Dad and Dan - Skiing Sunday

Saturday morning was glorious.  A light snowfall over night and a sunny cloudless day.

Lunch at Church of the Snow God. I believe that the correct name is Perisher Alpine Chapel but anyway.... It's kind of hard to get to as they have put the kids area in the way.  There is normally a half pipe to get you in the door but that was out of action.  You can walk up the hill from the Perisher Centre but that seems kind of silly.

So Dan and I took the T-Bar to the top of front valley and then skiied down behind the various chalet's and buildings until we found the Sundeck hotel and then on down to the church where we started the service by consuming a burnt offering (not burnt actually but very nicely cooked sausage) and washed it down with hot chocolate.

I think this is back in Smiggins

Dan at the to of the Quad chair.

Dad and Dan Day 1

Friday afternoon saw some frantic packing as Dan and I packed for a weekend away.

Megan kindly drove us to the airport where she had to endure the wrath of one of those overly officious paking attendants.

Dan and I arrived in Canberra and Dand made comment about smoking.  Took a taxi to Henry's place.  He is away and I had texted him and he had kindly agreed and had advised me of the code to the alarm system and so it was with great trepidation that I, with notes in hand, opened the front door and with beeping all round managed to calm my nerves and punch in the code.  Pushed the on button on the central heating.

Henry had kindly left a note explaing that sheets and blankets could be found.  So we made beds and then unpacked anything we would not need at the snow.  By now the house was toasty warm and we went to bed.

4:00am Saturday Morning and I got up and left Dan sleeping while I got the car.  Henry has a wonderful Honda 4x4 and sitting in the drivers seat gives you an immediate impression that this is a well engineered car.  (Unlike the Vito which teaches you that the phrase 'German Engineering' is actually a swear word).  The instrument panel is clear and there are words in English to tell you what does what.  However the designers seemed to have forgotton the handbrake.  I looked all over and then noted that there were no red lights on the dash decided just to reverse out.  All went well.

Then it was back into the garage to get the chains and while I was there I spied a backpack.  Remembering that one has to carry ones luggage up the hill to the lodge I decided to toss in the back pack.

Dan woke easily and we tossed in our bags and were away.

First stop Cooma where we stopped into Rythm and hired Dan a pair of Ski pants $20.

Then the East Side Cafe which apart from Ski Tourists seems to cater mainly for bikies and we tetatively sat expecting either a police raid or a retribution drive by.

Everything about the place involved Motorbikes.

Or hand made wooden toys.

We ordered Bacon, Eggs & Pancakes.  Blow me over this is the bigest pancake I have ever seen.  Puts the Pancake Manor to shame.  It was good too.

And Henry's car and the main street of Cooma looking toward the snow.

After this we headed down and parked at Bullocks Flat.  I repacked my gear into the backpack and we bought ski tube and 3 day ski passes.






At Perisher, caught the free bus to Smiggins and then the value of the decision to use the back pack came into its own.  We hired skiis and then trudged up the hill to the chalet.  At the chalet, Dan fround a friend and they toboggoned ? on a small patch of snow.

Marcus starts to Learn to Drive

Today for the first time, Marcus got behind the wheel of a car [legally].

Back up to yesterday (Monday) and Marcus arms himself with passport, birth certificate, medicare card, school ID.  In school uniform he and his friend Alistair walk down Boundary St to the Dept of Transport.  They each have similar piles of ID but it seems no proof of address.  Bureaucrazy!

So today he armed himself with all of yesterdays paperwork and a bank statement and what I assume was a stat dec (I signed it anyway) declaring I have known him for 16 years and he resides with me at this address bla bla bla.  Alistair and Marcus again made that trip down Boundary st.  Forked out $20 each and sat the written test to get a learners permit.  Out of 30 questions they both got one wrong.  The slack dogs. What do you think this means.  ACtually no wonder we have a road toll.  It's nothing to do with speeding.  It's youth who can't read the signs.


Anyway, he phones to tell me the good news and I leave work and we meet at Sherwood.  I figured do we have the first lesson facing up hill on Sherwood Rd in the dark.

nah.

So I drove up Sherwood Rd, over the railway line and turned left into a side street.
And there in the dark, Marcus started off.

Twas not long before we did our first handbrake stall and put on the hazzards and waved past the line of cars that had politely gathered to support us. 

We wound our way through the back streets and got close to Clieveden Ave.  Then I took over and drove us home as we were running late for touch footie.

After touch, where Marcus incidentilly scored a try, we had another lesson.  We wound our way through back streets until we got to the corner of Plumer and Oxley Rd.  There I again took over and drove to the church where I picked up Sarah and Jemma.  They had gone there with Megan after touch and Megan is staying for a meeting.  We are not sure if Sarah is allowed in a car driven by a learner.  Have to check on that.

So will he master Corro drive tomorrow on his way to school or will we all hear about it on the traffic report?

Church (Propel)

Tonight we had one of those youth services.

Bob (Guitar), Sean (Drums), Grace (Keyboard) & Natty (Vocals) bashed out some songs.

Kay Raymon did a message.
Then Grace lead a discussion.

 Children played near the alter.

 Chris was involved in a dramatised bible reading where the alter of God was rebuilt.  Water poured on scrificed bulls (observe stuffed toy ontop of boxes)

And fire danced around.

Frank & Chris Bake a Cake

It being Marcus' birthday and all....
A cake was considered necessary.

Suggest you multiply these all by four.  We multiplied the quantities by 2 and the cake was pretty thin.

1 Cup Self Raising Flour
2 Level Tablespoons Cocoa
a pinch of salt*
1 Cup Sugar
2 Eggs
1/2 Cup Milk
1 teaspoon Vanilla *
3 Tablespoons of Melted Butter

Mix all dry ingredient.
Add eggs, vanilla & melted butter.
Beat for 3 minutes.

Bake in a moderate** Oven for 25 minutes

 Icing-
Make the icing in the pan used to melt the butter.
2 cups of icing sugar
1 tablespoons of cocoa
drop of vanilla
a teeny weeny bit of boiling H2O.

At Church we sang Happy Birthday to him again and then Courtney and Alistair snuck off.  The rest of us ate dinner and went into church.

Rowing

I (Frank) have taken up rowing.  After getting out of my boat at the head of the river in 1980 and not setting foot in one until 2012 it is I have to confess something I wish I had done a lot sooner.

Today the Gramerians (those geriatric Grammar boys) held a family day at lake kurwongbah on the Northern side of Brisbane.  The fellow holding the boat is Chris Hinton who coincidentally coached me a couple of times when I was at school and he was at Uni (I think).

Chris Thomson and I went out in a double scull. 

Actually Chris and I had two goes in the scull.  Before and after the family row in the eight.  Great fun.

The tribe took out the eight.

Alistair (3)

Marcus  (2)

Sarah (5) from Germany who I think may have anglicised her name slightly.

Marcus' girlfriend - Courtney (6)

Chris (bow)

and Frank (7)

Megan, Dan & Jemma came out in a motor boat and a while later Megan swapped with Marcus at 2 and Dan swapped with Chris at bow and Jemma took over from John (see below) as the cox.

John in red below is one of the fellows I row with on Tuesday mornings.  He took on the challenge of  getting us in the groove which he managed.  Don't know how but at one stage we had all 8 rowing and we stayed upright.  Amazing.  Thanks John.

Marcus Birthday Breakfast

 Happy 16th to Marcus.
We got up as planned at 6:30  8:30am  and picked up Courtney and then on to Alistairs.  Then into the City to the Pancake Manor arriving at 7:30 9:30.  There was a wait and the teenagers entertained themselves.

Then the food arrived, we sang Happy Birthday (as you do) and presented Marcus with his present.  It is the a set of road rules and the cash required to get his learners permit.  So Monday on his way home from school he can drop into QLD transport and do a test and get a permit.

Oxfam Thank You Party

In recognition of the efforts exerted a thank you party was organised and support crew and supporters invited.

The trailwalker event, as you know, raises money to support Oxgam who deal in World Poverty.  In keeping with this theme and to help us appreciate it, we had lots of cake & drinks and so much food that we felt sick.

There were thank you awards handed out

The main Brisbane page is
http://trailwalker.oxfam.org.au/brisbane/

We had two teams
Oxfambulators    Who raised $10,351.00
and
Serial Hillers who raised $8,190.00

As of writing, the most any one team raised was $18,445.  The Oxfambulators are the ninth highest fund raisers.  But if you combine them then copmbined they raised     18,541
which puts them in FIRST PLACE.
Wow!

I took several photos of Sean and Erin.  This is a wide shot showing Catherine attempting to keep Andrew out of shot.  Bob is looking bemused, perplexed.  Plotting how he will jump into the shot at an inopportune moment.

Stream Android Camera Live to PC

Imagine being in the crowd at a concert and being able to send your camera phone picture live to the big screens beside the stage.  It may be a wide shot from your position in the crowd or it may be vision of you and your friends dancing and enjoying the concert.


DIY with python scripts
http://aboutscript.com/blog/posts/300


CloudCamDemo
CloudSpy
Demo limited to 5 minutes
Sends to VLC - > works.  in colour.  about 2 second lag.  low resolution.
The preview on the handset only uses quarter of the screen at the same time, all the other parameters are displayed clearly and easily.



Tried SECuRET liveStream DEMO free from the Android Play store.
The demo is in black and white.  And time limited to 5 minutes.
The resultant image is played on a web browser. & works.
The paid version I believe is colour.

Ditch the Church Notices

I was speaking to someone at my Church last night and discovered that we (our church) has a working bee on today.
Hmm
bugger I say (not too loud of course)

I ask myself why.  Why did I not know about it?  Not that I really wanted to do it.
I suspect that notice of the working bee was announced in the church notices.

I wonder ....
I have been involved in many discussions where the gist of the discussion is that the best communication is personal -> one - one.

• At church we say that faith is passed on through personal invitation.
• Businesses know that the best advertising is a personal recommendation from a friend.

I suspect that when the working bee was announced in the church notices that those for whom the working bee is important figured "there done that".

Many years ago I had a discussion with a person from an American electronics company who told me that their company had switched off the ability for employees to send email to each other.  If you needed or wanted to tell a colleague something then you had to get up, walk over to them and tell them.

Let me suggest that we should ditch the church notices.
At the same time we would need to not use the yahoo e group to disseminate information either.
Then we will have to tell people one on one - Face to face or on the phone or individually addressed email or ?  But personal.

At the same time it addresses the theological dilemma of where in the service to put the notices.


A littlle aside
"The notices" in our church used to happen toward the end of the service.  The theology was that WHAT we do is done as a RESULT of our christian faith.  But sometime in the last few years, the notices got moved toward the beginning of the service.  

In our church, About 20 minutes into the morning worship service, the kids and Sunday school leaders leave the church building and go and do Sunday school in the hall.  We then come back together for morning tea.  


I think the reason the notices was moved to the beginning of the service was so as to include those who were leaving the main service in the life of the church.  The life as expressed through WHAT we were doing.

Sarah comes to visit

We have an exchange student named Sarah who has come to stay with us for 10months.  We picked her up on Sunday at 1:30pm at the airport.  We still had Tonya with us.  In the late afternoon, we drove up Mt Coot-tha to show them the view of Brisbane city.

Frank, Sarah, Tonya, Marcus, Dan, Chris, Jemma & Megan.

Brisbane City as seen from Mt Coot-tha

.
Sarah has to go to school.  One would have thought a 10 month holiday was too good to be true.  We tried to get her into Girls Grammar but they were not interested in a freebie and no one was willing to fork out $20k.  So Sarah is going to Corinda High. 

This is her first day photo in the Corinda High uniform.  Dan and Jemma are in their Oxley State (primary) School Uniforms.

We wait to see how much homework she does :)

Insuring the Tiida

Well blow me over but we need to insure the Tiida.
Had a look at iselect.com.  Hmm I doubt if they are likely to get my business as their cheapest offering was considerably more than either RACQ or Suncorp.

The process to obtain this RACQ quote is the simplest and does not require one to enter data about a spouse.

Mind you as I am entering the data to get a quote I am reminded of what type of car I do not have such as Maserati or Porshe.

And also what I do not use it for.  Do you know that you can use your car "Primarilly for Racing".

Now imagine Racing Tiidas.  Hmm I wonder.

And to the question "Does your car have any existing damage".  I answer "no" but I wonder if the style design could come under this heading.

 This RACQ quote ticked the boxes for RACQ membership although it did not ask whos (Megans) plus other RACQ policies on a car, house & contents.  I still listed myself as the "Most Frequent Driver" and still no requirement to mention Megan or her indescression.

This Suncorp quote looks good but this was just for me as a single driver.  And also with no other suncorp policies.  Lets see what happens when we confess that Megan may drive it.  Suprisingly Marcus as a learner driver does not have to be listed.  So if learner drivers do not even rate when it comes to car insurance, why are they vilified when they get a P plate.





This is what happens when we include Megan with her baggage.  (1 single vehicle accident while moving (at 1km/h)).