I spotted this on ThinkGeek, it was even on special, I just couldn’t leave it there.
Live Long and Prosper.
Project:Shots
This should be an interesting one.
When I was living in New Zealand I started collecting shot glasses from the various places I visited, I collected over 60 while I was in New Zealand, and have been collecting them here in Aus ever since (though at a much slower rate).
I hadn’t been sure how I was going to catalog and display them, displaying them is still up in the air, there isn’t enough space in our current place, so that is on hold for now. But I recently had an idea for cataloging them, many of the glasses have the name of the town/city/place where I got it on the glass, but not all, so to remember where I got them I am going to photograph each glass I have/get and place the photo onto a google map.
Its going to take a while to log all of my existing glasses, time isn’t something I've had a lot of lately so this will very much be a long term project, and in fact will continue for most of my life, or until I have been everywhere on planet earth...
Stay tuned.
Supercars VIP 2017
Every year I make the trek to Symmons to see the v8 Supercars (now known as Supercars) live. This year things were a bit tight financially, but I was determined to make it because it has been confirmed that this year will be the last year with a full v8 powered field.
And then Brian rang.
Brian is our fuel delivery guy and a friend of mine, he offered me a VIP experience at the Supercars, he gets VIP every year with TeamVortex. I had no idea what to expect, I knew we got a box above the pits, and free food (Caltex gave dad two VIP tickets in 2005, but I don’t remember much) but that’s about it. So on Saturday I picked him up and we headed down for what was the best day at Symonns I have ever had.
The VIP experience starts before you even leave home, when you get VIP parking, arriving early to secure a good spot is not necessary. I left home just before 9am, we arrived at 10am, racing began at 10:25am, we were through the gates and inside the corporate box around 5 minutes after arrival.
Inside the Corporate Box:
The view from the Corporate Box:
The forecast for the day wasn't great, a fair bit of rain was expected, when we arrived tho the sun was shining and the first round of support racing was not of huge interest so we decided to go for a walk over to the merchandise area for a look. I grabbed a TeamVortex hat, as well as a RBRA hat, and later I went back for a Volvo shirt (GRM from last year) and a Scotty Mclaughlin volvo hat (for my collection).
Being in the Corporate Box is quite an experience, there is free food (fancy food too!), free wine, beer, coke and redbull! I am not a beer fan, but since it was free I thought I'd try the 'Official' beer of Supercars:
It was fowl, I took one sip and that was all I could get down.
The food was good tho:
This was a pleasant surprise, and not the last one either, being in VIP with TeamVortex includes a private signing session with the drivers from Triple8, Shane, Jamie and Craig!
We also got a guided tour of the TeamVortex garage.
I learned alot of very cool stuff about the car, team and how they operate, I also learned that Triple8 is actually a 'Race Engineering Company', I thought they were just a big team that manufactured their own components, but they are actually, primarily, a race engineering company that manufactures control parts for racing categories all over the world, including Supercars, and they only started racing in v8 Supercars to show off their parts.
The weather was all over the place for most of the day, the GT racing cars and the Super2 supercars races were both cut short due to nasty accidents, I think both categories managed 2 - 3 race laps for the day. The aussie racing cars managed to complete all of their sessions tho.
Another perk of being VIP is you can go out for the grid walk, I got a sticker and even the rain wasn't going to stop me, it was pretty heavy, but I was to keen to get up close with all of the cars, fortunately while the cars were all lining up on the grid the rain stopped.
I even managed to get myself onto TV, without realising! I was walking down the grid taking photos and I look up and realise that I'm walking directly towards a camera, they were interviewing De Silvestro. I immediately jumped onto my phone and set my Foxtel box to record the days coverage, when I got home I combed through the TV coverage and discovered I had managed to get myself in front of the camera 3 times!
If your interested you can watch my grid walk here:
Race time!
But alas, it didn't last long, continuing the trend of the day, they made it 2 laps before an accident occurred, this time tho, it was serious. As can be seen here:
https://www.foxsports.com.au/motorsport/supercars/live-supercars-tyrepower-tasmania-supersprint-at-symmons-plains-race-3/news-story/44f5ca151e770b9b22f0705e79f8f8d3
It took the officials far to long to realise it, (they counted it as a race and awarded trophy's, before declaring it a 'no race' the next day, no one knows why as the rulebook clearly states minimum race distance must be run for it to count) but this accident canceled the race, so no further action was seen for the day. Nevertheless I thoroughly enjoyed the day. Thanks Brian!
I went back on Sunday with the Wallaces, it rained ALL morning, full on rain, loads of people packed up and left.
Brett dressed for the occasion!
All in all it was a good weekend, until next year!
Live Long and Prosper.
City Networks Delivery Day
For those who don't know, CityNetworks is a very small team of people from churches across the NW Coast of Tasmania, their task is to be an invisible tool to unite the churches of Tasmania. I am a member of this team, I look after all of its technological requirements, as well as help out in any other way that I can.
The first major initiative run by CityNetworks is called 'Breaking Bread', the idea is to bake one batch of bread, and deliver to as many churches as possible, so that all the churches involved can break bread from the same loaf, a small, but none the less meaningful thing.
Yesterday, the team, which I was privileged to be a part off, successfully delivered bread to over 100 churches across Tasmania.
www.citynetworks.org.au
www.ai.org.au
www.faithlikeamushroom.com/2017/04/07/united-in-sourdough/
Mike and I volunteered to assist with bread deliveries in Hobart, this photo was taken as we prepared to leave.
This was our final delivery, due to several factors, we were running late for quite a few of our deliveries, but we managed to claw back the time on our final two drops and made it to our last scheduled delivery 3 minutes early, we were way too proud of that.
A total fluke, but this was my odometer reading when I pulled back into the garage at home. I had reset it before backing out yesterday morning.
My Bunnings Desk
I saw a guy on Facebook put together a nice desk using bits and pieces from Bunnings, and the best part, it was cheap. I saw it and thought that would go great in our spare room.
The top is a nice acacia timber bench top, 2200x600x26, that cost a whopping $99, and the legs, $15 each. Its a little wobbly, but pressed up against the brick wall makes it plenty solid enough.
Ill be using this as a work desk for my computer business.
Not bad for $160.
Tax Scam
I got a call the other day from an officer at the ATO's Legal Department, after identifying me through the usual means, he informed me that he had in front of him a legal affidavit that stated I have been accused of tax evasion and that I owe the ATO $4,000.
Up until this point everything was extremely legit, in fact its exactly how I would expect such a call to go down.
At this point I started inquiring about the debt and how it came about, most of my tax returns have been done by an accountant so I really wasn't sure how I could have been avoiding taxes. We argued over the figure for several minutes, I was not able to get any concrete information out of him, it was at this point I was starting to question the legitimacy of the call, but the final nail in the coffin was when he said 'you are required to pay the debt in full before the end of this phone call' I told him I cant do that, and he came back with, 'if you do not an officer from your local police department will be around within the hour to collect you and hold you for 72 hours until you can appear in court'.
I told him I look forward to it and hung up.
The legitimacy of the call was unreal, if I didn't know that the Tax Office sorts out such matters via letters I'd have probably fallen for it...
Australia Day 2017
What a day!
I hadn't originally planned to do anything on Australia Day, I wasn't even sure I would get the day off. Which didn't really bother me. But I got the day off, and Ek & Grant invited us to join them and go for a drive and visit the Bridestowe Lavendar Farm.
We visited a few places on the way home, we went via George Town for a look (I haven’t been there in years) we also stopped in at Moore’s Hill Vineyard, a small but fancy vineyard.
That was our last stop before heading home, all was chill and we were enjoying ourselves. It was late afternoon so we thought we'd call into woolies in Port Sorell and grab some stuff to cook tea at Ek & Grants, but all plans went flying out the window when we got close to home and saw the smoke rising from somewhere very close to Ek & Grants house (it was hard to tell from a distance, but it appeared to be very close to their house) and there were two helicopters circling above, suffice to say we cancelled all plans and rushed straight to their house, for obvious reasons.
What we found was my block on fire, their house was fine and not in any danger, there were several fire trucks present, along with 2 police vehicles, and 2 fire fighting helicopters, it was pretty full on.
The fire was started on the neighbours place, no one is quite sure what he was doing, but it ended in a bush fire that took off across his block and onto mine. Here are a few shots of what we saw arriving home.
It was pretty much under control by the time we got here, still, pretty crazy stuff! I didn't mind tho, everything that burnt was now something I didn't have to deal with! The heap on fire in the above photos was around 5 times that size prior to this incident. I wasn't sure how I was going to get rid of it, now I don't need to!
I knew one of the volunteer fire fighters who was there and he yelled out across the paddock 'Oi Jase you should have had a digger here and we could have stacked it up and kept it going'. He was joking of course. I yelled back, 'Yea, I know where I can get one at mates rates'. Very shortly after that the firefighter in charge rushes over and says 'Do you have an excavator?'. One thing led to another and well...
I brought our 3 tonner around in a screaming hurry and we pulled the burning heap apart so they could make sure the fire was completely out. During this operation (which took a couple of hours) the lead firefighter came over and asked me to see to another fire around the corner, apparently it was a busy day for our fire service...
Apparently the second fire was lit to 'get rid of some bees'. The foam they use is interesting stuff too.
All in all a pretty crazy afternoon! We didn't finish up till 9pm, Grant came with me during all of this so we headed back to his place for a Whiskey.
The aftermath
A lot of this will be much easier for me to clean up now, but it could have been so much worse, especially if we had our house built..
Live Long and Prosper
Our 1st Wedding Anniversary
I cant believe its been a year already! So much has happened. I am so happy to be married to the most amazing wife, life has been so much better since we tied the knot and I cant wait to celebrate many many more anniversaries!
We decided we'd go away for the weekend to Richmond, where we got engaged!
We stayed at a place called Hatcher’s Manor, I've never stayed at such a place, it was quite cool.
Breakfast done right on Saturday morning at a cute little cafe in Richmond.
After breakfast we wandered around Richmond, we had a lunch booking at the French Bistro, we weren't really sure exactly what it was, but it looked fancy, its on a vineyard, and we assumed it'd be french food, Amy was very keen to check it out!
Wandering around Richmond we found the Richmond Chocolate Shop... going in was a bad idea..
Amongst many other things, they had the above, made in house, gelato selection, we got a 'decadent thickshake' which is a thickshake made using your choice of gelato, my first choice would have been musk (pink one bottom left) but unfortunately there wasn't enough left to make a shake, so we picked Nutella, and boy was it good!
By now it was time to head off to our lunch booking, the Bistro was really fancy, with an amazing view out over the vineyard.
All of the menu items were, well lets just say I had no idea what anything was, one of them said 'burger' in their somewhere so I ordered that one, seriously thats how I picked, and this is what I got:
It had some ingredients in it that I would normally stick my nose up to (yes I know, I'm fussy), but this burger was delicious! Amy picked out some sort of French salad, she really enjoyed that too.
Next stop, some shopping in Hobart!
On our wedding day we never actually got to try a piece of our wedding cake, we grabbed a couple of pieces as we were leaving, but some clown decided to cover us in glitter.. And so we have had in our freezer the top tier of the cake, all that was left, we decided to wait until our anniversary to try it, so for dessert we tried it, and it was so good!
On Sunday Amy wanted to go to the Royal Botanical Gardens, it was really nice and very pretty, we really enjoyed wandering around, I particularly like watching how excited Amy gets when we go to places like this.
After the gardens we headed home, via Richmond, we wanted another shake from the Chocolate Shop... Baileys... It was so good...
On the way into Richmond I spotted a Tesla Model S! I have finally seen one in the flesh and I want one even more now!
They are actually alot bigger than I expected, its hard to believe that it can launch 0 - 100 in under 3 seconds..
The Fence
After deciding to get a puppy we both knew that the fence wouldn't be up to the task of keeping him in, see for yourself..
Its pretty run down, in fact the gate barely works, We never closed it until we got Bilbo.
We are also removing the gravel from the backyard and putting grass back down, and so while the old fence was down I wanted to back the truck in there and tip off a load of topsoil - save barrowing it all through the gate. I also brought our 3 tonner down to remove the old concrete plinth under the existing fence. It was pretty cool having an excavator in a unit block driveway.
On a side note, when the Foxtel tech installed the dish on the roof he left a full tube of silicon up there, I had been thinking at some stage I’ll get it down, this seemed like a good solution.
Unfortunately the Saturday we picked to put up the new fence turned out to be a scorcher, so it made the job twice as hard as it should have been, it also took considerably longer.
Some progress shots.
The victory pose!
Before:
After:
Now to clean up that mess along the side of the house..
Our TV
Our Soniq blew up, really.
Read MoreMeet Bilbo
I need to start here with some history, Amy and I always planned to get a puppy after we got married, it was originally going to be her first 'valentines day as my wife' present, but unfortunately things just didn't work out in a way that could allow that to happen, originally I had intended to have a small house built on our block for us to move into, but the issue after issue we experienced with the subdivision wiped that option off the board, so we ended up renting, and not able to afford much we ended up in a little unit on Wilmot St in Port Sorell, and have since moved to a slightly larger, much newer, but still a unit, next door. Neither place, being rentals, allowed pets, and weren't big enough for the pet Amy wanted (a Golden Retriever) and so we had given the idea away for the time being.
But then the unit we are in went up for sale...
Initially I was very annoyed about that, we had gone to the trouble to move next door because it was a little bigger and alot newer and we thought we'd be more comfortable there, having resigned to the fact we would be renting for probably the next couple of years. But God is good, and he has been looking after our best interests even though we didn't know it. Amy's parents bought it! Which means we can basically do whatever we want, the rent has gone down, and because the Real Estate Lease has been dissolved and because there is a small back yard here we can get a pet! Obviously we couldn't get a dog as big as a Golden Retriever, so we went googling and settled on a Corgi.
Meet Bilbo, and yes that’s Bilbo as in Bilbo Baggins.
He is a male, Welsh Cardigan Corgi. He was pretty shy when we first got him
Unfortunately only a week after we got him he got very sick, we had to take him to the vet, he was there for several days, on a drip, when he came back he was a completely different puppy, which leads us to believe that he was unwell when we first got him.
He is now healthy, and a very lively little puppy.
He is really cute running in slow motion: https://vimeo.com/199427049
Something cool, we picked Bilbo up on the 10th of December. Thats significant because 10 is our number (and it was not intentionally so). We started dating on 10th March, I proposed on the 10th Feb (this one was not planned), our engagement party was on the 10th July (also not planned), and we got married on 10th January (this one was planned), and now the next significant event in our lives has happened on the 10th.
Thats pretty cool.
Live Long and Prosper.
Its Time to Lose the Beer Belly...
Well, technically its not a beer belly, I don't drink beer - actually, I hate the stuff - but it looks like one. And its long past time I got rid of it. Not to mention my health and stamina are somewhat lacking atm...
Meet my chosen fitness machine:
Its a GT Verb Elite, as far as bikes go its only a cheapy (no, Kmart bikes don't count) but I like it, its a good solid frame, in a cool colour, and its really nice to ride!
I bought a mountain bike for two reasons, first dual suspension was a must, since I had back problems a few years back riding my old hardtail was torture. Second, I want to be able to take it bush, once I get my stamina back up a bit (atm 5km is hard work, embarrassing I know..) I plan to take it on some local bike tracks, I am told there are some good ones around!
This also counts as my Christmas present this year, so I won't be opening much on the day, but I'm cool with that.
It Might Be Worth Something One Day..
The text was Amy's idea, I thought it was quite cool.
Meeting Beck & Joel's Newest Member
Beck made a surprise visit to Tassie the other day, so I finally had the pleasure of meeting little BMW (Benjamin Michael Walker)
Its been a very long time since I saw, or held a baby, I had forgotten how small they actually are!
Congratulations Beck & Joel :)
Bathurst 2016
Yep, I finally made it to Bathurst!
I have been wanting to go to Bathurst for a long time, but given the popularity of the event, and the costs to get up there, its never really been an option, but a few things have changed in the last 12 months or so. Early last year my motivation to go to Bathurst increased because v8 Supercars announced that as of 2017 the Car of the Future rules would allow additional engines into the category, at the same time renaming themselves to 'Supercars'. We wont go into how stupid I think this is, but having always wanted to go to Bathurst, I wanted to go to see v8s, not 4s or 6s. Don't get me wrong an inline turbo'd 6 is awesome, but not in a field of 26 v8s..
The other, and major contributing factor, I recently learned that an old mate of dads now lived in Bathurst, and on the off chance, I asked if he'd mind if myself and Rob pitched a tent in his back yard. He was more than happy to oblige! And so the planning began...
I organised a few days off work and we headed up, it would have been good to take a week and do a few things on the way up etc, but neither of use could afford that much time off work, we were on the boat Thursday night and spent Friday driving up, something like 800km.
On the way up we made a few stops worth mentioning, the first of which is probably the coolest, theres a town in NSW, no where near the ocean, that has a full size diesel submarine in the middle of town, yes you read that right, and it gets cooler, its not a mockup, its the actual outer hull from a real submarine that was in service for over 20 years!
A photo of it when it was still in service:
This photo was taken at the Naval Base in Devonport, New Zealand, which is on Auckland's Northern Shore, I thought that was cool.
The second stop was at Gundagai, which I didn't realise was an actual place, we went and found the 'Dog on a Tuckerbox'. Literally just a dog sized statue on a tuckerbox...
Also worth a mention, we passed a crash site where a B-Double loaded with dunny rolls had run off the road, down a bank and into the bush, leaving a trail of toilet paper on the highway for several hundred metres.
We arrived in Bathurst at around 6:30pm, and made our way straight to Pete's (dads mate) place, hoping to get our tent setup before dark, Pete and his wife were extremely friendly and accomodating, we got setup and headed into Bathurst for a look around, to grab some supplies and a feed.
Saturday, 8th October, 2016
Saturday was primarily to scout out the track, so we didn't bother getting up to early, I think we were on the track around 9am, people everywhere it was nuts! We spent the first half of the day looking around the merchandise tents (buying a few things), surprisingly in the merchandise area there was a fairly big Super Cheap store, its not surprising that they were there, but the size of the store was a surprise, and there were two of them! One trackside (near the pits) and one atop the mountain. We watched the V8 practice from just past the last corner, after which we went for a walk through the paddock, which nicely timed with a driver signing session, Craig's line was massive so I lined up to get Scotty's signature. Something else that was there of interest to me, not a week ago I saw this video on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVwY0JUK-O4
And Triple8 had the very car in the Paddock on display, it looks way cooler in the flesh!
We also checked out the Peter Brock tent, which had on show most of his actual race cars, it was very cool.
After lunch we jumped on a bus and headed up the mountain (you cant walk up), the bus was run by SCA and Club Plus members got free rides, so that was cool, we explored all over the mountain, looking for the best vantage point for tomorrows race. We watched the support races, as well as the top ten shootout from above the Esses. Scotty punched out a great opening lap, and was still on pole until the last challenger came out, that being JW, I didn't want Jamie to knock Scotty off pole, but he did, and after watching the lap from onboard later on, it was a hell of a lap.
Getting back into Bathurst took a good while, we attempted to leave earlier than everyone else, and I am glad we did, we made it back into town in time for our booking at a restaurant called Acropile Restaurant, we figured we've been eating plenty of junk food so we better have at least one decent feed.
Sunday, 9th October, 2016 - Race Day
Up at 6am to be there in good time and try to snag our chosen spot, the night before we checked the website to see if we could take a few alcoholic drinks in, it said we could, to a limit, but apparently the guys at security had a different set of rules, I had to walk back to the car with the cooler bag to remove the 'offending' cans. Once we got to the top of the mountain we high-tailed it across and found a spot very close to where we decided on yesterday, its probably not the best spot to watch, but we decided we needed to be in range of a SuperScreen, so we could keep up with all the action that didn’t happen in front of us, looking back now, I am glad we did.
We enjoyed the drivers parade, and the tribute to Peter Brock, a parade of most of his race cars, driven by current drivers who have won the Peter Brock Trophy, amusingly the car Jamie Whincup drove, ran out of fuel climbing the mountain…
Around 15 minutes before the race we got a second visit from an F18 Air Force Jet, a very impressive piece of machinery, but the coolest part, was when he flew less than 50m over our head, at a fraction under the speed of sound, I know because just after he went past us, I saw the white ‘effect’ that happens on the wings when they break the sound barrier, but it was not accompanied by a sonic boom, so he can’t have broken it, but he was close. If you dont know what I am talking about it looks like this:
It was an awesome experience, the ground shook as he flew overhead. Absolutely unbelievable.
Race time! Ah the moment was here at last, the v8s do there warm up lap and line up for the Great Race, and what a race it was, during the race I wondered all over the mountain watching, it truly is an incredible race track, and you can’t fully appreciate it until you have been there.
The atmosphere around the mountain was surreal, and it was quite amusing after the altercation late race involving Whincup, Scotty and Tander, for several laps the whole crowd boo’d and put the middle finger to Whincup as he went past (at the time we thought it was his fault, having watched all the footage later on I am not so sure). After the race we figured there would be no point rushing to get down off the mountain so we remained seated for a while, as people were leaving the amount of rubbish left behind was appalling, but it turned out good for me, someone ditched a pristine Super Cheap Bathurst camping chair, I had nearly bought one before the race so I grabbed it!
We bused down off the mountain and spent an age trying to get out of the parking lot. We grabbed Red Rooster for tea and went back to Petes, we had a good chat with him and his wife before heading to bed, thanked them for letting us stay in their backyard, they are amazingly friendly people!
MONDAY, 10 October, 2016
We chose to take two days to get home, given the distance, and the fact that we needed to be at the ship by around 5pm, we could have done it in a day but it would have required an early morning and carried a certain amount of risk. Looking back now I am most glad we chose to do it this way, we had a fairly relaxed morning, packed up the tent and went into Bathurst to do some shopping, I picked up a present for Amy, some beautiful ear rings. After that we headed out of town, to start the trek home, we went via the track, on the off chance it would be reopened, it wasn’t, well, pit straight was, but it was closed past the entrance to the internal campground, so of course we drove it, stopped for a few photos, and on the way out stopped to have a look at the Museum, we ended up there for longer than expected, we tried to find a geocache, got some photos with the Brocky statue, and explored the gift shop.
Upon leaving we decided to traverse pit straight one last time, and a pleasant surprise awaited us, the track was reopened!!
BEHOLD, my lap driving Bathurst:
It took 7 minutes and 30 seconds, but it was awesome!
We ended up leaving Bathurst way later than planned - but getting to drive the track was so worth it! Here are some photos from around the mountain.
^ Me driving up mountain straight.
^ Rob on top of the mountain
Heading down Conrod
Our original plan was to go home via Canberra, but given our late departure, we decided to instead just head for Melbourne, stopping along the way at anything of interest. We had also planned to pitch the tent somewhere, but the weather was getting worse the further south we got, and the forecast wasn’t great, so we booked a room in Albury.
TUESDAY, 11 October, 2016
Opposite the hotel we booked there was a massive bike shop, we timed leaving the motel so I could call in and have a look at some bikes, I was mainly after a look at a Giant Trance 3 - I came away wanting one. Maybe one day. Onward to Melbourne!
We arrived in Port Melbourne around 2pm and parked robs car at the TT Line office, and caught a tram into town. We visited Minotaur, Zing, EB Games, I also grabbed a box of krispy kremes,
and a range of OAK flavoured milks (they're really good!)
I got cookies & cream, cool mint and molten caramel. All far better than any flavours we have in Tassie.
We returned to the car in good time to load up, and get in line. We had tea onboard and played a game of Star Trek Catan before hitting the sack.
I hadn't intended to collect hats, but over the past few years at various Supercars events I've bought a few and well, its becoming quite the collection..
My favourites would have to be the red Bathurst 1000, and the Lowndes Bathurst Wins one.
My shot glass haul from this trip
I dont get to tick things off my bucket list very often, so it was pretty cool to be able to tick Bathurst off it.
Is This Pissing Anyone Else Off?
Warning: I am far to passionate about this sort of thing... I apologize in advance.
Manufacturers are finally providing us with awesome, simple and secure mobile payment methods (Apple Pay, Android Pay etc)
But of course the Australian Banks are fighting them:
http://www.macrumors.com/2016/07/27/australian-banks-challenge-apple-mobile-payment/
All because they have a ‘system’ in place… It stinks. I am sure money has something to do with it too.. ANZ has jumped on board, I just wish I could switch from CBA but I can’t :(
Some more blog posts to read regarding this issue:
http://www.macrumors.com/2016/08/10/apple-australian-banks-iphone-nfc-access/
http://www.macrumors.com/2016/08/19/australian-banks-denied-negotiate-apple-pay/
http://www.macrumors.com/2016/08/24/australian-retailers-back-banks-apple-standoff/
http://www.macrumors.com/2016/08/30/apple-australia-banks-harm-consumers/
I wish these people would get of their stuck up high horses and just give us (the consumer) what we want! It is us after all that keeps them all going…
No surprise here, hypocritical bastards:
Whats worse too, at least as far as CBA is concerned, Apple Pay was launched with the iPhone 6, in Sept of 2014, some six months later, in March of 2015, CBA launched there own ‘Tap & Pay’ system, now if they had launched this before Apple Pay was announced, you could possibly understand their position, but they didn’t come first, they launched their own, inferior payment method, AFTER Apple Pay was launched, knowing full well that iPhone users would want it in Aus ASAP, its their own stupid fault, grow up, get over it, admit you're idiots and move on. Give us what we want.
This doesn’t only go for Apple Pay, it goes for Samsung Pay and Android Pay as well, I am just focusing on Apple Pay more because I use an iPhone and its the service I would use.
Rant over.
We've Moved... Next Door
Yea its true, we have moved from Unit 2, to Unit 3, the existing tenant offered it to us before he told the real estate he was moving out, its a fair bit bigger, has a full kitchen, and also a garage for Sheldon, all for an extra $5/week, because he told us before the real estate we had time to find someone to take over Unit 2.
Birthday Shenanigans
Well its that time of year again, ticking over another digit on the grand counter of life. I used to think 24 was old...
Before we talk about birthdays shenanigans, some history: at the last LAN party we had at Jimmy's house the top 200mm exhaust fan on my PC tower chucked it i, I attempted a repair, with no luck, and unfortunately due to the design not just any old 200mm fan would do the job, a genuine is the only way to go, and they cost upward wards of $60, so, for my birthday this year I decided to buy myself a new chassis.
After loads of research (and I mean loads!) I settled on the Corsair Carbide Series Air 540, I love the divided chassis design, the cube shape, and its huge cooling capacity.
With the huge cooling capacity in mind I did some research on the best fans to use on my H100i cpu cooler, and matched chassis fans to that, working out the flow to keep positive pressure inside the case to help reduce dust. The result, my 2600k running at 4.8ghz never exceeds 60 degrees under full load.
On a side note these fans are quite impressive, with this build I was going for maximum performance so I skipped plugging fans into the motherboard and bought an 8 fan power splitter to power them all at full noise. When you power the machine on it shudders as the fans spin up, they have an insane amount of torque.
The build is basically the same as my previous chassis, one notable exception is I am putting two SSDs in that I have picked up over the past year or so, I put them in RAID 0, with some pretty impressive results, 1100mb/s read speed, 900mb/s write speed.
The finished build:
i7 2600k @ 4.8ghz
32GB DDR3 1866mhz RAM @ 1984mhz
Asus P8P67 Deluxe Board
Corsair H100i CPU Cooler with SP120 & AF120 fans in Push-Pull
2x EVGA GTX 780 Superclocked GPUs in SLI
2x 240GB SSDs in RAID 0
2x 1TB HDDs in RAID 0
OCZ 1250w PSU
A lot of the components in this build are getting old now, I first built this when Intel released Sandy Bridge and the 2600k was brand new! And now nearly 5 years on, and with a mild overclock this machine is still very powerful, I am very happy with this, and I am keen to put it to the test (a LAN, of course)!
For my birthday Amy wanted to buy me a fancy whisky, so we decided to go away for a weekend to explore some Tasmanian Whiskies, which meant a trip to Hobart! We invited Ek & Grant and planned a 3 day trip.
Day 1:
On the way down we stopped in at Nant, supposedly a highly regarded Tasmanian whisky, the distillery was pretty cool, built inside an old Flour Mill which has been restored. Personally I didnt really like the Nant that much, however tastings are always straight, and I am not a massive fan of drinking whiskey straight, so I bought 2x 40ml tasters to try at home.
Next stop, Redlands Distillery, this tour was different, but just as good as Nant, these guys had recently moved locations and so their distillery was not fully up and running yet, but our tour guide was the Master Distiller himself, he was an awesome bloke, and let us taste the whiskey at each step of the process. Again tho I didn't really like the final product, at this point I am starting to think I just don't really like 'Single Malt' Whiskies, which is what Tasmanian is known for.
After that we headed to our accomodation and checked in, then headed out to find some tea, ending up at a Burger Got Soul, they make a damn good burger! Including this one called 'The Mount Wellington' - which Grant just could not resist.
Day 2:
Less whisky today, it was more of a relaxing fun day, we went shopping in the CBD, I took Amy to Puddleduck Vineyard (she's always wanted to go there), after which we enjoyed a relaxing lunch in Richmond (where we got engaged) and then headed back to town to meet up with Grant & Ek. Tea tonight was at Hogs Breath.
Day 3:
Off to Bruny Island today to visit the Tasmanian House of Whisky, a place where every single bottle of Tasmanian made whisky can be found, it was very, very cool! We spent a good while looking around at all the whiskies, trying to decide which one we would taste (it was expensive). In the end we decided to try a whisky called The Exile:
This is a one of a kind whisky, only 344 bottles were made, and of those only 1 remains for sale, the definition of rare! And at $795 a bottle its not the most expensive in the world, but as far as Tasmanian whiskies go I believe it is only beaten out by one, the Sullivans Cove Single Malt which won best Single Malt in the world last year. The Exile was a very nice whisky, my favourite to have straight, unfortunately Ill never get the chance to try it with coke (some would say oh thank goodness, apparently mixing expensive whiskies is frowned upon). While we were at the House of Whisky I picked up a few empty bottles of rare whiskies to add to my collection (yes a collection of empty bottles). We didn't get too long on Bruny Island, we filled the remainder of our time visiting the Bruny Island Honey shop, I would have liked to see more of the island, next time! We stopped in at a few shops on the way home, including a small chocolate shop filled with all kinds of home made chocolate delights, made by an apparently world famous chocolatier who has been flown all around the world to make chocolate. After that it was off to find my birthday present, Amy is getting me an expensive whisky, I had planned on a fancy Tasmanian one but so far I didn't like them enough to spend that much on one, so we went around a few bottle shops and I settled on a bottle of Johhnie Walker Blue Label ($220/bottle).
On the way home we stopped at Campbell Town for a feed and that brings us to the end of a pretty epic weekend! Thanks to my beautiful wife for the Birthday present, and the idea for this epic trip!!
Everyone, There's Someone I'd Like You to Meet
As most of you would know I have two cars, Snuffy the Patrol, and Leroy the Turbo Diesel Pug, a cheap to run runabout for daily commuting.
When Amy and I got married we added Amys car, a Nissan Micra, known as Stevie, to the garage, giving us a grand total of 3 cars.. 3 cars for two people..
When we got married the Patrol was down an alternator and so having three was actually useful, but overall in the long run 3 is overkill and doesn't make much sense.
Now the obvious solution here is to sell one and keep the other, right? Well, Yes, but that's boring. Amy has always wanted a Mini, and we had an opportunity to sell the Micra back to her parents, to become her sisters first car, and someone else is interested in Leroy, so we thought lets sell them both and see if we can find a Mini, so we went looking around..
Meet Sheldon: The John Cooper Works Mini Cooper
Amy has always wanted a Mini, and I have always liked the new models but never really considered owning one until now, I was happy to get Amy her dream car, but I thought, lets try and find a Cooper S, something I can have fun in too! So we went looking, we drove a clapped out Cooper S here in devonport, and we drove a boring run of the mill Mini in Evandale, and then I found Sheldon on gumtree, and it looked so good that I thought I just have to go and have a look at that, at the time I hadn’t considered it an option due to its price, I just wanted to have a look at the creme de la creme of Mini’s, and hopefully have a drive of it!
Well I did, and I walked away thinking that would be the perfect Mini for us, only 2 owners, low kms, and has been extremely well looked after, the thing was spotless, and drove like a brand new car, even smelled like one! Despite being a 2008 model, so we bought it, and we love it, its fast, comfortable, and lots of fun! I find myself actually enjoying the trip now, not just keen to arrive at my destination. I enjoyed the Pug, but it was just a commuter car.
And the best part, it sounds amazing! It has a full stainless steel low back pressure exhaust system, it sounds great, and its loud enough to be noticed, but not loud like tho wankerish commodore etc getting about.
Here’s a link to a video I found on youtube showing what it sounds like, it sounds way better in person, but you’ll get the idea: https://youtu.be/XdoCJ0j0A4Y?t=599
Its Days Like Today I'm Glad I Own a Patrol.
Over 200mm of rain hit places of north tassie last night, causing flash flooding the likes of which tassie hasn't seen for years, this is Latrobe from the air this afternoon:
Under these circumstances most people cant get around, it doesn't take much water on the road to stop a 2wd car, though people still try...
I enjoy going out in Snuffy (the patrol) on days like today, exploring, checking out the flooding, knowing that there’s not many places I cant get :)
I didn't find any places that were too difficult to get today, it was still fun!
I did find something unbelievable though, I drove Amy to Launceston this morning in Snuffy, she had an exam to be at, we left early in case there were any floods etc that we'd be forced to go around, on the way I thought we'd call into the dam we just finished a month ago to see how it fared, this is what it looked like on Friday:
That’s a photo from a few weeks back when we finished it - but the important thing here is the water level, it was at this level coming into this weekend, Sunday night it wasn't much higher than this.
To my surprise when we arrived this is what I saw:
This dam has a capacity of just over 100 ML (1ml=1,000,000 liters) - its pretty crazy that it could fill up overnight! And not only fill up, but run over the spillway a half meter deep!
You may not have noticed in that second photo but, take a closer look:
We are extremely lucky here, we need to do some maintenance on the dozer after this job, so we moved it up onto an undisturbed bank, fresh green, clean grass to work on (we had to spend a lot of time underneath it - and that really sucks in the mud!).
10 meters in front of and behind the dozer the land drops away several meters, our original parking spot was approx 20 meters in front of where the dozer is now, had we left it there to work on it... well, lets just say you wouldn't be seeing much in this photo...
This photo was taken this afternoon, the water level had dropped around half a meter by this stage.
Dams are never meant to fill this quickly the first time, for several reasons its best to fill them slowly, in this case we needed to keep water off the spillway to allow it to grow grass and become established before letting water over it (well established, grass growing soil doesn’t wash as easily) - but mother nature had other plans.. as a result the spillway took a lot of damage and we had to take our 3 ton digger down to do some damage control
Its not very often you go swimming with an excavator :)
What a crazy day!