Warm & Windy

The small screenshot was taken from my PC before 8am this morning.  Yet another strong wind warning for us here and I reckon this is the third or fourth strong wind warning we have had in a row.  Of course it isn't much fun bike riding in strong wind which means I have given bike riding a miss the last couple of days.

With this wind comes some unseasonable hot weather so early in the year for us.  It is expected to get to the mid 30's today and again tomorrow.

We still enjoy cooler nights though and with a mere 25° as a top yesterday at least there is some respite.  The pool is hovering around 23° right now (mid morning) and might hit 25° later in the day.  Now that's delightful for swimming!

Summer must be getting closer, the Waeco was set up on Tuesday just outside the back door ready to supply icy cold drinks during the swimming season!

But for me I have been getting the Community Newsletter together for printing next week. I finished that off earlier this morning so now it is wait till the postie arrives bringing my latest toy all the way from China.  I am looking forward to setting it up and just seeing what exactly it can do.

Speaking of streaming stuff, we finished series 5 of "Suits" last night and we think we will give it a rest for a while.  We are also into the most recent season of "The Americans" which has been sitting on the Hard drive for a couple of months.  But being 13 episodes it tends to be strung out a little too much nowadays.

I think I am getting old you know.  We watched the movie "Baby Driver" during the week.  It is a recent movie and rates around 8 on IMDB which is a great score for a movie.  there was action a plenty, a reasonable story but hardly worth an 8 I thought.  Trish did more of her "Word" game on her tablet than watching the movie I am afraid.

I managed to get a printer up and running for a friend yesterday, showed another older guy how to rip CD's and put them on a USB so he now play music and listen in his car.  I seem to get out every day or so to help out someone with a Computer problem.

I will put another brew on tomorrow morning with the obligatory 'bottle washing' and 'bottling' to follow next week.

Now I am waiting for the new doorbell to ring for the postie with my new toy! 

There it goes now ........

The Verdict

Larry from "KenRay Blinds" popped out to check out the split stitching on the sunblinds across the rear of the house and to give us a quote on what repair costs may be.  One of his first comments was that we had had these blinds for some time.  He said the experts give the material around 12 years before it begins to deteriorate from the sun's UV rays and we reckon we put them up soon after moving in about 15 years ago.

So he wasn't surprised the stitching was beginning to break down.There was no guarantee a repair would last any length of time as the blind material itself was in the early stages of deterioration.

They were quite expensive to put up in the first place we recalled so we began to prepare ourselves for a large cash outlay, an outlay we hadn't counted on.  The best idea he felt was to reskin the blinds, that is keep the ropes, the pulleys and other bits and pieces and just replace the material itself.

And that is what is going to happen.  They will make the new blinds up in their factory, then come out to our home and replace the blind material itself.  He estimated it at around a 45 minute job to swap the material over and our blinds would be good for another 15 years or so.

To have the current blinds restitched would have cost anything from $400 or more and there would be no guarantee for that job at all. We may get two years out of a restitching if we were lucky.

This time we have gone for a darker color, a light charcoal color, one that fits in with the dark colored pool fencing and a color which won't show the dirt and other marks as easily.

Now it is just sit and wait until the new blinds are installed.

Welcome to the 2017/18 cricket season.  My footy team got a belting last night and are out of the footy for this season.  You would say that to finish 3rd or so is about how good they really were so I am not that disappointed with the outcome.

More Spring Cleaning!

What a huge difference a couple of litres of chlorine and water make to removing the gunk off the pavers.  No they don't look like new I am afraid but they look superbly clean.  The build up of black gunk along the lines between the pavers and across some areas of the pavers themselves are all now 90% spick and span clean again.

But as the photo above shows, father time is beginning to have an effect on the sun blinds across the back of the house.  Several of the panels see the thread sewn joining them are disappearing.  This could mean a full removal and return to the factory to be resewn again.

The guy is coming out Friday afternoon and we will check out what we can do at the best cost efficient price.  In reality we only really need the first 2 blinds as we have discovered over the years.  The third and largest blind does get used but only a few times each year at the most.

So we wait to see what the possibilities are.

The new case was delivered today with a price tag on it of $269.  Now this is quite inflated of course but even at $96 delivered we reckon we have a great deal on an Antler brand suitcase.

At 21° the pool was a little brisk this morning when I had a brief swim.  But that is the second swim for the season now!

Spring Cleaning

With ample warm and dry weather about it was time for the annual 'spring clean' around the backyard.  I have the pool sorted, I have and the back fence now covered with the new panels. Last but not least is to clean the sun blinds and give under the pergola a tidy up.

All of that has now been done and at 10:30 am it is time to sit back and let things dry out a little.  The new pressure spray cleaner I got off eBay last year is great and makes short work of jobs like this.  It doesn't get used on the pavers as it tends to take the surface clean off.

The photos show how things are now looking.  In another 30 minutes or so all will have dried out allowing me to put chairs, small tables and my bike back where they belong under the pergola and and let me roll up the blinds.

With these jobs to do I didn't bother with a ride this morning but managed to get my exercise working in the backyard.

All that's left to do is give the pavers outside a sweep over with 1:3 chlorine and water mix.  This kills anything left over from winter and lets the pavers look tidy and clean again.

Computer stuff has kept me busy as well the last day or so.  One guy couldn't get his computer to see his new WiFi printer on his home network and his wife was keen to be able to print directly from her iPad as well.  After a quick re install of all the software things are working well for them again.

Then there are the mandatory Kodi tweaks when things stop working for a couple of the neighbours.  All is running well again now.

Disaster Avoided

As you can see my PC is running fine (or else how would I have completed this post?).  But for a short time Sunday afternoon I wasn't so sure.

I ask that my PC update Windows and other important drivers, namely video graphics card, printer firmware and the like.  Windows 10 updates the system fine but not so some of the other parts of the PC.

Yesterday I found a little program called "Driver Talent", a paid for program which checks all your drivers and updates them for you.  I know the Nvidia Graphics card had an update and I also had guessed there was a possible problem with my Audio driver.

So when I ran Driver Talent and it told me there were updates and repairs available for my Audio drivers and my Nvidia Graphics card I let it go and do its thing.  It also found an update for the 'on board' graphics included on the PC's mother board.

So off it went and downloaded and installed the new Audio Driver and then the on board graphics driver.  After it had installed the on board graphics it suggested a restart to complete the on board graphics update.  I held off doing this as I guessed the Nvidia update would also require a restart.

So after the huge 350mb Nvidia update, I hit restart and the PC closed down and tried to restart but all I got was the error message in the picture above.

So I hit OK and the PC begins to restart with the same error message screen eventually coming up again.  I hit restart again and the PC went through "Automatic Disk Repair" and it still wouldn't start.  Then I got the message "Diagnosing Your P.C." and it came up with a list of "Advanced Options".  I worked my way through each advanced option and finally opted to try "System Restore", back to before I had tried to install the Nvidia Update.

15 minutes later the PC began to restart and the same error message appeared followed by "Preparing Automatic Repair" and so on.  Eventually it got back to the "Advanced Settings" but this time I opted to start up in "Safe Mode".  And this time it started up fine but only in Safe Mode.

So I shut it all down and turned the PC off at the power point.  A minute or so later I tried to start it up again and "Voila" it was all working and started perfectly 100% again.  Quite often a shut down and complete power off will allow the PC to "Reset" itself and start properly ....... as it did!


I have been busy on eBay again.  We bought some very inexpensive luggage from K-Mart for our recent trip to Bali.  The luggage is great and is lightweight, but it sure is flimsy and not really 'full size".

So when some genuine "Antler Brand" full spinner luggage valued at around $260 came up via "Ozbargain" at $96 delivered to my front door, we grabbed one.  I am not mad on the only color which was available but Trish doesn't mind it.  It should be easy enough to spot on the baggage carousel!

And I grabbed an Android TV Dongle (below).  It is a nifty little device and I am looking forward to having a play with it.  It will run Kodi fine and is a quite powerful little device.  It can plug directly into a HDMI port on your TV and connect to your home wifi network and stream movies either from a source you have or from somewhere online.  Pretty clever eh?