Training Log Archive: Mess Engineer

After more than 24 years of never once being opened and looked at - and being transported from Adelaide-Whyalla-Newcastle Mayfield-Newcastle Cardiff-Newcastle Wallalong - my 19 large folders of University notes and assignments from 1989-1992 have been relegated to recycle bin.
An awful lot of detailed learnings that I never ever applied in my entire career to date!
So won't be carrying that excess weight on yet another move.

Also relegated were all water, electricity, council rates, closed term deposit, share sales, insurance documents etc more than 3 years old.

Still more to go yet. Want to get my four drawer filing cabinet down to a single drawer if I can.

C • With purpose! 1

Screwing the last two 900 mm x 1200 mm panels to the pool fence.
I have run out of screws so alternated with gaps so will have to come back and fill in 27 missing screws later.

And about 20 minutes shovelling out the lawn and dirt in front of one of the pool gates. Now that I put the plastic on the bottom to make it comply the plastic rubbed on the grass and dirt so had to shovel about four buckets worth out to solve this problem.

Then a quick trip back to Bunnings to return the two sheets of Perspex I bought the other day as it turned out I could cut everything I needed from the two sheets from the plastics shop (note two sheets from Bunnings 600 mm x 1200 mm and 900 mm x 1200 mm cost $105 almost as much as a single sheet of the 2440 mm x 1220 mm .... so you pay for the convenience!).

Will ring up Council, pay for another inspection, and organise this for next week so I can get a completed certificate.

First 2 families looking through my house this afternoon at 4 pm and 5 pm.

First tour through my house resulted in my first offer!
Off to a flying start.
So my pesimistic outcome of 9 months based on my two neighbours sale durations may be proven wrong!
First official open inspections due next Saturday.

C • OMG! 1

Since my pool fence doesn't comply with the regulated 100 mm gap beneath the bottom railing (it varies from 95 mm to 115 mm dependent on how much the pavers underneath have sunk) looking for a solution.
Can't sell the house without a pool certificate.
It was like this when I bought it but there was no regulation then (and it had passed a previous Council inspection).
Don't want to pull up the pavers as they are concreted in.
Don't want to take off every fence panel, the gate, hinges and magna latch and remount them either.

Went to plastics wholesaler and bought 2 off 1220 x 2440 sheets of clear 3 mm polycarbonate. Got them to cut it up into 14 off 100 mm strips 2400 long (for fence panels - I had to trim some of these to size as 3 panels shorter), 2 off 100 mm strips 900 mm long (for the gates), and two sheets 900 mm x 1200 mm to attach to fences either side of gazebo to stop kids putting their feet through the railing and using the deck as a step-up.

Spent from 5 pm - 8 pm screwing all the sheets to be bottom of the fence ... last half hour was by torchlight from the battery drill.

As the panels are clear - you can barely see them. Happy to have come up with a non hideous solution.

C • Sounds like an engineering feat! 3

Day off work.
Real Estate photos 9 am.
Real Estate 3D imaging of house rooms 11:45 am
Council Pool Inspection (failed!) at 2 pm.
Visit to Conveyancers to sign papers at 3 pm.
Trip to Bunnings for supplies to fix up pool fence 3:30 pm

Distance a guess as iPhone GPS refusing to work for some unknown reason and therefore also MapmyRun wouldn't work either.
Had to use phone stop watch timer counting down from 45:00 as I wasn't wearing a watch either.
This wasn't as user friendly as normally I have it announce every 5 minutes, and tell me my total and split distances run, so I get a constant time reminder ... and MapmyRun keeps the iPhone from going to standby.
So instead I had to keep looking at the screen and swiping my finger across it for it to stay active!

Route 1G 3C 1D 3B 2B1C 1B 3A 1A 1H 2C 3D 2D 2E 3G 2H 1E 1J 3E 2J

46:20 and 7.0 km for 20 Controls / 38 Points (1 Point x 8, 2 Point x 6, 3 Point x 6) so -2 to bring total to 36 Points.

I have never run on this map for a Street-O before. More hilly that I expected (although I remember from the Park-O I set here) and I overestimated how many I could link up so had to abandon plans for 2G-1K or 3H-1L.

I knew I was going to be late from 2D onwards and was very sure at 3G with about 13 minutes to get back! Wasted at least 30 seconds at 1J trying to find the cut through path - I went to the north side of 1J rather than the south side and there was a clear block and a gap in the fence - but running down the gap I found it was blocked further on. Elected to add on 3E after 1J to put some extra points in to burn off to make up for the expected time loss.

C • SSS 1

Real Estate inspection of house pre-photos to recommend any other tidy up and improvements I could do

Signed up with a Real Estate agent today to sell Wallalong.

After 6 years out here, the last 3 as a single, I am arranging an orderly retreat to pass the baton onto someone else that can make use of the large house (I barely use 1/3 of it), shed and yard for their family and to have the time to devote to its upkeep. I simply no longer enjoy all the physical effort and nature keeps winning restoring the yard back to its stick ridden leaf blown state.

Real Estate agent will come tomorrow afternoon for inspection to tell me all the other jobs I need to do (on top of everything done almost every day over the last 3 weeks!)

Photographer will come Wednesday.

Council coming to inspect the pool fence Wednesday afternoon .... I assume they are going to make me cut down all the pencil pines the prior owner planted along the back of the pool fence as apparently you can't have trees or hedges within 1 m of a pool fence.

House and yard looking in best presentation it has in over 5 years.
Hopefully it won't take 9 months to sell like others in the neighbourhood (both the two downhill neighbouring blocks with similar sized 6 1/2 acre blocks and houses took this long to sell - so I am dreading this potential outcome but will have to generate contingency plans for this).

Aim for first potential buyer inspections Saturday November 5th.

House and Yard Cleanup Day 2

Spent 2 hours solo high pressure cleaning all the pavers around the pool.
Looked worse afterwards due to all the mud and water.
Waited for it to dry and swept later in day.

Spent 1/2 hr solo high pressure cleaning pool areas again but that was as much as body could take prior to hot shower.

Brother and his wife & child came to help today from about 9 am to 2 pm.

Activities included (between the 3 of us)
1. Cleaned all front windows, flyscreens and replaced 2 flyscreens
2. Cleaned both main bathroom and ensuite
3. Finishing had wiping down all the eaves around the perimeter of house
4. Whippersnipped garden bed that had 1/2 metre high native grass that brother thought looked like a neglected patch. Whippersnipped front spoon drains to give a good impression when Real Estate agent shows up Tuesday.
5. Raked up all leaves and twigs from the garden bed in pool area.
6. After trip to Bunnings climbed up on roof and washed, sanded and painted all the decorative woodwork in the gables as paint was peeling off and attracted the eye. $50 1 litre can of paint where I used less than 100 ml of it. But I was very surprised how much better it looked afterwards.

I had not mowed in over 3 weeks.
Front yard starting to look untidy and normally would have left it for another week or more but Real Estate photographer turning up Wednesday morning so have to get it looking presentable.