thebaldgeek

You will need to open this link in a new window, and when its loaded, click and drag the map down so you can see the whole picture.
Thats our drive way right here……… How cool is that. I have spent the last 15 minutes looking at different places and reading about how the whole street view thing works…. Pretty much Google has paid someone to drive a goofy looking car/truck with a camera on the roof down a whole lota streets and record the images with GPS info attached……. Crazy. They say Australia will be launched some time this year, I wonder if Ballarat and Buninyong will be in the first lot of images……Anyway, we park our car (yeah yeah, car photos coming) on the left just after the first white speed hump you see, and our apartment is on the right.

Ok, the link is here….

Apart from this, things a going well. Work has gone ballistic. I hope Tom is having a great time in Jordon, we sure do miss him around here! Between the phone and the training guys, there is hardly a moment to breath…… Its pretty cool, you just never know what you are going to work on, measuring strain on the anchor cables of deep sea drilling platforms, spill gate control of hydro electricity dams and geothermal power plants just to name three…… You just never know what you are going to get when the phone rings!

The kids are going well, Amy never seems to have any homework, Terry seems to have it every night and  sometimes struggles to keep up with it. (This is a good thing…. for Terry, not Amy).

Freddy is going well, she seems to have settled down rather well and is getting used to shopping and swimming though the days. She finally has seen a few humming birds, but none real up close. We are still yet to buy a feeder and figure out how to mount it on the deck (we are not allowed to screw anything to the walls).
We still think we need two cars, but are stilling trailing having just the one for the next three weeks. The way it works is that Amy and I leave for school/work at 10 past 7 each morning (except Mondays, when Amy has a late start so she walks, or Freddy takes me to work and has the car all day), I start work at 7:30 and go till 4:30ish….. I say ish, because two times that Freddy has come to pick me up, I have been late, once, 50 minutes late….. we need two cars.

Went to the bank today to try and sort out the secured credit card thing. We can do it, but really need our cali drivers licenses to do it right, so its on hold for another 3 weeks. Much the same deal with the cell phones. Speaking of cell phones, I see that on my business card, its marked as ‘mobile’ not cell, so thats pretty neat.

Checks, the whole place runs on checks…..its driving me nuts. You stand in line at the supermarkets waiting for the person to pay for 10 bucks worth of groceries by writing a check. I pay for my cable internet by check, I get paid by check….. on and on it goes….. They all admit that its totally daft for a techo nation to be tied to bits of paper, but they cant give them up. I think its the only thing that the mail system still carries. If you transfer money between banks, they write a check, if I pay the church any money, I can write a check and send it, or, if I do it though the bank, ie, if I go into the counter and swipe my card and ’send’ the money to the church, the bank then raises a paper check and sends that to them…… duh, what up with that???

Ok, enough blogging, bed is calling…….. perhaps one little night cap of ‘port’ and lemonade is in order……. (shut up Matt W and Gary!)

Lisa had warned me about this before we left Australia, but I have to say, it still came at a total shock to me when it happen……
I thought I would ring the department of social security to see if there was anything that could be done from their end to ease this ‘new number’ syndrome I seem to be suffering from…….
I got a computer voice recognition system……uh, I speak English, I can answer questions…..how do Mexicans or any of the other nationalities that live in this free and brave land get on???? Beats me…….
I put on my best  American and gave it my all…… Let me tell you this much……. I really cant do accents, and I really cant do American accents. In fact, I think I do American about as good as Americans do Australian. I would love to know how an American would go with such a system in Australia……. Anyway, long story short, the kids were laughing at me, I felt really silly, and while I got a fair way though the voice prompts, I totally failed to say the word ‘Smith’ in American. I got the numbers, I got my name (tricker than you might think, the a’s come out as i’s) right, I got my address Ok, but totally failed to say my mothers maiden name in American…… I mean just how does an American say Smith?
Bah, anyway, ’cause it could not understand me, I had to wait on the phone line for about 20 min…… end result, nothing they can do.
The cell phones are just going to have to wait.

Great day in LA yesterday, some really good messages at church and a nice lunch in the middle. The drive up and back was not so bad. About an hour and a half each way, averaged 30.2mpg (12.8km/l)and 63mph (101kmh), so the Passat, while really uncomfortable for me and a tad small in the back seat for the kids, does the job really well, economy figures like that are going to be impossible to achieve in a minivan of any kind.

Off to the mountains today, Im very excited about it……heh, been up since 3:37am….just waiting for the family to wake up and shuffle them into the car…… Actually, thinking about it, if I had left when I woke up, I could have been there and back and they still would have been in bed!!!

The excitement and the complaint are not related, but it made for a more interesting title putting it that way…….

I’m excited because we had some weather today…..!!!!!! Yah! It was overcast and a cold north wind was blowing. Wow, our first non perfect day! While it did not rain, and so would have passed for a pretty good day in Ballarat, it was really neat to see something other than clear blue skies and perfect temperature!

The complaint I have had is from a good friend (not going to name names, but he lives in Melbourne)….. He said that I blog far too much and that he cant keep up. He wants to see shorter, less often blogs, and he also said that getting a 1 line summery once a week would be better……. Duno, I know 3-4 of ya read this, and its as much for yous as it is for me to keep a ‘diary’ of the adventure….. I see his point. I would hate to sit down in 5 years time and re-read it all……
Anyway, think I will just keep going and see if I get another complaint….

When we left Australia, we sold all our furniture, the first thing to be sold was the piano. We told Amy that we would buy her a new one when we got over here. We were very clear that despite what she wanted, she would be getting a digital one (both for me as much for the neighbors). Tonight was her night. We went and bought her a piano. After test playing about 5 of them she chose a Yamaha YPG-625.
I think she will be very happy with it. Terry might use some of the other features in it to get a bit interested again. If my web server was not going to show up some time, I might even look at the ‘learn’ feature of the thing, but the lure of cameras, weather stations and internet telescopes will be too great at the moment.

The only other news is that Freddy has got her humming bird feeder up and while we are yet to see any drink out of it, there are 2 of them hanging about in the tree out side our apartment and that is totally thrilling Freddy.