Monday, February 28, 2005

Salary shmalary

Started my salary negotiations with work today. We'll see if they can meet my requirements for working in the US or not... Fun times huh?

Sunday, February 27, 2005

Coffee

Ok, so the weekend is over and it has started raining pretty hard. I just got off the phone with my grandma and sounds like it is raining hard in Florida too... Last night I spent a long time organizing photos and putting comments to them. I have so many to take care of.

I have started using gThumb to make my photo albums. A while I started using it for photo organization and I figured I might as well use it for online albums because it already is very capable. I can put captions right there in the program and they show up automatically in the album. Take a look at the two new albums I put up and let me know if you like this new format or the old format better...
Here are the new albums: Mt. Ruapehu and Huey

Here are some that were promised. First we will tackle the one from Simon and I climbing Mt. Ruapehu on Saturday:
Simon peering off a cliff into nothing:


Lenny at the Crater Lake:


Now here are some of Huey that I took yesterday:


Saturday, February 26, 2005

Crazy Fockers

Just got done seeing Meet the Fockers with Hamish and Amanda. It was pretty funny.

Yesterday Simon and I climbed Mt. Ruapehu. Photos will be coming from that tomorrow. It rained on us a bit and was cloudy most of the time so the photo taking opportunities were limited, but I still managed some good ones. It was very "Mordor", but considering much of Lord of the Rings was filmed on Mt. Ruapehu, I guess that makes sense.

Just stopped in at work for a few to check my email and such. I guess I will go home and play with Huey for a while and maybe sit in the sun and read... Oh yeah, I will have more pictures of Huey tomorrow as well.

Photofriday: Ghostly

Hmmm... Ghostly. I never take "ghostly" photos, but that is the PhotoFriday challenge this week. Maybe that is the point and I should go out and take some "ghostly" photos. Here is the one I think is the most ghostly at the moment. It was taken last May on my way to work one morning in Hamilton, New Zealand:


Update: I guess this isn't the greatest practice, but here is another photo for the Ghostly competition. It is my mate Sarah's son Jack at an art show:

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Drive west young man

Dan is going to be in Rochester for Dave Jones' wedding on May 7th so he said he would drive with me out to Vail to keep me company. I am stoked. Looks like I will be in Rochester until the 8th or 9th of May... He also just sent me a few photos. Here is one of Dan dropping off a pretty big cliff in the Vail backcountry:

Grind

Last night after work I went home and hung out. I had to drop a CD off to Sarah and Gareth so I went over to their place and Simon was there! I couldn't believe it. I didn't know he was coming back until later. It's cool to have him back and I think we are gonna watch 21 Grams tonight on the projector at work. Good to see him again and it will be fun to have a tramping partner again.

The other night Huey was loving to climb and play in trees. Check it out:

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Flickr Killed the Photoblog Star: rebuttal

A little over a week ago, a photoblogger named Catherine Jamieson wrote a bit about how flickr killed the photoblog star. Here is my rebuttal to that...

Flickr defined the photoblog star. The people who continue to not use Flickr are the ones who are stars. That site only allows 10MB worth of new photos each month unless you are on a pay account. The format is very standard and in my opinion not all that asthetically pleasing. I am not saying my blog is appealing, but at least I can change it however I like.

In response to photography not being like text, I fully agree. However, Flickr is treating as such. I don't want to be looking at these tiny 400 pixel images. Puh-lease. I want 640x480 at least. Come on people. We all have high resolution monitors now. On top of that, the image is flash based. That means that if I like the image and want to save it or link to it, I can't. Saving it, forget about it. Linking to it is possible, but then you actually have to link to the Flickr page.

There are some nice things about it like the organizing and comments, but I can all that fairly easy by using gThumb or Picasa to publish a web album.

Flickr is a backwards progression in expression.

Monday, February 21, 2005

Contract shmontract

Work is officially driving me nuts with this contract. They want us all to sign a new contract, but some people don't really agree with all parts of it. I am one of those people. They keep pushing and pushing and I am fed up. I said I am not signing it the way it is and that is that.

Anyway, last night Hamish and I went out to Ben's parents' house for dinner with his parents. I had to bring Ben and Mel's snowboards out to them. Worked out well. Had a good feed and chatted for a bit.

Saturday, February 19, 2005

Photofriday: Rural

Update: I think I will use this photo for the Photofriday: Rural competition instead. If I get a chance and the clouds clear up I might go out and take some photos near the Jones' farm and change this yet again... I guess if I do it before voting starts that is cool right?

Anyway, I am submitting this one of my parents in Canterbury, New Zealand:


This is the old one:
From nearly the most northern point of New Zealand's Coromandel Peninsula at the base of Mt. Moehau. Rather rural there...

Summer on the Tongariro Crossing

On Friday afternoon I decided to do the Tongariro Crossing because the weather was going to be good. I went up there with a few giys from work early on Saturday morning and did it. There was a bit of cloud and it got a little cool at times, but excellent day for it...

Really excellent views... like this moonscape in one of the craters:


and the red crater on the top of Mount Tongariro:


like the ultimate North Island shot of the Emerald Lakes:


or the view across a crater to the Red Crater:

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Exciting times

I finished something up here at work that I have been working on debugging since November. It is finally working, now I have to speed it up. Serious optimization time.

The kitten is fun.

I got SILC working in Gaim finally... I had to install the silc-toolkit and then give Gaim a bunch of configure options, but now it is working and I had an encrypted convo over it with Kris...

On the 12th of March we are having a bling party at my flat as my going away party... Everyone needs to come wearing as much bling-bling as possible. I am going as the Bishop Don "Magic" Juan. Amanda and I are going bling shopping tonight.

Tuesday, February 15, 2005

Kitten

I need help naming this kitten:


Last night Amanda and Hamish were taking Olivia home and they came across 4 kitten in the middle of the road. They came home and told us about them so we went back and got one. The poor thing was the runt of the litter so of course Amanda had to have that one. It has fleas and we need to get that taken care of. Hamish and I went and got food and kitty litter last night for it. We had to make it sleep in the shed because of the fleas, but we will soon have them taken care of.

We don't know if it is a boy or a girl yet. We reckon it is about 7 weeks old. What should we name it?

Monday, February 14, 2005

Keep on workin it

Current music: Snoop Dogg - Let's Get Blown

So Endace told me that they are keen to keep me on and have me work from the States. Should be cool. I am heading to Vail, Colorado in May and I will work from there.

Jeff and Dan are going to work on getting a place for me for the summer. Their lease is up in the fall, so I might move in with them in a new place after that... I am stoked to head up there again!

Sunday, February 13, 2005

Again?

Well, working today and that damn guy who was sleeping against the front door yesterday has decided he would wander inside today. We caught him and threw him out... What a weirdo...

Started raining today. We need it.

Saturday, February 12, 2005

About to leave work

So it is the weekend and I thought I would try to catch up on some work. I am here at work and about to leave. I look outside and I see this really creepy looking dude walking towards the building. I watch him and then he comes and sits right against the door of our building. Now I don't really feel like leaving.

A very sweet photographer, Rachel Anne, is sending me some of her prints! I have always liked her work and so I thought I would ask for some prints and she said she would be very happy to send some to me... Awesome!

Bridal Veil Falls

So... I finally made it to Bridal Veil Falls out near Raglan. In the 5 months I was in Hamilton for uni and the past 10 months living here, I never made it there. I always drove by on my way ro Ralgan. Finally, yesterday I stopped to check it out. Really beautiful falls! Here are some shots...




Friday, February 11, 2005

Trip back to NZ

It just occurred to me that I haven't written anything about my trip from Florida back to NZ. Well, the trip was good. I was in Chicago briefly... just enough time to get a bagel and catch the next flight. When I got to LAX, Ben and Mel were there to greet me. It was rad to see them. We got dinner and hung out for a while.


When I was at my grandparents house they wanted me to put my grandma's knitting machines on eBay and my grandpa's '62 Ford Falcon. When my grandpa said how much he wanted the reserve set for I laughed and said for that price I would almost want to buy it. Then he turned and told me, "You want it! It's yours!" I didn't know what to say. I feel guilty, as though I asked for it even though I shouldn't because I didn't. As Ben put it, when I am a grandfather and I want to give my grandson something, I want him to take it. So I am going to take it... I am not sure what the heck I am going to do with the thing because I don't have any garage to put it in. I will have to find something. Anyway, here are a few photos of it:




Photofriday: Luscious

I wasn't sure what to do for this challenge from photofriday.com... Hmmm... Luscious... I looked through photos other people have posted and thought there were too many food posts. Here is one from a beach in Mount Manganui with a beautiful woman standing on a cliff. I took this a few weeks ago when I went out there to do some surfing.

Thursday, February 10, 2005

Photofriday: Distorted

This week's photofriday.com challenge is "distorted". This is a shot of my friends Stacy and Shaun when we were hiking Cascade Mountain in the Adirondacks during the November of 2002...

Wednesday, February 09, 2005

Back in the Tron

Made it back to Hamilton. I am not planning to head into work today. I am just going to relax here at home. I need to call my grandparents and parents to let them know that I have made it back here. Ugh... long flight. My brain is functioning slowly at the moment. Must get coffee...

Sunday, February 06, 2005

Visits

The Patriots just won the Superbowl... I really didn't care who won, but it was cool to get to see the last game of the season even if it was the only game I saw this season.

The Buccis came today with Steven and they brought my grandparents from up in northern Florida. It was really good to see them since it had been over a year! We took some photos. Here is one of me with all 4 of my grandparents:

DC -> Tampa

So the time in DC was good. We visited a customer and got some other things accomplished. Had dinner with Ian and Aggi one night. Then I took off to Tampa.

My Aunt Fran picked me up at the airport because Nonny and Poppy didn't want to drive at night. We made to back here and talked for a while before bed. In the morning Nonny's leg was really swollen and had a big red spot. This is the good leg, not the one she broke a few weeks ago. We went to the hosptial. It was a new one and there was nobody there. She was immediately taken care of. It was great, the way hospitals should be! Turns out that they think she may have an infection so they gave her some anti-biotics for it. The doctor said he had some other thoughts on what it could be, but she wouldn't want to hear them and he left it at that.

For the rest of the day we just relaxed around the house. Today my other grandparents are driving down from Leesburg (north of Orlando) with the Buccis. It will be cool to see Steven, the Buccis, and my grandparents.

Today the swelling on Nonny's leg has gone down some and the red spot isn't as bright. I hope the anti-biotics take care of it.

Tomorrow I am planning to head to the post office and Sears, then Tuesday it is back to NZ...

Thursday, February 03, 2005

DC slept last night

Ok, so I have made it to DC. Tried to crash out last night but the jetlag prevented that until about 2am. I am about to head off this morning to see some customers with the other guys. I think last night I started remembering things that I miss about the States.

Wednesday, February 02, 2005

wifi is good

Free wifi in the SF airport... Woo hoo!

Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Off to the States today

Today I am leaving at about 4pm to head up to Auckland to catch my flight to the States. Should be a fun trip. Almost done packing and everything. I just need to wrap up a few loose ends here at work and at home before taking off.

Watched the last episode of the Apprentice last night. Good, but it dragged on too long. It was pretty cool to see the guy I had been rooting for from the beginning win it.

Anyways, time to clean up the loose ends.