Blocked in by XT8941

This evening I was in for my second car park hell experience. After work I got back to my car after a hard days work and what did I find? I found that someone had decided to block me in! I tried for several minutes to get out of this car park but unfortunately I was just too big to get out. On about my third attempt I noticed a lady standing there who was trying to guide me out. I couldn't get out.

After giving up I realised that this lady was from First Recovery. We agreed that this vehicle had blocked me in sufficiently and was not parked correctly. The First Recovery lady then began initiatives to have the vehicle towed away. Straight after the tow truck was dispatched the owners of the car returned.

The First Recovery lady did an excellent job of giving them a telling off which is unfortunately all she can do really at this stage. No apology received from the driver but two thumbs up to the lady from First Recovery!


Video: Blocked in at the car park

Additional Information: Tournament Parking is New Zealand's largest privately-owned carparking company, offering carpark facilities throughout Auckland and Wellington, at over 50 conveniently-located sites.

Workplace First Aid

At a recent staff meeting there was a call for somebody to act as a first aid person for our floor/department. I volunteered to take up this position. On Friday I completed a two day course conducted by St John. I am now qualified in first aid.

The course was held on Thursday and Friday of this week from 8.15am to 4.30pm. The course covered unit standards 6400 (manage first aid in emergency situations), 6401 (provide first aid), and 6402 (provide resuscitation level 2). The course was taught by Tracie at St Johns Northern Region in Mount Wellington . There was a class of about 25 people.

The course covered a variety of areas including; Basic life support, bleeding and shock, first aid for medical conditions, burns, environmental conditions, poisoning, fractures and soft tissue injuries, head and spinal injuries, eye injuries, chest injuries, and Major incidents.

Of interest, the following were taught but were not formally assessed; Eye injuries, chest injuries, and major incidents.

The entire course was assessed by practical assessments using artificial scenarios. In some assessments students were asked to play the patients while their partner was assessed on their skills. The roles were then reversed and the other person was then assessed.

This course is worth 4 NZQA credits which can be registered with NZQA for $1.00 each. I received a full size certificate, a wallet certificate, and a sticker indicating that trained St Johns people were on site. The first aid certificate is valid for two years and can be refreshed by attending a 1 day refresher course.

A light morning tea and afternoon tea is provided (tim tams, biscuits, and coffee). Lunch is not provided. At lunch time a "Hey Joe" mobile food van does come with a varying supply of food ranging from rolls to pies (not a big selection). There was also a mobile coffee car that came around a few times in the two days. St Johns does set break times which coincide with the arrival of these vans. St Johns requests that food and drink is not taken into the classroom.

On attending this course you will receive a resource kit containing; CPR Manikin (Mini Anne), CPR Training DVD, Training first aid kit (non sterile, not for Clinical use), a couple of face shields, and some other material that relates to your training including a cardboard cellphone (its important that you get 111 called in the training).

Additional Information: St John's mission is to prevent and relieve sickness and injury, and to act to enhance the health and well-being of people of all races and creeds anywhere in New Zealand.

A Whatipu Weekend

On Sunday Anisha and I travelled to Whatipu. Whatipu is a Scientific Reserve owned by the Department of Conservation and managed on behalf by the Auckland Regional Council. It is located in the Waitakare ranges approximately 40km from Auckland Central.

A large portion of the road to Whatipu is unsealed which my GPS alerted to me when I programmed in the location. We arrived at the main Whatipu car park in the morning. The first thing we did was walk to the beach. This is the first time that Anisha has seen a black sand beach. We took some photos of the beach, the ocean, the mountains, and the rocks. We took photos of some odd-shaped rocks, with their shape no doubt caused by water erosion.

After the beach we went on the short Whatipu Cave Track. This track was 90% sand which gave our legs a really good workout. We saw and went into about 5 different caves. The caves ranged from small nooks to fantastically large structures.

There is an official camp spot at the end of this walk which is was simply a large open area with a portaloo besides it. We returned via some cut tracks though the long grass which ran parallel with the track we took to get in. Once we finished this walk and came back we had lunch. I had made some rolls the night before. Overall, the weather today was not that hot. It was raining a little, was windy and the sun was barely seen through the heavy cloud cover. Better luck next time.

Unfortunately I have misplaced my Sony Camera (found now) but Anisha took her camera and we collectively took some interesting photos.

The only other exciting this we did this weekend was to see Rouge Assassin at the Silvia Park movie theatre.

Additional Information: Whatipu, at the entrance of the Manukau Harbour, is best known for its remoteness and natural heritage values - its windswept sand dunes, wetlands and wildlife. This unique landscape, now part of the Waitakere Ranges Regional Park, has long attracted visitors seeking a wilderness experience. - www.arc.govt.nz

Valentine's Day

Today is Valentines Day. In the evening Anisha made me a Sheppard’s pie which tasted fantastic. I think the most noticeable taste which really answered my appetites needs was the Worchester sauce.

Anisha had printed out three recipes from the Internet by a well known chef on the process of making Sheppard’s Pie. Anisha has never made such a meal before but nevertheless I was extremely impressed!

We exchanged gifts with each other. I gave Anisha the Britney Spears spray that she wanted, along with a box of roses chocolates. I also gave her the Hersey’s chocolate bar which I had Phillip Jackson send over from the United States. Anisha was to put it mildly impressed.

Anisha gave me the CK4U spray that I chose at the Parallel imported sale. Refer to the link below for my account of that weekend.

Average Weekend
http://blog.nztechie.com/2008/02/average-weekend.html

I had continued problems with my web host Startlogic (not as serious as the 32 hour hour outage I had!). However, by the evening everything appeared to settle down (touch wood).

Additional Information: The history of Valentine's Day -- and its patron saint -- is shrouded in mystery. But we do know that February has long been a month of romance. St. Valentine's Day, as we know it today, contains vestiges of both Christian and ancient Roman tradition. - www.history.com

Mexican Mexican Mexican

This evening Anisha and I went to The Mexican Cafe for dinner. The dinner was Anisha's idea and the place was mine. I shouted Anisha dinner which is really the least I can do when she is due to cook me my favourite shepherds pie on Valentines Day.

I spent the rest of the evening when I got home trying to communicate with my website host Startlogic. Every website hosted with Startlogic on st03.startlogic.com has been inaccessible and down since at least 3pm. It is now 9:30pm and my website is still down. So far at the helpdesk I have chatted with Christopher Kiplin, Ivan Davis, and Melanie Evans regarding the problem. This issue puts my subdomain problem into perspective.

Startlogic Outage for st03.startlogic.com
http://einkey-pickledhamster.blogspot.com/2008/02/startlogic-outage-for-st03startlogiccom.html

Startlogic Compensates me for Outage!
http://einkey-pickledhamster.blogspot.com/2008/02/startlogic-compensates-me-for-outage.html

The above link shows an email from Shalet Fernandez (Billing Specialist) giving me a one months credit for the outage. This was a total of $6.95. With these types of problems I do not expect that Startlogic will keep me as a customer indefinitely. Perhaps as their server is being overloaded it is part of their plan to shed their customers on the "old platform".

I have read a number of posts stating that people have had major problems with their sites being broken when they are moved to Startlogic's new hosting platform. However, I understand from my chats that the new platform is a lot more robust then the platform I am on at the moment.

My next step is going to be to pull the DNS service away from Startlogic, and then eventually migrate my website to a host in New Zealand. This will be a magnitude more expensive then hosting in the USA but will provide faster access times for New Zealand visitors and for my own management of the site. This is definitely a long term solution as it is not a trivial task to move my entire website to a new location.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hayden to Startlogic -> I Don't Trust You!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Average Weekend

Anisha wanted to go to Parallel Imported's clearance sale at the ASB Showgrounds this weekend so I took her there. We both picked-up our Valentines gifts for each other while on site.

We had planned to go for another walk, however Anisha didn't want to do it on Saturday so we decided we were going to do it on Sunday. As had happened previously before it was raining in the morning. We didn't go today and Anisha spent parts of Saturday and Sunday watching episodes of Smallville while I worked on revamping my website.

Over the course of the weekend I also dropped Anisha off at the Botany Downs Town Centre so that she could get a haircut and organise some things she needed to do at the post office.

We are looking at doing a walk in the Clevedon Scenic Reserve, however I am yet to find any specific information on available walks. At this stage I have read that there are a variety of walks there ranging in a number of levels of difficulty.

I also received a letter in the post from Cartridge World. They were offering me a 20% discount on ink or toner refills. There was a voucher included which I must say was not the best example of sharp printing around. I would expected it to be well presented for a company specializing in ink and toner cartridges. Anisha still has it in her handbag so hopefully I remember to get it back off her. Cartridge World are annoyingly only open to midday on Saturday.

I read in the Sunday Star Times about how a "Man bites pet to death in front of owner". Apparently a man killed a pet mouse by grabbing it from its shocked owner and biting its head. He is due to be charged with assault, cruelty to animals and offensive behavior.

I chatted online with Nigel regarding his new computer box, and the advantages and disadvantages of various RAID configurations. I have included a photo he sent me above.

Additional Information: Parallel Imported claim to have the largest range of 021 mobile phones in New Zealand

A Facelift for NZTechie.Com

This weekend I implemented the most significant change to NZTechie.Com in several months. I have ditched the former style of using a sparse Google-like interface and have moved to an open source content management system called Joomla.

Joomla comes with a very professional-looking template which I have adopted (however, there are many more available online!). After some work, I completed menus to point to my Privacy, Policy, Copyright Notice, and Legal Notice. I have also included links to both my blogs, YouTube Channel, and Photo Gallery.

The advantage of using this content management system is that I can make modifications to the site from anywhere that has Internet access. I am no longer restricted to editing my pages in Frontpage or Dreamweaver, and then uploading them by FTP. (Before you say, I know what Frontpage Extensions are!)

There are a few nifty built-in features which I have retained such as the ability for users to create accounts (you can restrict access to content by accounts), and I have retained the poll facility which was included as "sample data", however I have changed the question. There is also the inbuilt capability for registered users to submit articles for inclusion on the site.

One initial downside to using Joomla is that it has no native support for any advanced HTML or scripting. This posed as a problem for how I would list my recent YouTube videos, and how I would implement my Adsense code. I was also worried how I would get Google Analytics working as well.

Fortunately, Joomla is very extensible with a multitude of 'extensions' being available for download from the Joomla. For this particular problem I used an extension called SpecialHTML written by Rony Sandra Yofa Zebua. This module allows you to insert HTML at any location. It has worked effectively for my Adsense adverts, Google Analytics, and Google Video Bar.

There have been a few teething problems with how Joomla is displaying my RSS feeds. I have configured the CMS to display the most recent post from all three blogs I maintain. However, on inspection it appears to not be showing the most recent ones. Joomla appears to have selected much older articles then are available in the RSS feeds. I'll try to fix this during the week. [Update: The CNS has updated itself since I published this post!]

The new site generally retains all of the functionalitymy former homepage had with one minor exception. I did have the facility to perform a search that will crawl all of my posted content from all sources. This was using the Google Custom Search facility. Joomla of course does not come configured with this.

It does however come configured with a search that will search all content published within the Content Management System. I may consider using SpecialHTML to include Google Custom Search back at a later stage.


Joomla!
http://www.joomla.org/

Joomla! Extensions Directory - SpecialHTML For Jomla [sic] 1.5
http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,4089/Itemid,35/

SpecialHTML Download Mirrors: [Mirror 1] [Mirror 2]

Additional Information: Joomla! is one of the most powerful Open Source Content Management Systems on the planet. It is used all over the world for everything from simple websites to complex corporate applications. Joomla! is easy to install, simple to manage, and reliable. -joomla.org

Cossey Massey Loop Track

Given that I had canceled last weekends walk in the Hunua Ranges, Anisha and I took advantage of the Waitangi Day public holiday today to go back and do another track. We started at the Hunua falls for our journey today.

First, we took the Cossey Track which took us to the Cossey Dam. This was a 1 1/2 hour track. From the Cossey Dam we returned to the Hunua falls via the Massey Track. The Massey Track added an additional 2 hours to return back to the Hunua Falls car park.

The majority of both tracks were under the cover of the trees so there was limited opportunity to be exposed to the heat of the sun. As described on the ARC (Auckland Regional Council) website, the tracks contained some steep sections which we experienced and overcame. I did find that the terrain was quite flat compared to other tracks that I have done in the past (or am I just getting fitter?). Sections which were extremely steep had wooden stairs.

On the track we stopped to admire the Kauri trees, and experienced some rock hopping as we crossed the Cossey Creek (See picture).

On the Massey track we walked past dozens of buckets placed in the bush by The University of Auckland for a "Seed Dispersal Study". Small signs were erected stating "Please do not disturb (thanks)". A contact number for an Andrew Pegman was displayed.

The complete Cossey/Massey loop track is 5 km in length with an estimated walking time of 195 minutes (3 hrs 15 mins). We did the track in just over three hours, including the stop to admire the Cossey Dam.


Video: Massey Track - Hunua Ranges

Additional Information: This track is metalled but is steep in places and involves wading or rock hopping across Cossey Creek. Enjoy long range views, impressive native forest, sparkling waters and great Kauri trees along the way. - Auckland Regional Council

Torment Parking

This weekend was really a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to adventures. On Friday night, Anisha and I went and saw the movie "Meet the Spartans" after work. I can only describe the movie as being 84 minutes of hilarious garbage. It's full of slapstick and completely unintelligent humour. You won't be expending too much brain power if you watch this movie.

My night was to get worse. I went to return to my car which was parked in my new secure parking to find that my access card wasn't working. I called the company up and a guy arrived in about 5 minutes. He was far from helpful, with a grasp of english which failed to communicate the problem correctly to his boss. These guys don't even have access cards to their own car parks!

He called in his boss (Tony) for assistance who didn't have access to the building either. During the debacle, another customer came into the building and lifted the door. I went and retrieved my bag and they had me move my car to another secure car park around the corner. Tony advised me that they won't be able to fix my access card until Monday. I pay for convenience, not these problems!

Over the weekend I also looked at the Acer Slimline Aspire L3600 PC, which I considered purchasing as a media centre PC. I also bought a DVD from Harvey Norman Botany with part of a gift voucher Charlene and Nick gave me previously. I couldn't believe the fact that Harvey Norman wants your contact name and phone number when you redeem a voucher. This is disgusting!

I also picked up Die Hard 4.0 from Dick Smith Electronics in Silvia Park. I ordered an additional 512mb RAM for my laptop from Ascent Technologies and Anisha ordered a Cooler Master Notepal just like mine. See here.

Anisha and I (Along with Kim and Nigel) planned to do the Cossey/Massey Loop (195 minutes / 5km) in the Hunua Ranges on Sunday, but I made an executive decision not to go as it was raining in the morning. The day actually turned out okay, so we really could have still gone, but thems the breaks.

Also, I can't forget to mention all the lovely dinners and breakfasts that Anisha made for me over the weekend. Isn't she lovely!

Additional Information: At the Festival of the Cleaver, the Spartans used to nail sausages to the wall for the older men to gnaw on... (Athenaeus 138e)