Merry Christmas

We have been rather busy over the last couple of months. The bathroom project has consumed most of the spare time, and actual real work the majority of the rest. The bathroom is nearing completion and has turned out quite well. The builders did a good job on the walls, which were nice and flat making tiling a snap. Alas the original walls were rather dodgy which made things much more fun but I got away with it for the most part. The floor has come up rather well, especially as we went for a border with diagonal arrangement. The wall was quite straightforward by comparison, but was a pain in the proverbial courtesy of the dodgy but cheap Chinese tiles which are slightly different sizes. Thus we have a variable gap between some tiles, which is annoying. The spa bath is working a treat much to the amusement of various small female things. We almost didn't have enough money to buy the tiles, and ended up splurging the UK credit card. The day after, a couple of my invoices of reasonably significant value got paid, which would have more than covered the damage. Such is the uncertainty of being self employed.

I took part in a busking competition on Labour day. Despite this being billed as an acoustic event, there were a large number of 12 volt amps in evidence, powered by suitably large batteries and I was drowned out. I had to move several times because I couldn't hear myself. I also had to move on account of the belly dancer who parked herself opposite me, which was "distracting".

Imogen wanted a Rip Stick for her birthday, the skateboard being far too easy to handle. She struggled with the Stick initially, but after watching the accompanying DVD she was off. Thus far no new trips to the casualty department.

The gas on the BBQ has finally run out. It seems it lasts just over 12 months. Naturally it failed when we had a few friends round, and thus proceedings were adjourned to the kitchen.

The pool has been causing some concern of late. Now the weather is hotting up, the water is just the right temperature. Unfortunately, the paint is coming off, and a little, or indeed a lot of agitation turns the pool into something resembling milk of magnesia. We decided to grasp the bull by the horns and drained the thing, with the help of a pump from Pool Services. The idea was to take the Karcher power washer and blast the oxidising paint off and the refill it. However, although the Karcher blew a lot of rubbish off, there was a stubborn undercoat that continued to release a white residue when you rubbed your hand over it. We concluded that the best plan of attack was to brush this off with a number of wire brushes. This turned into a game that most of the family was roped into with varying degrees of cooperation. Some of the smaller members looked like Smurfettes by the time they had finished, being covered in blue paint. We also discovered that one of the steps cut into the concrete appeared to be rotting away. The more we scrubbed, the more concrete dropped out. Pool Services recommended we get some epoxy mortar and stuff it into the hole. This was a rather gooey job, but ultimately it was successful, although $65 for what seems like two tubs of Araldite seemed a little expensive. We refilled the pool, which took 46 hours, took 45 cubic metres of water and cost an estimated $70. A week later, the pool is still pretty clear (you can see the filter at the bottom) and the kids are in it most days after school. The floating duck thermometer has nudged 29C, which is most pleasant.

The pool has also claimed its first victim. A hedgehog managed to get itself into the pool, but sadly didn't make it out again, prompting a hedgehog funeral. A second one did much the same thing, but as the pool was empty at the time, lived to tell the tale. It nearly didn't though - given how much s**t it left in it's wake.

We had our first visitor from the UK. Di's sister came to stay for a few days before disappearing off to Oz for a week and then returning to stay with us for another few days. Quite why she did it this way round remains a mystery. We're expecting a visit from another friend from the UK, who is one of these super fit iron men types. I just know that I'm going to get dragged out on an enormous long run and probably die in the process. Looking forward to it already.

Business wise I have picked up a few new customers. Most of these are castoffs from a guy I've done some work for who has far too much on his plate. No major projects yet, but every little is useful.

Di's office decided it was going to shut down and move everybody to Tauranga. This wasn't really working, so Di jumped ship and is now working for another agency who were chasing her hard, as were quite a few others to get her on board.

One evening we went for a walk on the beach, just across from our house. While we were there, we spotted a couple of sharks in the surf. They were about 4-5 feet long and not more than 20 yards from the shore. Di wanted some photos, and ended up wading deeper and deeper into the surf to get the best shots with the camera phone. She managed a couple of decent-ish ones, and came out with the requisite number of limbs although some were a little damp. Apparently there have been rather a few sightings of late, which prompted the press to appeal for eye witness accounts. Di's photo ended up on the front of the BOP Times, and also the NZ Herald - so it made the national press.

A friend of ours had to go back to the UK recently, which meant that we ended up dog sitting Kylie, a rather bouncy stick obsessed labradoodle. The kids made a massive fuss of her and wore the poor animal out. Naturally she ended up in the pool a couple of times (did I really need to throw the stick in that direction ;) but was none the worse for wear. I tried to take her for a jog, but after she decided to do what dogs do after 200 yards and showed a general reluctance to keep up with my decidedly modest pace, I thought better of it. It turns out that every time that dog gets out of the house, it empties its bowels. Labradoodle? Poobrador more like. However, on the plus side, having had Kylie to stay for a few days, the novelty of owning a dog has faded. We have managed to acquire a pair of guinea pigs though. I am told they are both male.

It's the end of the year, and all the kids have had the school reports. Phoebe is doing fantastically well and is now above the controversial national standards in everything except writing. Freya isn't doing quite so well, but is on target. Imogen is doing just fine, and we had to attend an awards ceremony at school, where she was presented with three awards. Rhiannon, however has just about blown the school apart. She managed to pick up *ELEVEN* awards, including first place in her year for Japanese and Music, second in science and social sciences, and the finishing touch being second overall aggregate in her year group. Fantastic.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Can I Use Your Loo?

Yet again I find that three weeks have flown past and I've not give the insatiable masses their fix of blog updates. Here goes

Phoebe has shown interest in the piano. She takes a somewhat perverse pleasure in practising whenever I remind Imogen or Rhiannon that they should be practising their instruments. I am playing up to this and making a fuss of her and trying to channel this enthusiasm as best as I can. It seems to be working. Speaking of music, I am attempting to learn a grade VIII piece, Rondo Opus 22 by Sor. Challenging doesn't do it justice.

The pool seems to have lost most of it's chlorine. We added what we thought was the right amount and overdid it a bit. However after a week or so and some rain the levels had returned to normal. Shame it's still too damn cold to use. We added some clarifier as well, which helps remove some of the ultra fine particles, which can otherwise pass through the filter and back into the pool.

I had an email from the guy who cooked us dinner the other week. He is a graphic designer in addition to being a chef. Er..yeah...anyway, he claimed that he designed websites on the side and had a "mate" who coded them up for him. This necessitated me pressing my business card into his hands with a directive to give me a call if his "mate", who by all accounts was becoming more expensive and vague actually let him down. Lo-and-behold I get an email asking for a quote for none other than his mother's new website. I went and met with him and his mum, discussed various possibilities including a CMS option and hosting. The quote was accepted and the site is now live. Huzzah. Even better, he's passed my details onto someone else.

I've also started work on another site based on their graphic designer's mock up. Alas this one's going to be time consuming, because the client wants to mico-manage the whole thing and is a little demanding about exactly which font size to use...

A couple more domain registrations have come my way, and I am now hosting a site that is going to be launched nationally. This has necessitated me acquiring another host just for the launch - it would be rather embarrassing if he thing fell over on day one, as new high profile sites tend to do when everyone + dog tries out the website.

The rates bill has been resolved. I still find it rather harsh that you get a demand for $950 and a threat to add 10% if you don't pay on time. Under the rebate rules, we were entitled to a full rebate of $570 since our "income" for the last financial year was, ahem, bugger all. We missed a trick with the portion of last year's rates as we would have been entitled to a rebate on the year we weren't in the country. The problem however is that the IRD have not given us any proof of the income we haven't had, and without that, the council won't grant a rebate. I explained that we had no proof to the council, who insisted we get the IRD to write something to that effect. After several phone calls to the IRD, I finally got through. The IRD person suggested that we print off a statement from the online services website that said there were no details. Apparently this rather flimsy evidence is what the council were after. Sure enough, this proved to be the case. I appeared in person at the council offices, presented the evidence and subject to a clarifying phone call "upstairs", a full rebate was granted.

Our sofa, which we bought nearly a year ago and had to have fixed, has broken again. This time it's snapped clean in the middle. We reported it to the shop. Three times. Despite this, the manufacturer never bothered to call to arrange a time to fix it. We did a little bit of research which lead us to believe that the consumer guarantees act was on our side here. In short it says that goods sold must be fit for purpose and of sufficiently durable quality. We went back to the shop and said as much. They did try and offer us an upgrade, since the items of the same "quality" weren't going to gut it, but there was nothing that really grabbed our attention. We ended up with a full refund a few days later. We did a tour of various furniture shops, but ended up buying a suite from TradeMe for $500. If it lasts a year, then it'll be worth it.

Sunday wasn't a good day. Rhiannon's laptop decided to die, an event that was accompanied by a huge amount of wailing and whining. The weather also took a turn for the worse, with thunder and lighting directly overhead, and hail stones, some of which were approaching cherry/olive size. Fortunately nothing broke, unless you count hordes of children running around outside trying to collect them all up and colliding with each other. I have no idea why they are still in the freezer.

The laptop was collected by Computer Solutions, who whisked it up to Auckland for repair. It transpired that it was the power brick that was at fault, which seemed a little odd since the old one was still giving out power. A 10 day lead time was quoted. Argh! Madam has been making her presence felt and generally getting in everyone's way by stealing whatever hardware is available to continue her online life, the details of which no one is allowed to know. Fortunately, the lead time turned into a couple of days and Madam returned to her darkened room to exhaust what remains of our monthly data allowance. No thanks, of course, for the $90 repair bill.

Imogen had been badgering us for a fishing rod for a while now. We finally gave in and took her to get one. This if course necessitated a trip down to the Mount to try it out. She actually manage to catch a couple of fish - lane snapper. They were unfortunately too small to eat and had to be thrown back. One didn't make it though - a passing cormorant got an easy meal.

Rhiannon and Freya both managed to get themselves into the paper with various school events. Rhiannon was recognisable from a distance, but Freya was most distinct.

We went to the Tuesday pub quiz at Rain bar - and managed to come second winning a $50 bar tab. We did have a little help from our B team, but were still a long way above third place.

Craig announced this week that he was moving out. It came as rather a shock, particularly as we hadn't been winding each other up for several weeks now. It turns out his boss has just kicked his girlfriend out and wants a lads only bachelor pad for a while. Although the rent is a bit less, he's going to have to feed himself, sort out his own internet and wash his work clothes, gym clothes, posing clothes, etc, etc. He seems to get through more clothes than all his sisters put together, so good luck with that.

Our builder told us that he's coming next Monday to start work on the office/bathroom conversions. This was also the day that Di managed to reverse the Odyssey into a parked car, cracking the bumper. Apparently the reversing camera wouldn't work fast enough and she couldn't be bothered to wait. Sigh. I also met with the director of another internet firm, who seemed interested in my development capabilities. We had a loose agreement that any odd jobs might come my way. This came through quicker than expected with a call on Saturday. He wanted a couple of sites revamping and the details will be discussed next week.

Sunday I was VWed. Wayne has bought a rather ancient Toyota Lucida MPV since he and Vicky have impending parental visits, and carting them all about with the kids requires more than the usual five seats. Sadly, it had no in-car entertainment. I'd bought a CD/Radio off the catchoftheday website a few months ago, with a plan to fit it into the Mirth Mobile. Sadly I could not figure out how to remove the old one, and as the Radio is just dandy, I slung it into a box and left it there. Wayne was keen to have it, and bribed me with some beer to install it. The connectors were incompatible, but a trip to Repco provided one half of the solution. The other required a judicious amount of soldering, and it all went quite smoothly. That was until we tried to push the unit into the dashboard. It was too big by about 5mm. A problem such as this called for a beer and a large amount of air to be sucked through the teeth. Measuring things up, it seemed that the fake walnut veneer on the dash might be filed down, and a few metal protrusions persuaded not to. With such a fine end to a Sunday afternoon, we decided that the pleasant weather was conducive to a barbecue, and the beast was fired up for the first time this season. Sadly, the weather turned by the time we were all assembled, so the BBQ was dragged into the conservatory.

The builders turned up on Monday, and demolished the walls. The electrician didn't, so operations were suspended at about 4PM. We have concerns that the bath which we don't yet have might not fit through the doorway, so a trip down to Plumb in was in order to measure up. I wanted a corner bath, and the measurements are such that this is actually the only realistic option. A regular bath would fit, but it would be cramped by comparison.

Personal Services

It's all going ballistic. As I reported in the last post a few weeks (oops!) ago, I've been putting a number of quotes out. It's rather pleasing to be able to report that they've all been accepted, but worrying that they've all come in at the same time. I have 6-8 weeks of work ahead of me, which is nice, but also a bit of a juggling act. One of the more interesting jobs involves me working for a male escort agency. Not as dodgy as it sounds - I'm writing a customer registration database back end and it's not that sort of an agency - it's more of a companionship thing and allegedly no rumpy pumpy is allowed.

We've had our first fuel bill since the insulation was fitted, and we've achieved a $60 drop. Hurrah. Sadly we've also had our rates bill. This comes in at a biennial $960 and the b******s want it up front by the end of the month, or get this, they add 10% on top. Apparently it's not possible to pay by instalment. Unbelievable. We are eligible for a rebate however, because it's based on the previous year's income which was approximately $0.00. But they won't just take our word for it, they want some sort of acknowledgement from the IRD. This is where the rot has set in, because although Diane has received an official notification of earning sod all, mine has yet to be "processed", according to their website. I tried ringing up, but the automated call handling system was buckling under an apparently excessive load.

The Mirth Mobile made it through another WOF. This was a bit of a rush job, as I was driving on Saturday morning, and happened to glance up at the sticker on the windscreen and noticed that the due date had passed three days ago. Oops. I dimly remembered that there was a cryptic comment about one of the tyres being a bit dodgy, so I got it replaced with a cheap second hand one (now the tyre with the deepest tread!) at Tyremaster before wandering down to VTNZ. I still have one borderline tyre, but it's not the one they moaned about before!

Diane is on the verge of signing up not two but three and maybe even a fourth listing as one of these has a neighbour who wants to sell. Di came up with an apparently convincing argument that two houses up with the same agent makes for a quicker sale etc. Said with a straight face and a confident tone, it rang the appropriate bell.

Freya had to visit the doctor earlier this week because of ear ache. The English doctor we saw prescribed the usually amoxycillin and some paracetamol. 24 hours later Freya was more or less back to full scream. So much so in fact that she managed to trip over the dishwasher (while walking backwards through the kitchen) which of course sent the contents flying, including the very sharp vegetable knife which stuck in her leg. I'd just come back from a Sunday morning run and was just stepping into the shower when I was required to cover up and take her off for stitches. She was quite good about the anaesthetic, no doubt aided by the lollipop she was given to chew on by yet another English doctor.

We have had a few builders round to give quotes for putting up and taking down various walls. The first task is to put up some walls around what has become the office space. When we sell, it will of course be a fourth bedroom, but as far as the council are concerned it will be an office. More bedrooms apparently means a large rates bill, and it's big enough as it is. We're also getting quotes for putting up the walls for the bathroom, since the lack of a family bathroom will be a sticking point when we sell, and I'm getting fed up playing U-Boat Kommander every time Freya and Phoebe have a bath.

Getting Busy

I am pleased to report that things are starting to get busier. I met with a rival design firm, who are very much in the "eye candy" department and not in the down-and-dirty-database mangling that is my forte. They have a customer who's in need of some requirements that they just can't handle and we've worked out a quote together which has been accepted. It's a reasonably large project, which I expect to take two weeks of solid development. I expect to be relying very heavily on jQuery for some of the more funky requirements, including AJAX population of various parts of the page.

I am also trying to complete a newsletter authoring system which I'm told is a must have for a number of folks. All the versions I have come across are either over complex, limited in functionality or cost serious money, none of which makes them attractive.

I discovered that Google have dropped me from their maps database - allegedly for breach of "quality guidelines". Having read them, I really can't see why this should be the case and of course they're eing typically opaque and non-responsive about the whole thing. Google are the new Microsoft, IMHO.

I had a meeting about the Quickbooks integration which went well. I need a little more info from the hosting company, but I should then be able to put a quote together.

Freya is now wearing glasses! Apparently she has my eyes and is a little short sighted. We went to Specsavers in Bayfair - and because we have a community services card, the two pairs of glasses cost us the princely sum of $30. Can't be bad can it? Shame she keeps pulling such silly faces.

Freya's netball skills continue to improve - she's really got the interception and passing sorted out and she's streets ahead of some of the other team members - some of whom are just not very coordinated at all.

Diane's real estate activities are beginning to move forward too. After a rather dispiriting period where everyone around here seemed to be picking up sales and listings (only for them to fall through later) she's on the verge of her first listing - when the lad gets back from Vietnam or Cambodia or wherever it is she's flown off too. An out of the blue call this afternoon saw her racing off to show someone round a house being marketed by another agent. They were very interested and may well put in an offer.

Last night we had an excellent dinner, prepared for us by a local chef. Phoebe won this prize in the school raffle - an $800 value meal for eight with free booze (and plenty left over) all for $5. She raided her pocket money to pay for the ticket and all she got for it was a pizza she didn't like, and some magic reappearing coins that ended up in her money box which really confused her.

Time Flys - But Freya Swims

I could have sworn my last entry in the blog was only a couple of days ago, but it appears it's two weeks. I've kind of forgotten most of the mundane events of the last two weeks, but there have been one or two interesting events.

The kids have now finished the second of their four term year and they're now off for two weeks. Currently we're halfway through the holiday and it's becoming a little wearing having them fight each other all the time. Some may not survive long enough to return to school.

My web hosting master plan is beginning to gather pace. I now have 4 domains hosted, in addition to my own, which more than pays my hosting fees and results in a modest profit. A few more and It'll be producing real money. One domain that I was asked to register caused a few problems, since I neglected to set the "registrant" correctly. Changing this later proved to be a pain in the butt, and only a lot of argument and requests for common sense and to escalate to management resulted in the change. The usual route apparently is to fill in a form, get it signed by both the old and new registrant and fax it through. This is a security feature apparently, but also a PITA two hours after registration.

The ZenCart installation went live last week. Don't forget to visit and buy Pounamu Jade Jewellery - shipping world wide for a modest fee.

The tax office very kindly sent me a tax return for 2009/10. I filled it in and sent it back, not that I actually earned anything last year. It's possible that I might get a couple of dollars back on the bank interest - but it won't even buy a beer so I'm not going to plan a lavish night on the town. I also attended a free tax seminar at the local tax office. The tax office staff who organised it were very helpful and human - makes a pleasant change from the UK. The overall message was that as long as everything was claimed in a fair and reasonable manner, then there was unlikely to be any Spanish inquisition. I did discover that some of our claims are probably a bit dodgy, though, petrol in particular. I'll find out more about GST tomorrow as there's another workshop on that topic.

As a result of filling in my tax return, I was reminded that we are in fact now "working" although we're not generating any income. The tax office did mention when we applied for the family tax credit that being in work would make us eligible for "in-work tax credit", and it turns out that this is worth another $75 a week. In order to claim, I had to register for online services, send a "secure email", which was answered the next day, and the request was granted! As we've both been working for a couple of months now, I was left counting the cost of not applying sooner - but at least it's another $75 a week.

I have succeeded in making Quickbooks talk to a PHP/SOAP server - which is good news since it means that I may be able to earn a few dollars integrating this into a web store for another potential client. He's setting up a meeting, but the online demo finally succeeded in pumping a sales order into his system, once he'd added the correct inventory part.

We had the loft insulation fitted on Friday. The effect wasn't actually that noticeable on Friday night, but this was because it was actually the coldest night of the year. It just felt like any other night. Saturday and Sunday were much warmer. Our ensuite which is usually a bit nippy resulting in a general reluctance to get out of bed and use it early in the morning, is now remarkably unremarkable in terms of temperature at 6AM.The gas fire is almost redundant now - and no bad thing. We got invited out to a "pot luck dinner" on Friday evening (I did a chile-con-carne) and when we got back the fumes hit us as we walked through the door. There is no flue - the fire vents into the living room. It seems safe enough but it certainly stinks and results in considerable condensation in the morning.

We tried to have a mid-year Christmas dinner on Saturday, but the weather was unsportingly sunny resulting in an amount of lounging about in the garden. We had scheduled for 3PM, but the Vicmeister was her usual fashionably late self and appeared at about 5, by which time the broccoli had suffered a little, but the rest of the meal was OK. She redeemed herself by producing a bottle of mulled wine, purchased from a knowing English sales assistant at New World. Apparently quite a lot of poms attempt to celebrate Christmas when it's cold - it just seems wrong having a barbie and surfing on Christmas day. The wine was just dandy, producing a very fine warming sensation in the bottom of the stomach. Shame we didn't actually need warming up.

We bought a second hand lawnmower a few days back. Trying to start it on Sunday afternoon, despite its "easy start" moniker proved challenging, but it went eventually. It didn't live up to its "quiet" claim either. It was in fact a bad buy - the choke seems to have a mind of its own and thus it has rather a nasty habit of cutting out. It's nice and sharp though. When it runs. One of the neighbours saw me struggling, and lent me his. Later farting about saw ours running at an ear splitting full bore - it needs ear protectors for sure.

Freya managed to fall into the swimming pool this morning - apparently it was rather cold. She came in shivering and wet but laughing and seems none too bad for the experience.

Sorry, Where Was I?

Doesn't time fly? It seems to have been rather a while since the last entry. I've actually been rather busy, with my attempts to earn a living. I've even begun to earn a little money.

I've invested in a new virtual host located in Auckland. The one I was using turned out to be located in California, and sometimes its performance was, to put it mildly, dog. I now have 3GB of disk space to play with and have root access and can thus do pretty much anything I want, although the kernel seems to have been tweaked with one or two features removed.

Diane managed to have a small incident in the Odyssey - not bad only 3 days since we bought it. It wasn't her fault - it was parked and a van driver managed to smack the door of his van into the bumper.

Another networking meeting resulted in a couple of referrals. One of these was for someone wanting a shopping cart. I've not done one before, but plucked a copy of ZenCart from the Internet and set about figuring out how to configure it and get it up and running. I was a little nervous about the credit card aspect, but it's actually dead simple, because all it does is run off to the bank's payment page and returns a succeeded message back to the software. I also found a very handy payment provider in Paymate, who specialise in the Australian/New Zealand market. No setup fee, no monthly fees and reasonable rates. They seem better than the ubiquitous Paypal, since you don't get screwed over for having the audacity to use a currency other than the US dollar, and hammered if you withdraw funds. Paymate deposit into your bank account within 25 hours.

Di had lots of fun at work with the "IT" person. He seems to have a right stinky attitude - everything is too much trouble. He also seems barely competent at his job, since he failed miserably to get more than 6 of the dozen or so computers connected to the wireless access point. I told Diane to ask him some searching questions about DHCP address pool size just to make him a little bit more paranoid.

Freya's netball skills continue to improve. She really has got the idea of moving around the court and is becoming more cunning in the way she plays the came. The last match they played involved a number of excellent sequences of play resulting in the team's first win - and quite a comprehensive one.

Having swatted up on ZenCart, and put together quite a decent demo, (including debugging the Paymate payment module which didn't seem to work with the latest ZenCart version) I arranged a demo for Tuesday.

Diane did an open home on Sunday - one person very keen but sadly has their own house to sell, which effectively means no sale. This seems to be very much the order of the day.

Tuesday came around and I did the cart demo. It went really quite well - nothing broke and the price I came up with seemed not to frighten the guy off. He asked me for a quote which I duly sent him. It wasn't all success on Tuesday though, I managed to hoover up Rhiannon's headphones which promptly spat both the ends off. Fortunately we managed to track down an identical set with which to replace them and were thus spared the full fury of a hissing spitting teenager. Diane also spotted a bloke across the road from her office, carving jade jewellery outside his home. Although she was only vaguely interested, she made a fuss and latched straight on to his lack of a web site. To cut a long story short, he was after a shopping cart too, so my card was pressed into his hand and he was duly directed to give me a call. Good girl! Later that evening I got an email (he'd been sniffing round my website) and it seems he's more than interested. I hastily modified the demo I'd put together and wandered round on Wednesday. He and his wife were impressed, and I wasted no time in issuing a quote. The following day I got my first order! His money turned up the following day and I got to work registering the domain name and putting the site together.

Saturday Di and Vicky went to a massive Zumba party. It was supposed to be the largest party in Australasia, but missed out by 16 people. Wayne and I watched NZ hammer the Welsh into oblivion, and England beat Australia at rugby. Huzzah! Much beer was consumed (mainly by me it seems) and when Di and Vicky returned I was a little worse for wear. Di was rally pissed off, having been pulled over by the police allegedly on suspicion of drunk driving and then fitted up for not staying in her lane while navigating a round about. The filth that pulled her was clearly one of those to whom the job meant everything. The piggy little moustache and the immaculate and tightly fastened shirt and tie said it all. He was apparently not at all amused at finding a sober driver, not just sober but stone cold sober, especially an English one and was really highly sarcastic, asking questions like "Don't you have lanes in England?". He took about 20 minutes wibbling on and generally getting off on his own sense of self importance and then issued an instant $150 fine. Bar Steward. Subsequent enquiries revealed that Di was dead unlucky, as most coppers will send you on your way with a little advice. Vicky's verbals probably didn't help much, but he was clearly just an arsehole.

Sunday we hade the pleasure of Charlie and Lola for a couple of hours while V&W had a couple of hours to get some painting and tidying done. In the end they just went for a walk in the mount, but they certainly appreciated the time off.

This Tuesday I started work on a rather interesting project - making the Quickbooks accounting software talk to a Linux/Apache web cart. Various people had apparently told my contact that it couldn't be done, but I fail to see why this is the case. The Quickbooks web connector uses XML/SOAP to talk to its data sources (i.e. the web server) and as these are all implemented in PHP, it should be possible. Time will tell. The first thing however was to get quick books installed, which took rather a long time on my poor little laptop. All that .NET rubbish. Noooo!

I spent quite a lot of time this week trying to get the holiday rental code I'd written to run inside a Joomla CMS. In the end, I came to the conclusion that it would be far easier to ditch it in favour of using Opus instead. This worked quite well in the end, but the path was rather painful, not least because of an inadvertent CSS name conflict which had me confused for a while. It's now hanging together and there's a danger I might actually get paid again.

The rest of the week was spent flitting between Quickbooks, Zen Cart and the holiday rental stuff. Busy busy busy. We've now had the shortest day, and even then it only seems to get dark at 5PM, not like the UK where it starts to get dark at 3PM. Still not massively cold although we have had one or two overnight frosts. The heatpump is earning its keep, not doubt about that. I've also ordered some roof insulation, since we get 60% off with a community services card. The bad news is that we might not get it installed for 4-5 weeks by which time the winter may be on its way out. However, as we may not have the card next year, it seems like a good time.

God Save The Queen

It's been a while since the last entry - I don't seem to have got round to doing it. Part of this is being stuck to the laptop for most of the day and half the evening curtail the enthusiasm for more typing. What follows represents two weeks of nefarious activity. Well, I'd like to think of it as nefarious, but it's probably just plain boring. Read on and find out.

I went round to Wayne's on Monday to watch the world twenty20 final between England and Australia. Sadly I managed to missed the start (6AM), but thanks to the magic of Sky was able to skip through the action and watch England WIN. Huzzah. Shame it was a Monday morning otherwise we'd have cracked a few beers open. Always nice when England win, especially if the Aussies LOOSE.

Tuesday I met up with another web design company based in Greerton. They lack any programming ability but are very good on the graphics side. We hope to be able to do some business in the future. The meeting was a result of a referral from another graphic designer who did my business cards. It really is who you know in the country.

Thursday I attended the 7AM (why am I having all these early mornings??) networking meeting but picked up a referral from one of the members who wanted a web site. Sounds promising.

Saturday morning was spent at the Mad Butcher and PakNSave shopping for our house warming party. We had invited pretty much everybody we knew and the place was full of Pomms and estate agents. Hmm. It started at about 3PM and we threw the last people out at around midnight. Everything went well apart from one five year old who lost his front tooth courtesy of the trampoline. Tramp: 2 Kids: 0.

Sunday we cleared up but paid a visit to a friend who as a nurse, had promised to remove Imogen's stitches FOC, saving us a few bucks on a trip to the doctor. We had a lot of stuff left over from the party so we descended on V&W and insisted they spark up their barbecue. It wasn't the warmest of days, but their outdoor wood burner just about kept the shivers away.

Monday I went to chat a bout a possible web site which seemed very positive, and the rest of the day was spent shopping for cars. We visited perhaps half a dozen dealers who all seemed to stock the ubiquitous Honda Odyssey MPV. We particularly liked the one we found at Car Connexxions. Unfortunately we'd forgotten that Freya was competing in an inter-schools cross country event. She finished 11th in her age group - a thoroughly creditable performance.

Tuesday we went back an bought the car, and then tried to find some insurance. Insurance over here is not compulsory, but highly advised since you're liable to pay for the other party's car if you drive like a twit. The AA were initially miles cheaper, since they decided that Diane (it's her car, not mine - the Mirth Mobile liveth on) as a real estate agent did not need commercial insurance. We rang around a few others including a guy from the networking group who was the only one who could explain the reason for commercial insurance being more expensive: namely that it costs more to administer a claim on a commercial policy because the government takes an interest in write offs. This is because as a GST registered person, you're able to claim GST and depreciation on the car, and it's not unknown for the car to be mysteriously written off and thus act as a tax fiddle. In the end the third person we spoke to at the AA suddenly decided Di did need commercial insurance, which meant the network guy got the business.

Wednesday evening we attended a multi-country dinner at the primary school. Everyone was supposed to bring a dish from the country that the kids had been researching. Freya had chosen Sweden, and we took Swedish ginger cookies. I had also been roped into playing guitar - since it's Spanish. I was thrust onto the stage and tried to play while sat on a very small chair. The foot stool was out of the question which made things rather awkward. The lighting was not very good which didn't help with reading the music so my first piece was a bit rubbish. The second was much better and I was quite happy with it - playing from memory with your eyes shut does work it seems. I was applauded off the stage and no one threw any of the food.

Thursday - another network meeting. The quotes I'd given out seemed to have been well received. I just need to chase them up next week. I exchanged a few emails with the Greerton outfit - looking very positive here. I migrated my mobile phone over to the 2degrees network - Vodafone are really expensive and 2degrees are half the price and keep giving a way extra credit and free texts. The process was relatively painless and the number transfer took about 6 hours to complete. We took Phoebe and Freya to netball - Freya played really well but does need to work on her shooting skills. She ended up with the player-of-the-day award so it's not just our imagination. Freya's teacher was apparently very impressed with my guitar playing and wants me to give her lessons. She seems serious... blimey. Thursday evening I went to meet up with a few other webheads over in Tauranga. Rather boring, but free beer and pizza:-)

Friday I met up with another network person at his premises - he's a bathroom/kitchen warehouse. We spent a while discussing requirements and then at about 5PM he locked the doors and got the beer out. Consequently I was late home and wasn't able to cook tea. I managed a convincing excuse about customer entertainment which I think I got away with.

Saturday we finally received the invoice for the pool equipment - but it was wrong. There appear to be two of the same item. Hmm. Smell a rat here. We have had reservations about PoolCare, since they were supposed to have been maintaining the pool, yet the pressure gauge and filter basket were both knackered and in need of replacement. We've also heard a few rumours, and having met the proprietor, he seems like a wide boy who might just slip in an extra item on his invoice "by mistake". We sent a querying email.
Later we went to a party at a former neighbour's house - sadly we were the oldest ones there - everyone else was under 30, or so it seemed. We managed to talk to a few interesting people though.

Sunday was a miserable wet day. We attracted most of the local kids into the house somehow (must be the death trap AKA trampoline) and the noise level was immense. Vicky was bored and wandered round with the kids to add to this mix. Fun Fun Fun.

Monday was a bank holiday - the Queen's birthday apparently. We decided to have V&W round for nosebag, so headed into Tauranga to raid PakNSave. We also stopped in at Bond+Bond, and scored an Emachines netbook for Di. She apparently needs a machine while she's at work. Neither of us really wanted Windoze seven, and as the netbook was a mere $399 inc GST (which can be reclaimed) and it's XP powered and the right size to drop into the handbag, it seemed like a steal.

I cooked a massive pot of chill-con-carne, which V&W tore into like they hadn't eaten for a week. Both of them are now eating meat again, having given in to the cravings and got fed up with feeling anaemic. The latest graze is apparently a diet linked to blood group which means that Wayne can't drink beer - only red wine and cider. Such a shame we had several reds left over from the party.

Blood on the Carpet

Last week was something of a blur. I've been flat out working on the web project which I'd estimated at 60 hours. However various interludes haven't helped the deadline. Good job I didn't actually give one. I had a brief meeting with another web design company, who seemed rather keen to harness my database/integration skills. My membership of the networking group has been approved so I now have fifteen or so people who are supposed to refer me as to all and sundry.

We've had some immense fun with the broadband connection this week. I noticed on Sunday that we seemed to have use 75% of our monthly allowance in just two days. After a bit of a rant at the kids, who denied all knowledge, I attempted to call Telecom to find out what was going on. Their call centre appears to be somewhere in the Philippines, and they were pretty useless, claiming that the router had a virus or that someone had cracked the wireless key. I got them to send us an hourly breakdown of the usage, which revealed that between midnight and 8AM there was a 300MB/hour upload going on. This was rather a good trick considering that all the machines and the router were switched off. A few more phone calls and interminable time on hold, dropped calls and general mucking about, and I finally got to speak to someone with a brain. It transpires that our broadband connection hadn't been moved and we were therefore being blamed for someone else's usage. This is where the fun started. We were plugged into the "wrong" port on the exchange which although they sorted that out, the existing usage statistics were another matter. It seems that there's nothing they can do other than wait until we hit the limit and then remove it. There's no way that this can be done in advance apparently. Having been inspired by their call centre, I asked for a direct dial number - and the guy at the other end gave me his mobile. We'll see what happens when we hit the limit.

Phoebe and Freya took part in a cross-country running event at Blake Park. Freya was 4th out of the 40 or so girls in her age group, and Phoebe 9th out of 30. Both came home waving certificates and it was certainly great fun to watch. The turnout of parents was rather impressive for 10AM. This wasn't the end of the sporting activities this week, however. We acquired a trampoline which the kids had been after for a while. It's now sat in the middle of the front lawn tempting any passing kids into having a bounce. Imogen and Rhiannon were trying it out and got a bit carried away. Imogen managed to bounce into Rhiannon' s head. Rhiannon escaped unharmed, but Imogen wasn't so fortunate, receiving a gash above her eye which needed stitches. The first we heard of it was the loud screaming and the blood trail leading inside.

I headed off to the hospital. We were assessed by the triage nurse very quickly, but then told there was a 2.5 hour wait. The nurse informed us that we could try one of the private doctors who charge a small fee. She called the nearest one up, who claimed a 15 minute waiting time. This seemed like it was worth the $30, so we headed town to the place and got seen instantly and were out, fully stitched in 15 minutes. Had I remembered the community services card, it would have been cheaper. We also discovered that there's one of these places just around the corner from us so we could have avoided a trek to the other side of Tauranga. Sigh.

I'm On My Way

Last Sunday I took the garage carpet to the "Transfer Station". This is what they call the council dump over here. There's no such thing as free waste disposal in New Zealand - you pay for everything you chuck away. There was quite a bit of carpet and getting it all into the car would have proved a challenge had I not savaged it with a Stanley knife first. With it all fitted into the boot, we drove to the station, on to the weighbridge, deposited the carpet in the appropriate receptacle and returned to the weighbridge 60Kg lighter. This 60Kg cost $9.80 to be rid of. Later we had V&W over for a barbie and to check out our new house. Somehow this turned into an impromptu jam session, aided and abetted by a tablature download of the Proclaimer's I'm on my way.

Di went into work on Monday - not much doing as she is not yet licensed but she came back waving her new business cards which she had been told she was not allowed to give anybody until the licence came through. I finished writing up a quote for some more work on an existing website and emailed it to the client.

Tuesday was a useful sort of day. I went to visit the guy I met at the networking meeting to show him a CMS system and allay some of his suspicions. This mini demo went well and the prices I came up with didn't seem to phase him. However as always cash flow is non-existent so it may be a couple of months before anything happens. I got back well before 12 when we were expecting the pool man to show us the ropes. He failed to show until about one-ish, and then only after a chasing phone call. The solar heating is now working - we just have to turn the valve the right way. All the electronic gubbins is apparently no longer in use. He suspected that there was a temperature controller there at some point, but it seems to have been disconnected. He also indicated that the pool level was rather low and could do with a top up. This necessitated a trip to Bunnings to buy a hose with which to fill it. It seemed like it took several hours to raise the level a miserable couple of inches. This does not bode well given that we are on a water meter.

Di was back at work on Wednesday - same story as Monday really. I got the nod on the quote and got to work. There's going to be a little bit of AJAX in there - which is nice and sexy.

Thursday morning started with Imogen being deposited at school at 6:15 for her trip to Auckland zoo. I made it back home in time to be picked up and taken to my 2nd networking meeting. Thursday was also a bit of an eye opener. We went to the pool shop to pick up some chemicals which the pool man had indicated we needed. We came away with the equipment we needed to "vacuum" the pool. This consisted of a long telescopic pole, an equally long hose, a nice bakelite plate to sit over the pump inlet ($50!) and a brush head to sit on the pole and connect the head to the plate via the hose. We've no idea exactly how much this lot comes to, as the chap said he'd bill us. Scary, really, as we don't know him at all, although he does know the pool. In fact he knows it a little too well - it needs repainting apparently. He cheerfully informed us that it's not possible to simply repaint it. It needs to be blasted by a specialist at a cost of around $3000, and then painted with $150 a tin paint. Not much change out of $5000 apparently. Try not to weep too much.

I took the opportunity to present him with a website quote since he didn't have one. We got into a discussion on the benefits of site generators etc. but at the end of the day he wasn't biting. We stopped off at Lighting Plus on the way home and bought a couple of lamps for the living room and a few energy saving bulbs to replace the 100W spot lights in the hall which get left on all night to stop the kids panicking. Diane had an appointment later in the afternoon to smarm all over some developers of some rather posh apartments, so I had to collect the girls from school and take Freya and Phoebe to their respective netball sessions. Freya's team got hammered again, like last week but this week they actually managed to score - just once. 11-1 is far better than 15-0. Finally we picked Imogen up from school at 8:30. The highlights of her trip apparently were the hippopotamus testicles and the tortoise penis. Sigh.

Friday was notable for me breaking the new pool brush. In mitigation, the plastic pin holding the (necessarily) heavy head on to the pole is something of a design fault. Returning it to the shop we were a little taken aback to have it repaired by means of a nut and bolt. Kiwi ingenuity and all that. Perhaps if the manufacturer used a bolt as opposed to a plastic pin it wouldn't have dropped off anyway. Di had a phone call saying that her licence had been approved and she is thus a pukka real estate agent. We paid V&W a call shortly afterwards and were able to assist with emptying a few beer bottles.

Saturday was a miserable day - it heaved it down and I was rather glad I didn't fill the pool up as the rain had a damn good stab at it. We had a visit from some of our new neighbours - a retired builder and his wife. Nice folks. I discovered that we seem to have used 75% of our monthly broadband data allowance, which 3 days into the month is a worry. I finally managed to get through to Mumbai or where ever Telecom's call centre is and the mailed me a more detailed analysis of the usage. It seems that between midnight and 8AM, we managed to *upload* 320Mb/hour, every hour. This is rather a good trick with all of the PCs switched off, and the router, too. It corresponds to a flat out upload of something really big, like 4 CD images or half a DVD. I suspect Monday will be spent arguing the toss about this. A little Googling suggests that there are more than a few instances of this sort of cock-up floating about. Of course they were blaming the wireless router - insinuating that the neighbours are stealing bandwidth. No - not with it switched off and WPA/PSK active on the router. And they'd have to be parked on the driveway which would be rather obvious.

Sunday Di was learning the "open home" ropes with another of the agents she works with. She seems to have acted as a lucky charm - the house in question had failed to attract any visitors for several weeks but Di's presence attracted four sets of visitors, one of whom was extremely enthusiastic. A potential sale, but sadly as she's not officially conducting the open home session there's no commission.

A Tiring Day

Di dropped me at Rite Price Rentals at 8AM Monday morning to pick up the truck. I hadn't given it much thought, but the truck was equipped with manual transmission. I was about to get a crash course in clutch control which promised to be rather amusing after a hiatus of eight months. It turned out not to be too bad. I remember having driven an automatic for a few days about 15 years ago and the only problem I had when getting back behind the gear stick was to forget to dip the clutch when stopping at junctions. It proved to be much the same in the truck this time around and after stalling twice and annoying the rush hour traffic I got the hang of it.

The truck came equipped with one of those sets of lifting wheels in addition to the tail lift. Therefore I decided that rather than attempt to turn the truck in the rather narrow confines of our house, that backing it down the drive and using the wheels for the big stuff would be the best way to proceed. We both got text messages at about 11AM from our lawyer saying that the sale was now completed. We finished loading and proceeded round to the house with the first truckload. The former owner was only just on the point of leaving. The washing machine plumbing had apparently sprung a leak and various apologies were made. Only one remote for the garage door was in evidence but the woman promised to look for it and forward it on when she found it. With the house now in our possession, the first thing we did was to rip up the carpets in the garage. These stank of cat pee and their distinct hum drifted through the entire house. However once they had been disposed of, the house started to smell a lot better.

The first couple of trips were uneventful, but the third attempt at backing the truck down the driveway resulted in the wing mirror scraping the fence and getting stuck on it. The only way out of that was to get out and man handle it off. There wasn't any obvious damage and apart from mounting the kerb once or twice when turning left that was the sum total of all mishaps. We got 99% of our stuff out by 6, when it was getting rather too dark to reverse down the driveway. We then swung by V&W and picked up the majority of their big stuff and made a couple of trips to their new house to offload it. We held on to their table, however, since we'd come to the conclusion we'd rather like it ourselves. This is the same table we retrieved from Rotorua a few weeks ago.

I finished up back at our new house at around 8PM, to find the cold remnants of fish and chips that Imogen had eaten most of. Just the ticket after a hard day's humping. After such a sumptuous and filling dinner, I tried to get the TV working. The house has both a satellite dish and a collection of terrestrial aerials. It should have been easy to plug in but it wasn't. The satellite decoder insisted that there was no signal, and attempting to tune in the TV resulted in just one very fuzzy analogue channel. We had been assured by the previous owner that it was all in working order but this appears to have been inaccurate.

Most of Tuesday was spent unpacking boxes, assembling beds and generally trying to put the house in some sort of order. The TV issue required some attention. I took the face plate off the aerial to find that it was nothing more than a face plate. The cable had been cut off. It looked as if it had been used on the satellite instead, which had the same sort of cable hanging out of the wall. Both the satellite and the aerial's cables entered the roof space under the tiles so it seems that a trip into the loft was required to check things out further. There wasn't a lot of space in the loft - not enough to stand up and without a ladder, getting into the loft wasn't that easy. Fortunately our old table and a chair stood upon it made it relatively easy to gain entry. The first thing I noticed was that there was absolutely no insulation in the loft whatsoever. There were also a huge number of cobwebs and a small coffee table. I made my way to the approximate place where the cables came in to the loft, only to find that both were joined together using an "Antsmix" connector. It seems that rather than run a new cable into the living room, the satellite installers had simply spliced the cables together and chopped the aerial plug off and replaced it with a satellite one. I concluded that a partial reversal of this would give us a TV signal and this proved to be the case. Most of the analogue channels were pretty grotty, but the digital ones are just fine. I'm still unsure why the satellite dish wouldn't work with our freesat box, but on the plus side, we can flog it on TradeMe and hopefully get our money back.

Wednesday involved a lot more box opening etc. There was also an amount of window opening too, some of which involved a good deal of WD40. We also began to explore the pool controls. The first thing we found was that the pool pump was being run continuously. The timer control was nothing more than one of those mains plug-in things and was pretty easy to set up. It's now running four hours per day which we're reliably informed is all you really need.

Thursday morning I had an early start. I was a guest at a networking group meeting. They apparently have a vacancy in their ranks for a web site guru. As it turns out, I was not the only visitor, the other being another web site person, but this one was from a large company operating throughout Australasia. I was asked to speak for 60 seconds on what exactly it was that I did, and in order to make myself distinct from the other party, I laboured the content management and back office integration things which seemed to strike a chord with at least one of the members. In fact we ended up having a chat after the meeting and he wanted me to look at his website and also to investigate integrating into an accounts package for one of his customers. I made a few phone calls and set about joining. In the afternoon, I went and picked up Vicky and the kids so that they could have a look round the house. Vicky was rather bowled over by it all, and the kids couldn't keep out of the pool which created a few nervous moments but nothing more.

Friday was spent telling various organisations that we had moved. I also spent a while trying to figure out which company to use for our gas supply. Trust power, who are supplying our electricity are not able to supply gas. We were tempted with Genesis Energy, but they had a $66 "reconnection fee" and fees for all sorts of other things. Trust power also have a connection fee of $35 which sticks in the throat rather. Mercury Energy on the other hand, have no connection fees at all but can only supply gas if you take electricity as well. After an amount of soul searching, I decided to go with Mercury Energy, and give Trust Power the heave ho. I was expecting some sort of argument and an insistence that the connection fee would have to be paid, but they just said fine - no charge. Bonus. Mercury it is then.

Saturday was notable for various arguments over where to position all of our pictures and paintings which had been in storage and unpacked. I acquiesced mostly, (or to be more accurate wasn't really that bothered but insistent on the glass being cleaned first) and various picture hooks were nailed into the wall (all plasterboard internally) and most of the pictures are now up. Our paw prints are now to be seen in more or less every room.

The pool company is booked for Tuesday to explain how everything works, including the solar heating which we suspect either isn't working or is mostly ineffective. Various annoyances need attention including the leak in the washer (hot tap dripping), the really small basin in the bathroom with the enormous shelf over it making spitting toothpaste a precision art, various immovable windows, the extremely tight fitting fridge requiring the cupboard doors to be removed, the sticking front door, the hideous curtains and the removal of the same old lady wall paper from every room in the house (except the bathroom). However, the major work needs to come first, namely building the 4th bedroom (really easy, power and lights already installed - just needs walls and a door) and the installation of the family bathroom. All things in good time.

On The Move

The firm Di decided to work for offered her the choice of a new phone. The temptation of a Crackberry was eschewed in favour of a Samsung touch screen job. She has, unwisely I suspect, decided to keep her same number which means she'll never be able to turn it off. We wandered into Tauranga to sign the house papers and were needless to say presented with a large bill. One rather odd thing that happens over here is that the portion of the rates paid by the vendor is added to your house purchase. It also seems to be the case that you pay every six months unless you specifically make a point of asking for monthly payments.

Freya made several batches of extremely tasty Anzac biscuits, but the last batch resulted in the untimely death of a favoured plastic bowl, accidentally left on on of the recently juiced hotplates.

I summoned up the enthusiasm to run into and around the mount, but suffered from a slightly stiff calf on the way back. I guess that's an indication to ease off a bit.

Wednesday we were packing. We were also troubled by a bad smell from the kitchen. A packet of cat food, purchased in a moment of weakness had been thrown on top of the cupboards when Phoebe wouldn't leave it alone. Sadly it dropped down the gap behind the built in oven and has lain there, irretrievable, ever since. It is now starting to hum, especially when we use the oven. Hopefully it will abate over the next few days.

Di has decided not only to use her existing mobile number, but to put our home phone on her business card. Had she asked me, which she didn't, I would have said no. Thus an argument ensued about never being off duty etc. and we eventually agreed to get an 0800 number instead. Because she's a cheapskate, she nicked mine instead of ordering a new one.

A friend of Di's has her house on the market in deepest darkest Papamoa and has had no offers. She wants to sell for the same price as she paid, two years ago when the market was buoyant, something which Di considered unrealistic. The lack of interest and the forthcoming termination of the sole agency agreement had Di chomping at the bit to scoop up the listing. Sadly, someone has now put in an offer on the asking price and the house is sold. We wandered over to visit them and congratulate and also try to flog them a website - which they seemed happy to go for.

Thursday was not a good day for fingernails. I broke two putting things into boxes. Freya insisted on making even more Anzac biscuits, which given their propensity for vanishing immediately on exiting the oven, we agreed to let her.

Friday we went to Bayfair and extracted a large amount of dosh and took it to the lawyer. We received a pathetic little orange piece of paper in return which looked rather insignificant given the value it represented. We returned home and continued packing, although I took some time off to throw the strimmer at the weed patch pretending to be a lawn.

Saturday was more of the same. We had been invited round to another of Di's friends (she has so many - why is this?) so that I could meet her husband. Apparently they had been discussing pairing us together and as Steve is a member of a business networking group who just happened to be in need of a web site designer it seemed reasonable to explore this opportunity. The afternoon turned into early evening and some fillet steak appeared and disappeared again along with a couple of beers. We pencilled in a "group meeting" for 7AM on Thursday. 7 WHAT?

Today was fairly uneventful. The packing has morphed into cleaning and I've been tasked with cleaning windows and scrubbing fly poo off the ceiling. Tomorrow is moving day and the kids will go to school as normal but come "home" to the new house. I drove Imogen to the new house and she directed me back again. She's the only one who's going to cycle and needed to know the way.

A Depressing Statistic

Friday was a successful day. The website I'd been working on went live after a brief intermission while the DNS played catch up. It was rather satisfying to see it live after a reasonable amount of work. I now have a basic design that I can reuse - just change the colour scheme, edit the menu and get to work on a Photoshop banner. Phoebe came home from school with an award certificate celebrating her success at reading. She really is coming on in leaps and bounds and her confidence is growing by the day.

I found out on Saturday that there are 72 web designers in Tauranga. Sigh. Well that figure is wrong because there are 73 now. I got myself added to the list. With that amount of competition it's going to be rather hard going drumming up business. My Google ranking also needs a little work. Careful analysis of the pages that are coming up first seems to be the order of the day. One thing I did notice is that Google seems to pay quite a lot of attention to the contents of the "alt" attribute of the "" tag. I've never really bothered to set anything meaningful in these attributes before other than making sure it was present to stop the various HTML validation tools from complaining, but it seems I have learnt a valuable lesson.

In the evening we went to a party/barbecue at V&W's next door neighbour's house. We got invited I think because he's a Norton Commando owner, and I'd passed on some service tools I found lurking in my tool box. We met quite a few interesting people, and I even managed to pass on a business card to one who apparently had paid $3500 for a "basic" 5 page site. I wonder why I never manage to find that sort of customer. A basic site, probably only takes a day or so to put together and most of that's Photoshopping. Maybe I'll get lucky. The testimonials page is coming on nicely, though, and maybe that will help.

On Monday Di started at her new job. Well, started is probably a bit strong - she went into the office and met everyone, and then went and blew the company's money on a new phone. She didn't spend the whole amount on a phone, but kept some of the available funds for phone credit. She has, perhaps unwisely IMHO, decided to use her private number for business purposes. This will mean the phone's never off which may prove to be an issue at some point in the future. The other less than ideal situation is that she's switched to Telecom XT, because that's what the firm uses and they were throwing money at her to switch. Given all of XT's recent failings, this again may prove to be a disaster.

In the afternoon we went to do our house inspection. The woman had forgotten/not been told we were coming and attracting her attention was a bit of a challenge, but we managed eventually. Everything seemed to be working except for a blown light bulb. We also found out that the place has mains gas - quite a rarity round here. Sadly it's an electric hob but we do have the possibility of switching. The water heater is also gas powered, so it should be cheaper to run.

All Change

Monday was spent hacking some PHP code I found that generates a Shockwave Flash file on the fly from a collection of jpeg images. I'm intending to use this on the charity site I'm redesigning. It ended up working pretty well and I was most pleased with the results. I applied for a position as a "trainee application developer"! I'm a bit old to be called a trainee, but they want someone with all that Micro$oft .NET stuff which I don't do. I don't expect I'll hear from them again but it was worth a shot. We were interrupted mid-morning by Vicky's kids who seem to have developed an inability to get past our drive way. In a slightly flattering and a little bit stalky way, Vicky & Wayne have decided to move house too, and are following in our general direction. Apparently they've found a place between the golf course and the beach and now poor Wayne doesn't know whether to reach for the surfboard or the golf clubs. Di went to see what another firm of agents had to offer, but couldn't find anyone senior to talk to. In the evening I abused Wayne's hospitality again and offered my assistance with viewing the Chinese GP. A British 1-2 was declared a fine result, especially as poor old Mark Webber was much further back. Gotta keep them Aussies in their place.

Tuesday I received a phone call from our solicitors who wanted to make an appointment to sign the house papers. Next Tuesday at 10:30 is the date. We still have to arrange our pre completion inspection and this is now a priority. I spent the rest of the morning writing some cunning code to scrape information off a web page and import it into another using XML/RSS feed technology. Really boring, but very cunning. Better this than being idle. I order myself an 0800 number which will be available in four working days, apparently. The guy I was talking to about this turned out to be from Surrey so we had a reminisce about the old country. Diane has a mob of agents chasing her hide and wanting to force a job on her. She seems somewhat keen about this mob and their persistence may well pay off. Later she and Sam went to see the new Sam Neil vampire movie - Daybreakers. Apparently it was a complete blood fest and the most bloody film ever. I was also quite pleased to find out that Halo had finally received the money I beamed to them. Phew. Di also had the first of her two adverts in the B.O.P. Times. Apparently before you can apply for your real estate licence, you need to give the great unwashed the chance to shout "Oi, You, No!" if the person in question is a bandit. It doesn't stop most agents being bandits of course, but they are at least showing willing.

Wednesday Rhiannon was supposed to go to a school disco but apparently had lost her ticket. Various phone calls were made and the relevant persons notified that a tall year 9 pommy kid would be showing up with no ticket and would need to be let in. The messages were apparently received and their was no shouting and screaming when she returned later on. Di's second advert was in the paper, and with that Di headed over to Caroline to get a character reference.
I spent the morning getting all arty and down and dirty with photoshop, creating a banner graphic with all sorts of layer masks, fading gradients, drop shadows and more levels of opacity than you could shake a stick at. I was rather pleased with the result and although far from a photoshop expert, it is starting to become less of a complete mystery. Out of the blue I ad an email from HiFX claiming that they were now happy with my proof of address and asking me to confirm the "Unique Reference Number" which they apparently send me on the 8th April. Hmm - I got a load of stuff from their NZ office, but no idea about that number. It's not a priority now, since all the cash has gone through Halo anyway. Di went to see yet another firm of agents. This lot were really keen on her starting with them. Can this woman do know wrong? Am I in the wrong occupation? It has crossed my mind that I ought to consider giving it a go too, but then I probably wouldn't be able to keep a straight face when turning on the BS the way my good lady does.

Later than evening, Di told me we were going over to the darkest reaches of Papamoa to help one of her friends set up her hubby's wireless router. It turns out that he'd bought a "router" from the Warehouse, but it wasn't an ADSL router. It needed to be plugged into an ADSL device in order to work. This inter breeding was hampered somewhat by a patch lead composed mainly of thin air but once I'd got into both router and modem, it looked like a right pain to get them both talking and playing nice since they both wanted to own the DHCP service which is a recipe for disaster. It further transpired that they had a UK spec Belkin router which they claimed wouldn't work. This was I suspected a case of changing the VCI setting to 100, rather than the UK specific 38. Sure enough, after a few botched attempts at entering the login details and switching to PPPoA rather than PPPoE it burst into life.

Thursday I thought it would be an idea to start exploring moving the phone line and broadband to our new house. But what's this? Telecom initially said that they had no "ports" available on the exchange and that we might have to go on to a waiting list for broadband. WHAT!!!!!! Fortunately they did some proper checking and decided that it would be available on the day. Phew! The only slight worry was that I might have to call them from the new house if the current occupants don't arrange a cancellation but they claimed the switch would be made there and then. This is I suppose to stop mischievous and malicious requests to transfer lines. We also rented a truck, $70 a day plus 45c per kilometre. It has a tail lift and should we hope fit down the driveway as it's not much wider than a car. Di finally decided which agent she was going to work for. After all the fuss, it turned out to be the one that her lecturer recommended. Sigh.

We popped in to see Vicky, who was full of beans because our neighbour (another member of the Zumba gang) has decided to move into Vicky's place. She has been looking for a while largely because the rental she's in (which shares our driveway) is rather ramshackle and tatty. Vicky's old and new place are both private rentals with no rental agent involved, so there is a great degree of flexibility on dates and Vicky has cunningly arranged to move on the same day that we do, which means that we can share the truck. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't end up moving our neighbour, too.

Thieves, Sharks and Hookers

Monday afternoon after Di returned from the Poly, we wandered over to Blake Park, and let the kids loose on the monster skateboard ramp. The girls were a bit wimpy about even sliding down on their bums, but eventually managed it. Only Freya was brave enough to attempt it sat on her skateboard, but she did it twice - the $5 bribe I offered proving to be irresistible. Di went to an interview with a local estate agent, in fact the one who we bought our house off. She returned later pleased that she'd been offered a job. Another agent rang while she was out and wanted to arrange an interview. She seems suddenly to be in demand. The UK website I am redesigning was well received, and some more ideas were put forward. It looks like it could become a very tidy little site and a good reference.

I spent Tuesday working on another site, redoing a quick and dirty one I'd put together for next to nothing not long before I left the UK. Most of the effort was put into a "creative" banner for the top of the page which forced me to rapidly acquire some new Photoshop skills. Wayne popped in to borrow one of out spare mattress for some guests that had arrived from the UK. He was full of irritation about the proposed mining of the Coromandel Peninsula - a part of NZ we never got to see on our holiday two years ago and was determined that we should write a protest song. I wasn't so sure, but as he showed me some of the lyrics, I agreed to have a go. I had an email from HiFX wanting our new address and proof of it. Alas the only utility bill I had with both our names actually has Di's initial down incorrectly and they went off on one when I sent it in. They will have to wait until Trustpower send the latest bill with the correct name on it. Most annoyingly, we discovered that the stop loss order placed on Friday had been triggered, and thus we had bought at$2:12. The really annoying thing is that it was a momentary dip before it headed back up again. Needless to say this is a pain in the but and has probably cost us $3,000.

Wednesday I chased up Halo Financial to make sure that they'd received the money I'd sent. They confirmed that they had, which was a major relief since the thought of that amount of cash going astray did not bear thinking about. We just have to wait for the dollars to hit our Westpac account now.

Thursday Di and I went out for a curry. We decided to visit Bombay Brasserie in the mount. It was OK, but nothing exceptional. The same crummy size poppadoms and the inability to order madras without being asked how hot it should be. Our bank account is now bulging following the deposit of half a house in it. Phew.

Friday Di had her assessment at the poly, and she passed. She has to place two advertisements in the paper and assuming nobody objects she can apply for her real estate licence. She had an interview with another agent who also offered her a job. I must admit to being a little miffed about all this unbridled success. I've been looking for a job for seven months and not even the sniff of an interview and yet the Mrs. gets two job offers in a week. But then both of these job offers are commission only with no basic salary so it's not quite the same thing as a proper job. Di also went back to the dentist for a check up following her extraction. Another $110 left our bank account but there were at least a few more tests. A comprehensive ultrasound examination revealed lots of micro fractures which meant that any remedial work was likely to cause a much larger fracture eventually. This explains the repeated visits Di had to endure back in the UK. The extremely hard amalgam used to fill the teeth doesn't give when you bite down on it and causes the tooth to fracture. The work done in the UK was apparently mediocre rather than incompetent and the technique used to crown, i.e. a post and cap is not the best method although standard practice in the UK. The preferred NZ method is apparently a sealed cap adhered to the root filling which stops any rot getting under the crown. It also stops the post insertion fracturing the tooth.

Saturday we ended up over at V&W's for a couple of hours. Di told Vicky all the gory details of estate agency while Wayne and I contented ourselves with watching the F1 qualifying on Sky while blowing the froth off a few cold ones. We got involved with a Facebook chat with a mate in the UK and persuaded him to install Skype and had a face to face. Kudos to Chas for not only getting Skype installed, but also getting the webcam working. Well done, mate.

On Sunday we ended up at Fashion Island in Papamoa, in search of a pair of school shoes for Imogen. On the way back, suitably shoed up we stopped in to see Caroline who was eager for news of Di's impending new career. As a licensed agent herself it was a conversation that I wasn't really into, but the flaws and benefits of various firms in this neck of the woods were discussed at length. Some are more scrupulous than others and when you look at the deals they offer their sales people, it seems that the only party to benefit is the firm. Not the seller, not the buyer and certainly not the salesperson. Little wonder then that the names of these various firms were subtly altered in order to produce a semi-amusing blog title. Hookers, however, were left untouched - something of an oxymoron if ever there was one.

Selling Your Hind Teeth, Pussycat

Di went to the dentist today. It turns out one of her back molars had cracked and the rather large filling was loose. The only solution according to the dentist was to root fill it and crown it. $3000 please. SAY WHAT!? You've got to be bloody joking! Apparently not. Di has the back two missing on one side already and doesn't miss them and insisted that they pull it out. This cost $290, still daylight robbery. Neither of us can believe quite how much dentists charge in New Zealand. We were never able to find an NHS dentist in the UK and so we'd gone private and were used to paying £500 or so for a crown, but being charged three times as much is beyond a joke. The worst bit is that one of Di's other molars is in need of a crown and one of the ones done in the UK has apparently been botched (same dentist as the kids, who have had all their fillings replaced for much the same reason). So we could quite easily have been spending the thick end of ten grand on teeth. Ringing around other dentists, we discovered that they all charge pretty much the same price. They are without doubt a set of bandits. It would be cheaper but more carbon intensive to fly back to the UK, get your teeth fixed, take a holiday and then fly home again.

Thursday was also a dead loss since the power went off at 8:30 and did not return until 16:00. Apparently it was a scheduled maintenance period, but nobody told us or any of our neighbours. I was expecting a couple of emails, and managed to get on line by plugging the wireless router into a DC power inverter which in turn plugged into the fag lighter in the car. Fortunately I had brought a ten metre phone extension cable with me (sockets/plugs are the same as the UK) and this was just about the right length to reach from the bedroom to the car. The speed was probably down a bit, but not noticeably.

On the web front, a friend in the UK wanted my opinion on their site which they're doing using a diy flash set up. My comments were that it was unlikely ever to come up in a Google search because the Googlebot cannot read flash. As I am in need of a few reference sites I offered to take on the design of the site. He bit my arm off. What have I done?

I investigated getting an 0800 phone number today. I am minded to sign up for a VOIP number with Kiwilink which costs $10 per month, assuming nobody phones you. It strikes me that it looks more authentic to have a land line number rather than just a mobile. Di returned from poly today with news that one of her friends on the course may want me to look at her web site and give it the once over. Apparently it's been put together by a graphic designer but they get no hits. It looks the part though, but it seems it doesn't work. I also considered whether I should register for GST as I'm going to be dealing with businesses. Registration is voluntary if your turnover is less than $60k but it would mean I can claim back GST on any expenses which will be useful. On reflection I decided to leave it until we move otherwise it's more paperwork to change the address.

We noted that the estate agents had visited us and there's now a large "sold" sign slapped across the advertising board at the end of the drive. It would appear that we're definitely sold. Nice of someone to tell us.

Di and the kids had gone to V&W's in the afternoon and later on I wandered on down as well. Wayne was just about going mental with all the kids milling around. He insisted that I accompany him to Bayfair for a spot of shopping. Sadly this included a twelve pack which we set about demolishing over the course of the evening. We temporarily removed ourselves for a spot of dinner and that's when I got a call from Halo Financial. They agreed to take a 0.7% commission on currency exchange, so I went with then for the first half of the house money. Getting the bank to arrange the transfer involved a few phone calls back and forward in order to verify I was who I claimed to be. Fortunately this all proceeded OK and the transfer was made. I have also put on a couple of buy orders which will either buy when the rate hits the right value or buy when it's about to plummet, a so called "stop loss" order. Which ever one triggers first cancels the other. Thus we don't need to panic if things start to go south. Obviously we may need to make a manual order if the rate doesn't move either way.

Returning to V&W's, we finished off the beer and wobbled off home in the wee small hours.

Saturday started with a hangover;-) Not massive but just enough. The major irritant however was the stray cat which seems to have decided we are its owners. It has apparently gained the name "Tigger" on account of being a rather cute grey tabby. The damn thing keeps leaping in through open windows and generally trying to ingratiate itself with all and sundry. Naturally it has done a remarkably good job on the kids, particularly Phoebe and Freya who keep picking it up and carrying it around and generally making a fuss over it, wanting to give it bowls of milk and food etc. Di went on a mission to try and track down its owners (it has no collar) but all the neighbours had no idea. At this point with a house move pending the last thing we need is an animal about the house (we have enough two legged ones;-)) and thus I am now officially Mr. Grumpy because I want nothing to do with it. Although it is a cute and cuddly pusscat. No! Stop it!

Something To Get Your Teeth In To

I've not managed to find time to write anything for a while now but I intend to bring you up to speed. The job front continues to be non-existent. I have therefore decided to attempt to start my own IT services/web design business. Whether I'll make my first dollar remains to be seen but it can't hurt to try. I have been spending rather a lot of time trying to put together a clean, easily navigable attractive web site with which to tempt potential clients. I've had a logo designed by a local graphic designer and ordered some business cards. I've also been tarting up some of the other web sites that I've done so that they can act as reference sites. It's proving to be rather time consuming, not least because of the dumb rubbish browsers that Microsoft has put out over the years that people still use. As and when the site is finished, I'll add a link. Until then, you'll have to bate your breath.

We had a letter from our solicitor asking what sort of property ownership we wanted. I was rather disappointed to find two egregious spelling errors on the first page of the flyer that accompanied the letter, on top of the incorrect spelling of our surname. The error of their ways was made known to them.

Imogen's recently refilled teeth had been acting up, so I rang the school dentist for an appointment. She offered 11AM, which meant I had to retrieve Imogen from intermediate, and drive her to the junior school. The dentist covers four schools in the area, and spends a term working at each one thus you have to follow her around. She said the fillings were rather deep, necessitated by replacing the leaking UK mercury fillings (kids fillings are white over here - no mercury) and that she might need root canal work. This was not really what we were expecting, given that Imogen has only just got some of her adult teeth. It turns out the school dentist doesn't handle root canal work and gave us a referral to another dentist that did. She recommended a practice on Elizabeth Street in Tauranga. Phoning round later, this seemed to be the only place that would actually accept the work. It seems dentists the world over are reluctant to treat anyone who doesn't want a full set of veneers.

Di and I went to the "Irish" pub, Rosie O'Grady's in the mount to meet up with Rhiannon's friend's parents and Rhiannon. I proceeded to thrash everyone at table football and managed to win at darts, although by the time I actually landed double 1, we were all on the same score and at the point of having to rub out the top of the score board to "wrap around" the scores.

Wednesday was the first day of the Easter holidays, so the kids were all off except for Rhiannon who finished on Thursday.

Our insurance documents arrived on Thursday. The $600 premium contained about $200 of fees and levies for various organisations such as the fire service. There was also a bit about a maximum of $100,000 from the government in the event of earthquake or other natural disaster. I understand some of those levies are paid into a central pot which is used in the event of "the big one" happening. Later we had a visitation from Vicky who was in house hunting mode. Sadly, with no deposit the range of affordable housing in the Mount is quite limited but we took a look at some within walking distance anyway. Diane also did her best to talk Vicky out of buying a cross leased property in Welcome Bay. Cross leasing is an old fashioned method of sub-dividing a plot of land that technically is not allowed to be divided. The down side to this dodge is that the other property owners on the plot must agree any changes you wish to do to your house and vice versa. It's OK if your neighbours are reasonable, but like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get. This particular house had a railway line at the end of the garden, too.

We decided to make a stand against the turning weather on Sunday and organised a BBQ and had V&W round. The BBQ worked well in the absence of any wind, something that had blighted its performance back in the summer. The clocks went back on Saturday night, putting NZ a mere 11 hours ahead of the UK but more importantly curtailing the outdoor activities. Wayne invited me back to his place to watch the Malaysian Grand Prix, an offer I accepted due in no small part to the immense pile of washing up that had developed.

Sadly the washing up was still very much in evidence the following morning and I ended up doing the whole lot. My shiny new business cards arrived on Tuesday morning. I had turned down the offer of having them designed for me since it seemed a waste as I'm going to be moving soon and have no idea if the phone number will be the same. I did the "design" myself in open office and pumped it out as a PDF file. There wasn't much to get wrong, really, just the logo, name rank and serial number, etc. but they do look quite smart even if I say so myself. V&W deposited the kids on us in the afternoon while they went off to see a mortgage consultant. Meanwhile I was required to pick up madam from the cinema on Elizabeth Street (there are other streets in Tauranga, honest) and bring her and her two friends back home.

Today, Wednesday, I took Imogen for her dental appointment in Tauranga. We arrived early for the 9:15 appointment and were just about to pay for parking when someone who was leaving gave us a ticket that had another hour left. Imogen was called in early for the appointment. Dr. Bob, an English dentist, took Xrays, but these were apparently inconclusive. The decision was made to see what develops especially as the sensitivity had abated recently. Imogen has some other teeth coming through which might be what the issue is. We were told to make an appointment straight away if there should be a recurrence of the problem.

Di rang at lunchtime to tell me I had to take her to the dentist tomorrow, as her tooth ache is getting worse and paracetamol is not touching it. This will undoubtedly cost a packet as dentistry for adults always does. We'll find out tomorrow.