Toni's Corner of the World

It's a miserable day here in the Riverina and I spent much of the day driving around the countryside. This morning I drove to Tumut to pick Dad up to take him to Wagga. I couldn't get over how green it is up around Gundagai and Tumut, and driving back from Tumut to Wagga it's sad to see that the fields around Wagga are still all bare and brown looking. All the rain that we've had the last few days has done little for the drought in these parts.

Dad was all ready when I got to Amity and waited in the car while I brought all his gear out. One of the nurses loaded up a wheelchair and that made the job a bit easier. We had a final look around the main street in Tumut while I quickly ran in and cancelled his paper and Chemist account. Dad was quite taken with the drive; it's been many years since he's been that way and didn't think it would be likely he'd be seeing it again. Kind of sad to be resigned to having a look at something for the last time.

We got to the hostel around 12, just in time for lunch, and as it turned out, he knew 2 people that were at his table. That will certainly make settling in there a lot easier. His room is real cosy, on the end of a row not far from the gazebo that is the designated smoking area.

After I got Dad all settled, I picked up Carly and she did nearly an hour's driving on her Learner's Permit. Talk about a stressful hour. I've decided that next time she can go with a driving instructor and I'll pay for one lesson and she can pay for another one. I'm not a good driving teacher, far too short with her and too stressed out. I was gripping the seat in a death grip.

Last Friday we ran the Skate Comp for the April school holiday program and once again it rained and had to be called off. Prizes were given out for the scooters from the last washed out comp, and we managed to get through all the bikes this time, so they got prizes as well. This photo is of Alex on a borrowed BMX getting some air before he drops into the big bowl.

Alex and Jake at Alex's birthday lunch

Carly at Alex's birthday lunch

Jake at Alex's birthday lunch

Scarlett enjoying herself at Alex's birthday lunch

I had a day off work and took Alex to Borambola for the YouthRoc camp. He'll be there till Wednesday afternoon so I have the house to myself for a few days. He went last year and was keen to go again when I suggested it.

From Borambola I drove in to Wagga and picked up Carly for her apprenticeship signing. We've been waiting for this to happen all year so we were both pretty pleased that she's finally signed up. She'll attend TAFE one day a week and we got her kit and uniform for the course. La Porchetta covered the cost until the cheque from the apprenticeship people arrives, so it felt like a bit of a shopping spree. The kit has everything you could think of for the kitchen, so may knives that I didn't know what they were for (just as well Carly did).

Now if I could just get her to cook for me occasionally!

I spent a couple of hours last week at Lauren's trying to get the shared internet connection to work but with no luck. I think it has something to do with the ad-hoc wireless setup. The firewall refuses to start and so ICS won't work either. A even tried a system restore to get thinkgs back to normal but that didn't work either. I spent another few hours today trying to get it to work but without much luck again. I set up a proxy server as an alternate solution to ICS but Carly wasn't impressed, her browser crashed every 5 minutes. I'm at a loss.

It's Youth Week and to celebrate the Council put on a free movie bus trip for seniors. I took Alex and a couple of his mates, plus there was about 15 others on the bus, and we had tea at McDonalds and then had a choice of about 4 different movies. Alex and his friends watched Mall Cop and I watched Knowing, with Nicholas Cage and Rose Byrne.

Knowing was fantastic and had me jumping out of my seat a couple of times. That doesn't normally happen to me, and movies tend to be predictable, and although you could see what was coming with this one, there were a few surprises too. Well worth watching. Unfortunately, Alex and his mates thought their movie was pretty lame so I wouldn't recommend it.

Wow, 2 posts in 2 days, I hope I can keep this up. I was hoping Carly would join us tonight but she had yesterday and today off work and went to Canberra.

It's ages since I last posted anything and my only excuse is Facebook. That site just takes up more and more of my time.

Well, Carly and I went to see Coldplay in Melbourne on 3 March and it was fantastic. We borrowed a TomTom and had the voice of Austin Powers giving us directions around Melbourne. That was pretty funny. The trip was good, but shocking when we got to that area devastated by the bushfires. There was just no colour in the landscape at all. Everything was black and white with shades of grey. Talk about depressing!

Finding our motel was a nightmare and never having driven around Melbourne's centre didn't help. We parked the car and walked to the address, then when we knew where it was, went back and got the car and found one of those all-night parking garages. Everywhere we went we had to pay to park the car and I must have over a hundred dollars just on parking for the 2 days.

We caught a tram to the concert along with lots of other people, so we were able to just follow the crowd. We were seated nearly at the roof in the Rod Laver Arena but we could see everything. There was a couple of big screens mounted and the sound was awesome. Coldplay were excellent. At first we thought it was pretty ordinary, but once they changed the stage and came out again it was "showtime". It was great. They played till nearly 11 pm and I loved every bit of it. Carly was also impressed.

Shopping was the big thing on Carly's agenda and we spent the rest of the time in Melbourne going around all the factory outlets and both managed to spend a fortune. She drove for an hour on the way home but it was too boring for her and it was with relief that I took over the wheel again. At 80 kmp it would have taken forever to get home.

Carly has moved in with Lauren and Daniel and so it's pretty quiet here at home with just me and Alex. I'm missing her more than I thought I would. It's Alex's 14th birthday next Sunday and I haven't a clue what to buy him. It seems they have everything already.

Dad is up at Amity in Tumut and seems to like it, though he says he doesn't. He laughs and jokes much more than he used to, and they let him smoke to his heart's content so I'm pretty sure it's not so bad. I've been visiting every fortnight and Warren, Julie and David have visited too, so I hope he's not feeling abandoned. His feet are still very sore and the bandages are still on. They hurt like hell and he thinks they're getting no better, but he said that the nurses say they're improving and they did say it would take months.

My computer is still in pieces and I still haven't sorted the problems I had with the hard drive. I've got it sitting on the floor with the side off and the 3rd hard drive sitting there, plugged in, because I can't access the 2nd hard drive without it. I think I'll need to ditch one and reformat the other, then I'm thinking I'll install Windows 7 and have a bit of a play with that. From what I've heard, it sounds like it's very similar to Vista so I shouldn't have any problem. Time is my biggest enemy. There just isn't enough of it.

I've had a week of computer problems that I tried to ignore during the week but the drain on performance was obvious.

Early in the week I had the dreaded BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) that went away after a reboot. The first signs of a problem.

Last Sunday night when my backup started it returned an error saying it couldn't read the data folder... another sign of trouble looming. I discovered there was a bad sector on the partition I used to store all my personal data. That particular 320 GB disk was split up into 4 partitions: a Vista install, my Documents, my websites and technical stuff, and all the TV shows I'd downloaded.

I've got 2 × 1 TB external drives that I back up to, so I copied over all the TV shows, and already had backups of the other 3 partitions. I deleted the faulty partition and re-routed some of the links, copying all my data back to the original My Documents location and pointing the links to the new location. That helped with the speed of the computer and things looked like they were back to normal.

I could boot into Vista, but because it too was looking for the corrupted data drive, it hung and did nothing, and was totally useless.

Yesterday I removed the drive from the computer, then I couldn't boot into XP because of the boot loader that Vista uses. I put the drive back in the computer but it didn't fix the problem. I used a couple of utilities off the Hiren's Boot Disk and managed after 4 frustrating hours to finally boot into XP. From there I was able to delete the boot manager files (renamed them actually because they're impossible to delete) and now the computer boots up normally again.

Previously I had 3 hard drives in the computer. The added the 3rd hard drive and it hung on boot again and wouldn't do anything, so at the moment I have just the one hard drive in the box, and the 2 external drives. The 2nd hard drive has a backup of my xp install, and all the software I've downloaded for the last couple of years, something I don't want to lost, but something I can't access at the moment.

I haven't given up, there has to be a way to get everything working again, though the 320 gb disk is probably as Bob says. I can live without it.

As usual, I've had a very busy few weeks. On Monday I took Dad to Tumut to the Aged hostel there where he'll stay until a spot comes up either here in Junee or in Wagga. The place is lovely and Dad was okay about going there. We drove through Gundagai and the smoke from the Victorian bush fires was so thick you couldn't see the hills around Gundagai. It was eerie.

Tuesday night Dad rang to say he didn't like it and I was a bit taken aback, though he said the same about Junee Hospital when he first went there so I'm hoping that as he settles in, his attitude will change. Alex and I are going to Tumut tomorrow to visit.

Carly is packing all her clothes for a move to Wagga! Lauren is going to move both boys into the bigger bedroom and give Carly the smaller room, so she won't have the problem of getting to work each day. Today, for instance, she didn't start work until 2pm, but had to get the bus at 7.30am because the bus company cut out the Friday run at 10.30am, and the 1.20pm train is too unreliable to count on getting to work on time.

I'm going to miss Carly when she finally leaves. She's a great help around the house, the one who cleans up the mess that Alex leaves. He's a shocker! You can tell exactly where he's been by the trail he leaves. Yesterday when I got home from work it wasn't too hard to work out that he'd been working on his bike in the lounge-room. Tools everywhere! The school left where it was dropped. Clothes flung on the lounge, empty cups on the coffee table. It's about time I started training him to clean up after himself.

Happy Valentine's day for tomorrow, and Daniel, happy birthday.

For the last week the temperatures have hovered around the 40 degree Celcius mark, and hitting 43 degrees yesterday. Alex and I camped in the lounge-room for a couple of nights with the air-conditioner but last night, thankfully, it was a little cooler and I managed a good night's sleep in my own bed. That's probably the worst part - the tossing and turning through the night. I can even handle getting into a car that threatens to burn off your nose hairs and sear your throat, with a steering wheel that you have to keep taking your hands off or they'll burn. But those sleepless nights, they're hard to take.

I haven't seen Carly since Wednesday. Now that she's working she's staying over at Lauren's house a lot more, and Lauren has suggested her own room there. Carly still has her friends and sporting commitments here so I guess she'll continue to stay between both places. It's quiet here without her, no music blaring from her room, no scream tantrums with Alex.

I bought a 2nd-hand whipper snipper just before Christmas at the markets and managed to get the front of the house done for the big day, with the motor idling. The throttle wouldn't work. Then Alex was using it out the back and the head stopped spinning. Now because it's about 5 weeks since buying it, I couldn't very well take it back, so I asked Alex to have a look at it. He's a genius when it comes to motors - it's going better than ever. He fixed the throttle and the head, and even cleaned up around the tap where the grass was so lush from the leak there. His father was also good at fixing motors so it must be in the genes. I'm very proud of him.

Okay, for those of you that know what my title acronym stands for then you know why I haven't posted much lately. For those of you in the dark, it means "Same Shit Different Day". My life has taken on a very rigorous routine and every day is pretty much like the one before it.

This weekend is a little different because Monday is Australia Day and I don't have to go to work. Dad's still in hospital, so holiday or not, he's expecting me there every day to take him outside for an hour. I normally do it after work, so my days have been very long, getting home from work around 6.30pm, then if Carly's working, it's off to Wagga around 8 or 9.30 to pick her up. I don't mind the drive to Wagga, it's a half-hour run, and quite relaxing. Then another half-hour to get back home, but during that time I can catch up with Carly and comfortable even when we don't talk. She's been staying at Lauren's since Wednesday because she's had a 10am start each morning. It's been quiet with just Alex and I, and most nights he's slept at mates' houses.

I've discovered another distraction too, like I need one, and it's taking up way too much of my time. Yes, Facebook. I've been a Facebook user for ages now, but never really got into it until I discovered Hatchlings, one of the many applications that has me hooked. I went from about 10 to 130 friends in a couple of weeks just so I could search their nests (unless you play you probably don't know what I'm talking about). It's amazing, but I've actually met some very nice people from all over the world, who love to chat and actually get to know you. Facebook has built-in chat that makes it easy to talk in real time, and I've found that I'm logging in morning, lunch and night to see who is online. It's crazy, I feel like I've been hijacked.

School goes back next week and today Alex and I went to Wagga and bought everything he needs to start off the new school year. Everyone else must have had the same idea, because it was a nightmare trying to get a park, then jostling the crowds in the school supplies aisles. We survived, and it didn't hurt the budget too much either which was a nice surprise.

Congratulations to Carly who today got her learner driver licence. And my, isn't it costly these days! Nearly $100 later, Carly got to get her photo taken, but not before she went home to put on some makeup.

I picked Carly up from work tonight and let her drive home. It was a wobbly experience, with me so tense in the passenger seat, and on her case about watching the speed limit and the centre line, she probably won't be in a hurry to go driving with me again. Her first drive, and at night, might not have been the best idea. Between toggling the high-beam, trying to keep the car on the road, and me in her ear, it couldn't have been a good experience.

Tomorrow I think we'll try for half an hour around some back streets here in Junee to teach her how to take corners properly. I might also need to think about adding her to my car insurance, just to be on the safe side.

Wow, I remember last New Year's Eve like it was only last week. Alex and I shared a stubbie last year, we had a glass of beer each to toast the New Year. This year he insisted on a full one to himself.

I picked Carly up from work around 9.30pm last night after I picked up Zeke and Riley from Lauren's. She and Daniel had plans for a night out and Daniel's mum got sick at the last minute. I don't mind them sleeping over, they're no trouble at all, and both Alex and Carly are excellent with them. Zeke slept with Alex, and we set up the travel cot for Riley in Carly's bedroom.

Today Emily and Kai came over with meet for a BBQ so we had a bit of a family get-together, which is always nice.