Kazza the Blank One

Sunday.  6th.  Had tortilla pockets for dinner I got cheap at Chris's. Filled them with some taco spice-flavoured mince, lettuce, spring onion, salsa, cheese and sour cream. Yumm. Then started watching Go.

Monday.  Slept okish I think. Depressed about everything.. work, housework, being overweight. Sigh. Bits and pieces day. Leftover sausages from the freezer and veggies for dinner.

Tuesday.  Slept mostly ok I think. Spent half the day on the phone. Hurray. Felt like @aquila at one point who was lacking motivation. I suggested going to the pub. Which I couldn't do but I did have a beer after work, because, it was a day. There may have also been TV dinners. MacGyver was basically Home Alone (which had recently been released). Finished watching Go.

Wednesday.  Thought I slept okish, but felt tired during the day. Busy day setting up a new DR laptop, upgrading stuff, and just a tonne of other crap. I asked the sweetie to cook dinner, so we got KFC.

Thursday.  Spent all morning stressing about the afternoon's patching, then the afternoon patching. With lunch at Zhangliang Malatang in the middle.

Their sauces have changed since last time

I had "Spicy Dry Mix" which was peanutty but too spicy for me.  It's a pity they don't have any one chilli sauces.

Good drinks. Mills&Grills and MacGyver.

Capricciosa and Italian meatball

Also, Chrissie took back her little tank today.  We'd had it eight and a half years.  There's a hole in our life now... 

Friday.  11th.  Lest we forget.  Had another painful vendor meeting. We literally showed them our problem on the last call, but had to show them all over AGAIN because they'd completely misunderstood how we do things. Got off work early and we wandered out to the border behind Macgregor looking for swallows and tree martins but not finding any. We did see a reed warbler and a pipit though which were new for me.

Literally the biggest mushroom I've ever seen in my life!  It was the size of a dinner plate!!

Someone setup the Parliament House flag in their yard - very cool!

Kievs and Black Mirror.

Saturday.  Awake ~1 to ~3 with my mind in a loop. Went out for brunch to Cafe Luzon.

Stu with his Talong Omelet

I had a very nice "Tocilog" - grilled marinated pork, garlic rice, Asian slaw, fried egg, house vinegar ($24)

Then we went touristing around Canberra for a while. The main problem being people. Well that's a given. Civic is in chaos at the moment with all the tram works and Floriade. I should have been doing this weeks ago, but we've just had too much on and I haven't had the brain space. The other problem being our car's aircon doesn't work. So the car was getting super hot - up to like 30C which killed our will to live. Pretty much collapsed in the afternoon. Stu cooked up a bunch of veggies for dinner and we watched The Mandolorian and Grogu which was ok, just a bit of fun.

Sunday.  Restless sleep. Thermoregulation issues and hands constantly going numb. More touristing in the morning. The only problem being people. Going up to Stromlo this woman followed us right up our butt the whole way up the mountain then parked right in the middle of the spot I wanted to take a photo.  Sigh.

Then heading out to Cotter there was some BS car cruise which completely clogged up the road to Cotter Dam.

We actually abandoned the idea of going to the dam because we thought the car park would just be chaos.  Took off up to Uriarra instead.

..only to have to slow down a few times because of some bicycle race. Sigh. Grabbed some groceries and Maccas on the way home. Then I had to clean the kitchen (Stu helped) and cook dinner and suddenly it's 14:00 and I've achieved pretty much nothing all weekend. Well I did geotag 4/9ths of Dad's New Zealand photos from 1975.  Hurray.

Sunday.  30th.  Finished the leftover beef and Stu prepped a bunch of veggies for dinner, then MacGyver.

Monday.  Early night, slept okish.. until 3:55 then never got back to sleep.

My only daffodil this year.  And no jonquils.  And minimal plum blossoms.

Bits and pieces in the morning then some DNS cleanup in the afternoon. Pizza for dinner. Yeup. Third time in five days. I shoulda thought of that on Saturday and said no... But the sweetie enjoyed it so that's all that matters. Then MacGyver and an early night.

Crust pizzas

Tuesday.  Slept mostly okish, awake from like 5:35. Spent much of the day cleaning with a few interruptions.

After work we went to Giralang Pond to see some birds.

Leftover yellow curry for dinner, MacGyver and bird blogging.  

Wednesday.  

Slept mostly okish I think. Another day of going through DNS entries that need cleaning. Cutlets from Ben and Sarah for dinner with leftover veggies then an episode of MacGyver which was another Indiana Jones rerun, this time with the Fifth Element mixed in. Fun but bollocks heh. Then I managed to rename, resize, geotag and file all of Stu's photos from our Southern Australia trip. Now to start culling.....! (Did this while half watching half listening to Anti-Chef videos). Also today I realised I've chipped my left front lower incisor at some point.  hrmm.

Thursday.  Slept mostly okish.  DNS cleaning and fighting with certificates. Good drinks, then continued working our way through the Mills&Grills menu.  Yeup, pizza four nights out of eight.  hrmmmmmmm.

Brekky and Napolitana.  I gave my anchovies to the sweetie.

Friday.  Slept mostly okish.  Google is so dumb.  It doesn't index some of my holiday blogs, but it's fully indexed a blog I haven't linked to from my site yet, only from a blogger's site from America.  Deleting day at work which was fun.  Kievs and potato for dinner. 

Then watched Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines with EB which I haven't seen since I saw it at the movies in 2003.  I was disappointed with the ending last time and that's literally all I remembered about it (although I did vaguely remember the crane chase scene).  Yeah the movie was lame.  Claire Danes was good, but that's about it.  Arnie's lines were very forced.  23 years since I last saw it, and I doubt I'll ever watch it again.  Also finished watching a 60 Minutes special on Steve Irwin, who died twenty years ago today.

Saturday.  Took ages to get to sleep - super restless, and restless around 4 as well. Got some stuff done in the morning, then in the afternoon we went over to Mishi's. We just chatted for a few hours, then played a couple of games of Rummy tiles. Eight people in the first game and seven in the second, which made for a bit of fun.. except for poor Helen who couldn't make the requisite 30 points in one meld in either game!!

Sunday.  In the morning we went out to the Ginninderry Conservation Corridor out the back of Macnamara to do some bird watching. Or rather just get frustrated by birds that we could hear but not see. And I forgot my hat so whenever I tried to take photos I'd just get the sun shining in my eyes blinding me. We were there for two hours all up but didn't get very far due to aforementioned frustration with turds I mean birds.

You didn't know wallabies and kangaroos could fly did you?

Got some stuff done in the afternoon including draining Chrissie's little tank (the clown loach was still alive in the two foot yesterday...).

Stu already went out birdwatching today, but late afternoon he thought he'd go out to Giralang Pond, so I said only if I can come too.  So logged off work a little early and off we went.

Great egret

Several people stopped and asked us what we were looking at when we found these yellow-rumped thornbills

Black swans are nesting on the island

This willie wagtail was flitting around this log

A white-faced heron and some bin chickens at the stormwater drain inlet

Crested pigeon

Sulphur-crested cockatoo

Stu was scanning the trees for roosting birds and couldn't see anything.  So I was surprised he missed this straw-necked ibis and nankeen night heron.  All I saw was a dark tan blob.  Stu was excited to see one in the ACT, his first since counting this year.

We were out for nearly two hours all up, a good way to get a bit of exercise.

Sunday.  23rd.  Had a very nicely done roast beef for dinner, with some veggies.  Then we watched Kenton's next birding video in Costa Rica.

Monday.  Somewhat restless sleep, at one point in a delirium about the urls and firewall rules needed to go birdwatching. Somewhat less crazy day at work although didn't really achieve much. Cooked a nice yellow curry for dinner with some of the leftover beef.

Tuesday.  Restless sleep, kept waking up hot. So much BS at work I literally had a meltdown in the morning. After work I took a bus into town for the second Bright Minds Bold Voices talk of the year - Food, science and the stories we swallow.  It was super crowded - at 17:20 the place already had lots of people, and the food got demolished!  This talk had Adam Liaw and Dr Emma Beckett (a food and nutrition scientist).  Again it was a conversation rather than a talk.  Adam was espousing just cooking real food, while Dr Beckett had a surprisingly pragmatic view of industrialised food - like that juice has a place for neurodivergent people who balk at the unpredictability of fruit; industrialised food means that more people get fed, and sure, now people have the opposite problem of eating too much food, but surely that's better than starving?  Another interesting difference is that Adam talked to the audience.  Dr Beckett talked to Lish and Adam (until question time). 

After the talk we went to the newly reopened Fellows Bar for a light dinner.  We got Labneh, dukkah and rose ($13) - Hung yoghurt with hazelnut dukkah, dried rose and toasted sourdough; and Agnello pizza ($26) - slow roasted lamb shoulder, chilli jam, onion, provolone and rocket leaves.  Both delicious but still filling enough that I took home two pieces of pizza for the sweetie.  

Untitled, Aurel Ragus 1973

These weren't clocks they were old instruments

Wednesday.  

Got to do a bit of decom work planning which was nice. Late dinner (leftover beef/veggies), MacGyver and suddenly it's 20:00 sigh.

Latest Windoze 11 trash: I was filing photos so I had my photos to file in the right pane and the folder structure for filing on the left. But since there's a lot of folders to file photos into, I'd be expanding and collapsing folders to reduce scrolling.  But.  Sometimes instead of just collapsing the colder IT WOULD TAKE YOU TO THE FOLDER!!!!!!  Not every time, just sometimes.  What an utter piece of trash windows 11 is!!!!  I can't believe how unbelievably bad windoze 11 is.  I'm tempted to grab a copy of windows 10 explorer and see if it'll run.

Thursday.  Slept mostly ok. Crap day. Pretty good drinks. Mills&Grills, MacGyver.

Favourites - the Nachos on the left and Potata on the right

Friday.  Mostly decom planning work day which was nice. Kievs with gems and roasted tomatoes for dinner, then watched Nosedive on Black Mirror. Sometimes it would be good to be able to rate people like that. AHs need to be called out sometimes. But for the most part it'd be pretty crap, just like in the episode.

Saturday.  Slept mostly okish I think. Got a couple of things done in the morning but not much - headed out to the club around 10. After the bbq lunch they had the the AGM. Which went for THREE HOURS. Ooof. Stu may have wanted beer and pizza for dinner. Watched American Beauty which we haven't seen in ages.

Also, the house battery didn't charge today.  Have I mentioned that Solar Edge is trash?

We're on a mission now to try all the pizzas on the Mills&Grills menu - this one is roast pumpkin and spaghetti bolognase .. !!

Sunday.  Slept mostly okish. Or so I thought. I felt like a zombie from about midmorning for the rest of the day. We headed out pretty early (around 8!) to Jerrabomberra Wetlands to walk around. I saw shovelers which I don't think I've seen before but nothing else new and exciting.

David would agree

Was feeling like a zombie in the afternoon and it felt like too late in the weekend to start anything, so really didn't achieve much. I did move Chrissie's last clown loach to the two foot so I can break down her tank and give it back to her (I got it in February 2018 so that little loach is *at least* eight years old).  I'll be devastated if the thing dies in the next few days - I'll be a fish murderer .. again...

4.8.26

A few weeks back I was having a crap day so the sweetie said I should leave work and go birdwatching with him.  Con said do it, so off I went.

This time we actually walked all the way around the pond.  It was cold and windy!

Hoary-headed grebe

Hardhead

Australasian grebe

Sacred ibis

Welcome swallows hovering in the wind looking for bugs

A small flock of pied currawongs were flitting around the tops of some trees

Red-browed finches

Fairy wren

Australasian grebe

Hardhead

Pacific black duck

12.4.26

We got a little way around the south-east side of the pond before turning back.  This was before I got my big lens, so I included a few of Stu's photos.

Stu's photo of an Australasian grebe

More grebes

Stu's photo of a hardhead

Hardhead

Cormorants

This faceoff between a raven and a little pied cormorant was pretty funny

Willie wagtail

Yellow-rumped thornbill

Crested pigeons

8.8.26

A nature reserve out the back of Symonston.

Black-faced cuckooshrike

Fairy wren

Eastern rosella!!

Noisy miner

Spotted pardalote

I've literally never seen rainbow lorikeets in Canberra before so this was pretty cool

Wood ducks

How cute are Australasian grebes??

8.8.26

On the way home from Callum Brae we stopped at Giralang Pond. Apparently straw-necked ibis had been coming there in the evenings to roost. We'd driven past a few times but not seen them.  This day we actually got out of the car, and just as we did three of them flew in, poked around the water for a bit, then went up into the trees to roost.  It was pretty dark but still managed some ok photos of them.

(This is just a regular sacred ibis (aka bin chicken), but it looked kinda cool anyway)

So yeah, super lucky timing!

22.8.26

Another trip to the Pinnacle.  Apparently a few different birds that Stu hasn't seen yet had been spotted there, so we went looking.  Didn't actually find any of them, oh well, but did find noisy friarbirds.

Apparently a weebill

Crimson rosellas

(not eastern rosellas.. I've watched this video a bunch of times.. so cool!)

Magpie

Willie wagtails

At the top of the Pinnacle we heard something new and Merlin wasn't being helpful.  It called for ages and ages but stayed well hidden.  We followed it all the way down the hill through about three trees before we finally saw it properly - a noisy friarbird!

Noisy friarbird

At one point we stopped and the robins and thornbills were everywhere.  And a grey shrike-thrush.

Grey shrike-thrush

Scarlet robin (male)

Scarlet robin (female)

Buff-rumped thornbills

Yellow-rumped thornbills

And there were some more noisy friarbirds but only saw one of them.

Sunday.  16th.  Got a popup alert about some disk error. !! Found this in event logs:

Volume C: (\Device\HarddiskVolume5) needs to be taken offline for a short time to perform a Spot Fix. Please run "CHKDSK /SPOTFIX" locally via the command line, or run "REPAIR-VOLUME <drive:>" locally or remotely via PowerShell.

So I did that.. but makes you wonder what went wrong..

Stu ordered Chong Co for dinner.. whoops. Very yummy though. MacGyver and early night.

Monday.  Slept somewhat okish, a bit broken. Depressed about having to go back to work. Started working on some dashboards then the BS started. Sigh. Awful day all up. Leftover Chong Co for dinner, a birdwatching video on birding hotspots in Newcastle, then selected photos from the ~900 I took to blog.

Tuesday to Friday.  It's been a week. So busy and so much BS at work it's soul destroying. After work it's just been blog posting. So pretty much no time or energy for anything else.

I did take this photo of the only daffodil I'm probably going to get this year..

And had a very nice lunch at the Labor Club with Neil and DC on Wednesday.

Kiev!

I was so full from that I didn't need much dinner - Stu made these super yummy cheesy stuffed mushrooms.

And so far the only photo I've taken of wattle this year..

Friday.  Kievs for dinner then watched White Christmas (Black Mirror). I really like this episode, although I find a couple of bits in it highly disturbing. One interpretation of Hell is just being completely alone for eternity. This would be just like that.

Saturday.  Restless legs, took a while to get to sleep. Didn't get a whole lot done in the morning.

The other day when I was trying to figure out the trig I saw from Sherwood Forest I found Parks ACT has a site listing all the publicly accessible trigs in the ACT. I suggested to Stu that maybe we could incorporate trig walks into our bird walks.. :)

After lunch we went out to the Pinnacle again because there were a few birds that had been spotted there that Stu wanted to see. We didn't see those but did find a few noisy friarbirds that Stu hadn't seen in the ACT (and I don't know that I've ever seen). My guts decided they weren't happy half way through so that made for a fun walk back to the car.

Red-necked wallaby

Eastern grey kangaroo

View over Whitlam to Woden

Trig 1 - Mt Painter

View to Woden

Me on top of the Pinnacle

View over Denman Prospect to Mt Tennant

Pinnacle panorama

Trig 2 - I couldn't figure this trig out but I think it's at -35.293641 149.009954

Trig 3 - I think this is the Walker Hill trig taken from the other side of the hill that I took it from last weekend

Bird watcher

Black Mountain Tower

Not much else for the rest of the afternoon and we may have had tv dinners for dinner. Then we watched Project Hail Mary, which was a lot of fun, I really enjoyed it (except for the arrival - just turn then engines off and you're in orbit? What about deceleration? Edit: apparently the first half of the trip was accelerating and the second half was decelerating, which also explains why there was gravity until they stopped.  And the whole picking up the language in like five minutes).  (I'm reminded of Rocheworld with a similarish story and how they use computers and mathematics to learn to communicate).

Sunday.  Slightly more productive day, but not by much.  We did have this little adventure.  As we were backing out to go food shopping Stu thought the car felt lopsided.  So we got out and found the rear left tyre was flat. 

!!!!

I don't think I would have had the strength to get the wheel nuts off (or back on again) and we needed a hammer to whack the bolt thingie on tight enough to turn them.

I suspect this..

We went and checked all the pressures after doing our food shopping - the spare was at 9 PSI.. !!  I just checked it again and it hasn't gotten noticably any flatter..