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Monday, October 15, 2001

I took Joan, Graeme and Leonie into town for shopping, collected my finished picture frames, went into Millennium Computers for a network card for Linley, then came home. I remained hard at work, cutting board and mattes until 12.45 pm, when I went back into town to meet the others for lunch. Afterwards, I brought Graeme home with me then carried on matting.

That part of the job was finished by 5.30 pm -- just as well, as bending over the cutting table for several hours gave me a right pain in the back. I came uopstairs again after tea to find that a CD burn job I'd left running on Milly had locked up -- fortunately before it had started the burn. In trying to recover from that, I must have disturbed something in the bowels of Win98 because it took an hour to get Milly behaving properly again. I was then able to do my Monday index page update -- does anyone out there look at my "Nice Ones" links? Web logs don't seem to show outwards referrals, only inwards. The "Life in NZ" link page seems to be well-patronised, anyway.

All set now to finish the picture framing tomorrow and get the prints up to the Museum for hanging. I'll take time in the next day or so, to make a gallery page of what I've put up.

Tuesday, October 16, 2001

Finished the framing before lunch. Some of the mattes I had cut first were so bad, I decided to trim by about 3mm where the print permitted. I did have a spare piece of mount board which I used for the matte with the smallest hole -- the first attempt was then used to cut another matte for a larger picture. Like all such jobs, I really only got the knack of using the cutter by the time I had finished. My fault for buying a new bit of gear just before I needed to use it seriously.

I was tidying up in the office after the mounting effort, when I decided to check on the Mac Powerbook. It had been performing rather strangely the last time I used it; suddenly I started getting messages that there were file problems. I checked with Norton, which informed me that it had found 1210 cross-linked files and coupldn't fix them. The file names looked suspiciously like system files, so I realised the Mac was ailing badly. I booted from a CD, then fired up a utility called "DiskWarrior" from a floppy; this has been running about 2 hours but has dropped to a very slow crawl. I suspect the next step will be to re-install OS9 and then update to 9.1. The last resort will be to do a clean install. I suppose that means I'll lose most of the apps.

Wednesday, October 17, 2001

Mac update from yesterday: DiskWarrior trundled along until mid-morning (about 15 hours), then completed its job and told me I had 1200 cross-linked files. Bummer. Soooo, did a clean install of OS 9.0 and got things booting up successfully. Then came the long job of sorting out the Control Panels, Preferences etc that had to be dragged from the old System folder to the new. I worked on this off-and-on for most of the day -- and evening -- until I've now restored functionality to most of the installed programs, and even reconfigured TCP/IP to go on the 'Net. In between times, I prepared a couple of pages of my exhibition photos, for those who would like to look at them.

Other work for the day: I drove the Honda CR-V into town to the Firestone Tyre place owned by our across-the-road neighbours. They put on four new tyres and did a wheel realignment. I noticed a huge difference driving back home -- not that the old tyres were particularly bad -- just more rubber on the road and probably harder inflation. Meanwhile, Graeme went over to Lisa Crescent with Joanna and laid the tiles on her stove/worktop, then came back here and glued more on the windowsill above the sink.

Thursday, October 18, 2001

A bit of office work this morning; remembered I'd promised Ross in London to burn him a couple of CDs and send them to daughter Sue to take over, saving postage. After lunch, I took Joan and the others into town, while I went into the ANZ Bank to get a cheque account under way for the Clay Estate. We went to the Museum to have a look at my prints -- I took a couple of shots and they are now up on the Gallery Page. We then drove out to our hair salon for a hair cut, then back home via the supermarket.

I was out again this evening to a Camera Club Committee Meeting, sorting out the end-of-year stuff and discussing my idea for a Summer School next January. The theme will be a "back to basics" thing, and will be held over a three-day weekend.

Friday, October 19, 2001

As usual, it took us from 7.30 am until 10 am to get ourselves dressed and the car packed. Graeme went off with Joanna about 9 am (Joanna is heading for Wellington for a reunion of her nursing class) to be dropped at Turangi, where his daughter Deirdre (who has appeared in these pages from time to time) will collect him for the run to Wanganui.

We had a clear run down to Turangi ourselves (Leonie came with us); we stopped at the Burger King there to have a bite and coincided with Joanna and her nurse friends who were about to depart for Wellington. We carried on for an uneventful drive down to Wanganui, arriving at 2.45 pm and going straight to the motel to meet up with Graeme and Deirdre and her son Michael. We unpacked and went off for some shopping, then back to the motel for a rest before eating at 5.30 pm. The others went off to a fish restaurant; I didn't fancy a fish meal so walked round the corner to a KFC chicken foundry. Wow -- two lots of junk food in one day; must be slipping.

We tidied up and walked around to the Wanganui College campus, which used to be the Wanganui Technical College in our day, and was universally known as "Tech". An evening get-together was arranged for attendees; I actually didn't go to this school -- although I knew lots of people who did. And, of course, being a pharmacist in the city for 35 years means that a lot of people know you, even if you do not remember them. So we circulated, and chatted to a number of people who I hadn't seen for many years. After a couple of hours, we'd had enough; so walked back round to our motel.

I've downloaded my email; one really appreciates the speed of DSL when you're downloading into a laptop through a GSM phone at 9600 baud. I can jack into the motel phone and use the built-in modem, but I'll get charged for that, and the GSM is on free minutes after 7 pm. Just have to upload this Kronikle now, and off to bed

Saturday, October 20, 2001

We had minimal involvement with the school reunion today; Joan went off down town with Deirdre, and I went up to visit an old acquaintance: the retired doctor who writes and abstracts the articles for the asthma newsletter I prepare. He needed some help with his computer; he really does very well, considering he is nearing 80 years old. Just small things like how to attach files to emails, and sorting out his virus checker.

Joan walked round to the college in the mid-afternoon, as they had some of the classrooms open for inspection. She was soon back, as none of the rooms was manned and there was little to see. We then drove up to visit friends, then returned into town; I dropped Joan at her cousin's place for an hour, returned to the motel, and caught up on some reading until she showed up to change ready for going out.

Out again at 6.30 pm with young Michael (Deirdre's son) to have a meal with two old friends, Helen and Ian, whom I have known for years. We went to a small Chinese restaurant for an excellent banquet meal and chattered flat out until 8.45 pm, when we came back to the motel. It's a cliche but none-the-less true, that "old friends are the best friends"; you may not see each other for ages, but true friends slip easily back into focus as if you were just carrying on with a conversation that had been momentarily interrupted a few minutes before. A rare treat to savour.

Sunday, October 21, 2001

A late post, as we arrived back home rather tired after the four-hour drive back home.

After breakfast, we packed up the car and checked out of the motel. I dropped Joan at the river wharf, where the river boat trip departs from. This was a two-hour trip up the river on a restored river boat; this is coal-fired and has paddle wheels (but is long and narrow and not like the US ones). As I had done this trip before, I decided to save the fare and go off to visit Carole and Bryan for morning tea, then returned to collect Joan at 12 noon. We then drove to the College for a luncheon; again, I met several people I hadn't seen for years.

We slipped away about 2.15 pm and set off home on an uneventful drive back, arriving about 6.45 pm.