The BLOG

The blog starts here!

We're living in Christchurch now and I now work for Bluewater Systems Ltd. Pauline has signed up for a course at Canterbury University in Computational Tools for Management Science.

We have done a bit of snow boarding at Mount Hutt. Both of us fall down a lot but, so far, we have both escaped major injury. Pauline hurt her wrist on the first trip and then banged her shoudler on the second but has manged to avoid serious injury so far.

My old schoolfriend Philip visited us the other week and he came to the mountain with us. He is an intermediate level skier so he spent most of his time on a full ski pass, unlike myself and Pauline who are still on novice passes. I sometimes suspect that this will be where we are at the end of the season!

E-mails sent to Bob and Allan to see how they are getting on. Spent some time playing with the e93 editor for Windows.

Well, that's the first one done, wonder if I can keep this sort of thing going?

Spent most of the evening in waiting for a Mortgage Broker to turn up so that we can discuss the finer details of what we can, and cannot, afford to buy/build. I ended up reading Multitool LINUX instead.

Signed up with Z-talk for low calling rates so I can call Allan in Eindhoven.

Finally managed to get the hang of this API at work. Progress is a bit slow with the legacy GTK stuff still in place but progress is being made.

I met Pauline at The Yellow Rocket Cafe in Cathedral Square for a lunchtime coffee and a bagel. They serve good strong coffee. We mused over our housing situation and looked at the latest copy of Harcourt's Bluebook. As usual, the best ones (i.e. the ones we like) either cost too much or are only available at Auction!

We met with a mortgage broker this evening to see what we could, or could not, borrow towards a house purchase. Seems like we have a pretty open choice when it comes to lenders in the current market, given our situation. All we need to do now is work out whether we want to buy, or build. Building seems preferable but will certainly be a lot more stressful!

At work things move on. I seem to have gleaned enough undertsanding of the existing code to make better progress. I managed to get a bit more working.

We had a works evening out. Unfortunately, Steve and Phil could not be there but Simon, Helen and myself managed to turn up. We were joined by Pauline, Sally, Wayne, Judy and Helen's husband. We had quite a few drinks at The Bohemian before moving onto dinner at Thai Thai on Colombo Street. Only Wayne, Judy, Simon, Pauline and myself managed to go to Thai Thai - Sally had to leave for the babysitter and Helen and her husband also went home.

The food was as good as always - Red & Green curries, Paed Thai and Chilli & Garlic Seafood with Jasmine Rice. Really tasty and plenty of it. Simon said he felt over stuffed but that isn't too surprising since he also had a big lunch today. Pauline was also stuffed since she had devoured a double and triple cheeseburger at lunch.

We had a great evening out. Pauline and Judy seem to be hitting it off very well.