One week later and I have got much more done. I have US$50 for the visas, a little over a million rupiah in ready currency as well as Australian dollars. Lia has been packing for the last two weeks and kinda panicking because I have done nothing. Not to worry because tonight I packed.

I have my High Sierra backpack and case which can connect as a single unit however while separated, each piece is small enough to be classed as carry on luggage. In this I have packed my laptop, clothing, shoes, towel and all the power adapters in it. Lia on the other hand has two massive pieces of luggage each one around three times bigger than my bag.

In her defence though, one of the bags contains a massive amount of gifts that she’s pretty much been forced to buy for family and friends… and family of friends.. and friends of family of friends friends…

Yeah!

Tuesday was my last night at work and I was planning to get home on time but my close driver is quite slow and then on top of that the cool room decided to stop working just after close, followed shortly by the router on the LAN. No idea if the two are related (a surge perhaps) but it meant that I had to transfer all the meats out of the cool room and put them in the refrigerated make line cabinet.

I managed to get a lot of work done over the last couple of days, I even went out for dinner with family on Wednesday night although I was practically falling asleep at the restaurant. We had Thai and I probably had a bit too much of the green curry.

Today the twins flew to Sydney, tomorrow it’s our turn to fly.

It’s already after 4am on Friday morning and I really should be hauling my sorry self off to bed instead of blogging but here I am.

As it’s Friday it’s just one week before Lia and I depart to Jakarta and Bali. We’re also making a day trip to the island she was born, Bangka which is just off the coast of Sumatra. That’s kind of exciting because I’ve never been to Sumatra and, while it’s not the mainland, I can check it off the list of places I want to visit.

One week to go and I have not got any local currency yet. I have not even got my US$25 for the visa on arrival (It actually has to be paid in US dollars and they don’t make change).

I also have a swag of projects I really want to get finished..

So here I am at 4.27am, wasting time!

Wireless networking now works on Jamie’s machine.

That card is supposed to support all Win9x and NT variants so I don’t know why I was having problems with SP1

In my office I have three working computers and a semi-working Linux box. It’s not necessary as we really only need to have two and the desk that my dad built was designed for two and so the other machines are sitting on a dodgy looking table which is not the best impression to make when clients come over.

With that in mind I have decided to move Jamie’s XP machine and the nix box to the family room and, seeing as I have a wireless network, It would be stupid to be running Cat5 through the house.

I have a spare wireless PCI card which I attempted to get working with Linux but I couldn’t find drivers for it. As it’s a generic brand that doesn’t really surprise me so I’ll probably have to get a Netgear or D-Link card to get that running properly.

As the wireless card was not working in the Linux box I decided to try it in Jamie’s computer. It recognised and found my network but kept saying that the network service was unavailable. I am hoping now that this is because the computer is still running SP1

I had avoided installing SP2 because the version of Norton I had on the machine was incompatible but as that has now expired a new AV client has been installed the reason for not upgrading has been removed.

Installing the SP2 should be a fairly simple affair but that was not the case. As the machine is used by the kids and they only have limited access accounts I have been lax in doing updates on that machine so I had to install all the updates before I could look at downloading the SP2.

All 59 updates downloaded and the install process just started the very last one when suddenly Jamie’s machine and Lia’s machine went dead much to the annoyance of Putri who was doing (and not saving) homework. It turns out that Lia had turned on the kettle, the rice cooker, the deep fryer AND the dishwasher which are all on the same line throwing the circuit breaker.

I should get an UPS for Lia’s machine

I rebooted the computer and finished the updates but SP2 refused to download. I tried through the auto updater and through the http server but to no avail. In the end I had to go through the self help section, into the downloads, add the service pack to the cart and then download.

Five hours after first starting I am only now installing the package.

Hi

You may remember me as someone who used to blog..

Yes, so ok! It’s been one day short of a month since I last posted something so here’s a catch up of what’s been going on (and why I haven’t been writing)

As I have mentioned in the past the economy in Perth is extremely strong. So strong, in fact that there is a labour shortage with businesses advertising jobs on billboards and sandwich boards outside their premises and we have been no exception. In fact because of the economy we are getting busier and busier but finding it hard to find the staff to fill the shifts.

We lost a few staff and some of the people we have to replace them have been less than desirable, coming in for the shift and not putting the effort in that’s required or just not showing up at all. On top of that we had three of our regular junior staff who normally work weekends pull out of shifts over the school holidays as they went off on a school organised skiing trip to New Zealand.

Trying to run the store with only half the people we need has been a strain and not a heck of a lot of fun and at the same time I have been busy with clients from my web business.

I am currently building for 4 new clients and two existing ones and I seem to be getting more work coming through including something that’s going to be quite complex to put together. More on that later.

While on the subject of Job X and the lack of fun I have been having there the store got held up just over two weeks ago with a guy jumping over the counter and demanding money. This is not the first time I have been on the victim end of an armed hold up but at least this time it was only a knife and not a gun.

My ex is giving me grief.

I had the children for a week over the school holidays and Emily was telling Thomas and Cameron that, once Lia and I were married, they would have to call me Dad and they would call Lia mum.

Well, we’re not going to push that but Emily decided that she wanted to call Lia mum and so she started to do just that. Jamie followed suit and so when they returned home they told Amanda about it which I knew they would and Amanda was not happy about it, which I knew she wouldn’t be.

Anyway, it seems to have calmed down a little now with her still not liking it but more likely to accept it. We told her that if she really didn’t like it then she could tell Emily not to do it which is kind of manipulative because we knew it was unlikely that she would if the onus was placed on her but then, that’s the kind of thing she has no problem in pushing onto me in situations when the tables are reversed.

Between trying to do two jobs and sorting out hassles with Amanda and having the kids stay for a week we have also managed to do a little more organising for the wedding and I have also done some work in the garden, moving a couple of citrus trees and planting a new one as well as moving two frangapani’s that were being obscured by bushes into the feature garden that runs alongside the pond.

Last but definitely not least, Lia has some paperwork to sign. It’s a personal matter and not anything related to the wedding but it can’t be done here so we are going to go to Jakarta at the end of the month to do that and then have a couple of days stop off in Bali for some much needed R and R. We’re sending the twins to Sydney!