Valē, Nanna

On Christmas eve, Nanna (Mum's mum) passed away in hospital. She will be sadly missed by us all. Her funeral was held in Toowoomba today, but unfortunately we couldn't attend. So we had a quiet morning here at home in remembrance. The photo above is a couple of years old, but shows the whole family together and happy.

Christmas Photos

Here is a small selection of photos from our Christmas Day. We all had a great time, even if we were run off our feet the whole time (hence the lack of photos).

2008-12-25, Christmas Day 2008

We had Christmas lunch at our place, with Jess and Kelli cooking up a storm (and only breaking one glass platter - Jess still has a bit cut down the back of her leg to prove it!). After lunch there was a brief nap time allowed, then it was down to Jan and Graham's place (who were in Townsville for their Christmas) to dive in their pool with the kids. After splashing about there for a couple of hours we headed back home for a quiet dinner comprising of lunch leftovers fried up on the barbie, along with some prawns that Brendan and Jess bought along.

All in all, a good day was had by all!

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

Tis that time of year again - Dec 24 to be exact! And it's a beautifully warm 32-degree day here in sunny Cairns. It's almost warm enough for me to be bothered closing up the house and putting the AC on, actually. It's shaping up to be a warm day tomorrow as well, albeit slightly overcast. We haven't had any serious rain this season yet, so hopefully it will hold off for one more day.

To all our friends and family all around the globe, near or far, we'll be thinking of you all tomorrow, and hope you have a lovely Christmas day planned where-ever this may find you. To those lucky ones who have some time off (I'll be working on the non-public holidays this year, unfortunately), make sure you enjoy the break, however swift it may go. We hope to catch up with everyone in the coming year!

Happy Christmas everyone!
And a very exciting New Year!

love,
Matto & Jess!
(and Badger!)

More new toys - new camera

In our quest to spend as much money as is humanly possibly on this upcoming holiday, we've added another $400 to the tally by picking up a new camera:

It's an Olympus Tough camera - the one that's advertised by the big slobering dog chewing on it, and it still being OK afterwards. It's supposed to be waterproof to 10m, drop proof from a height of 2m, and still work fine in temps down to -10. So, from the perspective of all that, it should be just what we need for this trip! Yesterday Warren emailed me to let us know that it was -15 when he got up to go to work. So it's going to be a bit chilly, especially with us used to the middle of a tropical summer!

We've been meaning to replace our old camera for a little while now, as it was only a cheapie from BigW when we bought it to replace the broken old Canon, and just to have something. It's lasted OK, but it really doesn't take a good photo, and that something we wanted if we're going all that way. We were (OK, I was) originally leaning to a more advanced Canon camera, but in the end the Olympus won out, simply because we won't need to worry about it anywhere near as much as a good camera. We can throw this one in a bag, or sit on it, or whatever, and it should still be OK. It's certainly built like the proverbial brick out-house, so I dare say it'll stand up to whatever punishment we can dish out.

Mr T has had one of these camera for a couple of years now, and speaks very highly of it. I remember when he first got it, and was showing off photos taken underwater in his pool. His is still going strong years later, and in his words "if it was to break, I'd buy another". So that's a good enough recommendation for me. Hopefully we'll get just as good service from ours! Now I can't wait to try it out for real!

On the topic of the trip, everything's coming together. We've done our online registration for entry to the US, and have been approved, so have added those passes to our pile of documentation we'll need to carry. Our new fancy carry-on bags arrived a couple of weeks ago, so they'll make life a lot easier, and keep us a lot more organised, so long as they'll let us on the plane with them. Technically, they're just smaller than all the airlines' quoted dimensions for carry-on baggage, but they just look huge. Fingers and toes crossed that we won't have a problem.

Ginger Beer - continued

2 and a half weeks ago, I put on a Ginger Beer brew, hoping to have it ready in time for Christmas : Life in FNQ - Matto & Jess: Ginger Beer . Well, 2 and a half weeks later, it's still in the fermenter, bubbling away. The rate of bubbling has remained steady the whole time - 1 bubble every 10 seconds.

The problem is that the fermenting should only have take 5-7 days, maybe even less given the heat up here. So something's going wrong, and I suspect it's my method. When brewing beer, you want to leave it keep fermenting until a couple of days after it's stopped bubbling. This ensures that there's no sugar left in the brew when you bottle it. This is important, because when you bottle it, you add a specific amount of sugar to each bottle before capping. What this does is re-start the fermentation inside the bottle for a little bit, which produces CO2, which is what makes the bottle fizzy. If you bottle the brew before it's finished, then you end up with an unspecified amount of extra sugar in each bottle. which typically results in a large boom, and a shower of beer.

I'm thinking that, since Ginger Beer is generally sweeter than a normal Lager, I probably should have bottled it a week ago, since we would want some of the sugar to remain in the drink. The wash started off tasting wonderfully gingery, but has steadily lost flavour. It's still ginger now, but it's a very weak, watered-down ginger taste, as opposed to the strong, full-bodied knock-you-down-and-flog-your-wallet ginger taste it had when we first stuck it in the fermenter. So I think that's got something to do with it.

As for this batch, I'm not sure what to do with it. It's Christmas in a couple of days, so I've missed my chance to have it ready by then. Should I bottle it now and keep an eye on the bottles to see if they're looking like they'll explode? Should I cut my losses and just throw it out and start again? Should I use a Turbo yeast next time to try to ferment it quickly?

I'm not sure what I'll do at this stage. Probably just keep looking at it wondering when it will be ready for me to drink (which, lets face it, was the whole point of this exercise!). I'll try and bottle it in the next day or two though, and will see how it tastes after it's had a chance to fizz up, and once it's nice and cold. If you don't hear from me again after a couple of days, send the paramedics and the HazChem cleanup guys!

Finally, a new TV!

In September, our TV blew up, as I reported previously here : My Home Theatres...

Since then we've been making do with the replacement baby TV in the lounge, but in practice we mainly only watched the little LCD TV in the front room. It was handy, and since we'd watch it over dinner, we'd usually end up just staying out there, sitting on the dining table chairs to watch whatever we wanted to. But that meant our lovely plush recliners were sitting out the back, feeling very unloved. And as nice as I think our dining table chairs are, they're no recliners.

So on Saturday, we went down town to have a look at some TVs. I had promised myself that I wouldn't buy one before the Christmas sales, in case a good deal came up. I was hoping to pick up a Sony if they did their "Free PS3" deal again, not necessarily because I wanted a Sony, or a PS3, but because you just can't say no to a free PS3. Panasonic, however, were doing runout prices on the older model TV's, and had a promo running that if you bought a FullHD TV between now and Christmas, you got a free Nintendo Wii with it. Again, I didn't particularly want a Wii, but I DID want the Panasonic TV.

The particular model I was after (PZ800a) has earned very good reviews, and is generally regarded as actually having a better picture quality than the newer model (PZ850a), despite the 850 being built in Japan. I'd had my eye on the 800 for a few months now, but just couldn't justify the $2800 asking price.

JB HiFi had them on run-out though, so we went in to have a look. The intention was to compare the picture between a 42" normal HD plasma, with the Panasonic FullHD. The normal plasma was about $1200, so it wasn't an inconsequential price difference. Almost twice as much. After looking at both TV's though, I came to the decision that I really wouldn't have been happy with the cheaper option. Sure, it was cheap, but it didn't look anywhere near as nice, and actually looked permanently (slightly) out of focus.

Upon talking to the sales guy about them both, he revealed to us that he was actually finishing up at JB the following day, and so would be long gone before any manager has found out what he was doing. So, for Saturday and Sunday, he was selling everything for cost + 1%. He said he liked making people happy, and big discounts did that, and that buy the time people noticed it would be someone else's problem! So he called up the stock control on his PDA, and showed me that it was listing their buy price for that model for $2200, so said he would do it for us for $2220! Not a bad saving off RRP!

So, the next thing you know...



It's a Panasonic TH-46PZ800A - a 46" FullHD plasma TV. It's got both the digital and analogue tuners in it, and picked up all the local channels on it's second go (missed all the channel 10's on it's first pass). I've already hooked it up to the PC, the XBox and the sound system, and it's all working perfectly. It's even got three HDMI ports for that future XBox360/PS3...



We were lucky to get it home on the back of the ute (it wouldn't come close to fitting in the Pathfinder, and being a plasma, you can't lay them down) before it started to rain. We were home not 5 minutes, and were suddenly engulfed in a surprise downpour. Would have been very cranky if we had been out still!

After getting it all set up and connected, we gave it a good test run with the last round of the V8 Supercars for the year, and the last race ever at Oran Park before it's turned into a housing estate next year. To say I'm happy with the performance of the TV is a complete understatement - it really is amazingly good, and I'm very happy we finally decided to spend the extra and get the one we wanted.



Unfortunately, the sad thing involves our Free Wii. It's done by redemption, so on Sunday we went to the website and filled in all our details. It printed off a page for us to mail in with our original receipt, and once verified, they would send us out our free Wii. Jess was mucking around on the website, and ended up coming across a section in the FAQ entitled "My Wii hasn't arrived yet - when can I expect it?". And the answer was "Panasonic intends to have all Wii's dispatched for delivery within 30 days from the 1st of February 2009 (my emphasis).

So we're not even going to have a chance to play with our Wii before we go OS, and we might even be back before it arrives!!! It's not a problem for us, but it makes you wonder how many people bought a TV on the promotion with the plan of giving away their Wii as a Christmas present. Of course, from Nintendo's perspective it's a great strategy - keep as many Wii's on the shelves leading up to Christmas for people to buy, then give away the surplus stock later. I'm sure ours will arrive, and it's not as if we're holding our breathe for it, but it's still a bit of a downer after an exciting weekend.

Ginger Beer

I've made a couple of different ginger beer brews now, but wanted to try something different this time. Warren had emailed me his Super Secret recipe, that he's been using to cook up some nice brew over in the 'States. Apparently it's nigh on impossible to buy a proper brewed ginger beer over there! No ginger beer, no Bundy - why would ANYONE live there??? :)

No one seems to make ginger beer these days like we used to do when we were kids. I remember having a ginger beer "plant" (the yeast), that you'd keep in the fridge in a jar covered with gauze. It was always a big deal. We'd mix it up in big buckets, then pour it into 2L soft drink bottles in the laundry. After a couple of days, they'd start exploding, and you'd suddenly feel like drinking some ginger beer every time you walked past.

Maybe that's why no one does it that way any more!

Being a proper recipe, we needed some ingredients.
Being a good husband, I sent Jess to the shops with a list. :)

Warren's recipe was set up to make 10L of brew. But I have a 20L fermenter, so we decided we would simply double everything. Unfortunately, the first step involves cooking all the various ingredients in together. And our biggest pot wasn't big enough. So we did it in two passes, and poured it all into the one fermenter when finished. It took a bit longer, but should be the same in the end!



It doesn't look the most appetising at this stage, but it smelled divine! Looking back, I think we could have done with cooking it all a bit longer. We followed the recipe to bring it to the boil and then simmer for 20 mins, but I think our simmer was a bit too low a heat. I think either simmering it higher, or cooking it longer might have unlocked some more ginger flavour. We'll see how it goes, and alter the recipe for next time if we need to.

After everything was cooked, we simply tipped the wash (ginger bits and all) into the fermenter, and filled it up with another 16L of water and added the yeast. It's been bubbling away in the shed now for almost a week. It's not been brewing too quickly though, which is good, so we'll just keep an eye on it, and bottle it only after it's finished it's primary fermentation. To bottle it too early will result in explosions!



I've still got all my beer-brewing equipment, so I can test the specific gravity of the wash to determine when it's finished fermenting. We'll bottle it into some brown plastic 700ml bottles, which are worth their weight in gold. No longer do you need to worry about glass exploding, or smashing bottle caps onto the top of the glass with a hammer to seal them - simply two glucose drops, fill the bottle with ginger beer, then screw on the lid, same as you would a 2L softdrink bottle. Much, much easier! Plus, if you do get it wrong and they ferment more in the bottle than they were supposed to, they don't explode! They just expand out into a huge ball!

This batch should be ready for a taste test in about 2 weeks from tomorrow, which will have it just in time for Christmas. Trev is already planning to spend Christmas day drinking Dark and Stormy's - ginger beer with a shot of rum. Although I'm not sure he's factored in the alcoholic content of the ginger beer! I'll let you know how it turns out!

I have a date...

...with some V8's.

We booked our tickets over the weekend, for the inaugural Townsville 400 V8 Supercars race next year. The track looks interesting, and should give reasonable lap times (I don't like the short tracks with super low lap times, like Symmons Plains in Tasmania, where the average race lap is 55 seconds). You can see the design map here: Reid Park Designs Released. We're in the grandstands just at the end of the main straight, opposite the pits. We ended up going for the 3 day grandstand pass, and will make an extra-long weekend out of it. We may yet spring for a paddock pass to go and check out the pits - they'll no doubt be available on the day though, so we can pick them up later.

Accommodation in Townsville is already very scarce, but we're able to camp in Jess' cousin's back yard, so that solves that problem. Jess and Sally are coming down on the Sunday - they have single day general admission passes, which unfortunately means they can't get up into the grandstands. But we'll no doubt work out a roster system so everyone gets the good seats for some of the day.

Should be fun!

More info : V8 Supercars - Townsville 2009

New Toys

So I finally gave into temptation this morning, and picked up a Nintendo DS.

I've been tossing up whether I should get one for a while now, since I think it will be absolutely perfect for the long plane flights on our holiday next year. But I finally couldn't wait any longer, so we went hunting at the local shopping centre. BigW didn't have any of the limited edition red/black ones any more, and didn't think they were getting any more. Same story at Target. Dick Smith didn't have any at all. My last hope was Electronic Boutique, and whaddayaknow - luck!

The console came in a bundle deal with one of the NintenDogs games for free (the bundle was actually $2 cheaper than the bare console - what's that tell you about not even being able to give NintenDogs away?), and we picked up Lego Batman as well.



It's a completely ridiculous game, but it's just so much fun. I've only played about 30 minutes of it yet, and have just completed the first mission, but it's a real blast. I played 5 minutes of Lego Indiana Jones about 6 months' ago on a friend's Wii (that just sounds so wrong), and it was cracking fun, so I'm happy to see that this is just as good.

I'm going to be scouring the Pre-Owned bins at the shops between now and when we leave, as I'd like to pick up a copy of New Super Mario Bros (basically the good old original SMB, made specifically for the DS) and either MarioKart or Diddy Kong Racing. The games are pretty cheap, especially if you can buy them pre-owned or older releases, and there's a fair variety of types available.

While I was taking pictures, I thought I'd shoot one of my new work phone (next to the old one)


As well as our new video camera (in it's docking station)





Sorry for the lack of quality, but it was very late when I was taking these, and bed was calling. I'm still struggling with the FullHD settings on the camcorder - I'm not sure if there's a problem with the footage or if my computer is just too slow to be able to render and display it properly, but I hope I can figure it out soon.

Green Island Ho!

What better way to spend a Friday than relaxing on a tropical island paradise?

Last Friday, Rossco came up to Cairns. Rossco's our account exec at the place we purchase all our IT equipment from for work. We've been dealing with him basically exclusively ever since I started with the firm. Not only is he a great account exec who understands our business and our particular needs, he's also a bloody top bloke, and a good mate to boot.

He has a couple of clients who are based in Cairns, so he managed to wangle a trip up as a sales/networking expense, and decided that we should all head out to Green Island for the day. So, along with a bunch of engineers from another place in town, we jumped on the Sea Cat and headed out around 10:30am. The day was already quite hot, but we had all come prepared with sunscreen and water. The rum on the boat didn't hurt, either, and helped to pass the time on the 30 min trip.



Never one to shirk his duty, Rossco was even working on the way out there! Eeither that, or he was having a play with one of the engineer's brand new Blackberry phones - depends on whether his boss is reading this or not!)





As you can see, we had picture-perfect weather for the day, and the ocean was as flat as a board. Once we arrived, the first order of business was to adjourn to the pool, and stake out a nice shady spot. We managed to beat the crowd there, and secured the prime spot for ourselves.



The only problem was the parade of middle aged Japanese tourists past our spot. It seems the new hot fashion for middle-aged, balding and slight fat Japanese men is the skimpiest Speedo's that money can buy. It's an interesting look, and the girls that were with our group were not really that impressed!

Lunch followed the pool, where we were joined by some of the native wildlife:


After a couple of bottles of very nice white wine, it was surprisingly time to head back, as the last ferry cat leaves at 4pm. So we made our way back to the pier, managing to snap a couple of parting shots on our way.







All in all a lovely day on the island. Certainly the rum on the boat helped pass the time on the trip back, just as it had on the way out. The party kicked on into the night with drinks at Ba8, a ritzy cocktail bar right at the Marina, and Rossco, Jess and I ended up at a Steak & Grill joint for dinner. The ribs were divine, and I've promised myself that I'll have to go back and have them again, when I'm in a slightly better state to appreciate them!

I hadn't been to Green Island for probably 4 years, and it was great to be able to go back. The only problem now is that Jess wants me to take her! Thankfully locals get a discount on the ferry tickets, and everything else is quite reasonably priced (especially for a captive audience on the island), so we might pop over in a month's time. You can stay overnight on the island at a resort, but it's very expensive, so we'll probably just go for the day trip.

I certainly enjoyed the day, and I hope Rossco-san had a good time as well. Was great to meet the others on the trip, and the evening activities were most enjoyable. Certainly beat being at work!

So it's been a month...

... since my last post! Doesn't time fly. Haven't been up to much, but at the same time, we've been flat out! No photos, unfortunately, due to lack of coordination. There might be some on the camera that I've not had a chance to get off yet, so watch this space. Just some of the things we've been doing:

* Mum and Dad came to visit for 2 weeks. It was a last minute holiday, with Mum only booking the flights a week and a half before they arrived. Was great to have them up again, and I think they really enjoyed their stay.

* While Dad was here:
* He fixed my good drill which I thought I'd wrecked when installing the new door. Turns out there was a dodgy connector right inside the drill, which had overheated and burnt out. 5cm of new wire, and it's as good as gold again!
* Fixed our main bedroom air conditioner, which stopped working 6 months ago. I'd had a friend of a friend look at it, but he was on his way home, took one glance and said we'd be better off just replacing the whole lot with a brand new one, gas plumbing lines and all. Thankfully Dad was able to replace the busted contactor, and now it works a treat again!
* Almost finished hanging the new door. We cut/drilled the hole for the deadlock - I just need to mount the strike plate. Because the walls are besser blocks, and the door jambs are steel, drill bits get chewed out very quickly. So we ended up using my Dremel grinder with a cut-off wheel to cut the steel jamb, and then a masonry bit in the drill to eat out enough of a hole.
* Replaced the exhaust fan in the bathroom with one that's not quite so fally-outty any more. Because the original hole was so big (which was why the existing unit was falling out), I've had to No More Gaps up the holes, and paint the patches. I put the first coat on last night, but I think the paint had gone off, so might need to invest in a new 1L tin of ceiling white that's actually, you know, white...
* Installed an exhaust fan in the toilet. It started out as a combined fan/light unit, but an installation discrepancy saw us using the template for the bathroom fan, which was massively larger than the hole the combo unit needed. So after 3 emergency trips back to Bunnings, we now have a separate light and a fan the same as the bathroom.
* Installed dimmer switches on the lights in the living room
* Fixed the toilet, so now it doesn't run constantly, and it flushes normally again.
* And there was something else, but I can't remember what it was! I doubt they'll ever come back again though, not if he thinks he'll spend all his time working again!

* We did a couple of day trips with Mum & Dad, with one Saturday heading up the Gillies to the Yungaburra markets, then onto the Chocolate and Cheese factory for morning tea. From there we headed to a military museum outside Atherton, then up to the Skybury coffee plantation for lunch. We put the 4WD to good use and called in at Davies Creek on the way home to check out the waterfall (with Mum managing to fall on a gravel path), then back home past Kuranda and down the range. I've decided that I want one of the Studebaker 6WD trucks that they had at the museum (Click here to see what I'm talking about!), as it was just plain cool. In a cruel twist of fate, Dad tells me that Uncle Stewart happens to have one that he needs to offload. I'm very tempted, but for the fact that it's 2000kms south, and I don't have anywhere to keep it.

UPDATE - Photos of the museum can be found here!!!
Life in FNQ - Matto & Jess: Mareeba War Museum


* Jess and I have both been crook, but have recovered now. Jess had a cold that ended up as a throat infection. It took her 2 weeks to get over it, at which point she gave it to me, and I ended up on antibiotics for 2 weeks. I then gave it back, and she ended up with fully-blown Tonsillitis. Not fun! The Dr sorted it all out though, and she's been fine again for the last few weeks now, so all's well again.

* Last week, we found ourselves in Brisbane again. I went down on Tuesday (Melbourne cup day - didn't win a cent), and stayed with Jamie while working a couple of days in our Bris office. Was good to catch up with the Bris team, and I always enjoy my time working there again. Got the chance to catch up with Scotty (dinner at Jamie's Tuesday night), Paul (dinner and drinks in O'Malleys in the city Wednesday night), Scotty (dropped into Casa Del Anderson on our way back from the coast on Sunday) and Stevie & Ros & Erin (crashed at their place on our way to the airport to come home on Sunday).

We both had the Friday (the 7th) off work. We picked up our hire car from the airport when Jess flew in, and were pleased to score a free upgrade to a Nissan Tiida, which, as it turns out, is a beautiful car to drive. The sore point was being stung $12 for not having the fuel tank full on return, despite it being 1/4 of a tank down when we picked it up. All that's on top of the extra insurance, but hey - I guess that's how they make their money.

We spent the day up at Grant and Sam's place, playing with Jesse & Lilly & Fraser. We scored the title of coolest uncle & aunty, and most annoying brother and sister-in-law, with presents of water pistols. We finished off the day with a BBQ on the back lawn up at Mum and Dad's place, where we stayed the night. We tried out the new video camera, and have a bunch of footage of the kids, however I'm having trouble playing it back on the computer, unfortunately. I don't know if it's the computer trying to play it, or the camera having trouble capturing it. Either way, I need to work it out before we take it O/S, so we can ensure we get good footage over there. I suspect that the FullHD video is just too much for my poor old PC to handle, but having just sunk $$$s into more RAM and a 1Tb HDD for the video editing, I'm reluctant to pour too much more into it. We'll see.

UPDATE - Photos of the kids can be found here!!!
Life in FNQ - Matto & Jess: Toowoomba Visit


We had a wedding on the weekend down on the Gold Coast, hence the reason for the trip, and we stayed down the coast on Saturday night (the 8th). The place has really grown on me, and now I'm annoyed that we didn't spend more time down there when we lived there. The wedding itself was great, and the reception was lovely. Waking up in Surfer's Paradise with a 16th floor ocean-view is really something else.

UPDATE - Photos of Maureen's Wedding and Southport can be found here!!!
Life in FNQ - Matto & Jess: Scott & Maureen's Wedding - Southport



Um, what other news?

Haven't done anything further on our holiday yet - will need to meet with our agent to see how everything's coming along from her side of the fence. We also need to book our NY accommodation ASAP, as we elected to take care of that ourselves and save some money. I'm trying to talk Jess into a Nintendo DS to occupy us during the long flights.

I finally talked work into stumping up for a new phone and laptop, since they were both about 4.5-5yrs old. Despite both being in basically perfect condition, the phone's battery would only last about an hour off the charger, and the laptop was taking around 20 mins to boot up and log on of a morning. So I now have a lovely new HTC Touch Diamond phone that uses the high-speed Telstra NextG internet to sync my work email/calendar/contacts, and a spankin' HP Elitebook 6930p laptop.

The phone is wonderful, although the full touch-screen interface takes some getting used to. It's not without it's faults, but for me I think it's pretty much the perfect device. I'm looking forward to trying out the GPS-enabled Google Maps when we're overseas! The laptop's brand new, having only arrived on my desk this Monday. So far, I'm absolutely loving the extra power, and the Vista/Office 2007 combo really does work well, despite an initially steep learning curve. The downside is that the laptop itself feels like it's carved from a solid block of aluminium - I wouldn't be surprised if it's twice as heavy as my old 12" Dell D410 machine. That said, the HP is a 14" widescreen, and has an internal DVD writer (external on the D410), as well as fancy features like a built in webcam, and so on. So it's not entirely unreasonable for it to be heavier.

And that brings us up to today, basically!

We've got nothing planned for the next while, which is a lovely feeling. We'll be having Christmas in Cairns this year, so unless anything pops up between now and then, we probably won't be back South again before we head overseas. So now the emphasis just goes back to trying to talk everyone into coming up for holidays and to visit!

I'm trying to get back to riding the Sprint more often (took it to work today), but my neck, back and head are not quite co-operating. Despite talking about it for the last 6 months, I want to start making time to play some more golf, and might even invest in a couple of lessons to re-cover the basics and make sure I'm not learning any bad habits. It's probably been over 12 months since I was at the driving range, and over 6 months since I was out on the grass, so I'm itching to have another round, or at least go and belt a bucket of balls.

On top of all that, I've been hunting around for a cheap way to set up a bit of a home gym, as I'd like to start doing some light weights training. Nothing fancy, just an inclining bench, and a barbell/dumbells set. That will let me get started with the basics at least. Unfortunately, like everything, the cheap stuff isn't good, and the good stuff isn't cheap. Being in Cairns doesn't really help - eBay is next to useless here, and all the pawn shops have prices basically line-ball with new gear. I've got my eye on the following:
Celcius Standard Weight Bench
Rebel Sport 50kg Weight Set

Anyway, that's about it from me - hope everyone's well - catch you all later!

Scott & Maureen's Wedding - Southport

As already alluded to in previous posts, we were once again down in SEQ at the start of Nov. The main reason was so we could attend Scott and Maureen's wedding on the Gold Coast. Jess used to work with Maureen in Bris, and she was really looking forward to catching up with her, as well as some other old workmates.

It was a beautiful day, with the bad weather holding off throughout the ceremony, and only starting to rain once everyone was ensconced inside the reception. The ceremony was held at the chapel at The Southport School, a very exclusive private school, with the reception being hosted at L'esprit, a beautiful restaurant/function centre right on the inlet at Southport, looking back over towards Surfer's.

Aplogoies, of course, for the terrible photos. One of these days we'll get around to buying a camera that actually works. We want one before we go OS, so hopefully I won't have to wait too long!

We stayed the night at Mantra Legends, which is right in the heart of Surfer's Paradise, only a couple of streets down from the Cavil Ave mall. As all good hotels should, this one had a Bullet parked in it's lobby. What's a Bullet? Well, it's one of these:



Bullet cars are based on the Gold Coast. They take a Mazda MX5, and cut it off at the firewall. An entirely new front subframe holds, in this car's case, a blown 350 chev v8, complete with all the goodies like coil-over suspension and the obvious front-tilting bonnet. The rest of the car is left reasonably alone, apart from some custom leather interior bits, new badges and a new VIN plate (as the car is now considered as being manufactured by Bullet cars, and not simply a modified MX5).

We were lucky enough to score an ocean-view room on the 16th floor. Despite some problems with the check-in staff, we ended up getting access to the room early enough to get ready for the wedding. These are the views that greeted us.











All in all, a very enjoyable weekend was had by all. The wedding and reception were lovely, and we had a good time all weekend. Unfortunately after waking up Sunday morning and wandering down to the beach for breakfast, the time had come to pack the car and head back towards bris, and our waiting plane back home.

On the way back we dropped into Scotty's place (after a slight detour after Matt got thoroughly confused after taking the wrong exit from the M1), and went from there to see Stevie and Ros briefly before we had to drop the car back. Jamie came out to the airport to see us off, which was much appreciated, especially when our flight was delayed and we had to sit around for another hour.

And so ends another trip to Bris - most likely it will be our last one for the year. The next time we get on a plane will be to head towards Japan and the the 'States!

Thanks to everyone that we dropped in on at late notice - it was great to be able to catch up with everyone again!

Toowoomba Visit

The first week of November found Jess and I back in Bris. One of Jess' friends from her old firm was getting married on the coast on the Saturday, so I headed down earlier in the week to work out of our Bris office for a few days before meeting up with Jess at the Bris airport on Friday morning. We picked up a hire car (and a free upgrade to a Nissan Tiida!!) and headed up to Toowoomba for the day to spend some time with the kids.

I think they were happy to see us...

We came bearing gifts, since it was Lilly's birthday earlier in the week, and Jesse's later in the month. Water pistols all round!






Little Fraser has grown so much since we last saw him! Of course, the last time we saw him he was approx 4 hours old, so that's to be expected! He's a lovely little boy, and didn't make a fuss at all, despite being picked up and handed around by two complete strangers. He looks so much like Jesse did when he was that age that it's not funny.





The day ended with a BBQ dinner up at Mum & Dad's place in Toowoomba. Was a perfect end to a lovely day.


All the photos can be found here:

2008-11-07, Toowoomba - Grant & Sam & kids

Mareeba War Museum

While mum and Dad were visiting, we took a trip out to the Mareeba War Museum. It's the largest privately owned collection of military hardware in QLD, apparently. It consisted of a small block building housing the small items (combat knives, radios, etc) adjoined to a large open-ended wartime hanger. As you'll see, the entire hanger is jam-packed with old vehicles, aircraft and other bits and bobs. There's an amazing amount of variety there, and it was well worth the $14 entry fee.

Some photos:

Ikara Missile (rocket launched torpedo)



Folding-wing naval jet, showing the roof of the huge hanger (all support structure made out of wood!)



6WD Studebaker truck. I've decided that I need to get myself one of these.



Alternatively, an old Blitz truck would also surfice. One thing I didn't know - both Chevy and Ford made basically identical Blitzs for the war. Shown here is a Chevy in the foreground, with the Ford version next to it. The Ford truck was the museum owner's expedition vehicle to retrieve aircraft and other artifacts from the cape. It's done 6 trips to Cape York with him, mostly in expedition-style driving - no roads/tracks, but cross-country path making, to get to plane crash sites or other areas of interest. Has never failed to proceed, but apparently the ride is less than plush.



And where would a WW2 museum be without a Jeep? This was one of a couple of well-kept (original, not restored) examples. This was set up as a radio truck. There was also a short-wheelbase Blitz decked out as a radio truck, but it was hiding away under the wing of a bomber.


The full gallery of photos can be found here :

2008-10-25, Mareeba War Museum

New Front Door

When we moved into our house, the first thing we said we'd do is get a new front door. The existing door was brown, ugly, and starting to fall apart. It didn't have a door knob - just a dead-bolt, so we would end up pulling/pushing the door open/closed by using the key in the lock, turned about half way. When we bought the new fridge a couple of weeks after moving in, it wouldn't fit through the door in it's packing carton. Because we were getting a new front door, we simply elected to shove the fridge through, which resulted in further splintering of the door, and delamination of the door skin.

And now, only two years later, we decided it was time to do something about it.

So, a couple of weekends ago, we took a Bunnings voucher that we were given last Christmas back to it's home, and traded it and a large amount of cash for a brand new front door, complete with a new door lock and deadbolt. A subsequent trip to the paint shop acquired a frightenly expensive tin of paint, and we were good to go.

Jess believed this to be a very straightforward job. Buy new door, take old door away, put new door in - job done. Having had experience with doors before, I knew better. Maybe it really is as simple as she though, and I just manage to bugger it up every time I try, but this time proved that at least I'm consistent.

First up the new door was much larger than the old one. So with the help of my trusty circular saw, we trimmed 10mm off both the top and bottom, and a whopping 30mm off each side. This saw the new door exactly the same size as the existing one. My plan was to measure and set up the new door exactly the same as the old one, right down to the position of the hinges. That way, instead of needing to muck around with hanging the new door, I'd simply pop the old one off, screw the hinges onto the new door in the exact same position as the old one, and voila - it would hang straight back on.

With that in mind, I wanted to have the door completely finished - cut to size, sanded and painted before hanging.



We painted the door one side at a time, lying on the outside table, as shown above with it's primer/undercoat on. That night I spoke to Dad, who told me the golden law of painting a door was to always make sure that you painted both sides at once. Apparently if you only paint one side, the absorption of the paint on the one side causes the wood to warp and bend the door. Great.

Thankfully the predicted warping never occurred, or, if it did, it's too slight to tell. Thank goodness for that. That's about the length and breadth of the good luck we had though. It took the best part of a week to give the door one undercoat and two top coats, since we only could work on it at night, and could only do one side at a time. In amongst all this we were both sick, which further impeded our progress. Not to mention that Weekend #1 was the Phillip Is MotoGP race, and Weekend #2 was the V8's at Bathurst.

Last Sunday we were finally at a stage to remove the old door and hang the new one. So the old one was turfed out the back (where it's stayed to this day), and the new one bought inside, ready for the fun to begin.



By measuring carefully we were able to attach the hinges onto the door in roughly the right spot, so we could hang it onto the hinge-half that was still attached to the wall with relative ease. Then the fun started.

The new door is exactly the same height and width as the old one, as measured on both left and right sides, and top and bottom. However, the new door is SQUARE. The old door, as it turns out, is not, and neither is the door jamb. So the door won't close. We tried spacing out the top hinge to angle the top-outside corner down, but then the entire door edge would hit the jamb. So back it went, and our only choice was to take a wedge out of the top of the door. We started on Saturday night with a jigsaw and sander, but neither were aggressive enough for the heavy door timber. However by sheer persistence we ended up with enough ground off the top to allow the door to be wedged shut. With no door locks installed yet, we were relying on the (very dodgy) security screen as our protection from all the nasty people that roam our suburb.

Sunday morning saw us remove the door and cart it back outside to attack with the circular saw. 10 seconds later, the top was trimmed down and everything was good in the world. Back inside it went, and back onto it's hinges, and after a bit of judicious sanding and planing, we had a door that swung beautifully on it's hinges, and fitted into the (decidedly not square) door jamb.

Next step was the door locks. I had pre-drilled the holes for both the door handle/lock as well as the deadlock. This was done from measurements of the old door, so that the new door would line up perfectly. Of course, this was before we needed to take a further 10mm off the top of the new door. So we ended up with the door latch not going anywhere near the existing rebate and strike.

Note about the door jamb - it's amazingly difficult to modify the door jamb in our case. This is because of 2 things:
1) the house is made out of besser bricks
2) the door jambs through-out the house are made out of metal.
They're big metal inverted-U shaped things. You take your besser-block wall, use a concrete saw to cut out a door shape, then twist and wriggle the U-shaped door jamb into the hole and voila - you end up with a nice metal door jamb over your nasty rough concrete hole.

So to modify the door jamb, and specifically the latch strike, you need to drill through the metal jamb, and then into the concrete. Step 1 saw me use a metal drill bit. This worked for a second or two, until it started to bite through the metal and hit the concrete. This immediately blunted the bit. Step 2 saw me use a masonry bit with the drill in hammer mode. This simply flattened out the metal and closed over the hole that we'd made earlier. Great.

So, we took the time-honoured tradition of dodgying it up. The latch was only just missing the existing strike and hole. So by using a drill bit in an entirely un-authorised manner, we simply elongated the hole for the latch downwards. This means the handle stays in the same position, but the latch, instead of being horizontal, slopes downwards and exists the door on a bit of an angle. This was enough to let it clear the existing strike, and it latches and locks perfectly.

Of course, we needed to rebate the latch plate 3mm into the door itself, so it would end up nice and flush with the side of the door. It was then that I discovered that I don't have any wood chisels. I keep meaning to buy them, but keep thinking I've already got a set, so consequently I never end up with any. Fortunately, I DO have a sharp flat-head screwdriver, and that worked a treat, albeit taking much, MUCH longer and resulting in a much rougher job than a $2 chisel would have afforded.

So now the door's hung, and the main latch/knob is installed, it's time to fit the deadlatch. First order of business it to re-attempt to drill into the door jamb to create a new locating hole/strike for the deadbolt bolt. And this is where my long-suffering drill finally throws in the towel. Unfortunately, I believe it's motor to be burnt out. I've not pulled it apart yet, but I suspect the worst. Which is a shame, since I *really* like that drill. I may yet be able to source a new motor for it and have it repaired - I certainly hope so.

Unfortunately this called an end to the day's festivities. We were able to assemble the deadbolt into the door itself so that we don't have any huge gaping holes in our new door, but until we can drill out the door jamb it will be purely decoration. There was another 2 hours spent trying to correctly re-assemble the door handle/lock after following the instructions to correctly orientate the keyhole on the outside, which only came to an end after I resorted to a large hammer. Thankfully it worked a treat.

With a splash of paint slapped on the freshly sawn/planed/sanded areas, it's come up looking quite ok, for a dodgy home job:





Certainly looks heaps better than the old one, and the square windows suit the style of the house down to a tee. With the blue paint and silver satin door handles, it looks quite smart and modern, and really lifts the look of the place, especially the inside of the front room.

There a few minor jobs left to do:

• Fix the dead bolt

• Add a magnetic door stop, affixed into the masonary - the original door had one of these, but it was only screwed into the skirting board. You can guess how long it lasted, but it did stop the inside door handle from smashing into the blockwork whenever the door was opened or the wind caught it.

• Touch up the paint around the edges of the glass

• Throw out the dodgy security screen and buy something that actually affords a bit of security.

I've already wiped down the entire front of the house inside, and vacuumed the floors to remove as much of the sawdust that we so deftly distributed whilst initially trying to get it to fit. I fear I'll be finding more sawdust for years to come. I've already hosed out the back patio once, but there's still sawdust everywhere, so it might need to be attacked with the pressure cleaner. The joys of renovating!