Panel Van!!!

Had to get up early AGAIN yesterday morning – 3rd in a row! Guess I should get used to it though – it’ll probably be happening a lot with Uni and all that! Luckily I was convinced to go to bed pretty early the night before though, so I didn’t feel to bad when I woke up.

The reason I had to get up so early was because Dad and Cal bought a Ford XF Falcon Panel Van on eBay and had to go and pick it up from Croydon, and I went with them. I found out that it is quite a long way out there! Also, Dad didn’t know the way (he usually does when we’re going anywhere in Melbourne) so I had to direct him, but that was pretty easy. We took a cool trailer to put the panel van on, because it had something wrong with the clutch and so it wasn’t alright to drive back home (the original plan was for me to drive Dad’s car back and Dad drive the panel van).

When we got it home, we decided to fix the clutch so that we could have a bit of a drive. It didn’t need much fixing – Dad’s friend took about 10 minutes – but the hard bit was getting it out and putting it back in again, which took a good 2-3 hrs apiece. But Dad did that, so s’all good . Meanwhile Cal and I fixed a few little things like the door handles, the glove box and the thing that holds the bonnet up. These all would’ve been bitches of things to fix, but Cal has an old Fairlane that’s only a couple of years older than the panel van, and we swapped a heap of parts off it (it was bought for that purpose). The Fairlane is now officially a pile of crap (well, more than it was before). Cal uses a coat hanger to open the driver’s door, because we couldn’t be bothered swapping parts back. Not that they would’ve worked all that well, anyway.

It was pretty late by the time it was drivable, but we decided to take it for a burn around Nerrina. It goes surprisingly well. Like – there is nothing wrong with it! Certainly a lot better than Cal’s Fairlane . The only problem was that there were three of us, but only two seats. We figured we were doing enough illegal stuff already, so one other little thing wouldn’t matter too much (the car doesn’t have number plates or anything, ‘cos the guy was worried that we wouldn’t transfer the rego).

So that was a pretty full-on day, and my most productive in quite a while. I actually enjoyed getting a bit dirty and fixing stuff, which was surprising to everyone, myself included! Hopefully the car is fixed, roadworthy and registered before I head up to Sydney, so I can drive it around a bit! Hehehe.

Today I slept in, got up and mowed the lawn. Nothing terribly exciting. Oh well… suits me!

Hope everyone is super duper!!!

James

Burnt and Tired

The last few days have been the busiest in quite some time. Yesterday (Saturday) we had a garage sale, and sold basically everything. So Mum’s house is pretty much empty now! Except for my room, strangely enough. I don’t think my room has actually changed at all, except for some stuff possibly having disappeared from the cupboard, but I wouldn’t notice that anyway. We even sold the T.V. and the rubbish bin. So we just have plastic bags for bins, and it’s lucky I have my laptop . But yeah, most of my stuff is either coming with me to Sydney or going up to Dad’s, so it’s still here at the moment!

Last night was Jackson’s birthday party, and I almost didn’t go because I was so darned tired from the garage sale (combined with hardly any sleep the night before). I’m glad I did though – it was good fun, although drunks can get rather annoyingly persistent when it comes to trying to make somebody get up and dance (that somebody being me, of course). Now, Coke is good enough to get me singing, which was fun, because the music was extremely loud and nobody was caring anyway, but it takes a fair effort to get me up and dancing, especially with weird drunkards. But yeah, overall I had a lot of fun. Most people went out clubbing at the Bended Elbow afterwards, but I just went home. I still haven’t been clubbing, and I don’t intend to any time soon. I guess I will if/when I feel like it, but so far that hasn’t happened! Besides, I was still tired.

But despite my tiredness, I didn’t get to sleep for about 3 hours last night. I went to bed at about midnight, or just afterwards, but didn’t get to sleep till about 3am. Argh. To make matters worse, I had to get up pretty early this morning because we went to Melbourne to visit my Uncle and Aunty and cousins. It was pretty fun, except I wasn’t a very exciting cousin and didn’t do a heck of a lot except sit around and chat a bit.

Ah crap, Dad just texted me to say we’re going to pick up a car (a panelvan actually) from Melbourne tomorrow, and we’re leaving at 8am. That means another early rising – I was hoping to get a nice sleep-in! Oh well I guess I better go to bed then. Goodnight!!

Love James

P.S. I forgot to mention the reason for the ‘burnt’ part of the title. I went to Swindler’s Australia Day BBQ on Friday and got pretty burnt. Not good. At all. Also Jemma’s (my sister) birthday party was on Thursday night. That was pretty fun. Smitty and Elaine came along, which was very good indeed. I got Jemma a bracelet, which she liked a lot, so that was nice!

Oh what a wonderful feeling…

Oh what a wonderful day!

Actually it is a rather nice day outside! But regardless of that, today is shaping up to be fantastic (and already is!). First up, I get a lovely email from a friend to cheer me up completely, and make me feel wonderful. So my day was already pretty wonderful just because of that. But then, to top it all off, I got some mail. One from Nanny (my Grandma) was a card saying congratulations for getting into Uni and stuff, and some money to go with it.

The second was from the UAC (the NSW Universities and Admissions Centre – the equivalent of VTAC), saying that my application for a Commonwealth Accommodation Scholarship has been successful!!! That means I get just over $4000 p.a. to assist with rent, etc for the next four years (assuming I remain elegible). ZOMG!!! That will make life a damn sight easier for me! Mum and I were basically yelling out with joy lol. It was quite a moment! Okay well I am going to go and enjoy the rest of this brilliant day. Cya!!

Lots of love,

James

LogJam

Well I’m pretty bored, so I decided to install a program that lets me post to my LiveJournal without using a web browser. It’s called LogJam. It seems pretty good and it’s really easy to use, so I might just keep it!

In other news, my website really badly needs fixing (the homepage is fine, but the rest of the pages are very unorganised and outdated). So I might do that, if I can be bothered. In fact, I think I might just make a whole new site, because it would probably be less complicated than fixing the old one. Might not look as good, though.

EDIT: My site is running a lot more smoothly now. I managed to get Nvu (a website creator/editor) to synchronise with my site, so I could easily make changes in there. Very cool. There will still be a few broken links though – to the ‘Site Map’ page. There aren’t links to this on the homepage, but there are some on other pages. This will change eventually, I assume.

Assassin!!!

In recent days, there have been two assassination attempts on me. Both by whitetail spiders. The first one was by your average, run-of-the-mill whitetail, which I would normally just put outside straight away. However, due to the location of this particular spider, it became a rather scary situation. I first felt it (yes, FELT it) when it was crawling on my leg. I didn’t know what it was, so I just brushed at my leg. It was still there, so I looked down, but being dark I couldn’t see anything. So I brushed some more, still with no success. So I switched my light on, looked down, and just about wet myself. I brushed the spider off my leg successfully this time, then put it outside (a long way from the house, mind you). I was in shock afterwards, wondering why on earth it didn’t bite my leg off (whitetails are so evil that they are probably capable of this).

The second assassination attempt was conducted tonight. Again it was fairly dark, but I saw a dark shape on my wall. I directed my light onto the wall, and much to my horror I saw the BIGGEST whitetail I have EVER seen. Take a normal whitetail, then multiply it’s size by 4, then multiply its scaryness factor by 17, and you will have something similar to what I saw. I got Mum, and we trapped it and put it outside with its friend. Actually it was a lot further away that its friend. I told Mum to put it over the other side of the road, but she couldn’t be bothered. Still, its basically in the gutter, so it shouldn’t make it back. We assume that it was a female and was due to have lots of little evil whitetails very soon. Also it was extremely agitated (the first one was pretty calm), so that is further proof that it is a female (not being sexist here – female spiders are just much horribler that male ones it’s a fact!!). Anyway, hopefully the first one was the husband (we probably saved its life before the female ate it) and the second one was the wife and so there will not be any more for me to come across. *crosses fingers*

ZOMG UNI!!!

I suppose I’d better blog about my good news at some point, so… I got into the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS)!!! My course is:

Bachelor of Science in Information Technology, Diploma of Information Technology Professional Practice, Bachelor of Arts in International Studies

Whew!! But yeah, so excited!! I also got an offer from the University of Ballarat for their Bachelor of IT (Professional Practice), but that was only for if I didn’t get into UTS. But yeah, there are so many dates to try and keep track of and I am gonna have to spend a fair bit of time in Sydney!! Oh wait, that’s obvious… I am going to have to LIVE in Sydney (living on Res – already done!). But you know, before Uni starts I’ll have to go up there for enrolment, orientation, etc. It’s all pretty overwhelming and exciting. Hard to believe it’s actually happening!

Okay, so in other news, Nick and I went to Jackson’s place the other night because Jackson was home along. We played Gears of War on Xbox 360 (and passed the entire game in the one night), and also Wii Sports (on the Nintendo Wii, of course!!). Wii is SO FREAKING AWESOME I now want one. We played tennis and bowling and everything and yeah… SO COOL!! Hehe.

Last night Smitty organised a little bit of a reunion of school friends at the Bended Elbow. We were supposed to have tea and then play trivia, but turns out the trivia isn’t on at the moment so we just hung around and talked and then went to Maccas and hung around and talked some more. Oh and Lucy had Pasta Zoo and it was crap. Well, it looked crap. And Lucy said it tasted crap too. Why on earth does Maccas sell PASTA?!?! Oh and then I dropped Joel and Jackson home (and was the victim of Emma’s road rage on the way to Joel’s!!) and then went home myself. Other than that, not much is happening at all.

Oh wait, one last thing. I don’t know if Nick reads this, but if he does…. VISA CARD!!!!! Teehee.

Bye!

Love James

Albury, tennis, and…. Soviets!!

Howdy all!

Well, I’ve been in Albury for the past 4 (?) days, visiting friends that we met when we travelled around half Australia (in 2000). I didn’t have much access to internet, which would explain my absence from MSN, but that said, I didn’t mind because I was having too much fun anyway. The Murray River runs through Albury, so we swam in it at this cool place where you walk up the river a couple of hundred metres and then jump in and float down to where you started. All you have to do is keep yourself afloat, ‘cos the current it heaps strong! We also bought blow-up pools from The Warehouse or some such place and floated down on/in them too! ‘Twas awesome fun! The people we stayed with also have a projector with a big screen so we got to watch DVDs and stuff when it was too hot to go outside (a lot of the time).

Oh, and the last night we were there (last night), we jumped in the pool (yeah, they had a pool but that was the first time we used it lol) at about 11:30pm and switched all the lights off and we could see the stars and stuff and it was pretty. Also we played fun games like Marco Polo and Ships & Subs. Ans we made a whirlpool!! Yay I love being childish . Oh oh also I drove all the way up, which was rather surprising – usually I’ll only drive for a couple of hours but I drove almost 5. Mum and I shared the driving on the way back though. As a last note about our journey, I will include a picture of us playing cards:

Liz, Annie, Me, Jemma and Cal playing cards (Jemma and Cal are my sister and brother respectively)

Oh, tonight I watched the tennis for the first time in ages. It was actually pretty good, and riveting! And on a final note: the Soviets did some darned nasty stuff, but they also made some totally awesome and crazy bus stops!!

That is all.

Lots of love,
James

Two Conclusions

I know I blagged already today, but I have cool some stuff that I want to write down. Namely two conclusions that I have come to:

1. Cats are both funny and cool
At my Mum’s place we have a cat that hangs around a lot. I can’t remember it’s name (it has one and it has an owner and stuff), but it’s still cool. It comes around sometimes and meows at the door and then when you go out to pat it, it headbutts you like crazy and rubs up against your leg. A few times now it’s almost knocked me over. It’s not a big cat at all, but it’s quite strong!! It’s good cos when I’m here I don’t get to spend time with Specto cos he’s up at Dad’s. So he’s kinda a replacement .

2. Horoscopes can be strangely accurate
I was reading my star guide for the whole coming year just before (I am a Libra). In the ‘Home’ section, it told me that in February I there will be some kind of major reshuffle, quite possible moving house. Coincidentally (or is it? o.O ), I am moving in February – on the 19th/20th to be exact. My Mum also happens to be a Libra. She also happens to be moving in February some time (differently to me, though). The only other person I know well and that is a Libra is Kale. Oh, and guess what? Kale is also moving in February. Maybe horoscopes deserve more respect than a lot of people give them?

Night driving in Melbourne

Yesterday / last night was very interesting indeed. In both good and bad ways, too! Overall it was pretty fun though. It was my Grandpa’s (76th) birthday yesterday, so we went to visit him in Melbourne. It was a pretty full car, because me, Dad, Jemma, Cal, Bronwyn (Dad’s girlfriend) and Wylie (Bronwyn’s son) all came. It was okay though, except for the heat! The interestingness started after we got to Melbourne. We went out for a drink in a cafe, which was nice – Grandpa seems to know EVERYONE in the whole of Niddrie. It’s rather funny. Then we were going to go back to Grandpa’s place, but some ‘family issues’ came up (I can’t be bothered explaining, and I’m sure none of you really want to know anyway) so we didn’t stay long and we didn’t install Ubuntu on Grandpa’s computer (Grandpa wanted to, but Lois, his partner, wouldn’t let us =( ). Oh well.

Then we went to Lygon St for tea and we had souvlakis which were delicious as usual (in fact more delicious than usual). After that we headed down to St Kilda beach and had a bit of a walk and a paddle which was very nice indeed. We also walked out onto the pier and Dad kept yelling out “Look, penguins!!” because there are penguin sightseeing tours in that area and he was making people look. Twas funny .

We couldn’t be bothered going home then, so we went up Mt Dandenong (I drove!) and looked over the whole of Melbourne and could see all the pretty lights and stuff. It’s pretty awesome up there. Then I drove back down also and that’s where the night got rather more interesting (for me at least). Halfway down the mountain (it’s windy roads, and it was dark and a bit wet), I’ve come around a sharp corner and suddenly seen a rather large tree laying across the road. Slammed on the brakes and stopped only just in time. Mind you, lucky Dad taught me emergency braking, otherwise I probably would’ve hit it. Dad’s car doesn’t have ABS, so the brakes locked up (really quickly!!), and the car was just sliding because of the wet. So somehow I managed to EASE OFF the brake, then brake hard again so the brakes weren’t locked up. Scary shit, but all was okay. We moved the tree off the road and continued on our way. We got a little lost, probably because it was dark and wet, and Dad was trying to direct from the back seat. It stressed me out a little, and as a result I accidentally took a roundabout a little too fast and (again, due to the wet) the back slid out a little lol. Dad and I were the only ones that seemed to notice though, so it can’t have been too bad!

The stressfullness of that drive got just that bit worse when we got into the city. I was going to pull over and get Dad to drive, cos I’d been driving for probably close to 2 hours in not-good conditions and I was pretty stuffed, but we were going to stop and get fuel soon anyway so I just kept going. Bad idea apparently. Went through an orange light and saw a bright flash. CRAP!! Stupid red light cameras. That said, another car went through at the same time, and it would’ve been pretty hard for me to stop given the conditions, and Dad said he wouldn’t have stopped either, so it could be okay yet. I certainly hope so! So yeah, that’s my story. Was it a good one? I hope so lol.

Not a lot else has been happening lately I guess. The other day I went for a walk around the lake with Kale, Joe and Tiana. It was pretty good, except for the heat and the severe lack of water in the lake. But yeah, I had a good time!

I think other stuff happened pretty recently, too, but I can’t think of it at the moment. Main round offers for Uni placements come out on the 16th for Victoria and the 17th for NSW, so I’m looking forward to that (I think). I will hopefully get into UTS and all will be well. It’s exciting! I get to move into my room in Sydney on the 20th of February! w00t!! Okay yeah that’s about it. Bye!

Love James

Happy New Years!!! etc

I know it’s rather late (3 days even), but Happy New Years everyone! I wish you all the best for 2007, and hope you all have a wonderful, happy, exciting and peaceful year =). 2007 is going to be a pretty big year, I reckon, with me and most of my friends, having finished school, heading off to either Uni, TAFE, or full-time work (or something else!!). Uni will be pretty exciting for me I think – especially being in a completely different city and even state!!

Well, last time I blagged was Christmas Day, eh. A fair bit has happened since then I guess, so it’ll be a pretty long blag. Boxing Day we had a nice lunch, still at my Uncle and Aunty’s place in Gawler. Then we headed back home that afternoon/evening. It was pretty uneventful I guess, but then most travelling is usually.

The day before New Years Eve five of us went out to see ‘A Night at the Museum’ at the cinema. It was hilarious! The best characters were definitely Jed (spelling? played by Owen Wilson ) and Octavius. They were miniature people and they were very funny indeed. But yeah, very good movie – you should check it out some time if you haven’t already! Then we went and hung out at Maccas for a while, as usual (although Elaine had to go and tend to sick Matt).

I wasn’t really looking forward to New Years Eve at all. It’s not that it’s a bad thing or anything, I just had bad memories from the year before and they were getting to me a little bit (my parents separated). I didn’t go out or do anything terribly exciting, but I had a nice night nonetheless, and it dispelled my negative predispositions towards the night. Yay!

At some point around this time I reformatted my notebook again (it was before New Years, but that’s all I can remember), because some things were playing up. Firstly, when it booted up it came up with an error and put me into a console. All I had to do was exit the console and it would continue to the login screen as usual, and there was no visible damage to the OS itself. I’m pretty sure this problem was not really Ubuntu’s fault – it only happened after I installed Fedora Core 6 and then played around with the boot loader. So it’s either my fault or Fedora’s. Probably mine . Anyway I couldn’t work out an easy way to fix it. Also, at some point when I was in Adelaide, Ubuntu stopped having the ability to go and get a DHCP network address. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about… Well, I’m not going to tell you, so you can go and Google or Wikipedia it if you really want to know. I could kind of manage to set a valid static IP and connect to the Internet that way, but it was annoying and not practical. Also, it wouldn’t let me connect to Mum’s computer at home so I couldn’t back up. I had to use Fedora to do that. Thank God it was there, in the end. But yeah, Ubuntu is a pretty fresh install. I decided to try out this program called ‘Automatix’, which installed codecs, plugins and programs that people commonly use. This includes the codecs and plugins that allow me to play MP3s and DVDs (these are proprietary formats, so it’s technically illegal…). It was pretty good for that sort of thing, but I went a little overboard and got it to install Skype and Google Earth as well, which I wouldn’t do again. It’s nowhere near as neat and stuff as when you just do it yourself.

Yesterday I decided that I’ve been a little lazy these holidays, and I was feeling unfit due to not having played squash or racquetball for a while (the next pennant starts soon, but it might be a bit late before I go to Sydney…). So I decided to go for a run around the lake (if you could call it that). Out of the 6km, I managed to run maybe 2/3s, but I had to keep slowing down to walk. I guess it’s not a terrible effort considering the last time I attempted to run, though . So I’m pretty sore from that!

Also yesterday I finished my book – “The Bear and the Dragon Volume 1″ by Tom Clancy. It’s pretty awesome, but I found out – much to my disappointment – why it was “Volume 1″. It’s because I got the Large Print edition from the library, because all the normal print copies were gone. So it’s only half the book. Still massive though! So I went and got the full book (normal print ) from the library, and discovered that it’s a whopping 1028 pages! So yeah I’ve got a fair bit of reading to do over the next while!

Okay I think that’s about it. Today was pretty awesome – I got something today, which I’ve been wondering if it would ever come. It did though! Hehe it’s for me to know what it is though. Some might guess, but I doubt it . Okay well yeah, I’m gonna go read some more. Bye!!

Love James