Rain, Rain Go Away

Blimey, it's like being back in England. The last couple of days have been wet, wet, wet and I'm not talking about the pop group. Di put some washing out on Friday morning, and it's still out there. It got wet on Friday and it's been piddling down ever since. Apparently various roads in other parts of the north island were closed due to flooding. The farmers have been whining on about a lack of rain reducing milk yields etc but it now seems that the last few weeks of fine sunny weather have been more than adequately recompensed.

The only item of note on Saturday was a number of trips to and from the Warehouse in search of the "right" scooter for Phoebe, who's impending birthday is upon us. The first one, a three wheeled affair was too small but the right shade of pink. Di decided it was "faulty" and took it back and we ended up with a two wheeled aluminium fold up one. I was tasked with installing the tassels on the handlebars with the aid of a power drip and some duck tape. Apparently these are the fashion accessories every self respecting six year old just has to have.

Sunday was a complete washout. Rhiannon got a lift into the the Mount and lurked with her friend for most of the day. I finally got round to editing a video taken a while back with the aid of some software I bought of the 'net, and had another good go at the VL prelude which now lurches from start to end.

Imogen decided she was going to bake some Betty Crocker choc chip cookies. However, she misread the instructions and added 400ml of milk rather than 40. The mixture was somewhat akin to milk shake than cookie dough. Fortunately Di was able to effect a recovery mission by adding in loads of extra flour and sugar and obtained something resembling the right consistency. However Imogen was not to be deterred. She hadn't quite got the idea of how much dough to use for each cookie, and the resultant mountains were truly gargantuan (yeah, that is a dinner plate in the photo) but despite being a meal in themselves, were actually quite tasty and didn't last long. Further fun was to be had later in the evening with Phoebe feeding the cookie saved for Rhiannon to Craig, much to the annoyance of Madam when she returned and discovered the dastardly deed.

Certified!

On Wednesday I took a break from the studying and we went to an expats' meet up over in Papamoa. We took all the girls and Vicky which necessitated two trips. We met a number of new people, including a couple who had moved here recently with their two 16 year old sons. Hmm. Not sure I'd have made that move with kids at that stage of their schooling. Phoebe and Freya spent a lot of time playing with a little girl who we'd met several times before and who's sister Rhiannon hangs around with, so we let them go back and play. Rhiannon's friend was also there, but got up Rhiannon's nose by talking to someone else. Consequently Madam decided she wanted to be taken home before all the fun was over. I obliged and took Imogen home too, since she was complaining that there were no kids her age to play with.

Later on, we went to the Mount to watch one of the cruise ships departing. If you walk clockwise around the Mount, you get to a point where the boats sail right past and you get a really close look. We met up with Phoebe and Freya, and watched Scott tying to fish with plastic crabs as bait. It didn't work very well. Freya spotted a seagull attacking a fish head and chased it off. Di then proceeded to pull the head to bits and extract the eye which she insisted on attaching to Scott's hook. It didn't improve his luck and he continued to hook vast quantities of sea lettuce.

When we got home, Craig informed us that the plumber had called and that he'd said 8AM was OK for the plumber to call. I informed him differently which was not well accepted.

Thursday morning and the plumber turned up at 8AM and removed the knackered waste disposal and replaced it with a standard plug hole. All relatively painless and took 1/2 hour. After a spot of hoovering, I continued the revision until I got fed up again and gave it up in favour of a further attempt at VL's prelude. It is coming together. Di took the kids to the school pool and chucked 'em in for half an hour or so, returning later with a copy of the B.O.P. Times. It seems that my angry rant about the cost of school uniform, written in response to their rather naff headline feature on how to save money and ask the school for exemptions, got printed. They must have had a slow week.

Friday arrives and I set of at 9AM for Auckland to take the ZCE exam. The journey was pretty straight forward and I found the place without too much trouble. I was somewhat early, arriving at around 12. I sat in the car of about 90 minutes with the laptop doing some last minute cramming and wandered in to the testing centre at 1:30, the exam being at 2:30. I was shown into a room and allowed to do some more revision. The place seemed to be staffed exclusively by Indians, and the strategically placed sign saying "English at all times on campus" did make me wonder whether the exam might be in Urdu or Punjabi.

2:30 came and went, so I rattled a few cages and eventually someone came and asked me to fill in the required forms and checked I was actually who I said I was. I was presented with a laminated note pad and marked pen and the taken to the test suite, basically a small room with a PC. The PC had a preloaded program running on it which asked 70 mostly multiple choice questions with about 10 where you had to put a name to something.

The first 20 or so questions had me wondering If I was doing the right exam. The content of them was nothing like the sort of thing the practice exams had been. Thereafter the questions were more familiar and straightforward, although some of the code examples were a bit nasty. I reckon that I answered at least half correctly and another 10 or so were likely to be right. The rest were just intelligent guesses. However, after the 90 minutes was up, the program told me I'd passed and was now a Zend Certified Engineer. Huzzah! I was presented with a rather scruffy looking piece of paper which is I guess my certificate, but it could easily have been faked using any word processing package. Maybe a real one will arrive in the post?

The journey back home was uneventful, other than a bit of slow moving traffic on Highway 1 as I got on to the motorway. One thing I did like was the "one car at a time" traffic lights on the slip roads. This allows just one car to join the motorway an a time, and thus keeps the traffic moving slowly but surely without 7 zillion idiots trying to cut in from the left.

On arrival back home I was roped into a game of piggy-in-the-middle which I tried not to dominate and then I was sent to New World for bread and milk. Somehow some beer fell into the basket as well. Shame about that.

Rhiannon had also done an exam today, for entry into the Gifted and Talented class. It turns out that she'd already done the exam before, but her results (and presumably the results of the 20 or so others taking the test) were not available. She says she did OK, but not as well as the first time she took it.

Easy Money

Craig's shiny new driving licence arrived yesterday along with his insurance documents. The fools know not what they have done by letting him loose on the roads.

I spent most of the day swatting up on PHP, mainly rereading the exam answers with the occasional visit to PHP.net. Our next door neighbours absconded with Phoebe and Freya later on in the morning, and dragged them off to the beach. Rhiannon disappeared off with her friend Georgia and was absent for most of the day. This left Imogen on her own. Di took her off to the beach allegedly to meet up with the littluns, but failed to find them. Apparently the surf was rather good, and the only problem was the small fin protruding out of the surf. It wasn't a very big one, maybe the shark was a metre long, but it was enough to cause a minor but prompt shore bound exodus.

I was texted at 6:30 demanding I pick Madam up at 7:30. She might hate me, but I have uses, apparently. Later I pounded my way into and round the Mount, returning home just as it was getting dark and it was starting to spit with rain. I cooled down sitting outside drinking iced water in the rain watching the stars appear.

Today, lazy bones that I am, it was nearly 10 by the time I was rudely awakened by the plonking of a cup of rosie next to my slumbering head. Di took the kids into the Mount and fed them Burger King. Rhiannon arrived back a couple of hours later on her own. Apparently there had been some sort of disagreement which resulted in her parting company with the rest. Maybe it was Freya finding $10 on the floor and buying everyone ice creams.

By this time I'd completed mock exam no. 5, passing everything with flying colours except for the "design" section, which I tanked. Again. I'm far from convinced that the questions are accurate - there are at least two that are plain wrong, some of the others are more opinion than fact and when you factor in some of the really criminal spelling (not just American spelling either) it makes you wonder how rigorous the whole exercise really is. The exam was rudely interrupted by boy wonder discovering his 'onda had an alarm, which he proceeded to set and reset at 30 second intervals until I asked him where the stupid noise was coming from. He denied all knowledge, but strangely it stopped thereafter.

When the rest of the tribe turned up again, they immediately wandered off to the beach and made use of the decent surf. Apparently although the waves were great, there was a lot of detritus in the water, looking like the remnants of a storm was washing ashore. This was a stark (shark?) contrast to yesterday, when the water was crystal clear and fish could be seen swimming around and jumping out of the water. This was probably what attracted the shark. I'd had enough by this point and packed it in in favour of a little guitar practice. VillaLobos' Prelude No. 1 is the piece I am now forcing my way through. I have just about figured out the first section before the change to E major. It's not as horrendous as I'd thought.

Di had decided she and Vicky were going to the hot pools, but Vicky seemed to be incommunicado, so I went instead. We soaked for over an hour, and on the way back stopped off at Latitude 37 for a beer before heading home.

Some Days You Step In It

Friday was fairly uneventful. We had Vicky and her kids round for a barbie. She'd brought a rather sad looking selection of vegetarian barbecue fare, that I resisted the temptation to mock and contented myself with browning it nicely in the flames generated by the burning fat dripping off the sweat burgers. The burgers did their usual trick of shrinking from small down to minuscule, but I don't much care as there are inevitably a number of half consumed ones left lying around.

On Saturday we went to the Tauranga Agricultural & Pastoral
show. There was as you might imagine a fair amount of livestock around, and a fair amount of "calling cards" produced by said livestock. Suffice it to say one needed to be quite careful where one placed ones feet. Unless you're nearly six, in which case you're free to tread in as many cowpats as you want, especially if you're wearing flip flops. Sadly, the average cowpat depth is significantly greater that the depth of your average jandal, which leads to an amount of overflow and an associated level of whinging and emergency cleaning. She still wouldn't put them back on though.

We wandered around for quite a while looking at the various animals, the sheep shearing competition and of course partaking of various burger stalls, ice cream stands and candy floss vendors. Various rides and fare ground attractions were explored, some of which were more agricultural than others. There were also a couple of shows - a lumberjack show including an axe throwing competition, and a dog agility show all of which amused the kids.



While we were watching the dog show, we bumped into our rental agent, out with her family. She mentioned that our landlord was not going to repair the garbage disposal, but would send a plumber round to remove it and seal up the hole. When we thought this through a little bit later on, we reckon we ought to ask for a reduction in the rent, as we now have less facilities that we had before and it will cost us more in rubbish disposal, as we were shoving all the uneaten burgers down the waste disposal and not slinging them in the bin.

We also had a disastrous time with the sun block. Although we smothered the little ones, we left Imogen to do her own and she "forgot" to do her face, which is now rather red. Diane had a similar case of brain fade, but hasn't suffered quite so much. I did rub it on all over, or so I thought but I must have missed a bit as there's a stripe of red down my nose and various odd patches on the forehead where I was clearly a little too sparing. And we won't mention the top of my head. Oh no, we won't. I must wear a hat, no matter how stupid it looks.

Went for a run later in the evening - uneventful and almost enjoyable. My resting heart rate is now back down around 44 beats per minute. The increasing level of fitness is not just in my imagination.

Sunday. Yeah. Not much happened, and it's too boring to write about here anyway. Maybe Monday will be more exciting.

Short Circuit Garbage

Yesterday Rhiannon went out with another of her friends from school and went to the hot pools and round the mount. Again she managed to walk back from town. She's in severe danger of developing a sun tan. not long after she had returned, we got a call from Specsavers saying her glasses were ready. We also had a call from the bank turning us down flat for a mortgage. Not really a surprise, given the zero level of income. Imogen also returned from her sleep over accompanied by her friend who hung around for a few hours until her mum came to pick her up.

In among all these toings and froings, our refuse disposal thingy decided it was going to start tripping the circuit breaker. After having reset it a couple of times, it became apparent that it was knackered. It started up and ran for a few seconds, but then spat the trip out. As it plugs into the wall with a standard NZ plug, I plugged it into another socket via a couple of extension leads. It proceeded to spit it's dummy at a different trip, proving that it was the disposal unit itself and not the wiring that was at fault. We called the rental agent to report the problem.

I went back to visit the website client, and went through the various screens they needed to use. They were very impressed with the whole setup and most effusive in their praise, which was liberally sprayed all over face book. I went away with another contact who is in the market for a web site, but not a complex one at all.

Not long after I returned home, Di pointed out that the site looked a bit odd. Curses. It turns out that lower screen resolutions were struggling to align images correctly. An emergency bit of surgery restored things to normality, and arguably made things even better. I also registered an NZ domain with TheSiteManagers which for $12 with the first three free seemed like a good deal.

After all the day's fun I ventured out for a run, just to see if the toe would behave. Fortunately it did.

Today I tidied up a few things on the website, and mucked about a bit with the control panel that it uses to maintain everything. I also figured out that the hosting service offers SSH access, but on a funny port number which I had to discover for myself using some dodgy system function calls in PHP. I came to the conclusion that I need to get my finger out and get the Zend exam out of the way, so that I can start pounding on people's doors and waving my certificate under their noses. The exam is now booked for a week on Friday. I now have seven days to finish swatting up. Sadly I have to drive to Auckland to take the exam rather than anywhere more interesting. Funnily enough, a PHP/MySQL job appeared on the seek website. I stuffed a CV in via email, having spoken to the IT manager.

An electrician called round to look at the waste disposal. I explained my diagnosis to him. He stuck his multi meter on the plug and pronounced the thing toast and went away again. We rang the agent, who said she'd look at getting it sorted, although with the money troubles the landlord is having, I'm not holding my breath. We may have to, however, if it isn't fixed as the rotting vegetable matter that's stuck inside may require it.

We haven't seen much of V&W lately, so we thought that we'd pop round and invite them to a BBQ on Friday. We got into a discussion about spirituality and reincarnation, which they both seem to be acquiring with their customary feet first approach to life. It should be an entertaining evening.

Toeing The Line

Monday morning saw us taking Rhiannon into Tauranga to get ripped off for school uniform. There are only two places you can buy it, and although one gives 5% to the school, they charge 10% more than the other. The clothes just seem to be about $10-$20 more than you could buy equivalent items for in other shops. One might argue that this is due to the cost of embroidering the school logo, but in some cases, there isn't one. We came out having parted with nearly $300. Thankfully Imogen will be wearing Rhiannon's old uniform which has only seen one term's service.

Di and I had been mulling over the possibility of buying the house we're living in. Our reasoning is that if it's a repo and we can get it cheap it would be a good investment. It would be even better if we could exchange our cash at a sensible rate which lead us to think that we might ask about a mortgage. This should be quite an entertaining process given that we don't have jobs, but do have enough quids. Di has made an appointment for tomorrow.

Annoyingly I tripped over a skateboard in the garage later that evening, making rather a nasty mess of one of my toes, which gradually turned purple over the course of the evening. I'm not sure whose skateboard it was, which is a good thing as it might have been used as a weapon of mass admonishment on the one responsible.

Tuesday we visited the bank to discuss mortgages. The woman who we spoke with was most helpful but was unable to give us a decision. We filled in an application anyway and she sent it off promising that we'd hear something by tomorrow. Due to a briliant piece of double booking, our 1PM appointment at the bank was about to clash with the 2PM appointment to show of the website. Some rather enthusiastic use of the Mirth Mobile saw that I made it on time. No mean feat, since this involved a sprint from Bayfair down to the mount and then a U turn back to Papamoa. To add insult to injury the speed restrictions were being increased on Papamoa Beach Road, dropping to 60 and various sets of bollards had to be negotiated.

Fortunately my work on the site went down a treat and I was instructed to make it live. This proved a little awkward at first, since I was rather unfamiliar with the control panel used by the web host, but after a phew aha! moments, I found it was possible to do just about anything including uploading and unpacking zip files, and restoring mysql dumps. Alas my laptop's battery fell over just at the end, and as I'd neglected to bring the PSU, I had to beat a hasty retreat and continue the work from home.

This is where karma paid me a visit. My use of GOTOs started
chucking up "Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING" everywhere they were used. It turns out that the goto facility was added in PHP 5.3, and the site is running a lower version. The cartoon opposite which I found on php.net website, on the documentation page had me falling off the chair and says it all, really. It kind of makes me wonder why they decided to add it. I'm pleased to report however that I came up with a thoroughly modern object oriented solution. I've no idea at all which design pattern I used, and frankly I don't really care, but it works. Objects are quite handy for maintaining state between method calls;-)

Di, Sam and Rhiannon went to watch Avatar at the flix, and came
back wearing extremely silly Joe-90 style glasses and giggling like a bunch of school girls. Imogen was at a sleep over with one of her mates and missed all this nonsense. The highlight of the evening for me was the realisation that the bruise on my toe was easing - because the blood had broken through the skin and thus eased the pressure. Naturally the graphic nature of this crippling injury is recorded for posterity.

Big Surf

I've been rather busy with the website development over the last three days, and to be frank It's been a relief to get off the PC. Thus blogging has been a rather less than pressing concern. It seems that I do have a number of loyal followers who get a little agitated if I'm not up to date. Withdrawal symptoms one might suggest. I never thought my inane ramblings would be considered opium for the masses, but it seems it is so. Those in the know may have taken comfort in my slightly less irregular but still irregular now the novelty has worn off Twitterings.

Rhiannon went out with one of her school mates and hung around in the Mount for a sizeable portion of the day. She seemed to make it home OK, which is an achievement in itself as she claims not to know the way, even though it's a straight road, which ever side of the Mount peninsula you take.

Friday was also the day that we had a visit from another estate agent, saying much the same as the first one with regard to the possible repossession. It all seems to be a bit hush hush and no one s really talking. We will I suspect find out more later on, but it's a little awkward not knowing.

Saturday was spent, you guessed it, mucking about with web sites and PHP. It's all hanging together nicely. Saturday morning turned into a text ping pong session with my mate Rog in the UK. Seems he misses his drinking buddy, but can only express this when ever so slightly unsobered at closing time on a Friday night. I miss you too, Rog. Mine's a pint.

Sunday - more of the same. I am now using GOTOs in my PHP code. Argh! No! Don't do it I can hear you shout. How bad can it be? Dunno what all the fuss is about - it works. I realise I am teetering on the verge of Hornerism and resolve to beat myself severely with a keyboard until I have purged myself of my filthy ways. The catharsis takes some time and I enjoy it, maybe a little too much.

Perhaps I should have gone to the beach. Di took Imogen down there while the little ones went off with the boys next door to visit their grandmother's swimming pool. Apparently the surf was "wicked" and Di was in the sea for literally the whole time she was at the beach. The waves were sufficiently powerful to hurl you right up on the sand and the whole place was full of surfboards. I need to get a life. I did manage to get another run in - just the Mount and back with no drama. It's pleasant to be able to move without feeling your beer belly swing in the opposite direction. The new year diet is clearly working.

It's a Dog's Life

Wednesday arrived and there was another estate agent at the door. This one had precious little idea about who we were and thought we were the owners. We declined to have anything to do with him, and rang our rental manager to ask what was going on. She wasn't impressed and said she'd find out.

The rest of the morning was spent doing yet more web oriented stuff in preparation for knocking the socks off my potential customer/acquaintance. However my task was hindered by the need to tidy the house which we had allowed to go to ruin for a few days. My good lady is not the most house proud of women, and I generally don't bother too frequently, but when I do take an interest the place comes up like a new pin. The major impetus for all this domestic drudgery was the impending arrival tomorrow of an estate agent, who was allegedly going to be taking pictures.

Craig went to look at a car but Di, who tagged along to make sure he didn't do anything stupid, refused to let him buy it as it was a heap. I've told him to save up and wait for something decent to come along, but he won't listen to reason. Old second hand cars are reasonably pricey for some odd reason, but the auction is quite cheap. Citing the Mirth Mobile as an example was not popular so I decline to get involved further.

Time for a run - this time into and completely round the mount in one go and a casual jog back home. Definitely getting it back.

Today the agent came and did his business, but while he was here, our rental gent phoned and asked to speak to him. He got a bit of an ear bending, from what we could hear. Our rental agent came round a little later to chat about all the agents that were descending on us, and to put our mind at rest that we had a rock solid contract until the end of March. Apparently the reason for the lack of communication is due to the agents being appointed by the bank, not the landlord. It seems that there is a possibly repossession on the cards and the house may end up going to auction. We wondered whether this might be an opportunity to make a cheap buy. I don't want to live here long term, but it might be a good rental investment.

And so to the meeting with my potential new clients. To cut a long story short, they were quite impressed with the work I'd done. Phew. I went away with some revisions and a couple of other sites to, ahem, base the rest of the work on. They also introduced me to a small graphic design company, who apparently get asked to do web sites and have not the skill. The idea is that I pick up the slack.

After I got home, I wandered up to V&W's spot to find the rest of the family who were babysitting since V&W had gone out. On the way back, Imogen was giving me a hard time about being the meanest father in the world because I wouldn't let them have a dog. I was in the process of explaining why a dog was not a good idea, when a small black poodle thing wound itself around my legs. Having checked for divine influence and also for any likely looking candidates for ownership I could find neither. Clearly it had managed to escape from somewhere, but after a few doors were knocked on in a fruitless search for the owner, we took it home where it consumed a large bowl of water. We printed a few posters and stuck them on the lamp posts. About 10 minutes later, the owner rang to claim his pooch, which let me off the hook.

Craig made an appearance with a very rough looking Honda Civic - 18 years old and $1,900. The guy apparently bit his arm off, even though he had asked for $2,500. He now has his NZ licence, and insurance even with his dodgy record is $300 or thereabouts, and the fools will let him pay monthly for no extra charge.

Surf's Up - Not

Monday morning was rather grey and a bit overcast. I rolled over to discover it was 8:30 - oops I need to get a move on as I'm supposed to be meeting Wayne at 9 and heading off to the beach. I made it just in time, but then Wayne suggested that I bring my body board, as there would be nothing to do when one or the other of us was on the surf board so we ended up back at my place again.

Next stop was the beach but despite the promises of the board hire guy, he wasn't there. We wandered down to the surf, which looked reasonably impressive and we noted a number of folks out there trying to catch waves. I gave the reef slippers their first outing and tried out the body board - and failed to catch any decent waves.

Wayne suggested I try his flippers - which were a rather tight fit since his feet are a size smaller than mine. I don't know if you've tried wading out into the surf wearing flippers, but it's near impossible to do in anything like a dignified manner. I ended up on my bum at least twice before I got to water that was deep enough to start swimming. I tried to swim out to the point before the waves were breaking, but it was hard work and there seemed to be a current dragging me along the beach. I still failed to catch any waves, so gave it up as a bad job and let Wayne have a go. He fared little better than me. After observing the other surfers for a few minutes, it became apparent that they were struggling to catch any decent waves, so when the board hire bod did show, we were on our way home.

I made use of the rest of the morning, playing some more with Joomla and putting a few page designs together for this afternoon's meeting. Alas a phone call around 12 postponed it until Thursday.

The major news on Monday was that the NZ licensing authorities have agreed to grant him an exception on his driving licence and he can therefore apply for an NZ driving licence without having to present his UK one, which of course he does not have. It was looking increasingly as if he might have to fly back to the UK in order to sort out his UK licence since they were insisting on a new photograph. His first reaction was to start looking at cars he can't afford to buy and getting narked when it was pointed out that he did not actually have his licence yet and it would be best to wait until it was granted.

Decent run into the Mount and back in the evening. It's definitely getting easier.

Today I did a lot more PHP stuff - basically sat there all day. It did get to the point where simple things just were not working. The icing on the cake was mixing html form parameters and javascript with PHP, and tripping over unexpected quote errors the parser complaining it had fallen off the end f the script. I packed it in as a bad job. At one point I was interrupted by my potential customer, asking legal (can i rip off this content and use it on my site) as opposed to technical questions. On your head be it, mate.

Di took Rhiannon to Specsavers (yes folks, they have them over here) in Bayfair to get her eyes tested. We had suspected for a while that she would need glasses. The Doctor who did our emigration medical suggested this would be the case. Di was really impressed with the eye examination which seemed to include every possible test you could think of and a few she'd not come across before. Rhiannon does indeed need glasses. We were expecting it to be a bit pricey, and indeed it came in at $250 for two pairs, one being prescription sunglasses. However, our community services card saved the day, making Rhiannon's specs FREE. The only thing we had to pay was a $10 eye test fee. Slowly but surely we are recovering the fees paid in order to get here. The optician recommended that Rhiannon wear the glasses only when she really needs them, and gave her a slightly weaker prescription than she really needed. His view was that it's good to make the eyes do some of the work and that this slows the inevitable degeneration down. Also, the "goldfish bowl effect" is minimised, meaning the poor girl won't walk into things when wearing them since the depth/distance perception can be altered.

Later on Di took all the girls to the hot pools before tea time. While they were out, an estate agent knocked at the door claiming to have been instructed to make an appointment to give the place the once over. He needs to take photographs apparently, and so tomorrow will require a big tidy up before the visit on Thursday.

Craig was on at me about exchanging his money. He'd left his last month's wages in the UK and had thus far refused to transfer the money because the exchange rate was pants. Now, of course, he can't wait to exchange as he wants to get back in a car. Sadly the rate we got was a paltry $2.10 - the dollar is at nearly an all time high, which is most depressing. He was whining that it would take 3-4 days to arrive, so to shut him up I transferred some of our money into his account. It does leave us a bit short, and if the money does not show up, we're in the doo.

This & That

The highlight of Friday was a chat with my acquaintance about the web site requirements. My prices were apparently "very reasonable", which makes me think I'm probably too cheap. There doesn't seem to be anything too odd, in fact it looks quite straightforward. My only concern at this point is whether there will be enough disk space on the web host, as there are going to be a large number of images involved. My research so far reveals that the amount of space you get in NZ is rather pathetic compared to the UK, which is somewhat inexcusable as disk space is damn cheap these days. Also I'm not sure that Wordpress is really what I want to use, and that's currently what's running the existing site.

On Saturday we went down to the beach. Again. This time the surf was up, and I managed to spend quite a while catching some decent waves. No sign of our bronzy friends. However the afternoon was not without injury, as I managed to step on several rather sharp stones/shells which ripped a hole in my big toe, and my wetsuit has begun to chafe since the arms are exactly the right length to meet with my elbow.

Our kettle, which we bought from Briscoes has been mucking about for a while. The power cable keeps making intermittent contact and more often than not it fails to boil. Much discussion ensued about what a pile of cack it was. Finally this afternoon we decided to take it back. Retrieving the box from the garage, I was amused to note the model number: KAK35! I guess we should have paid more attention when buying it. But then again, as we came home with a KAK36 (the same thing but cordless), probably not. The guy in the shop seemed rather unsurprised by the return, asking if it was a "dodgy connection". I suspect they have had more than one return. I thought we'd escaped quite well, but Di decided we "had" to have a milk shake maker. Quite why this is so essential remains a mystery. Allegedly the kids will drink more milk and less coke, etc. but we're sure as hell going through a shed load of L&P.

Sunday was spent playing with Joomla and finding a decent template to use. I also found an extension module, which lets Joomla run any old code you like, which is exactly what I needed to do. Later on Di and I went to Backdoor and I bought a pair of reef slippers - basically rubber gloves for the feet which some surfers use. Di has a pair and swears by them. I thought it was worth trying if it stops my soft pommy feet getting ripped apart. I had a call from Wayne who was excited about renting a surf board and wanted to go halves on it. Thus Monday morning will be spent on the beach trying not to look a prat while falling off a surfboard.

Money, Money, Money

On Tuesday, Imogen disappeared mid morning and spent the day with one of her friends from school. This developed into a full blown sleep over and we were thus deprived of her presence until Wednesday morning. We were also without Rhiannon for most of the day, as she spent some time with one of her friends and visited the hot pools on her travels.

Sam decided to splash out on a wet suit, which she eventually managed to haggle down to about $70. She's now body boarding like everyone else. Naturally the first port of call after its purchase was the beach to try it out. To round off the day, I went for a run down to the mount later in the evening. This was modestly successful, and the cooler evening air was a welcome change to the heat of the day. I do so miss running in the winter. Nah! it was bloody 'orrible.

Di has won the lottery! She apparently spent $13 on various tickets and managed to scoop a whacking $23. Enough for a pint and a bag of crisps, but not much else, sadly.

Di went shopping yesterday, and rang me to say that the music shop had new stock of ukuleles. Freya had expressed interest in a red one. Rather than take a gamble, I marched her down there accompanied by Phoebe who wanted to be in on the act, and we eventually plumped for a lilac coloured one. Naturally we had to then go to New World and show it off in the middle of the shop. Once we were back home, I attempted to tune it. Sadly, it seems that it's not particularly accurately made, since tuning them seems to be virtually impossible. The weird GCEA tuning where the (middle) C is the lowest pitched note is also most confusing. Tuning the C string (4th fret) to match the E makes all the chords sound rather horrible, and the only solution seems to be a slight sharpening of the C string. But I guess that's what you get for $47.50.

Di and the girls made their habitual visit to the beach while I lurked at home swatting some more.

Later that evening I did another mock exam, this time making a mess of the "design" section, where I was asked all sorts of questions about "design patterns", none of which seem to be documented anywhere. I am developing something of a jaundiced view with regard to OO programming - it seems to contain a lot of hype and pretence and theory which doesn't actually relate to real world solutions. But I must continue to learn about it all the same. Sigh.

I also had an email from an acquaintance, who wants some work done on a web site. It's a bit more than just a web site, and needs some actual programming (like the stuff I'm swatting up). We're going to discuss this in more detail on Friday, but it might mean some actual income.

Today I was accompanied to the barber shop by the girls, who also visited the music shop to "pick" a new pick since the nice plastic yellow one should have been a fibre one. I now look like a balding turnip but it's better than the look of a deranged glue sniffer which I was developing.

More exam revision and swatting, while, yes, you guessed it, Di & co headed to the beach. I was studiously beavering away, when Di came back unexpectedly. Apparently some woman who had been in the sea a few yards from Di started shouting like a mad thing and ran for the shore on account of the bronze whaler shark she had seen, a few feet away. This was rather a shame as the surf was most definitely "up", and some rather fine body boarding was going on. Typical, I missed it.

An expat acquaintance turned up with a replacement motherboard for the dead one in his PC that I had been looking at a while back. I transplanted it in to the machine, and it powered up OK. However Windoze decided it needed to be re-registered, presumably spotting the motherboard change despite it being the same model. This was a tedious process as I elected to use the phone and ended up typing in zillions of poxy numbers. I was rewarded for my time and efforts with $50 - woo! my first NZ pay packet. Sadly £25 in real money is not going to keep me in scotch, but it's a start.

Another run this evening, this time round the mount almost in one go. I am beginning to think that the fitness may be returning as it's getting a little easier. Either that or I am allergic to the heat of the day and shall have to restrict my activities to the evening.

In The Dark

Sunday was Freya's birthday. Phoebe was up nice and early to "help" open the presents, but strangely Freya was rather unconcerned by the whole thing. She appeared to like the skateboard, although was quick to spot it wasn't as handy as Imogen's (which was nearly four times as expensive). In a bizarre twist, she took issue with the pink ukulele on the grounds that pink was not her favourite colour. Apparently, blue or green would have been more suitable. I guess we'll know for next time. Imogen instantly expressed an interest in acquiring the ukulele, and was quite prepared to empty her bank account in exchange. We promised to get a more sensibly coloured specimen when the shop opens.

We invited V&W round for a barbie, as Freya wanted some sort of party and wanted their kids to be there. Sadly, our other two sets of neighbours were unavailable so it was just the usual suspects. The barbie again performed admirably, although it clearly has a "sweet spot" where things cook really quickly. Perhaps it's the wind that has an effect. Di had made a cake which the girls took great pleasure in "decorating". For some obscure reason, Phoebe decided that a single solitary Ferrero Rocher was required, and placed it squarely in one corner. A plethora of white chocolate buttons were applied, together with oodles of strawberry sauce. The majority of the buttons managed to gain a small dot of sauce in the middle and the whole thing looked rather like a testicle surrounded by a thousand nipples. It tasted great, and there wasn't a lot left over. Lighting the candles was a trial, as there was a fair breeze blowing so we had to bring Freya to the cake.

Monday - back to work for a rest, as the saying goes. Well, it was for Craig and Sam at any rate. I spent the morning mucking about with PHP and its DOM object, but ultimately managed to make it produce an RSS feed, pulling info out of a database on the fly. All very nerdy and boring, but good practice for the exam. About 4:30 this afternoon the power went off. A quick check of the neighbours indicated that it was quite wide spread, and thus there was not a lot I could do. It did start me wondering how I would get the car out of the garage if the power was off since the electric door opener clearly wouldn't function. It's actually quite simple - the large red rope that dangles down from the chain drive needs yanking, and this uncouples the door from the chain and you can lift it up easily enough on its runners. Phew!

Happy New Year

New year's day was rather a quiet affair. It would seem that despite my best efforts, I did manage to quaff a fair few beers and ended up with one of those nasty thick headaches that persists all day long and no amount of paracetamol will shift. Everyone else went to the beach leaving me to stew in my own misery. Fair enough. I did make it down to the beach a little later on, but judged it wise to avoid too much exertion.

On Saturday, after a decent night's kip I was feeling much better. Sam took the girls to the cinema to watch the presumably horrendous sequel to that annoying chipmunk move. I did a bit more exam swotting, making the most of the welcome silence. I dropped Imogen at her friend's house for an afternoon doing whatever girls do. Just for a change went off to the beach, this time equipped with body board and wet suit. In fact it was one of those rare occasions when Rhiannon chose to grace us with her pasty white presence. Not only that, but she nicked Imogen's body board and spent a considerable time in the water trying to catch a few waves. Despite my larger board, my technique seems to have vanished and Di was making a far better job of it than me. Sam wandered home with Phoebe, while Freya was buried in the sand by the boys next door who arrived on the beach at around the same time we did. They'd made a good job of it, too, as we actually had to dig her out. No amount of arm stretching was going to prise her loose. On our return home, feeling a bit peckish, it was rather a pleasant surprise to find that Sam had been to New World and scored a couple of roast chickens and put some chips in the oven.