MWNews 176

Hello there. Is anyone home. Surprise, surprise, I am posting on a different day. Although I might not but I am starting on a different day and hope to post this soon. Not that I have anything extraordinary to say but at least you can waste your time while I waste mine.

I am working at Morgan's Financial today. Doing a laptop rollout. My part is easy. I have one of the Morgan's IT guys here and he is doing all the se
tup which I would normally do so I just wait for him to finish and go plug it all in. If the desk is neat, then it takes me five minutes. If not, it takes longer.

I have also been doing my Tursa job but this one came up and I am the only one trained in how to do it so they pull me off Tursa and put me on Morgan's. Tursa is a lot of physical work, Morgan's is not. They only replace the computers and all the peripherals stay the same. So a lot less lifting. Tursa can kill you because as I have said before, or maybe not I forget, Tursa printers are heavy. I'd say around 30 kilos each. It takes a lot to carry them around. One guy I work with has a trolley so when I work with him, we can wheel them around and do not have to carry them. It makes it much better. But since I am on the train, having a trolley would be difficult to haul around. 

Right now, the guy I am working with from Morgan's is making this process take very, very long. He is doing all the things they would do once I have the devices installed. Normally, I just do some updates, have them sign in and set up their accounts and then plug it in. Since we are doing all the things they would do after I do that, it is taking up to three hours per computer. So I do not think we are going to finish on time. I have explained what I do according to my instructions but he insists this creates a better user experience as they do not have to wait for slow updates from IT once it is installed. I suppose we have to do it his way but I am hoping he is not here tomorrow when I am supposed to finish so I can get it all done.

I have decided we will never finish.

I haven't seen the kids in a few days. I see them but with me working, I get home and go to bed so I only get to see them come in and tell me good night. It's getting kind of hard to do that all the time but these projects only go for a couple more weeks and then I have no idea what I will be doing. Hopefully, I will have more work but there is no guarantee of that. I will be taking the kids somewhere next month and it is my birthday so we will get to do some things together then. I am really starting to miss them, or miss doing things with them. Not that I did a lot before but they were always there if we wanted to do something. One of the problems is, on the weekends when I do shopping or go to the shops, I like to leave early enough so we do not waste the whole day on it but they don't get up and ready until around 10 or 11 so most of the day is wasted and then I have to come home and make dinner so I don't see then either. I always say I will make the time but it never seems to happen.

I plan to buy season passes to Dreamworld this week. It is supposed to be a present for our anniversary but I am not sure I can get away with that. She will probably want something personal but these passes are expensive and I have been working hard and saving up the money for them so I think it is a good present. Probably not. I was going to do it last night, but was too tired and went to sleep. 

Dreamworld is the bigger theme park here. We had passes to the other three last year, Sea world, Movie world, and White Water. They are all the same pass but the parks are much smaller. Movie World is mostly roller coasters and I or Maeghan cannot ride them. William will ride sometimes but he doesn't like riding by himself.

Hey, guess what. It is now Friday and I never got a chance to get back to this. So now I am going to try to finish it. Not that any time has passed for you but it has been a couple of days for me so I will probably forget what I was talking about and either repeat myself or forget where I was going with it. But I am sure the quick witted among you will be able to follow along with no problems. As for anyone who gets confused, now you know what it like to be me, always confused and not sure what is happening at any given moment.

I told Juanita about the Dreamworld tickets. Not sure if she thinks it was a good present but it did cost more that what I would have spent on her if I hadn't bought them so it will have to do. I told her because the tickets are already active and we could start going immediately. I thought it would be a good idea to go this weekend to the water park. The water park closes for the year in a couple of weeks so we only have a few opportunities to go until the spring. Not that it is cold here but these are Queenslanders and they think everything is cold. It will be at least 20 degrees for the next month or so but that is cold around here. It is a warm day in Tasmania but try convincing anyone of that and they look at you funny.

We might not go as I am really really tired and I need a day off. Seems I have been going and going for at least a month now and I need to just sit at home and play Xbox for a day. I don't do that very often and I don't really enjoy it but what I need is a day where I don't have to do anything. I will do things like cook and go to the shops but only because I want to and not because I have to. I will have to cook dinner but I mostly enjoy that so it is not a real chore for me. I do have things that need to be done, like mowing the lawns or cleaning the BBQ or any number of things that need to be done but if I don't feel like it, I just want to be able to sit.

Now, you would think with all these grown men living in the house, one of them would do this for me but it usually ends up either I do it or Juanita does it and they just sit around and ignore us. Not a lot of good thoughts around that arrangement. The only thing they actually do is sometimes, they wash the dishes but they have to be told to do that and when they do, I usually have to rewash them as they are not very clean. I guess if you get them wet, that constitutes washing them in their minds. And one of them is a full grown man in his 40s. You would think he at one time or another would have learned how to wash dishes, but no, he never does the washing, only drying if it comes to it.

I'd also like to complain about another thing that just came up but since I have taken all this time complaining I might only complain a little more. We just got the power bill. Almost double what it was last time. Juanita said she mentioned it to the people living there and they all said, 'we don't use that much power so its not their fault'. One of them even said they had been staying with someone else for a couple of days and they should not have to pay rent for those days. By the way, we charge them rent to stay with us. No where near what it costs for them to live there and they are poor so they end up not paying most of the time anyway, but to suggest because they were not in the house so they should not have to pay has really set me off. I was not there when they said it but if I hear it directly from them I will suggest I should use that strategy with the real estate. That if we go on vacation, we should not have to pay rent for those days we are gone. I am sure they will be real accommodating.

But enough of that.

If we go, we will go to the water park this weekend. We spent a week doing that a few years ago. We came up here on vacation for a couple of weeks and bought passes to Dreamworld. They are basically the same park or two parks right next door to each other. We would go to the water park in the morning and then leave for the main park in the afternoon. We would just take our things to the car and then walk in to the other one and ride some rides. It was great. I might have mentioned it at one time or another in this blog but that was several years ago and I cannot recall if I did. Not that we will do that this time, but we might. They both close at 5:00 so it is a pretty good deal. Swim for a while, ride the water rides and then walk next door and see some shows or ride around on the train or something. Nothing majorly thrilling, but we enjoy Dreamworld more than the other parks we had passes for last year. We thought about it a long time last year before we settled on season tickets for the three park deal but those parks are just not for us. They are not close together, or two of them are but not really walking distance, so you have to get in the car to drive to a new park if you want to do more than one a day. Sea World is pretty far from them so it is a standalone experience and a destination in itself. It is good but once you have seen everything, not a lot of re-visit value. They do have three or four special shows each year and those were good, although one of them was strictly for little kids and we did not enjoy it much. Or now that I write that, that was at Movie World where the Halloween show was pretty bad and not something designed for anyone older that six.

Now we have a problem. I am tired of typing already. I still have a couple of hours where I am supposed to be here at my job but I think I am not going to type anymore because I am tired. Been tired for a few weeks, months, years, decades now. I just never seem to get enough rest and always fall asleep when I shouldn't. Most of the time, while sitting watching TV or if I go lay down for a minute, I fall asleep. I wake up at 3 in the morning almost all the time. Mostly, I get up because if I don't I am afraid I will oversleep when I need to get up for work. So I am in bed by 9 every night, sometimes 8, sometimes 7. I think it means something but there are no doctors here that will agree with me, so I keep plodding onwards. And, by the way, that will start another rant on my part so I will stop writing about that. Terrible health care system here. Better because it is free, worse because it is free.

Maeghan and William are desperate for me to spend time with them. I can feel it with every breath. Juanita is even more so. I am not sure what I can do about it. I am just spent, both mentally and physically. But again, a tale for another time. I am tired of typing and if I get started, not only will it be all about me but I will go on and on. So I am stopping for now.

Until next time,

Later

MWNews 175

 

Back for another day. Was hoping to not work so hard today but everyone seems to be having problems and I am just not up to fixing any of them. There was supposed to be an outage today so I am just blaming it on that. Problem is, the outage is over now and I can't blame it on that for the rest of the day. Maybe I can just sneak out and no one will notice.

I am talking about Prinz Willem, the nursing home although I don't think they call them that here. Not sure what they are referred to but I don't really care so let's not talk about it. I have someone coming in soon to have me set up their printers. It would seem that they lost all the printers during the week and some people are still having trouble getting them back. Since I only work on Fridays, it is up to me to fix them all and they have to bring their laptops in for me to do it. But again, I am tired of talking about this place so let's move on. Although I was just ask to set a printer as the default printer for someone in this office so I had to show them how to do that.

Now for more good times. I have never sent William's thing into the army for him to attend this get to know the army camp next month. I have until tomorrow to do it so guess I will be doing that when I get home. I am not sure he is keen on doing it but we will send it in and see what happens. It should be ok and I think he might even like it but he is building stuff in his construction class and he seems to enjoy that. Not that he is building anything useful but I think they are just giving them access to the equipment and they can build what they want. He built some necklaces for Juanita and Maeghan and he built a tool box last week. I have not seen it up close yet but it looks ok. He still likes going to school but I think it is only because it is so easy for him. He is taking reduced requirement classes which seems to mean they do the minimum of what is required to pass the eleventh grade. He says it is so simple, he has done all the work required already and has nothing to do when he is at school. But he likes that.

He doesn't like having to take the bus and the train and then another bus to school and then again to get home and will find any excuse to not have to do that, which means he misses as least one day a week. His usual trip is to take a bus from our house to the train station. Then take a train one station further on and get off there to wait for the school bus for his school. He says it is a 45 minute wait for the school bus but if he takes a later bus from home, he will miss the school bus. There is nothing to do at the train station, although there is a small shopping centre across the street, so he has to wait with nothing to do. If he ever discovers he can go over to the shopping centre I am sure we will begin to hear about him missing the school bus because he was across the street. But so far he has not done that.

One of the reasons he has to take this trip now is the ever rising price of petrol. Even at Costco, it has risen to $2 a litre. That makes a tank of petrol around $150 to fill up. That is a significant expense and one we can no longer afford. Taking the train and bus only costs about $3 a trip so it is way cheaper. I am sure they will be raising the price of that soon but for now, it is the only option.

I am trying to find ways to only work jobs that are close to the train stations. I get lost on the bus systems but trains are ok. Most of the time, it is not too far off track for me to take a train and then walk to my destination but in some cases, I still have to drive. Since it takes a half tank of petrol to get to the other side of town, where most of my work is, that is something I cannot afford. It cost me more to get there and back than what I am getting paid. In some cases, they will pay mileage but in most, they do not. I have told them, if it over 100 kilometres, then I expect them to pay for it. So far, they have done so but even then, what they pay is not the full cost of traveling to some of these places. It just gets harder and harder with no end in site.

Now I am moving on to other news. Maeghan seems to be enjoying her classes also, but I think she is getting bored with it. She goes in and does different art classes each day, except Wednesday, and creates something in a different media each time. One day they do painting and another they do clay and then etching and something different each time. I am not sure what the point is but she is graded on them and works really hard each time. I just don't know how they grade art. That seems very subjective to me and is not a pass or fail type of thing. But it is a college level class and I am sure it means something to someone. She likes it but I have noticed she is missing more days this year. Generally just not feeling like going in as she takes a bus and then a long train ride into town each time and that is not the most exciting thing to do. She used to like it but now it takes so long that she is getting bored with all the travel. Next year, the plan was for her to go back to her original child studies but she will need to apply for assistance or a grant to get that as it is no longer free. The only reason she did not do that this year was she was too late when she tried to apply for assistance and she decided to pay for this class herself out of her car savings. At one time, she had over $5000 saved for a car but that is no where near what it will take to get one and she has not saved a lot since then to improve on it. I think she still has the original $5000 but has not added to it lately.

Let's talk a little about the horrifying home life we have. We now have eight adults living in the house. Not full time but at some points, all eight are there. We have me, Juanita, Maeghan, William, Adam, Leslie, Anna, and Anna's new boyfriend. I have no idea what his name is but I think he works with her, but I am not sure. He doesn't actually live there but he is always there. So far, they stay in their room and I do not have to feed them but I am sure as he gets used to us, that will change and he will be in other rooms and doing other things, like eating our food and watching our TVs and playing our games. He never comes out now, but I know that will not last long. I have actually only seen him once. Not a pleasant experience but who am I to judge. They are adults and I have no say in the matter. But he is not the sort I would like to be living in my house if I did have the choice.

Of course, we still have the dogs and the cat and the bird and whatever else wanders in. The cat smells, the big dog is too big to be in the house and the little dog chews his fur off so he is not pleasant to look at with his patchy fur. We have thought it was flees but we use all the flea stuff and he still chews his fur. Can't really explain it. The bird is loud and messy with feathers and bird seed all under his cage all the time. The big dog wants to get the bird out of the cage and we have to constantly watch it to keep it from jumping up on the cage. The cat used to watch the bird but the cat lives almost exclusively in the garage with Adam now so he never sees the bird anymore. It's a real menagerie. If it weren't for the cat smell, it wouldn't be so bad but that cat stinks and no one seems to care except me. I keep the door to the garage closed all the time but no one else seems to close it so I have to constantly keep closing it myself.

I had to do some work so I have forgotten my train of thought. I think I was complaining but that doesn't sound like me so I was probably doing something else. I think I am going to hang this one up. I am pretending to write a note to my employer about the accident I had this morning. Briefly, I will go into that because I have a few minutes before I can sneak out.

I fell out of a bus. I have said we are trying to take public transport now and I usually take it to this place on Friday's. This morning, I was getting up to get off the bus and trying to do too many things at once, get my card out, put my bag on my shoulder and walk down the stairs to the bus exit. I missed a step getting out of the bus and went flying. Fortunately, I grabbed a poll and spun myself around to fall back into the bus but it caused a great deal of ruckus and a lot of people were trying to get off at the same time. All of them tried to help me and a couple of people who were waiting tried to help also. No one actually touched me, COVID and all, but they all kept asking if I needed help or asked if I was alright. I wasn't that big of a deal but in hindsight, I probably should have stayed down a little longer as I have been woozy all day and now my back hurts. My back always hurts but I made the mistake of telling these people at work what happened and they started noticing me limping and being in pain. They said I had to report it to my work as it was part of going to work and would be covered by something or other. Since my back has hurt for years and I have not made a secret of it, I was not going to report it to anyone but they said I had to. So now I am pretending to write my work and tell them when I am actually typing this sentence you are reading now. It all works out.

But that's enough for me. I want to go home and make dinner or something. Maybe I will take a nap. I have to walk the twelve miles back to the train station but I am sure it will pass quickly. Maybe the ducks with knives will attack me. Only Maeghan will get that joke so we will see if she ever reads this. I know she doesn't. But that's it, I'm done, I am outta here.

Until next time, 

Later

MWNews 174

 

I have noticed that I have used the same picture over and over again in these. I need some new pictures but it gets complicated as I cannot tell what I have copied from my phone to my computer and vice-versa. It is all a jumble of photos, several duplicated in many places so tracking down where any new ones are is difficult. Plus, when picking a picture for these entries, they are very small on the screen and I cannot tell who is in them. It could be the kids and it could be the grandkids, it's hard to tell. And, the kids do not take pictures together anymore. I have to catch them off guard so I can get them both in. I have several of each of them individually but not so many together. I need to find a better way. Consolidating them all in one place would be a good start, but who has time to do that. I have to do a picture by picture comparison to delete the duplicates and that will take years. Best I save my time for the riveting entries I try to keep up with. That way, everyone wins. This picture, I have no idea who is in it but I used it anyway.

I think I have lots to say but can't recall what I have or have not already talked about. Let's start fresh and see what happens.

Kids are back in school, although they keep warning us that it is about to flood again. No rain at all but they keep saying it will so people panic. The other day, we were coming back from some place they sent me to work. It was a Wednesday and Maeghan does not have school on Wednesday. We left William home to catch the bus and the train and then the bus again to get to school and get back home but I knew if no one was there to make him go, he wouldn't. He didn't. But Juanita and Maeghan came with me. They said they would visit some places while I worked. I have no idea what they ended up doing but I was working less than a block from the beach, so they ended up sitting there waiting for me.

Anyway, we were coming back and stopped for petrol. It's been many years and yes, I now say petrol all the time. I rarely say gas, the proper term, anymore and it pains me no end to realise that. But I digress. While we were stopped, we could see in the far distance a huge lightening storm. It was a constant barrage of lightening. We could not see individual flashes but the clouds were flashing all the time and it lasted the whole time we were there, about 20 minutes. It was very far away but towards our house. I think it was way too far as we never did find out where it was even after we got home. They said they had not seen anything at the house. But it was impressive. Constant flashing from one cloud to another. But we did not see rain, again.

A really strange phenomenon has occurred. McDonalds has closed. Yes, I said that right, McDonalds has closed over half its stores. It is hard to find one that is open anymore. They say it is because of the rain and floods and they cannot get supplies through but there are some that are open so are they consolidating their supplies to a few stores or is something else going on. I think the latter. No other stores are closed, only the McDonalds so why can they not get their supplies and everyone else can. But this whole thing is just a phenomenon too strange too believe. McDonalds closed. Never have I seen that before.

Since McDonalds is one of two fast food places in Australia that sells hamburgers, it puts a crimp in getting something fast and cheap on the go. Hungry Jacks, aka Burger King, is the only other option. You can get burgers at other places but they are really inconsistent and normally not part of a chain restaurant. Each of them is their own place and they tend to charge a premium for their burgers. Say in the $12 to $18 range, where McDonalds are only $6 to $8, the same at Hungry Jacks. I always said I hated there being a McDonalds every 5 miles or so but now that they are gone, I might start to miss them. A $2 hamburger is always good, no matter what it tastes like.

Have I ever mentioned my philosophy of ordering McDonalds hamburgers. I think I might. I always tell the kids how to order. They don't like it and they think it is weird but I think it is the best way. You see, a McDonalds hamburger is $2. A cheeseburger is $3.95. So they are charging $1.95 for that slice of cheese. You can order another hamburger for that. I tell them you can get one cheeseburger or two hamburgers. They almost always want the cheeseburger and that is just weird. If you go to the quarter-pounder, it costs $6.50. You can get three hamburgers for that. Once again, to me a no brainer. I'll have the three hamburgers. But the kids want the big burger so they get the quarter-pounder. Weird. It goes for any sandwich you can order, it is always more economical to get the $2 hamburger. So while they are ordering their quarter-pounder or chicken sandwich, I am getting three hamburgers and I steal some their fries so I don't have to order it in a meal. Another price ripoff if you ask me. Yes, ordering everything separately costs more that ordering it in a meal, but basically, you are getting half an order of fries if you order it in a meal and I just don't think that is worth it. I drink water, so I don't need the coke and stolen fries are always better than ones you order for yourself so its a win-win for me. Three hamburgers, some stolen fries, and a bottle of water I filled up at home and I am out of there for $6 total. And if they have an apple pie on sale for a dollar, then I have desert and a meal for $7. I think its got to be the best bargain around. Unless we are driving by Costco, then all bets are off. You cannot beat, anywhere or anytime, a large drink, a huge slice of pizza and a giant hotdog for under $5. That is worth the trip no matter how far you have to drive.

Speaking of Costco, they also have the best price of petrol around. It is always 30 to 40 cents cheaper per litre at Costco. I don't know how they do it but it is well worth the price of an annual membership if only for the savings on petrol. Now that petrol is over $2 a litre, as much as $2.20 at one place I saw, getting it for $1.66 at Costco is a real bargain. I suppose it doesn't work if you do not live near a Costco but still, it would have to be a long way away for it not to be worth the drive.

Let's get off of that and talk some about the floods. I was watching some of the videos people had taken from drones and walking around. They were showing a lot of the places in and around Brisbane that had been flooded. I knew there were places that were bad but unless you have seen it before and after, you can't really tell how much it flooded. There are typical pictures of the streets and houses that were underwater and some of the businesses that were flooded but if you just look at the swollen river, it just looks like a river with a lot of debris in it. You have to know what it looked like before to notice how high the water is and what used to be there but is now underwater. Most of the piers where the water taxis go are gone or were underwater for a while. There are restaurants along the river that when you look at the flood waters, you don't see them but then you think, there used to be a restaurant there and it is gone. I was in someplace where I caught a water taxi up to where Maeghan was at Southbank and that place is now underwater to the second level. The pier and the restaurants on the first floor cannot be seen in the pictures and I was there a couple of days before that. Since it has been a week, most of the water is gone now but they have shown pictures of those places and all the damage that has to be repaired before they can re-open. I don't know if the water taxis are running again, but I doubt it. I know the trains have re-opened where the tracks were flooded but they have to rebuild most of the those docks and piers before the taxis can run. They showed pictures of Southbank, where Maeghan goes to school, and the water came all the way up to where the giant Ferris wheel is, The walkway up to it was underwater although the Ferris wheel itself looked ok. It is built up on a platform but all around it was water. And the worst part is, Brisbane did not get the worst of it. There is more severe flooding north and south of Brisbane and down into NSW (New South Wales). Of course, those places always flood but it get pretty bad down there when it does.

It comes up in my work as the IT department for the job I am doing is located in Lismore, in NSW. Lismore was evacuated and was under water. It might still be but when I have issues with this rollout, I try to call them and there is no one there. One guy has access to everything from his home and he is basically supporting all of this company from his house. He doesn't even answer his phone as being part of Tursa, the company, anymore. He just says hello and does not identify himself. I think he is hoping you will think you have called the wrong number or something will leave him alone.

By the way, I am at the nursing home right now. Just a few days after my last post. I have to leave early from here to go to another job that is an hour away. Hopefully, I can sneak out in a few minutes before they discover some problem I need to fix.

In other home news. Adam is still with us, living in the garage. We have an inspection this week and they will discover someone living there and will probably terminate our lease. So I could be homeless the next time I talk. Leslie lives with us but is with his mother right now. Not sure when he is coming back but he has been gone for a few days. Anna has made herself a home in our extra bedroom. She has bought furniture for it and gotten her mattress off the floor. It looks like she wants to be permanent. Another reason they will cancel our lease. The worst part of Anna being there is she thinks she lives there. To the point that she has a new boyfriend and he has been staying most nights. One more reason we will be kicked out.

So, if you are counting, there are now eight full grown adults living in my house. Plus two dogs and one cat. We signed the lease for just the four of us and only one small dog. There is no way they renew this lease under those arrangements and if they do decide to break the lease, there are no other properties available. We know because we have looked. Everything has gone sky high and they do not accept pets or large families or anything that we have going for us. Plus the rents are double what we pay and for smaller places than what we have. I am fairly upset about it but no one else seems to think it is a problem. Just writing about it now is making me angry enough to go home to night and kick everyone out. That is probably not an option so it will be me that has to leave and since I no longer have a car or any savings, I will be on the street and homeless. Basically, if I stop entering into this for a while, the reason is I don't have any electricity to run my computer. How depressing is that.

Guess I should stop talking about it and do something around here. It is almost noon and I wanted to leave at 1:00. I can hear the boss talking out in the hall. I hope he is not headed here to hand me another problem. I need the day off and came in here to have some peace and quiet from work and home. Doesn't seem that that is going to work out.

I think tomorrow I need to get William signed up for the army. I don't recall if I have mentioned that but they have a camp he can go to that is supposed to show them what it is like to be in the army. To see if they like it or not. I need to send in his application and will have to do that this weekend. I also need to get him his own Medicare card as he is no longer eligible to be on mine. That stopped when he turned 16 and we are just now finding out about it. I am sure he has all the information he needs to do that. So wish me luck. For the army thing, he has to explain why he wants to be in the army and what he is currently doing to prepare himself for it. I don't think he has an answer for either of those questions.

Maeghan wants to meet me at Strathpine mall when I finally go home. I am not sure when or where I will be but it is sort of on the way home. Problem is, it means I cannot finish early, which is what I was hoping but she won't get there until 4 or 5 in the afternoon, so I might as well stay at work.

I've talked enough now. The boss went away, so I can't hear him anymore. I didn't tell him I was leaving early but hopefully, he won't notice. Plus, I haven't been feeling well today. So if he does ask, I can tell him that. They don't want any sick people here because, well everyone is old and they don't need to be sick too. No covid again. We have to be tested every time we come in. I was negative again. So whoopee.

I am going to go now. Wish me luck with everything, especially with the inspection and losing my home. It happens next Thursday so we will see what we will see.

Until next time,

Later

MWNews 173

Finally back at work, so I can goof off and write into this blog. It's been an adventure and I am not loath to tell it. Where to begin, where to begin.

I guess pandemic is where to start. I was locked out of my job here at the laugh academy for about a month. They were in lockdown, no one in or out as they had a number of cases of the fever and unless you were here to take care of someone, you were not allowed in. Computer work was apparently not essential, although I did manage to get in one day but left early when they found out I was here. Seems I got here before the bosses and no one on staff wanted to tell me I was not allowed to be here, so I worked for a couple of hours until they saw me and then had to leave.

Good news is, I did not catch it. Bad news is, I did not catch it. But I suppose, overall, that is a good thing. I wanted to spend some time in isolation but with my robust health and cheery attitude, it was not to be. None of the kids have had it either, or anyone else that is living with us. Although, Anna claims to have had it for a week before she moved in but I have not verified that story and did not care enough to look into it. I am sure it is all true and she suffered greatly but let's just say, I have drawn a different conclusion. But not to worry, not to worry. It's all good.

I got a lot of other jobs in the meantime. I can't remember most of them but I have been working non-stop for a couple of months now, up until this past week when the floods came and swept everything into the ocean. But I am getting ahead of myself and will address that later, if it doesn't start to rain and I have to swim for it.

I do recall the Petbarn job. A nightmare. The first day, they told me to be there early, around 7:30. I said no problem. When I get there, the building is still being built. I am there to install some servers and cash registers and all kinds of new equipment. The building is still be wired for electricity. No networking stuff has been run, no cables, no ports, no desks to put anything on. But, that is not the worst part. In addition to that, no equipment to install. I looked around, through all the building materials and workers putting up cross beams and walls, and could not find anything resembling computer equipment. I asked the foreman. He said there wasn't any. I called the contact number I was supposed to work with. He said he was in charge of building material and had nothing to do with IT equipment. I called the people who sent me to the job. They said the equipment has been delivered on Friday and was there somewhere. 

Three hours later, still no equipment. It was finally decided that it was a waste of my time to sit around and wait for them to find the equipment. I agreed. I did find out later that they never did find the equipment, and I am tired of typing that word as I misspell it every time, and they had to ship a whole other set to the new site. I was put on hold while they did this and it screwed up several other jobs I could have been doing waiting for them to decide when I needed to go back.

And as a final paragraph on this job, this was the worse planning for IT work I have ever seen. They want me to run all the cables for the sales positions through the desks they had specially designed to be trendy and functional. These are where the customer pays for everything. A normal task you would think but the desks were designed in such a way that you could not run a cable from the monitors on top to the computers underneath. The computers were designed to attach to the monitors but someone decided that did not look good, so they put them underneath. Again, normal operating procedure, but the desks were in three parts. There was the main part with the monitor on it. The computers did not go into this part. That is where the cash drawer went with no access to anything except the cash drawer. The rest was hollow but with no doors or holes. Attached to this, was an angled piece. Hollow but with no access from the top or sides, just basically a square, or triangular box. Attached to this, another cabinet. This is where the computer went, but this was at an angle to the whole setup. What it means was that you had to drill holes in each part of the desks to allow cables to be run from one to the other. Again, not unusual. But the people that drilled the wholes were the people who put the desks together. They were not computer people. They drilled a hole in the top for the monitor. Another whole through to the cash drawer, but not in line with the monitor hole. They drilled another hole through to the triangular piece near the front of it, but the hole to the final cabinet, they put in the back of the cabinet. None of the holes were big enough to put your hand threw. They were barely big enough to fit all the cables through. What it meant was, you had to run the cable from the top of the desk, to the front of the cabinet into the triangular piece and then back to the back of the cabinet to get it to the computer cabinet. They suggested I use a cable puller to route all the cables through so they would fit. A cable puller does not make two right hand turns in one length. It did not work. I gave up. They had to take the desks back apart so I could run the cables through them and then put the desks back together with the cables attached. It was a long three days to get it all together. I was sore, tired, and with cuts all over my hands trying to push cables through.

I have to go now, one of the nurses is screaming. And, I have to go home. So hope to get back to it soon.

I'm back. It's now Wednesday of the next week. Turns out the nurse was screaming because someone found a mouse behind the printer. Not sure if it was alive or dead. I ran out of there because I had to get to another site to pick up a hard drive. Long story, but not that long. I had installed it on a server a few weeks ago and now had to retrieve it and send it to headquarters. Stupid job but it pays well.

I think I spent way too much time on the Petbarn story. I should go back and edit or delete it but that would require me to go back and read it. Not going to happen.

The Petbarn story does lead into what I am doing today. I have been working on a project to upgrade all the hardware for an employment agency called Tursa. Supposed to take a month and a half but looks like it will go longer than that. Its steady work for that time, although I am exhausted by the time I get home each day. I do the Tursa project Mon - Thur and then do Prinz Willem on Friday. Prinz Willem is the nursing home and yes, that is spelled correctly.

I am at a Tursa site today. And like Petbarn, no equipment. Have spent all morning trying to find out where it is. I am told it will be delivered within the hour, which means I have half a day to do what I was supposed to do in a full day. I don't see how it can be done but I am told to get it done. 

Have to go again, so probably will not get back to this before Friday. So it will be more time between entries. And I have not even mentioned the kids or the floods or the pandemic. I have a lot to cover. We will see when I get back to it.

I am back again. It has only been 5 minutes. I have about 30 minutes before the equipment arrives. I'll see what I can do.

We have had floods in Brisbane. They also had floods everywhere else on the east coast but I live in Brisbane. All my work was shutdown for a week as you could not go anywhere. Most of the roads were flooded. We were at the shops when it was beginning to happen and we had already seen the creek behind the mall was flooded all the way up to the road. While we were in there, they announced that everyone should go move their cars out of the parking lot as it was beginning to flood and the mall would be evacuated as soon as possible. There was water across the roads on our way home. Nothing very deep so we could make it home but in some places, it was too deep to cross. 

The Brisbane river which runs through the CBD was flooding. We saw all the news about boats washing down the river from north of the river and they were taking out docks and piers all along the way. Several of the city cat water taxis were destroyed by debris floating downstream. Maeghan's school was closed as well as William's. Most of the trains and buses shutdown. The trains were down for almost a week as several tracks were underwater and then they had to ensure there was no damage before they could open them. I have not been on a train since then but I am told they are back to working as normal. Maeghan takes one into town for her school.

It was a fun week and now, I am reading that they expect more rain tonight. Of course, they have predicted that every night for two weeks and we have not seen any but they keep telling us there is more flooding coming.

I went across a bridge yesterday that one of the rivers runs through. There used to be expensive docks and boats along the river but seeing it yesterday, all you can see are the posts that the docks were built on sticking out the the water and the metal stairs and paths that led down to them are all twisted and washed away. There was not nothing left and I am wondering where the actual boats went as they were big expensive ones.

I think I will leave any other news for another time. Probably Friday when I am at the nursing home. Too much about to start happening and I need to make an entry so people don't think I gave up on this.

So, until next time

Later