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Monday April 16, 2001

At the computer at 7.15 am this morning; if you look at yesterday's post, you'll see I powered off and went to bed in a dream. Hope the dozen or so readers came back later <g>. Ethan went off home later in the day.

I had a prolonged run of work on my site, preparing for the time when I'll be away overseas in May-June. Each week is templated and ready to go; all Don will need to do is get my emails, drop them in at the proper date, and point the redirector page at them. No pix though, until I get home. The next job to do is prepare an itinerary and a map of Greece and Crete so the punters can see where we get to.

I then opened up Ventura and completed the work on the Johnston genealogy. I just need to get someone to proof it, and then it can be printed out for distribution. So that was the day.

Tuesday, April 17, 2001

Whoa, Trigger: boot up Milly and no network. Scratch head. Realise I did a BIG defrag yesterday -- maybe a network file got munged? OK - delete and re-install Net BEUI. Nope. Check cable; ah -- not plugged fully into Milly's NIC. Bugger. A re-affirmation of Pournelle's Law: 95% of network problems are caused by cables. Should have checked the cable FIRST.

Joan disappears off with Joanna and the children to get a breath of fresh air -- they end up at a hedge maze on the other side of the lake. I do more financial wrangling and manage to finish the annual depreciation schedules for the computer equipment and software. I suppose that a normal office is quite happy depreciating its stuff over three or four years; but I look at my schedules and find, for example, that I've just reduced the value of the CorelDraw 7 upgrade to zero -- purchased May 1997. As we are now to upgrade to version 10, what sense does that make? The gear to run it on has been upgraded twice over the same period -- just to keep up with the demands of the software -- and I still haven't got the original stuff off the schedules yet. But that doesn't matter to the Inland Revenue; after all, I just noticed that its depreciation schedules give a percentage rate for spirit-based duplicators. I haven't seen one of those used anywhere for at least 15 years.

Actually, the general opinion around the Daynoters is that computers and software complexity and cost seems to have plateaued at the moment; the average user is quite happy with what he's got in the way of software and the hardware to run it on. It's only in the heavy graphics field that extra horsepower and quicker programs really have to be kept up to the mark. It's a matter of productivity, I suppose. We used to spend ages waiting for Photoshop to finish applying a transform or filter -- now it's done almost immediately, and that means more billable work out the door per day. And I can burn six CDRoms in the time it used to take me to do one. And of course the rabid gamer is never satisfied...

Wednesday, April 18, 2001

The sunny period we were promised never came; instead it has been cloudy -- and cool enough to get out my sleevless jerkin that i use in this half-and-half weather. Joan and I went off to the doctor at 10 am; firstly to get our flu shots (free to pensioners like me, and asthmatics like Joan) then to get stocked up with medication for our trip. Joan has to get a heap of asthma aerosols and I asked for D & V tablets as well as some antibiotic against need.

Then into town to visit the Library and pick up a few book tapes for our trip to Wellington. A full-length book can go six or seven hours, which is just about the right time period, and certainly makes the trip less tedious. We get four, and hope that two of them are OK. Sometimes we can't stand the voice of the reader, or the book is boring. I then dropped Joan at Don's office to help with the billing and filing, while I came home.

After lunch I prepared a whole lot of stuff for the Camera Club's committee meeting tonight to do with arranging assessors for the club competitions. Then all of a sudden Joan was home and it was tea time... I attended the meeting and delivered my stuff, returned home, and now have to get my stuff together to go to Wellington tomorrow. Which includes transferring the current site to Ace my trusty laptop, so I can do nightly updates as usual.

Thursday, April 19, 2001 -dateline Wellington

Because I didn't have time to pack properly last night, we didn't get away until 10 am. The traffic on the roads was much heavier than normal, so driving was correspondingly more difficult. OK, I wasn't on the multi-lane motorways, just on a normal road -- one lane each way. But New Zealand is a mountainous country and roads are forever winding round and up and down. Every so often there are passing lanes on hills, but not as many as there should be. This means you get into streams of cars sitting behind a logging truck or a milk tanker. The sight lines down the road are often not good enough to give you an opportunity to pass, and when the road *is* straight, there invariably are cars coming the other way.

So it took about seven hours to get to Wellington; we had a couple of food stops, and also I pulled off the road a couple of times to have a short snooze. We struck Wellington at the time when the city is emptying out -- fortunately most of the cars were going the other way until we got right into the city centre. Jeremy arrived home just as we did; Sue came in about 45 minutes later.

We've had a delicious beef casserole that Joan had cooked earlier in the week and brought down in a frozen state. So I'll get this posted and have an early night. Tomorrow will be a shopping day.

UPDATE: Friday 20th 12.15 I haven't been able to access my ISP account until now because the DSL connection stops me using a dial-in. Sigh.... They don't tell you these things when you sign up. So I've had to get them to initiate a new dial-up account I can use when I'm away with the laptop. Jeez......

Friday, April 20, 2001

Well, as you see above, my ISP simply won't permit two connections using the same login. Fair enough -- except they want me to open another account which will cost $10 per month, just so I can connect while away from home. I've got a temporary lashup in place, but will have to do the paperwork on Tuesday after I get home on Monday night.

Joan arranged to go off with an old friend and visit her daughter-in-law and baby, while I grappled with the ISP problems. She returned at 12; so we walked round the corner into the shopping streets and had coffee and a sandwich for lunch. (Sue's apartment really *is* in the middle of Wellington). Then we went to an outdoors clothing shop called Kathmandu to stock up on things for our trip -- actually they are as much an overseas trip outfitters as outdoor. We bought a couple of excellent over-the-shoulder bags; capacious enough to hold a jacket, water bottle, food etc and comfortable enogh to wear. This is an alternative to a day backpack -- which is a security problem in crowds. (Joan had a lass dip into her daypack in London last year).

I then went on to another outdoor shop to buy a replacement watch for my Casio, which has been losing functions lately (it's been on my wrist for about 6 years). The Casio has a very useful barometer with 24-hour graph; very useful for keeping an eye on the weather trends. The replacement is a Suunto from Finland, which has barometer and a built-in compass. In our travels, we have been known to head the wrong way down a street or road, particularly in overcast conditions. In which case, knowing which way is north can be a real lifesaver. Joan went on to a department store to buy new sheets, then met me for the walk back to Sue's apartment.

We had a drink and rest before Jeremy and Sue came home, then went out at 6.30 pm for a meal at a small Cambodian restaurant. The food was delicious; although one kept encountering rather alien flavours every now and then. We then went on to a coffee place for after-dinner coffee before returning to the apartment.

Saturday, April 21, 2001

Saturday started with fine rain; and Wellington with a brisk wind and drizzle has little to recommend it. However, it did clear as the day went on, and the rain didn't start again until evening. Sue and Jeremy went off to the supermarket to stock up with groceries. After lunch, Sue and Joan went off to one of the suburbs for shopping, while I read a nedw paperback of Sue's -- a new SF author for me: David Weber, who writes some of the best space opera I've read since Lois Bujold. Her character Honor Harrington is modelled on C.S.Forester's Hornblower, and is as well-drawn as Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan.

Sue and Joan returned in mid-afternoon and took me off down town to visit a shop and get some coffee. I deviated to a second-hand bookshop and managed to find the second volume in the Honor Harrington series, and a Harry Turtledove I didn't have. After coffee, we returned to the apartment for a roast lamb dinner.

I busied myself with David Farquhar's book Optimising Windows and put some of his advice into practice on Ace the laptop. I also removed several applications I don't use, and ended up with a quarter of the hard drive freed up. When the warranty on Ace is up, I'll attack the drive with Partition Magic (on a previous laptop, the hard drive failed and I was charged $50 to repartition the replacement because it was non-stardard).

Sunday, April 22, 2001

I was up before the rest of the household -- Sunday is sleep-in day for Sue and Jeremy. I had a quiet breakfast and settled myself with the second paperback of Honor Harrington. I must get the remainder of the set; I am really enjoying this author (David Weber). The rest of the family duly emerged, and we went out about 11.15 am to find somewhere to have brunch. I had a plate of breakfast goodies (sausage, egg, bacon, mushrooms etc); Joan had an omelette, Jeremy had bacon and banana pancakes, and Sue had blueberry pancakes. Finished off with a nice double-shot bowl latte (OK, Keith?).

Sue and Jeremy disappeared off to pick up some hardware supplies to fix the clothes dryer vent pipe, and Joan decided she wanted to go to Te Papa (Museum of NZ) to see the Versace exhibit. I read for a while, until she phoned and dragged me down to an outdoor clothing place to try on a polarfleece jacket. The jacket did fit (I need at least XL); I bought it and ordered another one in much heavier polarfleece.

We changed and went out again at 5.15 to drive across town to have a meal with Joannie and Herbie, old friends of Joan from way back. Actually we went to Joannie's son Mark's house, where there was quite a crowd. They had been out catching crayfish in the afternoon, and were busy cooking all 17 crayfish. So we had a very pleasant evening; the crayfish was excellent, and the rest of the food good too. Left at 8.30 pm and drove back into the city to park the car outside the apartment, ready to load in the morning. We'll have to be up and out early, as the parking nazis are out in force from 9 am. Besides, we need to go to Wanganui first (2 3/4 hours drive) to get some things sorted before continuing on to Rotorua (another 4 hours drive).