1 week down

Well,
I'm now one week into work and still haven't got through all my Monday stuff - not unexpected. My brother has left to go back to sunny Scotland and now I have the cooler room and more comfy bed back - ah. In spite of reading the late Christmas present that Andrea sent last night (thanks Andrea, one of my favourite authors) I feel wide awake this morning , ready to:

mow the lawn
take back the wii remote that's playing up
hunt for some sort of paint spray that seals in rust for the front fence
sell some cook books
copy some VCR's to DVD

but first, a little lotro - heh heh heh

sleepy..

Its Thursday,
I still haven't got to some of the things I thought would be done on Monday. I haven't looked at my own research yet (though that may happen today). I have talked to 3 research students though :) and they are all doing something now.
Its been rather hot, my bed is not as comfortable as the one I sleep in when my little brother isn't visiting and I haven't been getting my afternoon nanna nap that was a mainstay of my holidays..so I'm a little sleepy.
Its been 34oC at 9:30pm at night in my room and then 32oC the next morning - I need a better fan, or aircon.

I think I need to write a list of the gear I need to get my research going and then go find it. I ordered it all a year ago thinking I'd have time then, so its sat around, being shifted everytime the lab moves/fridges fail etc and now I have to find it all again :( I hope its all still in date.

On more fun news, this is my brothers last night here so we're going to the strand - I must remember to wear walking shoes for the long stroll after dinner to the icecream shop.

aaaand back

Back at work, too much to do - 9:30am and I've already had 4 people poke their heads through the door to see me.

No blogging recently as my brother has been home from Scotland for the first time in 10 years. We've been going out a lot and also ripping out the front fence and replacing it in a straight format.

Also,
Barbeques on the strand with plate sized t-bones, curries, pastas and roo dinners...Dougs cooking. Michel's mmm, Hervey's range tea house for cat poo coffee, Charters towers for lunch, lots of going out for coffee in the morning. Naps in the afternoon. Movie watching at night. Playing the Wii (and getting thrashed at boxing)...hmm I'm sure there's more, but I must focus on work now :(

What I did on my holidays

Today I went through 10 years of superannuation and receipts paperwork and files most of it in the shredder. The back room is almost clear enough for my brother to sleep in when he arrives, the front room is still a pigsty but I do have a pile of stuff in there ready for a trip to the salvos. I cut the ham I bought this Christmas for lunch today - mmm smoked ham.
I've been playing with a new high pressure water hose. If it hadn't been so saturated here the last few days I'd be out spraying foam on the house and cleaning it properly. The squelchy weather turns me off a bit. I mowed last week and the grass is higher now than it was when I mowed. I'm not looking forward to the first mow when it gets dry enough
I figured out what my dedunk error was on my computer - I think - and can deal with it fine now - its the card reader slots - they have an attached USB port which is probably what causes the error. I just disengage when the error first turns up and its all fine.
I spent the afternoon tanking for a group of 5 in Carn Dum and only died once.

I'm sure I've done more than this in the last few days...its something of a blur.

Avatar

Saw it in 3D today
Very, very cool flying things ..and that is all I will say until you've all seen it.

Merry Christmas one and all (for tomorrow)

Because there's no way I'll get on the computer tomorrow to say it - what with the turkey and the ham and the cake and the prawns... and the buche de Noel.

In the last two days I mowed the lawn, window tinted the western facing windows in the back room, bought office 7 for a laptop that didn't have office on it, did the very last of my Christmas shopping and had a pedicure (the nail polish was a little disappointing - I was careful with it for 2 hours afterward and assumed it would then be dry - and now I have material patterns in it from the blanket on my bed when I had an afternoon nap.

I also had my first MRI today - loud long and slightly uncomfortable, but at least only the bottom 1/2 of my body went in so there was no claustrophobia induced panic attack involving wild thrashing about and uncontrolled sobbing.

Still to do today
Photograph the bird Susie is getting for Christmas, take a bird over to Dot and wrap those last pesky presents.
I think I'll wait till after Christmas to do anything more on my list.

and so it goes dedunk dedunk dedunk

They couldn't find an error with the computer and suggested it was a USB connection. I pulled everything and replaced my mouse and spent 3 days monitoring, at first I thought it was heat since I still got the error sometimes but then when if was going nuts, I took away the side wall that was just resting against the computer and turned the fan on it. No dice. Then I turned the computer around a bit and it stopped- and stayed stopped. I've had the fan off, the side back on and had it running hotter and still no error. I think there's a connection in the back which is not quite right and moving the computer has got it sitting right ( or a cable that has a dodgy bit maybe). I'm now afraid to touch the computer even though its sitting rather awkwardly.

On other news - the back room is cleaned up, I've been pricing software, I've marked a literature review for work - EVEN THOUGH I'M ON HOLIDAYS!, gone to the graduation (4 hours out of my day) - EVEN THOUGH I'M ON HOLIDAYS!
Tomorrow I'm getting my car serviced and going in to uni to listen to an honours confirmation seminar - EVEN THOUGH I'M ON HOLIDAYS!
I've also had calls and requests to go in to work every day last week. You really need to leave town and lose your mobile to get away from this job. My dad laughed because when I was small he was doing exactly the same (they even called him after he'd resigned and moved on).

I just washed my academic robes today. I figured out since I wear them no more than twice a year, I have to wear them for 70 years to get my $5 a wear rule value out of them. I work on the basis that I can buy any jewelry, shoes or clothing so long as I wear them once for each $5 that they cost - eg $30 pair of shoes must be worn 6 times. It stops me from thinking clothes are too good to wear and leaving them in the cupboard. The better they are, the more I have to wear them.

I've also cleaned all bar one of my bird cages, booked a facial etc for me and Mum and put away the miscellaneous star trek paraphernalia I'd picked up over the last year as well as playing an RPG with C & A, lots of LOTRO and a bit of an online game in beta - but the repeated big downloads, character wipes and limited access time sort of cramps my style.

new comic

Having read this, I feel a bit bad about taking down goblins in LOTRO.

To do done so far

2 days officially off and I've already had to write a long email to a student and have a 10 minute phone call today. As per usual, expensive pieces of equipment break on Friday at 2pm, when the rest of the day is meetings and then off on holidays. Hopefully it will all be dealt with by someone else, though that was what the phone call was about.

So far I have;
* taken my computer in to have a glitch looked at (I'm using my parents to write this)
* taken my DVD recorder in ditto (don't expect it back before christmas - so much for watching DVD's on Holidays) - maybe I will be buying that tivo sooner rather than later
* made Buche de Noel with Dot
* shifted the lounge room furniture around
* made a start on cleaning up my rooms
*taken some 1/2 hour afternoon naps
*Posted Andreas Christmas present and Birthday present- only to have Australia Post go on Strike. You may get it, someday....I also just bought the first bit of the next round of presents.

About to go out and;
*play RPG with A & C

Still to do
*repair tumbler (only been trying to get to this since July)
*get ebay account and sell some stuff (only been trying to get to this since 2 years ago)
* finish clean up my back bedroom so that visitors can actually sleep there
*sew up curtain hems
*look for cool Birthday presents for Dad, Doug,
*play lots and lots of online RPG's - I have done a little bit ;)
*finish scrapbooking my tazzy trip, do skiing trip
*rest - as instructed by Andrea
*convert tapes to DVD - if I ever get the DVD recorder back
*go to the movies - I just bought 6 tickets to use up at Warrina
put the christmas tree up - only 2 weeks behind so far
*hmm I think there's more on my list somewhere - but I'm off now to put the birds to bed and put the Birthday presents for A & C in the car.

I feel strangely sleepy given I'm on Holidays ;D

been galivanting

I've been up in Innisfail collecting soil samples to look for phage. Now I have to process them....still sleepy from filed trip fresh air. I have to finish the coffee sitting beside me and go sort my samples this morning, maybe start processing them too.
Innisfail was nice, I ate out at the RSL and the Imperial tavern & stayed at the Big 4 caravan park with was clean, quiet and well set out. I got to see lots of different banana breeds as well as ornamental gingers, lilipilli and limes. We stopped and bought cheap fruit all the way home...mmm lychees.
Last night I had a meat skewer at outback Jacks. It was a foot long with 3cm cubed chunks of meat on it...double yum

...and now, to work!

Subject to change without notice

This is my list of things to do during my holidays. I will be editing as I remember things, decide not to do things etc

To do
*repair tumbler (only been trying to get to this since July)
*get ebay account and sell some stuff (only been trying to get to this since 2 years ago)
*make Buche de Noel with Dot - this is the "oh we've eaten too much so we'll just have a little slice to be polite....is there any more? perhaps thirds?" cake I have made in previous years
*clean up my back bedroom so that visitors can actually sleep there
*play RPG with A & C
*Post Andreas Christmas present
*look for cool Birthday presents for Dad, Doug, Andrea
*play lots and lots of online RPG's
*finish scrapbooking my tazzy trip, do skiing trip

edit 18/11/09
*rest - as instructed by Andrea

edit 26/11/09
*sew up curtain hems




Wouldn't it be nice to do
catch a flight to brisbane and go shopping for a couple of days

crippled - timing could be worse

I blew out my knee on Tuesday. I spent the evening icing it and the next morning it looked baseball sized and almost as firm - I couldn't bend it far or straighten up completely. Went to work to pick up some reading and then went home and spent the day in bed alternatively icing and compressing. I got a new ice pack whcih is really cool...in more ways than one. It looks like one of those old headache bags with the screw cap that you put ice in - but also comes with a large neoprene thing with straps that fits over it so you can velcro the whole thing to your knee, ankle , elbow etc...and it doesn't slide off!
On Thursday I spent much of the day seeing the Doctor, getting x-rays and making bookings to see the orthopedic surgeon.
Its a lot better today, but the problem I have is that I'm getting injured regularly when walking on flat surfaces in straight lines.
When people say "what did you do?" my response is "nothing". So I want to find out whats really wrong inside the old knee & make sure its not something that 10 years from now they'll say "oh we know whats wrong, you should have got it fixed a decade ago, its too late now."
And the timing could be worse - at least I don't have to run for classes and stand up in front of them at the moment. It might mess up the planned field trip though.

and the phone doesn't work again

We had a ml of rain last night. Enough to make it muggy and make the phone line change from static and working to snow and not. The ADSL is still working though.

a blow by blow account....

Actually, probably not - since we were online doing hall of mirrors instance in LOTRO for 3 hours and still didn't get to the end. We gave up when we all died at 10:30pm and had to run a very long way back through to get to the "just before the big boss" area.

I did discover that 3x lvl 60 characters can, with the appropriate mix and tactics, kill 2 nasty rehealing wargs and then a boss with over 100 000 hit points. When we eventually got close to the big boss, the morrovail kept repopping and since they had an instideath thing after 45 sec, it was hard to take them out quickly enough to not die as well as have time to figure out the next step. I've got to the point where if the creature has less than 11000hp, its considered easy. At least in a group with a loremaster.

I think we'll have to start from scratch next time...perhaps when we have a longer free time to go through it.

problems briefly fixed

P1
The guy came round, looked at the phone - discovered I'd plugged the network port into the phone line which had caused the complete silence (woops - since taped over that connection). Couldn't find any static, said it might be one of my plugs being old and a little dodgy connection wise.....they'll probably send me a bill since they found the plug in the wrong port)
Static came back the next day - replaced all of my line filters and splitters, static still there. Will call my brother before calling Telstra again I think.

P2
Opened up the computer, swapped the ram around, prodded the connections - issue went away. Until I'd had the computer on all Sunday afternoon, where I got a BSOD and then a brief freeze with audio loop. I also had a new issue which was actual lag I think - though possibly it was the freeze screen. It killed Bindy.
I'll have another open up and prod. I may have to run the computer with the side off, or move it to somewhere I can blast a fan on it full time. I could tape net curtain over the side - or fly screen - and let a fan blow in...I could buy and install airconditioning I guess too.

problem fixed..errm

I checked all my cables - even when all switched off and filter/no filter on single lines I still had static. I rang telstra, they were having an upgrade, could I ring tomorrow. I rang tomorrow, They organised to send out a tech - in 2-4 days and diverted incoming calls to my mums mobile...outgoing should still work but be staticy still.

Then the phones stopped working entirely no static, no dial tone - the incoming divert worked but we have no outgoing - oh, and no internet. Now telstra have got us booked in for a tech in 2 days.

Soo - no good way to work on my second computer based problem yet. Also, no game playing.

problem solving

I actually enjoy problem solving - if I have some free time. Even if not, I can waste hours trying to figure out solutions to things for other people. I know I shouldn't because my work doesn't get done, but it is so much fun.

I do have some of my own trouble shoots to do at the moment.

1. Static on phone. Is it because;
a) I churned to a new provider
b) there's a fault turned up on the line
c) the dvd player I in put in the parents room is interfering with the phone base

2. Dedunk dedunk noise on my computer, matched with brief thinking by the computer which slows things down on the desktop and freezes the screen in lotro if I'm playing (also causing audio looping) for about 10 sec - mouse still works. I need to;
a) remove everything that plugs in via usb and turn on computer - see if it happens again
b) open computer and check all my connections are tight
c) try to track down some of the alert thingies on my event viewer
d) do more online reading
e) look for viruses, spyware etc
f) look at my router settings -I did some fiddling when I churned - but I think I already had the issue then

I've already done a checkdisk - its not that. Used canned air on all my USB ports - still happens.

Some of the comments on the event viewer are about non-existant registry or DLL files, but there don't seem to be enough events to match to the frequency of the dedunks

ok - must go and do real work (ie marking) now

pics at last

Here are my new Champions online characters
- Dark Lightning



Precious Horde (who I team up with A&C's Dragons to fight for justice for the soft skins.


Hawk Blade - physically my strongest character - she lifts trucks over her head and throws them



and Tiffany, my gadgeteer. I wanted a completely human looking character. Apparently a good fighting match for Normal Man...who looks suspiciously like Chris dressed up.

storage woes

My Lotro characters have bulging pockets that are terribly unorganised...pretty much like my own storage at home. I spent all evening fiddling with it last night (the Lotro stuff that is) logging in and out between watching TV. I don't think its improved any...perhaps I'll have another shot on Thursday - or i could just sell it all. I would be selling my own stuff if I got organised enough too.

chipmonk eyes

I am suspicious that the decaf coffee I was given at 8:30 last night was not actually decaf - I was still eyes wide open at 1am. Then I had to get up before 7am. The previous night I had stayed up waaay too late killing dragons in Carn Dum. At least I have the gratifyingly sunken and darkly circled eyes of the sleep deprived. I hate it when I feel awful but look fine - there's just no sympathy.