Birthday presents

are cool :)

Too many cool presents to list here, but the picture shows the coffee machine and wraparound surfing sunglasses that my folks bought me.

The weekend was amazing, and we took nearly a gig of photos and movies. Will be posting them on fatcat soon!

2 days 'til the big one

yep - I turn 30 on Sunday. I haven't really thought about it much (unusual for me!), and in fact typing that just now makes it feel more like it's really about to happen. We can't really muster enough of a crowd for a party, and it's a great excuse to get away for the weekend (take the Forester for a cruise!) so we're heading south to the Gold Coast Hinterland. We're staying 2 nights in a mighty fine chalet with good bush walking nearby, and we're booked in for an afternoon's whale watching from Byron Bay. We loaded up on tasty naughty foods yesterday, and I'm anticipating some relaxed eating and drinking.

Other news - World Cup! England are through, and so are the Socceroos. I've been absolutely gripped by the competition (as ever), and over here that means tinkering with my sleep pattern to make sure I don't miss games that kick off at 11pm, 2am or 5am. Hooray for the media centre - I've had a fair share (maybe more than a fair share....) of hassle with it, but it's doing it's job of reliably recording stuff, and allowing TV to be paused and rewound even while it's recording. People over here are really behind their team, and it's been a historic performace too. It's quite nice not to have to endure the negative media pressure that's always piled on the England team during a World Cup.

It's mid winter here. Daytime top temps are still 20 degrees and above, and lows over night only just dip below 10 degrees. Not too bad at all, really. Still, I'm wearing Ugg boots round the house, and bought a fantastically warm merino wool jacket that I seem to be wearing anytime that I'm not lying in bed.

it's alive!

after quite few evenings, well, too many really, spent kicking, cajoling, courting and cursing the PC, I finally got the damn thing to become a media center (sic) - hooray!

Phase 1 is now complete - I have a noisy but functional PC sitting next to the TV, ready to record to the hardrive, in time for the start of the world cup. The problem of those awkward kickoff times is now solved!

Phase 1.5 involves adding a remote control, and a wifi card

Phase 2, I guess, will involve a bit more of a rebuild. Probably add a second HDD and card reader, then shoehorn the lot into a smaller, slicker box.

god, my life's exciting! :)

Another big day

It's still one thing after another for us - today brought 2 huge developments:

• Skye got a new job
  
• we bought a new car!

Going into detail about work isn't always appropriate here, so I won't mention much about the new job thang, but I will mention much about the new vehicle :)

It's a silver Subaru Forester, 2.5 litre, all wheel drive, pop-out cup-holders, cruise control, air con (at last!), CD player, smooth as silk - it's the kind of nice car that we've seen other people driving around in but never seemed to own ourselves. The car salesman was unexpectedly straight up and decent, the finance company were easy to deal with, even the insurance people were friendly and accomodating. To top it off, it even fits into the garage under the house :) All we need to do now is buy one of each of the official Subaru accessories (oh, and there's a whole brochure of those!) and then she'll be right (as they say).

....but is it appropriate to name a car....?

New developments

Undoubtedly the most important and best news in ages is that a pair of new Byer babies were born just after midnight on june 1st, everyone happy and healthy. Welcome to the world, little Solomon Maurice and Joelle Ilse!

Anything else seems very insignificant following that kind of news, but there is other news so I'll state it here anyway :) I have begun the hard work of turning a tired old PC into a shiny new media centre PC. Hooray for umart, who allow you to shop online and then scoot straight over to pick up the goods! A new DVD writer, 120GB hard drive and fancypants dual digital TV tuner card will be the bones of the system, and should be enough to get it up and running in time for the world cup. Fripperies like remote control, shiny hi-fi style case and super quiet fans will have to come along later.

...and, after an hour on the phone and frantic webpage refreshing, I have 8 tickets to the first day of the first Ashes test here in Brisbane! 23rd November should be a day to remember, and I've plenty of time to practice my sledging