Fuck it's hot

Mowed the lawn today, fucken’ 37° - must be mad.

 

Weatherwall was indicating 24% humidity at the time, I think I drank 3 litres of water in 2 hours with no visible perspiration other than hatband and waistband of my shorts.  I can see why people who are silly enough to go and do fun runs and bike rides etc keel over from over temperature and dehydration under the circumstances.

 

I think I slung something like 6 litres of ice in the fish tank today to keep the temps under control, luckily never peaked above 29°.  Only one more summer here before the new house.

 

Told one builder to go and get rooted the other day due to idiotic “flat-pack” practices, claimed they couldn’t alter a kitchen design.  Read: we’ve ordered 500 of them and we just want to bolt them in cookie cutter style.  We’re now talking to another builder who seems interested in building houses to request.

Jokes...

A group of 40-year-old buddies decide to celebrate their lifelong friendship with a dinner. After a lengthy discussion about choice of venue, they eventually agree to meet at the Gausthof zum Lowen restaurant because the waitresses there have low-cut blouses and bountiful breasts.

10 years later, at 50 years of age, the group meets again and once again they discuss and discuss where they should meet. Finally it is agreed that they should go again to the Gausthof zum Lowen because the food there is very good and the wine selection is excellent.

10 years later, at 60 years of age, they meet again and once again argue about where they should eat. Finally they choose the Gausthof zum Lowen again because they can eat there in peace and quiet and the restaurant is smoke free.

10 years later, at 70 years of age, they again meet and once again debate the choice of bistro. Finally it is agreed that they should meet at the Gausthof zum Lowen because the restaurant is wheelchair accessible and even has an elevator.

10 years later, at 80 years of age, the group meets again and once again there is dispute over where they should gather. Finally it is agreed that the Gausthof zum Lowen would be a great idea because they have never been there before.

Lesson for the day

Light aluminium target arrows go a LONG way if you just clip the top of the target with one and it ricochets upwards.

 

This is especially the case if you are propelling said device with a 52lb longbow.

 

In the back yard.  O.o

Oh, this is BRILLIANT! I have SO got to try this!

Righty ho

Here's the scans of the site of the new block.  We're on the right hand end of the yellow dot on the first, lot 235 on the second.

Site

Block

This is a basic version of the floorplan we are thinking about using hacking to bits at the moment.

New car

Rightyho – new car collected, girlie happy.  Insurance is how fscking much?!?

Oh, shit...

We have got to be getting very close to IPv6 here.

http://bgpmon.net/blog/?p=275

I did boughted a hunka dirt

OK, went and did the deed this morning - deposit made on a block in a new estate called Somerfield, in Keysborough.  14x32m, facing east, $305,000.  O.o

Only about half of the estate has actually been done, so we can't actually look at the block yet other than on a plan.  You can see the location of the estate here on Google maps, it's in the V between Perry Rd and Greens Rd.

Bit of an update

Well, we now have 2 clown loaches to replace the deceased blown golden ram [which the fish shop NOW tells me they “are a bit sensitive” - theirs died in the heatwave too… :-(  ] and they are doing a spectacular job of cleaning up the little bastard snails that have chosen to invade the tank.  The fish shop’s opinion was “yeah, the eggs probably came in on a new plant or something” – I think I was very circumspect in not replying the ONLY addition to the tank for the last month was their bloody cardinal tetras.  Either way, we have one very sociable loach, and one very shy one, but man can they clean up snails.  Names:  Krusty and Sideshow Bob.

I’m off tomorrow morning to buy a hunk of dirt, last one in a release at Keysborough.  About $15k more than we want to pay, but that’s the going rate and the next release is slated to START at $320k…. 

Windows 7 "god mode"

http://www.techspot.com/guides/236-windows-god-mode/

Fishkill

My golden ram Fingers has died.  :(

 

He’s always been a very timid fish, not helped by the fact that he was being bullied by the male betta we had when we got him.  Even afterwards, he was always shy, to the point where it was noteworthy that he came out into the open when we got the two dwarf gouramis.  All the other fish have always swum together and come to the front of the tank for food – the gouramis were doing it within a day of being introduced, but not the ram.

 

I had noticed him being a bit off colour over the weekend, spent a lot of time hiding in the caves and not coming out.  He wasn’t coming out for food either.  I was hopeful he was just going back to a shy phase but I was pretty certain he was not going to make it last night as he was resting on the bottom in the smallest cave, and this morning he was dead.

 

I had a look at a few websites, they say the rams tend to be a shy fish, although not necessarily hard to keep.  I think I might get something like a swordtail to replace him, the rams just seem a little delicate to me.

 

RIP Fingers.

You just don't get TV ads like this outside of Europe.

Pity.

Home brew

Had some issues in the last couple of days getting my carbon filter system to run reliably.  Apparently the problem is variable density in the carbon blocks, which I can attest to.  Ideal time for a polishing run is about 4 hours/litre for me, which allows a comfortable triple filter before tossing the carbon block and changing for the next batch.  This just keeps ahead of still production while producing an optimal drinkable spirit.  When it takes over 24 hours and a litre is still on the first pass, we have a problem.

I was briefly tempted by a change to a different filtering system, with only 3 problems:

(1) $200 setup cost

(2) ongoing carbon costs (significant, especially as I get the blocks free)

(3) ongoing spirit loss through dumping saturated carbon – as much as 400ml.  O.o

After some experimentation, problem solved…

Boil the bastards before use.  To be exact, boil the freckle out of them.

This appears to both dissolve any solidified salts out, allowing freer flow, and at the same time allows a simple density test – anything that floats from the outset is too low a press density to polish effectively.  Anything still on the bottom after a 20 minute boil is something to be kept for very sloooow polishing when you have a lot of time to spare.  Going from the bottom on cold to the top on rolling boil is officially Goldilocks material.  :)

I am also pleased that production has now exceeded consumption to the point where I will need to move to 5 litre glass demijohns for storage before and after polishing.  This means I will now be able to maintain at least a gallon of polished, drinkable spirit on hand, which can be decanted and flavoured as necessary.  Combined with 8x 1150ml bottles for individual flavourings and wood chip soakings, this means there’s basically an inexhaustible supply of hard booze on tap at all times.  :)  I’m currently experimenting with different rums and whiskies from pure essences, but for bourbons I really can’t go past a good wood chip soak.  10 days on chipped Jim Beam or Jack Daniels barrels seems to be the go, plus the essence on top.

OK, I want an underwater chainsaw.

http://www.csunitec.com/saws/air-chain-saws.html#4hp

Talk? More like scream...

http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/2009/12/30/wifi-for-passive-aggressives/

Family photos

http://www.kelhess.com/familyphotos.html

OK, I officially want one.

I'm buying a christmas tree next year.

Weather

Fuck it’s hot.

Saw

OK, I am officially impressed.  Check out the horizontal saws in the vertical axis.  I was trying to figure out the software logic that would control this rig until I saw the control room.

Security gone mad

I spent some time yesterday at work looking for a batch file to executable compiler.

 

I needed a freeware one, as there was no scope to purchase a commercial product.

Every suitable freeware site was blocked by the corporate firewall as a suspected “malware/hacking” site.

I managed to download the software onto a surf café PC, but discovered its security policies prevent the use of USB sticks.

I couldn’t mail the software in to myself as the corporate mailserver will block any executable attachments.

I’ve tried zipping then raring the things before with no luck, and nor does changing the file extension bypass the restriction.

I tried mailing it to my own webmail account, then logging onto webmail from my LAN PC and retrieving the attachment from the sentbox, but for some reason the attachment kept corrupting.

I went back to the surf café PC to upload the attachment to some FTP space, but access restrictions meant I couldn’t install Filezilla, a firewall meant I couldn’t use command line FTP, and the PCs are running IE7 and FF which don’t have the built in FTP client of IE6.

I finally cracked the shits and uploaded the file to five free file hosting sites on the net, and the second – filedropper – worked fine (aka stupid firewall restrictions didn’t block it).

 

Time taken to complete work:  30 seconds.

Time taken to arrive at the point where I could do the work:  one hour.

Now that's cool

Just got myself a Mon Carbone carbon fibre case for my iPhone, now that’s a cool looking piece of kit!

Fits beautifully, very slim indeed and the phone fits into my dock now while still in the case.

:)

New livestock

Just got back from the fish shoppe, now have a couple of new livestock.

 

Total population is:

11 Neon tetras

5 Rummy nose tetras

2 Peppermint bristlenose catfish

2 Albino bristlenose catfish

1 Blown ram, golden.

2 Dwarf gouramis, 1 red and 1 blue

 

The blown ram, normally the most timid fish in the tank, is currently establishing his territory and chasing the red dwarf gourami around the tank.

 

Just to establish our superiority at the top of the food chain, we are having fish burgers for lunch.  Be afraid, fish.

 

Happy new year's day. Meh.

Whee, 2010.  Alltogether now:  Whoopee doo.

So far I am quite liking the rum I made yesterday, actually a little better than the Laphroaig whisky.  Got a wash in the still now with one more batch to go this afternoon, then will put down another wash which should be ready about Thursday.

This should be popular….

http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,26535391-952,00.html