Current location:	Wolf Castle
Current mood:	contemplative
Entry tags:	life

And the days go by...
Seems I haven't posted since last Sunday. I still read and comment, but there's no great desire to share words.

I have been keeping busy playing with a couple of web-site ideas, and at work being deep in the start-up of anew project where I have a lot of freedom to specify technology etc, so it's actually fun.

<rant> Except for the fact that they use IBM WebSphere which is a bloated, over-complicated monstrosity that is extremely poorly documented and makes it ten times harder to do anything than it needs to. Also, it seems like after you update an application a few times it suddenly decided you can't update it any more and reverts to a random earlier version of the application. And it refuses to un-install applications properly as well. Fixing any of these problems is impossible due to the lack of documentation on what WebSphere is actually doing, and the only feasible solution seems to be an un-install of the server, followed by manual deletion of it's old directories and scrubbing of the registry, as WebSphere doesn't un-install itself properly either. </rant>

Actual things have been happening this week though. Monday evening and Tuesday morning I got two surprise pookah train trips, which was fun.

Wednesday I was invited to the launch of Friends of Tangaroa at The Beehive, New Zealand's centre of government. As I walked there in shirt sleeves, I was again struck by how much I prefer New Zealand over other countries. Sure there was evident security, but there were also people sitting on the steps of the parliament buildings eating their lunch, a small, perhaps lone, protest about something on one set of steps, children playing on the lawn, and everyone, including the security people, were friendly and many were smiling, probably because of the appearance of that huge shiny warm thing in the sky.

It felt like a normal public place. It was our seat of government, but people didn't feel the need to dress up to visit it, people were playing and eating in it's grounds. I had to contrast that with fortress-like appearance, general pompousness, and unfriendliness of other land's equivalent places.

I was there for the launch because I work with one of their other prime movers and she had asked me to set up their web site, and so in the lobby of our house of representatives, in front of a couple of Green members of parliament, a mayor, a Maori TV camera crew, and a whole bunch of kids, I was thanked by Don Richards, the prime motivator of the project, for putting it together for them. It was somewhat embarrassing, and I had to spend time afterwards explaining to people that they really should be thanking the developers of Drupal, as all I did was install and configure it.

That evening I discovered an ant invasion in out pantry and I had to commit genocide. I only finished clearing up from it this morning. The benefit of the process is that at least one shelf of the pantry is now much cleaner and tidier, and wasup_bro took it upon himself to throw out all the condiments and spreads that were way over their use-by periods, some had expired in 2001! There's probably a little more to go, there's a jar of raisins that I know hasn't been touched since before Ele left back in 2005, and which may be fermenting, and another jar of yellowish powder which wasup_bro thinks might be milk powder, which it might be safer to just chuck. Also, the unopened maple syrup belonging to panda_pitt that taraxgoat gave him for house-sitting when he came back from Canada back in, what, 2004? I don't know, can people tell me whether things like maple syrup or golden syrup go off ?

Thursday was a curry night with a surprise John at BBC. Did not feel like walking all the way up the road to the Southern Cross for Drinking Liberally, and in the end it was good I didn't. Last night I said farewell to a colleague, the second to leave for Australia from work in the one month. There's a lot of people going there it seems. We hang out on the balcony of the General Practioner and enjoyed the scenery.

They were still going when I left, but I'd said I'd catch up with sokky at the Hawthorn Lounge for cocktails, and I'm glad I did, It' a great little venue, in a stylish 1930's theme, and very civilised. I think rikan_feral would approve. I had to try the Hindenburg Highball. Though it took a bit to figure out how to use the taps in the bathroom. I got to catch up with panda_pitt as well.

Just finished doing the black washing containing some new socks, after earlier doing the white washing, with new underwear, all purchased due to the Farmers Card member's day. It's good to use credit to get 25% discounts and more, when you can pay it of before the interest is charged ! :)

Tonight there are jarratt_gray's cocktails.

Life would be grand were it not for the fact that seraphs_folly and I are still living in separate cities.