Dad and I flew into Newcastle on Saturday the 17th. We met the Defender seller at Williamtown airport. Then Defender was loaded with the 4 extra Mud tyres and another spare tyre. We signed the papers and then started our trip home. Dad drove Saturday night. We had the pleasure of discovering some of the faults in the vechicle in the first few minutes that we were in the car. It was pissing down rain.. really hard.. and one of the windscreen wipers that was working fine for a minute or two, just stopped working. My dad also said that he thought his feet were getting wet.. I shone my LED torch at the pedals to see a stream of water pouring in on my dads feet. Anyway the rain slowed, and the leak stopped.



We stopped at Parramatta Maccas in Sydney for dinner; that was a pretty dodgey place. There was guy passed out in front of the Maccas entrance that we had to step over to get inside. We drove as far as Goulburn, we got there at about 11:30. We stopped in a truck parking spot. Because the spare wheels were in the back, we had to throw them up on to the roof racks. We then managed to sleep uncomfortably in the back. I drove back all the way the next day. We got back to Sunbury at about 4.

My dad’s birthday was last week, so I shouted him a trip to the Airshow. My dad wanted to get there early, so we left Sunbury at 6:30 and got to Avalon at about 7:45. It opened at 8, and we walked round and had a look at the static displays before the flight displays started at 10. We were sitting right on the barrier next to the runway. It was pretty awesome, and I got some great video footage. I will edit the footage together and upload it soon. The highlights for me would have to be the B-52 fly over, the C-17A display, the F1-11 (with full afterburner and the fast jets (F-15, F-16 and FA-18s). Very good.

This evening I got an email from Gael Duval (The founder of Mandrake Linux), about my AJAX remote desktop application. He is heading up an OSS project that is currently using VNC for remote desktop access. He was interested in whether or not I was considering extending the application to allow full remote control, as my method of communication allows greater interoperability than VNC. Anyway.. a little excitement.

Have a good one!

Ok so after about 5 years of dreaming about it, I have put a deposit on a Defender. It’s in Newcastle. I got Rebecca and Richard to check it out for me. The said it was in very good condition. I will fly up to Newcastle within the next week to drive it back. Because of the purchase, I got my little sister to give me a manual driving lesson today. So I was booting Katrina’s Laser around the back roads of Riddells Creek this afternoon. I think I only stalled it once. I was pretty impressed with my skills. Katrina neglected to tell me that sometimes her brakes don’t work, and I was very frightened to discover this issue when turning a corner in third gear, instead of second; the brake seemed to bottom out without doing anything, so I thought I was pressing the wrong pedal.. Anyway I managed to keep the car in the correct lane, but I was worried about sliding into the opposite lane where there were some incoming cars.. anyway it was all good.


Devo had birthday drinks last night at the Workshop. Good turn out. We learnt about Chook’s issues with football players and what Paulius and Troja think of grey water. We got a bit drunk and came home via Maccas where Paulius nearly made it through 3 burgers.


It’s a long weekend this weekend. Bewyeah. I think we’re going climbing tomorrow…