Sunday.  17th.  My usual Sunday routine is to backup phone and download my photos. Two hours later the backup is still going.. hrmmm. Tried out the new DVD player (which we got cause the old Laser one was doing dumb things like putting out the audio but not the video. The new one is doing the same thing. Sigh. Tried turning the TV off and on again which fixed. Why is technology so crap? To watch the Chromecast we have to reboot the amp, to watch DVDs we need to reboot the TV. Probably also the old DVD player isn't actually faulty, it's probably the TV. At least the new one gets the aspect ratio right, without having to adjust the TV settings. Veggies for dinner (no photos because my phone is still backing up) and MacGyver (getting back into it now we have a workingish DVD player). Then watched These Pretzels are Making Me Thirsty. Cause that's my tagline at the moment. These proxies are making me thirsty. Gave up trying to backup phone after like FOUR HOURS of it being connected.

Monday.  Awake for a while here and there, partly stressing about the hottest 100. Not stressing, just my brain was stuck in a loop. The heater worked first go but then died after its second break. Proxy day. Stu heated up some leftover sausages and we had those with leftover for veggies. Watched a video on a birdwatcher who went to a few places we went to in Victoria. The been-there's were pretty cool. But what stunned me is they're allowing duck shooting in the Tower Hill Wildlife Reserve. What the actual F#$^??? A quick Google suggests they may have backtracked on that for the moment.. but seriously.. who the F#$% approved that in the first place???? Utterly outrageous!!!

Tuesday.  Okish sleep. Proxy day. No luck on the heater at all today. But we did get a dude from Voltair around to look at putting in a split system. Still nothing back from Climatrol about the heater though. Cloudloop have cut off cPanel/webmail/FTP due to vulnerabilities which don't have patches.. which is fine.. but they're talking about making that for "the foreseeable future" .. which would be super problematic for me (and I imagine a tonne of other customers) that are on ISPs that change IP addresses all the time.. hmm. ok they got back to me and said it should just be until they patch things (when they get a patch), so that's fine.  The new DVD player is a bit dumb.  Had reboot the tv this time to get it to work. Maybe there was actually nothing wrong with the old one (which was doing the same thing). hrmmmmmmm. At least this one sends the right aspect ratio to the TV, so no fiddling on the tv to make it show 4:3 for these ancient tv shows. Also today David sent me a link to a post by the Canberra Reptile Zoo saying that blue tongue lizards are no longer exempt from needing a licence. So then had to spend ages trying to figure out Access Canberra's website for information (there may have been some in some very long PDFs but nothing clear and simple that I could find about the changes until you actually load up the licence request form). I also don't really have any good photos of the whole enclosure so just sent the best ones I have to get it done.

Wednesday.  Took a while to get to sleep (restless) but then slept mostly ok. 12.4C in the house sigh. Proxy day.  Went to Hungry Cracks with Con and Jim and tried the Korean BBQ fried chicken burger which was pretty decent.  We even sat outside.

TV dinner for dinner.

Thursday.  Took a while to get to sleep (not restless, just awake). 11.1C in the house.  XL got a couple of KFC Hot Rods and gave me one - was pretty good!  Thanks XL!

In the afternoon the desktop guys released the new proxy to a bunch of peeps. Good drinks. Mills&Grills again and MacGyver.

Friday.  Logged onto work early to monitor for any problems from the proxy rollout. A few minor things but nothing too crazy. Well other than Microsoft's Whiteboard getting itself into a login loop. FFS why is Microsoft so BAD at literally everything?? Called Climatrol in the morning.  They never received my web form submission.  Sigh.  They're going to come next week to look at the heater.  Called POETS and we headed out to the club. Got the fire going and had tv dinners for dinner and afterwards Chris and Geoff came over and we just chatted for a while which was nice.

Saturday.  In the morning all around the toilet block and shed were all these big beautiful moths! I tried to save a couple of them from getting squished by people stepping on them in the doorways, but I actually sentenced them to death because a raven was watching me and was like "easy breakfast!!".

Went to the shed to see if they needed any help, but at the time the only thing going on was balloon blowing up. I don't do balloons. Having them overinflate and pop scares me too much, plus I can't even tie up the things, never have been able to. So left and raked leaves for like an hour. Then the sweetie and I went for a walk to look for birds. Saw a white-throated treecreeper which was pretty cool (it found a moth as well!).

Did some tapestry for a while. At 14:00 they had an afternoon tea. There was HEAPS of food, but I didn't eat too much - didn't want to spoil my appetite for dinner.

The shed looked spectacular!!

Just part of the afternoon tea spread

Then really just hang around chatting to peeps before dinner. Dinner was catered which was pretty cool. Quite a bit more expensive than self-catering but they do all the prep *and* all the dishes!!  (they did run out of a few things unfortunately).

I was hanging out for crackling but in the end they couldn't make much, but they were super sweet and gave it to me! I was honoured!

There were a bunch of speeches and cake cutting (three of them!!) and then we just hung out.

I also may have looked a bit like the Queen with my stoopid boofy hair and the "50" tiara that I wore that I got for my 50th.  Several people said so!

Bit of a late night, and we saw a tawny frogmouth outside, feasting on the moths.

Sunday.  Late night, but awake from 5:27. Hurray. Came home and had a pretty quiet day (super tired). Tried a few times to get the heater going but with no success. Stu did a power cycle on it and managed to get it to run for one cycle.  iTunes backed up my phone properly this week.

Sunday.  10th.  Chicken sausages and a bunch of roast veggies for dinner.

Watched the Lighthouses 2.3. Then I watched part 1 of a documentary on Hurricane Katrina.

Monday.  Awake around midnight for a while, then a somewhat delirious sleep stressing over the proxies. Day of trying to get things done, waiting for people etc. Leftovers for dinner, Lighthouses 3.1 on Beachy Head, photo stuff, then watched the next two episodes of the Hurricane Katrina documentary.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep and felt like I was awake half the night. On and off day.. filling in time for part of it, crazy busy for other parts. Stu cooked up a very nice Asian-style dinner with some leftover pork and veggies, and we watched the Lighthouses 3.2 on Muckle Flugga.  Did some photo stuff, and watched more of the Hurricane Katrina documentary.

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep and somewhat restless night. Busy day of trying to deal with stoopid proxy problems. Our old one could deal with Mutual TLS, why can't the new one?? Lame. Leftovers of last night's dinner for dinner, then the last episode (3.3) of The Secret Life of Lighthouses, on the Boston Lighthouse.  Did some photo stuff and finished the National Geographic doco on Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time. What an utter debacle. It's so sad looking at Google Earth/Street View and all the vacant blocks because so many people didn't have the resources to rebuild.

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep and somewhat restless night. Yeah after like four nights in a row of crap sleep I was a zombie today. Sure made it hard to concentrate on various proxy problems. Good drinks, a few other tables. Mills and Grills again for dinner. Death in Paradise 15.8 (end of season 15).

Friday.  Went to bed early and went to sleep early, but woke up around like 3 for a couple of hours. Tried to turn the heater on. It didn't even seem to want to turn on. Went back later with a light and was seeing "Busy 10 hi" and "Busy 46 hi" errors. Sigh. They errored out all day and we never did manage to get it going. Organised with Voltair for them to come and quote on installing a split system. Not quite as busy a day at work. Called it at 16:00. Kievs for dinner then we watched Rental Family which was.. touching. We both enjoyed it.

Saturday.  Took ages to get to sleep and awake a bit early but slept mostly ok in the middle. Turned the heater on and today it worked first go. Go figure. Definitely going to try and get it serviced/fixed soon though. We've lost one of Chrissie's clown loaches. It had been looking unwell for a couple of weeks with two large welts on either side of it. Now I need to decide what to do with the other one. I also need to decide what to do with the AR-620T. Both its lights have gone and they're getting hard to replace. Gem Aquatics still sell them but only the white ones, not the pink ones. Tony refitted his with a compact fluorescent fitting but I'm wondering if I should bother or just downsize our fish tanks. Climbed Mt Rogers, then went out birdwatching with the sweetie out the back of Weetangera.

Mt Rogers Trig Station

Airbus A380 VH-OQG flying over Canberra (QF93 MEL to LAX)

We may have stopped at The Scottish Restaurant for lunch.  They've got creme brulee pies at the moment (deep fried!) which are quite nice.

Finished the leftover pork for dinner then watched Catch Me if You Can, which I hadn't seen since 2003 (we tried to watch it a few years back but had to stop after like fifteen minutes and neither of us could remember why).

Sunday.  Actually slept relatively well for a change! The heater worked first go, but then died after its first break.  Reset it and gave it a rest and tried again later and it ran for a while before the house warmed up enough it didn't need to run again.  Quiet day of photo and house stuff. Even made a cake! 

Sunday.  3rd.  Epic roast pork for dinner!   The crackling and meat both turned out quite well (2.4kg deboned shoulder).

Then we watched the first episode on a documentary on lighthouses (The Secret Life of the Lighthouse) - this one on the Eddystone lighthouse of Plymouth. A bit of fun and quite interesting.  Then I watched Matilda the Musical which was a bit of fun. Emma Thompson is unrecognisable as Trunchbull and the kid who played Matilda sounded exactly like Emma Watson as a young Hermione. 

Monday.  Star Wars Day.  Took a while to get to sleep and awake early for ages. Frustrating day of waiting for people and feeling like I actually went backwards with the proxies. For lunch I made toast pizzas which were yummy.

And the raindrops on the climbing rose in front of the cherry tree which is turning yellow looked pretty cool

Stu cooked up a bunch of veggies for dinner including a nice goats cheese cauliflower bake (the cheese was a couple of months past its use-by date (I bought it past its use-by date from Chris's before we went on holidays).. she'll be right!!).

Then the second episode of the Secret Life of the Lighthouse (on Bell Rock).

Tuesday.  Slept okish. Another frustrating day of waiting for people, then a super busy afternoon with various meetings/calls. Oof. Leftover pork and veggies for dinner then episode 3 of The Secret Life of the Lighthouse (on Fastnet Rock). Neither Lego set that I put up/relisted last week sold. And buying the last remaining missing pieces off Bricklink is also frustrating because the places that have a lot of the pieces I need charge exorbitant prices for them, and the places that charge reasonable prices don't have many pieces, so the postage gets prohibitive. Blerf.

In other fun crap today. We tried to turn the heater on after quite a few days of not needing it. But it kept dying. This afternoon Stu replaced the brand-new-second-hand controller we bought last year. This one the temperature dial works properly and so does the display, and now we can see the new error it's giving - Err 50 HI (and Err 10 HI). Google AI from Facebook says:

A Brivis ducted heater "Err 50 Hi" (or Error 50) indicates an ignition lockout, meaning the heater failed to light after four attempts. Common causes include no gas supply, a faulty igniter, or a faulty gas valve. Reset the unit using the reset button on the controller to try clearing it.

On the old controller the reset button just caused the whole controller to crash out. At least the new one can get it to work eventually. We'll have to see if a service will fix it. Leftovers for dinner and the Lighthouses series 1.3 on Fastnet Rock.

Wednesday.  Awake from 3:00 for hours sigh. Another stoopidly busy day dealing with problems with the proxies. Stu cooked some vege ravioli in creamy mushroom sauce which was nice then the Secret Life of the Lighthouse 2.1 on Wolf Rock.

Thursday.  Awake from like 3:30 for ages sigh. Another stoopidly busy day dealing with problems with the proxies. Good drinks - several other tables of peoples. Picked up Mills and Grills pizzas for dinner.

See Dominos.. THIS is how pizza is done!

Potata $21.90 - cheese, bacon, potato, aioli, garlic - yum!

Don Pepperoni $15.90

Death in Paradise 15.7. I think the entire solution was speculation with barely any evidence.  How would they ever get this to trial?

Friday.  Slept in til like 5! Another stoopidly busy day dealing with problems with the proxies. Kievs for dinner, Lighthouses 2.2 on The Smalls.

Then I watched The Little Mermaid "real life" remake from 2023. It's like two hours fifteen minutes though WTF??  Caribbean setting, but filmed in Italy. They kept most of the original songs, and even added a few.  And Jodi Benson was in it which was pretty cool.  And Melissa McCarthy was pretty good as Ursula.   I mean it wasn't *bad*.. just not the same...

Saturday.  Awake for ages from like 1:30 blerf. Quiet day of house and photo stuff. Leftover pork and veggies for dinner. Then we watched Remarkably Bright Creatures which was funny and sweet and I found quite emotional. Lovely!

Also this strawberry didn't get the memo that it's autumn not spring..

Sunday.  Awake for a while around midnight, and I was awake just before midnight when someone let off a whole heap of fireworks down the back which were quite pretty! Went for a walk (called the mother type person on the way), then popped out to pick up some Lego off a Bricklink seller, which ended up being two hours of that, Green Shed sorry Vinnies sorry Goodies Junction to drop off a pile of jigsaws (and not pick up any more!), and food shopping.

Happy Mother's Day!

Monday.  6th.  Stu cooked up some veggies and I fried up some lamb and then we watched Professor T 2.5, then I just watched crap on the internet.

Tuesday.  Slept okish I think. Spent the day working on getting the last of the vips migrated off the old load balancer. Stuff is mostly ready to go, just need to quadruple check everything and do a heck of a lot of testing. Leftovers for dinner, Professor T 2.6 (end of season two), then labelling Europe panorama photos. The internet died around 21:40. Hurrah.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok (although woke up around 5:20). The internet was still dead but came back before I went to work. Continued work on the last vip migration, only to find out someone else is doing another change to the back end of the system I want to work on around the same time. So I'm going to have to wait a couple more weeks. Also got pulled into a couple of blergh meetings which took up a bit chunk of the day.

Turdhead neighbour has parked his massive ute on our land. I left a note asking to please not park on our side. Finished labelling my Europe 2016 panorama photos.

Thursday.  Mostly awake from 3 except for a couple of short patches of dream sleep. Busyish day again, but waiting for people, so moved onto trying to solve a problem on the new proxies. Everything said to do something a certain way for HTTP/2 but it just wouldn't work and I had to raise a support ticket sigh. Not sure how busy drinks was, I don't think very (we were outside). We got Dominos pizzas for dinner. Shockingly, they've shrinkflated their pizzas. When I opened the first one I thought it was a joke, or a "special" pizza that was supposed to be smaller. Nope. They were both like 2/3 the diameter they should be. #grunt.  Will be boycotting Dominos til they fix their $#!+  I should have measured these..

Professor T 3.1. Bed.

Friday.  Restless night, weird dreams. Woke up cranky with the world. Also the neighbours still have one of their trucks parked on our side - it's been there for *days*. #grunt. The note I left the other night was gone. Talked to J in the morning who said he'd told T not to park there. At work I'm still angry they took away my Visio licence while I was on leave and refuse to give it back. Pissed off with the world. Busy day not achieving much including more meetings and having to deal with vendor support. Kievs for dinner then Professor T 3.2.

I was so excited Chris had potato gems!!!  Haven't had them in ages

Saturday.  Took ages to get to sleep - stressing over the neighbours. Then restless sleep. I was gonna go yell at turd neighbour to move his ute, but he'd already left for work. So I put some bins in the spot so hopefully he'll get the hint. Went for a walk, finished htmlifying Europe 2016 panoramas, watched the Artemis II splashdown.

Look how green everything is at the moment!

Food shopping in the afternoon, don't know what else I did. Neighbour came home and parked on his side. Hurray! Stu cooked a Japanese curry for dinner. Professor T 3.3.

Sunday.  Early night. Slept mostly ok. Went for a walk again. Got jumped on by TWO dogs. Seriously people if you have a dog that's likely to jump on people KEEP IT ON A LEASH!!! It's not that hard!! Busy day getting lots of stuff done around the house including washing, weeding, mowing, and even some music.

I'm so excited my chrysanthemum has got some life on it!!!

We also went out to West Belconnen Pond to go birdwatching but it was super windy - feels like 6C whoops.

Windoze didn't remember my iPhone in tray settings, but it did remember the date order sorting on my blog posting directory.

Yeah it's been a week...

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.

Wednesday.  New Years Eve.  After I posted my end of year post and year in review post I shut my computer down because of the incoming storm and went and did some dotz for a while. At dinner time we headed over to Annie's for nibbles and drinks. Lovely catchup.

Left maybe around 22:30 because some of them were headed to Melbourne in the morning. We put on The Fifth Element to keep us awake til midnight then watched the Sydney fireworks.

Just beforehand they had Mel C and I'm like .. what .. two years in a row of having British acts before the Sydney fireworks!? (last year was Robbie Williams) Weird. Then we watched rage for an hour. Whoops.

wtf.. Michael Jackson and Eddie Murphy.. Whatzupwitu .. ????  Never heard of it.. pretty much as mindblowingly random as German Bold Italic by Kylie Minogue!

Thursday.  New Years Day!!  Slept okish all things considered, even slept til about 8:00. Cooked up some cheesy hash browns for breakfast, with added freshly grated parmesan cheese.

Went and climbed Mt Rogers in an attempt to pretend to be healthy.

Saw *two* of these epic caterpillars!

Then just Lego and dotz.

I did pick up a few jigsaws from Jo. Whoops.

After prepping dinner I looked at my todo list. And got completely overwhelmed. Hrmmm. Cooked up a tuna bake and a bunch of veggies for dinner then we watched the end of season 5 of Stranger Things.

Friday.  Slept relatively well. Logged onto work for a bit to be NEIL. Then wandered off again. Did some gardening - potted a ribbon grass and trimmed the ferns. Late morning we headed out to do some shopping. The mall was feral. Officeworks parking was feral. Idiots breaking road rules were feral. Had lunch at Grease Monkey.

I'd been wanting to get some silicone baking mats for a while because we go through a *lot* of baking paper.  How cool are these? They have measurements and circles for making circular things (and another one has cookie circles you can use)

In the afternoon made some Lego and did some dotz. Dinner was a mouthful of ice cream and later some cheese and crackers. Yeah we were still full from lunch. Then we watched the end of 2023 Beyond Paradise Christmas special which was nice. Tried for an early night. Failed.

Saturday.  Slept mostly ok. Frustrating morning rescanning Mum's slides - every time I rescanned some slides there would be fluff in different positions. So annoying. Dotz, Lego, jigsaw. Finished the leftover turkey for dinner then watched the new Knives Out (Wake Up Dead Man) which was a bit of fun. Oh, one night, maybe Friday, we finished watching The Fifth Element.

Sunday.  Slightly early night and got to sleep ok, then woke up a bit before 23:00 with the storm. Then stayed awake. For HOURS. Sigh. Zombie tired day. Finished rescanning Mum's slides. A storm went through in the morning but just missed us (got like three drops of rain).

Let's see if I can give myself food poisioning by eating this week and a bit old parmi and chips.. spoiler alert.. didn't get sick!

Finished building Vic's City sets. Finished a jigsaw. So lots of finishing things today which was good for the last day of the break. We had a life planning meeting this afternoon. Then I got overwhelmed again thinking about my project list. Sigh.

Wow. So 2025. It sure was a year!

Travel

I went to Adelaide with Mum in late February to visit my Uncle Graham who was in hospital for three months being treated for a lymphoma. He was doing really well at the time (he'd really only just started treatment). Good news is he's done with treatment and is (so far) cancer free. We went down the coast to visit Kit and Pete in March for Pete's birthday and I went to the Milton Show with Kit. I didn't go to Europe with Mum, even after spending months planning it. At least David got to go instead. I did go up to Sydney the day before they left to go through everything I'd prepared with them. In November the sweetie and I took ten days off and headed down the coast, staying in Narooma and Kiama. Didn't get to spend as much time as we would have liked in Narooma due to reasons, so we hope to go back again some time soon. Did a day trip to Sydney in December to see Back to the Future the Musical.

Work

At work I was the Naughty Email Intervention Layer (NEIL) a few times while Neil took leave. We're not sure what's going to happen to his position when he retires next year (after 50 years!!!!). I got to do a bunch of work on some of our management scripts to get them working in the new environment. Learnt a lot, which I've now completely forgotten. Did scripts to check on the quality of objects/rules, backup configs, look for orphaned objects, print out our rules in a friendly format, delete crap. I love those delete scripts whenever I use them - they save So. Much. Time..!! Used Copilot (and Google AI) to help me with regex and Powershell (the regex stuff was pretty cool - I gave it a problem and it found me a solution - that worked!). Did lots of decommission work in the first two thirds of the year, ran out of time with everything else going to do much in the last third of the year. I still think my job description is mostly "Sadie". Helped Neil build and cut over to some new mail servers (which took months to finally get to do after they were like, oh, yeah there's a bug, soz). Ray brought in his pizza oven in February for a team lunch which was quite fun. We farewelled HBZ in February which was a bit sad, also farewelled Julian and Bruce in March and Imaar in October. There were trivia nights in March (a bit trash), June (a lot of fun, and we actually won, but luckily didn't have to run the next one - they decided in advance that the last place getters would run it) and October (a bit trash). Had a small "anti ball" in April but it was a bit of a fizzer and I don't think I'd bother trying to organise another one. Used "New" Outlook for only a couple of days in April because it was trash. The dealbreaker was shared calendars which just wouldn't render properly. Did a massive cleanup of our main dev environment, which I've been wanting to do for literally seven years. It makes me so happy that it's *clean* now! Worked on policy for our new cloud proxies, but even though I've been using myself for months we're still not really any closer to getting it released to everyone. In November it suddenly became crunch time on our existing proxies - the old hardware (which we've been using for TEN YEARS) was going EOL and we didn't want to renew the licence and we weren't ready to cut over to our new proxies, so I spent a few days migrating the policy to other equivalent but newer hardware, doing all the paperwork, and prepping it all so Con/Ward could cut it over while I was on holidays. It went mostly smoothly which was epic awesome. Spent a heap of time looking at what talks to some legacy domain controllers so could replicate their rules to new ones. Broke something during a transition though sadly. It was fixed super quickly once they told me though. Had to rework our ticket dashboards when they upgraded versions and our originals were done so long ago they were "legacy" and didn't work properly. Had various Christmas parties in December, including my annual bbq at the lake attended by over 40 people.

Health

I had a bit of a sore throat in February. Spent two days in bed and pretty sure I beat it off because I didn't seem to get fully sick. Mainly I was paranoid about getting sick because if I did I wouldn't have been able to see Uncle Graham in Adelaide. Ongoing bouts of insomnia and thermoregulation issues throughout the year (thanks menopause). Oh, and the minor inconvenience of the C-word. Not that C-word. The other C-word.

Family and Friends

We started the year (almost) with some of the n-gang (we left at 11:30 and got home just before midnight). Mum and D/K/S came for the family Christmas lunch in early January for last year, and a week before Christmas for this year. I definitely like doing an early family Christmas. Went to see Lily for her 21st in January. Had EffanC over for dinner in February, and also my birthday, and went over to theirs for dinner in May. David came to visit in March to install a new light fitting in the kitchen. Because the old one died. It was only six years old. Hating on how crap everything is nowadays. Mum tripped over just inside her village entrance in March and was knocked out and broke her collar bone. She went to hospital and they did a bunch of scans because they didn't know if she'd passed out and then fell, or got knocked out from the fall. Passing out first would have been super worrying. Fortunately there was security camera footage and you can clearly see she just tripped (she was power walking and was just moving off the main path when she tripped on a raised bit of concrete). Had Jenn over for dinner in March. It had been two years since we saw her last. Whoops! Caught up with Luc for drinks/dinner in May and December. Fiona came over with a care package in May, and visited again July. Tony also dropped in a care package in May, and we went to the arboretum in July, as well as had a couple of movie nights. Had lunch at the Burns Club with the Chrises and Tony in June and the Chrises and Glenda and Neil in December. Kit came to visit in August for Ben and Sarah's baby shower (which I would have loved to have gone to, but, people). Went and saw Annie and the family in August. Had Friday afternoon drinks with T/J in October - we really must do that more often! David and Kellie came to stay in November when they went and saw Ricky Martin. Went to Rob and Fiona's in November for a deck warming. Had Mishi's 60th in December. Had a super quiet Christmas Day, but Stu did got to see his family (and we'll hopefully catch up with them on New Years').  New Years Eve Eve party at M&M's with some of the n-gang.

The Social Club

We went out in June for Ian and Chris's 10th wedding anniversary formal night which was lovely. I did our annual Christmas in July by remote control this year - the sweetie did all the shopping for me, I did as much prep work as I could either at home or in the van, then got the sweetie and helpers to cook it all on the night (with lots of printed out instructions!). Went out again in September - Stu for a committee meeting, and I did some priming of cabinetry. Went to the Halloween Spooktacular night in October which was fun. Went out again in early November for a committee meeting for Stu, and I continued priming cabinetry. Then there was R&F's Christmas party in late November.

Photos

Spent ages picking out photos for Mum's funeral (on account of she wants to see it and I want to get it done in advance should the worst happen and then it would be one less thing I would need to think about). Spent chunks of time here and there tagging people in Picasa. I figured out how to have different databases for different people groups and even wrote a startup script to make it easy to switch between them. Jumped in to finally getting my Europe 2016 photos online - spent ages and ages culling culling culling, then labelling them and getting them online. I still have to make panoramas and get them online. Also filed a lot of photos into directories with more descriptive folder names. Re-scanned all of Mum's slides at the highest resolution my scanner would go (the first time I did them very quickly at a medium resolution). Then rescanned the ones with fluff on them, sometimes over and over and over again. I've geotagged our south coast trip from November, but that's all I've done so far.

Fish and Stumpy

Stumpy's UV light died at the end of last year, but I couldn't find anywhere that sold a 48" 10% UV light, so had to make do with an incandescent bulb which does heat *and* UV in one. He'd been pretty lethargic at the beginning of the year, possibly because of the lack of UV light. He perked up again with the new light, and got really quite tanned over the course of the year. My AquaOne 620T tank leaked in February because the filter wool drifted over and blocked the outlet, backing everything up. Whoever thought using chipboard to make fish tank stands would be a good idea should be shot. Lost the sucking catfish in the two foot downstairs in February - it was happy then was dead. Towards the end of the year I thought I was losing the clown loaches - they both hid in a corner and wouldn't come out. But in the last week or two they've been behaving more normally.

Our current fish inventory:
* upstairs two foot - a whole heap of guppies at various ages
* four foot - nine congo tetras, one lone male guppy (I'll get him some friends when others in the other tanks get big enough), and an enormous fat loach
* Chrissie's tank - two clown loaches
* angel tank - a whole heap of guppies at various ages
* downstairs two foot - a whole heap of guppies at various ages

Lego

Spent ages of time (and money) on Vic's Lego. Bought a crazy number of loose pieces to complete some sets. I managed to complete all the Creator and City sets. I built and photographed the Creator sets and have been building the City sets. Still a long way to go though. The LEGO Group is taking over Bricklink more and more. This year they forced you to use your Lego account to sign into Bricklink and later in the year they gave two weeks notice they were going to suspend trading in a whole heap of countries (which they then pushed back til next year). I'm just waiting for them to enshittify it completely. The only set I built new was 31134 - Space Shuttle, which I got for my birthday, but haven't had a chance to build the other two sets I got for my birthday.

Jigsaws

A little bit quiet on the jigsaw front, especially at work. Bought two jigsaws with a voucher from my 50th birthday, but have only done one of them so far.

Other Hobbies

My favourite hobby at the moment is diamond painting. I find it super quieting for my brain (which always seems to be overstimulated). After the little Christmas tree I did on Christmas/Boxing Day last year, I've done Green Eyed Beauty, Pink Galah and Banksia, White Cockatoo and Waratahs, and started on Oh Christmas Tree (which Dave2 very kindly bought and posted to me, on account of not being able to find anywhere in Australia that still had it). I did an Anko miniblocks Owl in Tree that I got for Christmas from Kellie and David which was very cute. I also did a Nanoblocks Church I got from the Green Shed sorry Vinnies sorry Goodies Junction in March. It wasn't quite complete but it was mostly there and is very cute. And there was also a Petit Blocks fox I got at Daiso for at work. It's very cute. I bought a brand-new-second-hand saxophone from the Young Music School sale in February. Had it serviced and got it back in August. I've done a little bit of playing on it but not as much as I would have liked. I did find some easy Christmas music for it which was fun and have been on the hunt for other music for it.

Weather

We had hail in January, August, September, November and December. There were various rainbows throughout the year. In October/November it went from needing the heater, the cooler, the heater, the cooler, the heater (although didn't actually run it that time) in the space of two weeks. Had lots of storms in November and December. Had an overnight low of 0C on 2 December.

Toys / Purchases / Techie Stuff

I bought a new camera in January because my old one (Dad's old one) had some dead pixels and just isn't as good as newer cameras in low light. But I got super frustrated at the 24-105mm lens which didn't have the range of my old camera/lens. I also got frustrated at how dull and lifeless the photos are from it. Did a bunch of testing comparing the new camera, the old 600D, my G5X and my iPhone. Also played with user mode settings to increase saturation and contrast, which has made a difference. In July I got a 24-240mm lens, much happier with it than the 24-105mm. The 24-105mm is still great for people photos and low light, but the 24-240mm is my general usage lens. I'm totally hating on Windoze 11 which does utterly daft things. Like if I open a text document on one desktop, it'll open it IN ANOTHER DESKTOP!!! Even if just a moment ago I'd opened and closed another text file on the original desktop. Or that it NEVER remembers folder settings. There's a few folders that I have specific settings (sorting by reverse date order, details instead of large icons etc..) and it resets them every fricken time I use them. HATE. There were a couple of times this year it remembered the settings, but mostly it just reset them. Or that sometimes when I unlock in the morning, windows that I've had on the right screen (my main screen) will randomly be moved to my left screen (which I don't use all the time) and I have to turn on that screen and move them back. Or that notepad is so trash now. If you have a large text file it becomes unusable due to the lag of it trying to do spell checks or whatever. Or it'll literally just not enter keystrokes and just skip one or more letters that you've typed. Or that Windoze will reboot AGAINST YOUR WILL when it feels like it. Or that whenever I attach a USB device it takes a full minute for windoze to recognise it. Or that whenever I attach or remove a USB device, explorer collapses what directories I have open, so I have to re-navigate to them all to get back into folder context. Or that when I open a command prompt (which I have pinned to my task bar), the command prompt doesn't open where the pinned icon is, it opens all the way over on the right of whatever else I have open. I got a new desktop at work and it's doing the same thing. Yet the Azure ones didn't do this. Or it'll just randomly jump to the top of the explorer window and I have scroll back down to find where I was working. Or it changed how folders are displayed by date. My computer crashed earlier in the year and in October as well. Frustration with Apple. If you let it automatically set the time zone, it'll just change the time zone on you randomly. It stuffed up a bunch of photos in Adelaide with its nonsense. Apple also merges timelines from different numbers into one message thread. So you reply to a message in the thread, but it goes to the home number not the mobile number and is never received. Apple is so stoopid. I had to split out Mum's mobile number into a different contact to stop that happening. Google broke Chromecast because they didn't renew a certificate. Eventually after a week or so they fixed it. OneNote threatened to force me into an Office365 subscription, but didn't end up doing it. I finally got around to setting up my phone to use my own hosted SMTP service because Optus was getting super flaky for trying to send mail. Raged at Optus who now FORCE you into using $5/day roaming unless you pull the sim out of your phone. BOM updated their website in October and half the country screamed at them for ruining things. Pretty sure CloudLoop made some change to email headers in mid to late November which means that mails from some places aren't rendering properly. I downloaded (and paid a little) for Thunderbird to handle mail from the problematic senders. Might one day copy everything across, but for now the way of filtering mail is super annoying.

House stuff

I spent ages in the first part of the year trying to get the back yard under control. Our lemon tree dropped probably about a thousand lemons over summer. I'm not even exaggerating - a branch fell off that had 110 lemons on it, and that was just one branch out of the whole huge tree. I juiced most of them and was drinking homemade lemonade for months. I grew a bunch of mini capsicums which I could harvest in April. Such a lot of effort (and having to water every single day) for so little reward (but a nice reward!). We tried to turn the heater on in April but either the controller or the heater was having a spaz and kept rebooting. In May we managed to get it to work and didn't turn it off for literally two weeks straight. After that we managed to operate it normally for the rest of the winter. But in spring, after being off for a few days, it got the crazy behaviour again. Potted a chrysanthemum that I'd accidentally uprooted out the front and it's been thriving. I still need to find a permanent home for it. Frustration the Mirabella Genio lights and app, terrible user interface and annoying to try and get them to repair. Started picking strawberries from the weeds in the back yard at the beginning of November and continued through early December. Not nearly as many poppies this year, must have been too dry for them.

Restaurants

We had Quan's Kitchen delivery in January (because Dumpling Inn presumably wasn't open yet). We went to Bar 59 a few times in January for work drinks, and again in April. Dumpling Inn is a continuing favourite, with deliveries in January, June (x2), July, August, September, October and December. So is Chong Co, with deliveries in March, April, May (x2), June, August and October. McGriddles at Maccas finally arrived in Australia! I had one in July but my sense of taste was shot at the time so couldn't judge it. Have had a few more since October though. Went to Ikko again for a work farewell in October. Went to Stellas by the Lake for brunch in November with David and Kellie, nominally for his 50th. Tried out Bamiyan with Luc in December which was really good. Tried out Grease Monkey in the mall in December. Went out to Four Winds for pizza lunch with Tony in December for our annual lunch out there. Went to the Labor Club with Mum and Stu in December. And to the Old Canberra Inn for Tony's birthday.

Food / Cooking

Our first meal of the new year was cheesy hash browns cooked on New Years Day. We usually have pizzas every Thursday night, mostly made ourself, but occasionally a commercial one. We often have Ingham's chicken Kievs on Friday nights. And we often have a roast dinner on Sunday nights. Made lemon pepper dill chicken a few times (with all that lemon juice!) and creamy lemon dill sauce with either chicken or fish a few times. Luv-a-duck Peking duck is a favourite, had that a few times. Did a pork neck in the slow cooker in February which was *amazing* and again in April. Tried Microwave Pork Crackle in February which was actually pretty good! Had steak a few times earlier in the year (we never get steak at home because Stu is usually meh about it). Had NQN's butt sorry beef cheeks in May. Stu cooked a little bit in April/May when he was on leave. Made a potato, blue cheese, and rosemary pizza in July. I couldn't taste it at the time, need to do it again. Did slow cooker lamb shanks in August. Tried a cheats mac & cheese with just a bit of water and cheese (and a bit of milk in one version, cream in another). Made a couple of coconut cakes - once in the microwave and once in the oven in August. Did slow cooker beef brisket in August. Baked a plain cake and icing in August from the Women's Weekly Children's Birthday cake book to test the recipe. Officially started cooking cakes out of it in September (just one so far!). Made puff pastry scrolls a few times - vegemite or pizza flavoured. Cooked some crackling by itself in November which turned out pretty well. Made some gingerbread biscuits in December. Made a peppermint slice in December.

Theatre / Shows / Exhibitions

* Pompeii at the National Museum in January with Mum which was really good
* AI in Science talk in April with T/J, but missed the rest due to avoiding people and being busy
* Constellations at the NFSA in April with Tony which was amazing
* Back to the Future - The Musical with the sweetie in December which was a bit of fun

Movies (at the movies)

None. *gasp*

Movies (TV)

* Heaven is for Real
* Die Hard 3
* Darkest Hour
* Star Trek: Generations (after seeing the Duras sisters in DS9 1.3)
* Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone
* Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
* Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
* Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
* Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
* Blackberry
* The Princess Bride
* Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince
* Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I
* Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
* Fantasia 2000
* Perfect Days
* Inglorious Basterds
* The Holdovers
* Jaws
* Flying High
* Rogue One
* Star Wars (A New Hope)
* The Empire Strikes Back
* Return of the Jedi
* The Post
* Cruella
* Forgetting Sarah Marshall
* Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
* Terms of Endearment
* Lego Batman Movie
* Lilo and Stitch (the original animated one, and the live action remake)
* The Green Mile
* Passengers
* The Last Emperor
* Back to the Future, I, II and III
* V for Vendetta
* The China Syndrome
* Die Hard and Die Hard 2
* Birdman
* The Neverending Story
* Love Actually
* Enola Holmes and Enola Holmes 2

TV

* Death in Paradise - seasons 11, 12, 13, 14
* Wednesday - seasons 1, 2
* Beyond Paradise - Death in Paradise but back in the UK
* Stranger Things - season 1 early in the year, then 2/3/4/5 later on
* Return to Paradise - a spinoff of Death in Paradise set on the south coast of NSW
* Meltdown: Three Mile Island
* Deep Space Nine - seasons 1-7
* Air Crash Investigations on Disney+
* Andor - season 2
* How to Change your Mind
* Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War
* Lego Grand Masters of the Galaxy
* Trainwreck: Poop Cruise
* Black Mirror - season 7
* Tokyo Trial
* Trainwreck: Storm Area 51
* The Antisocial Network: Memes to Mayhem
* Futurama - season 13
* You Are What You Eat
* The Simpsons - bit of season 36
* Lost Melbourne documentary
* GameStop documentary
* Pirates: Behind the Legends - a couple of episodes

Books

None. Although I did get some way through The Princess Bride by William Goldman. Reading is just so *hard*.

Other Stuff

* Got frustrated at the lack of response from Access Canberra in January over the new MyWay+ issues
* Got some ok photos Comet C/2024 G3 (ATLAS) in January
* Got our Queensland holiday from 2004 and Col and Sandra's wedding blogged. Only took 21 years to get online..
* Took some Cousin Itt photos in February
* Remembered 11 years since Dad carked it in February
* The Green Shed closed down booooo and was replaced by "Goodies Junction" run by Vinnies. Definitely preferred the Green Shed. Later in the year found out the owner of the Green Shed started a spinoff in Fyshwick.
* Did a keto diet for a few weeks in February to lose a few kilos. It was pretty effective! And mostly kept the weight off too.
* Neighbours moved to New Zealand in April
* Climbed Mt Rogers a bunch of times in April while I was trying to get a bit fitter for my holiday
* Did low carb again for a little while in April. Gave up when it became apparent I wasn't going overseas.
* Had a lovely drive around Canberra on our wedding anniversary in April
* Saw the Giant Crane in May
* Listened to the Classic 100 Piano in June
* Went to the Handmade Markets at EPIC in June
* Neighbours house was finally rented out in June
* Watched all of Jamie's Anti-Chef videos from the very beginning in order from August. Still only about two thirds of the way through them.
* A red-back spider took up residence in our letter box in August. She was spray-and-wiped.
* Crimson rosellas returned to chew on the beams supporting the roof
* Stu rage-retired in September. Then spent the better part of a month in agony from his back. Recovered from that only to have hearing problems and nausea.
* Saw comet C/2025 R2 (SWAN), but only barely
* Visited the new "Green" Shed (The Shed) in October
* Stu more or less took over some cooking and some basic housework in October or November
* Plucked a number out of the air to go for in the Melbourne Cup (my birthday), and that horse won!
* Got frustrated at MyWay+ which doesn't work properly. Got one free ride out of it, but then figured out a fix.
* Got some photos of the aurora in November, although I never actually saw it
* Made a beer advent calendar out of beers I missed from work drinks that Neil saved for me
* Found a 2011 10c coin!!
* Chipped one of my front teeth
* Neighbours got a new barky dog
* Reread the second half of the New Testament

So there we have it.  I guess a fairly quiet year in a lot of ways.  We're both hoping 2026 will be better, especially health-wise.

Happy New Year!!!

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.  16th.  Stu cooked up a pasta bake and a cabbage bake to use up a bunch of things in the fridge that needed using up.  

Then some Stranger Things (I think).  

Monday.  Logged onto work to be NEIL for the morning and did a handover after lunch. Got paperwork done for the proxy cutover change that I'd prepped but would be leaving to Con/Ward to do.  

Tuesday.  Holidays!

Thursday.  27th.  Got home around lunch time.  Lost one potted strawberry plant due to the heat and epic WIND.  But look at the haul!!  

Thanks Tony for looking after all our plants and animals :)  Spent some time unpacking, downloading GPS and photos etc.  Later in the afternoon the sweetie dropped me off so I could get a blood test done, then I dropped into work drinks.  KFC for dinner then Stranger Things 4.3.

Friday.   Got to sleep briefly but then awake for a while because I was HOT. Was looking at Kiama temperatures before bed, so didn't realise it was actually going to get *cold* overnight, but it was lovely! Had a busy day just trying to get caught up with life, including taking last year's Christmas party cans for recycling (finally!!) and getting a bone density scan (which they could do *today* which was pretty impressive.. I thought I'd have to wait weeks).

Kievs and some garlic bread I made with bread from the last club function leftovers. Stranger Things 4.4.

Saturday.  Slept like crap. Took ages to get to sleep, then awake from 1 for ages then awake from 4 for ages. Sigh. Got ready and headed out to the club.

John had cut a Christmas tree which we setup and then I spent an hour or so decorating. Good fun and it looked super cool.

Then R&F turned up and I helped all afternoon with the cooking. The night went really well.

Sunday.  Slept okish (mostly ok til around 4:45 then awake for a while). Went up to the shed and spent an hour or so tidying up and washing up.

Had to evict this five-legged grasshopper first..

Then home. And spent much of the afternoon putting up our Christmas tree and decorations.

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.