LOTRO horse

One of my alts won a PAX Prime steed on LOTRO.  I've doen this before with another alt too.  Its never my main that wins the rare horses..but I'm not complaining.  I just need to level these guys up now.

up down up

I had a high, low, high day today. First I got to help lift a couple of 100kg turtles, one of which is being released back into the wild. I also got to hold its head to calm it down during the move (very cool). Then I had to deal with a negative email about something that could have been handled in other more positive ways. Short fume before I decided that I have more important things to do and moved on. Then I got a phone call to say I'd won the set of pipettes from the display that had been held the day before. Woohoo! 10-100ul, 100-1000ul and 1ml to 10ml, plus a stand, some tips, a usb stick and a pen. I've immediately loaned them to someone who's going to do some work in PNG next week, because he needed some more for his training trip.

Now i'm going home on a high note. Thus dodging the second down I'm due.

latest Game

I played secret world for 5 hours yesterday...It reminds me a bit of skyrim. I think because of the realistic graphics. I also thought the movement on the screen looked a bit similar, but no nausea - I must retry skyrim when I'm feeling particularly well & see if it was coincidental nausea.

I love the puzzles. I love the "no pressure to rush through and grind" because you have to stop and think.

I'm glad I played for a couple of hours on my own before hooking up with A&C, because I worked out what combat worked for me. When i joined up, the combat style changed completely. Then when they got off (with warnings of, now you are on your own expect to die a lot)...and I died in 5 minutes. Then I remembered my solo combat style and only died twice the rest of the day - I love being able to do combat moves while moving. Going back to "plant your feet, wait till the induction finishes, run out of the way" other games is going to frustrate me now.

must figure out how to do this

People are still hitting my matryoshka limit blog entry. Which is interesting given there's usually only two people who read this blog. The latest one suggested I graph the number of hits on my blog vs the position that a search on Matryoshka limit put my blog on over time.

Anyone (out of the two readers of this blog) know how to find out the latter? I can get the former easily.

its been a hard month

Hence its been over three weeks since I blogged...but while the next week will also be very busy, I see light at the end of the tunnel.  I'm also going to the show tomorrow - yay!

The reason I'm blogging tonight is I want to say how fantastic an author Patricia McKillip is.  I'm re-reading the riddle master of Hed series and she just writes so well.  Her characters have such dignity, warmth and personality.  She writes the small (and large) tragedies of life so well. 

It may also help that I've been reading some fiction that seems whipped off in a hurry, trying to get through events with scant regard for the characters, few of whom struggle with the right thing to do.  And if they make hard decisions, don't suffer from the regret it causes.

Of course, if I could write better, this would be clearer.

next books

Books to get;
Quiet:The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking  By Susan Cain

I saw this reviewed at the link above & thought it might be an interesting read.  I've been thinking lately about the pressure society places on people to be extroverted.  I was going to ebook it, but I have the feeling this one is one I might loan out to people, so I'll look for a physical copy.

Some thing else I can't find again....I saw a link to a novel on a webcomic advert.  I thought it looked interesting and was purchasable on smashwords, so off I went, only I was on a computer away from home and couldn't remember my user or password.  I thought I emailed myself with the link...but no, I didn't & now I can't remember book, author or even which webcomic it was.  bummer.

Edit:  aannnd found the book:  The house of Yeel which i am carefully linking here so i can go off and buy it at a convenient time.

thats right, May is over

So now, to my books of May..almost all of which were box sets;

All the James H. Schmidt novels that came free from baen books (ebook), the last of which I don't think I'd read - ah, good times

Tamora Pierce Songs of the Lioness series - the first Pierce novels I ever read & the author who introduced me to the young adult section of Dymocks.

Lloyd Alexander:  Chronicles of Prydain - a lot closer in style to Lord of the rings than much of what I've read fantasy wise, but also a lot closer in date.

I had family visiting for 1/2 of May so that's all I got through this month.

I haven't been playing computer games because I've had guests - I've been outside, having barbeques, eating fancy ice-cream and fantastic coffee, panning for gold, nipping up to Cardwell for a Jessies' pie.  But they've gone now : (  So tonight I finally cleared up the backlog of other things enough to think I'd like to play...and both my online games are patching - doh.  I did consider skyrim but I haven't played for a month so its likely to want a long patch too (and it made me queasy last time).  So I thought I'd reinstall sims medieval...now it's taking its' sweet time to load.  Sigh.

Writing - sometimes I have to.

I just finished my first assignment for a grad cert subject that I'm doing (annotated bibliography).  I estimate it took me 20 solid hours to write about 2500 words.  I did have to find and read and assess articles prior to writing which is included in that time.  Now I have another assignment to submit in another 14 days - worth twice as much for the same word count, and another one 14 days after that worth as much as this one. 
I have some concerns about getting them done as well as editing two theses for grad students, teaching a 3rd real time PCR and writing the assessment and updating the practicals for an intensive subject I'm teaching in 5 weeks.  I'm planning on having a little melt down after the intensive.

Google is trying to take over

Hmm. My very common browser is no longer being supported by blogger. They suggested using Google Chrome. I wonder who runs blogger...oh wait, thats who. I'm all for companies getting bigger due to better service provision. I'm not fond of companies getting bigger due to making it hard for you to use brands other than their own...must look at independant blog providers. I tried google chrome and didn't like it.

This may be a first

I've started several books this month that I gave up on, for various reasons. Yesterday I found another pile of half read books under the bed that I lost track of and look at now with a feeling of meh. I think I'll give them all away half read.
Sherrilyn Kenyon: Born of ice (also born of night). Scifi romance - Ive read some of her novels and enjoyed them. I think these got a bit samey for me & I couldn't empathise with the characters
Paul Stewart & Chris Riddell: Vox - too kiddy  
Carol Berg: The spirit Lens - I think this is actually a good novel but I just could not get into it.
Cassandra Clare: Clockwork Angel - its a prequel to a series I found interesting, but none of the characters or the story particularly grabbed me or held me  
Johan Harstad: 172 hours on the moon - horror masquerading as scifi (I just don't enjoy horror as a genre, it makes me itchy)
Robert J Sawyer: Watch - I did enjoy the first one in the series, but the main character explaining her point of view to the audience got monotonous - story line please. I don't remember the first one having quite so much in it.

 Theres a couple I finished, but I won't be keeping
 TC McCarthy: exogene - interesting idea and viewpoint, very violent, never really could fit myself in with the heroine.
Galen Beckett: The magicians and Mrs Quent - rip roaring storyline and very Georgette Heyer in style (I like Georgette Heyer) but I struggle with books that run parallel storyline where the different groups of people barely interact (and some of them I quite disliked). I may get the second book anyway, as there may be some long term plan top have the characters join together more.

Theres a few I read and will keep (some came from my bookshelf)
Robert Buettner: Orphans alliance - less original now I'm at book 4 but still good hard war sci fi
Pittacus Lore: The power of six - I'll be reading ther rest of this series to see how it turns out. This is book 2  
Tamora Pierce: Tortall and other lands - I never used to be a short story reader. I found them unfulfilling, but as I get more busy, I appreciate the small bites of time. Particularly in a unverse I'm familiar with already. This lead me to pulling out a couple more of Tamora's books and buying a new one.  
Tamora Pierce: Terrier, Bloodhound, Mastiff - I bought mastiff on Saturday and read it last night and today. I was doubtful as it had been savaged a bit in the reviews, and yes, there's some treachery that could have been subtly forshadowed a little better without giving the game away, but it sucked me in and kept me reading well past lights out. So I feel a bit off today - need sleep (had a nap). I actually liked it better than Bloodhound. I think Terrier is the best. The treachery is very well done in that.

Thats it for April. Off to do some gardening so i don't feel guilty about the computer games later :)

The human spell checker

I spend so much of my time marking reports, that I can't read anything without mentally circling the typos. And yes, I do recognise that I spell atrociously myself - mainly due to the two finger typing (looking at the keyboard), followed by immediately hitting the enter key. And no, that doesn't mean you can send me your writing to check it for you.

TMNT

Can I still use an image of the teenage mutant ninja turtles on my point mutation lecture? What if it doesn't make sense any more? Maybe now I'm inferring the aliens are involved. These are the things I think about while writing lectures.

my poor computer

I tried to fix it, gave up and sent it into my repair guy. He thought he'd fixed it but i couldn't get back to him Friday, so it sat there over the weekend. Called him Monday and he said he turned it on Monday and got new error messages (after installing new hard drive and sata cables). I really hope i didn't corrupt the motherboard in some way. It all sounds very connections related. Anyway...still in the shop.

Edit: back now - new load of windows on new 1TB hard drive. So I'm updating the few things that didn't get swapped across. They did remarkably well, vent has been copied across & kept the passwords and logins - as has firefox. I'm also doubling the ram - but it wasn't in stock so when they get it, they'll drop by and install it at my place. Must remember to make bed that morning and make sure there's nothing embarrassing lying around.

Lotro needs a slight update, doing that now....SWTOR needs a new download of the installer. Guess whats not available right now.

new computer monitor

Most of my blog posts start with 'I'. This has nothing to do with the title, I just noticed it. It's not surprising since this is a purely narcissistic blog I write about me...and the weather. Hmm, Most of the weather blogs don't start with "I". Perhaps I should start using the royal "We" as variation.

We bought a new computer monitor today because SWTOR on a 19 inch monitor is tricky in group fights - too much HUD to click on the action. We were planning on 22-24 inch, but they either had shiny screens (yuck - much prefer matt) and/or didn't have the DVI cable option (only VGA). So, since it was on a $100 off sale, We now have a 27 inch screen. It doesn't have the 2ms refresh rate of the old one, lets see how long an LG lasts, but they set up skyrim on it and I couldn't see any difference in the quality with the character doing fast battle moves. This is as big as we can go and still fit the monitor and computer together on the desk.

We had to go back and correct all the accidental first person wordage in the paragraph above.

March Books

I doubt I'll read another one today. Too much to do, sp here they are...some with a 1 line comment! I like to ensureyou have enough feedback.

Wen Spencer : tinker – attracted by the bright pastel cover colours, stayed for the story
Garth Nix and Sean Williams: Trouble twisters – a little young for me I think, I couldn’t relate to the main characters
Rick Riordan: The throne of fire – OK book number two in a series I haven’t read # 1 of, so I can’t judge too much, it may require #1 to set the scene
Gail Carriger: timeless – enjoyed it. I really can’t see the issue with the dominant male thing – the female lead justs blasts straight through it
Kristen Britain: Green rider and first riders call – good books, I recommend the series
Orson Scott Card: The lost gate – book one in a series – looking good

Plus what I read at Andreas’
The Secret Notes of Lady Kanoko
- Psi High and Others
- Diving the Wreck
- City of Ruins
- Boneyards

Edit:
OK, so much for not reading another one

Garth Nix: A Confusion of Princes - very good, read it in one sitting.

skyrim nausea

I have just come to the conclusion that the way skyrim is interfaced makes me nauseous. I played it a few times when I first got it and felt off afterwards. Then I played it again tonight and I feel distinctly off again. I think its the way you change direction with the mouse. Its too randomly floaty. Queasy now so off to bed.

The things they make..

I bought Bertie Botts every flavour beans from my local lolly shop the other day. The soap flavoured beans actually taste like soap, the dirt ones taste like dirt, the vomit ones taste like spaghetti bolognaise (which I think smells like vomit anyway). I think I'll pass them round the tea room this morning.

Last night I had the strangest dream

I dreamt I was participating in a bike race, underwater, in canals..I think there was scuba gear involved, but we could have just been holding our breath. Then I was teleported to Antarctica and was hiking through the snowy wasteland looking for people to save me when I came over a ridge and there was a large, green mossy field with Mawson's hut at the front and a huge industrial complex behind it. I wandered up and the surprised employees got me to wait out front while they figured out what was going on. I remember looking down at the light jacket, shorts and cloth shoes I was wearing and thinking "I should be colder than this".

What did I eat last night? There was no cheese.

Power is back

we have the electricity back on. Its not all cleaned up yet. I've been hearing chainsaws all morning and every time I drive to and from work the roads/lanes that are closed have changed as they work on powerpoles and debris. So lots of interesting meandering routes to work

next pic

Did I mention, shortly after the storm we started hearing the sirens, I thought it might be one home...until daylight

tornados now

What next?
I was woken at 5:10am this morning to huge winds and thunder and rain going sideways into the house and what i thought was my parents closing windows loudly and banging on my door. In retrospect, they hadn't shut anything by the time i got up to close my window, so it must have been the sound of roofs being ripped off nearby.

I shut my window and then did a double take because there was still rain getting on me...through the wood panels between the casement windows. the rain hit the bathroom louvres and sprayed in up on the ceiling. At least the fly screens are clean now. The ceiling isn't.

My budgies are traumatised and we lost an eggplant bush, and nearby there are fences and brick walls and gates down..but the cross treat is worse.Not far away theres a house where the roof came off and all thats left are the beams and another where they lost the roof and half the walls (see piccys above). A road was closed nearby & they used roof panels as part of the road closed sign. Apparently there were no houses in that area that didn't lose their roof and some houses in Townsville have been completely demolished - though i haven't seen the evidence yet.

February books

and it took me till 1/2 way through March to list them...March may be difficult because I inhaled some of Andreas books while visiting and didn't make notes of the titles.

Neil Gaiman: Anansi boys
Sylvia Kelso: The moving water, Everran's bane
Rick Riordan: The son of Neptune
Misti Wolanski: Driven by the deadline
Selena Fenech: Memories wake, emotionally chraged
Kristine Kathryn Rush: The white mists of power

On other news I joined goodreads, but it seems to upload my database of just under 900 novels requires I have the ISBN numbers...the only information I don't have. There is a barcode reader at work. Perhaps one day I'll borrow it and resort all my books using the scanner...or one week.

Sydney conference

I managed to have a conference in Sydney on the wettest day they've had in 25 years...and it was at its worst at rush hour when I was travelling. I had to wade through the summer hill station underpass. Unlike the locals I didn't take off my shoes..and I waited for someone else to wade to be sure there weren't any potholes. Then I had to catch a taxi. Nobody was answering their number so I went to a taxi in the street which was in a traffic jam - cars everywhere. He was letting off a client at the station because they couldn't get across Parramatta road which was shut due to flooding. We took a long detour, which still should have only doubled my 7 minutes taxi ride, but the traffic jams were so bad, it took 50 minutes. The rain was tropical during the taxi ride and we went through some flood waters that I wouldn't go through in a sedan at home.
I was only 1/2 an hour late for the conference. It was very good btw. I'm taking some ideas home & I met lots of interesting people.

no wonder I felt blah today

I have a bit of a scratchy throat & an eye strain headache & by 1pm I was had it for the day & went home sick at 2pm (it took an hour to get through everything enough to be able to walk out the door). Then I realised I hadn't eaten anything since 6 am., hadn't drunk anything since 8am and had worked solidly since 7am with 3 hours of lectures thrown in...no wonder I felt bad...and I'd worked almost a full day before I left. So, after painkillers for the headache. ease-a-cold and gargle for the scratchy throat a drink of juice and a piece of cake for lack of sustenance and a nap...I feel somewhat better

Cranky day

And it started well, then someone changed a protocol and didn't tell me till the last minute...well, 5 minutes before I was supposed to teach it. Not happy Jan. I don't like other people changing things I'm supposed to be in charge of without consultation. Enough said.

Gaming confession

I am not a platform gamer. I have always sucked at platform games. I do not have the right hand eye coordination to jump over a box while ducking under something else...on an angle with one foot in the air. Or at least, that's how it feels to me. In the past, if there was some sort of manual dexterity jumping scenario, I would either hand it to someone else, saying "get me past this part" or give up on the game. My little brother is good at this. Unfortunately he lives on the other side of the world now.

Which brings me to the point of this post. SWTOR has some really cool easter eggs in the format of datacrons. Now, I love puzzle games. I will happily spend an hour figuring out how to get to one of these gems...so long as there isn't some hideously long path with multiple fall off and go back to the start points. At least the latest one I tried didn't kill me every time I fell. One of the first ones did. I'm still giving them the 3 strikes and I'm not trying again. But its so maddening even when you don't fall to your death when jumping up a series of boxes can result in multiple fails before I get to the top...sooo datacron near camp 27 on Nar Shadaa...even though you have a stat I want, I'm turning my back on you...at least till my brother comes to visit.

I feel obliged now

Dave listed the books he read in January...and reviewed them - I'm not that enthusiastic, but at least I'll list them. Most of them are paperbacks I bought at Pulp Fiction (while on Holidays in Brisbane in January) I think the only ebook I read in Jan was the Gratuitous epilogue. I may even keep up my list through the year. I fully expect the number to plummet by March. While my reading has been strictly sci fi and fantasy, I've been enjoying the variations in styles. Beuttner was definitely the hardest Sci Fi.

Robert Beuttner
Orphanage
Orphan’s Destiny
Orphan’s Journey
Gail Carriger
Heartless
Kylie Chan
Heaven to Wudang
Jasper Fforde
One of our Thursdays is Missing
Mercedes Lackey
Werehunter
The Sleeping Beauty
Intrigues
Andrea Host
Gratuitous Epilogue
Sharon Lee and Steve Miller
Mouse and Dragon

left handedness

I just got a left handed keyboard at work - ah - so much easier to work with...except for the long pause looking at the keyboard trying to find the delete button.

ereader update

If you've read below you'll see there are two main issues I have with the ereader
1. Its really sensitive and holding it with the cover closed can result in pages turning (I fixed this by tapping the power key as I close the book. It goes to screen saver (and requires a power tap to turn back on - no nasty page turning.

2. when you swipe to change pages, it occasionally thinks you want to look at a word in the text, highlights it and gives you options for dictionaries, google etc.

I just popped the ereader on my computer to sync it with the reader for PC to download a new book and it pops up "would you like to upgrade your software to fix (problem described above)". Yes, yes I would. Lets see how this goes.

SWTOR - everyone has a twin

My mum thinks my smuggler on SWTOR looks like my little brother. And except for the bald with horns bit, she's right. I didn't see it till she pointed it out. Now I'm going to look for other people in my alts - perhaps its all subconscious.

ereading

I've now read 4 books on the ereader (guess which 4, Andrea) and have discovered how to stop the annoying page turning while the cover is shut. Tap the off button and it goes into screensaver mode - this will cause it to be be unresponsive till you tap the power button again. I dropped a crumb on it one day and it just kept flicking pages till I removed it! Hows that for sensitive! Most of the "my hands are used to knidles (I just can't type Kindle without being dyslexic)" issues are over. I think the Kindle may be a little faster (or smoother) on the turn, but I should put them side by side on the same page.

On other news, Brisbane was fun for a week - no computer meant I had a chance to rest my computer induced tennis elbow. I had a photo taken of me with a python at Lone Pine Sanctuary and it wasn't till I got home that mum mentioned that she'd had one taken about 50 years ago at the same place - I've seen that photo! She's skinnier than me in it. The snakes looked the same though.

Not looking forward to going back to uni - sigh.

kindle vs Sony ereader

I've read all of one book on the sony & so far I find it much easier to do things -the touch screen is intuitive & having had a smart phone for a while, I instinctively want to touch the screen. The down side is that the touch screen can sometimes be too responsive. There have been occasions when I turn pages only to have the dictionary function activated because I've somehow lingered on a word. This usually happens for several pages before my fingers remember how to work it. This morning I found that my floaty sleeves will also turn the pages if the fan blows them over the screen!

I like the computer reader that the sony can install on your computer. It syncs automatically and you can play around with storage as well as read on your computer - I do my manual reading on the computer while playing with the ereader.

Big plus for sony - it tells you the page you are on like a normal book - and adjusts when you have changed font size and type - I did this in seconds without looking anything up! The kindle is set up with % through the book - maybe you can change that, but I haven't found out how. Its harder to get back to places in the kindle.

I haven't played with collections etc yet on the sony, so I can't compare that..and there is no australian sony store (unless its started since last I checked). So far not an issue for me as I get my books from smashwords.

Covers (mine are the ones with lights)
I like the light more on the sony case. The kindle light set up makes me think I'm going to pull it out too far and break it & its non-adjustable, though in a good position.
I like the elastic strap on the kindle case, which case keep it shut in transit, though I have yet to have the sony one open up.
The biggest issue with the sony case is that it has a softer cover than the kindle - I often pick up books by the bottom and I find that I auto forward a couple of pages because there is also a forward and backward button at the bottom of the ereader. This shouldn't be an issue as the ereader insets into the back cover, so a firmer front cover would avoid the problem.
The sony comes with a stencil since you can write on the screen (fingers work too), but there's nowhere to store it. I was slipping it over the top of the book cover, but I lost it once that way. Perhaps a compartment for it would help.

Overall so far, the sony seems looser and more flexible, the kindle is more rigid and controlled - steps to get to places take longer, but I am much less likely to do something accidentally.

And lastly,
Having two different ereaders is resulting in me trying to page forward by pressing the non-existant bottom right button on the sony and touch the screen on the non-touchscreen kindle.

So, I'll be doing a little more reading on the sony & determining whether I get over the sony paging issues or whether it drives me nuts. I should also try getting books from a few more sites & determine whether one ereader is easier to get books for. I also need to put some journal articles on the sony to check how good it is with reading science articles - and annotating!

SWTOR

The physical game came today. They have my account details, I have the game. Now to play, knowing I won't get booted tomorrow.

Yay!

Frivolous

And the purchases continue.
I got my leave loading for christmas, so I'm now spending it on things that I've wanted for some time but are now at a decent price;
1. A pod coffee machine (came with the milk frother and a bunch of pods included)
2. a terabyte plug & play back up device - I want to convert all those burned CDs of pictures over
3. a decibel meter (not a particularly good one, but its a nice toy)

Hmm, I'm sure there was something else other than the last of the christmas presents...I'll think of it later I expect.

The one thing I didn't get but would like to is a digital microscope (circa $100). I saw one but I wasn't too sure of the quality - it didn't look quite as good as one someone at work is using. They only go up to 400x (so no good definition of bacteria, but fine for larger structures). this one looked a bit like they had dodgy magnification. I'm told logitech makes one but I have yet to find it on the web, so the student may be talking through their hat. I'll keep looking.

Now, off to eat san choy bow sausages (also an impulse buy from our local award winner butcher)

Superfluous

When I first wanted to buy an ereader, I held off because I decided the sony version had more of the bells and whistles I wanted for reading and commenting on research articles. But it wasn't available, so I bought a kindle and generally loved it. Now sony has a new version out, with all the bells and whistles. So I bought it. The plan is to test it out for all those work things as well as rereading Andreas touchstone novels on it.
In my short reading of things so far I think that the kindle will be more useful for generic reading (I am suspicious that I'll be able to get a wider range of stuff as mobi files - unless its on smashwords of course) and the sony will be easier to make the sorts of impulse notes over documents that I want to make on my pdf's - and its touchscreen - glee!. The sony store in Australia is not yet up, so I have to download from my computer....but since that's what I do with the kindle anyway, its not a great loss.
Anyhoo, at some point if I'm diligent, I'll put up my personal pros and cons for the two. If it turns out that the sony does everything the kindle does just as well (including book variety), my little brother might get an unexpected kindle present.
For the people for whom the cover is important; I have a black kindle with blue case and a red Sony with red case - red goes faster, don't you know.

A book printed...just for me

I've been reading Andrea Host's books as ebooks & my favourite series just finished. I asked Andrea if there was going to be a hardcopy of the whole trilogy together & she organised one just for me...and now you too can buy the Jenny Edition.

Christmas...Arrrrgh!

I just collated the christmas presents I've bought for this year. Andrea's is about the only complete one (and I have her birthday present for next year done too. Everyone else is a bit spotty...though I do have a theme idea.

A first for today

I was down the back cleaning up all the dropped mangoes (mainly eaten by flying foxes) when I noticed the awful smell...Dead flying fox in the back yard. We've had trees for 40 years, had flying foxes visit and eat them for almost as long and this is the first dead one. I'm a little dubious given the spreading Hendra zone this season. It could be natural causes, but I aint picking it up with anything but a long shovel straight into a pit.

New power supply!

My old supply died last night in spite of technically being above the level required for my new card. My computer guy put in a new one for me without labour fees since he'd just put in the video card. Its a gigabyte superb 720 (which gives me some wriggle room for other upgrades). He also suggested I get a bigger case, mine's a bit old and not really designed for big gaming components and max airflow. Since he has a similar set up, in a similar not air-conditioned environment, I'm thinking hew understands what I need best. He suggested I look around and find the one I like most (he'll do the swap over if I want). I was going to get a couple of suggestions off him today but I forgot.
Anyhoo - I have a power supply replaced with something nice in about 2 hours with no labour cost. I like my computer shop :)

now off to reading up on case brands :D...I may wait till another couple of pays to buy one.

new card!

I just replaced my old Geforce 8800 video card with an Asus gtx560Ti. With no load, its running over 20oC cooler! Now, lets start up LOTRO....heh 25oC cooler than it was - and the fan had to be on 100% for the other one. This one is on 44% speed tops!

So far, so cool.

Incorrect assumption

There's a book in my cupboard that Andrea gave me in 2000. Spindle's End by Robin McKinley. Every time I've been thinking about reading an old book, I've brushed past it thinking "thats the one with storyline X" I'm not in the mood for that. I pulled it out the other day thinking..mmm.. storyline X, that'll do. And its Not!
All this time I was mixing it up with another book - which I'll now have to find. Its also been so long since I read this one that the story was completely new to me. It didn't ring a bell at all!
I like Robin McKinleys books, so its not that I skimmed through it and didn't actually read it...I think I must have read it only once however and somehow got my brain wires crossed...perhaps its been written over in my long term storage because I lost the link to it.

checkout the new link

funny - on the places to go list

Apparently this is not unique

I have no dial tone on my home phone, but my internet works. I've spent a couple of days with looking for the fault and so far no dice. Wednesday they come and check the lines in my yard. I finally thought to google "no dial tone but internet works fine" and lo, I am but one of many. Apparently one line can break and the other will carry the internet (or something like that, I choose not to understand any more than that) but both lines are needed for a phone call. Alternately, some sort of connection at the exchange may have lost contact with my phone line but still be contacting my ADSL. I'm expecting the former since a tech has already apparently looked at the outside my home things. I've tried 3 separate phones and combination of direct into the wall and in via the internet splitter - so its from the wall onward somewhere. I know theres an old line under my house that we don't use, but its split off after the main entry point (I think) so I'm hoping thats not interacting with it.

Wildlife carer! - not!

As I drove in my driveway today I noticed a car swerving up the street & something white and pink on the road. The next car also swerved and I thought... that looks like a galah - why isn't it flying away. Then a car backed out of the driveway right next to it and it did a weird - my wing is broken-flail to avoid turning into a recently deceased parrot. They didn't even see it. So I walked up the road thinking - "I should have got a box and a towel - this is going to hurt - large, injured wild bird with big beak - but there's too much traffic - I'll just shoo it off the road and then come back".
Another car saw me walking towards it and just stopped on the road to give me time to get there. When I got there it let me walk right up to it and just edged a bit away, then it let me touch it, so it was either really badly off or a tame bird.
I picked it up and carried it off the road and it only bit me gently before it got out of my hands. Then it made a "I've learned human speak noise" and I picked it up again more stably. The lady drove off and I thought "great, now I'm going to have to deal with an injured bird and find the owner" (at least I have some big empty cages at the moment).
Luckily a guy walked out of a yard before I had a chance to walk home and said it belonged to a neighbour who lets it wander. Apparently the wing break is old. Anyway I handed it over and it walked up his front onto his shoulder, so he took it home to care for until the owner came home.
If he hadn't I would have had to take it to a vet to check on the wing & there aren't many bird savvy vets here. (plus I expect they would have charged me).

The owner is very lucky the backing car didn't go right over it.

Ye old family reunion

I'm going to a family reunion this weekend. In anticipation, mum has had me scan some (many, many, many)old letters that she's had in storage (handed down from her mother and her grandmother). Its been an interesting experience putting them in order and getting some of the back story on bits of them. They were prolific letter writers.

It was an eye opener seeing how poor one side of my family was. I had been told, but seeing the letters saying that James was off looking for work or one of the children who are off working is sending money orders home, really emphasizes things.

Theres also a series of letters from an uncle who went off to Canada and then signed up for WW1 - he died in France. I was able to read about his life from 1906 to 1916 when he died & the letters afterwards from the military, informing his family of his death.

There are also a bunch of WW2 letters from several brothers. Wow, they are interesting (and some have bits cut out)Lots of "somewhere in France" addresses, or desert areas. There's also telegrams from the military with messages monitored from Japanese propaganda radio, purporting to be from them saying they were alive and well in POW camps, and similar from private individuals monitoring radio after the camps were liberated (they listed names and who to get the message to).

What I should do - if I could find some time - is collate them properly and find out some of the surrounding information & then epublish them. I could call it "The Chalmers Letters - snapshots of 3 generations of Australians"

Minor Plug

I just remembered to add Autumn Write to my places to go,people to see list. One day I might update it to separate comics from other interesting and useful sites....but not today.

Shameless plug for putting links on your blog - when I lost my bookmarks on my computer, at least I had my favourite comics linked and didn't have to go searching.

Maybe I should spend the time and put a whole list of lists on here :)

The downside to owning a Kindle

When you've found a CD full of books and decide to read the series on them, its very easy to keep reading. My vain "I might go swimming this afternoon" thoughts were abandoned and my "I might have an early night" was thwarted. Must...develop...more...discipline. I feel tired and un-exercised. And I over-ate on the weekend. Bleh.

On the upside, I'm getting to read all the Honor Harrington books in order one after the other.

reading glut

I just remembered I had a cd of BAEN books that I got as a freebie at world con last year. I hadn't read them as I didn't have an ereader and I just don't like reading on computer screens. I just downloaded them to my Kindle Or at least all the Honor Harrington ones - the rest can wait till I'm through these. I put them all in a file (in the right format) on my computer, so its easier to transfer them. I've also gotten online at Baen and found a couple of other books that I'd like to get. Maybe next weekend. My reading has gone up a lot with the ereader. I'd slowed down because of
1. Lack of space to put new books (and I don't like to assume I'll read once and give away)
2. Price of books - if I'm not sure whether I'm likely to want to reread, I'd rather not pay $100 for only 4 books.

Zombies...oh wait, just the reporter not understanding what the words mean

I was cooking my own mix of glass noodle, seaweed soup, roast chicken slices and fried egg strips tonight and overheard the following from the TV in the other room;

"The hospital was over run by dead bodies"

What they meant to say (I think) was that a lot of bodies had been found stored at a hospital.
Of course my mental image immediately went to the other place.

oh - that computer issue I talked about?

It was a ram problem - Bad RAM! Bad! Sit!

I have loaner ram while my lifetime warranty ram is away being replaced... though I only have 4 gig not 6 atm - so I'm wondering whether one popped out - the easiest thing to do would be to open the box....but I cant build up the enthusiasm right now.

new technology

I'm being involved in my first webinar. Its very cool and actually seems to be working! Yay. Though all I'm going to do is listen.

My kindle has arrived.

I am most pleased,though I haven't done an awful lot with it yet. The cover is blue.

And my first typing of kindle was knidle - perhaps the K should be silect.

coming up for air

I have been silent for a while as the thought of being even half way coherent on my blog was beyond me. This was mainly due to setting up for a 2 week intensive subject I ran, followed by a 4 day conference. I've now had a week back "in the office" and my brain has settled down again. The course went well. I had lots of complements. The conference went well. I think I've finally figured out how to get something useful out of going to a conference. I'm now dealing with trying to get reday for semester which is only a week away and 3 days of that will be spent in another courshttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gife that I'm a student in.

In other news,
Somewhere in there I had another birthday & we've been eating birthday turkey for 8 days so far.
My computer is getting weird again. I'm downloading the latest video card driver to see if that imporves things. I have doubts about my power supply though since my DVD drive is "vanishing" on occasion. In an unrelated matter, my headphones died too - I had a new pair and plans to change over, but I wasn't expecting to do it just then. Or maybe it was the computer port playing up too. The new headphones plug in differently.
I finally bought a kindle - it hasn't arrived yet. I did the easy thing and bought from Amazon with a case with a light - so many colour choices. I chose blue. Pink would show the dirt, I don't like orange, green seemed a bit off & I seem to by everything in red, so this was a novel colour for me...As soon as it turns up I'm buying Andreas novels - all of them - in a great glut. Speaking of which Thanks for the tea, I'm off to have some momentarilly.
Ok. Off to install a video driver. This could be a long night. The tea will help.

Long weekend?

I don't have time for a long weekend. I had plans that involved me coming in on Saturday at least. And plans for working Monday. Hmm maybe I'll come in anyway. At least no-one will interrupt me.

Oh...really..that was unexpected

Yesterday I went to see an ophthalmologist about an itchy eye that hadn't really gone away for a year. I was concerned that I had something in my eyelid scratching my eye. I can also see a strip across my eye when looking down a microscope. The doctor couldn't see anything and thought it best to refer me on to someone with better equipment. The expert told me I have an allergy response, that might not be to anything specific & I can take drops. He then had a look for the strip and didn't find it, so its probably floaters or something like that.

Oh, and by the way, while looking he also found the tear in my retina, a precursor to my retina detaching. so 1/2 an hour later I was sitting in front of a laser having laser eye surgery to fix it!

The phrase "dodged a bullet" was mentioned.

everyone is sick

It seems that I'm surrounded by the unwell...and not just the usual colds. Nooo; suspected pneumonia, fighting 3 separate influenza strains at once, whole families going down together. I feel threatened by it all - I can't afford to get sick right now.

Its been ages since I've done one of these

I'm a yellow magic drafter!

Take the quiz at Brent Weeks.com

Weirdly, this was my favourite colour when I read the book

And since it soesn't show up, heres what they said about it;

Yellow luxin is most often a liquid that releases its energy back into light quickly, allowing its use as a torch or a trigger to ignite flammable materials or explosives. Yellow nourishes other luxins, extending the durability of luxin structures or tools. Like water turning to ice, when yellow is drafted perfectly, it loses its liquidity and becomes the hardest luxin of all. Yellows tend to be clear thinkers, intellect and emotion in perfect balance.

The results from your color matching test have also shown that you are one of the elite, a superchromat. The magic you do will almost never fail. Satrapies will compete to recruit you, and you will have a wide latitude in what work you choose to do once you finish your studies. You can expect your patron to lavish praise and honors on you. As a monochrome, you will master your color, and only have to defer to bichromes and polychromes and, of course, the nobility and the satraps who support us all.

I laughed and I laughed

I walked past mum as she rolled an icecream cone in what looked like crushed nuts. mmm. Then as I walked away I heard her tell dad "its the biscuit crumbs left over from the tart". Then she made her own icecream cone, shortly followed by a cry of disgust. The biscuit crumbs were garlic granules. Bwah ha ha ha.
What makes it even funnier is that this is the second time something like this has happened. Some months ago she gave dad some eye drops that turned out to be the ant rid in the dropper bottle next to the eyedrops in the fridge. Suffice to say, they aren't stored in the same place anymore. FYI - ant rid stings, but doesn't appear to do any damage if washed out quickly.

Oh, and dad was happily eating the garlic icecream, having not noticed.

new toys

I bought myself a HTC wildfire phone. I was wanting another one in the HTC family, but it was only available on a network I didn't want to use and the next closest one was very expensive. I got it on sale, set the internet to wifi access only and am now happily doing prepaid. If needed I'll switch my prepaid to the version that has a couple of meg of download in case I need to use maps somewhere, but in the short term its a cheap way to have a smart phone with lovely, lovely apps. The wifi isn't as great here as it is in the UK. My brother has the same phone and showed me how to set it up this way. Almost everywhere he goes in the UK has free wifi access.

My next toy, should it ever come back into stock anywhere, will be the Sony PRS650 ereader. After extensive reading, I decided it was the one that did the most of what I most wanted....then its not available.

well that was inefficient

I had to get up before dawn yesterday & didn't find out till later that that was the best day to see the 4 planets align in the predawn eastern sky. (Mercurey, Venus Jupiter and Mars). Not that they were is a straight line, but they are clustered. They'll still be there till May 30 (when you can draw a line between them, but they are further spread out). So tomorrow, I'll be getting up before dawn...again.

Check here for the video

sad to see you go

My brother is leaving today. He's been visiting from Britain & we've been doing lots of socialising. I've been crab potting at Giru, to Ayr for high tea, to multiple coffee shops and having lots of barbeques on the strand. More in two(ish) weeks than we normally do in a year. Now I need to work very long days and catch up on the huge workload at work - lots of deadlines.

mmm holidays

Of course,
My dvd drive is dead and needs a trip into the repair man. The earthquake may have just jostled the plug from the motherboard, but there's too much metal in the way for me to see & I'd rather let someone else pull it to pieces to check that. It doesn't help that the water cooler keeps the open side attached so its not as easy to manipulate. Perhaps it should be attached to the back instead. I can't play sims right now because it needs a disk to be in the drive, or install bejewelled for mindles hours of fun. I can play LOTRO though, at least till my brother turns up. He should be here now, but the plane was late so he missed his connection. Instead of a 2 hour flight here (or less) from Brisbane, he now has a flight that goes to Canberra, then another that goes to Cairns and a third that comes back to us. Six hours - Madness!

Earthquake!

Although perhaps tremor would be more appropriate. I was just lying down for a nap this afternoon when there were about three "trembles" as though someone heavy was running up the stairs, but without the noise. Then there was a stronger, longer one that rattled the pictures (and the bed). It was like a helicopter flying low, or someone using heavy machinery on the house - all without the expected noise level. I thought it might be dad, who was downstairs, but he hadn't done anything (or felt anything). Then my brother range from the other side of town - he'd felt it too. I think we felt it because we were a story up in a wooden house - more movement. Lots of people felt nothing if they were in solid buildings like shopping centres. It turned out to be south east of us & measured 5.4 on the richter scale. I haven't heard of any damage anywhere yet.

blah

Head hurts, tired, haven't been able to access my files all day and the IT people haven't got back to me since I called at 2pm. I'm also about 3 days behind in the amount of work I have to get done by tomorrow afternoon. The 2 most important ones require me being able to access my files.

SIMS Medieval - more addictive than chocolate

I bought it on Saturday. I played it for 5 hours on Sunday. So far only one of the fatal flaws has actually been annoying. Gambling. My knight constantly loses. Actually, she tends to fail at everything. Though I did make her last. Perhaps its because I made her last and was rather fatigued. Screen shots will follow now I've thought of it. Now off to play again. I only works 10.5 hours straight today - plenty of energy :)

Rain, flash floods, car accidents, traffic jams, thunder

I'm still at work. It was pouring & I got a txt saying our road was flooded, but my car has high clearance, so I wasn't too concerned. I did try to leave when it started thundering but as I drove out one of our school exits, I saw that the road was blocked with cars going out...all the way back to the main Uni ring and beyond. So I turned back the other way, hoping the other exit was free, but I could see cars backed up to the point at which you could turn right rather than left. I think the whole university is grid locked. I turned back in the other school entrance to come back to work & after I parked I get a txt saying there was a crash on the Nathan Street Bridge. That would explain it. Now theres so much water I just got a txt telling my the budies in the aviary have an indoor swimming pool - the aviary is usually 10cm above ground level - ick!

Edit: finally got home & had to use some odd back streets. There was lots of traffic doing the same and some really fast flowing water over roads. I only saw one car in the water with hazard lights, abandoned. I decided to get into my street at the other end as the end I usually use is very potholed and would be flooded. I should have gone the usual way. The bottom end is a bit lower and it was DEEP. I considered driving up someone elses driveway to get out of the water but by the time I thought of that solution, I was onto the shallower part of the road (ie still too deep for a little sedan but ok for me - just. My fan belts were screaming as I came up the drive. Now I just hope it will all drip dry. Dad's belts were screaming too. He was at a shopping centre when it all hit & it was up to his doors trying to get out of the car park. The water was still rising when he left.

answers to the wet question et. al.

Yasi was the cyclone that struck much of Queensland earlier in the year. Anything that was damaged/destroyed as a result has been "Yasi'ed"

A slasher slashes or cuts long grass (whipper-snipper on steroids).

Making money off my blog...a strange and disturbing concept that would require I read all the fine print in the way its done. must...read...contract...all...the...way...through.
Though it might be worth it to see if the advertising was for XKCD ;) Alternately they would be weather related. By the way, its wet here again. We got 40mm last night.

tempted

I was downloading something from EA gamesand I found a new version of sims - Sims medieval. Its just come out. I could buy it and get totally sucked in. (Sims3 was tempting me to start with). If I had more free time...sigh

matryoshka limit

This sucked me in enough that I had to google the title of my blog. The front search page didn't actually use the terms in the same way as in the comic. But they should have! If it doesn't exist it should.

nothing ever goes away

I just had someone comment on a 2007 post. I blame google searches. I've also just found that this program doesn't like me typing google in lower case - it wants Google. Go figure.

And now back to reading through a paper someone here is submitting. So far I've only found a couple of typos. No, my name isn't on the author list :(

wet

It's been raining all day (after raining on and off for weeks). I almost gave myself heat exhaustion getting through mowing the front lawn last week and it needs doing again. I think the back needs a slasher now. Of course its too wet to do anything.

In other news, I'm getting used to my new progressive lenses. The frames are a bit more of a problem - I've been getting them adjusted every day. They still aren't right.

focus , focus now

Lately I've had some days where some of my tasks haven't taken up as much time as I expected (yay!) or have required me to twiddle thumbs waiting for other people (boo!).
As a result, I've been getting to the middle of the day and I've crossed off my day's list or moved it forward while I wait. The temptation is strong to just go home, but there's lots to do that I haven't got to because my days in general have been too full. I need to suck it up and start some of these jobs...but I don't want to. :(

Should I;
read my students partial project proposal
read any number of papers I haven't got to yet
apply for that equipment grant
clean up may samples in the walk in fridge that were dumped there when the lab fridge was Yasi'ed
read the notes for my education subject and reference my assignment
write the practicals for my new subject
write the appendices for my new subject
write lectures for my new subject
read the inch thick pile of papers on QA QC that I need to understand to write a lecture for my new subject.

Hmm.. perhaps the last one. It keeps me in my office while I wait for
1. the phone call from the computer guys
2. The student who promised to turn up so we could go talk to someone else
3. all the email replies from the other jobs I did today.

And is sort of what I'm in the mood for now I'm sucking it up.

raining

I love drizzly cool rain. I'd rather be at home enjoying it than at work. I'm about to go into a room 1m by 3m square with no windows and an autoclose door...I may be some time. I won't even know if there's thunder and lightning.

Sucky Windows

I just noticed that my windows now says its a non-genuine copy - I've checked online and according to the literature it does this if it asks you to type in your code and you don't (even if you do afterwards). This rings a bell from when windows downloaded a patch that caused my computer to not turn on and when I could get it on, it thought I had a new version of windows and wanted my number. This happened several times and on some occasions, it may have been asking for it but my monitor was not working. On at least one occasion I clicked past it without typing it in because I knew I'd previously installed it properly. I ditched the patch and now things are ok-ish, but I'm now waiting for windows to play up in a "non-genuine windows" way.

todays fun

This was run during our biosafety induction today - it certainly lightened things up and lots of us could relate.

Power Back Today!

Our power is back on, so now I'm catching up on things I couldn't do with the power off and resetting up my tivo....mmm off to set up the tivo now.

Day 5

Still no power.
My battery fan was nice last night and I'll buy some more batteries today in case it runs out. We are going to buy a generator and a proper chainsaw & kevlar chainsaw clothes. I just need to do some generator research, but I'm too busy right now with the course I'm on and the stuff that died in the lab.

Post Yasi day 4

I've still got no power. Today I bought a battery operated fan (designed for camping). Tomorrow I have to go back to work and sit in a course for three days - I hope they don't expect me to do internet based homework at night - my access will be limited. Its going to be very tight getting the semester ready since I've lost 6.5 work days, 3 for the course, the rest for Yasi. I havenn't got onto the emergency recovery number yet - its overloaded.

Post Yasi - day 3

Still no power. I got someone in Thuringowa to recharge my computer & mums mobile. The Ergon guy was on the radio talking about expected repair times & listed suburbs that will get power over the weekend, then the suburbs for next week and the suburbs they can't get into yet due to damage...my suburb was not mentioned at all. It could be a long week. I'm now entitled to a payment to cover expenses of being without power (generator fuel, ice, thrown out food etc. I haven't rung yet in the hope we'll get power back soon. If not , the costs will start to mount up & I might think about it.
The weather is getting warmer, skies are blue, hot sun, steamy ground, so I'm missing the fan now. I'm also achy, I've been working pretty hard the last few days pulling out stuff we had stored and this morning I helped clean up the very, very large amounts of huge fallen trees at our church. We only stopped because the larger tools (such as chainsaws) all ran out of oil. There are a few petrol stations open, so dad got fuel, but they had no ice. The ice maker in Townsville has been sleeping at his facility making ice 24 hours a day with friends and family to help. There's a queue at the gate that has been as long as 2km at times. I'm not sure I need to get ice that badly.
Missing my computer games :( I haven't been bored enough to pull out my work notes though.

Post Yasi - day 2

Power still out. I went to uni to check on the -80 freezers and see if they had power for me to recharge my computer with. Generator power ok with freezers on it but no other power. So I only have 40 minutes left on my computer (no way I'm unplugging our generator powered units. Depending on how long this goes on I may go silent. The Honours and Masters students building has a branch through the roof. Theres a few shops open but no-one with bread yet.
I am so lucky. None of our trees came down and nothing is damaged at our house. The number of yards with trees down is amazing. People are putting branches on the footpath everywhere... Plus all the footpath trees down. Dad couldn't get out to his bees this morning there were multiple trees over the road but also a power line about 2ft off the road going across. The street next to us has lovely trees over the road - now on the road. So its not just blocked at one spot, but at least 3 spots that I could see at a glance. I've seen a few windows broken and the church building has had glass doors blow in and the carpark is full of trees down.
We have water again - they frantically were fixing the water supply last night, but we would have been ok anyway, we had about 200 plus litres of water stored.
Getting off nowe in the hopes I can save some charge for tomorrow - or find someone with power (most of Townsville is still out).

Post Yasi

We're still here.
We lost power at about 10:40pm and still don't have it back. Yay for laptop batteries and wireless dongles from Telstra (which is the only provider functioning right now).
I didn't sleep much and we've had to clean up water in the house because our windows leak when horizontal rain hits it, but thats it.
Behind us a large tree came down from one neighbour and crushed the other neighbours hills hoist.
beside us a 6ft wooden gate was ripped down - it banged back and forth for a while and a metal awning tore off and hit a car. Over the road one neighbours gutters and fascia are 1/2 down and next to the 2/3 of a metal awning is down and some roof damage has occurred. There are tree branches in the street and snapped branches around places. The local news says don't drive round because there's lots of power lines down and trees blocking roads.
We've been told to be careful with waater because the treatment plant isn't running.
We are sharing the neighbours generator and running one fridge/freezer for 3 hours and then swapping to the next one.
Its still very gusty but like a normal gusty day, not a storm. The sun even came out.
We

Cyclone Yasi

11:45am
Starting to hunker down (crossing coast about 10pm to midnight atm). They shut the uni yesterday and won't open for the rest of the week. I waited in a queue this morning to fill a can of petrol in case we need to use a generator. The windows are taped. The cameras, phones and computers are fully charged. Plenty of foood in the house, the gas camping stove and fuel is upstairs. My evacuation bag is packed except for my pillow. I have most of the yard cleaned, all the budgies are in cages under the house (If we have to go, I give them a tonne of food and water & hope they survive. Now I'm just waiting for dad to finish moving someone to another house and come home to tie down the last couple of things. The house gates are chained shut, front fence gates aren't yet.
We've just had our first band of rain & wind and I was still tidying so I'm now soaked.
I don't think we'll bother filling the bathtub with water till we've had showers but all my water bottles are full.

8pm
We still have power (I'm lotroing with the radio on). The tub is being filled as I type. Cardwell is completely empty - the whole town was evacuated today.

We've been getting txts on our phones from the emergency centre. Last night at 10:30pm we got one saying the low lying areas of townsville were being evacuated. Apparently they door-knocked and everyone affected had to be out by this morning. We are about 300m away from the worst case scenario flooding zone - and in a high set house so all we'll lose is cars and stuff under the house if its worse than that.

I may keep you updated but I expect we'll lose power tonight and not have access to it for 3-4 days.

2pm
Now I'm exhausted - we weren't as close to finished as I thought. The bush house is now full of miscellaneous potential missiles, my car is up the side of the house for more protection. The aviary has stuff in it that doesn't fit under the house. Dad said there was enough protection in it that as long as the cyclone doesn't change direction, my birds would have been fine...but if it did change direction I might have been trying to catch the birds in the dark during category 2+ winds. Anyhoo, now we are done. I also planted a gerbera in the front garden - what timing. The winds have picked up again but its only spitting.

3:05pm. My cousin in Ayr just lost power - Some parts of Ayr lost power earlier today. I think it might be a combination of left over cyclone Anthony damage and a less stable power supply. Windy here, not a lot of rain.

4:05pm Its getting gusty. We are having early showers so we can fill up the bath tub. Parts of Townsville are losing power. This may be my last post for some time if we lose power too. Mum's filling the hurricane lanterns & putting boiling water in thermos flasks. We have the radio on constantly now. I'm off to turn off un-needed stuff.

5:35pm
I still have power but its gusty and rainy - the forcast map says we are well into strong gale force winds - destructive winds should be here in an hour or so.

8:50pm
Power out in Kelso, northern beaches, west end. We still have power if you didn't guess. The winds are wild & whistling down the street. The trees are churning. Nothing has broken or flown through the air yet that I can see. Its really loud if you actually open a door or window (or go into the toilet where the window doesn't seal shut). I'm really sleepy, but I'm not sure its safe to sleep.

9:22pm
That last gust shook the house. Maybe its time to turn off the computer. We are in the destructive winds phase and will be for hours now

spoke too soon

That annoying computer glitch is still happening, so now I've uninstalled the KB2419640 patch (restore pointed it). Of course I'll have to keep an eye out for windows tying to reinstall it, but lets see how it goes now.

bleh - windows update scare

Fortunately it fixed itself, but my newish computer wouldn't turn on after it updated this morning - power and fans but nothing else. I let it cool down, tried again a few times and finally it fixed itself. And then it told me I had to register windows - which I've already done, good thing the box was still to hand. I thought it might have messed up something important and all my programs would be gone. It didn't help that the computer has been off for 2 weeks while I was away. I found the last update and searched online and apparently this is a windows7 64 problem with this update - some people had to get in and manually remove it (not easy if it just won't turn on). {tentative} it seems ok now.

spirobathmophobia

There's a name for it!
The fear of spiral staircases. I never used to be afraid of them. In fact when touring Britain (twice) I climbed up and down many of them in various castles. But at some point they started to freak me out. I think it was at Clifford's Tower in York. Its too heavy for the hill its on and has sunk a bit - theres a tilt. So you are climbing a spiral staircase on a sideways slope. Then there was the very narrow very long, often with no rail to hold onto. staircase to the roof of York Cathedral..so my incipent spirobathmophobia was reinforced by my claustrophobia and my general lack of fitness (am I going to have a heart attack 1/2 way up and how would they get me out). Now they make me very nervous. My brother Doug laughed at me since he thinks spiral staircases are the safest ones to fall down on the basis you hit a wall pretty quickly that stops you cold. I will still climb them, but they are no longer fun.

the invention of a gravity inversion field is well overdue

I'm painting the bathroom ceiling. Or rather, I'm preparing to paint the bathroom ceiling.
Plan
Monday: sand and wash ceiling
Tuesday: undercoat ceiling
Wednesday-Thursday: paint ceiling
Friday: Tidy up

Reality
Monday: hand sand and wash, informed by dad I'll have to use the electric sander and a paint scraper because the current condition is so poor it won't take a new coat, sanded some and scraped off 1m square
Tuesday: sanding off areas that wont scrape and scraping as the sander hits loose areas - about 1 square foot done by lunch time....I might have it all cleaned by the end of the week. I have to keep stopping and doing other things to rest my aching arms.

Friday Update
Still sanding/scraping the ceiling - in some areas the sander works, in others it doesn't. In some areas I can scrape off swathes, in most areas its bits less than a cm 2. I'm also going through the paint in some areas and tearing off cardboard. Day 1 (Monday) had the most success. Tuesday and Thursday was sheer torture. Wednesday I did a lot of other things. Today seems to be more of the scrape off large sections again. If I can get all the loose stuff off today, I've tested a fine sandpaper which seems to smooth all the different types of surface and maybe I can undercoat tomorrow...but I'm thinking it will be closer to Monday. I do have to get it done by then though, or I'll be off on a plane with it half finished.

ah...

On Holiday. Of course, I've sort of filled my holiday completely up - but its not with work

Goldilocks and the three bears

I'm tempted to do a Chris - not that he's used muppets recently, so I can vent regarding aspects of life. Fairy-tale characters reused would be a good start, but I'd have to be far more creative than my current workload allows, and I'd have to work out who was who.

wow that was fast

I couldn't figure out how to do something on LOTRO - I thought there was a glitch, so I put in a help request - and a GM replied in game in under 5 minutes! It was actually me not noticing the right person to talk to. Duh.

books...books

My first lot of books from the Book Depository arrived yesterday. There was much reading of "I shall wear midnight" last night. I let my brother know about it this morning and he immediately got online and found it was cheaper for him than Amazon. Now of course, I have to read a lit review...then go into the lab! Glee!

Footloose

I found a new web comic called Footloose I had to stay up last night to read aallll the way through the archive. Tired now.

Ah - lecture recess - a week off from students

..no..wait...I have a project proposal, chapter of a thesis and half a literature review to write (lots of) comments on, 5 sets of 30+ practicals to mark, next week's lectures to write, a grad student to teach PCR to and another to teach the use of a freeze dryer to & a new PhD students offer to babysit through the paper trail. At least I got a paper submitted last Friday. With any luck they'll wait at least a week before rejecting it.

Rain

I washed the car on Sunday...so it started raining Sunday night. We had 38mm by 7am. My wellingtons have once more only lasted one season. I bought a pair a couple of years ago, used them for one wet season, tried to use them the next and found they leaked. I bought a new pair from somewhere else, ditto and ditto. Wet feet checking on the birds this morning. My next pair will be from a workwear shop it the hopes they aren't cheap junk like the previous few. My Dads wellingtons have lasted him years.

almost tempted to buy...

Theres a Miles Vorkosigan roleplaying game out - my favourite character by my favourite author. Perhaps I could just get it to have it.

WorldCon!

Loads of fun...oldest attender looked like she was in her late 70's, youngest was under 6months - possibly under 3 months but I have no baby age skills. This is my favourite shot of the con. I'm wearing my "come to the dark side, we have cookies -V" shirt. Which was appropriate for the shot :)

For those of you who haven't heard yet, there was a tie for first place for the Hugo for best novel and the Foglio's sold out of their graphic novels in under 2 hours - I got one - Glee!

dinner - Jamaica Joe's

I went out to Jamaica Joe's using my table 52 card on Saturday night with my parents. The weather was a little cool for it. The place is not sealed in, being on the water, but the food was nice. Mum and I had the best dishes; Jerked chicken and Goat curry. The curry was mild and tasty, the meat was tender. Dad's Angus burger was ok but not special. Service was friendly and prompt. Some of the prices were up there with Michels, but there were cheaper options.

Dropping balls

Up to 4 since last Friday.

forgot to let students into a lab on Friday
forgot to put lecture notes online prior to end of weekend
forgot to find reagents for Tuesdays prac till I woke up at 11:30pm last night having just got to sleep
went to the wrong lecture theatre this morning

Its going to get worse too.

Phew!

I got my updated computer home yesterday and the second thing I did was install LOTRO from scratch. I've heard of problems and didn't want to add to them by installing an old version and trying to upgrade.
The download went on all night (12 hours) then it installed directX 9 and microsoft net1.1 and started up fine. The computer then asked if I'd like to install directX 10 and I decided not in case something happens.
Of course, I haven't checked it again since I turned the computer off. Maybe the Microsoft net thing will screw up my computer and it won't turn on again :)


Edit: Ok not quite so phew - playing LOTRO caused my computer to turn off in 5 minute intervals, till I upgraded my video card & now it seems ok for an hour or so & then turns off. The fans do get faster & stay fast shortly before it shuts down (no BSOD, just off like the power went out). It lasts longer when I pull off my lit up mouse & turn off backlighting on my keyboard. The error is power kernal. Methinks the power supply isn't quite handling it. Its not overheating - I've been monitoring the core temp. When I have a minute to spit, I'll check how much wattage my power supply has.

Free Tickets!

I got free tickets to one of the chamber music festival events from Uni and had a lovely night out this week. I learned that there are musical notations for plucking strings as well as whacking the wood of your instrument with your bow. A violin/piano duet (of hebrew lullaby I think) was amazing. The violinist was celebrating his 30th birthday and the music was glorious. There were also some very slow gentle pieces being played at around 10pm - my mother just started to nod off :).

The civic theatre is undergoing an expansion, it looks lovely, but they'd better be putting more loo's in. 3 ladies toilets on one side is not sufficient.