There comes a time in everyone’s life when they do something truly stupid. It happens to everyone. It can happen in but a single moment.
Late this afternoon, all was good with the world. The weekend had been quite lovely. After a very wet start to the week, the weekend had been sunny, dry and cool. Sadly, as can be expected, the weekend was nearing the end point. I began thinking about sitting down and writing this weeks blog.
The modem and router were switched on. For some reason the internet connection was slow. Like way back to the mid 1990’s dial up speed kind of slow. Hmm. That wasn’t good. But oh yeah, now I remember. The nice telco sent a text message earlier saying that they were upgrading the mobile (cell) phone towers in the local area.
Just on the off chance that the telco had completed the work (they had), I took a look into what was going on inside the obscure workings of the modem. Turns out, the modem demanded a firmware update. Nothing makes me happier than being ordered around by a machine to do something, or face the consequences (kind of a bit like the horrid ED-209 robot). Anywhoo, I got the update process going, which ate up precious writing time. The update fixed everything. The internet was back to its usual crazy fast speeds again. Honestly, I don’t really require such fast speeds.
Then just for good measure, my computer started acting weird. Tech geeks have an old saying, I’m sure you’ve heard it: Have you switched the computer off, then turned it back on again? And that’s what (as they say) gone and done it. Unlike the modem and router, the computer didn’t switch back on again normally. Instead I was faced with a delightful shade of blue on the screen with a number of options, none of which worked. Even restoring from the Windows system image didn’t work. The evening had just then become a total disaster.
Who knew that the computer was writing crucial files to memory when I switched it off?
Oh well, there was nothing for it. A nice shot of rum soothed the frayed consciousness, and steeled the nerves against the epic amount of reinstalling of software which took place over the next few hours. Sadly, instead of writing an entertaining essay, you, lovely readers, are listening to me whinge about the downsides of computer technology. Trust me, I’d rather be writing entertaining essays about bubbles, than reinstalling software.
Fear not though! No crucial data was lost in crash. Just a lot of software bit the bullet. I’d be interested to hear how everyone out there backs up their computer devices so that the things can be restored quickly and easily in the face of computer trauma? So if you have any helpful suggestions, now is not the time to be shy.
Almost 80mm (over 3 inches) of rain fell earlier in the week. By Friday the rain had eased off. It was so wet outside that we decided to have a burn off of some of the forest litter. Basically, that’s the stuff that trees have dropped onto the ground over many decades, and it also happens to be the material which will fuel super-hot bushfires. It’s hard work cutting and hauling forest litter, and we were at that task for two days. But at least the days were cool, and the recent rain meant that there was no possibility of the fire getting away from us.
During the clean up, we spotted a very nice rock which would look good added to the rock walls we’ve been making on the new low gradient path project. We rolled the rock into the bucket of the power wheelbarrow, then drove it back up the hill.
Dumping the boulder out of the bucket is a much easier job than getting the rock in there in the first place.
A bit of work with the six foot steel wrecking bar, and the rock was moved into position. They do say that with the right lever, you could move the planet. I’d just hope to never see such a lever because that would be 100% pure apocalyptic!
The decent rainfall was a real boon to the plants. The ferns in particular enjoyed the big drink from the sky.
A little baby Echidna has been mooching around the shady orchard. I’ve had to train the dogs to leave it alone, and mostly they have done so. I quite like Echidna’s because they eat ants, and the enemy of my enemy, is my friend!
Onto the flowers:
The temperature outside now at about 11am is 12’C (54’F). So far this year there has been 731.0mm (28.8 inches) which is up from last weeks total of 651.4mm (25.6 inches)