I don't understand

I had the baked beens on Saturday morning.

What's going on?

Ikea

What is it about Ikea that makes it so soul destroying?

We lost a second weekend in a row to the search for, portage of, and consequent construction of:

2 Pine beds
2 Under bed storage boxes
1 Pine bookcase
4 Sets of draws
2 Large cabinets
1 Squat cabinet
2 Rugs (to match the bedding)
2 Stripy animal pattern sets of sheets
2 Stripy animal pattern doner covers
2 Stripy animal pattern pillow covers
2 Stripy animal pattern cushions

On the plus side the kids love their new beds and have heaps more room and I now have a cool new power tool to put Ikea furniture together

Mac Update

Hot air balloon flight - 0 comments
Dinosaurs - 1 comment
New Macbok Pro - 9 comments

-- you mac ppl are cultists --

installed Firefox because Safarie is... well its not Firefox.

I've got iCal syncing with my google calendar via GCALDaemon - it's not perfect as there is still some issues with leapoard but it does sync both ways (it just doesn't delete).

I've got in under the hood and remapped the keyboard so that the common windows shortcuts still work, home, end, ctrl + c, ctrl + v and a few others.

My phone (Nokia 6110) is sycing via blue tooth with iCal and my address book.

The MS Office apps are working fine, as is Windows and Ubuntu linux via parallels (yes, I know VMware is betterbut s is better than nothing and that was the choice, it's a work machine init.

For password management I found a version of KeePass (KeePassX) that runs fine.

I'm still looking for a good LAMP type development toolkit.

How am I looking - cool, stylish?

I should hope so, because this is being posted from my new Macbook Pro - the big one, wide wide screen, zillions of gigglebytes per nano second or whatever.

off to watch a movie on it - bye

Balloon Flight

One of the cool thing about having friends that do interesting stuff is that sometimes they drag you along for the ride. Last thing last night Sean gave me a ring and said they were a passenger down for the flight scheduled for the next day - did I want to come? Um sure, hold on let me rearrange baby duties for the morning - rang mother in law, pleaded - rang Sean - yep, all sorted. One of the down sides of being a hot air balloon pilot is the 04:30 starts.
05:30 we meet up at Parramatta Park. Sean consulted the met, made some decisions regarding take-off locations and landing locations based on wind speed and direction then we jumped in the minibus with the crew and 16 0r so punters and headed out to the launch location just south west of Penrith.
Every few years I get to fly with Sean at some event or another. Before I got married I regularly tagged along and crewed for him at events in Canowindra or Midura - crazy times.
This flight was more sedate than those in his smaller competition balloon. But lovley none the less. It is an amazing way to experience the world.

Thanks Sean

So, um, yep. we went down to Mum and Dad's place.

We took advantage of the long weekend and headed down to Tuross to spend the long weekend with Mum and Dad. It is always nice to slow down for a time and spend time with my folks. The kids are getting older - Adrian is almost speaking and is certainly interacting much more which was great for Dad especially. Annalise learnt to ride a bike (with training wheels). She got peddling together, can steer and can use the breaks, tho' not necessarily at the same, or at the right time. She also likes to look at where she has been and not where she is going.

One one of the nicest days we pointed the 4X4 at the bush tracks and forestry roads in the hinterland. Driving west on the Runnyford Rd which leaves the highway just north of Mogo we wound our way up and over the first of the foothills of the Great Dividing Range. The road winds around generally north-ish via an amazing wooden bridge at Runnyford and ends at Nelligan on the Clyde River. From there we took The River Road, another dirt track, north following along the west bank of the Clyde up to Shallow Crossing where you wash the dust off fording. From there you take The Old Princess highway through the bush back down to the coast. Not that you would usually call a dirt road a highway. We lunched at South Duras beach. Famous for, among other things, where Alex and I got married.

Amazingly I didn't put on any weight. I normally manage a kilo or three.

Oh, and dad gave me his boat. Now I just have to learn to drive it.

photos