Brian Hoover's Blog

Ashton has glasses. More pics and thoughts later.

Suzanne is now a blogger. I hope she keeps it up. She’s done well for her first day!

During the middle of last week I revisited a site I haven’t browsed to in a while. Heavens-above.com can be used to, among other things, determine when the International Space Station is visible in your part of the world. You plug in your lat and long (or choose your city from a menu) and the site will tell you when you can see the ISS float by with tables showing the time, the direction, the azimuth etc. I used to do this more often a few years ago; I’d grab Suzanne and we’d rush outside and watch this bright dot go overhead. I’d marvel, and Suzanne would pretend to be interested. It was more interesting to watch it magically appear or disappear in the middle of the sky as it came out of or went into the Earths shadow. I also used this site to predict Iridium flares which are awesome. Should do this again sometime…

Anyhow, this week I saw that on Friday night it’d be visible for a good 10 minutes going from horizon to horizon with a maximum altitude of 60-odd degrees (not too bad on the neck muscles) and an amazing magnitude of -3.2. Very bright indeed.

So, when I got home Friday night I had about an hour to give Jett and Ashton a quick lesson in orbital mechanics and an even quicker history on the construction of the ISS. I’m pretty sure they got the gist of it all; that the ISS goes around the Earth, it’s a joint project between the Russian, American and European space agencies, that it needs to be around dawn or dusk if you want to see it etc.

So, with that in mind I thought we’d bring up NASAs own tracking map so we could see exactly where it was, and so we could run outside at the right time, but unfortunately that map is turned out to be hopelessly inaccurate at the time. Not sure why, maybe it misread the time/timezone from my system clock but it seemed to be way out. So we made do with the map at Heavens-Above.com which was fine. We saw that it was flying right over London, England and its path would bring it over Perth via India all in about 35 minutes. Pretty fast!

So, at the appointed time which turned out to be about 5 past 8 we wandered outside and turned it into a competition to find the space station first. It wasn’t hard. We all knew it was coming from the north-east. When it came it was easily the brightest thing in the sky besides the moon. Ashton asked me if I was really serious about Sirius being the brightest star. Haw Haw.

So, yeah we watched it for a few minutes. A silent, bright light floating by. I think Ashton lost interest pretty quickly but Jett stayed the whole time.

The thing is, for the rest of the night and for most of the next day Jett would ask, “Dad, where is the space station now?” and he’d demand to get back into the computer to use the “space map” to find it. This would happen about every half hour. Once he found out where it was, he’d run around the house and give status updates to Suzanne and Ashton. “Mum, it’s over Japan now!” He asked me to find pictures and the names of the current crew too. I wonder why this has captured his imagination so much? And I wonder how long it will last.

Next weekend I plan on breaking out the old telescope and pointing it at Mars which is currently close to opposition. Moons’s a bit bright now, so we’ll wait a week.

Rather than a bunch of smaller presents each, Santa bought us one big “family present” for Christmas. He got us an extra set of controllers with Nun-Chucks, and set of Wii Remote Plus. He even managed to slip in the Wii Fit Plus package which he must have known Suzanne really desired.

After opening the boxes on Christmas morning we fired it up to test it out. I did a quick RTFM, but in the end I didn’t really need to. The system is easy to set up and configure. All I really needed to know were some technical details like the range of the controllers so that we didn’t stand too far back.

We were presented with the Wii menu. From here we could play a game, connect to a network for updates and internet browsing, or adjust the settings like date/time and location. These configurations were all easily found, changed and saved. Connecting to the WiFi network was as easy as supplying the passphrase. We don’t intend to do a lot of web browsing on this, but hey… it’s handy for system updates and adding Wii “channels”.

We found navigating with the Wii Remotes to be an easy learning curve; simple and intuitive. I’ve never owned any other form of Nintendo game so I thought it might be a chore to learn the buttons but it wasn’t difficult at all.

So after familiarising ourselves with the controls we thought we’d put it to use and play some games. First up was Wii Sports, the default game included in the packaging which is a collection of 6-8 games like Tennis, Bowling, Boxing and a few others. It took us a few minutes each to learn each game, but that’s to be expected from something completely new.

The next game was Wii Sports Resort, which is a collection of about 20 mini-games plus a plug-in to the Wii Controller which makes the controller more sensitive and precise. This sensitivity is needed for almost all the games like Golf, Frisbee, Sword Fighting, Basketball and Archery. You eventually learn that you get rated on each performance with points. Once you reach 1000 points you become a “Pro”. There’s also a handful of “stamps”, another form of reward for “achievements”. So far I’m a pro on Sword Fighting and Archery.

The Wii-Fit bundle includes the Wii-Fit Board which enhances the Wii-Fit game. It’s a balance board which is remarkably sensitive to the slightest shift in weight. Using the Yoga section of Wii-Fit showed me that I have absolutely no balance. The Wii-Fit Board can also be used with other games such as Raving Rabbids, which my mum had coincidentally given to us as a Christmas gift. It opens up new possibilities in the game such as sitting down on the board and using it as a sled, or standing on it sideways to use it as an interplanetary surf board. It’s great fun.

I have found, however, that we have been putting in more time on the Wii that I would like. Sure it’s Christmas, it’s school holidays and it’s the new novelty but I was surprised to find that we had logged an average of more than 6 hours a day on it, actively playing games. This week we had our first Wii-free day and we intend to ration out trigger time from now on. I think the kids can play as much Wii-fit as they want as that will help with balance, strength and general fitness. But other games should be doled out in small amounts. Hopefully the novelty will wear off, but not too much. It’s a fun system, and some games like Wii-Fit can be a great benefit if used properly.

So I’m 40 today. I don’t want to make a big deal of it, but I’m sure Suzanne has something planned. Pretty sure we’re going to the local pub tonight for a pizza dinner, which is about as elaborate a party as I want. I’ve already got some well wishes from facebook and, as always, the guys at potf2.com.

It’s just another day, but I suppose it’s a milestone of sorts. I’m officially old now. But at least Ashton reassures me that I’m not really old. I guess to a seven year old child you’re only old when you are hunched over with wrinkles and coke bottle glasses.

40 turns up a lot in scripture and is commonly found as a measurement as some substantial amount of time for endurance or preparation: it rained for 40 days and nights during the flood. Moses spent 40 years shepherding his people in the wilderness, and also spent 40 days up Mt Sinai (twice!). King David ruled for 40 years, as did Solomon.  Elijah fasted for 40 days in the wilderness, as did the Saviour.

So with 40 being a theme of time and preparation I can say I’m fairly excited about whatever is to come in the rest of my life. I guess. I dunno. It will all sink in when I need to choose “40 or over” instead of “39 and under” in online surveys. Also I need to plan to get my motorcycle license, and have an affair with my hot, blonde 19 year old secretary.

So I had the last week off work. I had to work New Years day which was tediously boring, even though there was an active Known Issue alert which affected only West Australian customers which had to do with WA no longer observing Daylight Savings Time. The code works fine if you’re north of the equator or if you always observe DST, but since WA is south and we only trialled DST for three years we found there’s a bug when you change calendar years.

But it was all a non-event and I came through unscathed so after catching the train back to Mandurah we drove down to Dunsborough to visit my parents. Natalie and Dave were there which was cool too. Some of the highlights were playing golf at Simmo’s, and watching Star Trek on the large theatre screen. I doubt mum has ever seen TNG or DS9. She remembers the old series so seeing the familiar characters was a kick for her. My old nemesis Eric Bana was even in it. At Simmo’s we played a round of mini golf. Somehow Suzanne managed to beat me, but Jett had the best score of all, managing to pull off triple figures! Then we all had ice creams. We didn’t tell the kids that  we had a banana split at Simmo’s while they were out at the movies the day before with my mum watching Alvin and the Chipmunks.

The rest of the time down there was a mix of walking the dogs, hunting for golf balls, swimming down at the beaches at Dunsborough, Yallingup and Meelup. For some reason we didn’t get many photos while we were away.

But, like all good things it came to an end and we had to come home. On Thursday we visited Abingdon Miniature Village which is near us on Pinjarra Road. The grass was manicured to within an inch of it’s life and looked fantastic. It’s quite a surprising little place. I had my reservations about going and seeing some crappy little model houses, but there’s more to it than this. Besides the model houses, there’s a model railway with tunnels and bridges and waterfalls, there’s a nice hedge maze to get lost in, and a smaller “running maze” with no walls for the kids to play on. There was mini golf, a big sand-pit play area, an old heritage Tea Room (way overpriced, so we had McDonalds) and a little boutique. I had a better time than I thought I would have.

On the Friday we had some old-ish new-ish friends for dinner. “Old-ish new-ish?” I hear you ask? They’re kinda old for me and kinda new for Suzanne. I used to go to Church with Adam and Elissa many years ago, but lost touch. I found Adam on facebook a while ago, and our nosey wives also managed to communicate and make friends with each other. They’re on vacation here from their home over east and so we had arranged to meet up mostly so that Suzanne and Elissa could commiserate and comfort each other about having such nerdy, quirky husbands.

Explaining my relationship with Adam is strange… He was (and always has been, funny that) a couple years younger than me so I can’t really remember have that much to do with him in Church when I was young. I do remember, though, that he was into Star Wars when I was also into Star Wars. I can’t remember who invited who, but  I remember attending some Star Wars fan club meeting with him at some school. I think it was in Maylands…? There was munchies and a quiz and talk of collecting and rumours of new movies; I’m pretty sure it was before Return of the Jedi. I remember Elissa and my sister Natalie hit some kind of jackpot one afternoon when they made a call from a public payphone near our Church meeting house in Greenmount. They dropped their coin in and the whole coin box opened up spilling 20s everywhere. I lost contact with both of them for the longest time until about 6 months ago. I remember hearing rumours that he was a Bishop or a Secret Agent or something like that. Adam joined in on a couple of my idiotic facebook status updates, Elissa and Suzanne compared notes on which of us was nerdier.

Anyhow, I was happy to have them and their family over for dinner and take them crabbing. I appreciate that they took a night out of their valuable holiday time to catch up with some guy they haven’t seen or heard from in twenty years and meet his family. Their kids are cool and seemed to be alright playing with mine. Their oldest can even quote Lord of the Rings which ain’t bad. I think they all enjoyed crabbing, which was strictly catch-and-release only. I’d be glad to have them over again so we can compare collections in more detail.

Happy new year everyone. Here’s some pics of us fooling around with sparklers. It’s a balmy 22 degrees Celcius outside, beats the cold temperatures I know most of you guys are enduring right now!

Here are what Suzanne’s fingers look like a few days after getting crushed in the door. Some nice blackness has developed there, but new pictures next week should show purple. Even later in the week you’ll probably see naked fingers, with no nails. Avert your eyes, children!

So I’ve finally got the Internet on at home. It’s only been a month, but not all the delays are Telstra’s fault. We made a number of phone calls to the rent managers over about a week asking the owner would pop the $299 and get the phone connected. It’s an improvement I’m making to his property, and I really think he should bear this cost. Nothing doing. So it took me a week to get the phone on. Then, once we had the phone connected, we could get the Internet connected. Suzanne made the call to do this and after half an hour of being bounced around from place to place (this “Velocity” product they have must be new so nobody really knows who to send inquiries to) she was told that I’d need to make the request since the phone was in my name only. When I connected the phone I specifically asked for Suzanne to be added as an authorised person, but they said that the Internet is an add-on product and she was authorised only for the phone product. The rest of the time was spent waiting for the router to be delivered.

The software installation was easy enough, but for some reason I couldn’t get outside the Bigpond network. It only took 8 minutes from the time  I dialled to the time I was speaking with the tech support dude. I remember working at iiNet… we would get busted bad if we had anyone in the queue for more than 30 seconds, and if we let the phone ring more than twice. Anyhow, this guy was pretty abrupt and unhelpful, so I hung up and did what he probably should have advised from the beginning: I rebooted, and that seemed to do the trick.

Whew, now to get my RAID disks up and running in my NAS. Formatting 3000 GB of disk will likely take the best part of an hour. I’ve opted for RAID 1, just because I want to and just because I can. It’ll mean my docs and files are kept safe if a disk ever dies, and because it’s a Network Attached Storage it will be accessible from everywhere.

OK, so we had a bit of a bad day at the Hoover household yesterday. First off, when I woke up I found that I had done my back in. I don’t know if it was from lifting something the day before, or perhaps when fighting off those Ninjas, or if I just plain slept on it wrong. It was a bit painful so I decided to take it easy for a day and I called in sick.

It so happens that yesterday was the day the plumber was scheduled to come and fix our drain pipes. Almost a month after we have moved in we still have to bail out the laundry trough over the back fence into the laneway after washing our clothes like we’re livin’ in the 1800s or something. The good part is that he turned up on time, fixed a few other leaking pipes but couldn’t get this main job fixed as he didn’t have the tools to find let alone clear the blockage. Suzanne was with Jett who was staring in wonderment at this hole in the ground which happened to be the one the plumber decided was blocked. The second in this series of unfortunate incidents happened to Suzanne as she stood in the doorway talking to the plumber. She had one hand on either side of the door frame, for some reason with her left fingers in between the door and the frame, where the door hinges. A breeze which was running through the house quickly forced the door closed… You don’t need to be a physics major to know that this particular level-fulcrum configuration produces quite a lot of force.

To her credit, Suzanne kept a civil tongue and did not once finish any of the expletives she started. As soon as she extricated herself from the door, Suzanne ran to the freezer from some soothing ice. Jett thought it was very funny to see mum with her head, shoulders and upper torso in the freezer and with her feet alternately running on the spot and jumping from side to side with howls of pain emanating from deep within. Even the plumber had a wry smile on his face.

So after the plumber had scheduled to come back the next day to finish the job, Suzanne decided that she couldn’t drive to take the kids to Tee-ball practice. Her fingers were showing evidence of hematoma, and her finger nails were starting to lift. Poor excuse, I reckon as she still had at least 6 working fingers, including two thumbs! So, she ordered me I offered to drive with my bad back and all. We were running a little late so I went to start the car while she gathered her handbag and a couple “road cokes” to drink on the way. At the car she handed me the stuff as I was busy moving some of the junk in the way from where the plumber had been working. Without really thinking about it I put the cokes and the handbag on the roof of the car, finished moving a large, but light, shelf, grabbed the cokes and got into the car.

The third in this series of unfortunate incidents happened somewhere on the road in between home and Tee-ball when Suzanne asked “can you grab my phone from my handbag, I gotta call someone”.

I looked back at her and said “Didn’t I give you your handbag?” She had her coke which was dutifully cooling and soothing her damaged hand, so she must have the handbag close by. You might have worked it out quicker than I did at the time, but at this point it’s quite obvious that I had failed to grab the handbag from on top of the roof after I moved the shelf out of the way. I got the all important cokes, but not the bag with the credit cards, house and car keys, and the requested phone.

The thing is, even if the bag is found by some kind-hearted good Samaritan, there’s no real way he can contact us; all the docs in her purse have our old address, he can’t call the mobile because it’s with the bag, and he can’t find us on whitepages.com.au yet because we just got the phone connected a couple days ago and aren’t listed yet.

So I think we have mostly settled into our new place. The novelty has worn off, the excitement has dimmed somewhat and it’s back to life as usual which involves working like a mongrel dog. I think it’s wearing a bit thin for the kids as well as they aren’t all that enthusiastic about getting up earlier and travelling for 40 mins each way to school and back. It’s a lot different to Atwell where we crossed the road to get to school.

The only thing left on our to-do list now is subscribe to Internet. The phone wasn’t connected when we moved in, so we needed to pay $299 to Telstra to get the phone up and running. I contend that the owner should bear this cost, not us because it’s an improvement I’m making to his home which I’m not going to enjoy later on. But, he’s not budging so we had to do it ourselves. It’s unfortunate for us that we are the first ones to move into the brand spanking new house.

The phone was connected today and I got an excited call at work from Suzanne when I reminded her she can now get some Internet action happening. But this is another area where I think I’m getting screwed over a bit; this is a closed shop, a “Digital Village” type of setup from Telstra which means that we cannot get phone or Internet service from anyone else. What is attractive is that Internet is delivered by optical fibre, not ADSL. Therefore I don’t think that I need nor should I have to pay for a phone line. But Telstra assure me that I’ll need to pay a monthly fee for a phone line I’ll really never use so that I can have an optical fibre Internet service. It’s been about 8 years since I worked for an ISP, but I’m pretty sure that we provisioned this kind of setup at Ellenbrook or some other new development independently from PSTN. I might be wrong, but I still think I should be able to get one without the other.

And besides that, Bigpond charges and caps aren’t all that attractive. $50 a month for 12GB? C’mon, a mate of mine in Canada complains that 300GB isn’t enough for his $40 a month. How am I supposed to get by with just 12GB?

Oh, and almost a month without Internet is a pain in the ass.