(a.k.a. wordsmiths)
After work today we had our informal get together of the local tech writers group at a pub in Subiaco. Much wit and repartee and some terrible puns! Puns we couldn’t get away with in normal conversation with work colleagues or friends and family, but puns that had the appropriate level of groan response with that group.
Thanks guys – it was fun swimming with my own kind again.
I left at 5:20am this morning for Perth and the moon was either full or as close to it as it can get. Which meant that the road was fairly well lit through the darkest and hairiest part of the drive from Bridgetown to Boyanup. Brilliant! I’ll have to plan my trips to Perth around the moon in future.
The trip was uneventful and I made it to work in just over 3.5 hours including a stop at the apartments to pick up my key. I went via South West Highway this time, and only hit traffic issues near the Causeway at 8:45am. Much better than a month ago when it took me 1.75 hours to get from Anketell Rd to Powis St on the ‘freeway’ (what a joke!). So all in all, a pleasant trip timed perfectly for me to get to my client’s site at 9:00am.
The weather fined up yesterday so we decided to go find a winery! We’d seen an unusual sight at the Blackwood River Tavern in Balingup a few weeks ago – a bottle of Zinfandel! The reason it was unusual is that zin is not well known in Australia, which is surprising as we have a VERY healthy wine industry and make some terrific reds.
Having travelled extensively in the US, and having friends in the wine industry in the Paso Robles region of mid-state California, we’re very familiar with zins. But only a few wineries in Australia make it. A few years back our Californian wine friends asked us to find some Australian zins and bring them over with us on the next visit so they could do a comparison. At the time I found that only about seven wineries in the entire continent produced zins! Three were in Western Australia (Cape Mentelle, Peel Estate, and Lilac Hill) so we hunted them out. Our friends loved the Cape Mentelle – no surprises there!
Anyhow, this was a local wine from Mandalay Estate near Donnybrook. So off we went, taking the back road through Boyup Brook to Mumbellup and then on to Mandalay Rd. (“Where’s Mumbellup? Between Yabberup and Noggerup!” So says a bumper sticker we saw.)
They had ONE bottle of 2004 vintage zin left! So we tasted it and bought it. There’s a new release in a few weeks and we’ll be back to get some more. The zin was lovely – nice and rich and quite peppery (to my palate, anyway). We also purchased some nice shiraz from Mandalay.
On the way back we stopped in at Thomson Brook winery close to Donnybrook, but weren’t as impressed with their wines.
And our last stop was the bottle shop at the Blackwood River Tavern in Balingup where they still had two bottles of the zin left! (well, three actually as we stayed on for a lovely meal and had their absolute last bottle with dinner).
It’s a bleak sort of day today, so I decided to do some purging of a different kind – my LONG list of web bookmarks. How long? Just under 1000 links! That’s a serious problem.
First, I exported the bookmarks to an HTML file (in Firefox: Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks, then File > Export to a bookmarks.html file). Then I ran Xenu Sleuth link checker over the file to find all the broken links. Then I manually checked the broken ones, fixing those I could and deleting those that lead nowhere – as well as deleting categories and links that were no longer relevant to where my life is at at the moment. So now I’m down to just under 700 over 900 links…
That’s as far as I’ve got so far. The next stage is to reorganise the links into better categories so that I don’t end up with a list of 50+ links in a category as broad as “Reference Material”! And to double check each link too as many that Xenu said it could find are now just placeholders for web hosting companies. So even though Xenu found a link, it may not be the link I saved way back when.
Of course, a simpler process might be to purge ALL my links right now and start afresh. Keep the exported bookmarks.html file in case there’s anything I need, but go back to a clean slate. Hmmmm… that option’s looking VERY attractive about now.
Footy starts today! (well, it started last night but today’s the day I start watching again)
But now I’m divided between two clubs… My nephew has left the Freo Dockers and is now playing for a Melbourne-based team (ptooi!) – the one that people either love or hate… there are no shades of grey with this team! (locals will get that reference)
So today I’ll watch two games – the one my nephew’s playing in (and that the family have flown over to Melbourne to watch), and the Freo Dockers. I’m no longer a member of the Dockers – moving down south, my nephew being traded to another club, and with the other nieces and nephews not renewing or going to the games as a result, it wasn’t worth it.
At least all the games are on TV – either free-to-air or Foxtel – so there’s no excuse for missing them. However, the temptation today is strong. It’s an absolutely BEAUTIFUL autumn day and it’s expected to be quite warm so the pull of the outdoors is pretty strong. But this is a BIG day for my nephew – it’s his first game with his new club and it’s his 100th AFL game and it’s the first game of the season. So I’ll watch it live.
Update: The Melbourne game isn’t shown until 8:00pm tonight, even though it started at noon. Darn. Meantime, the Dockers game is live on both free-to-air and Foxtel, so I’ll watch that. The weather has turned so I’m not so fussed about being inside now.
Some people just have a knack of getting a not very nice message across in a very polite – even humorous – way. I was reminded of that when I received this email to all staff in a company from one of the long time staff members (I have permission to quote this, but I’ve removed any identifying information):
Hello fellow kitchen users
Over the last 2 years I have been taking the tea towels home every week to wash them (thanks go out to <name> who was doing the upstairs tea towels while <department> was in the downstairs office). Don’t get me wrong, this has been an enjoyable experience for me, but I feel like there is a limit to the amount of fun a person should allow themselves, so I have decided to step down as the Tea Towel Maintenance Officer. If anyone would like to take on the title, feel free, otherwise please don’t complain about there being no clean tea towels. By the way there is a stack of clean ones in the far right cupboard where the sink is – once they’re gone, they’re gone.
I wondered why I couldn’t see the stars this morning when I went out to get the paper. As daylight emerged, it was obvious – fog! We’re close to the top of a very large hill and it was foggy up here – I’d imagine that in the valley where the main street of town is, it was very foggy indeed.
The picture below is of part of the backyard, with some of the fruit trees, the old aviary on the left which is now my garden shed (note the shadecloth I put up over the weekend to deal with any excessive weather!), and the massive eucalyptus trees on the property behind ours. There’s a firebreak/track between us and those trees too, though you wouldn’t think it from this photo!
One of the things about living in a country town and on a largish block of land with fruit trees (yes, fruit trees – lemon, orange, mandarin, apple, plum, and a grape vine are those I’ve discovered so far), is that birds come and visit regularly… and they chatter all day long! I’m not a bird person, but so far I’ve been able to identify these: Western Magpies, kookaburras, blue wrens, Western Rosellas, Australian Ringneck parrots (known as twenty-eights), New Holland Honeyeaters, Bronzewing Pigeons, and lots of other little flitty birds that I don’t know. We’ve also heard black cockatoos in the distance, but haven’t seen any yet. There’s a nice page of many of the birds we have in the garden here: http://www.waratahsoftware.com.au/wp_birds_birds.html
The other thing is the stars! Wandering out into the dark at 5am to collect the paper from the verge is an awesome experience – the Milky Way is just so bright against the black of the night, and some of the stars seem close enough to touch. I’d forgotten how bright stars can be – all those years of living in the glow of the city lights takes that away and you can only really see the very bright ones. Here, you can see them all. And they are an awe-inspiring sight.
Wow! I never thought I’d write about a vacuum cleaner!
Our old vacuum cleaner was one of those cheap piddly little cockroach things that had very little suction and a short cord. Although it was a brand name (Hoover), it really didn’t do the job very well. And when it started cutting out because of overheating – like after about 2 minutes vacuuming time – that was it. Time for it to go to another home.
So when we were in Busselton the other day, one of our tasks was to see what we could find as a replacement vacuum cleaner. I’d heard about the Dysons (ugly beasts that they are), and when the girl in the shop raved about hers, we had to investigate further. Well, not really investigate – I held the end to test the suction and nearly had the palm of my hand taken off, it was that good! We bought the DC08TSY model (pics and details here) and I used it for the first time this morning.
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As I said earlier – wow! This thing has a really long cord – long enough so that I could do the whole house without unplugging it; a really long hose, and a telescopic wand with a handle. And the suction is unbelievable! It wanted to lift the loose rug in the living room, and when I had it on carpet mode instead of hard floor mode, it tried to lift the vinyl in the office. After vacuuming the whole house, the bagless barrel had HEAPS of very fine dust and other particles in it… and I only vacuumed the house last weekend with the old one. BTW, we don’t have children or pets, and we’re very meticulous about cleaning up after ourselves. |
Amazing.
So amazing that I’ve even named it. In honour of the king hits that Mike Tyson did, I’ve named it “Tyson the Dyson”. I NEVER name things, so that’s a first. (BTW, I don’t like boxing, and I sure don’t condone Mike Tyson’s actions – it’s just that his name rhymes and this vacuum cleaner is a “knockout”.)
There I was today, working away on client stuff, when I checked the date. It’s exactly a month today since we moved out of Perth! It all still feels very new, yet it all feels very familiar too.
ALL the boxes (those that aren’t in storage) are now unpacked and out of the house – I did the last one on Saturday after I cleaned out the old aviary and made it into a shed to store the gardening tools etc. Most of the boxes were done by the end of the first week, but there are always stragglers. I’m just glad we’re not living in “Box City” any more. The house is definitely looking like a home now.
I’ve been getting as much work done for my clients as when I was in the office – in some ways more, as I’m not distracted by water cooler chat, people dropping by your cube, the “just a quick question” situation etc. Of course, I miss some of that too, but as I’ve been working for one client for 5 years and the other for 2 years, I’ve found that many of the nuances of body language and voice can still be achieved via email and instant messaging with those I know well.
Some things I’ve ‘dropped’ since we’ve been here…
A couple of times a week we’ll pop into town when I take a lunch break to do the grocery shopping, go to the butcher, bank etc. Town is about 1 minute away, so it’s not a long trip!
I’ve already made one trip back to Perth to do face-to-face with my clients, and I have another 3-day trip planned for early April. That first trip worked well, except my intentions of catching the train from Bunbury were impossible as there is no secure parking at Bunbury train station. It’s out in the boonies these days, and the car park is wide open and unsupervised at night. With a 90 minute trip back to Bridgetown after the train trip, it just isn’t worth taking the risk that my car could be smashed, stolen, or just undriveable when I got back in at night. So it looks like I’ll be driving, which is a real shame. I had a good run on the first trip back to Perth – I left at 4:45am and was at the southern end of the freeway in Perth by 7:30am. And then I hit the biggest traffic jam! It took me 1.75 hours to get from the Anketell Rd exit to the Powis St exit! Unbelieveable – and unacceptable. I’ve told that client that in future I’ll leave a bit later so I can avoid that situation. Fortunately, I’d had a pitstop just before Mandurah, otherwise it could’ve been embarrassing! Getting home took just over 3 hours, but getting to Perth took 4.5 hours, all because of that freeway situation.
I’ll write more later about some of the things we’ve discovered about living in a country town. Don’t worry – it’s all good!
Rhonda Bracey: At Random 