auchmeddan

Haven’t written an entry in months. Some good things happened (Alice Cooper, KISS, Poison and Whitesnake kicked ass at Rock2WLG) and some sucky things…like our builder going into Liquidation in April. If you’re ever building a house in NZ and you hear the surname “Pilbrow”, run like the wind in the opposite direction.

After weeks of messing around we now have a good builder who’s doing a lot of good work for us and helping us complete the house. We’ll put up more photos later when we’re further on with the build.

Photos from our house as a work in progress are now up HERE

A lot has happened since the last update. Some highlights are:

Back in November we went to see the LA Galaxy vs the Wellington Phoenix, purely to mark out to David Beckham.

In late December we went back to Scotland for three weeks and had a great time being somewhere where it actually felt like Xmas! I don’t think either of us will ever adjust to Xmas in Summer.

Jules did a 7K run the other week, and came in somewhere in the mid 2000s out of 10,000 people. (I need to check the number again later).

Finally, our house is starting to come together and we met the Electrical contractor to agree power outlet placement, data port placement, lighting, etc. Jules has been taking some photos over the past few weeks, which I’ll put up later.

I have been taking the mickey out of a colleague who spends the weekends up on his farm and seems to start most stories with “I killed a insert animal name here at the weekend”. His stories have run from shooting at Turkeys with crossbows, trapping possums in cages, and hitting a possum with a shovel. I’ve made various wild accusations that he’s making the animal version of Hostel up there, and that this is how most serial killers start out. In retort, Phil’s threatened to bring a dead possum in for me on several occassions.

This morning I was working on my laptop and became aware of Phil standing over me, and a strange smell. I turned around to find him clutching a dead possum inches from my face - a fresh one he’d trapped at the weekend. I was so dumbfounded I didn’t even have the sense to take a photo of this absurd scene.

I have to give him credit though. Not only did Phil kill this possum at the weekend, he also decided to transport it back to Wellington and bring it into the office in a “Chilly Bin” (or family sized ‘cool-box’ to us non-Kiwis). I assume this isn’t the same box he’d take his sandwiches to the beach in.

I’m still a little in shock. I can’t believe Phil brought a dead animal into the office.

I try not to put too much Tech stuff up on here as it’s meant to be more about our lives and not my geeky obsessions, but I just spent a couple of days up at Tech-Ed in Auckland courtesy of Axon sending a few employees up to the conference. This was my first Tech-Ed, and I really enjoyed the security related presentations by Steve Riley and Kai Axford. It was very interesting watching Kai’s Forensic based presentation and the Q&A with NZ Police’s E-Crime unit, then closing the day listening to a hyped-up (read: normal) Steve Riley stressing that there is NO back door into BitLocker and YES the bad guys can use it too if they want to.

What Bitlocker could mean for Computer Forensics is an interesting space to watch. If the penalty for not supplying your decryption key (or PIN, or whatever) is six months in jail and you have something on disk that could send you away for Waaaaaaayy longer, what would you choose?

I held off buying “Guitar Hero 2″ for a little while as I was afraid it would get “old” quite quickly…which I was totally wrong about. In the end, I was seduced by the chance to play Motley’s “Shout at the Devil” and GNR’s “Sweet Child O’ Mine”.

I had also held off as Jules told me she was looking forward to laughing at me while I played it. However, this never had a chance to happen as Jules took a keen interest in the game as soon as she heard me playing “Strutter”. In truth, Jules is just as addicted to this game as I am and was initally doing waaaay better than I was - a fact Jules took great delight in. I have since caught up, and won the “Eddie Van Halen” award today for hitting a 500 note streak on Sabbath’s “War Pigs”. Another three hours of my life gone forever chasing Xbox achievements!

Jules and I are now locked in combat over “Sweet Child O’ Mine”, the Kansas Song “Carry on Wayward Son”, and Skynyrd’s “Free Bird”.

We went out on Anzac Day for a walk along a trail on the East Coast of Wellington, past Eastbourne. Our walk turned into a 4+ hour hike, and we got high enough up to appreciate some of the scenery and view back towards Wellington. We were lucky as we had almost perfect weather all day, and it was nice to get away from the City and suburbs for an afternoon.

On the way back we realised we were being watched from the Hills beside the trail, and eventually we looked up and saw around a dozen or so goats. I have to be honest - goats scare me a little. I think it’s because they look like Satan’s minions, vomited from the dark maw of hell onto the earth. It must be the eyes.

Anyway, Jules decided to “Baa” at them and giggled as they stopped what they were doing to stare at us- which didn’t amuse me much. “Would you bark at a pack of wild dogs?” I asked. I urged Jules to “not stare at them” and “keep walking” as I reminded her about her experience in Queenstown being surrounded by hungry goats. I remember them surrounding the car afterwards and looking out of my side window right into an evil eye staring back at me. I still clearly remember it snorting steam against the glass - not unlike a tiny version of the T-Rex from Jurassic Park!

Happily, the goats didn’t stampede us and some photos from our day out are posted below.

I felt my first earthquake yesterday. I was glad to finally experience one (after sleeping through the previous ones) but I was honestly expecting a little more from it. I was in a meeting on the 17th floor of a building when it “struck”, but instead of pictures falling off the wall and windows cracking it felt more like the Tea Lady had just pushed a heavy trolley down the hall.

Jules told me it was 4.7, which I guess equates to a little bit of floor shaking but not much else.

We went out for a hike today in the Rimutaka Forest Park. We chose the Orongorongo Track (which we’re still not sure how to pronounce) and had an enjoyable few hours hiking to the Orongorongo river and back. Being NZ in summer, the weather changed a little on the way. I set out wearing trousers, long sleeves and a baseball cap and ended up in a Fleece and Wooly hat by the time we got to the river. On the way back the weather warmed up again and it was back to normal again.

I had a look for the trail start on Google Earth and was surprised by how out of date the photo was. The trees around the car park are definately thinner now, and the start of the Orongorongo trail should be visible.

There are a few more trails for us to explore there, so I imagine we’ll be back at the park soon.

(UPDATE: Per the good people in Jules office Orongorongo is prounounced “oh-wrong-oh-wrong-ah”)

We finally got the last of our shipped items yesterday. It’s taken a couple of months to get here, but everything turned up in one piece and Jules unpacked our boxes today. This is the first time in 6 years we’ve had all our belongings in one country.

We went out last night to see “Casino Royale” and were shocked at how good it was. I really wasn’t expecting much from it (or the new Bond) but it looks like I was very wrong. After the horror-show of “Die Another Day” it appears the franchise is back.

For our first movie going experience in NZ we used the Gold Lounge at Reading Cinema which is full of reclining seats, free popcorn and sodas, and unobstructed views of the screen. They also let you order drinks at the bar and set times for them to bring them to your seat. It was definately nice having beers turn up at set intervals, but I think in future I’ll order spirits to keep the liquid content down.