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.
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