Bend in the Weather

There should be laws when moving. Particularly when you're moving your business AND your house at the same time.

Let me introduce you to the 10 laws of moving:

Law #1
Instead of boxing, cleaning and moving literally tonnes of computer equipment, furniture and other knick-knacks, you should be allowed to burn the lot from the former residence/office and then get a 'magical' wish/rebate the other end to replace the lot with new stuff.

Law #2
You are excused from everything. Moving is stressful and tiring. You are allowed to be obnoxious, rude and angry for a period of 2 weeks prior to moving and 2 weeks after the move.

Law #3
All favours can be called in without exception. This includes all those people's who's computers you've repaired, the hordes of people who come ask for computing advice and those you have lent a hand over the years.

Law #4
Anything not worn, viewed or used in the past 3 years is able to recycled, handed on, given-away or disposed of.

Law #5
You will always lose one box when moving, but regain the box you lost in the previous move.

Law #6
No matter how well you think you have estimated the effort required, you will under-estimate the task. You will under-estimate the task.

Law #7
Something will be broken in the move. It's only stuff, so don't stress too much about it, it can be replaced.

Law #8
There is no such thing as too many boxes, packing tape, bubble-wrap and packing clothes/paper.

Law #9
Some boxes are never unpacked. The contents of these boxes will remain locked away in these boxes for years to come.

Law #10
You never have enough time to move. Moving is supposed to be cram 2n days in n days.

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Having said that, we've survived the move. We moved in last Friday (12^th December). Yes, we had a few things damaged (nothing major, but does require some love, hammers and glue to repair a few pieces).

We're working through the boxes (albeit slowly). I think by the time signed 32-bit integers roll over we'll be unpacked.
The essentials are unpacked and we're making some progress through the rest of the house.

All in all, it's been successful; though we're thankful the experience is over. We're dead beat and looking forward to going into Xmas/New Years mode for a few days to recharge the batteries.

Most things around the place are complete; although we do have a handful of tradies due back to finish up their jobs (mainl due to them 'forgotting' or stuffing up. Gawd, the general population of trades-people out there are slap happy. There is no-way I would get away with some of the crap they pull. I'm finding unless you watch 'em like a hawk you'll end up with a dodgy or half-asses job. They are learning quickly though, that I write down everything so nothing slips by me. I've caught a few of 'em out now and it seems the word is getting around. Hopefully by the first week in January all these items are cleared up.

One bonus: It's great to finally have a house with central cooling!

In my last post, I mentioned I was moving out of the city (Melbourne, Australia) and heading to the country.

Well the transition has occurred and I'm more than happy with the move. Our neighbours two deep on each side have all come out and introduced themselves, and the general atmosphere around the place is warm and uplifting.

The sense of community runs strong outside of the capital cities by the look of it.

Bannockburn is by no means a small town, though it's no thriving metropolis. It's about 15 mins drive from Geelong, but you would think you're thousands of miles away or in a parallel universe. Hand-waves whilst driving, a chat with a stranger (soon to be become an acquaintance/friend) are all common place. At the time of the 2006 Census, the population was a mere 2,486, but has more than doubled in the following two years. By 2015, they are expecting a population of around 15,000. If you're down this way, be sure to drop in. It's a quaint part of town and quite charming.

All the majority of our daily needs are here (local Woolworths, petrol, green grocer, butcher, baker, vet, auto repair, post office, pub, restaurants, fast-food, legal and accounting services,etc can all be found in the town). Those not here (ie: the not-every-day purchases) is only a 15 minute car-drive into Geelong.

I'm loving the lack of police sirens/choppers and cars doing wheelies until 4am most nights. The only noise we hear at present is the 6-7am chatter of the native birds found in abundance. (Not a real problem -- we're up at 6-7am anyway -- working through to late at night getting the house set-up).

Bannockburn for me was a natural choice. It's closer to loved ones, as well as the type of environment, community I would like to raise a family one day. The hustle and bustle and dog-eat-dog attitude that the big cities portray is not the values I would like to instil into my own children.

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So how did the move go on Friday? As many know there was a deluge across a lot of Australia. In our neck of the woods we had the pitter-patter of a few rain drops from about 10:30am whilst filling the removalist's truck. By 3:15pm they had finished unloading the truck and literally seconds after the truck doors had been shut down it bucketed!

I'm glad we got our water tank hooked up prior to the move. Those 24 hours resulted in approx 70mm of rain. The tank is now full!
That much rain ensured we had a natural inground swimming pool over most of the backyard. The dogs found this too irresistable (they had never seen so much rain in their young years), and decided it was time for swimming. Shortly after we had dual-coloured dogs.... The original colour on their top half and a nice brown/muddy underbelly.

Saturday/Sunday saw us return to clean up our vacated premises. On Wednesday we return the keys to the landlord. It's a great feeling moving out of the rent cycle and into our own home.

Monday I had our networking guys in to terminate off our wired house. We now have 48 GigaE running throughout the house. The 19" racks I have in the garage look all very impressive now. I'll take some photos in the next few days and post them up for all to see. (Once I find the box with my camera data-cable! )

The new 48-port GigE Managed Switch also has PoE on all ports, and makes powering the Snom VoIP phones a breeze with no need for a power pack anymore (frees up on power point, and also one less cable to tangle unde rmy desk!). Cabling the house was a great idea -- being able to just plug an Ethernet cable into the wall in nearly every room of the house is just a god-send and something I would recommend to anyone who's building (do it during the framing stage, prior to the plastering).

The mountain of boxes strewn around the house are slowly disappearing. It will take us some time but we're hoping by Christmas to have everything fully unpacked/setup. That will leave me with the daunting task of establishing our gardens/plants/lawns outside during this crazy drought/summer. Something I am looking forward to getting up and running.

One of the benefits is since moving that my ADSL1 connection is indeed faster and cleaner here than our previous location (though we are about the same distance from the exchange (1-1.5kms). I'm pulling down pretty much the physical limits of ADSL1 and squeezing 100-150Kb/sec more then I previously have. Once ADSL2+ becomes available through my provider (Internode - due in the next few days), I may consider the move up if the price is 'reasonable'.

The garden shed and vegie garden will probably be first off the ranks, with the rest to follow after that.
I'm seriously considering putting in a large sandpit for the dogs so they can dig til their hearts content (and not in my lawn/vegies/plants! )

Though, all in good time. In the interim, I'm just enjoying country life, and not missing the glare of the city at all. A few more weeks of setting up house and I'll be as happy as my dogs running around in mud!

Often life runs at the speed of light.

The modern lifestyle is so fast these days, it seems you never get time actually see the roses, let alone stop to smell the roses.
At times one needs to hit the pause or even the slow-mo button just to catch a breath.

I've discovered one way that works extremely well for me. I hope you too can find a way to recharge the batteries quickly in an often busy world.
Obviously getting away is the ultimate 'recharge', and that's not always possible, so I have found at times you need a 'quick fix'.

For me, it's a relatively easy one:

• Jump in my car.
• Take a short drive around my neighbourhood (at 50km/hr max -- so it's not overly fast).
• Stick on a Frank Sinatra CD.
• Listen to a few tracks of ol' blue eyes.
• Return home in 10-20 minutes time feeling much better.

It's amazing, throwing on his CDs, life appears to slow down... The sun seems shinier, people appear more friendly and I could swear people I pass and even the car I'm driving seems to only work at half speed. Instant stress relief.

Whilst Frank Sinatra won't be the answer for everyone, find something that relaxes and soothes you. Having an 'instant relax' method is a life-saver in the crazy busy world we call 'life'.

We met with our builder on the weekend to go over final items for the run home with the house.
We wanted to ask for a completion date so we can start the hideous task of getting organized ready for the move. We'll hire movers and packers.. as we just have to much crap... that and it's a little bit too far to make multiple runs. (Big cleanout this weekend... feel free to drop past as we ditch hundreds of old PC parts, memory, HDDs, power supplies, and you name it!)

The builder bet us to the punch... and announced. "I'm attempting to get you in here in 6 weeks". We both dropped our jaws.. they were still plastering the house when he said that. "Yup, don't hold me on that, but 6-8 weeks we should have you in. This stuff wont take us long now."

So we're quite excited... even if it looks like a skeleton at present... Today (Wednesday) all the plastering is meant to be complete with cornices going up as well. So I guess benches, cupboards will start to go in now... along with tiling and carpets.

For those that want to see the progress of our house being built (and why wouldn't you?!) You can watch it go from a block of land to the final stage over on our flickr account.

To be honest, the building process for us has been quite smooth sailing to date. (fingers crossed it's like that for the remainder!) We've had an extremely picky builder and some very good tradies working with him. It has made the process a lot less stressful as a result.

Here is a quick flick through some of the photos of the place for those too lazy to click on our flickr link.

So there is a bit to do still from our behalf. We're organising some fences (to keep dogs in!), as well as concreting. The concreting of the Alfresco is included in the house but we'll do down the side of the Western side to make a nice court yard that the Alfresco will spill out into. We also have driveways and paths to concrete around the house. There is also a 10,500L water tank to get installed and fitted.

We've run 48 points of Cat6-GigE throughout the house... and about 12 of those are PoE. We've also decided to put up the TV antenna now as it's much easier running it prior to the plastering.

We are also going to install a drought tolerant flowering modern native Australian garden... but all in due course. We've waited this long for our first house, so some of the finishing touches will take a little bit of time. We'll just be happy to move into a house we call our own*.


_{* Well the banks anyway!}

It took over two weeks of agony but I finally got over my wisdom teeth removal.

In the process it took many visits back to a heartless surgeon, and only the persistence of my family that saw me through.

The result - massive doses of painkillers, anti-inflammatories and even valium to see me through.
Why the valium you might ask?! It was used primarily as a muscle relaxant.

In the process of removing my wisdoms and the pre-molar (5 teeth in total), the surgeon tore the ligaments in my lower jaw and in the process dislocated my jaw.

A couple of visits to a physiotherapist that specialises in jaw conditions, and the valium saw me recover.

The actual holes left from the extractions were never a problem (though the cleaning process and mouth washes are a drag, they weren't painful after the first few days). The rough treatment whilst under a general is what did all the damage.

If you need your wisdom teeth out, some words of advice:

1. Ensure you get it done under a general if more than one.
2. Remove them in your teens or early twenties. Leaving them longer the teeth roots are much larger, harder to extract and the actual jaw bone is more solid. This makes for a difficult extraction.
3. Expect to be out of action for some time. Have plenty of heavy painkillers on the ready. You'll need them at least for the first few days (ie: A Panadeine Forte or likewise)
4. If you don't see any improvement, keep pestering your dental surgeon, don't get flipped off. Their charged to look after your well-being - before, during and after your procedure.
5. If you still have problems with your surgeon who is more than likely quite flippant; go back to your GP and inform him... it's not uncommon for these 'supposed surgeons', to not give a rats ass after they are paid and the surgery is performed
6. A second opinion is always a wise choice if you're not happy with your treatment. Surgeons have no loyalty to you, so don't feel you owe them any.

Going through the ordeal, I would never recommend the surgeon I had. (Heartless money grabbing self-righteous bitch is too kind a phrase to describe her).

If you're in Western suburbs of Melbourne, and needing such work done... let me know. I'll ensure you don't end up with her and actually are seen by someone who I would class as competent.

I hope I never see her again. It won't be by choice if I ever do.

It's now approaching 3:00am...

It's almost 7 days since I had 5 teeth surgically removed, yet the pain seems to be increasing not decreasing.

Two nights this week has seen me head in to the emergency department looking for some form of pain relief.

Currently the Panadeine Forte only manages to take the tip of the edge off the pain. I now have pain from my lower jaw that heads right up to my temple on the left side.

I've gone back to the surgeon twice already, yet I'm told that 'all looks good'. However, from speaking to others the pain normally subsides by now or at least is on the decrease. The pain itself doesn't appear to be in the gum, it appears more in the jaw bone itself.

So I'm back to see the surgeon again tomorrow. I'm wondering if x-rays should be looked at now (could my jaw have been fractured in the process of the tooth removal?). Do I have an infection in the bone?! Do pain killers no-longer have any effect on me?!?!

Something is seriously amiss... I'm going to perch at the surgeon's office and not leave until some further investigation is done. It's crazy, this pain is about 3 times that of the pain I had pre-surgery.

I can't even knock myself out with some heavy shots of alcohol due to the large amounts of codeine I've taken; for fear of the possibility of respiratory failure. (Hence why you should never drink and take heavy pain killers). I'm wondering if it's prudent to come off them (the drugs) and soley use alcohol for pain relief?!? At least I could pass out and get some sleep.

I haven't had a decent night's sleep for over 3 weeks now, and tonight appears it's going to be one more night that I either sit killing some time in front of the computer, or lie awake in bed watching the digits on the clock tick past.

I originally intended on heading back to work on Wednesday (that boat has already sailed). I am hoping I can get back on Monday, though some serious head-way is going to need to be made if that has any likelihood of happening.

Dear lazyweb, if any of you out there have some ideas how to relieve some serious pain I'm all open to suggestions. To be honest, I'm pretty desperate.... feel free to leave a comment. As the topic states... I'm at my wits end.

Yesterday I had surgery under a General Anesthesia to remove 5 teeth (4 wisdom teeth, and a baby pre-molar that never got a secondary tooth; but had decided it had hung around long enough ).

The day surgery saw us arrive at 12:30pm to 'sign-in' though I didn't actually get the pre-med until just after 5:00pm. So a mind numbing wait of 4.5 hours was undertaken. (Even worse was the fact that my last food and any form of liquid was 7:30am, and it seemed the only thing showing on the blaring waiting room TV was food shows. ). That resulted in a nice headache by mid-afternoon as my blood sugar levels dropped.

The surgery itself was a success, I left the operating theatre just after 7pm, and it took just over an hour in the recovery room. There I was treated to food that makes everything better (icecream and jelly), as well as a glass of apple juice and another of water.

Pauline took good care of me, and kept me company during the long wait before hand (though she ignored my pleads to head off and not blow her whole afternoon waiting around in the waiting room). Whilst I was in surgery she headed home (only 5 mins down the road) to attempt a bite to eat (that didn't happen as they called her back as she was about to commence eating), but she did have time to wash some bed sheets, feed the dogs and get ready for my return (buying/making some additional yummy goodies that I could eat/drink).

Swelling is well down (I expected to look like a bullfrog this morning, but it's quite minimal). I'll continue using ice-packs on either side of my face every few hours, to lessen it further.

It appears that besides the general, that the surgeons also applied a local to my bottom jaw, to aid in pain relief. The local worked extremely well, although it gave the sensation I had a bear's tongue and not my own for most of last night.

Since waking this morning, the local has long worn off, and I'm in relatively good spirits. I'm using the Panadine Forte for pain relief (in fact the pain is minimal at this stage -- which is brilliant!).

I came home brandishing a swag of mouth rinses, painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs for the next few days; I should be hopefully back to full steam in a short time.

This will be a weekend of rest and time to re-assess early next week. I'll potter online a little, but it's more from boredom than a burning desire to be on the computer (I'm not much value above useless at present!).

A big thanks to all the well-wishes I've received over the past few weeks... it's great to know others are thinking of you. Thankfully this saga appears to be quickly drawing to a near and I'll be my annoying, harassing and cheeky self in no-time (so beware!).

Responding to Sandra's Post on the top 25 IMDB movies...

(Bold the ones you saw in theater, italicize the ones you saw some other way instead, and leave the unseen ones alone.)

Here's my scores:

1. Titanic (1997) $600,779,824
2. Star Wars (1977) $460,935,665
3. Shrek 2 (2004) $436,471,036
4. E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial (1982) $434,949,459
5. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) $431,065,444
6. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) $423,032,628
7. Spider-Man (2002) $403,706,375
8. Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith (2005) $380,262,555
9. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) $377,019,252
10. Spider-Man 2 (2004) $373,377,893
11. The Passion of the Christ (2004) $370,270,943
12. Jurassic Park (1993) $356,784,000
13. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) $340,478,898
14. Finding Nemo (2003) $339,714,367
15. Spider-Man 3 (2007) $336,530,303
16. Forrest Gump (1994) $329,691,196
17. The Lion King (1994) $328,423,001
18. Shrek the Third (2007) $320,706,665
19. Transformers (2007) $318,759,914
20. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) $317,557,891
21. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) $313,837,577
22. Iron Man (2008) $311,708,133
23. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) $310,675,583
24. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007) $309,404,152
25. Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) $309,125,40.

I knew I was a movie whore, but 23 outta 25... wow. (I'm planning on seeing Iron Man, and never really was interested in the The Passion of the Christ).

It seems I do enjoy the big screen... there's nothing like cuddling up with a loved one and watching something fly out and hit you whilst you both jump and cluth each other. Having said that, it's mainly the 'big titles' I go to the movies to watch, I probably see a ratio of 50:1 (Home:Cinema).

Well... that filled in 5 minutes of boredom as I wait to head to the hospital...

I will be out of action for just under week as I go in to have 5 teeth removed.

I must say a big thanks to Pauline for pampering me leading up to it. (and the big slushy cook-up she's undertaking!) I think I've got soup for a year!
She's also pureed up a roast, so that will be an exciting 'experience' through a straw.
With those and jellies, and tinned fruit on the ready it should be a pleasant culinary experience. I guess I can probably throw in some warm custard as well.

I go in tomorrow, so I'll be drugged up heavily over the weekend (I am going to attempt to sleep through the weekend), but hope to make a speedy recovery (fingers crossed). I'm hoping I can be back to work on Wednesday if all goes well... though I'll see how we go.

It will be great to get off the painkillers after this all... sucking heavy painkillers every few hours hasn't been fun over the past fortnight.

I have learnt some great tips on dealing with mouth/teeth pain along the way:

• Use regular salt mouth washes every few hours. Directions: One tablespoon of table salt, to a glass of warm water. Rinse your mouth with it, and spit. Repeat until the glass is empty.
  (Believe it or not, after the 3^rd time -- you get used to it.)
• Applying either two whole cloves (place between gum and cheek above the tooth in question), or clove oil onto the affected tooth/gum is a great natural painkiller. It works extremely well!
• Keep out of wind or any chilly air. This also includes whilst sleeping, you may need to warm the room you are sleeping in to avoid a painful night sleep.
• Cold drinks nuked for 10-20 seconds in the microwave ensures a pleasant experience, works with water and fruit juices especially well.
• Use a dental mouth wash like Listerine or the like after eating if painful, as it will numb the area.

It's been a revelation to me, as I have only ever had one filling in my life, and never suffered toothache before. Hopefully some of these remedies/tips I've discovered over the past couple of weeks will be of benefit to someone else.

We met with our builder out on site today. The last week didn't see much happen on the block as it's been raining on and off, however it's given the slab time to settle now, so that's a nice bonus.

The builder wanted to walk us through a few things.
Due to having brickwork in all the in fills (above the windows) it now means in order to finish the external brick work so it's flush with the eve; we need a ceiling height of 2610mm instead of 2570mm (as were originally in the plans). As a result we'll end up with 40mm higher ceilings for no extra cost! I'm happy with that outcome!

This weekend was the only chance for a while we've been able to get down to the block (between sick doggies - both came down with kennel cough, and being crook myself (a dose of bronchitis), and next week-end I'll be out of action as I'll just be out from surgery).

We noted the meter box has gone in, as well as we've got delivery of all the timber, windows, doors and bricks.


The builder has mapped out everything on the slab (where walls, doors, braces, etc. are to all go). It makes it a lot easier now as we can walk around on the slab and see how it will all look and have the right sizes. Things do look different from going from a plan to actually seeing it at the real 1:1 ratio.

It will only be a matter of a few weeks and we should be at "lock-up" stage.

From there things will move inside and we'll start seeing the internal work commence. It will also mean that any bad/wet weather won't delay us further.

All in all, we're on about schedule and we should hopefully be able to move in come mid-October/start of November.