How was your day dear?: November 2020 Archives

Backdating.  Hi!

Monday.  Woke up with the storm around 1am and got up to backup my more recent files to OneDrive.  Added to a list of Robocopy commands to copy the most recent (14 days worth) of files from my most commonly used directories.  Still managed to wake up early for the daythough.  Ok day.  I'm no longer NEIL which is awesome ;)  Had roast pork for dinner and watched Mandalorian.

Tuesday.  Went with the sweetie to try out Ramen O.  It's pretty good but a bit expensive ($18 for a basic ramen) to do as a lunch all that often.  I'd love it if they did a smaller version for a cheaper price.  

Then saw this flower in a whole flowerbed of them on the way to the Lighty for Anthony's farewell.

In other news, Kit and Pete finally got keys to their new house!  In the evening had leftover brisket for dinner, fixed up the morning's slide scanning, and blogged last week.

Wednesday.  Had a few hours of training on Ansible and Ansible Tower.  Some pretty cool stuff you can do with it.

Watched Apollo 13 in the evening.  The blog title quote is the correct quote from the mission, not the one they used in the movie (which I can see why they did it, the real quote implies the problem is over and they're all cool now).

Thursday.  Busy day catching up on tickets from Wednesday.  In addition, the problem with Neil being off is that noone else knows how to do the back operations on the till for work drinks.  So I went up with Neil while he did stuff and took a bunch of notes for future reference.  Watched the start of 14 Minutes to Earth in the evening.  Also David figured out that we can in fact still access our NAS with its Netbios name (which died ages ago on my computer, and the DNS doesn't even resolve).  No idea how/why that's started working when it didn't used to work, while accessing via IP stopped working when it used to.  hrmmm.

Friday.  Took a Random Day Off with the sweetie.  I spent it doing all the things I would normally do on the weekend.  I also opened a random package I got in the mail this week - I could tell it was a jigsaw by its sound, but I had no clue who sent it.  I made a guess who sent it which turned out to be true!  So that was pretty cool.  However the quality was a bit of a disaster, but I'll leave that for another post.  Leftover lamb for dinner and watched As the Wind Rises in the evening, which I partly remembered from the last time we saw it.  I thought it was bittersweet, which was much how I described it the first time.  Most of his personal life was made up for the movie, but he did exist, and thought the war with the US was futile.

Saturday.  Out the door pretty early.  Had to do a big food shop and take it all out to the club for the club Christmas Party!  (I'd actually forgotten I'd volunteered to do this, having been quite disappointed that I didn't get to do Christmas in July this year because of Covid.  I got the reminder in the newsletter haha!)  Stopped at The Scottish Restaurant for our energy for the morning, then hit the shops.  Bought all the things from Coles, then to the markets to get the roast porks and some prawns.  Made it to the club by lunch time, then got down to cooking All The Things.  

There were two four kilo pork shoulders that I did in the oven (and home made apple sauce done on the stove), four one kilo turkey roasts that I delegated to have done in the bbq oven, two epic potato bakes, two kilos of peas that I added mint to at the end, two bags of carrots that I had to chop myself because Coles and Aldi don't sell frozen carrots anymore (wtf??) and added honey to, and a bunch of bread rolls. 

I also did some finger food.  I bought a couple of packets of mini toasts, which were topped with cream cheese, and either salmon and dill or tomato or cucumber.  With cucumber/cheese/tomato only option for the gluten-free person :) (we made more than are shown in this photo ;) )

And there were prawns with seafood sauce.  Whole prawns were like $30/kilo at the markets, but someone would have to shell/devein them.  For $40/kilo you could buy them shelled and deveined.  Given that whole prawns are literally half head, you're basically paying $60/kilo for the flesh, so it was a no-brainer to buy them cheaper and already processed.  And everyone loved them!

Eventually all the food was cooked, and I had an army of helpers to serve.

Apparently dinner was well appreciated, and I even got time to cool off in the pool after dinner (and avoid the secret santa cause I hate that crap haha).  Awesome evening!  Note to self:  next time find someone to do music!

Sunday.  Packed up all the leftovers (omfg there were actually some leftovers!  that never happens!) and came home.  Pretty quiet day.  Didn't do much other than put up the Christmas tree and some of the Christmas decorations.

Backdating.  Oh hai.

Monday.  Scanning.  Work.  Actually wore shorts to work.  Ok so I was at home, but it still felt a little strange.  The only time I ever wear shorts to work is the day of our Christmas party at the lake.  Cooked the beef stew for dinner (I'd done all the prep on the weekend, so it was just a matter of chucking it in the slow cooker all afternoon.  Nice sunset.  Did my UK photo labelling, then caught up on RSS feeds, but no blogging.  Whoops.

Tuesday.  Scanning.  Work.  Saw my birds at lunch.  David came along and we noticed a flooded pit that shouldn't be flooded, so David called Icon water to come fix.  Did my UK photo labelling.  One more night to go!  Didn't feel like doing much else.  Filed some photos.  I thought I'd download my phone photos so I can blog them at some point.  Except Apple died copying the movies, as it always does, and no amount of disconnecting/reconnecting it would get it to even open the phone in explorer.  *sigh*  Hate Apple.  HATE.  Wondering if my next phone will be a Samsung.  I'm sick of Apple's crapfullness.  Did some blogging.

Wednesday.  Scanning.  Work.  OMFG no recycling pickup.  Suez workers want a 4% pay rise and are striking til they get it.  4% seems a little high to me given our rate of inflation, but they're prolly paid like crap to begin with, so whatevs.  But still.  No recycling pickup!!  Gah!! 

Went to Specsavers at lunch.  Honestly should NOT have gone to Specsavers.  There's too many staff and too many people and they're just not very well organised.  The first half of the appointment was fine.  The general staff did scans of my eyes, and then I got to see the optometrist and all that was fine.  But then she said I should do a field of vision test and I could either wait and do it now or make an appointment.  I asked how long it would be and she went off and found out and said oh they can do it now, and I'll see you straight after.  Sweet.  So I went to go have it but they realised someone was in the room, and did I want to look at frames while I waited.  No that's fine, shouldn't be long, I'll just wait.  So I waited.  And waited and waited and waited.  I saw the previous patient leave, but noone bothered to come get me.  When they *finally* did the test, they said, oh your optometrist has gone on break, it'll be twenty five minutes, do you want to look at frames while you wait.  And I'm like NO, you told me I'd just do the test then get to see the optometrist.  So he goes off to try and find someone else to look at my results.  Ten minutes later and I'm waiting and fuming.  So I get up to leave and the guy goes oh did noone see you and I'm like no.  So he goes to the original optometrist and she comes out of her lunch break to tell me oh your results are fine.  Fricken I could have just left and you could have called me if any issues.  Fricken hopeless.  So I was fuming at all the stoopid by the time I got back to work and then had to deal with all the stoopid at work, which of course I couldn't because I was in a crap mental state.  Sigh. 

I left early with Stu to go pick up the car.  And had wine.  Because it was that kind of day.  The highlight of the day was that I finally finished labelling all twelve and a half thousand UK photos!  But the drama of the day was not over.  Kit and Pete had missed a document that needed to be signed for their new house to settle, and so it was all going to get delayed and cost them who knows how much money to sort out, and then they'd be homeless until it all got sorted out.  Which is never great when you've got so many animals to look after.  And have to go back to work at some point but all your clothes are packed.  

Oh, and there was also the cicada I rescued when I got back from lunch.  It was on the wall in the stairwell of our building.  So I grabbed it and took it outside and got a few photos before it flew away.

Thursday.  Scanning.  Work.  Work drinks.  Continuation of Kit's dramas.

Friday.  Hadn't gotten a new box of slides out to scan (and couldn't get at it cause David's car was in the way) so went back and fixed up a few rolls of previous boxes that needed fixing up (eg straighting or cleaning).  Work.  Discovery and Mandalorian in the evening.

Saturday.  All the things in the morning.  Super productive morning by 9:30, although didn't get as much done after that.  Had to log onto work at lunch time to try and fix a stoopid firewall problem, but the vendor couldn't figure it out either.  Even after three and a half hours on the phone.  So that was a bit of a poo.  Went over to Chris's to see if he had any veggies going.  He had some zucchinis which were looking pretty sad, so he gave them to me for free!  Win!  Cooked the whole lot of them (other than a few of the worst bits) and had them with the beef brisket that had been slow cooking all afternoon.  Watched the episode of The Simpons with Tom Jones in it, and we were like, what was that spoof movie he was in, and realised it was Mars Attacks!  So we watched that after.  Rented from Amazon Prime.

Sunday.  Houseworks in the morning.  I'm having to close the blinds on the south-east side of the house in the mornings now.  Our lovely pistachio tree that used to shade the house in the morning is gone, which is super sad.  Did a bunch of poking around with my hosting trying to tidy it up a bit.  Backing up files and rearranging things and deleting things and generally tidying up.  Still a lot of work I want to do in that space.  Culled photos for our North Coast holiday, and spent *hours* blogging it.  Also did a whole bunch of backdating of other blog entries.  If you don't use an RSS feed reader you may want to go back in time a few months, there's likely all sorts of entries you may have missed ;)  Leftovers for dinner.

It wouldn't be me if I wasn't backdating ;)

Wednesday.  Slept quite well after our long drive home the day before.  Ok day I guess.  In the evening struggled through the todo list that was a long way behind on account of being away for four days.  So no UK photo labelling this week.  Backed up my computer, but couldn't connect to the NAS.  It seems likely that windows is refusing to talk to such an old version of SMB/CIFS.  The laptop which hasn't been patched for a little while can still talk to it.  Apparently 20H2 will fix it.  We shall see.

Thursday.  Poor lonely Santa.

In the evening had pizza and the second episode of Mandalorian.

Friday.  Caught up on three boxes of slide labels (slides had been scanned just hadn't done the data entry).  Soooo nice to be at home.  Went and saw some of my birds at lunch.  Did a bunch of cleaning on the mail servers.  Because that's what I do.  The new neighbours started moving stuff into their garage (they organised to get access before settlement to start moving stuff).  Stu cooked gnocchi for dinner and we watched From Up on Poppy Hill which was very sweet.

Saturday.  Smashed out all the things.  Did some scanning and housework and achieved a weekend's work by 9am.  Gathered stuff for tax in the morning.  Went out for lunch and did a huge food shop.  

In the afternoon cooked all the things.  

I cooked up some mince with onion and taco spice for taco Tuesday.  I cooked all the meat/bacon/onion ready to pop in the slow cooker on Monday.  And I cooked up a veggie loaded san choy bow mix for dinner that night.  

Took three hours.  Yeup.

Watched second episode of Discovery.  Her hair grew too much for one year.  Just sayin.

Sunday.  Another productive morning of all the things.  Spent quite a bit of time sorting out the piles of packing materials (boxes, bubble wrap, tissue paper etc) we have in the garage - organising it all so we can find it when we want to sell stuff.  Cooked a huge lamb roast for dinner, with epic leftovers.  Basically over the weekend I cooked most of our food for the fortnight.

We're into season four of The Simpsons, and up to the third episode of Discovery.

Backdating.  Cause I'm a slacker.  Nothing to see here, move along.

Monday.  Slept ok.  Ok day I guess.  Went to have some of the snow peas that I bought probably only two weeks ago and they were *covered* in slime.  So fricken unusual because normally they last weeks and weeks in the fridge.  Pissed as.  Then David came home and spent all afternoon swearing at the fish tank lights.  But he got them working in the end.  Bestest brother ever.  (not sure if I ever mentioned the story - a few weeks back the transformer for Stu's stoopidly expensive LED fish tank lights went POP and that was the end of that.  It was a completely non standard transformer, there was no doco anywhere online for the lights, and they were strangely wired.  David decided to get resistors and rewire the thing so it'd work with a standard transformer, and also be less likely to blow out the lights.  Just waiting for the other transformer to go next so he'll have to do it all over again.. hrmmm....).  Had sausages and salad/veggies for dinner.  Then got more grunty that Stu's sauerkraut had gone off.  And some ham we bought ages ago is also looking very strange.  I *hate* wasting food and we've wasted so much this week >:(  Feeling like I should ban perishable food that I won't eat (like ham and sauerkraut) and veggies that only I like (like snow peas).  Don't get me started on trying to find veggies that everyone likes and doesn't cause health issues in people.  Took til 8pm to get UK photo labelling done.  811 left.  And blogging.  An hour and a half later.  hrmmm.

But look!  Poppy in the staircase!

Tuesday.  Ok sleep mostly.  Finished scanning Dad's WA slides.  Was good to see his photos, after only having seen Mum's very red-shifted prints for so many years.  I think I'll need to scan her negatives of those holiday trips - hopefully they fared better than the prints!  Worked from home so just watched some silly horse race on tv in the background.  David made home in time for the race but steadfastly ignored it ;)  Later in the afternoon had no tickets and not much else happening so flexed off for an hour or so and got some UK photo labelling done.  Only 581 photos left!  Leftovers from the club halloween night for dinner.  Hacked some periwinkle.  Watched random stuff on the internet in the evening.

Wednesday.  Okish sleep.  Up to 5000 of Dad's slides scanned.  I'm into Central Australia now.  I remember Mum saying a while back that Dad had issues with his camera on the WA trip, and there was a $25 camera fixing bill listed in the holiday expenses, but all the photos from that trip looked fine.  The Central Australia trip on the other hand was a disaster.  So many of the photos are over exposed, and there's *heaps* missing - obviously too bad to even keep.  I'm thinking *this* was the trip he had camera issues with.  Must have been absolutely heartbreaking for him.  I'll have to get Mum's negatives of this trip too.  Pity you can't climb Ayers Rock aka Uluru anymore.  I'm calling it though - I reckon within twenty years the local Aboriginal people will start doing guided tours to the top.  Charged of course.  I don't know how true it is, but David and Yvonne went some years ago and got the impression that the Aboriginal people didn't really care too much that people would want to climb to the top - they were much more worried about the sacred sites around the base of the rock.  I'm having to be the Naughty Email Intervention Layer (aka NEIL) at work, probably for another few weeks at least.  Which is a bit of a poo.  Cause he doesn't document anything!  Actually *going* to work sux epically - takes so much extra time out of my day.  Had leftovers for dinner.  Then it's back to "work" - finishing scanning the morning's photos (because there's not enough time in the mornings on "work" days), backing up hard drive, labelling photos etc.  Only 475 to go!!!

I don't have any notes for Thursday.  There was work drinks.  And I went with David to the mall to do some shopping.  Saw this very pretty car in the car park.

Friday.  I swear Dad must have had sex on the brain.  Following his Coitus Tower slides from the USA, this was the label for a thorny devil in Central Australia.

The evening was packing for our long weekend away...

Monday.  Couldn't get to sleep til really late, then woke up before 4am for ages.  Sigh.  Ok day.  Lots of tickets.  Hong Bo fixed the stoopid thing I couldn't get working last week - missing a dependency that I knew nothing about and wasn't in any of the doco.  Sigh.  Had UK labelling done by 7pm then watched the last episode of Against the Wind.  Then had a bit of a look around at static gallery apps.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep *again* (stoopid cold feet).  Very quiet day at work.  I don't think I had any tickets.  So went through documenting and cleaning out an old server we need to decommission.  Cooked up a bunch of veggies in with the mince I cooked Sunday night, and had it with pasta.  UK labelling and cleaning took til 8pm.  Then blogging.  Suddenly it's 9pm.  hrmm.

I saw this baby magpie lark on my walk at lunch.  The thing could flutter a bit but was clearly too young to be out of the nest.  The parents were *not* impressed that I was anywhere near it!

Wednesday.  Woke up to the sad news that Charlie of The Daily Coyote had died. 

Was scanning slides in the morning and came back after some housework when it had done a pass and the lights were out.  Which is super odd, the lights only turn out after it being idle for quite a while (12 minutes as it turns out).  When I tried to scan there was no option to scan slides anymore.  Tried turning it off and on again, but it still wouldn't come good.  And I'd just been saying that there were 58 days left til Christmas, and 50 boxes of slides, which didn't leave much wiggle room to get it all done by Christmas.  If the scanner was dead that would blow right out.  And then I remembered that I hadn't put out the green bin.  I went and got gloves and was about to go outside (I was going to have to empty some of the grass because the bin was way too full of grass) but the track came!  Gahhh!!!  But then it stopped.  And picked up the bin.  And I'm like.. wha??   Turns out David had put it out the night before, and even put some of the grass in the neighbour's bin.  Seriously, bestest brother ever!!  Ok day.  Busy busy afternoon.  David finished mowing the lawn in the afternoon. Stu wanted pizza for dinner.  At least it wasn't takeaway.  But they did get extra cheese.

And there was a storm down south.

I rebooted my computer to see if it would help with the scanner.  It didn't.  I knew it wouldn't.  So then David had a look.  Turns out the cable connecting the lid to the rest of the scanner had worked its way loose after thousands of times being opened and shut.  So it was the first rule of tech support - is it plugged in.  Sigh.  But did I mention that I have the bestest brother ever??  Finished scanning the morning's slides, but didn't get all the UK labelling done.  

Thursday.  Neil came to work blind in one eye, so Sharpie and I convinced him to go straight to the ER rather than his optometrist at 12pm.  And then I had to be Neil all day.  As well as find someone to run the bar.  I hassled literally everyone and thankfully someone came in to do it, otherwise we would have had to cancel.  R&F invited us out for dinner at Indian Pantry with EffanC.  We had one of the banquets which brought a lovely array of food.

Friday.  We would have been in Queensland for Ben and Sarah's wedding.  But covid happened.  So instead it was simply Ben's 40th birthday party at Gungahlin Lakes.

For dinner I had Famous Paddies Chicken - pan fried chicken tenderloins cooked in a whisky cream sauce with bacon, onion and mushrooms, served with house fries.  It was delicious!!

Saturday.  Just bits and pieces of housework.  We were going out for the club halloween night, and I wanted to get there a bit early to do some priming.  But Stu wasn't feeling it, so we arrived only just on Happy Hour.  I did Lego 80s Classic Space guy again.

Stu wore the beanie he had from a previous year, that everyone thought made him look like Shrek.

Matt and Michelle put on an awesome dinner.

Then got rejected so left quietly before I had a meltdown.  But it did make for an early night which was nice.

Sunday.  Slept relatively well.  Woke up to the news that Sean Connery had died.  Came home early.  They played our song on the radio on the way home.  

Oh wow!  We know him!!

Had a relatively productive day I guess.  Cooked up a bunch of veggies including a potato bake, and even baked some kranksys so that was a nice Sunday night dinner.

Watched the first episode of the new season of The Mandalorian.  See Star Trek, you don't need an overly complicated plotline to be good televsion.