the howie

Today finally we have fast NDSL interwebs connection at home!

It has been a saga and a half getting it connected.

First step was applying on the iinet website.

I did this in early Feb on a quiet afternoon in the office.

Then after 24hrs or so I had not received any form of confirmation of my application, not even an email. So I called up.

Turned out their system had broken my application but saved all my info, so the friendly man on the phone said he would resubmit my info but would need to change the surname.

Fine by me.

I started getting emails telling of the progress, then one day a week or so later I was told a telstra tech guy was coming out to install a phone line to our house, the telstra man came and installed a phone line out our house and then went up to the exchange and did some geeky stuff.

Then about a week after the first telstra man i was told a second tech was coming out to do something or other, and sure enough a second tech arrived with his screwdrivers and ladies cologne.  He fiddled around with the phone socket then went up to the exchange and returned again saying his work was done.

Then a progress email told me that iinet needed to send some stuff to the phone line to get rid of the dial tone and turn it into a naked dsl line.

then a week or so later another email and sms telling me my service was ready for use so they would post me out the modem and then i could be off and downloading.

So the modem arrived almost a week later and i plugged it in following all the steps listed.

nothing, not sync, no pretty blue lights.

I called again, and for the next 2 weeks phoned about every second day as there was all sorts of issues and things to try to get it to work. Then one person on the phone asked me to plug a phone into the line and see if there is a dial tone.

So I did and there was a dial tone, this is not what we wanted to hear because next came ‘we will need to send out a tech to the exchange to do some work, the next timeslot is in a weeks time’.

Then i got an email saying my original application, the one that didn’t work was still in progress and should be connected shortly. ARGGGG they where trying to install 2 connections on the one line. they rectified this problem by telling me there was a disconnection fee for one of the services, which luckily they then agreed to credit.

So we had to do more waiting.

that teach appointment was last thursday, while we where in Armidale so we thought we would come home to super fast internet.

We cam home to the same old sad story of no pretty lights on the modem.

So another 5,000 calls to iinet and the response came ‘we need to send a telstra tech to your house’. I told the man that there had already been 3 techs trying to connect my service was number 4 going to do the job?’

No.4 arrived at 12:30pm today, he was scheduled to arrive between 8am and 12noon.

Anyway he came and fiddled around, swore a bit under his breath and said there was some bad wiring in the socket, and a battery attached to the line outside. apparently one or all of the previous technicians had stuffed the instill. Then the tech man disappeared up to the exchange for a while before returning and telling me it should all be working now.

so he plugged in the modem and called iinet to make sure they where receiving the sync, they said yes.

he was the only tech that checked his work.

I overheard him on the phone outside and the person on the other end must have asked what the problem was.

He said bad wiring in the socket, a battery attached to the line outside and something else done wrong at the exchange, he then paraphrased it ‘pretty much a F&^$ up at every point possible’.

So thank you No.4 you are my hero.

So far i’ve seen this connection at 7.2Mbps not too bad.

If you are like me, and lets face you probably are like me or least want to be like me. Why else would you read my blog?

Well if you are striving to be me every time you go out to put rubbish in the bins you walk back to the front door frantically banging and swiping your head, shoulders, chest and upper back to ensure no spiders have landed on you and are going to kill you.

I hate spiders, bugs, cockroaches…….. I hate anything that can scramble across you, it sends shudders up my spine.

But spiders are the worst, Jenny has to be the man in our house casue i’m to busy shaking and standing on top of a pile of chairs squealing like a young boy going through puberty.

Well tonight I had to go take the rubbish out, it was dark and knew there was spiders about, there always is. To get to the bins you have to pass through the arch way of death. In the day time it’s a metal arch with roses on it but by night it’s the “ARCH WAY OF DEATH”.

I made it through swinging one of my arms around like a helicopter to break any webs of doom.

I didn’t feel any webs break with my arm so thought I was sweet.

It was on my happy trot back to the front door when I felt that horrible horrible crawling feeling on the back of my neck.

you know the one,8 little sticky feet making their way for the gap between your shirt and neck.

Being the well restrained gentleman that I am,I only whispered expletives as not to wake the neighbors.

I quickly ripped the shirt off in the doorway and began more hitting and swiping of my head, neck, back and chest.

I looked down at my shirt and couldn’t see anything.

1. Was it on my pants?

2. Was it on the floor about to run up my leg?

3. Was it all paranoia and actually just the tag of my shirt?

I was too scared to go for number 3, it was real, I felt it!

I decided to flick my shirt across the floor a bit.

And that’s when i got even more freaked out.

When you are freaked out, you make stupid decisions. mine was thinking ‘It’ll stay there for a minute, you should go get your camera’.

Well turns out it wasn’t that stupid as it did stay there.

Now i had to get rid of it, what if in the morning i wake up and it’s on my face!!!

I went and got one of my shoes as the thongs I’m wearing are thinner than my masculinity.

I realised I had one shot, and with this one shot I was to terminate the beast and probably also wake up wife and baby in the process.

So i hovered the shoe above the drop zone, and then BANG! Did I get it?

At first I didn’t know I was too busy trying to climb over the table to stand on the couch!

After a while i ventured back to the shirt and I had succeeded!

Now i’m siting at my computer with no shirt on wondering if I should really be telling people on the internet that I’m sitting here half naked.

Step 1.

Use ‘ProChef - Extra Virgin Olive Oil’ cooking spray.

The problem with extra virgin olive oil is that it has never been touched by a frypan before. When it did get touched for the first time, it freaked out and turned in to an emotional wreck all over our nice frypan.

Next time I’m using ProChef Extra Floozy Olive Oil, it should know what it’s doing.

I was just sitting happily at my desk doing some interweb surfing and I thought to myself, I don’t need the light on, all i’m doing is looking at an already lit up screen.

So i turned the light off.

On returning to my desk I knocked over a very large glass of water which took my MacBook Pro on a whole new level of web surfing.

The water managed to wet my iPhone, Macbook Pro, TV, desk speakers, numerous on power cords and adapters, papers, the entire desk, my lap and facade of desk drawers. With a splash on the side of the new work hard drive i brought home.

in reality it all happened extremely quickly. In my head however it was like watching Kevin Costner’s ‘waterwold’  it was a soggy saga that dragged on for what felt like months.

The first thing i did was quickly shut my computer and rip out the mag safe power cord that for the first time in it’s life actually held up some resistance in being removed.

Then it was off with power points and out with the tissues as there was no time to go and find a towel from the linen cupboard that would create the following statement from the better half ….

“what did you use that towel for, the electrical equipment drying towel is the one under the stairs at the bottom of the second pile next to the platter we got from your Aunty, I’ve told you that a million times, you’re using the second bathroom emergency bath mat.”

Cleaning up a lot of spilled water with tissues takes a long time and it also leaves a lot of water behind.

I did what i thought was all the drying and decided i should take a closer look at my laptop.

The USB ports where a bit damp and a bit of splash on the keyboard, nothing 75 tissues couldn’t fix.

But then i noticed water might have snuck in through the gap in the unibody.

The problem with macs is that they use the world’s smallest screws and for someone with bad isight it’s hard enough to find all the screws let a lone un screw them.

Luckily my wife has a repair kit in her car that should do the job.

I went out and got her handy toothpick size screwdriver set and began unscrewing the tiny screws.

Once inside i noticed there was no water at all.

So I put the case back together with a few disheartening cracking noises and turned it all back on to write a blog post.

As for all the other equipment  it all seems dry now, but boy oh boy I could do with a glass of water after all that!

As you know I spent the weekend sleeping in a makeshift slum.

Each night as i couldn’t sleep due to discomfort I would stare at the ceiling of the slum which happened to be made of empty cardboard fridge boxes.

I noticed something that you are going to find profound and life changing.

There is no ‘d’ in refrigerator. I have never noticed this before. Why is there a ‘d’ in fridge?

It should be pronounced re-frig-erator which sounds like some sort of nautical dinosaur.

So i’m thinking of starting a bring back the d campaign called ‘Plan D’.

Dave Andrews has ‘Plan Be’ all about bringing the beatitudes to a prominent place in our churches and personal faith.

Plan D shall attempt to return the D to fridge boxes, I’m pretty sure koorong will back me and sell my book.

No ‘d’. I’m still shocked.

‘Om’ has moved out, On sunday he came over to do some extreme vacuuming and remove 18 months worth of toe jam, dead skin and un-opened bank statements.We have decided to turn tom’s old room into a study/ spare room as my working from home situation has been impaired by my desk being smooshed in behind the wardrobe in our bedroom.

So today we did lot’s of moving and rearranging of stuffs.

Jenny even got me a sweet sign for the door.

The space behind out wardrobe will now be a storage area.

this week shall involve a meeting or tow, video capturing and sleeping in a cardbaord box in the melbourne burbs for the weekend.

As you know, I’m watching a bond movie every week. The old bonds on the whole are pretty good films but some standout flops have been ‘On Her Majesties Secret Service’ with auusie george Lazenby as bond, he is the crappest bond ever. The next film that was dumb is actually the next film ‘diamonds are Forever’ it just was dull.

But that doesnt matter i’m having a great time watching them.

I shaved on Saturday.I’m eating brownies and that is you up to speed on my exciting life.

I just installed google chrome and it doesn’t seem to like the idea of spaces in between lines and new paragraphs.

With a title like that you are probably expecting a rant about Eddie McGuire and his brigade of puffy blue commentators at the winter Olympics that doesn’t have snow.

Well that’s not what this post is about.

Today i had the best idea ever.

Fresh fruit salad + ice magic

I know it’s the sort of idea that could get me the Nobel prize.

The fruit salad was chilling away in a container in the fridge, so i got it out, added fruit to my bowl then poured on the ice magic.

I waited a few minutes but the ice magic didn’t go hard.

Maybe the fruit wasn’t cold enough.

So i put my bowl with all it’s contents into the freezer.

The ice magic still didn;t go hard.

So the best idea in the world has some flaws.

Why didn’t it go hard? Is there some sort of chemical reaction between ice cream and ice magic?

I was in the lift coming up to the office earlier today, and as I do every time i’m in the lift alone, I look at myself in the big mirror.

I noticed that there is a big hole in my beard of nice smooth skin that feels like it has never had hair growing on it. And on the other side of my face in the same area there is beard, not thick but there is defiantly hair there.

In October I’m going on holidays with my wife and son.

We are going to New Zealand.

I hope we don’t regret taking an almost 2yr old overseas, but how could we resist when he is free!!!!!

In January I had 3,008 unique visits to this blog.

That is the first time it has ever gone over 3,000.

Surely there is more interesting things to look at on the internet.

Like this. 

Jenny wants me to blog about all the stuff I have sitting on our stairs that needs to be put away in the shed and other places. Maybe she figures blogging about it is a step closer to putting it away.

I told her that wouldn’t be a good blog post.

I’m right.

Tomorrow is Australia Day.

would we be so patriotic it there wasn’t a public holiday?

Jesus left a comment on my blog but it was taken aside by my spam filter. I didn’t expect him to ramble so much, he speaks so well in the bible. Also did you know he was from France?

Good Day. Americans are benevolently ignorant about Canada, while Canadians are malevolently well informed about the United States.
I am from France and also now’m speaking English, give true I wrote the following sentence: “Criminal justice, bright sources in the london threshold career from same stations with a jeopardy of hundred opportunities together to un-democratic means going a thousand or more groups.”

Thank you so much for your future answers 8). Jesus.

I ran out of soap the other day. So i’ve been using some liquid crap that jenny uses.

Today whilst in the supermarket i remembered i needed soap. So we pulled out the ethical shopping guide to see what sort of soap I could get.

We found a happy brand and I read the boxes looking for a flavour that wasn’t too feminine.

There was a few interesting things written on the box, like ‘450g (when packaged)’. When packaged??? does my soap have an over eating disorder and by the time I take it out of te box it will be 500g?

It also says ‘3 times more moisture’. 3 times more moisture than what? 3 times more moisture than a brick?

doesn’t soap get moisture whn you put it under water? why does it already come with moisture x3???

And ‘mild enough for the whole family’. Far out who wants to rub a spicy bar of soap around their sensitive bits?

anyway there where 3 flavours to chose from. Spring Garden,  Forest Breeze and Fresh Linen

I chose ‘Forest Breeze’. I’m hoping now that i don’t walk around smelling like pine needles and murdered backpackers.

the murdered backpackers might explain the 3x more moisture though.

1 Cup full cream milk powder
3/4 cup of white sugar
1 1/2 cups tea leaves (or just chick in a bunch of tea bags)
1 teaspoon of ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon (you can also use cinnamon sticks)
1 teaspoon of cloves
1/2 teaspoon of ground cardamon

chuck it all in a bowl and mix it up,

then use about 1 tablespoon of this mix for every cup of water you boil.

easy.

After my weekend living in a make shift slum I have been lying low.

It was a tops weekend but i’m wasted. I didn;t sleep at all on Friday night.And i had a run a bunch of activites all day on Saturday and Sunday so by sunday night when we finished lack of sleep plus 2 small meals of rice and dhal a day took it’s toll.

I spent a lot of yesterday in bed sleeping and it seems i’ve picked myself up a cold too. I would like to really complain about it all but i guess it just makes the whole simulation a little more realistic.

sorry it’s not an exciting post, I did stub my toe badly on a heater today if you are wanting something to smirk at.

I’m running a weekend long simulation this weekend called ‘Slum Survivor’ at a local Church.

It involves living in a slum for the entire weekend and only eating 2 meals a day of rice and dhal.

Plus a whole bunch of challenges throughout the weekend. Because I’m running it i’m the Slum lord and it’s my job to dish out pain and discomfort and also collect money from the participants as they earn enough money to survive in the slum.

It’s a pretty full on experience for those taking part.

Anyway today I spend the morning mixing spices and powders together to make the dhal and some chai mix.

After inhaling all the smells of an Indian spice shop I loaded up the rickshaw with a bunch of stuff, heshen sacks., banners, and a big box full of hammers and gloves and plastic.

Jenny helped me push the rickshaw up the hill, as it has no gears and weighs more than 5 Americans.

So we pushed and pushed. Sweat was dripping down behind my sunnies and if my shirt was white i would have won the national wet t-shirt comp.

We made it to the top of the hill so jenny bialed and i got on for some pedaling.

I pedaled along the pacific highway (on the footpath) which was nice and flat, lots of people staring at me and one lady telling me i had a very pretty bike.

Eventually i got to the street that has the church on it and it’s downhill. So down i went with the rickshaw breaks squeaking like a late pubescent teenage boys voice box.Then i remembered the church has a friggen steep driveway.

I got to the bottom of the driveway and hopped off. I began pushing very very slowly taking millions of steps ans there is no room between the pedals and the back seat of the rickshaw to take big manly steps. It was hard hard pushing. Not being able to see behind me I had no idea there was a massive line of cars creeping behind me trying to get up the driveway to a funeral.

I had to stop halfway up in a little flatter bit to refill my lungs and squeeze out my shoes form all the sweat dripping down. It was at this moment I realised there was a long line of cars, what could i do?  I tried to pull over as much as i could and a few cars went past. I got going again when the driveway was clear. Stage 2 of the steep driveway was underway, just as i began stage 2 another bunch of cars appeared behind me. And there was people everywhere all dressed in suits and fancy dresses watching this sweaty man push a overloaded rickshaw up a steep driveway. I’m sure they where angry at me for interrupting their funeral car parking.

Eventually i made it to the top and found a spot in the corner to park the rickshaw. I walked home with jelly legs and a salty face.

I ran out of Metamucil and while you don’t care, this could be explode into a sloppy ending for me. Metamucil changed my life. I have IBS as a lot of you would know and when Metamucil came into my life I became a new man. I run like clock work and it all holds together like cookie dough…mmm cookie dough, probably not the best analogy to use seeing as i love eating cookie dough..oh well.

So I needed to go get some more and also some rolls for my lunch tomorrow.

So off to Westie I went.

I noticed some clouds creeping up behind me.

Being Me I didn’t take an umbrella.

I did my shopping in woolies and also picked up some discounted hot cross buns, good thing you can buy them now for Easter because they stay fresh for at least a day.

I then went in search of an umbrella in woolies.

Fail.

So off to 24Hr Kmart I went.

I looked around hoping to find a rack covered in umbrellas but found nothing. After a while i went to the front desk to ask. The lady said “Yeah we have them, just head towards women’s underwear” .

So off i went down the wide path towards ladies dainties.  I passed a rack with sunglasses, then handbags, then to my left was ladies clothes and right undies. Surely the umbrellas are close to this centre path. I kept walking up and down the path a few times.

then i found them. They where down to one side of a very narrow isle in the middle of bright pink g-strings and D-cups. I had to go look though, but what if someone walks past, from behind it would look like i was looking at pink g-strings not umbrellas. So it had to be a stealth operation. I power walked into the isle and decided to grab the first umbrella then get out of there.

The first umbrellas was leopard skin patterned.

I had to stay longer, I couldn’t walk out of the g-string isle with a leopard skin umbrella.

Eventually I found a nice masculine black umbrella.

Don’t men use umbrellas anymore?

It was a good thing i managed to get that umbrella.

I walked home in the rain, mostly dry.

I also walked past a take away shop where a man was standing outside stuffing money into his shoe.

Don’t men use wallets anymore?