I enrolled in a Food Safety Supervisor course, which later got cancelled due to lack of numbers. They offered to reschedule me for a month later, but work is on my back about needing this certificate.

A friend of mine did the course online, through the TAFE website, and I thought that would be a great way to go. Trying to enroll, it tells me that I’m already enrolled int hat course (the course I was enrolled in would have already ended by now, and it also got cancelled).

Today I’ve done the ring-around where everyone tells me it’s not their area, and transfers me to another person.
When I worked at iiNet, if I received a call that I could help, I fixed the problem, whether it was my area or not. That’s good customer service.

So apparently they’re not able to un-enroll me before they give me a refund for which I have to print out paperwork, fill it in, FAX IT TO THEM(?!), and the refund may take a couple of weeks to process.
I’ve had a bit of a whinge to an older lady that I spoke to, and by the sound of things, she’s going to try and ‘handle’ this for me. When I say handle, I mean I gave her my details on the phone, and she’s going to try and perform the refund right away, so that I can get un-enrolled.

I don’t fancy the $320/day fine that comes with not having this certificate, and seeing the council has spoken to me about it already, they’re pretty serious.

Crawling involves 1:10 scale 4×4 vehicles, and following them around tracks or through the bush, sometimes up to four hours. That’s a lot of walking, but it falls in to place with my wanting to get a little more exercise, so I thought ‘Why not?’.

Here are some build pictures:

As you can see, it is still a work in progress, but I’ve come a long way with it in only two days. Now I need to go and buy some paints and some soap-free detergent to clean the shell up. After that, a motor and ESC (Electronic Speed Controller) and it’ll be ready for action.

For those who don’t know my sign-name, you can check it out here: http://www.auslan.org.au/dictionary/words/storm-1.html

So.. The house got struck by lightning.

Unfortunately, the damage list is quite severe.

All lights and power-points have now been restored.

Laptop – Charger fried (thank heavens it wasn’t the laptop!).

NAS – Fried.

Media center (a Mac mini) – Fried.

Router – Fried.

Wifi – Fried.

HD Set Top Box – Fried.

My sister dropped by today with a ladder so that we could replace the broken light globe above the stairs.

Timmmb Supplied me with a replacement router and wifi access point (THANKYOU!)

Kyle loaned me a charger for my laptop.

Sitting here the last few days, I’ve come to realise that what I do with my life, is sit in front of the TV (which survived), and I watch movies or TV series.

Without a media center and a NAS, I am unbelievably bored. If you know anyone who has a Mac mini (core 2 duo or better) for sale, please let me know.

Fascinated, we both watched for a while, and something inside me told me that this was the difference in RC Cars that I had been waiting for.

I’ve had RC cars on and off during my childhood, but there was never really a goal.. Driving them in the cul-de-sac out the front was fairly boring, I drove in circles, mainly. My cars were almost always electric on-road cars, so there weren’t many places I could go, and when I did drive them somewhere, I pretty-much just ended up driving around in circles. It bored me.

When I got to Queensland around a month ago, I stopped to hang out with Rohan, as I always do, and while looking through his room of toys, I spotted a neglected Tamiya TT-01D. He’s run the car a couple of times over two or three years, and got bored of it pretty quickly. We agreed that I could borrow the car, try some drifting, and if I enjoyed it, I could have the car for $100. Car, charger, battery, radio gear and all.

Another mate in Brizvegas, Chris, was already in to RC cars, so when he found out about what I had bought, he invited me along to drift at Wynnum. I took Rick along, and we met up with Brenden, Chris and a bunch of other people.

My car didn’t drift real well, compared to the others, but when Brenden lent me a set of drift tyres, it made all the difference. I was hooked.

Brenden, Rick and I then headed over to Driftmas at Cannon Hill where there was an entirely different class of drifter, the skill level that I want to reach oneday.

It was at Driftmas that we met Marty. Marty showed off some donuts for us in his drift car, and after some chatting offered me an alloy drive-shaft for my TT-01D.

Couple of days later, Rick and I dropped in to Marty’s place to pick up the shaft, and what he had waiting for us was a close to complete Tamiya TT-01, which I gave to Rick, to help him get started.

Getting Rick started was easier than I thought, because Marty also gave me a brushless motor and speed controller, as well as some shells (some of which went Rick’s way also).

New kit in hand, we dis-assembled both cars, and started the build processes.

I’m sure there were more Ice breaks on the table before the photo, and certainly by the end of the night.

By the time the night was over, my car looked like this –>

Unfortunately Rick and I never got the chance to drift together, as I was leaving for the Gold Coast.

On the Gold Coast there are two drift nights a week (Wednesday and Friday nights) at a place in Upper Coomera, called The Compound.

The Compound is a warehouse set up with bike and skateboard ramps. It was here that I met Ridwan and Neale, both of whom run CS (counter-steer) cars, and let me have a drive of them.

It was a great evening drifting with these guys, I learned a lot from Ridwan in particular.

How I’ve missed driving this thing.

The other kind is that I’m travelling again. I’m currently sitting in Morayfield, Queensland, having recently been to the Coffs Harbour, the Gold Coast, Bundaberg and Maroochydore.

I’m kicking myself for not installing cruise control in the TX5, though. I bought the setup from Scott, and it’s sitting in my garage. The TX5 is considerably smaller than my XR6, and as such, cramps are much more common. Cruise control would meant hat I could move my foot and leg around a bit without worrying about pissing off other drivers.

When I get back to Sydney I’m going to install both the cruise control, and the better suspension package (shocks/springs/swaybar). That will make the TX5 handle a lot better, and be much nicer to drive for long periods of time.

It’s starting to cool down outside, which I’m glad of. It’s been 33 degrees outside most of the day. Hopefully we’ll get a little rain, too.

I don’t miss Sydney in the slightest, but I do miss the 20 degree rainy weather down there.

We (NSW) have a yearly roadworthy inspection called a pink slip. It’s not a big deal, even for modified cars to pass this inspection.

If your car has been out of registration for more than three months, or you’re bringing an interstate car to NSW, you need a blue slip. Blue slips are considerably more thorough, sometimes taking more than four hours to complete.

My TX5 was purchased from a friend in Victoria, and recently failed it’s blue slip. Yesterday it was towed to a detailer to get the engine and gearbox steam-cleaned so that they’re not covered in oil, as the car failed on “engine and gearbox oil leaks”.

Once that’s been fixed, it’s off to SX Developments to fix all the other issues on the list. There was an A4 sheet of paper attached to my blue-slip, and it was near-filled with other things that need to be fixed before the car will be allowed to be registered again.

I’d bragged to my friends, I’d compared dyno figures on cars, weights and estimates, and I KNEW I would be the fastest of us. Hell, I had a feeling in the back of my mind, that I’d be one of the quicker street registered cars on the track tonight.

Unfortunately, that’s not the way things turned out.
According to my friends, I was still quicker than 75% of everything that raced, but I was certainly nowhere near as fast as I should have been.

The culprit? The gearbox. I’ve been warned over and over by pretty-much every workshop that has worked on the car that I shouldn’t race with the standard gearbox because I’ll break it, and so I did.

My run times in order:
13.369@92.44mph (148.77kph) Hit the brakes and slowed down at around 1000 foot.
13.139@96.11mph (154.67kph) Hit the brakes and slowed down at around 1000 foot.
13.131@108.46mph (174.56kph) Stayed on the accelerator the entire run.

I retired after the third run, as there was close to no acceleration in fourth gear, and there was a huge metallic rattling noise in both third and fourth gears.

Congratulations go to Pete who ran a 12.5, and Adam with a 12.8.
Thanks to all the friends who came out to see me race: Adam, Emily, Liam, Meredyth, Travis.
A special thanks to Shannon for being both my crew person, and the talent behind the video camera.

Cards received: 1 (Thanks to my friends who have stalls at Liverpool Markets).

Presents received: 2 (One freshly caught fish, flathead, from one of my customers. One $20 note).

Phonecalls: 4 (Dad, Sophie, Karimah, Shannon).

Facebook wall posts: 130+

Shannon called after I’d finished work, he and Eleanor invited me over for dinner. It was a lovely relaxing evening, thanks guys.

I really want a gathering or party. Maybe lots of meals/outings with small groups of friends. I feel like a neglected hermit for the most part, and want to get out and see people.

Some of the crappy feelings stem from a lot of thinking I’ve been doing about life lately. I don’t like the hermit I’ve become. A number of people have commented recently on how I used to be such a social person, and now I’m just not there.

I want to change, I want to get out, but I’m going to need help. I’m going to need YOUR help.

I’d had enough, I went down to Frankie’s and asked them to check it out.

They told me it was best to rip the old one out, as it was both rubbish, and not playing nice. The central locking was replaced also, as the old stuff had become weak over time, and simply couldn’t move the locks anymore.

I decided to go with something that was insurance-approved, and after it was installed, I discovered that it had a built-in turbo timer. Rather glad of that, because I forgot to ask for it in the list of features.

Now that the locks all work, and I have keyless entry, I can concentrate on flogging the crap out of the car, and fixing what breaks (and what’s already broken).

I made one idiotic mistake, a sign I learned in my first week at class. “late”. I’ve used this sign every week, multiple times a week. There’s simply no way to explain how stupid I feel for getting it wrong.

Instead of moving my finger towards me when lifting away from where my watch would be (if I wore one), I moved my finger away. Luckily it was the only mistake in the entire conversation.

The Monday previous to our assessment the class had learned some new things about spatial awareness, and emergency situations that were thrown in to the assessment. If I had been in class that day, I probably would have learned them too.

I consider myself to be a fairly cautious kinda guy. Fairly aware of my surroundings, first to lift my drink as a running child approaches, so that there won’t be a spill.

When Ian and I sat down to go over the video, obviously he pointed out the mistake. During the conversation I finger-spelt “drunk”, because I didn’t know the sign for it, so he showed me the sign. Ian seemed happy when I reacted properly to the surprises thrown in to the assessment, so all up I have a good feeling about it.

The only thing left now is to mark it properly, and give individual grades to things like non manual features, finger-spelling, movement, things like that.

Fingers crossed. I’m hoping to see some fives (out of five). Last time I was assessed I scored all-fours, some bordering on fives. I would really like to see that I’ve improved.