Arguably, my own view isn't always particularly discerning, as many of you could readily attest.
LOCAL NEWS
There has been lots of news about a teacher that was a convicted sex offender. There's no detail about the offence, it was a while ago, but I am not sure where I stand on it. He's teacher 15yo girls, and to be honest, they can stick up for themselves from what I have seen. I suppose that they can't really tell the kids about him, but in some ways I wonder if that might be a good idea.
We had a few fatal car crashes, a quad bike death (tragic loss of a fun loving son, you know the drill). Just your usual sort of thing.
Some motorcyclist died while competing in a timed hill climb event. There was no mention of whether he was beating the winning time.
Some young girls were hit by a train and hurt when they leapt to avoid the said train. I can't help but wonder why people aren't calling for better supervision of children, etc. They don't seem to be blaming the train, which surprises the hell out of me.
The wharf strike at Auckland has continued, with the workers who labour 26 hours a week for a mere $91,000 now being made redundant (and getting up to a year payout). This, not being good enough, was motivation for them to block rush hour traffic this morning, not sure who feels more supportive of them as a result, I would love to meet them and learn their views on euthanasia for the criminally deranged.
Former All Black and current (temporarily) administrator Jock Hobbs is in hospital for what sounds like it is the last time. Funny, nobody seems to have bought his story for the women's magazines.
There's been a bit of noise about an New Zealand woman who's husband has taken their children to Algeria and she can't get them back. It all sounds exceedingly dodgy (he took the whole family back there on the pretext his father was ill, he wasn't, he took all their passports, and held them captive, the woman escaped but left her kids behind, which seems odd).
There's been a bit of noise about New Zealand cricketers involved with match fixing. I don't really get it, because a) you would think that most punters would know better by now, b) you would think that most bookies would know better by now, c) what happens if a punter fixes something and a bookie fixes something that goes contrary to the other "fixing". There are, after all, two teams in most matches. And finally, d) New Zealand are crap and anyone betting on them to win anything must know something, or have way too much money, in which case why don't they just donate it to someone?
They reckon reported HIV cases in New Zealand are dropping. I didn't notice any ACC statistics this week, which is disappointing. I suppose, given that you don't contract HIV deliberately (well, not very often) then perhaps this could be considered accidental. Oh, and after I wrote this I saw an article about a woman that won compo from ACC for the stress of her lover was HIV positive. Couldn't have asked first? Couldn't have used the usual precautions? Nope. ACC is there.
WORLD NEWS
I know I shouldn't laugh at the misfortune of others, but sometimes it is particularly hard not to. The case of a Sri Lankan man, for example, who was setting a record for being buried alive. The problem was, when they dug him out he wasn't alive any more. So now they don't know how long he was buried alive before he was buried the regular way. Technically, he was alive but unconscious, so he was still alive, but they could have saved a lot of bother if they just left him buried.
Joseph Kony 2012. I shouldn't say anything, but this guy came out of nowhere, a nasty Ugandan man who gets kids to kill their parents and then join his army. He put the infant back in to infantry, and created sooo many memes and jokes in such a short time. The man is a legend. And yet, according to some he was kicked out of Uganda years ago, so the whole thing is a total joke.
I did put this on Facebook, but this is an utterly insane corkscrew, and very very cool: http://youtu.be/31cl8Obftdg
Things in Afghanistan don't seem to be going too well for the Americans, I suppose killing 16 villagers is considered rude. Given the view on destroying the Koran, I love the idea of cladding Humvees and soldiers in them.
The Republican primaries drag on. I saw a bumper sticker that said "America - don't re-nig 2012". Very nice.
Apparently Iraq has a new sport, killing Emos.
The USS Enterprise is on it's last mission. It is a 50 year old aircraft carrier. I think it is being scrapped, which is a terrible shame. I would love to see it.
The solar storm was a non-event of non-biblical proportions. The guys on the ISS didn't even get super powers.
REAL SPORT
Hannah's volleyball team beat Kristin on Wednesday. My junior boys lost 5-15 to Mags B but they had a few A players in the team.
SPORT
Lionel Messi scored five goals in a Champs League game this week, the dude is awesome. I watched the video here a couple of weeks ago - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9S7hlL4sJek
The Black Caps lost the first test to SA. Not sure why I mention this because it isn't really news or noteworthy. They are nowhere near the class of the South Africans, and to think otherwise is simply delusional.
Man Utd beat West Brom 2-0 thanks to that Rooney person. Swansea City missed a penalty but somehow scored at the other end of the game to beat Man City 1-0. Chelsea squeaked past Stoke 1-0 in the 93rd minute 1-0. Sunderland got a valuable 1-0 at the expense of Liverpool. Spurs lost 0-1 to Everton. Man Utd have squeaked past City to lead the table now with daylight coming third, Spurs are well behind then Arsenal and Chelsea 4th equal.
I didn't hear anything about the Super 15, although I heard Kevin Mealamu got a bottle in the back of the head during the game against the Bulls.
Local sportswoman Valerie Adams now holds every major title in the shot put.
MY SAD LIFE
I spent the week dealing with the ever more complex obstacle course at Western Springs Lake as they built more stages, toilets and stalls for Pasifika on Saturday. It takes them about 2 weeks to set it up, which seems bizarre. It is on for one day only, doesn't seem worth the bother.
Hannah has thrown herself completely into the shave for a cure thing, and is grinding away at her target. She is planning to sell the right to shave her head on trademe now, which may draw some attention. She wore sandwich boards on Queen St on Saturday and three of them raised a further $400.
Diana and Hannah finished their pattern making course at night school, it was only four weeks.
Charles donated (although I suspect it might have been Steph) to Shave for a Cure, Hilary Barry (a TV3 newsreader) donated half as much as Charles. She is about two weeks away from doing the deed. If you want to, the link is here http://www.shaveforacure.co.nz/view_event_profile/5792.
Speaking of Charles, I see it is Steph's birthday on Friday, hope you have the gift sorted dude.
Meanwhile, on top of this, she has found someone for her food tech project, a lady called Philippa who is opening a bakery in Grey Lynn, she has met with her a couple of times and Philippa seems to be streaming considerable amounts of data into Hannah by email and verbally. It's good experience for Hannah, so fingers crossed.
On Friday night, water polo was at EGGS, so Diana came with me and we went to One Tree Hill and walked up it from Sorrento, only took half an hour. There were tons of sheep wandering around and getting in the way, and plenty of sheep poo also.
Saturday, because of Pasifika, getting anywhere was logistically challenging. We dropped Hannah off at a meeting with Phillipa, went to Lake Pupuke for coffee and watched some newbie divers and a woman feeding her toddler to the ducks. Then we came home and attacked the garden a fair bit.
I still haven't fired up the 3d printer but I did do some fiddling and I think I am going to have a crack anyway. There is a little slope on the base plate but it is about 1mm the entire range of it so it isn't a lot and I am not certain how I can readily fix it.
Diana and I watched an interesting documentary called The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. I don't really approve of reality show nonsense, but this was oddly compelling, I think we understand hillbillies a little better now. Not sure if that is of any use at all, but there you go.
On Sunday it was a bit wet, so we went to the movies. Diana saw some Marilyn Monroe thing and me, Rory, Koos, and Gavin saw John Carter and it was pretty good, I think. Certainly didn't deserve all the buzz about there not being any buzz.
Rory just posted on facebook that he got round of applause from a group of old ladies (probably over 30s) on a bus. Diana wants to know why. I just hope he remembered to wear pants.
Diana is having the book coven here tomorrow. Trying to think of somewhere to go.
And with that thought, I shall leave you all in relative peace, until next Monday NZDST…
12 March 2012
8 March 2012
Double standards, weather wise, and Hannah is going to shave her head for cancer.
LOCAL NEWS
Local man Bret McKenzie won an Oscar, so there was no escaping that news. I still disagree with awards in sport and show business. Until we have dentists, teachers, and panel beaters on the red carpet then I think we should boycott such things. Someone edited his Wikipedia entry and every time his name was mentioned it said "Bret Oscar Winning McKenzie", but they fixed it.
That tosser Kim Dotcom wanted to have $220,000 released per month for living expenses. That would pay for a charter plane out of the country, pretty easily, I suspect.
February 29th upset EFTPOS machines in New Zealand and Australia, pathetic.
There was a fuss because five kids were locked in a van while their parents were gambling. If they were in a queue at the bank, nobody would care. Good thing they weren't filming porn or something. What if they locked their kids in the van while they were delivering food parcels to the poor or doling out soup in a soup kitchen? Bet nobody would care then.
There seems to be increasing amounts of industrial action. The Auckland port is still largely shut and the Australians are threatening to mistreat any vessel that does business in Auckland with scabs. Affco locked out meatworker and had people standing around doing very little (so, a normal day, with slightly less risk of personal injury).
It was announced that Christchurch Cathedral is officially knackered.
Nasty weather that drenched NSW came to the North Island for a change of scenery, pretty windy and wet on Saturday. Apparently "weather bomb" is an actual measurable phrase in weatherology (meteorology is the study of meteors, how could it be anything to do with weather?).
Some crazy woman that secretly was pregnant, gave birth on her own, and then smothered the baby and kept it in a wardrobe until it was discovered 40 days later turned out to have done pretty much the same thing a couple of years before. These kind of people need to be sterilised. She also should become a midwife, sounds like she knows what she is doing in the delivery department, as long as she can not smother them afterward.
A skydiver that was part of the half time entertainment at Eden Park injured his leg in one of a number of rough landings due to swirling winds.
Some wine swilling snobs are whinging about an ad for beer that suggests in the 80's men had to drink wine because the beer wasn't very sophisticated until DB Export Dry was invented. Pathetic.
The Raspberry Pi computer made the news here. It's been around a while, it kind of surprised me in that a computer that small has been around for a long time, just not as connectable or cheap, I suppose.
The Auckland Mayor is doing an incredibly good job of getting himself voted out very bloody fast. Every view he takes seems to be the opposite of common sense. I just hope we find a clear candidate to take over that is not certifiably insane.
An 8 year old boy was driving around Wellington in an SUV this morning, wearing pyjamas. He hit a few cars and walls, which isn't really atypical of the average incompetent SUV driver if you ask me. Not sure if the clothing makes a lot of difference, but adds some colour to the whole thing. (Blue, in case you are wondering).
WORLD NEWS
There was a fire on a sister ship of the dreaded Costa Concordia, not a promising trend. Sounded pretty grim for a couple of days without power or water. Very Lord of the Flies.
There was a low volume shooting at a school in Cleveland. Isn't it oddly inconsistent that America seems to be the home of the bully and yet it is also a place where handguns are reasonably accessible. It got me thinking though, in places like Sierra Leone, do they have random shootings at schools and stuff (if they actually have schools) given that it feels like kids are born with AK-47s or RPGs in their hand…
Auto-correct on an iPhone caused an emergency at an American school when "gunna" was changed to "gunman" in a text from a student there.
Monkee Davy Jones has died, I think that means they need to lose one more before they are in the same position as the Beatles. On the good side, it was better having their music on the radio that Whitney's. I think it was coincidence that the episode of Modern Family this week that screened in the US included the lines:
Man A - Hey
Man B - Hey
Man A&B together - We're the monkeys.
(they were dressing up as Wizard of Oz flying monkeys). It made me laugh, anyway. So did the speculation as to whether he would be buried in his own locker.
Gavin noted that the New Zealand press was all about weather bombs and "it was like a war zone, trees were snapping like twigs" {news flash, trees ARE big twigs}. Meanwhile, 30 odd people died in the US from twisters and stuff and nobody really cared here.
Nice bit from NewsThump - a dress wearing 73 year old unmarried celibate man spoke out against gay marriage. Just because the Cardinal has no clue what he's talking about doesn't stop him. Plenty of people on that particular train, friend.
Legendary artist Ralph McQuarrie died over the weekend, at 82. To be fair, I kind of thought he was dead already so I won't pretend I am particularly sad. He designed a lot of the Star Wars characters, weapons, and people (like Vader) and a ton of other stuff.
REAL SPORT
My junior boys lost 4-7 to St Peters B on Friday night. Hannah's volleyball team lost both games this week, but one very narrowly.
SPORT
Jamaica beat the All Whites 3-2 on Wednesday night. I did consider going, but didn't. Only 15,000 actually did.
The Black Caps kept losing to the South Africans, no real surprises to any sane intelligent people. This, of course, means the media didn't expect it at all.
Fulham smacked Wolves 5-0, Man Utd managed a 3-1 away win over Spurs, Sunderland had a draw against Newcastle, Liverpool lost 1-2 to Arsenal, Man City beat Bolton 2-0, Chelsea lost 0-1 to West Bromich Albion, so Roman Abramovich bought them with the change he had in his car's ashtray.
The Warriors lost their first game of the season, the Blues lost their second. In fact, there were three games at Eden Park in three days and the home team lost each time. The Highlanders beat the Crusaders, I think.
MY SAD LIFE
I didn't get billed for any excess consumption from my ISP, I was pretty surprised, but what the heck. I got another four days free this week. While my IP phone continues to occasionally cut out mid conversation, I will take everything I can get. I also discovered my call waiting functionality has been disabled. I am not happy.
So, a few days back we gave Diana heaps for clicking on something on Facebook from Jackie, who had clearly been somewhere dodgy. Rory did especially. So then on Wednesday, we all got emails from "Rory". Turns out that a while back he changed his hotmail password because of the same problem, but he decided to change it back to the old password and BANG, all the spam started flying again. Who's the noob now?
Tuesday night I went to a manspace meeting, it was pretty scary, but I met a couple of guys who were fiddling with their own version of a reprap 3d printer, was vaguely useful and relatively interesting.
Friday was a pretty big day for me, went to Hamilton, tooted meaningless fake support to the locked out workers at Horotiu, meeting at 9am, back home by about 2:30pm, then went to polo, home by about 5pm, saw a P-lab bust going down on Meola Road on the way home.
Hannah did a lot of cooking this week. A birthday cake for someone, some cookies, éclairs, and two lots of bread. Not sure whether it was stress baking or procrastibaking. Either way, there was plenty of mess.
As I noted on Facebook on Saturday, I really have to stop putting my dirty laundry in the rubbish bin. A) it makes the rubbish bin smell bad, B) it creates concern and worry for anyone who observes the behaviour, and often that includes me, and C) I am running out of socks....
I redeemed myself later in the day by fixing Hannah's computer. With a vacuum cleaner…FTW!
Then a bit later still, I forgot where I left my gherkin. I think on balance I didn't win on Saturday.
Diana and I went out on Saturday, because despite not being home much on Friday, I just needed to get out for a while. We went to Bluebird Café for some serenity, and that boosted my levels considerably. Then we went in to the city, and fought with a parking meter. This time, my tool of choice was a pocket knife, and I won, sort of. We managed to force enough change into it to get just over an hour parking, but more would have been nice. We walked past the new art gallery, and would have gone in if the parking meter hadn't been so uncooperative. We went to a shoe store, Pat Menzies, my favourite shoe store for some considerable time (I seriously wonder if I own any shoes that didn't come from there now, I think one dead pair of crocs and my dog walking shoes would be all). Diana ended up assisting an Indian guy who needed shoes to match his suit for a wedding (turned out it was his wedding, later on). I got some new plastic shoes for poolside. On the way back, I got some new jeans, two pairs, and nearly bought a suit but we ran out of time (so, council, your fascist parking machinery prevented me from visiting the $120m art gallery upgrade and one of your retailers missed out on selling a suit, how's that working out for you?).
The whole parking experience helped inspire me, alongside Diana's $100 battle with the insurance company, and I think I have resolved to start fighting back. I intend to start shit stirring very soon (after I hit send on this).
Rory's first week at Uni was decorated with contrasting visits to Sciences and Arts faculties to change things. Science is particularly fast and efficient, and Arts requires all forms to have a photo of a rainbow attached. He has stolen Diana's ebook reader, she seems remarkably okay with it so far.
My friend Matt, plus Kristy and Michaela were supposed to be doing a run thing for cancer on Saturday night but it was cancelled due to the weather, which actually wasn't that bad, and by Sunday we had a very crisp clear day (with a good bit of wind, but who's complaining).
On Sunday, Diana and I went to Devonport, visited the craft market (which was mostly pretty gay and feeble) and had lunch in the sun by the water.
Hannah is shaving her head on March 27th. She is selling her hair and donating the proceeds to Shave for a Cure, a cancer charity. She is selling the hair, which is pretty damn long, and donating that also. I don't think hair is worth very much, you can't really make a living growing it. If you wish to donate you can here (you can leave a message and your name, even a $1 gets you that (maybe even less), would be awesome if some of you could) http://www.shaveforacure.co.nz/view_event_profile/5792
It would be really cool if you could leave messages, especially where in the world you are from, that would be neat.
I am hoping to score some matching beanies from Lothlorian, once I know how many at her school are doing it, so far I think about ten.
Oh well, I can't think of who I haven't managed to offend, so I will stop anyway with the thought that if I haven't offended you by now, it's probably because you're not very important.
Local man Bret McKenzie won an Oscar, so there was no escaping that news. I still disagree with awards in sport and show business. Until we have dentists, teachers, and panel beaters on the red carpet then I think we should boycott such things. Someone edited his Wikipedia entry and every time his name was mentioned it said "Bret Oscar Winning McKenzie", but they fixed it.
That tosser Kim Dotcom wanted to have $220,000 released per month for living expenses. That would pay for a charter plane out of the country, pretty easily, I suspect.
February 29th upset EFTPOS machines in New Zealand and Australia, pathetic.
There was a fuss because five kids were locked in a van while their parents were gambling. If they were in a queue at the bank, nobody would care. Good thing they weren't filming porn or something. What if they locked their kids in the van while they were delivering food parcels to the poor or doling out soup in a soup kitchen? Bet nobody would care then.
There seems to be increasing amounts of industrial action. The Auckland port is still largely shut and the Australians are threatening to mistreat any vessel that does business in Auckland with scabs. Affco locked out meatworker and had people standing around doing very little (so, a normal day, with slightly less risk of personal injury).
It was announced that Christchurch Cathedral is officially knackered.
Nasty weather that drenched NSW came to the North Island for a change of scenery, pretty windy and wet on Saturday. Apparently "weather bomb" is an actual measurable phrase in weatherology (meteorology is the study of meteors, how could it be anything to do with weather?).
Some crazy woman that secretly was pregnant, gave birth on her own, and then smothered the baby and kept it in a wardrobe until it was discovered 40 days later turned out to have done pretty much the same thing a couple of years before. These kind of people need to be sterilised. She also should become a midwife, sounds like she knows what she is doing in the delivery department, as long as she can not smother them afterward.
A skydiver that was part of the half time entertainment at Eden Park injured his leg in one of a number of rough landings due to swirling winds.
Some wine swilling snobs are whinging about an ad for beer that suggests in the 80's men had to drink wine because the beer wasn't very sophisticated until DB Export Dry was invented. Pathetic.
The Raspberry Pi computer made the news here. It's been around a while, it kind of surprised me in that a computer that small has been around for a long time, just not as connectable or cheap, I suppose.
The Auckland Mayor is doing an incredibly good job of getting himself voted out very bloody fast. Every view he takes seems to be the opposite of common sense. I just hope we find a clear candidate to take over that is not certifiably insane.
An 8 year old boy was driving around Wellington in an SUV this morning, wearing pyjamas. He hit a few cars and walls, which isn't really atypical of the average incompetent SUV driver if you ask me. Not sure if the clothing makes a lot of difference, but adds some colour to the whole thing. (Blue, in case you are wondering).
WORLD NEWS
There was a fire on a sister ship of the dreaded Costa Concordia, not a promising trend. Sounded pretty grim for a couple of days without power or water. Very Lord of the Flies.
There was a low volume shooting at a school in Cleveland. Isn't it oddly inconsistent that America seems to be the home of the bully and yet it is also a place where handguns are reasonably accessible. It got me thinking though, in places like Sierra Leone, do they have random shootings at schools and stuff (if they actually have schools) given that it feels like kids are born with AK-47s or RPGs in their hand…
Auto-correct on an iPhone caused an emergency at an American school when "gunna" was changed to "gunman" in a text from a student there.
Monkee Davy Jones has died, I think that means they need to lose one more before they are in the same position as the Beatles. On the good side, it was better having their music on the radio that Whitney's. I think it was coincidence that the episode of Modern Family this week that screened in the US included the lines:
Man A - Hey
Man B - Hey
Man A&B together - We're the monkeys.
(they were dressing up as Wizard of Oz flying monkeys). It made me laugh, anyway. So did the speculation as to whether he would be buried in his own locker.
Gavin noted that the New Zealand press was all about weather bombs and "it was like a war zone, trees were snapping like twigs" {news flash, trees ARE big twigs}. Meanwhile, 30 odd people died in the US from twisters and stuff and nobody really cared here.
Nice bit from NewsThump - a dress wearing 73 year old unmarried celibate man spoke out against gay marriage. Just because the Cardinal has no clue what he's talking about doesn't stop him. Plenty of people on that particular train, friend.
Legendary artist Ralph McQuarrie died over the weekend, at 82. To be fair, I kind of thought he was dead already so I won't pretend I am particularly sad. He designed a lot of the Star Wars characters, weapons, and people (like Vader) and a ton of other stuff.
REAL SPORT
My junior boys lost 4-7 to St Peters B on Friday night. Hannah's volleyball team lost both games this week, but one very narrowly.
SPORT
Jamaica beat the All Whites 3-2 on Wednesday night. I did consider going, but didn't. Only 15,000 actually did.
The Black Caps kept losing to the South Africans, no real surprises to any sane intelligent people. This, of course, means the media didn't expect it at all.
Fulham smacked Wolves 5-0, Man Utd managed a 3-1 away win over Spurs, Sunderland had a draw against Newcastle, Liverpool lost 1-2 to Arsenal, Man City beat Bolton 2-0, Chelsea lost 0-1 to West Bromich Albion, so Roman Abramovich bought them with the change he had in his car's ashtray.
The Warriors lost their first game of the season, the Blues lost their second. In fact, there were three games at Eden Park in three days and the home team lost each time. The Highlanders beat the Crusaders, I think.
MY SAD LIFE
I didn't get billed for any excess consumption from my ISP, I was pretty surprised, but what the heck. I got another four days free this week. While my IP phone continues to occasionally cut out mid conversation, I will take everything I can get. I also discovered my call waiting functionality has been disabled. I am not happy.
So, a few days back we gave Diana heaps for clicking on something on Facebook from Jackie, who had clearly been somewhere dodgy. Rory did especially. So then on Wednesday, we all got emails from "Rory". Turns out that a while back he changed his hotmail password because of the same problem, but he decided to change it back to the old password and BANG, all the spam started flying again. Who's the noob now?
Tuesday night I went to a manspace meeting, it was pretty scary, but I met a couple of guys who were fiddling with their own version of a reprap 3d printer, was vaguely useful and relatively interesting.
Friday was a pretty big day for me, went to Hamilton, tooted meaningless fake support to the locked out workers at Horotiu, meeting at 9am, back home by about 2:30pm, then went to polo, home by about 5pm, saw a P-lab bust going down on Meola Road on the way home.
Hannah did a lot of cooking this week. A birthday cake for someone, some cookies, éclairs, and two lots of bread. Not sure whether it was stress baking or procrastibaking. Either way, there was plenty of mess.
As I noted on Facebook on Saturday, I really have to stop putting my dirty laundry in the rubbish bin. A) it makes the rubbish bin smell bad, B) it creates concern and worry for anyone who observes the behaviour, and often that includes me, and C) I am running out of socks....
I redeemed myself later in the day by fixing Hannah's computer. With a vacuum cleaner…FTW!
Then a bit later still, I forgot where I left my gherkin. I think on balance I didn't win on Saturday.
Diana and I went out on Saturday, because despite not being home much on Friday, I just needed to get out for a while. We went to Bluebird Café for some serenity, and that boosted my levels considerably. Then we went in to the city, and fought with a parking meter. This time, my tool of choice was a pocket knife, and I won, sort of. We managed to force enough change into it to get just over an hour parking, but more would have been nice. We walked past the new art gallery, and would have gone in if the parking meter hadn't been so uncooperative. We went to a shoe store, Pat Menzies, my favourite shoe store for some considerable time (I seriously wonder if I own any shoes that didn't come from there now, I think one dead pair of crocs and my dog walking shoes would be all). Diana ended up assisting an Indian guy who needed shoes to match his suit for a wedding (turned out it was his wedding, later on). I got some new plastic shoes for poolside. On the way back, I got some new jeans, two pairs, and nearly bought a suit but we ran out of time (so, council, your fascist parking machinery prevented me from visiting the $120m art gallery upgrade and one of your retailers missed out on selling a suit, how's that working out for you?).
The whole parking experience helped inspire me, alongside Diana's $100 battle with the insurance company, and I think I have resolved to start fighting back. I intend to start shit stirring very soon (after I hit send on this).
Rory's first week at Uni was decorated with contrasting visits to Sciences and Arts faculties to change things. Science is particularly fast and efficient, and Arts requires all forms to have a photo of a rainbow attached. He has stolen Diana's ebook reader, she seems remarkably okay with it so far.
My friend Matt, plus Kristy and Michaela were supposed to be doing a run thing for cancer on Saturday night but it was cancelled due to the weather, which actually wasn't that bad, and by Sunday we had a very crisp clear day (with a good bit of wind, but who's complaining).
On Sunday, Diana and I went to Devonport, visited the craft market (which was mostly pretty gay and feeble) and had lunch in the sun by the water.
Hannah is shaving her head on March 27th. She is selling her hair and donating the proceeds to Shave for a Cure, a cancer charity. She is selling the hair, which is pretty damn long, and donating that also. I don't think hair is worth very much, you can't really make a living growing it. If you wish to donate you can here (you can leave a message and your name, even a $1 gets you that (maybe even less), would be awesome if some of you could) http://www.shaveforacure.co.nz/view_event_profile/5792
It would be really cool if you could leave messages, especially where in the world you are from, that would be neat.
I am hoping to score some matching beanies from Lothlorian, once I know how many at her school are doing it, so far I think about ten.
Oh well, I can't think of who I haven't managed to offend, so I will stop anyway with the thought that if I haven't offended you by now, it's probably because you're not very important.
27 February 2012
Late and largely boring, I would complain if I was you
LOCAL NEWS
We had a third traumatic toilet event, this time in Picton with a Canadian tourist.
On Wednesday there was no news other than the earthquake anniversary. And it just kept going.
An escaped prisoner was found hiding in the ceiling of a house. Perhaps there was no air conditioning ducting handy, that always works in the movies.
Lucy Lawless was true to her name, when she broke the law. Her daughter works at JB with Rory, but I think her surname is different. She looks a bit like her mother. Lawless was arrested today.
The woman who fought being fined for "parking" when she was giving way to a spy car, still has to pay the fine. Not fine, not at all.
Beer consumption is up, however I challenge that statistic based on the fact that purchase <> consumption. I have beer I bought last year. I am sure many people do.
The message this week from ACC was "never approach a goat from the front, a horse from behind or a shark from any side". I presume that next year we will get statistics on how effective that message was.
Jonah Lomu is back in hospital, I am guessing he needed to sell another exclusive story. Hope he gets enough money. Not.
The fact that fruit juice and honey are considered unhealthy seemed to surprise a lot of people. Just remember, if you are of average intelligence that half the population are not as clever as you. This would be where journalists come from. And Editors are from below them. And Publishers are below them. Then there is Rupert Murdoch.
WORLD NEWS
The leadership struggle in Australia got plenty of attention. Feels a bit like Witchy-poo versus Puf-n-stuf, not sure either of them are much use. Anyway, Julia kept the job, I reckon she's scarier than Auntie Helen. She's like Thatcher and Helen's bastard love child or something.
There are plans to sequester a million tonnes of CO2 under Illinois in sandstone. It got me wondering. What if one day we discover that all the oil we drill up came from sequestered CO2 that the intelligent dinosaurs pumped down there because they had a greenhouse problem, and they did too much and caused an ice age? Regardless, it doesn't seem like much of an answer to me.
Good grief, the Aussies are still going on about Azaria Chamberlain, the baby supposedly taken by a dingo waay back in 1980. I am guessing there is a good chance the dingo is long since dead.
I saw a thing about making factory farmed chickens brain dead for high density production. Interesting matrix-like connotations there. Hard to say whether it's better or worse. Kind of eliminates the whole suffering argument though.
The Sun doing a Sunday edition (basically News of the World in drag) made headlines. I really don't know why.
Things in Syria are still pretty rough.
There was quite a lot of coverage of the idea that humans should sleep 4 hours, wake up for one or two hours, then sleep another 4. I am not sure I want to try it.
The Oscars are happening today, I really don't care. Neither should you.
REAL SPORT
My junior water polo boys had their first game, B team versus A team, they lost 1-12. They actually did okay.
SPORT
The Super X started again (is it 15? I forget). The Crusaders just beat the Blues, the Highlanders just beat the Chiefs, Hurricanes lost to some South African team.
Arsenal beat Spurs 5-2, Man Utd staggered past Norwich 2-1, Chelsea won 3-0 over Bolton, WBA beat Sunderland 4-0, Man City beat Blackburn 3-0.
I think the Black Caps lost an ODI to SA.
MY SAD LIFE
After Diana's struggles with insurance, she wrote a letter. Believe it or not, it actually resulted in a response from a real person. It resulted in us getting a $100 bribe. Not sure what we will do with it. Probably nothing.
As we got close to the end of our internet billing cycle, we were averaging about 10gb per day. We did over 30Gb one day. Some people use 30Gb a month - noobs.
I saw Allan on day 3 after his upgrade, he was using crutches. I was thoroughly disappointed that he had no wifi or device to use wifi. I would have had the surgeons put one inside my leg, I think. They go in through the front, which seemed odd, but apparently it minimises disruption of tendons, veins, arteries, and stuff.
Koos came over on Thursday night, we assembled the electronics, cut a wire, soldered a wire, connected to the PC and actually got it talking. Can't actually print anything yet, have a software issue, but I will work on it.
Diana and I spent some money in the hope of organising various things better, and it did seem to help. I have learned that it's easier to organise crap if you get rid of a lot of it.
Hannah's life seems to be back to utterly full-on out of control-ness. Not sure how we feel about facing a year of that, because it's pretty hard for everyone in the fallout zone, which is quite a bit zone. Meanwhile, Rory seems to live in a world which goes by the following rule "I can't help because I am too busy at Uni, or I can't help because I am on holiday." The shortened version is "I can't help because I want to play LOL and browse Reddit". His back is still sore.
I offended Hannah by giving her key to the Falcon to the insurance company, who had actually bought the car. I didn't know it had meaning. I also got the number plates from the Falcon back this week. Now they are Falcon useless. I may put them on trademe, perhaps.
I better press send, I keep getting distracted.
We had a third traumatic toilet event, this time in Picton with a Canadian tourist.
On Wednesday there was no news other than the earthquake anniversary. And it just kept going.
An escaped prisoner was found hiding in the ceiling of a house. Perhaps there was no air conditioning ducting handy, that always works in the movies.
Lucy Lawless was true to her name, when she broke the law. Her daughter works at JB with Rory, but I think her surname is different. She looks a bit like her mother. Lawless was arrested today.
The woman who fought being fined for "parking" when she was giving way to a spy car, still has to pay the fine. Not fine, not at all.
Beer consumption is up, however I challenge that statistic based on the fact that purchase <> consumption. I have beer I bought last year. I am sure many people do.
The message this week from ACC was "never approach a goat from the front, a horse from behind or a shark from any side". I presume that next year we will get statistics on how effective that message was.
Jonah Lomu is back in hospital, I am guessing he needed to sell another exclusive story. Hope he gets enough money. Not.
The fact that fruit juice and honey are considered unhealthy seemed to surprise a lot of people. Just remember, if you are of average intelligence that half the population are not as clever as you. This would be where journalists come from. And Editors are from below them. And Publishers are below them. Then there is Rupert Murdoch.
WORLD NEWS
The leadership struggle in Australia got plenty of attention. Feels a bit like Witchy-poo versus Puf-n-stuf, not sure either of them are much use. Anyway, Julia kept the job, I reckon she's scarier than Auntie Helen. She's like Thatcher and Helen's bastard love child or something.
There are plans to sequester a million tonnes of CO2 under Illinois in sandstone. It got me wondering. What if one day we discover that all the oil we drill up came from sequestered CO2 that the intelligent dinosaurs pumped down there because they had a greenhouse problem, and they did too much and caused an ice age? Regardless, it doesn't seem like much of an answer to me.
Good grief, the Aussies are still going on about Azaria Chamberlain, the baby supposedly taken by a dingo waay back in 1980. I am guessing there is a good chance the dingo is long since dead.
I saw a thing about making factory farmed chickens brain dead for high density production. Interesting matrix-like connotations there. Hard to say whether it's better or worse. Kind of eliminates the whole suffering argument though.
The Sun doing a Sunday edition (basically News of the World in drag) made headlines. I really don't know why.
Things in Syria are still pretty rough.
There was quite a lot of coverage of the idea that humans should sleep 4 hours, wake up for one or two hours, then sleep another 4. I am not sure I want to try it.
The Oscars are happening today, I really don't care. Neither should you.
REAL SPORT
My junior water polo boys had their first game, B team versus A team, they lost 1-12. They actually did okay.
SPORT
The Super X started again (is it 15? I forget). The Crusaders just beat the Blues, the Highlanders just beat the Chiefs, Hurricanes lost to some South African team.
Arsenal beat Spurs 5-2, Man Utd staggered past Norwich 2-1, Chelsea won 3-0 over Bolton, WBA beat Sunderland 4-0, Man City beat Blackburn 3-0.
I think the Black Caps lost an ODI to SA.
MY SAD LIFE
After Diana's struggles with insurance, she wrote a letter. Believe it or not, it actually resulted in a response from a real person. It resulted in us getting a $100 bribe. Not sure what we will do with it. Probably nothing.
As we got close to the end of our internet billing cycle, we were averaging about 10gb per day. We did over 30Gb one day. Some people use 30Gb a month - noobs.
I saw Allan on day 3 after his upgrade, he was using crutches. I was thoroughly disappointed that he had no wifi or device to use wifi. I would have had the surgeons put one inside my leg, I think. They go in through the front, which seemed odd, but apparently it minimises disruption of tendons, veins, arteries, and stuff.
Koos came over on Thursday night, we assembled the electronics, cut a wire, soldered a wire, connected to the PC and actually got it talking. Can't actually print anything yet, have a software issue, but I will work on it.
Diana and I spent some money in the hope of organising various things better, and it did seem to help. I have learned that it's easier to organise crap if you get rid of a lot of it.
Hannah's life seems to be back to utterly full-on out of control-ness. Not sure how we feel about facing a year of that, because it's pretty hard for everyone in the fallout zone, which is quite a bit zone. Meanwhile, Rory seems to live in a world which goes by the following rule "I can't help because I am too busy at Uni, or I can't help because I am on holiday." The shortened version is "I can't help because I want to play LOL and browse Reddit". His back is still sore.
I offended Hannah by giving her key to the Falcon to the insurance company, who had actually bought the car. I didn't know it had meaning. I also got the number plates from the Falcon back this week. Now they are Falcon useless. I may put them on trademe, perhaps.
I better press send, I keep getting distracted.
13 February 2012
You know, I really wish I could send an email without a subject at all, sometimes.
As we approach Valentine's Day tomorrow, it occurs to me that it is really only relevant to a very few people. Arguably those who are in the throes of new love. Anyone else that thinks they should acknowledge it is just sad, if you ask me.
LOCAL NEWS
A 3yo fell down a manhole in Marlborough Sounds. It was at Furneaux Lodge, near where the dreaded Ben and Olivia went missing.
The Halberg awards were announced on Thursday night, the All Blacks dominated. It's such a futile waste of time, like all awards things.
Been lots of post-mortems going on. The Pike River coal mine and Canterbury quake dodgy buildings are the two main ones. It's all very ambulance at the bottom of the cliff and they should spend the money on prevention rather than persecuting the scapegoats.
A 5yo boy died when him and others were bouncing around on a pile of logs. I wonder if they had red bands on the logs? Yet again, there would be a witch hunt to assign blame. See paragraph above.
Some fool got arrested for selling things he stole from neighbours at a garage sale in Paeroa. He shouldn't have invited his neighbours, really.
They reckon teenagers are faking depression to score happy pills. I know, why don't we tell them all about the idea so they can all get some?
There was a bizarre case where a company was charged in a sexual harassment thing when I would have thought the actual guy doing the harassing was not doing it under the instruction of the company. Diana reckons that OSH rules can hold the person liable when it is far more likely that company policy and budgetary constraints are more likely to be the cause. Seems kind of arse about face.
The council wants to put a rail route around Auckland City, and they want to do all sorts of crazy things to make us pay for it.
It was Big Gay Out in Point Chevalier on Sunday, so we had lots of gay music, including a Whitney song.
The Urewera four were in court today, they were originally arrested in 2007. Justice seems to tick particularly slowly. Isn't timeliness kind of a requirement for such a thing?
WORLD NEWS
The ice drilling in Antarctica broke through to the 20 million year old lake, some of us are now waiting with baited breath to see what they find. If they find a copy of the times from Pearl Harbour Day, I stand to make quite a lot of money.
A new "Super Earth" has been discovered, it is only 22 light years away which is only just down the road - galactically speaking. It is much bigger than earth and goes around it's smaller star in 28 days. Imagine the conversations there - "Particularly unseasonal whether for this time of day. Oh wait, there we go."
Another well known torrent site that I have never heard of, Btjunkie, closed its virtual doors this week.
Some grey haired old lady reckoned she had an 18-month affair with JFK. Good grief. It's like a rule that to be POTUS you can't keep it in your pants. Perhaps this is why there has never been a female one.
A man was run over by a 787. That must have been kind of annoying. I bet he wasn't on a pedestrian crossing, but how could it has sneaked up on him? Do stealth bombers run over people all the time?
Apparently New Zealanders went on a pub crawl in London to celebrate Waitangi Day. They are just about the only ones that do.
QE II is celebrating 60 years on the throne (that just sounds wrong). There is a web site showing the great unwashed how much has changed in the world in that time. I hope she isn't claiming credit for all of it.
A 10 year old girl supposedly invented an unknown chemical. This seems bizarre in that her chemistry teacher thought it was unusual and worthy of examination but if it was so obviously new, how would it not have been explored before? Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
The last "World War I" veteran died this week. A 110 year old woman that served food in the officer's mess in England for about three months of the war. Seriously, I know she contributed and all that, but even a male mechanic or cook who did three months without going to France or somewhere that actually had fighting is not really a veteran. I can't imagine a bunch of old diggers talking about the war with someone who never left blighty.
The Greeks are upset that they have to pay for their lifestyle.
Whitney. Seriously? Why does anyone care?
SPORT
The Black Caps won the second Zimbabwe ODI. I was very confused because I saw video of the Zimbabwean team celebrating, but it must have been because someone faced a ball and didn't go out. They won the third one, too.
SBW had a boxing bout this week, I ignore all the usual promotional crap. The fight lasted less than three minutes. I hope everyone got their money's worth. This shouldn't really be in the sport section, but I don't have one for "entertainment" or "reality TV".
Wayne Rooney beat Liverpool 2-1, Blackburn beat QPR 3-2, Everton beat Chelsea 2-0, Spurs handed Newcastle a good old fashioned towelling 5-0. Man City beat Villa 1-0.
The Sevens team lost to Samoa, I think, in the final in Las Vegas.
I think the Black Caps are about to play South Africa, they don't have a chance.
MY SAD LIFE
I did very little on the 3d-printer this week, approaching zero.
The insurance companies continued to torment us this week. On Wednesday we got a reminder from the car yard about the Falcon, had to ring the insurance people. They went "oh yes, it's been written off. You want to get any belongings out? You have until tomorrow." Great stuff. Rory and I went and visited it and got a few bits and pieces that had been left behind.
Thursdays. Like Arthur Dent, I never really could get the hang on Thursdays. However, on this particular Thursday, I seemed to finally get it right. It started badly, don't remember why, but something went wrong, I just can't remember what. However, after that, everything seemed to go remarkably well. It was lots of things. A couple of work things produced spectacularly good results, one was noteworthy on many levels. I also discovered something really cool wasn't outrageously expensive and that was good. Also, Rory had a fun interaction with a fellow LOL geek, so he was happy. We got the valuation from the insurance company for the Falcon, and to be honest is was probably higher than anyone would have predicted. A couple of other work things went well, a package arrived from overseas that held some very cool things I really needed, and I had lunch at the Bluebird Café. All in all, it was pretty hard to complain about Thursday.
Friday was a bit of a let down in comparison, but it was still not a bad day.
I spent a chunk of Saturday in my first day of mentor training. Oddly, the gender balance was the opposite of what I expected, with 8 women and 2 men attending. It was okay, no real surprises, not sure I got many of the answers to my questions, but I understand the process a bit better. I have another day this Saturday then a few more hoops then finally a speed dating session and we get matched up in May.
The twins turned four on Sunday and had slightly rain affected party. I spent a lot of time blowing balloons and they just kept popping, it was ultimately unrewarding.
Gavin had a big day in court today, another round in his ongoing battle with the dodgy vendor of his house. It doesn't appear any closer to resolution, but by definition I suppose it must be. It is his birthday on a doubtful day this week. I think it is actually tomorrow but he pretends it is the 16th.
This coming Tuesday is the first episode of the new season of Go Girls. There is a very good chance Hannah is in it, and maybe me too. We will record it, or try to. Hannah doesn't seem to want anyone to know.
I am quite convinced that there is something really important I was meant to mention, but I haven't a clue what it was. This is a worry.
LOCAL NEWS
A 3yo fell down a manhole in Marlborough Sounds. It was at Furneaux Lodge, near where the dreaded Ben and Olivia went missing.
The Halberg awards were announced on Thursday night, the All Blacks dominated. It's such a futile waste of time, like all awards things.
Been lots of post-mortems going on. The Pike River coal mine and Canterbury quake dodgy buildings are the two main ones. It's all very ambulance at the bottom of the cliff and they should spend the money on prevention rather than persecuting the scapegoats.
A 5yo boy died when him and others were bouncing around on a pile of logs. I wonder if they had red bands on the logs? Yet again, there would be a witch hunt to assign blame. See paragraph above.
Some fool got arrested for selling things he stole from neighbours at a garage sale in Paeroa. He shouldn't have invited his neighbours, really.
They reckon teenagers are faking depression to score happy pills. I know, why don't we tell them all about the idea so they can all get some?
There was a bizarre case where a company was charged in a sexual harassment thing when I would have thought the actual guy doing the harassing was not doing it under the instruction of the company. Diana reckons that OSH rules can hold the person liable when it is far more likely that company policy and budgetary constraints are more likely to be the cause. Seems kind of arse about face.
The council wants to put a rail route around Auckland City, and they want to do all sorts of crazy things to make us pay for it.
It was Big Gay Out in Point Chevalier on Sunday, so we had lots of gay music, including a Whitney song.
The Urewera four were in court today, they were originally arrested in 2007. Justice seems to tick particularly slowly. Isn't timeliness kind of a requirement for such a thing?
WORLD NEWS
The ice drilling in Antarctica broke through to the 20 million year old lake, some of us are now waiting with baited breath to see what they find. If they find a copy of the times from Pearl Harbour Day, I stand to make quite a lot of money.
A new "Super Earth" has been discovered, it is only 22 light years away which is only just down the road - galactically speaking. It is much bigger than earth and goes around it's smaller star in 28 days. Imagine the conversations there - "Particularly unseasonal whether for this time of day. Oh wait, there we go."
Another well known torrent site that I have never heard of, Btjunkie, closed its virtual doors this week.
Some grey haired old lady reckoned she had an 18-month affair with JFK. Good grief. It's like a rule that to be POTUS you can't keep it in your pants. Perhaps this is why there has never been a female one.
A man was run over by a 787. That must have been kind of annoying. I bet he wasn't on a pedestrian crossing, but how could it has sneaked up on him? Do stealth bombers run over people all the time?
Apparently New Zealanders went on a pub crawl in London to celebrate Waitangi Day. They are just about the only ones that do.
QE II is celebrating 60 years on the throne (that just sounds wrong). There is a web site showing the great unwashed how much has changed in the world in that time. I hope she isn't claiming credit for all of it.
A 10 year old girl supposedly invented an unknown chemical. This seems bizarre in that her chemistry teacher thought it was unusual and worthy of examination but if it was so obviously new, how would it not have been explored before? Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
The last "World War I" veteran died this week. A 110 year old woman that served food in the officer's mess in England for about three months of the war. Seriously, I know she contributed and all that, but even a male mechanic or cook who did three months without going to France or somewhere that actually had fighting is not really a veteran. I can't imagine a bunch of old diggers talking about the war with someone who never left blighty.
The Greeks are upset that they have to pay for their lifestyle.
Whitney. Seriously? Why does anyone care?
SPORT
The Black Caps won the second Zimbabwe ODI. I was very confused because I saw video of the Zimbabwean team celebrating, but it must have been because someone faced a ball and didn't go out. They won the third one, too.
SBW had a boxing bout this week, I ignore all the usual promotional crap. The fight lasted less than three minutes. I hope everyone got their money's worth. This shouldn't really be in the sport section, but I don't have one for "entertainment" or "reality TV".
Wayne Rooney beat Liverpool 2-1, Blackburn beat QPR 3-2, Everton beat Chelsea 2-0, Spurs handed Newcastle a good old fashioned towelling 5-0. Man City beat Villa 1-0.
The Sevens team lost to Samoa, I think, in the final in Las Vegas.
I think the Black Caps are about to play South Africa, they don't have a chance.
MY SAD LIFE
I did very little on the 3d-printer this week, approaching zero.
The insurance companies continued to torment us this week. On Wednesday we got a reminder from the car yard about the Falcon, had to ring the insurance people. They went "oh yes, it's been written off. You want to get any belongings out? You have until tomorrow." Great stuff. Rory and I went and visited it and got a few bits and pieces that had been left behind.
Thursdays. Like Arthur Dent, I never really could get the hang on Thursdays. However, on this particular Thursday, I seemed to finally get it right. It started badly, don't remember why, but something went wrong, I just can't remember what. However, after that, everything seemed to go remarkably well. It was lots of things. A couple of work things produced spectacularly good results, one was noteworthy on many levels. I also discovered something really cool wasn't outrageously expensive and that was good. Also, Rory had a fun interaction with a fellow LOL geek, so he was happy. We got the valuation from the insurance company for the Falcon, and to be honest is was probably higher than anyone would have predicted. A couple of other work things went well, a package arrived from overseas that held some very cool things I really needed, and I had lunch at the Bluebird Café. All in all, it was pretty hard to complain about Thursday.
Friday was a bit of a let down in comparison, but it was still not a bad day.
I spent a chunk of Saturday in my first day of mentor training. Oddly, the gender balance was the opposite of what I expected, with 8 women and 2 men attending. It was okay, no real surprises, not sure I got many of the answers to my questions, but I understand the process a bit better. I have another day this Saturday then a few more hoops then finally a speed dating session and we get matched up in May.
The twins turned four on Sunday and had slightly rain affected party. I spent a lot of time blowing balloons and they just kept popping, it was ultimately unrewarding.
Gavin had a big day in court today, another round in his ongoing battle with the dodgy vendor of his house. It doesn't appear any closer to resolution, but by definition I suppose it must be. It is his birthday on a doubtful day this week. I think it is actually tomorrow but he pretends it is the 16th.
This coming Tuesday is the first episode of the new season of Go Girls. There is a very good chance Hannah is in it, and maybe me too. We will record it, or try to. Hannah doesn't seem to want anyone to know.
I am quite convinced that there is something really important I was meant to mention, but I haven't a clue what it was. This is a worry.
6 February 2012
Life in a 3d world, well almost
LOCAL NEWS
Some guy was sent a reminder to pay a fine from 1962, and was dismayed that four pounds ten had grown to $40. He had already paid it. The increase seems pretty okay to me, I had a fine for $40 turn in to $120 in about 10 years.
A man died after being stung by a swarm of wasps, and despite that has been referred to police, not really sure why/
Some guy charged for opening his car door and causing the death of a cyclist had the charge dismissed, and it appears that it is more than deservedly so.
There continues to be lots of whinging about haves vs have nots and the cost of housing. I can't see what good can come of such lazy reporting of a non-issue that has been around forever.
The Sevens seemed to be the usual people in crazy outfits, although the first one hospitalised with alcohol excess happened two hours after the start of the tournament, which seems pretty quick.
The scrap over the sale of the Crafar farms, a big chunk of land, to Chinese investors, went to court again this week. Selling our farms to overseas investors does not seem like a good idea. Then James Cameron bought a few thousand acres for a little ranch in the Wairarapa somewhere. Maybe it was the whole of the Wairarapa.
Today is Waitangi Day, but nobody really cares. There was some kind of a fuss yesterday, but I wasn't really interested enough to get the details.
WORLD NEWS
An Afghani woman was supposedly killed by her husband for bearing another girl. Don't you just love how religion and culture can create a society where people think it is okay to kill someone else under a completely ridiculous pretext (given that the gender of a child is determined by the sperm, he should have strangled himself).
Some parents are suing IVF providers for not telling them about the risk that their offspring might have something the father had. Seriously? They go to the trouble of seeking IVF, you would think they would know about basic genetics.
It was George Romero's birthday this week, crazy zombie film director. Wonder if he is related to Caesar Romero?
Apparently a US laboratory is researching a bird flu strain that could kill half the world. Part of me wonders if that really would be a bad thing. It would solve a heck of a lot of problems, wouldn't it? Just as long as vaccines weren't given out to politicians and car salesmen.
The primaries continue in the US with Mitt and the other guy. I don't see why we should care, isn't Obama just going to win, anyway? And the money they blow is unbelievable.
I think the superbowl was today, people seem to care more about the half time entertainment and the ads than the game.
SPORT
The Wellington Sevens were on, New Zealand beat Fiji comfortably in the final 24-7 but squeaked through so earlier rounds.
It was a battle incompetente when New Zealand played Zimbabwe in the first ODI. New Zealand didn't make it to 50 overs and Zimbabwe sucked even more.
Arsenal gave Blackburn a 7-1 thwack across the back of the legs and sent them home, Norwich beat Bolton 2-0, QPR lost to Wolves 1-2, Sunderland beat a ten man Stoke 1-0. Man City beat Fulham 2-0. Man Utd managed to stagger to a dodgy 3-3 draw with Chelsea this morning, they scored four goals and two were penalties, at least the OG wasn't a penalty. Newcastle beat Villa 2-1, Villa must be real crap.
MY SAD LIFE
Hannah returned on Tuesday and was basically a zombie. Rory left on Tuesday and returned on Thursday. Haven't really seen a lot more of him though. He has a plan to make a large model of a racer thing for the release of the PS Vita at his work, so we went and bought some bits on Friday afternoon. This resulted in me getting a new battery powered drill, because my old one is ten years old at least and doesn't charge any more, which technically means it isn't battery powered any more.
The Falcon was discovered on Thursday, in Mt Roskill, I got a call from Police. We still haven't seen it yet. But the ignition and door key are knackered. Not sure if anything else has been harmed. Probably a couple more days before we find out.
Those of you on facebook would know about Diana's fun times with insurance companies. It's been a trial. I rang them on Friday to give them info about where the Falcon was, and they said they didn't need it. Then they rang us to ask for it. I just wish Diana had had the foresight to put them on hold.
Thursday night Diana and I went to the engagement of Paul Chambers and Jess, not before time most would argue. They are about to go overseas for a couple of years so the wedding could be a while off yet.
Meanwhile, Paul Grant has been posting photos of whales and nice Hawaiian beaches on Facebook, the scumbag.
On Friday I went to a funeral with Mum, of Les Watson, a guy that lived in the street we lived in for all of the 70s and little bit either side. There were a few old familiar faces, very old. One thing I learned was this - get someone to check the speeches. One guy went on for over half an hour and he was bloody terrible.
Sunday night most of us had dinner with the Goodins at Lone Star. Rory and Thomas managed to drag themselves away from online world for a while. Hannah was at the Lantern Festival, which she said was boring.
The 3d-printer arrived on Friday, and some construction has happened but I have had plenty of challenges. Having a go today, Koos is coming to help. Not sure how far we will get, I broke a piece the other day.
Rory is working again today, four days in a row. His back is still troubling him a little. He may actually have to see a professional. Hannah worked yesterday and is again today.
I broke Rory's headphones yesterday when I picked them up, so he thinks I should buy new ones. Not entirely sure that is fair given the heavy use he has subjected them to. The fact that the same model seems to be
I saw Piri Weepu while I was walking the dog this morning, said good morning to him before I realised who he was.
I have been working on the 3d printer today with Koos and Ash, three brains are better than one. Well, two and a half. That's why this is late, they just left.
Some guy was sent a reminder to pay a fine from 1962, and was dismayed that four pounds ten had grown to $40. He had already paid it. The increase seems pretty okay to me, I had a fine for $40 turn in to $120 in about 10 years.
A man died after being stung by a swarm of wasps, and despite that has been referred to police, not really sure why/
Some guy charged for opening his car door and causing the death of a cyclist had the charge dismissed, and it appears that it is more than deservedly so.
There continues to be lots of whinging about haves vs have nots and the cost of housing. I can't see what good can come of such lazy reporting of a non-issue that has been around forever.
The Sevens seemed to be the usual people in crazy outfits, although the first one hospitalised with alcohol excess happened two hours after the start of the tournament, which seems pretty quick.
The scrap over the sale of the Crafar farms, a big chunk of land, to Chinese investors, went to court again this week. Selling our farms to overseas investors does not seem like a good idea. Then James Cameron bought a few thousand acres for a little ranch in the Wairarapa somewhere. Maybe it was the whole of the Wairarapa.
Today is Waitangi Day, but nobody really cares. There was some kind of a fuss yesterday, but I wasn't really interested enough to get the details.
WORLD NEWS
An Afghani woman was supposedly killed by her husband for bearing another girl. Don't you just love how religion and culture can create a society where people think it is okay to kill someone else under a completely ridiculous pretext (given that the gender of a child is determined by the sperm, he should have strangled himself).
Some parents are suing IVF providers for not telling them about the risk that their offspring might have something the father had. Seriously? They go to the trouble of seeking IVF, you would think they would know about basic genetics.
It was George Romero's birthday this week, crazy zombie film director. Wonder if he is related to Caesar Romero?
Apparently a US laboratory is researching a bird flu strain that could kill half the world. Part of me wonders if that really would be a bad thing. It would solve a heck of a lot of problems, wouldn't it? Just as long as vaccines weren't given out to politicians and car salesmen.
The primaries continue in the US with Mitt and the other guy. I don't see why we should care, isn't Obama just going to win, anyway? And the money they blow is unbelievable.
I think the superbowl was today, people seem to care more about the half time entertainment and the ads than the game.
SPORT
The Wellington Sevens were on, New Zealand beat Fiji comfortably in the final 24-7 but squeaked through so earlier rounds.
It was a battle incompetente when New Zealand played Zimbabwe in the first ODI. New Zealand didn't make it to 50 overs and Zimbabwe sucked even more.
Arsenal gave Blackburn a 7-1 thwack across the back of the legs and sent them home, Norwich beat Bolton 2-0, QPR lost to Wolves 1-2, Sunderland beat a ten man Stoke 1-0. Man City beat Fulham 2-0. Man Utd managed to stagger to a dodgy 3-3 draw with Chelsea this morning, they scored four goals and two were penalties, at least the OG wasn't a penalty. Newcastle beat Villa 2-1, Villa must be real crap.
MY SAD LIFE
Hannah returned on Tuesday and was basically a zombie. Rory left on Tuesday and returned on Thursday. Haven't really seen a lot more of him though. He has a plan to make a large model of a racer thing for the release of the PS Vita at his work, so we went and bought some bits on Friday afternoon. This resulted in me getting a new battery powered drill, because my old one is ten years old at least and doesn't charge any more, which technically means it isn't battery powered any more.
The Falcon was discovered on Thursday, in Mt Roskill, I got a call from Police. We still haven't seen it yet. But the ignition and door key are knackered. Not sure if anything else has been harmed. Probably a couple more days before we find out.
Those of you on facebook would know about Diana's fun times with insurance companies. It's been a trial. I rang them on Friday to give them info about where the Falcon was, and they said they didn't need it. Then they rang us to ask for it. I just wish Diana had had the foresight to put them on hold.
Thursday night Diana and I went to the engagement of Paul Chambers and Jess, not before time most would argue. They are about to go overseas for a couple of years so the wedding could be a while off yet.
Meanwhile, Paul Grant has been posting photos of whales and nice Hawaiian beaches on Facebook, the scumbag.
On Friday I went to a funeral with Mum, of Les Watson, a guy that lived in the street we lived in for all of the 70s and little bit either side. There were a few old familiar faces, very old. One thing I learned was this - get someone to check the speeches. One guy went on for over half an hour and he was bloody terrible.
Sunday night most of us had dinner with the Goodins at Lone Star. Rory and Thomas managed to drag themselves away from online world for a while. Hannah was at the Lantern Festival, which she said was boring.
The 3d-printer arrived on Friday, and some construction has happened but I have had plenty of challenges. Having a go today, Koos is coming to help. Not sure how far we will get, I broke a piece the other day.
Rory is working again today, four days in a row. His back is still troubling him a little. He may actually have to see a professional. Hannah worked yesterday and is again today.
I broke Rory's headphones yesterday when I picked them up, so he thinks I should buy new ones. Not entirely sure that is fair given the heavy use he has subjected them to. The fact that the same model seems to be
I saw Piri Weepu while I was walking the dog this morning, said good morning to him before I realised who he was.
I have been working on the 3d printer today with Koos and Ash, three brains are better than one. Well, two and a half. That's why this is late, they just left.
30 January 2012
A week in which towies got a bad name (as if that was possible), and we had our first car theft experience
It is now the year of the dragon. I won't do the joke.
LOCAL NEWS
A woman from Porirua drove 100km without her kids after a toilet stop. Her parents must be proud.
Three women have been pulled over in Auckland for driving whilst breastfeeding. It's not illegal, is it? The cellphone rule is still stupid.
The woman charged for slapping the girl bullying her daughter was given diversion, which I think means community service.
A 5yo boy was hit by a van and killed by a van while playing on the side of the road. Not sure whether he was actually off the road when he was hit. Excellent East Coast style supervision going on there.
The salvation army had a whinge about the rubbish they get in their donation bins. Seriously? They don't know the world is full of dirtbags? Where have they been?
The ACC helpfully gave us stats on dog bite attacks last year, it's nearly 5,000. That seems a lot.
There was a nasty car accident with four fatalities, they reckon that emergency services couldn't tell who came from which car.
Lake Hayes Estate near Queenstown is the victim of some sort of serial cat-napping with 30 gone missing in the last year.
Some highly questionable research suggests that cheating husbands are likely to be National voters, smoke, have a PC (not a Mac, doesn't mention iPads), drink coke (not Pepsi), Christian (what does that tell you), smoke, eat meat, and have a tattoo. What a load of bollocks.
Towing cars came under the spotlight this week. A man fought a fee for his car being towed about 5km, which was $230. That really opened up a can of worms. Turns out that some people were being paid as "spotters" for cars to tow. Apparently, if the spotter owns the parking space being illegally used, then the payment is illegal. Thing is, if you own the car park, and you pay for the car park, you can't get some money back when someone else uses it and you are disadvantaged? Isn't that a little bizarre? And surely, someone parking illegally in a park, even if for ten minutes or less, will often (not always) cause inconvenience, waste time, and potentially incur cost to the owner of the park?
I misread a headline about New Zealand's youngest pro golfer to win a tournament, thought it said "ugliest". That got me thinking, about the lack of honesty in reporting. Wouldn't that be more interesting, if a little subjective? "New Zealand's hairiest man win's shearing contest" and so forth?
An SAS hopeful went into a coma during a trial. Does that make him tough, that he can go until near-fatal collapse or is he eliminated?
A crazy retail worker that swore and left then changed her mind got $8,000 in compensation for unjust dismissal. Good grief.
WORLD NEWS
Richard Branson made himself a right Richard this week when he said the war on drugs has failed, so we should decriminalise it. Totally disagree. We should be criminalising cigarettes and probably alcohol.
There was news this week than the male sex drive is responsible for all war. Part of me thinks that is ridiculous, and part of me couldn't agree more. Now, if we could only find someone to blame for religion.
It was Australia Day on Thursday, apparently the biggest day of the year for alcohol related injuries and violence. Makes you proud to be an Australian (I assume).
There has been flooding in Fiji this week, but people are beginning to care little for that country, with their dubious politics.
I am pleased that the Costa Concordia is likely to stay put for months and months, makes me feel better about the Rena still being there four months later.
SPORT
Australia played India in the fourth test, it wasn't pretty, nobody was very surprised. They made it to day five, for the first time., but for less than an hour.
New Zealand played Zimbabwe in a test, the battle of third world cricketing nations wasn't expected to be up to much. I didn't even realise it was on until half way through the first day. Turned out it was just about all over by then. Zimbabwe got rolled twice on the third day to lose by 301 runs, and an innings. Pathetic.
Man Utd lost 1-2 to Liverpool in their FA Cup game, and that's all I am prepared to say about that. Arsenal just beat Villa, Chelsea just beat QPR.
MY SAD LIFE
It was predictably quiet without Hannah. The weather during the week was very nice, didn't seem like there was enough wind, but plenty of sun. It was a little wet on Friday, but overall hard to complain.
Thomas arrived on Tuesday, Rory and I rearranged his room a little in preparation, and they basically stayed in the man cave 24 hours. They didn't go to sleep until nearly 6am, and Diana didn't see Thomas until about 5pm (I ventured in there at 3pm to get proof of life).
Hannah returned on Friday, very, very tired but happy. We did get a quick tour over the boat, Spirit of New Zealand, not Adventure.
Spent a chunk of time learning to draw in 3d this week. No printer yet. Maybe not even by the end of next week. Not very impressed. I suspect I will need the time. I did manage to create a cookie cutter for a relatively complex geometric logo, and started playing with icing tips - more seeing one I can do rather than making to order.
Saturday morning, Rory couldn't find the Falcon. Someone has stolen it. Been two days now, no idea what we do about insurance, I believe we have to wait a week or something.
Matt and Juliet seem to be having a lovely time in San Francisco, the weather seems nicer than it is here. This means Mark Twain was probably wrong.
We (Diana and I) spent Sunday on the Pacific Pearl, a cruise liner, to check it out. Was interesting, bloody scary seeing the people lining up to come on board as we left, average age was about 89.5 years old. Corridors aren't wide enough for two walkers to get past each other, either. As for the nightclub being open until 4am, I suspect at 5am most of the passengers will want their breakfast.
Hannah is on "leadership" "camp" (this truly deserves separate inverted commas, I believe). She returns on Tuesday and then school proper commences on Wednesday.
Today, Diana and I have been washing the outside of the house on our day off. Now I am truly knackered.
Rory is leaving tonight for about three nights, to Orere Point which is about an hour to the South East. Except he might not, he has a sore back now.
Brett is off to Hong Kong and Singapore again, not sure about the state of his back.
I have enlisted in a mentoring program for teenage kids that need help. I have to pass some tests, and once that happens I have to pay to attend a two day course before I get matched up with someone. Will be embarrassing if I don't pass.
Time to hit send and go have a bit of a lie down.
LOCAL NEWS
A woman from Porirua drove 100km without her kids after a toilet stop. Her parents must be proud.
Three women have been pulled over in Auckland for driving whilst breastfeeding. It's not illegal, is it? The cellphone rule is still stupid.
The woman charged for slapping the girl bullying her daughter was given diversion, which I think means community service.
A 5yo boy was hit by a van and killed by a van while playing on the side of the road. Not sure whether he was actually off the road when he was hit. Excellent East Coast style supervision going on there.
The salvation army had a whinge about the rubbish they get in their donation bins. Seriously? They don't know the world is full of dirtbags? Where have they been?
The ACC helpfully gave us stats on dog bite attacks last year, it's nearly 5,000. That seems a lot.
There was a nasty car accident with four fatalities, they reckon that emergency services couldn't tell who came from which car.
Lake Hayes Estate near Queenstown is the victim of some sort of serial cat-napping with 30 gone missing in the last year.
Some highly questionable research suggests that cheating husbands are likely to be National voters, smoke, have a PC (not a Mac, doesn't mention iPads), drink coke (not Pepsi), Christian (what does that tell you), smoke, eat meat, and have a tattoo. What a load of bollocks.
Towing cars came under the spotlight this week. A man fought a fee for his car being towed about 5km, which was $230. That really opened up a can of worms. Turns out that some people were being paid as "spotters" for cars to tow. Apparently, if the spotter owns the parking space being illegally used, then the payment is illegal. Thing is, if you own the car park, and you pay for the car park, you can't get some money back when someone else uses it and you are disadvantaged? Isn't that a little bizarre? And surely, someone parking illegally in a park, even if for ten minutes or less, will often (not always) cause inconvenience, waste time, and potentially incur cost to the owner of the park?
I misread a headline about New Zealand's youngest pro golfer to win a tournament, thought it said "ugliest". That got me thinking, about the lack of honesty in reporting. Wouldn't that be more interesting, if a little subjective? "New Zealand's hairiest man win's shearing contest" and so forth?
An SAS hopeful went into a coma during a trial. Does that make him tough, that he can go until near-fatal collapse or is he eliminated?
A crazy retail worker that swore and left then changed her mind got $8,000 in compensation for unjust dismissal. Good grief.
WORLD NEWS
Richard Branson made himself a right Richard this week when he said the war on drugs has failed, so we should decriminalise it. Totally disagree. We should be criminalising cigarettes and probably alcohol.
There was news this week than the male sex drive is responsible for all war. Part of me thinks that is ridiculous, and part of me couldn't agree more. Now, if we could only find someone to blame for religion.
It was Australia Day on Thursday, apparently the biggest day of the year for alcohol related injuries and violence. Makes you proud to be an Australian (I assume).
There has been flooding in Fiji this week, but people are beginning to care little for that country, with their dubious politics.
I am pleased that the Costa Concordia is likely to stay put for months and months, makes me feel better about the Rena still being there four months later.
SPORT
Australia played India in the fourth test, it wasn't pretty, nobody was very surprised. They made it to day five, for the first time., but for less than an hour.
New Zealand played Zimbabwe in a test, the battle of third world cricketing nations wasn't expected to be up to much. I didn't even realise it was on until half way through the first day. Turned out it was just about all over by then. Zimbabwe got rolled twice on the third day to lose by 301 runs, and an innings. Pathetic.
Man Utd lost 1-2 to Liverpool in their FA Cup game, and that's all I am prepared to say about that. Arsenal just beat Villa, Chelsea just beat QPR.
MY SAD LIFE
It was predictably quiet without Hannah. The weather during the week was very nice, didn't seem like there was enough wind, but plenty of sun. It was a little wet on Friday, but overall hard to complain.
Thomas arrived on Tuesday, Rory and I rearranged his room a little in preparation, and they basically stayed in the man cave 24 hours. They didn't go to sleep until nearly 6am, and Diana didn't see Thomas until about 5pm (I ventured in there at 3pm to get proof of life).
Hannah returned on Friday, very, very tired but happy. We did get a quick tour over the boat, Spirit of New Zealand, not Adventure.
Spent a chunk of time learning to draw in 3d this week. No printer yet. Maybe not even by the end of next week. Not very impressed. I suspect I will need the time. I did manage to create a cookie cutter for a relatively complex geometric logo, and started playing with icing tips - more seeing one I can do rather than making to order.
Saturday morning, Rory couldn't find the Falcon. Someone has stolen it. Been two days now, no idea what we do about insurance, I believe we have to wait a week or something.
Matt and Juliet seem to be having a lovely time in San Francisco, the weather seems nicer than it is here. This means Mark Twain was probably wrong.
We (Diana and I) spent Sunday on the Pacific Pearl, a cruise liner, to check it out. Was interesting, bloody scary seeing the people lining up to come on board as we left, average age was about 89.5 years old. Corridors aren't wide enough for two walkers to get past each other, either. As for the nightclub being open until 4am, I suspect at 5am most of the passengers will want their breakfast.
Hannah is on "leadership" "camp" (this truly deserves separate inverted commas, I believe). She returns on Tuesday and then school proper commences on Wednesday.
Today, Diana and I have been washing the outside of the house on our day off. Now I am truly knackered.
Rory is leaving tonight for about three nights, to Orere Point which is about an hour to the South East. Except he might not, he has a sore back now.
Brett is off to Hong Kong and Singapore again, not sure about the state of his back.
I have enlisted in a mentoring program for teenage kids that need help. I have to pass some tests, and once that happens I have to pay to attend a two day course before I get matched up with someone. Will be embarrassing if I don't pass.
Time to hit send and go have a bit of a lie down.
23 January 2012
You would think by now I would be better at coming up with a decent subject
Things are almost back to normal, Christmas break wise (radio shows and such).
LOCAL NEWS
A woman was fined $60 for parking on a yellow line when she pulled over to let a Wellington council traffic "spy car" past her and they photographed her as she waited for them. Just bizarre, and it is going to court. The council needs a good smack.
Some Darwinian child went to hospital after he swallowed a $2 coin that was going to buy him an ice cream. Why? Did he think it might taste better than the ice cream?
An arrest was made after the wedding hit and run last week. The victim was an amazing guy, etc, tragically taken before his time, and so on. And pissed as a fart and unable to cross a road, let's be honest.
They reckon the body in the drain was that of a man trying to retrieve lost car keys. His name was Peter Black, 43. I know a Peter Black, no idea how old he was. It wasn't that one.
A 77yo woman, an archaeologist (who knew we had any of those) did her best to become something for someone else to dig up when she fell 50m down a cliff then a bank. She had minor bruising and cuts, she was very lucky.
There was a survey correlating poverty of parents to poverty of their kids, and things like teen pregnancy rates in the poor. It was an interesting mix of mind numbingly pathetic stuff, of both the blindingly obvious and the utterly ignorance of cause and effect. Questions I have include:
- Why would a rich parent let their kid be poor in adult life? (unless they somehow lost their fortune or the kid spent it all on drugs or gambling, it seems pretty unlikely);
- This of course is true in the converse, why would a poor parent suddenly find money to give to their kid as an adult?
Some morons took some prison inmates to a beach to harvest seafood from a marine reserve. Turns out they "didn't know" it was a reserve. Sorry, that's just bullshit.
Meanwhile, those living in the Eastern part of the North Island seemed to be doing their level best to show us what depths you can achieve when you live somewhere that you feel has no police. One drunk 13yo drove the family home on two hours sleep and none wore seatbelts. Only one died. A four year old was told not to go near an open water tank on a farm, this was considered sufficient supervision, so he drowned in it. One couldn't help but wonder if there would be a larger population out that way if they weren't so mind-numbingly thick.
South Auckland managed to stay in the spotlight, despite the efforts of the East Coast, with police shooting a man in the leg.
The Megaupload shut down (below) included a number of arrests here including the German-born Kim Dotcom, who had about 20 cars impounded.
Sione's Wedding, a movie that got considerable publicity because of supposed piracy, has had their sequel released. General feeling is that even the pirates won't bother, it's not that good.
WORLD NEWS
I missed out completely on the Sydney case of the dead woman in a tree, which they reckon got there about New Year's Eve and was found a few days later.
The SOPA/PIPA blackout happened Thursday our time. Not sure if it achieved any more than the OWS people, but it did show some solidarity - to the people that cared and were watching anyway. The hipsters did come out and say they knew about SOPA before the blackout, but that seemed like that was about it. Then Congress noticed.
There was a revenge attack on Megaupload, somewhere I never go, by the feds. Then, there was a number of attacks by hacker group anonymous on the feds. It was fast, it was brutal, and it just about turned the internet into an all out war.
Apple released some new products around iBooks and methods for making electronic text books. And they killed off the Steve Jobs figure, wankers.
A man was squashed in his 4x4 between two trucks in a Melbourne tunnel, and walked away with little more than some aches and pains. The car was toast, and the medics were amazed. Wonder if the guy's health insurance will get cheaper?
The US Presidential primaries continue, they go on for ever, I can't believe it is time for that whole thing again.
Some Fijian news agency had to do some major back-pedalling when the military coup el presidente only came second in a popularity poll. It's all about as believable as all the crap in North Korea. Who do they really think they are kidding?
SPORT
Man City continued their good run with a dodgy bit of football and a late penalty to beat Spurs 3-2. Man Utd squeaked past Arsenal 2-1 this morning. Fulham beat Newcastle 5-2, Chelsea drew 0-0 with Norwich (losers), Bolton beat Liverpool 3-1 (also losers), and Sunderland managed a much needed win 2-0 over Swansea.
There has been Australian Open tennis, but meh…..
MY SAD LIFE
Forgot to mention that last weekend Hannah drove me to and from the Browns Bay market in my car. She didn't tell Rory, which surprised me.
I found what was making the smell in Rory's room. It was nasty old coffee. Very nasty. Very old. He blamed me….
Eva went to the vet on Friday, she was so excited, we really must take her out more. Or would that mean she gets even more excited?
Thomas seemed to enjoy his geek course this week. He learned how to use blender, which I need to do some work with. Well, want to.
Hannah discovered she had been charged on her cashcard for something that they thought hadn't gone through. A mere $11.50 but the point is that if you take something from a shop without paying that is theft, if a shop takes money from you without you buying anything that's a "mistake". They seemed to cooperate.
My friend Matt and his daughter Juliet entered a competition on TV3, the junior jedi journalist, the prize is a trip to Skywalker Ranch for two days. They won with their video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXlcWTldUoQ&feature=colike
So they are off this Friday for four days. Even if you aren't a fanboy, that has to be an experience worth doing. As one person said to me today, it is probably a bucket list entry for a lot of people.
Speaking of Star Wars, over the weekend I learned that the copy of Star Wars and Empire I had on VHS, was recorded at Easter 1996 on TV2. Rory didn't even know about ewoks until Special Edition came to theatres in about 1998.
I have embarked upon a journey into a 3d world. I have ordered a 3d printer, which I should receive some time in the coming week. In preparation for this, I need to be able to edit/create 3d models on the computer. I foolishly thought this would be easy. Instead, I have spent considerable time making myself feel stupid, ignorant, and devoid of all computing skills. I haven't been enjoying myself. As I said to Diana at one point, this is making me feel like normal people do when they use a computer. I have found a program (Google Sketch) that appears promising, and I am working my way through it, reasonably well now but haven't done anything useful yet. It's not massively feature rich, but intuitive, clever, and there is a massive depth of things you can download to add to it.
We dropped Hannah off to the Spirit of Adventure this morning, she returns Friday 4pm. After yesterday, I think we may appreciate her absence. It was something of a mission getting her to get things ready. Photo of the boat Diana took is the first photo in her album here.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.216527545074094.54350.100001505500458&type=1&l=7fe413e6a3
There was some house maintenance done this week, nothing major, although we did clean a chunk of the weatherboards and the outside, really should do it more often. Rory was supposed to be rearranging his bedroom today, but he's done nothing yet. This comes as no real surprise.
Well, that's about it I suppose.
LOCAL NEWS
A woman was fined $60 for parking on a yellow line when she pulled over to let a Wellington council traffic "spy car" past her and they photographed her as she waited for them. Just bizarre, and it is going to court. The council needs a good smack.
Some Darwinian child went to hospital after he swallowed a $2 coin that was going to buy him an ice cream. Why? Did he think it might taste better than the ice cream?
An arrest was made after the wedding hit and run last week. The victim was an amazing guy, etc, tragically taken before his time, and so on. And pissed as a fart and unable to cross a road, let's be honest.
They reckon the body in the drain was that of a man trying to retrieve lost car keys. His name was Peter Black, 43. I know a Peter Black, no idea how old he was. It wasn't that one.
A 77yo woman, an archaeologist (who knew we had any of those) did her best to become something for someone else to dig up when she fell 50m down a cliff then a bank. She had minor bruising and cuts, she was very lucky.
There was a survey correlating poverty of parents to poverty of their kids, and things like teen pregnancy rates in the poor. It was an interesting mix of mind numbingly pathetic stuff, of both the blindingly obvious and the utterly ignorance of cause and effect. Questions I have include:
- Why would a rich parent let their kid be poor in adult life? (unless they somehow lost their fortune or the kid spent it all on drugs or gambling, it seems pretty unlikely);
- This of course is true in the converse, why would a poor parent suddenly find money to give to their kid as an adult?
Some morons took some prison inmates to a beach to harvest seafood from a marine reserve. Turns out they "didn't know" it was a reserve. Sorry, that's just bullshit.
Meanwhile, those living in the Eastern part of the North Island seemed to be doing their level best to show us what depths you can achieve when you live somewhere that you feel has no police. One drunk 13yo drove the family home on two hours sleep and none wore seatbelts. Only one died. A four year old was told not to go near an open water tank on a farm, this was considered sufficient supervision, so he drowned in it. One couldn't help but wonder if there would be a larger population out that way if they weren't so mind-numbingly thick.
South Auckland managed to stay in the spotlight, despite the efforts of the East Coast, with police shooting a man in the leg.
The Megaupload shut down (below) included a number of arrests here including the German-born Kim Dotcom, who had about 20 cars impounded.
Sione's Wedding, a movie that got considerable publicity because of supposed piracy, has had their sequel released. General feeling is that even the pirates won't bother, it's not that good.
WORLD NEWS
I missed out completely on the Sydney case of the dead woman in a tree, which they reckon got there about New Year's Eve and was found a few days later.
The SOPA/PIPA blackout happened Thursday our time. Not sure if it achieved any more than the OWS people, but it did show some solidarity - to the people that cared and were watching anyway. The hipsters did come out and say they knew about SOPA before the blackout, but that seemed like that was about it. Then Congress noticed.
There was a revenge attack on Megaupload, somewhere I never go, by the feds. Then, there was a number of attacks by hacker group anonymous on the feds. It was fast, it was brutal, and it just about turned the internet into an all out war.
Apple released some new products around iBooks and methods for making electronic text books. And they killed off the Steve Jobs figure, wankers.
A man was squashed in his 4x4 between two trucks in a Melbourne tunnel, and walked away with little more than some aches and pains. The car was toast, and the medics were amazed. Wonder if the guy's health insurance will get cheaper?
The US Presidential primaries continue, they go on for ever, I can't believe it is time for that whole thing again.
Some Fijian news agency had to do some major back-pedalling when the military coup el presidente only came second in a popularity poll. It's all about as believable as all the crap in North Korea. Who do they really think they are kidding?
SPORT
Man City continued their good run with a dodgy bit of football and a late penalty to beat Spurs 3-2. Man Utd squeaked past Arsenal 2-1 this morning. Fulham beat Newcastle 5-2, Chelsea drew 0-0 with Norwich (losers), Bolton beat Liverpool 3-1 (also losers), and Sunderland managed a much needed win 2-0 over Swansea.
There has been Australian Open tennis, but meh…..
MY SAD LIFE
Forgot to mention that last weekend Hannah drove me to and from the Browns Bay market in my car. She didn't tell Rory, which surprised me.
I found what was making the smell in Rory's room. It was nasty old coffee. Very nasty. Very old. He blamed me….
Eva went to the vet on Friday, she was so excited, we really must take her out more. Or would that mean she gets even more excited?
Thomas seemed to enjoy his geek course this week. He learned how to use blender, which I need to do some work with. Well, want to.
Hannah discovered she had been charged on her cashcard for something that they thought hadn't gone through. A mere $11.50 but the point is that if you take something from a shop without paying that is theft, if a shop takes money from you without you buying anything that's a "mistake". They seemed to cooperate.
My friend Matt and his daughter Juliet entered a competition on TV3, the junior jedi journalist, the prize is a trip to Skywalker Ranch for two days. They won with their video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXlcWTldUoQ&feature=colike
So they are off this Friday for four days. Even if you aren't a fanboy, that has to be an experience worth doing. As one person said to me today, it is probably a bucket list entry for a lot of people.
Speaking of Star Wars, over the weekend I learned that the copy of Star Wars and Empire I had on VHS, was recorded at Easter 1996 on TV2. Rory didn't even know about ewoks until Special Edition came to theatres in about 1998.
I have embarked upon a journey into a 3d world. I have ordered a 3d printer, which I should receive some time in the coming week. In preparation for this, I need to be able to edit/create 3d models on the computer. I foolishly thought this would be easy. Instead, I have spent considerable time making myself feel stupid, ignorant, and devoid of all computing skills. I haven't been enjoying myself. As I said to Diana at one point, this is making me feel like normal people do when they use a computer. I have found a program (Google Sketch) that appears promising, and I am working my way through it, reasonably well now but haven't done anything useful yet. It's not massively feature rich, but intuitive, clever, and there is a massive depth of things you can download to add to it.
We dropped Hannah off to the Spirit of Adventure this morning, she returns Friday 4pm. After yesterday, I think we may appreciate her absence. It was something of a mission getting her to get things ready. Photo of the boat Diana took is the first photo in her album here.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.216527545074094.54350.100001505500458&type=1&l=7fe413e6a3
There was some house maintenance done this week, nothing major, although we did clean a chunk of the weatherboards and the outside, really should do it more often. Rory was supposed to be rearranging his bedroom today, but he's done nothing yet. This comes as no real surprise.
Well, that's about it I suppose.
16 January 2012
The usual mix of slow news stuff and random acts of fatality for this time of year (Oh, and Hannah passed level 2)
As the second proper week of the year, I think things are returning to a more level of normal.
LOCAL NEWS
There was an attempted baby abduction at Middlemore, in South Auckland. As normal, they got all paranoid after that.
The Rena slowly sank but not from the news. They now reckon it will take two years to sort out and detritus has been appearing all over the place. I really don't get why they couldn't somehow refloat it and tow it away from trouble quickly, it ran aground back in November.
Some New Zealand born person in Perth is fighting deportation, because he reckons his family will be a bad influence on him. He was arrested to beating some small time drug vendor in Perth. Hasn't the bad influence horse already bolted?
Another week, another major downpour for Nelson.
The Auckland Port continues to sink into the poo.
A man went ballistic when Wendy's got his lunch order wrong in Lynfield. He destroyed things and it took five police to detain him. Would have been quite fun to see. There appears to be two stories as to what happened, but Wendys are bastards so I am siding with him. He is banned from the Lynfield Wendys now, but still allowed to go to others. I wonder how the staff at the other branches feel?
In Tauranga, a man set fire to himself by smoking while he refilled his lawn mower, who'd have thought? ACC told us that 3450 similar accidents were reported last year and cost $10m. Apparently a similar thing happened to a guy while siphoning petrol. Sheesh. If cellphones are "dangerous" around gas stations, then wouldn't cigarettes be really dangerous?
Meanwhile, a pregnant woman in Rotorua got the bash from another woman. Probably the father's wife or something.
Some woman is selling the chance to tattoo her arse on trademe and the bidding is well up into the thousands. Good grief.
Drownings this year is up to about 10. A canoeist got washed away down the Whanganui River.
Meanwhile, a man was killed by a train, and a body was found in a Wellington drain. A wedding guest was killed, probably in a drunken stupor, out on the road outside the do in the early hours on Sunday morning. Don't drink and walk, ever.
Some old golfer got two holes in one in one round, but his total wasn't pretty. Seems kind of typical of golf, really.
A fire in a motel turned out to be a meth lab accident, motelier wasn't too happy, and seemed a little uneasy about it - like he knew bloody well what was going on. The retards came back the next day to get their stuff and got arrested.
WORLD NEWS
I forgot to mention an article on what your facebook profile photo says about you. Apparently a quirky shot means you are staying true to the pre-spam generation, whatever that means. It seems that most options are uncool. Your kids, your pet, an action hero, an arty shot, a drunken moment, you name it. With 700 million out there, they are all cliché…
Eric Cantona wants to be President of France, that would be cool. Maybe Zidane would be cooler. Is it better to have a head butter or drop kicker as President? In retaliation, David Beckham wants to become king of Narnia (according to News Thump).
While CES (Consumer Electronics Show) was announcing cool stuff at regular intervals, there was a study released that says we drive as bad when we are sick as we do when we are drunk. Interesting concept.
Top Gear has managed to offend yet another third world country by telling the truth about them, this time it is India. Can we just take it as read that they will be offensive about wherever they go and move on?
The cruise liner in Italy made the news a lot until we heard the only New Zealander on it was okay. Last I heard eight were dead, no three, wait five, and about 40 missing.
The euro seems to be still bouncing all over the show.
SPORT
Turns out there was another test between Australia and India, but by the time I heard about it Australia had already won by an innings.
Swansea City beat Arsenal 3-2, good grief. Worse still, Blackburn were down to 10 men after 22 minutes and still beat Fulham 3-1. Chelsea squeaked a 1-0 over Sunderland, Liverpool drew 0-0 with Stoke City (why bother to show up). And Man United managed to beat Bolton 3-0, despite that fool Rooney missing a penalty.
MY SAD LIFE
It was relatively quiet this week, while Hannah was away. She took my Wifi 3g to stay connected, so she could not email us in style. Still only used 400Mb out of 2Gb on it, but it has been so useful.
Hannah got her NCEA results on Thursday, earlier that I thought, the results were largely as expected and hoped - she passed with Excellence, and got the excellence endorsement in Accounting, and Art Design. She had hoped to get it in others, but I think she is pretty happy with the result.
Rory fills his drink bottle nocturnally, apparently. And about 4am one night this week he filled it from the garden hose. He did have the foresight to check it before he drank from it and found a weta in the bottle, which some of us knew had been living in the end of the hose. Near miss, there.
Rory was proud, he made the front page of Reddit with this "rage comic": http://imgur.com/UWH06 He continues to administer his LOL forum, which continues to gain in popularity.
We had dinner with the Bambis on Wednesday night at Prego for Bambi's birthday. We saw actress Robyn Malcolm there. We always see some actor or some "luminary". We had dessert at café Cezanne down the other end of Ponsonby Road, and it was pretty good.
Diana installed Office 2010 on her computer because I refused to. I had to use it later in the week and it sucks completely. I really don't get why people want it.
We had Maddie and Kim over for dinner on Saturday (Kim being Rory's mother in law).
I have reconnected with Skyrim world. I hadn't touched it for about 10 days, but Rory's absence for work has made it possible. I have enjoyed it.
This may explain why it feels like I haven't achieved a heck of a lot this week, but I did actually have work and I was reasonably busy with it. I had lunch with Peter (my business partner) on Friday at Bluebird, a bit of tranquillity every visit, I just love the peanut sauce dish they do.
One thing I have achieved is an improved system for dealing with inbound videos, I am sure you are all very pleased to learn of this. It will save time and be safer.
Meanwhile, Mum was off around the north island visiting siblings again. So on Sunday she got a cat. But don't tell anyone, it's an illegal immigrant.
Sarah went off with the family on her birthday, sounds like she had fun. She went on a ferry, but not to Rangitoto….(she's never forgiven me for that, I don't think)
Young Thomas is off in a school holiday program this week, learning to program in iOS for iPads and iPhones etc. Should be very cool. I am a little jealous.
Today is Joe's birthday, well, tomorrow I suppose because it is still the 15th in Texas, assuming I send this soon, which is less than certain.
Times up, I am really going to send it now.
LOCAL NEWS
There was an attempted baby abduction at Middlemore, in South Auckland. As normal, they got all paranoid after that.
The Rena slowly sank but not from the news. They now reckon it will take two years to sort out and detritus has been appearing all over the place. I really don't get why they couldn't somehow refloat it and tow it away from trouble quickly, it ran aground back in November.
Some New Zealand born person in Perth is fighting deportation, because he reckons his family will be a bad influence on him. He was arrested to beating some small time drug vendor in Perth. Hasn't the bad influence horse already bolted?
Another week, another major downpour for Nelson.
The Auckland Port continues to sink into the poo.
A man went ballistic when Wendy's got his lunch order wrong in Lynfield. He destroyed things and it took five police to detain him. Would have been quite fun to see. There appears to be two stories as to what happened, but Wendys are bastards so I am siding with him. He is banned from the Lynfield Wendys now, but still allowed to go to others. I wonder how the staff at the other branches feel?
In Tauranga, a man set fire to himself by smoking while he refilled his lawn mower, who'd have thought? ACC told us that 3450 similar accidents were reported last year and cost $10m. Apparently a similar thing happened to a guy while siphoning petrol. Sheesh. If cellphones are "dangerous" around gas stations, then wouldn't cigarettes be really dangerous?
Meanwhile, a pregnant woman in Rotorua got the bash from another woman. Probably the father's wife or something.
Some woman is selling the chance to tattoo her arse on trademe and the bidding is well up into the thousands. Good grief.
Drownings this year is up to about 10. A canoeist got washed away down the Whanganui River.
Meanwhile, a man was killed by a train, and a body was found in a Wellington drain. A wedding guest was killed, probably in a drunken stupor, out on the road outside the do in the early hours on Sunday morning. Don't drink and walk, ever.
Some old golfer got two holes in one in one round, but his total wasn't pretty. Seems kind of typical of golf, really.
A fire in a motel turned out to be a meth lab accident, motelier wasn't too happy, and seemed a little uneasy about it - like he knew bloody well what was going on. The retards came back the next day to get their stuff and got arrested.
WORLD NEWS
I forgot to mention an article on what your facebook profile photo says about you. Apparently a quirky shot means you are staying true to the pre-spam generation, whatever that means. It seems that most options are uncool. Your kids, your pet, an action hero, an arty shot, a drunken moment, you name it. With 700 million out there, they are all cliché…
Eric Cantona wants to be President of France, that would be cool. Maybe Zidane would be cooler. Is it better to have a head butter or drop kicker as President? In retaliation, David Beckham wants to become king of Narnia (according to News Thump).
While CES (Consumer Electronics Show) was announcing cool stuff at regular intervals, there was a study released that says we drive as bad when we are sick as we do when we are drunk. Interesting concept.
Top Gear has managed to offend yet another third world country by telling the truth about them, this time it is India. Can we just take it as read that they will be offensive about wherever they go and move on?
The cruise liner in Italy made the news a lot until we heard the only New Zealander on it was okay. Last I heard eight were dead, no three, wait five, and about 40 missing.
The euro seems to be still bouncing all over the show.
SPORT
Turns out there was another test between Australia and India, but by the time I heard about it Australia had already won by an innings.
Swansea City beat Arsenal 3-2, good grief. Worse still, Blackburn were down to 10 men after 22 minutes and still beat Fulham 3-1. Chelsea squeaked a 1-0 over Sunderland, Liverpool drew 0-0 with Stoke City (why bother to show up). And Man United managed to beat Bolton 3-0, despite that fool Rooney missing a penalty.
MY SAD LIFE
It was relatively quiet this week, while Hannah was away. She took my Wifi 3g to stay connected, so she could not email us in style. Still only used 400Mb out of 2Gb on it, but it has been so useful.
Hannah got her NCEA results on Thursday, earlier that I thought, the results were largely as expected and hoped - she passed with Excellence, and got the excellence endorsement in Accounting, and Art Design. She had hoped to get it in others, but I think she is pretty happy with the result.
Rory fills his drink bottle nocturnally, apparently. And about 4am one night this week he filled it from the garden hose. He did have the foresight to check it before he drank from it and found a weta in the bottle, which some of us knew had been living in the end of the hose. Near miss, there.
Rory was proud, he made the front page of Reddit with this "rage comic": http://imgur.com/UWH06 He continues to administer his LOL forum, which continues to gain in popularity.
We had dinner with the Bambis on Wednesday night at Prego for Bambi's birthday. We saw actress Robyn Malcolm there. We always see some actor or some "luminary". We had dessert at café Cezanne down the other end of Ponsonby Road, and it was pretty good.
Diana installed Office 2010 on her computer because I refused to. I had to use it later in the week and it sucks completely. I really don't get why people want it.
We had Maddie and Kim over for dinner on Saturday (Kim being Rory's mother in law).
I have reconnected with Skyrim world. I hadn't touched it for about 10 days, but Rory's absence for work has made it possible. I have enjoyed it.
This may explain why it feels like I haven't achieved a heck of a lot this week, but I did actually have work and I was reasonably busy with it. I had lunch with Peter (my business partner) on Friday at Bluebird, a bit of tranquillity every visit, I just love the peanut sauce dish they do.
One thing I have achieved is an improved system for dealing with inbound videos, I am sure you are all very pleased to learn of this. It will save time and be safer.
Meanwhile, Mum was off around the north island visiting siblings again. So on Sunday she got a cat. But don't tell anyone, it's an illegal immigrant.
Sarah went off with the family on her birthday, sounds like she had fun. She went on a ferry, but not to Rangitoto….(she's never forgiven me for that, I don't think)
Young Thomas is off in a school holiday program this week, learning to program in iOS for iPads and iPhones etc. Should be very cool. I am a little jealous.
Today is Joe's birthday, well, tomorrow I suppose because it is still the 15th in Texas, assuming I send this soon, which is less than certain.
Times up, I am really going to send it now.
9 January 2012
Mega balloon fatality, and the Rena finally splits, otherwise typical slow news week
LOCAL NEWS
Being this time of the year, we got the usual pap about most popular baby names and other fluff. The papers became thin and more than usually tedious.
In keeping with this tradition, the ACC kept giving us cheerful statistics, like "street bashings cost $2.8m" and "ambidextrous paraplegic lesbians have a high propensity for paper cuts'.
Some 15yo kid was rescued from under a waterfall, sounded like he was very lucky last week. Turned out he wasn't so lucky and he died in hospital. His foot got wedged in rocks.
We had a bit of an air safety fuss when one of those floating "air sharks" was seen by an Air New Zealand flight over Christchurch, then someone saw one in Hamilton. Sightings continued around the country and someone advertised one in the lost pets section on trademe.
The biggest thing this week was when a hot air balloon crashed near Carterton, and 11 people died. Who knew they carried 11 people? It clipped a power line and was more conductive that the cable, I suppose. The biggest air fatality since Erebus, and perfect timing to give the media something to talk about during the quiet season.
The troubles at Auckland ports seem to be continuing to lose it customers, with Fonterra pulling out this week.
There was whales stranded in Nelson, as well as tourists.
There was a nasty accident when a guy was gutted by an anchor in a boat race.
A DOC worker on remote Raoul Island was suspended, they figure he was washed off the rocks where he was likely to have
They reckon buying organic/fairtrade/etc costs 25% more, I am surprised it's only 25% to be honest.
A man got crushed when the 40m tall tree he was trying to murder managed to get him in the process.
That bloody ship Rena finally split in two. Nobody seemed sure what that meant but I am guessing the salvage approach changes now.
A man mowing a large lawn drove his burning tractor into lake Te Anau to put it out. No mention was made of any pollution issues about doing this. The grass is pretty dry, it seems.
A preserved snake was found on a Christchurch street. Funny how such things make the news here. It was very, very dead.
We had a story about a large crayfish, 9.8kg, that was caught by an eight year old. By the time they told anyone about it, it had long since been eaten. It was reminiscent of the end of the Dodo and other extinction events. Experts thought it may have been more than 50 years old. Good thing they killed it, at least it was delicious.
WORLD NEWS
A man was arrested for lighting 55 fires in LA. Perhaps he was a tad cold.
There is a new theory that hurricanes and typhoons may help initiate earthquakes. This is interesting,
There was a little bit of fuss over a body being found on the Queen's estate, or should I say one of them. Kind of funny, really.
Apparently two Australians are arrested overseas every day overseas. They must be racking up a lot of fines, those two.
Stephen Hawking is 70 (that's not a bad run) but he wasn't in good enough shape to attend a party.
Meanwhile, apparently more importantly, Kate Middleton is 30. I think Betty White's birthday next week is far more interesting. Maybe that David Bowie is now 65 is of interest, also.
Some guy lost 90kg very quickly when surgeons removed a tumour. Yep, a 90kg tumour. Perhaps he didn't notice it when it was only 50kg. Was he eating for two?
Been a lot of news about some dodgy French-made breast implants.
I had never heard of the "Pizza Principle", but apparently the price of a slice of pizza and a ride on the subway in New York have been the same for 50 years. Not sure if the size of the pizza slice has changed, sounds a little like the Big Mac Parity thing. Anyway, the subway price has just gone up to $2.50 so pizza is expected to increase also. Bit self-fulfilling now, I suspect.
SPORT
Swansea City upset Villa 2-0, Chelsea squeaked past Wolves 2-1 thanks to Frank Lampard, and Fulham upset Arsenal 2-1 late on last weekend.
Man Utd beat Man City 3-2 in an FA Cup match, which is odd because I could have sworn Man Utd was out of the FA Cup already. Sunderland and Chelsea also won, with the upset being Sheffield Wednesday squeaking past West Ham.
The Aussies thumped India by an innings in the New Year's test.
MY SAD LIFE
We basically farted about achieving very little until Tuesday when we left for Parua Bay, near Whangarei Heads. We were in a little old cottage, constructed of similar materials to the place we had in King Street, same ceilings, same cladding. The facilities were good, although the shower was less than grunty. We were in a small valley with a pond next to us and a sheltered private beach we shared with one other house, the owners of the place we stayed. They were pretty low profile. There were tons of birds, mainly ducks, wood pigeons, tuis, pukekos. The kids saw a kiwi as they came down the drive, which was pretty cool, we've never seen one in the wild.
We brought Eva up in my car, the kids (including Maddy) came up later in the day in the Falcon. Eva was pretty happy when she got down to the beach, but we had to keen an eye on her, I didn't want her attacking birds or anything. The first day we just settled in and fooled around a little at the beach, the kids arrived about 9pm, very animated and excited because of the kiwi.
On Wednesday, didn't do a lot more than that, although the kids went off to explore downtown Whangarei in the afternoon.
On Thursday, Diana and I did a bit of a walk out around Busby Point and Smugglers Bay, saw cows, an old gun emplacement, quite a few birds. Hannah hit Rory in the head with the kayak and he looked like a wounded prize fighter with a small cut over his right eye, Hannah said it was payback for the one he gave her when she was about three with a tennis racket. We had dinner at the Parua Tavern down by the water, it was pretty reasonable pub food.
Friday, Hannah and I went off kayaking and did a 5km loop of the bay area, to the pub and around some rocks populated by seagulls and oystercatchers.
Late Friday afternoon, the kids decided to head home, rather than get up early Saturday morning. The weather turned pretty ugly on Saturday and we decided to head home in the afternoon, rather than stay another night and face possibly more traffic the next day.
Some photos of it are here:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.342923262404318.96645.100000599405805&type=1&l=30bd7715d4
On Sunday, we managed to see Gavin, then Jono, Anna, and the brats before they headed home to Sydney. It felt busy.
Hannah has just finished watching Firefly and the Serenity movie. Her path to geekdom continues. Not sure that there is any turning back.
It's Bambi's birthday this Wednesday. Oh crap, that means it is Sarah's birthday on Thursday.
Hannah is off to Matarangi for a couple of days, in Coromandel. Mum is off to New Plymouth today to visit family.
Next week is likely to be the week that Hannah gets her results for NCEA level 2. That could be a tense few days, although you get results online first so the mailman isn't that relevant any more.
Well, that just about sums it up for the first full week of 2012. You are now legally allowed to bash people that say "Happy New Year" to you.
Being this time of the year, we got the usual pap about most popular baby names and other fluff. The papers became thin and more than usually tedious.
In keeping with this tradition, the ACC kept giving us cheerful statistics, like "street bashings cost $2.8m" and "ambidextrous paraplegic lesbians have a high propensity for paper cuts'.
Some 15yo kid was rescued from under a waterfall, sounded like he was very lucky last week. Turned out he wasn't so lucky and he died in hospital. His foot got wedged in rocks.
We had a bit of an air safety fuss when one of those floating "air sharks" was seen by an Air New Zealand flight over Christchurch, then someone saw one in Hamilton. Sightings continued around the country and someone advertised one in the lost pets section on trademe.
The biggest thing this week was when a hot air balloon crashed near Carterton, and 11 people died. Who knew they carried 11 people? It clipped a power line and was more conductive that the cable, I suppose. The biggest air fatality since Erebus, and perfect timing to give the media something to talk about during the quiet season.
The troubles at Auckland ports seem to be continuing to lose it customers, with Fonterra pulling out this week.
There was whales stranded in Nelson, as well as tourists.
There was a nasty accident when a guy was gutted by an anchor in a boat race.
A DOC worker on remote Raoul Island was suspended, they figure he was washed off the rocks where he was likely to have
They reckon buying organic/fairtrade/etc costs 25% more, I am surprised it's only 25% to be honest.
A man got crushed when the 40m tall tree he was trying to murder managed to get him in the process.
That bloody ship Rena finally split in two. Nobody seemed sure what that meant but I am guessing the salvage approach changes now.
A man mowing a large lawn drove his burning tractor into lake Te Anau to put it out. No mention was made of any pollution issues about doing this. The grass is pretty dry, it seems.
A preserved snake was found on a Christchurch street. Funny how such things make the news here. It was very, very dead.
We had a story about a large crayfish, 9.8kg, that was caught by an eight year old. By the time they told anyone about it, it had long since been eaten. It was reminiscent of the end of the Dodo and other extinction events. Experts thought it may have been more than 50 years old. Good thing they killed it, at least it was delicious.
WORLD NEWS
A man was arrested for lighting 55 fires in LA. Perhaps he was a tad cold.
There is a new theory that hurricanes and typhoons may help initiate earthquakes. This is interesting,
There was a little bit of fuss over a body being found on the Queen's estate, or should I say one of them. Kind of funny, really.
Apparently two Australians are arrested overseas every day overseas. They must be racking up a lot of fines, those two.
Stephen Hawking is 70 (that's not a bad run) but he wasn't in good enough shape to attend a party.
Meanwhile, apparently more importantly, Kate Middleton is 30. I think Betty White's birthday next week is far more interesting. Maybe that David Bowie is now 65 is of interest, also.
Some guy lost 90kg very quickly when surgeons removed a tumour. Yep, a 90kg tumour. Perhaps he didn't notice it when it was only 50kg. Was he eating for two?
Been a lot of news about some dodgy French-made breast implants.
I had never heard of the "Pizza Principle", but apparently the price of a slice of pizza and a ride on the subway in New York have been the same for 50 years. Not sure if the size of the pizza slice has changed, sounds a little like the Big Mac Parity thing. Anyway, the subway price has just gone up to $2.50 so pizza is expected to increase also. Bit self-fulfilling now, I suspect.
SPORT
Swansea City upset Villa 2-0, Chelsea squeaked past Wolves 2-1 thanks to Frank Lampard, and Fulham upset Arsenal 2-1 late on last weekend.
Man Utd beat Man City 3-2 in an FA Cup match, which is odd because I could have sworn Man Utd was out of the FA Cup already. Sunderland and Chelsea also won, with the upset being Sheffield Wednesday squeaking past West Ham.
The Aussies thumped India by an innings in the New Year's test.
MY SAD LIFE
We basically farted about achieving very little until Tuesday when we left for Parua Bay, near Whangarei Heads. We were in a little old cottage, constructed of similar materials to the place we had in King Street, same ceilings, same cladding. The facilities were good, although the shower was less than grunty. We were in a small valley with a pond next to us and a sheltered private beach we shared with one other house, the owners of the place we stayed. They were pretty low profile. There were tons of birds, mainly ducks, wood pigeons, tuis, pukekos. The kids saw a kiwi as they came down the drive, which was pretty cool, we've never seen one in the wild.
We brought Eva up in my car, the kids (including Maddy) came up later in the day in the Falcon. Eva was pretty happy when she got down to the beach, but we had to keen an eye on her, I didn't want her attacking birds or anything. The first day we just settled in and fooled around a little at the beach, the kids arrived about 9pm, very animated and excited because of the kiwi.
On Wednesday, didn't do a lot more than that, although the kids went off to explore downtown Whangarei in the afternoon.
On Thursday, Diana and I did a bit of a walk out around Busby Point and Smugglers Bay, saw cows, an old gun emplacement, quite a few birds. Hannah hit Rory in the head with the kayak and he looked like a wounded prize fighter with a small cut over his right eye, Hannah said it was payback for the one he gave her when she was about three with a tennis racket. We had dinner at the Parua Tavern down by the water, it was pretty reasonable pub food.
Friday, Hannah and I went off kayaking and did a 5km loop of the bay area, to the pub and around some rocks populated by seagulls and oystercatchers.
Late Friday afternoon, the kids decided to head home, rather than get up early Saturday morning. The weather turned pretty ugly on Saturday and we decided to head home in the afternoon, rather than stay another night and face possibly more traffic the next day.
Some photos of it are here:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.342923262404318.96645.100000599405805&type=1&l=30bd7715d4
On Sunday, we managed to see Gavin, then Jono, Anna, and the brats before they headed home to Sydney. It felt busy.
Hannah has just finished watching Firefly and the Serenity movie. Her path to geekdom continues. Not sure that there is any turning back.
It's Bambi's birthday this Wednesday. Oh crap, that means it is Sarah's birthday on Thursday.
Hannah is off to Matarangi for a couple of days, in Coromandel. Mum is off to New Plymouth today to visit family.
Next week is likely to be the week that Hannah gets her results for NCEA level 2. That could be a tense few days, although you get results online first so the mailman isn't that relevant any more.
Well, that just about sums it up for the first full week of 2012. You are now legally allowed to bash people that say "Happy New Year" to you.
2 January 2012
A new year but the same old tired jokes, attitude, and news
LOCAL NEWS
A New Zealand man died in Thailand while visiting to commemorate the death of a friend four years ago. I can see a nasty cycle starting there. Then it turned out he wasn't a New Zealander but Brazilian and had lived here for some time. Same thing.
Then an New Zealand woman in US was murdered by her boyfriend. And another was shot dead in Vanuatu.
A man died when his ride on mower became a ride under mower.
Meanwhile the carnage with the road toll just went up and up. Despite this, we had the lowest total in 50 years for the year.
Rain, yet more of it, was forecast for Nelson, hitting Thursday, how did we get there when it wasn't raining? It used to be it always rained where we went on holiday.
The attack on a 5yo girl by a 16yo male in Turangi got masses of coverage. Sounds pretty nasty, at least they caught the bugger but nobody in court is identified to protect the victim, etc.
I really take offence at yearly statistics that come out before the end of the year, they inherently lack credibility even more than regular statistics. There was a record number of prescriptions, but a record low number of suicides during the RWC (WTF?).
The rain came down pretty hard over new year, and caused mayhem with celebrations and music festivals. Slips blocked the exit for 29,000 at one event.
That container ship was still leaking oil and breaking up more, can't believe how long that has taken, must be nearly two months and every time the weather gets a bit crappy we hear about it.
TelstraClear got some bad coverage after a customer reckoned their credit card got used fraudulently after giving their details to a call centre person in the Philippines. You would think that is a bit of a nightmare scenario for companies using call centres like that.
With all the fools dying on the roads, you can't help but wonder how come the percentage of retards out there seems to be increasing. We had photos this morning of a couple that thought that flooding was holographic and wouldn't affect them.
WORLD NEWS
Sinead O'Connor's fourth marriage lasted 16 days, is that longer or shorter than that Kardashyan nutjob?
Meanwhile, Russell Brand and Katy Perry lasted less than two years. TBH, the kind of people they seem to be, it is a little amazing they lasted that long.
Some of the best news out there at this time of year is the pisstake stuff. Like the American Gay war hero being awarded a posthumous dishonourable discharge, and MIT Mad Scientists telling us that corpse reanimation technology is still ten years off.
Keeping with that theme, Helena Bonham-Carter was awarded the CBE for her contribution to women getting cast in their partner's films. There were many other New Year's honours here and in the UK, all utterly meaningless.
Louis CK's little experiment continued to confound pundits and the take hit $1m in 12 days.
The meme proposal by "Tim" to "Audrey" got the attention of the internet, it wasn't bad, and she said yes which helps.
A survey off the coast of Scotland found a few things that were interesting including giant mussels with shells over 18 inches wide and a star fish with 10 feathery arms. Best find was an "Amphixious" (which does sound like the name of a medical condition, rather than a creature), a faceless, brainless fish with a very basic spine, certainly an interesting species. No sign of Nessie, though.
Some winner in the US tried to buy $500 worth of stuff with a $1 million note, which he insisted was real. I didn’t know the largest note in the US was $100.
Two Australians made it to the South Pole and ran around the world a couple of times to celebrate. Turns out there is a pole there now, who knew.
SPORT
Man Utd lost 2-3 to Blackburn, Blackburn! At home. Good grief. Arsenal beat QPR 1-0. Chelsea lost to Villa 1-3, silver lining there. Liverpool scored four goals to beat Newcastle 3-1.
Australia beat India in the Boxing Day test, what is going on with their wickets in Australia? The tests don't seem to last very long, very low scoring.
MY SAD LIFE
It really hasn't been a very productive week, I suppose we are on holiday, but even so were haven't achieved very much.
I may have mentioned reddit.com now and again, Rory spends a lot of time on it looking at meaningless crap. Anyway, he started a subreddit this week for a game called League of Legends, aka LOL. He got about 500 subscribers within a day and recruited others to help moderate it from Spain and the US. He was pretty pleased with himself.
We went to Devonport on Tuesday with Joe and Rose, and then popped in on the Goodins on the way home.
On Friday, Joe went home. We had dinner at his parents house with the family on Wednesday night. Rose made gumbo, a little spicy but not at all bad.
On New Year's Eve, we all went to see Tin Tin with the Goodins, we had dinner first then occupied much of gold class in Albany. We were among the last to leave the theatre, I think 7pm was about the last showing so people to go off to parties. Some restaurants were closed but others were reasonably busy. Hannah and Rory went off to things afterwards, and the old people just went home. The movie itself was very good, worth seeing.
Diana and I spent a fair amount of downtime watching "The Wire", which has proved to be a good show.
Rory isn't happy with me using his computer to play Skyrim, so he installed a batman game on mine, which I didn't want. So I haven't played it.
On New Year's Day, the Christmas tree got "retired", which was a little bit sad in a way. I am really not sure why, perhaps it was the way I unceremoniously dismembered it to fit it into the garden bin. I did do some other judicious pruning, also. And the lawn needs mowing again, I only did it on Christmas Eve Eve.
I had to fart about on the phone for ages with Vodafone to get things set up so I could check my balance on my mobile wifi thing. I had 1984Mb left out of 2048Mb, which means I used bugger all. I used it to post a photo on facebook from the theatre while we watched Tin Tin.
Apparently I don't tell anybody anything, so I am telling you all that we are going to somewhere near Whangarei Heads for five days, we leave tomorrow and return on Sunday. The dog is going with us and the kids are coming up after and leaving before we do.
I haven't come up with any resolutions for the New Year, I did consider inventing a new obscene word each day but that just seemed like too much bother.
Happy New Year, etc.
A New Zealand man died in Thailand while visiting to commemorate the death of a friend four years ago. I can see a nasty cycle starting there. Then it turned out he wasn't a New Zealander but Brazilian and had lived here for some time. Same thing.
Then an New Zealand woman in US was murdered by her boyfriend. And another was shot dead in Vanuatu.
A man died when his ride on mower became a ride under mower.
Meanwhile the carnage with the road toll just went up and up. Despite this, we had the lowest total in 50 years for the year.
Rain, yet more of it, was forecast for Nelson, hitting Thursday, how did we get there when it wasn't raining? It used to be it always rained where we went on holiday.
The attack on a 5yo girl by a 16yo male in Turangi got masses of coverage. Sounds pretty nasty, at least they caught the bugger but nobody in court is identified to protect the victim, etc.
I really take offence at yearly statistics that come out before the end of the year, they inherently lack credibility even more than regular statistics. There was a record number of prescriptions, but a record low number of suicides during the RWC (WTF?).
The rain came down pretty hard over new year, and caused mayhem with celebrations and music festivals. Slips blocked the exit for 29,000 at one event.
That container ship was still leaking oil and breaking up more, can't believe how long that has taken, must be nearly two months and every time the weather gets a bit crappy we hear about it.
TelstraClear got some bad coverage after a customer reckoned their credit card got used fraudulently after giving their details to a call centre person in the Philippines. You would think that is a bit of a nightmare scenario for companies using call centres like that.
With all the fools dying on the roads, you can't help but wonder how come the percentage of retards out there seems to be increasing. We had photos this morning of a couple that thought that flooding was holographic and wouldn't affect them.
WORLD NEWS
Sinead O'Connor's fourth marriage lasted 16 days, is that longer or shorter than that Kardashyan nutjob?
Meanwhile, Russell Brand and Katy Perry lasted less than two years. TBH, the kind of people they seem to be, it is a little amazing they lasted that long.
Some of the best news out there at this time of year is the pisstake stuff. Like the American Gay war hero being awarded a posthumous dishonourable discharge, and MIT Mad Scientists telling us that corpse reanimation technology is still ten years off.
Keeping with that theme, Helena Bonham-Carter was awarded the CBE for her contribution to women getting cast in their partner's films. There were many other New Year's honours here and in the UK, all utterly meaningless.
Louis CK's little experiment continued to confound pundits and the take hit $1m in 12 days.
The meme proposal by "Tim" to "Audrey" got the attention of the internet, it wasn't bad, and she said yes which helps.
A survey off the coast of Scotland found a few things that were interesting including giant mussels with shells over 18 inches wide and a star fish with 10 feathery arms. Best find was an "Amphixious" (which does sound like the name of a medical condition, rather than a creature), a faceless, brainless fish with a very basic spine, certainly an interesting species. No sign of Nessie, though.
Some winner in the US tried to buy $500 worth of stuff with a $1 million note, which he insisted was real. I didn’t know the largest note in the US was $100.
Two Australians made it to the South Pole and ran around the world a couple of times to celebrate. Turns out there is a pole there now, who knew.
SPORT
Man Utd lost 2-3 to Blackburn, Blackburn! At home. Good grief. Arsenal beat QPR 1-0. Chelsea lost to Villa 1-3, silver lining there. Liverpool scored four goals to beat Newcastle 3-1.
Australia beat India in the Boxing Day test, what is going on with their wickets in Australia? The tests don't seem to last very long, very low scoring.
MY SAD LIFE
It really hasn't been a very productive week, I suppose we are on holiday, but even so were haven't achieved very much.
I may have mentioned reddit.com now and again, Rory spends a lot of time on it looking at meaningless crap. Anyway, he started a subreddit this week for a game called League of Legends, aka LOL. He got about 500 subscribers within a day and recruited others to help moderate it from Spain and the US. He was pretty pleased with himself.
We went to Devonport on Tuesday with Joe and Rose, and then popped in on the Goodins on the way home.
On Friday, Joe went home. We had dinner at his parents house with the family on Wednesday night. Rose made gumbo, a little spicy but not at all bad.
On New Year's Eve, we all went to see Tin Tin with the Goodins, we had dinner first then occupied much of gold class in Albany. We were among the last to leave the theatre, I think 7pm was about the last showing so people to go off to parties. Some restaurants were closed but others were reasonably busy. Hannah and Rory went off to things afterwards, and the old people just went home. The movie itself was very good, worth seeing.
Diana and I spent a fair amount of downtime watching "The Wire", which has proved to be a good show.
Rory isn't happy with me using his computer to play Skyrim, so he installed a batman game on mine, which I didn't want. So I haven't played it.
On New Year's Day, the Christmas tree got "retired", which was a little bit sad in a way. I am really not sure why, perhaps it was the way I unceremoniously dismembered it to fit it into the garden bin. I did do some other judicious pruning, also. And the lawn needs mowing again, I only did it on Christmas Eve Eve.
I had to fart about on the phone for ages with Vodafone to get things set up so I could check my balance on my mobile wifi thing. I had 1984Mb left out of 2048Mb, which means I used bugger all. I used it to post a photo on facebook from the theatre while we watched Tin Tin.
Apparently I don't tell anybody anything, so I am telling you all that we are going to somewhere near Whangarei Heads for five days, we leave tomorrow and return on Sunday. The dog is going with us and the kids are coming up after and leaving before we do.
I haven't come up with any resolutions for the New Year, I did consider inventing a new obscene word each day but that just seemed like too much bother.
Happy New Year, etc.
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