Gosh what a busy week.

So Sunday a week ago was the Lego show at Ngunnawal.  Earlier in the day, which I didn't note last time, we went to Aldi and saw that they've changed their coin locks so my tool will no longer work with them.  Bastards.  I wouldn't mind using a coin if shopping centres could get off their asses and have a decent trolley return system, but they don't, which is why I'll continue to use my tool until it no longer works.

Monday morning I woke up at 4:15.  Hurrah.  And couldn't get back to sleep.  At least the day at work was relatively peaceful.  I cleaned out my locker and did a bit of inbox tidying.  After work we did some food shopping for Christmas.  But I was acting as a go-between for a couple of guys at work for a crisis that was going on, and so trying to rapidly type messages to both of them.  But OMFG iPhone autocorrect is infuriating sometimes.  It kept changing words that I'd typed correctly into different, incorrect, words, and so I'd have to keep retyping everything and sending correction message after correction message.  I swear I nearly smashed the damned phone onto the ground.  And I managed to screw up the steaks I cooked for dinner.  Yay.

Tuesday morning I woke up at 5:10.  Hurrah.  None of us were wanting to touch anything at work, because who wants to risk breaking anything so close to the break.  But as it turned out, the crisis the day before (still continuing Tuesday) was caused by someone changing something on Monday, and not telling their own damned team what they'd done.  So the others in the team had no idea that the problem was caused by one of their own.  Our team was dumbfounded.  I did however delete a bunch of Dev firewall rules for servers that no longer existed.  I figured if I broke anything in an environment that was being shut down anyway noone would care :)  Had a couple of sneaky drinks that we had leftover from the party before going home.  Had a super relaxing afternoon.  I even managed to finish scanning Mum's 1960s negatives and finish labelling our Hong Kong/Singapore photos, both of which I'd wanted to get done before Christmas, and I did!  In the evening we watched the Carols by Candlelight, which is so much better than the Sydney one.  It's more traditional and more mature and just not as *tacky* as Sydney.  

Look how low the lake is at the moment!  A good six inches down on its normal height.

I may have iced and sprinkled some of the gingerbread cookies.

This is the cast of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.  I got a better view of them on TV than I did in the theatre.

Wednesday.  Christmas Day.  Had a fairly relaxed morning.  Well other than having to take three quarters of an hour out of it to go feed Chrissie's animals, and clean up the cat poop one of the cats had done in the bath tub.  Hurrah.  The last hour before lunch was pretty busy, but the sweetie helped me with stuff so that was nice.  Annie and the family came over and we started snacking.  Then Mum arrived and we had Christmas lunch of prawns, ham, salad, bread, dips.  Then Stu put on stoopid YouTube videos so I went and did my own thing.  

We got the house some new towels for Christmas.

Mum brought this down from the cleanout at Diana and Grahams.  I can't believe noone else in their family snaffled this up.  And the wedding favours on top were from *our* wedding!

After everyone had left, Mum went off to go catch a tram, because they were free.  I went to put on a Christmas movie I had saved in my Netflix list, only to find that Netflix had deleted them all.  Bastards.  Moral of the story:  if you see something you want to watch on Netflix, watch it as soon as you can, because it won't be around for long.  Not the first time we've been caught.  I ended up watching The Movies that Made Us: Home Alone.  We watched Love Actually in the evening.  Well Mum and I did.  Stu ran away.

Thursday woke up early.  Hurrah.  Went to Bunnings in the morning with Mum.  Tried to have a sleep when we got back.  Failed.  Spent ages going through Mum's photos with her and updating labels with extra infos.  At one point we came across photos of the new Youth Hostel in Canberra that she was at the opening for in 1968.  So we went for a drive to try and find it.  We found it but the view is covered by trees, and even the building has had a lot of work done around it.  Had pizza for dinner and watched some BBT and into season 5 of Fuller House.  Played a couple of rounds of the basic game of Itchy Feet, a game I got for Christmas.  It was a little boring as the basic game, but may be better with the expansions, but I was too tired and cranky to feel like trying them.

Mum ate all the leftover prawns for us ;)

Friday woke up at 2am, didn't get back to sleep til after 3:30.  Then woke up around 6:30 with an aching spine.  Hurrah.  Mum went off to Chrissie's for the morning, which gave me peace and quiet to tidy the house and prepare lunch.  David arrived just before lunch, and we had roast pork with a lot of crackling and it was all very yummy.  Although not convinced by the stuffing (most of which oozed out and then burnt).  After lunch Mum left to go visit friends on her way home, David went to work and Stu went to the club, leaving me home alone.  I had a bit of a look at my todo list for the rest of the break but didn't actually do much.  Had some crackers and dip for dinner and a piece of crackling.  Healthy dinner, yay.  Watched 28 Days in the evening which I enjoyed.

This is what we call Five O'Clock Charlie - the smoke blowing in from the east.  It's usually more like 7pm though.  These photos were taken just four minutes apart.

Saturday woke up at 5:30 with an aching spine.  Hurrah.  With no car and no sweetie we couldn't do any shopping.  So grabbed the little brother to go storage tub shopping.  Basically there's a bunch of stuff in the dungeon and the spare room that's just all over the ground because there's no cupboard space, and I don't want to put any of it in the garage because of all the bugs.  But you can't even walk in those rooms because they're so choked up, so we can't even start with the decluttering of them.  So the idea is to use tubs as temporary storage to clear the rooms enough to be able to work in them again.  Once things are clearer, those tubs will be for more permanent storage of things that are in cardboard boxes right now - not good because, silverfish.  Spent the afternoon rearranging and filling tubs and getting rid of stuff.  Tidied the linen cupboard, the garage, the dungeon room, the hobby room.  So that was pretty good.  In the evening I watched Phar Lap, which I *might* have seen once more since seeing it at the movies in about 1983, but may not have.  Lots of been-there's heh.  Started watching Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, but then David pointed out that The Sound of Music was on, so may have accidentally watched the rest of that.  Even though I have it on DVD with no ads.  Whoops.

As I was cleaning out the linen cupboard, I found that my roller blades had completely disintegrated!! :(

When I was in the garage working, I heard a scratching on the door outside.  When I went to look, there was an itty bitty little blue tongue lizard.  He was pretty energetic too because he was so warm but I still managed to catch him for a photo.

Sunday was lots more tidying and organising.  Also a bunch of computer work.  Finished watching Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, which was silly but a bit of fun.  I totally want a food machine ;)

Monday not a lot of physical stuff, mostly computer stuff, including catching up on blogging.  Went out for lunch and did a bit of shopping.  Picked up a heap of lemons off the ground, and made a lemon meringue pie with five of them.  Managed to piss everyone off after dinner, and so instead of watching Die Hard 4 we all got grumpy with each other and did our own thing.  I watched Sliding Doors which I first saw a few years ago.  

Blue sky!  Haven't seen blue sky in weeks!  It's gone again now though.

Today I've pretty much been doing computer stuff all day - downloading and processing photos and blogging.  The weather is making me extremelly tense.  Canberra new year festivities have been cancelled.  We were thinking about going to the club but don't think we're going to now.  I certainly couldn't concentrate on writing up my year in review post so that will have to wait.  Have a happy new year and stay safe everyone!

Yeah so Sunday night had a great night sleep but woke up with a sore throat Monday morning.  By Monday evening I knew I was getting sick.  Didn't sleep well - in fact was in bed for four or five hours before getting any actual sleep.  So Tuesday spent most of the day in bed.  Watched a documentary on Die Hard (from "The Movies that Made Us").  

Slept quite well Tuesday night so worked from home Wednesday.  But OMFG the STOOPID!!  Just dealing with people who don't understand basic networking, or in fact how their own applications work.  So frustrating.  Even the brother type person got cranky at me and I just wanted to rage quit the whole day.

Got the sweetie to trim my hair.  Asked for two inches, got six.  oops.

Wednesday night I was awake for hours coughing and so zombie tired Thursday morning, so gave up on that day as well.  Spent all morning in bed, then we got ready and headed down the coast for a long weekend for Kit and Pete's wedding.

Back home Sunday night.  Still sick.  Still coughing.

Back at work today.  Still sick.  Still coughing.

My todo list is out of control.  The house is out of control.  

Stop the world, I want to get off.

At the end of June I was so filled with rage at the hypocrisy of our change management team that I took a slightly long lunch and went jigsaw shopping at Vinnies.  This 400 piece one wasn't priced though, so they had to make up a price at the register.  The 1000 piece one I got was $5, so you'd think this would be $2.  No, they charged me $4.  #grunt.  Did it in early July on the window sil.  Complete too, surprisingly.

This was the other jigsaw I got that day.  The California coast line.  At 1000 pieces it's a bit of a struggle to fit on the window sil, and took a lot longer to do.  Also complete.

It was very badly cut though - it'd gotten misaligned in the machine, so the cuts were too close and pieces were broken.

This one was in the break out area.  After a morning tea it was still there with most of the sky and water to be done.  So I finished it.  Whoops.

Had to dig into my supply of completed jigsaws for another small one to do at work.  Did it without the box, because the box has five jigsaws in it.  I did have photo from last time though. 

I was with Neil when he bought this.  I might have strongly encouraged him to do so, so that I could do it as well ;)  He never ended up doing it (he started at Christmas with his family but didn't finish it, and hadn't cleared space to do it at home).  So I borrowed it and did it in a weekend.  So much fun.

It has visual puns/clues for one hundred different movies.  I think I got about 3/5ths to begin with.  Then I looked at the location guide which lists the movies in alphabetical order.  From that I was able to guess some more movies, and realise some of my guesses were wrong because they were out of order.  From that I ended up with about 3/4 of the movies.

Spoilers ahead now. 

The problem with the jigsaw was the lack of resolution on some of the pictures.  Like this one.  It looks a bit like a black Admiral Ackbar, but is in fact Iron Lady.  Which maybe I would have had half a chance of getting if I could have seen her face.

Same with this one.  Looks like Airplane! to me, but was in fact Snakes on a Plane.  How am I meant to even see that?

Or this.  Some little kid sitting on a building.  How the heck are you meant to see that's Young Frankenstein?  You can *just* see it once you know.

This I thought was Super Eight until I saw the order was wrong.  Turns out it was The Angry Eight.

Some of them were a lot of fun to guess (like this one, guesses?).

Others even with the answer I was like.. how..?  This one took me *ages* to get even once I knew the answer.

Anyone see it?

And some were a bit of a stretch, like Reservoir Dogs

Definitely a lot of fun though.

And this other small one from the same pack as the tigers.

Some books in my recent readings..

The Cult of LEGO, by John Baichtal and Joe Meno.  This was a birthday (or Christmas?) present some years ago that I'd read a fair bit of but never finished.  Finished it reading in bed a couple of months ago.  Interesting look at all sorts of aspects of the Lego universe.

You Always Remember the First Time, edited by B.S. Johnson.  I picked this up at a Bookcrossing meetup years and years ago.  This might have been more interesting if I'd actually heard of any of the authors.  But a 1975 British book isn't going to have anyone much I know in.  Some of the stories were really good and well written.  Some of them were practically unreadable.  One even sounded made up (sex slave to a maharaja? really?).  Meh.

The Reader, by Bernhard Schlink.  Stu must have had this book since it came out, and we went to see it at the movies back in 2009.  I remember enjoying the movie.  The book was pretty good too.  Might have to see the movie again at some point.

On the Road, by Jack Kerouac.  This was recommended in Little Brother along with Cryptonomicon.  But Cryptonomicron weighs about three kilos, so wasn't going to cart that around on the bus.  So took On the Road instead.  OMFG this has to be one of the most boring books in history.  Nothing happens.  It's a rambling, at times manic, drivel of words, about thoroughly unlikeable characters who criss-cross the country multiple times by various means.  Urgghh.  So boring.  I'm half way through it.  Unless someone can give me a pretty compelling reason, I doubt I'll ever finish it.  (I stopped at the beginning of Part 3 - where there was a bookmark, likely from Stu who also probably never finished it)

Monday night the sweetie was home so he cooked dinner - salmon with a tartare sauce he made himself.  Very nice and very much appreciated.

After dinner and photo labelling I wanted to have some *fun* with Vic's Lego (after it all just being work so far).  So I started on the Cinderella Castle, because it was almost complete (likely because girls take better care of their things than boys do).  The palette sure is different to boys Lego too.

Tuesday lunch had lunch with Chrissie which was nice, although fairly brief.

Tuesday the sweetie was home but he didn't cook dinner.  We had leftovers.  

Then I finished the castle.

Wednesday the sweetie was home but he didn't cook dinner.  We had pizza delivered. 

Instead of photo labelling I spent all evening typing up all the notes from the last chat Kit and I had had about the wedding.  

Thursday we were going to go to Dumpling Inn with Hannah and Rita, but someone had the idea we should try Pizza Artigiana.  So we did that.  We had three very nice (and very thin!) pizzas - Patate e Salciccia - PAOLA - thinly sliced potatoes with mozzarella, Italian pork sausage (I think they forgot that ingredient) and thyme ($20); Quattro Formaggi - SANDRA - mozzarella, provolne, gorgonzola, and shaved pecorino ($20); Prosciutto Crudo - AMBRA - tomato base, prosciutto, mozzarella, rocket, parmesan and balsamic vinegar ($21).

And a nice Rocket and parmesan salad - rocket lettuce with shaved parmesan and a balsamic vinegar and virgin olive oil dressing ($10).

And we might have gotten the nutella pizza (which I don't think is on the menu).  

Friday I took a random day off, so used that do a bit of houseworky stuff, and then get ready to go down to the coast.

It was crazy windy on the drive.  All the wind turbines at Tarago were shut down.  I was a bit nervous about a tree branch falling on the car (and we did have to round a small tree partially blocking the road).  (edit: a father and son died when a tree fell on their car in Victoria on Sunday night :( )

Had dinner and just chatted when we got there. 

Pete has a new fish tank with nine neon tetras (Clone 1-9), six male guppies (red spotty tail 1 and 2, yellow spotty tail 1 and 2, blue and grey 1 and 2) and a sucking catfish (Dyson).

And Petal was very excited to see us.

Kit has a new snake.  She wants to call it Richard.  Pete wants to call it Monty.

And three of these are still going something like eighteen years later..

Saturday morning was more animal stuff.

Then we headed out to have a look at the wedding venue and ask questions and take notes.

Had lunch at the Australian Hotel in Nowra.  $10 for quite a nice steak (better than the Rashay's $5 ones).

Then we all went to the zoo.  It was still crazy windy.  I'll save that for another post.

Pete made pizzas for dinner (epic thick with toppings heh)

Chatted and played a game of Kismet (I won, somehow).

Sunday morning I showed Kit the bridesmaids dress.  We debated the best way to fix the problems with it.

Then I sat down and went through the wedding planning notes with them.  Well I tried to.  I'd been wanting to do it all weekend but getting the two of them to pay attention for more than thirty seconds at a time was like trying to herd cats.  Super frustrating.  So we left a lot later than we'd planned to, and just got chips and snacks at the servo for a very late lunch.

Got home and the house was freezing (10C when we got home, minimum of 6C).  Had chicken kiev for dinner and super stressed out by Apple.

Tonight I caught up on last week's photo labelling, as well as getting a good head start on this week's.  Was in a completely different mental state and was able to process all my photos from the past week.  I was so stressed out last night my brain couldn't *see* what I was doing.  Blinded by rage???  

So no movies at all this week.  Just a lot of feeling cold.  And a lot of pizza.  And a (mostly) nice weekend away.

So I pretty much always get depressed on Sunday nights.  But throw into the mix the fact that APPLE SUX and everything just becomes too hard.  Apple is STILL so buggy I can't download timelapse movie files off my phone with Windows Explorer.  I first noticed this when I first started taking timelapse movies using the inbuilt iOS feature.  If you try to copy the video file it says "a device attached the system is not functioning" and you have to reboot the phone just have another go at getting the *rest* of the files off.

This happened at least last year and I ranted long and hard about it, and the fact that the only way I could get the files off my phone at all was with iCloud.  But do you think I can find that rant?  Or even the movies I took?

No.

Because I suck.  And Apple sux.

No blog for you.

Edit: found the movies.  They were taken at the end of 2017 on my old iPhone. So this bug has persisted on two different phones with multiple versions of iOS.  Does this company actually care at all about people like me?  Guess not.

Edit again:  Actually I don't think I could use iCloud.  I just tried again and now I remember I had problems with that too - I get "Can't play - This item was encoded in a format that's not supported.  0xc00d5212".  Maybe I sent it via email.. which was ok for smaller files but was problematic for bigger files.  I wish I could find that rant and my solution :(

Edit again:  Ok so yeah emailing the file worked (for this file because it was small enough).  I think for larger ones I had to use this "fix" (not a fix at all because from memory it left the JPGs in some weird format, so I basically had to set this setting, get the files, then turn the setting back again).

I hate Apple So. Much.

I've just wasted a good chunk of my evening wasting time because of Apple's CRAP.  I should have just gotten an Android.

Such a busy week this week.

Monday was crazy epic busy.  Had leftover lasagna for dinner, finished day 28 of holiday photo labelling, although was too exhausted to do the full quota for the day.

Tuesday I had my quota of photos done by 19:30, so started watching Big Bang Theory from the beginning now that it's on Netflix.  Then I watched Kramer vs Kramer which I'd never seen, while fighting with my backups (my 2T external hard drive is really full, need to rework the backup schedule a little).

Wednesday was mostly fighting with the proxies.  I had it good for a year and a half when I didn't have to touch them, but now I'm back it's mostly my responsibility.  Was exhausted and sick of cooking and sick of leftovers so relented and let the sweetie order pizza.  Which of course made me feel like a big fat blob.  I did get over 9000 photos labelled (86% done), but we forgot to get milk.

Thursday I put on It Takes Two, because I don't think I've ever seen any of the Olsen Twins movies.  It was all a bit of fluff, much like Parent Trap only they weren't sisters.  I was all squee about the New York been-theres though.  One of the shots was of the Metlife building (this was a 1995 movie) and I was like, it was the Pan-Am building in 1979 in Kramer vs Kramer hehe.

Sailed under this six months and one day before seeing the movie

Went up there in 2000

And there

Walked past this statue of William Sherman in Central Park exactly six months before seeing this movie

Was there in 2000 too

Fun times.

Friday had a drink with the sweetie at the Waldorf.  Took photos of the pretty arch.

We went to Hero Sushi for dinner, but as always it was disappointing.  They did have plenty of takoyaki out this time, but it was just barely warm :(  No other interesting hot food to speak of.  Did our food shopping on the way home.

Saturday was pretty quiet.  Didn't do much in the morning.  Had the second last ancient hot dog roll out of the freezer and made pizza subs with it (slowwwwly getting through all the ancient food in there).

Stumpy even came out for a while in the afternoon and stayed til the heat turned off.

Saw these wispy clouds when I was bringing in the washing.

Mostly just Lego picking in the afternoon.  Watched Made of Honor in the afternoon/evening.  Again, fluff, but I really didn't like the title.  If he was *actually* "made of honor" he wouldn't try to break up the wedding.  Lame.  And get this, the opening shot in the movie was filmed BACKWARDS!  Completely retarded.  Here's a screen grab vs reality.

Watched The Rocky Horror Picture Show after dinner, need to try and brush up on the songs for the club night in a couple of months.

Today I did a bunch of housework in the morning and achieved quite a lot.  Just nothing on my todo list :(  Stumpy was out the entire time the heat was on.  Maybe he thinks winter is over.  Lego picking all afternoon - finished picking for another six sets.  Had slow cooked lamb shanks for dinner as per this recipe.  The recipe is nice enough, it's just lacking .. *something* .. Not sure what.  I had heaps of corn flour so it wasn't as watery as it's been in the past.  Just lacks a certain mouth feel.  hrmm.

Continued Brooklyn 99 and Homeland.

Then fought with Apple again.  After several weeks of it not screwing around with my files, this week it trashed most of my PNGs

Hate Apple.  Hate.

And there we are for another week.

Over Saturday/Sunday last weekened I watched The Breakup.  To start with I don't know why on earth she ever got together with him when clearly he was never going to listen to her anyway.  And I'd be just as ticked off as her at his behaviour at the beginning.  But then it all got a little childish and silly.

Monday night I got up to three quarters of the way through holiday photo labelling.  I finished sorting Death Star Lego into types of pieces.  Pretty insane.  

Tuesday I dug out my phone microscope lens to take a photo of the spelling mistake on our $50 note.  

I also thought I'd been sorting Lego Death Star 75159, when in fact the set I have is 10188.  They're almost identical.  Dumb Lego, dumb.  Also started watching Bridget Jones' Diary which I haven't seen in forever.

Wednesday morning it was a little frosty.  In the evening I finished labelling day 26 of the last trip and finished watching Bridget Jones.

Thursday was whiskey night!  I was sensible and only had half nips of them all ;)

Friday I had a lot of fun playing with a new monitoring tool we have.  And we finished the jigsaw Lachie left for us.  Had a nightmare ride on the bus sitting in front of a youth smacking gum the entire way.  Smack smack smack smack smack smack smack smack.  Urgh.  I hate people.

Had a drink with the sweetie at Shorty's.  Which was quite loud and the table next to us was full of drunk people.  hrmmm.

Then we went to Kimchi.  Or Chez Kimchi actually.  What's with that?  They trying to do fusion French/Korean or something?  What *was* a fusion, or rather a hot stinking mess was the menu.  It was all different styles as you went through it which doesn't work well with my brain. 

And a bunch of things were labelled "spicy" but no indication of *how* spicy.  I don't mind some spice, but not really hot spice, but trying to get that information off a menu is problematic in most places (I like menus that have a chili rating on each dish).  

Anyways, the condiments came out and we were hungry so scoffed these, they were pretty good.

Next up were "Modeum-Gunmandu" - Assorted pan-fried dumplings.  Ok, but two of the ones I had were cold in the middle.

Then "Dolsot-kimchi bokkeum bap" - Kimchi fried rice in a hot stone bowl.  This was pretty good.

And finally "Snow cheese chicken" - Snow on the branches of the fried chicken! (Cheese).  This was pretty good too although I was getting too full to enjoy it as much as I would normally have ;)

We loled at the Engrish on the door on the way out

Saw this in the Canberra Centre and thought it looked pretty cool.

Then we had a look in Muji - kinda like Japanese Ikea.

Didn't turn the heater on when we got home because there seemed little point when we were going to bed soon anyway.  But it did mean the house was *cold* overnight.  6C in the study according to the min/max thermometer!!  Yikes.

Saturday was at work all day watching graphs.  Nothing particularly exciting happened, although we did have a couple of complete mysteries we'll need to solve.  

Stu made up a vegetable stock in the slow cooker, and cooked cheesy polenta for dinner.  The polenta would have been nice enough as a side, but as the only dish I was practically gagging by the end of it :(  Watched Live and Let Die in the evening.

Today was a nice quiet day.  Did a bit of housework, a bit of Lego inventorying, and food shopping.  

Watched Bridget Jones Edge of Reason, which I didn't think I'd seen since seeing it at the movies with George in 2004, but according to the blog I watched it in 2007 as well. 

Stu cooked a mushroom risotto in the slow cooker for dinner, which actually turned out pretty good.

Watched Brooklyn 99 (first episode of season 3), then cleaned the kitchen and blogged.

Remind me to email the mother type person ..

Tuesday Neil and I had dinner at Pho Hub.  I had flaming chicken with hoisin sauce.  And it really was flaming!  Neil had his usual.

Then we went and saw The Lego Movie 2.

Wednesday night was a trivia night.  We won.  Again.  The organisers could have done with a little more practise, or at least have someone like Doc vet it all to save arguments with the crowd hehe.  The first three rounds were pretty tough, but the second three rounds were somewhat easier.  We did well with our Joker (double points) round, but annoyingly, not all rounds were worth the same.  Some were out of 10, others up to 12.5.  hrmmmm.

Thursday a bunch of us went to Chompy's for lunch.  I had the Iron Mikee.

In the evening we saw the episode of Fuller House where the kids go to the prom.  So then I watched the episode from 1993 where DJ and Steve go to their prom.  Silly really.

Friday Annie had her appendix out.  Must be contagious!  In the evening we watched The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.  After enjoying it at the movies because my expectations had been lowered, this time I felt a lot more like the reviewers that said it was way too long.  It's kinda tedious watching movies that are just massive cgi-fests.

Saturday morning was just house stuff.  At lunch we went out and got a new light for the bedroom fan light.  Had lunch at Yat Bun Tong, but couldn't face shopping at Coles in the mall so went off to Jamo to do food shopping.  When we finally got home it was pretty much time to make dinner.  The other week I'd made up a tomato sauce with a big batch of Kit's tomatoes.  So made a bechamel sauce and made up a big lasagna (from Lana's recipe).  It turned out quite well (looks a little overdone, prolly should have covered with foil for some of the cooking).

A little while later Kit and Pete came over.  They'd come up to see her brother and family before they went back to Germany, and came back to our place to stay the night.  They had some of the lasagna which seemed kind of appropriate, and we chatted and watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail and went to bed a whole lot later than I wanted to.  But I did manage to sleep in til 8am old time, 7am new time, so that was fine.

Spent way way way too long picking parts for five Lego sets today.  This whole process is going to take *forever* :(

Kit and Pete eventually went home.  Was feeling a little lost this arvo.  Cooked a nice roast dinner though, and we watched Fuller House (bringing us to the end of season 4) and Discovery.  

Also, that light we bought:  didn't work.  So don't know if it's the light or the fitting or a seemingly non-existent starter.  Very upsetting.

Friday:  Farewell to Cath and Stewie.  Again.

Saturday:  Quite a productive morning.  Doctor mid morning.  Late brunch at Gus' Place with the sweetie.  Photo processing all afternoon.  Cleaned my computer desktop.  Cooked a whole heap of Kit's tomatos for dinner with some gluten free pasta (she had a whole freezer drawer full of them which she gave to us before they moved).  I liked it but the sweetie thought it was too fiddly picking out stalks of thyme and tomato skins (you can eat tomato skins you know! ;) ).  Watched Discovery and Dunkirk.

Sunday:  Photo processing.  Finished processing all 10000 (and 51) of my photos from the trip.  And then we downloaded Stu's :)

Monday:  Posted my Canberra 1986-2016 blog to the Canberra Reddit.  At least a few hundred people had a look which was pretty cool.  Although Reddit's UI is pitiful.  For posting there was a link tab, an image tab and a description tab.  I filled out all three, but only the link ever posted.  So stoopid, Reddit!!  Yet another storm rolled over in the evening.  This one was pretty close so turned off my computer.  Which was annoying because almost everything on my todo list involved the computer!  Smashed out a 192 piece jigsaw while I waited.

Tuesday:  Began processing Stu's photos.  Android (at least the last two Stu's had) has a SUPER annoying bug where the forward facing camera has no date taken exif data saved.  Which makes it annoying to geotag, because apps rely on that field.  Some photos I manually geotagged, others I forced exif data into them based on the date modified field (with GeoSetter itself) so could auto geotag them.  Very very annoying.  Especially when like half of all Stu's photos on the holiday were selfies!

Thursday:  Realised it's been five years since: a) Dad went and carked it, b) we first attempted to watch MacGyver on DVD (only got half a dozen episodes in), c) Fiona was here with Bruce.

Friday: Drove to Sydney.  Will save that for a separate post.

This week I've been trying to catch up on All The Things.  Starting with all my iPhone photos and screenshots from when I first got the phone in November.  Photos are easy to work with now that I can use Faststone to force the date modified field to be the exif date taken field, so that fixes up all the photos.  For the PNGs (screenshots) and other miscellaneous files (movies and portrait edit information files) I got an app - BulkFileChanger - which is a nifty tool to modify the date modified field.  You can offset by x minutes/hours, which was super useful for fixing up photos from different time zones for the trip, or you can manually set to a specific time.  So I have to look while the phone is plugged into the computer what the actual date should be, then fix it with this app.  A fair amount of work, but gets the job done.  Although the last time I downloaded all the files none of the new ones were wrong.  Maybe 12.1.2 fixed it???? 

Last night while trying to backup, the computer had a sad and I ended up rebooting it.  But did you know you can only reopen closed tabs ONCE when you quit Chrome?  I quit it twice and lost all the tab history.  That was pretty annoying.  I had closed and saved a lot already, and history got most of the rest back.  But who knows what I'm missing..

Also last night my 2 terabyte backup drive filled up!!  Gasp!!  I deleted a couple of big things and it finished (took forever because it needed several weeks worth of photo processing).  Today I bought a 4 terabyte drive.  Started backing up tonight, but it's only a fraction of the way through.  Will be backing up all through the weekend at this rate!  Then need to rework the backup strategy so there's always at least two offsite copies of everything....

Tuesday afternoon we also got a dust storm that obliterated Mt Ainslie..

Tonight was Fuller House and blogging.  All the blogs...