And Then It's Gone

I could be talking about any warm weather because that's all gone now.  We even ran the heater for 4 hours the other night with blustery cold winds giving us a hell of a time.

Back at the end of April I mentioned in my Blog that my PC was taking some time to start up.  I have a Dell PC and it comes with 12 months warranty. mainly on a 'remote' basis.  That means you ring them up, the Dell Tech gets access to your PC and even though he may be overseas they can still carry out processes and fix repairs.

So that's what I did to solve to slow startup.  I reckon he worked on the PC for an hour and I saw on my screen something about "restore health" going on.  Towards the end of the process it said several problems had been rectified so on the surface all was good.

The chap would send me an email if problems continued, he was sure all was OK and we hung up.  But I noted the writing on the screen was very hard to read, almost as if it had been written with one of those dot matrix printers.

So I had a try to fix, all unsuccessfully I am afraid.  And to top it all off I decided on a "Windows Restore".  It turns out the restore had most likely gone from one version of windows to a slightly different version.  The restore process didn't work and on top of that the PC would begin to start but after 20 seconds it would crash.

But we have some pretty clever people at Computer Club, with one of the guys doing a full reformat of my PC.  So I lost everything but luckily I keep regular backups.  It is just about all back together now with just a few bits and pieces I will add as I go along.

I haven't ridden the bike since earlier in the week.  It has been bitterly cold with a gale force wind at times.  Then the PC died so I was trying to fix or else putting all my stuff back on after it was fixed.  But this post is being done on the PC and it is going along quite speedily.

Trish has been busy with getting Fairs up and running and doing heaps of other things.  The Community Association has the odd issue or two bubbling along which have required some time. And in the middle of all that the PC died!

I continue to mess around with a program called Plex which I am beginning to fully understand.

My footy team continues to plow along with another big match on tonight.  Between the footy on TV, the cricket from England, the tennis from Paris and heaps of videos to watch 24 just isn't enough hours in a day!

But I am pleased the PC starts up beautifully nowadays!

Not So Sunny On The Sunny Coast

The bike has been stuck under the back veranda for well over week now because we remain in the grip of a strong S/E wind bringing continual showers on and off to our part of the world.  This morning we got 13 mls which is a lot when compared to other recent totals.

Most mornings have seen a mere between 1 and 7 mls but this rain falls around dawn and across the day with short and sharp showers.

Both of our affiliations with local Community Groups has kept us busy recently.  They have reorganized bus routes in our area and upped the number of services incredibly.  But instead of doing the rounds of the community, the bus route now goes directly along the main road and right through our estate.  It has seen 6 local stops closed which has disadvantaged many elderly locals.

When we moved in to the area the 50+ years demographic was above 50% with many buying homes near a local bus stop.  These bus stops have now closed and these 50 years+ residents are now 65+, many with extreme mobility problems.  The decision to close local stops now mean the majority of people have a good 1 km walk.

Needless to say I remain busy with my tech stuff.  Plex has become my go to application for watching stuff I have 'acquired' on my Nvidia Shield.  It works well and now means I am getting some excellent use out of the old PC.  The more I use it, the better I am finding it.  It is great fun.

Recently we had a 250GB SSD hard drive installed in Trish's laptop.  It is around 5 years old now and was needing a boost up.  A guy at computer club removed the 750GB mechanical hard drive and installed the speedier SSD drive.  It now loads super fast and responds very quickly.  It was $45 to cover the cost of the SSD drive and $15 for an enclosure for the old drive.

I will get the same done to the old laptop I was given.  By replacing the hard drive with a 16x faster SSD drive will give it a great boost.

At Computer Club I often get asked what browser I use when surfing the web.  I like many of the addons which I can install in Firefox but Firefox updates so frequently many of the addons I like to use can't keep up with the updates and won't work on the latest Firefox versions.  So I use a version of Firefox called Waterfox.  It is usually around 6 months behind in development to Firefox, and therefore all my preferred addons still work great.

One of the guys at Computer Club strongly recommends the new Microsoft Edge browser because it is so nippy and speedy.  I am not a fan of Edge and its few addons but read where a new version of it is incorporating much of the workings of Chrome.  In its early stages of development it is being called Edge Canary which you can download and install.

Being heavily based on Chrome you can sort of install many of the Chrome addons.  So it is easy to add ad blockers, Real Debrid, backup addons, select search and many other search programs.  You can even create "Search" links for yourself.  With many download websites now being blocked by the government, proxy websites have sprung up everywhere.  You can now create your own search for one of these proxy websites which is handy when you are looking for a particular movie or TV episode to download.

As the new Edge Canary browser is still in development it still has a few hassles.  But overall it works quite well and seems so much faster than other browsers I have tried.

As per usual we are both well and loving where we live.  And we hope everyone is also happy and content with their life and health as well.

It Has All Changed!

The cold wintry and wet weather that recently swept across Melbourne and Victoria has made it's way to the Sunshine Coast.  Though today is showery with a cool breeze, the sun has been out and warmed everything up a little.

But yesterday we shut the house up to keep the cold southerly out.  Trackie daks, warm tops and socks were the order of the day as we battened down for our own cool day.  The high teens was as much as we saw Sunday morning but as the cold southerly wind died down a little the place began to warm to the low 20's.

I managed a swim for the first day or so of May but swimming is now well behind me.  I will have to wait until AFL footy Grand Final Day in September before I make it back into the pool again.  The breezy and cold outbreak has also put a halt to bike riding in the shorter term.  I now wait till after 8 am and the sun has begun its work prior to even considering heading out for a ride.

But things cruise along as normal with not a lot happening about the place.

Mow the lawns, put out the rubbish bins, do stuff for the Community Association, mess around with my Tech stuff and learn more about Plex.  Though I still keep up with Kodi stuff, Plex has become my go to application to play back movies and TV series.

Speaking of which we have just completed watching the BBC police drama series "In The Line Of Duty". After some ordinary stuff to watch lately the TV series was real shining light.

Of course there is another home brew on and a bottling is due this week sometime.

The best restaurant we found up here back in the early days was a place called Spirit Of Tibet in Mooloolaba.  But as Mooloolaba went ahead, rent prices forced the guy out.  He setup briefly at a couple of other places but was never open for more than a few weeks before something or other happened.

As it turns out he has opened up again but this time in the strangest of places which is partly why we found him so hard to find.  He runs his restaurant as a part of the Forest Glen Big4 Caravan Park (photo above).  It is a great size, heaps of space and the food is just as sensational as ever.

Three other couples I have met from Computer Club and ourselves checked it out the other night.  The food was a resounding hit for everyone with people who are not that fond of spicy food absolutely loving it!

The trouble is the restaurant is a good 30 minutes drive away.  However our friends enjoyed the food so much we will all get back there again.  We had some great nights there when it was in Mooloolaba and everyone we have taken there just loves the food.  He makes a tasty but spicy chilli sauce which needs to used carefully.  But boy it is nice.

The Computer Club group are a great group to go out with.  All of us are retireds and have come from interstate to live around Caloundra.  Previously occupations included the merchant navy, hair dressers or driving trains and then moving into lead lighting. They are a diverse group.

And we all enjoy watching our movies and TV series as well.

Trish and I are both well and keeping pretty busy.  Life is pretty good actually!

Still Swimming!

Anzac Day has come and gone but the pool still gets a work out after a bike ride despite getting closer to winter.  With a water temperature still over 22°, any swim, as short as it may be, is still 'do-able'.  But rest assured, I am not in the water for long!  Usually Anzac Day is the swimming cut off date but with nights still being a little warmer than usual, it is taking a while for the pool temp to get to under 21° so swimming is still an option.

Showery weather has returned for today taking any bike ride off the agenda but leaving me free to play around with my tech stuff.

The next Newsletter for the Community Association has all but been completed and it seems I can knock one up to a first edit stage in less than 4 hours.  And now we have only 6 editions per year the pressure has come right off.

I did a 16k bike ride the other day but that distance is a rarity nowadays.  Most days I ride between 12 and 14k's which is more than enough.

My right arm continues to cause me some discomfort so I gave the doctor a visit on the advice of the Chiro.  It seems I have torn a muscle between my elbow and my wrist and I have no idea what I did to tear the muscle.  Time will eventually cure that.

I have another brew 'on' and will bottle it tomorrow.

We both remain fairly busy, Trish with the Arts Centre Association and me helping people out with video and computer stuff.  Our older friends Brian and Edna have decided their laptop was getting slower and slower so I took it to Computer Club where one of the guys reformatted it for them at no charge.  It took another 3 or 4 hours for me to put everything back on it and get things working OK again for them.

But they are happy now, Kodi loads quickly for him and he can keep up with all the latest movies and TV series such as Game of Thrones.  I will do the same with Trish's laptop this weekend.  However the guy will replace the laptop hard drive with a 256GB SSD drive and then load up Windows 10 making it heaps faster than it was previously.

I am not convinced the recent Bios update to my PC has improved it at all, it seems a little touchy nowadays when starting up.  But it ALWAYS starts ... eventually!

The wet showery weather has returned today so I am stuck inside.

If you are not into Tech stuff then this won't interest you.  I have been messing around with Plex, a program which arranges and then allows you to stream your own media anywhere across your home network or even to fiends via the internet.  I haven't mastered this last bit just yet but I am finding the messing around and discovering how it works very interesting.

I have resurrected my old PC and I am using it to power the Plex setup.  Previously I was running Plex from my Seagate Cloud NAS drive. But because of a lack of processing power there were some aspects of the program which just didn't work.  But by using the old high i5 powered PC, it works heaps better.

And isn't my footy team doing well!  I am very pleased with the way things are going at the moment.  Trish's team had a bit of a scare last weekend but all finished happily ever after eventually.

My brother and his wife are heading to Borneo, Kuala Lumpur and Penang in June.  It is a relatively short trip but we have been in contact with ideas on where they can eat!  Our daughter Kim and a girl friend are there at the moment sending back heaps of photos of food.  But then that is one of the best things about visiting Malaysia.

So as the rain comes down here on the Sunshine Coast it is time for me to get back to my playing with my tech stuff.   I hope this hasn't been too boring for you!

Home And All Rested!

We are currently safe and sound back at home on the Sunshine Coast.  We are back in our own bed again with access to our own small ensuite.  The weather is sunny but it is rapidly cooling off with today expected to get to around the mid 20's.

Our trip via Warragul and then on to my sister's place in Omeo saw us begin our return journey by road from Melbourne.

But I did manage to catch up with a couple of fellow teaching colleagues Gordon and Anne Atkin who recently moved from Hallam down to the Warragul.  It meant they could downsize to an easier place to maintain but still remain relatively close to appropriate medical facilities.  You see Anne has had Parkinsons for well over 10 years now and being close to medical support is crucial.

It was great to catch up even be it for a short time only.

But then it was a further 300k drive via mountain roadways to Omeo to catch up with my sister Judy and Peter.  Omeo is in the Victorian Alps and within 50 or so K's of the winter snow fields.  It has been around 15 years since our last visit to Omeo so much time was spent discussing numerous topics and enjoying numerous ales.  The photo above shows the view from their veranda towards some of the mountains over their 20 or so acres.

A $10 lunch at the local pub for was enough to fill two people let alone just one of us.

But it was great to catch up and I'm guessing that by now they are on the road with their caravan in tow for their regular 6 months spent on western Queensland near Isisford where daily temps will be around 28° and not the cold, snowy and wet 6° of Omeo.

We set off to begin our long trek home to the Sunshine Coast with our first stop at Parkes, a drive of around 700k's.  Then it was another 800k's to Warwick in Queensland and a final 300k trek back to Caloundra.

The drive after a hectic 3 weeks away proved extremely tiring.  But given a couple of days resting up at home and getting back into the run of things and back to normal.

I am back on the bike knocking over around 14 k's a day and most times looking for the pool for a cooling off swim upon return.  The pool is around 22° which means any time spent under the water is fairly quick!  With a very cool breeze this morning I declined a trip into the pool being more worried about what it would be like after leaving the pool than when I was in the water.

Somewhere along the way I have done something to my right arm.  I describe it as tennis elbow that has slipped to my forearm.  It can be a little painful and I am noticing it now as I type.  There is absolutely no strength in the arm if it is raised above shoulder height which makes getting my coffee cup out of the head high microwave oven a bit of a chore.

I'm back to the chiro tomorrow.

I usually have a little concern about what will and what electrical items won't start up after almost a month away.  My PC keyboard has been a bit 'iffy' lately with some keys requiring a double push to get the correct response.  It seemed worse upon our return from being away despite it being over 8 years old.  And I had a 2GB external hard drive that would not come up when plugged into the PC.

The keyboard has been replaced but the 2TB hard drive was eventually recognized so (touch wood) it has again gone back onto my Seagate cloud drive to give me an extra 2TB of cloud storage.  I keep backups of my very favorite Movies on that drive but will keep my eyes open for a super good 2TB hard drive deal and possibly replace it.

Recently my 6 month old Dell PC did an update of the operating system (Windows 10) and an upgrade of the Bios, the underlying computer system which first is used as the computer starts up.  I have never had a computer which has had an update of the bios.  So the next morning I was a bit worried when despite pushing the power button, nothing happened.  I did it again, still nothing.  So I turned the power off, let it sit for several minutes and then powered it up again.

This time a Dell Support Assist program began and because of the failed boot up, it carried out a 10 minute check of the whole PC.  It found everything was OK so it then restarted and operated perfectly.  So this morning, with fingers crossed I powered up the PC and hit the 'start' button.  Thankfully everything now seems to be working OK again.  I don't think I will agree to any more Bios updates on the PC!

Trish is back into the swing as President of the Arts Centre Association while I am beginning to get my head around an upcoming edition of the Community Newsletter.  She had meetings today and I have a meeting to chair tomorrow night.

It didn't take long for things to get back to normal!