Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I popped into the fabric store yesterday to see if my new machine might be here by the weekend in time for the workshop. It won’t, so I’ll have to borrow one.

While I was there, the owner said there was this guy who’d seen my Dragonfly quilt in the window (she’s displaying it in the store for a while) and wants to commission me to make a single bed quilt! She indicated that the price would be high—over $1000—but it seems he gave her his number for me to contact him anyway.

Arrgghh! I’ve got his phone number, but haven’t called him yet. I don’t have the time to make it—unless he’s prepared to wait 12 months—and I’m really not confident in my ‘art’ quilt skills as the Dragonfly was my first effort of designing and creating something myself. And if it had all gone pear-shaped, it wouldn’t have mattered. It seems he wants a particular butterfly, so I’m guessing that it’s for a daughter, especially as it’s a single bed size.

And the store owner also mentioned that some ladies were wondering if I did a lesson or workshop on how to make a quilt like that.

What have I started?

Very funny! Things a mother would say in a 24 hour period, condensed into less than 3 minutes. Safe for work.

(Thanks to Ron M for sharing this link.)

Another frustrating computer day. Late last night our internet connection just died. No websites, no Messenger, no Skype, no emails in or out, no connection to my client’s system. Nada. Zilch. Nothing. I rebooted the router. Still nothing.

Same thing this morning when I booted up. So at 6:00 AM I called my ISP. After an hour of diagnosis and testing, the Support guy determined that the router had died. But all its lights were on and flickering away like in a demented cockpit, as they normally do. Fortunately, my folks were coming over here for lunch and to pick up my Mum’s old sewing machine (another tale), so I called and asked them to pick up a new ADSL modem/router from the store in their town (we can’t buy such things in our town though the electronics store can get them in within 24 hours).

After we had lunch, Mum and Dad headed home and I connected the new modem. The instructions had three steps only—how hard could it be? Problem was, one of those steps was “configure the modem” with no information on how to configure it, what the native IP address of it was, etc. I called the ISP again and the guys there helped me establish a connection around 4:00 PM, but that was just on a direct line to a machine. The ISP guys couldn’t help me with the network settings and warned me that some settings might need to be changed on the server too.

So another call, this time to the PC Guru guys. The very patient Mike helped me through changing the IP address of the new modem so it matched what my server was looking for, and removing the modem’s DHCP settings so that the server ones applied (WTF?). He then helped me do some ipconfig stuff (ipconfig /release; ipconfig /flushdns; and ipconfig /renew) on all the machines. After another reboot of the server and all PCs as well as the modem, we FINALLY got access after 5:00 PM today.

The cost of a new modem ($110) was small in comparison to the real cost:

• 8 hours: Lost day’s work—and therefore pay—for me… and this is with my new client too. Not a good look for the second week of working for them.
• 3 hours: Round trip for my folks + fuel
• 1 hour: Time on phone with PC Guru
• 2 hours: Time on phone with ISP’s Support

Bloody computers… [mutter, mutter, mumble, mumble]

I got such a surprise today… I knew that Google Street Views had hit Australia some months ago, but expected that only the main cities and towns would be covered. I also assumed that if they got as far as the little town where we live, that they’d propbably only photograph the main street that runs through town.

Not so.

I was looking up a local address on Google Maps, and lo and behold, I found that there was a Street View button! It looks like many of our town’s streets have been photographed. Based on the weather for the pictures in our street, the fact that some garbage and recycling bins were still out, the greenness (or otherwise) of the gardens, and a couple of other clues, I figured they came through sometime in autumn (between March and June 2008), possibly on a  Wednesday or perhaps a Thursday.

Then I went looking to see if they’d also photographed the estate where we hope to build, and they’d done that too. This time though, I think they came on a different day—there were a lot of clouds in the sky and the grass was yellow and dry like it is over summer. The roof was on on our friends’ house in the estate, so that should give some sort of time scale.

Google Street Views in our little town. Who’da thought?!

Yesterday, Bobbie and I, and Flora (Bobbie’s friend from Perth) went to Bunbury to participate in a quilt workshop. Michelle from Raggedy Stitches was our teacher for the day, and the workshop featured a Ricky Tims technique called convergence quilts (yes, Ricky is a bloke who quilts!). We all had lots of fun, lots of laughs, a bit of unpicking (ugh!), and learned a lot about piecing curves. I think everyone finished their quilt tops. We all used the same pattern, but with the variety of fabrics, everyone’s looked different.

Mine is the one in the earth tones—I call it “Sun and Earth”. It has an Aboriginal print as the main fabric (see the white snakes crawling towards the waterholes?), a yellow ‘sun’ fabric for the sun, and an ochre fabric for the earth (all fabrics were from my stash except the ochre fabric).

Sun and earth

Bobbie’s is done in Japanese print fabrics, and she’s making it for a friend of hers who is into Japanese design.

Turning Japanese

Link to post about finished quilt…

About 6 weeks ago I mentioned that I thought things were shifting in my world. Then 2 weeks ago some had firmed up. Today I got email confirmation that I’d be taking on an initial 3-month part-time contract with the BIG oil and gas company, starting next week.

How did I get this job without an interview, without showing a portfolio, or anything other than a phone conversation? Word of mouth referral. Clare and I worked together at [large mining company] some years ago—in fact, we sat in adjoining cubes so I got to know her pretty well. This was back in about 2000 or 2001. When she went to work for [large government department], she got me on board as she liked my work ethic and capabilities. By the time I started there, she’d moved on, but I stayed on for about 6 months. About 12 months ago Clare asked about my availability and said that she’d have some work for me coming up at [BIG company] where she’s now working. Well, that specific work hasn’t come off yet, but I’m not worried—it will. And I wasn’t available much anyway. Meantime, someone at [BIG company] she works with needed someone to move fast on a particular project with some tight filing deadlines, and Clare’s first thought was me. So Clare refers me to Julia and obviously speaks highly of my ability. Julia and I chat, and now it’s a done deal except for the final contractual pieces of paper that need to get sorted out with the agency they use.

And I had another nice ‘karma’ moment today too—this time, it was one that I could immediately identify, not like the one from back in February. Some time back a guy called me and asked if I would edit his science fiction/fantasy manuscript. He contacted me ‘cos he had relatives down this way and lived in the southwest himself. Well, I don’t do fiction editing of any sort, so I referred him to Helen, an editor I know of in Pemberton. I know Helen met with him and I’m not sure where it went from there. But I know she was grateful for the referral.

Today Helen referred someone to me for some copywriting work of a more technical nature than she’s used to. The marketing manager at the firm and I had a long chat, I sent off an email confirming our conversation, covering rates, time frames etc. The marketing manager only works two days a week, so she said she’d get back to me on Monday. So that could be another job coming in. A small one, but a new client nonetheless. Thanks for the referral Helen.

And thanks Clare for the referral at the BIG company!

My husband suggested that we go for a drive today. My commitments with the Queensland company were very light on today, and I’m waiting on phone calls from others before I start on new contracts, so that sounded like a good idea to me! Unfortunately, it wasn’t as bright and sunny out as it has been in the past couple of weeks, but it wasn’t raining, so driving on unpaved roads wasn’t going to be a muddy excursion that we might regret later.

Instead of going any long distance, we decided to explore some of the roads in the hinterland. And what a surprise we were in for! We followed the Blackwood River for quite a lot of the time, and had a picnic lunch by the river at the Winnijup Rd Bridge—the shire has thoughtfully provided a picnic shelter there. I doubt it’s used much—the date of construction was 1993, but there’s very little evidence that it’s had a lot of use. So that was our drive east of town.

When we got back to town we headed west and found the most gorgeous looping drive through farming country, nature reserves, hills, and the river. Magic. (This are is known as the Peninsula.)

Oh, and the wildflowers are starting to emerge. In a few weeks they’ll be in full bloom.

Some photos below…

Blackwood River at the Winnijup Rd Bridge

Driving hazards when you drive through farm land on a public road, near Bridgetown, Western Australia

Hardenbergia, near Winnijup Rd Bridge

In an idle moment today, waiting for a plumber that never came, I decided to see just how the number of Olympic gold medals stack up, based on the populations of the respective countries. I only did the gold medal tally (‘cos no-one really cares about who came 2nd or 3rd, right? 😉 ), and only the top five gold medal countries as at 10am Monday August 18, Australian Western Standard Time. (NOTE: Population stats for these countries are taken from http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/summaries.html)

Here’s what I got:

1. China – 35 gold. Population 1,330,000,000. 1 gold for every 38m people.
2. United States – 19 gold. Population 303,000,000. 1 gold for every 15.95m people.
3. Great Britain – 11 gold. Population 82,000,000. 1 gold for every 7.45m people.
4. Germany – 9 gold. Population 61,000,000. 1 gold for every 6.77m people.
5. Australia – 8 gold. Population 21,000,000. 1 gold for every 2.65m people.

Taking Australia’s ratio: If [country] was averaging 1 gold for every 2.65m people, they should have [number] golds by now:

• China – 501
• US – 114
• GB – 31
• Germany – 23
• Australia – 8

Puts a different spin on it, huh? 😉

Update 25 August 2008:

With the final gold medal results known, here’s how the first table pans out:

1. China – 51 gold. Population 1,330,000,000. 1 gold for every 26.1m people.
2. United States – 36 gold. Population 303,000,000. 1 gold for every 8.4m people.
3. Russia – 23 gold. Population 141,000,000. 1 gold for every 6.1m people.
4. Great Britain – 19 gold. Population 82,000,000. 1 gold for every 4.3m people.
5. Germany – 16 gold. Population 61,000,000. 1 gold for every 3.8m people.
6. Australia – 14 gold. Population 21,000,000. 1 gold for every 1.5m people.

And Jamaica came 13th in the gold medal tally, with 3. With a population of just 2.9m people, that’s 1 gold for every 0.9m people. Actually, it’s 3 gold for just one man—the unbelievable Usain Bolt.

Read this today in a comment on Pamela Slim’s Escape From Cubicle Nation blog:

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is liking what you get.

So I go into town today to get some groceries and I park in the main street—as you do. I get back to the car and what do I find? Little bits of cow poo scattered all over the side and top and back of the car, on the windscreen, the hood, you name it! Some cattle truck obviously went past and some cow decided it was time…

I bet the people at the cafe across the road got a laugh. I know I would’ve laughed had it been some other poor sucker who got crapped on. Not so funny when it’s your recently-washed car!

It’s fun living in the country.

Bits of cow dung over car