A welcome addition to the kitchen

We finally gave in and bought a new coffee maker this week.

It's bad enough having a teenager who complains all the time, but it's even worse if he has a job making expresso coffees and then has to come home and drink instant coffee.

Normally I drink plunger coffee, but apparently that is too hard for him.

So we bought a small expresso maker to replace our aging one. It was on special at Aldi's and was a very good buy for the price. It has quite a few interesting features and one strange one. I don't understand the water hardness adjustment - but then our water is pretty pure in Canberra and maybe this is a problem elsewhere.

One ongoing problem that I can forsee is having to make Karyn a cappuccino each morning before I go to work so that she can enjoy it before getting out of bed.

I'm sure that this gadget will get a lot more use than some that are in the cupboards.

New ISP

It feels great to be free from Telstra broadband. We've now switched to TPG.

Despite Telstra Bigpond being the dominant provider in Australia, they seem to offer the worst deals. You can't fault their system reliability, but you certainly pay for it. I was paying around $100/month for 25GB - now with TPG I pay $60/month for 75GB.

The straw that broke the camel's back was when Telstra decided to get rid of personal web pages. Or rather, you could start paying an additional $10/month for the priviledge. All the other providers still allow you a small site for free. I have a site that shows my family genealogy, and I want to keep it to share it with others and to allow other family members to find me. It has worked well for me for many years.

So finally Telstra forced me to look for an alternative supplier. It seems that they are more interested in getting new customers rather than keeping their existing ones. I was genuinely surprised when I called to cancel my service and the operator made no attempt to get me to change my mind. Maybe I was just one of thousands.

But let me tell you, it's hard being without the Internet for a week. It's like having no electricity or no TV. Fortunately Matt's iPhone can be used as a modem, so Karyn could plug it into her laptop to check her email. Lucky Matt has a 1GB download allowance for his phone.

Karyn rang me at work on Monday with joy in her voice as she said that all 3 lights were green on the modem, meaning that we were back online.

Mum's Birthday in Sydney

Last weekend we went to Sydney so see Mum for her birthday.

We now have a love/hate relationship with Sydney - we remember the great time that we had when we lived there, and it's a good place to visit, BUT we're glad we don't live there anymore.

When you visit Sydney, you are struck by the scene of a modern city flanking a beautiful harbour. The main focus of the city is Circular Quay, busy with ferries shuttling people from the rim of the harbour to the centre. Circular Quay is flanked by the Harbour Bridge on the left and the Opera House on the right. It's hard to think of politicians today making the same decisions as those of the past that resulted in such striking landmarks.

But then there's the traffic, and the people. And worst of all are the strange traffic diversions that take you in directions that you don't think that you want to go, which then force you to turn into tunnels that do take you where you want to go. And you have to be so careful to be in just the right lane so that you can take the right exit to move to another lane to take another exit to end up in the right street. Make one wrong turn and you could end up anywhere. And forget your GPS - you have to keep your eyes on the street signs.

We stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel at Circular Quay. I would recommend it to anyone. Good rooms, great views, excellent gym, but wi-fi far too expensive for the casual visitor.

On Saturday night we went to Doyles at Circular Quay for dinner with Mum, Richard and Lynne. (I forgot to take a picture of us all). The food was good and the view even better (see photo below). The only problem was that I reckon that they turned off the heading at 9PM to make everyone leave.


On Sunday morning we went for a walk to the street markets at the Rocks (a stone's throw from the Quay) were Karyn bought a new vase/water bowl/decoration-filled-with-water-that-you-float-things-in.


All in all, a very nice weekend.

The case of the misplaced water heater

I had a phone call from Matthew the other day. I was at work and he was home on school holidays.

Speaking over a loud hissing noise, he explained that there was no hot water and that the water heater was making a loud noise. It turned out that the water heater had sprung a leak and extinguished the gas pilot light. We needed a new one.

A man from the gas company came out and recommended a new instantaneous gas water heater rather than the storage system that we had previously. 5 stars instead of 2 apparently. The down side was that it couldn't go in the shed at the side of the house (according to the installation instructions), and the guy recommended putting it on the back wall next to the kitchen window. Surprisingly, the unit was only about the size of a large briefcase. They suggested the back of the house because people steal them. At $2,000 each, I'm not surprised.

I came home the next day to find the unit installed.

A problem then manifested itself. I found myself choking on the gas fumes. You see, when it is heating water, it fires its exhaust out horizontally almost 10 feet (3m). If you stand or sit on the decking at the back of the house, all you can smell are the gas fumes. A point that the salesman failed to mention.

I could just imagine sitting on the decking in summer, enjoying the outdoors - maybe a nice barbequeued steak, a glass of cabernet merlot, and a lung full of gas.

Being a bit of a soft touch myself, I got Karyn to give the gas company a call the next day. The salesman then rang me to say that they'll come and move it to the side of the house, but that we should leave it at the back because:

• it isn't a gas smell, just a "new" smell
• the gas exhaust isn't toxic because it's Natural Gas
• people steal the units

I said "what about the security bracket that it mentions in the one of the pamphlets that came with the unit"?

"Oh, but that bracket's ugly"

"But if the unit is on the side of the house we won't see it"

"Oh".

So they came and moved it.

Here is where they repositioned the unit at the side of the house, complete with an ugly security bracket.

What, you can't see the ugly security bracket?

Here it is - underneath the unit at the back (with a padlock on).

Windows can be so frustrating at times...

I'm sitting here at the moment with a friend's laptop on my desk. I feel like throwing it on the floor and jumping on it.

Like most girls' laptops that I get to fix the virus protector is about 2 years out of date. I think that it came with a 3 month free licence for Norton Antivirus, and when that ran out it nobody ever bothered with it again. Now what I have found is that an expired version of Norton is worse than a virus itself. Norton seems to try unsuccessfully to connect back to headquarters, and it hates you trying to use your laptop until it is good and ready to allow you. The first thing I always have to do is deinstall Norton completely. I often have to download the additional Norton deinstaller/cleanup tool to make sure that everything is properly removed - apparently the standard de-install leaves bad stuff hanging around.

Now Internet Explorer causes the machine to hang. I've had to load Firefox just to access the Internet.

But every now and then the machine just ... hangs..... for about 5 frustrating minutes. And then ... bingo... its back.

While its hung, it's really hung. I can't even get the Task Manager to run, so I've no idea what could be causing the hang.

I've tried downloading a bunch of Windows updates, but after downloading they refuse to install. I can see I've got a bit of work in front of me. Maybe a couple of days' worth.

Batching for a week

Karyn's been away this week, taking her mother home. So Matt and I have had the place to ourselves. Not that we've got up to much, you understand.

On Sunday night we went to see the new Star Trek movie. We both thought it was great. We were going to have dinner at the sleazy bar next to where Matt works, but he had filled up with one of those disgustingly large buckets of popcorn, and so didn't feel like eating.

The pool company came and installed the new spa cover one day, but when we decided to celebrate with a spa that night, we found that they turned off the spa heater, so it was too cold. So I turned it back on and cranked the thermostat up.

The next night we got in, and it was too hot. We now know what a cooking lobster feels like. I now know that 41 degrees is about 3 degrees too much. We could only stand it for about 15 minutes.

Unfortunately the spa cover doesn't fit properly, so they'll have to make another one. Karyn says they took quite a while measuring it up, so someone has slipped up big. On the side nearest the house it looks quite neat, but from the side and back you can see how it doesn't cover properly. Fortunately we haven't paid for it yet.

It looks good from the front...

But really untidy from the side.

When I rang the guy who installed it, he said he "thought there might be a small problem", but "he wasn't sure".

Dinner each night was whatever we felt like. Reheated frozen dinners featured a lot. We went out to Wests Rugby Club one night and had a pretty good nosh up. Matt had a Caesar Salad with freshly cooked king prawns, and I had the roast pork buffet. It's interesting that now Matt's 18 and can drink anything he likes from beer to spirits, he'd still rather just have a Coke. He doesn't seem to have inherited his mother's genes.

He went out with some mates after work on Friday night. I bet my parents were glad we didn't have mobile phone technology in my youth, because they never had to respond to SMSs at 2:00AM asking if we could sleep over somewhere.

Karyn came home on Saturday with a 6 hour drive. I noticed that when she got home she ignored the large stack of laundry that needed ironing. But I was generous and let her have the evening off. She can start on it tomorrow.

Today we finished the week off with a lunch with our friends Peter, Dot, and May at the Goulburn Workers' Club, about an hour's drive north of Canberra. This is a monthly event/therapy session where we get to compare horror stories about bringing up teenagers.

Peter and Andy

May, Karyn, and Dot

The mother-in-law has left the building

Karyn has taken her mum back to Port Stephens, leaving Matt and I to look after ourselves. She'll only be away for a week, so there shouldn't be too much mess and dirty washing for her when she gets back.

It's been a horrible weekend. Matt used up all our download allowance (I thought 25GB would be enough!) so we were slowed to 64k/sec, down from about 8MB/sec. It's hard to believe that once upon a time 64K would have been fast. It surprised me just how much I expect the Internet to be there whenever I want. Karyn's also taken her netbook with her, so we've lost our family-room internet device. Matt, at least, always has his iPhone in one hand, so he's never out of touch.

The situation has prompted me to change ISPs. Bigpond is dropping its member webpages, so I'll have nowhere to store my genealogy web pages. I'll probably shift to TPG as they have the best deal; I can get a greater download for less price. And they still have member homepages.

Matt and I had a spa tonight. It was about 6 degrees outside, so a bit warmer than its been in the past week, but still a big shock when you get out of the warm water. When we were in there I had a horrible thought: what if Matt closed the door and it locked automatically? Fortunately he hadn't or we'd be blocks of ice by now.