Arrival and temperamental routers

Against the considerable might of Alison's worst fears, we've somehow managed to survive yet another white knuckle flight from Brisbane to KL. My DS and the new Advanced Wars proved to be a welcome distraction from the tedium of travel and screaming children. Unfortunately the addictive nature of the game coupled with the rare treat of arriving ahead of schedule meant that I didn't get quite as many winks as I'd hoped on the plane, never a good thing on a midnight flight.



Thankfully the stop over at Changi Airport proved to be more relaxing than I'd originally expected.

Struggling against a wave of narcolepsy, I've tried to keep myself busy by 'fixing' mum's wireless connection here in Kajang. Still not entirely sure how I got it to work but somehow my frantic tinkering of the WEP settings seems to have done the trick. Sad to say my triumph is somewhat soured by the infuriating tendency of this router to reset itself for no good reason. From what I can tell it seems to be caused by too much network traffic so I don't have high hopes for setting up video chat for Skype here.

We've already been treated to the first of many greasy breakfasts and I must say it's nice to have real asian food again.

On a sad note, we've had yet another aquatic death. While popping in the two week feeder on the way out I had trouble spotting Connie in the tank. After rummaging among the rocks we soon found what had become of her. The taxi was on the way so we had to forgo the twenty-one gun salute and dug a shallow grave for the poor lass next to her brother. Another goldfish (Gustav) had actually joined the family a couple of weeks ago so we suspect foul play. Hopefully the others will survive till we return to conduct a full investigation.

Not going to let that case a downer on our vacation though. Super excited about the next two and a half weeks with Chinese New Year, weddings and heaps to look forward to.

She's back

Life is good again. I have Gemini back safe and sound. Edna is a good little companion but nothing beats a full sized laptop for use.

I've also been getting a little annoyed with the linux distribution that comes with th eee PC (Xandros) so I might have to install Ubuntu on it soon. Maybe when we get back from Malaysia. Speaking of which, I can't believe we're going to be flying off in less than a week. Hooray for holidays!

A new member to the family

To the household computer family that is. I've been reading about the Asus Eee PC and decided to pick one up on Friday to play around with it. It's marketed as a simple laptop for students and first time PC users but I think it's really pretty neat. My original intention was to get a new laptop so that Gemini could retire to Tivo duty but I guess that'll just have to wait a while longer.



As you can see it's remarkably tiny (either that or I have bigger hands than I'd like to think). Typing on the darn thing was a little challenging at first but after practice I've gotten used to it. Not surprisingly I'm typing this blog entry on the lil gal (who we've christened Edna after Edna Mode, as she's small and all dressed in black) and I'm not having any issues.

So far I've installed a few applications on it and customised it a little but the machine comes with pretty much everything you'd need on it out of the box. Asus have a special version of Xandros Linux installed on it which certainly does the job. I can do pretty much 90% of the things I'd use a PC for on it with limitations coming from the lowish spec and small screen. Reasonable compromises given it's price (retails in Australia for $500) and superb portability (weighs less than a kilogram).

This'll certainly be a lot easier to take on the plane to Malaysia that's for sure :P

It sucks

One benefit of having a blog is the ability to look back to see how far your life has come over the past few years. Reading this entry I'm inclined to raise an eye brow at this prevalent sense of deja vu.

Gemini has been struggling with screen issues yet again this year. It wasn't quite as catastrophic as the last failure (just a few lines on the screen) but I thought I'd better get it fixed before our flight to Malaysia. Imagine my mood when I was told that it'd probably take two weeks yet again if I'm lucky due to a back order on parts. Yippee...

Oddly enough this year we've found ourselves buying yet another vacuum accessory. This time an Electrolux Rapido to help with my new Speed Cleaning initiative. Our dust pan and brush has annoying me so that evidently justified the purchase of yet another appliance.



Doesn't it look pretty charging up? No idea if the darn thing works yet as we're supposed to wait for 16 hours before the first use. Worst case it'll make a nice garden ornament.

Happy Birthday Alsie

Alison wasn't considerate enough to have her birthday on a weekend this year so I had to plan a pre-wedding celebration on Saturday. While Als has the fortune to have time off work on Monday (her actual birthday) to spend the day with her mum, I'm slumping into work for fun business meetings... yay.

While I usually try to inject a touch of gastronomic class on birthdays, I think this year's effort might have hit a new low. Alison's been really into Texas Hold 'Em Poker lately so I thought she'd like to have a look at the tables at Brisbane Treasury. Shame that the blinds were just too expensive for us to consider playing. We might give the free poker nights a try at some point once we feel comfortable enough with the game. A poor excuse for birthday cake came during a Casino lunch buffet at Blackjacks.



It was pretty lax planning on my part but we somehow managed to get Alison to the Corinda Pitch and Putt for 18 holes of golf with Kath and Andrew. The weather through the week seemed less than accommodating but by a stroke of luck we had beautiful sunshine all through Saturday. Instead of torrential rain though we had to suffer through hot and sticky air and a saturated golf course.

The highlight of our round was definitely Andrew's attempt to deal with the local water hazard (bacteria infested puddle). Good attempt but maybe take a drop next time.



The final scores were as follows:

Strokes	Code Name	Boring Name
77	Agent Shadow Fish	Kath
78	Commander	Sharim
81	Alsie Walsie	Alison
89	Special Agent Biteme	Andrew

But of course we decided that the aim of the game would be who got the closest to 82 (being the birthday girl's year of birth) so three cheers for Alsie! Honorary mention to Kath for getting the lowest score. :P

After washing off a little bit of golf grime, I rushed Als off to our next appointment at the Yatala Drive In theater to catch the double bill of the night. We decided to see "Alvin and the Chipmunks" and "The Golden Compass", both of which I thought were sadly disappointing. The drive in was an experience by itself however and we came away feeling like we'd done our bit to immerse ourselves in bogan culture.



A pretty packed day all up but a fun one.

So long 2007!

Happy New Year everyone! This year we had a little sleep over at Kath and Andrew's to eliminate any inhibition of partying on into the morning hours, given that driving home wouldn't be an issue. Of course the slack arses decided to retire at a measly 1:30AM after a punishing game of Scrabble. I guess it's still an improvement over last year's effort so there's some progress. No disingenuous resolutions this year on my part, not after failing miserably on the daily snapshot.

We brought over Guitar Hero 3 for the Wii so that Spanky could have a go shredding. I was fully prepared to enjoy his rhythmic inadequacies with sadistic anticipation. In the end however he proved dexterous enough to finish one of the hardest songs on Easy level. Props mate, rock on!



In the morning we were treated to the best French Toast I've had in a fair while. Infused with eggy goodness, crowned with caramelised banana, crispy bacon and drenched elegantly with maple syrup. Gobsmacking stuff.



Thanks for being exceptional hosts guys. Looking forward to imposing on your hospitality shortly to greet the incoming addition to your family. Great start to a new year.