Recycled brake pad.

My Mother bought a car (1999 GF 626 Mazda) which needs a bit of work before putting it on the road, this was a rear brake pad, which in a huge surprise to me had the friction material fall off when I inspected the rear bits, through neglect the rear calipers had stopped functioning some time ago anyway, very questionable if any work is warranted but the car still looks pretty good so I'll proceed.

It now graces the end of my pushbike's prop stand so hopefully I can now safely park it on soft ground without it digging in and taking a tumble. Horrible weld but I could barely see what I was doing and had to take a photo just to check the result, such is the curse of cataracts, which now happily are on the waiting list for an operation.

Of course the Jimby bad luck curse had to continue with the headband of my cheap welding mask breaking, but I just hand held the mask to do the job, and tried a plastic weld job on it afterwards, no doubt it'll break again but I'm so used to breakages it barely raises a D'OH! any more.

A wretched Xmas eve.

We had an awful Xmas eve, Cyclone Owen in its now zombie form gave us a third visit and dumped a little bit of rain, only 100 mm or so, but the little bit of breeze it had left slammed our back door and broke its window glass, D'OH! our internet also dropped out a few times during the day. Then as I was settled into watching the Big Bash cricket and revisiting the old classic game Doom last night we found our bathroom was a flood zone!

The fairly new mixer in our bathroom (unlike in USA our lavatory is a separate room) has already failed, naturally at the most inopportune time imaginable. Because of our punitive rules about life in general combined with eye watering fines I shall only write that finding an available and cheaply priced plumber on the night before Xmas was no problem.

It's just got to get batter after this.

Happy Birthday Dad.

Father Fred is home and looking pretty healthy now, today is his 89th birthday and I was lucky enough to score one of his beers. He's walking about reasonably well now which is quite a relief, also the prescription drug fueled fog in his head seems abated, yippee.

After a wet night.

Cyclone Owen weakened into a rain depression as it became closer to Ingham and decided to then dump the moisture it was holding upon us last night, incredibly it was decent enough not to drop rain upon the Herbert river headwaters so this pondage outside our place has a place to drain which I expect to happen shortly after things clear up.

I think this is our wettest day in the 15 years I've been here, 327 mm since 09:00 yesterday. Keen viewers may notice the weather station's clock seems most awry but offsetting the time zone into a +1 means it conforms to the lazy Aussie standard of starting the day at 9 in the morning. The accuracy of this unit is also very good, I trust it and its fellow units about Ingham (plenty on the Weather Underground) more than the official reading. Stations to the SE of us received a lot more rain than our 327 mm too.

Here we go again.

Cyclone Owen wore itself out a week ago and gave us plenty of rain but it regathered puff after a spell in the gulf and now we're going to cop another dose of misery, if you see people on the news sitting upon their roof that'll be us, but I'm a hoping we don't cop yet another flood.
This could also affect my journey to Townsville on Tuesday for an eye inspection.