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A big week! Tuesday was pay day and with it the final payment on my car! Three years in, I love it more than ever and we have travelled over fifty two thousand kilometers together. Paying it off frees up a large chunk of my budget, which will be a lovely change!

Pokemon Go has been a interesting game to get into. I’ve only ever had a sideways glance at the universe, being too money-poor to own a GameBoy when I was younger, and time-poor since I have had the cash to play otherwise. The exploration of the local areas around work and home has been fun - I’ve walked down Kedron Brook for the first time in the seven and a half years of working for my current employer! The infrastructure behind the game, let alone the code of the UI itself is a shambles, but they’re making great strides to keep it all running and us engaged. An unsurprising response to the game has been from the various facets of social media, with the lovers and haters having plenty to work with.

I finally watched Battle Royale on Monday night via Netflix after hearing so much about it for so long. It definitely lived up to expectations. Absurd, violent, poignant, and impossible in western cinema but perfectly produced by eastern. I loved it, for everything that it is.

Just Cause, a story of Florida’s habit of treating black people like shit, and its long-term effects. A stellar cast including Sean Connery playing an amazing role as the out-of-town lawyer while Laurence Fishburne defends “his” town from the outsider. I saw Scarlett Johnson in the credits but didn’t spot her until the final act, wow I’m old. A fantastic mid-90’s thriller with some great twists and turns :)

Thursday night I received the statement of Attainment for my Category M (Miscellaneous: Crossbows) license! Now the countdown begins, I put my application in as soon as I could, but Qld Weapons Licensing are notoriously slow.

Friday morning they called me to confirm that my paperwork had been received and that I needed to supply something else (that I already knew about). It was nice to see they were fast on that, and that they could confirm everything else seemed OK.

Over time I’ve somehow ended up with three different disgustingly cheap portable drills which the batteries inevitably died in. Rather than spend a couple of hundred bucks on a new setup that will be incompatible with next year’s batteries, I decided to repack one of the existing battery packs.

Nickel-Cadmium batteries are icky, and I wanted the option to be able to use the batteries in other things, so I decided that I would buy some Lithium Ion batteries. After playing around with available voltages, I found that the 14.4V GMC drill I had would work OK with four 3.7V batteries. Yes, I know it’s overdriving it a bit, but I’m fairly sure it will not mind. If it does, then I’ll upload the video when it catches fire.

I had a fantastic day on Saturday with nine fellow SCA members at the SSAA Belmont doing our Category M (and for the others, their A/B) safety course. This course will allow me to apply for my Crossbow license and start working towards doing some re-enactment of being a period-appropriate Arbalist :D

It was a great day, Warwick from QLDFT is a very engaging and knowledgeable teacher, and we all learnt a lot. I helped run the class through the practical assessment of the A/B course to save time, given I’m a range officer and experienced shooter. The end of the day was the best, being able to have a couple of shots with his [Barnett Recruit Recurve](http://www.barnettcrossbows.com/crossbows/recruit-recurve0 bow at a target. The Leupold scope was lovely to use as well :)

I’ve been to the Lifeline Bookfest before, but never walked out with so many books. Turning up on the last day, I didn’t really expect much left, but there were still giant crates of books not on display! I’m not sure what they’ll do with them… maybe compost? :S

I looked around for a park near BCEC for a while, then gave up and parked underneath. Normally I’d park under the State Library, which is a couple of blocks away and cheaper having a flat rate for entry. I’m very glad I didn’t, since I ended up making two runs to the car to drop books off :)

Another week of sickness, most annoyingly. I’m on the mend now, but it’s been a quiet one.

I went to see two movies this week, Finding Dory and The Wilderpeople. Finding Dory is the tug-the-heartstrings-until-they-tear sequel to the hilarious and similarly emotional Finding Nemo. Pixar’s storytelling and hidden-adult humour skills go from strength to strength, and it’s another great example of their work. I’d highly recommend going to see it :)

Hunt for the Wilderpeople is a fantastic example of what makes Kiwi humour great. Kooky, full of hilarious jokes and Sam Neill at his best. There’s something special about the way the comedy’s done, and the story’s great. I’m going to try and see more movies by Taika Waititi now I’ve seen this hilarious romp through the New Zealand bush :)

This week’s been quite quiet, since I’m suffering from a sinus infection, bleh.

Today I spent a few hours replacing the ropes on the poles for my tent, finally getting most of that task done. The only thing left is to make some heavy aglets for the ends of the ropes and replace/glue on the tail caps on the poles.

RMB’s ropes need to be done as well, hoping to get that done tomorrow, another day off sick.

Tuesday was the Azure Discovery day at Microsoft’s offices in the CBD. I probably should have read the full briefing on what it was, expecting a technical coverage of new features and a rundown on some inner workings, but it was more a management/marketing run through of every little thing they do, which I could have discovered via the website. The presenter seemed to be a niche product engineer who didn’t quite have the overarching knowledge everyone expected, and there were many management types asking newbie questions which would have been covered if they’d have waited ten minutes..

I finally gave up on making some saw horses and bought some Rhino-brand ones from Bunnings. For $32 each, the metal frame and replaceable wooden cross bar is a good little package. They pull apart easily for storage so that’s perfect for my workshop.

My Kreg R3 kit turned up - I’ve got a few projects on the horizon where I want to try using pocket holes - I was going to build saw horses based on this video but decided against it. 😃