whirlwind week

Wow! this week has been huge. Since I last wrote, I have completed
another stage of my toaster assignment. We are now up to actually
starting to design the toaster. :-D I'm quite pleased about that.
On Saturday night, my venturer leader turned 50, so Slimmo (our
assistant venturer leader) decided to surprise a surprise birthday party
for her! There was well over 100 people there, and we all managed to
stay quiet while she was about to walk into the back yard, so she was
completely surprised! There was a lot of dancing, music and catching up
with friends, so I think she enjoyed the night.
On Tuesday night, Rovers had a $10 night, the idea is if everyone brings
$10 we can have a progressive dinner of fast food outlets! It went well,
and I think we all ate too much. hehe. We ate Chinese, pizza and had way
too much ice-cream for dessert. I think everyone enjoyed it, it was
definitely worth $10 each.
Wednesday I started out my day visiting Kelly's house to pick up the
key. I'm going to be house sitting for her while she and her husband are
on holidays in England. They will be gone for a month, so I will have
the responsibility for watching the house and taking care of the cats.
They have two cats, which don't like each other too much, so I've got to
feed them separately. This could get interesting! hehe. I'm there for a
month, and will only have limited net access, so I might get a bit slack
with posting... :-! I will take plenty of photos and post them when I
get back from house sitting.
Monday was Mum and Dad's wedding anniversary, so we had a special dinner
for that. Also on Monday, we got the information about the Germany trip
for all Product Design students. It sounds so exciting, and we get to
stay right in Berlin, and goto University there! SOO EXCITING!! I'm
already making plans to stay on after all the studying is done so I can
see a bit more of Europe, but we will see how it all goes.
Anyways, I think thats about all the news I have for now. -Andrew

hehe, i look all formal. does it matter that i didnt know what camera to look at? 

Oh what a feeling...

Today I was up before the sun! Now I know how Chris must feel when he
works with the balloons... dead. Anyways, I had a good reason to be up
and about early, I was going with some students from Swinburne to visit
Toyota's car assembly plant in Altona. The tour was very comprehensive,
and I was quite surprised at the level of accuracy used during
construction. Much of the production is done by hand, and the plant
employs aver 4000 people. The plant pumps out a car every 2 minuets, and
over 60% of the cars get exported to the arab states. Quite impressive
that we do that kind of thing here in Melbourne. Every task performed on
the car must be complete in 1min 45secs!
The other thing I did today was I visited the Melbourne exhibition
center. This week is "manufacturing week" and they had a huge trade show
set up. Can you imagine the entirety of Jeff's shed filled with C&C
mills, rapid prototyping machines and a vast array of new and
experimental techniques of manufacture. The show was quite interesting,
but was focused on metals, I want to deal mainly in plastics, so I was
interested to see the rapid prototyping machines, as well as the 3d
scanner machines. They had some people demonstrating different design
software packages as well, and I managed to pick up a free trial of
Autodesk's Inventor program, which seems like a good knock off of
Solidworks. (perhaps Solidworks knocked off inventor??) Anyway, the day
was quite fun, and I plan to goto church council tonight. I am sure that
will be a thrilling meeting.

Die SPAM die!!!!

Is it just me, or has SPAM recently become a really big problem
(especially for myrealbox users) In 9 hours, i received 80 SPAM
messages!! Using MS Outlook or Outlook Express, sifting through these
junk mail items becomes a daily chore, not to mention compromises
security. But don't dismay, I have found the solution! I've decided to
leave Microsoft for open source. (Why I didn't try this earlier, I have
no idea!)
Do yourself a favor, and download a copy of MOZILLA THUNDERBIRD! It's
not worth changing just for the extra added security, or the built in
RSS reader (use that to check my blog for updates, just like checking
e-mail: http://wheaties85.blogspot.com/atom.xml) The main advantage is
it's smart junk filters. You can actually "teach" it what you consider
"Junk" and when it makes a mistake, you can teach it what you see as an
important newsletter or ezine. This is allot easier than it sounds, as
all you have to do is right click a message and click "junk".
Everyone should dump Microsoft today!

[Fwd: more formal photos (if you are interested)]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: more formal photos (if you are interested)
Date: Mon, 9 May 2005 22:21:21 +1000
From: Andrew Wheatland <wheaties@myrealbox.com>
To: <wheaties85.post@blogger.com>

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y233/mr_frissy/smallgroup-jesshouse.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y233/mr_frissy/jessandchrisdancing2.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y233/mr_frissy/girls-smallgroup.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y233/mr_frissy/girls-largegroup.jpg
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y233/mr_frissy/formaldates.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/tigereye16/Year%2012%20Formal/PICT0007.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/tigereye16/Year%2012%20Formal/PICT0009.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/tigereye16/Year%2012%20Formal/PICT0013.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/tigereye16/Year%2012%20Formal/PICT0010.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/tigereye16/Year%2012%20Formal/PICT0019.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/tigereye16/Year%2012%20Formal/PICT0021.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/tigereye16/Year%2012%20Formal/PICT0033.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/tigereye16/Year%2012%20Formal/PICT0041.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/tigereye16/Year%2012%20Formal/PICT0039.jpg

Part of my toaster project. It's a presentation board with all the parts of the toaster glued to it. Weeksy and I present the project tomorrow 

Ian 

Michael 

Aunty Belinda and Uncle Mark 

Uncle Steve and Grandma 

David and Nyssa. (due to be wed sometime in October) :) 

Mum 

Phil 

Grandpa and Dad 

For mothers day, the Wheatland clan gathered at Grandma's house. Shane and Richard are pictured on Grandms's living room sofa. 

WOW! we finally got a microwave. Dad bought it for mum for mothers day. So everyone has been playing with it, zapping everything from instant porridge to bread rolls. I still have to make cake in a cup in it hehehe.  

Lots of pictures

Recently I know I have Posted ALOT of photos, so many that they dont all fit on the front page of the site! You can view all of them by looking through the archive section of my blog. Interesting stuff. I suppose I should give you a quick rundown of whats been happening anyway. I have been run off my feet with uni stuff! I presented my latest project yesterday. The brief was to design a digital instrument. Many people chose to make digital trumpet. That is what I designed.
Last Saturday night, I went to the MLC formal with Barbara. That was fun, except when it came time to go home, Barbara discovered she didnt have her keys with her. I called Barbara's Mum, and she saved the day by driving Barbara's keys out to Cartlon. Then we had issues getting out of the carpark. The ticket payment machine ate our ticket! So I went upstairs and had to get a special ticket from hotel reception. Overall, a very memorable night.
On Monday night, I went to a Group council meeting for 4th Ringwood Scouts. That is the group that my rover crew (www.brrc.id.au) is attached to. I'm not sure if I was really meant to be there, because my scout membership is still with Ferntree Gully Scout Group. Nobody seemed to care though.
Anyways, I think thats enough from me for now. Catch u all later!
-Andrew.

wow.. the whole place glowed. hehe  

I organised for Rovers to goto glow in the dark mini golf at knox city. It was a really good night. www.puttz.com.au 

Our assesors tried playing Evan's tuba 

Evan made a tuba. 

Jenny made a claranet. 

Andrew Weeks made a french horn. It folds away for storage 

Gavin's trumpet 

Gavin's trumpet 

My trumpet, and it's fancy carrying box. 

Anthony's trumpet