You can guess what he’s famous for…

Spent a significant sum of money on my car today, but am not unhappy, as my car has come out of it with a new cambelt, 3 new fanbelts, a new water pump, new battery lead, new brake light bulbs, new muffler, new rear brakes, antifreeze, engine flushed, oil and filter changed and a WOF. In other words, all the major maintenance which would conceivably need doing for the next few years.

Also feeling quite lucky that I got it all done now, as the cambelt was already missing a tooth, was loose and the rest of the teeth could be peeled off by hand. In other words, things could have been a lot lot worse.

Managed to get back to work in time from picking it up for beer and pizza as well.

In other news, we are running a wee AI contest at work, based on this one. I spent about 5 minutes modifying one of the examples and ended up with something which could compete quite well with others, which have had hours spent on them. As yet, I have made no improvements on this though, and the few attempts I have made have ended in failure. However, I have plenty of ideas, just waiting for me to figure out the maths that goes with them…

Anyway, after beer and pizza, I watched Demolition man and then went round to Merodie’s to play some pool. A satisfactory result at one game each.

Today, I get to spend all day at work! because we have a project due at the end of next week, which is not a long way away.

Well, I’ve had a reasonably good weekend… Somewhat surprising as I did spend 9-6 at work on Saturday, but it didn’t seem like that long. After work I went round to check out Mark’s new place which was very nice. I also met Jess - Mark’s (parent’s) dog and his parents.

A bit later we went into town to iconic and Merodie and I carved up on the pool table. - I think it may have been because we managed to find a cue that was straight… and got home just after 12. When I got home the TV was going and I watched the rest of a movie called Loser which wasn’t awful, although the ending was predictable.

Today I watched a couple of movies and did some shopping. Also cleaned the kitchen and threw out the decomposing food in the fridge. The movies I watched were “The Four Feathers” (1939) and “Dangerous Minds”. The Four Feathers had some classic location captions… This one in particular had me laughing out loud:

The funny thing was that it was completely serious

I just got home from work, (left about 10pm) (arrived just after 7:30am) and the first thing I did was to turn on my computer, which you’d think would be about the last thing I would want to do… However, I pretty much only turned it on to write this post, so I’ll be in bed before too long.

The long day at work was punctuated somewhat by a reasonably long lunch (lots of stuff to do, ending with sitting in the sun eating some monster sandwiches) and the trip Andy, Baz and me made to the all you can eat sushi place at church corner. I think I ate as much as I could eat… which I think we worked out would be about $35 from the amount of plates worth I ate, but all you can eat is only $16 if you have 3 or more people, so they weren’t making much money off us

The funniest thing that happened today was at lunchtime when I went to the warehouse to print a photo of something and was confronted on the screen by a number of photos of (flatmate) Megan with an af and crossed eyes, which I’m sure she thought she’d deleted, and which I didn’t know were there, but it turns out when she deletes the photos from her mac, they actually go into a hidden trash folder, which wasn’t so hidden to the machine at the warehouse. - Turns out there were 25 photos on the card when I thought there were 3. I’m considering actually posting some of the photos, because they are very funny, but I don’t know if I’d come out of it in 1 piece. Maybe after I come back from Kerikeri in the weekend and I won’t be in reach of her for some time…

I guess that’s pretty much it, possibly another late night tomorrow, but hopefully not, and then flying to Auckland at 7:40 Friday morning.

Well, quite a lot has happened since my last post… Thursday I was at work till 11 trying to get as much done on our project as possible, because I wasn’t going to be there the next day. We did have a break from 6-8 to play basketball though. Then I came home, ironed my clothes and started packing to go up to my flatmate Dave’s wedding in Kerikeri (He was marrying my other flatmate’s (Megan) sister Gwyneth.

I finished packing in the morning and Merodie dropped me off for my 7:40am flight. I caught the bus from Auckland airport into town and then hopped off to find the bus depot (for my bus to Kerikeri). I got there about the same time as the bus that I’d hopped off did For the record, the bus depot is at the sky tower and the airport bus stops there… I dropped off my bag there and then went exploring.

First I went up the sky tower and stood on the glass floor and looked down into a swimming pool… Reminded me of True Lies, - if only I’d come up the elevator on a horse .

They also had some remote control cameras up there, which were obviously powered by windows XP - due to there being some unused icons on the desktop

Then I went shopping for a tent, and after I fed my lunch to the sparrows in Albert park, I bought one. Then I bussed to Kerikeri, hopping off at the Bishopwood distillery and Restaurant, as I had been instructed by Megan. I then txted Megan and a few minutes later she pulled up in the car with her brother, picked me up and then drove across the road into their driveway…

After meeting lots of people I set up my tent on the lawn and had a yum barbeque tea, then we had a bit of a pool tournament, with Kelvin and me dominating the table Mike, Jude, and Leah arrived about 11. Mike stayed in my tent and we spent a big chunk of the night catching up. In the morning, (wedding day) we txted Gwyneth and Megan to place our order for breakfast in bed. However, suprisingly, breakfast was not forthcoming. We finally gave up hope when they went for their 9 o’clock appointment at the hairdressers, so we went and had breakfast. Then Mike and me went for a drive, did a bit of a tickie tour and got back in time for Lunch.

Then, just as we were about to leave to go to the wedding, someone came running up to the window of the car and said they needed one of the guys to drive a car… As we were sitting in Mike’s car, the job fell to me by default, and I found out that I was driving the bridesmaids to the wedding in a 1939 Morris 8! We made it safely, which was somewhat of a relief, as it was a bit different to driving a modern car.

The wedding was a success - they were married at the end , actually it was very cool. After the wedding there was an afternoon tea, then we went into town for coffee and then came back for a steam boat ride.

The reception had awesome food and excellent speeches. Below is a photo of the bride and groom having their first meal together

The next morning, Sherbert and Jerry came and visited us in the tent.

After breakfast Megan, Kelvin and me went shooting. Megan and me each got a turkey - I shot mine in the head Then Megan took me down the back of the farm to see their taniwha - a rather fat eel, which I got to stroke - a somewhat slimy experience In the afternoon we played Risk and after NCIS we went shooting again, with Kelvin getting a possum and me getting another turkey.

Today was a fairly lazy day, due mainly to the large quantity of rain - I now know that my tent can withstand both wind and rain… My plane departed at 5:30. Mrs Walst made me an awesome packed tea, which even made the air hostess jealous ~:)

I arrived home to find Tuesday’s leftovers still on the bench… They have now been disposed of

Again more than a week has slipped by since I last posted… - I am trying to do better, honest… Although I am doing better than Mark who last updated on the 3rd of December. I’m guessing it has something to do with him shifting and having no internet yet. However, when he does, get his internet back, I expect a huge influx of posts as he posts all the ones he’s been writing to keep up with all that has happened while he hasn’t had internet. - You are still writing the posts aren’t you Mark? I haven’t really done much since my last post, apart from watching lots of movies, as the title suggests.

The movies I’ve watched since then include National Treasure, The count of Monte Cristo, The original Ocean’s 11, Amélie, The new Ocean’s 11, Big Fat Liar, Sweet November and Out of Sight. I watched the original Ocean’s 11 at Tim’s and National Treasure at the movies with Mark and co. Other than that, I’ve pretty much been watching them alone.

Apart from the movies, I went into town with Mark and Andy after National Treasure on Friday to play pool. When we got there we saw some strangely dressed characters (superman, optimus prime and a zombie) who turned out to be Mark’s brother and his friends.

Saturday I went flathunting with Merodie, and we actually found a flat! A couple of preliminary photos below (taken early this morning). The inside photos I took through the windows were all kind of spoiled by reflections. The brown one is our backyard.

Yesterday, I spent a few hours on the phone to Megan, which put paid to my plans to clean the flat before I go home… I am leaving to go home tomorrow evening and am going out for tea tonight, which doesn’t really leave any more time. I did tidy a little bit though.

When I went up to Kerikeri, I accidently left my sunglasses behind… I have since received some rather interesting emails, which I felt I should share with everyone. Hopefully the copyright holders and photographic subjects won’t mind too much… As the people in the photos are all wearing dark glasses, I think that privacy is preserved

I’m almost relieved that they are now flying back to me!

This is going to be a quick update because I’m somewhat sick of sitting in front of this computer. The main reason for this is that I have spent most of the last few days trying to remove a fairly nasty trojan/malware/spyware thing. One site described the difficulty of manually removing it as “Battle axe or chainsaw recommended”. I’m almost certain that this or something like it was what I was trying to remove. Anyway, I have fought the beast and I have conquered.

Christmas was great, although it was a bit rainy. An awesome dinner cooked by my sister in the evening with a huge ham. Lots of chocolate etc received too. My parents and sister then had to leave for the airport in Auckland at about 6am boxing day as my sister was starting her new job in Queenstown on Monday. Monday the weather finally looked like summer and I played minigolf with my friends, followed by some lunch and games for the rest of the day (of the playstation and cards varieties) Then eventually made my way home after tea. I might post some photos when I am remotivated.

Went to see Ocean’s 12 today with my brothers, which I thought was excellent, with some excellent dialogue and LOL moments. Although I do hope that the last scene was not setting the movie up for a sequel…

That’s all I’m going to write.