crazyscot

Random utterance of the day: "Oh, that's a bit crap. Did we buy it at the Warehouse?"

We coined this phrase in the kitchen, having discovered that the lid of a pan bought there had a pretty horrid design flaw - that it trapped water, presumably dishwater from when it was last washed, in the handle. We noticed after it started dripping out onto the rice we were about to cook...

To be fair to the Warehouse, not everything they sell is crap, but it seems that everything that we've had a problem with has come from there. This looks to me like an unfortunate side-effect of their pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap business model; most of what they sell - WHICH is a microcosm of everything: OTTOMH clothes, stationery, tools, furniture, garden centre, electricals - is made abroad where labour is cheap but the design and quality control are also cheap.

Of all my favourite ways to wake up in the morning... let's just say that being called out by my inner paranoid on a full-scale security alert because the garage door just opened itself isn't one of them. It really did happen; this house has an electric opener, which is relatively loud in the upstairs bedrooms and pretty unmistakeable. I remember glancing at the clock as I threw on my dressing gown, seeing it was 4:04 and thinking something suitably inscrutable. As it happens, that was appropriate status code as I got to the garage just in time for the door to finish closing itself.

Whisky. Tango. Foxtrot?

My best guess is that the opening control on the wall is dodgy; I already knew it was half dodgy as the plastic button (which actuates a microswitch) was half-jammed. (This is as opposed to the remote, which we know is dodgy, but in a different way - the battery spring is loose.) I popped the plastic button off the switch trivially (not a good sign!) and replaced it, and it's definitely sitting differently in the surround. Why it chose that particular moment to activate remains a mystery, but I switched off the opener at the mains and will leave it that way for a few days.

No, I didn't get back to sleep, why do you ask?

I'm not a rap fan, but this music video is captivating. A Christchurch-born rapper has recut one of his tracks as a pro bono, filmed on location in and around the CBD including the off-limits parts.

http://youtu.be/XRcCzdHzZUg

A year ago today, the Christchurch region shook like it had never done before[*]. Since then there have been something like 8000 recorded quakes, albeit most of them tiddlers that most people don't notice. In the two months we've been here, there have nevertheless been dozens that we've felt (we stopped counting weeks ago). Every one is different; some rumble, some jolt, some are very sudden while some go on for several seconds. We've lost count of what we've felt; like many Cantabrians we've started guessing at the magnitude and distance after feeling a quake. ( Read more... )

Who's making wireless bridges these days? No, bridges, not just access points. I have two LANs and want to bridge them wirelessly. The wireless access point I bought last week is going back to the shop as it turns out to specifically not do client bridge mode; apparently dlink don't think this is a feature that anybody wants. It'll do bridging as an access point, but not as a client.

The van turned up, eventually. They sent extra people and managed to unload all 187 pieces, and unpack the furniture, in two hours flat. We have gone from rattling around a mostly-empty house to being somewhat hemmed in by boxes. It's not quite as bad as at the flat, because we have so much more space: the bulk of them have gone into the spare room (where I fear they will languish until we next move).

We've unpacked a handful of boxes, including some kitchenware (would you believe it's rational to hug a saucepan?!) and opened a fair number of others to survey. As expected, some have already been opened and resealed with tape reading "OFFICIALLY OPENED BY MAF BIOSECURITY NEW ZEALAND PURSUANT TO THE BIOSECURITY ACT 1993". We haven't heard from the movers that we screwed up with our declarations (though I suspect the inspector's lateness might have caused them to be less fastidious than they might have).

Nothing appears superficially to be broken, but we haven't opened up all the boxes yet, let alone powered up the computers, TV, piano etc (not that I'm going to immediately in case there's a condensation issue - not that I can as I haven't assembled enough plug changers yet). However, in the boxes that I have looked into so far, I have giggled at one (1) Yellow Pages, Cambridge edition (OK, rejs points out it might be useful as a monitor stand); and I grinned at the memories evoked by a bag of smithereens which used to be a pink Freeview box :-).

Two weeks ago we had Snowpocalypse 2. Last week was glorious, with temperatures hitting 20C. This week isn't looking quite so impressive, but still pretty fair. And yet it's still August, morally February if one naively believes that the austral seasons are six months off from those north of the equator.

We've been food shopping at the weekends since C started work, and are surprised. I wouldn't dream of visiting the supermarket on a Saturday afternoon - they're inevitably heaving. Yet we've found the big Countdown stores to be fine. Busy, yes, but nowhere near heaving; able to park near the store entrance, and not needing to queue for ages. OK, if you go to the shopping malls at that sort of time, they're busy - I guess with people who shop for the experience - but evidently the average Kiwi does their food shopping at other times. Just when is a mystery, as they don't seem to do so on Sundays either, nor the occasional evening that we've gone... Does an NZ passport carry with it the ability to use a hitherto-concealed eighth day of the week? I Think We Should Be Told!

Last week I received two letters from HMRC, dated a day apart. One of them thanked me for my leaving-the-UK form, said they wouldn't consider pre-emptively refunding my tax paid this year as I'm already on Self Assessment, but have I considered joining the Non-Resident Landlord scheme to get my rent paid to me without tax taken off? The other letter (surprise surprise) thanked me for my NRL application and confirmed that they have approved it. Left hand, right hand, etc.; but I don't expect any different. At least when ringing the IRD here to activate my online self-service account the process was straightforward and efficient, so while I will have to fill in one tax return for each of the UK and NZ next year, I don't expect the latter to be in any way taxing (ho ho). Famous last words...

This afternoon I am sitting in at home, waiting for the removers to turn up with our kit. They're late, due to the MAF inspector turning up very late, but I've just had the call to say that MAF have released our kit and so it's on its way. At last!

It's a year out from next year's UK DWcon. Part of me wants to buy a membership just on the very remote chance (originally mistyped as ogg chance) that it'll coincide with my being in the UK. Am I crazy? (fx: assembled masses yell YES! in unison)

OTOH it seems likely there will be another Aus DWcon in 2013. Swancon is in April and appears to be somewhere in Western Aus. UnCONventional, next year's NZ national con, is in June in Auckland; Continuum, the Aus natcon, is the same month in Melbourne. As far as major cons go, that's all I've been able to find. I'm sure there must be a bit more low-key scifi on these isles, but I've yet to find it...

Our car has an automatic transmission. It turns out that most cars in NZ do; one salesman explained that auto boxes have come a long way since the crap ones, and are pretty reliable these days (especially considering that the car market here is flooded with Japanese imports).

This is not the first time I have driven an auto box, but I can't say I'm very experienced with them. The conundrum I'm facing is, when waiting at the lights, should I leave the car in Drive with the brake on, or shift into Neutral? Having driven a stick for sixteen years, I instinctively shift into N every time (and usually don't rev the engine before shifting into D; oops) but I don't know how wear and tear from shifting the transmission stacks up against wear on the brakes and the slipping of the transmission when stationary but in Drive. Anybody out there have anything to say on the matter?

Whilst noodling around with my fractal plotter, I came across this beauty. I couldn't call it anything other than the Eye of Sauron ...