For new readers: welcome to my day journal — of sundry activities and rambling thoughts. There's a mixture of techie stuff and personal doings, so just read the bits you're interested in ;-]
You'll find previous Kronikles in the ARCHIVE if you want to catch up.
For interesting links which change every week, look at my Home Page for Life in NZ and Nice Ones.

To bookmark the redirector page, right-click here, and select <Add to Favourites>.

| LAST WEEK | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday | Saturday | Sunday | NEXT WEEK |

Monday, December 24, 2001

See yesterday for my Christmas Greetings and liability disclaimer.

'Twas the night before Christmas... and we all ate up large at Jo and Don's. This stokes everyone up to cope with the following day, starting when we go over for breakfast. The kids will have dealt to their stockings, we have breakfast, then they all get their REAL presents.

Into town this morning to change library books, collect two large trays of meat, and get some last-minute food supplements from the supermarket. I stopped at Noel Leemings emporium to purchase a copy of M$ Flight Simulator 2002; I had a copy of Russell's 2000 version to play with and got hooked. Installed when I came back home, and managed to keep a Cessna flying straight and level after half an hour's practice. I helped Joan remove the skin from a leg of ham, score and baste it, and get it into the oven for cooking. The delicious aroma nearly drove us mad during the rest of the day, until we were able to get it out of the oven and hack some bits off.

Over to Lisa Cresc as above; Jo had started cooking her ham later, and we had that hot with potatoes and veg. The dessert was Italian Panacotta -- a cream-based jelly with black espresso coffee poured over it; recommended. Some good wine, good conversation, and back home at 10 pm.

Tuesday, December 25, 2001 Christmas Day

Out of bed at 7.45 am; much hilarity floating through the bathroom window from across the street; Joan and I peeked out the front to see several households of children in full cry; also several adults engaged in squirting each other with water pistols. We drove over to Lisa Crescent about 8.45 am to open the presents and have breakfast (in that order of course). Soon, the lounge was filled with discarded Christmas wrapping paper; the boys were tearing the outers off Lord of the Rings figures, and Rebeccah was unwrapping various items of kewl clothing. Breakfast featured Joanna's cinnamon and nut rolls-- one of which is usually sufficient to fill me up. The recipe has a whole pound of butter, and four eggs to hold things together, and they are delicious.

We returned home in the late morning; Joan and Kay preparing for Christmas Dinner which was timed for 3 in the afternoon. Roast pork and the trimmings, four different desserts, and good wines. We all ate too much, as usual.

I found some NZ scenery for Flight Simulator 2002, and managed a 'flight' taking off from Rotorua airport, round the lakes, out towards the coast, and landed back at the airport without crashing. I remembered the old aviators adage: any landing you walk away from is a good one.

Wednesday, December 26, 2001

We all rose rather late, as might be predicted. A blob-out day, with another get-together for the evening meal -- with the addition of Joan's cousin Reg, wife Shona, and Don and Joanna.

Teddy went off in the mid-afternoon to get in a round of golf with hired clubs. He played on his own for much of the round, until caught up with by another lone golfer. They kept each other company for the rest of the round. Unfortunately, he found some difficulty with the clubs, which appeared to be ladies' length -- Teddy is about 6 ft 4 in. I managed to escape upstairs and get in another flying lesson on MS Flight Simulator.

We had another very pleasant evening, talking over the after-dinner coffee and finishing off the good wine.

Thursday, December 27, 2001

I spent the morning redrafting and refining the entry form and rules for the PSNZ Digital Photo Competition; and producing it in three different formats -- .txt file, MSWord .doc, and Acrobat .pdf to accommodate those who want to enter and don't have the appropriate software to print it out with.

Kay and Teddy went off south after lunch; they are headed for Napier and won't be back until next week. We had a quiet afternoon after lunch; later, I dug out the group photo taken on our Greece tour and did a bulk print of it to send to the tour party members. I've kept remembering, then forgetting to do this ever since June, and getting a couple of Christmas cards from tour members has spurred me into action.

Friday, December 28, 2001

Reasonably fine today -- but still had a couple of showers during the day. I went to my doctor to pick up a refill script, then into town to check out the Disk Smith Electronics sale. The only item that attracted me was a couple of spindles of CD-Rs at a reasonable price. Russell has approved the Digital Competition forms I did yesterday, so that's under way. I'll have to find some good images for it, now.

I succumbed to the lure of Flight Simulator after tea; did some circuits and bumps, then flew south over Lake Taupo. Takes a long time in a Cessna -- I think I need to fly a faster plane.... I'm most impressed with the realism of the scenery with the terrain grid added. The familiar hills and mountains are there -- the detail is rather arbitrary, but they've got it pretty close. The towns aren't realistic; I probably need to find another overlay for that.

Keith is accusing me of joining the 'sad anorak' flying wannabes (while secretly advancing his addiction by purchasing FS 2002); I deny that -- I'm a closet Biggles. Or further back: there was a story series that came out in the pre-WW II Chum's Annual circa 1935, starring a hero called 'Ace of the Seadromes'. Yes -- Ace -- that's me. Fearless aviator scourge of the aerial crooks that want to take over the world. I must get back into Crimson Skies after I have more flying lessons -- it does help if you know how to keep the plane in the air, so you can concentrate on fighting the baddies without flying into a hill.

Saturday, December 29, 2001

We had ideas of getting some outside work done today -- but the showers started again. Instead, we went into town to look at some of the frantic sale activity going on in various shops. Then a supermarket top-up, and back home to cook tea. Lovejoy episode on TV to look at, then upstairs to do some more Flight Simulator training before continuing my flight past the National Park volcanos. Then headed west over the very broken country tound Taumarunui before flying up the coast and up to Kawhia Harbour. Unfortunately, I exited before saving the flight -- so I can't resume this one. Never mind, plenty of scenery to sample elsewhere.

Sunday, December 30, 2001

Again the showers in the morning; but it did clear for a while and enable us to get outside and attack the circular plot around the magnolia tree. Joan needed the lawn turf removed from a 3-metre circle; she is putting down weed netting, planting box shrubs, and covering the rest with pea gravel. I succeeded in scalping off the turf, and grubbed around the periphery of the circle to loosen the soil. The topsoil proved to be rather thin, and underneath there is a clay-pumice mixture which oddly enough lets water straight through it. I would have thought that the clay would seal the water, but I suppose it's the pumice that makes it porous.

I spent the afternoon preparing photos from the Greece tour to send to one of the elderly soldier tour members. He had bought a camera and didn't understand the correct film loading procedure; consequently he'd missed a lot of pictures of the area he's fought over. I should have done this much earlier in the year; but he'll get a pleasant surprise when the photos arrive.

Tonight, I did backups; and while Linley was on, I had a Linux session. I installed OpenOffice which I had recently downloaded; didn't spend much time examining it, but it looks fairly comprehensive. Mandrake did the unpacking and untar-ing very smoothly. Then I struck trouble trying to configure a printer -- the elderly HP 4MP which is hanging off Milly it couldn't find. I decided I had better check on Samba, but the KDE Control Panel told me that Samba was not present -- obviously not participating in the initial install. Ok, I thought, it will be on the CDs with apps on them -- but I couldn't get Konqueror to look at the CD drive, just got a message that it was already mounted and/or busy. Something weird here, which I didn't have time to disentangle. Linux OS can access the CDRom OK, as I'd just let it find stuff for the printer install -- I just don't seem to be able to look at the contents.