News 2003

February 26, 2003

Well we survived the move. The new house
is great. We have a wonderful
view of the ocean and the bay. Graham likes being able to play out on
the deck. School starts next week so I guess it is back to the grindstone
for Scott. My job is going well and I don't have to pester Scott as much as
I used to. That will probably change when I start the next phase of the project.
Graham has started going to kindergarten. It is like preschool I guess. The
kids here go to "kindy" starting at 2 1/2 -3 until they are school age at 5. Graham goes on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for 3 hours. He is on the waiting list for mornings and we might go to 3 days. We haven't decided
yet. He has only been a couple of times, but the teachers says that he is
doing fine and doesn't seem to mind me leaving him there. They have lots of
trucks to play with, so there isn't any reason he would miss me.

April 17, 2003

Yes we are still alive. So what has happened
in the last 2 months? Not much. I guess that is why I haven't kept things
up to date. We were supposed to be taking the ferry to the north island today
for the New Zealand tandem rally, but it was canceled. We were very disappointed
about that. Don't know that we will do anything over the long weekend now.
The weather isn't looking promising anyway. There is that load of firewood
that is being delivered on Saturday. We can't be here to miss that. We are
definitely going to need it. I am not ready for winter, but I guess there
isn't much that I can do about it. Graham has been enjoying kindy. He starts going in the mornings with the new term. He will go 3 days now instead of
two. I think that he will enjoy that. Maybe he will take a nap in the afternoon
when he gets home. He certainly needs one. Scott is getting ready for a conference
in the US next month. Graham and I will be left behind in NZ. Oh well. At
least we will have firewood. I haven't been doing much but working and taking
care of Graham. I guess that is OK. My job is going quite well so I can't
complain. So that is about it. Maybe I'll get a new picture put up too. ;-)

June 12, 2003

So I have made new web pages. I like the design. I "borrowed" the idea from
the complexspiral demo.
I am also using Quanta Plus instead of
Dreamweaver. Maybe I will get the
pages updated more frequently since it is under Linux now where I do most of my work. Maybe I won't.
I have been pretty lazy
with the updates. Not sure when the photo albums will get updated or when all of the pictures that
I haven't even uploaded will get there.

Not much is going on here. Scott went to the US for a conference in May. Graham and I hung out
here as usual. He will be going again in July for SIGGRAPH. Graham and I will stay here. We have
been talking about taking a vacation in September, but I am not sure that we will. It sounds nice, but
it is expensive. We might save our money for a trip to Tasmania.

June 16, 2003

Cold and wet today. When we got home from lunch with Scott I had to start the
fire. I am glad that we have a wood burning stove in this house. It is nice
to have someplace that we can get warm.

June 19, 2003

Happy Birthday, Graham!

June 21, 2003

Well we survived the birthday party. Hopefully that tired boy will sleep in tomorrow. Pictures
from his birthday and the party are
here.

June 22, 2003

Hurray!! We have made it. Today is the shortest day of the year in this part of the
world. The days will start to get longer now. More sunshine is good. Summer can't be too far away!
;-)

July 1, 2003

We have new work visas/permits. I guess it is official. We are sticking around for another
year.

July 3, 2003

Well it looks like the move from FeaturePrice to whoever bought them didn't go quite as planned
the web site is down. Of course you read this until it is back up again. I'll still try to keep
things updated. Well as much as I do anyway. It might be time for me to redo the photo albums while
we are offline.

July 5, 2003

Sleet last night. They had been saying we would have snow and sleet for two days now. It finally
turned up. Our road and the road to get down off the hill is icy. We won't be going out in the car.
Scott walked to the little store and butchers at the bottom of the hill for some bread and steaks.

July 6, 2003

Well it seems today that king.salyernetwork.com has fallen completely off from the face of the
earth. I haven't heard from Marcus, but I think he must have been on holiday. They usually take one
this time of year. I have seen him on AIM for the first time in a while so he must be back.

The Tour has started. Three weeks of cycling snippets for us. Can Lance win again?

Our road is still icy. I don't think that we will make it out today either. It is really
annoying because the other roads are clear. We are getting low on milk which is a no no as far
as Scott is concerned. Maybe we should go to the little store for some. Too bad it is so
expensive.

July 16, 2003

Car has been in the shop. It is running much better. We still have a couple of repairs to do on
it, but we are waiting on parts. We are definitely going to the Cook Islands in September. It will be
warm and sunny and very relaxing.

I have been looking for a place to host our web site. I have been trying to come up with a domain name
too. We'll see what happens. It will be a couple of months before I do anything about this.

July 18, 2003

I bought a domain name last night. At some point we will be grahamand.us. That is graham and us.
I know, it is silly.

Well it is official. We are going to the Cook Islands for a week. I am looking forward to it.
It should be very relaxing. Scott said that I could even have a day at the spa. The place we are
staying at has a nice kid's clue so we can let Graham spend some time there. Maybe we'll go snorkelling
of something while he is doing that.

July 23, 2003

After shopping around I have found a new place to host the web site. Don't know when it will actually
be available. It takes a while for things to propagate through DNS. I'll get the main site up tonight, but
it could take a while before all of the photo albums are available. I guess that will have to do.

Scott is on him way to SIGGRAPH. He'll be there for 10 days. We miss him already.

August 1, 2003

Scott should be leaving San Diego in an hour or so. It is 2pm here. He gets in tomorrow at 11:30
Graham and I will be really happy to see him. We have missed him a lot.

August 2, 2003

Scott is back and he brought presents. Graham always likes that.

August 3, 2003

We blew a fuse in the house tonight. Every light in the house is on the same fuse. How strange is that.
Instead of having a flip the circuit breaker and everything is happy set up, we have these big fuse things
that plug in to a board. I don't even know where to go to buy a new fuse, but what are the odds that we can
find the right place and it will be open at 6pm on a Sunday? Scott went investigating. Graham and I sat
around in the dark. Scott didn't find fuses, but fuse wire. Whatever he did worked. We have lights again.

August 9, 2003

It was a beautiful Saturday today. We decided to run downtown to do a little shopping and maybe grab
some lunch. Bad idea. The All Blacks are in town. They play the Springboks tonight at Carisbrook. People
everywhere. Scott meant to get tickets for the game, but didn't follow through with it. They just said on
the news that there were a few single seats available. I told him he could trot down to the stadium if he
likes. I think that he will just stay home and watch it on TV. The game starts at 7:30, I think. They'll
start broadcasting it on regular TV at 8:30. I am sure that it is live on Sky.

What am I talking about? Rugby, of course. The All Black are the national team and they are playing South
Africa tonight. It is one of the matches in the Tri-Nations. The third nation being Australia. The All Blacks
are in the lead I think, but I don't really follow it.

August 25, 2003

Friday draws ever nearer. I am looking forward to my holiday. We went out for pizza tonight. On the way
home Scott wanted to take a walk on the beach but didn't want to take a walk on the beach because it was cold.
He decided that in a few days we could take a walk on a warm beach.

August 29, 2003

Cook Islands here we come. The temperature there should be between 69 and 77 from what we have seen. It has
been around 50 here.

September 6, 2003

We are home after 8 days of warmth and beach. We had a very good time. The trip was quiet and relaxing. More
details here.

September 13, 2003

We managed to get out on the tandem today. The goal was to just get some miles on my legs and butt. Scott rode the
bike to the park and Graham and I went down in the car. The thought was to have a play at the park after the ride. We
rode out on the peninsula. We met up with a friend and stopped at his place on the way back. Well we were going to stop at his
but since it was only about 5 minutes away from where we left the car, we went and got the car and then drove back to
his place. Saved us climbing that hill. ;-)

September 22, 2003

Spring must be here. Scott's allergies have kicked in.

October 3, 2003

So Spring went away. It has been cold and rainy for most of the week. Hopefully it will come back soon.

October 26, 2003

We have had some wonderful weather this last week. Temps in the 20s and lots of sunshine. Of course it turned cooler on Friday, but it is spring after all and that is to be expected.

Scott is done lecturing for the term. He won't have to lecture again until March most likely.

We are taking a trip to the north island the end of November. Scott is going for a conference and Graham and I are going to tag along.

The 10th was the last day I worked. They have come up with some more money to keep me working for another month, but I haven't heard when I am supposed to start. I am trying to do a little work every day. The weather hasn't been helping.

Scott planted something in the garden yesterday. He put in peas and watermelon and I don't know what else. We'll see if they grow.

November 2, 2003

We have booked our trip on the ferry to the North Island. We decided to take an extra week. We don't know
where we will be going apart from the 4 days in Palmerston North. We'll figure it out on the way.

I am officially working again. Only 10 hours a week, but the extends the appointment into December which makes
sense if we get the next grant.

November 15, 2003

Karate class on the beach today. Scott and Graham came along to play while I punched and kicked. It was fun. Some how we managed to get home without the camera. We went back to retrace our steps, but no luck finding it. I am not very happy.

November 16, 2003

Being the shoppers that we are, we got a new camera today. It is a nice Sony and it even does video. I have spent the evening beating my head against it trying to get it to work with my computer. It should show up as a USB mass storage device, but it isn't. I finally put it in some strange mode and I can at least get the pictures off from it. So I guess I am back in business.

December 4, 2003

We got back from vacation last night. We decided that we would prefer the long day in the car instead of staying in a hotel another night. This morning the hard drive in my laptop decided to die before I could get the pictures committed. I don't know if I can get it working again, so there may be no pictures of the North Island to share.

December 5, 2003

It is official. Lori is coming to visit in February.

December 20, 2003

I thought that I updated this days ago.

We were able to get my old hard drive working and I got most of my data copied off from it. I got a new hard drive and after installing it twice decided that it was set up the way I wanted it. I am finally running on my laptop again. Maybe I'll get everything copied back at some point.

Scott has been sending out job applications again. We'll see what happens. We aren't very optimistic at this point.

We are mostly ready for Christmas. I got everything sent to the USA and I have most of my shopping done. We just need to take inventory and see if Graham needs anything else.

We spent a small fortune on bike tubs today. We were out of tubs and patch kits which isn't good especially with the amount of flats that Scott gets here.

December 31, 2003

The new year is fast approaching. There is only an hour and ten minutes left in this year. It is hard to believe that another year has passed. 2003 was good to us. I wonder what 2004 will hold.

We had a very nice Christmas. Graham got too much stuff as usual, but I guess that is OK. We had a couple students over for lunch and we visited the beach. A quiet day for the most part.

On Sunday we went to Middlemarch and started the rails to trails again. Scott wanted to do it in 3 days so we that is what we did. The head wind on Sunday was terrible and we rode a lot on the road because we could make better time. We spent the night in Omakau. Monday we rode to Clyde and the end of the trail and then back to Omakau after a nice lunch in Alexandra. Tuesday we rode back to Middlemarch and the car. No head wind that day, but there wasn't a tail wind either. We rode around 200 miles. I am still tired. Scott needed 27 more miles to have 4000 miles for the year. Graham didn't want to ride the bike today, so we stayed home while Scott got in his miles. It is a big accomplishment.