WauloK : The life and interests of an Aussie

 I picked up Sienna from her mum’s on Friday afternoon and we came home and watched the new Futurama DVD I bought.

Saturday morning we went to swimming lessons.  After that we hurriedly showered, got dressed and drove down to Tweed Heads to meet our cousins.  My cousin Alison and her kids were there for a while. We met them at the shops and had lunch with them then Alison dropped the kids at the bus station while she returned the rental car.  Sienna and I picked her up and drove her back to the bus station and they caught a bus then train up to Brisbane. Unfortunately, four people with luggage would not fit well in my car with Sienna and I – six all up, so we drove home while they travelled up.

We went to Coles and got some food to make nachos with.  Ali and the kids had avocados and wanted to make guacamole so I figured the best thing to go with that would be nachos, right?  When they finally caught the train to my station we picked them up and grabbed a bottle of red from the local bottle-o shop and some soft drinks for the kids.  We came home and cooked up the nachos.

Her boys are now into computers and stuff so they wanted to watch HACKERS.  We put the movie on and even though their younger sister wasn’t interested in computers she seemed to enjoy the movie.

I found my Cryptonomicon book and gave it to one of the boys to read as I think he’d really enjoy it. He was looking up Unix tutorials while we watched the movie. He should get a good lot of computer stuff out of that book.  At 10pm I dropped them back at my station and came home to bed.

Sunday morning I slept in until 10am as Sienna had woken me accidentally the morning before at 5.30am.  I got up and we showered and drove to Indooroopilly shopping centre.  We had breakfast/lunch as it was 11am by now and then went to the cinema to watch Madagascar 2.  I really enjoyed it even as much as the first one. Personally, I think the Madagascar movies are the best 3D generated movies out of all done by Pixar and Dreamworks.  When we came out of the movies I saw the Indooroopilly library in the shopping centre. I’ve not been in a library for as long as I can remember, so we went in for a look around.  While I was looking for computer books I heard an announcement that Story Time would be starting soon so I took Sienna to the kids area and she sat down to listen.  One of her friends from school happened to be at the library as well so they sat down together to listen.  The librarian read out a story about a Superpig and then a story about a mother cat whom saved her kittens from a house on fire – based on a true story.  After the stories they had craft time and Sienna and the kids got to make masks to wear just like Superpig’s one.

After that we came home and played some games and watched DVDs until bedtime.

This morning we watched Futurama again and played some games until about 11am when I dropped Sienna home.  From there I drove to my friend’s place and had a BBQ lunch.  After that we drove to Chermside Greater Union Cinemas and watched Valkyrie. It’s quite a good movie and I really enjoyed it.  When it was over we drove back to his place and talked for a while then it was time for me to head home around 8pm.

Now, I’ve hooked up my mouse, keyboard and monitor to my Dell D600 with OSX on it to see if I could live with owning a Mac instead of a Windows PC.  If it did go well I might even consider SWITCHING, but we shall see. I’m quite attached to my XP machine and looking forward to Windows 7 – probably to the disgust of my friend, Striker. heh!

If I were more motivated I’d finally figure out Objective-C programming and write some iPhone applications, but at this point of time, even after studying source code and buying a book on Objective-C I’m still baffled about it all.  I have since found the source code for "Tris" – a clone of Tetris which was banned from the iPhone App Store when the Copyright owners made their own version. The full code of Tris is online at the Google Code website so I might study that this week at work since we are lacking actual work to do.

Oh yeah. Happy Australia Day or something. I’m not really that patriotic and I didn’t think most Aussies were, until I saw tons of cars driving around with Aussie flags out their car windows.

PS: Sorry again, Lisa.

 So, Saturday I went to visit my cousin Michael at Chatswood.  When I arrived at Chatswood Mall my cousin Chris was there too, which was a nice surprise.

We went to the Kam Fook Chinese restaurant.  They have a lunch time Yum Cha.  We got there and had to get a ticket with a number and wait until called to get in. They are so very popular and busy.  We were number 23 and they called out 14, 19, 24, 22 and finally 23.  We went in and sat down. They bring around trolleys with food on them and if you want what they have they put it on your table and write down the food on your bill.  We had lots of yummy food and finally left with full stomachs.  We checked the Hoyts but there was nothing on we liked.

Mike mentioned something about his broken laptop and I remembered he had issues with his printer driver so suggested we go back to their place and I could fix it for him.  It looks like a virus or something had broken the spoolersv.exe file.  Windows Event Viewer said "spoolersv.exe is not a valid Win32 application". D’oh!  I downloaded the Asus eRecovery software and Chris ran to the shops to get some blank DVDs.  I created the backup recovery DVDs and reinstalled Windows Vista and the printer driver successfully.

I left there before 7pm and we had some takeaway dinner at the Mall.  I had some calamari and chips.  I caught a train to the city and got there by 8pm.  I caught a Light Rail Tram to visit Scott and Robin.  I haven’t seen them in years.  We chatted for a while and Stephen turned up.  We kept talking through the night and Stephen and I left there around 11pm as Scott had to get up early for work.  We caught a Taxi back to Stephen and Lisa’s and I headed to bed.

On Sunday morning, Chris and Jo picked me up from Lisa’s and we went to Broadway shops.  Caitie was a bit shy with me at first but once she found out I’d play ball with her in the shops while her mum was busy she warmed to me.  We went across the road to JB HiFi and then to Oporto for lunch. Mmmm Oporto. From there Chris and Jo dropped me off at Lisa’s again and had to go do some more shopping.  Later on, Chris picked me up and took me to the airport.

I caught my plane home to Brisbane.  I got in about 5:30pm and to my home train station by 7pm.  I went to IGA and got some milk and then on to Dominos to get a pizza.  The young guy charged me $16.95 for one Meatlovers pizza. I told him it was $8.95 as it said on the sign in front of him and he confirmed it with the other staff.  I requested a refund so he charged my credit card another $8.95.  I told him now he’d charged me twice for the one pizza and I needed a refund, so he gave me $8.95 in cash.  I told him he needed to give me back $16.95 as he’d charged me twice.. once for each value.  He gave me the correct change and I took my pizza home.

Yesterday I caught a bus to my cousin Amy’s. I got on the 412 but he didn’t go up Norton st in Leichhardt. He said to just hop on and he’d drop me at Petersham train station where I could get the 445. He didn’t charge me a cent. Sweet!! I got to her place and her boyfriend was just leaving for work. We chatted for a while then walked to his cafe to have lunch. I had a tropical burger and a couple if mocha’s. Yum!

Then she drove us to Burwood to do some shopping. Amy got some shirts for friends and I got a pair of Havaianas thongs. As we were leaving I thought I saw my friend Marty in the car in front of us. I sent an SMS and tried to phone but didn’t get him. He wrote back about 7 mins later to say it WAS him. D’oh! We got back home and got a few DVDs. I had not seen Hancock before but enjoyed it. Their friend came over and cooked dinner for us. Salmon with sweet chilli sauce, bok choy and rice. Very delicious!

We decided to go out to a place they like so I got a collared shirt and had a shower. We stayed out until about 12 and Amy was unwell after getting food poisoning New Years eve. We went home and u got my stuff. I was going to get a taxi home but walked for the exercise and to just enjoy the walk. I got home about 1am and went to bed. Today I am going to meet my cousin Michael in Chatswood for lunch then catch up with Scott and Robyn tonight.

Last night I flew into Sydney on Qantas airlines. I caught a train to Sydenham and my friend Snaglepus from #crossroads picked me up. We all chatted until about 1am then I went across the road and slept at Lisa’s. Today Lisa cooked eggs for breakfast then Stephen and I had lunch at the Coffee Club in the city. We caught a ferry across to Manly and checked out the beach.
Tonight Lisa is cooking lasagne for dinner. Yum!