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Monday, February 18, 2002

Heigh Ho, another week starts.... Joan goes over to 61 Lisa Cresc with Joanna, carrying an assortment of tools and screws with them. They tackle the job of putting shelves into Jo's new linen cupboard, utilising left-over materials from earlier installations. They did not request help, beyond me showing Jo how to change the blade in the Makita jigsaw -- just in case she snapped it during use.

After lunch, I drove over to inspect; as I anticipated, there was an almost tradesman-like job carried out. Amazing what women can do if they feel like it <vbg>. Joan and I carried on into town for an appointment with the travel agent to pay over the balance of our money for the UK trip in May. We suddenly realised that we had forgotten to book plane seats to and from Auckland, and were gratified to find we got the last two left at cheap rates. We will fly home as well; normally Jo drives my car to Auckland on the Friday before we return, which is usually on a Sunday. This time, to get air points seats for Joan, we are returning on Friday; Jo will be dealing with children at school so will not be able to come.

We stopped at the hardware emporium on the way home to get more screws, and some wire for Joan's side fence. I am to string wire along each board on nail heads, to provide something to tie roses etc to. We then stopped at my Honda centre for the mechanic to check over the climate control for the aircon. It has not been working in auto; and the temperature display has been flashing " -30 " at me on starting. It turns out that the wire to the exterior sensor had become detached; and the air conditioner electronics had been telling me "You want me to cool the car, and it's -30C outside???". Quickly fixed and I'm all happy again.

Tuesday, February 19, 2002

I've needed to get my denture relined, so drove into see the technician at 9.30 am. He took the cast of my mouth, and I will be without upper teeth until 5 pm tomorrow. Joan had cooked some magnificent things: I had an omelette with soft bread for lunch; and corn fritters with mashed potato and buttercup and fried Spam (I can hear everyone saying UGH -- but fried spam is actually rather tasty and I can gum it to pieces). Office work for the rest of the morning.

Big clean-up after lunch; vacuumed the upstairs while Joan did the ground floor. At 4 pm, when the sun started getting lower in the sky and the ultra-violet intensity drops, I went outside with my chippy's apron, hammer and nails to install wires along each board of the left-hand garden fence. Having finished that, I was led over to the right-hand fence for a lesser-scale installation. Guy still hasn't showed up to finish installing the trellis, so I won't post photos until that's done. He's also going to refurbish the edging and plant a box hedge right along it. Joan has climbing roses and a wisteria to train onto the fence, and the other side has a quince that she wants to espalier.

Wednesday, February 20, 2002

I have spent most of today burning CDRoms of data; a backup job I've been ducking for a while. I use GRBackupPro to whistle new/changed files over to Linley from both boxes, and I have a lot of gigs of data stacked up -- the files are in clear and not zipped, for easy access. I've thought of zipping them, but most are compressed images, so I wouldn't achieve much. I've patiently copied the folders over onto 700 MB CDRs, and even at 16x plus verify it takes about 12 minutes to do. I'm up to 13 so far, and still quite a bit to do. When finished, the spindle will go over to Joanna's house as off-site backup.

And, of course, I've been dating each CDR with 20/02/2002, and as it's just turned 8.03 pm, I'm timing this one at 2002 hours and get three in a row. But our cousins in the USA with strange and illogical date customs will be writing 2/20/2002 -- which is not nearly as impressive.

Hurrah! I have my choppers back in time to sink them into a tasty home-made hamburger. This year, the grandchild schedules bring the two boys to have tea here, while Rebeccah and Joanna go off to ballet at 6 pm. And, they usually insist on hamburgers. Joan even baked fresh bread rolls for them -- sheer Gran indulgence. I apparently missed some intelligent discourse at the table from Eli, who asked Gran whether she knew that China and India bordered on the North Pole. Some puzzled queries later elicited the admission that it was Nepal and not North Pole. But not too bad for an 8 year-old.

Thursday, February 21, 2002

Back to a gloomy morning with light drizzly rain; a temperature of 12 degC making me forsake shorts in favour of jeans and sneakers. After I checked mail and daynoters, we drove into town to change library books and visit the supermarket for supplies. After lunch it was back onto bank statements.

I also mostly completed a little job for the Wanganui Camera Club: updating their Trophy Book with last year's awards. This is an interesting idea which I proposed some years ago: when all the trophies (mostly cups and the like) were gathered for the end-of-year prizegiving, I copied down all the previous holders of each trophy. The trophy book has a page for each, with the names in columns. The whole thing is set up in CorelDraw, and all I do is add the year and name, then do a page reprint which goes into the clearfile book. I've proposed the same for the Rotorua Club, as it's getting too expensive to have the cups engraved each year. For our end-of-year function, I prepared a set of presentation certificates instead.

My 15 backup CDRoms are stashed on their spindle, and are safe at 61 Lisa Cresc. I feel much relieved at knowing there's an off-site backup of all the stuff that I'd hate to lose if trouble strikes -- all at the small cost of $NZ20 plus a bit of time.

Friday, February 22, 2002

Joan had a 'panic' job to do for Eli this morning: he had missed out on a part in a small play his class is putting on for Assembly at Aorangi School; and at the last moment yesterday, was to play a cat. Now Eli must be correctly attired for all occasions, and insisted on a costume. Joanna had a suitable leopard skin outfit (made for last Halloween) but needed a set of cat ears. This task accomplished, Joanna took the ears down to school, and we followed at 11.45 am. It turned out that Eli just had to be a cat, and didn't have any lines to speak. That didn't matter -- as long as he had a part in the play!

Assembly at Aorangi is most interesting. The Principal has a bunch of awards to present each week (these are just a gold piece of cardboard with a piece of wool to hang round the neck), which are decided on by the teacher of each class. The citation is for such things as "being a good reader in class", or "greatly improved behaviour towards the other children". It's amazing what a little positive reinforcement does for these kids. Most of them have dysfunctional homes with disinterested parents; the school is classed as "decile 2" which means the average income of parents is in the lower 20%. Both parents are probably working (if not on the dole) and little time is devoted to the kids. But the teachers are dedicated, and do a superb job of compensating for home deficiencies.

After lunch, we drove down to our hardware emporium to buy 30 concrete pavers to be used for lawn edging. It has been drizzling on and off in the afternoon; so outside work being off, I managed to get some work done on my web site. I've completed the job of transferring all the asthma pages over from the site I had hosted at IHUG, and the account is now closed. I've also scanned some family prints and started a new family page. Finally, I've been using my new scanner to scan old colour negatives of Don and Joanna's wedding, a job that has been patiently waiting for a couple of years at least. I've managed to retrieve quite reasonable pix off them, so I'll print them and also burn a CD-R as an archive.

Saturday, February 23, 2002

Another gloomy day with showers every now and then all day. The temperature wasn't too bad, about 15 degC. The screen door company workman arrived at 8.30 am to fit the screen door which I ordered at least a month ago. They certainly didn't fall over themselves to get it made; but January is notorious in NZ for staff taking annual holidays and I guess they were short-handed and getting behind. Anyway, it's on the back ranch slider frame and will keep out the flies during the day, and the moths and other creepies at night. Joan turns off the downstairs lights and they have all been flying upstairs to my mezzanine.

I spent another portion of today on photos: firstly printing out the wedding pix I did yesterday. I then went to a scan of a whole page of old photos which had been pinned on a board and photographed. They were all of Joan's family and relations, so I cropped each one individually and tried to get it looking reasonable. My biggest aid in this work is a book by Katrin Eismann called Photoshop Restoration and Retouching, which I can recommend for stuff like removing red-eye and reviving old faded photos. Lots of really useful techniques which I would never have hit on by myself.

The family all went off to Super-12 rugby starting at 5.30 pm, so we lent them some of our really waterproof jackets in case the rain started again. This evening, I've been doing some web research for Joan on gardens to visit in the UK, in the areas we'll be passing through. It's really amazing what you can find with Google -- saves a lot of grief. There's nothing worse than getting back home and having someone say "You went to the gardens at XXXX while you were in YYYYY, surely". And you had driven straight past because you didn't know they were there.... The National Trust Handbook is a very useful guide as well, but some of the best ones are not NT properties.

Sunday, February 24, 2002

Here's another self-test for you, courtesy of Alwin Hawkins: What Dungeon & Dragon character fits your best? Here's my result:

  I Am A: True Neutral Halfling Ranger Druid

Alignment:
True Neutral characters are very rare. They believe that balance is the most important thing, and will not side with any other force. They will do whatever is necessary to preserve that balance, even if it means switching allegiances suddenly.

Race:
Halflings are short and fat, like miniature people. (Think 'Hobbits') They enjoy the easy life, but aren't averse to the idea of an adventure from time to time. They get along with all races, and are known for their senses of humor. Halflings also tend to be light of foot, and can move quietly when necessary.

Primary Class:
Rangers are the defenders of nature and the elements. They are in tune with the Earth, and work to keep it safe and healthy.

Secondary Class:
Druids are a special variety of Cleric who serves the Earth, and can call upon the power in the earth to accomplish their goals. They tend to be somewhat fanatical about defending natural settings.

Find out What D&D Character Are You?, courtesy of NeppyMan!

A quiet day today; we've been needing a rest break I think. Drove over to Lisa Crescent for midday dinner with Jo, Don, and Deirdre (Joan's neice). And the kids of course. On the way, we stopped at the hardware place to pick up a bag of sand to bed the pavers into, and a new latch for the side gate. A scratch tea at home; and I caught up with some reading -- Katherine Kerr's Deverry series. Good, well-written fantasy; swords and sorcery of course, but a good read.