Four more years

Oh Oh Tragedy !! - defined as any event with a sad and unfortunate outcome. There are dozens of words to describe the All Black defeat. Calamity - disaster etc etc.

What can I say - the Ref was pathetic, the IRB who won't allow linesmen to point out a forward pass are pathetic, the Referees Appointment Board who appointed a man who has only ref'd one test of any significance (France- Italy) - the other 5 all being the Pacific Five Nations , pathetic etc etc.



Then again, we should have won even allowing for that.



Was it Rotation? Who knows, but the coaching team will have to go. That is the price of failure in N.Z.

But the Cup itself is great with England showing that the scrum is an integral part of the game; Argentina have been a revalation; Georgia great and Fiji another surprise package. My thoughts a week ago was no Northern Hemispere teams but now it could be no Southerners although I am sure South Africa will be there.

Short Holiday

We have been away visiting Havelock North, Napier, Hastings, Whakatane, Ohope Beach and Te Awamutu.
We went to Havelock then on to Wakatane and stayed at Ohope with the plan to visit White Island. Sadly we couldn't as the weather was too bad. We will probably make another attempt next year. However, we stayed with friends in Te Awamutu for a couple of days which was terrific as we did a lot of catching up with old times.

But the interesting thing was the house numbering system. Rather than the usual one it numbers houses on the metres from the end of the road. Our friends house is in a short grove and as they lived at 85 our first thoughts were that we had the wrong number. As we entered the street we saw the first house was number 10 with the next number 26!!

He later explained the reason for the metric numbering system is that it enables each house to be located quickly by electronic tracking systems for emergency services. I had never heard of it before and he believes about 3 other NZ towns have it.

Our general feeling was that most of the small country towns are looking pretty prosperous.

Onto religion - RUGBY - It is now all on and we can only hope that all the planning comes to fruition. As for the jersey colour problem. We have played in BLACK for over 100 years and these other ratbag countries are now trying to change their traditional colours to match ours. I hope it really backfires on them on the the field.

Trojan

Got a damn Trojan called zlob.dnschanger - well according to the Panda Anti Virus site and Spy Bot. However checking with a couple of other Virus and Anti Spyware sites they didn't find it. Also Spy Bot said it was removed but it is still there. Will have to investigate further.

Rugby still enthralls (well almost) particularly the minnows. However the AB's were not impressive despite the score line. As for the jerseys - that is just typical of the incompetent IRB. Tonga - England will still be an England victory and I think Argentina will roll the Irish.

Going away for a few days up to the Hawkes Bay and also hope to visit White Isalnd although with Ruapehu erupting for the first time in 10 years it may have some effect out there. We will see.

The Cup runneth over

And so it does with more games than my brain can stay awake for. So that is one good thing about a Hard Drive Recorder I just tape up to 6 hours at a time and then make a decision from the result/what I read/hear/see on the morning news etc if I should watch it. Even then I watch part of some games in Fast Forward.

I think Georgia are the team I admire the most. The League people would hate it as they are not pretty and no "airy fairy" stuff. Just one game plan - drive it up the middle and if it goes to the First Five then boot it!! However it is effective from their point of view and it gave Ireland the hurry up.

The Phoenix, the Wellington soccer team, are to host the Galaxy Club with David Beckham at a cost of $2 million. I wouldn't cross the road to see him and I don't care but if I was a Wellington ratepayer then I would be concerned as they are to pay part of the bill. If it is such a good deal then why not let The Phoenix carry the can. I think it is $$$ down the gurgler.

Local Body elections are coming up and I suppose the usual pathetic voter turnout.

What is it with democracy that when you have it, you don't care, and when you don't, people have to die to get it.

Anyway I know a couple of people standing and will of course, as always, make sure my ballot is cast.

The World Cup and other matters

First the Xtra debacle. It now seems to be working except the Download Manager I use says it wants to download two .mp3 files. Telecoms brilliant answer was that it must be in one of the emails. What rubbish. It is due to their site otherwise why would I always get it with literally dozens of different emails?? Also they appear to have tweaked their Spam filter as legitimate emails now seem to be getting through, but of course so is a lot of Spam!!



Now to more immediate and important matters. The Rugby World Cup. Got up to see a reasonable upset but I have never underestimated "Los Pumas". I see that they have, in fact, more registered players than Australia. The downside is that we could meet France in Cardiff.

As for us - the injury front is a real worry and of course it is our two weak spots - lock and centre. Anyway Italy tonight which shouldn't cause too many problems.

Xtra Bubble - or should that be Booble!!

Well you can tell you are back home when everything is back to "normal" - just another Telecom "upgrade, enhance and improve" shambles. Cue Tui advert time - what a debacle.

Nothing worked and couldn't register for "Booble" and of course they only answer their "Help" desk if you have several hours to wait. So I emailed them and to their credit they phoned me. He went through the explanation of how everything would be better in a few days (weeks??) and give me a whole lot of free services I don't need or want.

However, of course I couldn't register anyway so I was told to wait a few days.

But as usual it got worse. Found out from others that emails were missing and as I had heard nothing about this from Telecom emailed them again. Their response this time was to ignore the questions and send a whole lot of useless links. Emailed again. They re-sent the same useless info. Emailed again telling them to read the questions. This time they did respond differently - but with some different useless info.

So as usual with this outfit you have to do it yourself.

I found I could now register and then after searching and digging around as well as reading all the stuff at the N Z Herald from the thousands of annoyed customers I found how to locate all my missing emails. Talking to others it would seem every person has different problems and Telecom doesn't seem interested in advising a list of the problems and how to fix them .

Oh for decent unfettered competition.

We're Back!!

Returned this week after a fabulous trip to Oz (4 days) and South Africa (16 days). Still seem to be suffering from a little bit of jet lag as we are both a bit tired during the day.

In Australia we met up with Janet and Jim, a couple we met on the tour we undertook to Europe last year. It was certainly good to see them again. Also this time in Sydney we, with them, walked across the Harbour Bridge at night.

South Africa - will put down my impressions in later blogs but it was an interesting trip to an interesting area of the world and would love to return some day but probably unlikely due to $$$$. When we looked at going to SA we thought we better go on a tour for safety reasons but our experience was that we could probably have done it on our own. It seemed to be safer than we thought as long as you used common sense and kept away from J'burg which seem a bit more risky than down south in the Cape area.

Travelling is always a thrill but returning home is always wonderful and even more so this time with Kipp and Rhett waiting for us. Kipp has certainly grown and now sits up on his own and is almost crawling while Rhett probably thought we had left him forever.

As I said great to be back!!