Ξ July 13th, 2010 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Uncategorized |
Flying Today
Ξ June 6th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Uncategorized |
Well I went on my third flying lesson today and Janice went out to the airport with me and snapped a couple of photos 
That me over on the left hand side, in the pilots seat, My instructor (the young guy in the seat closest) and I are waiting for the engine to warm up to operating temp and then we taxied away from the front of the schools building onto the main airport apron to do the run up tests.
This is the run up test where we increase the revs and check the operation of the magnetos and clear the throat of the carby if there is any ice with the carby heat.
Then we taxied out to the runway (29) and took off, today was my first time actually taking off as the instructors did it all last time.
And that’s me flying
Keeping busy
Ξ January 28th, 2009 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Uncategorized |
Well I have been trying to keep myself busy while I look for work, so I am currently working on a web site for the Colour City Dragons, a local Dragon Boat Club. Its been fun and it keeping my mind off the depression from having my job pulled out from under me just before Christmas.
I will link to the club page once it goes live and you can see what I have been up to.
Well have a happy fsking Christmas
Ξ December 8th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ News, Rant |
On Monday afternoon, the 1st o December the company that owns the building where my work is located came in and seized the premises. This has effectively made me un-employed as on Thursday the 4th December they had the Metro Cinemas Orange put in the hands of liquidators.
To say that this has upset a few people would be an understatement, apart from the 35 people that have lost their jobs, there is the Film Distributors who cannot get their films out of the building, and the Church that uses Cinema 1 on Sunday mornings for their services and they also store all their gear under the tiered seating in that Cinema.
Rumour has it (and I can only go on rumour as they have not contacted me to say what is going on, as promised by Tracey Sunderland from Fleetstone Group of Companies) that they are trying to re-open the cinema themselves, but due to the stupid way they closed us down, they are now meeting some resistance from the film distributors, who quite rightly don’t like being treated this way, especially this close to the busiest time of the year. I honestly don’t know what they were thinking but because they obviously didn’t know themselves, they are now at the bottom of a very long and greasy slope, and if they think they can have a profitable business going in anything less than 18 months, then they obviously have rocks in their heads.
Firstly they will have to regain the trust of the distributors, and THAT will take more than a few assurances and some cash, those people have VERY LONG memories. whoever they get to do the film booking is going to be holding the dirty end of a long shit covered stick for some time.
Then getting the necessary licenses to actually be allowed to show any movies that they may eventually get will also take a while and this close to Christmas it may be game over until at least mid January. One of the Aces up our sleeve when the Metro Cinema’s was operating was the fact that we were going to be getting state of the art 3D digital projectors, this would have allowed us (or whoever we leased them from) offload our 35mm film projectors at a decent price as there will be a glut of them on the market in a short while. you see the big Hollywood studios are currently making the next batch of children’s movies in 3D digital, for digital distribution and will be dropping film print distribution in the very near future. So that’s another expense they will have to wear, and at around $170,000 each, it will soon eat into any profits that they might have been expecting.
I could go on with all the hurdles they have put in front of themselves for no good reason but hey, why should I help them, suffice it to say the biggest hurdle they now face is regaining the trust of the local cinema going public, as we operated in a competitive market against an established cinema, we have gradually eked out a 70% market share (figures are from within the industry ) we didn’t do it by being cheaper, we weren’t, we did it by being better, we did it by not treating the public as a cash cow, the truth is, our opposition used to only spend as much, or should I say as little as possible to put a picture on a screen, the majority of the seats in the cinemas were/are second hand and came out of the Adelaide Entertainment Centre when they refurbished it, so the seats are circa 1970’s vintage. How do I know this, because I was the head projectionist there for nearly 10 years and I was there when they expanded from a single screen to a 4 screen complex. The sight lines are the minimum you could get away with, because if they improved them, seating capacity would be reduced and the screens are a joke, there were supposed to be curved but because they did everything to a price, the screen frames turned up as flat and the actual screens themselves turned up from England the wrong sizes, this means that in the majority of screens there, you cannot get the edges of the picture focused. Did I mention that our screens were all curved and professionally installed, as well as having the lensing of the projectors all correctly worked out.
Anyway, that’s my story for the moment, hopefully I will get some real information from the storm troopers at Fleetstone and when I do, I will pass it on here.
I suppose you want updates already !
Ξ October 12th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Family |
Well I figure its time to update my poor neglected blog, Laura did finally come home from Vietnam, bearing gifts for all, she did go back to school and actually did pretty well considering that this is her penultimate year and changed schools as well. After a few problems with some of her class mates though, she has decided to change back to her old school, who were happy to take her back.
Oh Zac has put a good effort in this year as well, though for some reason that he wont divulge to us, he wasn’t at all happy to go to school for about the last week of term, we suspect a bullying issue but without anything to go on, its a bit difficult to help. Zac also submitted a Poem to an publisher (without telling anyone) and out of the blue he received a letter from the publisher asking for permission to publish it, and last week a copy of the book appeared in our letter box complete with his Poem (I am not allowed to divulge the name of the book on promise of death from my oh so shy son) needless to say it takes pride of place on the coffee table. Zac also had a Birthday and did receive one of the things on his wish list, no it wasn’t a Mac Book, or an iPhone or even “The Orange Box” (a collection of games) but he did receive a nice shiny new Blackberry 8800 phone, the morning of his birthday was punctuated by cries of “ahhh COOL!!” as he discovered a new feature of the phone.
Our Cavies are all doing well and we have discovered that we are not to be trusted when it comes to sexing them, we had the male in with two of the older girls and the two other, younger girls in a cage by themselves, then we discovered that the one we thought was a girl, is in fact a boy and the two we separated from the pack were in fact girls, so after a hurried re-shuffle, we now have a lone boy in his own cage, and 4 girls sharing the bigger cage.
School starts back for the kids tomorrow, and Laura will be ostensibly starting year 12, and Zac will just be finishing his current year 7 year.
Me, I’m looking forward to the next couple of weeks as we will be going on a family holiday to Perth, well all except Laura, as she doesn’t want to go because she says “Perth Sucks” even though she has never been, plus she has a lot of school work to keep her busy, Granma will be looking out for her and hopefully she will get her motorbike “L’s” in a couple of weeks as she wants to use the scooter to get around on.
with any luck I will get motivated enough to update this before we leave, and when we get back, bus work has just been sapping my strength lately and I havnt even been keeping on top of my other blog as I just dont have the energy to be creative at the end of the day, maybe after I have my first holiday in about 7 years, I will have a bit more energy to show the world that I am, in fact a true Barstard
CAVIES!!!
Ξ August 17th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Family, Fun |
Guinea Pigs rule supreme in my house at the moment, We started out with just one, a girl because they breed….well they breed like Cavies.
Unfortunately we got it from my Brother in Law and his two girls decided that our Guinea Pig should go home to play with its parents for a day, and when it was returned to us, it was pregnant! In the mean time my wife bought another girl so our original girl could have someone to play with, and I agree that animals seem to be better behaved in pairs. Now though, we have 3 more bringing us up to 5 little squeakers, our original 2 girls and a new baby girl and 2 baby boys, we will have to get rid of the boys as they are the ones that will cause us the most trouble, what with the breeding thing and all
So, if you know anyone who wants a nice albino boy Guinea Pig or a mottled three colour boy, just drop us a line
Week one and Laura is still in Vietnam.
Ξ July 19th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Family |
Well it has been a week and My daughter is still in Vietnam, This time last week she was winging her way across the ocean on her way to Ho Chi Min City and her first real adventure. I wont bore with the details of her trip as I will invariably get them wrong, or omit something important but briefly she is going on a religious mission where she will get to sing in front of huge crowds and maybe get a little shopping thrown in.
Actually I know she has already shopped till she dropped and if the video is anything to go by, she also screamed the centre of Ho Chi Min city down when she was being doubled to the markets on a motorbike with the rest of the group.
When Laura and our friends the Walls family flew out last Saturday Janice and I waited until the aircraft actually left before we went home, we also waited at the end of the terminal building so we could see them boarding their flight (some might call this crazy but hey, Laura is our only daughter and this is her first flight over seas and her first flight in a large aircraft (she has flown in a helicopter before)
and now for the obligatory photos
I’ve Been Busy
Ξ June 28th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Fun, Oppinion |
Well it has been an eventful week, I bought myself a cute little scooter to zoom around on (well as close to Zoom as 50cc’s will let me)
I bought it from a friend who bought it, then had an accident and never bothered to renew his learners permit, so it has sat in his garage for a couple of years doing nothing, when he told me it was for sale, and the cheap price as well as only having 111 Kilometres on the odometer I jumped at the opportunity, and with all my luck running out in finally getting a bargain the small niggly problems cropped up, after the cheque was passed over it was discovered that my friend had somehow lost the keys, we turned the house upside down looking for them but to no avail. Fortunately I have another friend who is a locksmith so on Thursday I used my day off to push the scooter (mostly downhill) to my locksmith friends business, He proceeded to pick the lock for the under seat storage so we could cut a key from it, the opened lock revealed a rather large cavity under the seat that contained a jacket belonging to my friend (I will return it shortly as it is several sizes too large for me anyway) the bike toolkit, some paperwork and………………. a spare set of keys.
Now with keys we could get the bike started, but after so long without being used the bikes battery was as dead as last weeks sushi roll, and the fuel is probably nothing but vagrant hydrocarbons looking for a handout and a warm place to sleep. So I pushed the bike another few blocks to a local Motorcycle shop and they will ring me when it is actually making zoom zoom sounds :-0
I have also been working on another project, one that I have been slow roasting in the back of my mind. I Have been reading a blog called En Tequila Es Verdad and from there to another site by the same author called Carnival of the Elitist Bastards The Carnival is always in need of Captains and after a bit of thought I decided to throw my hat in the ring for a guest spot. something that I will keep everyone posted on as the due date approaches. Now in my emails with Dana about the position she mentioned do I have a blog we can launch my cruise from, and as I really didn’t want to launch it from my family friendly blog here, I decided to extract my digit and set the wheels in motion and set up a totally new venture and register a new domain, so for the not so faint of heart I give you So You Think I’m A Barstard A place where I will poke fun at barstards everywhere and vent a few of my own barstard views and opinions. My first act of Barstardry was to use the alternate English spelling of "Barstard’ as opposed to the more common US form or "Bastard" and anyway I think that extra "R" makes it roll of the tongue with more feeling, don’t you ??
Testing Windows Live Writer Plugins
Ξ June 19th, 2008 | → 0 Comments | ∇ Uncategorized |
Just testing the “Insert Website Screen Capture” plugin for Windows Live Writer
It lacks a couple of features I would like, like the ability to crop and resizing only makes it appear smaller but does nothing for the original file size so until the Firefox extension becomes compatible with Firefox 3 It will have to do.
Just a quick note
Ξ June 14th, 2008 | → 2 Comments | ∇ Tech |
Firefox just did a dump on me and when I restarted all my bookmarks and RSS feeds were gone, I tried a system restore but alas the bookmark and feed folders is no more. Fortunately I had a recent backup but I still lost a couple of recent additions, I will find them again I’m sure but its sure a pain in the arse to have to remember how I found them originally. I will also try and figure out why Firefox shit itself on me in the first place. Isn’t technology grand 
