The Jamjar

On-the-spot Report

Hi there - blogging from the Intermediate Microsoft Excel course here in sunny downtown Auckland (exact location undesclosed due to security - you really can't know where I am at any given time because I AM NINJA)

So far, the day has been excel-ent (see what I did there?) We looked at charts, colouring-in charts, making 3-D charts - I finally understand why this stuff floats my sister Jo's boat so much.

Currently, we are waiting for the stragglers to come back from lunch so we can get back into the whole "pretending we know maths by following the formula exercises" part of the programme. Apparently, serving sausages to the hoards at lunchtime causes a rift in the time/space continum and we've lost about a third of the class.

Okay.. so steaming along with sorting data and calculating mortgage repayments. Ms Stacey was shocked to learn the repayments vs the loan amount over 30 years was "highway robbery" - she's thinking of never leaving home. I'm sure her parents are pleased.

Cruise Bruise

I wonder how long that graphic header will be used on this Herald article It's wrong on so many levels.

They've been driving me wild this weekend (not in a good way) with their treatment of the sad, sad story about the Kahui twins. (*ranting sadly behind the fold*)

The NZ news sucks recently; far, far too many rapes and kidnappings and dead babies.

The twins story doesn't need anything added to it to make it worse, but the Herald is doing it's best to set the scene with descriptions of the families' houses:

Here .. is another, older Housing New Zealand House. It too is painted pale blue, but it has the solid wooden weatherboards of the '60s, a big, grassy section, a teddy bear on the windowsill of a child's bedroom, and a hopeful planting of white arum lilies against the fence.

It's only when you walk around the back that you see the broken window, the kid's yellow bike against the wall, the used disposable nappies spilling out of black plastic rubbish sacks on the ground against the house.

The washing on the line hangs sodden and forlorn, much of it on the ground. Chris's mother is ill in hospital, the rest of the family are at the Manurewa Marae, where the tangi for the twins is well in progress.

and then in another article

Outside their Mangere home, dirty nappies are strewn on the back lawn, towels hang from the washing line and a large recycling bin is full of empty Steinlager bottles and KGB cans.

I don't know what their obsession with washing on the line is, and I'm overfocussing because the whole story makes me terribly sad, but the Herald seems to be trying overly hard to paint squalor in wet laundry and bust-open rubbish sacks.

There's no subtlety needed here at all, Herald. Keep your tabloid-trash writing away from this story because it sucks without you having to tell us so.

PS: the otter is on Rangitoto now.

Tanuki's Cave

PUB (nopub) QUIZ NIGHT

Attendees: Rupert, Tor, Alvina, Mark, Michelle [and a whole lot of other people we don't really care about cos they wouldn't share their chips and dips]
Apologies: Tristan "I'd rather be a indoor lawn bowler", Peter "let my inner real estate agent free"
Spectator: Bruce
Floater: Matt "I'll wait til I find out who has the best snacks before I decide on which team invitation I will accept"
Facilitator and All Round Grand PoohBah: Richard
Date: 22 June 2006 Time 5:30-7:30pm Location: Level 5

The extremely punctual Learning Services Group Quiz Team representatives arrived in good form and fashion complete with both liquid (wine, beer and coke) and solid (Chips, Grainwaves and ah, more Grainwaves) to represent the learning department in the Company Pub (noPub) Quiz last night.

It was quite clear from the onset that the core Company values of working together were cast aside for this important and extremely competitive competition. Departments with representative teams remained extremely separate with no "data sharing" whatsoever. A number of Teams flouted their (obviously) large social budgets with huge platters of well organised snacks, dips, nibbles, and generous amounts of wine, champagne and beer. We extended our hands of friendship but they were smacked back with nary a sniff of the dips.

But our steely resolve wasn't tarnished by our meagre sustenance, in fact if anything, our determination to edge out all our competition solidified into a great pep-talk from Rupert who decided we were gonna "kick their asses with our brains" or.. something like that (I wasn't really listening) and he dubbed us Team Drunken Codrex (we were carrying sick and wounded as well.. hell, we really should have been handicapped now I think about it) and hoped the other teams would become slow and sleepy by eating so many carbs so late in the day.

Our small number (5 members, dropping to 4 after Mark had to leave after Round 3) pitted against the other mighty teams (8-13 members, all with cell phones though I'm not accusing anyone of anything) did very well in all rounds. Thanks to Alvina's sterling knowledge of All Things American, Tor's amazing islands of information regarding "young people's" music, Mark's good fortune to have attended school the day the Maths tutor taught him all about angles, Michelle's fascination with diseases, and Rupert's knowledge of Nuclear Radiation yet again proving to be a winner.

While we didn't manage to win the trophy, we proved yet again: Online Delivery (Keepers of the Company Knowledge) are solid C Grade students of life and general knowledge. We tied a respectable 3rd place in the competition. (I think.. pretty sure we did anyway.. we sure in hell weren't last, i know that much)

I am pretty sure we had a good time and if there had been an award for team work, we would have won that.

A HUGE thanks to Richard for running such a smooth quiz show, compiling challenging questions and ensuring we all had a super evening.

Lessons Learned: Next time, someone read the sports section of the paper for goodness sakes!

[this post originated as an internal Company email and therefore, has been modified somewhat for public consumption - mostly to correct the spelling errors but also, to protect the innocent]

Why am I awake?

I'm awake. It's dark and quiet and I'm wondering why. The strange peacefulness of this busy street. No cars, no trucks - maybe that's why I'm awake. I haven't heard it without traffic since I moved in here. I can hear the rain soft against the car parked outside my window. How romantic. Wait, against the leaves too - that's better. Steady. Wet rain. No wind.

Why am I awake? Did the rain wake me? I fell to sleep so quickly, easily. Dammit. I look at the clock - midnight in Australia; after lunch in the UK; mid morning in Wisconsin. Christ why can't I just see the time here. Time blindness. Legacy chat habit. I think about what the Dutch might be doing.

There's a sound at the end of each breath. What is that? that's new. Heh, a wheeze, how cute. Like an old man who smokes too much, or my sister when her asthma is bad.

Aw crap, why am I awake? there's no real reason. I was dreaming. Dreaming about Braden and the headphones. He was wanting to know why I'd bothered bringing my iPod to work when I didn't bring any headphones. Pointless he said. Waste of time, he added. I didn't have a good answer so I made him roll his eyes by saying I used the reflective surface on the back of the iPod to put my lipgloss on neatly. He rummaged in his drawers with an exasperated sigh and found a pair of bud earphones I could use. He's such a solutions kind of guy. Strange dream until I realised that it wasn't. It had happened this afternoon during a day with dreamlike qualities. Yesterday afternoon. There's that wheeze again. Now a cough.

That's another new. That's not good. I cough again. Not satisfying either. And it hurts. I think maybe that's what's woken me up. I didn't have that cough when I went to bed. I have that cough now. I reach for the juice beside my bed. It's orange and mango, left over from dinner eaten in my room.

So nice to come home after walking home from class tonight to find dinner plated up for me - a distinct advantage to living with people is that they do nice things like cook dinner. I keep forgetting that's what people do for each other when they live together so it's still a lovely surprise after such a long Wednesday. I ate my dinner on my crumpled bed, still in my red coat while texting Christchurch, being so cold nosed from the night air and feeling small amongst the tangled bedding. The food was good. Just what I needed. Just like the juice.

It had been a nice walk home from the college. Class had gone well. People were kind with their thanks on this the last evening class of the term. It doesn't always go well, but tonight it did. The night had been still, and dark, and cold. I listen as thunder rolls it's way around the bowl of the city - it always feels that shape on nights like this. I sip juice again as I feel another cough coming. Sore throat. Clock says it's 12:45am in Australia - stupid time zone brain - getting on for 4pm in the UK, Wisconsins'll be thinking about lunch - Dutchies'll be packing up to go home from work.

Cough. Ow. Dammit. Why am I awake?

Rainy Day

Meme Dreams

Find your own pose!

Snow Day!

What a complete treat. Today I got to work so very much later than even I usually manage for a Monday. Even so, my bus still made better time than most cars trying to negotiate a citywide blackout that stopped all the traffic lights at intersections. I had a fabulous time after getting off my bus, being blown down Symonds Street all the way to work. Seeing umbrella after umbrella blowing insideout as people battled hopelessly against wind that loves to destroy such unsuitable shelters.

I love rainy days - sure, it's nice inside, but it's fun outside in the weather too and the blustery day made me happy. What a great start to my day.

Work's automated doors opened, and the lifts worked so, unlike most of the companies in Auckland City today, ours was business as usual. But no one had the mind to work - well, not whole heartedly anyway. There were patterings of talk about the adventures different people had on the way to the office: traffic jams, seawater crashing over the barriers on the motorway, winds buffeting cars. How lucky we were, I offered, to be in such a critical building that it was backed up with generators so that even Mother Nature could not stand in the way of the very important work of updating intranet pages.

Yeh, right.

Snug emailed to say he was being sent home for the rest of the day. Some in other offices never really got started - Christchurch, for instance; most workers there couldn't even get to work for the snow. Txt messages about AUT and inner city businesses closing for the day sending students and workers back home. We kept working - meeting - keeping those wheels a'turnin' until thank god and at last we got the call "all non-client facing workers to go home"

Yes!

So off home I went on a bus that shuttled me back out of the city. For all the news reports on television and the internet, I didn't see any "chaos" but then again, I was on a bus and no one really argues with a Howick and Pakuranga bus that wants to get through a set of non-functioning lights. Getting back home by 12:30pm and the power came back on 15minutes later - I was a happy camper to get a bonus day off work and the final episode of Firefly to watch from the boxed set.

See? this is how Mondays should be all the time!

PS: I've heard it actually did snow in Auckland. Brief flurries mid morning - I thought it was extra low mist n' cloud, and horizontal rain but for those closer, it was actually snow - a rare sight in the City of Sails, that's for sure.

Outage in Auckland [NZ Herald]
Real Snow Day in Canterbury [NZ Herald]

Please note: Telecom's phone lines remained open and didn't fall over in a screaming pile of unpreparedness. They have a backup plan for such outages that worked so well, no one even noticed. Unbundle *that* Transpower.

Beautiful Thing

Logos' Cat has a blue nose!

Discovering Logos' Secrets