Taize

The third religious observance of the day was a Taize service organised by Cybele in the evening at Sherwood UC.

I really "enjoyed" it.  Well found it refreshing if that is the right description.

We sat on the floor.  A few candles and subdued lighting.  Got a numb bum.  Sang songs, prayed and had 10min? silence.

No photos because, well flash photos kind of spoil the mood.

Sunday

Three religious observances today.
Church
Dump
Church

At morning church we were given this piece of paper that describes the emotional response to disaster recovery.

Now am I the only one who finds this whole process a positive one?

Even when I read this sheet, it seems so positive.  There are heroic activities, expectations of help, promises, rebuilding.

For me personally, the whole thing thing has been great.
We threw out a whole lot of junk that was cluttering our house.
I met people on our street who I have seen but never spoken to and others who I had not even seen.
We had communal meals together.
I had people help me
I helped other people.
I went canoeing through McDonalds.
No one in my close circle of friends was injured or killed.

So I am torn.  On the one hand I would not wish a disater on anyone and especially not the life taking disaster that occurred in Toowoomba and Lockyer valley but on th eother hand  for me personally it has been a great experience.



I do think that I am at the Disillusionment stage.
To me the Feds should set up a disater recovery fund and policy.  Not just the great response that we had in SEQ but for any place and time in Oz.  To me this levy is a knee jerk reaction and far too short sighted.

Now I am off to the dump.
The dumps are free right now.  Normally we pay be weight.  So this makes heavy things are uneconomical to dump.  Batteries are heavy but very recyclable so I am taking this opportunity to take a pile of gel cells to the dump so I can put them in the recycling pile and receive a warm fuzzy feeling inside.  :)

Happy Birthday to me

The conspiracy was suspected the night before. Megan's phone goes knock  knock when a text message was received.

There was a lot of knocking last night.

The conspiracy theory was given more credence when we saw some evidence walking toward the pancake manor.


There we met all sorts of people

And we all got that little bit fatter.


And happier.

Thanks Megan.

Thank's guys.

After the wonderful breakfast of pancakes, bacon, eggs, butter and rediculously sweet sauce, I knew my blood sugar would be through the stratosphere and then down below the ocean so I balanced it carefully with several glasses of coffee.

As breakfast concluded at morning tea time, and the guests had departed, the family went window shopping. 







In the evening, Megan and I went to see the movie "The Kings Speech".  A great movie.  Highly recomended.

Marcus and Jemma Stayed at the Konings.
Chris had a sleep over at his friend Calum's.Beckenstalls (spelling?)
Dan went to

Now we are watching a DVD and about to indulge in hot chocolate and Tim Tams.

Vodafone melodrama

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Government assistance

Well I like my hand out from the government ($1k from the Feds and I think another $1k from Anna)

But I do not like the one off levy.  The reason I do not like it is because it is one off.
Why should there be a levy because Brisbane went under.  What about the Vic bush fires.  The rocky floods and so on.

I would support a national reconstruction and disaster recovery fund.
(BTW, whatever hapened to the "future fund"?)
But one offs like this - no

Australia Day - The Floor

The water has caused the floor to swell.

Interestingly when the floor was put down they included a 12mm expansion joint.  By the look of things we needed a 50mm expamsion joint.  Actually much of the problem is the expansion of the ply underneath.

Near the back door we have a sort of pleasantly stylish hump.

To release the pressure, we ran the circular saw down the western side of the floor.  Then we lifted out two planks and the plywood underneath.

Then we put in a set of acro props to push the bump down.

It is an incremental process and we tighten the acro props a little each day.  Compare this photo to the one above and see how far the stylish hump has gone down.

Syndetic

We have been running of Derek's 2.8kW generator.  We have most equipment wonstream of one of those 6 way power boards with an overload circuit.  The servers are up stream of it.  That way if the downstream load exceeds 2400W, the 6 way board overload trips but the servers stay up.  The Laser printer seems to be a big user of power and makes the generator labor.  We have only 4 benches powered up and no main lights and no aircon.

We have a gas bottle and saucepan to boil water for coffee.  An Esky and ice to keep milk and water cold.

Energex are installing a new power pole and transformer across the road.  A new feeder cable is being installed to the building.  The huge old transformer under PDB in the EM building is being decomissioned.  

Monday we are told power will be on.  They are working hard so here is hoping.

Thank you

A huge thank you to the many people who called and helped.  This is a partial list and has been put together a week after so I am sure many names are missing.  There are also anonomous people who helped and whos names I probably never knew.  Please let me know if your name is missing.


Frank Horky - Convincing me to move and then helping me to move.
Dick Carter - Convincing me to move and then helping - moving, Karchering.
Paul Koning - Helping to move.
Bob Manthey - Helping me move, weather updates, conversation & washing up.
Brian - Charging my phone, Hosing out.
Chris - Hosing out.
Leslie & Karen  - Feeding me & many others.
Derek Griffin - Generator.
Sean & Erin - Washing, pool
Verity - Washing
Sherwood UC - Mower
Terry -
Ap
Cory & his friend Paul.

Also to those who phoned to enquire how we were going and offerred help.
Peter Burrows, (Action Coach)
Pat Bellet.(GroundProbe)
Geoff Brown (Surtek)
John Beutefer (Cohda)
Richard Hodgson
Lewis & Clare,
James & Kay,
Henry

Red Tape

Heard on the radio today that they are creating a special task force to oversea the rebuilding after the flood.

The task force is to have extra power to allow it to cut through red tape.  Hmm me thinks which government created the red tape in the first place.  Me also thinks that some (a little) of it is probably useful but most of it should go.

I reckon the BCC should get rid of the height restriction on houses.  8m in our area.  People could then build houses on 25m high stilts or perhaps make a floating house that just floats up on top of the flood water.  A flag pole up the middle could keep it from bumping into the nighbours.

Megan's birthday dinner

Found this great Korean BBQ restaurant.  Took Megan out for her 40th.  You get the raw food and cook it your self.  Rice, salad and wot not supplied to complement the meat.  I assume it's a South Korean reataurant as there was food on the table.

After we picked up some ice cream from Baskin & Robbin's at Mt Gravatt and took in the view from the top of Mt Gravatt.




Click this to see the restaurant:-
http://maps.google.com.au/maps/place?hl=en&biw=1190&bih=515&um=1&ie=UTF-8&q=korean+bbq+restaurant&fb=1&gl=au&hq=korean+bbq+restaurant&hnear=Brisbane+QLD&cid=12220749801477766089

Good and Bad

Time to think about the last week

On the plus side,

Volunteers and community Spirit.   People everywhere and so positive.

I think the government as a whole performed well.  There were plenty of warnings on TV and after the flood there seemed to be sensible things coming from the mouths of politicians.  I have been quite impressed by Campbell Newman and Anna Bligh.  Also the local councillors Milton Dick and Nicole Johnson.

Both State and federal government have assistance packages in place.  Hats off to the Feds.  Easy & Simple criteria and  $1k per adult and $400 per kid. 

I think the church responded really well.  I was so pleased to see that at 2am Heather had opened our church and turned on the lights.  Set up tea and cofee.  She then went back to bed.  In the morning there were 15? people who had just moved in.  Moggiil UC seemed to be the centre of organising at Moggill.  I heard Andrew Solomon on the radio on one occasion early on inviting people in for tea and cofee.  While on the subject of tea.  It seems Shri Lanker (I think) and Dilmah have donated a gazillion tones of tea.  The best foreigh aid support I can think of.

The mobile phone networks stayed up.  So good.

The negatives for me have been of the petty kind.

The biggest brick bat should go to the police for over zealous behaviour.

The most public example around here was that on Saturday they closed Oxley Rd in front of the golf driving range.  Now I can live with the road being closed when it is covered in water.  In this case no water.  Occasionally a car would sneak past somehow so it was obviously passable.  Yet they closed it.  So the traffic backed back to indooroopilly bridge.  With the centenary highway bridge closed, indooroopilly bridge became the main river crossing and the police managed to screw that right up and of course by sending the traffic through the side streets they made it all the more difficult for hundreds of residents cleaning up.

Then of course in Warwick, Lewis got a ticket for driving on a "closed road" even though the water was no longer on the road.  Mind you I heard someone on the radio comment on the free and generous distribution of tickets in Warwick.

Two good reasons to remember that the system is not your friend and that these days the thing to do is avoid the police and be self sufficient.  Remember if you need them say for a home invasion or mugging, they will be so busy elsewhere giving out tickets for minor infringements that they will be unable to attend your emergency.

The next award for stupidity and unreasonableness though must go to the BCC employee who fined some one for having a "Directional Sign" at Moggill pointing to go to the Uniting Church for flood assistance.

Mind you that person only just trumps the BCC library person who fined one of our neighbours for returning flood damaged books yesterday.  This was not the lady on the counter.  She was following an edict sent to her on her computer.

So even though Campbell Newman was saying intelligent things, the BCC bureaucracy was in full swing in its "we know better than you how to manage your life" mode.

the  electricity is a good example of bureaucracy gone mad.  When energex came round our street, they pulled the pole fuses from all the houses that had water damage (or so I though).  Even though I showed the enegrgex man that an electrician had replaced our one power point that had gotten wet and that the fuse box was well above high water, because I did not have the "Form 2 or Form 3" and actually did not know the name of the electrician, the energex guy pulled the fuse anyway.  Turned out the local sparky from up the road had gone through my house and checked it and he did not have blank "Form 2's or 3's" because he always submits them "on line" as he did for us.  Pity the fellows in the truck were not "on line".  OK so time passes and the power in the street comes back on but not in our house.  I ring energex to push it along and they tell me there is a known fault in our street and apologise for no power.  I insist the power is on in our street just not in our house.  The kind energex girl calmly and kindly commiserated with me but reminds me that there is a known fault in our street which must be fixed before they will dispatch a crew to replace my pole fuse.

The really bizzare twist is that almost all the houses that were in the deepest water all still have their pole fuses and the lights are on.  I guess shift change happened before they got that far.

Update Tuesday 18-JAN-2010 9:30am : 
Phoned Energex and was greeted by a happy computer that informed me that they know about a serious power outage in Calston St Oxley.  That's me I figure since except for my Next door neighbour, the rest of the street has power.  When I finally manage to speak to a human, She kindly informs me that my power was restored at 4:05am.  Well blow me down I think.  I am sure the pole fuse is still taped to the pole.  I thought that is quickly confirmed by Megan who runs out and takes a look.  So the takes my details and the details for #21 again and promises to contact the crews.

Update Tuesday 18-JAN-2010 4pm:
Phoned Energex again.  Same story.

Now lets not forget the state education department who do not insure teachers personal property on school grounds.  Since the government is so poor at providing resources to teachers, they end up developing  their own resources.  In fact pretty much everything of real use apart from computer hardware seems to be the teachers personal property.  So when the water goes through the classroom, the teachers open their wallets and throw money down the proverbial government toilet.  You wonder why state education is so bad.

Canoeing Oxley 2011 brisbane Flood

Sunday

Today started with a 5:30am drive to Syndetic. Ipswich Rd, Fairfield Rd, Open. The corner of Hyde Rd had a policeman. Luckilly they were distraced and I slipped past. Made it to Syndetic. The flood had gotten just inside the gate and below the door by a few feet. Loaded some big batteries and a couple of inverters.

As I was leaving a security guard had appeared in Cansdale St. I asked him if her was there to close the street. He seemed to have difficulty speaking english so I proceeded back along Hyde Rd. At the Fairfield Rd intersection, the policeman advised that only locals would be allowed in.

Headed off to Church with Megan and Will (Pascoe) in the ute with Derek's generator in the back.

At church showed the video of the canoe through Maccas and a few other people spoke. Even the Grand high moderator was there. Church continued with morning tea of the better variety as Debbie Costello had supplied some of her ledgendary chocolate cake.

After church wandered down into Logan Ave.  This is the next street down from us.  Its a war zone.  There were thousands of volunteers and lots of trucks and diggers.  So many volunteers that some had take a seat while others worked.

I think I offended some government types who were sitting on esky's wearing orange overalls with "Workplace health and safety" emblazened on the back.  I commented along the lines that "sitting watching others work was about as safe as one can get and that I could of course do that kind of work all day".

We then were co-opted into helping to move the lady back into her house.  This was the lady who's stuff we moved in the ute on Wednesday morning.

Around 3 (I think), Energex arrived in the street.  I was not able to convince them to leave the pole fuse intact.  I pointed out to the Energex guy that only one power point and the hot water had gone under and that he could just switch off those circuits but this argumment did not hold water.  As I was showing the energex guy my one power point, I saw that a local electrician had checked out our house and replaced the power point.  It took a while to identify who that was but as the necessary forms had not yet been completed in quadruplicate, the pole fuse came out.

So tonight we are running once again off Derek's generator.  It's still in the back of the ute and so a bit noisy.

The evening concluded with another BBQ

Canoe through Mcdonalds

With the flood waters rising, we were feeling peckish.  So off to maccas for a burger and chips.

Calston St Flood Part 5 - Rubbish

Saturday AM

Calston St Flood Part 4 - Wendy and Daryls

Loaded Derek's generator onto the ute and Dick and I converged on Wendy and Daryls house at Jindalee.
The downstairs has received about half a meter of water through it.  The downstairs floor was covered in a thick gooey black mud.

Dick.  Notice the floor is not black!

As Dick used his high pressure hose to dislodge the mud the rest of us used squeegees and brooms to push it out of the door.  Dan and Steven helped to moove it on out the garage.

Calston St Flood Part 4 - Community

The community spirtit has been great.  Starting with the way everyone pitched in and moved the contents of several houses.  Then a family up the street produced dinner for many of us.  Curry & rice and nahn bread washed down with a glass of wine and pavlova.  Then this morning an omlette. 

Thursday Dinner was a sausage sizzle.  Complemented with a rice salad and yet another glass of wine or beer or softdrink depending on your taste.









At 5:30 after the 4pm peak had not materialised and with the water out of down stairs, I decided it was time to start the clean up.  Chris (2 doors down) and ?? from across the road arrived with wheel barrows and we carted all sorts of wet junk out to the nature strip then they hosed out down stairs.  As they finished that bit, Frank Horky and a friend arrived and cleaned out the work shop.  I disapeared off and with Bob's help picked up Derek's generator.

Right now its midnight.  I have Derek's generator humming away on the back of my ute plugged into the house with a death lead.  The fidge is on its way down in temperature.  The TV is giving me a view of the rest of the city.  I have some fans drying out the down stairs.  Extension leads feed anything downstairs because I am not game to energise any circuits that went under water.  The ADSL is up - amazing since the phone line is so crackly its almost unusable.

Calston St Flood Part 3

The water rose
This was taken at 6am.
The peak was about 5am.  The high tide mark is visble on the driveway.

We ended up with about 0.6m of water in the down stairs part.

Downstirs is the 4 kids bedrooms, play area, laundry.

Calston St Flood Part 2

Wednesday
The sun rose and I wandered out side.  There were people (Adults and Kids) wheeling stuff on trollies up Manor St.  I took my ute up and some strong lads loaded it up with chairs and wot not.  It appeared that various houses at the high part of Calston st are being used to store all the stuff.  Eventually I feel torn between working on my house and helping others so I leave the keys in the ignition of the ute and anounce that I am going home and that anyone can drive and I guess they did as it arrived back several hours later.  At that time some locals came and helped move the two remaining wardrobed that had been too heavy for us the previous night.

With the important stuff (in my opinion anyway) up stairs, and at 2pm upon hearing that the water maybe much lower than originally prediced I changed tack and decided to try to seal the house.  I figured it would be a real pity if the water only covered our down stairs floor by 25.4mm.  So I taped up the door between Marcus's room and the workshop.  Taped some black plastc (Thank you Frank H) across the back doors and then loaded it up with sand bags.  Turned out to be a waste of time as the water leaked in under the walls.  Also taped up the floor drains and put a plastic bag full of sand in the down stairs dunny.

 With the sand bags in place and out of energy for carrying stuff upstais, caught a canoe ride to maccas. 

 Oreo looks on.

Calston st Flood part 1

Tuesday

Left work early and went shopping.   So did everyone else.

Frank Horky turned up and tried to convince me to move all the stuff to high ground.  He was not immediatly successful but then Dick from work arrived armed with maps and after bringing up various web pages I am finally convinced that yes action is required,  So we all go our separate ways to have dinner.  I went to Frank Horky's for dinner.

Then the action really began and Bob and Paul joined in the the mving process.  Eventually we collapsed exhausted with much of the big stuff moved up stairs.

Discoveries Camp

Discoveries is on again.
There are photos on the web site and a note saying that they are all safe on high ground.  The camp site is up pretty high so I imagine thay are all OK.
http://discoveriescamp.com/
Also if you have or know a kid on camp send them an email.  The address to send to is:-
kids@discoveriescamp.com
They always love getting mail.


View Larger Map

I am supposed to do the canoeing activity on Wednesday.  I may need the canoes in order to reach the camp site.  Anyone got a motor?

Toowoomba under water

Taken from Myers looking East along Margaret St.

Technology #$^%&*

Megan and the kids are away.  So I figured I would look at some of those little mantenance issues that have been lurking in the background.

RANGE HOOD
Blanko Model BRCIS90X.
Problem: Light switch jammed.
Dismantle and discover that the switch must have had a poor contact and the switch has heated up and melted the outer cover of the switch assy.
onto the net to locate spares.  Ah the internet is not working.
have now established the spare part will cost.  Wait for it.  $131.20 and a few days delivery.  This is looking expensive.

PHONE & INTERNET
No internet.  Pick up the phone.  Its all buzzy and crackly.  Locate old T200.  Disconnect ADSL modem and the cordless phone.  Plug in T200.  Still buzzing and crackling.  Go find a paper based phone book.  Remember 1100 for service difficulties andfaults.  Well now on about page 1600 you find some other number with a fancy name like service guarantee.  This takes half an hour.  Pick up the T200 and dial.  On old and as I hold I can hear it getting better so by the time the call centre person runs the automated tests, its sort of OK.  They can't find a fault of course but log it in anyway.  Hang up.  Re connect ADSL.  Getting a bit of data through but its so slow and bursty as to be useless.  Give up.

Of course this is another reason why the NBN is a white elephant even before it starts.  Why would I have a wire or fiber bringing a stream of bits into my house only to have it stop evey time it rains.

GAS STOVE ELECTRIC START
Blanko Model BCG9SXF
Problem: When you push the gas knobs and electric start should make sparks and light the gas.  Does not work.
Pull out the kitchen draws and have a look under the gas stove.  Check power in power point - OK.  Look under unit and decide that it is gas and I do not wish to tinker with gas.  Fear I guess.  Give up until Monday.  We now have a service visit booked from Fixzit 3816 0344 for Tue 18-JAN-2011 at $79 call out and $26.40 per 15 minutes.

Dishwasher
Blanco
Problem: Trips earth leakage.

 We already threw out the Blanko microwave after the connection from the turntable to the drive motor broke.  Twice.  And the Oven had to have its clock replaced under warranty.

Moral to this story is do NOT buy Blanko.

WIRELESS INTERNET

On a more interesting note I bought one of these.  They are basically a mobile phone modem and a wifi access point coupled togeter.  They have a battery in them so for a limited time they will operate all on their own.  The computers and wot not connect by wifo.  (Limit of 5 computers).
We even have connection in Mudjimba although yo have to get the location just so in order to make a 3G connection.




Of course Telstra and Optus have similar products:-

WHO	Start Cost	Included Data	Expiry	Recharge month	YEAR	Notes
Vodafone	$99.00	3GB	1month	$29 2GB 1month $49 4GB 1month	$150 12GB 1year	Share your details with the world
Telstra	$149.00	5GB	1month	$40 1GB 1month	$150 10GB 1year	Best Coverage. Telstra Shop Mt Omany 3376 3999
Optus	$129.00	8GB	6month	$30 2GB 1month	$130 9.2GB 186days	Coverage? 1yr not available?

Mudjimba SAT

We are at Mudjimba.
Megan and I went for a walk on the beach this morning.  Then a coffee and next door noticed a hair dresser so nipped in for a hair cut.  Had no money with me so asked if they would cut now pay leter and they agreed.  Megan then went home and got the credit card so they ended up with their money anyway.  Breakfast in the holiday house consisted of cerial and bacon and eggs.  Marcus and Chris have been playing chess and Megan, Dan and Jemma are playing "Pardon my pxie dust"  Google it!.



View Larger Map

More NCYC

Christopher Wayne











VIDEO
See some video of NCYC singing here
http://ncycmusic.com.au/news/060111/live-video-online
or here

NCYC

NCYC = National Christian Youth Convention.

Megan ran the evening rally / worship events.

After Woodford, on the 3nd, I drove back to Brisbane, dropped off some gear and Chris (who went for a sleepover at Nick Wright's place) and then I headed down to the South port school where NCYC was being held.

NCYC Techos.  Recognise that fellow on the right?

Apparantly there is a story behind this picture.  A group of dancers arrived and as they were going up on stage they were asked (again) where was their sound track.  After looking around blankly they then anounced um err ah we have the sound track on our phone.  So here we see Reece holding the voice over mic to the phone.
 
The girl with the headset on is Elia.  Keep an eye out for her.  She is very competent.
 

Megan got this huge cross from Sven Designs.

While reminiscing, the astute reader would recognise the truss holding the lights as the home made truss from the YAF days.

I really enjoyed the worship.  The band were great.
Nick Patsellis spoke well.
There was this pommie girl who also spoke well.
Christopher Wayne did his usual testimony interspersed with magic tricks.  Even with close ups from the video cameras, I can not work them out.

Megan in black coordinating something.

James Erickson on Derek's camera with Jemma and Dan.

Taken just after the Christopher Wayne show.  Dan and Jemma sat on the boxes that protected the lighting winch up (wrapped in red stuff) from being crash tackled by the audience.  This sat them up higher than a chair and gave them a great view of the stage.

 Cameron Todd on a 325.  Actually Tony Pitman gave this camera to me about a year ago and when the need for live video occurred the week before Chrismas, it was pressed into service.  I need a iris motor for the lens though - let me know if you have one.

Woodford

This picture was taken in the rain.  The stage "wings" are on the left just covered in silver tarps. The water would pool and sag in the roof and people would have to push up from inside and a huge torrent of water would crash down the side coverying any unfortunate who was standing near the side of stage.

The blue things in the middle are the subs (Bass speakers) and the video tent is at the right.  You can see video wires on the ground.

Back stage.  Water runs down the hill in front of the stage and then under the stage and out the back.

 On the last day, we washed every cable and coiled it up.  They were then placed in the tent in front of the air conditioner to dry.

Mould is a bit of a worry.

 Volcanoes that formed part of the fire event.  The outpost bar is in the background.