Sephy’s Platzish

Going straight into it again

Remember that you can click on the small picture to view the full-size version.

Sunday, 18th November

Some more of the wind damage that had happened in the park; this tree is laying over the main trail. I’d venture to guess that it will be cleared up sometime next spring, unless someone walking past it decides to sort it out on their own.

Total distance: 5375 steps, 4.30km

Monday, 19th November

This picture really sums up the day - gray and foggy. It wasn’t the most pleasant conditions outside, but at least it wasn’t icing over.

Total distance: 5086 steps, 4.06km

Tuesday, 20th November

Here’s one of the horses taking an interest in me walking past.

Total distance: 5507 steps, 4.40km

Wednesday, 21st November

Another flash shot of fun here. The two dots toward the lower left of the picture is one of the horses from the paddock. The white specks are the snow that fell.

Total distance: 4532 steps, 3.62km

Thursday, 22nd November

A trinity of snow pictures from the first snow of the year. On the left is a shot of the road and the field that has the horses, with plenty of snow along the side of the road. Next is a shot of the pine trees with snow sitting on the branches, and finally, the park with snow all over the open areas. Interestingly, in the park, there was quite a bit of the area where the snow had been cleared in the forest, but when I got into a leaf-covered area, the snow was still there.

Total distance: 3805 steps, 3.04km

Friday, 23rd November

I didn’t go for a walk today, but rather quite a lengthy drive. We had to go into the city for an appointment, and I said that I was going to drive. Although it was Black Friday, the traffic by around noon wasn’t too bad, and it was easy to get around in the city. I also took the opportunity to find where I was going to take the driving test and did a little bit of driving around the area before we headed for home.

Oh, and if you’re wondering, obviously I wasn’t driving when I took this picture.

Saturday, 24th November

This is a look at the path that I’d usually pass along, but I have to admit that I’m not 100% confident in walking in the boots I got. I went out on them on Monday, and I need to get a shoelace or something to tie them up, and the zippers on them wouldn’t stay up for very long when I was walking. Also, it kind of felt like I was wearing concrete boots on my feet. Oh well, I’ll get used to them soon enough

Total distance: 3755 steps, 3.00km

In other news, the counseling is going well. I have to read up on a couple of options I have for treatment called EMDR and HMR. From what the therapist has said, both of these options have proven very effective, even if it does make you sleepy after you do a session of it.

My driving test is only one week away, and I have to say that my confidence is growing. On Friday, as I had mentioned, I found out where the testing location is; it looks like some decent roads in the area. I also got some advice about common ways that people fail their tests such as not checking mirrors often enough and also stopping before a sidewalk when you’re coming to stop sign. Also, I got a great tip for practising the parallel parking - use a trashcan or a witch’s hat (or cone or bollard) to mark the location of a potential car.

The big task for me this week will be getting some posts pre-written for the blog, as I am setting a goal of having a week prewritten so I can focus on other things, such as getting out there and commenting on blogs. Also, we should be getting a proper phone again this week; for the last two weeks we’ve not had regular phone service as the phone number we have has been transferred to our new phone service. Luckily we’ve been able to dial into voicemail to get messages.

This is a quick guide to importing your exported RSS feeds into Mozilla Thunderbird.

If you do not have an RSS feeds account set up, you will have to make a new account for RSS feeds. You can do this from the Account Settings screen, just click Add Account… and then go through the steps.

Now that you have a News & Blogs account; you can go about importing your subscriptions.

First, from the main screen of the folder (the one you get when you click on the News & Blogs name), click on Manage subscriptions -

Next, click on Import

Then, in the window that pops up, find the file that you exported from your reader. Then, click Open and all of your feeds will be imported.

Now, I did this after importing all 100+ feeds that I have in my OPML file. If you have folders in your reader, those will not be imported along with your feeds. You will have to remake your folders, and you will lose the ability to read a full folder at one time.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment. If you’d like to have a how-to written up for something you’d like to know how to do (and you probably won’t be the only one who wants to know), feel free to drop me a line via the contact form.

…of the widely publicised election that nobody knew about in the USA.

Well, saying that nobody knew about the election would be a bit of an understatement; obviously news junkies, expats and anyone with an interest in Australia knew about the election that was held today down there. Of course, the pedantic side of me has to mention that almost all of the voting took place yesterday my time, since it’s midnight on the east coast at 7AM here during the winter…

Anyway, if you were aware of how the election was going up until now, you wouldn’t be surprised that the result did wind up as it did - Labor picking up a massive load of seats in the House of Representatives, leading to John Howard (who, incidentally, might just be out of a job depending on the results of the absentee ballots) holding firm at his position on second in the chart of longest-serving Australian Prime Ministers.

I actually stayed up for quite a while last night (I was awake fully until about 2AM, then pretty much dozed off until 3, laying on the couch when I went to my bed proper) watching the coverage from ABC TV, which they were streaming for all to watch (and record, if you may know how to do that; which I do, so I can catch up on the bits I missed while sleeping, though I could have sworn that I heard Mr. Rudd giving a speech, with the cheering crowds and all). I have to say that everything that I had heard about one of their election analysts, Antony Green, was true - he made all this talk of “primary votes”, “two-party preference” and swings make sense. He also would be honest about what the numbers that were coming in actually meant.

All I’ll say is that it’s too bad that a network here doesn’t have the forethought to bring him overseas to possibly analyse our election. I guess beggars can’t be choosers, eh?

However, one of the most interesting aspects of this election is the fact that the American media couldn’t have cared less. Sure, it was an election occurring half a world away, but I will note that elections in the UK get quite a bit of attention; in fact, C-Span would air the BBC’s coverage on one of their networks, even going so far as having it on all night. If you were to tune in to the first two (and most widely distributed) of their networks this morning around 1AM, you would have seen some random government person giving a speech or an author giving a talk at a Barnes & Noble somewhere. The other news networks, all of which weren’t even showing new content (CNN [US], MSNBC and Fox News), may have mentioned the election, but I don’t follow those channels that much anymore; all I know is that 1 AM, they didn’t show coverage from their Aussie counterparts as well.

After it’s all been sorted, though, the news website emails I receive have mentioned the resounding defeat for the Liberals and the Nationals. Of course, it’s all put into the frame of reference that Howard was a staunch ally of President Bush, however, I don’t believe that the close ties to our government had much, if anything, to do with the defeat of the Coalition. If I had to guess, I’d say that the biggest issue that led to this result is the appearance that the recently enacted workplace reforms (WorkChoices), along with uncertainty in the housing market (an issue which wasn’t helped along with the fact that the Reserve Bank raised interest rates during the campaign, to a rate that was still lower than the rate that was in place when Howard took up residency in Kirribilli House some 11 years ago.

All in all, it will be interesting to see how it all comes out in the wash, and to see what kind of changes will go on Down Under over the next three to four years. Also, a question, when will Kevin become the PM? I’d guess before Christmas?

A couple of weeks ago, I got word of a really cool offer of some free stationery from a company called VistaPrint - in particular their Australian division. Part of the offer included free calendars, postcards, business cards and even Christmas cards.

So, being a lover of all things free (even if I have to pay for shipping), I went ahead and ordered a whole bunch of free stuff - 100 large postcards, 250 business cards, a calendar, 10 Christmas cards and a pad of sticky notes. I went for the slowest option for shipping, about 3 weeks.

About a week and a half ago, I heard the doorbell ring, and as it turned out, there was a DHL deliveryman there with a package for me. Now, I hadn’t heard anything about part of my order being shipped, so when I opened it, I was pleasantly surprised. As it turned out, the first shipment was sent from Detroit via overnight shipping.

Then, just now, I went out to get the mail, and there was a small envelope in there. I was half expecting it to be some books that have been sent to me from overseas (which I didn’t pay anything for, but earned as a reward for completing a challenge). I looked on the package and it said that if it wasn’t deliverable, that it should be returned to Belgium; along with that is a customs sticker that says the retail value of the items inside was A$3.99. As it turned out, these were my Christmas cards that I had been waiting for.

Clockwise from lower left - sticky notes, Christmas cards, Calendar, postcards, business cards

The coolest thing about the calendar if you ask me, is that it has all the Aussie holidays on there (of course, they’re not that different to ours, but it does have Australia Day and Anzac Day on there, but doesn’t have all the different Labour Days and Queen’s Birthdays, and I did add some US Holidays as well )

If you check out VistaPrint’s Australian site, you should be able to take advantage of a lot of these deals - this whole lot of stuff cost me only $15 for shipping.

I’m going light on the serious content today since it’s a holiday

All I’m going to show you are a couple of pictures I took today, as a hint of what’s coming up in the next couple of days

It didn’t stay this way for too long

Also, something happened last night, and I took a walk to see how things shaped up; I’ll post a couple of more pictures on Sunday, but here’s a taste:

Sorry bout the motion blur y’all, it was cold