Kazza the Blank One

On Wednesday a few of us went to some training with Cisco in the city and they took us out to the Lebanese restaurant Azima for lunch.

We got the "lunch special" which for us was a mini-banquet of shish-kebabs, salads, fries and flatbreads.

Soft flatbread and crispy fried zataa bread - that crispy stuff was awesome!

There was a salad with more fried bread

Some hummus (and another bowl of garlic sauce that I didn't get a photo of)

There were lamb mince and chicken kebabs which were yummy

Some fries

They either made too many, or someone wasn't paying attention, but there was a leftover naa naa lemon-mint mocktail that I said I'd take if noone else wanted it.. it was great!  But paper straws disintegrate when you try to use them to stir in all that slushee...

All in all it was a lovely lunch - just the right amount of food (for me). 

The only problem was that it was *very* slow, even with a basically empty restaurant, who knew we were coming.  There was no food at all for almost half an hour, and most people didn't get their drinks orders til well into food service (and I didn't get that mocktail til near the end of food service).

My AquaOne AR-620T fish tank is basically as old as this blog.  23.5 years!  Literally my third blog entry back in January 2003 was about getting the tank and the chlorine in Sydney water.  In the early days of my blog, this post got a HEAP of traffic.  

It's very sentimental (it was my first tank, and I associate it with CIA, since they paid for it).  It's a lovely looking tank.  It's glass too, not perspex, although the stand is sawdust which is not great when things leak!!

But the problem is, it's getting harder and harder to get lights for it (Tony has replaced the lights on his with LEDs).  I'm also wanting to downsize our fish tanks (we have too many and they're way too much work).  So when the last fluoro bulb died recently I decided it was time for it to go.  Tony had already offered to fit it out with LEDs, and Jesse would take the tank.

I moved all the guppies and the surviving plants out of it to my other two foot tanks, and today I started to dismantle the tank.

I pulled everything off the top and cleaned it all off.  I still need to drain it and clean the glass.

It's pretty sad to see it go, but it'll cost me less time and money so there's that...

Sunday.  2nd.  Stu roasted a bunch of veggies which we had with some leftover lamb. MacGyver and photo stuff.

Monday.  Awake from 4:33. The morning was spent pulling mail for an incident on the weekend. The afternoon was more workgroup db tidying. Leftover lamb and salad for dinner, MacGyver and photo stuff.

I forget how nice greek yoghurt is with food..

Tuesday.  Day of all the BS. So much BS. I even lost it at lunch. Later in the afternoon Stu said I should ditch work and go birdwatching with him. So I asked Con. He said do it. So I did. It was good for my brain.

Logged back on for an hour when I got home so the hit on my flex wasn't tooo bad.  Stu cooked up pea and ham soup for dinner.

Wednesday.  Cisco training in the city. Except it wasn't really training, it was just a hands on lab. The lab was actually pretty good as labs go, and I managed to achieve the suggested work for the day (with more work that can be done in the next few days). Beer at Kingos with the sweetie then Disappointing Sushi.

Thursday.  Tried to revise the labs from yesterday but nonstop interruptions all day. Drinks was pretty epic - heaps of temp staff came up which was great.

Friday.  OMFG SOLAR EDGE IS TRASH!!!! We were scheduled for a power outage today (they were replacing a cross beam on the power pole in the neighbour's yard). So Stu told it not to discharge the battery last night. All good. They cut the power at 8:45. A second or two later the battery kicked in. Great. After the router rebooted I reconnected back to work and all was well. Until fifteen minutes later when everything went dead. Stu did a complete restart of the system but it didn't do anything. After nearly an hour I gave up and caught a bus to work (they said they were likely to be done by 13:00) as I had a heap of work I really wanted to get done. Stu fought with Solar Edge's system to try and get a support ticket in about the whole debacle (which he's still waiting to hear back from). The system is in la la land AGAIN. Every few days it just drops off the network so you can't see what it's doing. I HATE SOLAR EDGE SO MUCH!!!! I wish we'd gotten something different. So I get to work and get about an hour's worth of solid work in, then got an alert I had to spend an hour investigating. It's been a literal conspiracy to stop me getting this training done. Did managed to get some decent work done in the afternoon though.  Everything is awful. Kievs and Black Mirror.

Saturday.  Awake for a couple of hours from midnight. Had a heap of things on my todo list. Didn't do much of it. In the afternoon we headed out to Callum Brae Nature Reserve. Birds were being turds and hiding. Did get to see a heap of rainbow lorikeets though, I'd never seen them in Canberra before.  And a cool photo of a spotted pardalote.

There's three of these powder magazines 100m apart near the Mugga quarry (used for storing explosives for the quarry)

Red-necked wallaby.  Only saw one macropod, but a LOT of rabbits

Leftovers for dinner then watched Jurassic Park in honour of Sam Neill.

Sunday.  Awake from around 5.  Red in the morning.. shepherd's warning..

Weather was crap so didn't leave the house.  So it was a house/hobby/photo kind of a day. I did finish one photo project though which was good.  After several blissful weeks of windoze explorer remembering my folder settings, today it's forgotten them again (or at least one of them, another was ok). Why does windoze 11 suck so badly???

And just for fun.. last week the Riot-ACT (Region Media) posted this infographic based on AAMI insurance data for accident hotspots.  Except they used AI to generate it.  Hilarious!  #fail  It got pulled pretty quickly.

Just closing off some browser tabs..

MV Doña Paz - "Asia's Titanic" - how had I never heard of this before??? A worse tragedy than the original Titanic!

VO2 max - supposedly your VO2 max score is a good predictor of your longevity

Bert Flugelman - this would make for a cool tour of Australia - to find all Bert Flugelman's public sculptures

Lighthouse Map - another cool tour of Australia - lighthouses!

Hearing Test Online - test your hearing with this free tool

Metal Earth - I got this for my birthday a couple of years ago (last year??) but didn't get very far through it because I can't SEEEE!!

Diamond Dotz Colours - wouldn't it be cool to get them all!

Port Stephens flat - we stayed in this very flat in 1978.  I'd love to go back some time!

Learn kiragana and katakana - gamify!

Old building in Canberra - can anyone tell me what that cross-shaped building at the bottom was?  (it's gone now)

Region Media Fail - someone thought they could use AI to generate a map of Canberra based on AAMI insurance claim data in Canberra.  They pulled it from the article pretty quickly when people LOLed, but it's still online (for now).

Contour Gauges - how cool are these?  Not that I ever do any sort of work like this, but if I did I'd love one of these!

Hammerdex - another tool that would be useful to keep in your car, just in case you happened to land your car in some water..

Lego Space 1978-1992 - I really NEED this book!

Daisy Chain ACT - a Canberra lady travels all Canberra bus routes

Deepfake Challenge - EVERYONE needs to see this. Especially older people.  

ACTmapi - ACT mapping tools

Digital Atlas of Australia - more mapping tools

List of "best" TV shows

Mosaic Mofos Map - mosaic art in Canberra

Whiskey War - crackup!

Librarian - as seen on Blogography.  I used to have Steam.. and I think I'd probably enjoy this!

John Oliver wants your erotica! - I should look at this for Instagram

Extend New York - what block do you live on?

Sunday.  26th.  Had all the leftover meat, gravy, apple sauce and peas from the club Christmas in July night last night. Yeah it was barely enough for the two of us. MacGyver and early night.

Monday.  Awake from 2:43 for like an hour and a half. There were half a dozen big bangs at one point, and another big one a while later. This morning Tony found the shell casings for the fireworks. Bits and pieces day. Had some of the frozen meals we got off Ben and Sarah for dinner, MacGyver then photo stuff.

Tuesday.  

All the frozen yoghurts I got off Ben and Sarah.

Day of way too much BS. Making me want to rage retire. Cooked Ben and Sarah's leg of lamb for dinner.  If we'd been better organised we could have had it when they were over last week.

Happy birthday Dad.  Missed you and your carving skills tonight...

MacGyver and some photo stuff. Feeling like it's all too hard.

Wednesday.  Awake from 3:43 for ages. Nothing day, didn't achieve anything much. Bought some new undies and sox hurrah. Tried to get some photos of the moon. Clouds were being annoying. Stu cooked a pretty spectacular shepherd's pie for dinner (that took him like an hour and a half to make whoops).

Then MacGyver, read a few news feeds and it's 20:15. Sigh. Then post a moon photo and it's nearly 20:30. Epic sigh.

Thursday.  Spent a bunch of time cleaning out some workgroup DBs.  Good drinks, a bunch of other people came.  Mills&Grills for dinner.  This time we got Southern Chicken - tomato base, chicken, sweet corn, bacon & southern style sauce and mozzarella.  That was quite nice.  And potata.

Friday.  Slept like crap.  More workgroup DB cleaning.  Kievs for dinner and Black Mirror.

Then continued the Arnie marathon with EB with Terminator 2.  I still prefer it over the original.  Couldn't find my DVD to start with - somehow it had gotten mixed up in the S section!

Saturday.  Somewhat crap sleep.  In the morning got some house stuff done and a few things ticked off the todo list.  Then headed into town to go to Ted's.  Except the big one is shut on Saturdays WTF???

So went to the little one but it didn't have the range of bags the big one does.

Then headed over to the National Botanical Gardens.  We spent three hours there taking lots of photos birds, and had a late lunch there as well.

We both got Korean Fried Chicken Burgers ($22.90) - crispy chicken, kimchi slaw, gochujang mayonnaise, milk bun, fries.. which were quite nice and very filling.

Dropped into the chemist and the pet store(s) on the way home (it's getting harder and harder to get fluoro bulbs, another reason to downsize/get rid of the fish...).  We were out for nearly five hours - most of the day - whoops.  I didn't feel like eating any dinner.  In the end I had a piece of cheese and a scoop of ice cream.  We watched Conclave which was surprisingly interesting.

Sunday.  Okish sleep.  House/hobby/photo stuff and some food shopping.  Stu got a rather yummy truffle toastie from Le Cheeserie ($21).

5.7.26

One Sunday afternoon we parked off Diddams Close and wandered around the peninsula.

Dusky moorhen

Some sort of paradalote...

White-plumed honeyeaters

Fairy wren

Stu's photo of a New Holland honeyeater

This was the first time I'd seen a spinebill.  We saw it in the trees, and then it flew over and landed right near us so I got to get a few quick snaps that turned out really well!

Brown-headed honeyeater

Cormorants..

Purple swamphen

Fairy wren changing plumage for spring

7.7.26

First actual test of the new lens.

Red wattlebird

Grey butcherbird

Red wattlebird

Magpie

Can you see the eastern rosella?  I took this photo on my phone while Stu had a play with my camera and lens.  

What about now?  (cropped)

And these are the (cropped) photos Stu got

Oh and this whistler of some description from 4 July

18.7.26

A brief afternoon trip to the Watson Green Space.  Second test of the new lens.

Crested pigeon

Wood duck

Young king parrot

Young grey butcherbird

This happened so quickly I didn't have a chance to get a decent photo.  The depth of field was so shallow though that the miner was out of focus even though they are really close together.

1.8.26

Yeah I'm actually blogging the same day I took the photos....

We wandered around the rainforest walks to begin with.

This female bowerbird was pigging out on berries

These little white-browed scrubwrens were all over the place.  But they don't stay still.

Spinebill

Then we headed out into more open area.

I was excited to see these cinnamon-flanked silvereyes.. apparently they fly over from Tasmania for the winter!

Stu heard some gang gang cockatoos, and then we saw them fly into a tree in the distance.  I was amazed I was able to get this shot at all!

Stu spotted this male satin bowerbird (the only male we saw)

A pair of crimson rosellas were poking around this tree looking for a suitable nesting site.

There were heaps of female satin bowerbirds around

Red wattlebird

New England honeyeater

There were more spinebills as well

A new bird for me - yellow-faced honeyeater

19.7.26

Galah nesting

Buff rumped thornbill

Brownheaded honeyeater

White winged chough

By this point we hadn't really seen anything too exciting.  Then I noticed this little scarlet robin like right next to the path..!!

Scarlet robin (male)

His girlfriend was there too

Scarlet robins are super cooperative for photography.  They sit still on a branch and spy insects from there before swooping down.  

Great egret fly-by

We were heading back to the car when we thought we heard a stone bush curlew so we headed off to the north to where we heard it.  Never saw or heard it again though.

White-throated treecreeper

Brown thornbill

Thornbill of some sort

Wood duck (female)

Eastern rosella