Ah, so O-day has been and gone, and today was the first day of Semester 1. The bus is packed with students who don’t know that you should wait for everyone who’s getting off the bus to get off before they get on. And a bus driver who seems to also be a fresher, given the sudden stops and kerb scrapes.
Of course to commemorate the start of the teaching year I’ve come down with what I can only consider to be the O-day cold. At least I’m not the only one with it at work, so responsibility for spreading it is shared. I expect this bus full of students is doomed.
So, they would have been born in 1992, before the advent of the world wide web, when I was downloading e-mail to my Newton via my analog phone, newsgroups were still king, WiFi was a dream and DVD’s were yet to be invented. Sigh. I suspect as technology accelerates the rate of world change accelerates and the generation gap widens faster.
Archive for the ‘Life’ Category
Bus blog 8
Monday, February 22nd, 2010A week and a bit redux
Sunday, November 29th, 2009Really this is meant to be ‘Two months redux’, but I still need to work out what I want to say about them, so here’s the last week instead, and hopefully we can work on getting on track, seeing as some of my adoring public are requesting updates 
- Played “Dominion”, and the Seaside variant. Pretty cool.
- Finished Richard Morgan’s “Woken Furies”. I do like his stuff, but I’m reading it faster than he’s writing it…
- 500Gb Western Digital Scorpio Blue is giving I/O errors. Fortunately looks like it may be still under warranty. Might go Samsung for a change this time though.
- Movember morning tea raised some $100+
- Tempura Fish and Chips in Mosman Park. Basa, white snapper, and red spot emperor. The red spot emperor seemed the favourite (IMHO as well) but of course is smaller and more expensive
- Made it to team breakfast
- Ordered some bearings for my reprap, thereby committing myself more to building one. Assuming they don’t go to Washington or Austria or something. Now all I need to do is find a source of the circuit boards who aren’t Makerbot supply constrained.
- Buying more chook food, getting some freebie mulch, walking around Lake Monger, buying a replacement HD, getting annoyed by a JB Hi Fi salesdroid who suggested maybe I should buy something other than what I wanted.
- Zoo visit with our generation of the family (and the next one, I guess Got to see the elephant (I’m assuming Tricia) get taken for a walk through the park at lunchtime, which was great
- Astrofest at Curtin Uni. Puggle got to launch water and air rockets. Saw the Scitech guy get his arm sliced up by plastic shards when the LN2 demo exploded prematurely. Good thing he was wearing his safety goggles and didn’t get hit in the face. Don’t try this at home kids!
- Excellent dinner at the Essex restaurant in Fremantle for our ‘kiddie dinner’ (ie no kids . I must remember not to order chowder, it’s rarely remarkable. The rest of the food was great. The French botrytis semillon from Saint Croix du Mont (Something de Pavillion) was astounding. Service was excellent.
- Unfortunately Cygnet was upchucking so we didn’t get to linger over dinner and were recalled.
- Cutting down the rat access paths to the roof. Unfortunately I think that means they’re now trapped in the roof…
- Bunnings doesn’t look much good for Reprap parts, they either don’t deal in sizes that small or they don’t have the bits in the quantity I need, so Radio Spares it is.
- Making lamb and spinach curry. Lacked something, not quite sure what
- Cygnet is taking multiple steps. Bilby is playing the recorder. Puggle is playing the recorder, and is getting pretty good at associating new information with what he knows so far (frequently, in Latin . And both are speaking a lot of French vocab.
- Not going to have much of a novel at the end of this NanoWriMo
24 days later, redux
Monday, September 28th, 2009(Ah, if only I’d waited another 4 days
- Ghenghiscon quiz night win, thanks to a most excellent team. I really need to memorize countries and capitals.
- UCC dinner at Mez in Northbridge. Food was pretty good, but quite a loud venue on a Friday night (I suspect even if you subtracted the UCC’s noise
- DogCow dinner at Trigg Island Café. Not cheap (not particularly expensive), but the food, serving size and service were all excellent (on a Tuesday night, too!). Went the Blackened Fish and the Cherries Jubilee (which came with three full scoops of icecream!)
- A very enjoyable random dinner at The Moon
- My first site visit to as yet mostly unfurnished Perth Artifactory. Lots of potential there, hopefully it’ll be realised! And hopefully it’ll get me making stuff.
- Blood pressure monitoring. Seems it’s 15 points lower when it’s not in the GP’s office. Or between the left and right arms
- Discovered that while you may only need to keep your tax records for 7 years, you probably want to keep your share records for longer than that when you’re trying to work out your Capital Gains Tax.
- 4WD towball through my car’s front grille in the UWA carpark. Don’t bother using your horn, the other driver probably has the stereo on. Looks like mainly cosmetic damage. Now have to decide, do I claim and perhaps get the car written off (and then have to come up with money to buy a new one?) or do I just live with it?
- Planted squash, butternut pumpkin, golden cucumbers and pansies (in a hope that they’ll either keep the bugs away or get eaten first. Plus it’s easier to get the kids to water the flowers and they’re conveniently next to the veges). Hoping for some more groundcover to keep the grass at bay. I think one of the secrets the whole vege gardening has reinforced (I did learn it on my permaculture introduction), is to plant lots of different things close together. A nice big cauliflower, which unfortunately went to seed.
- Watched “The Pink Panther” at movie club. Still worth a few laughs. I wonder how long it is before movie ratings include “Includes smoking”? (Or will it just come under “Drug references”?)
- Leaves on the fig, flowers on the plum, many mulberries waiting to ripen (and then those that the kids can reach get eaten). Hoping we get some mulberry stained eggs from the chooks…
The fortnight, redux
Friday, September 4th, 2009- Since last post, washing machine fixed, phone upgraded. Car has a leak in the roof
- Yet another cold. And a possible burst eardrum?
- 2 days of training, with a cold
- Plane watching. And I see my first A380 in the flesh
- Had a chance to watch the kids swimming
- Saw District 9
- A start to the week I don’t want to repeat, and the village rallying around Mikey and family
- Couriering stuff to Becc on the way to work
- We discovered where Henny Penny has been stockpiling her eggs
- Too many bills, not enough liquidity. Oops! Shouldn’t have upgraded the phone
- The first ducklings of the season at work
- The chinese cabbages put forth new growth and ablate their outer leaves
- Mulberry tree is covered in leaves and green fruit. Hopefully signs of life from the fig soon
- A busy weekend ahead!
- There’s no leopard like snow leopard…
The weekend, redux
Monday, August 17th, 2009- Took Puggle to meet a real live Astronaut, followed by fish and chips down on the foreshore in front of Steve’s, where he spotted trains going along the freeway, and pelicans cruised past in the dark
- Took Bilby shopping, and for a babycino. She brought her bag and carried the (two items) of shopping for me!
- Tied balloons to their backs so they could be astronauts
- Went to a party, at which there was a CupCake Makerbot (it seems everyone has one but me )
- Craft day, so caught up with friends, distracted kids, put a roast on and took Puggle and Bilby to the park
- Moved the outside light switch inside, so less pfaffing around in the dark
- Realised that we are self sufficient in eggs, tomatoes, grapefruit, lemons and chinese cabbage. Now if only we could come up with unlimited interesting recipes for this combination!
- Bought 25kg of chook food
- Following the broccoli, the cauliflower has gone to seed. We may have a self-sown Chinese cabbage? Also, losing the war on grass
- Gave Cygnet some Nature time under the lemon tree
Another two months redux
Friday, July 10th, 2009It seems that I manage to update things about every two months, which is pretty lax.
- Rogaining was lots of fun, even if we did only get one checkpoint. Average speed 1.5km/h by the time we stopped for nappy changes, nursing breaks, and for Puggle to beat things with his stick (hammer)
- More mulch in the garden. Tomatoes and now Broccolli!
- Olives for pickling
- Roasting marshmallows with friends
- Dinner with friends
- The (Swine?) Flu, complete with raging fever
- Homelaid eggs (Dark yellow yolks and very white whites. Yummy!)
- Watching big machines move big rocks in Mandurah
- Finished reading Freakonomics (worth reading), now have Wikinomics, Richard Morgan’s “Black Man” and Craig Shuftan’s “Hey Nietzsche leave those kids alone” to read.
- Fixes needed for car, phone and washing machine.
- Bilby still talking up a storm, Puggle is thinking about things, Cygnet is standing up a lot.
- Now have a 1.5Tb drive
Nerd alert
Sunday, May 31st, 2009I am in the local city farm supply store, buying some chicken life support material (shell grit, vegetarian feed (no prions , and some straw). Having just been to see MacHeads I’m wearing my “Mac Geek” t-shirt. I get to the checkout:
Her: “I like the shirt”
Me: “Thanks, it doesn’t get out much these days”
Her: “Wear it with pride”
Me: “Oh, I do” (I think that’s what I said)
Her: “I’m not a nerd I’m a 50th level paladin”
Me: “I think you spend too much time on Facebook”
The two months, redux
Monday, May 18th, 2009Seeing as it’s coming up on two months since my last reduxion…
- Grubby nails garden blitz. Most thankful for all those who attended (and especially Derek and Alex for the gate hanging!)
- Swancon, which I may cover in a separate post
- Star Trek, also subject of a separate post.
- Wolverine, not worthy of a separate post really…
- Deville’s Pad, very cool. As an indicator of their clientele, they have 7 different sorts of Absinthe on tap. Not sure what their Wednesday childen’s sessions would be like though
- Nick’s housewarming and some enjoyable random discussions
- Sheldon’s X0th
- Mikey’s bucks night. Followed by a Mother’s day during which I felt very seedy. Thanks to FoG for the lift
- Shiny new server with G5 goodness. Blogs still go offline if I turn BOINC on though Unification of photos and music continuing.
- Skip and I laid down a batch of Grolsch clone. Just got to work out when we can bottle it
- Puggle’s birthday. He’s now getting pocket money. Unprompted, he spent it on stuff he could share with his sister. I’m so proud! Also has a bike now.
- Bilby is talking up a storm, and developing her stubborn streak.
- Cygnet has worked out crawling, and can now go fast. Now pulling himself up so he can creep along the furniture before running after his siblings…
- A great turnout at the dogcow/MacGeeks dinner, with some new faces and iPhone discussion
- No more daylight saving, at least until the Government decides to try it on us again to see if we’ve changed our minds yet
- The grubby nails day has brought forth vegetables! Now deploying marigolds to keep some of the pests at bay hopefully.
- We have worms too. This week, chickens!
- Today, spent watching Puggle discovering Jellyfish in the Swan (usually by poking sticks through them). His playmate is about to head off touring around Australia for a year. Brief tour of homes of the rich and famous as we tried to work out where in Freshwater bay we were actually meant to be meeting. My old stomping grounds. Dolphins lazily cruising.
Consumption
Saturday, March 28th, 2009For 5 people over 181 days:
- Average for our suburb without bore: 233,000L
- Average for our suburb with bore: 144,000L
- Our house this period last year: 137,000L
- Our house this period: 100,000L
Currently at this level of consumption water is costing us AU$0.643/kL
The Weekend, redux
Tuesday, March 10th, 2009- UCC’s Fresher Welcome, with added bonus UCC alumni Google guest
- Nachos
- Did some shopping in Mondo’s bulk store. Mmmm… must look up some goat curry recipes for winter
- A chance to stop for a cup of coffee with the family
- Prawn, mango and prosciutto kebabs.
- Met up with a documentary film crew from the US and some other Sungroper team members to do some interviews and look at the Willetton car. The Sungroper chassis lives on, only all the other technologies bolted onto it have changed
- Got a very pleasant chance for the kids to catch up with other kids whilst the adults did likewise. Looking forward to introducing them to Scrapheap Challenge
