The Long Walk

This weekend Anisha and I prepared ourselves for our trip to Hahei on Tuesday. On Saturday, I picked up Anisha from the Auckland Domestic Airport at 5:30pm.

I bought a Digitor Digital Photo Frame from Dick Smith Electronics. It cost me $140 and displays photos from Memory Stick, SD Card, and MMC flash media. It's only 7 inches in size. It pretty much a budget model. It does however come with a remote control.

It plays MP3's and Videos as as well. In my tests, It balked when I tried to get it to play video with greater then 25 fps in it. I know that Phillips has a much higher quality unit available at twice the price. I'll consider this my entry into the digital photo frame arena.

I tried and failed to spent the $40 Harvey Norman gift voucher that Charlene and Nick got me for Christmas. Harvey Norman has digital photo frames, but I didn't like the design of the two models they had on offer.

On Sunday, we went to Countdown to get the food we need for the trip to Hahei. The food bill came to around $200. We did some preliminary preparation of everything we needed. We plan to buy the milk, bread, and eggs when we are in Hahei.

On Sunday night, Anisha and I went for a walk to my old house.

Additional Information: Hahei is an attractive beach fringed with pohutukawa trees and drifts of pink shells at the northern end. Offshore islands provide something of a breakwater, making this beach ideal for swimming, boating and fishing.

Xmas Day 2007

In the morning we all went over to Charlene and Nicks to see Carlos open his Christmas presents. After that we all traveled to Hamilton to meet at Valentines for a Christmas lunch. The lunch was with everyone on my mothers side.

The place was busy, and as it was a buffet, we had to wait in line for a considerable period of time to fill up out plates.

Coincidentally, today is also Carols 50th birthday. We went back to Nana and Grandads for a while. We then went to visit the Bogles in Morrinsville. I played pool with Nick, Warren, and Samantha. Unfortunately, I only won one game with Nick.

We dropped back in on the grandparents and then went home. We got home after midnight.

One small thing I forgot to mention in previous posts; I resigned from Zeacom on Monday. I am due to start a new job for the ANZ National Bank as a LAN Analyst on January 14th.


Video: Carlos Opening Christmas Presents


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Too much Chicken and not enough Rice

At work today, we had a morning tea in the morning (duh!), and a BBQ in the afternoon. We also closed the phone queues early today.

Earlier this week, Dolly at work kindly gave me a voucher for a meal discount at a restaurant. She had originally got a discount book from the ANZ when she got a loan. There is a selection of restaurants that the voucher is valid at, and I looked up the associated website for the listing. Tonight, we decided on the Catch Restaurant on Ronwood Drive in Manukau.

I booked the table for two at 7pm. Overall, neither Anisha nor I were impressed by dinner. My orange juice didn't taste like orange juice, and the bread with my chicken curry didn't taste very nice. Anisha voiced that she didn't like her meal either.

Two positive comments about the restaurant were that the staff were very efficient and polite, and our meal was delivered to our table very quickly after ordering it.

We decided not to have dessert there and went home.

Anisha and I went to Charlene and Nicks to give them some Xmas presents. Anisha is to fly to Wellington tomorrow.

After that, we went to Denny's for dessert. I had a banana split. Anisha didn't feel like dessert at this stage and had a lemonade. Later that night Anisha and I swapped Xmas presents. Anisha bought me Start Trek: The animated series.

Useless Information: The restaurant industry provides work for more than 9 percent of those employed in the United States.

Margaret McHugh and Website Shenanigans

Looks like Margaret McHugh from Gourmet Food Store is now famous due to an email response she allegedly sent to a customer who was enquiring about her catering services.

The story begins like this; Hayley Johnstone from Ray White Real Estate sent an email enquiry to Margaret at Gourmet Food Store to organise catering for the business. What ensued is a swag of emails back and forward between to two, with some strong words and what I can only term as a response which is not customer-orientated.

Margaret allegedly takes offense to Haley's querying of being quoted different prices to that which is shown on their website, and the customers lack of ability to respond to emails to confirm catering in the past.

If you would like to see an example of how not to respond to your customers in an email, check out a transcript of the whole email at: http://hayden-tennent.blogspot.com/2007/12/margaret-mchugh-customer-service.html

On another note, Ive experienced some problems with my website at Startlogic. Due to some recent malware which is spreading though hijacked hosts on the Internet, some core functionality has been disabled on my service. This has had a minor effect on my online photo gallery, causing an unsightly error to occur. Fortunately, it is still functional. Startlogic gives the following options:

- Wait until my website is transferred to their new platform where I can re-enable the function
- Recode the PHP script to use a safer function.

Useless Information: The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence, but government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words. - www.thecateringstaffroom.co.uk

Christmas Gifts and Things

On Friday night, Anisha and I went out for dinner at the Khyber Tandoori restaurant on Khyber Pass Road.

Sunday was a day of organisation for Christmas. Anisha and I went to the shopping centre. I have already bought all the Christmas presents I needed, except for my brother-in-law Nick. I got him a humorous T-Shirt from Jay Jays in the mall. Full credit to Anisha for coming up with the idea.

I also bought a large pack of Christmas cards and addressed Christmas cards to family and friends. Later in the day I posted them in Botany.

I bought myself a mini tripod stand (XG0514) for my digital camera from Dick Smith Electronics (DSE) for $19.95. This should help keep the camera steady and remove some shake, in-particular when I am grabbing snippets of video.

I replaced my Vodafone Sim Card which was playing up badly. The problems with calls not making it through to the phone have not repeated themselves. I got myself a haircut at Just Cuts.

Anisha helped me wrap my Christmas presents. Without her, my attempts would result in a mess, or I would be waiting for hours in line at the shopping centre for the free Christmas wrapping service.

I shouldn't forget to mention how god damn hot it was on Sunday. I must have gone through 5 Cokes on the day it was so hot.

Useless Information: "Most cameras have both optical zoom and digital zoom. Optical zoom works just like a zoom lens on a film camera. The lens changes focal length and magnification as it is zoomed. Image quality stays high throughout the zoom range. Digital zoom simply crops the image to a smaller size, then enlarges the cropped portion to fill the frame again. Digital zoom results in a significant loss of quality..." - photo.net

Zeacom Christmas Party

This evening was the Zeacom Christmas party. Cogent has their party on the same night, however they did not allow partners to attend, so Anisha and I went to the Zeacom one. The party was held at Pontoon on Westhaven Drive. Just under 100 people attended tonight.

I am not much of an alcohol drinker, but I did have a fair share or alcohol tonight. One of the key aspects of the evening was the speech by Martin Davis talking about the companies success, and then eventually awarding prizes to our most valued employees.

There were too winners of the Outstanding Contribution to Zeacom Success 2007 award. The winners were Lee-Ann Sterling and Grant Wright.

Lee-Ann also surprised me with her singing performance. Lee-Ann had been part of a band as a singer, and organised her old band to perform tonight.

After the party, we had a taxi take us thought the drive through at Macdonald's (after stopping some guy trying to pinch our taxi), where we ordered something to eat.

Useless Information: If the sound of a balloon popping startles you, you’re not alone. A bursting balloon actually creates a small sonic boom! Once a hole is made in an inflated balloon, the quick release of the balloon’s energy, or air, causes the hole to grow at almost the speed of sound in rubber. Since this speed is much higher than the speed of sound in air, the hole in the balloon actually breaks the sound barrier, creating a sonic boom.

Sails Restaurant

This evening we had a family dinner at Sails Restaurant. Sails Restaurant is located by the Westhaven Marina on Westhaven Drive. It afforded a lovely view of the waterfront, the harbour bridge, and the boats in the marina. It was dinner for eight tonight. Mum and Dad, Nanna and Grandad, Charlene and Nick, and of course Anisha and I.

There was a vegetarian menu which satisfied Anisha special dietary requirements. The waiter was quite witty throughout the night. I can recommend the Grain Fed Chicken Breast, even though the froth looked like somebody had hocked on my dinner. For dessert I had the Valrhona Chocolate. Did you know that "desserts" spelt backwards is "Stressed"?

Earlier in the day, Anisha had met up with her Grandfather and cousin who had come to Auckland for a visit.

Useless Information: "Not all who wander, are lost." - J R Tolkein

Christmas in the Park

Today, Anisha and I went into the city centre to do some shopping. In particular, I was looking for a Christmas present for Anisha. It started out that I was going to get her a couple of Jamie Oliver DVD's, then it was an MP3 player, then switching to something from the Body Shop.

Finally, we settled on contributing to a new cellphone (I contributed NZ$60). Anisha and I went to Vodafone/DSWireless, where she purchased a new Sony Ericson K800i cellphone (Assistant Manager at Vodafone was Farah Dale). It has a 3.2 megapixel camera, video-conferencing, and a good audio capability, hence negating the need to have a separate Mp3 player. This was my suggestion.

After Vodafone, Anisha and I went to Dunkin donuts where she bought a small box of "Munchkin" Donuts in a variety of flavours.

Later on tonight, we went to Christmas in the Park in the Auckland Domain. This was Anisha's idea. We got there by 7.30 and had brought a blanket to sit on. I initially tried to get some video from my Digital Camera, however we were too far away to get decent video. Later on in the night I moved closer to the stage in an attempt to get some better video. There was an element of rain tonight but nothing too serious.

The concert was hosted by Jeremy Corbett and Jeanette Thomas. The concert starred Opshop, Ben Lummis, Coca-Cola Kids crew, DIVA, Elizabeth Marvelly, The Funky Moneys, Jonathan Heaps, Lyndon Keenan, Sela Mahe, Shavaughn Ruakere, and Stig Eldrid.


Video: Christmas in the Park - Fireworks Display


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Useless Information: "Hot cockles" was a popular game at Christmas in medieval times. It was a game in which the other players took turns striking the blindfolded player, who had to guess the name of the person delivering each blow. "Hot cockles" was still a Christmas pastime until the Victorian era.

A Bank Assessment

Today, I went for an interview at the ANZNational Bank. Mum had found an advertisement in the New Zealand Herald for a Lan Analyst position. She urged me to apply. I did apply, and was asked to attend an "Assessment Centre" today.

The assessment was held at 107 Carlton Gore Road, on the same road as my current job at Zeacom. I went at 1.30pm today. There was about a dozen people in total today. The Bank has been running a number of these assessments throughout the week.

Firsty, we were observed performing a group activity. This involved a simulated situation where we were trapped on an island in Tahiti. We needed to pick 15 items to take with us. Secondly, there was a small technical written test. I was intrigued that one of the questions related to PABX and VoIP technologies. I'm glad that I could answer this question, and I suspect a lot of the other people could not adequately answer it.

They asked what a PABX was, and what VoIP was. They also asked for an explanation of what a "Hunt Group" was.

I was also interviewed briefly by two people who asked me behavioural-related questions. These are always tricky, but I managed to get through in the end.

It looks like this job is going to be based on Queen Street, and there is going to be no parking provided by the bank.

I'm told that I should hear from the bank within a week.

Nicks Birthday

Today was Nicks birthday. I was invited over to have Pizza with Mum, Charlene, Nick and Carlos. Dad was out at a work function so wasn't there. I had BBQ Chicken from Pizza Hut. I had bought Nick a Lynx Weekender Gift pack from The Warehouse.

Useless Information: Basic pizza most likely began in prehistoric times with the 'dough' or bread cooked outdoors on hot flat stones. Roughly 1,000 years ago herb-and-spice-covered circles of baked dough grew exceptionally popular in Naples, Italy. Known as focaccia, these rounds were served as an appetizer or a snack. (Source: Smithsonian)

Iguacu Resturant and Bar

This evening was dads retirement party, which was at the Iguacu Restaurant & Bar in Parnell (269 Parnell Road, Parnell). I managed to leave work early so that I could make it on time. When I arrived, I parked in a tournament car park facility at a cost of $NZ21.00. It was prepaid car parking, and I paid enough until midnight.

There was a significant turn-out including dad's colleagues and clients over the years. One of the people that is going to take-over dad's job (they need two people to take over his work) knows Steven Leong from Datacom. His name is Victor Tang.

There was finger-food thoughout the night, and plenty of alcohol available. Various people gave speeches, including dad.

My replacement ADSL modem arrived from Dove Electronics today.

Useless Information: In 1969, the first Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers restaurant opened in downtown Columbus, Ohio.

I submit to the gods of the Internet!

I have received a couple of emails from Go Holidays over the last couple of days. Apparently, I had signed up to some sort of electronic newsletter and regular prize draw. After closer inspection, it looked like my Aunt Carol may have signed me up.

I submitted my blogs to the DMOZ (Open Directory Project) service, and to Internet Vibes. Internet Vibes state they give preference to submissions which include thumbnail screenshots, however I was unable to make a submission without including a thumbnail.

I made a template change to the design of my Disjointed thoughts blog, and I believe it to be superior in design to my previously selected template.

I installed a prompted update for Zonealarm Pro as well. A small amount of additional commentary is available at:
http://hayden-tennent.blogspot.com/2007/12/zonealarm-professional.html

I phoned Ascent Technologies to follow-up on my ADSL router (Dynalink RTA1320) replacement. They advised me that there has been a delay in getting the product, however it will soon be on its way. I've been without VoIP for a week now and it is quite annoying.

My cellphone was acting odd today. I received a couple of phone calls which when answered would prompt me to enter my voicemail password. I declined to enter my pin number for security reasons.

John Innes is due to leave tomorrow, and continue his tour throughout New Zealand. I'm off to Iguacu in Parnell tomorrow evening for dads retirement party.

Useless Information: Go Holidays! is a bonded member of the Travel Agents Association of New Zealand, a member of I.A.T.A. and a member of the Overseas Tour Operators Committee.

The Original Adventure Golf

Today, John, Anisha and I went to Treasure Island mini golf at Auckland Airport. Anisha and I had done the ship course previously so we decided to do the other course which was the cave course. It was a hot day and I made sure I put plenty of sunscreen on. We used a voucher from the Entertainment Guide which gave us a free game (One free game when another is purchased).

The final result of the game was a win by Anisha, followed very closely by myself and then by John.

Later that night we had a family BBQ with Nick, Charlene and Carlos coming over.

Earlier in the day I had gone to Botany Downs where I bought two pairs of new shoes from Hannah's. I had previously gone to Mr Minit to see how much it would cost to have the soles of my existing shoes repaired. They advised that this would cost me at least $NZ60, so it was much better sense to buy some new shoes. I bought two pairs of $NZ80 Logan business shoes. However, the second pair was charged at half-price as per a special was on at the time.


Video: Treasure Island Adventure Golf

Useless Information: The World's Longest Golf Course is the International Golf Club in Massachusetts, a long par 77, 8325-yards, from the tiger tees.