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 ...

We are all photographers

My pictures being displayed

Nothing to say and just a single picture to show

My ankle is letting me know it's there... It's sore but only when I walk on it (kinda gives the hints to me not to be upright)... Although I did manage to turn it rather quickly when wandering about the house and causeda loud 'Pop" to come from the ankle ..... No damage though I think ....
Emerging frond of a tree fern

It's sooo Hot !!!! Another 30C 86F day in the making and the humidity is now up as well .... the north of the island have just experienced torrential rain and floods ... I hope it's wandered off to sea now .....

My McDinzie hard at work with her stylish new camera.....

And now the cicadas have started to emerge.. They won't be as plentyful as other years but there are enough to be noisy around the place..... One of the disadvantages of living beside the native forrest is that we get heaps of cicadas ...greens and browns, big and small... And the forrest creates a sound shell for them so the noise is amplified even more ..... Last year when watering I sprayed the trees around the front garden .. .For a few seconds only there was a pleasant silence... until they resettled and started their rapid clicking again ......

The upper reaches of the Hutt river.. Big trout reside but are hard to catch

Another pleasant surprise today when the man we hired to sort out the overgrown lawns arrived ... In less than an hour with the right tools and they are looking pretty damned good again .... Edges to the borders all trimmed properly, grass picked up ...Its looking good again ... Well by our standards anayway :O) AND he closed the gates after him as well .... He can come back :O)

A native Rata tree.. Covers itself in orange/red flowers once a year

Where does the time go in the day??? I've sat at the computer all morning (with my foot up and resting) doing some work work (I can dial in and acess everything from home.) And also doing some research on my ancestors in Scotland ... Some frustration as to getting certain census entries but otherwise have found a few things of interest especially around where they lived ... All my family on my Dads side were country folk ...Farm workers or Gameskeepers and the like ....

Swing bridge at kaitoki. From where you can see the trout....Sometimes

Now I have a heap of people I can take some interesting stats .. Like the oldest any of my family lived was 88 years Female and 87 years male. But the average age is 67 for both male and female .. Of course that would include infants who died within 1 or 2 years of birth...

The maximum number of marriages to any individual is 3 (my grandfather.. 2 wives died in child birth) but the average for the whole family is only 1. The average age being 22 for getting married the youngest being 16 (Female...)

Mature tree fern

I'd love to make the trip back home to see these places now ..I've been to Norfolk ages back but only managed a day in Scotland ...Would be good to see where they all lived...

Stream at Mt Bruce reserve full of eels

Pictures of summer and Sprained ankle..

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

This get fit lark is bad for your health !!! It all started with a bruised damaged foot.. In the bone of the ball of the foot ... hurt hurt hurt wherever I walked ... then that subsides and I get cramp again ... in my ribs of all places ...So damned painful ....

Then this morning in the gloaming McD and I were walking the dogs along the path by the river and went past a spot where workmen have been sinking some posts into the earth .. Not sure why they want them there but anyway ... The earth and dug up river pebbles were still over the path and I managed to step on a pebble unknowingly and over on my ankle I went .....
Not happy ...... So now I'm stuck here with my foot bandaged and elevated and the day is sunny and the temperature is already in the mid 20s C ...Mid 70s F.... Grumble grumble grumble ................

Forgotten Graves.
Friday, January 19, 2007

I was trolling through my photos trying to find a suitable pictire for the picture Theme week on the Photo Challenge Open Diary site and came across these ....... They are pictures I took from an old Wellington grave yard .... Many were moved from their original site to make way for the motorway that feeds the city now .... These grave now have a semi peaceful setting albeit still beside the motorway .....
Life was hard in the 1800s & early 1900s ... many of these graves have young children in them.. dying of Flu or other such ailments ..... Many adults died way before their time . But there were some who survived well into old age as well .... Real survivors of the times ....
Life is a lottery eh ....

This shows the motorway and the CBD building opposite ... The graves also face out to the city ...... Co-incidently the office block to the far left of the picture is the building I work in .... But my desk is on the other side looking at our parliament buildings and out across the harbour.

Well I must be a stick insect by now !!

Maybe not ......................

But still on the diet .. Although the weekends are damned hard people .....
Dunno what happened to Saturday ... Went to bed late Friday night ...Well, really early saturday actually ...Played around on the computer far too long ...I can lose hours once distracted by something on the internet ... thats why its so bad for trying to learn anything from it ....

Woke up to the dog barking at me (she hates me sleeping in ) and McD bringing me a cup of tea .....Gawd bless the girl .......From then on it just passed away through my fingers like grains of sand .....

I knew the weekends would be harder ... Decided I would have three fairly large meals and hope that would keep me going ... which id did ..but this evening was very hard ...

At the weeeknds I'm used to having a cooked breakfast and a good meal at night ....Like a decent curry, rice and naan bread ....

Instead we made 'healthy' egg, chicken rashers and lite cheese muffins ... about 300 cals for one ... Yum .....I enjoyed them and they kept me going till about 2pm before we felt hungry again .... Then we grabbed a healthy subway ......\

Then this evening we made beef strips in a wrap with yoghurt and humus and colslaw (no dressing) .So really healthy food all up ... but my body is still shouting for curry and steak and chips .......

*Groan*

I found an article of the 40% who keep their resolutions ...and some pointer on how to keep going with the weight loss...
Click here

So of course food has dominated the day ... What to eat, What to eat, What to eat......... And not just today but for a good few days to come .... rather than hitting the big food places we did go to a smaller vegetable place and then to an actual butchers next door .... Both fruit,vegetable, and meat looked a lot better ... and it's all about quality at the moment ... If I have to eat like this dammit, it had better be top quality and damned good tasing muck thats for sure ...... Or there will be trouble!!.... And grumbles...I didn't get where I am today without knowing how to give a good whinge I can tell you .......

*Ahem*

Damn this diet makes me grumpy ........ And hungry ......I'm so hungry I could eat a ...A.... A Penguin !!!!!!

:O)

testing

It is fortunate for McD

Saturday, October 07, 2006

It is fortunate for McD that I am nearly always sleeping on my left side ... Due to a number of nose injuries (war woulds :O) If I sleep on my right hand side I can't breath well .... And since I'm one of those people that needs a breath or two of air in my lungs through the night I tend to lie on my left side and spoil myself with lots of air .....

However I am prone to violent movement in the night as well .... A few months ago I was dreaming about being stuck in a drain pipe ...(Please don't do the psycho-bubble analysis on me ) while stuck along came a big rat (don't they feature a lot in peoples minds ) anyway I awoke with a BAM_BAM as I did a double puch to the rat ... Safely absorbed by the bed and not McD all was well .....

A week or so back I deamt of a confrontation with some thug dude ..... That resulted in a karate style strike to his neck .... Several items cleared noisily from the bedside table beside me ...... McD awoken but again no damage done ...

Last night another confrontation with a dude on a boat ..... as we fought he messed up with his guard exposing his rib cage ..... BAM .... Finger tip strike into and between his ribs ...... Again I awoke .. This time a little pain ... As I had struck the bed but obviously my finger crumpled up in the strike and the joint is no somewhat sore .....

And McD sleeps on ..

And I don't even eat cheese !! so can't blame that ....

Bit of a worry for me really ... Probably a bit more of a worry for McD I guess ......
========================================================

It's just gotten very silly at work .... I'm swamped with work ... and a good percentage of it is stuff that shouldn't be happening or that our outsourcing vendor should be doing ..... The current Delivery manager with the outsourcer has resigned ... and Good riddance I say .... She's very very nice .. but just doesn't understand her role .... We then asked for a specific delivery manager and as it turned out they were able to assign him to us ..... We talk the same language and both know what needs to be done .... So thats a start ......

But I'm still too busy to do my real job ...

Had to do to Auckland Wednesday night (return friday afternoon) .. As is always the way when I book these trips, we had flights cancelled and big delays due to high winds and low cloud (almost fog ) .... So got to visit a few sights and meet with the Auckland division and Vendors ...and got grumbled at by far too many about issues they have with the IT systems ......

I've spat the dummy with them too many times in the past few weeks...But I did have the vendors national services manager with me at the meetings in Auckland ... thats like the delivery managers bosses boss .... It was really good of him to join me on this ... I hope he got to feel a little of my pain ....

========================================================

IT'S DIET TIME !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I start a diet today ... Again .... I may start another diary to write about it .. .It can be a bit repetitive and boring listening to people's dieting woes ... But there again I want to dcument it and it's a diary I am writing here so where better to put it ...

So I'll think about that ....

I have a diet plan worked out .. Sensible (designed by scientist from the Ozzy CSIRO ) and have an exercise plan that is there but will need tweaking in the next week as I find whats sensible and whats not ....

Goals - to lose a couple of pounds a week over the next year ... 50kg or 110 Lbs loss...

Do you think I can do it - Bet you don't .........

But if I do lose it then I can get out into the wilds more .. and take pictures like this !!!!!