Monday.  21st.  Did I mention I'm doing low carb again for another few weeks? Except the day got off to a rocky start because I'd forgotten about an apple that needed eating. There goes my carb limit for the day.. whoops. The sweetie prepped a cauliflower bake and brussels sprouts for dinner and I chucked a chunk of beef in to go with it. I got my blogging done quite early. Funny how writing up notes properly during the week makes blogging a lot quicker on a Sunday.. or Monday in this case. DS9 2.24.

Tuesday.  Awake from Dentist Time for hours and only broken sleep after that. Sigh. NEIL at work, as well as trying to figure out the API of our IP management system to help someone with something. Leftovers for dinner, DS9 2.25. After dinner started going through Dad's photos (from when he switched from slides to prints and onwards) to get photos of Mum. Annoyingly Dad had a really bad habit of over-enhancing his photos. At least with the prints I can go back and rescan them, but for digital photos once they're enhanced at all they're destroyed because he didn't keep the originals. Which is odd in itself because he used to make backups upon backups upon backups, just not of the original unaltered files. #grunt.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok. Really wanted to get through some decom prep but the interruptions Would. Not. Stop. All. Day. So damned hard to concentrate with Teams and Outlook popping up every five seconds. Seriously considering turning all notifications off. The sweetie cooked creamy mushroom chicken for dinner which was very nice.

DS9 2.26. Then more photo picking. From 2010 and some of 2011 Dad saved the raw camera photos off separately to the enhanced photos. That was nice of him. Maybe there were other copies of the rest of his digital camera photos elsewhere that either he or I lost. More likely him. I spent an entire week one Christmas trying to sort it all out, and would definitely have kept any raw photos if I'd found them. Knowing him he probably made several backups, thought he had a backup, didn't in fact have a backup, and deleted the original. Or maybe he just never thought he'd need his originals. Silly Dad.

Thursday.  Slept okish until about 5:00. Mostly decom work at work. Bar 59 for drinks which was quite pleasant, although a lot more expensive than work drinks! Made pizzas then DS9 3.1.

Friday.  Anzac Day.  Lest we forget.  Awake from 1:45 for hours sigh.

House stuff mostly in the morning. Happy that Stumpy is basking more and is more enthusiastic about food.  Did some camera testing in the afternoon. Only to realise later I had it on the wrong mode. Sigh.

I need to find a spot to plant out these chrysanthemums.  I accidentally uprooted one of the ones out the front the other month and chucked it in a pot out the back.  They're now happily flowering while the ones out the front are barely hanging on to life.  These things like a lot of sun but our garden is completely hopeless so not sure where I can put them.  

Kievs for dinner.  With half a cauliflower and most of a capsicum.

DS9 3.2. Then watched Blackberry which made us both a little nostalgic. Also, it's Anzac Day but I've only worn a jumper like twice all year. Usually by now there would have been days where we'd be wanting to put the heater on in advance of the Anzac Day allowed starting date. Instead I had a window open in my room to cool it down so I could sleep.  hrmmm.

Saturday.  Slept mostly okish.

Cooked cheese kranskis and miso scrambled eggs for breakfast.  Although Stu just had eggs because he needed to only eat soft food to not break his temporary tooth crown again.

Started a jigsaw. Went for a several hour drive with the sweetie, checking out previous houses, family houses, the church we got married in etc. Was a lovely way to spend a few hours with the sweetie (and we drove like 70km!). 

Made a small share platter for lunch (although I did get hungry later)

Finished the jigsaw. Got Chong Co delivered for dinner (after the MenuLog driver finally turned up) and watched DS9 3.3, then The Princess Bride :)

Sunday.  Awake from ~3:30 and never got back to sleep. Sigh.  They promised many millimetres of rain.  We got about three drops.

Went and saw Constellations at the NFSA with Tony which was a bit of fun. House stuff mostly for the rest of the day, and some food shopping.

When you realise you have 15 different cheeses in the fridge.. whoops...

Filled with rage in the afternoon at Optus who FORCE you to use international roaming because there's no way to disable it. Their only workaround is leave the phone on flight mode and use wifi. WTF??? I think I did read somewhere that if you have a second sim you can disable the Optus one. Which would work unless I needed to receive an SMS for two factor for anything. But there's a heap of horror stories out there from people getting charged the $5/day even when the sim wasn't even in the phone!!!

Hi.

Sunday.  16th.  After blogging we had leftover lamb I dug out of the freezer and cabbage.  DS9 1.16 then finished Stranger Things season 1.  

Extra Hard Rated!

Monday.  Slept mostly ok. 

Had to stake the capsicum plant because it was falling over underneath its own weight

NEIL at work.  Spent some time deleting old spam addresses that Neil put in, but aren't in use anymore.  DS9 1.17 - Lwaxana Troi! heh.  Then watched Labyrinth - 35 years to the day that I first watched it.  Oh, and was going through Adelaide photos and found the ones of the odometer on the car - we did 106km on it.. and put a whole $6 worth of petrol in it.  !!

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep - was actually cold!  NEIL again at work.  They're talking about doing some fundamental changes to the way we do things with mail.  May or may not be a bad thing.  Finished off the last of the pulled pork from the freezer with some cabbage.  DS9 1.14.  Had to do some stuff for oncall.  Tried to find where I took a photo in like 2010.  The mother called for an hour.  Then it was bed time.  Annoyingly I've been feeling a day out all week - like Tuesday felt like Wednesday.

Wednesday.  Took a little while to get to sleep.  NEIL again.  But also so fricken busy with All The People wanting All The Things.  Also found out I'd split my jeans right across my butt.  Hurray.  Wonder if anyone noticed.  Stu had had a day, so we had KFC for dinner.  hmmm.  The mother messaged.  She'd had a fall (probably fainted from her heart condition) and broken her collar bone.  !!

Thursday.  Had just gone to bed when got an alert.  So had to get back up again to check it out.  Everything seemed fine and even Jim didn't know what it alerted.  But it was like midnight before I got to sleep.  NEIL again, and another busy day of All The Things.  Deleted lots of spam list entries.  After drinks was trivia night.  Except it was ANOTHER one of THOSE trivia nights.  Where there were so many words on the slides that they went so low as to not be readable.  Where they read through the questions so damned fast I literally couldn't keep up with writing answers.  Where they asked questions about work that even people that worked there wouldn't know, let alone friends and family.  Where questions had an answer, with bonus points for fleshing out the answer, never mind that they didn't consider all possibilities so their answers were actually wrong.  Where answers were in fact wrong (we Googled afterwards).  Where they didn't mark things centrally, but got us to mark each others, which meant all the nonsense with the multipart and incorrect answers made it impossible to score properly.  I delegated marking because it would have made me too angry otherwise.  So, me being me, I started complaining loudly.  I could hear myself doing it and knew I should stop, but I just couldn't.  DC threatened to leave at one point.  Hell *I* almost left at one point.  Things did pick up a bit after the first couple of rounds and it did get more fun.  We were even winning at one point.  Ended up coming equal third, two points behind the winner.

Friday.  Awake for several hours in the middle of the night.  Partly stressing about the fact I'm such a Karen.  Sigh.  I should probably not go to trivia nights anymore - they bring out the worst in me.  NEIL again, but hardly anyone bothered me most of the day, so had quite a peaceful day Getting Things Done.  Got a dump of all the domains we'd had email from in the past six months, and used that to cross reference addresses in our spam lists.  Anything not used in the past six months could be deleted.  Also wrote up a change to do more mail policy rearranging next week.  Sorry Neil! ;)  Pizzas for dinner since we didn't get them last night.  Tried to watch DS9 but it was like double zoomed in - worse than even pan and scan that we had to watch Mash in.  It was literally unwatchable.  So watched Death in Paradise 14.3.

Saturday.  Early night and slept well hurray! 

House stuff mostly, and some tagging of travel photos in Picasa.  Quicker to find photos of Mum that way - software does all the hard work.  Cooked an epic feast for dinner - creamy lemon pepper dill chicken, cauliflower blue cheese bake, brussels sprouts with bacon and hazelnuts, capsicum and garlic.

Stu had a fiddle with Amazon Prime on the Chromecast, but it was still doubly zoomed in and he couldn't figure out how to change it.  After Googling he found it's just a "thing" that Amazon Prime does.  So we watched DS9 1.20 on Netflix.  Screw you Jeff.  Then watched Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, so slightly late night.

Sunday.  Awake from before 2 til after 4.  Sigh.  Not too zombie though.  Mostly photo tagging/picking.  While David was here last week we discussed our backup strategies for our phones.  Lately I've only been backing up MOV files using iMazing.  It will download the HDR versions from the phone.  Since I first started using iMazing they've (dunno who) made it so the HDR videos will play *ok* on Windows, not completely washed out like they used to.  But they're still a bit over exposed.  So tonight I decided to try and grab them again in Windows.  Some time in the last year or so Apple has stopped messing with the timestamps on the files that it presents to windows, so all the timestamps are correct which is nice.  I guess enough people complained about it.  So grabbing everything I've still got on this phone.

But I am still PISSED that Windoze resets the sort order and view settings on my folders EVERY DAMEND TIME IT REBOOTS.  #hate #grunt

Was reading a r/pettyrevenge story about someone that changed the Solitaire icon to their work app, and was reminded of the time my brother and I changed the default beep on the family's windoze computer to Yosemite Sam screaming Noo that's not it! Try it again!.  My brother and I got years of laughs out of that!

Back in 2020 I used Picasa to do a face slideshow for Ryan's 21st.  

Afterwards I put that install aside and used it on my old computer to tag work people.  This worked really well and I tagged the faces in thousands of photos.

But I never got around to migrating the install to my new computer.  I still had the database directories backed up, just had never used them.

The problem with Picasa is that it's only setup to run one database per user.  But I don't want the several hundred people in my work database mixed up with people in my friends and family directories.

So recently I fired up Picasa on my new computer.  Because I hadn't run it before (as a bonus you don't need to "install" it, you can just run it) it started a fresh database.  I pointed it at my family and friends folder and let it do its thing for a while.  Then I shut it down and moved aside the two Picasa folders in my user directory.  I copied across the work database folders and fired up Picasa again.  This worked beautifully and loaded straight into my work database.

So switching between Picasa databases is as simple is swapping out the two folders - 

C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Google\Picasa2
C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Google\Picasa2Albums

Apparently there's utilities out there that will swap them around for you.

And this dude even figured out you can just run Picasa as a different user, so the <user> directory will be different, but there's no fussing around moving directories around.

This is what I've currently got setup.  I've created a folder for each database I want to use, and move the Picasa2 and Picasa2Albums in and out.  You could keep these anywhere, but I keep them in the same place for convenience.  

If I could be bothered I could write a script to move them around automatically, but this will do for now.

It's such a shame Google is utter trash at maintaining support for their products.  Some of them were awesome (Google Reader, Chromecast come to mind).  They might fix Chromecast. 

To find Picasa nowadays you have to find it on old repositories.  I'd lay a flower on its grave if that page was still being maintained...

Edit 16.3.25.  I wrote a script. 
It's pretty trash, I'm very much a novice coder.  Sue me.  ;)
Also sorry about the lack of indents, the copy paste didn't work so well.

# A script to swap out Picasa3 database folders
# Kazza the Blank One, March 2025

#### Section 1 - Getting Started ####

# Set the Google Picasa local directory
$GoogleDir = "$env:USERPROFILE\AppData\Local\Google"

# Define folder options
$PicasaFolderList = @{
"1" = "Work"
"2" = "Friends and Family"
"3" = "Church"
"4" = "Europe 2016"
}

# Check if Picasa is running first - we don't want to be moving folders around while it's running!
if (Get-Process Picasa3) {
write-host "Error: Picasa3 is running, exiting"
sleep 5 # So you can see the error message before it closes the window
exit
}
else {
write-host "Picasa3 is not running - this is a good thing! Don't worry about that scary error above!"
}

#### Section 2 - Select which folder you want to use ####

# This bit from https://www.reddit.com/r/PowerShell/comments/1cu8e62/multiple_choice_for_readhost_input/

# Display the list of folders to choose from
Write-Host "Enter the number for the folder you wish to select:"
foreach ($folder in ($PicasaFolderList.GetEnumerator() | Sort-Object Name)) {
Write-Host "[$($folder.Name)] $($folder.Value)"
}

# Prompt the user to enter the number of the folder
$folderNumber = Read-Host "Enter the number of the folder you wish to select"

# Get the selected folder based on the number entered by the user
$folderPath = $PicasaFolderList[$folderNumber]

# Check if the path was found
if (-not $folderPath) {
Write-Host "Path not found. Please enter a valid number. Exiting."
sleep 5 # So you can see the error message before it closes the window
exit
}

# Display the selected folder path
Write-Host "You selected $folderPath"

#### Section 3 - Check for preexisting runs ####

# Check to see if you've left folders lying around from a previous run of Picasa
# Assume that if any of the database folder directories are empty, then put the database folders back in them
# If none of those folders are empty, exit (haven't done code for that heh)

# Check for the existence of Picasa2 or Picasa2Albums folders
if ((Test-Path "$GoogleDir\Picasa2") -or (Test-Path "$GoogleDir\Picasa2Albums")) {
write-host "Picasa database directories exist, checking for an empty folder to move them to"

# Check the list of folders provided for an empty one. It'll stop after the first one and move the folders there.
foreach ($folder in ($PicasaFolderList.GetEnumerator() | Sort-Object Name)) {
$databasedir = "$GoogleDir\Picasa - $($folder.Value)"

# If a directory is empty we'll use that
if (-Not (Test-Path "$databasedir\*")) {
$emptydir = $databasedir
write-host "Found empty directory - $emptydir"
# Move the database folders to the empty directory
Move-Item -Path "$GoogleDir\Picasa2" -Destination $emptydir
Move-Item -Path "$GoogleDir\Picasa2Albums" -Destination $emptydir
# Wait five seconds to make sure the folders have moved
write-host "Waiting 5 seconds to make sure folders have moved"
sleep 5
# Stop after the first empty directory
continue
}
# You really should have some code here to exit out if none of the folders are empty.
# Although it doesn't matter too much, as the next check will fail out if the directories exist in the root
}
}

#### Section 4 - Move folders around ####

# Check again to make sure the folders are gone before moving things around
if ((Test-Path "$GoogleDir\Picasa2") -or (Test-Path "$GoogleDir\Picasa2Albums")) {
write-host "Error: Picasa database directories still exist, something has gone wrong, exiting"
sleep 5 # So you can see the error message before it closes the window
exit
}

# Set the full working directory path based on the user selected folder
# Note the "Picasa - " prefix on the directory names. The $folderPath should match your actual folder paths.
$databasedir = "$GoogleDir\Picasa - $folderPath"

# Check the database directories exist within the working directory, then move them
# yeah yeah you could probably do this with a try/catch, I never said my code was any good
if (Test-Path "$databasedir\Picasa2") {
Move-Item -Path "$databasedir\Picasa2" -Destination $GoogleDir
}
else { write-host "$databasedir\Picasa2 didn't exist, exit"; exit}

if (Test-Path "$databasedir\Picasa2Albums") {
Move-Item -Path "$databasedir\Picasa2Albums" -Destination $GoogleDir
}
else { write-host "$databasedir\Picasa2Albums didn't exist, exit"; exit}

#### Section 5 - Start Picasa ####

# Launch Picasa
Start-Process "C:\PROGRAMMES\Graphics\Picasa3\Picasa3.exe"

Monday.  17th.  Slept mostly ok - although took me a while to get to sleep - it's been *cold* the last two nights - like 3 or 4 C overnight.  House work before work.  Work work at work.  It was so cold in the house I had to put my jeans on!  Salad for lunch.  Salad takes a long time to prepare and eat, did you know?  Had a 45 minute lunch break, and most of that was taken up with prepping and eating.  And I still ended up hungry by like 16:30.  Booked a hotel in Adelaide.  Realised the angel tank was leaking *again*.  Even with a stone weighing it down, the filter had drifted over into the edge of its compartment into the outflow compartment, backing everything up.  Not so serious this time but sheesh.  Need a heavier stone.  Stumpy has decided he's not very hungry anymore this summer.  Salmon and salad for dinner.  More time taking prepping food and eating food.  At least the salad can be done while the meat is cooking, and the eating can be done while watching TV.  Watched Return to Paradise 1.3.  Another preposterous setup for a murder.  Reminded me a bit of Death of a Detective from season 3 of Death in Paradise.  Then a few minutes of hobbies and suddenly it's bed time.  hrmm.  Also, turns out maltitol is really bad for the sweetie's bowels.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Spent the morning going through a log of stuff other teams have deleted, so can list all the things we need to do to clean up after them.  Did some scripting in the afternoon.  Fixed my foreach statement with a where-object, because sometimes arrays are not really arrays, but you apply a where-object to them and then you can work with them.  Sheesh powershell is dumb sometimes.  Wondered if I could compile all Mum's family photos in two weeks.  So put in a start on it.  Leftovers for dinner.  Return to Paradise 1.4.  Finished a Nanoblocks set I got at Green Shed sorry Vinnies sorry Goodies Junction.  

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.

Potato fruit!

Bit of decom thinking, but too many meetings to get much done.  Bit of scripting in the afternoon.  Thought it was green bin week.  The green bin is full.  But no, it's recycling week.  The recycling bin is only 1/3 full.  Sigh.  Leftovers for dinner.  Return to Paradise 1.5.  Continued frustration with Windoze which constantly opens text files ON THE OTHER DESKTOP!!  Like, I have Notepad open in my current desktop.  I open a text file and it opens in the current desktop.  But a minute later I open another text file and it opens ON THE OTHER DESKTOP.  I HAVEN'T EVEN BEEN TO THE OTHER DESKTOP!!  Sigh.  Backed up computer, washed hair, bed.

Thursday.  Slept mostly ok.  Found the lovely pleco in the downstairs two foot tank had died overnight.  I don't get it.  It seemed happy enough yesterday.  Today, dead.  Sigh.  Also a bunch of guppies in the two foot are looking sick with red gills.  I don't get that either - that's the healthiest tank we have and I even did a water change last weekend.  Lots of crap at work, feeling like not getting anything useful done. 

Jim and Ray did a pizza feast to commemorate all the shut down and decom work we've been doing (remember all those migrations I did last year?  we decommed the hardware just recently).

Then drinks and more pizzas.  Finale of Return to Paradise season 1.  Much like the other series, the setups for the murders are completely ridiculous.  

Friday.  Awake from like 3:30 or 4 or so.  Sigh.  Another day of a lot of crap and distractions and feeling like not achieving much.  Stu cooked miso mushrooms and cauliflower rice for dinner which was very nice.  

Then we started into Deep Space Nine.  Stu watched this himself years ago but I didn't watch it with him at the time.  He wanted to watch it again so we're watching it now.  Early night on account of early morning.

Saturday.  So I went to bed relatively early, but not early enough, so it took til nearly midnight for me to get to sleep.  Sigh.  Stoopid being too tired to go to sleep.  Just tired and restless. 

Mostly house stuff in the morning.  Was freaking out about my todo list.  Then spent the ENTIRE afternoon tagging people in Picasa.  Sigh.  But I did find out you can simply move out the two database directories in and out and so therefore have different databases for different folders of files.  Handy if you want to keep the tagged people in different groups.  Like I want to keep work peeps separate to friends and family.  Leftovers for dinner then Stranger Things 1.4.  Early night.

Sunday.  Early night again and then slept mostly ok which was nice.  Spent all morning on photo filing and tagging.  When I probably should have been doing crap I won't be able to do the next couple of weekends.  Bit more "productive" in the afternoon, including cooking all the food.  

This was a Christmas present from Kellie and the family.

Unboxed.  This set has a lovely little dome to stop the set getting dusty.

All the pieces laid out by shape.

At one point in the instructions it wanted pink pieces, and I'm like, there's no pink pieces.  Turns out there are - but they're stoopidly light and very difficult to tell from the white.

Same here.  Luckily I'd kept them separated when I was unbagging everything.

Another place you could get tripped up - some of these pieces had holes, but others didn't.

At the end there were a *lot* of leftover pieces.  One or more of most of the pieces.  Although there were extras of some of the bigger bricks too which made me wonder if I'd missed a step or two here and there, and even went back to check through the instructions.  Found one place where I'd made a mistake because they flipped the whole thing round 180 degrees without telling you.  But I don't think I actually missed anything.

Finished!!

It's flimsy AF but cute as hell!!

You can't really pull this apart when you're done - it has stickers that span multiple pieces :(

Overall, very cool, and it'll go nicely with the Nanoblocks sets Annie has given me over the years.

Sunday.  19th.  

Leftover lamb and veggies for dinner.  Death in Paradise 12.7.

Monday.  Took a little while to get to sleep then awake ~5:30.  The Access Canberra ticket I opened on 5 January is still "unassigned".  Fricken hopeless.  My trip from 16/1 is there in the history now though, but not the first two trips on the new system.  

Tuesday. 

Did up a script to look for orphaned groups/objects.  Cooked up a tonne of veggies including some stuffed capsicums with some leftover cheesy mince.  Watched the Death in Paradise 2023 Christmas special.  

Wednesday.  Took forever to get to sleep - restless - but then mostly slept ok.  Bits and pieces at work, mostly going through the output of the orphaned objects script for stuff to clean up.  Leftovers for dinner.  Death in Paradise 13.1.  Then went out to see if I could see the comet.  Rob and Lynne saw me from waayyyyyyy across the field and called to me, so we hung out for like half an hour waiting for it to get dark.

I'll chuck some comet photos in another post.

But here's one of a satellite.  Starlink cluttering up the sky?

Thursday.  Took a while to get to sleep.  Mostly decom prepping at work.  Drinks at Bar 59 again.  Pizzas again.  Death in Paradise 13.2.

Friday.  Decommission Day!  Deleting All The Things.  I love how much time my deleting scripts save me, not to mention saving me from RSI!!  Kievs for dinner.

Death in Paradise 13.3.  Started watching the Netflix series Wednesday which we both really enjoyed.  Addams Family meets Hogwarts.  And *of course* it's Tim Burton and Danny Elfman.  Then went and had another look at the comet.  

Venus and the Mt Rogers trig station

Jupiter is the bright one on the middle left, Orion in the middle at the top, and Mars just below the head of the trig station

Belconnen from Mt Rogers

Saturday.  Took a while to get to sleep but slept in til 6:33.  Pretty quiet day.  Didn't achieve too much.  Bought a new camera.  Had some of my 50th birthday bubbles.  Dumpling Inn delivery for dinner.  Death in Paradise 13.4. Wednesday 1.2.

Sunday.  26th.  237 years since my great great great great great great grandparents arrived here.  Slept mostly ok.  Felt like I didn't achieve much, but I did get some stuff done.

No roast tonight, just finishing up some leftovers.

2024. Pretty standard year really. Busy busy busy!

Our big trip this year was to Tasmania. So no overseas travel, but does overstrait count? We spent a month there and had a great time. We could easily do the same route around the island and see all different things if were to go again, there's that much to see. I took five days off in January so I could get a nine day break, to make up for the shortened break at Christmas (which essentially only felt like a long weekend after the whole leadup/Christmas/post Christmas family stuff). In early February we went to Tumut with Tony/Frank/Karen for the TRBC Tumut River Tap Days. The day itself was hot but it was a lovely afternoon with beer and friends. I went down to Junee/Wagga for the Lego show in Wagga Wagga which was great and uncrowded, then stayed with David the night and caught up with Kellie's family. Sydney in May for a tour of WestConnex, the Ramses Gold of the Pharaohs exhibition, and Rachel and Hayden's wedding, with a couple of days playing tourist with Mum in the middle. In September we went up to Port Macquarie for Jeff's 80th birthday party. It was a lot of driving for just a day there, but Jeff had a wonderful time with most of his family there. Stu went up again in December for Potty's 50th. In October we flew up to Queensland for Ben and Sarah's wedding. It would have been nice to stay longer and have a proper catchup with Chay and also David, but Stu was too stressed with work to think about it.

My job continues to generally be "Sadie" - lots of decom work. A couple of bouts of being the Naughty Email Intervention Layer when Neil was on leave. On one of those I did a bunch of work in the test environment to make it match prod. We setup a new notifications db and decommissioned like half a dozen others. Looked at a proxy as a POC sorry POV. Not overly impressed. Cloud stuff just really is too.. nebulous.. troubleshooting and logging is invariably crap. The biggest project of the year was migrating a couple of thousand VMs to a new environment with a new version of the firewalling software. In advance of the move I spent two days deleting 10% of the rulebase so there'd be less rules to migrate. Then we had to maintain two environments while we spent a month migrating everything. But it generally went quite well, and we did the majority of it during business hours with no outages. Of course none of Daniel's scripts work in the new environment, so with a jump start from someone in security, and a lot of help from Nick, we managed to get a bunch of them working with some new powershell modules. I've learnt a lot about powershell, but I'm still really dumb so it's a struggle. Socially, there was a gin night while I was in Tassie, but was able to have leftovers when I got back. We won a trivia night in July, but luckily someone else volunteered to run the next one, which we were in no danger of winning in October. The social club had a 70th birthday "cocktail" night although it was primarily beer, wine and bubbles. A great night anyway. A couple of work Christmas parties, then my Christmas bbq at the lake in December for 58 people. About the 11th year in a row I've run it. Good times.

I've generally been pretty healthy this year. Other than being fat. Hit the fattest I've ever been in January, so went low carb and did lots of walking up Mt Rogers and managed to lose a few kilos quickly so I didn't have to lug them up mountains in Tasmania. Had the usual bouts of insomnia here and there. Did a sleep study in September. I have a bit of sleep apnea when I sleep on my back. No surprises there, I avoid sleeping on my back, except when I'm asleep and don't notice. Had a couple of sore throats in October, but if they were colds they only lasted a day or two. Got new glasses in November. Should NOT have gone to Specsavers. This time the optometrist was like "eh close enough" with the vision check so I never got that whole "oh wow I can see moment" when I first tried on the new glasses. Also one of the pairs I got was far too small and I can't get them to fit right, so wearing the "spare" glasses that don't have the anti-reflective coating on them.

We've had a relatively quiet year with friends. Stu has simply been so stressed out by work that doing any sort of socialising is too much for him to bear a lot of the time. David came up in January to look at the oven. Met up with him and Shane and Jess for dinner in October, and he came for dinner later in October. Stayed with Mum a couple of days in May and we played tourist which was kinda cool. Kit came to visit with Oreo in February and May, and by herself in June. Had multiple visits to Herbert's with Tony/Frank/Karen as well as with the Chrises and Neil. Had Tony and Jo over for dinner in April. Had cocktails at Molly/Hippo and dinner at Molly/Bar Rochford/Akiba with Luc in April, August and October (busy year for him in Canberra! Here three times!). Picked up the sweetie a few times after drinks with Dennis. Had drinks/dinner with Ding at the Lighty in April. Went over to Nick and Tab's for dinner in May. Met up with Luc and Cynthia in Sydney for dinner in May. Had Fred's 50th at Herbert's in June. Went over to Chris and Geoff's for raclette in September. Had a Rocky Horror night at Rob and Fiona's which was a lot of fun. We caught up with Chay, Daemon and Augie in October, the first time we'd seen them since 2016! James/George/Josh/Rachel took me to afternoon tea in December on their way to Melbourne.

We went out to the club five times all up. See aforementioned notes above about Stu being stressed by work. We went out for a Remembrance dinner near Anzac Day in April. Ian and Chris's anniversary formal night in June. There was a working been in July. I did Christmas in July for like the tenth year in a row (except for 2020, stoopid covid). And Rob and Fiona's Christmas party in November.

Had another busy year of photo processing. I got my Turkey 2014 trip photos culled, labelled and blogged in time for the ten year anniversary of our departure in May. I started processing David's America 2023 photos, but didn't get very far through it because I had too many other projects I was working on. Got Tasmania photos online in time for the six month anniversary of that trip. I got our Queensland 2014 trip photos culled and labelled, but couldn't get them online on the tenth anniversary because Vodien broke my database. So they were a month late. I've also been doing a lot of filing/organising of general Canberra photos, Stu's family photos (pulled out 600 photos of Immy cause she hardly has any of her as a little kid), and pulling photos in case of having to need them for Mum's funeral one day (easier to get that done now rather than being in a hurry if things happened suddenly).

No big changes with the fish. The upstairs two foot has countless guppies, and I'm having to weed all the java fern out of it regularly. The four foot has a loach, three male guppies and two female guppies, and 11 congo tetras (I think). I still have Chrissie's two clown loaches - I've had them for nearly seven years now. The "angel" tank has maybe ten or so guppies in it. The downstairs two foot has a big sucking catfish and two female guppies. I've been meaning to give them a boyfriend for a while now... In January the filter clogged up the outlet on the "angel" tank and water backed up and leaked over the back, which was super annoying and made a big mess. In October the stone I had weighing down the filter wool to stop a repeat of January drifted over the well with the wool and got stuck in the outlet. Water backed up and leaked over the back, which was super annoying and made a big mess. Stumpy's UVB light died in December, but two pet stores and the reptile store at Gold Creek don't have them. Waiting for Gold Creek to get more stock.

I had a big Lego year this year. I've spent ages on Vic's Lego all year. I finished inventorying loose pieces so I knew what was left, then used that to pick parts for some more sets that looked somewhat completable. I then wishlisted all the missing pieces (a couple of thousand of them! eep!) and noted the average price for them (to compare seller prices). I bought a big batch off a dude in South Australia and it's taken weeks to mark everything off and file them into sets. I did build a few of the smaller sets that are complete, but was hoping to do a lot more over the break that I just didn't get the time for. I made a 31x31 mosaic of a QR code that will take you to my blog. I borrowed Jo's (originally Riley's) Winter Holiday Train (10254) and bought some missing pieces to complete it. Of my own I did Scaled-Up Lego Minifigure (40649), Minifigure (3723), Moving Truck (40586) and Notre-Dame de Paris (21061). All a lot of fun.

Jigsaws continue whenever I have time. Which is not often at home. I still haven't assembled the Disney jigsaw as I don't have anywhere I can do it.

I pulled out my Spirograph in January and had a bit of fun with it. Also had a play with my Rubik's Rings puzzles (never could solve those things). I'm still playing the clarinet. I'm still not very good at it. Spent the year working through a Crystal Creations koala. While it was all actually pretty good quality, the colours they provided were all off, so it looks dumb. I got some Diamond Dotz ones for Christmas and have done one and started on a bigger one.

It's been a warm year. Had our usual share of storms, rainbows and even some hail. It snowed out at the club in July which was pretty awesome. The humidity in January and December wasn't fun.

Windows 11 continues to piss me off with its trash - like files opening on a completely different desktop to the one you're on, even if the app is open on your current desktop; notepad search sucking donkey balls and just dumping you at random places in the file when you close the search box (but keeping unsaved files open over reboots is nice, although only at home, not at work); refusing to shut down when I tell it to; refusing to eject hard drives some times. But at the beginning of the year we found it will FINALLY let you ungroup taskbar items. Google may be improving the security of the internet by FORCING https, even without consent, but it did break my blog because Chrome refused to load the http css/js content on a https page. Vodien broke my blog/database in June - from broken CageFS file system errors and script errors, to broken cpanel passwords, to a mysql database reverted to October last year, to a completely broken website. Took weeks of yelling for them to fix it. Then in August they broke my database AGAIN, by reverting the database to the same point in October last year. Took weeks of yelling and pleading to finally get a complete export of my database taken after my last blog entry but before they broke it. I took that database and moved to CloudLoop, who have been amazing. I used the opportunity to do a massive cleanup of all my blogs. I fixed up all the things I'd been meaning to fix up for years, got my holiday blogs to a consistent design, got everything working in https, and cleared 14000 image assets so my blog entries publish in seconds instead of minutes. We bought a new printer in October (an Oki) because the old Brother one had a fault with the fuser and was smudging all the prints. Such a waste. Why is everything so crap these days? We bought a new lawn mower in November because the starter rip cord ripped right off on the old one. Stu has used it once. I've used it three times. In December I coded up some Perl to pull weather data from BOM's API and put a little widget on my blog to show the current weather. I dispute their "feels like" temperatures though!

Around the house. A second element died in our POS DeLonghi oven on New Years Day. After not being able to get a replacement for the previous dead element, we decided to piss it off and get a new oven. The old one was only four years old. Such a waste. Why is everything so crap these days? David came up in January to do the diagnosis on the old one, and did the installation on the new one. So nice to have a qualified electrician in the family! Although funnily enough the new one has a standard plug and doesn't need to be wired directly in, but it did need a new power point. I grew two mini capsicum plants out the front (the ones out the back got eaten by snails in like one night). They're stoopidly slow growing (not helped by completely infertile soil out the front and very little water) so only a few ripened by June before the frost finally got to them. The fridge made a loud clunk in April when it was turning off which sounded ominous. Sure enough the next time it ran it was a lot noisier. But it's still running, loudly, so there's that I guess. I dread having to buy a new one. This one is at least twenty years old. Anything new won't last anywhere near that long. Our Solar Edge solar system for reasons unknown didn't charge the battery at all for three days in April (it was sunny!). Our lemon tree totally went off this year. By June it was completely laden. In August I started juicing lemons that had fallen off. In November a branch with 112 lemons on it broke off. I've given away dozens of lemons and litres of juice, and made multiple lemon cheesecakes and lemon pepper chicken, and there's litres of juice in the freezer. I drink about an ice cube a day. But more lemons keep falling. All. The. Lemons. We had various problems with ancient electronic timers. Either turning on and just not turning off, or losing time. About three have had issues this year. The turdburger crimson rosellas came back again this year to eat the house. The gas heater died in August - nothing on the control panel. Fortunately a complete reboot of the whole heater at the power point fixed it. First poppy of the season flowered on 1 September. There's still one or two left. We had more purple poppies and epic dandelions. In September I planted out a stick of geranium that had been lying on the ground since January!! How is that even possible that it's still alive?? We had a scheduled power outage in October. The Solar Edge solar system dutifully kicked in and kept all the fish tanks running all day, but it didn't charge the battery. That's not what we were sold on. Annoyed. Got lots of strawberries in November/December. Although I didn't get to eat half of them - the currawongs kept stealing them. They didn't find the ones in the pool though, and neither did the snails so that was a win. In December I heard dripping in the washing machine after it was finished/emptied. Seems the thing is leaking. The first time I let it go and it leaked a *lot* into the drum over a few days. And then one day I found water all over the laundry floor. So it's leaking in two places. So now we turn the water off when we've finished washing. I dread having to buy a new one. This one is at least twenty years old. Anything new won't last anywhere near that long. Redid the silicone sealant on the shower in December - further up the wall this time. Our ExtendaLine that David installed in 2020 had another line break in December. Now I can't fully extend the thing which is super annoying.

Did a reasonable amount of eating out this year. Kinn Thai in Civic is a favourite, we went there in February, April and December. Chong Co is another favourite, with delivery in April, August, October. Same with Dumpling Inn in February, July, September and November (twice). Many visits to Herbert's with Tony/Jo/Frank/Karen/Chrises/Neil etc, including tap takeovers by TRBC (farewell tour) and Hopsters Cooperative Brewery. But they gave me grief over ordering from the kids menu the last time, so I lost it, and very likely will never go back. Dumb business decision will (and in fact already has) cost them. Dinners before/after ANU events with Tony at Badger&Co, 10 Yards, Terra. Some new lunch places with Neil at BZ Burgers, Uyghur Cuisine and No. 10, a few team lunches at Ikko (twice), Ramen-O and Vanilla Pod. Molly, Bar Rochford and Akiba with Luc the three times he was in town. Went to the Burns Club in Holt with the Chrises in January, and at Kambah with David and Kellie and some of David's friends during the Airport Open Day. Kimchi in Dickson with David/Shane/Jess and a colleague of David's in October. Cypher for Wello's birthday in October. Raku with Annie and Stu in May. Had Grease Monkey from their food truck at the Belco markets in May. Pattysmiths in January and June. Pizza at TRBC in Kingston in July, which turned out to be the one and only time I'd ever get there. Pappa Rich before Twisters in August. Returned to the Aussie Crepe House (previously Crepe Cafe) in October for the first time in a few years to avoid the mall food court during school holidays. Beess & Co in September and Gang Gang in November. Four Winds with Tony in November, repeat of the previous year. Yat Bun Tong and Kinh Do delivery/takeaways in May/July.

As usual I somehow ended up doing a whole lot of cooking this year. Staples included Sunday night roasts, Thursday night pizza (mostly made at home) and often Brown-Food-Fridays with chicken Kievs. Did slow cooker lamb in January which was amazing. Lemon dill chicken in January, then again in December with my own dill. Cheese mince and cheesy taco casserole in January (keto ftw!). Tried a carbonara from AntiChef in February but it didn't really work with alternative pasta. Might try it again some time though. Barramundi bake in March, although not as good as basa, and a few tuna bakes. Luv-a-duck cheats Peking duck a couple of times - pretty awesome each time. Did three Mexican things from Nagi Maehashi's Dinner book in May - slow cooker Mexican shredded beef, taco slaw, Mexican red rice which were all excellent, and beef ribs from her website in June, which would need a bit of tweaking to do again. Osso bucu on August. Lemon pepper chicken a couple of times in November. French onion soup in December. Also made Not Quite Nigella's peppermint slice a couple of times, and lemon cheesecake a few times.

Theatre/Shows/Exhibitions/Tours
* Canberra Airport Open Day in April. In the rain. But nice in the afternoon.
* Journey of Australian Science series at the Shine Dome
* Lego show in Wagga Wagga in April
* Ramses and the Gold of the Pharaohs in Sydney in May. Too many people and not enough room and no flow made it super stressful for me
* Ralph Heimans exhibition at the portrait gallery in May
* Questacon to see the Ryan "Brickman" McNaught Lego exhibition. During school holidays. Not recommended.
* Beethoven's 9th in August
* Questacon again on my birthday in August. Much quieter and more civilised.
* Dark Matter in the Pub in August
* Mint in September (and back again a week later to swap out the earrings I bought)
* Scrivener Dam tour in October

Movies (at the movies)
* Twisters

Movies (TV)
There may have been more that I forgot to blog about or forgot to add to this list
* The Queen
* Mona Lisa Smile
* Mash
* The Sound of Music
* Fantasia 2000
* The Shape of Water
* The Good Son
* Parasite
* Barbie
* A Night To Remember
* Iron Man 1/2/3
* Miss Potter
* Twister
* 9 to 5
* The Door Into Summer
* Mean Girls
* TRON / Tron: Legacy
* Freaky Friday (2018)
* South Solitary
* Wonka (2023)
* Grave of the Fireflies
* Inside Out 2
* Golden Kamuy
* Salt
* My Old Ass
* John Wick
* Die Hard / Die Hard 2
* Love Actually
* The Santa Clause / The Santa Clause 2

TV
We were getting into a good routine of Death in Paradise on Thursdays, The Orville on Friday or Saturdays, The Crown on Sundays, as well as Mash, The Simpsons and Futurama over dinner. Then they all finished and we haven't been watching as much together. There's a few things I want to watch so hopefully will get into a routine again in the new year.
* Death in Paradise - from mid season 7 to mid season 11
* The Orville from mid season 2 til the end
* Mash from mid season 2 til the end. Fun seeing various people pop up that became famous later - like Mr Miyagi, Larry Wilcox, James Cromwell, GW Bailey, Patrick Swayze, David Graf, "Larry" Fishburne
* Sex Education from mid season 4 til the end
* The Crown from mid season 6 til the end. Although there's 20 years of the Queen's life left so they may make another series.
* Some Big Bang Theory on tv in Tassie
* Shogun all of season 1
* Laid Back Camp season 3
* Start of The Apothecary Diaries. It didn't really grab me (maybe it would have gotten better) so Stu watched it by himself.
* Lego Masters Australia vs The World
* First three seasons of the American Lego Masters, and a Christmas special
* Documentaries - Brats, Pretty Baby, The Movies that Made Us (on Friday the 13th), Feminists: What were they thinking?
* Start of Girl Band Cry. Another one that really didn't grab me.
* Amazing Race season 8 (another celebrity edition)
* Black Mirror - all of it
* The Simpsons - some of season 36
* Futurama - whatever this year's season is

Weddings
* Rachel and Hayden
* Ben and Sarah

Other stuff
* late night on NYE watching the fireworks
* went out to Cotter Dam on New Years Day because it was spilling. It was quite crowded out there. Walked all the way up to the viewing spot.
* took a *lot* of photos of flowers. And food.
* remembered the January 1994 bushfires thirty years ago
* went shopping for jeans in January. Failed. Did get a bra though.
* bought some jeans at Vinnies of all places in January
* also managed to get some "skinny" jeans in January at Kmart because that's all that was left in the store. Hate.
* impressed with a Seiko battery from 1998 that was still working, and has been powering a thermometer all year
* got my first Charlie coin in April
* got grunty at Access Canberra because MyWay cards can expire and they expect you to fork out $5 for a new one (no credit on new cards) so they can transfer the balance. Decided to ignore the problem until the new MyWay+ system came along in December, and Stu could transfer his balance.
* saw a kangaroo in our driveway in May (sounded like it smacked into the fence) but it disappeared before I got outside
* ABC Classic 100 "Feel Good" in June
* had my nails "professionally" done in June
* watched the Olympics opening ceremony but nothing else
* had a play with ChatGPT. It's trash. Asked it to write a trivia night round on current events. Most of the questions couldn't actually be answered because they were wrong.
* saddened to hear that TRBC was closing down in September
* found some five leaf clovers in September
* wandered round Yarralumla in September and saw the old brick works
* saw Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan-ATLAS) in October. Well, my phone did, I didn't
* found a two leaf clover in October
* visited the Lake Ginninderra spillway and wetlands in November
* encouraged the epic dandelions around the place
* watched lots of Jamie and Julia
* booked another holiday next year with the mother type person
* did the Plonk beer advent calendar
* got a random Blue Screen of Death in December
* got to level 15000 in Candy Crush just before the end of the year
* saw a rat among the daisies under the lemon tree

My biggest stress this year is simply a lack of TIME. I desperately want to retire so I can actually slow down and enjoy life and just do my hobbies and have a quiet life. Even over the Christmas break I spent too much time trying to get All The Things done, and not nearly enough time on my hobbies. Didn't really feel relaxing at all. I have heaps of photo projects I want to work on next year as well. And I'm desperate to get Vic's Lego out of the house, but so little of it is complete. Deep breaths. It'll all be ok in the end.

Happy New Year to everyone, I'll try and have one too!

Monday.  9th.  Nice and cool overnight.  You'd think I'd be able to sleep.  You'd be wrong.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Busy morning before work doing all the dusting/vacuuming/weeding/cleaning the kitchen, and then time to go to work.  Cert renewal crap and meetings all day.  Kievs for dinner (was too hot and humid over the weekend to think about turning the oven on).  Did some catchup blogging, then bed.

Also waved at the peeps up on the space station.

Tuesday.  Nice and cool overnight.  You'd think I'd be able to sleep.  You'd be wrong.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Busy morning before work doing all the dusting/vacuuming/weeding/cleaning the kitchen, and then time to go to work.

Yeah a rinse and repeat.

Planned out some more decom work for later in the week.  Started looking at Daniel's quality report script.  Brain might have exploded.  Final Journey of Australian Science at the Shine Dome, which was back to hard science again which was pretty cool.  This one was related to the work of Sir John Carew Eccles.  They even had some of his family members there.

They had Prof Stephen Redman and Professor Lucy Palmer talking about their work with neurons and electricity in the brain.

Dinner at Terra afterwards.  We split a 220g beef brisket smoked steak and had charred broccolini and brisket fat chips as sides.  

Beef brisket (smoker) 220g | salsa verde $39

Charred broccolini | burnt miso butter, chili oil, garlic chips $18

Brisket fat chips $12

I enjoyed the sides.  The brisket itself I found a little.. dry..   I'm used to slower cooker brisket which is basically confit brisket.  This was done in a smoker so wasn't quite the same.  It wasn't bad, just wasn't what I'm used to.  It really needed the sauces.

Nice view of the tower on the way back to the car.

Wednesday.  Um.  I think I slept better.

Thursday.  12/12/24 - cool date!  I think I slept ok. 

Oh, I planted some mini capsicums the other week.  Some have sprouted.  At least one has been eaten already.

Got to do some decom work in the afternoon.  Ok drinks, but ate wayyy too much in the way of chips and sausage.  Still made pizzas but Stu ate most of mine.  Watched some more Jamie and Julia.

Friday.  took ages to get to sleep, then woke up at like 4:30.  Sigh.  Party day!!!!  The sweetie very kindly gave me a lift to work (he was working from home).  Picked up All The Sausages ($300 worth!!) and then just getting everything ready.  Went shopping with XL and Jo.  Then partied all afternoon! 

It was super hot though.  A special thanks to Louise and Tony for cooking the chicken and veggie stuff cause noone else wanted to go out in the heat! 

Typical though.. you give the camera to someone else and they cut off the tshirts and get all sky.  Uncropped.

Ho Ho Hold my .. bird.. ?  It's tradition for me to catch birds at these things.  I was never expecting to catch a honeyeater though!!

Finished up maybe like 19:30.  Stu took two loads of crap home.  Bestest sweetie ever!!  Con and Ward kicked on somewhere.  Tony biked it home.  And we gave Doc a lift home.  By the time we'd unpacked enough and organised, it was after nine by the time I got to bed.  Doh.

Saturday.  Slept relatively well.  Spent most of the morning organising the leftovers and party crap.  

For lunch I thought I'd see if any of the leftovers would give me food poisoning...

Mostly Lego filing in the afternoon.  Late in the afternoon I wondered how hard it would be to get a weather pixie on my blog...

Sunday.  Took ages to get to sleep (like 23:00).  Then woke up at 4:30.  Sigh.  Scripting, house stuff (two loads of washing up even! and ran the dishwasher for the second time in two days), Lego filing.  Put on my cd jukebox and listened to random crap all day.  Billy Joel sang about The King and I, and a few songs later Shall We Dance came up..!!  Funny stuff.

Sunday.  3rd. 

We got another rump cap beef roast to cook.  I didn't realise how expensive it was - 1.8kg was like $50!!  eeep!!  This one wasn't as epic awesome as the last time we got one.  It was cooked nicely to medium rare but it was a lot tougher than last time. 

Watched The Entire History of You on Black Mirror. 

Speaking of Black Mirror.  The other night's episode Fifteen Million Merits had a scene in it where the dude literally couldn't even close his eyes to block out ads.  This is disturbingly close to being a thing in real life.  The only time I ever have to sit through ads on my phone is when I'm playing Candy Crush.  Yeah, still playing it.  But only when I have the spare 45-50 minutes to play an entire episode of 15 levels.  And I only do that so I can "win" the round against other people and get the 40 gold (it used to be 45).  Point is, when you don't finish in the requisite moves you can watch ads to get more moves and a bonus.  I don't watch the ads.  I literally just lay the phone down and count down the number of seconds until it's due to be finished.  Most of the time I have no idea what the ad is even for.  The point is, apparently Apple are thinking about monitoring eye contact during ads.  This could either be a good thing - they'll see that I'm not watching the ads and so not bother to give me such long ones, or they'll figure out a way to force you to watch them.  At that point I'll quit once and for all.

Monday.  Awake for an hour or two in the middle of the night.  Hurray.  Meh day.  Cooked lemon pepper chicken for dinner.  With maybe like 0.3% of the lemon juice I have in the house.  I think I'd keep the veggies separate next time.

Did some catchup blogging in the evening.  Watched Be Right Back on Black Mirror.  I reckon some of that sort of thing is really not that far off (apparently in the decade since the episode has aired there's been a few apps out there that have tried).

Tuesday.  Remember remember the 5th of November.  I always do cause it's the day I started at my current job.  17 years ago.  Eep!  Meanwhile, Neil has been there 49 years.   !!!!!!  Did some futzing around with powershell scripts.  Even managed to get something to work in our new environment which was pretty exciting.  Leftover beef with salad for dinner, photo picking and White Bear on Black Mirror.  

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Frustrating day with scripting at work - not nearly as successful as yesterday.  Late home, late dinner, then sorting files, backing up computer, washed hair, bed.

Twenty or so years ago when I was still living in Sydney there were the first mumblings of a plastic bag ban.  As such I started keeping all my plastic bags so that I would be able to have bin liners for years to come.  Then I moved to Canberra (brought all those bags with me!) and continued until we got supermarket green bags.  Even using those we still managed to accumulate plastic bags, except they were thicker (hurray!).  Except now our supply is dwindling.  We still only put out a bag or so of rubbish a week, but they're not being replenished.  I've got very few bags left now.  This was a bag from Sydney from 17-20 years ago.

The lake is very very low at the moment.

Thursday.  Oh the humidity!!  Juiced twenty lemons for Jim - like 1.8 litres worth!! 

Clouds were a little ominous.  Barely any rain though :(

Had some success with scripting which was cool.  Drinks, pizza, Death in Paradise 10.3.

Friday.  Slept mostly ok.  Went to the doctor late morning.  Had a list of 11 things to talk about (booked a long appointment).  Getting old sux donkey balls.  Just saying.  Decided to drop into Herbert's to have the very last of the TRBC beers (the blood orange sour).  Messaged Tony to see if he'd want to join me, so he did.  Even ran into Fred and family who'd come for lunch which was pretty funny.  Had some tenderloins with mustard sauce which were quite nice, but quite small for $21 and did end up hungry later.

Stu also bought a new toy...

Only cause our old one, which we've been using for like fifteen years since Grant sold it to us, died when the rip cord.. ripped off.. hmmmm.  Frustration with scripting at work.  Mostly cause I'm dumb.  But in the end cause the API I'm working with is crap and to do what I need to do I'd need to make like 3000 api calls.  Hurray.  Think I'll wait to see if powercli updates will be any good.  Kievs and veggies for dinner.  

Then watched Goodbye, Farewell and Amen on Mash.  The only thing I remembered from it was the chicken, so was watching the whole first half in light of that.  It was a pretty good ending to a tv series.  Apparently still the most watched episode of a TV series airing, like, ever.  Even after forty years.  I have all the DVDs from Dad, but I guess I'll probably never watch them now.

Saturday.  Slept mostly ok.  Got some stuff done, but not nearly enough.  

My first strawberry of the season.  Photo taken in the morning.  I was going to go back in the afternoon and pick it.  I forgot.  By the next day it was GONE.

Stu tried out our new toy.  It's a lot quieter than the petrol one!  And a lot easier to start.  I always hated mowing the lawn as a teenager.  Our yard was huge and we had a heavy clunky lawnmower that always managed to hit me in the face with twigs even with the catcher on.  So I probably haven't mowed any lawn in thirty five years.  I might take it up again though!!

Pretty flowers on the walk to Herbert's

In the evening was a tap takeover at Herbert's.  I was half not wanting to go (would probably end up drinking too much and spending too much).  But went along anyway with Tony, Frank and Karen (J was busy).  The takeover was from Hopsters Co-operative Brewery.  Shared some nachos with Tony to start with and had a couple of beers.

Mitch the "only paid employee" came and sat with us for a bit which was pretty cool, and he told us about the brewery.  It's actually a democratic co-operative and they choose the best beers from their user's home brewed productions and brew them up at scale.  Very cool.

The gang!

After that I went to get more food and that's where the wheels fell off.  I asked for the "kids gems" ($9).  And Dino was like.. oh, we try to save those for the kids.. So I looked around and I'm like, there's literally no kids here.. and he's like, oh it's cause people "take the piss" and order a kids meal between four people.. and so I'm like, well don't worry about it then (I was literally ready to just not order anything at all), but he said he'd give them to me "just this once" (never mind the time I had them at the TRBC night a few weeks back).  Anyway so I sat down again and pretty much just lost it.  Like, I could have ordered a bowl of chips for $5 or a bowl of gems for $9.  I love gems.  I'd much prefer to have gems than chips.  HOW IS THAT A PROBLEM????  I could barely finish the beer I had (and missed out on trying the last one).  I couldn't even face the gems.  Forced myself to eat a few of them.  Tony had the rest.  And then I went home.  Sigh.

Sunday.  Slept mostly okish, except for hurty for a while in the middle.  Still upset/depressed about last night.  The whole drama, combined with a massive increase in food costs (their pea and ham croquettes were $16 the last time they had them in 2022, now they're $20; and the tenderloins I had yesterday were incredibly expensive for their size (for $5 more I could have had a burger and chips and like four or five times the amount of food)) means I probably won't be going back to Herbert's any time soon.  So didn't achieve much all day.  Did some food shopping.  Did a nice roast pork for dinner.  Fat spatter all over the oven though.. eep!

I'm just so over it all at the moment.  I'm almost at the point of giving up on everything.  If I didn't feel the need to travel I could retire now and just stay at home and do my hobbies and never go out and just have a quiet life.