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Monday August 27, 2001

Away from home by 9.30 am (which is quite good for us) for the run to Auckland. We had our customary stop at Matamata (after an hour's drive) for morning coffee, and arrived in Auckland about 12.15 pm. Went straight to Deirdre's accountant to pick up her cashbook and records, as she has to do her GST tax return before the 31st. Back onto the motorway and return to Manakau City and find the house that Deirdre is sharing with her friend Gillian. She was packed and ready for the trip to Rotorua; but Joan had brought a jar of chicken soup for lunch, so we had that with some fresh bread rolls that Joan had bought in Matamata. Her tummy is still very sore after the op., but is quite able to withstand the 2 3/4 hour trip back to Rotorua.

We had a quiet trip home -- apart from the auntie <-> niece chatter -- and arrived back home in Rotorua at 4.45 pm. I was a little tired after the drive, so sat and read for a while until tea. Ethan and Eli came in as usual for a Monday; Rebeccah went off to ballet, then with her mother to High School to check on the subject curriculum for next year. TV after tea, then I'm upstairs now to do these Kronikles and a little more indexing.

Tuesday, August 28, 2001

Up and out at 8.30 am this morning, as Joan had an appointment with the Ear, Nose & throat specialist. She has been getting bouts of vertigo lately and needed to have it checked in case it was coming from the sinus cleanout she had. The surgeon gave her sinuses a clean bill of health, and presecibed posture exercises to get the innder ear sorted out again. We drove back home very carefully, as he had put her in a tricky couch which dropped her head down and rotated it. By mid-afternoon, things had settled down again.

I went back into town after lunch, taking Ace the laptop with me to the City Council offices, for a hookup to the video projector I am to use at Camera Club next week (the club president is in their IT department). We didn't have too much trouble getting it to work OK, except I couldn't get both screens going together. I am to show a selection of my Greece and Crete images, and this was the easiest way to do it. I will use IrfanView, as it has an excellent slideshow.

Back home via the supermarket, and to work on the book index once more -- up to page 112 now.

Wednesday, August 29, 2001

Boring office work this morning, but has to be done. Out after lunch to buy a replacement exhaust fan for the bathroom; the fan still works, but the plastic cover has completely packed up -- probably from the heat of the light bulb. Round to the supermarket to stock up with food; another mouth in the house gets through the groceries faster <grin>.

Some more indexing work on the Sparling book; I'm up to page 119 now, but still heaps to go.

Thursday, August 30, 2001

Joan, Deirdre and myself into town by 11 am to meet Joanna and Don for coffee. Then Joan & Deirdre went shopping while I checked up on the colour carts for the Epson 1290 I've had on order for a couple of weeks. Typical of these importers... sell the printers, then won't keep enough stock in the country to keep up with demand.

An interesting request, referred through Don: the programmes Developer at Rotorua Museum has been in and out of Don's office for some time, and has always looked at my photos on the wall. Now she has invited me to do a display of work in their cafe. The work is to be for sale (if any) and will be exhibited for a couple of weeks. At last my evil plan to take over the world is gaining recognition...

Our landscaper was here when we came back home, to finish putting bark on the garden. I have to get the lawn cut now, and then I will take update pix for Joan's garden pages. The spring growth has started, and buds are popping everywhere. The magnolia in the lawn is flowering, too.

The electrician arrived after lunch to install the bathroom fan. Murphy's Law insisted that the existing hole in the ceiling is too small for the new fan, so I lent him my venerable Makita jigsaw to cut a new one (the ceiling is pine timber). The jigsaw, incidentally, is one of the first batch to be imported into NZ; I must have bought it in the 70s. They don't make them that solid now...

Worked steadily on the indexing, and managed to get over 20 pages done today.

Friday, August 31, 2001

Another grey, drizzly day; didn't worry me as I hardly stepped outside all day. After i fired up Sissy and started email etc, I had a popup box from AOL Instant Messager to inform me that an update was available. I clicked on <yes> to get it; then all hell broke loose -- at first I blamed the AIM, but subsequently realised that it was probably an incoming email. Zone Alarm let me know it had quarantined something, and simultaneously my Fixit Utilities virus scanner lit off with a string of warnings about "detecting virus". By the time I had finished rapidly clicking all the <exterminate> buttons, it was all gone. I've just looked at the Fixit Utilities log, and the virus checker found "PE_MAGISTR.A - SULPH NBJ.zl9" and "PE_MAGISTR.A - MSNSIGN.zl9". These would have been .EXE files or something similar, and ZoneAlarm had renamed them before the Fixit virus scanner nuked them. To finish off, I did a complete deep virus scan to satisfy myself that all was well.

It's reassuring to know that the AV system is working properly; you've just got to keep getting the virus updates every day or two to keep up. Actually, I've just had a look at the Fixit setup, and it is supposed to check daily for new files and let me know. I only installed it last week (replacing System Suite 3) so it probably hasn't had anything to report.

Spent the rest of the day (in between breaks) ploughing on with the book indexing. When I finished tonight, I have about 20 pages left to do; then I can go through the generated index files and look for mistakes. Like putting males in the female index and vice versa.

Saturday, September 1, 2001

Joan, Joanna, Rebeccah and Deirdre left for Auckland about 8.30 am in my CR-V. It wasn't raining then, but it set in here about 9.30 am and kept up until mid-afternoon. It's cold as well -- about 9 degC this evening. I had a lazy day; caught up with some reading: I found two more of the excellent Elizabeth Moon series: very high-quality space opera. Her plots move along and characterisation is believable.

I had just finished my lunch (of last night's pasta leftover) when I noticed in the morning newspaper's TV listing that there was a Babylon 5 film showing. I actually have it on video, but blobbed out and watched the second half of it before going upstairs. I managed to get another 10 pages indexed before stopping to heat some soup for tea. Joan rang from Matamata to let me know they were on the way; they arrived back safe and sound at 7.45 pm with piles of stuff. Rebeccah had been needing new clothes, as she is growing fast and nothing from last summer fitted. Joan had found stuff in an interior decorating place that was having a 30% off sale.

I received an email from Alex in Wanganui letting me know of the honours awards for the Festival of Photography; I typed all the names into my prepared templates, printed them out, and cut them up ready for the morning. All I have to do now is finish these Kronikles, upload, then transfer files to Ace the laptop.

Sunday, September 2, 2001

Up early (for a Sunday) and ready to roll at 9 am. I received two nice books from Jo and Don for Father's Day: A book of NZ Landscape photos, and an interesting book by Simon Winchester on "The Map That Changed the World" -- a biography of the man who produced the first geological survey map ever. Then into the car and away to Wanganui on a beautiful sunny spring morning. A good run past the volcanoes on the central plateau, then down the Parapara highway to Wanganui, arriving at 1 pm. We went straight to the motel and unpacked our stuff from the car and had a cup of tea.

Then Festival of Photography was opened at 2 pm, so we just had time to drive to the venue, park and join the crowd. The prints were of a good standard; no honours for me this year -- I think my sort of photography is now regarded as old-fashioned and tends to be overlooked in favour of the avant-gard approach. Not that it worries me -- I just turn out what I like, and if somebody else likes it too, that's great.

Once we'd had some afternoon tea, we drove to the home of the club president, Beverly. She had been having trouble with getting good results from a scanner, and I had offered to show her (and others interested) how to use an IT8 target print to calibrate a scanner for best results. Unfortunately, she didn't have Photoshop installed, but I managed to locate most of the requisite features on the Photo Express package she did have.

Out for a dinner at the home of Bryan and Carole, friends from way back; a v ery pleasant evening with much hilarity and chatter. Back to our motel and bed.