Sunday.  15th.  Kievs and brussels sprouts for dinner. Must be Friday. Wait, what?

DS9 4.14. Another episode to be endured. Then LegoMasters 7.3. Yayyy Karen!!!! haha

Monday.  Slept mostly ok. Gave Mum a call before work for her birthday and heard more about her trip. Sigh. Did a few tickets at work but mostly scripting which was nice. Google AI helped with one problem but sent me on a wild goose chase with another and needed Nick to help me fix. Pizzas for dinner, must be Thursday. Wait, what?

Andor 2.4 then Lego Masters 7.4.

Was impressed how well these things lasted - like a month!

Tuesday.  Slept mostly okish. 

Happy 3128!!  Whenever I see my clock/watch at around 13:52 I wish @Aquillaaudux a happy 1352.  So my step log at 3128 two days ago was pretty cool!

Stoopidly busy day. All. The. Tickets. The last week or so has been quite pleasant, so this was quite a shock to the system. 

Nissin miso ramen that I had for lunch.  Not miso-ey enough.  Next time I'll lump in some miso paste

Cooked up some leftover pork with some veggies for dinner. Andor 2.5. People are calling this like the best show ever, but I'm all what the actual f#$& is going on all the way through it. I have no idea who's who (I struggle with names and faces at the best of times, but no one has names that mean anything to me, and some of the cast look fricken identical), who's on who's side (hurray for espionage stories), or what anyone is doing. And that end scene?? What??? Fricken hopeless. A real estate agent (I guess) came to Kit's place today. But instead of turning off the lights in the kitchen that have been on for two weeks straight, they turned MORE lights on and left them on too! What a retard.

Wednesday.  Slept ish-ish I think.

Baby fish!  Not sure who's babies they are.. either from the very unwell big female I took from the four foot a couple of weeks ago, or maybe one of the super young females I took from the two foot..  There's only like three babies though so who knows.

Not quite as crazy a busy day but still pretty busy. I tried multiple times to do some scripting, but whenever I started someone would interrupt me. Even after 17:00 when most people were offline, people came to talk to me in real life and I *still* didn't get any scripting done hmmmm. KFC for dinner. Whoops. Andor 2.6 (somewhat better episode, easier to follow), Lego Masters.

Thursday.  Slept mostly okish.

Fairly busy day again.

Saw these guys at lunch attacking a new grass seed mat

Good drinks, heaps of people, and even a whole heap of pizzas (thanks Timmy!) so I had dinner before I even got home. Lego Masters .. awwwwwwwwwww so sad to see Owen and Gabby go. Someone must have come to Kit's place again today because most (not all) of the lights are off now.

Friday.  Okish sleep. Took an RDO. Got some things done in the morning. Went out before lunch to do a couple of things, but ended up being out for nearly four hours #grunt. There's a couple moving into Kit's today, including a dude with an actual truck. Leftover beef from the freezer for dinner. DS9 4.15,  urgh another tedious episode. Then The Bomb and the Cold War episode 7.

Saturday.  Ok sleep I think. Semi productive day. I asked the sweetie what he wanted for dinner and so he got Dumpling Inn haha. Had that while watching Jaws, on account of it being fifty years ago yesterday that it was first released in cinemas (in the US). Also because Stu has never actually seen it. !!

Sunday.  Slept okish. Less productive day today. Did get some photo culling done and some food shopping, but a lot of the day went on a horrible jigsaw.

Windoze Explorer has been continuing to drive me crazy.  This week it refuses to honour settings I've previously set like sorting and icon size.  I was trying to file email attachments and it would reset the settings to whatever it felt like EVERY SINGLE TIME I NAVIGATED AWAY.  Or it'll just randomly jump to the top of the window and I have scroll back down to find where I was working.  FFS windows is trash.  Tonight it actually remembered my blog photo directory by some miracle, although Chrome reset itself.  I hate windoze.  

Last weekend was the ABC Classic 100 Piano.

When this first came up a while back I listed the first things that popped into my head.  All but one of them were listed:

Rhapsody in Blue - yes
Jessica's Theme (Man from Snowy River) - yes
Ice Castles soundtrack - no (this has a nice piano opening but not sure it's really a piano piece anyway)
Pride and Prejudice soundtrack - yes
The Entertainer - yes

They had a few novelty pieces too - Chopsticks and "Heart and soul" as well.. I never even knew it was called that.

In the end these were my votes and their places.  I wasn't really expecting the Shostakovich to get up, but I do like that piece from Fantasia 2000.

4 Rhapsody in Blue -- Gershwin, George
  (robbed!!!! this should have been number one!!)
18 The Man from Snowy River (incl. Jessica's Theme) -- Rowland, Bruce
22 Le Carnaval des animaux (The Carnival of the Animals, incl. The Swan) -- Saint-Saëns, Camille
25 The Entertainer -- Joplin, Scott
28 Pride & Prejudice Soundtrack (1995 TV) -- Davis, Carl
30 Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV565 -- Bach, Johann Sebastian
32 Piano Sonata No. 11 in A major, K331 'Rondo alla Turca' -- Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
46 Up Soundtrack -- Giacchino, Michael
78 Lyric Pieces (incl. Wedding Day at Troldhaugen) -- Grieg, Edvard
Piano Concerto No. 2 in F major, Op. 102 -- Shostakovich, Dmitri

I actually listened to every piece they had open for voting.  Because most pieces I literally have no idea what they're called.  I pretty much added anything I'd ever heard of to my short list, then whittled them down from there.

Aside from the finals above, these were my maybes and their positions.  I did consider 4'33" too haha

17 Bagatelle in A minor, WoO59 'Für Elise' - Beethoven, Ludwig van
35 Flight of the Bumblebee - Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai (arr. Rachmaninov)
67 Forrest Gump Soundtrack - Silvestri, Alan
75 My Neighbour Totoro - Hisaishi, Joe
Chopsticks - Allen, Euphemia
  (just for the novelty factor)
Heart and Soul - Carmichael, Hoagy
  (again for the novelty factor)
Minuet No. 1 in G major - Petzold, Christian (formerly attributed to JS Bach)
Waltzing Matilda - Traditional (Australian) arr. Cowan, Marie

And these were my probably nots and their positions:

1 Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73 'Emperor' - Beethoven, Ludwig van
2 Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 27 No. 2 'Moonlight' - Beethoven, Ludwig van
7 Gymnopédies - Satie, Erik
8 Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor, Op. 23 - Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich
  (this was the onlyTchaikovsky)
9 Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43 - Rachmaninov, Sergei
10 Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K467 'Elvira Madigan' - Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
12 Variations on 'Ah! vous dirai-je, Maman', K265 (aka Twinkle Twinkle - Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
15 Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring - Bach, Johann Sebastian
19 The Piano Soundtrack (incl. The Heart Asks Pleasure First) - Nyman, Michael
21 Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30 - Rachmaninov, Sergei
26 Howl's Moving Castle Soundtrack (incl. Merry-Go-Round of Life) - Hisaishi, Joe
29 I giorni - Einaudi, Ludovico
34 Peer Gynt, Op. 23 (incl. Morning Mood) - Grieg, Edvard
  (this might have gone into my maybes if I'd realised this was also Into the hall of the mountain king)
37 Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence - Sakamoto, Ryuichi
41 Spirited Away (incl. One Summer's Day) - Hisaishi, Joe
42 Pictures at an Exhibition - Mussorgsky, Modest
61 The Pink Panther - Mancini, Henry
71 Piano Sonata No. 16 in C major, K545 'Sonata facile' - Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus
74 Maple Leaf Rag - Joplin, Scott
85 American Beauty Soundtrack - Newman, Thomas
89 Waltzes (incl. 'Minute') - Chopin, Frédéric
Je te veux - Satie, Erik
Rondo a Capriccio in G major, Op. 129 'Rage over a Lost Penny' - Beethoven, Ludwig van

So most of the stuff I might have voted for got up.  Guess that says something about "popular" music.  ie, crap that people have actually heard of got voted for haha.

A fun weekend!

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.  Star Wars Day.  Stu cooked a cauliflower and feta bake with brussels sprouts and zucchini for dinner.  

DS9 3.9 then Andor 2.1.

Monday.  Slept okish. The guppies downstairs I think are doing ok, but I think the ones in the four foot got eaten. I think one might have survived overnight (but didn't see it again later in the week). Catching up at work (not too many interruptions hurray). Cooked very nice salmon for dinner (huge pieces though), with salad for me and leftover veggies for the sweetie. DS9 3.10 which was pretty silly.

Sunrise.. sunset..

Tuesday - Slept okish. All over the place day. Did manage to do a change I'd been planning though. The sweetie cooked the mince I cooked the other night with olives and tomatoes and fake fettuccini which was very nice.

DS9 3.11. Had to LOL at a Riot-ACT post from the other day. They were all spruiking the "first Malatang in a food court in Canberra" in Civic. The first comment on the page was literally from someone saying the people in Belconnen must be shocked that they don't live in Canberra (there's been a Malatang at Belco mall since pre covid). I just reloaded the entry and got a 404. bwahahahaha.

Wednesday. Awake from 1:30 to 5:00 or so. Hurrah. Distracting day again. Did get some decom work done in the later afternoon. Pizzas for dinner. Was going to make slow cooked lamb shanks, but, life. DS9 3.12.

Thursday.  Awake for a while in the middle of the night. Managed quite a bit of decom work due to not being interrupted every five seconds. Was actually a fairly peaceful day. Put the lamb shanks on at lunch, they turned out really well. Too often in the past my slow cooker lamb shanks have super watery sauce, so this time I didn't cover the meat - I only used about a cup of liquid with a stockcube, as well as a heap of fresh rosemary and some gobs of minced garlic. At the end I made gravy like I do with the pulled pork - take the lamb out to shred, pour all the stock/juices into a saucepan with some cornflour (in a slurry with a little water). Boil til thickened. Mix back in with lamb. Enjoy!  I didn't get an "after" photo.  DS9 3.13.

The veggies didn't make it to leftovers..

Friday.  Early night so woke up at 4. Hurrah. Got a bit more sleep and in the end woken from a dream (wherein I was drifting over Sydney in what appeared to be a massive cruise ship, but I was also weightless. I held onto a handrail tightly (in case gravity came back suddenly) and just floated. Nice :) ).

More decom work. Kievs and a cauliflower bake for dinner.

Then Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Don't know why it rates so highly in IMDB - pretty much most of the entire movie takes place on one night in the story. And it's just so damned *dark*!!

Saturday.  Slept okish. Awake for a while here and there though.

Just a day of all the things. Started back into culling of Europe 2016 photos again so I can get them online.

Made butt sorry beef cheeks for dinner with lemon garlic broccolini which was very nice.

Watched Andor 2.2, Fantasia 2000, and The Movies That Made Us on Back to the Future.

Sunday.  Awake from ~1:25 to ~4 hurrah. Bit of a slow start. Quieter day, but did do some Europe photo culling.

Saw this on Neil's a while back and thought it would be cool to do.  One of those old-fashioned "blog memes" that people used to do twenty years ago.  I stopped commenting on Neil's blog forever ago because when I tried to catch up with him when I was in York in 2010 he completely ignored me.  His blog went dead for years but my feed reader still had it and notified me a few years back of new posts.

Why did you start blogging in the first place?

Vic said I should.  I was doing unpaid work at CIA/Host1 at the time (well, helping out with windows hosting support and answering support mail in exchange for free internet and web hosting).  I'd heard of blogs by then (January 2003) but had never read or subscribed to any.  Vic probably wanted to spread the word of his ISP a bit, so I did it.  But it very quickly became a place I could brain dump and I only wish I'd started the thing sooner so I could have recorded my life better.  Not that the early years were much good at recording events.  Too many times when I've been sorting my photos I've wondered what I was doing the day I took them, only to find no useful record.  These days are much more betterer.

What platform are you using to manage your blog and why did you choose it?

Movable Type.  Been using it since day 1.  I started using it because it came as part of the cpanel setup Host1 had so it was easy to start with.  There was one big upgrade a few years in that changed the whole directory/post/file structure layout, and the one that started inserting images as assets, but otherwise it really hasn't changed much.  I'm still using the last free open source version before it started costing $500 USD .. PER YEAR..!!  WTF!??  I really do need to modernise, not the least of which is because it uses http not https and I still haven't figured out how to *fully* sslify it (eg, canonical links)

Have you blogged on other platforms before?

I did put a few entries up on blogger.com for some more private stuff, but it never really went anywhere.  Same with the "This Day in History" posts I was trying to do here.

How do you write your posts? For example, in a local editing tool, or in a panel/dashboard that's part of your blog?

I just use the Movable Type web interface.  And only ever from my computer, or laptop when travelling.  Phone is too hard.

When do you feel most inspired to write?

Back in the day I would blog nearly every day and sometimes more often.  Usually in the evenings.  For several years now I've only blogged on the weekends after I've downloaded and processed my photos for the week.  I definitely post a lot more photos than I did twenty years ago.  Really my blog now is a place for me to post photos.  With a little bit of filler about what I've been doing.  It's also a bit less cryptic.  Reading my old entries now I have no idea what I was talking about half the time.

Do you publish immediately after writing, or do you let it simmer a bit as a draft?

I always publish immediately.  Usually on Sunday evenings.

What are you generally interested in writing about?

Nothing.  My blog's byline is "Boring Life Of a Geek" - BLOG for short.  My life is boring.  My photos are mostly of flowers and food.  I do like my travel blogs though.  There's even at least one holiday blog (USA 2000) that I wrote up from literally a paper notebook of notes I took during the trip.  And my USA 1983 blog was written entirely from my memories of the trip thirty years after the event!  When I was 9 years old!

Who are you writing for?

Myself. There's maybe like half a dozen readers that I know about, and maybe a few more I don't.  My mother and brother care most.  The sweetie might read things if they happen to show up in his feed reader.  Mostly I do it for the record of my own life.  And it's been quite useful for that.

What's your favourite post on your blog?

Don't have one. 

Any future plans for your blog? Maybe a redesign, a move to another platform, or adding a new feature?

This thing really needs to move to something more modern.  One that bakes in https naturally.  But the idea of moving it is just too daunting.  Maybe if I retire and have more time to think about such things.

Who else do you want to tag?

Ha.  Who even does that anymore??  The only two active bloggers I know that might even still read my blog from time to time are Dave2 and kapgar.

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.

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.

Last year or whenever it was, when they cancelled the work ball a few days before the event, we all agreed that we should go out somewhere anyway.  We never managed to arrange it and then it became Too Hard so that was that.  In January we again brought up doing it due to Bar 59 being the perfect place for it.  So last Saturday night we did it.

We got there at 18:00 to get a view during the day as well as at night.

LAKESIDE SPLASH - Vodka, Rum, Tequila, Gin, Blue Curacao & Lemon-lime Soda

Parmesan & Truffle Chips - Served with Aioli Sauce

Sunset over Belconnen

Margherita Pizza - Fresh Tomatoes, Mozzarella & Fragrant Basil. Drizzled with Olive Oil

Mixed Charcuterie & Cheese Plate - Combination of Cheese & Charcuterie Plates

The gang

COSMOPOLITAN - Vodka, Triple Sec (Cointreau), Cranberry Juice & Fresh Lime Juice

The gang

MARGARITA - Tequila, Cointreau & Fresh Lime Juice

Belconnen by night

Confit Garlic & Rosemary Pizza - Slow-Cooked Confit Garlic & Rosemary, Mozzarella. Drizzled With Olive Oil

So it was a perfectly pleasant night out.  But given that people forgot about it, double booked, or just didn't turn up, we only had seven people in the end.  If someone else organised another one I might go, but I dunno that I could be bothered organising it again myself.  Organising people is worse than herding cats.  And I'm allergic.

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.