Animals, Bees & Bugs

Kangaroos

Coming home from work the other evening, we spotted these two kangaroos on the football oval as we came through the middle of town. There’s a narrow park between the sporting complex and High Street. Seeing them reminded us how we hardly see them gathered on the oval these days. During the drought some years back, this oval would’ve had mobs of kangaroos feeding, some even stayed while the footballers were training. These kangaroos are surrounded by ducks. Wood ducks, I think. (For larger images, just click on them.)WP_20150304_018-2kangaroo1WP_20150304_022-1kangaroo2And I have a bee , of course … just an ordinary one, and I have no idea if it is a native or a European Honey Bee. I still have my ‘exotic’ big bees about.WP_20150305_002 beeI’ve got my computer problems fixed now, so I’ll be about more often. I’m pretty pleased with myself since I haven’t fiddled under the bonnet of my PC before.  Of course, it wouldn’t have been necessary if I hadn’t been careless while trying to install Linux alongside Windows XP. Somehow I corrupted the loading of XP next time it started … well, I say somehow, but I suspect it is because I pulled out the live USB stick when Linux told me it was unable to install – oops. I guess I didn’t have enough spare memory for the installation this time, because I did install Linux as a dual boot last year for a trial run. I knew I would need to do something about XP eventually, but being XP Pro, I was still getting updates.

So, here I was with a badly wounded PC, with a lot of photos and some files not backed up. Some stuff is backed up thrice over, but other stuff isn’t at all. I watched a video on YouTube on how to get at things in my computer  model (Dell Optiplex GX520).

I took out the hard drive and plugged it into an external casing (ebay, around $30), and now I can read the drive on my ‘old old’ PC (Compaq Evo with XP pro) and the Toshiba laptop (with Linux) so I’m happy.  I picked up a 80GB second-hand hard drive from ebay for $9.99 and put that into my wounded PC, loaded in the free Linux Mint Cinnamon operating system and bingo. All solved. It’s like having a brand new PC, having so many GBs free. Now, I must not clutter this one up. And if you read this far, you deserve a medal for perseverance.  ❤

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36 thoughts on “Kangaroos”

  1. Sue says:

    bravo, i salute your tech abilities, i’m still trying to install viber, aint happening, will have to get Donald to look at YouTube, we’ve both tried & we must be doing something wrong. Glad yr up & going again. The wildlife is getting pushed further & further away. Hope they enjoyed their lunch

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    • I hadn’t heard of viber before, Sue, so I looked it up. Have you checked out the FAQ page and seen what platforms it works on? I have Skype on my phone and laptop but have never never tried it. And then there is the Google+ hangout which I’ve been invited to, but haven’t tried either. I see you can’t put viber on a desktop unless you have already installed it on a mobile device and my Nokia will only support the messaging apparently.

      Our wildlife isn’t doing too badly. The ‘roos don’t need to come into the town centre nowadays, as there is plenty of grass on the roadsides and the edges of the forest. Some get killed on the roads almost every day, which is shame.

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  2. Glad you’ve got it all sorted out, Christine. Your technical abilities are to be envied, especially by me. Hope you didn’t lose anything of importance – particulary regardng your book! Great pics again and interesting info about the kangaroos.

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    • Ahhh, my book, Millie … I panicked at first, but then remembered I’d exported it as a HTML document and had actually put it on a USB stick only days before while I was moving some ebooks. All I lost was some tinkering with one scene because I’d had the best part of a week off around that time. So, off to the ‘old old PC’ and I worked on it there, but I’m still to marry the two parts together. I’ve tried a few times to get yWriter5 to work with Linux and haven’t managed it yet. But I should keep working on the older PC with no internet connection – could be good thing!

      I haven’t restored my emails yet. 🙂

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      • You do seem to be having a lot of probs. I bet you were having kittens when you thought you’d lost your book! Oh, Christine, what a time for all this to happen. I hope you’re still OK for your April deadline. I agree about it probably being a good thing to have no internet connection. I’m considering switching ours off permanently and just getting on with my writing.
        Talk to you again … 🙂

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        • MY April deadline is looking dodgy. As long as the book is done, I’ll be happy, even if I still have editing and formatting to go. Part of me still wants to try the traditional submission process … just to see. 😀

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          • Well, I know exactly what you mean about the traditional route. I think most of us hanker after that, Christine. I still intend to try once Book 3 is written. You could always try with yours, though, especially if it’s a one-off (not a series, I mean). Hope the editing and formatting goes OK. Are you doing it yourself?

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          • Hi Millie, sorry for not getting back to you with that last email! I hope my book is not a one-off. I’m jumping on the trilogy bandwagon.

            I’m doing the editing myself, so I haven’t got time to do a thorough job to meet the deadline. Lucky it’s only self-imposed. I’ve been procrastinating by insisting I get my writing program onto my main computer. Two days ago I finally got yWriter5 to run under Linux, but when I imported my file from a text backup, the text wouldn’t align properly with the first five or so characters in each line out of sight! I found a better way to do it just before bed last night, but ended up restoring the wrong ywriter file – a 88,000 word one instead of 103,000. I’ll fix that this morning and then get stuck into it. If I work really really hard, I’ll have it ready for beta-readers in two weeks. That’ll be scary.

            Formatting for Kindle isn’t scary now I know about yWriter5’s export to e-book function. It creates a file with the right formatting to be converted by Calibre into a mobi file.

            🙂

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          • You have a lot on your plate right now! I hope you’re bearing up and not drowning in all the pressure. It will all be worth it in the end, when your book is published. Keep in touch. 🙂

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          • It’s not REAL pressure, I don’t have to answer to anyone except myself, so it’s hard to get real worried! I’ll just be a bit embarrassed, that’s all, but I’m used to that. 😀 ❤

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  3. Kangarooooooos. Interesting fellows. Love your pictures, Christine.
    Aren’t you brilliant. I’m nervous something else will put me on edge where my laptop is concerned.
    Do you know anything about OneDrive? Went to Best Buy a week or 10 days ago because it stopped synchronizing my files. It happened again last night. I swear I’ll back them all up when I get this fixed. My external drive will be hooked up all the time afterwards. Grrr.
    Have a lovely weekend.

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  4. Carol Ann says:

    I humbly accept your medal for perseverance.

    I am so proud of you! To me,what you did to your PC is akin to brain surgery. The inside of my computer terrifies me, but I have always thought I would make a good brain surgeon because I have super controlled dexterity (and I can write in cursive backwards and upside down…I used to write long letters like that to a friend and it drove her nuts…she had to read them in the mirror). You are such a treat to watch,albeit from afar. Thank you for your email address…I will write sometime as I consider you a dear friend and would trust sharing my deepest thoughts with you.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Oh hello Carol Ann, nice to hear from you. I trust you are well. I can see how you drove your friend nuts with the fancy writing. Thanks for your kind words, pleased to provide you with entertainment. ❤ And of course your thoughts are safe with me.

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  6. I get excited when I see deer on a golf course. Of course you would get kangaroos on a football field – I would be beside myself with excitement!! 🙂

    I too am impressed with your technical expertise. My technical skills are limited to calling #2 son for his assistance in whatever my issue-du-jour is 🙂

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    • I would feel the same way if I saw deer, Joanne, for sure.

      I still have every computer I ever had, Joanne, can’t seem to throw them out. I cut my teeth on an Amstrad, but never got much beyone playing a magical game on it called ‘Feud’. I’d type in long strings of numbers from PC magazines to make games for my kids. I shudder when I think of dot-matrix printers, how far we have come! But it’s taken me 30 years to be game to fiddle inside. I’m impressed with myself. I’m such a braggart. 😮 [blush]

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    • I’m always thrilled when I see deer – but never in the wild. I’d feel the same as you about kangaroos. Actually, seeing llamas and/or alpacas gives me a thrill too. 😀

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  8. Of course I kept reading. I love digging around inside a pc so I was happy to follow your story and process. Great work, Christine!
    Every now and again I’ll spot a wallaby by the river path. First time, it was really close on the slope rising from the path and I nearly had a heart attack!

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    • They give you a fright if you come on them suddenly. I always think of having my guts ripped out! And good, glad to know you know what I’m talking about and I have no idea why it has taken me so long to have a PC doctoring session. No stopping me now – next is a cd drive for my offline XP computer so I can still use cds I have for my family history.

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  10. I read all of your post, and understand most of it. But I never would have tried any of it! Major respect, Christine! 🙂

    I love your photos. I see a part of the world that’s so different compared to what I’ve known all my 56 years. Keep ’em coming! 🙂

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    • Thanks Cindi. It turned out a lot easier than I expected, though I wouldn’t have been at all surprised if I had wrecked something else while fiddling about.
      With the photos: I should have explained what we are seeing here … the swimming pool complex is at the back right, the blue building is home to the local cricket club (with their training cage). The building next along to the left is the scoring box – the scoring boards get hung out on the front. Beyond the row of trees is the McIvor Creek, and then the land climbs to form the McIvor Ranges. 😀

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  11. Good for you for biting the bullet and taking your computer head on! Thumbs up!

    I can’t imagine seeing Kangaroos in the wild to the extent that you wonder and reflect on where they’ve been. Thanks for sharing. 🙂

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