Brog Blog

So far this year has flown by, quantity of work and pressures to deliver on time has not given me much time to do much other than work and live.  I have started work on an electric bike but effort has been limited to about 4 – 8 hours a week.

Dani is currently up in Queensland organising her fathers funeral with her sister and brothers.  Life has been more than full for both of us this year.  I am glad to have Dani with me though it all.  I hope I have given her the same support.

In the next week or two I should have some major news. Stay tuned.

Ok so for the last couple of months I have been run down and feeling a little overwhelmed.  After a little prompting from my wife I made a doctors appt.  My doctor sent me off to get a series of blood test.  One week later I had the results.

So my cholesterol is fine, my thyroid is fine, actually it all came back good.. except for one measure my vitamin D level was low very low, near the “significant deficiency” level.

So I am taking 1000mg of vitamin D every day, hoping to feel better soon.

Ok so I get out from in front of the computer on the weekends I have decided to start a little project, ok maybe not so little.  I am going to convert a Suzuki RG250 motorcycle into an electric bike for commuting.

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My son left a note for Santa last night. He didn’t tell us he was going to do it and he was very hi-tech about it.  On his bedside table he left his DS running with the chat program up. The message “Hi Santa” written large on the screen. What was I to do, ignore it? write a response?

So I left a short “Hi xxxx, I am glad you have been good.”

He was so happy this morning, even before the gifts.

Ok this year time has flown so fast.  Seems like it was only a couple of months ago I was with the in-laws for Christmas.  Now we are planning to have my family over this year.  Three brothers, their partners and kids, my Mum and Dad and my wife and kids.  It will be a full house, a very full house.  They are all coming down from Queensland, with this being the start of my parents “Grey Nomad” experience.

So my parents and my eldest brother will be down in their respective caravans, my middle brother will be staying near our place in a cabin and hopefully my little brother will be down for a few days staying at our place or in a cabin.  My little brother is overcoming a bought of cancer and the subsequent treatment, he is doing really well and will have the results of his latest checkup just before Christmas.

I have had a lot of things happen over the last few weeks but will put them up in other posts soon.

On October the 4th Canberra hosted an Electric Vehicle festival on the grounds of old parliament house.  At the show was a complete range of Electric and Electric assist vehicles (hybrid).  Two old Detroit Electric cars at one extreme and a Tesla Roadster at the other.  Along with the large companies showing off their almost electric Hybrid cars (actually not at all electric, they still get all their energy from petrol) there was a great collection of home conversion cars.  I met, in person some people and cars that I had researched on the internet.

Really has got me thinking… it would not be that hard to pull together the gear for an electric bike.  Of course I might have to learn how to, weld, cut metal and design stuff… also a shed full of tools might help, don’t have many of them.

Anyway it was fun and inspirational, here are a few links to get you going..

• Canberra EV group
• Australian Electric Vehicle Association
• EV-Capri
• The Electric Car Company
• The Engine Whisperer
• Convert Ur Car
• EV Works

Hope this inspires you.

I had a great day yesterday.  I was given some shirts, a diary, Turkish delight and musk lollies.  After breakfast we went to Temora, home of the famous Temora Aviation Museum. 

Temora has the philosophy that all its exhibits must be not only capable of flying but are flown regularly.  They have approx 6 flying days a year where more than half their planes are flown.  These are not big aerobatic events, but the planes are put through their paces on a small field close to the crowd.  These guyswant their planes to be still flying in 50 years.

Yesterday they were flying their Sabre for the first time in public, such a great plane.  They also had a visiting FA 18 Hornet.  The hornet performed a “Power Display”, man that thing was amazing.  They seem to fly it like a rally driver drives a car.  They point the nose in the direction they want to go then floor it, the more tail slide the better!

You can see some of my photos on Flickr.

Ok as you saw we had “issues” with our phone. Yesterday morning the repairman came and climbed up the pole at the back of the house (yep pole, yep backyard, Canberra is a strange place) and tested the line. Well needless to say it was BAD, so 4 or 5 poles later he found the offending junction, once fixed he tested the line to confirm the fine was working. All good.

So last night I reconfigured the modem to ADSL2+ ( I was running ADSL2 for stability) and the “new” connect speeds exceed 10Mbs. Compaired to 0.6Mbs while it was faulty and 3.6Mbs “before” the fault I am very happy.

For the last few weeks the home phone has been incredibly noisy. I believe it is something to do with all the wind and rain, as we have an aerial lead in line to the house. I have looked at the cabling under the house (which is not very pretty) and determined that it is all sound and dry.

It has got worse just lately, the last 5 days we have no dial tone and anyone ringing us just rings out. I bypassed our central adsl filter (conveniently located right in the middle under the house) with no improvement. During this time our ADSL speed has dropped to 1/6th of what it normally is to a pitifully low 0.5Mb a second.

The technician is due tomorrow morning so hopefully it will be resolved.

Sorry for anyone trying to contact us… however our mobiles still work.

Ok we had a rude awakening this morning as a way too loud policeman was bashing on our door. Seems that some nutter had stolen a tradesman’s van, taken some tools and then dumped it in the park over the road.  They then decided to torch it.

The fire brigade got there about 2:30 and had the fire suppressed fairly quickly.  However when they inspected the wreck they noticed one or more compressed gas tanks in the back.  Closer inspection showed them to be Oxy-Acetylene.  They checked the tempreture of the tanks and confirmed they were still rising due to “internal activity”.

At that time the bomb squad was called and an exclusion zone with a radius of over 200 meters was created.  That included our house.

I need sleep right now.

Ok so my Pentax K10d was in my bags when I fell off my motorbike and it has been away to be fixed. Basically the camera was sound however it would not read any SD card. Repair was a new mainboard as the connector plug had snapped off.

Well I got it back today, let me tell you I am not happy. The camera recognises the SD card now but does not detect any of my automatic lenses. Sees them all as full manual.

So I have to take it back and get it looked at again. Man I am shitty how can they let this camera out as fixed and not even turn it on!

Ok so it has been over 5 weeks since I fell off my Triumph. As you know they wrote of the Triumph and I have been looking around for a new bike. After a few test rides I decided to go for a brand new bike with a few less horses than the Triumph. The Trump was great but always bigger than I needed.

So what did I pick? The Suzuki GSX650F this is basically a fully faired Suzuki Bandit 650. Great frame, riding position and responsiveness. The 4 cyl, 4 stroke, fuel injected 650cc motor is great, revving all the way up to 14,000 rpm. The only thing I don’t like about it… the muffler! It is HUGE.

What do you think?

Ok so my brother has had all but one round of Chemo now. His latest PET scan gave him an all clear so that is great. Now they have to decide to do two rounds of radiation treatment to be sure. Either way he will be home in June at the latest.

Way to go Bro’.

Ok so it is just over two weeks after the accident with the bike. I am off the crutches and just using a walking stick at the moment. I should be off that in a week at most. The burn is almost fully healed and the swelling is mostly gone, I am going to have a checkup with the doctor later this week.

I got a call from the insurance company about the bike, basically they stop counting when the parts got up to $13,000, no labour just parts. So it looks like I am in the market for a new bike.