LOCAL NEWS
The stonewalling of police around the death of the twins continues to be reported, but with less interest. The police are being made to look pretty stupid, it has to be said. A disturbing incident is becoming considerably more so, and the messages that are being sent are all bad.
Big news on Friday is the re-exploitation of the Kupe gas field, which should give us 15% of our energy needs. That should help our balance of payments which has been abysmal.
The Broadcasting Standards Authority has rejected the record 35 complaints about the "Bloody Mary" episode of Southpark. This shows that common sense can occasionally prevail.
Telecom announced the separation of the company into wholesale and retail arms. Nobody was too impressed or concerned.
Power returned finally to everyone in South Canterbury, 18 days after the outage. Poor buggers, it has been pretty cold.
Activist Tama Iti, displaying further scant regard for the law, has auctioned the flag he supposedly shot with a shotgun, to defray the fines for having shot the flag in the first place. It turns out the Crown also has the flag, and so does his tribe (so it sounds like he shot a couple of extras for posterity). This is bizarre. It was removed from trademe before it closed.
There was a piece in the news about five "prisoners" escaping home detention this year, including a violent offender. I wonder how many escaped jail detention? This is quite pathetic. Home detention must be like a "get out of jail free" card.
A police memo has been leaked that suggests that the police have a little competition for getting the most speeding tickets. The Ministry denies it of course. Despite evidence of clear monitoring of results in ticketing. However, if people speed less, how can they issue more tickets? Again, we have a situation where a very bad message is being sent to the public. If the press had their act together they would challenge the assertion that the memo was just someone going to far and ask some hard questions like "but how come it refers to end of year results and regional reports? Is that all fictional?".
WORLD NEWS
A New Zealand man has died in Thailand after being stabbed, supposedly for not letting the stabber have sex with the stabbee's girlfriend.
For some reason, the news of Warren Buffet giving the Gates foundation 80% of his considerable fortune has been repeated on the news over, and over, and over again. Either it has made a particularly big impression on news agencies or they are losing the plot.
Israel seem to be getting physical again, looking for a missing soldier. I hope he isn't just awol.
GW almost completed a coherent sentence in a speech.
The space shuttle launch has been delayed again.
REAL SPORT
Hannah came home very happy on Thursday. Her class was in the final of the class soccer tournament, and Hannah scored the only goal. Head very big after that.
Her soccer team were playing a team they should have beaten, but despite a number of chances just couldn't score. They lost the game 0-1 through a defensive lapse in a goal mouth melee. It was not pretty. Was disappointing after their beyond-expectations win the week before. No soccer next weekend due to school holidays.
Hannah attended a soccer trial on Sunday. It is for an 12th grade team for a tournament in October but with a mini-tournament on 23rd July. We should hear how she did in about a week. I think she looked pretty good, to be honest. Maybe a few players better but not many. We shall see if I am biased or correct.
PanPac tournament starts this Thursday for Rory. We go to the opening ceremony tonight.
SPORT
Big final of netball on Friday night, BOP Magic versus Southern Sting. Sting have won like seven titles in last nine years. Magic were defending champions. First final held in North Island for ten years or so.
England are out of the World Cup, again. Bollocks. I only want them to win for very historical reasons. I don't like the way they play and they have some complete tossers in the team (like Gary Neville). Rooney is a git for getting a red card.
Germany's win over Argentina was lame, like the England v Portugal game it showed that an open exciting style can be stifled by an ugly boring one. Italy showed that the Ukraine were lucky to be in the final eight.
The Warriors won again this weekend, fourth game in a row. Not sure it enough to get them into the finals but it is certainly helping improve their season.
Team New Zealand won a pre-America's Cup regatta, beating Alinghi in the final. There have been soo many. They lost in the pre-pre-America's Cup regatta, and so on. Not even sure when the real thing starts.
MY SAD LIFE
Got news on Thursday that Les Dobson had died overnight. Had been told the week before that he had been given six to twelve months. He was a client of mine, worked pretty closely with him for about four years. He semi-retired last year and I helped him sort out with his home network. He had been pretty sick, virtually had a new stomach constructed out of his intestine. In December he looked like his own grandfather, was a thin, pale version of his former self. Can't say I always got on famously with him, in fact one time I actually told him I was not prepared to take any more of his crap and resigned. Despite that, our working relationship continued for a couple of years beyond that event. They are holding a very quiet family only service in Wellington, where his kids all live.
Major revelation in Rory's world this week. He seems to have realised that parents actually don't have to spend their entire lives taking children places and helping with homework and they might even prefer to do other things. He seems to have begun to show some genuine appreciation of the effort we put in. This is quite a breakthrough.
I think Diana hates clothes pegs, or me. She throws washing into the dryer, starts it, then goes out. On Friday, I removed TWELVE clothes pegs from the dryer. In about seven attempts. I would restart the dryer then hear another one, stop it, remove it, and repeat. Got five the first time. It is damned noisy with twelve pegs in there.
We are seeing Gavin on Wednesday. Gavin is seeing Jana on Thursday. Gavin isn't seeing daylight until Monday.
Been working on a speech with Hannah this week for school. I emailed a guy on the web who's web page listed a play that was very much along the lines of the chosen topic, he emailed me back and a couple of days later he sent me a PDF of the play, which I thought was pretty cool.
This Friday it will be three years since Dad died.
Saturday is Heidi's birthday. Happy Birthday Heidi. Do the minties count as a present?
A VARIATION ON THE GLASS IS HALF EMPTY
A discovery in the pantry over the weekend (you remember, it's a big pantry). There were five jars of peanut butter in there. This is because Rory gets a jar to the point where there only enough peanut butter for about five or six pieces of toast, then moves on to the next one. You can't begin to imagine some of the things that I said when I made this discovery. I have removed the two most full jars until he uses the others. I am not even counting the jar of peanut butter he doesn't like in the five.
CONTRIBUTION FROM GUESS WHO
Just to let you know Hannah is the best daughter in the world and she rocks at her sports for soccer she got nominated for a rosebowl team which is made up of Auckland reps. Yesterday was the trials for this team and I think she is in the top five.
(this is what happens when someone gets to read the email before it is sent, no idea what else has been changed)
Next Monday I will reveal the surprise. I hope you are in suspense.
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