The new Github loads fantastic for me, even given our really spotty connection here.

When the cat’s away, the mice will play!

There’s been a couple of piles of garbage wood sitting on my parent’s place for ages, and now that we’re into Autumn/Winter, it’s safe to set them ablaze.

The transit’s out of commission for the time being, but Dad’s picked up a few jobs here and there and Mum’s gone with him… which means we can have a good time with impunity! Yay for feeling like I’m twelve again. \o/

All juvenile jokes aside, it was a bit too cold for Duncan to be out too late, so we didn’t stay out with it too long. Luke and Jess did, to keep an eye on it.

Once most of the sticks had burnt down and there was only coals left, Luke came up with the brilliant idea of doing a camp oven as well. It turned out really well, though his oven’s a bit small for the number of people we were trying to feed.

Given the amount of wood that goes into a decent sized bonfire, it’s probably easier just to check out something like GrillsDirect.com grills rather than build a bonfire every time you want to cook something, but when the occasion strikes, it’s fantastic.

The local Ford guy still has to wait for a few more emails and read more on the technical bulletins to try and figure out what’s going on, but it’s looking like the problem may not be fuel related at all and may in fact be the pedal sensor (it’s drive-by-wire).

The good news is I passed the course with flying colours - I basically 100%ed the exam. There was one multiple-choice question where I picked two of four potential answers and only one of them was correct, but apparently I wasn’t penalized. I think that’s pretty neat, and it’s funny that in my thirties I finally have my first qualification and it has absolutely nothing to do with IT.

We passed up another job through SA, this time going across the Nullarbor, because of the shitty condition the van’s in. It turned out for the best, as Dad picked it up instead. He also knows the driver and the other pilot (who’s the driver’s wife), and then to make things even better Mum went with him.

I have absolutely no concerns about our chances of getting another crack at going across the Nullarbor and that’s not really the area I wanted to take a sick van anyway.

In our downtime, I’ve managed to get quite a bit of stuff done on MumbleDog, things that I’d been procrastinating for quite a while. I’ve made a flurry of commits to our new “beta” admin panel (unfortunately one of which breaks support for “non-beta” servers, but that’s okay as I want to phase those out anyway and I don’t think there was anyone using that panel with those servers), fixing a ton of bugs and just generally making things look and work a lot better.

It’s good to be back doing what I’m good at, but man I’d really like to go out and see some shit again.

1) Activate the preview pane for Gmail.

2) Block the sidebar with the ads and shit in it.

Arne’s post says it works in Firefox, but it worked for me in Adblock for Chrome as well. I’ve found it a ton quicker to go through email that way.

The kid absolutely adores chocolate, and his eyes pretty much lit up when he saw it. Basically it’s a chocolate cake, with chocolate frosting, chocolate chips on the side and chocolate Cadbury Creme Eggs on the top, with chocolate drizzled all over it. Yeah.

The cake itself turned out fantastic, which much to my surprise (and a little bit of relief) Duncan ate most of. It was so incredibly rich that I found myself in an eyes-bigger-than-stomach scenario pretty quickly.

Duncan got assorted presents throughout the day – mostly Cars related stuff, because that’s his new thing again, along with a couple funny tshirts and that sort of thing.

Duncan takes great delight in being parked up at Roadhouses. Me, presuming internet access is available, I’m more happy to park out in the middle of nowhere as long as there’s a working toilet. Duncan on the other hand prefers to wake up to a sea of trucks – or “toot toots” as he calls them, perplexing, because he’s said the word “truck” before.

Port Augusta Ford (who are also an Isuzu dealer) managed to squeeze us in the next afternoon, but we went over there first thing in the morning to try our luck, simply for lack of anything better to do. It worked out pretty good, because we ended up with a loaner car for the morning. I stuck $10 worth of petrol in it and we went off to take a look around.

After spending some time at the “esplanade” and walking around in a giant circle, I got the shocking memory that I’d only intended to park the car where I did (on a gravel pull-in near the yacht club) for a few moments to look at the bay/gulf/whatever. We decided to get back in the car, and go check out the botanical gardens.

There’s not a whole lot to see there, unless you’re really into arid flora, but if you drive all the way through it to the rear-most car park there’s a pretty spectacular view of the narrower part of the Spencer Gulf. Apparently it’s somewhere around the spot some early adventurers gave up the idea that they’d found a water-course navigating straight up the guts of Australia, but the really interesting thing for us that day was a couple of Dolphins playing out in the bay, which I think we manage to take a good picture of.

We ended up taking the loaner car back just before 1pm, when the mechanics were supposed to be able to look at the van. We sat around for a few moments, then they took off with the van. At first they were thinking fuel pump (which is what I was dreading, because it’s an expensive operation and we’d be out of commission for a while), but after a quick test-run they didn’t think so.

The cheap scan tool they had wouldn’t read the codes off the thing (apparently Transits are picky like that) and the Ford one was at their sister dealership and wouldn’t be back for a few days. They cut the fuel filter open for a look, which was pretty much inconclusive, and then we were on our way home.

The van started really acting up (shuddering really hard, one of the side effects of novatest?) around Ouyen, Victoria, so we stopped for some lunch and so Duncan could play. We finally made it home around dinner time, and now we play the waiting game to figure out what’s going on with the van.

Anyway, back to the flies… they weren’t kidding. Growing up in Australia, I’d never really had too much of a problem with flies – they’re annoying, sure, but you get used to them. Central Australia breeds a completely different type of fly. They’re vicious, climbing into your nose if you stand still for even a second.

On the trip back through, we stopped for fuel again and Duncan looked around, noticing we’d parked in the same exact spot as the day before, and asked quizzically “Where’s Poppy?” It was a little bit heart-breaking, that he didn’t understand the concept of adults having to leave to work. Unlike the day before, we weren’t stopping the night. No time to break out the outdoor furniture and set up camp – Before he knew it we were off again, making the last part of our precarious trek across mobile-service-barren lands in a van that could seemingly die at any minute, before returning to the waiting bosom of civilization.

Primarily known for being the source of much of the world’s Opals, Coober Pedy’s also intriguing because of the sheer number of buildings that are built into the hills. I’ve long toyed with the idea, simply because being underground protects you from the effects of the weather to a huge extent, and this place is pretty much built around the idea.

We blew right by it on the way up, so there wasn’t much to see. On the way back, since we were coming back empty, we decided to stop and take a look around, despite the fact the van’s playing up. It’s a sight to see, I’ll say that much… Take one of the local churches for example:

I’m not religious in any shape way or form, but even this little church was quite moving really. It was almost eerily quiet being underground.

Some parts of the town are not as interesting – there’s quite a bit more conventional housing than I’d expected, some mobile homes, along with what can only be described as an over-representation of slums for such a tiny town.

At the moment I’m in absolutely no hurry to go back, but I’m not sure how much of that just might be the fact that the van threatened to leave us stranded there.

The night before we left we were up until 2am getting Dad’s ute ready for it’s maiden voyage: we were to be the rear pilot and Dad the front. We had a sign to put on, flashing lights to wire up, and a metal bunk bed and kitchen to install. It was worth it in the end, Dad made some money with us and Duncan really appreciated having his Poppy on the trip with him.

The trek up and back was a little nail biting: the Transit’s been playing up. We ended up stopped at Marla for the night, simply because it had phone and internet service.

I don’t really know why she wants one so bad, because she’s mentioned multiple times about her chronic inability to read in the car without getting sick. Considering that pretty much all we do is drive different places, I’m really puzzled by the usefulness of such a device – but if it makes her happy, we’ll have to look at getting one soon.

So that’s that taken care of, all I’d need to work out is what the heck I’m going to get my Mum.