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Sunday, July 27, 2014

Family Rowing

Today the Grammarians rowing club had a "family day" at lake kurwongbah.  Megan, Chris, Dan, Jemma & I left pretty much straight after church and drove up.  Marcus unfortunately had work and was unable to join us.

The weather was beautiful.  Sunny.  A light breeze. 
Megan was first in a boat rowing comfortably in 6 seat.  The boat is "The Barrel".  In the same boat in 4 seat was Angus who is the cox of the boat I normally row in.






















Chris and Dan each got a chance to drive the speed boat.























My personal goal was to have a go in a single scull.



















Jemma and I went out in a double scull.  Jemma is keen to take up rowing,




Thursday, July 24, 2014

Australia's Insane Employment Law

800 pages of fairwork act.
Plus 120 modern awards.

Very few other countries have awards based systems. France,  Ireland.

Australians get 10 stick days a year and tend on average to take 8 or 9. (Depends on what newspaper or web site you read)

Australia and NZ are the only countries with long service leave. (In case you forget you get 6 weeks holiday after 10years with the same employer)

Having worked out which of the 120 so called "Modern Awards" actually applies to your company or staff you try and work out how much is the minimum pay for a person.  First you try to read the award and it is so convoluted and confusing that you go to  http://paycheck.fwo.gov.au/PayCheckPlus.aspx.  There are literally hundreds of classifications.  There are numbers and letters like C7 and C12 and so on.  The fear is that if you classify someone the wrong way the rabid public servants will haunt you for the rest of your days.





This is just made to get unions and lawyers involved.  No individual could ever hope to understand it.

No wonder Australia has such a high cost base.

Now I can understand the government providing a safety net like a national minimum wage but all these awards.  All these little details.  Its &%$@&^%$#&^.




Sunday, July 20, 2014

Making an axe

Megan and I were invited to Pauls 48th Birthday party.  It was a Alice in Wonderland Murder Mystery.  My character was the executioner.  I needed an axe to behead any recalcitrant characters that took the displease of the Queen of Hearts.
Jemma cut out the head and later Dan painted it.

The pole was 18mm conduit and I used the drop saw to slice a slip into the top of it.  Some black plastic tape tape was wound around the top of the conduit after the head was installed.
 Tried it out.  It worked on Cats (Oreo)
 An teenagers (Marcus)
 Girls and Boys too

Even Dogs are not spared.






Pauls 48th Birthday Party - Alice in Wonderland Murder Mystery




The theme was a Alice In Wonderland Murder Mystery.

We started with a cheese fondu and then did part of the murder mystery. Then we had a chocolate fondu and then the final part of the mystery.

In hindsight a couple of wines does not help ones deductive powers



Megan was the Queen of Hearts.  Paul indulged himself by purchasing a costume for Cybele on Ebay.  It did not fit. So I was the beneficiary.  Cute eh.

I went as the Executioner.

The Queen of Hearts would scream "Off with their head" whenever anyone displeased her.  I was only too happy to oblige.


Paul as the Mad Hatter with Mel MaryAnne (White Rabitts Maid)







Post Rowing Coffee

Today Sunday got up for rowing at 5:00am.  Later than the usual 4:15 rise.  Today we met at 5:45.

We started with a warm up.  I am very keen to get our crew in the habit of warming up.  We have a rotating door of injuries and it would be good to reduce those.

The warm up I am doing basically starts with a short jog.  The focus is on keeping the back vertical to start with.  Then we do a few leg swings and lastly we end up with some torso movement. 

Greg Carroll came and coached.  To me coaching is essential to technique improvement and Greg has great attention to that.  Son Chris subbed in at the last minute and rowed 2 seat.  I took up bow seat.  Its kind of nice to sit up there and get a view of the crew but cripes it is hard.

Our crew was
Bow: me
2: Son Chris.
3: Bart
4: Rob
5:  Peter Hastie
6: Jeff Clark
7: Anthony
8: Gary
Cox: Emma
Coach: Greg

On the water exercises included:
Placing the oars in the water at the finish and then pushing up to the catch and turning round and taking a stroke.
Square blade rowing in 4's

After rowing the obligatory coffee at Albertos










Sunday, July 13, 2014

Install Virtual Box and Ubuntu on Windows 7

OBJECTIVE:
1. Download & Install Virtual Box
2. Install a Ubuntu server in the VM

ACTION
https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads
Choose
save VirtualBox-4.3.12-93733-Win.exe
run the installer - Done.

PROBLEM:
Get an error:
"This kernal requires an X86-64 CPU, but only detected an i686 CPU. 
Unable to boot - please use a kernel appropriate for your CPU. "
Grr.  Given that I have a 64bit hardware CPU but surely we are in a virtual world here and I would have thought it should at least pretend to be 64 bits or 128 bits if things were so wanted.  Apparently not.

SOLUTION
https://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/12350
Uninstall Hyper-V









Thursday, July 10, 2014

Visit to Aunty Anna

Henry and I drove to Toowoomba.  The primary reason was to visit aunty Anna.

First we went and visited a school friend of Henry's who has a company that makes desserts.  It was interesting to see that here is a manufacturing business in Australia and is able to continue to supply to woolies and coles.

Then we drove to Aunty Anna's house. Knowing that anything associated with computers was time consuming aunty Anna suggested we start by looking at the computer.  Some tinkering and we established a call to tech support was required.   Placed the call and luckily tech support had a call back feature so we went to lunch.

Lunch was at a pub bistro at the Wilsinton shops.  Barra with Holondaise sauce.

Back to Aunty Anna's and an enjoyable back verandah chat interspersed with playing with her little dog.

Finally tech support called back and we sorted out some issues but as with any computer issue we left with the issue only partially resolved.

Then onto Afternoon tea with Richard Hodhson & his wife Kerry at a cafe in Mary st.

Then we drove past Boyce ct which was looking neat and tidy.

Back to Brisbane. Megan had cooked a beautiful dinner.

Great gran Elenor Von Stieglitz

Old Franks mother.

Name change from von stieglitz  ccurred when old Frank was fighting in the trenches in WW1 and his co said that he should change his name in case he was captured by the Germans.

Monday, July 7, 2014

Aunty Margaret's great grandmother

ORFF post conference dinner

Friday night and Megan and I are out to dinner at Indooroopilly bowles club.  It is the post conference dinner fire her ORFF mob.   In this context ORFF is a music teaching methodology.

Syndetic celebrates

We shipped a big important order in the final week of last fin year to a very valuable customer. We had had a number of uni students helping us out. We ran 2 shifts each day finishing at midnight. To thank them we shouted gokarting. A good adrenaline rush. 

Btw 1Jul is 15 years since we started.