A Dad Prank.

I bought a packet of googly eyes. And also some blu-tack

The kids have been running around the house like crazed leprechauns, trailing streams of manic laughter. Every time they find a new 'hidden face', they race off to find everyone else and show them. They've even started putting up their own around the place.

It's disturbing. Like the house is watching me...

Goddam BUGS!

It's been a long... fortnight? Longer? I dunno.

The situation this year should be simple. Five days a week, no kids due to school. That should allow me more time for myself, and for work.

But factor things in. The usual: cooking, cleaning, shopping, errands. Add the rest of the usual. Then account for the stuff added this year: gymnastics for the kids, orchestra for the boys and Natalie. And now swimming lessons of a Saturday, at the big pool in Launceston. That's my job too, because the boys (who need to swim better, definitely!) will listen better to me, and because I spent a lot of my young life around two professional swim teachers - my parents.

Then add in a tummy upset last week, and a bunch of visitors, and multiply by the fact that I am trying very hard to give more weekend time to being with kids, etc, and you'll realise that I was really, really looking forward to tomorrow. Monday. Nobody home but me.

Tuesday Natalie's home. I can work, but it isn't the same. Wednesday likewise, and of course, I'm planning for the afternoon and evening of ju-jitsu. Thursday is a nightmare of back-and-forth to Scottsdale with instruments, lessons, Swedish studies, etc. Friday isn't so bad, but by that end of the week there are usually pressing errands. Monday is the day I like to pile in and really get my own work done.

The weekend was pretty full-on. Natalie was on call, so I couldn't be out of communication with kids/house, etc. Therefore I took Genghis to his bass lesson Saturday, with a quick stop at an interesting nursery that has some fantastic apple trees that I want. Definitely want. And they were supposed to email me, and they haven't, and obviously I'm going to have to go back and shake them up a little. For they are gorgeous trees: maybe two and a half metres tall, and every branch utterly groaning under tonnes of beautiful, pink-red apples the size of plums - but tart, and sweet, and delicious, not like crab-apples at all. They lean over the road from the nursery, and shamelessly I stole a couple of kilogrammes last week and made a spicy apple jam... it is utterly delicious, and I want those apple trees.

Anyhow. While Genghis was doing the bass stuff, Jake and the Mau-Mau and I padded about inner-city Launceston. We found some Asterix and Obelix DVDs - cartoons from the 1970s. I didn't even know they existed. They were six or seven dollars each. We bought three.

After the lesson, Genghis put his new transport wheel into the bottom of his bass, which delighted him. The luthier who teaches him bass had only managed to procure this wheel that morning, you see, but Genghis had been anticipating it for weeks. It's about fifteen centimetres high, and it works like a castor, on a support rod that fits into the socket at the bottom of the base where the spike usually goes. With his new wheel in place, Genghis is at last able to move the instrument comfortably. We've been carting it around for him up until now, have Natalie and I, since the instrument itself is considerably broader and taller than he is. But with the wheel -- well, he slung the neck of the bass over his shoulder, and zoomed off down the sidewalk, making loud motorcycle noises.

Happy kid.

We spent a couple hours at the big pool complex after that. One at a time, I took the boys into the larger pool and put them to some serious swim learning. They're both water-safe enough for Tasmania, naturally, but I'm determined that they're going to actually swim, not just float, thrash, dog-paddle, or whatever.

Jake is built for it - lean and gangly. He takes after me, and I've always been a very good swimmer. (My mother held several Australian records in her age group when she swam in the Masters. And she quite liked the odd 10km race. Father... well, with his shoulder, he doesn't swim hard any more. But when he did, he was very, very fast indeed.) Unfortunately, Jake is nervy, and not relaxed, and it's hard going to get him to progress.

Genghis, on the other hand, is stocky and densely muscled. Not good for floating at all. But once he got the idea, he was right into it. In the space of half an hour, he went from kickboarding to practice his breathing and flutter kick, through to working a basic freestyle stroke, and by the time we quit for the day, he could manage six or seven metres of very fast, very strong freestyle... but he couldn't yet integrate the breathing, so he did it all in one breath.

I figure another two, three weeks for Genghis and he'll be ready to handle a full fifty metre lap of freestyle - if he keeps learning at this rate. It'll take Jake longer. On the other hand, when they can both manage it, the situation will reverse, because Jake has the advantage of his reach, and build. Never mind.

We made it home, and I rounded up a bunch of laundry, etc. Then I handled dinner, and we watched one of those Asterix flicks. Which was... very odd. But you get the idea: busy day, not a lot of my own work.

So, today. Sunday. Determined to do well for the kids, I got up with everyone and we had our pancakes and backon. Then I played a couple games of "Kung Fu Samurai On Giant Robot Island" with the boys, and sorted a bunch of laundry. After that, a short lunch, and then an hour or so of combined frisbee/vortex toy throwing with all three kids, because the sun was out and the day was beautiful. And then we went shopping, and I set up for a charcoal barbecued chicken dinner.

I was the Good Dad, yes. And it was nice. We had a very pleasant day. And all the time, I could feel the emails piling up, and I figured: yeah, I'd get them tomorrow.

Dinner finished. I threw all three kids in the bath, and climbed in to do a mass hairwashing. All good.

And it should have stayed that way. Except that the Mau-Mau continued to complain of an itchy scalp. Natalie had already checked her for bugs, and found naught, but I figured - with her hair damp, and using a powerful LED torch, I could really do the job right.

I found one.

One rotten, stinking louse. One.

So.

Tomorrow, all three children stay home from school. The boys seem to be completely clear, as usual, but the rules say they stay home too. And I shall go to the chemist, and I will purchase a crapload of ti-tree and eucalpyt based products. And I will individually treat all three kids, and then myself - for of course, my scalp now itches like hell, though Natalie says there's nothing to be seen - and all of this will take most of the morning, and the afternoon will have kids running back and forth, and arguing, and I will not be able to string together the quiet I really desperately wanted, and that's that, isn't it?

One filthy little bug.

Iceland Wins Again!

You may recall that some time ago, I wrote of Iceland with some enthusiasm and approval. I believe it was shortly after they elected a professional comedian as mayor of their largest (only?) city, Reykjavik.

Iceland goes from strength to strength, however. When the Icelandic banking system began to smell like a bucket of bad hakarl, the Icelanders didn't permit a massive bullshit bailout. They did NOT authorize a huge transfer of taxpayers (public!) funds to prop up a bunch of (private!) corporations. Nope.

Like the sensible folk they are, they took it on the chin, and let the banks fend for themselves. (Amid considerable rancour. As should indeed have been the case.)

Now they've gone one shining step farther. Not only have they begun prosecuting the people who played fast and loose with the banking system -- they've actually found one of them guilty, and sentenced him to prison. To top it off, before the crash he was actually a permanent secretary in the Icelandic Ministry of Finance.

This is a good thing. Imagine how much better the USAnian situation could have been right now if the American government had shown some stones, and actually arrested the corporate megabastards who financially sodomized their entire nation!

But they didn't. Instead, they threw something like a trillion dollars of taxpayer monies into the hungry maw of the corporate finance beast - and at last check, Wall Street finance companies were once again paying multi-million dollar bonuses to their executives while the government teeters on the edge of shutdown, and ordinary Americans find themselves without simple things that most of the Western world takes for granted.

Now... if only Iceland would stop harpooning whales and start harpooning American bankers instead!

Some Photos And Stuff.

As usual, I really don't know how this stupid blogging software is going to order these photos. I can never remember whether it's backwards, forwards or sideways. So you'll get what you get, in the order you get it, and you'll deal with it. Or not.

Right. Now, for those who may not be aware, my residence lies along one of the Tasmanian highways which host the yearly Targa Tasmania, a road race which is apparently very well known and popular worldwide amongst people who... errr... like to drive expensive cars very quickly around road which really aren't designed for that.

To many people in Tasmania, it's a major highlight of the year. Unfortunately, I'm not much of a petrolhead, so for me, it's just that day in April when they close off my driveway from 0700 to 1200, so the kids don't go to school, and poor Nat has to get away very early indeed to avoid leaving the hospital a doctor short. And then, of course, it's about three hours of loud car noises.

The kids like it, though. The day off is appreciated, and we always make a point of going up to the top paddock to have a look at some of the competition. Not that we know much about it...

That's a car. I'm sure of it. It was going pretty quickly, too.

This is another car. Notice that it's a different colour. The kids were quite taken by the fact that it didn't have a roof. I don't think they'd ever paid attention to a convertible before. This car was also going quickly.

Oh! And this photo has nothing whatsoever to do with Targa Tasmania. It was, in fact, taken the other day when we were all down the beach at Bridport, keeping up with two sets of visitors at once. There was Gemma and her two kids, and at the same time, there was Nat's dad, and his wife. It all got a bit manic at times, but it was a nice day. And as you can see, the Mau-mau was delighted by the chance to play chasey with the waves.

And this photo shows Younger Son, doing the lost-and-lonely-on-the-beach thing. I like this shot very much. The composition is good, and Younger Son was ambling along with just the perfect attitude. It helps that he's a striking young lad in his own right, but the timing was rather good.

Oh - I should mention that Younger Son has finally earned a name here in these annals. Even as Elder Son became 'Jake Flinthart' after the WorldCon in Melbourne, Younger Son has laid claim to "Genghis Flinthart" as his own.

And frankly, it suits him. Therefore, Genghis Flinthart he shall be henceforth.

Which brings us to this last photo: Jake and Genghis raptly enjoying the race at about 0800 this morning. They watched about five minutes worth of cars going past, and then the urge to race around like loons overwhelmed them. In this picture, they're playing their very own combat game called "Star Trek Punch-Out". The rules are simple: each player takes on the role of one of the more violent of the Star Trek regulars, and then they swing wild, slo-mo haymakers at each other, reeling back with hilariously exaggerated expressions of dismay whenever their opponent takes a swing at them.

It's unnervingly like the fight sequences from Old Trek, actually. But Genghis's occasional cries of "Khaaaaaaaaan!" lack that special something which only The Shat could ever bring to the screen...

Nuuurgh.

Well, the whole visitors thing is working out pretty well. The two kids visiting are behaving well, and getting along okay with the residents -- aside from a few minor scuffles between the Mau-Mau and young Jen, who is just a couple months younger. Five/six-year-old girls are unpredictable, and in this case, unfortunately, there's a bit of the name-calling and the neener-neener-neener bullshit that sometimes crops up.

Not that it lasts.

With Nat's dad and her stepmum in town, plus our old friend Gemma and her two kids here at Chez Flinthart, things have been more than a little hectic. Friday orchestra evening segued seamlessly into Saturday Bass Lesson plus Visitor Pickup plus Grandparent Meetup plus Extended Playtime At The Launceston Hilltop Swimming Complex. And of course, I've been cooking: polenta-crusted baked salmon for Saturday night; charcoal-roasted leg of lamb on Sunday night, and tonight, a spicy Vietnamese-style beef soup with spiced meatballs and home-made rice noodles.

To be fair, the rice noodles didn't work out as well as I'd like. In fact, they fell apart a lot. But the soup was still good, and the kids were so good about eating it that I even succumbed and made pinwheel apple danishes and whipped cream for dessert.

It's been good having Gemma visiting. I don't get many people through who will face up to a decent horror film, and I've been waiting for an excuse to watch 'Sauna' again. Gemma came through with flying colours - aside from falling asleep here and there - and the movie was as enjoyable as I recall from the first viewing. Not an explosive, hack-and-slash horror film, no, but a very effectively atmospheric film that culminates in some really, really nasty visual and emotional imagery.

Last night we tackled "Dead Snow", which is a fairly tongue-in-cheek Norwegian flick about a bunch of medical students off for a weekend of skiing and Extracurricular Activities in an isolated cabin. Naturally, things go badly wrong -- things, in this case, meaning a bunch of Nazi zombies left over from WWII. Not nearly as affecting as 'Sauna', but it was still a whole bunch of fun, with a nice sense of humour.

Unfortunately, something I ate disagreed with me rather violently. I had the most epic stomachache all night, and combined with the zombie flick, it led to repeated awakenings from dreams in which either I was stabbing myself in the stomach, or things were trying to eat my intestines. Oddly, I wasn't particularly disturbed. I think I was too tired, and of course, every time I woke up I was in too much pain.

So I didn't achieve very much today, no. And I am very tired.

Beyond that, however, lies a tragedy of truly Olympian proportion. It's such a tragic tragedy that I really don't quite know how to express it. I'll just come straight out and say it:

Boag's is discontinuing their 'St George' variety.

That may not seem like much to you, but... well, for the last few years, this has been my absolute favourite beer. It's fresh, sharp, tasty, and sits lightly on the palate, though it's full-flavoured and full-strength. The idea that they're discontinuing it has smitten me with despair, and led Gemma and myself on quests to several pubs to find the last couple of remaining cartons.

I am now approximately one half-carton of beer away from a period of deepest mourning...

No Lung Cancer Either

Not that I expected it.

I got the results of my recent CAT scan today. Lungs all clear. Normal. No action required.

Can't say I'm at all surprised. I'm not a smoker. The only risk I can think of would be possible brief exposure to old asbestos while carrying out urban spelunking missions at Uni of Qld back in the 80s and 90s. And besides, I would have figured lung cancer to do more than give me an annoying cough which has been fading away.

I do believe my doc is now planning to investigate me for reflux, on the theory that cryptic, low-level reflux may be irritating my airways and causing me to cough. I wouldn't know, I suppose. I'll co-operate, and be a good lad.

Heh. Nat and the boys are enjoying their newfound association with the Launceston Community Orchestra. They get to play actual music, and do it together, which makes for a happy house at times. I like that.

One of the pieces they play is "Norwegian Wood". Since someone asked at the dinner table what the song was supposed to be about, I sang it through for the kids. I like Norwegian Wood. It's a cool tune, and the low-key description of the encounter between the singer and the girl is reminiscent of more nights of my misspent youth than I can readily recall. Except I never slept in a bath, because I'm too damned tall for that.

Anyway, once I was done with the song, we went back to eating. Finally, the Mau-Mau looked up. She was clearly troubled.

"Why in the song didn't they brush their teeth?" she asked plaintively.

Good question. So, Mr Lennon: why didn't you include a line about brushing your teeth in your classic song, there? Inquiring five-year-old minds want to know!

The new Telstra account seems to be working well. It will be nice not to have this loud satellite modem on my desk any more. I can use the space, and it will be great to hear the rest of the house again.

I'm also in the process of changing over one of my oldest email accounts. It's a long, tedious process, but there's no point in paying for an inferior service when something better and more accessible is offered free of charge courtesy of Google. But I do wish there was a better way of shifting all my contacts across. That's what I get for using non-standard email client software, I guess.

I suppose this also marks a goodbye to Foxmail, which has been my preferred email software since somewhere around 1997. Ah well. Never mind. I didn't much like the most recent versions anyway...

Triumph!

Two and a half months. Nearly three, actually. Four separate trips into Launceston. A dozen or more phone calls to Telstra, the longest of which lasted more than an hour and a half -- and that was AFTER I got through their labyrinth of recorded bullshit.

Today I connected up the high-gain aerial I bought last week in Launceston. Bought, I should add, from the Telstra Business Office in Mowbray, and not from the almost-completely-useless Telstra store in mid-town. (By which I mean: I ordered the aerial through them in early January. I went back in mid-February and asked about it. They were very apologetic, and went about ordering it some MORE. Firmly, this time. In mid-March, I went back to talk to them again... but this time the woman at the counter hit me with her Rudeness Raygun, and I left. That hour-and-a-half phone call? It confirmed that the Telstra office in Launceston had never at any time placed an order for a high-gain aerial to my account. What had they actually done? Nobody could answer that.)

Yes, I connected that metre-long black whip antenna to the base station. And then the real fun began. Naturally, I couldn't get it to speak Internet. So I tried reinstalling the base station, but it wouldn't recognise the password that went with the username. So... gritting my teeth, I phoned Telstra.

The recorded messages were painfully useless. Particularly the one that wanted me to cite the account number. That particular bit of good cheer told me I had to say "continue" when I found the number -- but then it stumbled. And repeated itself. And stumbled again. And repeated. And I couldn't actually at any point tell it the number.

STUPID F___KING RECORDING!

Eventually I got a Telstra tech. Like almost all Telstra tech support I've ever dealt with, he had a strong accent that I was hard-pressed to follow, but we worked our way through for a bit. And then he told me that I couldn't update the password because I didn't have access to the user account.

That's right.

Two and a half months of work. I mean - the home phone is in Natalie's name, but we're both on the books as "people who can authorise changes". And this new Bigpond account -- the only reason it EXISTS is because I packed up my three kids, drove into Launceston, then waited forty minutes to see a service johnny, and then spent a further forty minutes working through the specifications of the account.

Except, of course, that the account is linked to Natalie's mobile, isn't it? And despite the fact that I was allowed to set up the account, rearrange Natalie's mobile payment details, authorise the purchase of the base station and decide which mobile broadband plan we were going to use... well, it's Natalie's mobile, right? And, you know, there's nothing on the books authorising me to have anything to do with that, is there?

I kept my temper. I asked the idiot on the other end of the line if he seriously expected me to ring my GP wife at her surgery so she could phone BigPond and spend forty minutes with a recorded system in order to authorise my access to the account I'd created in the first place.

Strangely, the pillock actually did think that was the way to go. So I asked for his supervisor.

Somewhere into the second quarter-hour of hold music, I hung up on them.

I gave 'em a few minutes. I tried again - because the recorded voice kept seductively promising that it could help me change the password. Except, of course, that every time I tried to supply my account number, the F__KING thing would stumble and repeat itself. Again.

Eventually, I wound up with another heavily accented tech. But THIS tech was far, far less stupid. Once he ascertained I was trying to reinstall the system, he told me to quit messing around, and gave me the URL of the control page of the base station/router. And of course, once I was there, it was child's play to enter the proper username and the password... and it worked like a charm.

Fantastic!

Unfortunately, the signal strength still varied between 'low' and 'non-existent', meaning that I could get maybe thirty seconds of access at very infrequent intervals. But perhaps that was because the aerial was still sitting in the house, leaning on the wall. I put it out the window, fetched a ladder, and wandered round to the outside.

With a little electrical tape, I temporarily attached the aerial to a long rod, and I taped that to the top of the ladder. The aerial was now well over the roof height. I went back inside.

Signal strength was still deeply forked. Bummer.

I thought about it for a bit. Particularly, I thought about the nasty, finicky little joiner which had been provided to allow me to connect the skinny co-ax cable from the aerial into the back of the base station. Typical piss-poor design: the connect-o socket for the co-ax on the back of the base station doesn't actually connect -- you have to put a double-ended adaptor onto it, and each end of the adaptor has to individually screw into place: one on the cable, one on the base station.

The adaptor is about three centimetres long. And naturally, they've located the connecto-socket in a place where there's a kind of shield in the way, so you really can't get your fingers in to do the job properly. I'd done the best I could... but had it been enough?

I found a pair of electronics pliers. Then I tightened the two opposite-turning collars on the adaptor... and lo! All of a sudden, the signal strength indicator jumped to 'high'!

Instantly, I jumped online and tried a few YouTube videos. (Hayseed Dixie, if you must know. They're hilarious.) And by Odin's long and scraggly beard... IT WORKED!

Like magic it worked! I promptly tried three different broadband speed check sites, and discovered that this setup is about two to three times the speed of the crappy satellite link. About 1.3mbps, as a matter of fact. Whooo-HOO!

So. Next hurdle: I went upstairs, fired up Natalie's computer, and looked for the new wireless link.

Oh dear. Nothing.

Shit.

At this point, a lesser mortal might have caved in and gone back to phone Telstra again. But not yours truly. Nope: I opened up that control-page URL again, and noodled around until I found a whole bunch of settings - including WiFi. Working with my little ASUS eeepc on my lap, I tweaked the settings until I could find a wireless signal, log on, and download. Then I trotted back upstairs, and had another crack at Natalie's computer.

Success! This time her computer not only found the new network, but logged straight on and happily took to reading the BBC news. Yes! Calloo, callay! O Frabjous Day! Genius = me!

But the job still wasn't done. Because, of course, the actual aerial was still taped to a paint-roller handle that was taped to the top of an aluminium ladder. And that configuration would almost certainly turn out to be sub-optimal in the event of inclement weather... or even me needing my goddam ladder back.

So I grabbed the coach bolts kindly provided with the aerial kit. And the hose clamps, yeah, them too. I loaded a decent drillbit into my cordless drill, found a socket spanner to fit the coach bolts, and trundled up to the top of the ladder with all my gear, plus the steel hockey-stick thing provided as an aerial mount. With balletic grace, I drilled a couple of pilot holes left-handed (since my right hand was involved in maintaining vertical integrity of myself, the ladder, and the hockey-stick thing). Then I coach-bolted the blasted thing into place on the eaves. Yay!

Up the ladder to the roof, going very carefully. I freed the aerial from the jury-rigging and duct tape, and placed it alongside the steel hockey-stick thing. Then I dropped the hose-clamps into place, and did them up nice and tight with the screwdriver I forgot to mention earlier. (Spanner. Socket. Screwdriver. Drill... yeah, lotta tools up there on the roof. Did I get them all down? Jeez, I hope so.)

And there it was. Solidly mounted. I gathered my tools and descended once more to earth. Then I put the whole lot away, and put the ladder back in the shed, and went back inside.

Miracle! The signal strength was still "high". I was still Net-enabled!

Ladeez and gennulmen, I have done it. After nearly three months, I have managed to activate and then render useful this Telstra 3G account.

And what do we get after all that effort? Well, there's our blinding new 1.3mpbs speeds. Yeeha. And there's 12 -- count them! -- TWELVE gigabytes a month available for a cost maybe twenty bucks down on the price we've been paying for 15gb a month from the satellite dudes. The thing to note, however, is that our new 12gb allowance is NOT restricted by time of day. No "peak time" bullshit, in other words.

Y'see, with the satellite people, only 3gb was available at what they called "broadband" speeds between the hours of midday and eleven pm. And if you used more than that 3gb during that period, you were 'shaped' back to 64kbps.

Can I just point out that most of the Internet -- even text-heavy pages like Wikipedia -- won't even load at 64k any more? It just sort of... hangs. And Cthulhu help you if you actually needed to access anything interactive. Ugh.

We never used our full 15gb in a month... but we frequently needed to buy expensive data blocks to avoid having our Internet access rendered useless for half of every day for the last week or so of the month. 12gb of broadband speed available 24/7 should hold us for a while.

What's that? Pathetic and expensive, you say?

Well... yeah. It is. I'm well aware of that. But it's an improvement of sorts. We'll keep the satellite maybe one more month to make sure this system doesn't have any hidden bugs - and then we'll switch over. And who knows? Maybe someday they'll connect us to that magic NBN which is only ten or twelve km down the road...

...ha. As if.

The worst thing about this situation? I'm back to dealing with Telstra again.

Fan. Fucking. Tastic.