The End is Nigh

Thank goodness for that, 2008 is almost over. But it's pretty crazy, it's just another revolution of the Earth, taking us back to the place we started. I'm a big fan of evolution. Moving on. Moving forward. What's going to change this coming year?

And why would it only change from 1st January? It makes so little sense. Yet it is a perfectly reasonable time, it appears, to review things and make wholesale changes. As good as any other.

Anyway, this coming year will contain more struggles, I'm sure. Hopefully a few different ones though. God please send creative struggles! And help me through my current set. Anyway. Let's not get to introspective...

Welcome to Boxing Day

Ah, family... for the first time in a little while, we had the whole family together - sister, brother, sister-in-law, mum and dad. Storm cooking was the order of the day for Christmas Eve, while backyard cricket and foosball were the order of the day for Christmas day. Unfortunately, the family couldn't last together for Christmas day with A-S leaving on the 6am flight to Sydney - she had to be back in Redfern in time for her Christmas service. I think they call that commitment.

An interesting point that she made, though, unrelated to anything Boxing Day, was regarding some carols that she was organising. She managed to convince the powers that be that it would be beneficial to fork out a couple of grand to get someone to run the sound for them (including provision of gear). The question "Why can't we just use the Church's gear?" was a regular obstacle, however, she somehow managed to make a good business case or something... Anyway, what I got out of it was the fact that so often we want to just take the cheapest option, when the cheapest option, in this case, would have meant significant increase in stress-levels for all the organisers - having to have a last minute pull apart of the church sound system in the auditorium (there were indoor carols on at the church the night before), trying to reconfigure it outside in trying weather conditions, then the packup. Then there is the issue of poor sound quality - trying to get a system to do what it's not designed to do... So, I'm relieved, for the sake of my sister, that they were able to just hire the gear and someone to run it. This example, in my opinion, is pertinent not simply to sound systems for carols' services.

Anyway, that was a large aside.

So, Christmas, it was fab to catch up with the fam. And then to finally have a Christmas without gale force winds and driving rain. The weather was so good, in fact, that I ended up going out for 9 holes of golf with Ben that evening. Why is it that the more I play the worse I get? I hadn't played in months and ended up playing (crappy) better than I do when I've been bashing at least semi-regularly.

Today, Boxing Day, sees me head to Rob's place for Boxing Day Test Match viewing and a significant amount of backyard cricket. I am looking forward to it.

The Combo

I have two weeks holidays for Christmas and New Years. Then back to the grindstone, then off to the tennis for a bit of first week Australian Open action.

Many people have been quizzing me regarding the persistence of my mo, which I began growing in the name of men's health and all things manly. As many of you would be aware, my mo did not reach a state of manliness in that initial 30 day period, however it has begun to thicken out, albeit, in a rather light, whimsical hue. Now the reason for this persistence pertains directly to the tennis trip... with six of us boys heading across, and the insisence of wearing a tennis uniform, I thought, how better to complement it than with the "Mo-Fro-Combo". Definitely the go! The addition of plenty of sweat bands and head bands, I think, will make the look sensational.

But, by 26 January, there will be no direct reason for the mo, so I may be enticed to remove it...

The Photo

The Corner of the State... Where the turbines flourish

Myself and five of my wind farm buddies... aka colleagues, came from Hobart and Melbs to checkout the magnificance of Studland Bay, Woolnorth (near Smithton, aka Mifton). We had tower climbing training on the Wednesday in Legana, Launceston, before heading to the very top left corner of Tasmania: Smithton.

It was a pearler of a day - one of the few days in that region without wind. The wind farm is quite large (140MW) - built in 3 sections. We went to the third section called Studland Bay, and it consists of 25 Vestas 3MW V90 turbines. They have a hub height of 80m and blade diameter of 90m (hence V90). So we climbed up to the top (despite the fact that they have lifts, we had to climb because it was our first time). It's logical to climb up to the top, as, despite there being rest platforms every ten or twenty metres, there is nothing to see at these places.

So, you climb to the top of the tower (which is about 4m diameter at the base, perhaps a little wider, and tapers in), then up another ladder with dirty rungs up into the nacelle. The nacelle has plenty of space for 3 people to look around. But I wouldn't want to live in there. (Thought I'd just mention that the turbine is shutdown when we climb and the blades are mechanically braked, so they cannot turn at all.) So I checked out the gear box, the generator, the yaw motor, the pitch hydraulics, the control panels, then we climbed up outside. You get out onto the roof, eighty-odd metres above the ground, and there is a slight non-slip surface on some parts of it, but there is a slope off to the edge - and there sure as hell isn't any railing or fence on the roof, though you do wear a harness which is attached to a safety point. If you slip, it'll save your life, but it won't stop you from brown pants syndrome... anyway, I sat out there for a fair while, surveying the scene, both from the point of view of a renewable energy engineer, but also just cos it's pretty speccy. You're right on the coast. You've got a view onto the islands to the north, to the other wind farm across the bay, at Beauty Point (1.75 MW V66s) and the amazing cliffs next to which they're built. And you can look out to sea, and just see sea. That's out to the west. I think, next time, I need to bring a punnet of cherries with me, because it'd be a wonderful place to just sit and eat cherries, and spit pips over the side. That and a cricket bat. I'd love to try playing turbine cricket! It'd be a one ball a side match, I think, with easily accessible boundaries, but to have the photos, and to say you'd done it, would be awesome.

Anyway, there are some speccy photos which I will endeavour to get off the cameraman. I don't have them quite yet.

Everywhere

What have I been up to, you ask. Well, this weekend just gone was as jam packed as any recent weekend on record.

Thursday and Friday I was at the Australasian Wind Engineers Society Workshop. There, I discovered why I don't call myself a wind engineer. That involved conference dinner on Thursday night. Friday afternoon was spent at the Cascade gardens drinking their fine beverage and indulging in a gourmet bbq. I then went home briefly so as to have dinner with my sister before she flew out, before my main dinner at the home of the conference convenor. As everything was all rather slick, time wise, I didn't get time to change out of my Hydro gear before heading back into town for the second dinner. So, after the second dinner, it was my typically "worky" night on the town. I was itending to meet up with Jesse from work... which i did eventually, but first I ran into a group of umpires out on the town for a buck's party. Quite amusing, because they were a party of four, two of which were field umpires that don't particularly like me. There was another field umpire there who I get along with well, and a goal umpire who I also get along with. One of the ones that doesn't like me made inference to the fact that I was there at one stage, while the other managed to continue completely impervious to me. It was an impressive effort really. I'm not sure what I did, but it would have been quite amusing if it wasn't so sad.

So that was that bit...

Ended up getting to bed around 2am. Being designated driver doesn't stop me from being out late...

So I washed a bit of grime off a couple of cars on Saturday morning/early afternoon, before heading to the athletics track for a 3km race. I managed a very solid 10min 16, which I was quite pleased with. It's crazy, it's a 7.5lap race. You go around nicely for the first 3 laps, it starts to hurt a bit during the 4th, but it's not too bad, then all of a sudden, every step is a mighty effort. I was holding on the back of a couple of guys, and I learnt something about mental strength. At each point you're so much closer to just letting the pack go and just "doing it in my own time". Either way, it hurts, and I was hurting so much that I feared I wouldn't have a kick, so rather than kicking at 150, which is when I knew the other guy would kick, I went with 250m to go. After the race I had nothing left, I could barely stand. Interestingly, the first 1500m was in 5min 14s, the second was in 5min2s, so the back half was a lot quicker.

After that, I went home and packed some gear to go to Launceston - I made it up for a bonfire/mate from uni's birthday. The bonfire involved petrol. It was crazy. Nobody was injured! I was up at 6am, then I went to bed! I left at 10:30am to make it back for the 21st. The 21st involved backyard cricket, which was my first bash for the summer, really. Sent down a few deliveries. There was a bit of crap, but there was a bit of rhythm starting make its way into my delivery stride.

I could only stay at the 21st for around 45mins, so that was a bit disappointing, but I had my last game of Gaelic footy for the year. Ended up being a pretty good game. We won pretty easily in the end. Winning is nice.

Anyway, now it could be time to sleep.

Dissatifsfied: Third Instalment

At this stage in my blog, I was going to talk myself up, like a CV... I've done this, this and this, and yet I feel really dissatisfied. When I achieve something, I expect to feel a certain sense of accomplishment, and lately, it just hasn't been there. I don't know if I'm talking about the last 10 years or maybe only the last few. I don't think it matters. Yet, I still have that sense of "just missed out" every time I just miss out. It's just not fair to have a sense of failure when you don't succeed, but not have the equivalent sense of success when you do really well. I think I tend to just talk up my enthusiasm. And then, because nobody else really cares, I don't know if I feel rejected, or whether it's just that it saps a large part of the success feeling that I am numb to.

Another consideration is that these things are generally so insignificant in the big picture.

The third consideration is that when someone is interested, I am worried that it is either feigned interest, that I am talking too much, that I am boring them or any other such selfish thought.

I have a lot of time for justice, especially when I've been stung by something. If many people are likely to come after me, I'm there for the long haul. In that sort of thing, I think I'm pretty persistent. But have I had any worthy changes? The odd one, but not much...