ozguvnor @ozguvnor@eigenmagic.net

Why Las Vegas? (Pt 3)
After 5 days we proved that you could even spend a week based there, never set foot in the city and still have the most incredible time seeing nature.
TIP: Time trips to avoid Friday night LA to LV inbound and Sunday night LV to LA outbound logjam traffic on the LV freeways.

Why Las Vegas? (Pt 2):
Also Mt Charleston (peak alt. 12500ft) is a short drive from LV. Tiny town at 7500ft that looks more like a small ski resort. Just the one little hotel where we had lunch at 7500ft (200 taller than Australias Mt Kosciusko). Some short hikes to get incredible view. Well worth a trip if you only have 4 hours free. Sadly we missed out on Death Valley. It was having a record heat day, and in a rental car with ZERO mobile coverage we didn’t want to risk getting stranded.

Why Las Vegas?
Grand Canyon & Hoover Dam are obligatory of course. We splashed out big time on a top end heli-tour of GC so that we could see it from the Colorado River. Well worth the $$. Red Rock Canyon is near LV (v. pretty) & has short walks. We drove to LV through Joshua Tree Nat’l park (stunning) through the Mohave Desert from Palm Springs (Aerial Tramway excellent, short hikes at top v. Good) ...

So, VERY happy to be back home after nearly 2 weeks on vacation. Have to say that Las Vegas (when you are not there for work) is a TERRIFIC place to visit. And we only spent 3 hours visiting the strip all week. And that was for a Cirque du Soleil show (“O”). LV is surrounded by the most beautiful array of biomes.

I’m on Mt Charleston at 7500ft. 1/3 of the way through the first beer I already feel like I’ve finished 2 pints. Better moderate.

Of these 4 buttons: 1 opens, 1 closes and 2 do nothing. Apparently even the elevators in Las Vegas are a gamble! 😂

Apparently running NordVPN destroys ping response and makes coop gameplay impossible. Or as my 13 yo put it, “What the Hell Dad! It’s hard enough playing with my Australian friends online from the USA without you routing my packets via Europe!”

With 3 kids occupying all the desk/monitor space in the media room, I tried out Microsoft Remote Desktop Client from my iPad to get to a new workhorse server I built. The client rocks! It runs so well. Having a bluetooth keyboard for ipad helps.

Enormous lightning strike just took out the Home Router. I think it came in via the coax as my NAS lives on the same power board and was still shutting down and somehow was ok. My children are in withdrawal.

Enjoying a long weekend at Cocoa Beach. The resort is aimed at families but their WiFi is limited to 3 devices. Good thing I always bring a portable router! 😁 No problems now. And I am running all our devices on 5GHz (less crowded) whilst the router talks to the resorts on 2.4

Happy for SpaceX that their Starlink Falcon-9 went up ok. Kind of bummed though it didn’t cop another 2 days delay, or we could have watched it from Cocoa Beach. Aaarrrggghh. Explains why my Aeronautical Engineering wife is having a few red wines tonight.

Taking slow release NSAID for the back pain. Have a 6 hour drive in the car tomorrow. Getting in is ok. Getting out again at the end might be tricky.

Pinged my back yesterday. I lifted a heavy box a bit crooked and now its pain city. I am pretty sure after I need to introduce some oblique and sacrospinalis strengthening into the gym workout. Once I'm better that is.

By that I mean it still hasn't arrived here - let alone me posting it back. In an FB poll I ran in the Aussie ex-pats group, 55% also still haven't received theirs either.

Explained to an astounded US Floridian local how AU voting is compulsory. He didn't think much of the idea. Having said that, my postal ballot has been in the mail for 2 weeks now. So I'm not entirely convinced my say is going to be all that useful anyway. Still ...

No gym training this week as my facilities access is temporarily curtailed, hopefully to be sorted tomorrow. Instead did a morning run around the local streets. Florida is not quite fully brutal yet, but 4.5K of up and down a few hills in the sun instead of AC gym on treadmill, I sure felt the difference.

Just spent 10 minutes squinting at replacement watch batteries. #GettingOld

Thanks heavens! Property manager rented us a temporary fridge freezer until the other gets replaced.
Somebody bring me a beer man!
Oh yeah ... they’re warm. 😂

I feel like I am trying to watch a head on collision between 2 glaciers - given the slow failure and correspondingly slow rising temperatures, slow response by repair company and slow replies from FB marketplace ads. FTR I am not patient with slow stuff.

This modern ‘message me only’ culture instead of phone calls is very annoying when you need something in a hurry. (In my case a freezer. It was easier when we just had The Trading Post and you called.