For those who remember my old (1964) Rover 95, it's gone. I gave it away to someone who's interested in restoring it. It was that or restore it myself (lack of time/motivation) or sell it for scrap, which would be a very sad thing to have done.

So it's off to what is hopefully a good home, and one day I hope to see it being driven around again.

Bye bye Rover.

There's been a lot of stuff in the media recently which is annoying me, and I keep meaning to vent about it. So here goes :) Today's fun topic is the idea of reserved seats on the Auckland supercity council for Maori representatives.

To quote from NRT - "...the hikoi has made it clear that an Auckland which excludes Maori will have electoral consequences."

This concept of excluding Maori intrigues me. It's cropping up in various news media, in statements from people who emailed in to Morning Report this morning, in interviews I've watched. But whereabouts in any of the proposals is it written that Maori will be excluded? There's been a lot of vitriol poured out accompanied by claims that Maori will have no voice if guaranteed seats are left out. Excuse me, but you do still get to vote, right?

In the same submission read out on the radio this morning, the submitter called for equality and quoted the Treaty of Waitangi as granting all Maori full rights as British subjects. Which to me says that they[*] have the same right to a vote as I do, and through this the same right of representation. But where does it say that there is a greater right of representation? Because I believe that's what guaranteed seats provides for.

[*] I actually feel somewhat odd using the concept of they/them and me, because as far as I'm concerned, I'm a New Zealander. And so is anyone who has Maori ancestry. Can we get over this them and us thing already? Apparently not, because a vocal section of the population seem to think that they want to be treated differently, and to have different rules applied to them.

For the record, when the elections come around, the race of the candidates isn't actually a consideration in my mind. Are they going to be good at their job, and serve the people well? (I'd love to say that I've found candidates who meet these criteria, but as yet I'm still looking. Still, one has to pick the best of the options presented). And those candidates should be there to represent everyone in the area they represent (however that area is determined) - Maori, Pakeha, Pacific Islanders, Asians...and New Zealanders. Not just one group. But whatever ancestry of the candidate, if they are one who has spoken in favour of this apartheid regime that some citizens seem to want, then I'm not voting for them.

So if you're not in the SCA, you probably won't care about this, but I've made it not friends only in case people not on my friends list find it interesting.

( Read more... )

So you know how the airlines have recently developed an annoying habit of changing flight times after you book them? We just got hit by that. Except that unlike most times, they failed to get in touch with me about it and even acknowledge so.

I happened to look at their website to see if the flight we thought was happening at 5pm was still on time. What I found instead was a nice little note in my Frequent Flyer page saying "Your flight time has changed. Click to confirm". Note the "Click to confirm". That goes away when you confirm it, so Qantas _know_ I hadn't confirmed it.

Changed. To 3:30pm. I found this at 3:10pm. Not a chance.

The fairly helpful person at the Qantas callcenter said that they would normally try calling people who hadn't acknowledged through the website, and she didn't know why they hadn't.

But we're now rebooked for 9am. Tomorrow. *sigh* Which means we'll get up to Hanmer where my family are this Xmas sometime after lunch.

Dear Qantas. You are no longer on my xmas card list, and while I've previously been a fan of your service in the past, I am now Not Impressed. In fact, I'm mightily pissed off.




Unfortunately, Air NZ has recently introduced retarded baggage charges (you now only get one bag as part of your free allowance, which is really not useful for sports/medieval types), so I don't like them much either.

Arrrgh.

Merry Xmas.

I could stop there but...

Well ok, some more detail - why is it that all of the places I've looked at so far have a pathetic selection of brands, or only sort by brand (and not by product, thus making it hard to search). Or even better, have categories which you then click on and they say "sorry, no products in this category".

Also, decent kitchen stuff is expensive. But I knew that already. Unfortunately (or not?), V and I already have a bunch of kitchen stuff, so anything we "need" at this point is nicer (generally aka more expensive) stuff.

Anyone have suggestions of really good, functional, gift registry places? Particularly for kitchen stuff.

Oh, and we probably need to sort this today, since invites _really_ need to be sent out. (about 2 months ago)

So, yesterday was a little more interesting than I was expecting. Nothing too dramatic, but after 6 and a half hours of flying (Ottawa->Chicago, Chicago->San Francisco), and having previously corresponded with the contact at the vendor I'm visiting who said they'd have someone there to meet me... yeah. About that.

I'm told that said company waited about an hour and a half, and paged me etc. Which is interesting, because I sat around at the United Airlines meeting point for 2 hours, and never heard nor saw on the paging monitors anything for me. *sigh* In the end, I gave up and decided to see if I could find a train (actually I had to change trains 3 times, so 4 trains[1] in total) that would take me down to San Jose. Which was an entirely successful exercise in the end, although being a Sunday I ended up waiting around for a while for one of the trains. But hey, public transportation is a good thing, and I'm all for using it. And it was a hell of a lot cheaper than the alternatives.

So today's been spent wandering around giant malls in San Jose, which while interesting - lots of big name brands, a seriously large selection of different outlets which all sell pretty much anything you want - it was just like home, except bigger. And I'm not sure much of it was significantly cheaper.

Almost bought a camera at Best Buy, but I think I'll just go with taking lower quality pictures on my cellphone and getting pics from other people who're here who have decent cameras, as if I buy one here, the warranty's basically useless next Monday as soon as I leave the country.

Oh, and I think I'm getting a cold. *grumble*

[1] Alright, one was a monorail, but I consider it a trainlike object for this conversation. At least, I think it was. The SFO airport "AirTrain".

See, you can tell when I'm away - I start posting a lot more in my LJ than normal!

This is really quite funny (thanks Morbid for posting this to IRC :)

Part 4b

Oh, I almost forgot. We went to an ice hockey game last night. Am now addicted, want to go again. Muahaha :)

Last full day in Ottawa today, then it's off back to San Jose and San Francisco for the next 10 days. Today has been a day of playing tourist, which I think I could easily spend another week doing. Ah well, I might just have to come back some time (preferably with a vendor paying for the trip again, and V along as well).

So today started with attempting to go to the Canadian Aviation Museum. Except that it's closed for expansion work. Damn. So we wombled off to the Sci/Tech museum instead, which was quite interesting. How many NZ science museums have a tokamak? And on the way there and back we got to enjoy the scenery along the riverside, which is really quite beautiful at this time of the year.

Am pondering buying myself a decent camera, although I probably should've done so on the way over rather than now, so I'll have to make do with the ones from my phone, plus pictures from the cameras of my workmates who've been travelling with me. One flew back today, her part of the trip over with, which is a bit sad, since it means that once I head off tomorrow and leave my ex-workmate who's also along on this trip as the vendor rep here, I'll be by myself. It's more fun travelling with people you know. Ah well.

After lunch I explored central Ottawa on foot, dropping through the Byward Market (many interesting shops), then up around the Parliament buildings (which I think must be some of the nicest in the world, making me want to enter Canadian politics just so I could work there) and finally through the National Gallery of Canada. Which was... wow. I wish I'd had more time there to look around further. Seeing various pictures on the walls which are the originals from some of the Renaissance art books I have... yeah. Wow.

All of the Canadians I've talked to so far are polite and lovely. I think a lot of NZers could learn from this, or maybe it's just that they're being nice to me because I'm obviously Not From Around Here (people keep thinking I have an English accent at first, then becoming increasingly undecided the more they talk to me, until they give in and ask).

Oh, and it's daylight savings here tonight, so I get an extra hour's sleep before I have to head to the airport in the morning, which is excellent. Assuming of course that my travel arrangements did allow for this, and that I'm not going to end up missing a plane and being stuck in Chicago. Still, if that happens I'm sure I can survive.

So, Ottawa rules. Apart from the traffic, but I'm from tiny NZ city (ok, the biggest one, which is only 50% or so bigger than Ottawa), so what do I know about traffic.

Oh, and the weather. I thought snow was fun. I don't mind some snow, and -3 deg or so. But the doorman at the hotel told me about -20 deg days. That's a little chilly for my liking. Although I'm sure people here have ways of coping.

So, Nortel is an amazing place to visit. They have various research facilities, but this one's where (among other things) their optical research labs are. Very _very_ impressive technology. And getting to meet and talk to the people who're inventing this stuff was great.

So, restaurants/cafes to visit in Ottawa: The Black Tomato (pretty good). The Black Thorn (also, good. And yes, we appeared to have a gothic theme going on at this point). Vittoria Trattori (or something, however it was spelt) - yummy Italian food. Eighteen - OMG yes, would eat again A+++++.

Part of me wants to learn French now, because it seems like a fun language to converse in. Maybe next life. Not sure I have time right now. Well, I probably do, but... we'll see.

One more day of interesting technology demos and meetings, then I have a day of playing tourist, then a day of airplanes. Can I have a Concorde now (or better yet, my own Gulfstream 5?).

The timezone difference is somewhat annoying too. It's 11pm or so here, which means it's about 4pm in NZ. This doesn't make for an easy alignment of times to call home.

Part 1 (getting to Chicago) would've been posted earlier, but I was a bit tired last night, and didn't feel like finding some internet access to use.


So, it's snowing. Where am I I can hear you ask? I'm currently in Ottawa, where I'll be for the next few days. Then its off to San Jose/San Francisco for a week before returning home.

Ottawa's where Nortel Networks are based, and work buys stuff from them, so there's a couple of us from work and an ex workmate who now works for Nortel here attending a technology demonstration event, which should be fairly interesting stuff (assuming you're into that sort of thing).

I was pleasantly surprised not to encounter any TSA or other bureaucratic irritation most of the way here, which having now said that I expect I'll have just cursed myself for the rest of the trip and be hassled at every opportunity. I say _most_ of the trip, because Canadian immigration made me go and talk to a second person, who asked me the same questions as the guy at the first desk, looked suspiciously at me quite a lot (although I suspect he just didn't want to be at work today) and generally gave the impression of trying to find a reason to decline me entry. He failed, so now I'm in Canada. Muahaha.

Anyway, travelling (the actual sitting on planes bit) is generally teh suck. But most of you know that, so there's nothing really insightful there. NZ->San Francisco, sit around there for a couple of hours, then fly to Chicago. Meet up with workmates cousin and had Chicago style pizza for dinner (admittedly at 10pm, but we couldn't tell what day it was by then, let alone what time). Overnight in Chicago at $random_ignorable_hotel, then this morning we flew to Ottawa. I think it's now Tuesday, but I'm pretty sure I owe the Universe a day now, which it'll claim back from me in a couple of weeks.

Other interesting points of note:

WALL-E is cool. If you haven't seen it (ok, I probably should've seen it aaaages ago when it came out), do. Air NZ has a fairly decent selection of movies to watch.

Having someone who's got airline lounge membership travelling with you is good. But he's going home direct from Canada, damn it.

Upgrading myself to Premium Economy on Air NZ was probably worth it. More legroom is good, the food's better, and the level of service you get makes it a lot more relaxing. I think I might've slept for a couple of hours, since there are bits of the flight which probably took longer than I remember. But it was quite bumpy the whole way over the Pacific, so I didn't get as much sleep as I would've liked. Also, the chairs don't _quite_ recline back far enough to be comfortable. Ah well.


This weekend - explore Ottawa. Unless I find an easy/cheap way to go visiting people on my way back to SF (which I'm currently scheduled to do on Sunday).

Greetings all,

Tomorrow morning (Sunday October 19th) from 7am until (hopefully) no later
than 9am, most of the sca.org.nz/paradise.gen.nz services will be
unavailable as I commence the migration of services to some new hardware.
I apologise for the short lead time of this outage notification.

During this time I'll disable the mail and web servers - my apologies if
this coincides with a time you like to be able to read your mail, but it's
the most convenient time being just after the daily backups have usually
finished running.

In the event that anything doesn't go well, or the nightly backups haven't
completed or are in any way deemed insufficient, I will be rolling back to
the existing server.

It's also entirely likely that I'll miss something during the migration.
Hopefully nothing too important, but if you notice anything that doesn't
seem to be working properly afterwards, please email me directly or comment here.

International travel is crazy...


Trying to find flights which are reasonably priced and aren't simple return tickets is proving to be... annoying. In the extreme.


*sigh*

Serves me right for wanting to go A-B-C-D-A rather than A-B-A.

Yes, I think I shall go to this...


http://www.ticketmaster.co.nz/event/2400413269760C60?artistid=798528&majorcatid=10001&minorcatid=1#

Ok, so it's not Qantas' fault, but I was supposed to be in Wellington about two hours ago.

Does it count that we were orbiting around _over_ Wellington? Probably not. And I bet they won't give me additional airpoints for flying back and forth several times in one attempt to get to Wellington.

*sigh*

Soon, we might leave Auckland (again) and have another go. Wheeee.

At least they could let me into the Qantas Club lounge to have some food. But nooo...

If you don't know what's going on, this is going to be a very odd post.

Finished (all done with 2m [or thereabouts] sections)
4x 6m
8x 4m
6x 2m

So another 4 or so 4m ones to go.

And all of the 4m ones probably want the rough bits tidied up on the top sections, or they'll snag on things. But that can wait. It's more important to get them cut to size.

Polish. Definitely Polish.

Why does it always rain on days when I need to do stuff outside?

Today I'm making bamboo poles for May Crown. The tricky part is trying to make then in sections that slot together (so we can fit them in the horse truck[1]), while still achieving a decent height (6m or so). Fun! And all this while being rained upon.



Oh well. Yay for having a decent covered deck out the back, since I can do most of this under there (apart from the actual harvesting of the bamboo)




[1] Yes, they could fit in lengthwise. But that's not useful for the next people who have to move them, and the horses won't like having long poles next to them either.

In today's interesting news, my lovely lady has consented to marry me.

*bounce*

That is all. More (maybe) once I stop grinning so much.

Well, at least the truck related bits.

We're home! Hurrah! We pondered stopping off somewhere along the way home from Wellington today (left Bernard's about midday), but ended up just coming all the way home. Mmm, proper bed. It's a bit of a motivator.


My lady (who did all of the driving, me not having an HT license yet) is awesome, and I shall go and make with the hugs now.

So, following on from the Greenpeace name-a-whale poll which selected the truely inspired name of "Mr Splashy Pants" for a whale I invite you all to participate in McDonald's name-a-burger poll.

I hereby nominate the "Mr Splashy Pants Burger", and have submitted such.

:)