Garden landscaping research

Today's research project for Eric and me was to visit the local landscaping places to look at garden edging (decorative concrete blocks) and paving bricks.... and to collect business cards for people to do the heavy work. A relatively small area in front of the house is our responsibility. We have several idea for this area, some more practical than others. The easiest, and most practical for us, is pebbles and concrete animals, along with Eric's weather station and some little windmills. This type of garden is fairly popular among the residents of Carlyle Gardens. We also like the idea of a raised bed with a garden railway and rocks piled into mountains, but I'm getting away from that idea because it's too likely to be vandalised by someone from outside... despite the security force. We'll see.

Driver's license

Went to the Dept of Transport today to change the address on my driver's license and car registration. Their website had refused to accept my new address; apparently it's not in some database. The Dept Transport woman had to override the system to get it accepted; apparently she has to do this a lot.

Wrestling with technology

Need to get some Windows software on the Asus Eee PC. I have the software on CDs, but the Eee has no CD player. I tried to use an old external (USB) CD/camera card drive, but failed. Sometimes the computer sees the camera card part, but not the CD drive; sometimes it won't see either. Over to USB sticks: copy CD onto USB stick, install on Eee from that. So far that's been successful, if tedious.

Australian federal budget

I'm relieved to note that eligibility for the only Australian government benefit I receive (Commonweath Seniors Health Card) was unchanged by Tuesday's Budget.

New book on technical editing

I have a chapter in a forthcoming book from Baywood, New Perspectives on Technical Editing. My chapter is titled "Copyediting and Beyond". I was allowed, even encouraged, to include some of my opinions on editing, which many editors find heretical—and others find liberating.

Construction and gardening

Much construction and gardening work is going on beside the house: edging (not quite a curb) on a bit of road that goes nowhere; a path for walking, bicycles, and golf buggies; formwork for edging a large new garden bed; and laying of many truckloads of topsoil.

Awnings and blinds

Someone came to measure the windows of our new house for awnings and blinds (some external, some internal). We've decided about most, but not all, of the window coverings; the rest can be done later. Installation should be in mid-June, after we return from a trip to Adelaide.

Survey

A multiple-choice health survey asked how many cups of tea I drink a day; the choices started at "none". The same survey asked how many cups of coffee I drink; choices started at "one". Bit of biased assumption there? (I don't drink coffee.)

Smoke alarm

Used grill in oven for the first time in new house. Set off the smoke alarm. Alarm's turn-off button didn't. Eric had to rip it off ceiling and remove the battery. Not impressed. The chops tasted good, but.

Progress on OpenOffice.org Calc Guide

First draft of OpenOffice.org Calc Guide is now complete, and some chapters have been reviewed once. I have more topics to add, including new features for OOo3.1. Then on to the indexing, my least favourite activity.

Front garden ideas

We're contemplating the delights and hassles of installing a model railway in our garden. Eric's been helping by feeding me URLs. This scheme started with rocks as low-maintenance garden plants, artistically arranged, and grew from there. (I've been wanting a train set for years. Never had one as a kid.)

Instant lawn

Contractors arrived, assaulted me with obnoxious music, and departed, leaving badly-laid sod behind. Some of it has been sitting around in the sun too long and may have died. As soon as they were gone, the staff gardeners set to work running the watering system, which is not on automatic yet.

Pallets of sod arrive.

Sod has been laid.

Sod laid in back of house. Garden between houses also visible.

Bridge open

The bridge between the new section of Carlyle Gardens (where we live) and the older section was finally opened to pedestrian and light vehicle (bicycle and golf cart) traffic, so we can now walk over to the restaurant and other facilities without climbing over a ditch to get around the barrier, and we're getting a lot more residents from the other side wandering around looking at the new section.

Do Not Call register

Got onto the Australian Do Not Call website and registered our new phone number. Begone, telemarketers! Not that it's stopped (on our old phone) the people trying to switch me to a supposedly cheaper phone service. I rarely make phone calls, so cheaper calls are not an inducement.

Immunisations for South America trip

Today I saw a doctor specialising in immunisations for travellers, and was given shots for several exotic diseases, including yellow fever, typhoid, and hepatitus A. The yellow fever immunisation is a requirement for getting back into Australia. To my surprise, I found my (now very battered) old immunisation record card from the 1960s, when I was going to North Africa... at which time I had yellow fever and cholera shots.

Planning a trip to South America

I've been organising a trip to South America in July: Venezuela and Peru, flying into and out of Santiago de Chile. The Venezuela part (11 days) is being organised by the family of a friend, but I'm putting together the Peru part (another 11 days), tours to Cusco, Macchu Pichu, Arequipa, Colca Canyon. And all the air travel is up to me. I'll be flying on LAN, a Chilean airline. I wanted to book all my flights through the LAN website, so I can track and manage them online. Unfortunately, the website refused to process my credit card most of the time, despite getting it right once. Wanting to be sure to have the trans-Pacific flights locked in (just in case their very favourable business-class fares disappeared without warning), I fought my way through their telephone system to reach a human, who could only accept payment in US dollars... so I got stung with an extra card fee for that. Eventually I gave up trying to book the other flights and got a travel agent to do them, along with the tours I'd selected from the Tempo Holidays brochure. The Tempo website is hopeless.

Wasp sting

On evening walk with Eric, stung on ankle by a wasp. Wow! That HURT. Can't recall the last time I was stung—many years ago. Fortunately an ice pack seems to have dealt with the swelling (not bad) and the pain. (After quick check on web of first aid for wasp stings.)

Wireless router now working

Eric finally got the Belkin wireless ADSL modem/router to connect to the Internet. Several default settings were wrong for Australia. Hard to diagnose. Once the settings were sorted, the gadget worked just tine. Eric's blog has the technical details. Note: his blog is written in valid xhtml, so Internet Explorer does not display it.

Back on broadband, despite hardware issues

The broadband service at our new house is now active. Unfortunately, our new wireless modem refused to connect to the internet. Eric spent a lot of time trying to work out what was wrong, without success; he'll work on that some more this weekend and try it out on our service at Airlie Beach. We did have an ancient modem, which worked, so we know the connection at Carlyle Gardens is working. Unfortunately, the ancient modem runs only one ethernet connection (not wireless), so we're a bit limited until Eric gets the technical problems figured out. He's gone off to Airlie Beach for the weekend he was planning to go anyway), where he can use our connection there and try to find out what's going on with the modem -- and how to fix it. (We both assume the modem will work fine there; one of the corollaries to Murphy's Law...) Meanwhile, I'm on broadband again at the new house.

Windows XP dies on my main computer

A complete switch to Linux may be coming on my main machine: the Windows XP partition won't load, even in Safe Mode. Spent a bit of time trying to get Windows going again, without success. I don't know enough to really be able to solve this problem, and to be honest I'm not createdly motivated to find out. Ubuntu works fine, and I do have a WinXP partition on the Eee PC for the rare occasions when I actually need to use it.