Sunday.  28th.  Reheated some mince that I cooked on Friday with some cream cheese and had that with salad for dinner. DS9 7.16. Early night.

Monday.  Slept mostly ok.

Prepped some complicated comms rules for another section. Went to put the lamb shoulder into the slow cooker at lunch but it didn't fit. Sigh. This is what happens when you let someone else do the shopping for you. So put it in the oven in a baking tray with some stock and covered it in foil and roasted at 110C all afternoon. I couldn't tell how much power we were using because SolarEdge is trash and lost contact with the battery before lunch (and still hadn't gotten it back by the evening). A bit after 5 took it out to look at it. The garlic wasn't cooked and the lamb wasn't falling apart, so put the temp up a bit and freed the garlic and cooked at a higher temperature for like twenty minutes, then put in some brussels sprouts. So turns out the lamb was super tender, really well cooked, although it was a battle to get at the meat past all the fat.

Put on DS9 7.17, but when I went to turn the lounge lights off it hadn't made contact yet and popped up the menu to do stuff, but I hit the wrong button - instead of cancel to try again, I hit dismiss group, and then it was GONE. It's not the first time I've done this, but last time I was able to recreate the group (somehow, NFI how). This time no such luck. The Mirabella Genio app is one of the WORST apps out there. I was trying everything to get the group back but the app is utter TRASH and I was getting more and more stressed and eventually somehow deleted the actual light devices and two of them started flashing. I literally ended up having a meltdown because life is too damned HARD at the moment. Couldn't finish the episode and our lights are still stuffed up.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep, then restless sleep thereafter. Hurray.

Busy day. Took the sweetie off to get an MRI on his back.

KFC on the way home. Oops. Neighbours have a visitor from Victoria who's parked partly in our driveway even with the extra space. #grunt. Finished DS9 7.17. Still haven't fixed the lights (actually managed to get one of them to pair last night, but not the other).

Wednesday.  Galations 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance (patience!), kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. I was going to print these out in emoji and stick them to my monitor to remind myself, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Con asked me to work on the new proxy policy. But first I had to get my persistent machine setup so I could actually *work* on it (rather than trying to switch between the two). So that took most of the morning. Then documenting and asking questions about what's been done so far and trying to wrap my head around this thing again. Off in the afternoon to get nuked (1/15). Two and a half hours out of the house later. Sigh.

Then needed to cook dinner, DS9 7.18, go comet hunting, then it was practically bed time. Sigh.  I did download comet photos and post them though.

Thursday.  Busy day. Conflicting priorities. Hurrah. Off to get nuked (2/15). I got there early and they were running early and it went quickly so I was out of there by the time I was meant to start. Winning!

Dominos for dinner. Whoops. DS9 7.19. Finished htmlifying Europe food photos.

Friday.  

Busy day. Mostly proxy stuff. Nuking 3/15. Kievs for dinner.

DS9 7.20 then the first episode of Trainwreck: Storm Area 51, which was pretty hilarious.

Saturday.  Busy day. And yet with all the running around and scanning taking longer than it should (hurray perfectionism) I didn't get nearly enough done.

Cooked a lasagna and blue cheese potato bake and roast tomatoes for dinner.

DS9 7.21 then the other episode of Storm Area 51.

Sunday.  Bit of a late night (fighting with my backup drive). Woke up 6:00. Except actually 7:00. Another busy day of trying to do All The Things and only doing about A Quarter Of The Things. Blerf.

We still haven't fixed the last Mirabella light.  I've tried a few times to get them into pairing mode but nothing happens.  When we get around to it we might try taking out all the "good" lights and leaving just the unpaired one so we can fiddle.

Must be Sunday.  Windoze has forgotten all my folder settings again.  

Sunday.  21st.  Stu cooked a cabbage bake and I threw some zucchini in and we had that with some leftover roast beef. Definitely not a great roast - tough (even though it was rare to medium rare) and a line of gristle through it. DS9 7.10 which was pretty good. Think I'm getting a cold sore. Not surprising, and actually surprised I haven't gotten one sooner with my immune system being shot and all.

Monday.  Awake half the night stressing about some thing I had to delete at work and how I was going to do it. When I fully woke up I realised that thing didn't even exist and I'd probably just dreamt it. Sigh. Busy day being NEIL and doing All The Things for All The People. Leftovers for dinner then DS9 7.11 then Europe photo labelling (food photos!)

It hailed in the afternoon (very small hail)

It knocked lots of petals off the cherry tree..

Tuesday.  Felt like I was in the one position all night and that every time I woke up to consider rolling over I just stayed there. hrmm. Busy day being NEIL and doing All The Things for All The People. Someone at 16:40 asked me if I liked Kingsleys. Now I want Kingsleys!!! hrmmmmmmm. Leftovers for dinner, DS9 7.12 which was pretty silly, Europe food photo labelling.

#poppyporn starts... NOW!!!

Lunch was pepperoni and olive pizza scrolls..

Wednesday.  Another disjointed but busy day. "Your failure to plan does not constitute my emergency". Except when it does and you have to stay back doing stuff for peeps.  DS9 7.13. Finished Europe food photo labelling (finally!!)

Lunch was little cheese bread toasties, cream cheese, and either tomato, olive, cheese, pepperoni or roast garlic

Dinner was Luv-a-duck cheats Peking duck.  I love this so much!

Thursday.  Busy day doing All The Things for All The People. Pizzas for dinner, then DS9 7.14 (it would have been nice to go to Matt and Michelle's bucks/hens, but, people. Sigh). Thought I'd put on the Lego Batman Movie cause it's disappearing off Netflix soon and I couldn't remember if I'd ever seen it. Turns out I had, back in 2017, and apparently I own a copy. Not that I could find it when I looked..  So much for getting anything else done though, that movie requires 100% attention or you'll miss stuff!!

Friday.  Took an RDO!!  House stuff in the morning then labelling Europe photos. In the afternoon we went out to the club and lit the fire and had a few drinks and some tv dinners and it was all very pleasant. At 19:30 we were like, now what, and invited Ian down for some whisky which was lovely too.

#fresiaporn starts... NOW!!!

I got this bottle of shiraz from Ben and Sarah for my 50th and we shared it in front of the fire.  It was really nice!

Saturday.  Actually slept relatively well, I thought, although I wasn't really transfunctionating in the morning (not sure I was making much sense talking the mother type person).

I was going to make scrambled eggs.. but couldn't bring myself to break them when they all plopped into the pan intact..

Finally got around to doing a second coat of primer on some of the cabinetry. It's been sitting in a half done state for years.  This is an in-progress shot.

Came home in the afternoon. Stu was in agony from his back from after lunch until we got some more powerful painkillers into him when we got home. Most unpleasant for all involved. Mainly him. Finished labelling Europe hotel photos. Pizza for dinner (comfort food for the sweetie!), DS9 7.15, then bed.

Sunday.  Slept relatively well. A day of All The Things. Was a bit confused when I plugged my phone in to back it up that iTunes wanted to upgrade to iOS 26. WTF? I'm only on 18. Turns out they're aligning with the year. Which is dumb anyway because it's 2025 not 2026. Got to half way through htmlifying Europe hotel photos.

Sunday.  20th.  Heated up some lamb I found in the freezer and had it with a potato/onion/feta bake, cauliflower/onion/spring onion bake, and brussels sprouts, bacon and hazelnuts. Yum yum yum. We both may have had seconds.

Then watched DS9 5.6 with tribbles which was a lot of fun. So I watched the original Trouble with Tribbles to see what they did to integrate the footage. Fun stuff! Ooo new season of Black Mirror! Watched 7.1. You just know that a subscription model isn't going to end well.. and adverts.. had to happen.

Monday.  

Acts 11:18 When they heard this, they had no further objections and praised God, saying, "So then, even to Gentiles God has granted repentance that leads to life." .. hurray for us Gentiles!

Slept mostly ok although did get woken up by my alarm which is rare. Decom work planning/writing up at work. Leftovers for dinner, DS9 5.7, photo culling, Black Mirror 7.2.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly ok but awake quite early. Deleting day!! Deleted heaps of crap which always makes me happy. Creamy cheesy mince with leftover for veggies, then DS9 5.8, photo culling, Black Mirror 7.3.

I have no notes from Wednesday to Friday.  It was that kind of week.  Distracted by my hair situation, long meetings, waiting on people for things, medical appointments.  Didn't get nearly as much done at work as I would have liked.  There would have been a few episodes of DS9 in there.  

Thursday I made cheesy vegemite scrolls for lunch - haven't had those in ages!

There was a nice sunrise on Friday

We may have also tried McGriddles.  For some reason they weren't as good as I remember them from Japan and Hong Kong.  Edit:  this is likely because I've lost a lot of my sense of taste at the moment.  Sigh.

Christmas in July prep started after work Friday (the sweetie did the shopping).  

I made the apple sauce, cooked all the sweet potato, and made a peppermint slice.

It's times like this I really miss the little brother...

And there may have been kievs and cauliflower bake for dinner

Saturday.  

Acts 16:31 They replied, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved--you and your household." .. interesting that all the household would be saved if one member is.. how would that work?

Finished prepping as much as I could (sliced All The Potato, made gravy, toasted pumpkin seeds, washed fruit, printed out All The Instructions) then headed out to the club.  When we go there the shed was full of people which was super stressful and annoying. Usually it's pretty much empty during the day. Turned on the oven then went through everything with Stu. Got the pork into the oven then really left the sweetie and a small team of helpers to do all the putting and taking of stuff in ovens.

I had mulled wine by the fire.

Apparently everything went fairly well.  Except the crackling.  I really should try pouring boiling water over to begin with...

I also made up the pavlovas and took them up

Sunday.  Didn't sleep very well.  Not too much to clean up, and not a vast amount of leftovers. Came home. Got clippered. Fiona came over for a while in afternoon which was nice.

Sunday.  29th.  Dinner was leftovers I brought home from the club. DS9 4.18 then Lego Masters 7.9.

Monday.  Early night, but took ages to get to sleep then woke up at like 3:30 for ages. Did eventually get a bit more sleep but not much.

Spent the day staring at the rules in a dev environment that are a mishmash of several versions of things including imports of prod. It's a complete mess. I've been wanting to clean it up for literally seven years and finally had a good excuse because I need to do it to prep for a project that will require us to actually do real work in there (and I can't see anything in there at the moment). Andor 2.10 then Lego Masters 7.10 (semi final - a Harry Potter build which was a heap of fun!).

Tuesday. 

Acts 2:21 And everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved... Originally from Joel 2:28-32. After the apostles receive the Holy Spirit.  Just a reminder.

Slept mostly ok. Definitely had energy this morning more so than other mornings recently. Had my morning routine done by like 7:40 instead of after 8. Not quite the whole day cleaning up dev (too many people wanting things) but I did delete nearly 1360 policies that weren't in use - winning!!

It was perfect soup weather on Tuesday

Cooked a tuna bake (forgot the dill) with brussels sprouts and broccolini for dinner.

Andor 2.11. The second half of this series has definitely picked up quite a bit, I'm enjoying it a lot more. Then it was sorting out Mum's photos, removing some duplicates and getting a "definitive" version for picking later.

Wednesday.  

Acts 3:19 Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out .. after God heals a lame man through Peter, and Peter is telling the onlookers about Jesus.  What he said.

Slept mostly ok. Deleted more crap today. Went into the city after work to get a filter for a new lens I'm hoping to get because Ted's said it wouldn't be available til like September. Turns out it was the lens not available not the filter.. which makes more sense but FFS now I have two filters and no lens. Sigh.

Leftovers for dinner. Andor 2.12 (season finale) then Lego Grand Masters of the Galaxy 7.11 (season finale). **spoilers** .. I reckon Trent and Alex's build was totally win-worthy, but obviously Brickman preferred the art of Henry and Cade's.

Thursday.  Slept okish. More deleting crap and tidying and documenting what's left in the dev environment I'm working on.

Good Games vending machine!! 

Good drinks although not many people. Pizzas then DS9 4.19 then the Bomb and the Cold War episode 8. Before it started I was telling Stu that I'd really like to watch a documentary on some thing I was thinking about.. but we started watching the show and forgot about it. And then for the life of me I couldn't remember what it was that we were talking about. And neither could Stu. All we could remember was it was some engineering thing, because I remember telling him that I liked engineering stuff like dams, bridges and towers, but I never could have been an engineer cause I'm dumb and no good at advanced maths. Oh well.

Friday.  

Acts 4:12 - Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved .. Peter talking about Jesus to the High Priest, elders and the teachers of the law in Jerusalem after he was arrested for talking about the resurrection.

Slept relatively ok. Did a bit of tidying/documenting but not as much as I'd have liked. Found this video by Kurzgesagt quite depressing.  Chris didn't have Kievs so we had some chicken pieces but they were a bit too spicy for me. I did make a nice dipping sauce of yoghurt, garlic powder, lemon juice and dill though.

Death in Paradise 14.7 then Flying High because I needed something light.

Saturday.  Awake from like 1:30 til after 5 or so. Stressing about All The Things. Hurray. Surprisingly unzombielike though. Mostly Lego filing all day. Annie came over for a while in the afternoon which was nice and she brought some nice peanut butter and choc chip cookies she made. Dumpling Inn for dinner then we watched Rogue One, which worked well after just finishing Andor.

Sunday. 

Acts 4:32 All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had.... oof yeah that doesn't happen much anymore!

Slept through til ~4 before waking up and never getting back to sleep. Stressing about All The Things. Got some stuff done during the day but not nearly enough.

Food shopping in the afternoon.

Sunday.  1st of June.  1st day of winter.  Although feels like it's been around a little while longer.  Heater is permanently on because we're too scared to touch the controller in case it dies and never comes back again.  And the peeps at Heating Cooling Warehouse STILL haven't acknowledged that we bought a brand-new-second-hand controller off them.  Will need to call them.

Ahem.

Turns out if you fry sour dough in bacon fat it turns out amazingly..

The sweetie did a pea and ham soup for dinner.

DS9 4.2 then The Bomb episode 2.

Monday.  Photos and jigsaw kind of a day.  

Did a slow cooker lamb shoulder for dinner with a bunch of veggies.  Slow cooker lamb sure is a winner.  I separated the fat out though before making the gravy with it - got a whole small decor container of fat out that we might otherwise have eaten.  

DS9 4.3 then The Bomb episode 3.

Tuesday.  Slept like crap.  Didn't get to sleep til like midnight, and then an ordeal to get comfortable. Back to work. Stayed "offline" all day to avoid the questions. Spent the day catching up on emails and doing tickets. Cooked up the last of the mince I cooked the other day with some tomato and cheese - simple but tasty. DS9 4.4.

Wednesday.  Slept okish. I think. Another relatively quiet day at work - the calm before the storm really. Leftovers for dinner. DS9 4.5.

Thursday.  Slept okish. I'm now XL for a month. Did a few tickets but distracted waiting for responses from people. Pizza for dinner, must be Thursday! DS9 4.7 (what happened to 4.6??) and recognised James Cromwell even under all his prosthetics! Then episode 5 of the bomb (don't know what day we watched episode 4).

Friday.  Awake from like 3:30 or so. Hurray.  Got some tickets done and had some time in the afternoon to work on my reporting script. Even got it to do what I wanted which was nice. Kievs for dinner, DS9 4.6 (labelled as 4.7 in Netflix - so the wrong way around compared to IMDB) then episode 6 of the bomb.

Saturday.  Slept okish. Quiet day of All The Things. Well, some house stuff, jigsaw, scanning, photo stuff and listening to the Classic 100 Piano.

I asked the sweetie what he wanted to do for dinner. We got Chong Co. Heh.

Watched Inglorious Basterds after dinner. It was .. "interesting" .. hrmmm!  

Sunday.  Slept okish - even slept in til nearly 7!! Went out by myself to do food shopping (Stu's back is having a week since he went into the office a couple of times during the week and had to sit up straight for too long). Forgot it was Sunday at Jamo - usually parking is a nightmare on Sundays. Fortunately the rain kept the crowds away so parking wasn't an issue.

I haven't been to Coles at Jamo since December and the entire store has been completely redesigned and refitted. Very stressful. Super quiet day, mostly just jigsaw and listening to Classic 100 Piano.  Beethoven made number 1.  Again.  How many times has Beethoven won?  Must be a few heh..

Monday.  19th.  Went into the city in the evening to meet up with Luc for dinner.  We just had some pizza in the bar because it was relatively people-free.  Nice catchup.

Tuesday.  Slept okish.  More of All The Things. Not that I feel like I achieved much. Did a roast chicken with lots of veggies for dinner. Actually managed to have some leftover veggies. Then watched Perfect Days. Very nice and all but no story heh.

Wednesday.  Awake from 4 for ages but got a bit more sleep.  Just bits and pieces really. Cooked a chicken yellow curry for dinner. Andor 2.3.

Thursday.  Okish sleep, still stressing about All The Things. Gloomy day. Stu fixed the heater with a $1.35 part. Well, we thought he did. 20 minutes later it died again, same behaviour. Sigh.

Friday.  Up stoopidly early to go get bits chopped out.

Saturday.  Home via chemist mid morning. To a cold house. Heater is still playing up sigh. Very quiet day. Fiona came by with a care package which was lovely and we chatted for a bit. And talked to Mum and David. Got Chong Co delivered for dinner. DS9 3.20, then a documentary on LSD.

Sunday.  Slept mostly okish. Another very quiet day.  Managed to get the heater going for a little while in the morning so at least wasn't freezing all day like yesterday.  Plus the sun came out which helped.

Sunday.  11th.  

Dinner at EffanC's which was very nice - pumpkin soup and miso salmon

Monday.  Slept okish I guess. Ok day at work, got some stuff done. Talked to Mum after work. Epic stress. Epic drama. Not to mention the STRESS that Mum and I are both feeling. Epic depressed about it all. The sweetie cooked some nice pork rissoles for dinner which was lovely of him.

DS9 3.14 which was pretty silly.

Tuesday.  Took well over an hour to get to sleep. This is what happens when you *don't* drink. Somewhat restless sleep. Bits and pieces at work and even managed some programming in between interruptions. Europe photo culling, DS9 3.15.

I'm not sure which I prefer.  Probably the phone photo - everything is in focus.  The Canon's depth of field is so ridiculously shallow that you can't get everything in focus, and there's abberations.  At least most of the crap on the window is blurred out.

Did I mention the shallow depth of field?

Also, rainbow

Stu cooked up some very nice bok choy with oyster sauce, and the rest of the rissoles

Wednesday.  Took til like midnight to get to sleep.  Sigh.  This is what happens when you *don't* drink. Somewhat restless sleep.   Rinse and repeat.  Pretty good progress on a script I'm working on, although hit a roadblock doing something simple. Leftover butt cheeks and cabbage for dinner, DS9 3.16. More Europe photo culling. Holiday stuff for Mum.

Phone vs Canon again.  Neither are super crisp up close.

Thursday.  Slept kinda okish. Got a few bits and pieces done. Pizzas for dinner. DS9 3.17.

Friday.  Woke up at dentist time and only got like 3/4 hour more sleep after that. Hurray. Frustrating day fighting with Powershell. I too dumb. Leftover lamb and veggies for dinner. DS9 3.18. Dumb episode.

Saturday.  Woke up early I think. Mostly uneventful drive to Sydney. Followed a Murray's coach from the Barton Highway to Picton Road which was pretty cool. At one point a Tesla passed us which had a sticker to the effect of "I bought this before Elon went crazy". No rocks on Hanging Rock Road. Bumper to bumper traffic all the way from Yarrawarra to Mum's because of Heathcote Road closure. And the fact that Sydney traffic sucks all kinds of donkey balls. Got to Mum's and we spent most of the afternoon going through holiday stuff. Also checked out backup hard drives and I backed up her computer again. Had TV dinners for dinner. Went for a walk after dinner so Mum could get some milk and I could get a beer. It got very late very quickly.

Mum has these textas of mine that she used long after I stopped using them.  I've had them since I was in primary school, so they're at least forty years old.
They still work.
Mind. Blown.


Sunday.  Slept okish. Had to have the door open because it was like 22C in the room - way too hot! It got down to about 19 by morning - just barely tolerable! :) Did some copying of Dad's photos off an external hard drive (possibly the only copy she has of his photos). Also looked at a lot of photos. Went for a long walk around lunch time and picked up a bbq chooken for late lunch. Saw David briefly, went through holiday stuff, then everyone left in different directions. It was after 16:30 by the time I left, way way way too late, so was a pretty tense drive in the dark and the rain. Two wallabies jumped in front of my near Broughton Pass, but luckily didn't hit anything. Late dinner when I got home.

This little house is for sale.  It's on a 1220sqm block.  I guarantee it will be at the very least a duplex but more likely three or four townhouses the next time I see it...

Hotham House


Monday.  Slept okish. Day of appointments and trying to keep on top of crap.

Sunday.  27th.  Leftovers for dinner then Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I still don't like how they explain how he's the half blood prince in the movie. Not that the book was a whole lot better - it was just a line, but at least it had that line.

Monday.  28th.  Remembering Alan's first heart attack, Como Presbyterian Church reopening after the 1994 bushfires, and the Port Arthur Massacre. Slept okish - restless and thermoregulation issues. My computer crashed last night #grunt and it wasn't even for patching this time. Managed to lose another hair tie overnight. Like how does that even happen, I've only been in like three rooms since last night. While searching I did find one I lost a couple of months ago. Hurray. Busy day. The sweetie cooked creamy mushroom fake noodles which was quite nice. DS9 3.4. Looked more into ways to disable Optus while overseas, including setting a SIM PIN, and locking the phone to Optus manually (but that causes a battery hit apparently). Also realised that my iPhone 5 is really a brick now on Optus since they shut down 3G, which is why it won't connect anymore. Spent entirely too much time stressing over Optus being such a ripoff.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly ok I think. Busy day. Lunch with the sweetie. Bought some light tshirts (all my tshirts are dark, which is no good for Greece or Dubai in summer). Lots of rain FINALLY and even some thunderbolts and lightning. The sweetie cooked some nice mince for dinner (well I cooked the mince the other weekend, but he added nicely to it). DS9 3.5 then holiday planning.

Wednesday.  Took forever to get to sleep - restless legs for ages. Tried to turn the heater on. But the control panel was dead. So Stu went to reboot it. The panel turned all the led things on. But then turned off. Then started flickering on and off. So he rebooted it again (leaving it off longer). It came up for a few seconds normally.. but then started flickering again. Sigh. So leaving it off for longer this time.

All on!

Did put a jumper on for third time this year. KFC for dinner, DS9 3.6, early night.

Thursday.  Took a while to get to sleep (cold!) but mostly slept ok. 12.7C in the study in the morning!! eep!! Achieved pretty much nothing all day. Super quiet drinks. Blue cheese pizzas for dinner. DS9 3.7. Early night.

Friday.  Got to sleep ok, but then awake from like 1-4. Sigh. The heater worked briefly in the morning then died. Nice warm day though so the house wasn't too crazy. Stu rebooted the heater again and it worked for a few minutes then died again. Sigh. Emailed Travis about recommendations for a split system but he hasn't mailed me back. The sweetie cooked up a cauliflower bake and brussels sprouts with kievs for dinner. 

DS9 3.8 which was pretty silly. Then another episode of an anime series of some Japanese travel blogger. Continued frustration with the heater which might work for a minute or two then just die. Sigh. The house is cold. Sigh.

Saturday.  Awake from like 3 or 4 and never got back to sleep. Sigh.

Another ripe mini capsicum!!

Super busy day. Attacked the todo list (mostly) in the order it happened to be in FreeMind. Chong Co for dinner then Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I. Finished just in time to see Dutton's concession speech.

Sunday.  Slept somewhat better. More ploughing through the todo list. Moved ten young guppies to the tank downstairs which has been empty for a while and desperately needing new fish, and four to the four foot (it definitely needs a lot more guppies). Need to get a few new guppies with different genetics though.

I doubt I'll get to eat this tomato.. 

Remember how much I was complaining about windoze resetting the folder views every time I went to use them?  Well the last week or two it's been a lot better - my in tray folder of photos for blogging has maintained my view settings.  This makes me happy.  I guess enough other people complained about it.

Sunday.  30th.  Had Jenn over for dinner, wherein we cooked up a huge vegetarian feast.  Stu cooked his miso mushrooms.  I did a potato bake, a blue cheese broccoli/cauliflower/onion bake and brussels sprouts with hazelnuts.

We debated how long it had been since we saw Jenn last.  I looked up my blog and said April 2023, which seemed way too long, but I do remember taking a photo of her hair, and the date on that was April 2023, which pretty much confirms it.  We're such slackers at keeping up with people.  Watched DS9 2.7 after Jenn left.

Monday.  Slept mostly ok I think.  Got to hand back over the NEIL job back to Neil hurray!!!  Leftovers for dinner then DS9 2.8.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep #grunt.  Did a bunch of analysis of some catchall rules so I can put in some more specific ones so we can get rid of the catchall.  

I tried feeding Stumpy today.  He's still being lethargic and not basking, but he did eat a blueberry and some food which was good.

I'm always suprised how quickly the COLD hits in Canberra.  It'll be 30C for days on end, and suddenly it's 5C overnight and leaving the windows open makes for a very cold house.  Decided April 1 should be close up all the windows day (several are left permanently locked open over summer).  In the afternoon I was cold and hungry so had a cup of tea in our fancy Cunard tea cups.

Luv-a-duck for dinner which was very nice.  All. The. Garlic.  !!

DS9 2.9.  After dinner was watching a video Dave2 linked to on living without a smartphone.  Yeah I literally can't even remember how friends and I would meet up without being able to text each other updates or issues.  Like what if a train was late, how would you tell who you were meeting?  Navigation is another big thing.  Nowadays I can turn up anywhere and use GPS on my phone to navigate (except that one time in Switzerland when I had to pay more for a car with satnav because the esim I got didn't work in Switzerland).  I can't even imagine the paperwork you'd need to cart around to try and do the same thing with maps.  Don't get me wrong, I love maps, and I like navigating, but they're damned heavy and more often than not I'm doing the driving not the navigating, and I can't imagine Mum would have much luck navigating me around European cities.  Having said that, we did manage to navigate our way around the USA and Canada in 1983 and 2004 before phones.  But for the most part we stayed out of big cities.  And the USA is literally designed for road tripping.  Signage is way way better there than in Australia or Europe.

Wednesday.  Second night in a row dreaming about toilets.  I have this bizarre thing where I stress about finding a clean/usable toilet.  And not even when I need to actually pee in the middle of the night, it's just this weird obsession I have.  Bizarre.  

Somewhat busy day.  Late home.  Stu had had a day so we got KFC hmmm.  DS9 2.10.  

OneNote is trying to force me to upgrade to Office 365.  It's already upgraded itself from the old Technet version I've been using for years AGAINST MY WILL I might add (apparently there's a way to turn off automatic updates so I might try reinstalling it and do that).  So now it says I have 90 days of free usage.  Well I can tell you that there is no way in HELL I'm going to pay to use it.  I will NEVER get an Office 365 subscription.  I'll rip everything out of it and use LibreOffice and Notepad if it comes down to it.  Which is a shame, because OneNote is actually quite a good product.  I like how it keeps different groupings of notes together and you can easily password protect sections.

Thursday.  Late getting to sleep, then awake from 5:30 sigh.  Went out to put a few things in the recycling bin before it got collected, only to find two big bags of RUBBISH in it!?!  WTF!?!  I pulled them out and raged for a while.  Messaged the neighbours but didn't get a response.  In the end put out our bin (which only had one bag of rubbish in it so wasn't worth putting out) and put their rubbish in it.  As we were leaving for work neighbour's Dad was out there and I asked him and he said he did it.  Sigh.  Simon was sick at drinks so if I get sick early next week we'll know why.  Pizzas for dinner then DS9 2.11.

Friday.  Slept mostly ok.  Busy day - put in a heap of those firewall rules which took me all afternoon to do.  Kievs and veggies for dinner then DS9 2.12.

Saturday.  Awake from like maybe 1 til 4.  Sigh.  Zombie day.  Spent a chunk of the day photo picking from "other peoples photos" and trying to sort out what backups I have of Mum's computer. I'm definitely missing a few years worth from 2015-2017 where I just haven't had the time during visits to get it all copied. Debating a trip to Sydney to do that, as well as sort out the mess they made when they built her a new computer and didn't transfer all the files. Luckily she has all the photos (I hope!) on an external hard drive that has a snapshot backup I made her do some years back. In the evening we went to Bar 59 for an "antiball" but it was a bit of a fizzer really. People forgot or double booked or just didn't turn up, so there was only seven of us there in the end. I tried a few cocktails just for a bit of fun. So it was nice enough night, but dunno if I could be bothered trying to organise another one. Neil very kindly gave us a lift home.

Sunday.  Awake for maybe an hour or so in the middle of the night - from 2:27, but the new 2:27, so didn't get to watch the clock go from 2:59 to 2:00. Still pretty tired though. Finally managed to setup SMTP on my iPhone using CloudLoop. Optus is flaky as hell for sending SMTP mail through, plus I get SPF softfails with them because I don't have their mail servers in my SPF records. Did a bit of house stuff, and started thinking about some holiday stuff. Tried again to add my Qantas frequent flier number to my Emirates flights, but I kept getting the error:

Warning:
Sorry, we`re unable to save the changes. Please check all the information and try again.

So I tried their online chat. It was quick and they just did it for me. Unexpectedly quick and painless! Not that I know why I bother really - Qantas expire all my points before I can use them. Then did some other holiday planning.

The Windows 11 Explorer trash is really pissing me off.  I have an in tray where I have all the photos that I post to this blog.  I update it every week when I'm processing my photos, and when I've posted them they get moved to Done.  I sort this folder by date (in reverse to what windows likes to set it to) so that when I'm blogging them I can see and post the photos in order.  Every time my computer reboots this setting is lost.  I have to go Sort By -> Date (twice to get it in the right order) not just in Explorer, but in Chrome as well.  Every damned time.  But lately it's gotten worse.   Tonight I did an experiment.  I had the folder set the way I wanted it, and copied the path to clipboard.  I closed explorer on this desktop.  Opened up again and pasted the path.  Folder view was reset to default.  So did it again, this time by navigating manually to the folder.  In this method the folder view is retained.  And it's repeatable. 

I also epic hate how Explorer collapses all explorer folders that you've had expanded whenever you insert or eject removable media.  Like WHYYYYYYYY????

I hate Windoze SO MUCH!!

And suddenly the weekend is over. hrmmm.

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