2009 to come

Almost there. Clive and June arrive from Australia on the 1st.  Very quiet New Years Eve but Elvis sums it up.

Xmas day by Sophia

All these pictures were taken by Sophia, Joe & Sarah's German student. 

 (She is incredible - they want to keep her)

 KIPP UNDER THE XMAS TREE

From the left:  Sophia,Christine,Wayne,Joe,Angela,Sarah and at the head of the table KIPP.

Rhett looking for his Xmas presents.

Kipp on the Xmas booze.

Kipp with his Nans garden sign, suitably altered to Nanan.

Holding up his sign Whoops wrong way.

Contemplation time.

Hiding behind his sign.

One of his favourite gestures.

Again.

Kipp and Sophia - painting.

Is today saturday or maybe Sunday.

Today feels like a Saturday or Sunday. It is so quiet. The TV news has basically closed down and when you (or should that be - when one is ) are not working then one tends to lose track of the days over the Xmas - New Year break. My time is also upset with the kids coming around, particularly Angela, as she is off work until next year. Normally, because she is at work, we only see her at the weekend. 

Went to a friends 70th birthday party today for a while. Saw a few people we know and had a bit of a chat.   

We got Christine an electronic photo frame for Xmas. It is quite good. Does more than I realised as in addition to showing photos in various random phases it can be an alarm clock, show a digital clock and various other things. She has loaded it up and it is now chugging away.

Wanted to upload some pictures of Xmas day, all taken by Sophia, Joe & Sarah's German student, but the Net is so slow tonight. (Tuesday - 20 to 10 PM)  that I have given up. When will NZ get fast Broadband. No matter what the promises - Not this century. 

Clive and June arrive from Aussie on Thursday. Talking Aussie and cricket - we were weren't we - Seth Effrica by 9 wickets. GREAT!!!

Have been trying to track down two songs - probably the last I would like - Big Jump, Sandy Nelson and Lonnie Donnegans The Party's Over. Now got them both thanks to people all over the world. 

Leaders salaries. This was in the papers today. I looked at ours and compared it to the Australian PM. My immediate thought  was that ours is overpaid. Reading the Oz papers they believe their guy (Kevin Rudd) is underpaid. I suppose that thinking is typical of a Kiwi - we want lower wages, the Australians higher. 

If taking the US President as the benchmark then my take is that we are overpaying, the Irish are crazy, Russia underpaid as is Bolivia. In Bolivia's case Morales took a 50% pay cut when he took office. Singapore and Hong Kong are overpaid. A factor that is not allowed for is the 'perks'.  The US President s not that well paid but while in office he has few expenses and after leaving office he can make a mint. 

Boxing Day

The day after Christmas when we ( mostly in the Commonwealth) celebrate by having as a holiday. Named for when they used to give people gifts in boxes.

Report on Xmas Day - Great day and the weather was quite fine in the end. So much so that we ate outside; great meal (thanks Joe) and everybody pretty relaxed and happy. Quite a bit different for Sarah & Joe's German student Sophia. They open their presents the night before and of course it is winter in the North.

Other, mainly computer,matters: Raffle was about $5K down on last year- and I didn't win it!!.
Have been having problems with Internet Explorer so downloaded the Google browser Chrome which seems to be alright although the odd thing is it doesn't have a Home Page button automatically present, it has to be customised. Odd.
Don't know how it will all fare when we have to download some Windows updates as I/E doesn't seem to want to open. Also changed the ink in my Lexmark printer and it is having problems. Went out onto the net and it is a fault which Lexmark can't seem to fix. Will have to investigate further.
After the PC problems have decided to move everything as a backup to the Laptop but it has Roxio as its CD burner as opposed to Nero on the desktop. Can't see how to save the names of items burnt so I can put them in a Word document.

Christmas Day

Santa has arrived - I think!! Of course it is summer in the Southern Hemisphere and the day has dawned fine. Leave soon to have lunch at Sarah & Joe's place - turkey as usual.   Kipp is still too young to really appreciate the day but his day will come. 

Xmas Eve

XMAS EVE

Yes only one sleep to go. Funny how time passes so quick now and the days seem so much shorter than when one is a child. Then it took what seemed weeks to arrive. School finished and it was, it seemed, some months later that Xmas was here. I can still remember when I first knew that Santa was not real (isn't he!!!),

I was going to stay at my grandmothers in Pt. Chevalier and told my mother it wasn't true so I took some presents to her place - for her probably - and my brother asked what was in the parcel and we told him it was a shirt. I can't remember how old I was.

Speaking about my brother; he and his wife are coming to NZ for a few days and will be staying with us. A chance for them to meet the fabulous Mr Kipp.

Joe cut his leg and had to go to the hospital - he was told the delay was an hour which was a good estimate but as he got to the front an ambulance arrived. Overall about 3 hours there in the end.

Fiji - Our High Commissioner bundled home just after they said they wouldn't. Irrational behaviour is a hall mark of all dictatorships.

Another nutty story from America. The Californian Supreme Court has ruled that 'good samaritans' who help others, such as at car accidents, can be sued if they inadvertently harm those they are trying to help. So, if you see anybody that needs help - just walk away. That is really Christian!!

Always a busy last day as the Raffle finalises itself and the weather is wet although we can do with some rain.

Cricket

Two great chases lately. India chased down England but the big one was "Seth Effrica" doing the Aussies. What a great result. As for NZ vs Windies. We certainly let them off the hook. With New Zealand 245-3, only 62 in arrears with two batsmen set, the pitch a featherbed and time on their side we ended up with a lead of 64. I wouldn't think that is enough if the Windies get going.

Got our desktop PC back today so am back and running. Will try to move to a decent backup system by transferring most items to the Laptop.

After some probably needed rain we have a great day today. Don't know what Xmas Day holds.

Six Sleeps To Go!!

Six sleeps to go.

Although generally well down on the mad spending of last year I think it is picking up. I was on Raffle duty at the Mall today and we did reasonably well.

With all the problems with the PC I decided to load my address book into my Yahoo account. Went to open it from the saved file on my flashdrive and as usual did not do what I thought. It wouldn't open the file, it wanted to import into it into Windows Mail.

So I did that and loaded in the email addresses I didn't have into Yahoo. Sent an email and I think it has worked OK. Will work upon Windows Mail when the PC is up and running again. As per usual the computer idiots seemed to have altered the names - Address Book I think is now called Contacts. What idiots make these stupid decisions to change things for the sake of change are beyond me.

Less than a week to go - and the PC again

Less than a week to go until Xmas. And the bloody desktop PC has gone down again - and it does not sound good as it refuses to boot up - just going into a perpetual re-boot. And as usual have not backed up for a couple of days. My intention now is to move everything to the Laptop as well. Mainly will have to look into Windows Mail so I can use my email. May even looking at moving the adresses to a Webmail such as Yahoo.

As for Windows Mail - why oh why do they make things always more difficult not easier, always changing names, where actions are etc. And the Americans wonder why the Japanese do it better!!

Raffle sales are down nearly $5000 on last year and $2000 on 2006 which shows how the recession is starting to have an effect.

Final Quiz night for the year and we had a team of 7 and after our decision never to move away from General Knowledge as our bonus (double points) round we did terrible with 5/10 but came 2nd!!! $30 worth. To cap it off Christine took a ticket in the meat pack and won!! Whoo hoo - a good night.

It needed to be as most of us have been sick with a 24 hour bug. I seem to have come off the best as I was just feeling queasy and very tired - no vomiting. Luckily Kipp has not caught it as yet.

Is see Barak Obama is Times person of the year. However, I couldn't gety over one quote about Sarah palin as " the bright future for the Republican Party".

Rutherford 9 December 1908

100 years ago on the 9 December 1908 Ernest Rutherford was awarded the Nobel Prize. Is he our greatest Kiwi of all time?. The Reserve Bank seemed to think so when they put him on our largest denomination bank note.

We were visiting friends last night and as we drove back we heard on the 11 PM news that former All Black and commentator John Drake had died, aged just 49. What a tragic loss. I always looked forward to his views as I considered him one of the most astute judges of Rugby.

I opened a "competitions" email account at Myrealbox many years ago but it is getting worse so decided to move to Gmail. Thought I would use our names and just add something the same to each as easier to remember - such as Waynekiwi. But as usual all taken so after much mucking about now have all as haka added on with our names except Christine with whom I have had to use her initials.

Quiz - came 3rd equal. With no Jackpot going and it must go next week, with Xmas as the theme, we should be in training.

Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke (12 January, 1729 – 9 July, 1797) was an Anglo-Irish statesman,who served for many years in the House of Commons. I am a supporter of his views as to voting by MP's in Parliament. They should vote their views not ours.

"Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion."

At a recent candidates meeting one said he would canvass the views of his constituents and follow their views. Not my way of thinking - what say the majority wanted to do away with taxes!!

PC problems and street view with another win

Have had PC problems with overheating again so was forced to use the laptop and VISTA. Prefer XP any day. But back in action again.

December 2008 is here. Xmas is coming and so is Google Street View. Had a look at our place and found the exercise quite interesting. We only had a picture of our house with us not present, which would be as expected, since our house is geared with the living area facing towards the back. A friend said his picture caught him leaving his house. The privacy concerns are many I suppose, but with a picture only, I can't really see any problems.

Also had a look at my brothers place in Australia.

Busy at the moment. The Xmas Raffle is underway, SeniorNet, Probus function tonight, Xmas Parade last Saturday. We took Kipp to the Xmas Parade and of course he loved the trucks (especially the Police cars and Fire Engines) but was not happy at all with the clowns. Got quite scared of them. Planning to visit Wellington to pick up the Rotary Audit stuff next week and will take him on the train with me.

Quiz - We took out the jackpot again but as it was won the previous week and we had a team of 6 we split $104 between 6 of us. It was an all NZ question evening and we didn't do that well in the general questions.
Our mistake was taking Politics as our Bonus Double Points round when we should have taken General Knowledge which would have put us in 1st equal.

Clever clogs me knew the Jackpot answer!! I've got it twice now, Joe once and a team effort once.