Had a fairly decent weekend last weekend.  Got quite a few things done on the todo list, including renewing my domain names (kazza.id.au has been in existence for fourteen years today!), vacuuming and cleaning out the pool, washing the sheets, installing windows 10 on my little laptop (and the GPS software still works hurrah!), cleaning the kitchen, some fish tank work, food shopping and cooking.  Didn't do the house vacuuming though.

In between we had our work ball, which I'll get some photos online for eventually.

This week was a very strange week.  We had several farewell events for the Chrises including a long lunch on Wednesday.  Gonna miss them.  It also seems certain that we will lose literally the best bar in Canberra.  And our carpark.  All very depressing.  Got some work done in between, although wasn't terribly motivated.

I also got grumpy this week at Insight Vacations who have been ignoring my emails.  And at myself for not registering for the last Ingress Anomoly - which means the hundreds of jarvises, adas, cubes, bursters etc that I donated to the cause will have been for nothing :(

Our pool froze over twice during the week.  And yesterday the power tripped early in the morning which means the fish tank heaters didn't work all day, and we lost some fish in the smallest tank :(  

Have been spending mornings scanning mum's photos.  Two weeks to scan each album, give or take.  So one down this morning, four more to go until the next swap-meet when I can get some more.

And I have this odd sort of feeling that I'm coming down with something.

Well that was fun.  NOT.

Wait, that was a few nights ago.

hrmm

So Friday night after getting home I slept really well.  Fine all day Saturday.  Saturday night I woke up in the middle of the night for hours and was a zombie on Sunday.  Sunday night I had a few drinks and slept pretty well so was fine on Monday.  Monday night I slept quite well.  Tuesday was also good, but Tuesday night I woke up in the middle of the night for hours and was a zombie on Wednesday.  Can't. Fricken. Win.

Wednesday night we (read: DC and Duncan and Doc and Chris and even Jai, but not me) won the fricken trivia night.  A-fricken-gain!  

But at least I slept well.

Today the second-place-getters at trivia took us up on our begging offer to run the next trivia night so that was a huge relief!  

Tonight Ben was going to come up but then didn't.  hrmmm

So instead I watched the video that came with one of my installs of Windows - Windows ME I think - which had Alanis Morissette cutting off her hair - which suits her sooooooo much better than the long hair around her face.  And that got me onto watching one of her episodes of You Can't do that on Television which I can't believe I've never actually referenced on this blog!  (sorry: scratch that, I did mention it once, two years ago).

Yeup.

"You Learn"

I recommend getting your heart trampled on to anyone
I recommend walking around naked in your living room
Swallow it down (what a jagged little pill)
It feels so good (swimming in your stomach)
Wait until the dust settles

You live you learn
You love you learn
You cry you learn
You lose you learn
You bleed you learn
You scream you learn

I recommend biting off more then you can chew to anyone
I certainly do
I recommend sticking your foot in your mouth at any time
Feel free
Throw it down (the caution blocks you from the wind)
Hold it up (to the rays)
You wait and see when the smoke clears

You live you learn
You love you learn
You cry you learn
You lose you learn
You bleed you learn
You scream you learn

Wear it out (the way a three-year-old would do)
Melt it down (you're gonna have to eventually anyway)
The fire trucks are coming up around the bend

You live you learn
You love you learn
You cry you learn
You lose you learn
You bleed you learn
You scream you learn

You grieve you learn
You choke you learn
You laugh you learn
You choose you learn
You pray you learn
You ask you learn
You live you learn

Hi Luc!

Lately I seem to be feeling a constant low level stress/depression (that regularly flares up to much stronger versions).  Work is certainly not helping.  The heat over the last couple of weeks.  Lack of sleep.  Body cycles that should be four weeks being only three.  Food.  Blood pressure.  Missing jigsaw piece from a new and expensive jigsaw.  Bank fees.  Housework.  Vacuuming.  Trivia nights to prepare for.  A computer that hasn't installed updates since a cancelled upgrade to Windows 10 last year (other than Security Essentials updates) and doesn't seem to have the ability to either.  iPhone batteries that don't last the day.  Clutter.  Dust.  Holiday finances.  Weight.  Deteriorating eyesight.

Yup.

There just doesn't seem to be enough *time* in the world.  Last night was cool off in the pool, cook and eat dinner while watching House, a walk with Chris and just a little bit of time on the jigsaw.  And then it's bed time.  I didn't get any computer time.  I still haven't even *seen* most of my last holiday photos, let alone geotag them.  Tonight was better, but had to fight with my computer for too long after it started spazzing out.  Got a bit of trivia night stuff done at least.  A whole half hour.  Yay.

Was feeling miserable on Monday morning on account of fish killing on Sunday.  The day didn't get any better.  The proxies were misbehaving and we spent the better part of the day fighting with them.

Today I decided to apply rules of quantum physics and not look at them.  Strangely they behaved somewhat better.  Probably just having their console windows open adds to their workload (and they never could cope at the best of times).  We'll be damned glad to see the back of them when they go.

Other than that we've been watching Sherlock again.  Awesome show even a second time around.

Just some flower pictures that have been sitting in my "to blog" tray for months..

Azaleas in our front garden

Climbing roses by our front door.  Such a lovely thing to open the door to!

Nasturtiums growing on the back windowsill

An iris at a cafe in Gundaroo

White wisteria outside Grazing in Gundaroo

Coreopsis at the top of Mum's street.  I used to call them goldilockses when I was little because I couldn't say coreopsis.  I think I like goldilocks better

Rose in our front garden

OMG I HATE iTunes SO MUCH.

The latest drama: trying to unlock my phone from Optus.  Apple in their infinite wisdom dictated that the only way to unlock your phone from your provider is to do a backup and then a restore of the phone.  How retarded is that on every level?  The last time I tried to do it it wiped an app off my phone and I lost all my UK 2010 GPS tracks.  I was devastated.  

Tonight I was having another go at it on my new phone.  I dutifully backed up the phone, then hit the restore button.  Except I got an error:

"iTunes could not restore the iPhone "Kazza the Blank One" because not enough free space is available on the iPhone".

Except there was over a gig free.

So I *BATTLED* clearing things off it.  Photos are easy enough through Windows Explorer, but podcasts, music and audiobooks play hard to get, and it's not intuitive how to do it.  Had to fight and fight with it to remove the files.

Got to nearly 3.5 Gb free.  But do you think the phone will restore? NO!  I renamed the backup file directory and did a whole new backup.  Both directories were only 6Gb in size.  Still it wouldn't restore.

So now I'm going on yet another trip where my phone won't onlock and I'll be forced to use Global Roaming if I want to use my phone at all.

Apple, you SUCK!!!!

Edit.  I deleted another couple of gigs of photos to get it to more than 6Gb free, which was the size of the backup directory.  Now it seems to be restoring.....  Let's see if Apple screws me over in some other way next ...

Went to Sydney again on Sunday.  Went over to the home, and took dad out.  We went up to the local shops and bought him hot chips and a milkshake.  He liked them a lot, and liked the chance to get out of the home.  Still didn't stop him ranting about stuff like the other home residents and politicians.  Sigh.

During the week Mum and I tackled the work shop - clearing the foor and chairs and some of the work bench.  We're starting to see a difference in there.  We also threw out a *lot* of 3 1/2" disks.  Legitimate copies of things like dos, windows, office etc.  But so old *noone* would ever want them.  So they all got turfed.

The drive up was pretty eerie - sections of the Hume Highway had bushfire damage either side and there was very heavy smoke around.  But got to Sydney ok.  Had no troubles getting home last night, as the major fires are up in the Blue Mountains and the southern ones were nowhere near where I needed to go.  The skies on Sunday and Monday were full of smoke and very eerie. 

Sunrise on Monday morning:

Tuesday night (and more of Monday night) Mum and I continued working on the garage.  I pulled lots of things down off high shelves to sort out/chuck.  There were several boxes of commercial VHS tapes, and a couple of boxes of tapes Dad had taped off tv.  There were several unopened copies each of DOS 5, Windows 3.1, old Word versions and other stuff.  There was a box of papers dating from 1981-1983 including church office newsletters, magazine/newspaper articles, and even a long letter writing to the rail authority complaining that he had not in fact fare evaded, as he had bought a weekly ticket but had inadvertantly thrown out the new one and had been carrying the old one around.  We piled up several recycling bins worth of paper in the garage, so that'll keep mum's bins full for a couple of weeks.

Came home last night via Yvonne's to drop off some stuff.  Had Harry and the car in front of me doing the same speed to keep me company and awake.  

This morning I wasn't really sure what day it was.  I alternated between a weekend day, Monday, and Friday before realising it was Thursday.  Oh well, at least there's beer to look forward to in 8.5 hours.

Friday night Andrew W came over and fixed a couple of plumbing problems we've had, but the toilet problem is much more complicated and he's referring us to a mate who's had more experience with that style of outlet.

Saturday we went to Pulp Kitchen for breakfast.  They've changed their menu slightly and the breakfast raclette is not there anymore.  I had eggs benedict with ham, and a side of streaky bacon, but the dude forgot to write down the side, so I had to get it after they brought out my eggs.  It wasn't as good as last time though, oh well.  But the ham was very nice on the eggs benedict.

Afterwards did some food shopping then came home.  I pottered around the house and Stu worked on his assignment.

Saturday night we actually had a night off.  It was the first Saturday night since May 11 that we've had where we didn't go out or have anyone over.  We watched some Star Trek and then Gladiator.

Sunday morning tidied the house a bit, then Damien came over for a war game.  I was planning to leave for Sydney around 11am, but firstly the garage door broke (a bracket came off and it wouldn't roll up - we did manage to roll it manually somewhat), and then my car was completely dead and wouldn't start.  Not even any charge lights at all.  *sigh*.  So got the NRMA battery dude out and he ended up replacing it (it was four years old - older than I thought).  So made it to Sydney a couple of hours later than I expected.

Went to visit Dad.  He's "sad" he described himself.  Mostly about facing the unknown of moving into a nursing home tomorrow.

Mum did an instant roast dinner for lunch with leftover pork, then we attacked the garage for an hour or so.  I climbed up into the shelves and pulled down piles of stuff.  I made an executive decision that VGA cards, other I/O cards, MS DOS 5, Windows 3.1, Microsoft Word etc etc could all be safely tossed.  We filled several large boxes with manuals for software that was out of date twenty years ago, a lot of it unopened. 

Fun fun fun ...

I finally gave away this laptop last weekend.  It was originally a uni laptop that belonged to Jim, but was thrown out when it reached the end of its useful life.  I took it all around the USA/Canada in 2004 to download my photos, a trip to Queensland in 2005 and Lord Howe Island in 2007.  It was a great little laptop because it was so small and light.  But it was what, thirteen years old?, and only running Windows 98, so attaching devices became problematic.  We replaced it with the first Eee PC in 2008 and I hadn't used it since.  So last weekend I gave it to my Dad.  If he can make his camera and memory sticks work with it, he'll probably find it useful, but otherwise it's probably only good for landfill :(