Lets have a look at some of the positives and negatives generally.

Positives

Negatives

Personally I think those positives out weigh the negatives, there is no chance for me to understand the intricacies of each teams requirements in relation to when they play their local basketball competitions so I will not comment on that for anyone but Adelaide.

Is the fixture perfect, of course not we have to play away games for starters;), but there are so many variables which all need massaging for it to fit together.

Before last season everyone was saying how dead the game was going to be because of a rushed league, less teams etc. but we had our worst coach team results ever but I think it is the most games I have watched on Fox every also. Is it the same everyone who is now shooting down the fixture for the coming season? I say bring it on, stop the negative crap and focus on the positives, lets rebuild the league. If you don’t like the fixture, pick your dummy up and lets see your fixture which will fit in with all the requirements of broadcaster, the teams and the venue availability and let me shoot that down in flames.

Bring on the 2010/11 NBL Season. Marty Clarke I want to see some improvement in defense effort and a return to the finals for the 36ers.

The ramblings of a basketball fan and 36er fan since 1986

The CD Label Print software which is provided with the Canon CD printable printers appears to have issues. I have Windows 7 x64 version installed and it wouldn’t launch, to the point where I didn’t even get an error message. It would appear as a process in Process Explorer but it would disappear shortly after.

I tried different compatibility options which didn’t change the situation (actually in Windows 98 it said no compatible printer was installed). I reinstalled the printer and the software about a dozen times trying various things and nothing helped.

So I started uninstalling printers, I have about a dozen different printers installed for various different locations around my location and the 3 other branches I support. I started a PDF printer, which had no effect. Next I tried our local MFD a networked Ricoh Aficio 3224c – and it fixed the problem.

Now I have working CD Label Print Software. I am fairly sure there will be other printers that will cause this problem, but I have no way (or need) to test other printers.

Of course I really need that printer installed, so I will now start to see if there is any solution to the problem – first off I will try the Ricoh website for a driver update and see how I go from there.

Mostly I am bad because I have no time. Working, studying and all the house stuff is taking up most of my time. I picked up my camera the other day to get some photos of Ellie and it was the first time in a long time. I haven’t even blogged about Ellie, but photos have probably been randomly coming up for all to see.

So who is Ellie, she is my Murray River Curly Coat Retriever puppy that I picked up on November 28 from Kingston SE. She is an adorable little girl and an absolute pain in the arse at the same time but I wouldn’t give her up. She likes to dig and I expected that, so I put up a fence around my garden, except she likes to jump and the fence isn’t tall enough and she can jump straight over it. She is currently spending some days at Mum and Dads with their dog Abbie so she isn’t home a lot on her own, but I am leaving her home more and more each week, by the end of February she will pretty much be home every day – so the fence height will be increased before then.

What else is happening, I have gone back to studying at Open University – the goal is to complete Accounting and Business Degree within 4-5 years and at the current rate I should be able to do it. Open Uni works on 4 study periods per year (instead of 2 semester) and I am doing 2 units per study period (instead of 4 per semester) so I am effectively studying full time over the 12 month period. I have found it tough getting back into the swing of things – university is nothing like real life (well the life I have lived so far anyway). I have completed a total of 4 essays/reports (I am half way through my second study period – so half way through my third and fourth units) and I can’t believe how much crap you have to talk in the essays/reports. Where I work a report to management is considered long if it is more than a page and it is usually in point form. In the four essays/reports so far I have written about 6,000 words which has been rather tough, I am in the middle of a 2,250 word report at the moment on Health and Safety Management and I find the research side of the report difficult to find the right sources. I am soldiering on and sort of starting to enjoy it, next study period is classed as study period 1 in the academic year and I get to start on the accounting subjects – so I am bound to be calling on any accountants out there to ask questions if Dad or Kristen are sick of me asking.

I have a nice vegetable garden happening in the back yard, which has so far gone untouched by Ellie. It has produced lots of Zucchini and up to about 10kg of Roma tomatoes so far from 4 plants and 8 corn cobs from 6 plants. The Might Red tomatoes and cucumbers haven’t done do well and the Cayenne Peppers I planted aren’t very strong, so I have planted some Jalapenos to make up for it, hopefully it wasn’t too late.

I am preparing to plant some fruit trees, I am looking to set up 3 espalier trees along 2 sides of my shed. Not sure what exactly I will plant yet, but peach, plum, nectarine are prime candidates. I purchased some metal fencing posts through work and hope to get them installed over the next week or 2 – I have no idea when the right time to plant fruit trees are, I reckon winter but I will need to do some more research on this.

I have a sore back, but it isn’t getting better so I am trying hard to ignore it and just keep doing what I need to do.

Hopefully the next update wont take as long as this one.

My oldest niece Chelsea started school this year – can’t believe it.

Black Saturday
Saturday February 7 saw treacherous weather conditions in much of SE of Australia, weather conditions which were extreme and dangerous and had the potential to cause catastrophic damage if a fire was to take hold.

Unfortunately it wasn’t just one fire that took hold in country Victoria, there were numerous fires in throughout Victoria. The weather conditions changed and many of the attempts to control the fire with back burning efforts were well and truly out of control.

Devastation was wide spread, whilst I never saw the whole area and what I did see was 6 months later, I can only imagine what the scene was like when the fires hit. Marysville 6 months on was still a ghost town, the only real development that had occurred was flattening and removal of the fire destroyed houses. Looking over Marysville from the surrounding hills was an eary and emotional feeling 6 months on, and with no emotional ties to the area at all. What was once a holiday town now looked like a new housing estates with only slabs visible.

I can’t imagine what it would have been like to have been stuck in the town of Marysville with fire bearing down on you, for many the only way out was through fire which was obviously not an option.

I had the privilege of helping for a week in the town of Yarra Glen and their relief centre in September/October, it is going to take a long time for many in the affected areas. For Marysville I don’t know if it will ever return to its glory days – I will be sure to visit the areas regularly to to help support the local economies.

That is enough for 2009 – bring on 2010, it’s going to be a good one for sure.

I did spend a week in county Victoria helping out with a group of about 200 people completing various projects and helping out where they could with Bushfire Relief. It was a fairly emotional time, particularly in Marysville – to see the devastation in the town, had to be seen to be believed and felt. Look over the town from a nearby hill, it looks like a new estate with slabs the only thing really visible – sadly its all some people were left with. The terrain around the area is intriguing, I wont say nice because it is far from nice but it is interesting and makes you glad for what you have. It was cold and wet for the first few days we were up there, but we had a place to stay and a house to go back too, some people are still living in tents and caravans. The recovery will be long, houses can be rebuilt in time, but the scenery will be take a long time to repair. I would like to go back again, at least to drive through and see how it is going, and plan to do so on the way to or from the Winton V8 Supercar round next year I think.

Below are some of the photos that I took, didn’t take heaps, because it felt weird taking photos of people’s loss.

Also being quite busy getting my veggie garden happening, got all my plants in and dripper system in on the weekend of 17/18 October. I planted 4 Might Red Tomato’s, 8 Roma Tomato’s, 6 corn, 8 capsicum, 6 zucchini and some bok choy. The bok choy has been eaten by what looks like birds or caterpillars, same with some zucchini but not as bad and one roma tomato plant has gone missing. Hopefully by Christmas I will be picking home grown veggies. In a separate garden I have 4 new chili plants and a strawberry plant (which has sort of split into 3 plants) from last year. I will hopefully be picking strawberries soon – there is only a few but they are ripening – photo will come of gardens and the first fruits.

The weekend just gone though is a weekend I always set aside to do very little but watch V8s. However this year I decided to have a small Bathurst Party at my house in the shed which meant I had heaps to do and was still doing stuff Saturday night in preparation. It was a good day expect for the end result and all the cleaning up to do as well but oh well.

The following youtube clip is a intro to the race narrated by Russell Crowe, I found it great, made the hair stand up on the back of the neck. Enjoy.

Thinking back about it and it all sort of fits in, our head company purchased a company in the US similar to ours here (similar but also very different). The talks very early on were about integrating the 2 companies and how this would go. So I put my proposal up about how this would occur and it was basically shot to pieces and they didn’t want to spend the money. No one had a better idea and basically 6 months on we have gotten almost no where down that path.

However, thanks to some major prompting over the last few weeks approval has been granted for my project to go ahead. It doesn’t mean a lot of work for us, however it does mean a little but it is my project and I am looking forward to the odd hours I may have to work to communicate with the guys in the US.

Eventually I got around that and sorted out all the piping and the joints etc, however during this sorting out and overnight we had a significant amount of rain the trench had filled up. It had so much water in it to the point that I need to extend the trench otherwise it was over flowing. I eventually extended the trench about 3 metres and hopefully that will be enough to last me until next weekend.

Below are some photos of my weekend exploits.

This was a pretty spectacular start to a World Touring Car Championship recently is Pau – they sort of completed a lap

I haven’t found any motorsport drivers yet, but there are a few basketballers out there – so come of motorsport fraternity get on board. You can follow me, by going to the link in the right side bar of the homepage. Well I am off to search for more people to follow.

Happy tweeting.