move and the 'anti-ant spray' has been in full use.

I have worked out a temporary fix for my home wireless network.  After a while the home wireless network 'loses contact' with the printer and the media player.  The computers can always 'see each other', but other periphery devices tend to drop off.

So if Trish wants to print from her laptop via the wireless networked printer there are times when it just doesn't work because the printer has disappeared from the network.  It is still 'there', it is just that the modem/router can no longer 'see' it.

To get the printer or the media player back on the network usually I just restart the device and after a minute or so it reappears on the network and can be used.  Another way to fix things is to restart the old Billion modem/router I am using while a replacement for my newer but not working properly TP-Link modem/router is being processed.

I have set up this 'switch' between an extension lead and the old Billion modem/router power pack and I have placed it within easy reach of my keyboard.  Every now and again I flick the red switch off, wait 10 seconds and then switch it back on again. Within a minute or so the Billion has been restarted, the network and all its devices re established and everything is up and running again!

Things may stay that way for several hours before they slip away again.  I quick flick of the switch off and back on gets all sections of the network available again.

Off Back To Home

Chris, Wendy and the family set off to return home to Melbourne this morning.  Trish drove them to Brisbane Airport where they are currently winging their way back to Melbourne.

On Tuesday they all went off to the local smaller than anything on the Gold Coast "Fun Park" known as Aussie World.  It is certainly less expensive for a family of four but doesn't have the range of fun rides that the larger theme parks have.

But I don't think that mattered one iota.  The park had its final ride over by 5pm, their "Closing Time".  The kids drove home around 5:20pm!  Andrew estimates he had around 50 rides all together.  There was minimal queuing up and at the end of the day you could just walk up and get on the ride.

The "Giant Redback" was a big hit with them all. The day was a great success.

This morning the kids had a 'final' swim in the pool prior to packing up and heading off to the airport.

I think they had a great time and I know we just loved having them here.