We have started house renovations – yip after all the work on the ex-state house, we had a decent rest from such things when we moved into this house, but this weekend we started the first of a few alterations on our list. We have an internal wall we put some “windows” in to let in some more light. Just needing a sand and painting now. As always, the job is longer and more fiddly that you think it would be, but the result (whilst not finished) is all worth it.
7. October 2007 »
What do parents and a brewery have in common? Invercargill if you are talking about my (Cam’s) parents and the Invercargill Brewery. We are just back from a visit down to Invercargill to catch up with my family for my Dad’s 60th birthday – and naturally managed a visit to the makers of the best beer Pitch Black.
It was a great trip, we shot down stopping off at places like Moeraki Boulders on the way. Once at Invy we did a day trip out to Rivertown, Monkey Island, and Cosy Nook. The weather was great, the ocean beautiful, and seeing Dad get caught out with a big wave priceless.
Joss and I caught up with Steve at the Invercargill Brewery and with a beer in our hands got a tour around the Brewery before leaving with a stash of beer & goodies (including a cap with a bottle opener on it!).
We also got down to Bluff and had a nice meal out despite the weather turning that day. And naturally we got in a Jimmy’s Pie during our stay.
On the way home we saw the Kingston Flyer – and it was snowing! I will post a photo or two once we have them organised (yip we got a new camera after the TransApline trip). We stopped off at Arrowtown for lunch which is always nice. Cromwell for icecreams and a play at the playground for Brook. Cromwell was looking a lot nicer than I remembered, a very nice place.
We had a snow fight whilst travelling over the Lindis Pass (even though I have mentioned snow twice, it was lovely & sunny most of the trip back). We stopped over for the night in Geraldine, whilst close to home we were keen to have a better look at this town and were pleased we did. And finally we are home with a couple days off before starting back at work & school.
5. October 2007 »
I have not had any real issues with Vista until now. I have installed a WAMP server (tried both WAMPServer and XAMPP) and if I use http://localhost it takes for ever to bring up the web pages. If I use http://127.0.0.1 it works fine. If I disable my wireless adapter, localhost works – so maybe it is not a Vista thing, but I have not got too far googling the issue. I see a lot of posts about locahost not working, but not many saying 127.0.0.1 works fine though. My issue occurs in both Firefox and IE7.
There is some suggestion it is UAC that is the issue, but then why with no active network adapter does it work without any UAC changes? There is talk about IPv6 being the issue as well. I think I will have a look at the network adapter angle, and then firewall, then park the issue if that all fails – at least I can use the 127.0.0.1 method.
18. September 2007 »
Last weekend we shot off on the TranzAlpine to Greymouth. The train trip was fantastic, we all really enjoyed it. You get a great view and go through areas you cannot go by car. We struck good weather on both sides of the Alps which was a bonus.
We did an overnight trip, the idea of return with only 45-60min in Greymouth was not too attractive – 9 hours on the train would have been too much for us, let alone Brook.
Greymouth was nice. A little disappointing about the lack of the shops that were open, but it was a good stop over.
Only bummer of the weekend, our camera was dropped and does not work any more. Not too sure what we will do about it yet. I guess we’ll talk with a camera shop to get some advice.
29. August 2007 »
Yip, we have got ourselves a new PC – the other 5 year old one custom built PC has moved into Brook’s room. We went Dell – because I had some customisation options, and for price. Service has been good too. Yes I could have built another one, but the customisation via Dell gave a resemblance of that build your own, but the comfortability that it is all compatible. May be a sign of getting older, may be of getting wiser, or just the convenience factor of leaving it all to people who build PCs day in & out – but I am guessing we’ll do the Dell type thing from here on in. Must say the Dell email support centre has been good. Again I have the skills to sort out most issues, but why work harder when you can work smarter. We all use Google to help find solutions to issues, why not tap into Dell Support?
We are getting use to Vista – yes it is new and you need to get use to things as they may be done differently than with XP – but so what? Not too sure what all the negative fuss is all about. True I have not put it though its paces but hey I like it. Outlook XP to 2003 was a big change GUI wise, but once I got use to it I think it is a much better design and hate going back to Outlook XP on other PCs. I am guessing Vista will be the same. We are actually running Office 2007 in this puppy – again that good GUI for Outlook that came from v2003.
Anyway I am happy, Joss is happy, and Brook is delighted to have “his own PC” so all is cool.
12. August 2007 »
Two of the best movies I have seen in a long time – Shaun of the Dead & Hot Fuzz. They are both made by the same team, Hot Fuzz being the latest release. They are both very funny, laugh out loud funny – Shaun of the dead more so, Hot Fuzz is a little more serious (but not by much). Very tempting to purchase them to add to our small collection of DVDs.
Want a good movie to laugh to, then pick one of these.
29. July 2007 »
My ramblings have not been too frequent of late – at least on the web. Not too sure what we have been doing, mainly living week to week.
The highlight would have to have been Joss & my trip to Sydney. We packed Brook up and sent him off to his grand parents in Golden Bay and we had 6 days in Oz. That was very cool. We stayed in the CBD the whole time, basically walking the whole area. Each day we caught a movie – more movies than we’d normally get to see in a year! Lots of fun.
Speaking of fun I did my first school trip with Brook. Brook’s class and one other went to the airport for a morning and I joined in as a parent helper. A bus packed with 6 year olds is interesting, we’ll leave it at that. The trip went well and it was nice to see Brook interacting with the other kids.
It has been 2 months, I am sure there have been some other semi interesting things going on, but I am drawing a blank. So time to sign off – may be the next update will be written on a new PC… if so I am sure to have some boring geek stuff to write :)
24. July 2007 »
I have been meaning to write something in ages (and no new photos in a year!). Time seems to be zooming by. It is birthday season in our family – April, May & June for the three of us. With Joss’s today we had a nice lunch out and mini golf of all things (Brook’s idea – and it was actually surprisingly fun). Brook was the only one who got a hole in one. But then he was the only one who was 20 over par on a couple of holes!
We have shifted some rooms around to make better use of space and things like the computer more accessible, esp when we have visitors. Brook now has a bigger room which he loves. Although first night in it a tummy bug meant all the rooms that we cleaned Brook ended up being sick in :(. It also meant a wireless network as there was not any great options extending the CAT5 cable network. Am thinking we may need a larger gain aerial since we have a number of walls to go through, but otherwise it seems to work well. Quick to set up and to enable encryption etc. I think though better gain aerials should be included in the pack, esp when targeting the home market where people are probably going to have more walls, cupboards etc in the path.
So we all seem busy & constantly tired. Joss has more hours at work now and I am adding some IT enterprise architecture work to my day. We are looking forward to a holiday to catch up & have a break.
Later days.
27. May 2007 »