Sunday.  28th.  Cooked up an epic lamb roast ($22/kg from Tathra Place in the markets) and veggies for dinner, then watched The Big Year (which some random dude on our holiday told us about).  It was a bit "serious" for all the comedic actors in it, but kinda cool.

Monday.  Slept relatively ok I think, for a change.  Spent much of the day geotagging holiday photos.  Stu also pulled out all the bedroom furniture to vacuum nearly 18 years worth of dust behind stuff...

Had some of Lily's Youfoodz for dinner.

Watched Professor T 1.5 together then I watched Taxi Driver which I've never actually seen.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep, epic restless.  Finished geotagging holiday photos.

In the afternoon we went to Palmerville for a walk and to do some birdwatching.  This Bell 206L-1 (VH-OAS) chopper had been buzzing around Canberra all day, Evoenergy checking powerlines.  

I hadn't walked along the new pathway yet

Such a fun shot..

Finished off Lily's Youfoodz dinners and the last of the salad

Then watched Professor T 1.6 together (end of season one) then I watched a doco on the Titanic - Titanic: Digital Resurrection.  Considering the effort they went to to digitise the ship, the computer graphics they also used were pretty cheesy.  Interesting though.

Wednesday.  April Fools!  Slept okish, only awake for an hour or two around 3.  Back to work.  Yeup definitely an April Fool.  Spent most of the day catching up on chats and emails.  

The sweetie cooked up a heap of veggies and I fried up some lamb, then we watched Professor T 2.1.

You can tell the sweetie was cooking - the potatoes are all lined up nicely ;)

Then spent the rest of the evening putting up reviews of all the places we stayed on our holiday in booking.com.

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Mostly still catching up on crap at work.  Had a gin night at drinks but hardly anyone else turned up.  Sad times. 

Bus home (trying to save petrol) then made pizzas for dinner and watched Professor T 2.2.

Friday.  Good Friday.  Although not so good for Jesus back in the day.  Slept mostly ok.  Didn't get much done all day sigh.  Pretty much a nothing day.  We did go for another walk in the afternoon to Palmerville to try out Stu's new toy (all the bird pics I'll put in another post one day).

Kievs for dinner then Professor T 2.3.  I then watched "Challenger Disaster: Lost Tapes" from 2015, which was mostly footage around Christa McAuliffe.. (as an aside, I didn't know that her backup, Barbara Morgan, later went on to be a full-blown astronaut in her own right.. cool!).  Eerily, the peeps that are on their way to the moon right now used booster rockets from the shuttle programme.. that wouldn't be freaky .. at. all.   .. !!)

Saturday.  Only awake for an hour or two around midnight.  Spent literally the entire morning doing housework.  Sigh.  Went out with EB to have a look at the new road around the north/east side of the airport which was pretty cool, had a good long drive around the area, then went in to Quangers for lunch at the Royal Hotel (had a very nice caesar salad).

Air traffic control tower at Canberra Airport

Did you know they're closing down the air traffic control tower at Canberra Airport and replacing it with cameras done with remote control..?  What could possibly go wrong?

Swing bridge in Queanbeyan

Caesar salad at the Royal Hotel in Queanbeyan

It's such a shame they haven't setup any sort of dedicated planespotting area with all the new works

Stu cooked a tuna bake and veggies for dinner then we watched Professor T 2.4.  I then watched Lantana which I'd never seen before.  Lots of unlikeable characters behaving badly.  Hurrah.

Easter Sunday.  He is risen!  Slept mostly okish I think.  Woke up 6am!  But 5am in reality. Sigh. Didn't achieve really anything all day.  Stu took Stumpy outside for a walk.

In the afternoon we went over to Annie's for afternoon tea and catchup with the family.  Pebbles wasn't being *quite* the scardey cat...

Leftovers for dinner.  The just-past full moon was rising and it was like, hey there's four peeps in between me and that bright shiny thing!  Pretty cool!  Then watched Molly's Game, which I'd seen on a plane but Stu hadn't seen.  

Monday.  Slept mostly okish.  Got a bunch of Europe 2016 photo stuff done, and a heap of jigsaw.  Stu has cooked up a bunch of veggies to have with some leftover lamb for dinner.

Sunday.  15th.  Leftover Peking duck for dinner (Stu had the last of the Turkish) then MacGyver. I tried to watch the end of Airport on my computer but my computer wouldn't read the disc.. probably stoopid Macrovision trash. What's the point of trash like that if it PREVENTS LEGITIMATE USERS WATCHING YOUR MEDIA!?!?!? Edit: a quick Google suggests Windows 11 removed the ability to play Macrovision DVDs.. yet another reason why Windows 11 is a piece of trash. Although I'm not convinced that's the full story - the player won't even recognise the disc and kind of just "clicks of death" with it. Sigh. Anyway so had to finish watching it on the DVD player (which very nicely remembered where we were up to even though it had been turned on and off a couple of time and had MacGyver DVDs in there in between).

Monday.  Awake from 4am til like 5:30am then had some convoluted dream about catching buses around Jannali with a heap of crap and running late for work. Another thing that pisses me off about Windows 11.. if I have too many windows open and the tray fills up, it'll hide some tray items. But not just the ones off the end, an entire application's worth. So my task bar is literally 2/5ths blank. How is this in any way useful for people??? Felt like I didn't achieve much all day, just lots of fluff and waiting for people to answer my questions. Leftovers for dinner then MacGyver and achieved pretty much nothing with my evening. Although I did watch Dad's funeral slide show (which was 12 years ago yesterday) and tried to get the timing working properly in LibreOffice.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly okish. Spent much of the day working on the last of the migrations to new load balancers. We cooked a slow cooker pork neck and a bunch of veggies for dinner. Delicious!

MacGyver then spent entirely too much time geotagging Mum's photos of South Australia in 1969.  I didn't find the location of the Beachport YHA that Mum and Marita stayed at, but a couple of days later I found it literally right there in my Google image search - it's the former Harbour Master's house and is now an AirBnB.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly okish. Disjointed morning but got stuck into some new proxy crap in the afternoon.

Carnage...

Causer of said carnage...

The sweetie cooked up some creamy mushroom chicken for dinner which was very nice. MacGyver then achieved very little.

Thursday.  Lights out 22:00. Sleep maybe 01:00 or 02:00. Sigh. Zombie day. Went through a URL block list to see what still needed to be blocked. Pretty good drinks. Someone else tried to take over our table but we pushed back haha. Made pizzas for dinner (pepperoni and feta, tomato and blue cheese, and mushroom, olive and capers).

Then tried to watch MacGyver but my old $50 DVD/BluRay player decided it didn't want to play. The first time it came up with audio but no video. Then it wouldn't power off. Then no audio or video at all. So now we have nothing in the house that will play blurays. Watched some Simpsons instead.

Friday.  I shouldn't look at things. When I look at things I find problems that I want to fix. So I spent much of the day checking doco on a bunch of URL categories and coming up with a plan to tidy them up. Went and had drinks with T/J which was nice.  Definitely a lovely way to spend a Friday evening after work. Kievs for dinner then I watched Freakier Friday set 22 years after the previous one. That was a bit of fun but more confusing because four of them swapped around making it harder to remember who was who.

Saturday.  Awake from 3:00 hurray.

I caught this little guy Friday night and evicted it Saturday morning.  So fricken cute!

Day of housework and Lego filing but did also do some music practise. Stu was out at the club most of the day so he was exhausted when he got home and it was a Dumpling Inn delivery kind of a night.

Then we watched Saving Mr Banks which I'd seen in 2022 but Stu hadn't seen.

Sunday.  Awake from 4:00 hurray. Lenovo wants to install a bios update. Windoze wants to spend 20 minutes to an hour doing a "bigger than normal" update. hrmmmm. I let Windows do the update later in the morning, it took maybe 3/4 hour. Otherwise just lots of getting organised with life. Even did some Europe 2016 panoramas.  This week both Windoze *and* Chrome have forgotten my folder settings.  Sigh.

Sunday.  4th.  Managed to get the end of last year's photos posted before a storm came through that was a little too close so I shut down my computer (and it BSODed as I was doing it #grunt). Then had to sit around doing nothing much for an hour because my dotz were packed up, Lego was done, jigsaws were all done. So I did some kitchen stuff. Hurray. Dinner was nachos. We are going to get healthy soon, I promise.. haha. 

Watched the Death in Paradise 2025 Christmas special. Then I went to bed. 20:30 is bed time right? Weird going to bed while it's still light though.

Monday.  Slept fairly well. Back at work full time. Sigh. Went back to some decommissioning tickets that have been banking up for the past few months. Went into work at lunch to drop off most of the Christmas party stuffs, then had lunch with Neil at Kingsley's (the mall is feral over the school holidays). Finished the leftover tuna bake for dinner then watched Beyond Paradise 2.1.

Tuesday.  Went to bed at normal time but then didn't get to sleep for HOURS. Sigh. And awake from well before 6 again. Zombie day. Again. Was putting away more Christmas decorations and couldn't find a string of fairy lights. I remember taking them off the lounge where they were, but now I can't find them to put them away. Sigh. Edit: found them, I was confusing them with another string/box. This is what happens when your brain is zombie tired. Lots more decom prep work today. Even did a bit of playing with Powershell/APIs. Dug out some sausages leftover from the Christmas party to have for dinner with some very old pork jelly and very old sauces. One of them might give us food poisoning, we shall see. Beyond Paradise 2.2.

Wednesday.  Slept okish. Disjointed day at work.

We may have gone to Grease Monkey at lunch.  That's like three times in like a month.. whoops..

More Christmas party sausages for dinner and Beyond Paradise 2.3.

Thursday.  Spent most of the day deleting stuff which was nice, trying to clear out a backlog of decommissions going back til last September. Drinks at the Labor Club, Dominos for dinner then Beyond Paradise 2.4.

The 8th of January is always the day I remember the Como-Jannali bushfires (32 years ago), my blogiversary (23 years this year!!) and David Bowie's birthday (he would have been 79).  This year smoke from the Victorian bushfires made for a very red sunrise and sunset...

Friday.  

Didn't achieve much in the morning but did some more deletions in the afternoon and some certificate replacements as well. It's been stoopidly hot this week (37C today), and yet we still turned the oven on for #kievfridays. Whoops.

Saturday.  Slept okish I think. Spent pretty much the whole day cleaning the house and cooking. hrmm. Had EffanC over for cheese and champagne and dinner. The lasagna ended up being a bit overdone as noone was really ready for dinner when it was ready, so turned the oven down and let it sit for longer. Still fairly good though. A lovely catchup.

I forgot to get a photo before cutting it up

Sunday.  Fairly late night but of course I still woke up at 6:00. Filled the green bin in the morning and did some house stuff and spent entirely way too much time geotagging Dad's photos of Kangaroo Island.

Found this on the weekend too! WTF!?

On 1-November-2025 Thryv who manage White Pages directories, have removed Residential listing from the White Pages website.
To search for a residential listing your options are:
Collect a copy of the White Pages from your local Australia Post Office or order online at www.directoryselect.com.au for a copy to be delivered to your home.
Contact Directory Assistance on phone 1223
Please note that the search functionality for White Pages Business and Government is not changing.

Still not ready for being back at work full time...

Sunday.  7th.  The sweetie cooked up a bunch of veggies for dinner, unfortunately there wasn't much in the way of leftovers! Stranger Things 5.1, set 18 months after the last season but filmed three years later.

Monday.  Slept okish I think (awake a few times hot).

This little spider ran across a chopping board, stopped just long enough for me to take a photo of it, then ran off, never to be seen again.  Googled that crap, apparently it's a scuttling spider of Cycloctenidae (although one Redditor is trying to get it nicknamed mittens spider).  It sure is cute!

More work on the domain controller rules. Managed to break something doing a cutover though. Sigh. I remember being confused by the mess the other week, and looks like I never went back to sorting out the mess, so that app got left out when I was adding the new rules.  Did some email sorting and filing after work. Stu cooked up some veggies for dinner which were quite nice.

Stranger Things 5.2. Did a bit of Christmas music on the recorder because the sax is all too hard. Photo filing in the evening.

Tuesday.  2 Peter 3:10 But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.  Be kinda cool if he returned in our lifetime.

Okish sleep. Busy day of not achieving much. Did finish going through the domain controller flows. Leftover pesto pasta and some salad for dinner. Stranger Things 5.3. Finished geotagging holiday photos from the phone (just checking them and fixing them up). Then talked to David for a bit about web hosting. I'm so out of the loop with modern DNS and hosting options these days.

Wednesday.  1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

Restless sleep. Went to see nuking doctor, although only saw her briefly and spent most of the time with a registrar. NEIL briefly in the morning then spent the rest of the day fighting with our new DR laptop. How many IT professionals does it take to copy a file? Too (many). And a lot of angst. Still fighting with all the restrictions they put on these things. Stu cooked a delicious tuna bake and brussels sprouts for dinner.

Stranger Things 5.4. Now we need to wait til Christmas for more episodes to drop.

Thursday.  Restless sleep.  Meh day, didn't achieve much. 

Busy drinks which was good.  Someone (or something) has been cutting off the heads of my epic dandelion plant under the lemon tree.  I thought it was the neighbours but that doesn't really make sense.  Why would they come over and cut off flowers that haven't even popped yet?  Maybe it's possums.  The sweetie and I got grumpy at each other over differing expectations about life so that made for an unfun evening.  We did have pizzas and garlic bread.  I started watching Birdman.  Is this like art imitating life or what?  Batman? Birdman?  I knew literally nothing about the moving going into it other than it had Michael Keaton in it.  I had such a thing for him when he was Batman.  I noticed the "one take" shooting pretty early on and looked out for the transitions.

Friday.  1 John 3:16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. 

Okish sleep.  Spent much of the morning reworking our ticket dashboard to fix it up for the new version.  They've removed at least one useful thing (being able to colour code filter titles) but at least now you can choose the columns you want in the dashboard and not have your settings for that table be there.  First work Christmas party at lunch and all afternoon.  There was an epic roast lunch and all the food.  I ate lots so didn't get too silly. 

The sweetie was going to pick us up but a little before he had to leave he had epic dizziness and nausea and actually was sick (three times!!) - he *never* gets sick (almost never).  So Neil/Wello/me caught buses home.  Finished Birdman.  Yeup.  Weird.  

Saturday.  Pretty crap sleep funnily enough.  I think I was awake pretty much the whole time from about 2.  Stu was sick again overnight and nauseus all day.  I had a day of All The Things, mostly getting the house organised. 

I was so excited this week to find a 2011 10c coin!  I've never seen one before!

I may have taken over 50 photos of the cockatoos demolishing our self-seeded plum tree..

Kievs and wedgies for dinner. 

I also made a strawberry "sauce" from all the strawberries Tony picked and froze for us while we were away.  They all turned to mush after being frozen, so I smooshed them through a sieve and added a little sugar.  It worked really well with vanilla ice cream!

Then we watched The Neverending Story.  I don't think I've seen that movie since I was a teenager.  The DVD cost me like a dollar from Vinnies (it was still shrinkwrapped!) but I don't think I'll keep it - it was pretty cheesy!!

Sunday.  Okish sleep. Another day of All The Things. Although I put aside my regular todo list and just focussed on Christmas stuff.

And juicing lemons.

And taking photos of Stumpy.  Look how tanned he is with the combo heat/uv light!

Got enough done that I felt relaxed enough to make up some gingerbread biscuits after lunch!!  Then some music (I found a heap of good Christmas music for the saxophone yesterday so played those all through again today.  They're all a lot higher than your regular C major which is nearly impossible to play for me at the moment (I struggle with E and D, and C and B are right out).

Sunday.  30th.  

Stu finished cooking some potatoes from the club as well as some of the bread and we had that with leftover turkey and veggies. Stranger Things 4.5.

Monday.  December! Minimun 8.7, maximum 18, 2 predicted overnight! Welcome to summer! Took ages to get to sleep again. Then awake from 4:30 and never got back to sleep.

Busy day being NEIL for a while, then catching up on chats and emails then clearing the ticket queue.

Cracked open this year's beer advent calendar after work.  Which isn't any sort of official one.  Since I couldn't go to work drinks for months, Neil saved all the Beer of the Weeks for me.  I had almost enough to fill an advent calendar box (I still had the box from last year's Plonk advent calendar).  And I've been collecting them now that I'm going back to drinks.  I also asked @aquila to pick me up the Bridge Road Brewers Christmas beers, so this photo doesn't show the box as full, but I'll have more beers than will fit :)

Did some music after work, dinner, Stranger Things 4.6, geotagging holiday photos. The house is a disaster. I still haven't finished putting up Christmas decorations. I still haven't fully unpacked or put all my washing away. Need. More. TIME!!!!

This star light is probably 24 years old.  This year one of the lights has finally blown in it.  I do have one spare bulb but I'd have to pull everything out of the cupboard again to get at it.. next year.. 

Tuesday.  Took a while to get to sleep, awake at 4 but got back to sleep.

Welcome to summer in Canberra!!

Busy day. I decided I really wanted to get back to working on a project I started months ago, but it requires a lot of concentration, which I couldn't really do while being NEIL and working on proxies. So tried to get back into it. But was interrupted every five seconds by people wanting crap and distracting me. I even stayed back late after work to work on it because it's quieter then, and I STILL got interrupted by someone wanting crap. FFS. Stu cooked some pasta to go with some pesto I dug out of the freezer.

Stranger Things 4.7. Then it was pretty much bed time. Sigh. Also getting annoyed at my email which isn't downloading properly for some senders. It's like the messages are getting corrupted somehow. Or at least just not rendering correctly.  It started around maybe mid to late November. They view ok on the server in webmail. Maybe there's something in one of the headers that's confusing things. There's definitely content downloaded but it's just not displaying. And it's not everything, it's only some mails from some senders. Sigh.

Wednesday.  Okish sleep but awake from 4. Got into work early and was able to do a bunch of work before a morning full of meetings.

Connor tried the Stranger Things Upside Down Double at lunch

Got more stuff done in the arvo including fixing an ldap health check for TLS. Got home and the sweetie was cooking up leftovers from the club night. Stranger Things 4.8, then backed up my computer then it was basically bed time. hrmmm.

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep. Looking at traffic to domain controllers most of the day. Super quiet drinks - just our table.. oof! The sweetie felt like Dominos so that's what we got for dinner. Ate too much. Whoops. Stranger Things 4.9 (end of season 4). Some of season 5 has dropped so we'll be able to start watching that straight away. Although it's another three years later so the kids will be all grown up!

Friday.  Meh sleep.

More AD traffic checking. Lunch with the Chrises and Neil and Glenda at the Burns Club (aka Magpies) which was very nice.

Seniors Salt and Pepper Squid, with tartare sauce, lemon chips and salad, $20M $21.50NM.  At least the Burns Club is happy to serve anything off the menu, including seniors meals to non seniors.  See, it's not that hard, HERBERTS!!

Drinks with Luc and his mate Stephen (from AARNet) at Molly (Old Fashioned and a Rusty Nail)

Then dinner at Bamiyan - we had an epic feast of camel skewers, butter chicken, mantu (lamb dumplings) and lamb biryani. So good!! I ate way too much but did bring home some leftovers. Hasty goodnight as my bus arrived just as we got to the bus stop.

Saturday.  Crap sleep (bloated cause I ate (and probably drank) too much). It didn't cool down overnight either so had to have the cooler running with water all night. Spent much of the morning tidying the house.

Yeah it was stoopidly hot, but I'm trying to clear stuff out of the freezer

Then it was all afternoon at Mishi's for her 60th. Picked up TV dinners from Chris's for dinner, then watched Die Hard.

Sunday.  Awake from dentist time for a while. More house stuff and sorting out holiday finances.

Finished the puff pastry out of the freezer

Food shopping after lunch.

Ethos topped out this week (you can't see the tree in this pic)

And the Premier inn is gorrrrne, skyline replaced with The Residence at The Markets

And stressing over how little of my todo list I've gotten done this weekend :(

Sunday.  9th.  9/11.  Stu had a recipe he wanted to make up this week that had pork belly, but not the rind. So the butcher cut it off and gave it to us separately. So I made crackling with it! It actually turned out really well.

Stu also cooked up a cauliflower bake and some sweet potato and we had that with leftover beef.

Stranger Things 2.6. Early night.

Monday.   So I think I got to sleep ok, but I know I was restless. Then I woke up at 4:42. Hurray.

Usual day of NEIL and all the crap.

We may have cut down the bamboo sprout..

Stu cooked up that pork belly with a very nice Japanese recipe. My only complaint: not enough vegetables ;)

Stranger Things 2.7. Then finished watching the You Are What You Eat docuseries. Yeah really need to eat less meat! hmmm.

Tuesday.  Hebrews 9:27 Just as people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment, 28 so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

Got stuck into planning moving proxies temporarily. Remembering there's no such thing as temporary solutions at our work. Stu cooked up the mince I cooked the other day with some stock and flavourings.  And there was a lot more veggies :)  I didn't eat all that mince, I gave some to the sweetie.

Stranger Things 2.8. Finished watching Half-Life Histories (for now). 

Wednesday.  Stoopid MyWay+ is stoopid. It keeps refusing to bring up my QR code. Last time it did this I fiddled and fiddled and got it going, but not this morning. It did mean a free ride though.  Hurrah. NEIL/proxy migration/crap. I only really got any useful work done after about 16:30. Stoopid MyWay+ is stoopid. This evening I did what I did last time and signed into the portal within the app. This seems to kick it, and turns out that was probably what got it working two weeks ago.

Stu cooked up leftover pork belly with more garlic spinach and rice.

Stranger Things 2.9 which finished season 2 which was pretty cool. Tony messaged me about the aurora (which was super helpful otherwise I never would have seen it). Got some photos but couldn't actually *see* anything. Went to bed wayy past my bed time but then epic restless legs because I was overtired.

Thursday.   Yeah crap sleep after a bit of a late night. NEIL/proxies/crap. Finished copying across all the proxy config and then managed to test it. After Jim extended my admin ID because the new system is too lame and doesn't work yet. How am i meant to do my JOB without the access i need??  But yeah was super excited that the proxies "just worked" after copying all the config.  Even kerberos authentication which is a strange beast.  But then my desktop froze up and never came back which made me depressed because you never know what you've LOST when your computer crashes.  Good drinks though.  Made pizzas then watched The Simpsons 36.14 (I think we may have missed some, need to check synopses).  

Friday.  Crap sleep.  Again.  Hurray.  Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. .. I learnt that as: Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.  I wonder what my printed copy has.  

Yeah I have strawberries growing as WEEDS in our pavers!

Remember those LR44 batteries from 1998?  Well they finally died.  Given they were well over twenty five years old and lasted for nearly two years once I started using them I was pretty damned impressed.  Yayy Seiko!  I bet the Energizer ones I bought today won't last that long!

Logged into work and found my desktop had only frozen and hadn't completely crashed! So it was all there!!! Hurray!! Finished getting the proxy cutover work done and did some testing. I got frustrated at our border firewalls that barely work and you have to FIGHT them to get certificates deployed. Then I got frustrated with our Strata mob who don't send reminders if you don't pay your strata fees, they start charging ridiculous interest. No idea what happened this time, I had filed the email, filed the attachment, and marked it as paid on my budget spreadsheet, but couldn't find any payment in my internet banking. So I paid it. Without the interest. Because it's RUDE that they don't send a reminder first. I've complained to them about it in the past too. Then got frustrated with St George's internet banking which doesn't give you an option to add a nickname to payee accounts. So if I have two payee accounts with the same name but different account numbers I have to go and look up which account is which. Every. Damned. Time. They've never updated their internet banking interface in OVER TWENTY YEARS!!  So I complained AGAIN to them about it. Then I got frustrated at the ATO because their billing system is so TRASH!! I had a "New myGov Inbox message" so went to look. It's complaining about an overdue PAYG tax bill, but I can't find any original bills at all!! They just give me a dollar value and say it's overdue. They don't say which quarter it's for. Fricken HOPELESS ATO!!!!! Not only that, but most of the links from MyGov to the ATO site were giving such fun errors as "An error has occurred. We are currently experiencing technical difficulties. We apologise for any inconvenience. Try again later." Yeah thanks ATO.  Had EB over after dinner and we watched a 50th anniversary documentary on Jaws (Jaws @ 50) which was pretty cool.  

Saturday.  Awake from 2:52 for most of the rest of the night.  Hurrah. 

More WEEDS! ;)

Day of housework, Lego filing, jigsaw, scanning.  Then went over to Rob and Fiona's for a "deck warming" which was a very pleasant evening, but a bit of a late night, whoops.

Sunday.  Slept relatively well all things considered.  Spent entirely too much time geotagging photos of Dad's. Whoops.

Sunday.  31st.  Had tuna casserole and veggies for dinner.

Then Mash and the first episode of Shogun.

Then got all kinds of depressed cause I didn't get invited to Herbert's birthday on Friday night, and noone told me that the tickets for the Canberra Airport Open Day had come up while I was away, and had "sold out".  

Monday.  April Fool.  Yeah that's me.  Took til past midnight to get to sleep because of feeling blah.  Did some weeding and scattered some purple poppy seeds around the garden, but not fully transfunctionating and too brain dead to concentrate on anything much.  I did finish geotagging photos from Tassie though.  Sausages and frozen veggies for dinner.  Watched Mona Lisa Smile which had vibes of Dead Poets Society but for girls.  

Tuesday.  Slept ok.  Nothing much day, leftovers from fridge and freezer for dinner.  Also got an email saying I'd come up on the standby list, so got myself a ticket for the Canberra Airport Open Day.  Messaged David and he was able to get one too.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Nothing much day, did a bit of decom work planning.  Met up with Stu and Dennis after work then had Kinn Thai for dinner.

Demolition in Civic

Chicken pad see ew, chili jam crispy pork, roti

Then backing up holiday photos.

Thursday.  Nothing much day.  Gin night at drinks.  Well not really, they had it a month or so ago while I was in Tasmania.  But there were plenty of leftovers so had a half shot of each.  Pizza for dinner then Death in Paradise 8.7.

Friday.  Since I wasn't invited to the evening Herbert's party, I had my own with the Chrises and Neil.  Got to try all six of the beers for the Bearded Bro Brewery tap takeover (altho one was just a sneaky mouthful I took of Aquila's).  Braddles and I shared some lamb balls and honey soy chicken wings.

Then spent the afternoon deleting stuff.  What could go wrong? :)  Kievs for dinner and Orville 3.4

Saturday.  Woke up at around 1 til well after 4.  Sigh.  Zombie tired.  Hurray. David and Kellie picked me up at 8:45 for the Canberra Airport Open Day.  It was pouring with rain and it was windy and the puddles were several centimetres deep and we got drenched.  I really should have taken my hiking boots which are a lot more waterproof.  Whoops.  Kellie went back to the car while we waited to get on the Hercules.  After a quick walk around the emergency vehicles we decided to call it for the first round and come back a bit later, so headed back to the car.  Which was gone.  Kellie had taken it.  Whoops.  David was a bit upset (busting and hangry sure didn't help) but everyone felt better after a pitstop and some food.  We went back to the airport fence to ponder our next move.  David called Adam/Brenda and it was established that lunch would be at the Burns Club.  After I'd just eaten a double cheeseburger.  Whoops.  There were like twelve of us including a few kids.  And Fiona paid before we had a chance to, so all I could do was give her all the cash I had on me ($20).  Whoops.  Saw Adam Peters for the first time in probably 30-35 years.  And met Craig who was one of the drivers who taught my brother how to drive Sydney trains.  Had a much better afternoon at the airport - saw some of the air shows and the sun came out and the people left at the end so got some nice photos. 

Felt a bit blah when we finally got home, so just watched crap on the internet.  Watched Mash and Sex Education 4.7 with the sweetie, then had some cheese and crackers (didn't need dinner - had it at lunch) and went to bed.

Sunday.  Went to bed at 21:15.  Woke up at what I felt like was about 6:30 but it was only 6:00 on the phone, still, it felt like a good nights' sleep.  Played on my phone for a bit then went and had a shower.  Get back and the bedroom clock says 7:54.  WTF?  Yeah, daylight savings ended, so I actually slept in til 7:00.  Felt a lot better after nearly ten hours sleep.  Wasted wayyyyyy too much time on Friday's XKCD.  You have to make a rube goldberg machine with either one, two or three coloured balls.  My first one was super boring, just one coloured ball with a funnel almost straight down.  The second one was three colours but it was still pretty generic.  After looking around at all the creations on the board I made a third one that was a bit more interesting.  But they're not static - if you refresh the page other boards will stay in place but yours resets.  So I never got screenshots of the first two.  This was my third though:

Then did a bit of Turkey photo stuff, house stuff, weeding, Tasmania finances, and food shopping.  Although we didn't buy much food - still getting through everything in the freezer.  Not entirely sure how I'm going to survive a five day week this week.. hmmm..

Sunday.  24th.  A couple of other notes.  All the toilet paper we had while were away was thin crappy stuff.  Even at the expensive Cradle Mountain place.  It was so nice to get home to the good Quilton stuff!  Another treat was a full keyboard and two large monitors :)  But.. 6:30am is *dark* now!!

Monday.  Awake from around 1:15 til after 4 *sigh.  Turns out there was an email from IFTTT telling me they were going to deactivate my applet because I hadn't logged in for a while.  But I never pay attention to their emails cause they're mostly all marketing crap.  I've unsubscribed from the marketing crap so hopefully now I'll see anything useful.  Spent the morning signed out from chats at work so could catch up in peace and quiet.  Logged onto them after lunch and sure enough the crap started rolling in haha.  Did two loads of washing before work, which I brought in at lunch.  Also did a bunch of work in the front garden at lunch and put a heap of stuff in the green bin.  Spent some time tidying the garage after work (which Stu took til Saturday to notice ;) ).  We were going to have leftovers for dinner but the sweetie had had a day, so we got pizza delivered.  Then I started processing holiday photos.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Bits and pieces at work.  Was going to do some decom work but people kept wanting stuff.  More weeding at lunch.  Leftover golden curry from the freezer for dinner.

Wednesday.  Took *forever* to get to sleep.  So bit of a zombie day.  Too tired to concentrate on anything much.  Sausages from the freezer and frozen veggies for dinner.

Thursday.  Had a generous dram of Sheep Dog before bed last night which did the trick, and not only got to sleep ok but also slept ok.  Too many meetings at work to concentrate on getting anything useful done.  TV dinners from the freezer for dinner, then Death in Paradise 8.6.

Good Friday.  Although not so great for Jesus a couple of thousand years ago.  Slept relatively well again which was nice.  Did three quarters of an hour of weeding before it got too hot.  Did some house bits and pieces but mostly just photo processing.  Did a barramundi bake with potatoes for dinner (I got a bag of potatoes for 76c from Woollies the other day and used a bit over half of them).  Also some frozen veggies.  

Then The Orville 3.3 which was a bit weird, and geotagging photos.

Saturday.  Slept relatively well again, hurray!  A day of All The Things.  Combination of weeding, house stuff, bit of jigsaw and geotagging.  Also did a bit of food shopping in the afternoon and got more bark for Stumpy.

I couldn't believe this stick of geranium.  It's been broken off and just lying on the ground for about TWO MONTHS!! But it's still growing new leaves!!  

Stu cooked miso mushrooms for dinner which were delicious.

Then watched Labyrinth.  

Easter Sunday.  Much the same as yesterday - slept relatively well, then weeding/house/photos stuff.  Didn't feel like putting the clarinet back together, so just played some hymns on the recorder - of course starting with "Jesus Christ is Risen Today" :)

And just like that we're a quarter of the way through the year..!!

Sunday.  11th.  Roast pork for dinner with epic crackling.  I actually had to turn the oven down from max though because it was threatening to set fire to the baking paper.  Next time I'll try it just in a baking dish.  The meat was a little dry though.  There was also blue cheese cauliflower and brussels sprouts, and brussels sprouts with spring onion, bacon and hazelnuts.

Then Sex Education 4.4

Monday.  Slept mostly ok but awake quite early.  Ok day doing stuff I didn't really need to do instead of doing any more training hmm.  For dinner cooked mushrooms and pork in cream and cheese and had it with cabbage and spring onion.  Yummm.

Tuesday.  Distracting day so didn't get much more training done.  Finished rotating all of David's America photos.  Cooked stir fry pork with veggies for dinner.

Then have been trying to catch up on rss feeds.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok but woke up early from a disturbing dream of Mum and I watching Dad going for a photo opportunity on a rockshelf and getting swept off said rocks.  Not much of a day.  Leftover cheesy mince and salad for dinner.

Thursday.  Slept fairly well.  Had a team lunch at Ikko which was quite good.

Gyu-don at Ikko

Copied some proxy configs from old to new servers in the afternoon.  First work drinks of the year and it was fairly busy which was really good.  Had a couple of sausages and didn't need dinner.

Finished renaming all David's America photos (with date/time).  So that's all his masters processed.  Now I need to decide how many of them to keep.  I feel like I should at least delete any dud photos.  Then I started re-backing them up to my holiday drive.  I also need to decide whether I want to keep an offsite backup of them or not..  Maybe just until I can do a resize working copy.

Friday.  Took a while to get to sleep.  Ok day I guess.  Kit came over after work.  We got Dumpling Inn delivered (hurray they're open again!!  haven't had Dumpling Inn since pre covid) and chatted and went to bed on time.

Saturday.  Woke up around 3:45 and didn't really get any more sleep. 

How cute is Oreo?!? (one of Biscuit's crumbs)

After Kit left I spent the day doing All The Things.  Got lots done, and we even went out for a chemist/food/car wash run.  Leftover pork (refried in lamb jelly from the freezer) and cabbage for dinner.  Then we watched The Orville 2.14 (season 2 finale).  After the hail.

Sunday.  Stu came to bed late which woke me up but then it took me like an hour to get back to sleep because restless legs.  Doh.  Climbed Mt Rogers first thing, cooked some bacon and eggs for breakfast, then got stuck back into All The Things.  Grumbly thunder for a bit but not enough to turn everything off.  I used iMazing to copy some files to my phone.  It works quite well and just makes new albums with what you import (or you can import into an existing "Mac" folder) and it doesn't clutter up the regular timeline (so when you go to back it up it doesn't show them) and any geotagging will show up on the map.  Super handy.  Just a pity they don't import in alphabetical order.

Kievs in the oven for dinner...

Sunday.  9th.  Mini roast beef for dinner.  Finished season 4 of The Crown.  In Amazing Race the cops came back, after being out for two weeks.  !!  Turns out at that point they'd been racing for six weeks total.  In like sixteen legs.  Craziness.  You wonder where all the other days go.  Travel days?  Rest days?

The lemon cheesecake I made

Monday.  Slept ok.  More server migration work.  And lots of photo culling.

Tuesday.  Took forever to get to sleep.  Tried to do a test server migration, but only got about ten minutes of that done all day because of all the stoopid and all the rage and all the meetings.  Needed a drink by 15:20 but no time for that cause I had a prod change to do at 16:30.  Sigh.  But I did manage to cook a nice pasta bolognase for dinner.  Also finished first pass photo culling of Europe photos!

Wednesday.  Took forever to get to sleep.  Got to work super early, and left super late, so got a lot of stuff done (at least on either side, not so much in the middle because people).  I'd get so much more work done if I didn't have to GO to work or have to talk to anyone.  

Thursday.  Had to migrate to a new DR laptop to replace an aging one, and tried to do a prod server migration.  Didn't finish either.  Oh well.

Saw this at lunch.. wtf??

Drinks/pizza/etc.

Friday.  Slept ok.  Took an RDO!!  Trying to do all All The Things.  But then took like three hours out of it to do an Ikea run.  *sigh*.  Thinking of something like this for a bin solution (will have to move all the shelves up a bit):

Also had pork ribs nom nom nom

Saturday.  Slept ok.  Another day of All The Things.  

Do you reckon this will kill us?  

Looks disgusting right? :)  It was some beef dumplings that were being thrown at work (fridge clean: everything had been taken out of the fridges for cleaning.  Around 17:15 I claimed a couple of perishable things that would have needed throwing out if they'd been left out overnight.  These dumplings were a frozen solid ball that needed defrosting, but of course the dough can't handle that and they disintegrated).

But, they turn out quite nicely if you fry the heck out of them, and 24 hours later we haven't gotten sick ;)

Watched First Man in the evening.  So it was more a character study than a movie.  Not that there was much character to explore.  He says like three things the entire movie (ok exaggerating, a little, but not much).  It was told from mostly Neil's point of view, which means your entire experience of the movie is inside a dark shaky metal box.  Certainly none of magic of something like The Right Stuff (*that* was a good early astronaut movie).  This one was a bit lame.  AND FFS KEEP THE F#$&ING CAMERA STILL!!  OMFG such a terrible trend in filmmaking, oh let's just give the camera to a drunk cameraman to try and make the audience feel queasy.  Fricken hate.

Sunday.  Slept ok.  Another day of All The Things.  Except I felt blah about the fact that even long weekends are too short.  I can't keep this up.  There's just too much to do to have time to go to work.  Took some more stones to Cath's and made a bit of a dent in the periwinkle under the cherry tree.  Also finished sorting Dad's slides into some semblance of chronological order.  Going to have a break from that for a few weeks so I can finish culling Europe photos.  Then it will be geotagging, applying exif data, copying, touching up, renaming and filing.  

Some fun facts:
* this was from last week - Mozart actually had six children, but only two survived past infancy.  Neither married or had kids, although one did become a musician.
* Australia controls 11% of the world's air space!
* The name Arctic comes from the Greek arktos, meaning "bear." Anta is synonymous with anti, which means "opposite".  So you have Arctic (bear) and Antarctic (opposite bear).
* From the time Pluto was discovered until the time it was demoted from planethood, it still hadn't made one complete revolution around the sun (it still hasn't)
* Neil Armstrong had a daughter Karen (she died at the age of two from a brainstem tumor)