Lounge update - wiring done.

Yesterday turned into a lazy day, for on other real reason than it was that sort of day. I did finish of the wiring in the lounge room though. I've now hidden all the cables running up to the projector in some conduit which makes the whole thing a lot neater. Other than that I only managed to acheive a lot of web surfing and the end of Dr Who Season 3. Blink has to be the best Dr Who episode I've ever seen...

Lounge Room Chairs....

So after finishing the Lounge Make over (well pretty much anyway... I have one lot of wiring to do today) and having a few people over for the AFL Grand Final ("Go the Pie Man!!!!) it has become a little obvious that we are a bit low on lounge chair quota. The Round Sofa and the Ottoman are fantastic for laying back and taking in some TV but that's all we've got for seating. I've started a bit of a quest for some lounge chairs. One of the other reasons is with the little one getting closer to coming home neither the Round Sofa nor the Ottoman are going to be useful to get in or out of with a small thing in your arms.

The top two condenders are the POÄNG from IKEA and the ASTRO from King. 

POANG

ASTRO

I also really like the LILLBERG rocker but it's no easier to get in and out of than the round sofa. (obviously continuing in the black and white theme though).

As these things go of course I could fall in love with something else before either of these things make it into the house..

Anyone else got any thoughts?

Friday's in the office are great!

Mmm Cose Dolci goodness!

The Lounge Makeover continues

We had a little bit of a trip to IKEA to continue the lounge makeover last night. The amazing thing about the trip was that we only bought what we went for... nothing else.

We picked up the doors for the bookshelves and a couple more shelves for the cabinets holding DVDs.

From Lounge makeover

The doors actually took a surprising amount of time to get on. Not because they were difficult but just fiddly. We initially tried the doors with white inserts but ultimately decided on the black finish.

From Lounge makeover

Now all I've got to do is finish the wiring and hide all the cables, a job for either tonight or tomorrow. I've come up with an idea to reduce some of the speaker visibility but I'll see how it works after they are in place.

Back into the flight routine.

Today I’m back on another flight (surprising I know). I’m off to Melbourne today and tomorrow. The flights are certainly getting more stressful with Ness getting closer to due date. I had a good chat to Paris this morning and made sure that he/she knew not to go anywhere until I’m back.

 I’ve added some more items to the ebay sellathon and there are quite a few more items to end up on the list, but they’ll have to wait until I get back home.

 I’m hoping to see Wall-E on the weekend, we’ve taken a hot tip to see it in gold class because it’s school holidays and the chances of it being kid free are reasonably high.

The other big plan for the week (at least mine) is getting the lounge room finished with a trip to Ikea to get some doors and another cabinet and after the last Ikea trip, fit the baby seat to the C4. I’ve also got a little bit of rewiring to do with the change of layout. That should be the end of the setup for the lounge.

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NESS!!!

I hope you have a great birthday Festivas!

A new house layout!

Yesterday, for some unknown reason, I decided that we should have a new layout in the lounge room. One of the main drivers was a better spot for the new Samsung Flat Panel. I was toying with the idea of moving the TV onto the (long) wall and mounting it, but Ness came up with the great idea of moving the bookcases from the study out into the lounge and framing the TV cabinet with it. So that was the job for yesterday in between events in the Festivas.

The end result I think looks really good.

From Lounge makeover

It also managed to solve a problem I've been having with DVD storage, with one of the bookcases holding all the DVDs of the other two stands. 

The Projector setup will stay the same and will give the room a bit of a dual purpose. I've kept the speakers in the same orientation and am using the internal sound from the Samsung at the moment.

It's not quite finished yet, we're planning on putting the doors on the cabinets and adding one more (for the high def titles) on the left hand side next to the DVDs but I think it will work well.

An Electronics Sellathon!

After a recent run of upgrades I've started to put a few of the replaced technology, I've put a whole group of stuff up on Ebay, there is a few more things to come but it's a start.

• Pioneer DV-S969AVi-G Audiophile DVD-A/SACD player
  
• Yamaha RX-V1200 Surround Receiver
  
• Sony PlayStation 2 Slimline Console
  
• Microsoft Xbox Console with Advanced AV & 2 Controllers
  

A foggy brisbane morning.

A took a ride into the city this morning and I was amazed at how foggy the city was. When I left i couldn't see across the river and the bridge was almost completely covered. The ride wasn't too bad but I think i'll know that I haven't ridden for a while when I get up tomorrow.

Amazon Love!

Just under a week ago I put in an order with Amazon and yesterday (to my amazement) it arrived! There were a few more titles added to my collection than I'd planned as I hadn't checked my cart all that closely before I ordered. Just a bonus really as they were all disks I was hunting anyway.

I picked up a few titles with Digital Copy, which looks like a great idea. When you purchase a copy of the movie you also get a "digital copy" that you can upload into iTunes. I was a little disappointed with this though as it doesn't seem to support countries outside the US. So even though I've bought a copy, I can't use it... how I love DRM, it would have been easier to just download the movie, no wonder piracy is such a problem.

Bad TenHD!

I've been waiting for the 4th season of Battlestar for months... I've been waiting so long that I held off watching the last episodes of season 3 so I wouldn't get stuck on the cliff hanger... The great news is that the 4th season has started again on TenHD, the downside is there is not one bit of advertising to say it was coming up. The only reason I know was I just chanced a search on the Foxtel EPG and discovered it was showing... To my horror though I've missed the first episode..

The other big news is that the seasons of BSG are now on iTunes (of course only up to season three).

I think I'm going to be on the search for the first season.

The Desk of DOOM!!!!! da da daaaaaaaa

My Parents have a terrible record with technology, specifically PC based technology. Last night I think I discovered the reason... I think my parents have The (computer) desk of doom. Not only did the PC hard lockup (after working fine at my place), the ethernet adapter stopped working AND my new removable HDD died...

A justified lack of blogging.

It's been a few days off from blogging since last week but there have been some very good reasons for it. Not least of all is the fact my beloved/loathed Dell XPS M1330 (which is the envy of all my customers without any justification) died. The hdd has been threatening to give up the ghost and we're had a replacement on order with constant backups in place, but from left field the screen stopped working all together. Ironically the system still boots but i'm thee to an external screen from there on. Fortunately the dell tech turned up today and all is fixed.
The other big distraction for the weekend was setting up the baby's room. This included a fresh coat of paint. What colour you ask? A nice soft blue, yellow or even green? No a black feature wall. I think it looks great with the whitewash finish of the stokke furniture.

Coolest thing on a flight in a long time.

I've done a lot of flying in recent memory and today was one of the coolest landings I can remember. About 10 mins out from landing we lined up along side a Qantas flight and landed in tandem. I was amazing to watch the plane touch down almost in time with mine. It was almost like looking out to a mirror of the landing. I only wish i'd had my camera with me.

Ah the airport....

Well I'm back at the airport again... and I'm pretty tired today. Last night I had to have an MRI (as a follow up from my recent hospital visit). They run them suprisingly late (my appointment was at 8:30pm) which unfortunately leads to late finishing times about 10:30pm last night. This would have been fine if I wasn't already flying to Sydney today. I've got a serious case of the yawns as a result this morning.

The whole MRI thing is pretty cool, just not exactly a riveting experience for the patient. Being so late at night and not being able to move at all made it quite hard not to dose off....

I'm considering another shipment from Amazon this week. One of my favourite cartoon series as a kid, ROBOTECH, has a new series (the Shadow Chronicles) and it was released on Blu-ray this week. There are a few other titles I've got on my wish list at the moment so I might have bundle up a few others with it... you know, to save on shipping obviously.

On the whole "buying DVD/Blu" thing I must admit that since we've got Foxtel HD+ with the ability to download HD movies on Demand the need/urge to buy hard copies of shows is really reduced. Admittedly you don't get the TrueHD sound formats but the difference in cost is hard to ignore. Even compared to renting the convenience of just clicking "Watch" rather than jumping in the car is a huge bonus.  This compined now with Apple's announcement of TV shows in HD I can't see my DVD collection growing at the same rate as it has in the past. I will still get the movies that I will watch more than once (probably lump a few Pixars into that) but I won't be rushing out to buy a title just because I missed it at the cinema. This may of course mean that I may at some stage add an AppleTV to the current setup but that won't be for quite a while yet.

Well even after all that ranting my plane still isn't boarding... oh well looks like I'll have to wade through a few more articles on Google Reader.

Collider 1 Apocalypse 0

So many people theorised the end of the world via black hole today. Looks like we skipped that one. Although may this is what the next life is like. Obviously I've managed to get to hell though, I'm still developing in itsm.
I'm back to Sydney tomorrow (chalk up some more evidence) this time for two days. Which is less tiring than the day trip but i'm away for longer. Looks like apple have come through with some nice shiny new gear.
Sorry for the stream of consciousness but i'm entertaining myself on the bus.
I downloaded Doom on the 360 the other day for some old school fun and even after more than a decade it's still great fun. I'm keen to try it online if any one is interested (fyi it was always one of my worse games, Dean used vm regularly hand me death by rocket).
I'm still thinking about a phone upgrade. Trust me writing this post on a phone pad is getting old. The iPhone looks perfect, but the new offerings from htc on the android platform are probably the way to go.
I've got some more configuration on the new receiver setup as it's not decoding everything quite the way i'd like, mostly from the blu ray player. That will have to wait for next week sometime as i'll be painting paris's room in all the free time i have this weekend. That's about it for this post i'm running out of buffer.

Google Chrome and Google Reader

Last Week when I was overseas I downloaded Google Chrome, not a big surprise as I’ve been well and truly on the Google bandwagon for a while. So far it’s been a good substitute for Firefox and is a lot easier on the resources.

 

The biggest thing that I like about it is the great integration into Google Gears and as a result offline Google Reader access. Which is what I’m doing right about now... Not too much else to do on the flight today so Google Reader it is... Also useful as I didn’t read anything last week I’ve got over 1700 articles.

 

Also I’ve started listening to the original ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ radio show... which on a random trivia note the 6^th episode was aired on the day I was born...

Back at the airport... guess not much has changed..

So only about 36 hours after I left BNE airport I'm back... I'm off to Sydney. Fortunately this time I'm flying Virgin and not my other favourite carrier. I must say I am really getting sick of the continual flights, I'm due back in Sydney on Thursday.

Another plus so far is that I'm not suffering too badly from jetlag, although I haven't really had much of chance to let it take hold.

One of the big distractions on Sunday was setting up the new receiver I bought just before I left. The setup process was a breeze and with all the great video scaling I managed to eliminate about 50m of cables from the current setup. I have to say that the auto speaker calibration is just amazing. I'm not sure I could ever own another amp without it!

Well looks like my flight is going to be delayed today so I could be in the lounge a little longer.

The advantages of flying Qantas

1. You get a great chance to meet new people when you sit in the check in queue from international to domestic for 90 mins
2. You get to practice your diplomacy skills with the unfriendly/unhelpful staff when you ask for an earlier flight
3. Plenty of time to reorganise your luggage and find some new clothes to wear
4. Heaps of time to get changed and eat some food when they rebook your connecting flight 3 hours after it was planned
5. A chance to finish off a couple more levels in that DS game you were engrossed in before you land
6. A great time to stretch those tight legs from the 16 hours in the last plane while your shuffle forward in the queue.
7. Time to enjoy the shopping facilities in the airport because you've got such a long wait for the flight
8. A chance to blog
9. Ample time to charge your ipod that is flat after the flight.  

Training Training and More training

It's day 3 of the training and it's really starting to take it's toll. The 11+ hours each day is starting to get a bit draining and it's getting harder to stick it out. That combined with the late nights networking are going to make it easy to sleep on the way home.

Not much else to report other than that...

Pleasanton.... anything but...

Well it's not really all that bad, a bit of a come down from the sightseeing from the last 2 days though. Today was the start of the training course and it's pretty full on. We're going from pretty much 8:30am until 7:30pm everyday. The course is pretty good, just very long days... also everyone on the course (except me) is staying at the same hotel so I'm a fair bit away from the action... although tonight I did head back to the "course" hotel for dinner (not helped by the lack of restaurant at my hotel).

So onto my few gripes with America.... What is it with Starbucks? Really? There was one IN my hotel in SF and when I walked out the front door I saw another 3. In the hotel here they have thermoses of Starbucks for breakfast (and at the course as well). I don't really know what they serve but it isn't coffee that's for sure.
Also I know why they have a weight problem over here (not that I can point the finger at the moment); 1. the food is... um... well... Let's just say my breakfast selection today was a) an egg pancake wrapped around a cheese slice covered in cheese spread, b) some sort of cake in caramel sauce, c) bagels, d) muffins e) watermelon. And the stuff they put in their "Coffee" is mind boggling... I'll take my camera tomorrow and try and sneak a few snaps.

I had something else really important to say in this post and it seams to escape me at the moment....

Anyway, the people here are great and being the only Australian who isn't from the Vendor (and only 1 of 4 people total not from the vendor) it could have been a little lonely.

It's almost midnight so probably time I signed off for the night and got some sleep for the long day tomorrow.

Oh wait... I remember... We went out for dinner at this really nice Mexican Restaurant and I had a fantastic Mole Poblano which I had to try after the Ominvores Hundred post.

San Francisco, Day 2 - a HUGE DAY

Today I had planned to do some shopping and tour a few other parts of the city. I started off catching the cable car to a few of the other spots around the city. My tip for the cable car is don't wait for it at the change points, every time I was at a change point the lines were really long. If you walk up about a block or two they will pick you up 9 times out of 10 and no queue.

I jumped off at China Town and had a bit of a meander before I jumped on another cable down to fisherman's wharf. Despite just about everywhere being sold out of tickets for Alcatraz, I thought I'd give it one last shot and at least do a cruise. After a fair bit of wandering around I managed to find a street vendor with a spare ticket which was fabulous, the downside of course was that because they were in such high demand I did get a little ripped off and had to buy a ticket for another cruise around the bay. Still, it was less than the $75 I was quoted yesterday and I got the bonus cruise.

Unfortunately this meant a fair bit of time out on the water and... in the sun. The first cruise was pretty good and I ended up with some great views of the bridge (and a chance to play with my fish eye lens). The cruise got back just in enough time to check out the seals and pier 39 before heading to The Rock.

The tour round Alcatraz was fantastic, one of the best audio guides I've ever used. It ended up being over 90 mins long but the time just flies by.

I finally made it out to Pleasanton tonight (about 9pm local time) after catching the last ferry back from the rock and cable car-ing it back to my hotel.

I'm a bit on the tired side so I'm going to leave it there... more photos up as well.

San Francisco, Day 2

It's another beautiful day here, I think I'm going to try and hit the shops today (at least in the middle part). The Sunburn from yesterday won't be much fun if I repeat it today. I didn't bring any sunscreen with me and so far haven't found one I'm not allergic to.

I really wanted to get to Alcatraz today, but the labor day holiday has foiled my plans with tickets really hard to come by. I did have some successful shopping yesterday, highlighted by a trip to BabyGap for some stuff for Paris.

(Un)Fortunately I've only brought small bags and they are pretty packed already so there won't be much room for any really big shopping sprees...

This is my last day in San Francisco proper, tonight (and for the rest of the week) I'm staying out at Pleasanton. Yesterday was fantastic (apart from the sunburn, which is more embarrassing than anything) got to see lots of great sights and pack in quite a few different things yesterday. My favourite though has to be the cable car ride at night. Hanging off the front of the through the lit streets was great.

Ness is keeping me up to date with everything that is going on back home... which is fantastic.

A big day of sight seeing in San Francisco

I tried to pack a lot into today, for one tomorrow is Labor (sic) day so I'm not really sure what is and isn't open and two it was a really beautiful day...

I've updated some more photos and I know I promised to blog but it's late, I'm sunburnt and the jetlag are all too much....

Quick Highlights
Golden Gate Bridge
Union Square
Riding on the outside of a cable car
The Pier
Lombard St
and a fabulous steak dinner at the Urban Tavern.

A few SF Photos...

Just back for a quick camera upload and a snack before I'm off to hit the shops...

Here are some of the snaps... hopefully I'll get a couple of night shots tonight

San Francisco

Landed in San Francisco....

Not much to report really, flight was bumpy but uneventful.. I've checked into my Hotel and am about to head out to take in some sights.

The view from my hotel isn't much... but it's nice to have a view all the same.

On an annoying note.... my phone doesn't work. Not sure if it's the network or the phone but either way I've got no communication other than my laptop.