Cyclone Hamish has now been upgraded to a category 3 cyclone and is still tracking down the coast of Queensland. At the moment they are predicting that it will stay off the coast, but since cyclones are rather unpredictable we will have to prepare for the worst. It is set to be off the coast of Townsville about this time tomorrow.

An interesting way to follow and track Tropical Cyclone Hamish is using a service called Twitter.

Twitter is a micro-blogging service that allows users to post short, 140 character posts to it’s service. One of the features that is has is to set topics to the short posts, which people up and down the Queensland Coast are starting to do with Tropical Cyclone Hamish.

You can follow people’s posts about cyclone Hamish on Twitter here.

If you are experiencing anything to do with the cyclone and want to post about it, just sign up on Twitter and include “#hamish” in your post to add to the topic.

Since it’s after mid-night right now in Queensland you can expect things to be quiet on that topic over night, but it will no doubt pick up again in the morning.

I was really hoping that Tropical Cyclone Ellie was going to be our only tropical cyclone this year. I know that was unrealistic to hope for, but I was hoping …

Last night Tropical Cyclone Hamish formed off the North Queensland Coast about 200km North of Cairns. If you have a look at the tracking map below, you will see that Cyclone Hamish is expected to be a category 3 cyclone by tonight, and is expected to track down the coast of Queensland over the weekend.

Tropical Cylcone Hamish is expected to be off the coast of Townsville by Sunday, but at the moment they are not expecting it to make landfall.

A category 3 cyclone can be a scary cyclone. Cyclone Larry, which brought massive destruction to Innisfail in 2006, was a Category 4 cyclone, which Hamish will be not too far off of.

The best that we can hope for is that Hamish will continue to track down the coast, and then turn out to sea, slowly loose strength and die. There is currently a tropical cyclone warning issued for between Cape Melville and Cardwell, and a cyclone watch between Cardwell and Mackay, which includes us here in Townsville.

About this time last year we had some wild weather and I was asked by some passers by if I wanted a cyclone, to which I answer a definite “NO!”. Upon hearing that they called me a “pansy” for not wanting a cyclone to hit.

Well, if that’s the case, then today I am again a pansy.

Tropical Cyclone Hamish, please stay off the coast …

You can track the latest updates on Tropical Cyclone Hamish on the Australia Bureau of Meteorology web-site here.

It’s time to batten down the hatches so to speak as Tropical Cyclone Ellie is due to hit land about 120km North of Townsville on Monday (tomorrow) at around noon. Here is the current tracking map from the Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology (link):

We will be keeping a close eye on this cyclone and this afternoon I’ll be taking down the shade cloth cover from our outdoor entertainment area. If the cyclone starts to build in strength, or move south at all, I’ll also be taking in the chairs, table and possibly the barbeque into the garage.

The last cyclone to hit near Townsville was Tropical Cyclone Larry in 1996 while our house was being lifted. That cyclone destroyed or damaged 1 of 3 houses in Innisfail, which you can see on the map above. This time we should see an increase in rain and strong winds in Townsville, but if it continues on the current path we should be fairly safe here.

Dealing with cyclones is one of the challenges we get to deal with living in the tropics. My wife’s been talking about writing an article about how challenging this climate can be at times (this week we had to throw out a backpack and at least one pair of shoes because of mould). Not sure if she will get around to it, but if so I’ll make sure to post it on here …

I can just hear the collective groan of "Well, Duh!" after reading that title…

It’s not that we didn’t expect a bit more cleaning with a bigger house, it’s just that I don’t think we really understood how much more cleaning it would mean.

Two more bathrooms, four new bedrooms, a staircase, a hallway and a garage amounts to more than doubling the amount of time it takes to get the house clean.

To help ease the burden we have decided to put the kids to work. Caleb’s jobs are sweeping the garage and cleaning the front garden and driveway. Jessica’s job is usually family moral …

Most of my outdoor work here in Townsville is done while wearing thongs. I lost one thong when I sunk into my backyard after some very heavy rain we had last year, but other than that they have worked out pretty well. They might not offer as much support as I would always like, but they are usually supportive enough, although I don’t usually wear them if I need to be working up a ladder.

I guess that the thong doesn’t provide very good sun protection either, as I have a pretty noticeable thong tan right now. Maybe I should be using more sunscreen …

As you can see, the tan on my foot is pretty prominent. Last time I had a tan like this it took a few months for it to fade, but that didn’t happen until winter when I started to wear covered shoes again. Right now it’s just too hot for that most days …

Also, in case you didn’t already know, here in Australia a “Thong” is the same thing as a North American “Flip Flop”…

With most pocket sliding door that I have seen there are scratches on the inside and outside face of the door. These scratches are most often caused by the timber and other hardware that is inside the cavity that the pocket door actually slides into.

Our old upstairs bathroom door had this problem, and had some pretty unsightly scratches on the sliding door. Downstairs we have two pocket sliding doors, neither one of which I really desired to see scratched up as our old upstairs bathroom door was.

I found the solution at Bunnings in the sliding door hardware section for only about $4.50 per door.

As you can see in the photo above (click on it for a larger view) I purchased some sliding door guides to install on the door frame. The guides are just two small pieces of plastic designed to fit onto the bottom of the door frame. I had to trim the door guides a bit to get the perfect fit, but now the door can’t rock into the timber and door hardware that is inside the frame that the pocket door slides into.

I always like it when a cheap and easy solution comes up to fix a problem. I just wish they were all this easy …

The next person to tell me that “It’s easy, you should be able to do that” in regards to my home renovations might end up with a black eye and a bloody nose.

Our house renovations are not going well. We are approaching our second Christmas where we are still not able to live on the ground floor of our house and I don’t know when we will finally be able to move down there.

I have been told a few times now that what I am doing is easy and that I should be able to do the sheeting, or put put up the deck, or pour the slab for the shed, etc. Just because renovations are easy for someone else doesn’t mean it’s easy for everyone. I don’t tell my friends that to build a web-site or fix a computer is easy and that they should be able to do that themselves, so why is that such common advise when it comes to renovations or home improvements?

This post isn’t directed particularly at any of my well-meaning friends, it’s more like a warning to the friends and family of not-so-handy renovators. If it’s easy, then help out your mate and do it for them or with them. Otherwise just shut-up, because what’s easy for some can be pretty bloody hard for others.

I swapped around the space on my desk earlier today and tonight Tamara was unable to connect to wireless from her laptop in our bedroom. I tried the normal stuff to get it working, but didn’t have any luck getting it to reconnect.

I thought that maybe our new cordless phone was interfering with the wireless access point since it was now between the wireless access point and Tamara’s computer, but swapping those two around didn’t fix the wireless connection problem.

The next thing I moved was our Chrome Canadian Moose (pictured above). We got the chrome Canadian Moose as a wedding gift and it has lived in all sorts of places around this house and our previous two homes. It must have some very reflective qualities, or just be a solid hunk of metal, because as soon as I moved our chrome Canadian Moose the wireless started to work for my wife.

We both had a good laugh at this one once we figured it out. After all, who knew that a Canadian Moose could block a wireless signal?

I had previously written about our builderhaving his previous off-sider quit on him while working on our house. He had picked up a new apprentice and things seemed to be going well, until last week when he had to let his apprentice go.

With this latest apprentice quitting he has come to us and told us that he can’t abide by our contract and get the house enclosed by the end of January (our previous thoughts were that we would actually be moved downstairs by Christmas, woops). So now it looks like we are left without a builder.

This sucks…

Because of the wait that there is for builders in Townsville this looks like our plans could be pushed back a year behind where we thought we would be.

So now we are stuck with a house three metres above the ground and no-one to enclose it. I wish that I could say I can do it myself, or even get some mates to help do it, but I wouldn’t hold out much hope for that happening.

Now what?

Previous Article: Renovate Australia – Builder Quits

Technorati Tags: renovation, contractors, house renovation

This morning Tamara received a phone call that our trade contractor’s “off sider” has quit. His off sider was his second man in all of his construction work. This basically means that now all of our plans are pretty much on hold until he can find either another “off sider” or an apprentice to work with him on the building work.

From what our main trade contractor told Tamara he is eager to pick up an apprentice as he won’t have to actually teach as much as he has had to in the past. An apprentice should be able to pick up the work and run with it a lot more so then a casual worker will.

My only hope is that he find a new employee soon, otherwise this project will draw on well into the new year and probably mess around with our plans to visit family in Canada next year…