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Monday April 23, 2001

Up early, pack, breakfast, lug all the cases and rubbish to the lift, pack the car, and away by 9 am -- astounding. We stopped in to see friend Debbie, who is a creative doll artisan living at Paraparaumu. Talked flat out for 45 minutes; caught up with her news and gave her ours, then back on the road again. Stopped for lunch at Bulls at 11.40, then on to Wanganui by 12.30.

Went straight to my favourite men's clothing shop -- they specialise in large sizes ( I am 6ft 1 in and weigh about 250 lbs [in retro American units]). I found a pair of trousers in 'micro fibre' -- whatever that is -- which we were assured was almost totally crumple-resistant, and very light weight. These are for formal occasions on our trip; there will be a certain amount of official ceremony, church services etc. Also bought a couple of pairs of shorts.

We then tackled the family business we had come to Wanganui for; slipped up to St Johns to have a break at Leslie & Vince's place, then on the road about 4.30 pm. Big joke. We went down to the Dublin Street bridge crossing the Whanganui River -- only to find it was closed; something about the bridge piers being unsafe. So we drove towards the other bridge and encountered a long tailback; inching forward, we could see on the opposite bank the cause of the problem: the river bank on the other side had been eaten into by the river, and there were hordes of large machines doing repair work. This cut the road width down to one lane, and traffic was alternating. So there were hundreds of cars trying to access the bridge from three different directions - chaos. We eventually got out to the open road 45 minutes later.

Fortunately, the road traffic was very light and we made good time. I needed a break, so we stopped at 6 pm for a meal at a little bar/restaurant at National Park; then were on our way to arrive back in Rotorua at 9 pm -- 12 hours after we set out from Wellington, a long day. I'm finishing these Kronikles, then off to bed.

Tuesday, April 24, 2001

Lots of things to do today. Don rushed in with the Forestry Group brochure to prof print; he also needed a CDRom burnt that a client wanted to send to Korea today. I tackled the chaos in the office until lunch; then we went out to collect prescriptions to take away with us. Into the library to return the audio cassette books we listened to in the car, then I went on a hunt for heavy-duty suitcase straps. Most of the ones I located are too short; we may end up making straps from the bulk webbing and suitable buckles that are available. Then off to the supermarket for a grocery stockup.

We arrived back home just in time to coincide with Jo and Ethan; being Tuesday it was Ethan's programming lesson. Actually today he needed to be given the basics of Excel, as his teacher had given the class an assignment to count and list the sports equipment -- and told Ethan to do it with a spreadsheet. Ethan, having had the programming basics, had no trouble in picking up the spreadsheet concepts; I'll be interested to see the result.

After Ethan and Jo went, Joan and I got our gear together and drove to the Aquatic Centre for some much-needed Aquajogging. We haven't done any since Joan had her nose operation, and I'm feeling rather sore in lots of muscles tonight <g>. I've been trying to do some web research for Don, but found the HP laser printer was not being seen on the network -- even though File and Printer Sharing looks OK. I may have to de-install and re-install in the morning. that usually fixes these things. Networks ARE a real pain ....

Wednesday, April 25, 2001 - ANZAC Day

Most countries celebrate some great victory or liberation. It always seems ironic that New Zealand and Australia instead commemorate what was probably their greatest disaster. In one tragic WW 1 campaign, the flower of both countries' youth was squandered for what afterwards was seen to be a useless gesture. News item here. More here if you're interested.

Anzac Day dawned with clear skies. The sun shone warm, and this was ideal for me, as I started to prepare for our overseas trip. The first essential was to paint some bright orange strips on our large suitcases -- this is something I've done for years, as it really helps to identify your cases as they come round the airport carousel. It also prevents someone else grabbing your case by mistake, as they thought it looked just like theirs. I used acrylic paint, so each case was put out in the sun to dry each stage before the next. The strips needed two coats, so the whole job took until lunch.

In the afternoon, it was sort-up time. My toilet bag needed topping-up. I tackled the first aid kit; I always take a basic selection of antiseptic wipes and band-aids -- and they do get used. This trip, I decided I'd better add some extra items as we will be with a tour party of 66 -- and an ex-pharmacist is always expected to produce first aid gear on request <g>. Joan has to take plenty of her asthma medication, and also antibiotic in case of chest infection. As we travel to Greece via Singapore, our baggage is limited to 20 kilos each (44 lbs) so we will have to be selective in what we take. (Going via USA, the weight is less important.)

Because the tour is semi-official, we need to take tidy clothes; I need a jacket, tie, and long trousers. This is a pain, because I usually travel in jeans and try not to look as if I was worth mugging. But there will be official receptions, and commemorative church services -- and we are told that Greece is very strait-laced when participating in this sort of thing. Still, we knew that when we decided to go on the tour.

Thursday, April 26, 2001

Out bright and early, and away in the car at 8.25 am to pick up Don from the office and drive out to Ngongotaha to do another photoshoot for our Forestry clients. They wanted a boardroom table shot; but these are all outdoor guys and we suggested a forest background would be more as their clients saw them. So we all piled into the 4-wheel-drives and went a short way out of the village to the nearest suitable stand of trees. They parked one of the vehicles by the trees, we draped the bonnet with map and aerial photo, and took all five directors in a group. Because of the cross-lighting, I used a fill-flash held high on the right to brighten up all the shadows.

We drove back into town; I dropped Don and went to Lisa Crescent to pick up Joan and head back into town for dental appointments. Just our 6-month checkup and scale. Then back home for lunch. The afternoon was taken up with finding stuff to do with our holiday: some small padlocks to lock the zip fastener tags together; we wanted sturdy straps to go round the cases and eventually located a locking strap which may do. All small things, but needing a lot of leg-work to track down.

I've been surfing the web looking for solutions to my email problem on the trip: I did a Google search using "Free ISP Greece"; lo and behold, there were a couple listed. The first one turned out to be for small businesses in Athens; the second was more promising, and I got most of the way through the registration forms before finding out that they required the use of a 'special program' which ran on W95, W98 and Wme. As I will be using a Psion 5, that wasn't any use. I suspect the special program was some sort of modified browser with built-in ad server. It looks as though I might best sign up with Compuserve; I can get logon scripts for the Psion, and they have dial-up numbers for most places. My fallback position is to use Internet Cafes -- but I am told that they are not common, and when you do find one it's expensive. I suppose the keyboard would be in Greek letters?

Don dropped files in at tea time for me to print: the amended Forestry Profile with the above photo. He's working on the fourth page tonight and will bring it in to print before work in the morning.

Friday, April 27, 2001

First up in the morning was Don with the last Forestry file to print. I worked in the office until lunch, attempting to restore some order. Also rang up the help desk of one of my ISPs to enquire about access to my account while overseas. They have a roaming dial-in facility arranged through a third party — but I'll be taking my Psion5 and GSM phone, and they also (see above) want to install Windows software to do the connecting. It looks as though my best bet is to use my Telecom overseas calling card. I should be able to use my GSM phone to dial an 0800 number in Greece which connects me directly to the NZ phone network; I enter the card number and a PIN, then the phone number of the ISP. I can then upload my email reasonably promptly (at 9600 bps -- it's GSM, don't forget) The costs are charged directly to my Telecom phone account in NZ. In actual fact, I can get the Psion to do all the dialling, inserting lots of pauses here and there to allow for dial tone acquisition and automated messages. This should be more economical than the Internet Cafes.

Joan had a physio appointment at 1.30 pm (she had a nasty fall in a shop early last week — they were dismantling fixtures and she fell over a shelf bracket protruding at calf height; the leg healed quickly but she wrenched her back and it has caused some discomfort). Of course, in the USA we'd have sued the pants off the owners (not that it would have done much good here -- the shop chain was closing down); but in NZ we have cover from something called the Accident Compensation Corporation, a quasi-governmental organisation which pays for medical treatment after an accident and provides 80% of wages for those fortunate enough to be in work. In exchange for this munificence, we gave up the right to sue for negligence, thus creating a no-fault system of compensation. Of course, the system gets ripped off by malingerers; and incredibly, people injured while playing sport are also covered. I, personally, regard injury while voluntarily playing sport to be self-inflicted.

Oh well -- at least the ACC pays for the physiotherapist <g>. While Joan was being physio'd, I went down to my friendly computer pusher and collected the Dreamweaver 4 upgrade which had finally come to hand. Then round to my bank to get some folding money in pounds sterling to take overseas and make sure my Visa card had a good PIN number. It seems that, if you put your Visa account into credit with a hefty payment before leaving, you can draw money out of ATMs without incurring any charges.

Back home for a welcome cup of tea, then off to Aquajogging. Not quite as stiff afterwards as after the other night <g>. In the evening I installed Dreamweaver 4 and played the intro tour movies. This is indeed a substantial upgrade; the code editor has been improved out of sight. It appears that you can design pages by drawing rectangles on the screen, which are automatically converted into tables and cells. There are lots of new buttons on the toolbar, too. but one cool feature: I installed it in a new folder to be separate to DW3; when I fired it up, my site appeared just like that. It must have dived into the adjacent folder, and pulled my settings and site definitions over the fence -- all ready to go. Now that's what I call a real civilised installer <g>.

I'll stick my neck out here: if you're developing and/or maintaining more than two or three sites, you can't afford to be without this program. It's like trying to do serious image work without Photoshop — OK, there are programs that (sort of) do a reasonable portion of the job, but if you need to do it well, and do it fast, these two programs are a MUST. Cost notwithstanding.

Saturday, April 28, 2001

Hard at work in the office this morning, while Joan went off with Joanna to look for wallpaper. After lunch, I decided I'd better look at the Psion email setup, because I hadn't used it for a while and I've changed ISPs since. I found the Psion Dacom V34 modem, plugged it all in and fired it up -- success. But going over to the web browser brought a complete lockup. I jabbed a pin in the reset hole and tried again -- with the same result. I disentangled the serial cable to the PC that links the Psion, and fired up PsiWin to reinstall the Message Suite. That gets the browser going OK -- but it's like watching paint dry; then I remembered a review of Opera for EPOC that said it was much faster. Download, swap cables again for the install, and Opera burst into life. It wasn't much better for speed, until I switched off the images and java -- and that was better. If I do happen to get a good pipe while we're away, I should be able to check the NZ news. That will have to be by POTS, as the GSM phone is too slow for browsing.

So I decided to register the EPOC Opera as it times out in 30 days (for $US15); get the email back with rego key -- and it's for Linux <groan>. Their keys are specific for platform versions, so it just told me the rego key was wrong. I sent a frantic email back saying puhleez send the EPOC key -- but there probably wasn't anything human on the other end, so I'll have to wait until next week. The weather being threatening, I thought it was a smart move to mow the lawns before any chance of rain, and got them all finished before tea.

A pleasant surprise this evening, as I retrieved my 'travel' purse from the depths of the cupboard and found £50 in notes left over from last year's trip -- a useful supplement to the sum I got from the bank. According to Bloomberg, one GBP buys 550 Greek drachma; I can see us getting lost among the large numbers on the notes. And I expect they'll have alloy coins by the handful which will be almost worthless except for supermarkets to shave miniscule amounts off their specials.

Sunday, April 29, 2001

It actually rained overnight; some more during the day, and a little more tonight. The Garden person is happy.

More tax work this morning, and checking off bank statements -- work that I find soulless and boring. But necessary; if you pay somebody else to look after your affairs, you really have only yourself to blame when they screw up -- and you know you could have done better yourself.

Anita, our neighbour across the road, came over this afternoon for me to help her with mounting a print for the Camera Club competition (she is joining this week). I have to give a demonstration of matting and mounting at the meeting on Wednesday, so this was a good chance to get all the gear ready and practise my technique. I don't think I'll be able to get anything ready myself; we are on the last week now -- departing tomorrow week, and still a lot of things to do.

We had a roast tea at Lisa Crescent; Joanna had cooked a rolled, stuffed piece of mutton -- commonly known as 'colonial goose' which was delicious. We went over a bit early for me to work on the two computers; the one that the kids are using is minus the modem -- there were no spare PCI slots for the network card, so the modem had to go. I first installed a freeware proxy server I found on the 'Net called AnalogX proxy. After a bit of configuration, and some argy-bargy with Zone Alarm bleating that a nasty thing was trying to break through its shields, we got it sussed. This means that Don can work on Lisa the main box, while the kids can access the 'Net for homework without disturbing him.

It's a good thing I've been stumbling my way through the intricacies of IP addresses and ports -- the setup instructions of both programs assumed a certain level of knowledge. It's amazing how many pieces of software make no concessions to the newby; it's almost as if somebody has said "Well, if you have to ask what to do, you shouldn't be messing with this stuff anyway". I can appreciate the sentiment, but that's no help when you desperately need to mess with it.