Today I pumped water from the tank into the pool (with our Onga RivaFlow ittybitty pump) … and while J and I were off experiencing Sweeney Todd in Gold Class @ Indro, it seems to have been bucketing down all through.That makes 4 from 4 – whenever I put water back into the pool, it rains heavily. Note that because I don’t wash our car there’s no correlation to be had on that front.Weird. Must be some science-y reason for I’m sure.
Alan showed me this link: “Mommy, Why is There a Server in the House? (Helping Your Child Understand the Stay-At-Home Server)”It’s hilarious, and I particularly love this slide.And it’s a real book, too – check out amazon.com’s page for it,The whole premise had me rotflmao. Nice one, Microsoft .. image:: /images/smilies/icon_smile.gif
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:-)
Now that we’ve got a bit of distance between Christmas Day and now, I figure I’ve unlaxed enough to be able to blog.It’s been interesting having all of J’s family staying with us – I haven’t had to cook for more than 6 people in many years. Last night’s Chicken in Soy was a case in point, and the lesson I learnt was “always cook more vegies!”We’ve had a very quiet few days and apart from codercat deciding that I really should be getting up with the birds too (0400!!) it’s been quite relaxing. We enjoyed mango daiquiris yesterday, courtesy of J’s sister who used to work in a bar; young T has been doing laps of the loungeroom, living room and just outside, and we made sure to jump in the pool on Tueday.Yesterday morning J, Spoonboy, S and I wandered in to GoMA at South Bank to see what the Andy Warhol exhibition had on offer. Parking was easy (well, it was Boxing Day) and cheap, entry was AUD20pp and we saw a massive amount of Warhol’s work covering (as far as I could see) his entire professional life.As somebody with an interest in photography, I was particularly interested in his use and extension of photography in his work. I’m not quite sure how I might describe it just yet (still have to read the exhibition catalogue book), but I found it very powerful while at the same time subtly disconcerting.Today after taking S+C off to Lennon’s for an overnight stay (a present from myself and J), J, C and I took young T for a walk to the park up the street, then for a roundabout meander along our street. Managed to get some semi-decent photos of our nephew on a swing, then when we got home I snapped him some more around home. The killer photos though are the ones from dinner (I made spag bol), where he was so keen to be at one with his dinner that he decided to wear the spaghetti (nose) and bits of broccoli (eyelid)! Just you wait for your 21st, kiddo, then all will be revealed .. image:: /images/smilies/icon_razz.gif
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S+C and C+A will be heading home with a cd each of photos, should be a nice memento of our first Christmas here.It’s been a good time over the last few days. I just wish I could get a bit more sleep.
Overnight I received this email:
Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2007 14:35:01 -0800 Message-Id: [200712152235.lBFMZ1tV020872@crawler002.qts.spock.com] From: Spock Team [donotreply@spock.com] To: [me] Subject: Stephen has requested your trust on Spock Hi James C. McPherson, Stephen has added you as a trusted contact on Spock.com. By accepting trust, you will be able to search each others' network, share contact information, and get news. Get started here: [url] - Unsubscribe: http://www.spock.com/do/public/request_unsubscribe
I’ve got a few questions here. Firstly – why Stephen? I know perhaps 6 or 7. Secondly, wtf is spock.com? Thirdly, why is it that if I go to www.spock.com, I get see this image? .. image:: http://images.spock.com/fail.jpg
Today I got a servicedude out from Steel-line doors to service our garage roller door and remote operation stuff. He managed to tell me that the unit I had the primary door connected to had a faulty logic board, so he swapped the two units around.He didn’t remember to swap the radio receiver with it though. This meant that my remote control didn’t actually work with the powered-on door opener/closer unit. Damn! When Chip came over for coffee this arvo, we spent 5 minutes looking at both units, and very quickly realised that the radio receiver needed to move in order to enable the opening and closing remote control functions. One very quick swap later, and joy had returned, along with a working carkey-sized transmitter unit which actually did tell the open/close unit what to do. J will be pleased
The caption comes from this El Reg article:
Forget test-tubes and blackboards, this is *proper* science.
That’s for damned sure!
I assume that the photo is Copyright 2007 The Register
We finally have a pool fence installed, courtesy of a big weekend of effort and assistance from J’s parents. I’d like to take this opportunity to thank C and A for coming down for the weekend and helping us, we would not have been able to get the project completed in one weekend without their help.It’s a great relief that our friends and family can now visit us without having to worry about their younguns clambering into the pool unsupervised. We’ve got a few more pavers to re-lay and sand to brush around, but it should all be sufficiently prettified by next weekend. .. image:: http://www.jmcpdotcom.com/roller/jmcp/resource/20071204_130533__MG_7708.JPG-640x480.jpg
… it’s going to be interesting – very interesting – to see what are now marginal seats. I think North Sydney, Bennelongand Ryan might be three such seats.With any luck that will make those MPs pay more attention to their electorates and not take them for granted.
On Saturday 24th November 2007, Australia made history. The Liberal/National coalition government under John Howard was solidly defeated by the Australian Labor Party lead by Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.Yes, the Australian economy is going gangbusters. Yes, we’ve had about a decade of sustained growth.
That seems to have been the essential point that the Liberal/National coalition failed to understand. When the basics of the economy are strong – and the voting population knows it – then people tend to feel that they can afford to worry about the future: about climate change, education, infrastructure, water….One thing that I picked up on throughout the campaign was that the Coalition was really keen to remind us of their history, and the ALP’s history – but only the pieces which they could paint in the worst possible light. So we were continually reminded of high interest rates under Keating – but not that Keating inherited them from when Howard was treasurer. And unions – they’ve been portrayed as breeding grounds for thugs and anti-business, yet unions in this country are some of the most pro-business organisations we know of. Of course, the Coalition glossed over that the professional associations which most of their membership are part of (the AMA and various state Bar associations) are also unions, just with a different name.Bunch of hypocrites, all of them!The other major aspect I noticed was that for the things I care about, the Coalition had no plan for the future whereas the ALP does. Climate change, physical and internet infrastructure, education, health, freedom of information, reconciliation and social justice …. the ALP under Rudd released policies which promote all these things, and whatever the Coalition released in those areas really was a poor shadow in comparision.Today we all have to work and deliver on the changes that we as a nation voted for yesterday. It’s way past time that we moved from “yeah, this nation is great” onto “how can we make this nation even greater?”
