In preparation for my move to canberra, I am selling my Drum kit. If anyone wants a drum kit, it's going cheap at http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=7417395985&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMESE%3AIT&rd=1

Well today is a sad day. We are off to Canberra this afternoon (my first time). Basically Di is moving down there to what will pretty much be permenant. It's exciting, but at the same time very scarey. will be different with the whole long distance relationship, but we will be becoming good customers of Virgin Blue. We already have a bunch of tickets booked, but could always do with more.

Will be a great oportunity for Di. But sad to see her go. Guess I better start hitting seek so that I can get myself down there.

-sigh-

Ok, this will be a good indication of how long it takes Google maps to update Photos of Brisbane. Basically our house is located at http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=-27.508129,152.950705&spn=0.006690,0.010131&t=k&hl=en currently as of today, there are none of the new "traffic Calming" and big orange painted bits on the road. When it does update, there should be a huge area of orange, with yellow around it, painted at the start of Moggil road and at 4 points along that road.

Well Bronson has Kennel Cough, we blame the silly lady walking up mount coot-tha, she told us after she bought her dog over to meet bronson. We have kept him inside since then, don't really want to spread it around, it's a bummer because he was going to go to doggy training (we have done the first lesson, but that was without a dog anyway). Just hope we haven't given it to Mum and Dad's dogs, although I am guessing it may.

Since I put the MC Hammer picture up, thought I had better put this one up:

OK, we have a new photo gallery, it's from our ISP so it should be nice and fast and we should be able to put plenty of photos up on it. You can get to it by going to www.mongdidi.com or go direct to the site. We have some photos of our new dog Bronson up on there.

We have a dog, His name is Bronson, He is a 2 year old Schnoodle (thats the yuppie name), basically it's a Schnauzer/Poodle cross. Also my Fly died at work today...

I have been fighting with the following problem for the last two days at work, been driving me nuts.

I have upgraded my login program from VB6 to VB.NET, however before I could start using the program and all the funky new stuff that is in there (Threading, Exception handling etc...) I had to figure out one simple thing, how to prevent the form moving... now in VB6 thats a simple property of the form, but in VB.NET, it's not there, after banging my head I found a simple solution, that was already pretty much in there:

'Declarations
'API declarations for removing the Close button and Close menu item
Private Declare Function GetSystemMenu Lib "user32" (ByVal hwnd As Integer, ByVal bRevert As Integer) As Integer
Private Declare Function RemoveMenu Lib "user32" (ByVal hMenu As Integer, ByVal nPosition As Integer, ByVal wFlags As Integer) As Integer

'Constant for disabling the close button
Private Const MF_BYPOSITION As Integer = &H400


'Function
Public Function DisableCloseButton(frm As Form) As Boolean

'PURPOSE: Removes X button from a form
'EXAMPLE: DisableCloseButton Me
'RETURNS: True if successful, false otherwise
'NOTES: Also removes Exit Item from
' Control Box Menu


Dim lHndSysMenu As Long
Dim lAns1 As Long, lAns2, lAns3 As Long


lHndSysMenu = GetSystemMenu(frm.hwnd, 0)

'remove close button
lAns1 = RemoveMenu(lHndSysMenu, 6, MF_BYPOSITION)

'Remove seperator bar
lAns2 = RemoveMenu(lHndSysMenu, 5, MF_BYPOSITION)

'Remove the Move option - and the Move function of the form
lAns3 = RemoveMenu(lHndSysMenu, 1, MF_BYPOSITION)

'Return True if both calls were successful
DisableCloseButton = (lAns1 <> 0 And lAns2 <> 0)

End Function

Code mostly stolen from FreeVB Code and modified by Moi.

I am pretty bad with spelling and grammer, but this line from the Australian Associated Press (posted on Yahoo news) I thought was pretty ordinary: "Steve Vizard has opened a civil hearing into allegations he breached his duties as a Telstra director by apologising for his actions" after my first reading of this I thought that he had apologised at some stage during his time as a telstra director (something they would never do) and that this was a breach of duties and opened up civil procedings... of course the article was about insider trading. I, would, use, more, commas :)

Di has graduated. Congratulations baby :)

I am an Uncle now. Check out the pictures at http://www.mongdidi.com

My Baby is off to Canberra for an interview with DFAT. It's too good to pass up! She goes down sometime between the 4th and 8th of July, it sounds pretty serious, cause they are paying for her to get to Canberra (flights, taxi's accomodation... the whole lot) GOOD LUCK MY BABY :)

we have some new photos up on buzznet

Had a fantastic time in Newcastle on the weekend, caught up with Aunty Jewel and Uncle Darryl, Sheena, Bill Jodie and Matt. Saw the sights of Newcastle, The city centre looks a lot older then Brisbane, lots of older colonial styled buildings. I think Di's highlight was getting to go fishing (see a picture here) after driving out onto the beach in Bills cool little 4WD. Was a great weekend.

Weell it seems I will always have fun buying glasses in Australia (had no troubles in China).

Laubmann and pank were so bad that I won't be going back to them (even though most places now are just re-badged OPSM places), with L&P I had a set of glasses, they lasted about a week before I noticed tiny scraches on the lenses, we took them back, and after being accused of not caring for them the sent them off and fixed them, this time we bought cleaning clothes and kept the cleaning clothes in ziplock bags to make sure we looked after them, this time it took almost a month, but the scratches re-appeared, so we sent it back and this time they admitted they had a faulty machine (I was getting a non-glare coating) so this time without even asking, they decided they would remove the coating and just make it plan lenses (almost $100 cheaper to do), I was firstly annoyed that they did this without asking, then they would not refund the difference - hence never going back to them, plus they are WAY to expensive, I can name a few other places that put L&P prices to shame.

On Thursday went to Myer to pick up some new glasses, they had accidently put the prescription in both lenses (I only get it in the right) so it was throwing me off. So basically without good glasses for another 2 weeks, was looking forward to them as it is getting harder at work with my current ones...

why can't it be like china, after two hours I had a great pair of glasses that were very cheap ($30 AUD) and were a great prescription. Will be stocking up next time!!!!

Well we are moving towards the end of this month. Looks like Monday the 28th will be the big day, although everytime we go over and drop Al home or eat at Di's parents we take a car load of stuff (so far that equals 2 loads :) The reason we are moving on a monday is that it is almost 1/3 the price to rent the van on a monday and tuesday then on a weekend ($77 for monday and tuesday, $129 for Wed, and Thurs and up to $159 for all other days...)

Just shipped a washing machine knob, no where in asutralia has them, it's for the knob that broke on the one in the unit, was for a damn Zanussi brand washer, had to get it from the UK, cost 3.55 pounds, plus shipping, so it's 5.55 pounds and is only going to London, then will cost us more to get Dan (thanks for doing this) to ship it all the way over to us. Hopefully will be here before we move out.

Expenses scaring me... but I am sure we will make it, we have a house mate moving in on the 11th of July (thanks Trissles, apart from being cool fun, will help us out :)

I am off to bed.

Well I guess some huge news that I should have posted here a while back is that myself and DI are buying a house. Di's mum and dad are moving and are offering the house to us for a really good price that I am sure we will never see again, so we have decided to jump in and go for it. I am a little scared, it's a lot to pay off each week, but I think for the first part of it I will love doing little things around the house (I reserve the right to change that at my whim and groan about house work). It's in Chappel Hill/Kenmore area in Brisbane, so if you are heading past :)

I am pretty excited though, cause one of the rooms is going to be a Games room (Air Hockey Table, MAME cabinet and Drum Kit) and another will be a computer room (of course if I am running out of money both will become eBay show rooms :)

Also got sick of the 15 second full page ad that you get when visiting www.mong.tk or didiween01.tk so I have registered www.mongdidi.com Cost something like $10AU to do for two years. I spent more on Morning tea and a lotto ticket this morning (of course this will stop when we are paying off a house :)

For anyone that likes MC Hammer :)

last night there was a massive storm, had no warning that it was coming, we knew there was a possible storm, but I checked out the BOM webiste, just incase, so that I could get the car undercover, and there were no warning. This is because the radar at Marburg was down (DOH!).

The hail started at about 5:30ish and just roared down for about 45 minutes, with lots of lightning and wind. About halfway through the hail slowed, and I was going to go out and check the car, when it started again and came from the other direction, this was the one that was nasty hail, wasn't as big, but it sure chopped up the trees. I was expecting to go out and see our car looking like it was in an old gangsta movie with bullet holes all throuh it. Thankfully looks like no damage so far.

a good picture is available here and here (both images from the ABC website).

It's my Birthday... according to Mum 27 years ago when she was 27 I was born... So if anyone gets regular lotto tickets go 10 27 and 5 for me :) (no garuntee's on winning attached to that one).

Oh and I got my MAME cabinet, works a treat, will get some photos of it up on the web, it's a hoot playing with it, even Di liked kicking our butts on street fighter :)

27...

Well Only two days til my Birthday, will be 27 (wow, that snuck up on me) can remember sitting in Rocky for my 18th not too long ago (but realistically almost 10 years ago!). DI still hasn't told me what I am getting, next year I must devise a plan for extracting this information better :)

Am thinking of selling the Drum Kit. In my defence I would have loved to have played them, but I always have a thing about not annoying neighbours with too much excess noise, and figured they could get real sick of drums real quick, and playing them quieter seems harder :) also might have to sell them to make way for the new arcade cabinet - ended up getting a rather cheap one from a guy in Upper Kedron today, and will most liely pick it up tomorrow night. Picture of it here.

ALso sorry about the 15 second ad that pops up when you go to either mong.tk or didiween01.tk. Will try and get something else sorted out for that.