The Weka
Weka, O Weka, O little brown Weka,
Why do they hate you, and cry on your name?
They tell me you’re sly and you swoop without warning,
Your wings have no flight, and your beak, has no shame.
You’re gay as a gossip and vain as a man–child,
You snatch at a bright thing and bear it away.
You sing with your mate when all good birds are silent,
You’re gallant by night and your’re sidelong by day.
But its my pity your footprints grow rarer;
Little brown mischief, don’t slip from our sight.
Wicked and sweet are your eyes in the twilight,
Wistful and wild is your cry in the night.
— Eileen Duggan
E hia motunga o te Weka i te mahanga?
How often does the Weka escape from the snare?
My Habit for falling asleep in Meetings through the day is starting to be noticed ....And yes even talked about .... I had a young architect reminisce to me about a meeting where he was trying out his newly learned 'kepnor Tregoe' Problem diagnosis to a current issue we were facing ... aparrently it was most offputting to have managers falling asleep as he tried to run the meeting .....................................I told him it was nothing personal as I fall aspeep in even amidst the most highly attended meetings ....... But I also pointed out that I already knew the outcome of the meeting .....KT is a great disciplne - if you have the buy in ........
Any way
I had a phone call from an extremely rude and abrupt vendor finance woman today ... Not a good time for her to be trying to have a go at me about non payment of an invoice ... I sent her away to to speak with the executive on the account ..... I also mentioned I was meeting wit hthe NZ head of the vendor company tomorrow and that I would speak about it to her leader as well ....... Not that I will ...... Or will I .......Mwaahahahahahaha ...
Ahem ....
I fell asleep on my Laz-y-boy chair right at the start of House tonight .... Woke up to the dulcet, Kiwi Accented SHOUT of "WAKE UP OR YOU"LL MISS BOSTON LEGAL AS WELL !!!!!!!" Niow I'm wide awake having slept an hour wondering if that's it for the night sleep wise ......
A PUKEKO IS NOT A CHICKEN !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Think Pukeko ... Think Moorhen ...... Just ours ain't just black .....
They are edible though I'm told ...........
Ok - tonights Bird of focus ... The NZ native parakeet .....
.
A lot prettier than the Pukeko .... but far less edible ..... Though a couple of them on toast might make an entree .......... OK Perhaps not ....:O)
Monday at work ... plenty of Gos to make the day interesting ... Plenty of work as well ensuring I was at my desk most of the day ... Had a quick lunch with McD ... Healthy Subway ...
I read in the paper today that IT workers are getting a healthy 6% pay increase this year ... .That would be nice ...I won't be holding my breath though .
This is the NZ Pukeko .. Interesting for its antics as it runs hops and strides around on those stilts for legs .... It is also known for its bi-sexuality !! Did you ever know such things with birds !!!!
Weather has been stunning the past few days ...I love these NZ autumn days ... the sun is warm but not over bearing and the sky is crip and clear and you can see for miles .....
The trip today was to a small wildlife reserve we discovered my accident on the internet .... We will be going back .. Its beautifully layed out and caterers for families wanting to just feed a duck or two and have a picnic with the songs of the birds about them .... You can even watch the giant eels being fed ,,,
All in all very relaxing and theraputic ......
Pictures as requested by Gypsy Sprite .These are of the "Beehive" New Zealands Parliament .. I see this building from my desk each day ... Though to be honest I'm usually looking past the Beehive and out to the harbour and the bush clad hills beyound that .......
The weeks been full on ... With the IT leadership monthly meeting looming we had two days that ran late into the evenings as we completed our IT road map and budgets for the 07/08 financial year ......
I'm still knackered ..>Then Wednesday night I woke up with the worst case of heart burn ...I could not believe you could be in so much pain from it !! Started about 2am and that was the end of my sleep for that night...I was then forced to take Thursday off work ....
I thought I'd have had the day to do some of my own stuff..Watch an old movie or two... but the day was well and truely dominated by sleep ...... Today I was back at work .. More resignations at the vendor outsourcer we use ... Another told his position has been disestablished so he's to leave soon .... Leaves me with nothing ...All the institutional knowledge of where i work gone ......
My senior team member has the job she went for ... when she leaves I have to find a way to cover another 20+ hours a week on Service support she provides ...As she so daintilly put it when I told her the gos from the Vendor ....."Hahahahahahahahaha ....Your FCKED !!!! "
Yep .... I think I am .......
Out of All Sorts
Sunday, March 18, 2007
I've been knackered (is that a universal tword?) all weekend.. Slept my two days away. Last night I woke up about every hour. Then spent 2-3 hours sleeping over lunchtime in my chair...McD Said not a murmer did I make ...which apparrently is unusual.....
Anyway - I hate this rut ... Too tired to do anything in the day ...unable to sleep properly at night .... Next week will be another crap week workwise.. various meetings arguing about stuff that doesn't matter in the scheme of things .... But there you go .....
I lost my temper with a young IT archetect at work... He started it but I made well sure I finished it ...My final sentances questioning what he saw as achievements and then questioning his wage bracket if that was all he had to brag about as a BA could have done it ......... McD told me I'd gone too far when I spoke to her about it ... .She was right of course ....
My senior member of my team has been interviewed for another company... I hope she gets it. I think she thought I would try and stop her doing it when she told me .... .But she needs to get a new job and new challenges ....She's been in this company too long ....
I guess I'm ready for bed .... Up in the morning to walk the dogs .. .Daylight saving happened this weekend so it should be lighter in the mornings for a while .... Then the winter's long nights will kick in ....Oh Joy ......
I'm not too good at building or achetecture shots ...Though I enjoy taking them .....
Well - got that over and done with ... Flight to Auckland was fine with a gentle touchdown .... Visited offices in Manukau city where I bumped into an ex-collegue coming out of the same building ...He lives in Wellington too..... Then off to Kingston street in the centre of Auckland ... Booked for 3 hours to sit an let anyone who wanted to cvome in and speak with us .. .One manager with a few issues come in and chatted for an hour with us and that was that ... We then met a strange PM doing work for us in Auckland and then I sat in a meeting I wasn't part of really (no pre involvement ) and nodded and blinked and tried unsuccessfully to stay awake and alert....
That evening we walked down to the harbour water front and sat outside a pub with a beer waiting for the boss and his daughter to arrive ...Daughter is now in Uni in Auckland... As I sat down and look up there was an ex-manager of mine from EDS ..also from wellington.. He was with a bunch of other EDSers ....Ex-manager on seeing me adjusted his seat to move me out of his line of vision and that was that ..... Just re-inforced all my reasons not to work for that crowd ever again ... Nor ever use them for any outsourcing I'm in charge of .......
Friday started off with the worst hotel breakfast I've ever experienced ... so Breakfast food was out .... We wandered down to our queen street offices and had a number of meetings ...One of which was cancelled so I asked my boss to bring one of the meetings forward to allow us time to get to the next destination and even home earlier ... Which he promptly did by an hour .. .The meeting still finished at the scheduled original end time overrunning by an hour ...I must speak with him and others about what to do and not do in multi-vendor meetings ..... yeh gods ....
And then we drove down to our offices in Panmure ... More a factory than offices as they are the controllers and checkers of weights and volumes machinery ...They keep the businesses honest...... They've had IT performance issues for over a year now ... and consequently endless IT vendor teckies vising the place .... My manager playing around logs in as himself to try it out ...perfect performace ...the equivalent of perfmnce we have in the head office !! ... So we now know it has to be the profile the desktops have or the install ... Both can be done over the weekend for them, and the issues will be gone ..... After a year ... .When back at the car I turned to our IT vendor national services manager who was with us the two days ... " Well that must be damned embarrassing for you !!!! A year of your teckies visiting this place and the company CxO no less fixes the problem!!!" "How embarrassing is that ??"
"yeh .... " he mutters ...
"embarrassing" ....
Flight was one of the few flights ontime that evening due to engineers work to rule....I'd eaten nothing all day .... McD and I dropped into a chinese restaurant in lower hutt ... It was the best chinese food we'd eaten in a yaks age ....
So why in these restaurants do the chinese get nice Bowls to eat from with their chop sticks and we westerners get plates ??????? Ever tried to eat rice off a plate with chopsticks !!! My shirt needs a special cleaning after that .....
All the fun of the Fayre
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
There's another story to tell on the title ....... One day I may find the time and inclination to write it ...
Meanwhile ..this is try two to post this ... last night A lightning strike over the valley plunged us all into darkness for an hour or so ...Original entry lost for ever .....
Tomorrow it's up and about almost before I get to bed and off to auckland .. .120km winds forcast either here in welly and or Auckland .... going to be `fun me thinks ......
I've been exhibited!!!!
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
There is an exhibition happening at this present time in Switzerland called "We are all Photographers Now" .. to highlight the explosion of people taking photographs now that the digital camera has arrived ...
There's a lot of active discussion on whether these people sjhould be called photographers or not .... Go figure .. anyway the exhibition calls for entries from anyone to submit pictures that will be shown at the exhibition randomly ...
So I sent 4 in .... I felt a bit of an outsider as most people seem to have sent in "photo Journalistic" type stuff .. but Since I've not gotten into that yet I sent some NZ pictures .... All 4 have now been exhibited...
Anyway - a bit of a buzz seeing them projected onto the wall over there like that .....
Have a go youselves ...
My pictures being displayed
