Sunday.  4th.  Managed to get the end of last year's photos posted before a storm came through that was a little too close so I shut down my computer (and it BSODed as I was doing it #grunt). Then had to sit around doing nothing much for an hour because my dotz were packed up, Lego was done, jigsaws were all done. So I did some kitchen stuff. Hurray. Dinner was nachos. We are going to get healthy soon, I promise.. haha. 

Watched the Death in Paradise 2025 Christmas special. Then I went to bed. 20:30 is bed time right? Weird going to bed while it's still light though.

Monday.  Slept fairly well. Back at work full time. Sigh. Went back to some decommissioning tickets that have been banking up for the past few months. Went into work at lunch to drop off most of the Christmas party stuffs, then had lunch with Neil at Kingsley's (the mall is feral over the school holidays). Finished the leftover tuna bake for dinner then watched Beyond Paradise 2.1.

Tuesday.  Went to bed at normal time but then didn't get to sleep for HOURS. Sigh. And awake from well before 6 again. Zombie day. Again. Was putting away more Christmas decorations and couldn't find a string of fairy lights. I remember taking them off the lounge where they were, but now I can't find them to put them away. Sigh. Edit: found them, I was confusing them with another string/box. This is what happens when your brain is zombie tired. Lots more decom prep work today. Even did a bit of playing with Powershell/APIs. Dug out some sausages leftover from the Christmas party to have for dinner with some very old pork jelly and very old sauces. One of them might give us food poisoning, we shall see. Beyond Paradise 2.2.

Wednesday.  Slept okish. Disjointed day at work.

We may have gone to Grease Monkey at lunch.  That's like three times in like a month.. whoops..

More Christmas party sausages for dinner and Beyond Paradise 2.3.

Thursday.  Spent most of the day deleting stuff which was nice, trying to clear out a backlog of decommissions going back til last September. Drinks at the Labor Club, Dominos for dinner then Beyond Paradise 2.4.

The 8th of January is always the day I remember the Como-Jannali bushfires (32 years ago), my blogiversary (23 years this year!!) and David Bowie's birthday (he would have been 79).  This year smoke from the Victorian bushfires made for a very red sunrise and sunset...

Friday.  

Didn't achieve much in the morning but did some more deletions in the afternoon and some certificate replacements as well. It's been stoopidly hot this week (37C today), and yet we still turned the oven on for #kievfridays. Whoops.

Saturday.  Slept okish I think. Spent pretty much the whole day cleaning the house and cooking. hrmm. Had EffanC over for cheese and champagne and dinner. The lasagna ended up being a bit overdone as noone was really ready for dinner when it was ready, so turned the oven down and let it sit for longer. Still fairly good though. A lovely catchup.

I forgot to get a photo before cutting it up

Sunday.  Fairly late night but of course I still woke up at 6:00. Filled the green bin in the morning and did some house stuff and spent entirely way too much time geotagging Dad's photos of Kangaroo Island.

Found this on the weekend too! WTF!?

On 1-November-2025 Thryv who manage White Pages directories, have removed Residential listing from the White Pages website.
To search for a residential listing your options are:
Collect a copy of the White Pages from your local Australia Post Office or order online at www.directoryselect.com.au for a copy to be delivered to your home.
Contact Directory Assistance on phone 1223
Please note that the search functionality for White Pages Business and Government is not changing.

Still not ready for being back at work full time...

My blog turns 22 today!  Happy blogiversary!!

David Bowie would have turned 78 today.  Happy birthday!!

It's been 31 years since the bushfires in Como.  

Today my blog turned 21!!  Still not even half my life blogging though.

David Bowie would have turned 77 today.

The Como-Jannali bushfires were 30 years ago today.

Saturday.  New Years Eve.  What was meant to be a nice quiet evening didn't quite work out that way.  We did have a nice turkey roll roast for dinner.  And I watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.  But the sweetie ended up talking to Kit and Pete most of the night (I talked to them for a while too).  Watched the Sydney fireworks at midnight and then Rage til way too late.  

Sunday.  New Year's Day!  Too late a night for me.  Doh.  Did sleep til around 8ish though.  Had bacon and eggs for breakfast.  Then spent all morning catching up on the last of the blog entries for last year.  Spent all afternoon hacking a copy of my blog to test out (and log) all the changes I'd need to make to refresh the design on it for its 20th blogiversary.  Had Dominos for dinner (first time in a long time) and watched 8th episode of Picard, somewhat of a strange one.  Then we watched the Laid Back Camp movie which was .. eh ok.

Monday.  Slept well enough.  Spent most of the day hacking my blog.  Stu went out and did some weed hacking so I did some work outside as well.  Watched the second episode of season 7 of You Can't Ask That (saw the first episode the other day).  Refried leftover pizza and salad for dinner then just watched crap on the internet.

Tuesday.  Woke up at ~4:45 and never got back to sleep.  Sigh.  Back at work, being Neil.  Cleared the queues by lunch time.  That means I'm done for the day right?  hrmm.

Wednesday.  Ok sleep.  Some sparkies came to replace our ancient analogue meter with a fancy new digital one.  Need to get a login for it.  They were all done by 8:30.  Tried to do some cleaning but all the people wanted all the things.  Stu finally responded to the solar guys request for feedback, and he wrote a very diplomatic response telling them the system was borked and they can't communicate to save themselves.  That put a fire up their butts and they sent someone out that afternoon.  Right as a storm rolled through.  They left eventually but the system still wasn't working.  At all.  Sigh.  Made a fancy potato bake to have with some refried pork in pork jelly.  As I was turning the oven off the power to it tripped.  WTF?  What's the deal with everything electrical being borked??  Either the sparkies have done something dodgy with all their fiddling, or one of the elements is faulty (and when you turn the dial to go past it, even with the temperature dial off, it will sometimes try to turn on another element as you go past it).  Sigh.  Finished watching Survivor Canberra. 

Thursday.  Slept ok.  Went into work.  Pretty quiet, and started collating a bunch of cleaning jobs.  Did mention the solar isn't working.  AT ALL.  #grunt

Friday.  Couldn't get to sleep in forever, then woke up before 5.  Sigh.  So a zombie day.  I was going to do some cleaning work but then remembered I needed to put in paperwork for a firewall upgrade.  So spent most of the morning doing that.  But I was too braindead to do some of the cleaning I wanted to do.  Didn't want to break anything hehe.  Raijin takeaway for dinner but it was pretty average.  The beef don was nice enough but the karaage chicken.. well wasn't really.. karaage chicken.. at all.  XL's from Champion Chicken and Tea at the mall on Thursday was much much nicer.  

Then watched Origins of Us - Bones

Saturday.  Slept a lot better.  Had a super super busy day doing All The Things.  I did 6000 steps without even leaving the house!  Chong Co for dinner then watched the last episode of Picard.  Aww man I love Q so much (I even had a dream last night I kissed him haha).  And the traveller!!  I'd forgotten that!  Of course then we *had* to watch Encounter at Farpoint.  OMFG everyone thirty five years younger :)  Except the aspect ratio from the DVD was wrong, and not sure if we have to hack the DVD player or the TV, but ended up just watching it on streaming.  Slightly late night, oops.

The new phone struggled with this.  Dunno what the old one would have done...

Sunday.  Today!  My 20th Blogiversary!!  I started off by backing up my blog - first the database, then a snapshot of the files.  Took an hour and twenty minutes cause there's two and a half gig of it!  Yipe!  I got the design refreshed but I'm getting 405 errors when posting.  I'm not sure if that's just cause it's not in a fully published state, or if there's errors in the template.  But the entries posted, so will look into it more later.  So then I started publishing the old pages.  There's over 5000 entries and it's going to take hours and hours and hours to do it (as of 17:45 it's ony 38% of the way through the individual entries).  Did some holiday planning and some other stuff around the house.  Tried to backup my new phone, but since it's a new device it wants to do a full backup.  Which filled my c: drive.  Whoops.  Will have to look at moving the backup somewhere else.  And I really need to clear out some of the 35000 photos on there ;)  

Not sure how I'm going to survive a full week of work...

Twenty years ago right this very minute I created my very first blog entry.

TWENTY YEARS AGO!!

I had no idea back then I'd still be blogging in twenty years time.  It's been a crazy twenty years.  Even though I feel like I don't do a lot, you just need to read my year in review posts to see that I actually do heaps.

I only wish I'd started blogging sooner.  My 20s are the dark ages in my life because I have really no record of what I did.  I have a few photos of things, but there's plenty of events where I didn't take photos (not getting a digital camera til I was twenty seven was a big part of that).

To celebrate my 20th Blogiversary I've given the blog a design refresh (publish is still in progress and will take *hours* so you may notice issues on archives pages at the moment.  And there's issues with searches but don't know how much of that is because everything is still publishing and taking up all my resources).  

Stu will appreciate the mobile-friendly styles.  I'm not 100% happy with the final design, there's a few little changes I'd want to make, but I have so little experience with CSS it's just a pain in the butt and this might just have to do.  

The banner picture is a photo I took of Belconnen from Mount Rogers.  It also has Black Mountain Tower in it, which was a prerequisite.  I thought Belconnen and Lake Ginninderra was more fitting than Lake Burley Griffen.  And if you look closely you can see a hot air balloon :)

Here's to another twenty years of blogging.

Also, happy birthday David Bowie, and as always we remember the January 1994 bushfires in Como.

My blog turns 19 today :)  I wish I wish I wish blogging was a thing in my earlier life, there's just so much missing that I never documented.  Not that I do a much better job of day to day life now, but at least there's something, and events are documented.  

David Bowie would have turned 75 today.

The Como-Jannali bushfires were 28 years ago today.

As always, on January 8 I remember three things..

This blog is seventeen years old today!  I wanted to get a mobile template applied to this blog over the break, but I just had too many things to do.  One day ..

David Bowie would have turned seventy three today.  Someone at work pointed out it was Elvis Presley's birthday as well.. which I knew but I've never mentioned here because I'm just not all that interested heh.  Edit: actually, I did, in 2015 :)

Bushfires raged through Como destroying many of our friends' homes and our church twenty six years ago.  The current bushfires are hence all too real for us.

This blog is fifteen years old today.  Fifteen!!  I've been blogging for a third of my life!

Quiet day today.  Mostly alternating between scraping grout in the shower and trying to get email inboxes under control. 

Also, the kitchen is probably the cleanest its been since we moved in.  All the cupboards under the bench have been cleaned out and decluttered, and the entire benchtop cleaned.

The sweetie cooked barbeque pork for dinner (with a nice chinese bbq marinade), roast beetroots (from Serena's garden) and a peach crumble (also from Serena's garden).  Then we watched Discovery, and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Twenty-four years since the Como bushfires; David Bowie would have turned seventy-one.

January 8.  Always a day I think about three things..

1.. David Bowie's birthday.  Still sad he's not with us anymore..

2.. The 1994 Como bushfires..

3.. My blogiversary.. fourteen years old today!

Here's a couple of photos I scanned a couple of months ago.  It's dad in front of our church as it was burning down in 1994, taken by one of the firies (about the only unit that actually made it to the scene - most were out at Bangor and weren't able to get back across the old Woronora bridge due to congestion).  This photo appeared in the local newspaper in the week after the fires.

Another from the series..

I was having trouble deciding what to blog first tonight.

If I'd blogged last night it would have been about my trip to Sydney to see mum and her brothers and two Lego shows.

There would have been mention that we went to Aunty Di's on Friday night and remembered the January 1994 bushfires of January 8, those twenty two years ago that day.

If I'd been home to blog on January 8 I certainly would have mentioned my thirteenth blogiversary (my little blog is a teenager!).

And as part of that I would have said happy birthday to David Bowie.

He was in my thoughts three days ago.

And sadly, he was in them again today.

For once I didn't hear it first from the internet.  As in 1997, when I heard about Princess Diana, it was my little brother that told me.

Rest in peace David Bowie.  You were one of the greatest loves of my life.