Interesting grapevine at work

I got an email from Jon Berretta this morning saying that he hopes Owen Smith had received the news about Aaron and wondered if I had his email address or anything. Unfortunately I don't, but passed on Jesse's and his parents' phone number. I believe Owen would have been one of the first people contacted. I was curious though, about how Jon had gotten my email address. I don't think I have really seen that guy in a long time! I do remember who he is... I think he lived either next to Stephen Krisel or maybe Johnny lived with Steve and Berretta lived next door. I don't remember. Anyways, he said he got my email from Jen Davis. I guess the email I sent out must have been forwarded to Jen, then from Jen to Jon... Weird... Anyone know who Jen Davis is?

Got home from work yesterday and hit up the Warehouse with Ben then we went and played some pool at Spirit'd and did some grocery shopping. Seems like I live at the grocery store sometimes. Ran into Sarah and Jack on the bus home last night and then again in to town this morning. Jack hadn't eaten any breakfast so I gave him my banana. Cute kid. A bit of a rascal though.

Just talked to my mom, sister, and cousin. My cousin Danny is going to visit Stacia in Italy on Saturday. He is in the army and stationed in Germany right now. My mom is doing well. She is excited to come over here and is working on planning her trip. I am going to make an itinerary for her once she tells me all the things she wants to do.

I need to ask about taking some time off when they come over so that I can go to the South Island with them for a week or something.

Great weekend

On Friday night I went out with a bunch of people from work and ran into Leigh. She is waitressing at Iguana. I got her number so I will be catching up with her soon!

Saturday was rainy and I stayed in for most of the day. Ben and I messed with the antenna on the roof trying to get better TV reception. I think we screwed it up. Samantha and I went to town with Ben in the afternoon and did some shopping, but ended up getting nothing. We went and hired some DVDs... Texas Rules of Attraction, Chainsaw Massacre, and Donnie Darko. Also picked up some groceries to make burritos... the BBQ vegan ones that I did with Tim, Beth, and Jeff a while ago... Sam and I made burritos that were great, then we watched the movies in the order listed above. Right after Texas Chainsaw when we were starting Donnie Darko there was thi big chainsaw noise outside. It scared the crap out of us... It turned out some people were having a party down the road and were cutting something up with it. Great night to be doing that.

Sunday I watched DOnnie Darko again when I woke up then Ben, Mel, and I headed off to the hotpools in Rotorua. Here is a good shot of the scene there...


After those pools we thought we would head over to Taupo for some more...


I was pretty worn out after all that...

On my way to work this morning the sky was rather beautiful. Here is a shot from the bus station.

Friday morning mocha

So I have started making mochas on Friday mornings. I just have normal coffee with rest of the week because if I was having mochas every day I would be huge. Damn I love this coffee machine.

So... what has been going on since I found out about Aaron you ask? I went home early from work on Wednesday and just veged out all night. Went over to Simon's house later to find out about rock climbing.

Yesterday I met Sarah out for lunch at Kino's Sushi Bar then Ben, Melanie and Simon picked me up from work to go rock climbing at the gym in Frankton. It was a good time. After that we had to rush home to go over to Simeon's presentation. He made a movie short for the S&M club (screen and media unfortunately...). It was quite a big thing. There were about 20 films... they were all music videos. Excellent stuff some of them. Others were terribly boring. Afterwards we went back to Simon's place and then out to the Home Bar. I got annoyed with the place and ended up just taking off and walking home.

That is about it for me right now...

Aaron

Here is some info... SHOEMAKER.doc

Recent pictures of Aaron Shoemaker

I Googled these because I don't have any pictures of him with me here in NZ and the ones I have back in the States are not all that recent...

Bad news in the world of snowboarding... and just life in general

I just found out about 2 hours ago from Tracie McCarthy (Bryan Hartman's wife) that Aaron Shoemaker died yesterday in a snowboarding accident. He was riding over there professionally and competing. Jesse (his brother) went to visit him and this happened while Jesse was there. He was able to be with Aaron in the hospital.

This is a sad day for snowboarding. Aaron was not only a fabulous snowboarder, but one of the best people I have ever met. The entire Shoemaker family are some of the most sincere, loving, and friendly people. This should not happen to any family and certainly not one like theirs.

I am glad for the time I have spent with Aaron and I will never forget it.

Slowly I have been informing people that knew him. Dan Lindsey asked me if there is anything online about him. A quick Google search came up with a few... Here are two of the best... One is a salute to him... http://www.sportestremi.org/. The other is a newclip stating his unfortunate fate... http://www.crazyriders.it/HomeP.asp

One thing is for sure. Anyone who met Aaron will remember him the rest of their life.

Thought I would be paid

I thought I was getting paid last night, but the money has not shown up in my account yet... Weird... Anyways...

Went home from work last night and made some pizza. Used some pre-made crust that I got at the grocery store and it actually came out pretty well... Of course, I made my own sauce and stuff.

After pizza my whole flat went out to Spirit'd to shoot some pool. Played for quite a while. I like this just buy a drink and play as much as you want idea...

Time to get down to some work here, after a cup of tea.

$5 for cokes and pool

Last night after work I hung out at the flat for a while then Ben and I decided to go play some pool. We went down to Spirit'd in town because they have free pool for customers. We paid $5 for 2 cokes and played pool for almost an hour and half. Sweet deal huh?

Ben dropped me off at Aimee and Sarah's place because Daryl was there. He is finally back from Aussie after 7 months. I hung around there for a little then went home for bed. Darly got really skinny! Probably either all the drugs he is doing, or just being poor and not eating much. He has been living on the beach I guess and he only worked about 2 out of 7 months he was there.

So... plans for this week...

Today:
- lunch with Boldas

Nearly every day this week:
- coffee with Sarah

Thursday:
- lunch with Sarah
- rock climbing with Simon, Ben, and Melanie

Damn! I just spilled tea on myself.

It is pretty cool because Sarah goes to Polytech and works in the mall just down the road from me and Aimee also works at the mall. I can meet them out sometimes during lunch and stuff.

Back at work after a relaxing weekend

So Friday evening I walked home from work. The weather was awesome so I said screw taking the bus... After I got home Marty and Kenny came and we went bowling then to play some pool. I rocked everybody with a 183 then at pool I got a down-trow against Marty. Marty was pretty gutted about it...

Saturday I went and looked at some cars with Ben at the auction. I really want to buy a car. I miss not being able to get places... After that Kenny and Marty came around and we went over to Simon and Richard's house for a while. The girls and Simeon came over too... even Samantha showed up! Everybody had already heard about the down-trow and they were really ripping on Marty... besides, he had the lowest score in bowling too... even Aimee beat him.

Sunday Kenny came over in the early afternoon and we went out to Cambridge with his brother and a bunch of other people to pick up his '46 Chevy body. After that I chilled out with Richard for a while at his place then went home and hung out with the flatmates the rest of the night... Ben loves that Buzznet site and he commented on a few pictures on there. I think he is going to start sending some pics to the Buffalo one...

Here is a picture of one of the cars at the place we picked up Kenny's '46 Chev body...

Fridays at work = pretty rad!

So... Last Friday we had pizza. This Friday one of the guys here decided that he is sick of pizza and he wants to have a BBQ instead. He is working on firing it up now. I love Fridays.

Last night I went out for dinner with a bunch of people because today is Simeon's brithday and Kenny's is Sunday. We all went to Metropolis last night for dinner then went to the Loaded Hog for a while and played some pool. It was supposedly "National Nude Day", but that is weird because it is normally in August. Anyways, there were plenty of girls running around with no shirts on. I went home early though because I had to get up for work. I left town about midnight and things don't really get crazy until about 1am... no nakedness for me last night.

Here is a picture of the birthday boys just after making a toast...

Toys at the office

I know you geeks have been dying to see what I am working on. For information about real products we already have, go to http://www.endace.com, but here is a Prolificx product called the Eagle-250. It has a 400 MHz ARM X-Scale core and runs Linux. I am playing around with it a little to familiarise myself with the platform. Hint... hint... Something based on this is coming. Not sure if I am allowed to talk about it yet though.

Weather couldn't be better

Current music: Mogwai - Hunted by a Freak

I went out for a walk and get some lunch about an hour ago. I got some pretty good Chinese tofu/beef/rice combo thing and went to Garden Place and sat in the sun. After that I got myself a Magnum (best ice cream on a stick you will ever have) and went back to the sun. Som little 3 year old Maori kid came over and I had a nice chat with him. I didn't realize that where I was sitting there was a ton of ants. Now I have ants in my pants...

Anyway... 65 and sunny every this week so far. I love it.

Evenings are boring in winter

It sucks going from one winter to the next. Days are getting shorter and they are already short! It has been getting dark about 5:45 lately. On the other side of that, it will soon start getting longer again.

Last night after I left work I went to an internet cafe to download some Loveline, fix up my IRA account, and just do stuff that I can't do on the computer here at work because they block SSL at the web proxy.

As I was walking from the cafe to the bus stop I came across Ben so he gave me a ride back home.

Melanie wasn't feeling well so Ben and I just hung out the rest of the night. Our power went out for about 30 minutes. We rang the power company and they came out and fixed something at the pole. They said a bunch of people on our street were out.

I lead a real exciting life lately. Maybe it will pick up this weekend... I will have to make it pick up I guess...

Work work work...

Last night I went home and just hung out most of the night except for the walk I took over to the Warehouse and the dairy. I had to pick up a little heater for my room from the Warehouse and the most recent copy of Loot to look for a car from the dairy.

I haven't posted any oh my pictures from the trip to Napier so here is one... This is a shot of the two kids we rode with on the way back to Hamilton from Napier. This huge Cook Islander and his Samoan wife picked us up in their van. They were awesome. They made the kids sit in back and then bought us chips and gave us a big bag of apples! Anyways, here are their kids sleeping on the back seat.

2nd week of work...go!

Current music: Jets to Brazil - Wish List

So I already wrote this, but for some reason it didn't post... I will write a shorter version this time just pretty much listing what I did since Friday afternoon.

Went out with flatmates to a pool hall.
Fell asleep early...

Saturday:
Got up early (see above).
Went into town after missing the bus once.
Did grocery shopping and got computer speakers for my Neuros
Went to hardcore show. some good bands (Electric Shakedown), some not so good.
Met Samantha at Cazbar.
Hit up Little Ben's 21st at Digger's.

Sunday:
Went out for lunch with Samantha at Esscaba's.
Got coffee with Sam at Metropolis.
Ran into Bel.
Went to Raglan for a surf with Ben (flatmate).
Watched movies with the flatmates.

Radio shows

Current music: Howard Stern - 11 September 2001

Not sure why I am so into listening to radio shows lately. Maybe it is because I haven't been getting any new music and I am not doing that much yet at work...

Anyways, the guy who gave me work to do went to Sydney for a few days and nobody knows what I should do...

I have a little to do... so back to it.

Took some pics around the office

Current music: Loveline - 9 May 2004 with Andy Richter

So I went over to Sara and Amy's last night with Simeon, Kenny, and Richard. A bunch of other people showed up... Pretty fun. Here is a picture of Lenny, Kenny, and Penny (Simeon wants to be called Penny so he rhymes with us).

The wonderful land of HDLC...

Current music: Air - Surfing on a Rocket

Yesterday I thought I would recompile the kernel on my machine here at work to add USB mass storage support so that it would recognize my Neuros and CF card reader. I recompiled it using the wrong version of GCC it screwed up all my libraries. Between that, getting the video card to work again, and getting the mouse to work again it took me all morning.

Last night it was raining so I just went home from work. When I got there nobody was home, but there was a pile of DVDs on the floor. I decided to watch one so I chose

Orange County

. Nothing that great. In fact, it was kinda lousy. After that I went over to the internet cafe to download a Loveline episode. I miss that show so much. I am glad that I have found some reasonably up to date servers with episodes on it!

This morning I came into work earlier so that I could take some pictures around the office and stuff, but I forgot that I hadn't entered my alarm code yet, so I didn't have one. Good thing I remembered before I opened the door... I ended up walking around the city for about 30 minutes listening to Loveline before I came back. Koryn and Erez were just coming up so they let me in.

Today I have been working on an HDLC frame checker thing. It checks that the HDLC frames that have been de-mapped from a T1/E1 line have been de-mapped correctly. Kind of interesting because I don't know HDLC, but I hope that I get to write some actual software for a board instead of a little desktop utility.

I have been listening to Loveline a lot lately. I brought 3 episodes from early March on my MP3 player. I have about 10 minutes left of the last one to listen to then it will be on to the new ones. Damn Jeff for getting me hooked to that show, but it gives me something to listen to when I am waiting for the bus and riding hte bus to and from work. Not having a car really isn't bad in Hamilton, but it will be a pain on the weekends when I want to go places. I think I should have that sorted soon though.

My world is slowing down

At work again for the 3rd day now. Last night I did some more grocery shopping then went home and pretty much sat on the couch all night until bed. I have started listening to the Loveline episodes on my Neuros. I need to download more, but I can't here at work because of the bandwidth limits. I think I will stop by an internet cafe after work and grab some...

It is raining today and should continue all day... Maybe I will go make myself a coffee...

2nd day at work

So I went to Napier with Simon. It took us 4 rides to get there and 4 to get back. Some sweet ones and some that sucked. We had this one crazy woman on the way there who kept saying stupid stuff and downshifting her automatic like crazy. Really angry woman. Not fun to ride with so I went to sleep in the back and made Simon suffer in the front. On the way home we got a ride with some Pacific Islanders who were really cool. They gave us apples and bought us chips at Pak N Save.

Started work yesterday. I caught the bus into town, but the door to Endace was locked. I walked around and got some coffee at a cafe then came it. They had me writing a packet sniffer using libpcap. Really easy! Went shopping after work and got groceries then took the bus home. Went over to Simon's last night for a little while after dinner.

So now I am starting my second day. I am gonna go make some coffee on the really aweswome coffee machine! It is a full cappucino thing like in coffee shops. I can steam milk and make espresso and everything. I will have to get a picture of this one! Pics of the office coming soon.

I would have posted more pics from the Routeburn by now, but Blair's computer was acting weird the other day and now I have been unable to sync my Neuros with the computer at work. It is a cool machine though. Dual P4 2.8 GHz with 1GB of RAM and a 122 GB HD and a 17" LCD... I am in love. Of course Debian all the way...

Ok, off to make some coffee.

Hitch mish to the Nappy???

I took the bus back to Hamilton and Kenny picked me up. It was pissing down really hard and I owe him for coming to pick me up in that crap. We got my stuff from Blair's and I moved into my new flat. I need to take Blair's key back to him still...

In the morning I met Alice, one of the girl in the flat. She seems really nice. I did some washing, went to the warehouse and picked some stuff up and Samantha met me there. I hung out with her most of the day. There was a free bbq on campus so we went over there and sat in the sun for a few hours. After that I came home and Melanie was here, she is Ben's girl. Very cool chick. We hung out and watched tv for a while and I ate some fish and chips.

Kenny and Simeon came around with Jo and picked me up to go to Simon's place. We hung out there for a while and I finally met the infamous Sarah... I'm not sure why everyone worships her though... Aimee Connors was there, Daniel, Richard, Richard's ex (Melissa). I think that was about it.

Si wants me to hitch with him to Napier for his brother's flat warming party tonight, but I am kinda sketchy about it. I have to start my new job on Monday and I am not really settled in my flat yet. I have to do some banking today and grocery shopping. I think I am just gonna stay here. Although, it does sound like a lot of fun.

Back on the North Island

Current music: Radio in the IEP office

Made it back to the North Island just a short time ago and took the AirBus into Auckland's CBD. Now I am sitting at IEP catching up on email and stuff... Once I get down to Hamilton I will try to get on a computer and upload some serious pics from my trek.

Got word from Jennie today that she has purchased tickets over here. Sweet! We will have a blast. I am sorta looking forward to starting work on Monday, but I am enjoying just doing nothing and traveling around. I guess it will be good to have some income though. Besides, Hamilton can get boring...this will give me something to do. THere should be some shows coming up too... maybe I will see the Bleeders soon.

I am gonna try to get a hold of Ben and Bubba now and see if they want to go out for some dinner. I think Bubba and Steph are in Aussie now though.

Slept well last night

Got up this morning and had breakfast in a cafe with Will then went up the Gondola in Queenstown. We did a quick run on the alpine slide (they call it a luge) then we rode the ganjala back down... It's funny...Will is from Vail.

Anyways, I have been taking care of some pictures for a while now. Got some awesome Indian food downstairs in the mall.

This week photofriday.com's challenge is "natural". That is pretty sweet since I was out on the Routeburn... Here is my entry.

Lake Harris near the Harris Saddle on the Routeburn Track between Glenorchy and the Milford Sound in New Zealand.

Back from the trek...

I got up in the morning a few days ago and went down to the DOC office. I met up with Jess and there were two others in there waiting to go on the bus out to the Routeburn as well... The guy was from Chicago (Mike) and the girl was from Berlin (Julia). Turned out that we did the entire track with them.

The first day we went from the Routeburn head of the track up to the Routeburn Falls hut. Absolutely beautiful there. It is right on a cliff by the Routeburn Falls and overlooking two gorgeous valleys. It was dry until we got a short distance from the hut and it rained on us a little. No big deal though. Once we were in the hut it pissed down the rest of the day. We stayed in and talked and played cards with two from Sweden (Daniel and Sissi) and a few Aussies. Since there were only the eight of us in the entire hut we pulled some matresses into the kitchen area and slept there because there was a coal furnace there and it was much warmer...

In the morning we got up and leisurely ate some breakkie and had tea then set out. It started raining as soon as we started on the track. It just was pretty misty though and not raining hard. When we got to the Saddle it had stopped raining. We had been getting incredible views all morning. We figured that since the weather was breaking a little bit we would go up the Conical Summit. It was an hour return with no packs... We left our packs in the shelter. The wind up top was mad, but so were the vistas. Well done New Zealand... well done! We made our way back to the shelter and ate some lunch then set out to the Lake Mackenzie hut as soon as it started raining again... Took us about three hours to get down there, and down it was. There was a warden at the shelter and quite a few people. The main bunk house was nearly full, the stove was blasting and it was warm... Very important since we were soaked through. Had a good night and ate a mean dinner. Jess gave me a wicked back rub... Yeah...

Morning came and I slept through all the people be loud (as I do). Really took our time because it was raining hard and it did not look like fun. Mike and Julia set off in front of us because Mike needed to get a bus at the Divide at 2:15 (us not until 3:45) and Julia was going to continue the Greenstone track. So many awesome waterfalls... There was one HUGE one that soaked us since we had to walk almost directly under it and Jess and I are both too stubborn to take the "flood bridge detour". When arrived at the Howden Hut shortly after Julia and Mike. Ate with them and drank some coffee. Mike decided he was going to continue on the Greenstone with Julia and Jess and I went down to the Divide. When we got down there we had to wait about an hour for the bus. There was some crazy guy there who was going to do the Routeburn (in the descending snows down to 700m) with no rain gear besides some bags... What a nutter. He told us a story of a girl who had just been saved off the Milford Track with a broken leg. He was out on the track and sort of involved in the rescue... Took a bus back to Te Anau where I said a goodbye to Jess and then back to Queenstown. I am staying in the same hostel in the same room with the same guys as before. Kinda funny, but cool too because I like the guys. There was one new guy though...Will. We just went out to dinner at Lonestar. Now I am here writing this and I am ready to go take my wet boots off and sleep!

Pictures are coming! Probably either tomorrow or when I get back to Hamilton... More than likely tomorrow because I have all day in Queenstown and not much to do. I plan to ride the gondola, but if the weather is bad who knows...