Apparently I failed to touch wood after my comment last week of being the least sick person I know, as on Friday afternoon I fell ill with some nasty bug.

Friday lunchtime I felt perfectly healthy, however by that afternoon I was definitely feeling off. I attended the Gold Coast .NET User Group on Friday evening to hear Boon Tiong Lim present on Visual Studio 2008 and associated technology which was really interesting. While I was there, I managed to win myself a copy of Windows Vista Business which was a really great surprise!

Anyway, I went home and collapsed in bed and slept for about 12 or so hours straight. The following day I couldn’t muster the energy to do much at all and this continued until about Tuesday. Finally got an appointment with a local doctor on Thursday and he said that I most likely fell ill with the same bug that has been putting people in hospital here on the Gold Coast and in Brisbane. The doctor was pretty impressed that my body had managed to fight off the bug on its own, without drugs in only 4 days – go immune system go!

Returned to work today, still have a little bit of a cough however the drugs the doctor prescribed will kill that off soon enough. Next time I’ll remember to touch some wood next time I make a statement like that.

Saturday morning I was playing fetch with Princess, when I bent down to pick up one of her favourite toys and felt my back twinge.

Historically, I would surely qualify as one of the least sick people I know. In the last three years, I could count on one hand the number of times I’ve had to take off work sick or injured. Unfortunately, in the last two months I’ve had some level of back pain more than once. In both occasions, I wasn’t doing anything strenuous when it happened – simply bending down to pick up something light or getting up off the sofa.

I’m fairly confident that the reason I’ve managed to hurt my back in the last couple of months is a direct by product of not doing anywhere near enough exercise and sitting far too long and often at work. When our current block of development is completed, I’m really looking forward to getting back into the gym and walking regularly again. I can literally feel in myself that my body and mental state is in a better place when I’m exercising regularly and I’m really missing it at the moment.

Over the last couple of days I’ve been trying to keep off it as much as possible, gently stretching it from time to time. Anyone have a magic solution for back pain that I need to know about in case it happens again?

After finding out that most Gold Coast real estate agents suck and having to move house, one of my worst fears have been realised; it doesn’t look like I’m going to have broadband at my new home!

As soon as the new phone service was provisioned, I submitted an ADSL transfer application to my current ISP. Checking the status of the transfer, it went through a couple different stages but ultimately ended up in a held status stating that there isn’t enough available copper.

I believe it might be time to submit an application into Bigpond and see if they have magical powers which help them find available copper that was previously unavailable to a competing ISP. If that bites the dust as well, other channels will have to be pursued; not having fast, permanent internet at home just doesn’t cut the mustard.

Dear god, please provide me with fast reliable internet at a reasonable price.

I’m sorry for the lack of updates on here of late, two major things are going on at the moment:

• I’ve just moved house and I’m still praying that the gods will provide me with broadband once more. I’ve had broadband since it became available in Australia, so I sure hope that Telstra can perform some magic and provide me with it again or I’ll be forced to find alternative means!
• We’re coming to the end of the first stage of a major block of development at work and the pressure is on. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of time for anything other than work at the moment.

In the next couple of weeks things should begin to return to normal, I can’t wait.

After a lot of effort on Saturday, we’ve now moved all of our stuff into our new home. We hired a three tonne truck (largest you can drive on a standard car drivers license) on Saturday morning and it took three trips in total, however only the first and second had any significant amount of stuff in them.

A couple things didn’t go to plan during the move:

• it appears that our iron has been damaged and is causing the power to trip
• I think I’ve lost a little bunch of four screws, which we purposefully wrapped in tape so as not to separate them. As it turns out, it was in vain as it seems we’ve lost them anyway!
• the antenna at the new place doesn’t seem to be working, so no TV at the moment. Hopefully, we just need a signal booster.

A big thank you to Brendan, Jacob and Andrew for all the help during the move as well.