Quasi fibre cometh soon.

This green box is a node for the NBN optical fibre rollout, I think Ingham will be connected in October, this is 300 metres from our house and I think we'll be connected by copper to it, hopefully something cat6 or better but it should mean little difference for us as our DSL connection is pretty good and regardless of connection speed Australia's internet is clogged anyway during normal hours.
When it's connected it will bring forth a good excuse to finally terminate our old POTS phone and move to VOIP but that should mean losing our great phone number, something I've held onto for years as it's so easy to remember.

More artwork.

This frog has been in Tyto a bit longer than the Sunbird and seems to be surviving alright.
The wonderful Tyto viewing tower is in the background but it only opens during popular hours, oddly to me they have an unmarked smoking area next to the entry to the tower, due I suppose it being a very convenient place for smokers, a bit sad for people who want to use the tower though.

New artwork in Ingham.

I went for a wander at dawn this morning as Peter had told me about this new bit of metalwork, it shows a metal bird (possibly sunbird) taking nectar from a metal flower.
The idea's good, pity these things always come with an inflated price tag with an extra zero or two usually plonked on the right end of the price tag whenever there's a whiff of public funding money about.

A final repair for my mouse.

The left button on my mouse had become unreliable again so I swapped in a new switch from my goodies box.

This is the third replacement switch I've put into this cheap mouse but the copper tracks are now cactus so this will be the last repair for this lovely mouse that has been a joy to both use and look at for years, such a lovely colour as well as a good fit for my hand, and having a pointer that works nicely with my mouse mat, I'll miss it when it's gone despite it only costing a few dollars.

Snakes don't have legs.

Olivia took this pretty good photo of what she thought was a snake yesterday while we were out checking on how Grace was going.
Jimby would call it a lizard but he lives in a simple world.

It was a good do.

Sorry I'm very slack posting after Olivia's party, maybe the cold weather has curbed my activity.
It ended up a pretty good night and due to nobody writing down a list of songs they wanted to blast out on the karaoke I ended up hogging the microphone a bit too much due to me having put some songs that I knew onto the USB drive, thus they were all at least 45 years old, unlike most of the girls.

I even discovered I can almost do Roy Orbison stuff, what I lack in voice I can almost make up for in effort. My voice also has a great similarity with Frank Sinatra in that it's gone to Gowings at about the same age as Frank's did although he actually had one when younger.
This photo also shows some evidence that I suffer from dwarfism, much like the late great wrestler Andre the Giant I lack legs that are in proportion.

Warming up for tomorrow.

Soosie came over for a haircut today and them tested the karaoke setup we have for Olivia's and Lorna's party that we're having tomorrow, hopefully a few people will enjoy our meagre offering.

Soosie's (I always think of Bruce the Blowfly's girlfriend when I hear Susan, he was in a great TV show 30 years ago) daughter Kesha drew a photo of me, dunno what that stuff on my head is but the teeth are fairly accurate, crooked and about the right colour, a few too many though.

A jimby oven repair.

Our Fisher & Paykel oven failed a month ago and I made the mistake of jumping to conclusions and ordered a pair of new triacs because the elements were fine but not operating, then later I suspected the opto chip was crook as I wasn't getting voltages that made sense from the output despite the input working as it should. This piccie shows the replacement opto that I fitted which I even made the effort to put a socket in for.

Of course fitting the new opto chip and the new triacs which finally arrived today made no difference as during my testing I'd used this diagram as a reference. Today I did some real checking and noticed the orange and red wires should be fitted in reverse, little wonder I was surprised the oven wouldn't turn off during my testing.

 So I decided to get serious about looking at the board and the darkened area at the oven drive end of the board was very suspicious, I had put it down to 19 years of service but one leg of the capacitor was loose and these bad eyes of mine finally saw it. I think because of that it caused that transistor to fail, which then led to Jimby donning a loupe and checking his box of semiconductors, deciding on a lesser replacement that hopefully will be OK as its max voltage is 30V Vs 50V of the original but the capacitor being rated 16V should mean it's OK, its current rating is slightly higher. I replaced that capacitor too with a 25V rated part.
Anyway testing after finally getting the triac wiring right has things working fine and we have a very happy Olivia.

Almost back together.

I had a month of cold sweat nightmares thinking about putting the fan cover back in place, then it dawned on me that Olivia might manage it far easier than me, a few seconds later she'd done it, I can stop feeling pain thinking about it now.

Voting day today.

Here I am shuffling off to vote today but that Katter sign looks a bit crooked,

so I straightened it, I feel about as crippled as I look in this photo too.
It looks grim so far in the counting for the Pavetto chap on the left in his battle against sitting member Katter, methinks a bit of a pity as it would be nice to be represented by a member who's articulate and literate, however it looks like a lot of people here will be out sunning their necks tomorrow.

Happy Birthday to another cute Olivia.

The media don't seem interested but the great Olivia de Havilland shown here with legendary Aussie Errol Flynn turns 100 years old today. Captured from The Adventures of Robin Hood made in 1938, a film made by the greatest director ever, Michael Curtiz, she wouldn't have had to act too hard to do this hugging scene  either as they were very chummy in real life, Errol had a very good life until he died from extreme old age when he was 50 y/o.

In this earlier scene she's riding Golden Cloud, a horse who later was adopted by Roy Rogers and changed his name to Trigger to fit into his new partner's profile.