Bend in the Weather

(06:34) Someone set the alarm far too early. Jumped out of bed in a panic & twisted ankle. #

(06:44) Jumped in the shower. I missed, landed on the soap. Other ankle now throbbing. #

(07:09) Walked out front door to grab morning newspaper. #

(07:10) Eyelid meet bee. Eye now swelling. #

(07:11) Bastard paperboy has got the paper in the damn bird bath again. #

(07:15) The same someone who fiddled with the alarm clock has now set the toaster to the 'burn like a crisp' setting. #

(07:16) Forgot to buy coffee, will have to settle for water. #

(07:20) Toothbrush is now black from the charcoaled toast. #

(07:25) Where the hell are my keys? #

(07:29) Tackled dog rugby style after chasing him around the coffee table. Have managed to recover them, albeit full of dog saliva. #

(07:30) Apparently keyless entry into your car doesn't work after being chewed into a black ball of plastic. #

(07:31) Hit head when entering car. Maybe this is why keyless entry was invented? #

(07:43) If you are going to have a road-rage episode, choose wisely. Now sporting a growing fat lip to match my bug bee-eye. Note to self: Don't abuse a boxer. #

(08:17) All car-parks now taken due to the time lost with the boxer. Have to park 4 blocks further away from the office. A great workout for sore and swollen ankles. #

(08:33) Remember the umbrella even if the weather report says there is little chance of rain. #

(08:53) Finally in at work. #

(08:56) The company provided International Roast is a poor substitute for coffee. #

(09:05) Coffeeeeee annnndddd keeeyboardddddds donnnnn't mix. #

How time flies.

Tomorrow (2^nd May) Pauline and I will have been married for 10 years!
It only seems like yesterday that we were two scared kids wondering what the hell we were getting ourselves into.

We can honestly say that it's been a great 10 years. Whilst like every couple we have our ups and downs, we generally have more ups then downs. We've both grown together and stronger as individuals.

This year, is a big year for us. We are building our first house, and potentially may start a family after that. So life moves on, always throwing more challenges and adventures.

To celebrate the milestone, we're heading away for the weekend.
I'm taking a few days off work to extend the stay. We're not heading too far, but enough so that we're out of mobile phone range and the hum of computer power supply fans for a few days.

We've decided to head up to Healesville. For those unaware, it's located North-West of Melbourne in the Yarra Ranges.


View Larger Map

There is tonnes to do there, and we indeed to make good use of our time! We're hoping to get to Healesville Sanctuary (Pauline is an animal loving nut - this is a must stop for us!), The Hedgend Maze, The Yarra Valley Railway (time permitting), as well as visiting a bunch of wineries in the region (Map here) (I wish to stock up the ever diminishing supply of good Australian Red/White wine I have.)

It will be good to get away for a quiet retreat and leave computers, mobiles, television and most of the usual suspects that distract us.

As I've already blogged, I got Pauline an eternity ring to mark the occasion. Pauline returned the favour by surprising me today with my own present!

She came home with a lovely watch. My existing watch had been banged up quite a bit and was in need of a new battery (though it did tell the time correctly twice every day!).

She couldn't wait to give it to me (she was planning on surprising me on the day and had to show me straight away!

It is indeed lovely, it's quite easy to read, balanced beautifully and quite an attractive piece of jewelry. I'm extremely happy with it. (I would of personally picked something like this - she has got my taste down pat!).

It's fantastic, we now both have something lasting to remember the milestone.

So we've packed our bags, getting the dog looked after and heading out early tomorrow. (Friday).
The camera has been thrown in so we will hopefully take some photos of the picturesque country that is the Yarra Valley.
Pauline's selected a lovely apartment for us to stay in, and it's been furnished in a lovely traditional Japanese style. I'm looking forward to staying there, as it looks divine.

I won't be near a computer or Internet access for half the week, so I suspect the Email will still keep rolling in.
For those of you wanting a response, please SMS me (I'm not sure when we'll have coverage), or wait for our return.

Whilst the weather forecast isn't ideal, it is strangely very similar to the weather we had on our wedding day! In any event we have a number of indoor and outdoor activities planned so I'm sure we'll have a blast.

I've placed a bunch of photos up in our gallery for you to all take a peek at!

You will find a bunch of photos of our Pets there, and in particular of Duke...  our newest addition! 

It's been a while since my last blog entry.

There has been a few reasons.

1. Haven't been on my computer much.
2. Had the flu for three weeks.
3. Purchased a 42" Plasma TV and setup a HTPC to keep all our movies/music/photos on!
4. Had a few weeks of on-call support for work.

Rest assurred -- I'm still alive! 

I'll be posting more this week, including:

• An update on Duke (our new dog!) -- with more photos (coming -- I promise!)
  
• Details of our HTPC
• Details of the new computer I've just bought -- with hardware virtualization -- allowing me to run Windows and Linux at the same time with no performance loss! 
• A post on the new version of SuSE Linux 10.1 -- that will be the main driving OS of the new workstation (and powering Xen).
• A posting on the new 2.0 Beta of Firefox....   that now includes a spell checker and anti-phising tools!
  

If there is anything else you would like me to write about ... let me know! 

We've got our new puppy! 

He arrived about 2-3 weeks ago so we've been having fun with him most of the time and haven't had much time to post up here (add to that .. .being on call two weeks straight!)

He's a real cutey!  Take a look: 



I've uploaded a few pictures of him to our photo gallery.   You can view them here.

Duke was given to us by my sister.   Her dog Susie (Labrador) mated with a Golden Retriever/German Shepard.  It probably explains the very unusual markings he has.

Currently he's about 13 weeks old... and still very puppy!

He starts puppy school tomorrow night... so that should be exciting!

Chistmas Day we headed down to Little River to celebrate it with Pauline's side of the family.

Unfortunately not everyone could attend (Christine, Michael and the kids, as well as Barry, Diane and the kids all couldn't make it).
Besides some people MIA, it was a great and fun day by all that attended.

It was a relaxed and enjoyable time for all. The usual 'Cini Feast' was layed out. After lunch the exchange of gifts occurred and several undertook a game of Bocce.

Feel free to click on the photos to see an larger version of each.

Pauline and I dragged ourselves out of bed Saturday morning. We'd have a big day previously and were pretty beat, so a sleep in was well in order.

Pauline was up prior to me, and I heard her on the phone. She was talking to my Aunt.
With everything that had gone on the previous week I had completely forgotten I had previously arranged to help my Aunt get SuSE Linux down on her computer.

Being the sweetie she is, she was ringing to say she wasn't expecting us after everything that had gone on with Jessie... though a quick chat with Pauline and we thought it was be the best idea to keep busy... so after a quick shower and a we headed down to Geelong to see her.

Coral (A.C. to me -- short for Auntie Coral! ) must have a lot of faith in me after my last attempt at her computer!
She had ordered a new motherboard, CPU and video card as a result of ongoing heating problems and unexplained freeze ups (even after replacing the memory and reinstalling the operating system).

So we headed down, Pauline to help oversee A.C. put build the computer, and myself to help with the OS installs for WinXP Pro and SuSE 10 (64-bit edition) in a dual boot environment.

A.C. has an external backup disk, but we needed to save her existing data to there as well... without overwriting it by reinstalling Windows.

We decided we could boot up using a Live Distro of Ubuntu, and then copy the data onto the USB Backup Disk. Unfortunately it was in NTFS format, which is only read-only under Linux...

We then hooked up her Laptop to the USB drive, and copied the 6.5GB she had off it, so we could then format the USB device to FAT32 (something Linux can write to.. and still be rad under Windows).

The laptop only had a USB1.0 connection... so the 6.5GB took quite a long time... and it was finished at midnight!

It was then we could use Ubuntu, and copy the existing data of her HDD onto the backup drive, so we didn't lose her Photos, Documents and other value information.

Once done it was a matter of installing Windows XP Pro, applying the Service Pack 2, and installing the various drivers for the hardware. We then installed SuSE Linux 10 and also applied all the updates.

What we didn't count on ... was the fact it was the start of daylight-savings! This meant we lost an hour... and very quickly it turned out to be around 8:30am!

After a long night, we had a newly build computer, running flawlessly and extremely fast (it was an upgrade at the same time), as well as two operating systems and most of the patches applied. A job well done!

I've left A.C. to install most of her software and complete the Windows updates.

I'll also be posting more details on SuSE 10 over the next few weeks and the various applications available.

A.C. like many others isn't a Linux geek, but a regular home user who's sick of Microsoft 'reformats' and constant $$'s to the OS... SuSE 10 is perfect for her, and provides her all the tools she needs.
I suspect many more could find that SuSE 10 (and other Linux distributions) could provide them with a real alternative from Microsoft.
It's come a long way since the early days, and Desktop Linux has made great leaps forward in just the last year. I run my home computer as a Linux Desktop, and use Windows for only about 2-3 applications that aren't available on Linux.

Once these or suitable replacements find their way... Windows will be gone for good. OpenOffice has long replaced Microsoft Office on my desktop!

Pauline and I rose late in the morning on Friday...
Rather tired and emotionally drained.

We decided it was not the best idea to mope around the house so we headed out after brunch for the day.

We'd been greeted by a lovely cloudless morning that soon had clouds rolling in for the afternoon, though it was still warm and if not a little humid.

We packed some fruit, made up some drinks and filled the car up with a tank of fuel and pumped up the tires.
We had to get out of the house, out of the city and enjoy some time reflecting on the good times we had with Jessie.
So the idea was to head up to Woodend, and look at Hanging Rock.

We bundled up the highway, taking our time, looking at the scenery and stopped at Woodend for a look around. Found a nice country fruit and veg shop and purchased some strawberries for the afternoon.

We stopped and had a bite and a coffee at a nice diner and just relaxed. Once refreshed, we headed up to Hanging Rock.

We drove up there... realised it was like Fort Knox (with a fence and electric gate to match pentridge!) and entry was going to be $8.00 for the car. It was already around 3:30pm, and we didn't see it as good value so we turned around.
(It's a national park that our tax dollars fund and I still need to fork out to walk around the bush. It's a natural reserve... the animals are all native, so why the funds?), It's pretty poor when you need to PAY to see a few trees and a rock.

Not to put us off.. we'd already been enjoying the day, so we thought we would head over to Daylesford, the home of the alternative lifestyle, the kook, mineral water and spas.

We cut through Woodend to Daylesford and stopped off at the Trentham Falls on the way.


It was a great place for a toilet break and just to enjoy about bit of natures beauty in a very natural waterfall surrounded in Aussie bushland.

Daylesford is a nice little town, though it's charm has been lost in the last 10-15 years as many from the city have moved in.

One of the killers of the place has been the erection of modern cottages and condos in a rural Victoria city.. that is surrounded by gorgeous country cottages. I've never seen worse eye sores!

We stopped in at a collectibles store on the main road, who have loads of 40, 50, 60's and even some 70's memorabilia.

We saw tonnes of Elvis, Beatles, The Monkeys, Beety Boop, Ford/Holden, Kiss collectibles... as well as a a very large Coca-Cola collection.. featuring all types of Coke stuff, from original yoyos, bottles, money boxes, Santas and the like. I even saw a Coke bottle that looked more like a glass 600ml milk bottle!

We spent some time down at the Daylesford Lake and even took a walk around part of it. By then it started raining and was approaching dusk quickly, so we called it a day and headed back home.

A relaxing day after such a stressful week. It was great to spend some time alone with Pauline outside the hussle and bustle of normal life. Something we need to do more of...

We had to put Jessie down yesterday. We'll miss our as she had become one of the family.

She gave us so much joy to every day. She didn't last a long time but she had a good time. She was one of the happiest dogs I have ever known. She always loved to meet people, dogs and even the occasional cat!

Her idea of aggresive was to attempt to lick someone to death.

We're still coming to terms... as it is so .

R.I.P. little Jess. You were here on this planet far too short, but you made every day count... and brought everyone that knew you so much joy. Jessie 16/1/2001 - 27/10/2005 (4 years, 9 months, 11 days)

Jessie at 3 months (in Pauline's arms)


Jessie at 4 months


Jessie at 15 months


Recently (7/10/2005)