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.