The Home of Tom & Morven

Previously I had posted about how I don’t think Windsor Green couch lawn is as drought tolerant as Santa Anna couch lawn. Here is a screen-shot from the website of the company that recommends Windsor Green for it’s drought tolerance. Click on it to enlarge:

The last bits of the Windsor Green are dying off in our Santa Anna couch lawn. Every time we have a heat wave a bit more of the Windsor Green dies. Sometimes it comes back after browning off, but I don’t think it will this time. Click on the photo below to enlarge. Note that the circled areas highlight which parts of the lawn are Windsor Green, as it is hard to tell from the photo. In fact, I actually had to go back outside after taking the photo to work out which was the Windsor Green and which was the Santa Anna. It is hard to tell, but the Windsor Green generally has a bluish tinge to it. This is the same colour as it was when I bought it, so I don’t think it’s turning bluish because of our particular soil. Up close I can tell which is the Windsor Green not only by what colour it is, but because the blades are generally slightly matted together, and dwarf like.

You can see that two of three patches of Windsor Green in the above photo are burning in the heat. The interesting part is this section of lawn gets shade from mid afternoon onwards, so it’s surprising that any lawn here would burn. It is possible that the Windsor Green is being attacked by the Santa Anna, and the heat waves are just the final blow. But, usually when there are several species of lawns they blend together. My overall conclusion is, that regardless of how drought tolerant a “lawn professional” claims Windsor Green to be, it’s not as drought tolerant as Santa Anna in our situation.

I would be interested to hear if anyone has had success with Windsor Green over Santa Anna. Perhaps there is a scenario in which Windsor Green performs better?

SWK has pointed out to me that in my last post, the term “blackboys” could be interpreted as somewhat politically incorrect. I use the term “blackboys” to describe the Xanthorrhoea plant, otherwise known as Yakka. Yakka is a word that seems to have come from the Kaurna people, the native Aboriginals to the Adelaide Plains. Until the political incorrectness of it had been pointed out to me, I liked the term “blackboy” because it reminds me that most of the yakkas around in the national parks have probably been there since before the Early Settlers came to the Adelaide Plains in 1831. It is not uncommon to find Yakkas that are over two hundred years old. I used to think the term “blackboys” would have come about because the white people would have called the yakkas this as they looked like aboriginal children - and that’s why I liked the term! But, as it was pointed out to me they were quite possibly termed this in a not so good context - not to mention the politically incorrectness of calling a dark skinned person (in relation to a American natives) a boy, which is something I also hadn’t heard about! I won’t go back through my blog and correct myself, as I want my unknowing political correctness to remain in the history of my blog to remind me of how as times change, society learns about how things that we have done in the past become unacceptable by tomorrows standards. This is a good thing!

Whilst I’m at it, I would like to take the opportunity to show-off how good our lawn is looking, as I was explaining in my last post.

I didn’t stop blogging, I’ve just had higher priorities in the last few months. Since I last posted anything substantial, I’ve been doing a lot, and I will attempt to catch up with what I’ve been up to in this post. SWK will be proud!

In my last post I mentioned I was going to do the Foxy1000 cross country mountain bike endurance race with Nick. We did the 100km race (50km each) but it was much harder than I anticipated. The fact that I had to ride 50km was okay, and the difficulty of the terrain wasn’t too bad although the track did include the Fox Creek downhill trail which I found doing very scary, but was proud that I only dismounted I think at two spots on this downhill track. The reason I had to dismount twice is because at one spot there was a drop-off which you had to negotiate whilst doing a corner on a slope (hard to explain) and another spot where there was just a massive drop-in. When I say drop-in, imagine a slope that’s about 60 degrees below horizontal for several metres! I would possibly attempt these obstacles if I hadn’t already ridden flat-out for about an hour, and didn’t have arms that were worn out and/or had time to stop and adjust my seat-post such that my centre of gravity was more reasonable. But at the end of the day, the idea of a race is to get from A to B as fast as you can, and if it’s on average quicker to get off the bike than to attempt something you’re not confident doing and risk injuring yourself or your bike, then you might as well! (However this hasn’t stopped me on at least one occasion recently which I’ll get to later!) Nick and I took turns at doing 2 x 25km laps each (100km total) and each lap involved 1000m of vertical ascent. Half way through my second lap, I had major cramp in my legs from dehydration. I don’t know how I got dehydrated because I was drinking by the bucket loads after my first lap, and was well hydrated before the first lap even started. I guess it was a hot day. The last 10km was very painful and difficult because of the cramp, but eventually I finished and we came 3rd in the category of Men’s Duo so it was very much worth it! We have been riding together on most weekends usually doing at least 30km rides, and recently becoming closer to 50km rides on some occasions. We hope to do quite well in the 2008 Foxy1000 race. Who knows, maybe in 2009 we might even both race solo! But I much prefer the team idea - besides, Nick is faster than me… at the moment I say “at the moment”, because I’ve been riding my road bike a little bit lately on my trainer to try and build up my leg muscle which is my major weakness from several years of endurance running which stripped me away from leg muscle.

Since the Foxy1000, apart from weekend rides with Nick (mostly from the city, up to and around Eagle Park) we’ve also been doing the Summer Series races. I find the night races much to fast-paced for my liking, because for my category (Sports Men, which is “C” grade) I generally do 3 laps of about 5km. It sounds like a lot, but it’s all over within 45 to 60 minutes. Since my strength is endurance (i.e. 50km+) I struggle with the sprinting, and my heart rate averages 180bpm (minimum 170bpm, maximum 187bpm). When riding up a hill at 185bpm+ I feel like my heart is going to explode! For this reason I don’t look forward to doing the race, I look forward to completing the race! And it is a good feeling to achieve finishing. The first night race of this summer season was at Flinders Uni. My tactic was to go easy at the start to avoid any 185bpm+ activity in the first two laps. Unfortunately this meant I was stuck behind a couple slow(ish) riders who didn’t let me past. After the first 5 minutes there was an opportunity for me to overtake on a downhill section on a fire-track (i.e. a track designed for a 4WD vehicle to access) which was covered in blue gypsonite crushed rock. Because I built up a lot of speed in an effort to pass the guy before the bottom of the track which turned back into a single track, I wasn’t able to take the corner at the bottom. I think a combination of me going way too fast, my tyre pressure too high, and the rebound dampening of my suspension all worked against me, and although I sort of made the corner after turning right on to the bridge, I was sliding sideways off of the bridge, and in fact slid off into the rocks which formed the bridge. (I call it a bridge, but it’s really just a pile of boulders with finer gravel on top to allow the water to pass through. I snapped the buckle off of my shoe so wasn’t able to continue the race, and I seriously gashed my hip and elbow which I was paying the price for over the next month.

The second night race of the season was at Eagle Park, and I did okay physically but had a flat tyre towards the end, so overall got a poor time. The third race was again at Eagle Park last night, and I think the training I had been doing has only just started to pay off. Unfortunately, I had a small crash due to my front wheel sliding off the track in a sandy patch on a corner. I was okay and didn’t lose too much time, but I bent my rear derallieur which meant that my chain kept slipping into my wheel between the spokes and rear cassette.

This happened about 6 times during the remainder of the race, and meant each time I had to get off and pull it back on again, costing about 20 seconds each time. Also I kept losing the gear I was in on most climbs, which made me lose traction on many occasions which cost me a few more minutes overall. Overall I came 6th in my Sports Men category, which was fairly satisfying, even if there weren’t many more than 6! I will take my bike back to the store on Monday and get a yearly overhaul done, even if I can fix it myself. It’s probably about time I had the suspension serviced anyway. After the race last night I went to the Lotus Lounge for going away drinks for a mutual friend of Morven and myself, Monica. It was great to see lots of our friends all together in one place having a good time, but it’s weird going out without Morv! (I’ll explain later in this post where she is at the moment). After the Lotus Lounge, I headed over to The Worlds End bar with a couple uni mates (including Nick who I raced with). Good times were had, but I went home before everyone else because my elbow was oozing yucky stuff from when I slid on the dirt in the race. It is mildly amusing that the scrapes I have from last night are in exactly the same spot as the first summer series race where I stacked it, but nowhere near as bad as the first stack!

In October I went to an 80’s night a HQ Nightclub with Morven and her friends. It was to celebrate the birthday of FreshFM radio station. It was a good night, but we were the only people that actually dressed up in 80’s gear! Okay well there were probably about a dozen others that made an effort to dress up, and I can’t really say that I dressed up myself but Morven and her friends did so I felt ripped off and we sort of looked silly. Every now and then you would see someone from the crowd of people dressed in classic 80’s gear. I misunderstood what a barman said at one stage and ended up accidentally ordering 5 different cocktails instead of one! I didn’t mind, we drank them all!

Really the main reason I haven’t been blogging in the last 5 months is because my server hasn’t really been working anyway! Apache (the main part of the webserver) just kept crashing, and not loading after the computer rebooted like it always did before I upgraded to this new computer. Over the last week I’ve updated Wordpress, Gallery, all of my Wordpress plugins, and the webserver software XAMPP. I found it difficult to upgrade my XAMPP installation, and I will write about this upgrade process in a seperate post at least for my own future reference! I took me a VERY long time to work out why Apache wasn’t booting on startup, and I’ve found that the Apache service under Windows Vista doesn’t load under the LocalSystem or Administrator account, I had to create a seperate user account to run it under. This is a problem attributed to the UAC (User Account Control) system of Windows Vista. I will also write about this in a seperate post.

I had a really nice break from work between Christmas and New Years. Christmas was mostly spent with Morven’s family and family friends. For Christmas Morven gave me a bike chain bracelet. I was so happy to unwrap that gift, as I used to have one as a kid (that I had found on the ground with a broken link and repaired it myself) but lost it somewhere along the line and was really upset. Our family was fortunate to receive a CD from my younger cousin in Melbourne, who is manager and website guru for a band called Men Without Pants. We were given their debut album GhosTrain. I don’t know how to describe it but I’ll give it a shot: very cool jazz! Really not very descriptive, but I like the sound effects they use, coupled with the cool, semi-philosophical chilled-out lyrics/vocals. You can listen to my favourite track by clicking on the play button.

For the very low price they are asking for the CD (AUD$10) I can’t recommend any more just buying a copy or three or more (for gifts). You can listen to their music on the website too, so go check it out! (Please note I have special permission to play this song on my blog, it is copyright. Please go to their website if you want to hear more.) The band is two of my cousin Carl’s high-school classmates in Melbourne. Two very talented musicians whom I’m sure will go a very long way with their music careers. My cousin Carl is pretty talented too with maths and website technologies, although I have to question his sense of humour given he just sent me this URL to a comic as I’m writing this paragraph which is quite bizarre. Having said that I did laugh profusely after reading it. It’s disturbing how similar Carl and I are!

Over Christmas, I decided that my computer wasn’t performing well enough for my liking (even after upgrading it) with playing Colin McRae Rally Dirt, so I did my research, learned how to overclock my computer (which I will also write about in a separate post). Doing this, and adding a soundcard (instead of using the onboard sound) and adding more RAM has significantly increased my gaming experience, as has purchasing a Logitech Momo steering wheel and pedal set! There is so much enjoyment that can be had driving rally cars in such a realistic rally car simulator game, with amazing visual and effects, using a reasonably realistic steering wheel and pedal set! I’m looking forward to getting Morven “behind the wheel” as she has been known to enjoy a bit of the rally car driving game. She doesn’t like driving using the keyboard, but I haven’t had any alternative up until now. Maybe she’ll perform better using the wheel set and stop using the hand brake so much - who knows! She hasn’t actually seen it yet because I only got it recently after she left.

Morven is doing part of her work placement in a hospital at Stoke on Trent, England. She left nearly two weeks ago (such a long time to be without my lady!) and I will be going and meeting her in London on her last day of work. We will spend two nights in London in an expensive hotel right slap bang in the centre of London, then four nights in Paris again in the slap bang centre of Paris in a very expensive hotel! The last night of Paris will be Valentine’s day, so it should be a very romantic holiday You can check out a map of where we’re going and staying.

Today, after from updating my blog I’m taking it rather easy. I’ve done some odd jobs including fixing a shower-head mount, a shower curtain rail, our letter box lid that had broken off, and a rail for a window blind that had popped out of the wall. I’ve been keeping our lawn (Santa Anna Couch) in admirable condition despite the drought. It’s surprising me how little water we can get away with for watering our lawn and keeping it amazingly lush green despite the fact we’re going through a drought. Despite the current water restrictions of a maximum of 3 hours watering per week, we only water the lawn for 1 hour per week. I think the trick to keeping it lush green is to let the lawn grow longer when a heat wave is happening, and cut it back to normal length again after the heat wave. The other trick is to use fertiliser as recommended to keep the roots of the lawn strong, but use organic fertiliser because it won’t burn the lawn if you don’t water it in very well. This way you can apply the organic fertiliser just before rain (if you’re lucky enough to get any). A week or two after fertilising, check for weeds in the lawn. The other reason for using an organic based fertiliser over chemical fertiliser is it is better for the environment, and requires less water to manufacture it. So if you are using chemical fertiliser to keep your roots strong to save water overall, think again! Chemical fertilisers require ridiculous amounts of water to manufacture. Also any weeds will suck out water from the topsoil, so use a cover-spray appropriate to whatever weeds you have. I’ve also been regularly coring the lawn, and using a “Wetta-soil” powder which holds water in the soil after the rain, increasing the time it takes for the water to evaporate back into the heat of the harsh Australian sun. I’ve noticed that the Windsor Green couch has died off in the drought, whilst the Santa Anna Couch has stayed strong! Paul Munn personally recommended to me at his store to use Windsor Green Couch because it tolerates drought conditions better than Santa Anna, but I suspect this was just a sales pitch (unless we have an uncommon soil type/mixture). I would highly recommend to anyone in Adelaide to use Santa Anna couch over Windsor Green (update: discussion continued in a later post.

I should also write about my latest batch of black boys. After a few months now, my latest batch of black boy seedlings (xanthorrea’s) are about 3cm to 10cm tall. Unlike last time where they all died after leaving them in the sun, I’ve been keeping them mostly in the shade, and always constantly moist. I don’t have much experience with growing seedlings of anything but I expect this is a requirement for most seedlings. I am surprised though that black boys in particular are so sensitive to direct sunlight.

Today I rigged up a way of saving lots of water. Our washing machine, which although is already highly efficient with its water usage, still uses at least a couple buckets of water per wash. By taking the hose that hangs over the sink so the water goes down the sink drain, and elevating it over the tap, we can simply leave a bucket under the hose to catch water. The bucket will fill up, and overflow. The cleanest water will be left in the bucket, and this can be put on the garden. You can also catch water that you use to wash hands, and stuff like that.

It should be known however, that it’s very important to make sure you use an environmentally friendly washing powder/detergent. This is because it will eventually seep down into the water table, so it’s imperative to ensure it has a very minimal chemical content. I haven’t chosen the washing powder/detergent that we’ll use yet because I need to take this information to the supermarket, but here is the info I will use to select the most environmentally friendly detergent:

Lanfax Laundry Products Research
On the site, you will find download links to view and print two pdf’s with all the info you need on washing detergents/powders for sale in Australia, and direct comparisons.

Alternatively, download them from me:

Graphs of sodium and phosphorus in laundry detergents

File Size: 31.1 KB

Brochure on sodium and phosphorus

File Size: 91.5 KB

Today I also fertilised our lawn, and also applied sulphate of potash, which will make the lawn a lot more drought tolerant. I’m aiming to go for at least two weeks between watering our lawn regardless of heat waves this summer. I’ve invested time and effort into making the lawn require a lot less water in terms of quantity and frequency by increasing the depth of the root systems, through regular fertilising, weeding, and coring of the lawn.

Adelaide Marathon

This was a couple weeks ago, but I’ve been “a bit busy”, such is my favourite line at work these days. After talking to someone for a couple minutes and you feel like getting back to work, or just getting away from talkign to them, I say “anyway, gotta go, i’m a ‘bit busy’” - regardless of how NOT busy I am Anyway, my bro Mike and Dad entered the event too (10km run and 10km walk respectively) so that was great to have them come out and participate too. Mike had a rough time with blisters afterwards, and Dad had sore legs the next day I think, but both of them have just started getting back into running and walking, so soon it won’t be painful for them, rather it will be 100% enjoyable.

Anyway back to me, I got a new PB of 3hrs, 26mins (4 minutes faster than last years Melbourne Marathon). I was set for a 3hr 10min finish until the last few kilometres when everything cramped up and I was destroyed. At the finish line I got stuck because I had to dig my fingers into my quads or otherwise they wanted to snap into a cramp, so I couldn’t let go of my leg. It didn’t hurt or anything, just needed time to be massaged out. The volunteer helper people tried to push me through the finish area so I didn’t clog everything up, but I just had to tell them politely not to touch me. Later on, Morv gave me a really long massage that hurt lots and lots even though she was barely touching me (my fault for running 42km, not hers!) Even still after a 1 hour massage, I was completely ruined and could hardly move. I think this might have been from getting on the p**s with Tom V, Nick, Gary on the Friday night before.

Morvie & Tom 3 Month!!

Morv and I had our 3 Month on Friday! woot! She took me out to dinner at the Snake Charmer on Wednesday night. Definitely a big contester to the Raj on Taj Indian restaurant I normally go to. Delice! (That is delicious pronounced how Shaun Micallef would say it after having a sip of some random drink after sitting on a random chair at the start of one of his shows) Anyway, Thanks Morv it was a great night!!

City to Bay Fun Run

Best City to Bay I’ve ever done! Even though it was my worst time by 5 or so minutes, it was great to start at the back of the pack with Mike for the full run. After I ran with him for a few minutes, using my GPS watch to help him work out what a good 65min pace was, I left him to go hard and try to match my previous times. Unfortunately it succed hardcore having to push my way through everyone constantly for 12km, and apart from probably running an extra few hundred or so metres (from all the sideways movement), having to slow down and speed up constantly to get past people, I also p*ssed a few too many people off by bashing into them for my liking. In particular, there were 4 or 5 or so girls running SLOWLY abreast each other right at the finish line, and I swear I yelled very loudly “coming through” but they didn’t move, so unfortunately they felt the need to yell out “idiot” and “jerk”. Hopefully by next year if I build up some race cred I might be able to start with the elites or something. They start a minute before everyone else you see.

Afterwards, I met up with Mike and we took drinks back along the course for Nai and Morv which I think they appreciated. I feel sorry for Nai who had mega blisters from her shoes being too small. I know what it’s like to have bad blister problems and hopefully I can help her sort them out.

Indoor Soccer

I’ve started playing indoor soccer again in a team that Chris Soo started up. Our team name is “The team that very occasionally doesn’t lose!”. Quite appropriate, given we lots 16 neil today, and they lost 10-2 last week. This was my first game today, and heaps of people couldn’t make it so we got Morv to fill in to play as well She did an awesome job and is an indoor soccer superstar professional! I’m trying to convince her to just charge at the guys with the ball, and because she’s a girl they won’t tackle her so she’ll get the ball by default. But the team this weak was pretty gnarly looking, so it probably wasn’t a good first game to try these sorts of shenanigan tactics.

Work / Portland / Montreal, Canada

On Sunday I left to Portland with Ben from work. We tested soil for a wind farm for a couple days, which was definitely interesting. Unfortunately there wasn’t really much to do in Portland at this time of the year, so we got a little bored at nights. It’s a small town between Mt Gambier and Goolwa (Goolwa in Victoria, not the suburb of Adelaide). It comes alive in the holiday season over summer, with lots of tourists. Anyway, our stint in the field was very successful and we came home a few days early. I left my wallet at the airport on Wednesday which wasted most of Wed afternoon at work as I desperately rang everywhere looking for it. Got it back eventually, thanks to several very honest people, the key person being a worker Hudson’s Cafe at Adelaide Airport (ground level) that handed it in. Thank you so much you’re a champ!!

This coming Friday I’m going to Montreal, Canada, to attend a seminar on this software used for earthing of distribution systems. It will definitely be extremely intersting and I’m looking forward to it a lot. I enjoy numerical software, CAD, and FEA software, so this is exactly the kind of thing I should (hopefully!) be good at doing at work. It will no doubt take a few months to become reasonable at it, and intimidating for reasons I won’t publicly speak about, but I’m definitely glad to be doing this. I feel extremely fortunate to be given this opportunity.

Latest Beats

Roni Size. OMG he’s coming to Adelaide but I”m going to miss it as I’ll be in Canada!! ARRRGHHHHH!!!!! I missed out on the Red Hot Chili Peppers tickets, and now I’ll miss Roni Size. Just so you know, Roni Size, DieselBoy, and Klute are probably my three all time favourite DNB artists - which basically means my three all time favourite overall artists! So I’ve been listening to all my Roni Size music which I don’t seem to have listened to for over at least one year, and i’m loving it! I was getting a little tired of a lack of variety of DNB music I seem to have these days, but I’ve just got to learn to shuffle my CD’s in my big stacks of CD’s around a bit, and wipe and re-download new music to my mp3 player. Also, I think I need to go through and check that all my mp3-alised music is properly tagged so it can be searched for and sent to my mp3 player.

So my favourite album at the moment is definitely “in the mode” by Roni Size. There is this one track in particular “Centre of the Storm” which has the guy from Rage Against the Machine (Zack de la Rocha). It’s totally fierce, and should be awesome for running marathons to. It’d totally make me feel “pleasantly angry” which is exactly the kind of emotion I like to feel when running as it helps the release of lots of adrenalin. I was talking about types of music to someone at Morv’s friends 21st (Christina) last weekend for when you’re out running, and I really think it’s quite interesting to find out what people listen to. It can really help to just make you start to feel a little angry from the music you listen to, because it stops you thinking about the pain your legs go through. When I say I like to feel angry, I don’t really mean I”m going to go biff someone, I just mean it makes me not give a stuff about things. In particular, the pain of my legs.

Another Roni Size track I really like is “Lucky Pressure”. I would love to put these mp3’s up on my blog but I don’t think the record company would appreciate it. If anyone is reading this and would like to hear them, leave a comment and perhaps I’ll just put up 20 seconds of each track and provide a link to where to buy them from In fact I’ll just do it anyway! Here they are They’re deliberately in really bad quality to help prevent roni size from suing me :S

Lucky Pressure:

Center of the Storm:

Both these tracks are from In The Mode which you can buy for yourself and myself at this link, which is with Full Cycle Records. Unfortunately I don’t think he has a standalone website but let me know if you find one. Roni Size, I think you are a fool for not purchasing www.ronisize.com

Other wicked tracks are Brown Paper Bag, Play the Game, Dirty Beats, and OMG the list is endless! Best DNB artist, please buy me all these CD’s - in particular In The Mode

Other music I’ve been listening to a lot is a Cafe Del Mar album “La Caina Vue Mer”. It’s very relaxing and good for listening to just before bed, or whilst typing massive blog posts.

Lawn

Things on the lawn front are looking quite promising. I’ve done a little bit of back lawn transplantation to try and encourage the santa ana cooch to grow into the shaded areas of the lawn. I think it will be possible, but will be hard to keep through the winter. Weeds are extremely minimal after the extensive effort I spent last year. A bit of oxalis still which is under control, and a tom thumb type looking weed which I forget what it’s really called, still remains, but also under control using Paul Munn’s B6. All winter grass is dead from my mid-winter wintergrass poisoning. The very odd bit of kikuya keeps popping up every few months, but becoming a lot less frequent giving the huge dosages of Round Up I give it whenever it does, muahahhahaa. The only other weed is the bindii-eye which has popped up just a little bit, but nothing I haven’t been able to keep under control by hand and with B6. I guess this is the seeds of which was dropped last year before I got really stuck into my hand-removal regime. I should really take photos of our lawn now for completeness of my blog, but I don’t really want to until I’m totally happy with it.

This summer, absolutely MINIMAL water will be used on the lawn, and since we’re extending a veranda in to the yard this will further help to keep water down. I’m working hard to get the roots deep deep down, and the soil conditioned to absorb water as best it can, all before the summer kicks in.

A while ago I posted about my new hobby of growing black boys. I planted them mid-May 2006, and they’ve just started to sprout now after about 7 weeks. They are the quadrangilata species.

ACF GreenHome this fortnight is encouraging readers to reduce household waste.

Did you know that putting green wastes into landfill instead of home composting, produces methane instead of carbon dioxide, and relative to the quantities, composting is 23 times less destructive to the atmosphere?

I have done my part this fortnight for this, I just filled up one of our compost bins with all the leaves around our shed, and turned the second bins contents over to get it ready for spreading around the garden.

Also, to cut down on the massive amounts of junkmail we get in the letterbox (which always goes straight to the recycle bin) I’ve registered our street address with the Australian Direct Marketing Associations “Do Not Contact” service. Marketers that participate with ADMA use this database of people to know not to bother contacting them, because they know we chuck stuff straight into the bin, so it’s a waste of their money as well as everyones resources. Whilst I was at it, I also registered our phone number to help prevent the increasing number of marketing phone calls we get!

Whilst I’m in such a green mood, I checked out the Burnside Council’s recycling guide. It has full details on everything from what we can do to prevent waste in the Burnside Council district, including the specific pdf guide to what we can put in the Burnside Council’s recycling bins. If your council doesn’t have a comprehensive website I suggest looking at this one.

Also of interest to me is I didn’t realise the Burnside Council will (unless I’ve read wrong) reimburse hundreds of dollars of expenses for installation of rainwater tanks, as far as I’ve been able to read.

As pointed out by my brother, there is an interesting video of a recycling collection truck in operation:

Lots of things have been happening in the last fortnight, and I won’t even try to put this into chronological order!

On Tuesday last week I got a phone call from ETSA Utilities, who rang to ask for my postal address so they can send my employment contract to me. This I guess means that I have the job with ETSA, which I haven’t mentioned in my blog yet since I didn’t want to be too preemptive about it. I nearly started working for ETSA in early 2005 although opted to try a PhD instead, so I’m really looking forward to starting work with ETSA. Hopefully it comes in the post early this week, otherwise I’d best find out what happened to it.

On Thursday last week I started volunteer work via Greening Australia, with the Youth Conservation Corps. It was all good and interesting, and I enjoyed working with people I hadn’t met before. I even learnt a few things. However, I only lasted one day before I decided to quit, because of the setup of the program they were running. Because the program is sponsored by the Government for the purposes of giving young people skills to make them suitable for entering the work-force, most of the other volunteers were people that didn’t neccessarily care too much about the work they were doing. The program works such that the team I was assigned to is rostered certain tasks for the week. Since I was an added bonus to the team, all I did for them was to make their job less work, which reduced their individual workload from about 2 hours a day to about 1.5 hours a day, despite them actually “working” for 8 hours a day. I found it hard to believe that people could be doing volunteer work “for the environment” whilst dropping cigarette butts all over the place. In my opinion, the majority of the people that require volunteer work as a means of building up their CV are more likely to benefit from it if the Government pays these “volunteers” a small amount of money such that they can be disciplined for lack of team attitude and work ethics.

I did an extremely hilly 20.3km run on the way home from the job-site of this day of work I did with these people, and at the average pace I did it in after nailing such steeply ascending hills, I think I can say I’m fit to do the Adelaide August marathon this year in at least the 3:15 mark. (Previously I have been hoping to do it in sub 3 hours, but I have been sick on and off for about 6 weeks this year with a virusy type thing).

Sometime last week I cleaned and detailed my motorbike the best I ever have, and took heaps of photos of it. Click on the image below to see all of them.

A lot of my time in the last fortnight has been spent with the lovely Morv. She’s been on holidays which has been really fun but is back at work tomorrow We’ve been for a couple good hikes in Cleland, a DNB event with Technical Itch at the Colonel Light that Eddie organised, together with Darius & Sari, played a game called “pooker” which we’ve devised as a fair way of playing eight-ball together (not quite snooker, and not quite pool, rather more like eight-ball except I have to hit all the balls in in order and she doesn’t, since I’ve played about 1,000 times more pool than she has in her time it puts the game on a level playing-field) and just hung out together in general. The Technical Itch was awesome - I was expecting Tech. Itch to be heavy industrial type DNB but it wasn’t too bad, slightly progressive. We all had an awesome time, but all left by 2am as I think we’re getting old or something. Definitely have to go to some more DNB events in the near future. Morv took me to one of her friend of friends band that played at the Ales and Sails hotel (not somewhere I’d normally go!). The band was called the Lady Beatles - they were a group of chicks (quite young) that play Beatles songs, and their logo is of course a lady beatle! They were very impressive and very talented, it was just unfortunate that there were a few drunks in the pub that felt the need to dance in front of where we were sitting to watch the band. This would be fine if one of the 40 or so year old ladies had not decided to flash her tits, and shortly thereafter moon us. Thankfully I was able to use mind over matter combined with telekinesis to deflect the photons of light beaming from the said “moonie” such that I did not completely burn my retinas, and nor my sanity. I have not been having hallucenagenic nightmares since being mooned at point blank range by this drunk lady due to the quick action I took with the situation, and am trying to move on with my life. I haven’t even required professional counselling…yet.

I also still need to decide on a replacement light-fitting for my bedroom and would like to get some feedback of what you few readers there think of this one. Nai took me shopping for light-fittings and we found this one, which I’m intending on putting in alignment with my desk. So, what do you think? Please, leave a comment!

On another random note, one of my blog entries made it into the South Australian Rogaine Association June Newsletter!! I’ve saved a copy of the newsletter for my personal safe-keeping:

June 2006 SARA Newsletter

File Size: 1.3 MB

What else have I been up to lately.. well the marking of assignments and stuff for uni is nearing complete. I finished all the “assignments” and just have to finish this marking 44 reports that are maximum of 2,000 words each, and then I’m done for good - can’t wait!! Speaking of which, I best get this done ASAP. It is so hard to motivate myself to mark assignments though. As my colleague Laura once said, it is “soul-destroying”.

As Autumn has settled in, my (/my parents) Santa Ana cooch lawn has settled in for dormancy, and the winter grass has taken away. Thanks to Paul Munns weed chart I was able to buy special winter grass killing stuff. Winter grass supposably doesn’t harm cooch lawn, although in the long run if you don’t control it, your entire lawn may be covered in it, and could be detrimental to the cooch in the winter. I figured it’s better to make the sacrifice of having potential dirt patches for one winter than have to worry about it every winter.

Veronica and Nigel had their engagement dinner last night, which I felt very priviliged to attend. I hadn’t realised how small the dinner was going to be, which really made me feel like one truly appreciated friend - thanks guys I guess this is a product of being in a similar circumstance to someone else, and friendships are often forged stronger when big decisions are to be made. Norton Summit Hotel is the best food in the world (except my mum’s of course).

Sat. morning my bro took me to the uni gym, which I can’t believe I’ve never been to before. It was pretty good, except the treadmills don’t go any faster than 20km/h (pfffffffft what’s with that!?!?) and I could leg-press the entire stack they had 30 times without stopping, and really slowly at that (don’t mean to brag or anything ). I knew I had strong legs from my cycling days but they seem to have become stronger with the endurance running I’ve been doing. I guess I’ve been pushing myself a lot harder at late. I’ve also developed more mental strength to hang in there and push the barriers.

This morning I finished a batch of marking, although I really should have done another batch today.

Speaking of marking, I better go running now as an excuse to procrastinate

My latest hobby, black boys.

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get time to go collect seeds from some local black boys for growing my own black boys.