Kazza the Blank One

Sunday.  26th.  Lit our anniversary candle and we had Chong Co delivered.

Had a couple of snackages from them as well (not pictured)

This cracked me up - the neighbours had setup a fire pit and they'd taken a tv out side to watch tv by the fire..

Then we watched Listers: A Glimpse Into Extreme Birdwatching. Uh oh, a two hour documentary on birdwatching? Well it was actually really good, and very funny. Very well done. I reckon even better than the Hollywood Big Year movie.  Worth the time!

Monday.  Slept ok until 4:30 then awake.

Quiet day of house stuff and photo stuff and dotz. Stu fried up more leftover sausages from the Christmas party and we had them with some leftover veggies. Death in Paradise 15.2.

Tuesday.  Slept okish but awake from 5:30. 30 years since the Port Arthur massacre, and 30 years since Como Presbyterian Church reopened after the 1994 bushfires. Crap day achieving pretty much nothing.

We had a mini team lunch at Bombay Duck.  I had butter chicken which was very nice.

Leftover Chong Co for dinner, Death in Paradise 15.3 (yeah maybe, like, test everyone for GSR), then going into battle with eBay again. Tonight they'd changed all of their postage options from last week. Utterly ridiculous. This time "letter" was an option though. Just not a small package. The smallest package option was "up to 3kg". Anything in between you have to use "satchel", but what the hell does that mean? The smallest is 40x20x15cm .. can I still use a box for that?? WTF?? Also last week's set didn't sell. But disturbingly at one point during the week there were two views on it. By the end of the week there were none. Are they like deliberately hiding the listing unless you choose to pay extra to "promote your listing"?? I wouldn't put it past them. ebay is evil. One of the worst companies in the world. Got Tony to search for it. It came up ok so there's that.

Wednesday.  Super restless sleep.

Chaotic day. I have a task I really want to get done but I can't because I keep having to go to BS meetings or people keep asking me questions. It's getting crunch time and I'm getting more and more stressed about it. Just fricken leave me alone to do my work!!! Leftovers for dinner then Death in Paradise 15.4.

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep and awake early. Another crazy busy day. Fairly quiet drinks. Pizzas and garlic bread for dinner.

Death in Paradise 15.5. Like, no physical evidence at all, just conjecture.  How would that even get to trial?

Friday.  Mayday! Not great sleep. Spent most of the day working through all the scenarios of the proxies with AWS. I have like ten or fifteen use cases to figure out. We also had the tree dudes out to chop back the ivy, photinia and pittosporum.

Carnage!  I really liked having the ivy on this wall as it offered some some protection, but I couldn't manage it because it just got too high and we don't have a ladder long enough.

Kievs for dinner then Death in Paradise 15.6. Then watched Matilda which I haven't seen in probably 20 years (and last read the book in 2009).

Saturday.  Slept okish. But cranky with the world all day. Headed out to the club via Queanbeyan.

Stu went into Coles to shop for the bbq, and I went to return the frames I got from Homebase the other week.  Turns out Homebase Queanbeyan is dodgy as hell.  The frames I got the other week were meant to be 40cm x 50cm.  Except they weren't.  They were 38cm x 48cm - way too small for what I needed them for.  You'd think it would be a simple matter to return them, since were literally not what was on the label.  But noooo Homebase Queanbeyan tried to pull some BS "store policy" crap even though the product was clearly not what was on the label.  They said it was "more than seven days" so they have a no returns policy.  Well, I pretty much had to go full-on Karen on them and they begrudgingly gave me a store credit valid for three months.  Not really what I wanted, as I really never want to set foot in that store ever again.  DO NOT SHOP AT HOMEBASE QUEANBEYAN - they will try to rip you off!!  I told Stu about it after, and he agreed that Australian consumer laws override store policy in the case of products not matching descriptions.  

Made it out to the club and Stu cooked up sausages for lunch while Dominic and I raked and carted leaves off the tennis court. 

After lunch a half dozen or so of us raked and carted leaves off a big chunk of land below the toilets.  Pretty impressive effort actually.  Was aching by the end of it - sore back and ankles in so much pain I could hardly walk.

Got home and had a shower and washed my hair (again) and the sweetie got Crust pizzas for dinner.  I may have almost had a meltdown when I was too weak to open a bottle of Henkell...  It really was that kind of day..

Crust truffle beef rossini pizza

Peking Duck pizza.  This was great until I hit a landmine of really hot chilli chunks

Watched Okja which has been on my Netflix to watch list for years.  It was.. interesting.. 

Sunday.  Slept like crap - took ages to get to sleep (upset and stressed) and woke up at like 4:20 for ages. Quiet day of photo stuff.

Apparently this is a plume moth.. who knew?  Found it on one of the walls this afternoon

One of these days I'm going to setup a proper blog for this sort of thing.

This is Narooma in April 1960

And this is from (almost) the same spot in November 2025.. sixty-five years later!

Notice the difference in caravans? ;)

On Friday we all headed to Braddon to go to Bentspoke to celebrate Neil working 50 years!

The booking was super stressful.  They force you to give you a credit card so they can charge you $40pp if you cancel within 24 hours of the booking.  So that was a bit offputting.  But it all worked out.  I booked for 18 in the end and I think we had 16 for the main part of lunch, but another four people came over the course of the afternoon.  

I tried a bunch of beers with a couple of these taster paddles

For lunch I had the Southern Fried Chicken Burger ($25) with Americano mayo, American cheese and iceberg served with chips & choice of sauce.  I asked for regular mayo but they talked me into the chilli mayo which they said wasn't very hot.  Yeah it was hot.  Took me ages to get through it and didn't each much of the sauce.  Otherwise it was very nice.  Their chips are pretty good.

Very nicely the kitchen doesn't close between lunch and dinner, so we were able to get more food over the course of the afternoon to stop us getting too silly.

A lovely afternoon.

A few weeks back Gianni's in Belconnen finally opened (they'd been under construction for ages).  On Wednesday Neil and I decided to go try it out.  We didn't bother with a booking.  It was maybe a third full?  

We started with garlic bread ($9) which was beautifully crunchy and oily and garlicky we both really liked this

We both decided to get the $25 lunch express (a pasta or salad or small pizza and a glass of wine).  

I got rigatoni marasala - with mushrooms and garlic cream sauce.  This was lovely and tasty.

Neil got penne diavola - chilli, garlic, creamy tomato sauce.  This was also very nice, although it wasn't very spicy - Neil said it could have been hotter heh

We decided it'd be a great spot for a team lunch.  There's not a huge variety of options for the lunch time special but we wouldn't be going all that often I guess.  We both quite enjoyed it.

Sunday.  19th April.  Leftover curry for dinner then Professor T 4.3. Then I continued watching a Disney series The 90s Greatest, which has been a bit lame but a bit of memories. What was freaky is the second last episode looked at the Waco seige and the Oklahoma City bombing.. both 19th April.. woah!!!

Monday.  Slept okish I think. Was looking at ways to download the URL categories for our new proxies.  They literally don't have a way to do it.  They just say, oh use this third party python script that someone has written to call the APIs yourself.  Lame.  Then I found they'd upgraded our version of Postman to a cloud version which forces you to create an account on their cloud and sign in to use most features.  Except we block that because it's a massive security risk to, you know, save your passwords in clear text on remote servers.  Not to mention that by upgrading they blatted all my collections which filled me with all kinds of rage.  Then I got home and found the Chinese ebayer I bought a lens cap with a string off, sold a plain cap with no string.  Like how hard is it??   Filled with rage at that too.  Later she partially refunded me (it was only like $5 to start with) since it didn't match the photo.  It does seem to be a genuine Canon lens cap too, although can you believe "Made in Japan" printed on it if it came from China?  Stu cooked up some broccolini in a nice sauce and we had that leftover sausages from the Christmas party, which was very nice.  Then Professor T 4.4.

Took ages to get to sleep, woke up early, and Stu was SICK in the middle of the night! He never gets sick (almost never). He was feeling slightly nauseous before dinner. No idea what set him off. Fighting with the new proxies all day. Trying to get my head around their dumbness. Although did find one super useful feature in their URL categories (which is utterly needed to do the daftness of how their URL categories actually work) - it lets you find other places that has a wildcard (because you need to add an explicit URL to the wildcard category, otherwise it won't be included in the wildcard.  Don't even get me started on that trash). Cooked up some brussels sprouts, capsicum and potato gems for dinner.

Professor T 4.5. OMFG I hate ebay so much. I've been needing to sell some of Vic's Lego, but ebay make it as painful as they possibly can. They don't *do* letters, so even though I can fit stuff in a large letter box (<2 cm thick) if you try and choose that it blanks out what the local postage will be and only shows you international (at $13-$30). So you choose regular package which is like $7-$9 which isn't toooo bad considering it has tracking, but they don't give you any provision to charge for packaging (the box cost me like ~$1). And then they will charge like 13% FEE on POSTAGE, which is money they literally steal out of your profit. But if you don't jump through eBay's hoops (and include tracking) then you're at the mercy of the buyer whether they'll just lie and say the package didn't turn up, and ebay will literally take your money back off you. Then you have to go to Australia Post and argue with them to try and get a refund which they'll only do up to $100 unless you buy insurance. It's the most stressful thing ever. I hate it. I really really wish there was a better alternative to ebay. And don't even get me started on Windoze 11. If I'm on another desktop and click to open windows explorer, it takes me to ANOTHER DESKTOP ENTIRELY!!! Same with Notepad. Double click on a text file on one desktop, and it opens notepad ON ANOTHER DESKTOP!! How is it that windows is STILL SO BAD???

Wednesday.  Slept mostly okish I think. Didn't get much done all morning - too many meetings. Tried out Gianni's with Neil at lunch and had their lunch special. Managed to get something working on the new proxies that I'd been fighting with. Turns out someone else just hadn't done their job properly and my stuff worked once it was fixed. Sigh. Leftover Japanese curry for dinner (we're almost through it!), then Professor T 4.6 (end of season 4).

Thursday.  Took a while to get to sleep but okish sleep after that. Lots of doing doco today and testing the new proxies. Quiet drinks, only one other table. Made pizzas and garlic bread for dinner and watched Death in Paradise 15.1 since Professor T season 5 isn't on Prime yet.

Friday.  Restless sleep. Distracted morning. For lunch we went to Bentspoke to celebrate Neil having worked there 50 years!! It was actually last year that the anniversary came around, but he was recovering from knee surgery so it got put off. Lovely afternoon and around twenty people came.

Saturday.  Anzac Day.  Went to bed as soon as I got home last night, okish sleep, considering. Nice quiet day just doing house stuff and photo stuff.

I may have made some Anzac biscuits.  These were a lot drier than last time (I measured everything properly for a change) so they held their shape a lot better (the last ones melted everywhere). 

Kievs and gems for dinner (since we missed out last night) and then watched Amelia which was somewhat interesting.

Sunday.  Mostly ok sleep but awake super early (half an hour earlier than normal) to go out to Mulligan's Flat for a bird walk of sorts. I've never actually been out there. Didn't see a huge number of birds (we were really just scoping out the place and went for a walk round the dam) but there was a little flock of red-rumped parrots having a bath which was pretty cool. Then we went to Cafè Luzon, a Filipino inspired cafe for brunch. I had the eggs benedikto which was quite nice although the spinach left that weird spinach feeling in my mouth long after. Then just a quiet day, and did some dotz and some music.

Our friend at Cafè Luzon...

We may or may not have Chong Co coming for dinner... :)

Ten years ago today the mother and I left for a six week trip to Europe.

We did two organised tours - a Reformation Tour of Germany, France and Switzerland with Bruce Ballantine-Jones, and an Insight Vacations tour of Scandavia; and we had a couple of days in Salzburg in between them.  

It was a pretty great trip and we saw lots of cool things.

Last year I got my photos online finally.  

So here's the trip! Enjoy!

Sunday.  12th.   Leftovers for dinner then Professor T 3.4.

Monday.  Slept okish I think. Felt all day that work was completely pointless. I keep getting called into meetings for one project that people have to do every couple of years, but instead of reusing previous years' work, they insist on redoing everything from scratch, which feels like the most massivest waste of time and money ever. Then I was waiting for other to people to help me with some stuff. Still waiting. Stu cooked up some goats cheese and caramelised onion ravioli with a creamy mushroom sauce which was very nice. Professor T 3.5.

Tuesday.  Slept okish I think. More pointlessness and waiting for people at work.

Went into town after work for the first Shine Dome talk of the year in the Bright Minds, Bold Voices series.  This time they had Professor Stephen Simpson from the Charles Perkins Centre and Vanessa Hudson the CEO of Qantas to talk about "Reimagining how we fly".  The format was a little different from previous years (although I missed most of last year's due to reasons so not sure what they did then) in that they just had the guest speakers sitting out the front and chatting about stuff rather than having formal talks.  They were talking about the collaboration they're doing between science and Qantas to optimise the long haul experience by the choices of lighting and food service to try and reduce the worst of jetlag.  This was going to be especially relevant for Qantas' Project Sunrise A350 flights which are aiming for 22 hour non-stop flights from east coast Australia to the UK.  Which is great and all, but I was still hung up on how little *space* you get in cattle class. Vanessa addressed this right at the very end with a quick comment about how economy will get 34 inches between seats instead of the usual 31-32.  pfffffft.  Sorry but I need more horizontal space as well so I don't feel like I'm pinned in (which leads to epic restless legs).

Professor Stephen Simpson, Vanessa Hudson, Lish Fejer

We saw this very purple mustang in the car park..

Then Tony and I went for a light dinner at Badger & Co (we split this on account of pigging out at the Shine Dome)

Wednesday.  Slept okish I think. I don't think I achieved anything useful today. I did get a ride to and from work with Chrissie though in her Tesla. OMFG there are so many DUMB things. Like the door handles for a start (to get in you have to press them in then you can pull them out, and to get out you can either find an awkward little handle in the arm rest area, or push a button). You have to change gears using a touchscreen WTF?? (Ray pointed out that how often do you *really* need to change gears in an automatic electric car?).  Yeah so if the touchscreen dies you can't drive your car. Hurray.  And blinkers are a button on the steering wheel. The torque on it is pretty impressive though. Like a rollercoaster.  Stu cooked up a fake satay chicken using some almond paste we wanted to get rid of out of the fridge, with some red curry paste, coconut cream, fish sauce, chilli powder, sugar and some veggies that needed using up out of the freezer. It was very yummy and tasted like satay.  Professor T 3.6 (end of season 3).

There's actually a bunch of rice under this!

Thursday.  Took forever to get to sleep - super restless. Then another day of not achieving much. Chrissie came to drinks which was kinda fun. Although I think Mike hates me. hrmm. Got Dominos again, but only because they sent us a $23 voucher for a free pizza during the week (something about the delivery taking longer than 24 minutes last time). These pizzas actually went back to almost being full sized. Almost. Yeah, still only 9.5 inches.  The thin and crispy pepperoni we got was just over 10 inches. Still pretty hopeless. Professor T 4.1.

Friday.  Broken sleep from 2am. At work mostly just fixing up logging on the new proxies. Kievs for dinner. Professor T 4.2.

Saturday.  Somewhat restless sleep. Got annoyed (listening to the news in the morning) that I was going to miss the airport open day. I knew it was coming up but they hadn't put tickets online yet before I went away for our holiday, then I forgot to keep an eye on it while we were away. Annoying too because they were going to have an A220 which I haven't seen before. #grunt. Went for a walk again in the morning.

Got back then went out birdwatching with the sweetie. Suddenly the day is half over. Whoops.

.

Quiet afternoon.  I may have done a jigsaw.

Fire out at Googong (hazard reduction)

The sweetie cooked up a heap of veggies for dinner (including a very nice cabbage bake using a pack of goats cheese I got from Chris's that was already past its use-by date when I bought it before we went on holidays... she'll be right!)

Then watched Netflix's 2023 "Civil War" which was a bit.. bleak..

Sunday.  Slept mostly okish I think. Quiet morning, then in the afternoon went with Jo and Mel to see The Sound of Music at the NSFA .. singalong!!!!! OMFG it was so much fun. The sweetie just barely tolerates me singing along in movies, so this was a great opportunity to really have some fun. It was awesome! Thanks Jo for the invite!

Monday.  6th.  Stu cooked up some veggies and I fried up some lamb and then we watched Professor T 2.5, then I just watched crap on the internet.

Tuesday.  Slept okish I think. Spent the day working on getting the last of the vips migrated off the old load balancer. Stuff is mostly ready to go, just need to quadruple check everything and do a heck of a lot of testing. Leftovers for dinner, Professor T 2.6 (end of season two), then labelling Europe panorama photos. The internet died around 21:40. Hurrah.

Wednesday.  Slept mostly ok (although woke up around 5:20). The internet was still dead but came back before I went to work. Continued work on the last vip migration, only to find out someone else is doing another change to the back end of the system I want to work on around the same time. So I'm going to have to wait a couple more weeks. Also got pulled into a couple of blergh meetings which took up a bit chunk of the day.

Turdhead neighbour has parked his massive ute on our land. I left a note asking to please not park on our side. Finished labelling my Europe 2016 panorama photos.

Thursday.  Mostly awake from 3 except for a couple of short patches of dream sleep. Busyish day again, but waiting for people, so moved onto trying to solve a problem on the new proxies. Everything said to do something a certain way for HTTP/2 but it just wouldn't work and I had to raise a support ticket sigh. Not sure how busy drinks was, I don't think very (we were outside). We got Dominos pizzas for dinner. Shockingly, they've shrinkflated their pizzas. When I opened the first one I thought it was a joke, or a "special" pizza that was supposed to be smaller. Nope. They were both like 2/3 the diameter they should be. #grunt.  Will be boycotting Dominos til they fix their $#!+  I should have measured these..

Professor T 3.1. Bed.

Friday.  Restless night, weird dreams. Woke up cranky with the world. Also the neighbours still have one of their trucks parked on our side - it's been there for *days*. #grunt. The note I left the other night was gone. Talked to J in the morning who said he'd told T not to park there. At work I'm still angry they took away my Visio licence while I was on leave and refuse to give it back. Pissed off with the world. Busy day not achieving much including more meetings and having to deal with vendor support. Kievs for dinner then Professor T 3.2.

I was so excited Chris had potato gems!!!  Haven't had them in ages

Saturday.  Took ages to get to sleep - stressing over the neighbours. Then restless sleep. I was gonna go yell at turd neighbour to move his ute, but he'd already left for work. So I put some bins in the spot so hopefully he'll get the hint. Went for a walk, finished htmlifying Europe 2016 panoramas, watched the Artemis II splashdown.

Look how green everything is at the moment!

Food shopping in the afternoon, don't know what else I did. Neighbour came home and parked on his side. Hurray! Stu cooked a Japanese curry for dinner. Professor T 3.3.

Sunday.  Early night. Slept mostly ok. Went for a walk again. Got jumped on by TWO dogs. Seriously people if you have a dog that's likely to jump on people KEEP IT ON A LEASH!!! It's not that hard!! Busy day getting lots of stuff done around the house including washing, weeding, mowing, and even some music.

I'm so excited my chrysanthemum has got some life on it!!!

We also went out to West Belconnen Pond to go birdwatching but it was super windy - feels like 6C whoops.

Windoze didn't remember my iPhone in tray settings, but it did remember the date order sorting on my blog posting directory.

Yeah it's been a week...

Sunday.  28th.  Cooked up an epic lamb roast ($22/kg from Tathra Place in the markets) and veggies for dinner, then watched The Big Year (which some random dude on our holiday told us about).  It was a bit "serious" for all the comedic actors in it, but kinda cool.

Monday.  Slept relatively ok I think, for a change.  Spent much of the day geotagging holiday photos.  Stu also pulled out all the bedroom furniture to vacuum nearly 18 years worth of dust behind stuff...

Had some of Lily's Youfoodz for dinner.

Watched Professor T 1.5 together then I watched Taxi Driver which I've never actually seen.

Tuesday.  Took ages to get to sleep, epic restless.  Finished geotagging holiday photos.

In the afternoon we went to Palmerville for a walk and to do some birdwatching.  This Bell 206L-1 (VH-OAS) chopper had been buzzing around Canberra all day, Evoenergy checking powerlines.  

I hadn't walked along the new pathway yet

Such a fun shot..

Finished off Lily's Youfoodz dinners and the last of the salad

Then watched Professor T 1.6 together (end of season one) then I watched a doco on the Titanic - Titanic: Digital Resurrection.  Considering the effort they went to to digitise the ship, the computer graphics they also used were pretty cheesy.  Interesting though.

Wednesday.  April Fools!  Slept okish, only awake for an hour or two around 3.  Back to work.  Yeup definitely an April Fool.  Spent most of the day catching up on chats and emails.  

The sweetie cooked up a heap of veggies and I fried up some lamb, then we watched Professor T 2.1.

You can tell the sweetie was cooking - the potatoes are all lined up nicely ;)

Then spent the rest of the evening putting up reviews of all the places we stayed on our holiday in booking.com.

Thursday.  Took ages to get to sleep.  Mostly still catching up on crap at work.  Had a gin night at drinks but hardly anyone else turned up.  Sad times. 

Bus home (trying to save petrol) then made pizzas for dinner and watched Professor T 2.2.

Friday.  Good Friday.  Although not so good for Jesus back in the day.  Slept mostly ok.  Didn't get much done all day sigh.  Pretty much a nothing day.  We did go for another walk in the afternoon to Palmerville to try out Stu's new toy (all the bird pics I'll put in another post one day).

Kievs for dinner then Professor T 2.3.  I then watched "Challenger Disaster: Lost Tapes" from 2015, which was mostly footage around Christa McAuliffe.. (as an aside, I didn't know that her backup, Barbara Morgan, later went on to be a full-blown astronaut in her own right.. cool!).  Eerily, the peeps that are on their way to the moon right now used booster rockets from the shuttle programme.. that wouldn't be freaky .. at. all.   .. !!)

Saturday.  Only awake for an hour or two around midnight.  Spent literally the entire morning doing housework.  Sigh.  Went out with EB to have a look at the new road around the north/east side of the airport which was pretty cool, had a good long drive around the area, then went in to Quangers for lunch at the Royal Hotel (had a very nice caesar salad).

Air traffic control tower at Canberra Airport

Did you know they're closing down the air traffic control tower at Canberra Airport and replacing it with cameras done with remote control..?  What could possibly go wrong?

Swing bridge in Queanbeyan

Caesar salad at the Royal Hotel in Queanbeyan

It's such a shame they haven't setup any sort of dedicated planespotting area with all the new works

Stu cooked a tuna bake and veggies for dinner then we watched Professor T 2.4.  I then watched Lantana which I'd never seen before.  Lots of unlikeable characters behaving badly.  Hurrah.

Easter Sunday.  He is risen!  Slept mostly okish I think.  Woke up 6am!  But 5am in reality. Sigh. Didn't achieve really anything all day.  Stu took Stumpy outside for a walk.

In the afternoon we went over to Annie's for afternoon tea and catchup with the family.  Pebbles wasn't being *quite* the scardey cat...

Leftovers for dinner.  The just-past full moon was rising and it was like, hey there's four peeps in between me and that bright shiny thing!  Pretty cool!  Then watched Molly's Game, which I'd seen on a plane but Stu hadn't seen.  

Monday.  Slept mostly okish.  Got a bunch of Europe 2016 photo stuff done, and a heap of jigsaw.  Stu has cooked up a bunch of veggies to have with some leftover lamb for dinner.

So this is where we went last month (this month).  Don't mind that little gap between Renmark and Balranalad, my external battery ran out and took out the GPS with it.  Stu has promised to send me the track from his radio at some point.

Moving on.

Day one was Canberra to Melbourne, just a driving day.  Had the weekend in Melbourne and went out to Cape Schanck.

Then to Warrnambool for a couple of nights.

Then to Mount Gambier for four nights.

Then to Victor Harbour for two nights

Then to Kangaroo Island!!  That little bottleneck of Hog Bay Road we did up and down 12 times! (six each way)

Back to the mainland, we stayed in Goolwa for two nights to explore Lake Alexandrina and surrounds

Then onto Adelaide for a week

This is all of South Australia

On the way out of Adelaide Google Maps had a brain hemorrage and sent us all around Adelaide but not out of it.  We started in Glenelg and *should* have just gone up the Anzac Highway and then north.  But instead it sent us around the airport (ok) but then SOUTH when we wanted to go north.  It was only when we stopped for petrol near Edwardstown that it finally got the hint and realised we wanted to go north.

So this is the route we took (starting in Glenelg)

Let's not even mention how it told us to turn RIGHT (south) here in peak hour.. it took us like five minutes to do this..

Apple Maps would have sent us up the Anzac Highway and then north.  No idea why Google couldn't figure this out..

But we made it.. hurrah!!