Upgrade of the firewall went really well today, better and smoother than I thought it would.  Only another five to go heh.

Tonight the little brother came to visit - he's running trains in and out of Temora on the weekend.

Oh and I got 92% on the first aid pre-course test.  Phew!  One wrong question I'm sure wasn't in the course material, another I misread the question, another was either one or the other and picked the wrong one, another I just forgot.

One year ago today we went to Lamma Island and did a walk across the island.

So I upgraded my phone from 6.1.4 to 9.1 on Sunday night.

Yeah yeah yeah, shut up.

I spent ages and ages on the weekend making sure I had everything backed up.  Because given my history with iTunes, there was no way I was going to trust my content to Apple.

As it turned out, I did get errors.

I tried upgrading iTunes (my phone was a brick at this point).

And in the end it did in fact want to completely wipe my phone.

But then it upgraded ok, and restored the backup ok.

So far the only thing I've noticed that I've lost was all the gold I'd spent months accumulating on Candy Crush.  So was pretty pissed off about that.  But at least all my other rewards and my level were maintained.

So. 

iOS 9.

Having not ever used 7 or 8, the "new" interface is new to me for the first time.  The calendar and photo sorting differences have been around for a while, but are new to me.

Things I like:

* I do like the photo sorting.  Rather than one big folder of thumbnails, now they're separated by date and location.  Much easier now to find and clear photos.
* the predictive text feature that I've seen on Android is there, although I've not really used it.
* the clock actually works on the home screen now!  And it even has a second hand!
* it *seems* like the battery life is a lot better
* EDIT: OMG! You can see all the attachments on SMSes!!  Will be easy to go through and remove excess crap

Things I'm not sure about:

* not sure I like the new icons
* the music player is no longer on the left of the home screen, and doesn't come with a double click from the lock screen unless you already have it open
* reminder alerts don't go away from your lock screen until you've actually swiped them to unlock/read.  But at least swiping to open an SMS actually opens the messages app and doesn't just unlock the phone and then expect you to load messages after that.

Things I really don't like:

* the notes application has now split up my notes based on some arbitrary decision about whether they're in my mail file or on the phone.  Dumb dumb dumb. Just give me a notes file.  I'm constantly having to switch between the two views of notes to see the notes in the two different locations.
* lack of consistency in switching between *stuff*.  Want to switch between an app?  Scroll left and right.  Want to switch tabs in Safari?  Scroll up and down.  Completely retarded.  Plus the animation is too enthusiastic and you end up scrolling past apps, or accidentally closing them when you meant to scroll left or right instead of up or down.
* lack of response to clicking the home button or scrolling.  Previously when I clicked the home button to unlock, the screen popped up straight away.  Now it can take up to a full second before the screen comes up, making me think I haven't pressed it properly.  And previously swiping between home screens was quite sensitive and responsive.  Now sometimes it just doesn't swipe until you've *really* swiped - otherwise it'll just bounce back to the screen you were on.  Super annoying.  EDIT:  This mainly seems to be after unlocking the screen.  Presumably when unlocking the screen it starts up a bunch of processes to do *stuff* when unlocked.
* I've really not liked the calendar interface since iOS 7 (when seeing it on other phones).  iOS 6's calendar let you show a month at a time, and when you clicked on a day it showed you the events at the bottom.  Simple, and it didn't change layouts around.  Now you *can* get a month view, but if you click on day you get taken to a list view that shows all events in a list.  Yuk.  And actually part of the reason I put off upgrading my phone.
* photo location map.  This was a super cool feature that showed you on a map where all your photos were taken.  I have photos all over the world on this phone and it was cool to see on a map.  Don't know if this feature is still there but hidden, or gone forever.
* EDIT: really not liking the reminders anymore.  Just clunky and awkward to use now.

Really the main reason for upgrading was just too many apps these days need iOS 7 or later to work.  So I had to bite the bullet and do it...

Last Saturday we went over to EffanC's to celebrate C's (ahem) 25th.  So that was a lovely afternoon of drinking bubbly and chatting.  In the evening we watched Juno on the big screen.

Last Sunday Chrispycon and Anne were in town from Hong Kong, so we met up with them and a bunch of their friends at Manuka for drinks.

Last night was a BBQ at Kit's, just because.

In between has been working, house cleaning, fish buying, mandarin learning, cooking.

!

Yesterday I was feeling completely overwhelmed by the state of the house.  So Stu wisely told me to just work on one pile, which I did.  So that was good.

Dad's photo scanning is coming along.  I'm up to 260 out of the thousand-odd needing to be scanned.  I'm half way through his photos of our Kangaroo Island holiday in 1994.

Stu has bought a heap of plants and some native fish for his four foot tank.  I've gotten some danios for the two foot, and some more danios to start again on the "angel" tank.  Stu has also setup a tiny little tank with some cherry red shrimp which are very cute.

I've pulled apart the Ingress Lego logos.  I'm really wanting to find a new mosaic design to use.  The current big mosaic was made in February 2009!!  And has been hung up in the spare room since November 2009.  That's just insane. 

And tonight I've got a better than average chance of completely bricking my phone by upgrading it from 6.1.4 to 9.1.  I might have spent ages today making sure I have everything that I care about backed up off it.

Still sick.  Have so far spent the entire weekend feeling miserable.  Other than not being able to sleep and watching quite a few videos, all I managed to achieve was creating the Enlightened logo in Lego, and rename the 800 photos I took on film from 1992-1999 with a filename containing the date, roll and frame number.  Actually didn't take all that long.  I also figured out that it's quite possible that dad had never scanned the first thousand photos he had.  It looks like he was working his way backwards through his photos - the ones he had from 1999 were scanned just before he was diagnosed with his brain tumour.  Doesn't explain why the excel files with the labels are missing though.

I was thinking I might be able to work from home tomorrow, but if I'm feeling as crappy as I do now I might even reconsider that :/

OK so I didn't.  I actually didn't do all that much at all.

But after a weekend of work, we have a new pool at the club.

Monday was just catching up on housework.  Why does it never end?  Why do we *always* have a messy kitchen/house??

Pretty quiet week.  Nothing particular of note.  

Oh, we did have dinner at the Dumpling Inn for the first time since they were closed for so long.

And dinner with Stu's dad on Wednesday at The District.

Yeah so much for low sodium.

Friday I was depressed about food in general.  Watched Tora Tora Tora with the sweetie.  One of the better war movies from Dad's collection.  He last watched it in March 2013 - around the time he was diagnosed with his brain tumour.

Saturday the sweetie worked on his assignment.  I climbed mountains and did house and garden stuff.

In the afternoon we went over to Scott and Kerry's for a family gathering.  Which was relatively pleasant.

Today was brunch with @phonakins who was in town for the weekend, and Helen and Sean (I think that was their names), internet friends of hers.

Then I did more garden stuff.  

Did an instant lamb roast for dinner (roasted veggies with some leftover lamb that was in the freezer).  And watched House and Frozen.  Do you wanna build a snowman?

Oh also.  My watch fricken died again.  #grunt

This time I really did!  But more on that later.

So it all started at drinks on Thursday night.  Steve and Simon asked if I wanted to go to the snow on the weekend.  I said sure, so long as my planned upgrade on Friday arvo went ok.

Well Friday arvo came along and my upgrade went badly.  Really badly.  Beg for help from *real* comms guys to help fix badly.  But the worst part was knowing that Steve was waiting for me.  I tried and tried and tried to get them to go without me, but they wouldn't so I just got more and more stressed.  It was an awful awful night.  Then I was so flustered I forgot the cable for my GPS, and I thought I'd left the Android at work, when turns out I'd actually left it at home.  So I pretty much lost it.  Fortunately the sweetie found the Android and was able to hack portals to keep my Sojourner badge going.  Phew.  But the GPS not being chargable really sucked.  It did the whole first day and til about 10:30 the second.  Sadmaking.

I was so stressed I couldn't eat anything on the way down Friday night, so I didn't actually have any dinner.  I think I would have thrown it up if I'd tried.  (and a very meat-heavy lunch certainly didn't help).  Woke up about 1am hungry, but got through it.

We stayed at a guy from work's place.  $30/night for an apartment in Jindabyne.  Pretty awesome value.  And I woke up naturally both mornings - much better than being woken up at 4am and being a zombie most of the morning.

So onto the snow.

It was very warm, and the snow was quite slushy in the morning, and even worse in the afternoon.

Day one we started at Front Valley, headed over to Mount P for a couple of runs, then I left the boys and did Pleasant Valley, then Guthega, then back to Blue Cow for lunch.  After lunch we did Roller Coaster, up Ridge, Excelerator, then by myself again Summit, back across to Pleasant Valley, Copperhead Road, Pretty Valley, Interceptor, then back to Telemark and done for the day.

Olympic from Mount P

Riding the Mount P triple

Main ranges from near the top of Mount P

Pleasant Valley

Riding the Pleasant Valley quad

Main ranges from Guthega

Guthega Pondage

Milk and pie.  Don't even talk to me about how much sodium is in that thing.

Obligatory selfie

Day two we started at Smiggins, headed across via Interceptor to Roller Coaster, then I left the boys and went down to Guthega, back to Blue Cow, Pleasant Valley (the GPS conked out at this point), over to Mount P, back up and down the Quad Express.  At this point I thought I'd aim for the top of Telemark to go down that way back to Smiggins (from Mid station), but I must have taken a wrong turn somehow I got stuck somewhere I really didn't want to be - possibly in Wine Glass.  I got part way down and there was pretty much nowhere to go.  I had to take my skis off to get down.  Which really mucked around with my confidence.  I trudged back to Smiggins and collapsed in the cafe for lunch.  After three quarters of an hour I felt better again so did some runs in Smiggins while waiting for the boys to get back.  Was there for well over an hour an a half waiting and doing the same few runs.  Whoops.  

Ridge quad

I told you several times this view never gets old for me

Happy Valley from Mount P

A bit after three I found a nice spot under a tree to sit and watch the world go by.  And I built a snowman.  Only a little one.  But kinda cute.

Taking a photo on my phone and the battery gave out and it turned off.  hrmm no way to contact the boys.  So cleared some space on random camera (it was full) and got some photos on it.  Then headed down to see if I could find electricity, or at least wait at the bar.  Turns out the boys had just gotten there, so that was good timing.

Went back to the apartment to tidy up and pack up, then came home.

Took ages to sort out the GPS tracks.  I did fifty runs according to the Perisher dashboard.  Day one I covered fifty five kilometres up and down.  Day two nineteen kilometres before the battery died.

Fun times.  But my everything hurts.

Had a reasonably quiet weekend.  Stu has been sick since last week, so didn't go out Friday night.  

Saturday was the club AGM, but we only went out for it and came home again after.  I cooked duck for dinner and we watched The China Syndrome, which Stu had never seen.

Today Stu studied and I did jigsaws.  Correction.  The same jigsaw, just the other side.  All will be revealed soon.  And housework.  Always housework.  And started setting up another blog for all my Australian holidays (since I'm scanning all my old holiday photos and would be good to get some of them online).  Tonight I did a lamb roast (we have sooo much food in the fridge it's not funny) and we watched Highlander.  I don't think we've actually seen it since we went to Scotland in 2010.  Been theres! :)

So we just had a lovely long weekend in Queensland (longer post to follow soon).  We were both inspired to eat better.  For Stu, he's trying to be more strict about low fodmap.  For me I'm trying to be more strict about sodium.  At least for a week or two to see if it makes any difference to my blood pressure.  To that end, we went shopping tonight, mostly for our own food.  And then I came home and cooked.  A kilo of chicken thighs, a scotch fillet steak, rice, mushrooms, potatoes, frozen veggies, and snacks.  I was cooking all fricken night.  Blerf.  At least I won't have to cook again til the weekend.

Had a pretty quiet weekend.  Stu was mostly just working on his uni assignments.  We did watch a couple of movies though - both I got on Bluray very cheap.  There was Les Miserables, and Ghostbusters.

I once saw an amateur stage production of Les Miserables and had absolutely no idea what was going on.  So seeing it as a movie was quite helpful and it was easy enough to follow that way.  I quite enjoyed it, but it was very *long* and towards the end I'm like, guys you really could cut that song length down a bit.. 

And Ghostbusters I haven't seen since *at least* before 2002 - probably a good while before that, so could easily be twenty years since I last saw it.  It's a bit silly and dated, but not nearly as much as I thought it could be.  Fun times.

And we're still eating those damned beans.