Orange is not a colour, it's a state of mind

Took a couple of random photos on the way to work this morning.

There’s always someone who goes along in the morning and sprinkles seed for the pigeons – they must go quite early because there’s always birds pecking at it on weekday mornings when we head out around 7.30m.

Flowers are in full bloom and smell in the garden on the corner of Mercer and Victoria. Looks quite pretty.

Took a trip out to Lower Hutt because that’s where you have to go to find vacuum cleaner stores. In the past we’ve just gone to some kind of electronics or appliance superstore and helped ourselves (because those kind of stores never have staff that know the details about their stock) to one based on colour and whether or not the vacuum needed bags, because we always seem to end up with one that has really specific bags that we can never get any more of from the supermarket or the store where we originally bought the vacuum from because by the time we get around to it they’ve stopped making that brand!

Anyway. Going to an actual vacuum cleaner store means that even on a Saturday afternoon you get a girl who knows her stuff. I mean really knows. Asks about pet hair, floor surfaces, size of dwelling, willingness to clean filters, price range, who does the vacuuming etc etc and then demonstrates a range on carpet and tiled flooring including sucking up various items from pots of sand and wool fluff they have on hand, and lets The Mister have a go (he does the vacuuming).

So we’ve come away with a well-known brand, in our price range, that has bags (that you can even get from the supermarket) because we’re not inclined to clean the filter (and who knew you had to do that on a bagless one every week otherwise they blow up after a year or so, well now we do and if we’d had someone to help us in the aforementioned electronics store we might’ve made a different choice) , has a great floor foot that is good for cleaning stairs and doesn’t require all manner of attachments for different surfaces.

I give you the Hoover Tranquility:

So snaps to Godfrey’s and the very helpful Saturday Girl. And BEST of all, we just left our old vacuum cleaner and all its bits there to be disposed of. That was a plus on already great service – like getting rid of a Christmas tree from an apartment, broken appliances present similar challenges!

Hot off the press – Nikau Cafe is set to re-open mid-September! Probably around the week of the 14th. Great news. Apparently kedgeree will still be on the menu, no mention of date scones so will have to get onto them about that!! Yaaaaay!

Gotham’s first night open for dinner seemed to go OK, although perhaps a bit quiet. The menu is ‘cafe’ style I guess – simple delicious things like steak, chicken schnitzel sandwich, spare ribs and yaaaay for me, herbed tagliatelle with pesto. There was one staff member there who we recognised, and we recognised the owners sitting in the other booth and between them they recognised us as regulars because our waiter, who we didn’t know, came to tell us that our drinks were on the house in recognition of the support we’d given them and showing up on opening night. So that was *very*cool – and I didn’t even order peanut butter on toast so they must’ve recognised us just for being us!

So we’ll definitely be going again and it’s perfect if we want to work late because we can just nip down, get dinner done in an hour then go back to the office.

It was pretty hard to resist the temptation to order toast though!

Team Orange is expanding – I’m getting another orange helper! Well hopefully. Position is advertised, blogged and twittered so we’ll see how it goes. Hopefully it’s not so nerve-wracking now that I’ve done it once already!

This time the Mister has a 2-page spread – he’s in the IT Brief magazine again – a real interview with him on geeky CTO stuff. Will post a link to the article on their site when they update it seeing as you can’t buy the magazine in Whitcoulls!

Day 2 at the conference was way more geeky than the first day. I went decked out in my orange flair again, complete with new WordPress button and wore an orange top!

Thought I’d be the most orange person in the room but in fact there was another girl there in an orange top and she had an orange cover on her Mac Book! We exchanged cards – she had a mini Moo card too! And she’s from New York! So I was pretty excited for a while there. Oh! And then I ‘won’ a Supreme spot prize – not quite sure how, perhaps something to do with waxing lyrical about the Supreme coffee and baristas all weekend but after lunch the guy giving out the prizes said “And now we have our last Supreme pack to give away. Is there a Catherine in the room?” Oh. ME!

So, take-aways from the weekend in no particular order:

• You’re liable for any comments left on your blog.
• And because of that, you shouldn’t moderate comments to the point of editing or allowing/disallowing because that implies you agree/disagree with the comment therefore making you more liable than normal.
• Every other person was tapping constantly on a laptop or iPhone. As a presenter I don’t know what it would be like to address an audience of head tops. I couldn’t handle it. I’d find it so rude and on the rare occasion I do speak I glare and pause dramatically if I see people whispering and not paying attention so god knows what I would do if people were doing something else. And I know they’re not taking notes because I saw some of the screens and what was on them.
• What *is* the etiquette when sitting next to someone who opens a laptop – it’s so much clearer and not easily hidden like a note pad – should one avert their eyes? I almost told the person next to me at one point they had a typo in a Tweet they were writing but thought that probably wasn’t right.
• People who don’t blog and Tweet are referred to as people ‘out there in the real world’.
• Heard the phrase ‘Fairy Dust’ for when a geek does something to the server or user account to fix a customer’s problem.
• Facebook seems to be a place to keep in touch with old friends. Blog is for current stuff.
• Not sure my life will take a different path now, feels like this is it. A guy presenting was 16. On stuff that proper grown ups do. Made me wonder what I’ve been doing since I was 16 and what I was like when I was 16 – god that mustard jumper, that Lady Di hair do and braces. So so different.

At a WordCamp conference this weekend – a collection of people using the tool WordPress primarily for blogging – we use it at work and it’s what my ‘new’ blog is now running on. It’s up at the Mt Vic Bowling Club – a very yesteryear type establishment inside – complete with flowers in the toilet and engraved boards of lifetime members. It’s in a lovely sheltered spot and the bowling green out the window was incredibly green and lovely and sunny and warm for our coffee and lunch breaks.

The founder of WordPress was a guest speaker today, very charming and inspiring. This is my first conference like this, the few work things I’ve ever been on in my career have been training type things and I think today was fairly typical of events like this based on the stories The Mister brings back from the ones he’s attended. The people that are used to presenting, especially Americans (like the WordPress guy) are really good and really inspiring. I couldn’t stand up there and speak as freely as they do. And answer questions from left field with such aplomb.

The guys from Coffee Supreme were there and them (the actual Supreme guys) making coffee was fantastic. Enough to make me switch from Fuel even except there are absolutely no guarantees when you go to a Supreme cafe that you’ll get a decent barista.  I just can’t explain how good it was, perfect temperature and it was like drinking silk – thanks Ralph, Olivia and girl who’s name I don’t know.

Went for a wander around the block at lunch time and found this great house with an orange car, orange front door and orange picket fence!

Over the last couple of months the building at the uinversity that’s being built up in front of the house with the orange roof is beginning to look like a real building. Glass panels are going up on the front of it and we can no longer see the house.

We decided to go on a walk up through the university today to see if we could find it. The building is not as high as it seems once you get up there, it’s near the rec centre part of the university but it looks deep going back towards Kelburn Parade. We took in the view back over the city from up there. Didn’t realise how big that apartment building on Taranaki Street is going to be but it’s blue shroud certainly dominates the view at the moment.

Walked back down Devon Street into Aro Valley and down Aro Street. I’d forgotten how steep and curly Devon Street was and how shabby some of the student flats are.

Whew I do have a brain up there, and a normal one at that – “age appropriate” whatever that means!! I only had 236 black and white images to peruse so not sure which portion of it is coloured orange or is the cause of my orangeness.

Anyway, despite the trauma of waiting for the MRI and results I feel quite excited to be able to look inside my own head, a literal look being far less dangerous than a metaphorical look I suspect!

Recognise me?