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Monday, March 18, 2002

An unaccustomed early start to the day; showering at 7 am; rousting kids out of bed and into clothes; inserting breakfast into kids; finding school bags and books; collecting lunch boxes from the cook; kids into car, and off into the 8.15 am traffic. With a squillion other parents doing the same thing. Thank goodness we only have five days of this <vbg>.

We drove into town after morning coffee (strong espresso-strength plunger) to revive us; dropped in the incorrectly-printed sheets at the copy centre to be re-done; then posted letters, and a CD to Jon Sturm over the ditch in Tassie. Back home, a courier arrived with the PCMCIA adapter for the iPAQ. I slipped a 96 mB Compact Flash chip into a PCM holder, shoved it into the adapter, and docked the iPAQ into it. The chip came up in File Explorer OK without hassle (just like it should) so I'll see about getting a cheapo 128 MB for storage. This adapter also has an extra battery which transfers charge to the iPAQ internal one, thus doubling the endurance.

Looking at the adapter, I remembered I had a Psion Dacom 34k modem PCM card. I shoved it into the adapter to see if the iPAQ would recognise it -- but of course, there isn't a suitable driver for it, is there? It would be handy to be able to plug into a phone jack and connect to my ISP. I do have the Psion holder for the modem, and the connector plug does fit the iPAQ -- but it would be a miracle if the pinout was exactly compatible, not to mention signals...

I trawled through newsgroups and Google searches looking for "iPAQ PCMCIA Modem" but found little of any use. There are several CF card modems that would slot into my holder -- but they are way too dear for casual use, and I *can* connect through my GSM phone when required. It seems that the iPAQ will recognise a Hayes generic modem on a serial cable and that's all.

We collected the kids after school as scheduled, plus Adam, who will be staying the night and having tea tomorrow as well. I sat Adam down at Linley, so he could research a topic for school: the Praying Mantis. He produced an impressive scrawled list of facts that one would rather not have known. Rebeccah asked me to fire up CorelDraw so she could do a graphics assignment -- logo and business card. She had an excellent design; I just needed to sort her out on getting outline and fill the same shade, and we printed the results.

After tea, it was off to ballet at 7.30 pm, and I drove back to collect her at 8.30 pm. The class was just doing their stretching exercises when I arrived, and I was interested to see how closely they followed the exercises we did 30 years ago in my Karate Dojo. I suppose they're all based on the same thing, really. There's only one best way to put the human body into various positions, and if people work at it intelligently for long enough, they'll end up doing the same thing -- even if the intentions are different.

Tuesday, March 19, 2002

Got everybody to school on time with the correct books and lunch boxes. I took Joan into the Physio at 10.45 am, parked the car, and went for a walk round the near-by park for half an hour. Back home for lunch, then worked on financials for a large part of the afternoon until I had to go out to pick up the kids.

I then spent some time working on a client's site for Don; he had told me he had uploaded the files I had worked on a couple of weeks ago and deleted the old stuff. So before I started I did a full site synchronise -- and got all the old files mixed in with the new on my drive. He hadn't managed to delete the stuff he thought he had. It took me ages to disentangle the resulting mess, and recheck all the links. All finished now, anyway.

Not much more to tell tonight; these early morning starts are making me get yawny about 9.30 pm -- so we're off to bed too.

Wednesday, March 20, 2002

Ethan woke up with a nasty asthma cough plus a wheeze, so we kept him home today. I dropped Rebeccah off at school and drove back home. As it was a fine morning with some wind, I opened up the camper for another airing, and later put all the squabs and stuff back in it before locking it up again.

An iPAQ problem: I tried Microsoft Reader, which told me it wasn't activated yet, and to log onto the appropiate MS page to do so. But this page told me it wouldn't activate because my browser needs to be IE 4 or better. Now Sissy has IE 5.5 installed, so I'm guessing that somewhere deep in the Registry bowels, there is some key value that never got changed. Does anyone have any clues on this?

I spent some time trolling the Web for free eBooks; also finding that I'll probably need a program to convert test to the .lit format that Reader demands. There's plenty of Project Gutenberg, but that's all in .txt files. I suppose I could use Pocket Word to view these, but I found that Word insists on loading all of the file before displaying it. That's where the Reader scores: you only seem to load the immediate portion, and it's almost immediate display when you return.

Thursday, March 21, 2002

I dropped Joan into the physio for her last appointment; her back is much improved. I returned home and did office things, had lunch, and read a bit until Joan returned home by bus, after a little shopping therapy in the clothes shops.

We were out again at 2.55 pm to collect Rebeccah first, then meet the boys (Ethan and friend Adam) who were walking into town. Collected them and took them to the Aquatic Centre for swimming. Ethan was still a little wheezy, and wisely decided not to do his lengths but just have a quiet time in the warm water instead. I left Joan with them and took Rebeccah back home, got her set up with homework, then departed back to her school for a 'meet the teachers' session.

Her assessment report was exemplary, so there were no problems to discuss -- only one or two requests to get homework handed in on time. I returned to the Aquatic Centre, picked up Joan and Ethan (Adam had been picked up by his father) and once more returned home.

The tower case and memory I had been seeking for Russell finally turned up today, and I spent some time installing the motherboard and components. These were left-overs from Russell's upgrades; I had a slot 1 Pentium 233 MHz on a Gigabyte m/b; and a 4GB Seagate drive in a 5.25 inch format which had to be persuaded into the upper drive bay. I had to partially dismantle the tower case to unscrew a metal baffle at the front, which was preventing this very large, flat drive from coming forward far enough to get the screw holes lined up with the drive bay slots.

There was some sort of S3 video card, probably a voodoo, so installed that, plugged in the monitor and powered up for the smoke test. Got the correct beep, and booted from a floppy OK. The last step tonight was to re-format and partition the drive to 4 GB into three logical drives using Partition Magic. I'm just going to check on progress, shortly, and that's that for the day.

Friday, March 22, 2002

Only Ethan to get ready for school this morning, so we were on our way without too much trouble. We had decided that we needed some time out, after our full-on week, so when I got back home, I opened the camper to prepare for a couple of days away. We got out all the stuff that normally lives in our storage area, like bedding, and stowed it away.

I got back onto the box I was assembling yesterday, tidied up some loose ends such as installing the sound card and modem, then loaded Win98SE. I managed to get the install finished OK; fortunately, he had retained all the driver disks for the odd stuff. They were mostly Win95 vintage, but everything seems to be working OK. I didn't try the modem, though.

I copied my website files over to Ace (I'm typing on him at the moment) and then grabbed necessities such as spare clothes. By now, we were close to school time so threw the rest of the kids' junk into the CR-V (TV, Playstation 2, etc etc) and drove off to pick up Ethan and Rebeccah. We delivered them back to their home, just after Joanna and Eli returned from their camp.

Jo was wiped -- the two people who were designated cooks had cancelled out at literally the last moment (bereavment), so Jo and two other mothers cooked for 46. They were using commercial ovens and equipment, but the sheer scale of, say, having to cook 16 chickens at once or prepare 92 slices of toast as fast as possible, was rather daunting -- not to mention exhausting. However, it all went well; Eli was wiped out too, and will need a couple of good night's sleep to come right.

We returned home, finished loading the food and stuff, and departed north at 4 pm. We're in a small camping ground about 6 km from the town of Matamata (where I was born in 1933, as a matter of interest). There are hot springs here, and we've bought our bathing gear. A nice big open pool at 29 degC -- not too hot -- should suit us fine. We drove into Matamata at 6 to catch the supermarket for some supplies, then had a really delicious meal in a small cafe/bar called Workmans. Joan had grilled lamb steaks, and I had a nice piece of fillet with veg and salad. Back here at 8 pm, and I don't think we'll be too long out of bed.

Saturday, March 23, 2002

We managed to stay awake until 9.30 pm last night; the night was clear and cold, and we woke about 7 am after a good sleep. A leisurely breakfast, and we drove out of the camp to go to a very small town north of Matamata to visit a cat breeder. Joan had been given this lady's phone number, as she has been wanting a burmese cat and they are rather hard to come by. We found the house, and were introduced to Missy. She is 18 months old and has produced one litter, but the lady has decided not to breed her any more. We get her for the cost of spaying. As we are heading overseas in May, the lady is quite happy to keep her for us until we return in June. See pic below.

We then drove further north to another small town called Te Aroha, where a festival was being held. There were various activities taking place in the town, but the main action was centred on the Domain, where a considerable number of tent/stalls had been set up by local artisans selling their wares, and school groups selling food and drink to raise funds.

We had a good wander around in the brilliant sunshine -- a perfect late summer's day. I took a shot of youngsters selling chocolate fudge to raise money for a skate board park. I gave them my card and told them to look on this site after tonight -- so your photo is below, kids!

We drove back to Matamata to visit a cousin of Joan's; unfortunately, he was away fishing this weekend but we had a cup of tea and a chat with his wife. It being late in the afternoon when we left her, we stopped at the supermarket to get supplies of cold meat and things for tea, then returned to the camp.

These photos are thumbnails; click on each one to see bigger.

Missy the Burmese	Te Aroha Festival	Selling Fudge

Sunday, March 24, 2002

Last night was clear and cold; I was well wrapped up in a sleeping bag, but Joan had not brought a divet and suffered. There was a lot of activity in the camp all night -- people talking; walking on gravel carelessly; and somewhere away from the camp, there was a party with serious PA gear running flat out. The music beat was all that carried, and it sounded like old heavy metal. It didn't keep me awake, but Joan had a very restless night. I think that's camping over for this season <grin>.

We had a leisurely breakfast, packed up, and left the camp at 9.45 am, heading straight back to Rotorua. Called into Joanna for coffee about 11 am, then back home to unpack. Had a quiet time for the rest of the day, preparing for a busy week again. We're off to Wanganui on Wednesday to attend the Camera Club meeting, then down to Wellington on Thursday to have a few days with Sue and Jeremy, returning next Sunday.