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.

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Monday, January 28, 2002

A catch-up on office work this morning, while Joan went over to help Joanna do some gardening. We are going down to Wanganui tomorrow for a funeral on Wednesday -- an old friend of Camera Club days has passed away. We'll then come home via Taranaki for a night or two; I have a cousin to visit, also an 'extra daughter' -- one of my former dispensary technicians from pharmacy days has kept in touch. We want to take the camper-trailer down, as the weather is forecast to be fine and sunny.

It was sunny here, also, for most of the day; I opened the camper up and let it air out, also put the bed cushions in the sun. We decided to go to the aquatic centre for some more Aquajogging about 4 pm, so closed the camper back up again. Just as well, because I had just finished tea and was contemplating going outside to wash the camper down, when it suddenly started raining. It's still coming down steadily; but hopefully this will have blown away by the morning, as I have to take the camper over to get a warrant of fitness (like M.O.T. in the UK) and pay the registration which expired in December. Joan needs a hair trim, so hopefully she can get that done while I get the warrant etc. Hopefully, we'll be able to leave by 1 pm at the latest; it's a 4 - 5 hour drive towing the camper, so we should arrive in Wanganui by 6 - 7 pm.

In the meantime, I'm doing some packing and getting Ace the laptop loaded with the website files.

Tuesday, January 29, 2002

Well, we're still her in Rotorua, because Joan woke with a severe headache and vomiting -- she has probably picked up a virus from somewhere. She has stayed in bed all day, so unless she is materially improved tomorrow morning, we'll be staying put.

I got outside straight after breakfast, and cleaned the camper with my trusty water blaster, using the detergent dispenser to soap it up and the lance to wash it down. I coupled it up to the Honda CR-V, checked all the lights, then drove over to the testing company. It passed without any trouble, and I was back home by 11.30 am. The other thing that had to be done was to get an electrical inspector to check the camper electrics. He came at 1 pm and gave it a clean bill of electrical health.

I spent most of the afternoon vacuuming out the inside of the camper and packing stuff back into the cupboards, so if Joan does inprove overnight, we can finish packing and leave fairly quickly. I'm now going off to watch some of the second half of the one-day cricket on TV -- NZ v. Oz -- which promises to be a real match.

Oh yes: our Hawaiian Daynoter Dan Seto has an interesting link to this site. Here, you can answer a set of questions which will unerringly derive your religion (or lack of it). My results:

1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Liberal Protestant (96%)
3. Secular Humanism (88%)
4. Liberal Quaker (87%)
5. Bahá'í (72%)
6. Neo-Paganism (72%)
7. Atheism and Agnosticism (71%)
8. Latter-day Saint (Mormon) (68%)
9. Reform Judaism (67%)
10. Theravada Buddhism (63%)
11. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (62%)
12. New Thought (56%)
13. Conservative Protestant (52%)
14. New Age (52%)
15. Sikhism (50%)
16. Orthodox Judaism (44%)
17. Scientology (42%)
18. Jehovah's Witness (42%)
19. Taoism (41%)
20. Mahayana Buddhism (39%)
21. Orthodox Quaker (36%)
22. Eastern Orthodox (34%)
23. Islam (34%)
24. Roman Catholic (34%)
25. Seventh Day Adventist (25%)
26. Hinduism (23%)
27. Jainism (21%)

So what the hell is Unitarian Universalism???

Wednesday, January 30, 2002

Joan much better today -- but still not 100%; thanks to those who mailed me with commiserations. Actually, I realise that I have had the same thing (in a mild form) since the weekend. I just feel lethargic and have been napping much more than usual; that means very little to report on the computer front.

I have been active on domestic chores today -- even cooking my own dinner and providing some for Joan :-0

Another beautiful day of sunshine and 24 degC temperatures; looks as if this little piece of summer will hold into next week. We'll look at getting away with the camper after the weekend. I went into the garden to pick beans, zuccini and new potatoes for dinner, realised the beans were looking decidedly wilted and hastened to get the watering going.

Thursday, January 31, 2002

Another quiet day, although I did get some financial work done in the office. Joan is somewhat better, but this virus is grimly determined to last as long as possible. I read that other Daynoters are afflicted too -- but they are Northern Hemisphere and so have a good excuse. What a shame -- to have this fine weather and not being up to utilising some of it. I will have to go out tomorrow, as we've eaten all the food :-P

I spent a little time this afternoon salvaging a bad music CD -- one I rather like from Mark Knoffler's Notting Hillbillies. It was breaking up badly on the stereo in my office; I dropped it into Sissy and found it played OK through MusicMatch Jukebox; so did a conversion to .wav files of all tracks. I then moved them over to Milly and recorded them onto a CD-R using Nero. This worked brilliantly, and I now have a CD that will play in the stereo. I then completed the job by ripping the .wav files to .mp3 format and adding them to my mp3 folder.

Friday, February 1, 2002

Another beautiful day again today; office work in the morning, and a trip into town in the late afternoon to post letters and do a supermarket run. Also to take our breadmaker into the appliance service shop; it's a cheapo made in China (like everything these days), and the bread bucket keeps jumping off the drive mechanism for the beaters. And the service warranty has run out, bought 15 months ago. The appliance guru said that they had had a number of these in for service and it was usually worn bearings. We do have recourse on the vendor in New Zealand: the law says that goods should last for a reasonable time after purchase, even though the manufacturer's warranty had expired. If the cost of repair is more than $10-20, I will consider returning it and making a fuss.

An interesting snip from Alwin Hawkins - he has an interesting blog called View From The Heart:

... I have a great deal of admiration for the health care delivery system that Canada developed over the years. Unfortunately, they are buckling under the exact same pressures all the industrialized nations are, and (IMHO) are trying to 'make do' with short term solutions. They are only putting off the inevitable. All of the nations of the industrialized West need to make radical, systemic change in the delivery of health care, or they need to recognize the need to start pouring cash into the system.

2/3 Principle Of Health Care: You can have it good. You can have it cheap. You can have it fast. You can even have any two out of the three, but no more than 2/3.

And the following from my monthly web stats -- these are phrases culled from those who access my site by search engine:

bed slats size
animated cloud drizzle icon
neck messagers
women blown up in inflatable balloons

Saturday, February 2, 2002

A certain amount of domestic work undertaken this morning, as Joan is still picking up slowly. This virus has affected her asthma as well, so lack of oxygen means less energy. Anyway, we got the place looking tidy again.

After lunch I had a visit from our hairdresser, Lurene. She is in need of financial advice and assistance in applying for an increase in her business loan. We went through all her financial records (spread over three years), and I compiled a spreadsheet of her yearly expenses with analysis of amounts as percentage of sales. I explained things as I went; and she was a good deal happier to find that things weren't as black as the accountant had made out to her.

I suppose accountants are the same the world over: they prepare annual accounts and discuss them superficially and rapidly with their client -- usually without bothering to find out if the person actually understands what they have talked about. Lurene is pretty bright (she would have to be to qualify in hairdressing and colourants) but she admitted that the accountant's talk had largely gone straight past her. As she is Maori, and cultural background tends to make them hang back from asking questions of professional people, she has been largely working in the dark for these three years.

Once I had explained a few key concepts to her (which she grasped immediately) I was able to show her how the figures revealed that she had been under-pricing her work for the whole of one year. She said that she had realised this -- but far too late to do anything about it. The tragedy is that the accountant had been sending her ample monthly analysis sheets, but she really didn't know what they meant. But in spite of everything, I found she had actually managed to pay back half of her initial loan in the three years.

So, four hours later, we had finished an application for an increase to her loan, and a set of accounts analysis to show she was moving ahead positively and had good ideas to increase her clientele and make more profit. And I'll get free haircuts for the rest of the year <vbg>. I enjoy this occasional mentoring stuff; it does represent a pay-back for all the business help I've received over the years -- although most of my knowledge has been bought dearly by making the mistakes first.

Sunday, February 3, 2002

A bit of tidying-up today as Joan gets back into the swing of things. We drove to a linen sale place that had a temporary home in a vacant display place, to return some bath towels that we bought from them in late December. One towel in particular has flaws that resulted in loss of the cotton flock; as we have dark mats in the en-suite bathroom, that didn't go down too well. We had no trouble in getting a refund, as they were obviously not up to scratch. So we went into town (one of the joys of the New Zealand Sunday is that a number of the larger shops are open seven days a week) to the Farmers shop and bought replacement towels (so I can shower tomorrow...).

In the late afternoon, Bharat, our bookseller, brought round a second-hand Compaq computer he had just purchased, for me to refurbish. Good 17 inch monitor, Slot 1 Pentium II 300 MHz, 64 MB RAM, 3.2 GB drive, sound card, and a network card -- all for about $NZ500. It was loaded with NT, but fortunately he had a copy of Win98SE. So I scrubbed the drive clean, partitioned it to an 850 MB C:\ with FAT32 and the remainder in a D:\ partition. Installed Windows, managed to configure the network properly, and was able to access my program archives on Sissy to get things like the Win98 update patches installed. Also Eudora, so he doesn't have to tangle with Outlook Express to get email. Finished up with a couple of games for the kids, and it's all set to go.