Archive for 2006I’ve just adopted a virtual pet.. my little tiger is playing in the sidebar on the left there. Wave your mouse cursor over him and feed him some meat and have a bit of fun for a change I picked up Sienna Friday evening and we grabbed some KFC and came home. Saturday morning we went to swimming lessons. Sienna had great fun learning to float on her back and kick along with a kickboard. After that, we came home, showered, washed the clothes and headed out again. We caught a train to Milton to visit the offices of 96.5FM .. the same place we went to a couple of weeks ago to drop off the Shoebox. This time, the station was raising money for itself in a Radiothon. They go into schools and broadcast the Breakfast show from there and have fun with the kids. Sometimes they take the Radio dog (a pet of one of the breakfast show announcers). Sienna jumped around on the jumping castle for about 20 - 30 mins while I listened to a couple of brands playing live, but not broadcasting. Once she’d had enough we grabbed a couple of free sausages on bread and some chocolate milk. We ate that then went inside for a tour. I had a fun tour of the station. It was not totally unlike the radio stations I’ve worked at before (I was a volunteer radio station announcer for about five years from when I was around 17 at two radio stations. I later did some voice training in Newcastle and broadcase on the Hospital Radio Network). We checked out some recording studios and other rooms around and talked to the station workers. Sienna scored a lollypop and we met a station celebrity (Robbie, the Gentle Giant). He interviews school children for a segment on the morning show where he asks about their future job prospects and other things they like. Unfortunately, Sienna would be too shy to talk to him on the microphone (or off it) so she didn’t get an interview. He said usually they get kids from preschool age upwards as they are less shy about talking to people by this stage. We donated some money then headed back downstairs (after Sienna scored a free marshmallow, too). She jumped around on the jumping castle again for a while then grabbed a balloon and some blue fairy floss. I put her on my shoulders and we walked back to the train station. We grabbed the next train home and drove to the local shopping centre. We bought some groceries (mostly fruit) and headed home. We had some lunch and Sienna went for a nap. While she slept I made a giant bowl of fruit salad from: oranges, kiwi fruit, grapes, apples, bananas, watermelon, strawberries, passionfruit. I think that’s the lot. I scooped the chopped up bits into small containers I bought from Coles as well, made by Glad Wrap. I poured in some tropical fruit juice and put the lids on then tossed them into the freezer. I also bought some ice cube trays and filled them with tropical fruit juice. That should make some nice cool snacks for later during the week. Healthy and delicious. THAT is what I call fruit salad. Not what you buy in cans at the shops which contain: Pears, peaches and pineapple.. the three P’s .. or something like that.. always only three fruits. THREE FRUITS DON’T MAKE A FRUIT SALAD!! HELLOOOOoo!!!! At least the juice had about 5 fruit juices in it. We watched some Mickey Mouse Club on the Foxtel IQ box. She’s graduated from Little Einsteins and hardly ever watches it now.. it’s all Mickey Mouse. We both headed for bed about 9:15pm. I slept until around 8am and Sienna probably got up about 6am and watched some TV while she waited for me to wake. She’s a trooper like that.. always let’s daddy sleep in since I can’t do it any other day of the week. Occasionally on weekends I might nap with her for a couple of hours. I taped Iron Chef last night and am watching it now, but I don’t think the American Iron Chef show is quite as good as the Japanese one. Today, we’ve just been taking it easy at home. We played with my Texas Hold’em Poker chips and cards (which are currently all over the floor in the lounge I heard some great news on the TV1 channel during advertising for upcoming shows in December. HOUSE is coming to TV1!!! YAY! This means I can tape every episode and make sure I see them all, plus watch some for a second (third?) time Also, I’ve just found this on Wikipedia while researching actors (well. . ok the German blonde) in National Treasure: “Although the audio commentary says that there were no plans for a sequel, the popularity of the first film warranted a sequel, which was given a go-ahead in 2005. National Treasure 2 is expected to coming to theaters December 21, 2007″. Kewl! I like this movie. I’m always interested in Knights Templar, Freemasons and Rosecrucian stuff (for some reason.. don’t ask. I also like Egyptian and Chinese stuff — like Fung Shui and Chinese Medicines). I just watched a really cool episode of Mythbusters where they try to prove or disprove cat burglars from Hollywood movies .. breaking into businesses by climbing up air vents, tricking alarm systems, etc. Really fun! Today I went to buy a coffee in the afternoon, but the coffee shop was closed so instead I went to JB HiFi and bought “Serenity” and “Mr & Mrs Smith” on DVD. $13 and $16, respectively. Very nice. I’ve been trying to ascertain whether Windows Live Mail Desktop supports contacts and calendar and notes synchronization with mobile phones and other mobile devices. I haven’t come to any conclusion as yet. Let me know if you do. It’d save me shelling out AUD$690 for Office Standard 2007 just to have Word and Outlook, the latter only to synchronise contacts, calendar info and notes. I started downloading the latest beta of Windows Live Mail Desktop, but it was going to take one hour via dialup and a new Freeroll Texas Hold’em Poker tournament is starting in 5 minutes There are just too many applications I want to use which only have a Windows executable. Eg: Dialup modem driver (Conexant), all the online poker clients I have. There’s no comparable mail checker like Mailwasher for Linux. VNC is so simple and easy. iTunes is too good to give up.. it’s my main media player now. Funky functions of MSN Messenger. Last.FM rocks. Can’t easily synchronise my Sony Ericsson mobile phone, nor explore it easily from Linux. It makes me wonder at news articles with headlines like this: Linux desktop domination “just a matter of time”. I don’t think so. I also don’t think so in my lifetime. Prove me wrong, if you can. I just don’t see it ever happening. There’s some people who get benefit from using only Linux but for the majority it’s going to be either Windows XP or Windows Vista. No contest. I’m even willing to start saving money now so I’ll have enough to buy a copy of Vista the day it hits the shelves. I’m actually looking forward to it now. I cleared all the data off the 200Gb hard drive in my Linux server and when I buy Vista I’ll install that into my PC and partition it to be my main hard drive. I suppose I could use the 80Gb drive in there now for Windows Vista and the 200Gb for everything else. I dunno. We’ll see. I shall have to compare access times, etc for it. I want a nice fast machine. I wish Microsoft would have a ’save to flash memory’ feature people have been speculating about coming in Macintosh OSX one day in the future. It’d be nice. Then, when you shut down Windows could save the current state of Windows to flash memory. When you boot up next, you turn the PC on and Windows is running instantly. Although, with Windows needing reboots all the time, perhaps it’s not that good an idea after all I really would have liked to see Linux do better and get to use it instead of Windows, but the convenience of Windows wins hands-down. Don’t get me wrong. Linux has come a very long way since I first confused myself trying to install Slackware from source and find all those dependencies. Now, you don’t have to do that so it’s getting easier to install software, like Windows is, but it’ll never get to be as easy. I might even invest in Office 2003. I don’t need a full version though. I just need Word for file editing (mainly documents, resumes etc) and Outlook for synchronising contacts, etc from my phone. There isn’t any freeware (or commercial software that I’ve found) which does it as well. I even downloaded the Thunderbird ‘Lightning’ extension but it doesn’t synchronise with anything at all. It just imports Outlook data. Perhaps once it hits version 1.0 it might? I don’t know. I didn’t read the roadmap, but there’s nothing in there now and I need backups now. So, at the over-expensive cost of Windows Vista, I’ll start saving and buy the darn thing. It’s annoying, though. I bet you could buy a brand new PC for $300 if Windows wasn’t pre-installed on it. No matter how much we complain, that’s how it’s run so we just have to put up with it. I actually picked up Sienna Thursday night for a change, since I was off work all week sick. Yesterday afternoon we jumped on my pushbike and rode to the nearest park and had some fun on the swings and slide. In the morning I had to go to the doctor’s again and have a checkup. It seems the new medicine is working but my throat has been sore as.. so he prescribed some Difflam to numb my throat a bit. It seems to work. This morning we went to swimming lessons. Sienna had a ball as usual and I wasn’t late, for once. After that I picked up the Difflam and some tissues and we came back home. Today we’ve weeded the garden, washed clothes and had a nap for a couple of hours. Swimming lessons at 8:15am was definitely a bad idea, but it gets me motivated when I normally wouldn’t be. An afternoon nap is always a good thing. I’ve seen studies saying everyone should have a nap for 30-60 minutes every afternoon, including work days as it makes you more alert. I’ve been playing some Texas Hold’em Poker online the last couple of days just to check it out. I haven’t really played much online lately as it didn’t interest me, but I got into a Tournament and that was quite good fun. Click on the “Texas Hold’em Poker blogs” link to the left there to read more. If you only see one post click on the link at the top of that blog post called “Pirhana Jay’s Poker blog” (yea that’s my Poker handle Yesterday afternoon I wanted to connect to my Linux box via the Wireless WiFi network. I enabled it but could not see the Linux box (for some reason it no longer auto starts after the 8 seconds countdown and I have to hit ENTER.. also after about an hour or so it just locks up and I have to reboot). Since I couldn’t see it, I hit DISABLE and my Windows XP machine rebooted. About 5 boots would not get past the BIOS screen. After that Grub (my boot manager from when I had Linux installed) locked up for about 15 reboots. Next, I got to the Windows start menu saying Windows had not started properly and asking if I wanted to go into Safe Mode or boot Normally. None of the options worked (including Last Known Good) so after a while I rang Tomcat and talked to him. He suggested putting the XP CD back in and trying the Repair Windows option. Well, this didn’t work properly either as it kept telling me it could not copy files from the CD even though I could from a DOS Box and even use EXPAND.EXE to extract the file. I kept skipping files by hitting ESC and Y (yes I’m sure I want to) until the installer had completed. Now I could boot into Windows XP but could not create a DialUp network. The modem was in the Hardware list and the driver was fine, but New Network Connection had greyed out DialUp networking via Modem. Argh! I took Tomcat’s advice and backed everything up to another partition and then Formatted C: drive and reinstalled Windows. I also finally deleted the Linux partition and set up NTFS on it. I just have music and stuff on there now, so it’s handy. I also found out (after seeing the doctor) that the eye drops I had were not working, so he prescribed me some stronger antibiotics and gave me the rest of the week off. Wish me luck with these drops. Conjunctivitis really sucks the big one. The main downside to being sick is I can’t play Poker in person as Conjunctivitis is highly contagious. Damn Damn Damn Damn! You know.. I never really got that quote before. I didn’t realise that Americans call Conjunctivitis “Pink Eye”. So I’ve had the last couple of days off work due to having the above condition. The doctor said adults don’t usually get it from kids (Sienna had it first), but I said I’ve not had it before so he said I’ve not got any immunity against it. The doctor said I need a few days off work cos it’s highly contagious. I have an appointment tomorrow morning to get checked up to make sure it’s gone before I head back to the office. The downside is I can’t play Poker for a few days either. Gah! Oh well. That’s just at venues. I can play Online in the meantime. If you want to keep up with what I’m doing at Poker I won’t be posting about it here any more. I have a new Poker site (in case you didn’t notice the new link on the left there) and have a blog on it as well as other News and information about Texas Hold’em Poker. I found out after looking around a lot that if you click on the Poker blogs link you will see only my last post. You have to click on the link at the top of that blog post called “WauloKs Poker blog” to see the rest of my blog posts. I will be posting information there for people new to playing Poker like what happens when you go to a venue, winning hands, FAQs and other info. It might help out some people who have never played before. I’ve had Foxtel Platinum package for months and only realised the other day that I get two free Box Office movies per month with that package. I’ve been missing out on movies I’d like to see because I didn’t want to pay an extra $6 each. Argh! So last night I watched Date Movie. I don’t usually watch those crap shows but hey.. it had Alyson Hannigan and Sophie Monk in it. How could I *not* watch it? Yesterday morning we got the washing done.. clothes and dishes and caught a train into the city for something different for Sienna. First thing yesterday morning we went to swimming lessons. We got there a bit late again. I was sure 15 minutes would be way long enough so next week I’ll leave a lot earlier. We were only 10 mins late so she got to meet her actual teacher this time and had fun swimming with the kids. She really enjoys it there. On the way out, they had a sausage sizzle so I got Sienna a sausage since she wasn’t that interested in much breakfast. I bought her usual tinned pasta but they only had two tins left since they were on special so I got another brand and she ate it up and loved it. I might get some more next time. We spent the afternoon blowing bubbles and finishing the watching as well as looking at a couple of TV shows after having a sleep. We went to bed at about 12:30pm and woke at 3:30pm when the phone rang and my uncle was there for a chat. He has been trying to ring me for a few weeks, but I’ve been busy with Poker and bowling, etc. He even tried on a Sunday but that was when we were Christmas shopping. I will have to give him my mobile number next time. I must remember to send them all Christmas cards. I sent off 20 cards already over the last week. Today has been very hot. They tell us this week it will get to 33 degrees Celcius during the week. I can believe it. I’m gonna have the air conditioner on a lot by the looks of things. I really hope it’s going to rain more as well. We sure do need it. The storms we had last week did SFA for the dams. I drove to poker through a big storm the other night. Sienna is currently napping in the bedroom… on the floor. She pretended she couldn’t climb onto the bed so I said “Oh well. I guess you will have to sleep on the floor then” and put my hand out to help her onto the bed. She decided it was going to be fun to sleep on the floor .. so she did. heh. This morning I phoned Foxtel to cut down the number of channels I get. I don’t have so much time to watch it now, so I got the Basic package plus the kids channels. It’s going to save me about $30 per month. Cheerin’! Back off to Poker at my old haunt again. Let’s hope I haven’t dropped TOO far down the ranks after playing badly last Sunday night. Still not a winner at Australian Poker League games, but getting better. Last night I was all out before the break at 8pm. Tonight I lasted until 8:45pm (Break from 8pm to 8:15pm). A big issue I have with these APL games is this.. My old venue had an even keel. Everyone starts with the same number of chips. At APL, if you spend money at the club, you get an extra $500 in chips. Since I’m not spending money I start out with less chips than almost everyone at my table. So, I figure if I’m lasting longer then some of them, I’m doing pretty well. If I make it to late into the night then I’m doing fantastic cos I’m always starting with a short stack (no disgusting comments pls I only had two hands to win with tonight. One I won because I had an Ace and the other guy had a smaller card. The other hand I won a side-pot. I put in my last $100 in the small blind and won $500 from the other players with a set of 6’s (three sixes). Still, it’s all fun I actually did try to get extra chips tonight. At last night’s venue I had to spend $10 at the bar to get a stamp and my $500 extra chips. Tonight it was only $5 at the bar. So I spent 10 mins looking at their list of beer and even wines. They had one glass of “Wolf Blass Yellow Label Cabernet Sauvignon” priced at $5.50. I thought “That’s expensive!” but what the hey? I will pay it just to get a stamp. It turns out that a glass of that cabsav is $2.60. Ack! Since I don’t want a fluffy girl’s cocktail and can’t stomach any more bourbon or whiskey I didn’t get my stamp. Later, during the break, I bought a pot (that’s a middy for you Southerners) of Victoria Bitter beer. It’s only $2.25. How the hell am I sposed to make $5? I looked at their drinks list and there’s only cocktails over $5!! Best I could do is a beer and a bit of cheesecake. LOL! Anyways. I think I may give up bowling and do poker 5 nites a week. Call me an addict, but it gets me out of the house. I get to meet people and play poker for free. Win-Win situation! Yes. It has finally happened. I found Texas Hold’em Poker games every night of the week at clubs near where I live How cool is THAT? What happened is a few months ago I checked the Australian Poker League website but there were no games near my home. Last night I thought I’d give it another go (after seeing their advertisements played during the Poker I watch on Foxtel) and saw they now have MULTIPLE games near where I live, at multiple venues. Well, My Fridays and Saturday nights are taken with having Sienna visit and Mondays are bowling nights.. but Sundays and Tuesday to Thursday nights I don’t have anything else on.. so why not play Poker for free? I checked out a new venue to the south of where I have usually been playing. Unfortunately it was in the middle of the biggest storm I’ve seen in years. The lightning was blinding and the thunder so loud it seemed like someone’s car blew a tyre next to mine on the motorway. Under an overpass a ute had stopped so the guy could comfort his dog which was panicking due to the loud bangs. After driving for 15 minutes I could not see the road so took the next turnoff and parked the car in a residential area while it died down. I looked at my road map, figuring I should be rather close to the club by now and was surprised I hadn’t passed it as it didn’t look that far when I checked before leaving. I discovered that during the storm and all I had taken the wrong turnoff and was NORTH of the venue I have been playing at. The road I took is the turnoff BEFORE the one I wanted and it does go south but curves north. In the driving rain and storm I had not noticed this. I drove around in the direction I figured was the right way to go.. couldn’t read any street signs in the dark. They are not easy to see. I took a turn I thought might put me back on the right track and drove past the venue I usually play at. I then knew where I was and proceeded to drive straight south from there. Once I was far enough south it was a short 10 min drive east to where I should have been and I was there. Took 45 minutes to get there and 12 to get home again afterwards lol! Ah well. The games are totally different due to the way they are handled by the APL. They have a laptop computer which counts down how long before the blinds are raised. I got there and signed in. Got my membership card (which can be used to purchase merchandise off the website when I get frequent player points) and waited for the game to start. We start off with one $500 chip.. four $100 chips and six $25 chips (If I remember correctly). At the other venue.. my usual one.. we play with eight $25 chips and eight $100 chips to make $1000. I didn’t have a decent hand the whole night. In fact, in the end I decided to have a go just for the hell of it. The guy next to me checked all the way to the River card and then bet a $500 chip. I only had $625 in chips left and studied the board and guessed he may be bluffing. I called with my only $500 chip and found he had two pair. I had one pair, so he took it. Next hand I was the big blind and all-in for $125 (big blind being $150) and got out with a pair of 3’s. Still, it was a new experience. Today Sienna and I went to Crazy Clarks and bought some stuff for our shoebox to be sent overseas. She helped me pack it up and she liked all the stuff I got so I know it’s gonna be good heh. I decided since the most current experience I have is with a 3yo girl I would pack a box for the same. We got some toys and a toothbrush with kiddy toothpaste, a little outfit with shirt and pants, a paddle with ball on elastic, some plastic animals, a cake of Dove soap that was at the checkout, a little book of Leo the Lion, some colourful thongs (shoe ones not the underwear), a hairclip set, some coloured bouncy balls and an envelope with a photo of us sitting together and a Christmas card.
Contents of shoebox Yesterday we also went to Crazy Clarks and bought a Christmas tree with lots of ornaments to hang on it. We put all the ornaments on, including some pretty lights and Sienna loved it. She loved the ornaments so much she has taken most of them back off the tree to play with! There were even little fake presents which she has taken back off the tree and unwrapped. So now I have a floor with bits of foam and foil wrapping paper. The tree has bits of golden string on it where the presents and other ornaments used to be. Oh well.. as long as she’s enjoying herself.. that’s what mainly counts. Below is a photo of the tree before it was un-decorated.  Our Christmas tree
A while ago I posted about a carnival Sienna and I went to. Well, here’s some photos of interest.
   Also, a while ago I found this interestingly named Japanese Restaurant… “Where are we going to meet for lunch today?” “Fuku!” “Yeah! Well.. fuku too, buddy!”.  You can tell I’ve finally gotten around to emptying out the photos in my mobile phone…
A couple of weeks ago I drove past the Ettamogah Pub.
 To top it all off, here’s a photo of some of the drawings I did for Hallowe’en (which nobody saw):
 At 6:30pm three kids arrived with their mum and I gave them a few lollies each (probably 4-5). They ran off excited and after I finished dinner I thought I’d spruce it up a bit by doing these drawings (and a few more) plus packaging some lollies with a balloon in a bag so the kids could take them. Not one kid turned up after that. Only three kids from one family interested in Hallowe’en. A couple of years ago we had them turn up every 15-30 minutes. Oh well. Sienna is really enjoying the (natural no artificial anything) lollies and balloons (which were left over from her birthday party anyway).
Try Weff Jebster’s riddles and puzzles game at weffriddles.com At this point in time, I’m currently on Level 13. He’s a fiend! He’s a madman! Warning: Do not do this if you get frustrated easily or cannot think uber-UBER-laterally. PS: Hints in the forum really DO help.. trust me You trust me… don’t you? Fill a shoebox and hand it over to Samaritans Purse to go to a kid overseas! Pick a boy or girl and an age group for your shoebox then fill it with goodies and drop it off at the right place to get collected and delivered. The 96.5FM website has links to other drop locations if you aren’t in Brisbane. Go make a kid or two happy this Christmas! It’s for a good cause! Chuck in your photo and address so they can see who sent it and write back. I’ve got a shoebox I found last night, so I’m gonna get busy finding/buying stuff to go in it. I will get Sienna to help out so she can learn what it’s like to help others out. I’m sure she will enjoy it! |
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) and read a book and played with her toys. She’s currently napping in the bedroom.
I later saw an advertisement for 
