The Palms Have Gone!

I went to the Computer Club this morning. Meanwhile back at home the guy arrived at about 9:30 am to remove the two palms. When he used his chainsaw bits flew all over our small backyard. Bits went into the pool, over the fences and everywhere. This meant there was some tidying up to do!

After an hour or so the two palms were gone! By the time I got home Trish had already done a fair bit of tidying up. It now looks like someone has had a front tooth removed, the backyard looks so different!

Later, I set about bottling about 5 dozen bottles of beer! It took a couple of hours to do and I was pretty tired at the end of it all. After the eqipment had been washed and the newly bottled beer stored away it was time for a quick swim. The pool was over 26 degrees so I spent some time recuperating in the pool (and enjoying a cool ale!)

I will sleep well tonight!

It's Friday

We have been enjoying days with temps in the mid 20's and high teens overnight. The pool is about 23.5 degrees in the morning and gets up to about 26 most afternoons. We have had no rain to speak of. Everywhere around our estate is looking extremely dry.

I continue to ride most mornings and I am usually accompanied by Tony and/or Paul. This morning we did about 13k's with around 11k's our usual daily average.

About 12 months again when returning from the Whitsundays I got a nasty stone chip in my windscreen. I had it repaired but the guy wasn't confident it would work 100%. Just recently a crack less then 1cm (.5 an inch) appeared around the stone chip. I made enquiries about a replacement windscreen. On Monday while driving in Caloundra I was again hit by a stone kicked up by another car. It made a heck of a noise.

Yesterday a crack about 25cms (8") long stretched across the top of the windscreen. It is to be replaced on Monday.

Yesterday the Bellvista Community Association was handed its new website. One of the designers came to my place and showed us how it would all work. So much of yesterday was spent updating everything and 'learning' how to do things. It is similar in concept to "Blogger" but much more sophisticated. You can see it at http://www.bellvista.com.au/ There are a couple of issues to sort out (email addresses, a couple of missing pictures) and hopefully all will be fine by the end of next week.

Washing Day

On Monday afternoon I put two brews on, one a lager and lemon, the other a black ale. Two brews means double bottle washing and double bottling! Washing bottles isn't the best fun you can have. The photo shows enough bottles for the two brews all filled with water and bleach to sanitize them. I have now completed the task and about 60 bottles are currently drying in the backyard as I type! It was a big job! They will probably be bottled over the weekend.

The rain forecast for Monday night failed to eventuate. We got 9mls which was nowhere near what had been forecast. Today Wednesday is a lovely sunny day in the mid 20's. The pool is also around 26 degrees late in the afternoon at the moment. It loses a couple of degrees overnight depending on how far the temperature gets down.

I continue to ride most mornings and then I have a quick swim to cool off. Magpies have swooped me twice over the last 4 weeks which is pretty good really. We spoke with a lone cyclist and she said she was swooped most days. It appears there is magpie safety in numbers! We expect Tony to rejoin us in riding tomorrow as he finally recovers from having a Vietnam mate stay with him for a few days!

For those of you in Melbourne I learned Eddie has just had his gall bladder out. He has been to hospital so many times this year he is thinking of moving in full time!

The area where the palm is to be removed is now ready. The photo doesn't really show how much space we will gain in the 'back corner' but there should be plenty of room to seat about 6 people when all is finished. The palm is due come out Thursday afternoon!

My computer continues to run very well indeed. I have had to adjust some program settings to get everything just running perfectly. I am very happy with the outcome.

At Russ' advice I subscribed to a daily specials site called 1saleaday. Yesterday I bought some Vivitar Binoculars for $10. A few days earlier I bought 4 watches for $9! Trish is wearing one right now and it works quite well. Good fun!

It's Monday And There Is Rain On The Way!

Much of the last few days has been spent doing the day to day chores around the house and getting the PC all back together again. Now the PC starts up OK and shuts down fine. I have lost a couple of things but now everything seems to be for the better than before it was infected with a computer virus. Yesterday I made an 'image' of the fully reformatted hard disk which I have 'stored' away on an external hard drive. This can then be used to quickly revert the PC back to the same state it is in right now.

I am now a little behind on my home brew schedule. On Thursday both Tony and Paul came around to share their thoughts on the area where the palm is about to be removed. See the photo for the area in question. The biggest and furthest palm in this photo is the one to go. We are still debating what to do the area in be it pavers or patterned colored concrete. After our recent issues with pavers I am leaning towards the concrete alternative.

Paul is quite a good handyman and has experience with this sort of thing. The guys brought a few home brews with them but the heat of the day or the conviviality of discussion lead to quite a few of my supply being consumed. We are still not sure how Tony managed to ride home on his bike!

Saturday morning was Computer Club again. During the afternoon I went to the local Caloundra RSL Sub-Branch with Tony and an ex-Vietnam mate of his named Gordon. Tony's wife Angela is currently in Sydney catching up with family so Tony's mate is keeping him company for a few days! It is $2.20 a schooner at the Sub Branch so it really is the more you drink the more you save! It was a pleasant couple of hours spent there.

I am planning to put two brews on this morning to replenish my supplies. Then hopefully later after lunch some much overdue rain is due.

A recent newspaper article said Brisbane had not had a substantial fall of rain for 128 days! We live in the sub-tropics so it is extremely unusual in October for things to be this dry. I took this photo of the front lawn yesterday afternoon. I am using it as a "before the rain came photo". Hopefully the photo I post next week will show the same front lawn all green!

Trish did a volunteer afternoon at the Tourist Information Centre Sunday afternoon and is again out with the Volunteers this morning. Local tourist destinations like to 'host' the volunteers so they will recommend their venue to tourists.

We saw a Japanese movie with subtitles the other night called "Departures". It won a world wide film award and gets a massive score of 8.2 at IMDB. I am not all that interested in movies with subtitles but this movie was an exception and deserved its extremely high score. Keep your eye out for it.

People Who Play With Fire .......

This post is coming from my newly reformatted Vista PC! I had been thinking about reformatting for some time and over the last 36 hours or so the PC is getting back to where it was.

But now it starts up perfectly, closes down perfectly and transfers files quickly and effectively.

As many of you know I am quite interested in pirate software. I was helping a Computer Club colleague out and looking for a serial number for a program he wanted to register. Outside my usual sources I found a 'serial' and downloaded it. When the file came through it was actually a keygen, a small program which makes serials for a certain program.

I ran the keygen and my computer just seemed to hum along with the red activity light flashing but no keygen appearing. I stopped the keygen program but it appears I was too late, my computer was infected by a virus. I ran my anti-virus to hunt it out, after 30 seconds the anti-virus program stopped working and would not restart. The same happened with two other anti malware spyware programs, they just became inoperable. The photo is of the reformat process in operation!

So the lengthy task of reformatting went ahead.

Now I am glad it happened, it forced me to make a decision and my PC will be much better off for the reformat!