Yea its true, we have moved from Unit 2, to Unit 3, the existing tenant offered it to us before he told the real estate he was moving out, its a fair bit bigger, has a full kitchen, and also a garage for Sheldon, all for an extra $5/week, because he told us before the real estate we had time to find someone to take over Unit 2.
Birthday Shenanigans
Well its that time of year again, ticking over another digit on the grand counter of life. I used to think 24 was old...
Before we talk about birthdays shenanigans, some history: at the last LAN party we had at Jimmy's house the top 200mm exhaust fan on my PC tower chucked it i, I attempted a repair, with no luck, and unfortunately due to the design not just any old 200mm fan would do the job, a genuine is the only way to go, and they cost upward wards of $60, so, for my birthday this year I decided to buy myself a new chassis.
After loads of research (and I mean loads!) I settled on the Corsair Carbide Series Air 540, I love the divided chassis design, the cube shape, and its huge cooling capacity.
With the huge cooling capacity in mind I did some research on the best fans to use on my H100i cpu cooler, and matched chassis fans to that, working out the flow to keep positive pressure inside the case to help reduce dust. The result, my 2600k running at 4.8ghz never exceeds 60 degrees under full load.
On a side note these fans are quite impressive, with this build I was going for maximum performance so I skipped plugging fans into the motherboard and bought an 8 fan power splitter to power them all at full noise. When you power the machine on it shudders as the fans spin up, they have an insane amount of torque.
The build is basically the same as my previous chassis, one notable exception is I am putting two SSDs in that I have picked up over the past year or so, I put them in RAID 0, with some pretty impressive results, 1100mb/s read speed, 900mb/s write speed.
The finished build:
i7 2600k @ 4.8ghz
32GB DDR3 1866mhz RAM @ 1984mhz
Asus P8P67 Deluxe Board
Corsair H100i CPU Cooler with SP120 & AF120 fans in Push-Pull
2x EVGA GTX 780 Superclocked GPUs in SLI
2x 240GB SSDs in RAID 0
2x 1TB HDDs in RAID 0
OCZ 1250w PSU
A lot of the components in this build are getting old now, I first built this when Intel released Sandy Bridge and the 2600k was brand new! And now nearly 5 years on, and with a mild overclock this machine is still very powerful, I am very happy with this, and I am keen to put it to the test (a LAN, of course)!
For my birthday Amy wanted to buy me a fancy whisky, so we decided to go away for a weekend to explore some Tasmanian Whiskies, which meant a trip to Hobart! We invited Ek & Grant and planned a 3 day trip.
Day 1:
On the way down we stopped in at Nant, supposedly a highly regarded Tasmanian whisky, the distillery was pretty cool, built inside an old Flour Mill which has been restored. Personally I didnt really like the Nant that much, however tastings are always straight, and I am not a massive fan of drinking whiskey straight, so I bought 2x 40ml tasters to try at home.
Next stop, Redlands Distillery, this tour was different, but just as good as Nant, these guys had recently moved locations and so their distillery was not fully up and running yet, but our tour guide was the Master Distiller himself, he was an awesome bloke, and let us taste the whiskey at each step of the process. Again tho I didn't really like the final product, at this point I am starting to think I just don't really like 'Single Malt' Whiskies, which is what Tasmanian is known for.
After that we headed to our accomodation and checked in, then headed out to find some tea, ending up at a Burger Got Soul, they make a damn good burger! Including this one called 'The Mount Wellington' - which Grant just could not resist.
Day 2:
Less whisky today, it was more of a relaxing fun day, we went shopping in the CBD, I took Amy to Puddleduck Vineyard (she's always wanted to go there), after which we enjoyed a relaxing lunch in Richmond (where we got engaged) and then headed back to town to meet up with Grant & Ek. Tea tonight was at Hogs Breath.
Day 3:
Off to Bruny Island today to visit the Tasmanian House of Whisky, a place where every single bottle of Tasmanian made whisky can be found, it was very, very cool! We spent a good while looking around at all the whiskies, trying to decide which one we would taste (it was expensive). In the end we decided to try a whisky called The Exile:
This is a one of a kind whisky, only 344 bottles were made, and of those only 1 remains for sale, the definition of rare! And at $795 a bottle its not the most expensive in the world, but as far as Tasmanian whiskies go I believe it is only beaten out by one, the Sullivans Cove Single Malt which won best Single Malt in the world last year. The Exile was a very nice whisky, my favourite to have straight, unfortunately Ill never get the chance to try it with coke (some would say oh thank goodness, apparently mixing expensive whiskies is frowned upon). While we were at the House of Whisky I picked up a few empty bottles of rare whiskies to add to my collection (yes a collection of empty bottles). We didn't get too long on Bruny Island, we filled the remainder of our time visiting the Bruny Island Honey shop, I would have liked to see more of the island, next time! We stopped in at a few shops on the way home, including a small chocolate shop filled with all kinds of home made chocolate delights, made by an apparently world famous chocolatier who has been flown all around the world to make chocolate. After that it was off to find my birthday present, Amy is getting me an expensive whisky, I had planned on a fancy Tasmanian one but so far I didn't like them enough to spend that much on one, so we went around a few bottle shops and I settled on a bottle of Johhnie Walker Blue Label ($220/bottle).
On the way home we stopped at Campbell Town for a feed and that brings us to the end of a pretty epic weekend! Thanks to my beautiful wife for the Birthday present, and the idea for this epic trip!!
Everyone, There's Someone I'd Like You to Meet
As most of you would know I have two cars, Snuffy the Patrol, and Leroy the Turbo Diesel Pug, a cheap to run runabout for daily commuting.
When Amy and I got married we added Amys car, a Nissan Micra, known as Stevie, to the garage, giving us a grand total of 3 cars.. 3 cars for two people..
When we got married the Patrol was down an alternator and so having three was actually useful, but overall in the long run 3 is overkill and doesn't make much sense.
Now the obvious solution here is to sell one and keep the other, right? Well, Yes, but that's boring. Amy has always wanted a Mini, and we had an opportunity to sell the Micra back to her parents, to become her sisters first car, and someone else is interested in Leroy, so we thought lets sell them both and see if we can find a Mini, so we went looking around..
Meet Sheldon: The John Cooper Works Mini Cooper
Amy has always wanted a Mini, and I have always liked the new models but never really considered owning one until now, I was happy to get Amy her dream car, but I thought, lets try and find a Cooper S, something I can have fun in too! So we went looking, we drove a clapped out Cooper S here in devonport, and we drove a boring run of the mill Mini in Evandale, and then I found Sheldon on gumtree, and it looked so good that I thought I just have to go and have a look at that, at the time I hadn’t considered it an option due to its price, I just wanted to have a look at the creme de la creme of Mini’s, and hopefully have a drive of it!
Well I did, and I walked away thinking that would be the perfect Mini for us, only 2 owners, low kms, and has been extremely well looked after, the thing was spotless, and drove like a brand new car, even smelled like one! Despite being a 2008 model, so we bought it, and we love it, its fast, comfortable, and lots of fun! I find myself actually enjoying the trip now, not just keen to arrive at my destination. I enjoyed the Pug, but it was just a commuter car.
And the best part, it sounds amazing! It has a full stainless steel low back pressure exhaust system, it sounds great, and its loud enough to be noticed, but not loud like tho wankerish commodore etc getting about.
Here’s a link to a video I found on youtube showing what it sounds like, it sounds way better in person, but you’ll get the idea: https://youtu.be/XdoCJ0j0A4Y?t=599
Its Days Like Today I'm Glad I Own a Patrol.
Over 200mm of rain hit places of north tassie last night, causing flash flooding the likes of which tassie hasn't seen for years, this is Latrobe from the air this afternoon:
Under these circumstances most people cant get around, it doesn't take much water on the road to stop a 2wd car, though people still try...
I enjoy going out in Snuffy (the patrol) on days like today, exploring, checking out the flooding, knowing that there’s not many places I cant get :)
I didn't find any places that were too difficult to get today, it was still fun!
I did find something unbelievable though, I drove Amy to Launceston this morning in Snuffy, she had an exam to be at, we left early in case there were any floods etc that we'd be forced to go around, on the way I thought we'd call into the dam we just finished a month ago to see how it fared, this is what it looked like on Friday:
That’s a photo from a few weeks back when we finished it - but the important thing here is the water level, it was at this level coming into this weekend, Sunday night it wasn't much higher than this.
To my surprise when we arrived this is what I saw:
This dam has a capacity of just over 100 ML (1ml=1,000,000 liters) - its pretty crazy that it could fill up overnight! And not only fill up, but run over the spillway a half meter deep!
You may not have noticed in that second photo but, take a closer look:
We are extremely lucky here, we need to do some maintenance on the dozer after this job, so we moved it up onto an undisturbed bank, fresh green, clean grass to work on (we had to spend a lot of time underneath it - and that really sucks in the mud!).
10 meters in front of and behind the dozer the land drops away several meters, our original parking spot was approx 20 meters in front of where the dozer is now, had we left it there to work on it... well, lets just say you wouldn't be seeing much in this photo...
This photo was taken this afternoon, the water level had dropped around half a meter by this stage.
Dams are never meant to fill this quickly the first time, for several reasons its best to fill them slowly, in this case we needed to keep water off the spillway to allow it to grow grass and become established before letting water over it (well established, grass growing soil doesn’t wash as easily) - but mother nature had other plans.. as a result the spillway took a lot of damage and we had to take our 3 ton digger down to do some damage control
Its not very often you go swimming with an excavator :)
What a crazy day!
Castle's Been Cancelled!
I started watchingCastle at season 3, and have been following it for the last five years. Its a great show with a great cast. Its a bit of a shock that it is ending, season 8 has been very good! From what I can find online it looks like the last episode of season eight will be the finale, so tomorrows episode had better be good!! And it better end things nicely or I will be one unhappy fan...
Shoutout to Destin
Have you heard of Smarter Every Day? If not, you should check it out:
https://www.youtube.com/smartereveryday
http://www.smartereveryday.com/
I found Destin around 12 months ago now, the first video I watched was The Backwards Bicycle, that sparked my interest and I have been following him ever since. Some things he said in the backwards bicycle video, and in many others, had me suspecting that he was a Christian, I later discovered that he puts a Bible Reference at the very end of most of his videos (I often didn't see them because I stopped watching when he started his advertising bit). His being a Christian was later confirmed in a Q&A video he did.
I have developed a deep respect for him because of his character and the way he does his videos, watch a few and I think you will understand what I mean.
The reason for this shoutout is because of his most recent video, Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted some false information on twitter, and Destin corrects him in this video, now I have no respect for Tyson, he talks alot of dribble about evolution and the universe being billions of years old bla bla bla, so if it were me I would have made a big deal out of correcting him, probably making fun of him along the way, but Destin didn't do that, he went to Neil and involved him in the making of a video that explains why he was wrong, and demonstrates the correct information. A very respectful and Christian way of doing things.
Watch it below:
My Wife Joins Golden Key
Golden Key is an Honours Society awarded to students whose results are in the top 15% worldwide, and my beautiful wife has been invited to join! This means that her results from her first year at Uni are inside the top 15% worldwide! An extremely impressive accomplishment and I am so proud of her.
On Monday night we went down to the UTAS campus in Launceston for the Golden Key New Member Reception, where they award all new members a certificate of recognition and talk about the benefits of being a member.
Amy receiving her certificate.
Of course I had to get a frame and put it on the wall with all of her other certificates (there's still more to go on the wall!)
I am so proud of you darling! I am regularly amazed at your commitment to do your very best in everything you set out to do, no matter what it may be. I love you and I know that I will be putting another certificate on the wall soon ;)
New Lunchbox
I have had a thermos lunch lugger lunchbox for many years now, when I got it it was the best thing available and its been great, its strong, its built like a cooler so it doesn't let the contents get warm when it sits out in the sun. But alas its starting to fall apart, its not big enough anymore, I have a powered jacket which I carry spare batteries for now, I also carry works computer, and if I want to take a thermos, I have to carry a water bottle separately.
I am sick of carrying everything separately, so I got thinking about a solution and I worked out that a 25L cooler box would work for me, so I went shopping online to find one suitable, which I found, and soon discovered that the same unit was sold at Supercheap under the Ridge Ryder brand.
What I have done - and this is just the start, I’m already planning on adding more to it - I have installed some dividers inside it to organize the contents:
The two smaller compartments will house the work computer, my iPad, and two 1L drink bottles, for now the rest is for my thermos, lunch space and a backup battery. Depending on how it goes I will add another separate compartment for that stuff.
Depending on the weather, tomorrow will be its first day on the job, fingers crossed it goes well!
Scum of the Earth
I run a club on Facebook, the 2.8 Patrol Club, obviously for 2.8 Patrols. Four months ago a mate I met on there, lives in Victoria, had his car stolen.
Its a nice rig, heaps and heaps of work done, big lift (I think 6"), engine was recently fully reconditioned, redarc gauges, power chip, rooftop tent, light bars, the list goes on, he has owned it for years, and like me loves his car and has spent many hours and dollars on it. He was at the beach when it was stolen, and wasn't there long so he only just missed the thieves, minutes after it was stolen he jumped online to the Club and spread the word, people all across Victoria had there eyes open for it, but it was never seen again.
Until now....
I hope the people who do this are found and made to pay for what they do..
Update 1.3
There are now two domains connected to my blog:
www.jasoneyles.com
&
www.virgincubalibre.com
Its Been a While...
A lot has happened since my last post, here is a quick update on a few things that have happened (its been very busy!)
Christmas
A brief word on Christmas last year, in short, a lot of lasts involved, and by that I mean things happening for the last time, it was my last christmas as an unmarried man, the last christmas at home with mum and dad, and also the last christmas dinner at my grandparents current house, where it has been for as long as i have memories of christmas. It was a good day, and also a bit emotional, but I was very keen for the future. Nothing can get you more excited than being able to marry your best friend!
Bucks Night
Grant was able to secure In the Zone for my Bucks night at a cost to everyone (except me) of about 1 game each, we spent something like 5 hours there... It was AWESOME! Thanks Grant, you pulled of a far better bucks night than I could have hoped for. Unfortunately Ben wasnt well and didnt make it.
Wedding
Anyone who has planned, or helped to plan a wedding will know that it takes a hell of a lot of effort and time, and Amy being at Uni and me full time working didn't make it any easier, however come January 10th 2016 everything came together in absolute perfection and went off like clockwork, literally nothing could have gone better. Amy and I couldn’t be happier, and we will thank God for that for the rest of our lives.
Isn’t she absolutely stunning?
Yes, I cried.
I would like to say a HUGE thank you to all those who helped us to pull it off, we couldn't have done it without you.
Honeymoon
I wont say much about this other than it was absolutely amazing, and, that a cruise is the perfect honeymoon, everything, and I mean everything, is taken care off for you. The ship, the places we visited, the food, simply mind blowing. All of it. It was an amazing experience and a perfect honeymoon.
Our first look at the ship, Carnival Spirit
This was at the first stop, Mystery Island, absolutely stunning place, we couldn’t believe it! Turns out those tropical island photos in magazines aren’t photo-shopped!
Leaving the ship was a process called Tendering, several of the lifeboats were used to ferry people to and from shore.
On the balcony of our cabin, on the starboard side towards the stern.
This shot was taken from the viewing deck directly on top of the bridge. Pretty cool.
Free TV
A little bit of a backstory before I talk about this one, Amy and her family, particularly her father and sister, are big followers of Survivor, they have watched it together since long before I came on the scene. Due to our limited funds we didn't have a TV and so I had just setup one of my computer monitors in the living room to watch episodes and movies on. Well, about a week before Survivor was scheduled to start we get a phone call from her dad informing us that as an early birthday present to Amy they would put $400 towards a TV for us. Wow.
Obviously I wanted to put extra money in and get something nice, but we decided to be wise and find something for the $400, which we did, a 43" Full HD TV. Freebies are awesome :) Thanks Brett & Jenny!!
Smashed Apple Watch
Yea um.. whoops.. I’m glad I bought Apple Care+, a new one is on its way!
Dozer Engine
Dad and I have had a rush of work come in in the last 8 weeks, we have been absolutely flat out, with people chasing us to be there, which is great, a welcome change from the last couple of years! Last year we bought a dozer so we could take on these jobs, we had to do some work on it at home, but as it turns out, unfortunately we didn’t do enough, towards the end of the job we are currently on it suffered an engine failure, so we are now working flat out to try and get it going again (we are building a new engine for it) and to finish of the job we are on.
The old girl is looking pretty sad at the moment.
Anyway that’s it for now, over and out.
RIP Linten
20 December 1993 - 29 November 2015
An Interesting Experience...
I was heading from church over to spend some time with Amy at her place in Ulverstone, as I was coming up to the Leith intersection I was witness to a very nasty car accident.
The red line is the offending vehicle, the green is the Hilux pictured above:
A sedan pulled out of Leith, attempting to cross the highway and head west, but he pulled out in front of a late model Hilux towing a trailer and fully loaded with late model dirt bikes (I estimate close to 20k of bikes/gear onboard, perhaps more). The hilux had no where to go and hit the rear right corner of the sedan sending it spinning out of the way and the hilux barrelling down the highway sideways, and ending up on its roof in less than 50 meters.
I, along with several other motorists immediately pulled over and rushed over to help, we pulled the three occupants of the hilux from the wreck, all still conscious and ok, there did not appear to be any serious or life threatening injuries.
The number of people who stopped to help, along with the teamwork of those who did makes one believe in humanity again! If only we could get along like that all the time..
FINALLY!
Most of you will know that myself and my brother in law, Grant, have been working to subdivide a block of land at Squeaking Point. The process has been less than friendly, the council worse than completely useless, and the cost, ridiculous! But I finally have some good news! On Friday 23rd October 2015 @ 12:01pm our titles were finally issued!
It has been a long hard and expensive road, but we are finally on the home stretch, as of the writing of this post we are just waiting for our bank manager to organize the refinance, at which time we will have separate mortgages, on separate lots, and each own our own piece of Planet Earth.
Unfortunately due to all the delays and extra cost I wont be able to build there for some time, Grant however has been gnawing away at the approvals and planning etc and is now ready to start, we are moving our 30 ton Excavator in this week to begin clearing!
Praise God!
In other house related news, today Myself and Amy have submitted an application to rent a unit in Port Sorell, God willing we will hear about that this week, and hopefully be successful!
It Had To Happen Eventually...
2,250
The number of days I have been a licensed driver for and never been pulled over by the fuzz. It had to happen eventually, and of course it was because I was on my phone. The sad part is I have been using my phone less and less while driving, I usually have a BT headsetin the car for phone calls, but I'd left it behind on this particular day and the boss rang, I just answered it without even thinking!
17 days and counting...
50 Years Married
On the weekend my grandparents on dads side celebrated 50 years of marriage, the whole family organized a surprise get together in Launceston for a cruise down the Tamar followed by some photos (Grandma loves family photos) and tea at a Chinese restaurant, The Golden Brumby (formerly known as Susie's Hoong Fatt - I laughed too). All in all it was a good day, and a blessing to celebrate 50 years along with them.
I would just like to say Congratulations to them, and may there be many more years to come!
My Birthday Present!
Those of you that read this blog probably know me pretty well, and as such would know that I’m a big fan of smartwatches, I mean whats the point of lugging around a thing on your wrist that can only tell you the time? I stopped wearing watches years ago for that reason. So as you can imagine Ive been drooling over an Apple Watch even since they were announced, I had intended to preorder one, but when preorder day came along I was broke..
And so I had to sit back and watch as the world lapped up Apples stock.
Several months later, my birthday came along, and my fiancee presented me with a 42mm Apple Watch, suddenly I remembered what birthdays were like as a 5 year old.
I've had this now for a couple of weeks and it is every bit as awesome as I imagined! The ability to get notifications and respond to them on your wrist without the need to get your phone out is unbelievably handy, so is having all of your loyalty cards on your wrist! Not to mention all the cool extra stuff like, taking phone calls on your wrist, remote control for the iPhone camera, getting a brief look at the weather forecast and all the awesome, customizable watch faces.
One of the features fairly high on my favorites list isn’t the activity tracking that this thing can do, but the best thing about that is it keeps track of how long you spend sitting and after 50 minutes of sitting it taps you on the wrist and says you need to stand up and walk around. I spend far to much time sitting, either for work or in front of a computer and so this is a very handy feature. All this is set to get better too with the next OS update for this thing!
So to sum up this is an AWESOME watch, and I have THE BEST Fiancee ever!!
Our Engagement Party
Last week me and Amy hosted our engagement party, it was a big success. To be honest we weren't sure how it would go down, being a Disney themed dress up, but we had fun putting it all together, and organizing our own costumes etc.
But it was a huge success, we had some epic costumes and the amount of comments about how good a night it was was amazing, so a big thanks to all those who came, and even bigger thanks to those who dressed up!
A group shot of my groomsmen all dressed up :)
Some shots of the themes Amy put together around the room
I'm Home
Well, I have officially moved back home! And boy is it nice to be back!! Its been a pretty hectic two weeks, but I am glad to be back home with my fiancee, and I am enjoying the work too.
I flew in on the 17th of May, one of the better flying days I had going back and forth to NZ over the last 8 months, though dragging over 60kg of luggage through customs and the airport isn’t much fun, but I made it, and so did my stuff! The week following my return was spent helping dad finish off a job before he leaves on Saturday, going around all the jobs he wants me to do while he is away, and spending as much time as possible with my amazing fiancee!
Everything was going great, until the Enterprise beamed my wallet into orbit, and I haven't seen it since. I'll tell you now losing your wallet is a real pain! Not only did i lose all my cards (none were hacked thankfully), and my driving license (all this happened the night before my truck license test too) but I also lost several items of memorabilia from NZ that I wanted to keep, anyway its a week on now and I have all my cards back except my license.
Its also been a week now since dad left, and I must say that I am enjoying being my own boss, I’m also enjoying the work, a lot more so than I expected! Which is great.
I've Been Evicted!
The rent, along with my working contract ended April 30th, however Dean asked me to stay on for a bit longer, but unfortunately there is a new tenant moving in on the 4th of May so we couldn’t extend the rental agreement.
So, Ive had to evacuate the premises...
And move to a motel room...
Check out my fridge!
Less than ideal, but its only for two weeks, and the free, daily cleaning is a bonus!