I had a problem that the grass (Couch for those interested) wasn’t doing too well, probably due to a thick thatch and not enough air and water getting through to the soil. I played around with a pitchfork, eventually deciding that wouldn’t fix it so had it vertimowed. After which you need to water daily for a week or so which had a problem. My reticulation was leaking. Where there shouldn’t have been a pipe there were 2 25mm poly pipes, one having a hole in it (caused by pitchfork or vertimower I know not).

I fixed that leak in my reticulation this morning. I chopped out about 2mm of pipe with the hole in it and rejoined the two lengths with a joiner. Since it was such a tight fit, some skin got ripped of my palm (some might be interested to know this is called a degloving injury. The best one I ever had was the sole of my foot. Don’t ever push start a Triumph TR5 barefoot on the road, after your dad doesn’t get it to start on the downhill driveway)

but wait… this is a brad story. I ran the water to check everything and…

Water gushed out of the pipe about 20cm (guestimate, its covered in soil) upstream.

yay. more work to be done.

Here is roughly what happened:
1) Asked to take dryer from grandmother, so do so as I move in (Jan 3)
2) Operate said dryer in the way adjoining the kitchen and realise the belt is broken (May?)
3) Buy belt and wall bracket (June)
4) Buy some DYNAbolts (then realise they are the wrong size) (August)
5) Buy a drill set, bolts and wall plugs (September)
6) Buy masonry bits (duh!) (early October)
7) Drill 6 holes (2 weekends ago)
8) Buy socket set (This morning)
9) Tighten bracket and hang dryer (early afternoon 29.10.2006)

The missing lint filter still needs to be replaced.

A few minutes later turning upside down the spare bedroom that I added a desk to yesterday, the keys are found hiding under a pile of useless paper that must have got thrown on them while rearranging stuff. A few minutes later on the way to work the radio star signs come on. Shame I wasn’t listening in earlier, my Gemini stars for today “You have to get out on your own.”

Who would have thought my first blog in months would be about soccer? This whole site needs a cleanup, but there’s other things to do. Unless of course you want to come weed the lawn, clean the house, do the washing etc Somehow I’ve been at work a year. I haven’t achieved what I would like there and its an open question whether that will happen. But I leave that thought for another time. Replay of France vs Portugal starts in 20 minutes so I’ve got to get home.

The house is starting to feel like a home, with moments like this (a colleague’s kids keeping warm at a summer night BBQ the week after Australia day)

And yet I’m happy about it.

There is work to be done before everything is signed, sealed and settled, but nothing that shouldn’t be overcome.

Who’s up for the house warming?

There are easy decisions and actions that are available at any juncture in one’s day. The meal bought versus the one prepared. The trip by gas pedal instead of pedal power. The hotel instead of the campground. Plastic instead of paper. I am finding that many of the easy decisions have costs that are not written into the equation. Dumping toxins into the river instead of dealing with our industrial by-products is a good example. An easy�sometimes justified as �an economic�� decision. Well, no, we just diffuse the expense of our actions across a greater surface area of impact. We call that a footprint in technology realms. Very much like footprints on the trail.
The larger the footprint, the greater the cost.

We each choose a path to follow as we make our way through this world. The path of least resistance in some cases means the one of greatest impact. Undoubtedly there are days when what is easy fits better than what is hard. As a generation that has seldom if ever known scarcity, maybe it is a good practice to make things hard at times. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Yeah, I read that on your blog.
Posted by Tim [tmo] at October 31, 2005 01:04 AM

I wish I had time to read all these speeches, but the pile of academia I need to read is already growing too large. If any of these are as good as the Jobs Stay Hungry Stay Foolish speech, I should make time. Maybe you’ll find the good bits for me? Read. Comment. Please.

Additional Note: only after posting this did I notice the relevence to my previous post : Good News Day (infrequent but consistent?)

And since I’m on a roll adding to this post, you might want to happily and unworryingly go and look at a congressional report worth reading (for all world citizens) Politics and Science in the Bush Administration. At least skim read the executive summary.

After a nights reflection on the all around smiles and rush to spread the happy news I’ve been thinking 2 things:
1) People need more ‘happy news’
2) I think too much about ‘other’ stuff, rather than how to get more ‘happy’ stuff

Ideas welcome. What do you want to know?