tortoise and full moon

Yet another day working hard in the garden, and we found this tortoise!!! Being the middle of winter, I can only assume it is hibernating. It had pushed its way in under some cardboard that I had put there to mulch the garden. We prodded it to see if it was alive, and it simply pulled its head in tighter. So I put a piece of the cardboard back over it and and scattered a bit of hay over that. I think he is very lucky he chose a 'no dig' garden!











After a lot of hard work in the garden, it's always nice to clean up with a fire ... which we can do because we live in woopwoop! and not in a town, or a city!
It is almost full moon today so naturally the moon rose just as the sun was setting.

black bamboo grove

Beautiful weather this weekend. Frosts at night but the daytime temp is about 20C so it is irresistible to be outside... and we had a job to do:

This photo shows the patch of black bamboo in our garden.
Over the years we have let it go a bit, a very heavy frost one year killed off the tallest stems that rose about 7 meters and poked out the top of the mass.

Inside it is very thick with dead stems. Walking into the bamboo grove is a beautiful experience so these old stems have become a problem

After 2 whole days of extremely hard work, we now have an open bamboo grove, but an enormous load of dead stems to dispose of.

morning fog

I had a very enjoyable day today ... at school. I went in to help the art teacher with some stuff. Because of the little bit of rain we had yesterday!!!!!! there was a beautiful fog this morning. This was the view as I drove out at about 9am.

at last, now it's working, but ....

I have finally got my SmartStor DS4600 to work ... or least be seen by the computer, and I can see ... wait for it ... 3 out of 4 raid discs have bad sectors .... Is this normal?

DO NOT buy from this company!!!!

This is easily the most difficult web site I have ever encountered.

A long time ago, I bought an external back-up device, SmartStor DS46oo and I couldn't get it to work.

I eventually found and downloaded the latest software from www.promise.com and it still didn't work. I decided to ask for help and was required to fill in a form with the most impossibly difficult technical questions .... got a reply telling me to download this and that with no idea of where to find them; very difficult searching, nothing is straight forward, telling me where to go but no links and I don't know what they are talking about. The whole time 2 idiots are grinning at me from the top of the page. After a whole night at this ... I had other things to do, the backups could wait.

Today I had another go at it ... I eventually found my old discussion and opened it again. I was almost finished typing my story when the page disappeared and I was told my time was up, I had to log in again. Those 2 grinning gits at the top of the page just laughed at me! I couldn't reopen the page, it kept bringing up the message that my time was up. I restarted the browser, and of course all my typing was gone!!! I had to start again.

How can any business exist on such an unfriendly verging on aggressively dangerous web site?

My SmartStor DS46oo is still not working. I'm warning you .... don't buy this or anything else that might mean you have to endure the smug grins of 2 know it all imbeciles laughing at everyone who attempts to get support at www.promise.com, I promise you ... it is not fun!


http://www.promise.com

How we cope with frosty nights.

Frosts outside and this inside ....


with plenty of this.

Not bad!

revision for an exam on Friday

This is all I seem to be doing these days. These are Chinese characters that I have written on bits of stiff paper. The translation is on the back of them. I sit at my desk and try to learn them. Sometimes it feels like a game of patience. The aim of the game is to put them all into columns of overlapping cards which tells me (for the moment!!!) that I can remember what they are. If it is not overlapping, it means I can still flick it over to see what it means. Here you can see that 2 columns are emerging 2nd and 3rd from the right. I try to limit the time it takes me to do each set ... hence the timer. And then I read the text that these words came from.
Each time I play the game, I get them into columns faster. This is an indication that something is happening in my grey matter!!!!

Burmese puppet

My aunt brought a pair of these puppets back from Burma about 40 years ago! They are a bit faded, but still really beautiful.