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.