Entries from October 2005 ↓

What *is* rocket science anyway? According to that saying, there are plenty of things it’s not …

Saw this in a luggage store window. I suspect English is not their first language.

Just had a great long weekend doing some of our usual weekend things, and some not so usual – like:

• random trip out to Lindale to pat baby animals – some of us were first timers …

• our friend who we think is a bit of a chef rose to the challenge again – we bought various ingredients from Moore Wilson’s and said we’d like lamb fillet on a kumara cake with wilted spinach followed by poached pears with vanilla mascarpone cream – 3 hours in our kitchen and he delivered it all!
• gardening apartment-style and scared to death of the Legionnaire’s disease warnings on the back of the potting mix – avoid breathing soil dust at all times …

I just don’t know what to believe any more. Everywhere I go, conversation centres on bird flu. Should I be worried? I’m about to get on a plane.

pan·dem·ic

adj. n.

an epidemic that is geographically widespread; occurring throughout a region or even throughout the world

30 days until we leave for New York! We’ve found out all sorts of interesting bits and pieces in our pre-trip research. e.g.

• helicopter tours are not that expensive
  
  
• lots of cool shops in Soho
  
  
• theres an algorithm to work out where a cross street intersects with an Avenue
  
  
• the average temperature is about 12C in November but has been as cold as -6C and as high as 28C
  
  
• it’s about 4.2kms from Washington Square Park to Central Park
  
  
• Tiffany’s is right under the Trump Tower
  
  
• you can pre-buy Empire State Building observation deck tickets online
  
  
• Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade balloons are set up the night before in Central Park
  
  
• sunset will be around 4.35pm when we arrive and 4.29pm when we leave, 10 days later

One of my orange scouts informed me that Kirks are re-doing their windows and there’s lots of orange stuff on display! Obviously I leapt up and rushed away from my office, leaving work in my wake, to take a look. Lots of orange – especially in the Cuisine Store because of Halloween coming up.

Late Sunday afternoon we wandered over to Oriental Parade and stopped at Kaffee Eis for a gelato and a coffee. That place is fantastic and the poor people that work there are always run off their feet – making heaps of money though I bet. I was glad to see that for a shoe-box of a shop they still had 3 people working so the line of people meandering up the street was moving pretty quickly.

Today I had wrote a half-page note to a friend and when I was reading it over a random thought popped into my head when I noticed I’d not dotted many of my i’s – if a handwriting expert got a hold of this sample, would they proclaim me lazy?

Being curious (not that my handwriting necessarily reveals that about me) I “asked the Internet” (a cute phrase I heard the other day which I’ve adopted as my own), and now I have my very own Personal Handwriting Analysis (from some dreadfully tacky, unauthoratitive website somewhere).

Believe it, or not:

• sometimes you may blow your top when you get frustrated, but you don’t do it every time;
  
  
  
• you are poor with details, careless and forgetful (this is the not dotting i’s result);
  
  
  
• you do not have a lot of staying-power and may quit tasks after a short period of time;
  
  
  
• you prefer logic and reasoning, and you have little or no intuitive ability;
  
  
  
• you may be too open-minded. It may be too easy for you to accept other people’s points of view. This could be an indication that you are gullible;
  
  
  
• you don’t need to have others approve of what you do;
  
  
  
• your sense of humour does not show openly;
  
  
  
• you are not self-conscious, and have nothing to worry about;
  
  
  
• you are not sensitive to criticism at all.  You can be objective about the opinions of other people and accept or reject these opinions without getting emotional about them;
  
  
  
• you are rigid. You are obsessed with structure and have a fear of being proved wrong.  You are imposing stress on yourself and others around you;
  
  
  
• you have weak willpower.  You are not too clear about your goals.  You may have a vague idea – perhaps someday you will get around to them;
  
  
  
• you worry about certain things, but not everything.

How many of these slides can you identify with? I was really laughing by the time I finished reading this (I’m sorry but I don’t know where this originally came from so if the Internet FBI Copyright Police are looking in, I don’t know who to credit so I realise I am displaying this illegally…)

Everyone has a story about a bad experience with a tradesman. Well, ours is pretty bad. And we’re pretty pissed off.

• Thursday: Big TV dies
  
  
  
• Friday: ring a few service companies, none of which can come that day
  
  
  
• Later Friday: service company literally 3 minutes walk away realises that we’re only 3 minutes walk away and comes over. Pronounces the TV completely dead after a series of tests. Could possibly do further investigation in their workshop but estimates it will be about $6,000 to fix because the bulbs are blown. Charges us a call out fee.
  
  
  
• Saturday: mourning and research and murderous schemes for sending the Big TV on it’s way.
  
  
  
• Sunday: purchased a projector, screen and cables, and got it up and running.
  
  
  
• Monday: the Big TV sits black and silent, cast aside in the corner of the room (well as much as it can fit in the corner of the room).
  
  
  
• Tuesday: ‘ring ring’ it’s one of the service companies from Friday, who said they couldn’t come over, who are now available for a house call. Despite being told that the TV had already been pronounced dead by another service company the guy insists on coming over – he can’t believe that a 6.5 year old TV like ours has died.
  
  
  
• Later Tuesday: service guy says there is nothing wrong with the bulbs. They should last 10 years. It’s a great specimen of a TV. It’s likely to be some fried solenoid somewhere on a circuit board. He’s a personal friend of the Toshiba guy in Auckland so will get a technical manual and some little circuit thingies. Reckons it’ll be under $1,000 to fix it.
  
  
  
• Much later Tuesday: guilt is killing us. We feel like we buried a loved one then discovered they hadn’t died. We begin to harbour bad feelings towards the projector. We definitely feel rage against the first service guy. However, no guarantee the TV is recoverable yet.
  
  
  
• Thursday: 2nd service guy comes back. With a truly hardcore circuit board diagram. Utter gobbledegook. Sets himself up on the floor with a brief case of tools and his diagram and for 3 hours painstakingly goes from node to node, following every wire with his little amp meter thingy. After 3 hours and 5 minutes from the back of the TV there comes an “oh. give us a minute“ … tick tock … “snip with the pliers zzzzzzzttt with the soldering iron“ and knock me down with a feather – the TV IS WORKING!!! No parts required. No offsite workshop visit. We’ll be charged for labour. It’ll be about $400.
  
  
  
• Later Thursday: projector goes back to the shop. We had a 7-day trial.
  
  
  
• Much later Thursday: we channel surf, big smiles on our faces to have the bad boy back and in tip-top condition! The service guy calibrated it and the picture quality is actually better than before.

HOW I ask you, just HOW are you supposed to know that you can trust the opinion of a so-called professional when you’re totally in the dark yourself and HAVE to rely on their diagnosis? By God if we do not get a full refund on the projector we’ll be going after the first service company. It just makes us sick. They better refund us their damn call-out fee.

Tell your friends, ALL your friends: never ever use Next Electronic Servicing with branches in Victoria Street and Petone and always use the fantastic knowledgeable people at Unitec Electronics on Thorndon Quay.