The Jezzers Down Under

Where Am Dat Cookin' Fat?

2011-07-17T02:17:00.000-07:00

Freya's netball team has played several more matches. Sadly their initial success was just that, and they've lost every single one since then apart from the last three, when they really got it together. These matches were their first matches after Freya attended an all-day training camp and actually got to meet some of the Silver Ferns. Freya is now playing centre rather than goal attack. This was rather an unfortunate change, since I'd been on about getting a practice hoop for several weeks and the moment I buy one, she switches to a non-scoring position. To be fair, she's been playing centre even when wearing the GA vest, so the change was rather inevitable. Watching her play, the level of determination is awesome, and you can certainly tell that she has many siblings. She's like a mongoose on speed when it comes to the toss-up, rarely loosing.

Not only has Freya begun to excel on the netball court, she's turning into a rather useful runner. The school organised a cross country event, and Freya managed to come third in her year. Phoebe wasn't far behind in 5th. Freya's performance was such that she's been persuaded by the very enthusiastic sports coordinator to put in some extra practice and enter the local schools event. She managed 8th in this, and would I think have done better had she not gone for the final push a little too early.

Imogen has also taken part in her school's cross country (actually, along the beach so not really country at all), and managed to come 8th in her year. The top ten are allegedly going to be doing something else later. There may even be a dad-daughter training session at some point.

Rhiannon's sporting prowess couldn't be more limited, however. She was extremely proud of her school report which gave her excellence for everything with just the occasional merit, but exceptionally proud of the "not achieved" grades she got for every aspect of physical education.

Craig has decided he can't stick living with us again, and has moved on. This was I suspect due in part to my realisation that he hadn't been paying his housekeeping since he got back. I'd made an effort not to get on his case about anything when he came back, but this probably wasn't wise since in retrospect. He's now paying more money to live in a house with a broken window. Good luck, matey.

Some of our friends decided they were fed up renting, and were insistent on buying a house. Di thought she might get a sale out of it, but after a lot of toing and froing they plumped for a new build. They also paid more than Di suggested they should have, and we were interested to note that the builder reduced prices by $10k the following week. Ho hum.

Wayne and Vicky have decided to move over to Welcome Bay, since the kids are going to school over there, and they're both paranoid about tsunami. Because they hadbeen renting a furnished place, they had to start acquiring the usual household bits and bobs. Wayne roped me into helping him move a fridge/freezer he'd bought from TradeMe and store it in the garage. We got into a conversation about some of the remarkably good stuff you can get from TradeMe and Wayne went off on one about the possibility of making a tidy living buying and selling items. This prompted me to remark that if he wasn't careful he'd end up being a fridge magnate.

Work wise I seem to be getting a little busier. A few referrals are coming my way and I now have a semi permanent subcontract position which requires me to supervise a bunch of Indian developers as well as several kiwis and basically be the focal point for the customer. This could I am told result in up to 30 hours a week. I've picked up another customer - a church website which someone else can no longer support. There is talk of a monthly retainer and that nothing much happens for 6 months at a time. Clearly the Lord works in mysterious ways, but not as mysterious as the three separate coding styles in the home brewed CMS it's running.

Talking of home brew, the wine has been bottled. Finding bottles that weren't of the screw top variety proved something of a challenge, but there were several Jacob's Creek sparkling wine bottles lurking in the recycling which fitted the bill rather nicely. $10 spent on a corking device made short work of inserting the cork, and I now have 5 bottles of Château les Jezzers ageing nicely.

I have been under pressure for sometime to get a dog. Thus far I have been stalwart in my defences and we are still dogless. Di has however managed to acquire a moggy. There was no consultation, it just appeared one afternoon when I went out. It was apparently left behind by tenants who were neighbours of one of Di's friends. The SPCA were apparently completely full and their response was to hand over a voucher for the vet to check it out and have it seen to. The vet duly made two if the unkindest cuts and sent Di on her way with a free bag of "new patient" food.

Leo is a slightly useless tom cat of about 18 months old. Very fluffy and currently quite smelly on account of his recent gonad separation experience. He seems mostly house trained, or rather conservatory trained for that is where we've posted the litter tray, and isn't averse to being picked up and made a fuss of, but not for too long.

I have a trip back to the UK planned for August and as we've been here nearly two years now, we needed to get our visas updated so that I'd be allowed back in to the country. Or so we thought. The wording on the website is rather confusing, claiming that you need to apply if you've spent 184 days of each of two consecutive years in New Zealand. We duly got all out photos done (fortunately a friend with a decent camera was able to produce these far cheaper than the $8 each we would otherwise have been looking at) and sent of the forms + the $160 fee.

After a couple of weeks we got a call from immigration. Apparently we did not need to reapply because we hadn't been resident for two years. It's the date of the permit stamp in your passport that's the important thing here, not the visa sticker. The guy explained that all he could do was add another 12 months travel extension to the visa and told us we could apply for an unrestricted visa on or after the 2nd anniversary of our initial residence permit being granted. The fee had already been collected from the credit card and refunds were not possible apparently, so we accepted the 12 month extension.

The Return of The Prodigal Son

2011-05-10T02:10:00.000-07:00

Craig finally managed to blow his car up. It's taken just over a year, but it's finally died. I'm actually quite impressed that something that sounded like a bag of spanners in a spin dryer kept going for quite so long, particularly as it was getting through four litres of oil a fortnight. This episode was accompanied by the misappropriation of a bicycle and an unusually large number of visits, considering the relative immobility, discussing the "options". Apparently it's a rare limited edition model which means that a ready supply of engines is in short supply. Various schemes to install SOHC rather than DOHC engines were hatched, none of which received parental approval (don't expect the exhaust and engine management to fit/work). Staggeringly, a few days later, a local scrap yard acquired an engine from a rear ended write off. $350 secured it. Fitting it took more of a challenge, even with Craig's landlord's engine hoist. A mobile mechanic was required to bolt various bits into place, and the thing coughed into life, but more the sort of life one expects of a 40-a-day asthmatic. Another couple of weeks and several visits to discuss possible reasons for its non/intermittent starting came and went. Eventually I towed it down to Pit Stop in the mount and got them to look at it. They diagnosed a dodgy distributor and a couple of other ignition related parts, and off it went.

By all accounts, the performance was much improved, and tales of derring-do and 200KPH were bandied about. Deciding to quit while ahead, Craig stuck an ad on TradeMe, and managed to offload it for $2000. That's actually more than he originally paid, notwithstanding the $1000 for engine and fitment thereof.

Having sold the car, Craig decided to change jobs, since the place he was working was continually cutting back the hours. He succeeded in landing a new job reasonably quickly, but this necessitated a.....car to get to and from it. Eyes role skyward at the timing of it all. Thus we set out to find another car, despite my advice of using a bicycle for a month or two (it is only 7k there) and saving up fro something decent. We ended up looking at a slightly scruffy Toyota Celica which was acquired for exactly the same money as the old Honda was sold for.

The new job worked out quite well, but the domestic arrangements were becoming rather fraught, and when a fourth resident appeared in the house, but the utility bills continued to be apportioned in thirds, Craig returned home. It took the landlord three days to notice.

It's a good job that the job is working out OK, because Stig Jr managed to clock another brace of speeding fines, and as a result has no money to speak of, and has to drive everywhere like a monk for fear of loosing his licence. No licence means no job so a double whammy if he overdoes it.

Not content with this, someone reversed into him with a fair amount of force while he was queueing for petrol. The driver gave a false name and address and of course wasn't insured but the police in conjunction with the insurance company were able to trace the culprit through the number plate. The garage has CCTV of the incident and thus Craig shouldn't have to pay a penny towards the repairs. Something to be said for fully comp insurance.

Di now has another couple of sales to add to her total, having sold a pair of houses on the same section to a single buyer. The income is more than useful, as I seem to be going backwards. Various invoices remain outstanding which would go a long way to resolving some of this, and steps may need to be taken in that department.

We were given a rather large quantity of grapes by one of our neighbours, and then another large bunch my another. They didn't taste that great, but a little research indicated that they might make decent wine, if I could find a few more. I went back to the neighbour's garden, since he'd disappeared on another two month excursion to the south island, and pinched what was left - another five pounds or so. The sugar content wasn't quite what I'd hoped, and quite a bit of sugar needed to be added to make the original gravity up to 1100. Fermentation went like stink for about a week, and then seemed to stop almost immediately. The potion is currently sitting in a demijohn, and once I've collected a few bottles, I'll bottle it.

Phoebe managed to spill an entire bottle of blue food colouring over the kitchen cupboard, walls and floor while endeavouring to make her custard turn green. She tried to clean it up herself, but made it worse and then just shut the cupboard, which meant that after I'd cleaned it up, opening the cupboard resulted in the remaining contents of the bottle emptying themselves out and the whole cycle starting again. Custard will be yellow from now on.

The kids are back at school again, which is a relief. Freya was a little reluctant to take part in netball this term, because it was on a Saturday morning and it would apparently interfere with her "plans". He former teacher persuaded her by pretending that the team was short of players. Last year, the team, with the exception of a couple of girls one of whom was Freya, were rather girly and not quite with it and they got hammered mercilessly by nearly every team they played. Perhaps the constant substitution of the oversubscribed team and the frequent alternation of playing positions didn't help. This time however, they all game out fighting and showing plenty of aggression, particularly Freya who was instrumental in the 8-3 victory. Playing goal attack, she scored two goals and was frequently running back to defend and making good interceptions. No surprise that she ended up with the player of the day award.

Back on the Blog

2011-04-15T03:37:00.000-07:00

So, here we are, three months since the last entry. It was I suppose somewhat inevitable that the frequency of entries would lapse a little when things settled down into more of a routine. It's also the case that when one farts about with websites all day, the last thing you really want to do is fart about some more later on, even if it is just adding content. Looking back, I see our last entry was just before Christmas, so I guess it makes sense to pick up from there.

Christmas eve was rather "awesome". We decided to have a BBQ, and thought what the hell, and rang round a few folks. Most of them turned up, and quite a few jumped in the pool. A damn fine evening was had by all and I have a suspicion that we might have to actually organise something for next year. Christmas day passed off OK. Another BBQ - but nobody fell out and the kids managed to get on with each other.

Di has switched agencies and took her listing with her. She managed to sell it which was a relief to the household budget. Not a lot of people seem to want to focus on web sites over the summer/Christmas holiday, so my modest income dropped somewhat rapidly. Di has also managed to list a few other properties and sold one of those within a couple of weeks. It does look as if the market is improving at the moment, with the Mount properties selling at realistic prices. The quid pro quo is that Papamoa has stagnated.

One night we were laying in bed, and all we could here was some rather loud music from a party happening at the end of the road. It was 1:30 AM, so I thought it not unreasonable to ask them to turn it down a bit. Bad move, space cadet. It turned out that the house in question was occupied by maoris, most of whom were worse for wear having been on the pop for rather a while. Despite being polite, I got something of a hostile response (although the music did get turned down) and I had to leg it PDQ with insults of f***ing white pig (Pakeha), go back to your own country etc. following me down the road. It wasn't just insults that followed - several of them took it upon themselves to stagger along too, but they eventually lost interest when one of the grandmothers reigned them in.

The new school year started back in February, which required the compulsory photo of the usual suspects. As usual there was an amount of non co-operation, but this one came out rather well, mainly because one of them farted causing all the grumpy faces to loose control and giggle. Not long after term started, we held a joint birthday party for Phoebe and Freya. 20+ girls and a swimming pool makes for a vast amount of noise, not least from the pool pump from which the most enormous gob of hair had to be fished out since it makes it through all the filter into the impeller causing a rather unpleasant throbbing sound.

Imogen got herself a paper round - delivering the BOP times six days a week. She's taken to doing this on the roller blades she got for her birthday. Sadly it appears that they're not meant for any serious mileage, since she managed to wear the brake out inside 3 months. Needless tosay the shop deosn't stock spare parts, but in the end other parts such as the straps started to give up, so we took them back for an exchange. Rhiannon does half of the paper round and they share the cash. The downside to all the newspapers is that everyone's hands seem to be rather grubby, and I've begun to doubt the wisdom of painting all the internal walls white, such are the number of finger marks that appear everywhere.

Phoebe has finally lost most of her front teeth. She lost one months ago, but three more came out over a three week period, and the tooth fairy was extremely busy. She was less impressed at being likened to a great white shark though.

The girls have started a caterpillar collection, which threatened briefly to take over the conservatory. The monarch butterfly is a rather splendid, four inch wingspan variety that is very common in NZ. Its caterpillars love the "swan plants", which they have decimated. Fortunately most of them have now pupated and even begun to hatch, which means that we might actually get some of the conservatory to ourselves.

We've had the "pleasure" of Kylie a few more times recently. She seems to want to play musical beds, eschewing sleeping with Di in favour of various girls. Except Rhiannon, who will have nothing to do with the mutt.

I finally got round to building a new PC. I endeavoured to use the motherboard I'd brought from the UK, but managed to by the wrong processor for it (it needed core2-duo, not dual core) so I ended up buying a new motherboard anyway. IT's a Gigabyte board, and has a rather insane overclocking facility that would apparently take the CPU speed up to 13 Ghz. SO far I've pushed the 3.06 chip to 3.4, and it seems happy enough and the performance thus far is dandy.

News of the Japansese earthquake was something of a shock, and the impending Tsunami that was supposed to hit NZ was a serious concern for a couple of hours or so before it became apparent that it wasn't going to do us any damage. It didn't stop Vicky and Wayne making a run for the hills though.

The final piece of news is that I've booked a flight to the UK in a few months time, so that I can catch up with the family and indulge in a few beers and the odd curry.

Merry Christmas

2010-12-19T00:53:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-09-13T04:18:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-22T03:40:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-31T22:24:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-12T02:43:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-06-25T03:38:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-07T22:00:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-23T04:00:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-16T02:10:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-08T00:20:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-02T02:00:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-26T03:02:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-22T05:16:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-18T02:11:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-10T00:05:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-07T02:00:00.000-07:00

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.

Going, Going, Gone

2010-03-29T00:05:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning was rather nerve racking as we were waiting for the Auction to come around. The house was open for final viewings from 1PM and the auction itself took place at 2PM. We arrived at 1 and found no one except the agents there. As the auction time approached, more and more people started to show up until there were about 20 or so. The agent suggested that we start the bidding at a highish but still less than we'd offered figure. He suggested this might put off the other people. It turned out that we were the only ones actually bidding and that the other people were the friends and neighbours. The auctioneer put in another bid raising the bid to our original offer of $400k. Apparently he is allowed to do this if the figure is below the reserve price. At this point we offered a little more but wouldn't go any further. A period of horse trading then took place with the auctioneer scurrying between parties claiming an astronomical amount of daylight between our offer and the reserve. Eventually we agreed on a figure, but with a revised possession date of 3rd May. This was somewhat odd since we'd been under the impression that a quick sale was required and the original date was 23rd April. After all this mucking about, there was a final appeal for bids and then the hammer came down. It was ours.

At this point we were required to sign the contract for sale, which is unconditional. The final price was still $30k under the "capital value" assigned by the council. By contrast some later research before the auction found two other properties in the same street which were on offer for $60k more than this value, so we think we've got a bargain. Following this we met the vendor, who really didn't look at all well. She seemed keen to pass on some of her furniture, which alas was not quite the sort of thing we'd want so we politely declined. We headed home via New World to pick up a bottle of plonk which we wasted no time on opening and toasting our success.

Monday was rather busy. The first port of call was an insurance broker. As the house is now ours even though we don't have possession until 3rd May, of it falls down it's our problem. Thus we needed to insure it post haste. We had been recommended by a friend to use a local broker. I wandered in as it was just round the corner. The first odd question they asked was the total floor space. I had no idea. I went home and measured the floor plan and came up with a plausible figure of 156 square metres. I thought it prudent to get a correct figure so the agent would be the first port of call for this but as I dare not turn up empty handed, I drove to Bayfair to pick up a cheque for the deposit. The agent was most glad to see me and helpfully suggested that the floor area was actually 170 square metres, if the conservatory which was not on the floor plan was included. My guesstimation of the area wasn't that far out. Suitably pleased with my mathematical prowess I got the place insured for a tad under $600 with immediate effect and without having to part with any money up front. I also rang a solicitor who had been recommended by the same friend, and was quoted $1000 for the legal work. This I accepted and the details were passed to the agent. At this point, it was time for a cup of tea and to catch up on the progress of the test match. Sadly NZ failed to capitalise on the dismal Australian performance.

Today was also the day that Di started her real estate course at the Bay Polytechnic. She returned full of horror stories of deals gone wrong and the news that her lecturers considered that what we did yesterday was a bargain, highly risky and an object lesson in how not to do it. Apparently he likened the auction process to a circus where the client is made to sweat. We could certainly see the analogy, but we did stick pretty much to our limit. She also recanted stories about the leaky home syndrome that a lot of properties in NZ suffer from. We were aware of this, but what we didn't know is that potentially any house built around the time of the dodgy regulations is leaky - it's just a matter of time. Our house was built in 1987, well outside the date range. Scarily, there are 4,000 such houses in the mount area alone. Our house is built of bricks, so there's not problem.

It does seem that being a licensed real estate sales person in NZ requires you to be almost a mini lawyer, since there are a plethora of regulations that must be adhered to or you risk being sued. A lot of them seem to relate to non disclosure of potential problems (such as leaky home syndrome) for which the agent can be sued. Interestingly, the house we went to look at in Papamoa recently was actually a leaky building even though the agent claimed it wasn't when we asked. If we'd bought it, we'd have had a case for suing them to hell and back.

We sent an email to out rental agent asking for a reduction in our rent since we would now be showing people round a lot more. They responded saying they'd ask on our behalf. Sadly, we're probably on a hiding to nothing since we receive a call not long afterwards from the estate agent letting us know that an offer had been received and was likely to be accepted. It looks like we'd be given our marching orders pretty soon. Ho Hum.

A Grand Day Out

2010-03-27T01:35:00.000-07:00

Friday morning was spent tidying up the house. The prospective buyers showed up at 2PM and had a good look around. They seemed rather interested and made some positive sounding noises. We got the impression that they would be putting in an offer which would mean that we are likely to get six weeks notice at any moment. Later in the evening I swung past New World to score a 12 pack and wandered over to keep Wayne company. One of the kids had the trots, which threatened to put the kibosh on Saturday's grand plan.

Saturday was a most grand day out. We went over to Seddon Park, Hamilton along with Wayne and Vicky to watch the Black Caps vs Australia on day one of the second test. The kids seemed a bit better in the morning, and as Sam said she was happy to look after them even with the prospect of thermo-nuclear nappies to deal with, we headed off. We were a little late setting off, not making a move until 9:45 despite having tried to get V&W rolling by 9 using the 8:30 start ruse. The journey was uneventful and we managed to make it just after eleven. The $8 car park was full. However, we turned off the main road and parked down a side street which had no parking restrictions. This may be a trick that we shall remember. Australia were batting and were 12 for 0 so we hadn't missed too much of the action. Seddon park doesn't allow you to take booze in, but you can take in soft drinks and food so we went in fully stocked although a quantity of beer and wine was purchased at regular intervals along with a few portions of "hot" as opposed to "cold" chips. In addition, Wayne and I bought ourselves Black Caps shirts and congratulated ourselves on becoming instant Kiwis. We got market researched at one point, the focus being how much money cricket brought into Hamilton. Also, the very fine photo you see opposite was taken by a roving photographer, who was working for National Cricket Club. His camera was equipped with a thermal printer which produced a black and white image and an access code which allowed us to download the image later. Best of all this was free. I guess it must be a way of publicising the web site.

At the close of play, Australia were all out for 231, thus the day was considered a great success despite the Black Caps loosing an early wicket. We headed home getting back around 8:30. The consensus was to pick up a curry from Smart India which turned out to be rather a good plan as the nosh was quite decent. We finished off the evening with a few beers and watching the highlights of the cricket on Sky. Class.

Amusing Title Required

2010-03-25T01:00:00.000-07:00

I've not managed to record any of our doings for the last week or so. This is down to a general sense of can't-be-assedness which took up residence temporarily, making me into a seriously grumpy old git. Fortunately a good argument has restored my demeanour to its default level of grumpiness. I'm not really sure that I can remember accurately what we did over the last week in strict chronological order, so I'm not going to try.

We looked at several houses that were up for sale. One was a holiday home on Oceanview road, except that it was the front plot which meant that one could not actually see the sea. It needed a bit of work but the price was a bit too high. The agent had a couple of other "douppers" but they were really quite hideous and the areas they were in were not really what we wanted. Another supposedly four bedroom house for sale privately was really a three bed house with an extra bed in a corridor. It was also on a busy main road. The final house we looked at again needs some work but has potential which wasn't immediately obvious. More on that story later.

Imogen managed to survive three days at camp unscathed, which for her is something of an achievement. It's not without an unnerving degree of accuracy that Freya used to refer to her as Injure-man, a name that has stuck somewhat. The scooter escapade is now a distant memory and the leg seems to he "hoperating" as normal. Phoebe had yet another visit to the dentist this time to remove two teeth which were basically rotting in her mouth. The tooth fairy was most definitely short changed that night. The dental appointment was right after school, so Di had taken the car and was supposed to be back by 3:30 so I could pick up Imogen. This coincided with Wayne wanting me to collect a trailer from the school where he teaches. I had promised to drive to Rotorua on Saturday to pick up a table that Vicky had bought on TradeMe, the Kiwi equivalent of Ebay. Somehow we managed to coordinate all this activity without leaving anybody at the side of the road.

The journey to Rotorua was straight forward, if slow due to the windy road and trailer combination, with a couple of single track narrow bridges chucked in for good measure. We managed to find the place and load the table up even though it was bigger than the trailer at 1.5 metres square. We even managed to get all eight of the chairs in, one in the boot, 3 inverted in the back of the car and the others in the trailer. It's my guess that that table will be with them until their kids leave home.

I dropped the trailer back to the school first thing on Monday. It's rather handy to know that the school has a trailer available to staff. I'm sure we may be able to abuse this knowledge occasionally.

Now I return to the opening story - the house with potential. Although not in the mount and being only three bedroomed, there is potential to partition off and make a fourth bedroom. The house belongs to an old woman who has bought a retirement flat and needs to complete the sale ASAP. The house is going to auction this Sunday but we were told that if we made an appropriate offer in advance that the house could be ours. The potential wasn't immediately apparent but later inspection of the floor plans were something of a revelation. The main bathroom has been converted into a superb ensuite for the master bedroom, but this leaves the rest of the house with only a shower. It needs a second bathroom, and the floor plan reveals that there is enough space to do this. The lack of a bathroom and the general old lady feel (complete with cat pee smell in the garage) is probably why it's not been snapped up.

This morning we attended the auction of our current residence. I had bought $40,000 at a pitiful exchange rate but alas the usual banking latency meant that the dosh did not show up in our account until 9:30 this morning. Talk about cutting it fine. Strangely, it was $8 short which makes me wonder if the bank has had its filthy paws in there. We took our neighbour along to the auction. She wanted to see who was buying the place and to offer some moral support. It turns out that we were pretty much the only people there other than the estate agent staff.

The auction kicked off and there were no bids. Eventually the price dropped to $180,000 and this motivated me to put in a bid. There seemed to be a couple of other bids maybe from the telephone and possibly from one of the staff, we're not sure. Not surprisingly the reserve price, whatever that was, wasn't met and at $220,000 we were the highest bidder. A period of negotiation took place, and we eventually offered $315,000 which wasn't accepted. The next step apparently was to invite sealed bids for submission to the bank. However at this point, we'd kind of decided that we didn't want it, even though we had the nod that $350,000 would most probably have done the deed. Our neighbour was devastated. She's had five sets of neighbours in the last four years, and we are apparently the most amenable she's had. We think she was desperate to have us stay on, but it wasn't going to happen long term.

To get to our place you have to go down the driveway, which passes two other houses. Although our neighbours are fine, this may not always be so and the potential for aggravation with bad parking would be immense. Also, there's no garden, no view and the house has no character and is a bit of a dormitory. We also noted from the sale particulars that the drain in the middle of the shared concreted area is in fact a soak away. As the rain runs down towards us it stands to reason that a prolonged potential downpour might overflow the soak away, flooding us out. We came to the conclusion that owning this house would be something of a mill stone round our necks as it would be difficult to shift later on. One other thing we noticed is that the rates hadn't been paid for over three years!

With this in mind, we made an offer on the other house, $400,000. The woman apparently considered it, but then spoke to her solicitor, who against the advice of the agent, advised her to proceed to auction. As we are the only interested party, this seems rather silly but I guess we'll find out on Sunday. We also had a call from the agent for our current house, wanting to show someone round tomorrow. They were very polite about it, and thus we agreed to this.

The Lights Are On

2010-03-17T00:06:00.000-07:00

The kids went rock pooling on Sunday and managed to accumulate 20 shrimps, 4 crabs, 3 different kinds of fish and a lobster. This was probably the best haul to date.

Monday was a rather illuminating day. I ended up at Wayne's place since the kids had wandered down there and as Vicky & Di had gone off to Zumba he was going nuts with them swarming around his feet. He'd fitted new lights to replace the hideous chandeliers but sadly they weren't working. I had a look, and found the subtle misconnection much to the chagrin of Wayne who claimed to have tried every possible way of wiring them up. I declined to make the obvious point and took him up on his offer to watch yesterday's F1 race (rather boringly won by Ferrari) on the shiny new Sky box. When the girls returned we nipped down to the beach to check out the surf. Alas it was virtually non existent so we both went home.

I spent most of Tuesday wrestling with the steaming pile that is Internet Explorer 7, working on a piece of web design. I might have been less annoyed if all versions worked the same way but they don't. It's even more fun testing, since you can't run different versions of IE on the same machine without severe aggravation. Thankfully, http://ipinfo.info/netrenderer/ is at hand.

Wayne rack me at around 5 PM and insisted we go surfing since his new board was rattling around in his garage. I took my humble boogie board and we headed to the beach, which had a 1-2 foot surf rolling in. Wayne seems to have got the hang of surfing. I gave it a go but sadly I wasn't even able to lie on the board and paddle it out, let alone stand on the thing. The fact that it was submerged with me on top probably explains quite a bit. Then again I'm probably just useless. I did manage to catch some decent waves on the boogie board though. Joyce and Michael were in residence when I returned. They've invited us to the pub next Tuesday which seems like a splendid idea.

We looked at a few houses on Wednesday. The distinct lack of job opportunities in this neck of the woods for a man of my talents makes me wonder if property development might be the way to go. We looked at a few that were in need of renovation. One was quite interesting, but the others were in rather naff locations which we didn't fancy at all. Maybe it was the rain that made them look worse than they really were.

Imogen went off to camp on Matakana island for three days. She somehow forgot to take the cakes that Di had baked and that she was supposed to share. Also, her favourite teddy got left behind and has since been adopted by Phoebe. All hell will break loose when she returns and wants him back.

Later we went for a meal with some friends of Di's. We went to "A Taste of Asia" in the mount. I'm still not sure if it was a Thai or Chinese restaurant but it was nothing to shout about, cuisine wise. The menu was rather amusing, with several amusingly title dishes. We ordered our "Kang Bang" for four to start with. It seemed only appropriate that we all participate. All the main courses were rather heavy on the vegetables and light on the meat. The wine list was however the most depressing thing. It had a reasonable selection, but the inclusion of phonetic spellings of all the wines was simply very sad. We stuck with beer, rather than order Sham Pain or Shar Doh Nay. I kid you not.

Hot Pork

2010-03-13T03:54:00.000-08:00

Imogen fell of Phoebe's scooter yesterday and turned her ankle over. She spent most of Wednesday evening hopping everywhere and consequently she was off school on Thursday and spent most of the day playing on the Playstation. Di went to her first "Women on Water" session at the invitation of one of her friends. This involves hanging out on a fairly large yacht and learning how to sail it. The highlight of the evening was getting stuck on a sand bank and having to change sails in order to get off again. Apparently it was massive fun but sadly this was the last outing of the season but I suspect I will be child minding when the new one comes around.

I took Imogen over to Papamoa on Friday since she was going to a birthday sleepover. Later I was left holding the fort yet again as Di & Vicky went to an underwear party. Well, I was going to hold the fort, but as Sam was available I collected a 12 pack on my way to Wayne's. We uttered the usual slightly less that erudite rhetoric before a degree of drunkenness set in and the girls returned without any underwear. Apparently the cheapest pants were $35, and had quite rightly been deemed too expensive. Much better to spend the money on Sky telly, which is exactly what Wayne has done and the installation was planned for tomorrow, just in time for the final NZ vs Australia ODI.

Saturday morning we went to the Mount Primary's school fayre. This was held on the school field and had the usual assortment of cake stalls, games, tombola, bric-a-brac and second hand tat you usually get. There was also a bouncy castle and the usual sweatburger vans. However, there was also a fully fledged petting zoo, complete with pigs, sheep, goats etc and also horse/pony rides. The centre piece however was the piglet racing. A short obstacle course had been set up with a pen and trough at each end. Approximately every 20 minutes or so the pen would be opened and the pigs would bolt from one end to the other to get their faces in the trough. Each had a little jacket on and it was soon obvious that nos 1 & 9 were the hot pork. Having studied the form, we bought a few tickets at $2 each. Only then did we notice the jackets being switched in the pig box. Needless to say we left empty handed.

Rhiannon's mouse had packed up, due to overuse it seems. Thus I decided to take her down to Bayfair to pick up a new one. Having scoped out Dick Smith and Noel Leeming, I noticed that Warehouse Stationery, sandwiched between the two was selling exactly the same mouse, but for considerably less that the electronics specialist stores. While we were out Imogen texted for a pick up so we both headed over to Papamoa. Typically Imogen wasn't ready and thus I spent quite a while chatting. It emerged the elder sister was into guitar but lacked any formal tuition of any sort. Alas I mentioned that I played a bit and an impromptu recital took place. My phone number was taken and it's entirely possible I might end up giving lessons.

We had the first of the two "open home" sessions today. A couple of sets of people did turn up, one seemed more interested in chatting to his mate, the estate agent and the others were an elderly couple who had one of their kids leading them round looking somewhat harassed. I guess they had looked at quite a few houses.

Later I got a call from Wayne confirming that the Sky was installed, so I wandered over at about 8ish, supped a few more beers and watched the Black Caps win the final ODI. Better to lose the series 3-2 than 4-1.

Robbing Hood And His Merry Men (& Women)

2010-03-10T01:34:00.000-08:00

I've become rather conscious that the contents of this 'ere blog are becoming rather mundane. I guess this is because the things we're doing, or rather not doing are far from fascinating. Having said that I received a kick up the 'arris via email today from a regular reader bemoaning the lack of recent activity. So here we go.

Sunday was not particularly noteworthy. I managed a run around the Mount with a reasonable pace. It certainly felt relatively easy, but then the 12K was less than the rather taxing 15K of the previous run.

Monday was Phoebe's first full day in her new class. It seems to have gone quite well. She's not too sure about her new teacher, who can be rather strict when required but at least doesn't throw a hissy fit if the P.E. kit bags are not hung up in the correct manner. I spent most of Monday wading my way through a book on Joomla CMS templates, which turned out to be rather a waste of money. A suitably pithy (pissy? probably both) review was left on Amazon's site but they have yet to publish it.

Di had invited Rhiannon's friend's parents over for a barbecue on Tuesday. Thus old faithful was sparked into life and various bits of dead pig and cow were ritually cremated. There were even some chicken legs which I was only allowed to impart authentic barbecue flavour to since Di insisted on precooking them in the oven. Spoilsport. What's a little salmonella between friends? We must have done something right since they were with us a little over four hours.

The fun part of Tuesday morning was waiting in for the estate agent's merry band of thieves, rogues, bandits and ne'erdowells to attempt to "familiarise" themselves with the property. There's not a huge lot to familiarise yourself with since the layout is rather basic. There must have been about 20 or so of them turn up. It was rather comical. As they approached the front door, they all removed shoes walked into the living/dining area, then down the one and only straight and narrow corridor past each bedroom with a quick peak in the garage before turning about face and retracing their steps and re-shoeing. The whole thing took less than two minutes and I was left wondering what this rather pointless exercise actually achieved. I guess we'll find out on Saturday when the first of the "open home" sessions happens.

Wednesday's excitement was watching Phoebe do her "try-athlon" at school. Two lengths of the pool, leg it to the bike, cycle the length of the field and then run round it. The event was conducted in batches of three to prevent total mayhem. Her swimming has improved a lot, but she was still behind the others exiting the pool although she was catching up rather nicely on the run. She's made a new friend already, and we had the pleasure of her company for a few hours after school. Looks like she's settling in just fine.

One rather annoying thing I discovered today when I checked the bank back in the UK, was that Churchill insurance seem to have collected next year's insurance premium on the house that we were renting back in the UK. It didn't seem worth the effort to cancel the policy when we left the UK as it only had a few months to run and as it was contents only, the premium was about £100. I'd figured that any money we got back would be less any "administration fees" that most companies have a habit of adding on and thus it would be better to leave it alone as there was a danger of owing them more money. In hindsight a phone call might have been a good move. Sorting this out necessitated a call via Skype. It was relatively painless but could have been rather more so. Thankfully Churchill have UK call centres.

We also received some mail today, for a former tenant. We've had quite a lot of mail for former tenants and the landlords but this was a name we'd not seen before. Di opened it, and it turned out to be a letter from a debt collection agency chasing a $700 bill for Sky telly. Ouch! We sent an email saying "not known here" and pushed it back in the post marked "return to sender", but they'll probably still be sending the bailiffs round at some point anyway, claiming that they're not going to fall for the "we've moved" ruse. On the other hand we might well have moved soon anyway depending on what happens at the auction. The pound has tanked in the last few days and is currently sitting at a paltry $2.11 so unless the house sells for about $44.50, we won't be putting in a bid.

Bag of Nails

2010-03-04T02:12:00.001-08:00

Wednesday saw the start of the one day cricket series between NZ and Australia. Nothing like a home derby to get the juices flowing. We're lucky enough over here to actually get free-to-air coverage on the Prime channel. I had begun watching at 2PM, and encountered various sounds of dismay as various small and not quite as small persons returned from school. Apparently missing yet another repeated Simpsons episode was more than flesh and blood could bear. I also received moans about various other programs that Di wanted to watch. Fortunately the situation resolved itself since everyone buggered off to Wayne & Vicky's spot. A minute later, Wayne showed up and we spent the rest of the afternoon/evening watching NZ beat Australia, which was just fine and dandy. I support two teams - NZ and anyone playing the Aussies.

It wasn't all continuous viewing though. Phoebe has been riding her scooter to school recently, and is finding it rather hard to keep up with Freya on her bike. This has been made slightly more awkward by the scooter being run over by the Mirth Mobile due to a rather bad piece of parking and some insufficient wifely observation. Despite my best efforts with a selection of large hammers, it's not quite as smooth running as it once was. Phoebe decided today was the day she was going to ride her bike. It's maybe a little on the large size, but we refused to buy a small one with stabilisers that she would be out of in six months. She has finally figured out how to start off and stop without landing in a heap and took great pride in whizzing around and of course demanded an audience of admirers.

The rest of the books turned up on Thursday. I now have another 10 inches of paper to wade through. I noticed that Craig's car seems to have sprouted a for sale sign. Further investigation reveals that the oil light is coming on intermittently. An opinion from the local garage is apparently that the engine is about to die and he should either get a new engine or flog it quick. It's not altogether surprising, it sounds like a bag of nails when it's on tick over and always has.

Di returned from school on Friday morning, with news that the assistant principal would be calling. The phone call indicated that Phoebe has now moved to a year one class. Apparently the AP observed Phoebe failing to get involved in any of the class activities and keeping her head down to keep out of trouble. Clearly a complete breakdown in relationships. Of course we supported the move, and Phoebe seems a little more comfortable about it, although still apprehensive. Poor Phoebe's day ended with a trip to the dentist, who redid one of her fillings on account of it being rotten underneath. Apparently this is what happens when bacteria are left in the tooth before filling. All the girls have now had fillings replaced, which rather makes us question the standard of care we all received back in the UK. Neither Di not I are looking forward to the next dental appointment, what with the number of crowns and root canals we have between us.

We both received letters about registering for the electoral role. It seems that our names and addresses have come from the driving licence details. Although the letters proclaimed $200 fines for not registering, it also states that you need to have been resident for 12 months or more, and thus both were deposited in the bin.

I took Imogen to see Avatar this evening. I must admit to not being as blown away as I expected given all the hype it's had. Sure, it was a neat experience once I'd stopped focusing on the parts that were deliberately out of focus. The plot was a little bit thin and predictable, but it did fulfil its primary function, which was to entertain for a couple of hours. I have it on good authority that a pal of mine who works for Weta Digital has a credit, but there were so many to view, it was impossible to spot it, despite sitting through to the end and annoying the cinema staff. I shall have to take it on faith that it's there and ignore any suspicions of Geordie chest pummelling. ;-)

Back to School

2010-03-02T02:54:00.000-08:00

Phoebe wet the bed on Monday morning. Apparently it's something to do with the pressure she's feeling at school. She's in a year 2 class and has effectively missed out on a couple of terms which isn't helping. Not surprisingly Phoebe is also in reading recovery - learning phonics in the UK and now something completely different over here in combination with the two missing terms and all the upheaval. It seems that the reading recovery is at a slightly lower level than the class teacher expects, which smacks of a lack of communication somewhere. Di spoke with her class teacher, an English woman who was rather unhelpful, shrugging her shoulders and declaring she didn't know what to do. Di sought out the assistant principal, who was a lot more helpful and a lot more concerned and promised to observe the class. Apparently lots of shouting takes place in class, according to Phoebe. Hmm.

I received a phone call from the estate agent who was after some dates to arrange viewings. I asked him to email through a number of days so that we could be clear what was available. He wanted to bring his whole team through tomorrow, but I claimed this was too short a time frame. Taking the matter up with the rental agent, we were advised that as no notification of sale had been received, that we were not to let anyone in. Suits us. I responded to the estate agent directing him to duke it out with the rental agent and leave me alone. No sooner had I done this that the rental agent was on the phone advising us that notification had now been received. Thus I again emailed the estate agent, this time with three dates/times that we would be available. He wanted Sundays, but he got Saturdays.

Di decided the job she was looking at wasn't really for her. The bit about being on call 24/7 and potentially unblocking toilets at 4AM was what decided for her in the end. She has now decided that she wants to be a licensed real estate agent! Apparently a mutual friend has already qualified but isn't making a go of it. She lacks the ability to spin a yarn that Di is capable of. To that effect, we drove into Tauranga and signed up at the Bay of Plenty Polytechnic for a 2 week course. This cost $791. What an odd figure. Once qualified, another $500 is required to be issued with an "MREINZ" licence and then Di can start flogging houses. While we were there, I visited the "Rock Shop", which is a music shop and scored a couple of sets of strings for the guitar. $18 each.

I received an email telling me I'd not got short listed for a job in Rotorua. I wasn't really keen on it anyway, but the salary would have been rather large and therefore quite attractive. I was actually quite relieved that my lung function wouldn't be gradually degraded.

Phoebe seemed to have had a better day and did report that the AP had been in class. Time will tell if all is now well. Di went Zumba-ing with Vicky and when they got back I went for a run into the mount and back.

Monday night was dry - thankfully. We received the official notification of sale in the post this morning. A fairly standard sort of letter which basically spelt out that we couldn't unreasonably refuse access. This is loosely interpreted as arranged at least 24 hours in advance and as we've already given some dates, it was pretty much a NO-OP.

Amazon spewed forth the first of the books I ordered - "Ajax - The Definitive Guide". Light reading it is not, at two inches thick. Still, it did make it to NZ in about a week (from Germany, apparently). The other five or so books are still in transit.

Rhiannon's friend's parents descended on us at around 5PM. Apparently they have Tuesdays off and get out on their bike all over the shop. We hadn't really met them other than a few words when picking up their daughter and it was most pleasant to have a good chat to a pair of Poms who had been over here a few years. Apparently Joyce's brother was lecturing at the Poly but has just jumped on a plane back to Scotland. He's in for a rude awakening when he lands, as it's about -10°C over there right now. Tee Hee. He was teaching computer science, and the rather confused message from Rhiannon about all of this turned out to be about Java, which I know not a lot about

Howzat? Ouch!

2010-02-28T00:05:00.000-08:00

On Friday we found our house on the Internet. We were rather annoyed to find that the pictures taken for valuation purposes, which included all our worldly goods were displayed for all to see. Di spoke to a knowledgeable friend who was of the opinion that we were within our rights to insist they were removed. This we did via email. Half an hour later, the estate agent was at the door apologising and generally being smarmy. He wanted to set up a couple of sessions where prospective purchasers could come and view the house. I didn't agree to anything there and then, needing to consult with Di who was out shopping. He was also not very complimentary about our rental agent who he accused of jumping up and down without good reason. He was insistent that it was the landlord's responsibility to tell us of the sale and that even though the bank was now the landlord that they weren't responsible. No one seems to be able to give us a straight answer on this.

Di and Vicky went out to the Rain Bar to celebrate the birthday of a mutual friend. As Sam was at home, it seemed like a good plan to nip over to Wayne and demolish a few beers. Strangely, Wayne concurred that this was indeed a very good plan and thus we spent several hours staring at the stars, drinking beer and making erudite observations on the state of the universe. One of these lead to me accepting a request to umpire at a school cricket match on Saturday. I duly accepted.

Rather worryingly, Saturday arrived with a thick head. It was worrying because we honestly hadn't drunk that much. Maybe "NZ Pure" isn't as pure as it claims to be. The match was due to start at 12, and so I got a move on straight away and swatted up on the various umpiring signals that I would need to know. Some I already new, but others such as "run short" and "dead ball" where new to me. The match was a 40 over affair between Mount College and Tauranga boys. I took the first innings and made it through to lunch without making any bad decisions. However the innings was not without incident. Each team was allowed to field one adult. Tauranga boys had such an adult, who was a little bit on the competitive side which was rather painful when he decided to play an aggressive hook shot straight to square leg. The square leg umpire gathered the ball in his ample belly. It bloody stung, I can tell you.

After lunch I tried my hand at scoring. It was rather more frantic than umpiring, since there are zillions of boxes to fill in and not much room. I made rather a hash of it, which wasn't helped by 3 no balls and 5 wides in the first over. After the drinks break I resumed my umpiring duties, presiding over a spell of hostile bowling in which four wickets fell to one bowler, who apparently played for a county team. One of these wickets was a plumb LBW I had no issue giving out. Tauranga eventually won by about 30 runs, bowling out the Mount in 35 overs.

After all this fun, I headed home where Di had prepared a BBQ to which Wayne and Vicky were invited. We watched the sun go down while stuffing our faces.

Sunday we didn't do much. We kept off the beach because of the tsunami warning. I did manage to get another AJAX website thingy working though, which was nice. Rhiannon lurked in the mount and had to be retrieved a little later than she wanted, although it was quite late enough as it was a school night. A torrent of bile was flung my way all the way home. I love her so much.

One in the Eye - Not Cricket

2010-02-25T00:05:00.000-08:00

I volunteered to help out at Freya's class camp on Wednesday and Thursday. Thus I presented myself at school at 2PM and was introduced to the class. We drove the kids to the teacher's house, where the camp was to be held, along Papamoa Beach Road. It was a whacking great place, 3 stories high, with a pool, a grassed area and various wooded bits and of course it was only a minute from the beach. One of the first activities was to get on to the beach and collect driftwood for use on the camp fire later on. I volunteered myself for fire duties, since this is most definitely a man job and as the only man there it boiled down to me. I managed to get the thing going with just one match which I found rather gratifying. The idea of the fire was to "cook" some bananas and chocolate in tin foil which the kids prepared. This all passed off OK and the results were mostly edible. However the fire needed to be built up again for a latter marshmallow toasting session, and that's when I managed to poke myself in the eye courtesy of a low hanging branch, dislodging a contact lens which morphed itself into a ball of molten snot as it headed inexorably towards the fire. Fortunately I had packed several spares, and just about managed to avoid swearing loudly in the vicinity of 30 sets of delicate impressionable ears.

I had been scheduled to sleep in the boys tent, but alas two of the boys got really emotional which necessitated the teacher taking my place. Thus I slept in a bed. However, a rather annoying insect, possibly a cricket had taken residence in the pile of firewood immediately outside the window and was most definitely audible. Thus I received various strange looks as I began dismantling the pile of wood (which wasn't actually much more than a barrow load) in search of the offending bug. I failed to find it, but it got the message and kept itself quiet allowing us all to get a decent night's kip. It was quite a late night for the kids, but this didn't stop them waking before 7.

The first order of the day was an enforced run along the beach and a dip in the sea. Sounds cold and horrible, but it was in fact really warm and everyone went under the water. Various activities took place until after lunch when camp was packed up and we took the kids back to school. As the school was chucking out at that time, I assumed Di was picking up Phoebe so I went home with Freya. Apparently this was a bad plan as the terse phone call I got as I turned up at home made me realise. As we arrived home, we noticed the rather large estate agent sign on the fence. Still nothing in writing, but it does appear that we're up for auction on March 25th.

Thursday evening was rather interesting. Two of the wooden slats in Phoebe's bed dropped out onto Freya and resisted attempts to reinstall, seemingly because they were too short for the gap. It turned out that one of the other was slightly misplaced and was therefore bowing the bed frame out allowing the slats to drop through. However the major fun was the remote diagnosis of not one but two misbehaving computers in the UK, with constant updates from the customers and help from others flying back and forth via email. One may or may not have been resolved, the other needs the lid taking off. I managed to get to bed a lot later than I'd planned.

Repeat Business

2010-02-23T02:13:00.000-08:00

Monday came and went with no more news on the house. We're still not on the agent's web site so we are beginning to wonder what's going on. It appears that my recent attempts at web site design are to be rewarded with some repeat business. I therefore spent the morning resolving one or two little niggles that were reported and working on a description of the new work. I have also started to experiment with Ajax technology and the geek readers among you should know that my request queue is just peachy.

We saw Rhiannon off to camp. I did offer to take her to school in the car since she was loaded down with sleeping bags and the like, but I'm apparently too un-hip to be seen in public. Thus I was allowed to walk only as far as the school gate. Di took Vicky to Zumba at around tea time accompanied by our neighbour, and yours truly was left with three sets of kids. It was a nightmare, largely because our kids kept trying to "supervise" the little ones, who weren't up for this pseudo parenting and protested loudly. Somehow I managed to get back to the laptop to press OK on the order for books I had been in the process of placing with Amazon when they all arrived.

Tuesday involved more of the same from the web site point of view. I duly delivered a massive email and sat back to await the reply which I suspect will take a few days. I continued Ajaxing and went so far as to install the code on a live web site. Amazon UK have now despatched the books which will be here on the 3rd/4th March apparently. Di had sent in an application for a job as a property manager looking after holiday homes. Today she had a telephone interview. I've never heard so much spin in my life! She could work for T. Blair Esquire, no problem. It obviously did the trick as there's to be a face-to-face interview the Friday after next.

Phoebe had a bad day at school. Apparently one little boy was in trouble and had something confiscated by the teacher. Phoebe felt sorry for him and lifted it and gave it him back. Naturally this met with displeasure from the teacher and an appropriate amount of hot water for both of them.

I attempted a run this evening, this time using the Garmin. It does loose signal round the Mount, but this evening it was pretty good only loosing the plot occasionally. It turns out that the route into and round the mount is 12k, which probably explains why I'm wasted by the end of it.

Wednesday and Thursday should prove to be fun - I'm camping out with Freya's class. Apparently I am the token "Dad".

The Right Trousers

2010-02-21T02:08:00.000-08:00

Last Friday we went to view a house in Papamoa. It had been described as having a structural issue and came complete with a report on the damage. Papamoa Beach Road is a rather long road, but we weren't quite prepared for the distance we'd have to travel to reach it. We had a look round. He place was rather scruffy and obviously in need of a face lift. The structural issue appeared to be a case of water ingress. The structure of the house is basically a timber frame with some sort of plasterboard on the outside of the property, covered with a moisture proof coating. Alas some cracks had developed which had been left unattended, thus the damage. I don't think there was an actual brick in the whole place. The walls were no more than six inches thick (wot, no cavity?) and it seemed rather unsubstantial and flimsy. It's rather odd pounding on the outside of the wall and having it seem like a stud wall you might find inside. The price of $475,000 was allegedly a cracking deal, especially as the plot could be subdivided, but the area looked a bit rough and it really is miles from anywhere, yet you've still got neighbours and you're on a main road. The decision to take this no further was not a lengthy or difficult one.

Later on that afternoon, a button fell off my shorts, which necessitated me sewing it back on since there was no chance of them staying aloft. They seem to have become rather loose lately, and once I'd finished the needlework, I wondered if my dinner jacket and trousers would fit any better. The last time I wore those trousers, they were unbearably tight. This was partly a result of me being a fat git, and partly the result of inept alteration following my last modestly successful attempt at loosing a few pounds. The dry cleaners we took them to managed to take two inches out, but did it with the adjustment bit on the tightest setting. Anyway, it turns out the aforementioned trews are now a little baggy and comfortably on the loose side of snug. This made up for the rather disappointing BMI of 28, as measured on Wayne's WII Fit. I'm not convinced it's accurate.

Di went out to her inaugural netball team meeting....at the Rain Bar. Hardly an appropriate venue for a sporting activity, unless you count Sky Sports as a sporting activity. She dragged Vicky along with her for backup and reappeared several hours later having talked a few of her potential team mates out of joining the league on day one. Probably a wise move. Allegedly Di is now chief coach.

Saturday we went to the beach. No seaweed but the surf was pants. Bizarrely Rhiannon came too and actually went in the water and attempted to catch some waves too. I wasn't sure whether to pinch myself or her to discover if indeed she had been cloned or otherwise bodysnatched. Upon reflection, her shouts of FAIL! every time I didn't quite manage to catch a wave should have given the game away but I was too busy hurling the same insult back at her which she seemed to enjoy. Is the troglodyte evolving, perhaps? No sign of sharks today, but at one point as I was wading back out of the sea I saw this rather odd pattern of black shapes about 6 feet from the shoreline. I thought it was some sort of optical effect where the sun catches the undulations in the compacted sand, but having stopped and stared for a few seconds, it was in fact a school of fish, each one about 10 inches long, swimming in no more than a foot of water. It did make me wonder if the bronzies had scared them that close to the shore.

Sunday. Beach again. This time sans Rhiannon, who disappeared down the mount but managed to appear outside the house just as we were returning from the beach. I hadn't bothered with the body board since I'd suspected the surf would be poor. Instead Phoebe and I dug a big hole and Phoebe insisted I move the big log (about 15 inches diameter and 8 feet long) about 30 yards along the beach so that it formed a bridge over the hole. Quite why she could not reuse the hole under the log which she had dug yesterday is a mystery. You need to be six to understand it I suppose.

It's All About Colour

2010-02-18T01:57:00.000-08:00

The high light of Wednesday was the viewing of a couple of houses in Papamoa. The first one was in a cul-de-sac near Domain Road which is a main road leading onto Southern Highway 2. There was a considerable amount of road noise which was rather off putting. The house was owned by an elderly couple and alas the décor was very similar. The outside had a frankly bizarre purple edging which had to be seen to be believed. The killer however was the tiny bedrooms which coupled with large windows which seemed to start at floor level would make stuffing loads of bunk beds everywhere a little challenging.

The second house was more towards the centre of Papamoa. The size and layout was better, but not ideal. It was owned by a British couple from Birmingham who had lived there for six years. However, the grey/green outside continued everywhere on the inside. It really was a return to the Black Country. The whole thing would need a coat of white paint inside and out before you could live in it. Rhiannon might have liked living in a cave, but we didn't. Overall, neither of them were really what we were looking for.

This morning we had an inspection visit from the rental agent. Everything was in order but the discussion centred around the impending mortgagee sale. No one has talked to our rental agent and we have yet to have any official notice from anyone. The estate agent hasn't been in touch and it's all looking a bit amateur and a right cock up. Our rental agent cannot believe what's going on and was not at all happy with the estate agent and has given him rather a large amount of stick about the whole process. Tee Hee.

When I'm Cleaning Windows

2010-02-16T02:32:00.000-08:00

I started Monday with some window cleaning. We hadn't touched them since we moved in and one or two were looking a little grubby. I'd done about half the house when Vicky and her kids descended on us. I can't quite recall why but it took a couple of hours until I was able to finish off, not that I particularly wanted to. I managed to do all the windows, inside and out. The major pain in the arm being the blinds. These seem to be dust magnets and necessitated the use of the Dyson to rectify.

We had an email from the rental agent, who surprise surprise had not heard a peep about the mortgagee sale. Di spent several hours looking at potential new homes on the net. It's certainly the case that you get a lot more over in Papamoa for your money. The fly in the ointment with that plan is the morning school run since we really don't want to move the kids, and Rhiannon wouldn't move anyway since Mount college is still the closest school. Moving the littluns would not be a good idea as they have only just settled in. We were advised by a neighbour that if we do move, not to tell the school since they can apparently kick the kids out if they've not been there that long. Such is the problem with strict zoning/catchment areas and a popular and decent school. We would I suspect use Vicky's mailbox - at least until the year was up.

In the evening, Di dragged one of the neighbours off to Zumba. Vicky was planing to go, but came over all faint. Both made it back in one piece just in time for me to take my turn to sweat with a run into the mount and back. I took a moment to sit and survey the beach, and was acosted by a well meaning woman, concerned that I had overdone it. The truth was that I'd pushed it rather hard on the out lap. I explained that back home it was far too cold and miserable to do this sort of thing and that I was merely taking a moment to a) breathe and b) enjoy not being in England in Februrary. She found this quite amusing and wished me well.

Today we were Vickyed again. She'd had a call from the Warehouse about the vacuum and they'd agreed she could take it back. They were at one point apparently insinuating that it had been tampered with in order to make it faulty so that a refund could be claimed and wanted it taken off to a technician. Harumph! In the end they did the decent thing and exchanged it. I agreed to babysit again and this time got away without changing nappies. The only casualty being a cup of juice being dropped and its lid falling off.

Later we went into Tauranga to pay the water bill, and had a chat with the agent about all the shenanigans. Someone somewhere isn't playing by the rules, since we're supposed to be notified in writing about a sale or change of ownership. This has not happened and the only way we know is that the agent charged with the sale has let us know. Apparently under the tenancy act when ownership changes, fixed term tenancies automatically become periodic, at least from the landlord's perspective. I'm not convinced that the tenant has the same rights. Either way, someone needs to be writing to us. Looking through the legislation it is the case that we are supposed to allow potential buyers to view, but we don't have to do this at a drop of a hat. We can be a little awkward, which we probably will be and the chances of an "open home" session are about zero.

While in town, I dropped into the AA and paid for the registration on the Mirth Mobile. You can indeed pay for any number of months you like, as long as it's at least three. I decided not to be awkward (yeah, really!) and plumped for six.

Di continued to surf for houses, and made a couple of appointments. I was highly suspicious of the house that came with a structural report, expecting it to have no roof, or some other such problem and sure enough, it has an issue. It may be worth a look at the right price, since there are lots of people over here who simply do not want to do any work at all. A possible career in property development beckoned, for about thirty seconds.

We were supposed to attend the third and final meet the teachers barbecue, this time at Mount College. However, the drizzling rain put paid to that since Rhiannon returned from school with a message that the whole thing was cancelled.

That's Our Lot

2010-02-14T00:06:00.000-08:00

Freya went to a birthday sleep over on Friday after school. Her friend's mum had around 20 girls stay the night. She must be mental. We were a little worried that Freya would have a rough time as she'd not been away from home over night before, but she was fine. Apparently she woke up at about 5AM missing mummy, but after a quick chat she was OK. Imogen went to a volleyball session organised by school at the Mount Activity Centre and cunningly managed to avoid piano practice as a result.

Rhiannon spent Saturday lurking in the Mount with her mate, whose parents run a pizza takeaway. She'd skipped off rather early and we weren't expecting her until late. Apparently the temperature in the shop was too much to handle and I got a text to come and pick her up at 6.

We spent Saturday afternoon on the beach. Not much sign of the weed that made things rather slippery last time out, but the waves weren't much use either. After we'd got in and finally got Phoebe out of the shower (I'm sure she's half mermaid), Imogen was spotted doing her piano practice without having been reminded. Hurrah!

Sunday involved rock pooling in the pools round the mount. A fair collection of snails, hermit crabs, shrimps, starfish and crabs were collected. Phoebe had brought her back pack, but we couldn't work out why. It turns out that it contained not just her bathing costume and goggles, but several tupperware jugs and about ten packets of crisps. The jugs were apparently for catching fish. The pièce de résistance, however, was the cold sore cream. She'd brought it just in case anyone had one on the beach!

Not long after we'd got back, we had a call from an estate agent. He told us that he'd been appointed to sell the house we're living in at auction. Arse. Apparently the auction will be on the 18th March, which is rather poor timing. We are considering buying the place as it will make a good rental property, but the valuation he's quoting is way more than it's worth when you compare other properties in the locale which give you more for less. Our contract locks us in until the end of March and we're on a six seek notice period. We are therefore expecting to get our marching orders any day now. Who exactly we get these from remains a mystery. One would assume that it would come from the rental agent, but as nobody except us is talking to them it seems unlikely. The landlord is presumably no longer in the frame, since the bank (which one, there are two mortgages) must have ownership now otherwise how could they sell what's not actually theirs? The bank of course has no idea who we are and probably does not know who the rental agent is. It's a right old mess. The timing of the auction means that if we do decide to bid and we're unsuccessful, we will have less than two weeks to find somewhere else assuming we do get notice to quit. If on the other hand we do find somewhere else, then we might end up renting a place and also end up buying this one. It should be an interesting week.

Rhiannon went out in the evening to watch Avatar at the cinema with her mates from school, and then they went to a restaurant afterwards. She didn't have enough money, so she did her best to prise some out of my pocket. It came at a price, namely 1/2 hour on the guitar with me providing some "tuition". This basically consisted of me being shouted at when trying to explain something and lots of tears and complaints about what a horrible father I am. She is clearly back to her old self. Progress, of a sort, was made and $20 made its appearance in her back pocket. However, when she returned, having spent only $10, the other $10 returned whence it came accompanied by complaints of theft, fraud and deceit. Naturally she'd forgotten that she was supposed to be using pocket money for this little sojourn and the extra was a treat.

Craig still has a monster monk on and is still not talking to anybody. He keeps looking at accommodation on the Internet, but apparently it's all too expensive or too grotty to contemplate which only adds to his gregarious demeanour.

Hello, Good Evening & Welcome

2010-02-11T01:00:00.000-08:00

Tuesday was not particularly remarkable. We went to the primary school for a meet and greet session with the Principal and the class teachers. A good portion of the meeting was taken up with the new "National" standards that the John (Don) Key government is hell bent on enforcing on everyone. There's a lot of hoo-haa in the press and the unions are up in arms. The nub of the problem is that it's eventually going to lead to the same crass league tables that afflict the UK. These result in some schools being marked as "failing" when in fact they had imparted a great deal more learning on their pupils than the $16,000 a year private schools, which start off with a much better educated intake. There's also the age-old issue of what level X actually looks like since this is largely a matter of opinion which naturally varies dependent on the marker and also the text. Of course, these matters are being glossed over. The school's take is that standards are a good thing, but the league table nonsense isn't.

We received a letter addressed to some one other than us. We've had a few of these, but this was a new name we'd not encountered before. It was hand addressed, which rang alarm bells. Upon opening it, it turned out to be a water bill addressed to our landlord, which had been returned as undelivered since the address in Australia was no longer valid. Rather than stick it back in the post again, we contacted the rental agent who said to pass it on to them. Apparently we're only liable for the water supply and not the various other penalty charges that were included.

On Wednesday I investigated the services of a property website called Terranet. For a modest fee, they provide all sorts of interesting facts and figures about property, including the details of the mortgagees having an interest in the property. It seems that our landlord has two mortgages on the house. This muddies the waters somewhat, as we were intending to approach the lender and apprise them of our inclination to purchase, just in case they might me interested in avoiding all that auction nonsense - assuming we can agree the right price.

Still suffering from boredom, I spent several hours bashing the guitar strings, and as a result Villa-Lobos, initially spinning in his grave at close to light speed now revolves at a similar rate to the washing machine, but with a noticeably better tune.

Di wanted to take the water bill to the agent in person, since the bill was due for payment straight away and there was a vague threat about a restricted supply. Thus we drove into Tauranga and Di went in and had a chat, mentioning the dual mortgage arrangement we had uncovered. The agent was less than impressed and recommended that even if we don't get asked to leave, we should get out as soon as possible. She's looking for another house for us, and I think as we're model tenants, we'll get first refusal.

I also had a notice that the Mirth Mobile's registration is due for renewal. $247.86 inc GST will see the thing legal for the next 12 months. There's also an option for 6 and even 3 months. In fact it looks like you can specify anything over 3 months. I won't know until I try and as it's not due until 3rd March, I shall not be rushing to do it too soon. There's no significant penalty to taking a shorter term, other than a $7.56 administration charge for renewing. Beats the UK.

Managed to run round the Mount, but the home stretch was rather stuttering.

Today Di and Vicky descended on the Warehouse to return a dead hoover and two of our patio chairs. Just as the girls were about to slip out of the door, an agency rang with details of a PHP job and I had to fill in some of the blanks on the CV. Hopefully something will come of it. The girls scooted and I was left with Vicky's kids, who behaved really well. One filled her nappy not long after the girls had departed and I was reminded how unpleasant children can be. We managed to get through two whole DVDs before they returned. Women and shops. A combination to be avoided at all costs.

This evening there was another meet the teacher event, this time at the Intermediate. Imogen's teacher is great, and tells us that Imogen's writing is way beyond everyone else in the class. Imogen was visibly proud of this and left feeling rather important. Good on her. The meeting was preceded by a sausage sizzle organised by the PTA, and we came away $10 lighter than we went largely due to a massive disagreement on which drink was suitable.

I appear to have upset Craig. He's not talking to me. He's not talking to Di, either, since she agreed with me that his recent driving performance does not rank as satisfactory.

Long Live the Muppet King

2010-02-08T00:23:00.000-08:00

Sam took the little girls to school this morning. Imogen went on her bike, as she'd been nagging and whining on about "everybody" else cycling. It's certainly true that a number of kids go bombing past us with shouts of "hi Imogen". It's like a precession some times and gets a little monotonous.

Di, Rhiannon and I marched ourselves into reception at the school and announced our presence. The dean was busy. We said we'd wait as long as it took. The receptionist said she'd find him. She did and we were in his office a couple of minutes later. He was clearly very busy as a queue of other kids needed to be attended to and a couple of phone calls answered. We prompted Rhiannon to explain the situation, and backed up her statements. He was more accommodating in person than he was on the phone, and eventually agreed to move Rhiannon to the class she wanted. The fact that the school had recommended she attend intermediate to make friends I think sold it to him. Either that or the fact that we turned up mob handed and it was the lesser of two evils to give in. He did caution Rhiannon that she would have to ensure that she didn't cause any upset in the new class. This seems to be a no brainer, as Rhiannon has always behaved in a exemplary fashion. We left the school with a much happier girl.

Craig received a letter today - it turns out he's been zapped by a speed camera and has been issued with an $80 fine. No points on his licence apparently since the filth didn't pull him over. However a couple of nights ago he was pulled over with Sam in the car, for doing in excess of 70 in a 50. He got let off with a warning but it could easily have gone the other way. He's barely had his licence back two weeks and he's been tugged by the fuzz twice. Naturally, a little stick was applied which he did not take kindly to, but is was no less than he deserved. Being banned for a year has obviously not focused his mind on his idiot ways and he still regards the roads as an extension of the PlayStation.

Di decided she was going to join a Zumba class this evening. She took Rhiannon along - much to everyone's surprise. Rhiannon hates anything at all physical. Di came back an hour or so later complaining of some bits that were hurting, but full of praise for the Vin Diesel look-a-like instructor. Rhiannon hated it and vowed never to go again. There were apparently 80 or so women paying $8 a pop. Sounds like a lot of money for old rope if you ask me. A brisk jog into the Mount and back is what you need.

Bored, Bored, Bored

2010-02-07T00:11:00.000-08:00

Rhiannon came home from school on Friday with her head in her hands. She's not the sort to bond easily and is clearly finding it very hard going. She spent the rest of the weekend moping about and generally being very miserable. On Saturday night we find her crying on our bed, which made our minds up that enough is enough. There will have to be a tete-a-tete on Monday. All three of us will park ourselves in reception and wait until we get an appointment.

The rest of the weekend passed of smoothly enough. We ended up on the beach a couple of times with the body boards. Alas there was far too much weed about to make for an easy passage out to where the decent waves were, not that they were really that decent. The weed was really slippery, and made it difficult to move into the surf. I did manage to catch a few reasonable waves though. We had a barbie on Saturday, no particular reason, just because we could.

I am becoming rather bored. Now that the exam is out of the way, I have little to focus the mind other than an excessive amount of guitar practice. I am also more than pulling my weight in the kitchen, washing up and tidying etc. I've even had the hoover out twice and even taken the strimmer to the grass. I've decided to have a look at the Rottorua job, mainly because I suspect the salary will be rather substantial. If nothing happens however, I think the next few months might involve kiwi fruit in some form or another.

Road Legal

2010-02-04T01:50:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I popped in to Mount College after walking Imogen to school. I asked to make an appointment with the dean to discuss Rhiannon's problems. I also had a chat with her former class teacher at Intermediate, who confirmed that she was indeed as capable as her peers. She also explained that the reason for the missing test results was because Rhiannon did not exist on the government database and thus they could not be entered. Hmm. Computersezno apparently. I didn't get a call back from the Dean, so I rang and left a message.

Wayne and I went over to Hamilton to watch the Black Caps Vs Bangladesh. I'd never been t a twenty20 match so I wasn't sure what to expect. The journey over was uneventful, but we dud take in some rather fine scenery bombing along highway 29. Hamilton at this time of year seems to be very floral and generally looks quite a nice place, even if it is too far from the beach. We managed to find our way to Seddon Park, and then tried to find somewhere to park. A helpful sign that said "Cricket Parking" was followed, only for an attendant to start waving a "car park full" sign about. Then there was a change of heart, and a swift right turn, possibly cutting up the waiting traffic on the other side of the road allowed us to get in and parked for the princely sum of $5.

We located a decent spot to sit, behind the wickets opposite the pavilion, and then decided to investigate the beer and scoff situation. Beer was a tab pricey at $6 for a 375 ml plastic bottle of lager, but the food wasn't too badly priced, although a distinct lack of vegetarian options had Wayne making a move on the chips, a move that I concurred with.

The match itself was rather disappointing. Bangladesh rolled over for 78, and the Black Caps took just 9 overs to put them to the sword. We made an early break for before the final runs were scored and were first out of the car park, although it was a tight squeeze as all the cars had been wedged in rather tight.

This morning I did get a call from the Dean, and in short there was no shifting him from his opinion that she's in the right class. There is apparently very little between the two classes and some lessons are setted so Rhiannon will actually spend time with her friends, assuming that she's of a similar level. The test she took isn't the deciding factor apparently. I did manage to get a promise that the situation would be reviewed in a few weeks and that she may well move at that point. Moving now is sadly not an option that he was prepared to consider. Growl, claiming that the classes were both full. Rhiannon of course now blames me for not sorting it out and I am public enemy no.1, but there's no change there.

I finally got round to taking the Mirth Mobile for it's Warrant of Fitness. Cars over six years old have to be tested every 6 months. I had been recommended to use VTNZ, who don't do repairs and thus have no vested interest in failing your vehicle just to get the work. As with all things car oriented, VTNZ is located on Hewletts Road. I drove in and joined the queue in reception. It seems that they also do driving tests and other licensing stuff, just like the AA do. However, this particular station didn't do WOF, unless you're a truck and they sent me packing to the other VTNZ station further down the road, scarily enough opposite Turner's auctions where we acquired the Mirth Mobile some 5 months ago.

I went into reception and gave the number plate. From this they know what the car is and who I am and where I live etc. Kind of scary, is some of that info really necessary? I was relieved of $50 and given a job sheet and told to join a queue. The whole setup is a bit like a supermarket, with various lanes. You join a queue, leave the keys in the ignition and go and sit on the benches under the tree in the shade and watch the world go by. Someone comes and drives the car into the testing bay, various blokes pop up from the subterranean inspection pit and tweak various bits and pieces about. The testing procedure takes only a few minutes and eventually your car is deposited at the side of the shed and you're given the news. It passed! There was a scribbled note about one of the tyres, but I couldn't make any sense of it. I might ring them tomorrow.

I also had a call from a job agency about a possible position. Alas it's in Rotten egg-orua and it's a management role. I get to herd nerds rather than be one. Not too sure if it's for me, I'm not one for too much MBS, I don't fancy the hour or so commute and the stench would most likely get to me after a while. On the other hand the money might be cracking (it's not specified) but I'll need to wade through the fourteen page job spec to decide for sure.

Ran round the mount and quite a lot of the way back but then died and jogged the rest. Cooled down outside with iced water with the juice of a lemon which sadly fell off the tree next door into out garden.

It's Quiet...

2010-02-02T03:29:00.000-08:00

Today was the first day of school. Hurrah! it was a necessarily early start since there is a fair amount of logistical planning required in order to get the tribe ready and assembled in the correct uniform with the right book bags and sports kit. I am generally a bit crap at this, so my job is to set the alarm clock the night before and to roll over and wake up Di when it goes off. I generally manage to get this bit right. After the customary new uniform photo, Rhiannon took herself off, Di took the little ones and I walked with Imogen up to Mount Intermediate. There was something of a throng of kids waiting for the bell, and I hung on until the last minute before they all bundled off into the hall.

Phoebe apparently was in a completely different class to last year and all of her friends were missing. This is no surprise as she is younger than most of them by some margin. Initially devastated, she cheered up when given a job to do, namely keeping the tables clean.

Three o'clock comes around, and I pick up Imogen, whose new sandals seem to be leaking black dye everywhere. Shes seems to have had an OK day, the high point of which is that assembly is held with chairs for them to sit on and her bum does not go to sleep sitting on the floor. She's tagged along with a few kids she vaguely knows from primary and all seems to be well. I ban her from walking in the house, since the first steps barefoot on the tiles leave black ink like marks behind. I am forced to sling her over my shoulder and deposit her in the bath where she cleans her feet up. Freya and Phoebe seem to have adapted well - no complaints from Freya, and Phoebe seems happy enough, although complains that the work is too hard but has cunningly got someone else in class to do it for her.

Rhiannon however is in floods of tears. She has not it seems been placed in the G&T class, unlike her other 5 mates. She claims she's in a class of "thickies" and is wailing incessantly. Di contacts the school and speaks to the year 9 principal. He claims she is in this class because of her academic ability. I smell a rat here, as she was coping just fine at intermediate and was either top of her year or near it back in the UK. It's unclear at this point why they have assessed her at this level, but the missing exam repeated at the end of the summer holiday (hardly the best time) and the rushed telephone interview that she had during the holidays may be a factor. All her friends had face to face interviews with parents in attendance. The class is apparently one below the G&T class. To add insult to injury, she's not doing art or Japanese, the two subjects she most wanted. The year principal is apparently available on Friday (next two days are training days) so an appointment will be made. I will have an explanation.

A bit later in the evening, I needed to nip over to Papamoa, but alas the Mirth Mobile wouldn't start. I conned Craig into driving me over in his 'onda. Surprisingly he agreed and actually drove quite sensibly, if not quite at the speed limit. I couldn't figure out why the battery had gone flat, usually it's a light left on or a door open that does is but the thing was locked. As I am about to start fiddling about, I spot that the gearshift is in D4, rather than P. D'oh! D'oh! D'oh! I am about to give Di some unjustified grief to cover up my plebbling inadequacy, when she reminds me that it was me that drove it last, picking up Rhiannon from the Mount yesterday. I take refuge in running hard into the Mount and back, working off some of the nagging anger about Rhiannon's problems.

Premature Party

2010-02-01T02:50:00.000-08:00

Today we had a party to celebrate Phoebe's birthday. It wasn't actually her birthday, until later in the week but as she kept asking when it was we gave in and threw a party a few days early. It also meant that we avoided having to hold it after she'd gone back to school, which would have been an anticlimax. Naturally, we had V&W and kids, and the neighbour's kids over for various nibbles. Sadly the party poppers didn't quite last, but this is largely as a result of them being "opened" so they could be "tested" before the party started. Rhiannon skipped the party as she was spending time down in the mount with her mate, again.

We had made an appointment to view another house a few doors down from us which was coming up for rent. Thus we temporarily abandoned the kids for 10 minutes or so leaving Vicky in charge and went to look round it. It wasn't in the best decorative order and looked decidedly shabby in places. The tenants had been in there 5 years or so, and thus they had "grown" into the house as you might expect. Although the living space was larger, the bedrooms were smaller and there was only one tiny bathroom and one toilet. It simply wouldn't do.

When we got back, we found that the kids had been playing with the garage door and had left it in a half open position. This revealed an unwelcome visitor, who had made a rather poor judgement call and had decided to crawl along the gap where two sections of the door meet, just as the door had been closed. The remnants of this inch long critter are shown opposite. It is alas one of the downsides to living in a tropical climate, that you do sometimes encounter massive cockroaches which take a fair amount of effort to squash. But not in this case! ;-)

After we'd disposed of various children, I finished off entering an online profile for a contract recruitment agency. I'd postponed doing this so far as I was waiting the outcome of the ZCE exam. It required me to enter details of the two ~~bribed~~ individuals who had rashly agreed to provide references. Both duly completed their bits of stuff, and having read what they'd written, even I would sleep with me. Thanks guys, beers all round when I get work, I think, hemispheres permitting.

Rain, Rain Go Away

2010-01-31T01:05:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-01-29T01:50:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-26T03:08:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-24T01:53:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-21T02:20:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-19T01:00:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-17T00:05:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-14T01:09:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-12T01:00:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-10T01:00:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-07T00:47:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-04T01:48:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-02T01:14:00.000-08:00

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.

New Year's Eve

2009-12-31T02:11:00.000-08:00

I took some time this morning to review the answers to yesterday's exam questions. Unfortunately I had copied/pasted the questions into an openoffice document. Attempting to edit out some of the rubbish the slightly panicky cut/paste operation (it's a timed exam) had left in the document caused openoffice to crash. Worse, than this, opening the document again just caused the program to lock up, on all three PCs in the house. Je ne suis pas très amusé. Not wishing to loose the data, I figured that as openoffice documents are in fact zip files, I might be able to extract the information. Indeed, there are a number of files inside the zip file, the most important of which is the content.xml file. It looks like gibberish, being full of xml markup, but a cunning PHP one-liner like this:

echo strip_tags(file_get_contents("content.xml"));

resulted in all the data being extracted. Huzzah!

This evenings festivities we had decided to share with V&W. We had prepared a large pan of chilli, and Di and I worked together to make a plum crumble, using some Christmas plums Vicky had scored from a neighbour's tree. The scoff was due to be consumed later that evening, but in the afternoon, we walked into the mount to see what was going on. Alas not a lot it seems, although a lot of the beach was cordoned off, and the no booze zone had been extended all the way up to Tay street. The really annoying thing, however, was the fact that bag searches were in operation and Di got searched twice on the way into town. It was all a little bit big brother and were it not for the old grannies doing the searches, it would have been far from amusing. Perhaps as one of the premier Xmas hotspots in the country, this is to be expected as all the nutters turn up to see in the new year. Having looked around, and a quick stop to feed the kids Burger King, we walked back via the off licence where we scored couple of bottles of fizzy for later on.

We scoffed the chilli and plumble (excellent nosh) and I went to pick Sam up from Woolworths. I chose to take the main road into Bayfair, and noticed that the cops had blocked off the road into the Mount, and were stopping *everyone*. As traffic was backing up, and not wishing to waste any valuable drinking time, I took the backroads home. No coppers, other than the sleeping ones lying across the road.

We drifter round to V&W at about 8, drank lots of beer and played "Balderdash" and Triv until the wee hours, pausing briefly at 00:00 to pop the cork on the fizzy and indulge in mass snogging. Balderdash is one of those games that does go on for a while, but with a little lubrication and some outrageous made up answers such as "Ukranian Toothless Weasel" can induce fits of laughter that are mostly uncontrollable and greatly hinder one's ability to lie convincingly. We stumbled home around 2.

Third Time Lucky

2009-12-30T01:50:00.000-08:00

Not a huge amount to report yesterday, so I won't.

I was again listening to the TMS commentary, and was pleased to find that England managed to win the 2^nd test. It would have been rather cool to listen to it all, but the South African time zone doesn't really lend itself.

Imogen managed to fall off her bike, not seriously enough to do any significant damage to herself or the bike and she was back on it again in no time subject to the application of a plaster or two.

The girls were all dressed a little bit different today. For some reason best known to them, they had all decided to wear black tops instead of the traditional pink. It was kind of weird to see them all dressed as miniature All Blacks, but Phoebe in particular looked fantastic in black. It must be the shock of blond hair and the cheeky smile.

Needing a break from the Christmas festivities, I took my third PHP practice exam. This time there were no failures, and everything was rated as "excellent" apart from the three passes. A little more swatting is required I think, and then I'll book in for the exam proper and see if that does anything for the job prospects.

Board Board Board

2009-12-28T00:06:00.000-08:00

Rather annoyingly, I can't find the lead for my scanner. Thus in order to make a playable copy of a new piece of music I wanted to learn, I was reduced to using the camera instead. Despite my best efforts at flattening the book out, the images still showed some curvature at the edges and were of course in full colour, rather than grey scale which made for a rather poor copy. As a consequence I spent rather a long time tarting about with various graphics packages making them all black and white and editing out bits of shadow. After all this I sort of forgot to have a crack at the piece and went shopping instead.

Well, not exactly shopping, we went to the Warehouse to score a body board that was sufficient to support my vast bulk in the water. Di was quite taken with the idea of having one too, so we agreed to buy for each other and call them late Christmas presents. We did check out the pukka surf shops, but they wanted upwards of $150 a pop, and the Warehouse ones were $100 less 20% off in the sale.

Having bought the boards, the obvious thing was to go down to the beach and try them out. It certainly makes a huge difference having the right size board. Apparently it should reach from your feet up to your navel. As my navel has a unique variable height feature (something to do with a bulging midriff) I had no choice but to take a guess at the position it was supposed to be in when choosing the board. I managed to catch several really decent waves which chucked me right up on the beach and got reasonably good at shifting the weight around in order to steer the thing. Di never tried hers out, largely because we encountered V&W on arrival and a large amount of gossip was exchanged instead. It's so quiet out on the water.

After all this fun, we all decided that Wayne ought to get the barbie out and thus we piled back to theirs via a quick stop off at ours to get out of the wetsuits and a trip to New World for supplies.

Panda Woman

2009-12-27T02:03:00.001-08:00

This morning I caught Freya trying to extricate her bike from the garage, but at the expense of the Mirth Mobile's paint work. She wasn't massively receptive to the admonishment she received. I thought it might be an idea to rearrange the garage a little, such that all the odd boxes adjacent to the house wall disappear to make a decent amount of room for the bikes. The major task however was to compress the pile of rubbish that had accumulated on the other side down to a much more manageable level and then use this space for the boxes. NZ Van Lines had promised to pick up the remaining packaging, but at this time of year they were unlikely to be making house calls. Consequently I decided to fold up all the paper and cut up the cardboard such that it would all stack neatly in a couple of boxes. Stuffing various boxes under the eves of the garage out of the way of any potential rain also proved useful and the requisite space for bikes was duly found.

Later on in the afternoon we went back to the beach for another body boarding session. My technique has definitely improved and I managed to catch several decent waves using Imogen's board. It is clear that I do need my own, though, not just because an adequately sized one would be more advantageous, but because Phoebe is becoming more adventurous and more reluctant to relinquish hers. Also it might help preserve what little skin remains on my knees.

Di made the fatal mistake of not applying any sunblock to her face, and continuing to wear sunnies. Naturally, this resulted in a panda like appearance when she took them off later on in the evening, and an appropriate amount of mickey taking. I am not allowed to provide pictures, however!

Boxing Day Body Boarding on the Beach

2009-12-26T01:24:00.000-08:00

After yesterday's stuffing, we weren't really that hungry. I guess this is quite a normal feeling on boxing day. The kids were out on their bikes zooming around like loonies and generally enjoying them.

At about 3ish, we headed on down to the beach and tried out the new body boards. Phoebe was a little reluctant to get stuck in and preferred to teeter around on the edge of the water. We were most honoured to receive a visit from our favourite cave dwelling book worm, who came down to the beach and joined up with the family, against her better instincts. However she moaned like stink about the beach being a "sandy hell hole" and resolved never to darken its shores ever again. Sigh. Her pasty white complexion will continue and I suppose we'll just have to get used to it.

As Phoebe wasn't making the greatest use of her body board, I asked her if she'd mind if I had a go. She naturally refused point blank to let me have anything to do with it. However, I cunningly asked if Imogen could use it, and she agreed! Imogen was more than happy to let me use hers, which was a bigger size than Phoebe's and was actually able to support my vast bulk in the water.

I probably spent about half an hour trying to body board, and
actually did manage to catch a couple of decent waves. There is
definitely a technique to it - for a start it's important to remember that this is a body board, and therefor getting your body and not your head towards the end of the board is generally the best way of getting maximum buoyancy out of the waves. While I tried to remember this, I was at times spectacularly unsuccessful.

We were joined by V&W, who declined to actually get wet but instead sat and watched all the frolicking. We drifted home around 5 and got the barbecue ready. V&W joined us at about 6, and we barbecued and drank until about 11ish. The menu included the usual burgers, sausages and steak, and also some garlic prawn skewers, which were most reasonably priced at $14 for ten. All this was washed down with a few beers and more 'froaig, and the dulcet tones of Aggers and co commentating on the Boxing Day test.

Bicycles Bodyboards and Barbies

2009-12-25T00:49:00.000-08:00

Christmas day. Our first downside up one. It started quite early at around 7AM with the requisite mad present opening frenzy. It took me a few minutes to locate the camcorder with which I traditionally record the look of awe and wonder on our kids' faces when they find out what I have sold my soul for in order to line the coffers of large multinational corporations to their benefit. Most of the girls had a barbie and various bits of chocolate, a body board and a bicycle. Rhiannon had an art pack and of course the manga books which took such a while to arrive.

Di appeared happy enough with her CD and the small box of Ferrero Rocher that I'd bought. I was of course delighted with all the chocolate I received from the girls, and especially thrilled with the toasted sandwich maker that Di had bought me. I should have guessed that something like this would be on the cards, since the traditional scotch simply is not feasible.

The major benefit of a down under Christmas, is that you can take your new bicycle for a ride. This is indeed what Imogen and Freya did, although Imogen's bike needed an adjustment to the seat height. Phoebe isn't a confident cyclist and was only just riding a very small bike back in the UK. She took a while to get going on her bike, but did manage it in the end although starting off, steering and stopping are still areas of concern. What she really needs is a wide open grassy space to try it on.

We had decided, largely upon the insistence of Wayne that we would have roast dinner. Imogen had asked for lamb. Wayne wanted a ham, and Vicky had decided the kids should have chicken. As we were all going to V&W's, we agreed to pool resources so we cooked half the veg and the lamb and they did the rest. Various bits of garden furniture were ferried to their house and placed strategically in the back garden, their four place table having been deemed insufficient for our tribe. It was most fine eating Christmas dinner under a warm and cloudless sky, but it didn't feel all that Christmasy at all. Also there's a lot of preparation and clearing up and to be perfectly honest, it's not really in keeping with the NZ lifestyle. Next year's dinner will most probably be a barbecue, possibly featuring beer can chicken.

Dinner went really well, everything was done to perfection and we all ate and drank and were quite merry. We left at about 8ish, took the kids home but then Di and I popped back for drinks, and games of Trivial Pursuit and Scrabble. Alas Wayne managed to win the scrabble despite me getting rid of my Q and using all my letters up, and V&W won triv, which was a DVD based media/music version which ruled me out since I'm useless at pop music. I introduced Wayne (and Vicky!) to the delights of 'froaig, and ended up dispensing a couple more drams than perhaps I was counting on. Unfortunately at about 11:30 Sam rang to say Phoebe had barfed up (too much chocolate) and this curtailed the festivities.

In The Nick Of Time

2009-12-24T00:06:00.000-08:00

Would you Adam and Eve it? Just when we'd given up all hope and sent the last sarcastic email, Whitcoulls actually managed to deliver the remaining books! We decided not to let Rhiannon know in order that there might be some semblance of surprise in Christmas Day. We did note that the books appear to have come all the way from Eastbourne, in the UK, i.e. 50 miles from our old stomping ground. Suffice it to say that we won't be using Whitcoulls web site again, and would urge anyone else reading this not to bother either.

It does seem that ordering things directly from the UK is actually the best thing to do, if they'll deliver to NZ of course. It also helps if you have a ready supply of quids with which to pay for these things, thereby avoiding any currency exchange nonsense that the credit cards tend to charge. It also seems to be the case that some companies in the UK will not charge VAT on foreign consignments, and in all probability NZ customs tend not to charge GST either. I hold up as examples my UK purchased CD, and the bottles of 'froaig. Also, a neighbour of V&W's, who runs a Norton Commando tells me he imports spares from RGM Motors in the UK and gets away without GST or VAT.

Di went shopping for some last minute provisions, while I made good my threat to make some mince pies. My first task was to locate the scales. Having searched every cupboard and drawer, my search was fruitless. I resolved to play it by ear and use the markings on the butter packet to indicate the weight. Next job was to find a mixing bowl. I remembered that we had a large pyrex bowl, but this was not to be found in any of the cupboards either. Hmm. I went into the garage and rummaged through the four boxes of unpacked glassware and ceramics. No joy. However, I did find the plastic bowl from the scales which looked to be big enough for the task at hand. Everything else went pretty much to plan, although I had to improvise pastry cutters from a half pint and pint glasses and I managed to turn out three dozen mince pies in quick succession.

Upon her return, Di reminded me that the Pyrex bowl got broken before we moved to Bognor, some 14 years ago. Furthermore, she retrieved the scales from the only drawer I never bothered to check, because it was full of tea towels and nothing else. Nothing else except the kitchen scales it would seem. Sigh. I guess that the reason I don't touch the kitchen from one decade to the next is that I simply cannot fathom the logic Di uses to organise the kitchen. I am not confident the italicised words are used in their strictest sense.

Christmas eve itself passed quietly with a few beers and some 'froaig being quaffed and not too much argument about what to watch on telly.

Party

2009-12-23T00:05:00.000-08:00

I went and collected the bikes from Bike & Pack. Everything was in order and the bikes were all suitably pink. Imogen's has a really funky gear change mechanism with separate levers to change up and down. It really looks the business, and although it's pink and too small, I'm rather jealous especially as Di has acquired a bike from the fish woman who works in New World. She live on our road and apparently leapt out on Di yesterday and thrust the bike at her. The tyres were flat, but nothing some air couldn't resolve. It's nothing flash, but as it's free Di brought it home. This just leaves me and Rhiannon without bikes.

We were both invited to a "quiet" evening of pre-Christmas drinks. As we were a bit short on baby sitters, I dropped Di and Vicky over at Papamoa and went back home and watched telly. About 10PM, Di rang me to nag me to come along "for the last hour". As Sam was now I residence I wandered over and we ended up leaving at gone 2 AM. I poured Di and Vicky into the car and deposited them back in their respective homes. Naturally I'd stayed completely dry, but there was no sign of any coppers anywhere.

Avoid Whitcoulls Like The Plague

2009-12-22T00:06:00.000-08:00

I went for a run this morning - down to the Mount and back. The legs were a little stiff and had been since the last attempt, but once I'd stretched out a bit and eased into it it wasn't too bad. Alas the annoying cough/cold I've been suffering from for the last three weeks got the better of me and I unfortunately left some morning tea at the side of the road. This prompted an innocent bystander to remark "no pain no gain". Quite, although there wasn't actually much pain. By the time I'd got home the tubes were pretty much clear. In order to ward off the stiffness, I ran a cold bath and shivered for about half an hour or so and generally irritated all the girls by being in the wrong bathroom. Not being completely well hard, I eventually got out and had a shower.

Di took Vicky down to Bayfair for some Christmas shopping. This was supposed to take a couple of hours. Hahahahahahaha!. Four hours later I rang to find out where they were, only to discover they'd just got out of the coffee shop!.

The major issue of today was the non-arrival of Rhiannon's remaining 19 books we ordered from Whitcoull's web site. I rang the head office number, and was connected to an extension, which just rang out until it cut off. I rang again, and the woman, sighing like it was all too much, put me through again. Again no response and I got cut off. I logged in to the web site and was just about to send a snotty email, when I noticed the customer services phone number at the bottom of the form. Stupid place to put it, IMHO. Wishing to vent my spleen, I called the number. I refused the numerous attempts of the automated call handling system to leave a message as there was a "high call volume", and instead chose to wait for a real live human being, or whatever they had that might resemble one. However I was thwarted yet again as they gaily announced at 4:30 that they were now closed for the day and that I should leave a message. I did. I am not holding my breath for a reply. I sent the snotty email anyway.

I also applied for a job which requested a decent cover letter. I think I composed one that was up to the task and demonstrated that I could at least turn out a few coherent sentences, something that seems increasingly rare these days.

Present And Accounted For

2009-12-21T00:53:00.001-08:00

Imogen's friend rang at an inconceivably early hour this morning. Imogen wasn't minded to take the call so we advised her to call back later. She did Imogen wasn't in the mood to play so didn't take up the invitation to go visiting.

This actually played well with my plans to take all the girls to Bayfair to help me pick some presents for Di. I was advised by the girls that chocolate was not a good idea as they had already bought loads. Di was OK for perfume having scored a large bottle duty free on arrival. She had also warned me off jewellery claiming she had enough already. Hence the need for some inspiration. Not that the girls were much help - they zoomed straight in on Wendy's for ice cream. We did however make a stop at Westpac where I opened accounts for Imogen and Rhiannon. Alas Imogen wasn't old enough to have her own account, so she had to have me as a name on it. Also she wasn't allowed an EFTPOS card, unlike Rhiannon. This didn't cause quite as much agro as I might have expected. Maybe this was because Imogen has managed to save quite a stash of cash which she deposited and I had to sub Rhiannon $20 to be going on with.
I did eventually come up with an idea, but of course, I can't yet say anything, can I!

Just as we arrived back the furniture repairers turned up and I helped the chap load the sofa into the van. He promised it would be back the following day, which was a relief otherwise we'd have to spend Christmas on the floor.

A Domestic Dispute

2009-12-20T00:12:00.000-08:00

On Friday Di managed to break the sofa. It seems that this particular manufacturer doesn't understand that us 40-some-things need to push on the arm to get our ageing a***s out and that the arm needs to be strong enough to support this. We phoned the factory outlet and they sent a man round to have a look. He said he'd get it sorted out.

Di decided we needed to get the barbie out as it was a pleasant evening although a bit windy. V&W were duly invited round and in fact most of the neighbours kids seemed to be in on the act at one point or another as the evening became an almost biblical catering event in terms of numbers. The barbie and/or me performed rather well. Everything was cooked with just the right amount of authentic barbecue flavour. V&W's kids started to get a bit tired and wouldn't settle in our beds, so after we'd put the barbie away and got our kids to bed, we headed round to theirs and finished off the beers. I managed to instigate my cunning method of listening to TMS on Wayne's laptop, and we sat outside listening to Aggers & Co while staring up at an exceptionally clear sky, scoping for UFO's.

Saturday we walked into the Mount for an exciting dinner at Burger King, the highlight of which was watching a dollop of ice cream that some one (not us) dropped on the floor and gradually slide down the ramp out of the door. The staff seemed somewhat disinterested in cleaning it up so the entertainment was not only free, but long lasting.

Later we wandered round the rock pools at the base of the mount and rummaged around for whatever we could find. The usual fish, shrimps, hermit crabs, snails and starfish were today supplemented by an 8 inch purple crab which I managed to winkle out from its hiding place under a rock using a stick. This was in fact the mk II stick, since the one Imogen had procured was big enough to use as a javelin, and not much used for tactical cancerian extraction. The poor old crab had one claw and one leg missing, which on closer inspection were old injuries not related to my clumsy poking. The kids were rather fascinated by the crab, especially when it was released and scuttled off back under its rock.

On Sunday I took the noo shoos out for a trial run, of about 4K or so. It's amazing how much more supportive new shoes are than the old ones I've been pounding around in. No obvious ill effects and the leg behaved itself.

There's a church at the end of the road, and a large patch of land adjacent to it. There was some sort of event going on, involving free sausages and a bouncy castle. Although there was a distinctly Christian theme, the kids made a bee-line for the bouncing and we went along to stop them getting into too much trouble. One or two of the regular congregation attempted to "spread the word" but we politely declined to listen. Possibly a bit mercenary to go along like this, but it was an open event, and the amount of noise their P.A was blasting out it was hard to ignore.

One of our neighbours came in for a chat and a cup of tea, which was nice. Always good to be on friendly terms with the neighbours, particularly as the kids all seem to be getting on pretty well.

At tea time, there was a mad search for the ketchup, and not even Di with her infra red echo locating radar sixth sense was able to find it. Looking in the cupboard, I did manage to find it in one hit which was of course thoroughly annoying as it's usually the other way round. I did however take exception to the way the cupboard was "organised" and was half full of empty Tupperware containers. I "went off on one", and despite protestations, all empty Tupperware was stuffed in a cardboard box and shoved in the garage. This helped immensely, and pleased with the result, I rearranged everything else so that it made some sort of sense - like all the cereal boxes in one place, all the tins and jars in another, and all the sauces and condiments together. I expect this organisation to last for exactly 0.5 pico seconds, or until the next time Di opens the door.

Later I listened to the final day of the test match until the tea interval, when England looked safe. Should have known better. Still, at least the Quarter Cask was up to scratch. Oh yeah.

Test Match Special

2009-12-17T02:35:00.000-08:00

Wednesday was fairly uneventful. I found a cunning method of persuading the BBC's radio 5 live to allow me to listen to the cricket commentary on the first England v South Africa test match, which kicked off at 21:30 over here. Such is the time zone difference that I retired to bed when the lunch break was upon us. Jacques Kallis was being rather annoying and scored 100.

On Thursday, our next door neighbours took Phoebe and Freya and their own kids with whom ours play, to their mother's place for a pool party. We were a little worried about them going on their own, and especially as Phoebe is not yet a strong swimmer. However after assurances from the parents that they'd look after them, we let them go. Everything went swimmingly, and although Phoebe was suffering from the "want mummas" she had a good time and only "nearly drownded" once.

We had a call from one of Imogen's friends, who wanted to come over and play as her mother was at work. A rather early call, at about 8:30 but as Rhiannon was also off out this morning with one of her school mates, having some company for Imogen wasn't a bad idea. I was offered $20 for babysitting - I wasn't aware that I was but declined anyway and settled for the large back of crisps and bottle of coke that accompanied the visit. Not that I got to see a lot of it, though.

Later I attempted another online mock exam. I did better than last time, with everything graded excellent except for two passes and a fail and an overall score of "Excellent" rather than "Pass". However, as some of the questions were exactly the same as the first exam and I had researched those answers thoroughly, it didn't seem quite such an achievement. I did think it might be nice to see which questions fitted into which of the 12 topics, or maybe even some answers to some of the more esoteric questions such as whether performance or maintainability is the most important, and the argument behind the answer.

Rhiannon had not made contact all day and it was now 8PM, so I managed to get her to answer her phone. She was down the Mount at her friend's parents' pizza spot. It closed at 9, so there was just enough time to pick her up before settling in to day of the test match. Kallis was out early on with another wicket falling before lunch/bed.

School's Out For Summer - It's Christmas

2009-12-15T00:44:00.000-08:00

It seems like only yesterday that the kids were breaking up for summer, and yet here we are again breaking up for summer. Something somewhere in the universe is very wrong. We now have a six week break until they all leave us in peace again. The next six weeks will doubtless be filled with screams, crying and shouting. In other words business as usual.

I was rather pleased to take receipt of a parcel this morning, all the way from the magical island of Islay, Scotland. It contained no less than three bottles of just possibly the best whisky in the world - Laphroaig Quarter Cask. This was the same variety that reduced me to tears when dropping a duty free bottle while boarding a taxi shortly after having landed here. Total cost was £88.38, including £16.95 delivery. As a Friend of Laphroaig, I get 10% discount from the online store, and in this case an additional 10% birthday discount. My attempts to escape paying UK VAT appear to have failed, however I have also escaped paying GST, and I was pleased to note that the consignment was labelled "gift" which may potentially explain why. Less than £30 a bottle is pretty much what I'd expect to pay in Blighty, so I'm feeling rather pleased with myself and fully enjoying the Christmas spirits, both seasonal and 48% A.B.V. The same stuff sells for $120 in the few and far between establishments that sell it, so around $70 a bottle in funny money represents a substantial saving.

Di wandered in about 5PM saying the V&W were having a barbecue. We duly trotted along and consumed the VickyBurgers, hand made delicacies containing all sorts of meaty goodness. Wayne was espousing their greatness and waxing lyrical about the pure content, until I pointed out that he had no idea what was actually in the mince they were made from. This sort of stopped him in his tracks, and we contented ourselves with listening to the dying minutes of the final test in which the Black Caps were robbed of victory by some inclement rain down in Napier which made its way up to us a couple of hours later.

Illuminating

2009-12-14T01:38:00.000-08:00

Yet again I fund myself learning and revising the inner workings of the PHP language, and finding occasionally that I don't know all that I think I do. It does appear that despite the claim that I do not need to be a walking manual, it is rather useful to be one.

We received the last of the kid's end of year reports today. All of them seem to be achieving above average and for the most part putting in above average effort. The extended summer holiday does not seem to have done them any harm.

Craig has come to my attention today, since he seems to have neglected to hand over his house keeping and has now spent it on beer. He really does need to learn to add up or at least take an interest in the balance of his bank account. Usually when you've got an unusually large amount of money in your account, it generally means you've forgotten to pay for something. Maybe he's thinking all the free buns and sandwiches he brings home can be take the place of his housekeeping, however cream cakes do not pay the power or phone bills. Ever more bizarrely he doesn't appear to know when he's getting paid from his new job. Sigh.

We're looking forward to the kids finishing school for the summer. Hang on, haven't they just done that.. oh yeah....One of the problems we had with the UK schools was that there were one or two kids, or more accurately parents, who were always infested with nits and despite regular attention, our mob always seemed to acquire them from these unfortunates. The same principle seems to apply over here, although it seems that the NZ variety are easier to remove and not as veracious as the UK. Either way, isolation for a few weeks should finally see them clear. Until they go back to school that is.

Although Di had bought a Christmas tree, there weren't any lights. I kicked up a fuss about this and some were duly purchased from New World for the princely sum of $12. Not just yer usual lights either, multi function LED jobs with all sorts of different flashes and delays, all of which made it feel just that little bit like Christmas, despite the warm weather and lack of clouds/rain.

Maiden Voyage

2009-12-13T00:52:00.001-08:00

I've come to the conclusion that I am in need of some new running shoes. They are a couple of years old, and the injuries are starting to creep in again. The cramp/torn muscle that has persisted for most of the week has finally subsided, so I figured it was worth a trip to Rebel Sports in Tauranga for some new boots. The 30% off sale was also an incentive. Although they're a multi purpose store rather than a specialist running shop, I felt that having purchased various motion control shoes to support by fat *ss over the years, I ought to be able to ask for a pair and end up with something resembling what I'd asked for. The guy in the shop was very helpful - and we got the sizes right, which is I suspect because he could speak English sizes on account of his strong north-east accent. I also scored a cheap skateboard for Freya, who has expressed an interest in one and keeps stealing Imogen's. It's not anywhere near as good, but at $49 less 30% we don't much care if she wrecks it and it'll do to practice on.

The small patch of "grass" at the front of the house has got rather long, and so I popped into Bunnings Warehouse and bought a strimmer with which to annihilate it. Annoyingly there was no power cord - I guess for $47 this is an optional extra. A quick trip to New World (always a source of cheap electrical stuff) scored a brace of 5 metre extension leads enabling me to go-a-reaping.

Checking the third and deciding test, I was pleased to note that my newly adopted team were 471 in reply to Pakistan's 223. Sadly they failed to take any wickets, before the close.

The new barbie was fired up at 4:30 and made a fine job of numerous burgers, sausages, some salmon steaks and a couple of beef stakes as well as frying the onions. The girls seem to have made friends with the two Maori boys who live in the house in front of ours, and we ended up feeding them burgers as well. One of Imogen's friends rang up feeling a bit at a loose end. Although it was getting on a bit, we said she could pop round, and bring her mum. Thus the barbie went on a bit longer until the wind got up at about 7 PM and we called it a day.

Baby Sitting

2009-12-12T01:04:00.000-08:00

This morning I finally got around to assembling the barbecue. It took about an hour, and the only major hiccup was getting the drip tray to fit. The instructions simply said "Slide the drip tray under the burner" and then went on to talk about the gas valve. No way was it going to fit. It was only when Di from her lower vantage point noticed the screws that needed to be loosened that the job was completed. Subsequent reading of the instuctions from start to end revealed that it did mention these screws, several sentences after the aforementioned statement about the drip tray.

The barbecue came in a massive box. I don't know what it is about boxes, but small children seem to go wild for them. At one point we had three of the kids in the box, with the lid on. Phoebe was inevitably the first one to get scared so the lid came off, and the scissors came out and the box started morphing into all sorts of cars, houses and whatnot that only a childish but brilliant mind would come up with.

Di had arranged with Vicky that I would babysit her kids while they both skipped off to the Warehouse, in order to score a pair of parasol bases and "have a quick look round". I should have known what that meant. The kids were duly deposited and our lot made the usual fuss of them and the women disappeared in the Mirth Mobile. Not ten minutes had passed, and Lyla filled her nappy. It was rather evil and came as a nasty shock after several years of full infant continence to find myself changing nappies once more. 3 hours later, the women returned, with a tad more than a parasol base, blaming all this vast expense on "Christmas" etc.

Baby sitting

Blood on the Fingerboard

2009-12-11T00:47:00.000-08:00

I spent the morning revising some of the answers to the mock exam. I had cunningly cut and pasted the questions and answers into a text file for later review. I need to review all of the answers, but so far I have noticed that there are some rather sneaky questions which attempt to focus you on one thing but are in fact testing another. Others were thought provoking and worth taking to pieces and analysing because they did increase my understanding.

This afternoon we went to watch the Year 6 leaver's assembly at Mount Primary. Every student who was leaving was given a leaver's certificate, and a personal anecdote from the head. Imogen's was a little short and sweet, but noted her all round academic prowess. A couple of pupils had put together a short film on memories of the school, in which Imogen's main memory was apparently not having to wear uniform. It was a rather long and slightly emotional assembly, but enjoyable nevertheless.

Wayne appeared later on in the afternoon, a stringless acoustic guitar in one hand and a pack of strings in the other and a desire to have me fit them. This proved to be a rather bad idea, as I managed to snap the G string. Wayne took it rather well, and I dug myself out of the soft and brown by using the E machine head instead. It will mess with his mind when he tries to tune it up but the alternative was another $27 for a new set. After tuning up, we attempted to "jam", with Wayne playing some chords and me attempting to improvise a melody. It sounded mostly hideous, with the occasional bar or two (I'm assuming we were playing in 4/4) sounding not too unpleasant. It was at this point that Wayne's carelessness with a Stanley knife while fitting NZ style plugs to various electrical equipment became obvious, with a split in one finger depositing a none too shabby amount of claret on the fingerboard. We took the coward's way out and opened the beer.

A Grand Day Out

2009-12-10T00:26:00.000-08:00

Today I went on a jolly with Wayne up to Auckland to pick up his stuff. Unfortunately they've used a right set of muppets to get their stuff over, and have to pick it up themselves. We set of at 8AM, picked up a trailer en route and the made the mistake of trying to get down Hewlett's road at rush hour. Bad mistake. We did a U turn and took highway 2 instead - much better idea and only slightly longer. Di rang to tell me she'd scraped the Mirth Mobile on a protruding piece of concrete. Apparently it "would come out with T-Cut". Yeah, right. She was hoping that telling me now would allow sufficient time and anger to pass before I actually saw the damage!

The journey up to Auckland was uneventful, passing through Paeroa, home of the World Famous in New Zealand Lemon & Paeroa. We stopped off for some late breakfast and a couple of lemon slices for later on. We arrived about 12ish, but the person who was dealing with it all was at lunch. Half an hour later, we had the paperwork sorted and were off to the depot to collect.

There were three pallets in total, but none would fit in the van without being partially taken to pieces, so my trusty swiss army knife was put to good work. It was a hot day, and we were both parched, so we picked up a large bottle of mineral water and appropriately enough given our route up here, a bottle of L&P. It's basically lemonade, despite the hype, but without being too sweet or fizzy. The other moment of note was the usage of the water deficient plastic portaloo on a hot sunny day. No description I could possibly give would do this justice.

The drive back was similarly uneventful, other than missing a turning on highway 2, which resulted in us taking highway 27 for a while before getting back on track. A quick stop for some diesel, and we got back to the Mount at around 7. We made a quick stop at Woolworths for some beers, and then back to W's to unload and wind down with a beer or three and reflect on our day's labours. And then home to inspect the damage to the Mirth Mobile.

All Clear

2009-12-09T00:06:00.000-08:00

Di spent this morning and some of the afternoon taking a group of school kids from Phoebe's class - rock pooling. They were all behaved, unlike the bunch I had the pleasure of hanging out with the other week. They were all girls, however and approximately 5 rather than 11 which probably explains why. Sadly, the rock pools had little in the way of exciting wild life in them, which was a shame as Phoebe had a brand new net for catching fish and shrimps that she had no chance of using. The tide was also on the way in, which put a premature end to the search for various fauna.

Apparently the highlight of the day was the man in the park who has spent the morning laying new concrete paths only for the whole school, and indeed several other schools to turn up and run through his pristine but wet concrete. Naturally, Phoebe was culprit in chief but to be fair there were no cones or tape to isolate the area, and when you're 5 and full of bounce, hopping, skipping and jumping along newly laid concrete is fair game. The workman was rather a grumpy sort, but was given short shrift by a number of parents and their respective charges.

While all this fun was happening, I stayed at home and took a mock exam in an attempt to become Zend Certified. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had actually managed to achieve a pass, although some areas were rather dodgy. More swatting is most definitely required, particularly in the areas I've not really had much experience with, such as XML and OOP.

Another look at the bank account today, revealed that Whitfools had apparently finalised their charges, and we now have two that total the correct amount. It wasn't until later this evening that we actually got an email reply (so much for the promised phone call) which left much to be desired and basically blamed the bank for all the problems:

Many thanks for your email.

Please note you have not been overcharged for this order.

At the time of placing an order, a holding authorisation is placed on your card to confirm that there are sufficient funds for the order total (which was $287.20).

From your transaction history it appears that the authorisation process was completed but for an unknown reason the transaction amount of $272.84 failed, meaning that these funds were left 'held' on your card. A second successful transaction attempt was later made. We apologise for this technical error and can only assume that the card processor was unable to complete your transaction due to the high volume of orders being submitted to our website.

Authorisations generally take about 10 days to be released, but may be longer, depending on the type of card used/bank. If you have any further concerns, please contact your bank and do get in touch if I can be of any further assistance.

Not a particularly satisfactory answer, especially as the second transaction bloody well did hit our account. Bunch of muppets. Moral of the story is do not order anything from Whitcoulls web site.

Reflecting on this fiasco a little more, I can't actually see much point in having a visa debit card, if this is the polava it creates. The only difference between a visa debit and the EFTPOS card we also have is that it can be used online. I am beginning to regret not taking out the offer of a pukka credit card, which would I suspect have avoided this aggravation. It's not like the debit card is free, either.

What Fools

2009-12-08T13:05:00.000-08:00

Another day, another online ordering fiasco. The erroneous "electronic" transaction appeared this morning under the name "Whitcoulls". The bar stewards have indeed charge us twice. I did a bit of googling and managed to find a number for head office and rang up to find out what on earth they thought they were playing at. The poor woman on the other end seemed resigned to being shouted at, but I declined to do so, since all she was able to do was to put a request through to head office in Australia, who would allegedly contact me "within 24 hours".

Mightily annoyed by all of this, I decided to dispute the transaction with Westpac. Unfortunately, they were not much more use than Whatfools. Apparently the transaction is not final until about 7 days after it occurs and as such cannot be disputed until after it is. Westpac explained that what happens when you use your visa debit card is that a pending charge gets put on your account, reducing the balance and the balance available. Until the merchant finalises the transaction, it just sits there. This is allegedly to stop you going overdrawn, which I have to admit it does do, but at the expense of needing to keep a large balance in the account to cover Tom, Dick and Harry applying pending charges willy nilly. They did give me a fax number for their credit department, allegedly so that Whitcoulls (if they ever responded) would be able to sort this mess out.

A little later Di received an email which claimed to have despatched 19 of the 20 books ordered. The value of this despatch ties up with the extra charge we have incurred and I'm guessing that they've found one book missing and shipped a different order or something in order to get round it. What sort of crappy software they're using I can only wonder at.

Craig arrived home from his new job with yet another basket of doughnuts, buns and pizzas. If he carries on at this rate, we'll be as big as houses, or be paying a fortune to chuck it all away. My lack of gratitude resulted in some choice words being exchanged and accusations of grumpy old bar stewardness. But seriously, it's nice once in a while, but we are on pay-per-throw here (one has to purchase pre-approved sacks for rubbish disposal) and anything we don't eat will cost to chuck out.

With the end of the school term approaching, Di has rented a pool key from the primary school. This means that we can go and use the school's pool any time we like out of school hours. We decided to give it a whirl and took Vicky and kids along too. The pool can't be much more than 10 metres long, and is not very deep at all - I can sit on the bottom quite comfortably and enjoy a dry beard. Still, with the sun beaming down, it was a most pleasant way to wind down the late afternoon.

Mysterious Money

2009-12-07T12:31:00.000-08:00

Following from Rhiannon bat ears overhearing our recent bicycle discussion, she'd twigged that there might be a chance that she could score some manga books for Christmas. She'd made a comprehensive list of the ones she wanted, but was whining mightily about the prices "in this crappy country". She does not possess her mother's ability to sniff out an Internet bargain. Diane found that Whitcoulls were offering 20% off, and promptly splashed out on the best part of $300 worth of books. This is where the rot set in. I'd noticed that there were two "electronic" transactions for similar but not identical amounts on our bank statement. As "electronic" is not particularly helpful with identification of the perpetrator of these charges, we could only guess that Whitcoulls had had a moment and charged twice. Looking at the amounts, one was exactly 95% of the other, which as we'd ordered 20 books, seemed to me like they had found one to be out of stock and therefore replaced our order of 20 with one of 19.

I rung up Westpac for more info - they couldn't tell who they were from either but promised that we'd know by the morning when the overnight transactions were updated. The Whitcoulls website has no contact number on it, only the branch numbers and the branches are unable to help with Internet orders. Grrr. The "contact us" form on their website was therefore used to the max, but we noted there was a "48 hour delay" due to "high email volumes". Hmm. Perhaps they're stuffing everybody else, too.

It being another nice sunny day (you are reading this in the UK, right?) we walked into the Mount to register Rhiannon with a new dentist. The school dental service apparently stops when you reach age 13 and move on from intermediate and you therefore have to register with a local dentist. This has to be one on the approved list. Having tried the one round the corner (who wanted $95 each to register me and Di otherwise they would not register the kids and generally looked down their noses at us) we settled on the imaginatively named "Tooth Fairy" dental practice, who seemed a lot more accommodating and were happy to take her on.

While in the Mount, I checked the backpacker's casual labour board. Noel Leeming (think Dixons) were after Christmas staff, but alas the advertisement was two weeks old and unsurprisingly all positions had been taken.

I spent the afternoon swatting up on the finer points of PHP security, most of which was stuff that was either self explanatory or I had an idea about already. Craig had been trying out at a bakery around the corner, and returned at about 3PM with a vast quantity of fresh cream doughnuts and cakes that were surplus to requirements. This being his trial day, we believed he had actually been given them. He has also been offered the job, which is much closer than Breakers, and is actually 30 hours a week unlike Breakers which seems to be infinitely variable. There were far too many doughnuts even for me, so Di wandered off to stuff a load down V&W's respective throats.

She eventually returned with news of Wayne's petrol lawn mower that would not start. This was an opportunity to fart about aimlessly and possibly even fix it. Alas, although I figured out that the "start" position resulted in no spark at the plug, something else wasn't quite right. I suspect it was fuel supply since the float chamber did not appear to be filling up. However as the mower wasn't actually Wayne's and belonged to the landlord, it didn't seem appropriate to take it completely to bits so we left it in its non-functional state and Wayne resolved to call the landlord.

Party On, Wayne

2009-12-06T00:04:00.000-08:00

On Thursday we had a surveyor round to value the house. He seemed a little vague about why he was doing it, but pumping him for information revealed that it was a refinance operation, rather than a potential sale which ought to mean that we're OK to stay past the end of March.

Yet another sunny day on Friday, this extended Summer we're having is definitely most agreeable, especially when one considers the UK weather. Ho hum. An early morning phone call from a mightily relieved Wayne, singing all sorts of silly songs as a result of an email notifying permanent residence.

Friday evening V&W cooked us a celebratory dinner and we put away a few(!) beers and generally talked rubbish until an impossibly wee hour of the morning. Party on, Wayne.

Saturday I nursed the prerequisite sore head, although a fairly mild an not debilitating one. That said, I broke the toilet. It was Di's fault. She had bought some of those in-the-cistern toilet fragrance things. The only the snag was that we have a Roca DID Dual Flush Valve which alas defied any obvious means of removal, and my the time I'd figured that out, I'd pulled too hard on the top of the cistern and ripped the valve assembly off its flimsy plastic mountings. Oops. There seems no obvious way to remove the top of the valve from the cistern lid but clearly there must be, since it's obviously not fired in the kiln like the cistern top is. Maybe it was the headache, but I wasn't quite up to figuring out how it all hung together, even with a little Googling. I managed to force it all back together and it seemed to work so I left it at that.

Yesterday I went for a run, but only succeeded in a more severe repeat performance of last week's dodgy leg episode. Trying to run through it was probably not a good move but it's just so damned annoying. I guess I need some new shoes - they feel really flat these days and not at all supportive after 18 months. V&W had rashly agreed to look after the kids while Di and I attended the Tauranga Wine and Food Festival. This was easier to say than get too, because of the Santa Parade taking place in the Mount, which had resulted in some of the roads being closed and hence the buses where not able to get through. Consequently we walked back towards home and picked up the bus an hour later.

Sadly, when we got to the festival, it was rather a waste of time. I'm really glad we did not pay $50 for the tickets, it simply wasn't worth it. After collecting our free wine glasses and bottled water, we noticed that it seemed to be a corporate event, with lots of businesses spoiling their staff, judging by the number of large marquee style tents taking up the centre of the field. There were maybe 30 stalls dotted around the periphery, half a dozen or so of which were wine stalls. Some of these wanted you to pay $2 to just taste their wine! We declined but managed to score a couple of tastes of some of them - they were OK, but nothing special.

Di claimed she was hungry, and so we looked at getting some food from one of the other stalls. She eventually plumped for a venison burger. This is when the realisation that we'd not brought any cash with us - just EFTPOS - big mistake, all the tents weren't taking EFTPOS - quite obvious really. I happened to have a mere $20 to play with which scored he aforementioned veniburger and a couple of Macs lager and limes, which was as claimed, weirdly refreshing although a bit pricey considering the full but small glasses being used. After about 30 minutes, we decided to call it quits and wandered into town to check out what was going on.

Tauranga on a Sunday afternoon is not a lively place. Most shops are shut. We headed down to The Strand, where there are a number of bars and cafes. We stopped in at De Bier Haus, ordered another couple of lager and limes, and a few nibbles. As we had about 30 minutes to kill before the bus departed, we wandered round the shops, such as they were, before finally heading back to the Mount.

Vicky turned up with the kids about half an hour after we got home. They had apparently behaved themselves admirably and not blotted their copybooks, so we may yet be on for a repeat performance.

Cooking on Gas

2009-12-03T13:24:00.000-08:00

On Wednesday we found ourselves in the Tauranga branch of the Warehouse, where we scored a 4 burner gas barbecue, gas bottle and cover for $249. The barbie itself was reduced from $299, and the gas bottle and cover were free. As these items are the best part of $100 on their own, this seemed a rather good deal. We were offered an extended warranty for a measly $25, which also seemed like cracking value, so we had one of those, too.

We also stopped off at the Music Planet on Maunganui road, and bought a pink ukulele for Freya's birthday next month. She seems dead keen on joining the school's ukulele orchestra and we thought it would be a good idea to get ahead of the game and make sure that she had one ready for the start of the school year in February. Not wanting it found before its time, we popped in on V&W, to stash it at their place.

The leather repair kit has turned up, partially restoring my faith in mail order services in New Zealand. I have yet to try it out but will report back in due course. Also, the managing director of the freeview box manufacturers emailed to say how disappointed he was with the courier, and promised to refund the carriage charge.

The rest of the afternoon was spent visiting various bicycle shops, since Di tells me everyone needs a bicycle for Christmas. We've looking at over $1,000 which ever way we slice it. The impressive thing is that there are so many shops with some quite extensive ranges to choose from.

Thursday we visited yet another cycle shop, this time in Bayfair. They were actually selling Raleigh bikes. Did we buy British? No, although they offered us a good deal price wise, they were at pains to point out that the "mountain style" bikes could not be used off road (and were therefore less durable than you might imagine) and were only prepared to offer 6 weeks servicing. We eventually decided to place our business with Bike & Pack, who were prepared to haggle and whose range of bikes looked to be of higher quality and could be used off road and should therefore be Imogen proof. They agreed to store the bikes until Christmas eve, but we relieved them of the helmets and locks and deposited these at our favourite neighbour's house. V&W were fretting about their impending delivery of stuff from the UK, and the lack of anything looking like a visa allowing them to collect without leaving large deposits and paying GST. We suggested they hassle the immigration department to see if anything shakes out.

Rhiannon wasn't feeling too well today, so had the day off. She had decided she wanted books rather than a bicycle and unfortunately overheard us discussing prices. She now thinks she's getting $400 for Christmas. She may be disappointed.

Thursday evening we went to see Phoebe in her school production. It had a Christmas theme, but there was a total absence of god or religion, which we found very refreshing. OK, I know that Christmas is a religious festival, but the vast majority don't treat it as such. The kids sometimes get a bit uppity when they have to sing "god" songs, since we've always told them religion is a load of old nonsense, but that they should still respect other people's beliefs even if they are misguided. Phoebe was fabulous in her role as a "stocking", and despite falling off her perch at one point (a classic "you've been framed" moment) seemed to enjoy herself and the production was fantastic, and loud!

Absolute Power - Batteries Not Included

2009-12-01T00:58:00.000-08:00

Over a week ago I ordered a replacement remote control for the freeview box, since my size 11s made rather a mess of the original, and my subsequent partially successful attempts to repair it had only made matters worse. It hadn't turned up on Monday morning, so I rang the company to chase. They rang their courier, who claimed that they had tried to deliver but found no one in and had left a card. If they did, I didn't find it. Following a prompt from the freeview people, the courier called me back and arranged to deliver on Monday PM. Monday PM came and went and there was no sign of the remote. I attempted to chase it directly, but not having the consignment number, it was a case of computersezno.

I had also failed to receive the leather repair kit. A chasing email elicited a grovelling apology since it had not been shipped yet. Given that it's coming from the south island, and what with the general poor performance of courier services, I'm not holding my breath that it'll show up any time soon.

Phoebe hadn't been feeling too well, so we kept her off school. Strangely, she seemed to perk up soon after the others went to school, and the telly went back on.

This morning I chased up the remote again. The freeview mob were rather concerned to find that the courier had been so slack. I asked for the consignment number, since my research had lead me to discover that the local depot was a stone's throw from our spot. The cheeky chappy who answered the phone confirmed that they did have it, and said he'd deliver this PM. I thanked him for his kind offer, but declined to take him up on it as I didn't trust them to deliver on it and I had no intention of hanging around all day on the off chance they might get off their arses and drive past. The response was a cheerful offer for me to come down and pick up the remote and slag off their service all in one go. An offer to good to miss. I duly went and picked up, but I chose to vent my spleen on the freeview mob, hoping they'd throw some punches with much bigger clout. Oh yes, and the parcel had a big orange sticker saying "NOT AT HOME NO CAR LEFT". Like, how was I supposed to chase it? Hmm?

The remote works just fine, but sadly the $47 didn't extend to new batteries so these were salvaged from the dead remote. Normal levels of power are now restored, and I can now annoy everyone again my channel hopping incessantly. The power is absolute!

Di had gone to Bayfair with Vicky, and surprise surprise, they had indulged in a little retail therapy. I got a call to come and pick them up. I managed to get them both home just in time for a quick cuppa before picking up the kids. Phoebe was back at school today, and was due to take part in her school production this evening. The school has down rather well here - 5 performances, 200 tickets at $5 each - a cool $5000. And you can buy the DVD for $20. Methinks I might take my own camera with me, not being particularly inclined to swell the school's bulging coffers any more.

Wayne apparently wants me to aid and abet his collection of his stuff from the UK. They have hit rather a problem. It seems that as they don't yet have permanent residence, and actually no passports as they are with the immigration department, getting their stuff from customs may prove an issue, or at least expensive. Allegedly the passport issue can be overcome by a deposit of $1000....which takes two months to return. However, the biggest problem is that as non residents, they are liable for GST on their stuff. The alternative is to leave it in storage, which will of course attract a charge. The moral of this tail of woe is - don't ship your stuff until you have a residence visa.

On a more positive note, today is officially the first day of summer. Seems unreal - December being Summer, but there you have it.

Another Day Another Barbecue

2009-11-29T00:50:00.000-08:00

Saturday was a bit of a grey day with attempts at rain, although we fared much better than other parts of the locality which suffered torrential downpours. The Mount itself has something of a micro climate, and is generally brighter and sunnier than the surrounding areas. It must be something to do with the large volcano dominating the sky line.

Phoebe demanded pancakes, but we were low on supplies so I was duly despatched to New World to rectify this. On the way, I dropped in on Wayne, who was suffering for the lack of a bottle opener, a situation that I simply could not allow to persist and so lend home one. It's not entirely a philanthropic gesture, I can't get the beer open with his keyring-bottle opener. He was unsure how to plumb in the washing machine, so I arrange to pop back later on and have a look once we were all pancaked up.

The washing machine was a relatively simple affair to resolve. Although I'd gone round to our new neighbours alone, we were invaded by the rest of the tribe and an extra one. Di had picked up Rhiannon's friend from Papamoa and her little sister had tagged along for the ride.

Wayne was after a barbecue, having been slightly disappointed by having to cook in the kitchen. A predictably intense discussion about the merits of gas versus charcoal barbecues ensued which I avoided participating in and contented myself with earwigging from a distance. We ended up at Bunnings Warehouse who were having a sale and a charcoal effort was purchased. The weather wasn't conducive to barbecuing, so it was postponed to tomorrow.

Sunday was a little dull at first but brightened up later on. I started with a run, but this proved rather unsuccessful as something started hurting and it therefore turned into a walk. Vicky was concerned that it was just too hot to sit outside, and thus we ended up whisking her up to Briscoes and scored her a large black parasol. In fact we grabbed one too. We were all rather amused by the shelf labels in the Plastic Box store - one labelled "More Crap", another labelled "Even More Really Useful Crap"! Some of their crap was actually not that crappy, but at least they weren't actually talking things up.

Wayne had the barbie going, but unfortunately was a little too eager to get things going and managed to incinerate several burgers before the coals had stopped flaming. Subsequent attempts were much more successful, doubtless due to the quaffing of an appropriate amount of Stein Lager, and the large parasol temporarily embedded on a flower pot masquerading as a base. Suitably liquified, we wandered home in time to watch Doctor Who on the telly.

Herding Cats

2009-11-27T14:23:00.000-08:00

For the last three days I've been helping out at Mount Primary's "Amazing Race 2009". This consists of about a dozen "tasks" which involve wandering around the town, and occasionally around the mount performing various activities. Having been allegedly "in charge" of 5 kids including Imogen, I can honestly say the experience is much like trying to herd cats. We were under strict instructions to make sure that the group stayed together which proved to be more challenging that you can possibly imagine. Imogen was great, but then she knew she'd have copped a lot of flak if she'd mucked about. The other two girls were for the most part OK, but the two boys....give me strength. One boy was constantly miles behind and kept disappearing to the loo without telling anyone, although he claimed he did. The other was forever climbing up or down something, or leaping off/on/over whatever happened to be biggest and nearest. It was a major achievement getting round the mount in one piece without loosing anybody although we were massively late back which caused a little bit of a flap. One of the boys managed to spray sunblock in his eyes with painful consequences, resulting in me lying him on the ground and pouring the contents of his water bottle over his face while trying to prise his eyes open to wash out the sun block. This of course resulted in everybody else laughing which only made things worse.

Thursday morning, and the Mirth Mobile emits an ominous click when the key is turned and refuses to start. I find the open rear door that has left the interior light on all night that has flattened the battery. This is doubly annoying as today we need to take sleeping bags and other camping paraphernalia with us. Di went on ahead. laden like a pack mule, and I rummage through the boxes looking for the battery charger, all the while expecting the battery to be a write off as they sometimes are when completely flattened.

As Thursday was the day where everyone slept in tents, the first task was to pitch them. Alas, the wind on Thursday approached 35 knots, which made for a challenging experience, to say the least. Several tents were flattened by the time the day's activities were completed, and more tents had to be found rather quickly. An impromptu parents' meeting was called to decide the fate of the camp. The consensus was to give it a go and hope that the wind died down a bit, which it did. The evening rounded off with 90 or so kids descending on the hot pools before turning in for the night. I managed to get a reasonable night's kip in the parents' tent, and was in fact the last one up in the morning, everyone else having made it out before 7 AM.

Day three saw three more tasks put to bed and everyone return in one piece, and prizes awarded before heading back to school. Alas our team were not in the top five, even with my generous but honest marking scheme but on reflection I'm rather glad that Imogen did not win a giant inflatable jandal. While out and about on the last task, I receive a call from an agency with a possible position at Rotorua Council. They have yet to decide if they have a position, but my name is going forward if they do. The commute is allegedly 40 minutes on a bad day, so I might have an excuse to get a bike again. Such a cunning plan is doomed to failure.

Returning home, I receive an email from another agency, rejecting my services. This is the one where there are two candidates, the other one having worked there before.

I discover that when Wayne has borrowed the newly recharged Mirth Mobile to move house, a bottle of vinegar has discharged its contents all over the boot. Vicky has therefore stolen the carpet and has scrubbed it and I find it lurking in the back garden of their new house, a stone's throw from us. Wayne runs out of beer so we wander up to New World to replenish supplies, and this turns into an impromptu barbecue expedition, albeit without an actual barbecue to cook it all on. Sadly I have forgotten my wallet and Wayne has to spring for the lot. He sportingly decides to treat this as a house warming party and we are only too happy to accept. Vicky draws the short straw and cooks it all on the stove. We wobble home around 9:30 a little worse for wear and fall asleep, thrilled by the exploits of the local talent on Australian Idol.

Faking It

2009-11-24T00:52:00.000-08:00

This morning I had an email from the temp agency asking me to complete some on line tests. This consisted of a typing/data entry test and tests on Excel, Access and Outlook. I've never used lookout, which I count as a blessing but I still managed to score 57% in the test. This apparently indicated "training is required". Access is also something I've not really used much, and when I did it was access 2000, not 2007. Still, 66% was achieved, demonstrating "broad knowledge" with some areas indicating "expert knowledge". Not surprisingly, Excel was my highest score at 78% which as I've been using openoffice almost exclusively for as long as I care to remember was most pleasing. And the data entry test was 100%.

About 5 minutes after I'd finished all the tests, I got a call from the agency, asking a few more questions and generally asking me to sell myself. They told me a little more about the role, which is alas a very temporary 60 hour position, which pays a fairly poor $25 per hour. Still, If I get it and I am apparently one of two candidates, $1500 would come in handy. The down side is that the other candidate has worked for the same place before, which may well slam the door before it's even opened.

Di had been to visit Vicky, who was having some trouble transferring funds from the UK. As we seem to be well set up with HiFX, Di suggested we do the exchange for them. As it was a really sweltering day, a drive in the Mirth Mobile with the aircon on 11 seemed like a wheeze, so I wandered round to exchange bank details.

Di has also rented a pool key for the primary school's swimming pool. $40 for the summer, with a $5 refund when the key is returned. It's quite a small pool and not very deep, but the kids seemed to enjoy splashing about in it. With the 6 week summer break coming up in 2 1/2 weeks, it seemed a reasonable thing to have on tap.

Uh, Wot?

2009-11-23T00:37:00.000-08:00

Shhh. My head hurts this morning. I guess I overdid it a little last night. Although we didn't stay until the 1AM closing time, we packed it in about midnight which was about right, or so I thought. The rest of the day was a bit of a waste really - I didn't do very much other than fill in an application form for a temp agency. They were also threatening to ask me to take an online test to prove my claimed wizardry with Micro$0ft products.

It was a really pleasant day, and about 5PM after a bit of a snooze I was feeling a little more human (OK, less like a bear with a sore head) and we all headed down for a half hour on the beach. It was actually quite windy on the beach, but the sun was really warm and the two elements fought it out with each other while we were alternately chilled and warmed. The kids dug a big hole and Phoebe leapt in and out. The wind picked up so we wandered off home.

Don't Try This At Home

2009-11-22T04:30:00.000-08:00

We took Rhiannon over to visit her new friend over in Papamoa this morning. It was interesting looking at their house, since we were offered it while still in the UK but declined since we weren't comfortable with taking a 12 month let on a house we'd not seen. Just as well, since the acoustics in the kitchen/dining area would have done my head in - very echoy.

I was beginning to feel a bit like a Pom on holiday since the majority of blokes seem to be wearing some sort of shorts and here I am in Levi's 501. Thus a trip to Farmers was in order where I bought a couple of knee length khaki efforts for $120.

While we were in that neck of the woods, I popped into Dick Smith's and bought a soldering iron, figuring I'd have a crack at fixing the remote control - nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that. This turned out to be rather a mistake. I managed to resolder across the broken tracks, and on first try, the remote worked. Huzzah I thought. Sadly, I soon discovered that I could turn the volume down, but not up and some of the channel buttons wouldn't work. I borrowed Di's glasses which while not exactly reading glasses did help me see what I was doing. There can be no denying that age related presbyopia is rather conspicuous these days. Di's favourite trick is apparently to double glaze herself by wearing contact lenses and glasses in order to read the paper. Alas despite the improvement in vision, I still couldn't get the other remote functions to work. It was only after the sound was turned down to almost nothing that I discovered that the freeview box remembered its setting when switched off! I had in fact made things much worse by trying to fix the damn thing. The TV now has to be turned up to full blast in order to hear the freeview box, but there's a slight danger of acoustic feed back if one inadvertently switches over to the DVD

Rhiannon's friend's parents brought her back and everything seemed to have gone well. Various invitations for sleep overs were exchanged, but apparently my warning about Rhiannon's evil trouser coughing were not well received. I spent the rest of the evening getting the evil eye.

The highlight of the evening however was a night out on the pop with Wayne. We started off in Latitude 37 before moving on to Mellick, an Irish bar where I was able to consume copious amounts of the black stuff, which after the first few mouthfuls which were a little odd (must have been the Tui) tasted just fine. It wasn't a particularly busy night, but we ended up sharing some conversations with a few characters, and we ended up outnumbering the natives with out recently acquired Canadian, Greek and Ukrainian drinking buddies. We stumbled back to Wayne's place and tried to get the radio 5 live commentary working. Alas my best efforts to find an open UK proxy failed and I left him to it.

Damn And Blast

2009-11-21T22:36:00.000-08:00

This morning did not start at all well. Freya was struggling to get the television working and in my efforts to help her, I tripped over the toy box and trod on the remote control for the freeview box. Sadly the application of in excess of 100 kilos to a flimsy printed circuit board did it no good at all and it refused to work from that point onwards. I therefore had to order a new one online, at the cost of $47. Opening it up (I might as well, it's dead) revealed numerous hair line cracks in the circuit board. And to add insult to injury, Diane pointed out the page sized Repco advert giving 25% off everything. Presumably this would have included the brake pads I bought yesterday.

Vicky and Wayne are due to move into their new house this week, but were still shopping around for various household items. Vicky was under the misapprehension that the Warehouse was in Bayfair. This isn't the case, Tauranga or Papamoa are the nearest branches so I gallantly offered to take Vicky out shopping. Wayne was otherwise indisposed playing cricket.

After the shopping trip we all went down to the marina to watch a fishing competition, mainly on account of the free sausage sizzle. Alas, by the time we arrived the sausages were gone so we were reduced to mucking around on the foreshore. Freya managed to find a couple of live 5 point starfish which we avoided bringing back with us.

After all this healthy outdoor fun we went back to ours and ordered pizza. Wayne was still incommunicado and as it was an away match, we scoffed all the pizza. He turned up a bit later looking rather hungry and downbeat on account of an 8 wicket defeat. We stuffed some cheese on toast down his throat and washed it down with a beer and this perked him up no end.

For some obscure reason, we ended up playing poker, which is something I've never done before. It seems I've a lot to learn, but I did manage to bluff Di and indeed Wayne a couple of times and managed a reasonable showing. Craig interrupted the proceedings by requesting a lift home and I took the opportunity to deposit VW back at their place before driving Craig out to a party near Bayfair. It was necessary to wind the windows all the way down since Craig has no idea of how to apply just a little aftershave. On the other hand, it saves on fly spray and insect repellent.

Sports Day Revisited

2009-11-20T00:05:00.000-08:00

After Wednesday's wash out, the school rearranged sports day for Thursday and Friday. Diane and I spent the morning watching Imogen compete in the long jump, high jump, shot put, discus and sprint. Imogen was third in the high jump, and claims to have been third in the sprint, although she appears to have been robbed by the referee. It was rather refreshing to see a junior school doing proper sporting events. OK, the shot put was a plastic ball and the discus a rubber ring, but the idea was the same. Also, the whole thing was competitive, with the winners and runners up getting a certificate. All the kids took a turn, and some were much better than others but it's all a contrast to the UK, where the events are a bit limp and the emphasis is on everyone having a go and not on winning. Is it any wonder the UK sucks at sport? Later on we watched Freya doing some of the same events. She was 2nd in 100 metres, 3rd in 50 metres and 3rd in shot put.

This morning, we went back to school to watch Phoebe do her events, and Freya complete the rest of hers. Phoebe was amazing. She was 2nd in the sprint event, 3rd in the cross country (a lap of the school's exterior perimeter, barefoot) and was 4th in the shot put. She finished in the top third of all but two of the events, and scored 16 out of 18 points. Quite an all round athlete.

The whole atmosphere in the school is just great. It's also totally open - you can just walk in off the street and watch the kids do their thing. No one bothers you. There's no paranoia like you get in the UK, where schools are fenced off and you have to be numbered and indexed by the office before you get anywhere near your own children. The openness is perhaps a little worrying, but there does not seem to be any trouble with it. Let's hope the UK style everyone-is-a-pervert mentality does not creep in any time soon.

Another case in point is the play area in the school. Back in the UK, the infant school had to remove its climbing apparatus because it was a matter of an inch or two taller than the "new" "improved" "safety" regulations. Not doing so would have meant the school's liability insurance would be invalid and any child hurting themselves could sue for millions. By contrast, the climbing equipment here is the best part of seven feet tall. Kids are allowed to jump off and use it as they see fit. There is a danger one or two of them might someday come to grief, but no one seems to worry too much. The ACC covers any liability which has the knock on effect of enabling the kids to find their own limits, without having artificial "safe" limits being imposed upon them. As I joked with one of the mothers - if the kid is dumb enough to fall off, it only serves to cleanse the gene pool.

The Mirth Mobile has been developing an annoying squealing noise when braking, and also when being driven on the flat. It's been doing it since I got it. I tried not to worry too much about it figuring it was just the brake pads that needed doing. With all the running back and forward to school over the last couple of days with the windows down, the squealing has become much more noticeable. As I have no excuse for not taking a look now that all my tools (including trolley jack, axle stands and a selection of hammers) have arrived, I jacked it up and took a look. The front pads have loads of wear left, but the rears. Oh my. The weren't quite down to the metal, but there wasn't a lot left.

The reason for the horrible squealing however, was due to a strange metal protuberance, which was scraping on the face of the disk. I'm not entirely sure what this thing is or why it's there, but my guess is that it's a wear indicator and it's supposed to be connected to a wire or something and turn on a light when the pads wear down. The Mirth Mobile has no such wire, so it's completely useless.

The search for new pads was now a priority. Craig mentioned that he'd seen a car parts place on Hewletts road. This turned out to be a branch of SuperCheap Auto. Sadly, they had a computer sez no moment and couldn't seem to find a 1999 Honda Accord 3.0 V6 VTiL in their list of cars, so they directed me down to Repco who were much more accommodating and relieved me of $49.99 in exchange for a set of pads. Now the fun began. Getting the calliper off was a bit awkward, since the pads seemed to have seized on to the disk. Judicious application of a hammer and a bit of leverage saw it pop off. Now for the really fun part, pushing the piston back into the calliper. No amount of pushing, shoving, levering, hammering and swearing seemed to move the damn thing. I took my life in my hands and undid the bleed nipple hoping that this would allow the piston to move. No joy. At least I had escaped without tearing my nipple off. Always best avoided, that one. At this point a bit of googling was called for. It turns out that the Honda Accord has a feature whereby rotating the piston clockwise by means of the very large cross in the back of it screws it back into the calliper. D'oh! Easy peasy once you know. Copious amounts of copper grease was applied and the whole lot shoved back together. The other side should have taken about 10 minutes - sadly one of the calliper mounting bolts rounded off as I tried to undo it. Grrr. I finally managed to get it off with an extra deep 6 sided socket, which I was reluctant to use since it was only a 1/4" drive, and I had to adapt it up to 1/2" to get the leverage on it. Fortunately it didn't snap and I got the bolt out. Pads changed, I put the bolt back in. Naughty, but it tightened up OK and I won't have the Mirth Mobile long enough to merit another set of pads.

Why Does it Rain on Sports Day?

2009-11-18T12:00:00.001-08:00

I coughed and snorted my way to school this morning with Rhiannon, who became increasingly disgusted with my bronchial discharges. Well at least I tried. It started to rain the moment we set off so we went back and fired up the Mirth Mobile. A return trip was made to deposit the rest of the brood at their school. We were supposed to be going back to school at 10AM for sports day, but a quick phone call a little later revealed that it had been cancelled because of the weather.

We had taken another look at the requirements for getting hold of a community services card. Apparently we are able to use birth certificates as documents "over 2 years old". We'd also figured out that there's a local Work and Income office in Bayfair, where we would be able to get our documents certified. Unlike the UK, where you have to make an appointment to see anybody, over here, you just walk in, or at least it seemed like that. The office was a rather large open plan affair, and there was no evidence of any protective barriers or closeted interview rooms you get in the UK. I guess people getting upset with government bureaucracy is not an issue over here. The girl on the reception desk made copies of our documents and offered to send them off for us. Result. I had been wondering exactly what the card was worth, and a little googling around indicated that it lowers prescription charges from $15 to $3, so it's good that we carried on with it. Rhiannon has finally admitted that she is having difficulty seeing properly (no surprise, we're both blind as bats) and hopefully the card will lead to cheaper eye tests and glasses.

I ordered a leather repair kit over the Internet. With any luck it should make the scratches imparted by Imogen's trousers all but invisible. I do hope so otherwise that's $75 wasted. Watch this space.

My face has begun to peel quite spectacularly. I was already going quite brown before over exposing myself and going read. I now have what appears to be a dirty tide mark of brown surrounding areas of new pink skin. I have no intention of sharing any pictures, so you'll have to use your imagination if you want to feel thoroughly nauseated.

Imogen went to the doctor and had a tetanus injection. Apparently it's standard practice over here for a tetanus shot around age 10/11. It's indicative of the outdoor lifestyle I suppose. Rhiannon had the first of her HPV vaccinations yesterday. Both seem to have escaped any major side effects with only Imogen complaining of a sore arm. We deliberately ignored the vaccinations being offered in the UK, since the all knowing, all wise UK government opted for the less encompassing Cervarix vaccine, which only protects against two strains of HPV, whereas the rest of the world seems to have gone with Garadasil, which protects against four. Admittedly, these extra two are not believed to be cancer inducing, but they are responsible for cases of genital warts and it seems to us to be rather silly not to protect against this at the same time.

Westpac have very kindly pre-approved me for a credit card. This is rather worrying as I don't as yet have any source of income, but this seems no impediment. The credit limit is a mere $3,500 but they have offered to waive the annual $44 fee for the first year. I would also get to collect "hot points". Woo! Tempted as I am, I think I'll stick with the UK cards which I could use if something major crops up.

Kill! Kill! Kill!

2009-11-17T00:12:00.000-08:00

Today we finally succumbed to the delights of the Mount Maunganui Hot Salt Pools. Vicky and Wayne are regular visitors and we can see why now. It's very relaxing and as residents we get in for $6 each instead of $10. We bought a ten entry ticket and will therefore be going back at some point. A Subway for lunch, and then I tried desperately not to fall asleep for the rest of the afternoon.

I wanted to throttle Imogen this evening. One of the rivets on her jeans managed to fall apart leaving a really sharp edge. Alas it has left scratches on not one but both of our new sofas. The jeans were immediately consigned to the bin much to the chagrin of Imogen, who seemed somewhat oblivious to the damage she'd done.

Monday Morning Blues

2009-11-16T23:55:00.000-08:00

Rhiannon had another filling replaced on the grounds that it was leaking and decay setting in under the filling. This is exactly the same problem that Imogen had, and it does rather call into question the standard of treatment we got in the UK. As we had a private dentist I can only wonder about our teeth.

The girls resumed practising their instruments, to much protest. Some nonsense about not having a teacher or something. Rhiannon seems to have forgotten very little, however Imogen either does not or will not remember what the note directly above middle C is.

I seem to have developed an annoying snotty nose/cough which as it's heading towards summer is rather odd. Maybe it's just the usual November dose, which takes no notice of season. Whatever, it's a nuisance.

Sam's staff discount card turned up in the post this morning, so we wandered down to Woolworths to try it out. If saved us a whopping $4 on a spend of $140. I doubt we'll be making the trip toBayfair specially. On the way back to the car, I spotted a motor home in the car park. Nothing unremarkable about this you might think, which ordinarily I would agree. However this one was a rental from Wenderkreisen in Auckland, the firm we rented from when we visited last year. In fact, looking at the reg number, it was the same exact truck we had! I guess my flamboyant driving on highway 17 last year wasn't terminal

Boring

2009-11-15T01:54:00.000-08:00

Another week has come and gone, none of it particularly noteworthy. I continue to swot up on the PHP language, but other than that not much has changed. I've heard nothing more about a job I expressed interest in, despite having a chat with the agency. I can only imagine that they've been inundated with applications, either that or they've done the usual Kiwi far-too-laid-back-for-your-own-good thing that they have going over here.

Last Saturday I managed to run into the Mount, round the Mount itself and back again, a total distance of just over 12K, which explains why it did me in.

The kids are really settling in at school. Phoebe no longer has to be peeled off you leg and will now run on ahead and doesn't want to be followed into class. I am no longer allowed to meet Rhiannon after school, because her friends might see and she'd be embarrassed. Rhiannon's week away has certainly helped her get to know her friends a lot more.

HMRC have managed to produce my long awaited tax refund, which was just like Di's was exactly what I had calculated. We had a letter about the community services card application. Apparently they want certified copies of passports witnessed by a Justice of the Peace, and also they want utility bills and whatnot, which apparently have to be two years old. Fat chance of that happening, so unless we can get them to acknowledge how stupid that rule is, then it's game over.

We have finally managed to get our deposit back from our last place in the UK. There was a lot of nonsense about wanting to see that we'd paid all the bills which as we'd either shredded or packed them in a container proved difficult. The agent hadn't mentioned this before we left, so it was rather annoying to have them requested after we'd left. The landlord however decided that the windows were dirty and claimed for window cleaning. We'd argued that we left them as we found them, and after some wrangling he agreed to pay half. However, the agent took £60 off, which was steep to say the least. We had the last laugh however, as the agent cocked up and paid us £1400 instead, followed by a grovelling request for a refund. We duly refunded all except the window cleaning portion which we wanted to see a receipt for. Our honesty was rewarded with the window cleaning being written off. It's interesting to note that you really have very little recourse if you do make a transfer to the wrong account, as you can see from this article. However, in NZ, well, with Westpac at least, you can cancel a payment made today up until 10PM. This does mean that there's no such thing as an instant transfer, but it does give you a way out if you drop a booboo.

Having failed miserably to get the wireless access point working, I have been a little more successful getting a wireless card to work in my desktop which is exclusively a Linux machine. Huzzah. The only downside is the rather poor network performance which is a function of being 5 rooms away and therefore dropping the signal to a very low rate. Trying to make it function as a wireless bridge so that other machines could access the Internet proved to be a bridge too far.

I received a CD which I ordered from the UK. It took about a week to arrive, which I didn't think was too shabby. However, and airmail letter posted by my brother back in the UK seems to have taken only a couple of days, which is just dandy.

Craig has been having rather a hard time at work. He's been taken out of the kitchen and stuck in the bar. Not that he's done anything wrong, they just wanted to give him more experience. Alas this comes with a cut in hours. To make things worse, they've appointed a new chef who's been barking orders like Gordon F. Ramsay and trying to lord it over everybody else which needless to say was not well received. However, it appears said new chef has gone one step too far and has been given his cards which has brought rather a smile to Craig's boat race.

Today (Sunday) we went to hang out with some more expats on the beach opposite the Tay Street Beach Cafe where there are some free gas barbecues. This spot is also outside the booze free zone, so we were able to blow the froth off a few while soaking up the sun. Alas I have soaked up a little too much and have a rather red face. We were expecting to be out for only an hour or two, as we've all gone rather brown, I never quite got round to the sun block, which was on reflection rather a mistake. The kids were all sunnied up though. Rhiannon got on famously with another girl, the daughter of one of the expats, who was going through a goth heavy metal phase but was seriously into manga, which was a common frame of reference. Imogen had invited a couple of her school friends, who rather formally introduced themselves to me and shook hands. The formalities disappeared later when they all insisted I swing them round by the ankles and generally rough house with them. I can see why Imogen gets on with them - they're all boys. Phoebe and Freya were kept busy running round after Wayne and Vicky's kids, as per usual, and we all tried to stop them eating the sand, mostly ineffectively.

Banished to the Garage

2009-11-09T00:13:00.000-08:00

I've been a bit slack in the last few days with the blog. Sorry about that. The fact that people are actually sending in comments does actually clear up the little nagging doubt in the back of my mind - at least somebody other than me reads this drivel. In mitigation of the lack of output recently, I can report that Thursday was rather unspectacular and not blog worthy in any way unless anyone's really interested in what I had for breakfast. I'm not that interested and even less interested in writing about it, so you'll all have to use your imagination.

Friday was a bit more entertaining. I was in a bit of a grump since I'm used to having my own room to do my own thing, and this just isn't possible in this house, as we have but one living area with an en-suite kitchen. It's too small for a desk once the table and the lounge suite is in, and bedrooms have no space for anything interesting (watch it!). Having whined about the ambient level of noise and general wittering on, I was summarily banished to the garage, which is quite capable of housing both desks. I managed to locate the wireless access point which is supposed to function as a repeater, but sadly it wouldn't plays with WPA2 security on the router. Not being inclined to turn off security, I've had to move back into the living room when wanting to run operating systems other than Windoze, which is the only way I can get any real work done.

Rhiannon (AKA Madam) was due back from her week long camp trip to Wellington. I got a garbled call on the mobile at around 6 saying "my phone is about to die", so I took this to mean come and get me. Having made the mistake of going to the first entrance, I went to the furthest one, the one with the bus stop, which is where I left her. She wasn't there. After a minute wait while it became apparent that everyone was gone or going, and after asking a teacher, I went to the other entrance. No sign. I rang her mobile which went straight to voice mail. Nothing for it but to go back home, and then of course I found her half way home. Not in the best of humours by this point, Madam refused to get in the car, so I left her to it. I was of course not fit to be trodden on by the time Madam got home. Later it emerged that her phone was low because it had been confiscated by a teacher on Thursday night since all the kids were texting each other and thus she was unable to charge it up. She didn't know her way home from the bus stop entrance, so walked through the school and out of the other entrance, which is why I missed her. After she'd calmed down I was forgiven (really, and there I was thinking this would last for at least a fortnight) and peace was restored.

Saturday I got sucked in to some of the admin for the West Sussex Guitar Festival. Such are the tendrils of the club that I cannot completely escape, even 12,000 miles away. Apparently my sooper-dooper excel spreadsheets with tonnes of VLOOKUPs were too much to handle and no one could make them behave. Even me, it seems. Some really quite odd effects trying to sort rows, which just refused to do as instructed. This was a result I suspect of the interaction of Openoffice and Excel which seem to save data in ever so slightly different ways. OO seems to think something's a number until you sort on it, when it decides it isn't. Grr. Add to this all the "late" entries and multiple versions from different people each competing for the prize of the "latest" version, conspired to do my head in and persuaded me to dust off my PHP coding skills and implement the spreadsheets as a web based application, which I've just about finished as of Monday afternoon. This was all good practice for the Zend Certification I'm intending to take in the next few weeks. Talking of which, I've had a sniff of a vacancy for a PHP/MySQL programmer which I'm hoping to hear something about this week.

Everybody else went to the beach, while I continued to nerd about. However at about 3:30 I wandered off down that way too, and lazed about watching the kids run amok and generally tried to pretend they weren't mine. Rhiannon was playing troglodyte, and spent most of the weekend in her room glued to her laptop with the blinds shut. Apparently a week away from the Internet was too much, although it did help her get to know some of her mates a bit better.

Sunday we ended up at Vicky and Wayne's place. Wayne was feeling fragile on account of a post match celebration. Apparently he'd managed to return figures of 24-2 off 8 overs and the team won the match, so much beer was consumed. He tried to talk me into joining, but as I've not played or tried to play cricket since the age of nine, and I have all the natural coordination of a cross legged pig on acid, I suspect that even the standards of the fourth team would be beyond me. I'm a bit of a Monty, but I can't bowl. Although I have plenty of variation, the safest place is invariably in front of the stumps. V&W have apparently "agreed" that the house a few doors down from ours is the place to be, so we will I suspect be seeing even more of them than we do now. Bonus.

This morning I had a visit from another expat, Tim, who has a broken PC. He popped it round and we had a chat about various things while I prodded it and kicked the tyres with no obvious effect. A little later I decided the PSU was OK, and it was a motherboard fault. (For reference folks, short the PSU green lead (14) with the adjacent black (15) and the PSU will fire up with a suitable load i.e. a hard drive, attached). Spares are available on fleabay for a modest outlay, but it's worth fixing as it has a 1G of ram and a 2.8GHz P4 processor.

And hot off the presses, we have the news that Di has managed to win a double pass to the 2009 Gartshore Tauranga Wine and Food Festival, held on the 6th of December. These tickets are $25 a pop, so I'm guessing that there will be at least some free booze to be had. Huzzah!

Shaken, not Stirred

2009-11-04T03:04:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a lovely day, but nothing much to report other than being "VWed" at about 4:30. The girls made the usual fuss of the toddlers and we expanded the curry to include an additional two adults. It was rather fun listening to Vicky and Wayne having a barney about where to live - they had been to look at a house round the corner from us but it lacked a "view". My suggestion of the purchase of a 50" plasma telly and some appropriate scenic DVDs was not appreciated by Wayne, although Vicky found it amusing.

Sam missed the 8AM bus this morning, and had to walk to work. She was not in the best of humour when she got home, and we apparently lacked sufficient sympathy, citing her taking a whole hour to get ready for work as the reason for her lateness. It's not like there's a choice of what to wear is it?

This morning I got in touch with Westpac about the amount of tax we were paying on the savings. Currently it's a whopping 38%. Apparently the tax paid is known as "Resident Withholding Tax". They said I'd need to come in with some ID and my IRD (tax) number and then they could reduce this down to 19.5%. Apparently it's common to be on the higher rate if your tax status is unknown. We duly trogged on down and waved passports at people and got it changed. As it happens, we have virtually no money in the savings account, but that may not always be the case and it would be a shame to pay too much tax when we do convert all the loot into funny money.

I had another call from the agency - it's an official no-go on the job that I interviewed for. Apparently they can't make up their minds if they want someone to train (for the part that I didn't know and I suspect not many people would) or someone already in the niche market. All things considered, I don't think I want to work for a firm that prevaricates so.

A few days back, I was sat watching the telly, and I could have sworn that the train that runs parallel to our road but is several streets over had got a little closer. It certainly sounded like it had and I was sure I could feel the vibration. It turns out that it wasn't my imagination, but it wasn't the train either - I had in fact experienced an earthquake! It wasn't much to write home about, at 2.8 on the Richter scale, but it was entertaining nevertheless. This site lists the most recent quakes, and at the time of writing shows that there were in fact two quakes of similar magnitude that afternoon, about 2 hours apart.

Nuts

2009-11-02T13:54:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we took the girls over to Rain Bar in Papamoa and met up with a few other ex pats for brunch. Service wasn't massively swift, and a "rare" steak sandwich wasn't at all pink but it tasted OK. The kids didn't like their burgers though, so human dustbin that I am, I left feeling rather full.

An early start this morning, as I needed to deposit Rhiannon at school at 6AM for her camp in Wellington. We got to the school but there was no one there! A couple of panic phone calls home asking Di to double check the location, but then I drove round the back of the school and found a mass of small people with suitcases. Panic over. I left her to it and went back home. Imogen had a dental appointment at 9AM, so I whisked here along for her replacement filling. The X-Ray may have taken a week to process but is showed decay under the filling which needed to be replaced. She coped with it really well, which as it was a very deep filling was admirable.

Tidying up the kitchen, I came across the collection of macadamia nuts which we acquired from next door's tree. I tried the nut cracker on them, but it started to bend. Hmm. More power needed methinks. A No. 3 Record vice did the trick quite nicely. Nothing like crushing your neighbour's nuts in a vice to start a conversation running.

Trick or Treat

2009-10-31T00:05:00.000-07:00

A right sunny day this morning, so I thought I ought to take the opportunity for a bit of exercise. I ran into town and round the Mount via the footpath. I didn't use the Garmin, so I'm having to guess this was 10K or so. Running round the mount is quite interesting as the scenery is fantastic, and the combination of ups and downs in gradient mean you need to pay attention. It's not too arduous and I expect I will repeat the route in the near future.

Checking the UK bank account today, we spotted that HMR&C have managed to give Di a tax rebate. Scarily, it was exactly what I'd calculated it should be. No sign of mine though which is odd as they were applied for at exactly the same time. Perhaps it'll turn up next week.

We continued to unbox various items and generally try and find spaces for everything. The family PC was plugged in and seemed to work, although after applying the inevitable Windoze patches, updating Firefox and AVG, AVG jumped up and complained about a couple of trojans which it complained it couldn't remove as there was a process attached. Several hours of safe-mode scanning and rescanning seems to have sorted this out. Naturally, they were all lurking in Craig's download folder. I have yet to pluck up courage to visit his internet history to find out why he's more afflicted than others.

The other irritating thing to be unpacked was Phoebe's CD player. Not the player itself, more the JLS CD single which she just sticks on repeat *endlessly*. I guess it's my fault for sticking NZ stylee plugs on everything. Some things should have been excluded, no matter how loud the whining got.

It's Like Christmas

2009-10-29T20:46:00.000-07:00

I waited in all day as we weren't sure when the container would finally arrive. When it turned up at 2PM, it wasn't a container, just a big truck full of boxes which the three cheeky chappies NZ Van Lines sent with it happily unloaded. My job in all of this was to tick off the box numbers as they brought them off the van and give some vague direction as to whereabouts in the house they ought to go. The garage got more than its fair share, as some of the boxes labelled "toys" could have gone anywhere. Glass and china were more obvious, as was the bed. Yes! we have our Freecycle acquired bed on the other site of the planet. There's a certain irony there I suppose. The customs people (or was it MAF) had had a good look at the Dyson. Everything else was pretty much untouched.

I was pleased to find that my three bottles of Frog have made it intact. The rest of the day was spent opening boxes with various squeals of delight from small persons upon discovering long lost treasures which naturally had to be played with all at once. You have not seen such a mess as this. I was beginning to think that most of the stuff would end up staying in the garage, but it does seem to have dispersed for the most part around the house. There are still several boxes of glasses which are seldom used (why did we bring them - a long period of theft from public houses, mainly;-)) and these will probably stay boxed until we move to a more permanent location.

On the job front, I was disappointed to receive a call from the agency - apparently my prospective employer is still prevaricating and won't have made a decision until later next week. Sigh. I'm sorely tempted to just start doing my own thing and see what happens. As long as it brings in more than nothing, I should do OK. Just need a unique easily Googled name to use I suppose.

Impending Delivery

2009-10-28T02:54:00.000-07:00

We all walked into Bayfair this morning, Craig to set up his kiwi saver (pension) and Sam to find out why her wages were short. It transpires that in the absence of an IRD number, she'd paid almost 50% tax. Much sulking was evident later on, particularly when asked for some housekeeping.

NZ Van Lines rang to say they would be delivering our stuff tomorrow afternoon. Woo! Not sure where we're going to put it all but we really can't wait for our own bed.

A phone call from the dentist - Imogen needs two fillings replacing and a new one. Rhiannon also went to the dentist this morning, and the strange arrangement of teeth (courtesy of extractions and orthodontic treatment) resulted in another set of week-long-to-process X-rays.

We received a letter from the Ministry of Social Development inviting us to apply for a community services card. Apparently the Inland Revenue had told them we were entitled to one. No such thing as data privacy over here apparently. As it entitles us to "the full subsidy for your health care costs" we applied straight away. It does seem to be related to having children but I guess it's also income related. As we don't have any income right now, we'll take any help we can get. This is I suppose pay back for the hundreds of pounds we've handed to the NZ government just to get over here. Don't feel guilty at all.

Still Lurking

2009-10-27T14:02:00.000-07:00

Kids were back at school today - phew. Silence is golden. I received a call from the agency in relation to the interview last week - they'll still deliberating, and I won't hear anything before Thursday. I'm still not sure that I want the position, as the salary puts me back 20 years. We'll see if they want me first and we'll try haggling.

Got a text from Wayne, apparently the laptop is "Awesome". Not quite the words I'd have used to describe a Vista laptop, but he seems a happy bunny, so I guess I'll be on his Christmas card list.

I bought a copy of the PHP study guide with a view to getting Zend certified. I've been mucking about with PHP for a while, and it's kind of difficult to say what I know, so maybe having the certification would be a definitive measure of my capability. I might even learn something and possibly it might help the job search.

Not much else to say - Rhiannon's arm continues to improve, but she's playing on it still. No more skateboard casualties so far...

Labouring on Labour Day

2009-10-26T13:46:00.000-07:00

Today was Labour Day - a bank holiday so no school for the girls. We drove into the Mount today since Di wanted to score a couple of pink skateboards for Christmas (No! Please God No!) for $60 a pop, without the girls noticing. I took them to the play park and played Frisbee while Phoebe went on the swings. As often happens when we're in the Mount on a nice day, we bumped into Vicky and her kids. Wayne was apparently doing battle with their laptop in a fruitless attempt to make it run faster. I put it to Vicky that it never would, since it's running Vista.

Fortunately the skateboards had already been sold (phew) and we watched the kids play for a bit before they started to fall asleep. Vicky departed and we went home. Not long after this, I got a call from Wayne with his a*** in his hands - the laptop was running so slowly as to be useless. He didn't have an install disk or it was in transit from the UK, so I tried to find one on the net. It turns out there's some sort of restore utility available which I downloaded and then ran. It restored the beast to its status in July 2008, and as a consequence was *much* faster, although still slow. Turning off all the interface effects helped a little more, but not much. Of course, there were a shed load of updates to install, and I spent several hours chatting and watching the downloads proceed really slowly. I guess most of NZ was on the net that afternoon.