A call from The Ministry

Anisha shouted me Subway for lunch. A replacement mouse for my work PC also arrived. I had gone through a couple of mice trying to find a decent one. The last one I had was awful, evidenced by the complaints from my colleagues assisting me with work.

I was provided with a Microsoft Wireless Optical Mouse 2000. I didn't ask for a wireless one, but there was no way I was going to turn it down. I hinted to Anisha that night that I might want one for my birthday.

I really feel my manager Wayne May is very supportive, and its the things like this that make the difference. Zeacom treats it's employees well.

I am very skeptical of the 6+ Months claimed battery life on the packaging. However, it looked so cool that I really wanted to buy one for myself now! I'll check the pricing on the Ascent Technologies website. Only NZ$59.40, a very reasonable price.

I must remember to bring my Ubuntu CD to work as Harpreet wishes to borrow it. Unfortunately, after after writing this reminder note to myself here, I am unable to find them. I think I tossed them out.

I asked Nigel if he and Kim wanted to come to the food festival this weekend. Unfortunately, they wont be blessing us with their presence because they are going to the snow for the weekend.

I got a phone call from my old Friend Lydia Huggard today. She was at work (Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry), due to finish her shift at a crazy 3am in the morning! I remember the days at Datacom when I worked those crazy hours. Never again I say!

Lydia has just completed a web-design course. She asked what I was up to on Friday night. I said that Anisha and I had nothing set in stone at this stage. It was suggested we meet up at the Cock and Bull in Botany for a few drinks. I said I would check with the boss and get back to her. I emailed Lydia some links to my Homepage, blog, and YouTube channel as she requested. I received approval from the boss via MSN at 8.32pm.

I also got a call from some phone-survey group. They were asking me about which Mayoral candidate I would vote for, and what my concerns were as a resident.

I changed the counter that I use on this blog to one provided by statcounter.com. It is a free service and I can actually track unique visitors to the site. The other great thing is that I can exclude certain IP's from the count, like my home and work IP addresses!

A lot of funny emails went around the office today. Below is a funny video and the picture to the right gets a rating of 5 out of 10 for funniness.


Video: Ameriquest Mortgage Company Advertisement

Useless Information: In 18th Century France, visitors to the royal palace in Versailles were allowed to stand in a roped-off section of the main dining room and watch the king and queen eat.

A Network-shared global clipboard?

Even with all the Big Brother monitoring on the corporate LAN these days, you would expect that an item such as your own computers Windows Clipboard would be safe.

This was far from the true today when a system irregularity was found. An irregularity, yes, but a feature that was working as designed. You may be surprised to find that our computers clipboards developed some type of network-aware sharedness. What this meant was that when a person placed something in the clipboard, it was being made available to other users on the LAN, and appearing when a paste function was used.

An example of this occurring, is when one user was using the copy and paste function, but ending up pasting an email from a colleagues PC into her Microsoft CRM case. We narrowed this down to the VMware virtual machine.

When a user has a VMware session open, and places an item on the clipboard on their local PC, a copy is made available to the local machine. Now, anyone subsequently using that same VM session may inject (for want of a better word) that clipboard content into their local PC by using the paste option. Obviously, timing is a major factor in whether the user gets clipboard contents intended for somebody else.

With the help of ISHelp (Outsource IT), we (Read Alan Murray) narrowed this down and Alan advised the team of an option to disable this 'feature'. My clipboard will never feel safe again.

Useless Information: During the American revolution, many brides used to wear the colour red instead of white as a symbol of rebellion.

Fixing the AdSense Problem

As I use both Google AdSense and Google Adwords, I made a slight modification to my Adwords setup. I placed my homepage into the competitive add filter. Why you might ask? Because advertisements for my own homepage were appearing in my blog!

I am slightly concerned that Google AdSense seems to run out of advertisements sometimes on my blog. This leaves my blog with a blank ad unit, or a community notice. The small ad unit at the top of my blog is often affected. Sometimes it is even replaced with a search box saying 'search for ads on'. I wanted to see what its about, but unfortunately I am prohibited from clicking my own adverts.

Blair Keeley from work told me that he has setup his new FTA Digital Decoder in order to pick up Freeview. He told me that all he needed to do with his existing LNB was to adjust it until he picked up Freeview.

The final of Ultimate Force (Ultimate Farce?) is on tonight, so I plan to watch it. One of the few programs I have enjoyed on TV1, other than Spooks and a handful of other British programs.

Useless Information: During the Cambrian period, about 500 million years ago, a day was only 20.6 hours long.

Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head

Today, I had some problems with my Laptop. Ever since I installed the latest driver for my Intel Graphics chipset, Ive had problems with blue screens. However, these blue screen failures only manifest themselves when I disconnect my second monitor from the laptop. The BSOD occurs only on startup. I unplugged my secondary LCD monitor when Anisha was playing Command and Conquer: Generals.

Fortunately, I managed to rectify the problem as I have done in the past in a highly technical manner. That is, restarting the PC until Windows comes up without a BSOD. After it sorts itself out, it works flawlessly.

To be more specific, the problem driver is the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator for Mobile. It operates fine, unless I unplug my external monitor (And a certain setting is configured in the driver settings). The OEM driver for the chipset is available from the Toshiba website. However, that driver is ancient and is a sloth.

We went to DSE for a bit, and then Anisha wanted to go to the garden centre, so we went there. When we were at DSE, I bought a cheap game called CSI: Dark Motives for only NZ$15.90. We played this for most of the evening.

Useless Information: During the Depression, banks first used sellotape to mend torn currency.

The Simpsons Movie

In the evening, Anisha and I went to see The Simpson's Movie. I found it to be a very funny movie. I did notice however, the reuse of some obviously successful components from the TV series we love.

Below is a brief description of some of the more major events that occurred in the movie.

The film begins with a concert performed by Green Day on Lake Springfield. After playing for a number of hours, they begin to speak about the environment. This immediately angers the crowd, who pelt the band with rubbish and bottles. The barge that Green Day are playing on eventually sinks, and they are presumed drowned.

The next day, the Simpson's family are attending church. During the service, Grampa Simpson is possessed by God and warns the city of a future disaster. He is whisked away quickly by the Simpson's family, after being wrapped up in the churches rug.

The story evolves around the pollution of a Lake Springfield. Lisa Simpson brings to the attention of the town the risk of contaminating the lake. The Mayor responds by banning dumping in the lake, and erecting various deterrent's to potential illegal dumpers.

At the time, Homer Simpson is in the possession of a new pet pig (Spider-Pig/Harry Plopper). Homer adopts this pig as it runs from Krusty the Clown after use in a Krusty commercial. The pig is destined to by destroyed after the commercial is complete. Now Homers new friend, This animal tends to cause a large amount of waste, which Homer has stored in an overflowing silo in his yard (Homer admits that some of the waste is his own). Homer also appears to be giving more attention to his new pet then his own son Bart.

After Marge Simpson's demands disposal of the pig poo, Homer is finally convinced to take it to a waste processing site for proper disposal. Unfortunately, he is distracted by a phone call from a friend (Lenny) who tells him that his favourite donut shop (Lard Lad Donuts) has been shut down and is giving out free donuts.

As there is quite a line at the disposal station, Homer becomes impatient and dumps his waste into Lake Springfield. This results in a number of ecological anomalies, such as a squirrel developing a dozen eyes after having immediate contact with the contaminated water.

During this time, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) finds out about the contamination, and places a large impenetrable dome around the entirety of Springfield. Nobody can enter, and nobody can exit. The EPA in its infinite wisdom decides to wipe Springfield off the map. This includes taking it off the map, and advertising it as the next Grand Canyon (Thanks to Tom Hanks).

The town finds out that Homer is responsible and wishes to crucify him for his crime. The Simpson family escapes through a sink hole in their backyard which takes them outside the dome. The Simpson family home falls into the sink hole behind them and is destroyed. The Simpson's family escape to Alaska to make a new start.

The Simpson's are now poor, with very little money. Homer wins a truck by performing a full-circle on a motorbike within a globe (Ball of Death) at a carnival. He will perform this again in an even more spectacular function later in the movie.

In Alaska, Marge and Homer have a fallout as Marge wants to help Springfield and Homer does not. This eventuates in Marge leaving Homer to try and return to Springfield.

Homer becomes frantic and starts looking for Marge, but falls asleep in the middle of the snow. The next morning a polar bear tries to attack him but a mysterious person dressed in Native American clothing wards it off and drags Homer to her tent.

When he is revived the stranger, revealed to be a woman with enormously sized breasts, tells him that he must reach an epiphany or he is doomed to spend the remainder of his days alone. He soon has a mysterious vision where he is tortured by a forest of trees and reaches an epiphany. He thanks the lady, and sets off to find the family.

At around the same time, Marge, Lisa, Maggie, and Bart are caught by the EPA who have a warrant out for their arrest (A Tip off from the NSA). They are released in the centre of Springfield after a failed attempt by Homer to break them free.

The EPA decides as a final solution (With the assistance of President Schwarzenegger), that they will destroy Springfield with a small but powerful explosive device. The device is lowered into Springfield. The bomb has a timer on it.

Homer returns to Springfield by entering a small hole at the top of the dome which was used to place the bomb into the town.

Eventually, with the assistance of Bart, Homer performs an impossible acrobatic stunt and Bart throws the bomb out of the gap at the top of the dome. The bomb explodes, shattering the dome. No injury is afforded to anyone, except Doctor Nick who appears to be severely injured by a large piece of the dome landing on his midsection.

As a final desperate act, Russ Cargill (In charge of the EPA), threatens to shoot Homer and Bart. They are saved when Maggie pushes a rock on to him, causing him to be knocked-out.

The town praises Homer for his efforts, and rebuild Springfield. We witness the Simpson's house being rebuilt. All is well.

There are multiple more subplots including Lisa meeting a new boyfriend (an Irish boy named Colin), a dare between Homer and Bart that results in Bart skateboarding naked to Krusty Burger. There is a loss of belonging for Bart towards his father, and the bonding between Bart and his neighbour Mr Flanders.

Useless Information: During the Middle Ages, few people were able to read or write. The clergy were virtually the only ones that could.

Thems the Brakes

Looks like the work done by Hometune turned into $NZ515 today. I had to get the front brake pads replaced. I needed a service, and I was convinced it was better value at the same time.

So I got the brakes and the service done. Now I'm out of pocket the total of $NZ515.

The technician from Hometune (Martin Stock), had some trouble getting the centrepiece off my mag wheels. I was asked for the tool to remove it. Whether the tool was stolen when my car was broken into, or its gone missing somewhere down the line, who knows, but I didn't have it.

The front brake pads were replaced with the Lucas brand. Apparently a high quality brand. I found Marty to be very professional (He has worked on my car before). I'm planning to get a replacement centrepiece removing tool from magwarehouse.com in Manukau City.

The guy from magwarewarehouse.com (Stephen Alexander) was supposed to email me back whether they had the tool or not. He never did.

Useless Information: During the Middle Ages, it was widely believed that men had one less rib than woman. This is because of the story in the Bible that Eve had been created out of Adam's rib.

Simon from Sales is Shouting Support

Today, our true and honourable account manager Simon Grieve shouted the support team some Pizza from Hell's Pizza.

There was ample pizza to go around, and we were even blessed by the presence of Tony Wilcock and Zlatko Filipcic.

At the end of the day Anisha and I went to Countdown to get some groceries for the weekend.

We went to Burger King, and then I inflated my car tyres. The damn inflating tool thing at Shell Botany was out of service, so we went round the corner to BP. After getting home we marinated a chicken.

Useless Information: Eating chocolate was once considered aa temptation of the devil.

Sky Television dosen't like Freeview

Nothing exciting happened today. It was my managers (Wayne May) birthday. The sales team (read Simon Grieve) is to be shouting a lunch tomorrow according to the weekly HotSpot report.

I'm still waiting patiently for Kontera to set up my publisher account.

I phoned Hometune today to organise someone to come have a look at my car. Its making expensive screeching noises whenever I use the brakes. NZ$79 which includes the first 30 minutes of labour. This is probably going to cost me more money then I would prefer.

The TAB in Auckland city was subjected to an armed robbery according to my Police Scanner (My trusty old uniden BC80XLT).

I read a bit more about Freeview today. Apparently, although you can run Sky TV and Freeview off the same satellite dish, at the moment you have to purchase and install a dual LNB as the polarity of the systems are different. At some future date, Sky is due to use the same polarity as Freeview.

I've decided I'm probably going to drop the Yahoo! Widgets I installed on my PC. Primarily because half the items in the dock don't automatically update themselves. This is a feature quite important to me. Maybe when I install Windows Vista I will try their gadgets.

I showed dad TVNZ TVonDemand. The free video clips are preceded by the usual barrage of advertisements (The Warehouse advertising Harry Potter on this occasion). Mum showed very little interest.

I created a new blog for my private ramblings on blogger. I also enabled comments on this blog. I like the moderation options whereby I can control what is posted. I also like the word verification which should stifle any automated bots trying to post.

Useless Information: Euripides was the first person on record to denounce slavery.

Erroneously used IT terms

Below are terms that really get me annoyed when used incorrectly:

- People that call their computer the "Hard Drive". Its like calling a car a steering wheel!
- People that say they had to "Crash their computers" to recover their system.

I had lunch with Anisha at the FM Cafe. I took my umbrella with me even though it was not raining. I did not want a repeat of a previous soaking incident. She gave me [Suppressed] number two, there are 48 remaining to collect.

There was a fantastic rainbow outside the office today. But alas, I did not have my digital camera with me. My crys for anyone who had a digital camera went unanswered.

By the time I had pulled out my paltry 1.3 megapixel cellphone camera (Crappy unstable, bug-ridden, slow Nokia 6680), the rainbow was all but obscured by clouds. My quest for photographs was yet again hindered.

Ritesh Lal from Placemakers Helpdesk/Datacom told me by MSN today that he is coming to Zeacom on Wednesday for some training. It is Kim Putt's birthday on the 10th August. She will be 26. On another note, Charlene is in the current issue of Bride & Groom.

About a month back, I was looking for an additional advertising network to use on my blog. I found one that actually turned keywords on a site into hyperlinks, pointing to an advertisers website. Unfortunately, as hard as I tried tonight, I can not find that website. [Update 9:36pm - I found it! It is called Kontera]

I have put through an application to Kontera to sign up.

Useless Information: Francis Scott Key was a young lawyer who wrote the poem 'The Star Spangled Banner' after being inspired by watching the Americans fight off the British attack of Baltimore during the War of 1812, The poem became the words to the national anthem.

Harry Potter and The Order at MacDonald's

Today, Anisha wanted to see the latest Harry Potter movie entitled Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

Anisha had taken the bus to the Botany Downs Shopping Centre. I went and picked her up from The Warehouse Botany where she had been shopping. I bought a sausage in bread from the usual charity stand in front of The Warehouse. It was only $NZ1.00, but I question the hygiene standards in use by the two Howick College boys there.

I slotted a little vacuum cleaning and dusting in at home, with Anisha as my aid.

Next we went to Silvia Park. As always, it took us an age to get a car park at that time of the day. However, it didn't take too long and we persevered until we found a space.

We went to MacDonald's for lunch. We then watched the Harry Potter movie.

We bumped into Nigel at Countdown Botany Downs. It looked like he had been doing some painting earlier today. Later on, we had dinner with mum and dad.

We watched CSI on the projector (mum had ironed the sheet that we had used!). After that Anisha was totally engrossed with the new Harry Potter book she bought from The Warehouse. She bought Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Useless Information: If a family had two servants or less in the US. in 1900, census takers recorded it as lower middle-class.

Georges Problem with the Bottle

Today I had a look at Georges PC and the problems he was having with it. Mum advised me incorrectly that he was running on Windows 98. Thank god when I arrived I found out that it was Windows XP Home.

I planned to have a quick look and see what I could do in a short space of time. In particular when I was doing it for free. IE6 would randomly freeze up all the time (The hourglass would just stick, which George referred to as a bottle). I did the following:

- I installed FireFox as an alternative browser
- I turned-off the three additional toolbars which were injected into Internet Explorer
- I disabled the third-party browser extensions
- I ran Lavasoft Adaware and Spybot Search and Destroy
- I upgraded the browser from IE6 to IE7

I could have done a lot more, but I was short on time. Hopefully I have fixed his problems. We also sold my old bed to Nicks brother Ross for $NZ100.00. He came and picked it up in the afternoon.

Later that night, I rigged up an impromptu home theatre setup with a projector and a couple of speakers to watch the rugby tonight. The All Black beats the Wallabies 26 to 12. New Zealand won the Netball and the Basketball too this weekend.

We had fish and chips for dinner. Mum made some banana splits for desert.

Also, have a look at the cute picture of Carlos which is completely irrelevant to what I'm writing about here.

Useless Information: If we had the same mortality rate as in the 1900s, more than half the people in the world today would not be alive.

ZeeClub Breakfast

Today, ZeeClub members were treated to a cooked breakfast. So for breakfast I selected from the smorgasbord of items; Bacon, Sausages, a hash brown, and some eggs.

They got me to pop down to the dairy an pick up some bread. I went down to the local dairy and picked some white toast bread for $3.40.

After work, I thought I would surprise Anisha. I came over to her house with flowers and chocolate. She seemed suitably impressed. Admittedly, I did eat a large proportion of the chocolates! Anisha had some problems with her Woosh connection which she appeared so sort out for herself.

She cooked me a lovely Tandoori Chicken meal, which I really loved. She's planning to cook this for my parents some time.

On the way home, there was a Police checkpoint on Highbrook Drive. This is the first time I have seen the cops on this new road. At home I heard on my Police Scanner about a crash between a car versus a motorbike on the corner of Ti Irirangi and Ti Rakau Drive.

Tomorrow morning at 10:00am I'm off to have a look at George William's PC which apparently has some problems, and my mother offered my services to him.

Useless Information: In 1778, fashionable women of Paris never went out in blustery weather without a lightning rod attached to their hats.

The Day After Yesterday

Grandad Tennent called up today. He is going under the knife for an operation on his eye tomorrow. Since his 80th birthday, he has not had the opportunity to work on his new computer as he has been 'Flat Out'.

He let me know that he has joined SeniorNet. This brought back memories of working in Microsoft Services with hundreds of calls from the elderly that utter it in their first sentence. ;-)

I changed the Google Adsense adverts on my blog. Hopefully I will get more clicks! Tomorrow, the Zee Club is shouting a breakfast for its members. I'm looking forward to it.

Useless Information: in 1801, 20 per cent of people in the US were slaves.

My First Server Build!

Today I built my first server from the ground up. Zeacom are going to be installing the Zeacom Communication Center server for one of our customers in the accounting industry. We have six other servers backed-up that need to be setup also!

I worked on the first one this afternoon. We received all the components from Ingram Micro and I went to work. I installed the Hard drive, CPU, Ram, and DVD Drive into the HP server provided. The server has 2 x 2.3 GHZ Intel Dual Core processors in it.

That's quite some power! It was more easy to work on this modern server than some of the desktop computers that I have worked on in the past. The RAM slots were easily accessible, and everything clicked into place.

After the hardware install, I configured RAID 5 on the server and installed Windows 2003 Server R2 on it. It was a breeze! Tomorrow I will need to complete some small network configuration changes and install SP2 for Windows Server 2003. I'll also need to install Zeacom Communication Center as well!

I also did this Avatar to the right on the Simpson's movie website. I could probably get a closer likeness if I spent more time on it.

Useless Information: In 1917, Margaret Sanger was jailed for one month for establishing the first birth control clinic.

Silvia Park Adventures

Today we went to the Silvia Park shopping centre. We picked out the wedding presents for Virginia.

We also went to Dick Smith Electronics Powerhouse in Silvia Park. We developed 133 Digital photos at 14 cents each. The prints were on special. When we got home, we put them in the album that we got from Kmart.

Anisha and I played Monopoly. For dinner we got takeaways from Punjabi Dhaba.

Useless Information: In 1937, yeast sales reached $20 million a year in the US.

An OJ at De Post

Today I met Anishas brother-in-law Rajeev (Raj). We went for coffee at the De Post Cafe in Mount Eden. Raj works for a company called Adtraction Marketing.

Raj is based in wellington and is going back on Sunday. We planned on going to Silvia Park afterwards, however finding parking was impossible so we gave up.

Anisha and I organised all the photos we planned to get printed out. I was going to order them from Snapfish, however after looking at the price of postage for 118 photos (it was $NZ9.99 postage), we decided not to go for it. Dick Smith Electronics Powerhouse has a special on photo printing of 14c per photo. We may get this done on Sunday.

Useless Information: In ancient Egypt, killing a cat was a crime punishable by death.

My Photos Have Arrived!

Today my photos arrived from SnapFish. They arrived from a factory in Glen Innes. But thats Glen Innes in New South Wales, Australia!

I am suitably impressed by the picture quality. This paves the way to print out a bigger selection of my photos!

I had to play around with the permissions on mums PC so that she could read the salvaged computer files from her old PC's Hard Drive (I threw it in an external drive enclosure some months back when her PC died). A simple taking of ownership of the files was all that was required.

Useless Information: In certain parts if India and ancient China mouse meat was considered a delicacy.

Three Occurances of Things

Today, nothing fantastic happened. Other then the horrendous weather throughout the North, and the high winds in Auckland, it was a fairly mundane day.

Blair and Dolly were working on a server for a customer that beeped strangely whenever they ran some of our Zeacom services.

I invited Anisha over to work on our holiday plans further. We made some additional bookings and were set.

Anisha wanted Pizza Hut so we went there for takeaways. I got some Wendy's. While waiting for Anishas Pizza we went to Blockbuster and browsed for a bit. Anisha suggested that we should hire out a game some time for the XBOX.

I reminded her that I already had a small selection of games. 2 to be precise (Purchasing the XBOX that time back turned out to be a bad choice). Ive still only got SWAT GST and Playboy Mansion. I really should sell the damn thing.

Useless Information: In medieval England, beer was often served with breakfast.

Sleep Sleep Sleep

Today, Anisha and I had a long sleep-in this morning (myself more so then Anisha).

Today we booked the tickets for the flights to Greymouth, and the associated train trip. The accommodation is yet to be organised.

I found that DigitalMax were offering 4" x 6" photos online for 18c each. DigitalPro had a special on for 17c each, but the site didn't look very professional to me.

Mum and dad shouted us Takeaways from Oceanz. Anisha didn't go for the fish too much, but we got her some veggie samosas. We finally drank the wine that we brought to Kim and Nigel's that didn't get drunk.

Useless Information: In Puritan times, to be born on a Sunday was interpreted as a sign of great sin.

Anisha gets an Agent

Anisha and I went down to Harvey Norman today. She decided wanted to get a new external hard drive. All of the hard drives at Harvey Norman were external ones.

I reminded Anisha, that in the past I had found it cheaper to buy and Internal drive and put it in an external drive enclosure. We went down to INC Technologies to check out the prices there.

The prices worked out about the same, given that the unit at Harvey Norman was down from $NZ249 to $NZ189. At normal prices, the offering at INC would have been cheaper. Anisha got the 250 Gig FreeAgent Desktop hard drive.

The static bags that the equipment came on them had little stickers which said 'Hello' on them. The installation manual stated 'This wont take long' with a disclaimer stating:

"Note: Times may vary depending on how excited you are about using your new FreeAgent desktop drive."

We went to Kmart and picked-up a couple of photo albums. We plan to order some prints of a load of our digital photos, pending the quality of the ones I ordered from Snapfish.

We went to Pak n Save to get some food. We witnessed a couple of people trying to back into each other. On the way out, we bumped (not literally) into Heather Tennent.

Later on we went through all the digital photos that we had, intending to have about 400 printed by Snapfish and put into the new albums. In the end we selected around 100 really good ones for inclusion.

At night, Anisha and I, along with Jonathon and Nigel, went to see the Transformers movie. Everyone seemed to like it. Prior to the movie we went to Borders and had a look around for a bit.

Useless Information: In the 1700's in London you could purchase insurance against going to hell.

A Faraday Cage in the Sky

Thank god it is Friday! Today we were completely short-staffed for a variety of reasons. I suggested to Wayne that he might want to shout us Pizza, which he did.

Anisha and I were going to go to Nandos for dinner, but the queue looked to long so we dined at the fine establishment Burger King.

We are tentatively planning to see the Transformers movie on Saturday. Hopefully Nigel and Kim can make it. He told me his Grandmother is ill in hospital so he must visit her on Saturday. I completely understand if they cant make it.

I left a message on Jonathon's phone because he expressed an interest in coming to the movies. I gave Lydia a call too but couldn't get hold of her.

Nigel sent me the below video showing a guy working on a high power line. I thought it was quite cool, so I uploaded it to Youtube.


Video: High Powerline Worker

Useless Information: In the great fire of London in 1666, half of London was burned down but only six people were injured.

Lovely Support Team!

In accordance with Matt's story about a customers unusual use of the word "Lovely" on Tuesdays team meeting, it appears someone in the team felt the following sticky note needed to be attached to his office door (It wasn't me).

At lunch time, Anisha and I met up with Jonathon at the FM Cafe. He needed someone to act as a witness on his passport photos. This was because the first time he got them done at The Warehouse, they were rejected.

Anisha got a text message later on that day stating that his second set of photos were also rejected! Apparently they were too blurry.

We had some really bad weather today with a tornado apparently "ripping" through New Plymouth. According to the New Zealand Herald, Botany Downs was also affected.

"The Fire Service has had eight call outs to the Botany Downs and Golflands areas since the strong gusts in Auckland."

The roof of New Plymouth's PlaceMakers store comes to rest against a tree. Photo / Carey Davis

Useless Information: In the marriage ceremony of the ancient Inca Indians of Peru, the couple was considered officially wed when they took off their sandals and handed them to each other.

Photos, Videos and other media

Today I uploaded a small selection of 43 photos to my MySpace profile. At last count I had taken over 1,800 Digital Photos and Videos since December 2006. I have over 800 photos available on my homepage photo gallery and a growing collection of videos are available on my YouTube channel.

I like the way how I can centralise a profile, with photos and videos. I see I could also create a Blog on MySpace as well. What I don't like is that anyone who wants to see them (The photos at least) would need to have a MySpace account.

Looks like I will be sticking with my website and Youtube for my photos and videos. Blogger seems to be serving me well, so I don't have any problems with that.

Just for fun I uploaded another video to MySpace. Looks like ive tried a few online video sites (YouTube, MySpace, and MSN SoapBox), however Youtube seems to be the best.

I noticed that YouTube introduced a feature where you can pick your thumbnail. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to be working for me!

At lunch time, I got absolutely soaked getting back to work as it rained heavily after we had lunch. We dropped into JayCar for a bit also. I need to remember am umbrella!

I set up Anisha with an Author account on my Blog, so that she can Blog if she wishes. I'm yet to convince her to start her own blog.

Nick and Charlene borrowed my wireless surveillance camera so they can keep an eye on Carlos. Dad had a look at my Blog and reminded me that I should have been wearing safety glasses when using the drill at Nigel's place.

Useless Information: In Turkey, in the 16th and 17th centuries, anyone caught drinking coffee was put to death.

A Monday of no Consequence

This morning I got up really early to drop Anisha off at work. She starts at 8am every day. I spent the rest of the morning before starting my shift updating my Myspace profile.

I took the leftover enchiladas to work for lunch. ;-)

Today I chatted (On Windows Live! Messenger) with my former team Manager at Datacom [Anna Verrell]. She is now working at Vodafone and she really seems to enjoy her work.

Anisha's Subscription to PC World arrived today. She got a bonus headset and mouse for subscribing. However, she ended up with two. She kindly gave me one of the sets. Isn't she nice!

Dad came back from Australia today. His flight was delayed and he arrived at the same time I got home. After dinner I made some modifications to my main website, to make my portal to my photo gallery "Somewhat" Okay :-)

Later on that night, I had a look at snapfish.co.nz. This site which is run by HP lets you get prints from digital photos. They had an offer of 20 free prints so I took that up.

They still did get me for $4.95 P&P. They say to allow 2 days for processing and 6 days for delivery. This is a lot slower then getting them done at Harvey Norman!

Useless Information: Income tax was first introduced in England in 1799 by British Prime Minister William Pitt.

Putting up the Gib Board

On Saturday we got a call from Nigel. He asked us to help him with putting up some Gib Board (That's Drywall for Americans). Anisha and I dropped in, and we helped him prepare for the Gib Board, then we put it up with the assistance on Kims brother Dean, and Kims dad.

Later that night, we watched a DVD (The Butterfly Effect 2). After that we watched Attack Force with Steven Segal in it. I have never seen so many people get thrown through a wall, and just "Brush off" their injuries in a movie!

Kim and Nigel shouted us takeaway dinner. I got some Butter Chicken from Adjaz. We stayed the night and came home in the morning. The bed was very comfortable!


Video: Preparing the Garage for Gib Board

Useless Information: New Zealand was the first country to give woman the vote in 1890.