Sunday.  23rd.  Leftover chicken feast for dinner.  DS9 2.1.  Recopied all the MOVs I have on my phone with Windows.  

Monday.  Early night, slept ok.  NEIL again - did a bunch of rearranging of mail routes and holding areas to make my life easier.  Salmon and salad for dinner, with a creamy lemon dill dressing, although it was very runny because it was cream - next time I'll use yoghurt.

DS9 2.2.  I reckon Frank Langella totally looks like Christopher Lee.  Google that crap, I'm not the only one that thinks so!  Finished culling/adjusting/resizing Adelaide photos.  All the photos taken on my new camera are a bit .. muddy ..  Will have to check the settings and see what other options there are.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly ok.  Noticed that Windoze 11 brought back the ability to right click on a directory in the left pane of Explorer and choose New -> Folder (previously you had to right click then Show More Options -> New -> Folder)..  That had been pissing me off since day one of using Windoze 11, so that was nice.  NEIL again at work, doing more policies for sorting mail.  Steak and salad for dinner with creamy garlic mushrooms.

Once again I managed to cook it nicely.  I may convince Stu to like steak after all haha.  DS9 2.3. Talked to the mother type person.  She's doing better, and said they pulled up the security video which showed her fall (she fell right at the entrance to her retirement village) and you could see that it was in fact just simply tripping over a raised bit of concrete, not a blackout, so that was a huge relief!  Mum photo picking - from all the weddings we've been to, so that was a bit of fun, lots of looking through photos of our wedding too.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok. Windoze 11 has recently started randomly moving windows off to my other screen overnight.  So I'll turn on my right screen in the morning only to find some of my windows aren't there anymore, they've been shoved off to my secondary monitor on the left.  Why is windoze 11 so TRASH?? WHY WHY WHY????  Less time having to be NEIL with my policies in place - less time picking through big mail queues.  Dealing with other crap instead heh.  Leftover lemon pepper dill chicken for dinner.  DS9 2.4.  Mum emailed through a video taken on a phone of the security video and yeah you can clearly see her trip rather than pass out.

Thursday.  Went to bed at 22:00.  Went to sleep at 01:00.  Sigh.  NEIL again for the day.  They're threatening to go back to managed desktops at work, which will be a massive pain in the @$$ because in order to use my own computer (you know, to actually work productively with a proper keyboard and two large screens) I'll need a dock or kvm just to use my own computer.  So dumb.  Ok drinks, although bartender was late so we were wondering if the bar would even open at all.  This cockatoo was hanging around behaving rather strangely.  I went over and it was quite tame (even let me hand feed it).  Wonder if it was someone's escaped pet.  

Pizzas then DS9 2.5.

Friday.  Early night and slept well hurray.  NEIL again, hopefully the last day for a while!! 

Had this miso ramen for lunch - $5.80 for two servings from Daiso.  Wasn't too bad.  Needed some pork belly though!

Kievs for dinner.

DS9 2.6 then Death in Paradise 14.4 - another ridiculous episode.

Saturday.  I knew that because I slept well on Thursday night I'd sleep badly on Friday.  Sure enough, awake from ~1:30 to ~4:30 sigh.  Zombie morning, pretty much a complete writeoff.  Tried to pay tax (last time I tried the site was down for maintenance).  Why do they make it so damned HARD??  Why can't they make it like utilities where you get a nice clear bill and details to pay.  Tax you're *lucky* to get a cryptic "You have mail in mygov" email (or in my case, the first you hear about it is an sms that it's overddue).  Then when you login it's still not even clear what you're paying.  Like is this PAYG for this quarter? Next quarter? What?  Just make it EASY FFS!!  But.  All the rain today!  Hurray!  Blogged my recent trip to Adelaide.  The new light I got for the two foot tank looked rather.. dim.. and flickery.  I tried replacing the starter (of course I opened up the wrong end first didn't I??) but no luck.  Tried another bulb, it seemed ok, and tried the bulb in another fitting, still dim.  #grunt.  Windoze 11 Notepad sux.  If the file you have open is too big (like maybe a couple of hundred KB) it will literally just skip entering keys you've typed.  So you have to back and keep reentering them.  So dumb. Most likely it's all the spell checking and autocorrection crap.  I'm still on the fence whether to give up on it and go back to classic Notepad.  I do like the state saving - you can reboot and not lose anything you have open.  Handy when Windoze REBOOTS AGAINST YOUR WILL whenever it feels like it.  Sausages and salad for dinner then watched Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.  Even though we put it on at dinner time it still finished after 21:00. hrmmm.

Sunday.  Slept mostly ok.  Definitely had a lot more energy today.  Although mostly just house stuff, food shopping, returned the fish tank light and got a new one which seems better, cleaning etc.

We're worried Stumpy is dying.  He's not been himself the past couple of weeks.  Lethargic and not basking. hrmmmm.  He is around 18 years old though, and typical age for a blue tongue in captivity is 15-20 years.....

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

Sunday.  9th.  Got home from the coast and spent some time doing Dotz, then closing off browser tabs.  I really feel like I need to spend less time on the computer/internet/phone... hrmmmm.  Downloaded photos from the week and blogged the last two weeks and some of the coast weekend.  Leftover mince with cauliflower rice and cheese for dinner.  Death in Paradise 14.1.  Somehow managed to lose a BRAND NEW HAIR TIE!!!  Had a slight meltdown because I'd been out of sorts all day, and this just sent me over the edge.  

Monday.  Went to bed early (like 20:30) but woke up at 12:45 and stayed awake for HOURS.  Sigh.  So not transfunctionating during the day.  Mostly just did house stuff during the day, which all took a lot longer than normal because I wasn't transfunctionating.  Finally finally got a bit of rain around 18:00 (even the weeds are dying at the moment!!).  Need to bribe the little brother into visiting before daylight savings finishes so I can see what I'm cooking.  Had lamb chops from Chris's and cabbage for dinner.  I never used to like lamb chops growing up because they were just too damned fiddly with all the fat and bones.  After forty years (and almost never having eaten them in the meantime) I have to say my opinion hasn't changed much.  Sure they're tasty, but just too annoying.

Tried to watch Stranger Things but nothing would connect to the Chromecast, even after rebooting it, the wifi and Stu's phone.  Did a bit of a Google and found everyone on the internet complaining about it.  Enshittification much??  We ended up watching a bit of Hard Quiz.  I think I could answer ONE question - football, meat pies, <what> and Holden cars?

Tuesday.  Slightly early night.  Actually slept quite well.  Hurray.  NEIL at work, who was off getting bits of him chopped out.  Chromecast still down.  Turns out an intermediate certificate expired so stuff couldn't authenticate.  I wonder if Google are debating whether or not to fix it or let the generation 2 devices all just die and force people to buy new ones.  I imagine that would piss off enough people that they would refuse to buy anything Google again.  I also got my quarterly reminder at work to check for expiring certificates coming up in the next quarter.  If only Google had done that.

Wednesday.  The brother type person called me while I was at lunch.  He could come TONIGHT.  Except I didn't have a new light to install yet.  He suggested Bunnings.  I walked up to Project Lighting instead.  They had a record of what we bought last time and I got something similar.  Not the same of course.  No no no.  Maybe that's a good thing though because turns out Mercator Franklin lights are TRASH!!!  Seriously LED lights should last years and years and years.  Not SIX years!!  And it's not like you can just replace a bulb, now you have to REPLACE THE WHOLE DAMNED FITTING!!! #hate  Anyways, so David picked me up after work and installed the new light! Hurray!!  Bestest brother ever. 

Had a few drinks and chatted then he got a bee in his bonnet to setup the PS3 to be able to use Netflix and Amazon Prime.  Did I mention I have the bestest brother ever?? :)

Thursday.  Woke up around 2:45 for several hours.  Sigh.  Although surprisingly unzombielike. 

NEIL again for the day.  Julian's farewell at drinks which was nice (I called the Japanese whisky, but not Lego Himeji Castle :) ).  Pizza with blue cheese for dinner!

DS9 1.13.  Another dumb episode.

Friday.  Slept fairly well.  NEIL at work.  Brown Food Friday!!!

DS9 1.14 and Death in Paradise 14.2.

Saturday.  Went to bed at 21:30 but didn't get to sleep til after 00:30.  Sigh.  Then meh sleep.  So twice this week I've had crap sleep the night before a day off.  Sigh.  Zombie morning, mostly house stuff.  Did some Dotz and even did a jigsaw in the late afternoon - 500 pieces in an hour and a quarter flat!  I asked the sweetie what's for dinner?  His response:

Google fixed the Chromecast issue.  Haven't looked up what they did.  Watched DS9 1.14.  Another meh episode.  Does DS9 actually get any better?  Most of season 1 is lame.  Stranger Things 1.5.  They finally banded together after all attackings things separately.  Reminded me in one place of E.T.  :)  

Sunday.  Slept mostly ok.  Got a bee in my bonnet to write a script to swap out Picasa database directories.  And spent a chunk of the day tagging people in photos.  Whoops.  Also gave Neil a lift to the hospital for antibiotics (did you know "hospital at home" is a thing?  You stay home but have to pop into the hospital every day for treatment.  Advantages and disadvantages - nice that you can hang out in your own house but a pain to have to trek into the hospital every day). 

Also.  Why TF does windoze reset the sort order of my directories EVERY DAMNED TIME IT REBOOTS???  Far out it pisses me off.

Have had like three drops of rain this afternoon.  So much for showers.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monday.  3rd.  You might be missing a few days.  They'll be over in my Australian Holidays blog soon.  Slept okish til about 5 then that was it for sleep.  Busy morning before work dong two loads of washing and trying to get organised from not having a weekend.  Spent much of the day trying to catch up with work, on account of missing three days last week.  Very nice salmon and salad for dinner.  DS9 1.9 then Dotz for a while - first time in ages I've had a chance.  Downloaded my photos from the weekend.  While I was away I let the phone set the time zone.  Everything was ok until right near the end when one of the photos jumped back to Canberra time zone, then back to Adelaide time for the next one.  This happened straight after I took photos in burst mode (by accident).  This is exactly what happened to me in America two years ago - when it would jump around time zones, mostly after taking non-standard photo types - like panoramas or videos or whatever.  So I turned off the auto-set time zone setting again, cause I don't trust Apple not to randomly change the time zone of my photos whenever it feels like it.

Tuesday.  Took a while to get to sleep.  Distracted day at work being NEIL.  Very nice eye fillet steak and salad for dinner.  Stu bought these steaks on the weekend which is unusual for him cause he rarely eats steak.  I let them rest for like an hour before I cooked them, and they turned out really well - tender and juicy and nicely pink in the middle.  Stu might be convinced to eat steak more often heh.

DS9 1.10.  Dumb episode.  Reminded me a bit of that movie Cube.  One of the lowest ranked according to ASTRA (Australian Star Trek Ratings Analysis - which has never been posted to the internet, it was only ever on Usenet back in the 90s).  

Wednesday.  Okish sleep.  It was nice and cool at least.  Slightly more productive day.  Stu cooked up a big batch of mince.  I cooked a cauliflower bake and All The Garlic.  

DS9 1.11.  The Grand Nagus' lips looked familiar.  They turned out to be Wallace Shawn's haha

Thursday.  Another distracted day.  Lunch at Lighty for Julian's farewell.

See if you can pick which ones were on the Canon and which on the iPhone..

Bruce's farewell at drinks, pizzas, DS9 1.12, bed.

Friday.  Early night.  Slept through til nearly 6 which was good.  Felt overwhelmed with my todo list and being away two weekends in a row.  hrmmm.  

Ever wondered what potato fruit looks like?

The other week we thought we should get some meat that we could slow cook.  Market Meats had a 2kg piece of pork neck that looked promising.  So we got it.  Turns out it was all meat and not meat with bones in the middle.  Winning!  

Found a recipe online that seemed simple enough.

So mix up a heap of garlic, a tablespoon of bacon fat (cause I had some, otherwise just use oil) and a heap of thyme (I can't remember if I added that parsley at the end).

Rub it all over the pork

They said "a handful of bayleaves" so I probably could have used more (hey! I'm not driving!)

Come back five or six hours later

Shred it all up

I didn't get any photos, but at the end, take all the sauce from the slow cooker and boil it up with a stock cube (that bone broth in the photo above was all solidified), 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar, a generous tbsp corn flour, maybe a cup or so of water (not sure how much I used - I thought I used too much but I think it was ok).  Boil it all for a bit til it thickens.

Edit: did this again and got a photo this time.  Also, don't add a cup of water, only add enough to make a slurry - it'll be a lot quicker to thicken!

Then mix it all back in the slow cooker.

I had to put some in the freezer, then we spent the next two weeks getting through the rest of the leftovers!  So good!!!!

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

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

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok.

Potato fruit!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sunday.  26th.  Leftovers for dinner, then went over to give Lily her 21st birthday presents.

Monday.  Bit late getting to sleep, then woke up at like 5.

Spent much of the day on my blog doing some catchup blog entries including a couple from 21 years ago.  Started to look at why Google isn't indexing my site very well anymore.  One error it complained about is canonical links being http.  The problem is I can't really do anything about that cause I have no idea how to fix MTEntryPermalink - <link rel="canonical" href="<$mt:EntryPermalink encode_html="1"$>"> cause I'm dumb.  It'll be buried deep deep deep in the Movable Type code somewhere.  Sad times.  Leftovers for dinner, Death in Paradise 13.6, Wednesday 1.3.  Then went and tried for some more comet photos on the new camera.

Tuesday.  Went to bed/sleep a little late, but woke up early still.  Decided to go to work (had been debating taking the day off).  Tidied up a bunch of doco from all the deleting I did on Friday.  Luv-a-Duck for dinner that we picked up when we went shopping today (Stu also cooked up a bunch of keto food).

Death in Paradise 13.7 then Mum photo picking.

Wednesday.  Took ages to get to sleep, even though it was nice and COLD after stoopidity of the day's heat.  Slept in past 6 though. 

Bit of crap in the morning then mostly planning out mail server upgrade (need to build new vms).  Home late, dinner of sausages and salad.  Death in Paradise 13.8 (end of season 13) with another preposterous setup for a murder.  Backed up computer, washed hair then bed.

Thursday.  Mail upgrade planning.  Built a vm.  Updated some doco.  Had our last drinks at Bar 59 for a while.  Made pizzas then Wednesday 1.4.

Friday.  Early night and slept ok (another nice cool change).  Crap meetings, bit of mail server work, amongst distractions.  Kievs for dinner.

Wednesday 1.5 then logged onto work for an hour and a half to do a big certificate renewal.

Saturday.  1st February.  Earlyish night but awake from 2-4.  Sigh.  Stu was awake for ages too.  Slept in til 7.  Bit of house stuff, food shopping and suddenly it's 10am and haven't really done anything.  Pretty much just cleaned the house all day.

Had EffanC over for dinner, which was lovely, it's been wayyyyy too long since we've had them over.  Did a nice rump cap, blue cheese potato bake and brussels sprouts.

Finished the last bottle of bubbles from my 50th!

Sunday.  Got about five hours sleep which wasn't too bad all things considered, but I was tired all day.  Had a nice quiet day, mostly doing Dotz and also cooking up a huge batch of mince/bacon/mushroom/garlic/onion to decorate in different ways over the next week or so.  

I didn't actually realise until last night that this comet was an entirely different one to the one I saw last year.  And the one I saw last year I thought I saw just before Christmas.  Nope.  October!!  I'm losing my mind.  

I went out on Wednesday night (22/1) at maybe 20:30.  Way too bright.  But did meet up with Rob and Lynne and so we hung out together to wait for it to get dark.

My G5X picked it up first a bit after nine.  But I'm blind and the screen is so tiny I couldn't see it.  The phone could see it around 21:14.  Well, that's when it was bright enough for me to zoom and in and find the little smudge so we knew where to look.

I managed to get a few photos on the G5X before it got so dark it had not enough contrast to focus.

Another shot on the phone

I also had a go on the 600D.  My ~12-13 year old camera that I inherited from Dad in 2014.  That has, as I discovered, many dead pixels.  It also had trouble focussing in the dark, so set to manual focus and was able to get some shots.

This one was 20 seconds - star trails!

On Friday 24/1 Tony said he hadn't seen it yet, so we headed up Mt Rogers to get a different view.  Turns out city lights, while annoying for astro photography, also give cameras something to focus on.

Once again I was able to use the phone to figure out exactly where to look.  Here's a couple of shots on the phone.

And those lights gave the G5X something to focus on, so got the rest of the photos of the night on that.

Bug trails!!  And by bug trails I mean Elon's space junk #grunt

Fun times!

Oh, I forgot to link to this.. lyra_lightchaser's spectacular photo of it streaming off the top of Black Mountain Tower!

Sunday.  19th.  

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

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

Tuesday. 

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

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

I'll chuck some comet photos in another post.

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

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

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

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

Venus and the Mt Rogers trig station

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

Belconnen from Mt Rogers

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

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

No roast tonight, just finishing up some leftovers.