I've been a bit light on for blogging lately, but for a very good reason- holidays!

On Thursday we travelled to Margaret's mum's place at Newcastle where we stayed until Monday. Our children (except Phil but with the addition of James) joined us after they finished work on Friday. We had some quality time all together at Grandma's.

On Saturday evening I was doing some email reading when the battery on the Eee just ran out without the usual DANGER message. Some files were corrupted on the flash memory meaning that I love my home directory which Tim was able to recover and the wireless driver which, despite all his technical hocus-pocus, remained unrecoverable. So on Sunday I downloaded the Ubuntu netbook operating system. I discovered how slow Grandma's internet connection is- it took all day to download the equivalent of a CD ROM. It was fairly easy after that to create a bootable USB drive and start it up.

I really like the netbook interface of ubuntu. It's a step away from the desktop model. I don't like the fact that it doesn't include some Qt libraries necessary for opera, so I'm stuck with firefox until I get home. What I'm thinking is that I will re-install the full ubuntu desktop OS so I can use opera (I think it's the world's best browser) and see if it's possible to install the netbook interface.

Anyway on Monday we moved up to Port Macquarie which is now under 3 hours from Newcastle due to huge improvements on the Pacific Highway. We are staying at Port Pacific, a resort right in the main part of town. We are on the top floor (no children allowed) and have great views over the town. From the outdoor spa and barbecue area we have great views of the beautiful Hastings River.Port Central shopping centre is next door, and there are lots of restaurants in the area. The beach is a short walk (or drive) away. Lovely!

One frustration has been that, having paid for internet access at the resort, it is so s-l-o-w! Margaret has all but given up on Ebay.

So we're here until Saturday, enjoying a little bit of rest at the height of summer.