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Monday October 1, 2001

We left for Whakatane at 11 30 am on a beautiful morning; stopped at our hairdresser to pick up hair stuff for Joan, and while there looked at the time and realised we would need lunch. There was a takeaway right next door, so picked up fish'n'chips and toasted sammies and drove a little further on the road out of Rotorua where we could go down a side road to the lake edge to eat. Back on the road, Joan wanted to stop in at a rose nursery to purchase some roses, while I had a snooze in the car. Finally we were driving past a couple of lakes and through bush-clad hills to drop down in altitude to the coastal plain (Rotorua is about 300 metres altitude).

On the outskirts of Whakatane [for US and Poms: pronounced fokker-TAAH'nay], we noticed a large lot selling campervans and caravans. There are not many of these places about, and we stopped to have a browse. Our problem is that our camper-trailer is a little cramped, and we really need a bit more room. We were taken with a caravan that had a pop-top centre lid -- this provides a lower profile while travelling, but has more headroom when stopped. We took measurements, and continued on to Whakatane and wandered around the shopping area for some time. Drove down to the river estuary wharf area and read for a while until 6 pm, when we moved down the road a bit and signed into one of the local chartered clubs for a meal. We weren't away from there until after 7 pm, so went straight through the town, stopped to gas up the car, and then find the hall where the Camera Club meets. I was surprised and pleased to meet and recognise Don Young, an old colleague from Pharmacy School days in 1957. We were all in Wellington completing our training and exams -- and I hadn't seen him since.

I delivered my critique of their work, and showed a portfolio of some of my older work plus some of my recent digital stuff. The members were all appreciative of my comments and help with their prints, and we had supper and a chat. I have offered to help with a seminar/workshop in the New Year or later, so discussed possibilities. Back in the car at 10.15 pm for the run back to Rotorua, which we reached at 11.15pm, back to home and bed.

Tuesday, October 2, 2001

I tackled office work this morning, deferred from last week by Milly's crash. And tidied up a lot of the office shambles. A man from the carpet shop came in to measure the upstairs for new carpet. THAT means I have to deal to the heaps of books and junk, get rid of the surplus cameras, and sell their display cabinets. I don't suppose any of my NZ readers is into collecting box and folding cameras? Going cheap to a good home.

Into town after lunch to order the tiles for the kitchen and lounge window sills. Yes, the resident Interior Decorator has decided that the rather scruffy flat window sills in the lounge would look better with tiles on them. Even though I had UV-absorbing film put on the glass, the sun has caused the varnish to deteriorate noticeably -- and it's only a couple of years since it was re-done.

I also stopped at Millennium Computers to decide on a replacement motherboard for my spare box. Unfortunately, the processor on the old one is a slot one pentium, and slot one boards are no longer available in this neck of the woods. So I've ordered an 800 MHz Celeron, and a mid-range NVidia video card as well. Also (gulp) I'm getting Windows XP, which is on release here this Friday. The lads in the service department have convinced me, by their very favourable experiences with the final trial versions, that there is a big jump in speed and stability as compared with Win98SE. I look forward to the attempt, anyway, and will install it in Milly -- who needs it most. I'll do a Drive Image of the C partition to provide a fall-back position in case of problems. I suppose I could even do a dual boot setup and take my pick.

Wednesday,October 3, 2001

More time spent in the office this morning until 11 am, when we went round to Lisa Cresc, picked up the two boys, and drove into town to the movies. Joan took them to see the current 'Cats & Dogs" thing which they thoroughly enjoyed. I worked on at home.

Out after tea to our local Camera Club meeting; a pleasant evening with Bob from the Howick club in Auckland. He is a very competent assessor, who spoke constructively about the prints in the competition. There is considerable interest in the idea of running a Summer School early next year, although most thought that during the week was not a good time, and I might have to consider a long holiday weekend instead.

Oh yes: those of you who are interested in Windows operating systems, check this article in The Register which tells you when Microsoft will finally bury your favourite OS six feet under.

Thursday, October 4, 2001

A busy day for me. I did the usual email and daynoters, then went out to the garage to finish Jo's new counter top. Mainly glue'n'screw stiffeners along the front and sides, also planing some edges off which I had noted were binding on the wall when I tried it. All it needs now is to have the hole cut out for the ceramic cook top, then to be tiled.

Don rang me mid-morning to see if I could help with the computer situation at Lisa Cresc. Rebeccah has been using an old 486 with Win3.11 for her homework, and it has died. He wondered if I could resuscitate the tower I had here which came from the office. It had a useable Pentium 133 and 64 MB of memory, but unfortunately the problems it had before were still there. It had intermittent problems with the drive controller, sometimes unable to boot from a floppy etc. It is now difficult if not impossible to get a new socket 7 motherboard locally, so that squashed that idea.

So, bearing in mind that I was going to put aside the old board and processor from Milly and install a new one, I realised that the best solution was to get another new tower case for myself, and use Milly's old one as is. I vacuumed the case, installed the old Matrox Millennium MGA video card, stuffed in a boot floppy and came up in DOS. I ratted around and found a Quantum Fireball ST64A 6 GB drive, reformatted it with Partition Magic and reinstalled Win98SE, which is what it had been running before.

So Rebeccah now has a pretty respectable box, with Pentium III 550 MHx MMX Slot 1 processor and 192 MB of PC100 memory -- somewhat better than the 486, one would have to say -- and should be adequate enough for the rest of her secondary schooling. I have laboured on and off through most of the day and have the box on my network at the moment so I can access my program archives on Sissy.

Friday, October 5, 2001

We got in a morning's work before driving into town; first to the Library to return books, then out to our hair salon where Rebeccah was having a big hair-do before going back to school. She had a following dental appointment, so back into town where I left her with Joan and parked. I went to Millennium Computers to pick up bits'n'pieces -- only to find that there had been a hiccup with delivery of the Celeron and it won't be here until Monday or Tuesday. A small compensation is that the Celeron will be an 850 MHz instead of an 800 -- at the same price. I also picked up a case /power supply, and a set of cheap speakers which will be needed for Rebeccah.

I spent the rest of the afternoon finishing the software install and tidying up the drive. I'm using the latest version of FixIt Utilities from Ontrack; I really like the Registry de-louser which gets rid of redundant entries. There's always a slew of them after a Win install -- it's not very good at cleaning up after itself. Then I took a Drive Image of the C:/ partition as a further precaution against Windows crashes. The computer will go to Lisa Cresc tomorrow -- Don will need to collect the old monitor from his office, as my 15 inch is going there for Chris the PFY (If you read BOFH, you'll know that that stands for Pimply-Faced Youth) who is helping Don with web coding after school.

Saturday, October 6, 2001

A rainy day all day today; not continuous, but heavy showers every now and then. We took the top for Jo's new cooktop/stove setup over to Lisa Cresc for me to do the final trimming and fitting. I have to cut out the big hole for the ceramic cooktop tomorrow, and then it is ready for tiling. I also took Rebeccah's new computer box over; we have to collect the old monitor from Don's office tomorrow. I've unpacked the 17 inch monitor I'll be using here, and the 15 inch goes into the office.

I concentrated on tidying the office this afternoon; there was a full-sized AT tower case to be junked -- but I took the power supply out and robbed all the screws I could see for my parts box. And that was about all for the day.

Sunday, October 7, 2001

Daylight Saving was implemented this morning after I got up; I couldn't be bothered charging about the house changing clocks before bed. Another showery day, and another depression on the way -- if we were in the Northern Hemisphere, I would be saying it was April Showers. The grass is getting lush on the lawn and I'll have a battle to get the mower through it when things fine up.

Went over to Lisa Cresc in the late morning to take over Rebeccah's new computer, and jigsawed the hole in the counter top for Joanna. All accomplished to plan, the cook-top fits, and we were back home for a late lunch. A quiet afternoon; I cleared away the detritus from the weeks computer work -- cartons, surplus bits of metal, anti-static bags and the like. I unpacked the new tower case for a new Linley and installed the two hard drives and the CD burner; on looking at the motherboard, I realised I had been given the wrong one: this was a stripped down thing with only one PCI slot, an AGP slot, and one ISA slot. It also had a VIA chipset and I wanted the Intel 815E. So it's back to Millennium with that tomorrow. It's interesting that I can buy a full CD-RW drive for the same price that I was paying for a plain read-only drive a couple of years ago.

A nice pork roast with some Oz chardonnay to go with it for dinner, and a quiet evening before the week starts.