Troy’s Random Ramblings

Thank someone for the Qantas Club. Best money I ever spent. 90 minute stop over in Bangkok. At least I can get a decent coffee before getting back on the plane for another 12 hours or so.

Managed to watch Happy Feet, it was OK. Tried to watch The Prestige, but couldn’t make it all the way through. Next movie on the list for is Blood Diamond, hopefully that will keep me awake for a while.

Had an Indian couple (from the UK) beside me until Bangkok. Not sure if I’ll have anyone for the rest of the flight, be nice if I didn’t that way I can stretch out a little.

Time for coffee…

Checked in, through immigration and having a beer in the Qantas Club. Flight leaves soon. London here I come (in 23 hours)

That’s a massive amount of time on a plane. And when I get there it’s only tomorrow morning.

Well the day that I thought would never come has finally arrived. I’ve stepped off HMAS Ballarat for the last time. It’s been an enjoyable, if sometimes frustrating and challenging three years on board. I’ve had the pleasure of making some great life long friends, as well as working with some exceptionally talented and dedicated people.

Tomorrow I’m off to the UK and Europe for a couple of months.

Here begins yet another feeble attempt by myself to keep family and friends updated on what I’m doing while I’m not in Australia. Lately I seem to be away from the country more than I’m at home.

Anyway, over the next ten weeks or so I’ll be travelling to the UK and around parts of Europe. With any luck I’ll be able to get my shit sorted so that something semi-interesting or slightly intelligent will appear here.

Pictures will be accessible from the link on the side, currently there is only one, so enjoy it.

I’ve spent ages searching the internoodle looking for the region free codes for a Harmon|Kardon HS 100 home theatre system and haven’t had any luck at all. Thankfully when I picked mine up in Dubai earlier in the year the shop I got it from was good enough to pass on the relevant information, and in the interests of keeping information free I present it here for you.

1. Keep the system in standby mode with no disc in the player.
2. Display should show “No Disc“
3. Press the OSD button
4. Enter the number 3141590
5. Insert DVD from any region and enjoy.

The region free should last as long as the system has power applied (ie: on, off or standby). If you have to remove power from the system completely when you next power up you might need to enter the code again.

If you were looking for the old www.tkdack.com site, it’s been retired. Since Kate and I are no longer together I figured it was time to start getting things sorted out on this site. Expect the domain name to change in the near future. The tkdack.com domain name will remain for a while with everything redirecting to the new one, whatever that ends up being.

I’ve got a heap of photos from my recent deployment to the Middle East that I’ll eventually add to the gallery section.

Well we’ve nearly made it to the Arabian Gulf. Only a few more days to go and we’ll be there. So far it’s been a pretty boring trip, there really isn’t anything to see in the middle of the Indian Ocean. About the only thing we’ve seen is a couple of whales and some flying fish, so a pretty uneventful trip.

Nothing too exciting at the moment. We are making our way north west across the Indian Ocean. We’ll have one brief stop for fuel on our way to the Arabian Gulf. For those not too sure where I’m headed have a look at this map. We’ll be operating mainly in the northern end of the Gulf, protecting a couple of oil terminals that belong to Iraq.

Well we’re finally on our way to the Persian Gulf to undertake our role in Operational Catalyst.

We’ve had a busy few days in Western Australia reducing the ships magnetic signature, ammunitioning, taking onboard stores and fixing our last few niggling defects.

Had a couple of good days in Fremantle, spent more than I intended to but I’m pretty sure I’ve got everything I need to the trip.

Some more boarding party training starts tomorrow, by then end of this six months I should be reasonably fit, the challenge will be maintaining that.

Yippee, Fleet has arrived! We’ve got them for the rest of the week.  They’ve given us a bit of a touch up already and I’m sure there’s more to come. Luckily this week they are here to help us and give us guidance, rather than flog us completely.

Come early February when we have them on for 3 weeks it is going to get really interesting.