Whilst reading the SitePro newsletter, I heard about:

http://www.onlywire.com/ - for social bookmarking several sites at once

http://www.rorweb.com/ - ROR Sitemaps. XML sitemaps for describing any content for search engines.

Took advantage of the fact that the kids were up in Queensland for the school holidays, to escape to Cradle Mountain in Tasmania.

We caught a Virgin flight down to Launceston, and hired a car to drive to Cradle Mountain. Stopped off at Cataract Gorge first, to see the suspension bridge. Absolutely stunning. Even the peacock, who distracted me while I took a photo of him, and then stole my scone with jam.

On Saturday, Les and I went for a 3 hour guided walk around Dove Lake. It was a lovely, easy walk, and I fell in love with the colour combinations of the lake, trees and sky. Apparently the tannin from the button grass colours the water, creating a wonderful mix. You can check out my photos at www.flickr.com/ozgeekmum.

So, feeling adventurous, we planned to climb to the top of Marion’s Lookout on Sunday. A stunning ridge next to Cradle Mountain, it has views to Dove Lake on the left, and Crater Lake on the right.

That night it snowed. It was beautiful to wake up to, but we weren’t really geared up for hiking in the snow. I didn’t have gloves, and we bought one of the souvenir yellow poncho raincoats, in a nice vinyl.

We chose the difficult path, straight up the side of the mountain, figuring that we should get the hard part out of the way first, then have an easy, longer route back.

We made it to within 10mins of the top. At that point, standing near the top, with only a short, exposed ridge between us and the top of Marion’s Lookout, it was still snowing, and gusty. In fact it was so gusty, the wind actually shredded the raincoat into pieces, off my back whilst I was still wearing it. I’ve never actually had clothes ripped off my back by nature before. There were pieces of yellow raincoat blowing around the top of the mountain. Plus the small matter of being hardly able to feel my fingers, I didn’t think I could make it to the top.

We revived with a little Cradle Mountain whiskey from our room, some vegimite sandwiches we’d brought with us, and a superb dark ginger chocolate. Brought my fingers back to life with a nice warm chest, and set off home again.

Finished a beautiful weekend off with a decadent hot tub in the Health Spa attached to Cradle Mountain Lodge. It’s a beautiful outdoor hot tub, with stunning views over the bush.

An absolutely stunning time. Hope you liked the pictures from my trusty old Canon IXUS.

Luckily I can now leave the bank (available across the nation) I’ve used for the last four years, as they finally got off their butt and let me transfer my mortgage to another bank. It dragged on for months, from the start of the process, and in the last week I was getting phone calls from the mortgage broker complaining that the old bank wouldn’t talk to the mortgage broker or my new bank, and the old bank wouldn’t release the title deeds despite having the signed transfer document in their hot little hands.

Absolutely pathetic.

The first bad mark against them was when I asked for a joint account to require two signatures. First they said no. Then they said yes. They sent me a confirmation letter. Then they ignored it and let money go out with only one signature. It even went to their legal department, and they admitted they were in the wrong.

Then their ATM in the city malfunctioned and ate my card, for no reason. (Then I saw the piece of paper from a good samaritan fluttering nearby, warning people about the ATM). So, according to the instructions written on the ATM, I went to the local branch.

First they didn’t know they had an ATM there. Then they said I shouldn’t have come to the branch, as they outsourced ATM support. And then they said they couldn’t do anything about the ATM, or my card. They had to issue a new card and ATM.

When I worked at Westpac (the good guys) many years ago, that would have been crap. You had until the next day to retrieve the card and help the customer.

Of course, when the new card came, the new PIN didn’t work.

Then when my house insurance (with the same bank) was due, I didn’t receive a renewal. So they let it lapse. I was uncovered, until I rang and checked, knowing that my insurance was due at that time of year.

And almost every time I tried to use internet banking to transfer my money from the old bank to the new bank, their online access or transfers were always down.

Good riddance to bad banking, fellas.

My other nasty shopping experience was with IKEA this week.

I had a catalogue in the mail, and saw a cheap lamp, bookshelf and desk. Drove halfway across Sydney to get there. Eventually found the desk on display, and was underimpressed with the quality. Was casually informed by a wandering assistant how to record details of the item location. He verified that there were lots of the bookshelf in stock. But no desks. We also looked at some glassware, but found it too ugly to consider seriously.

Made it to the IKEA storeroom. Spent around half an hour, trying to find the bookshelf. It looked like there was one, but someone had scrawled all over the box, saying it was red. Somehow, multiple bookshelves had sold out in the last 10 minutes.

Giving it, I got the kids some ice cream. One lick and it fell to the ground. Kind of summed up the whole IKEA experience for us.

Got home, and mulled over it. Found out you could check the availability of items online. Rang up to see if it was possible to hold an item, or order online, or get it delivered. No. No. and No. And there were no desks, despite the guy saying they were getting more the next day.

I’m now cured of ever wanting to shop at IKEA again.

I wonder if the Google Calendar will display inside a post?

Ugly as all get out. Google has a form to et you specify basic colouring, but obviously not enough.

There is an alternative layout too:

Although you could have actually tabbed between the two formats.

A second software package is from Trumba.

That probably won’t fit on the page. And the free version has the Trumba advertising link at the bottom.