Posthumous award for brave dog - on Stuff.co.nz

Altogether now: AWWWWWWW....!!

Posthumous award for brave dog - New Zealand news on Stuff.co.nz

In breaking news, the Gummint announces all dog breeds except Silky Terriers & Jack Russells (because we have a soft, er, Spot for them) are banned.

Someone tell her please

Kerry Prenderghast called & wants her haircut back.

Posh, Britney in restaurant spat - Stuff.co.nz

Dog seized after biting two people

I wonder how many more posts I'll get in on the subject before something happens? How many more today even?

Anyway, part of the problem is this:

Miss Clark said she had "stronger views" on dog laws than most people, but every time there was a call for a tougher regime there was "pushback" from responsible dog owners and breeders.

That is because Prime Minister, your "tougher regime" has so far targetted responsible dog owners & breeders - microchips? Whatever for?

As soon as you start targetting the irresponsible dog owners - the unregistered, un-neutered dogs, and the so called "dangerous breeds", the rest of us will lay off.

It's simple, destroy or at the very least desex all unregistered dogs - local authorities know where they most of them are. I'm not all that keen on bans, but I'd probably not complain if the bulls (mastiffs & terriers) were outlawed - all the current registered ones desexed, all the unregistered ones destroyed.

Hmmm... I'm not convincing myself. OK - let's just say - start enforcing current dog laws & the problem may not disappear, but it'll sure reduce.

Dog seized after biting two people - Stuff.co.nz

Oh - and more while I'm at it. Ms Clark also said:

The issue for me is whether that ban goes far enough and the breeds that are specified. The dog that mauled the small child in the park just in recent days was not on that list of banned breeds.

And would it have helped this child if the breed was on the list? I think not. There already IS a law against any breed of dog wandering. Enforce it.

The death of existentialism

I thought hard about that title. (Click on it & it may take you to a lemon meringue pie recipe - who knows?)



Hat tip to (and flogged from) Perry at the site below.

Your Place - Not A Good Omen

Spring is coming

I just noticed something... click on the titles of my posts & you'll go all over the web! There is a (n inadvertent BlogThis) reason for this behaviour, I'd just never noticed it before.

But onto the business at hand - Spring is coming, and I mentioned in the linked post below that I'll be spraying trees for fungus & caterpillars in October, after the nut trees start flowering.

SunnyO: By the way

And it's the flowering I wanted to mention - apparently the orchard goes berzerk (nuts?) with mostly white, but some pink flowering trees peppered through them.

And for the spraying, I have a 12 volt battery powered, boom spray on a little trolley. Haven't tried it out yet, but I've sourced gloves, & glasses which are rated for use with chemical sprays, I just need to get a suitable mask now. And I'm in business.

And I'll post pictures of the flowering orchard when the time comes.

Here we go, here we go, here we go...

I was going to say that I'm expecting an official announcement on the fates of certain dog breeds any time now...

Heroic action saves tot from dog - Stuff.co.nz

But by the time I got around to it, there were some developments.

But just to get in ahead of anyone with the bright ideas - microchipping is not the answer to any other question than "Is this my lost dog?"

Nuts & avacadoes off the menu

One of the reasons I missed the Hustle for AUtism last night was that I spent a reasonable amount of my evening with meh dog at teh vet's. Just her annual checkup, but they were running really late.

And she's generally fit & well. Excepting that she's 4 kg too heavy - which I directly attribute to her cleaning up all the avacadoes that have fallen off the tree. From now on I'll cruise the area first with a bucket.

Her other problem is that she's cracked two teeth chewing macadamia nuts. She sneaks out to the orchard, grabs a mouthful of windfalls & finds herself somewhere quiet to take them apart & eat them.

Her teeth are OK at the moment, but any more damage and & not only will it become uncomfortable for her, but it'll be seriously & financially uncomfortable for me!

So plans to demolish the rotten fence that borders the orchard are on hold. I'll repair it instead.

Fecking dogs!

In good company

David Lynch joins the celebrated few.

peterquixote: Medallion of Quixote awarded to DAVID LYNCH

My medallion's around here somewhere.... maybe I shopuld put it at the top.

By the way

Did you know that by eating between 10 & 20 macadamia nuts each day you can reduce your cholesterol by up to 7%?

And did you know (Martha guessed) that you can eat as many macadamias as you like & you will NEVER put on weight?

I read that in the weekend, while looking up when to spray, & with what, the trees. (October, after flowering, for caterpillers & fungus).

Hustle for Autism

Tonight, San Fran Bath House in Wellington. Details at the end of this link.

Public Address | Speaker

Amongst the goods at auction will be 5kg of SunnyO Macadamia Nuts. In order to vary the tone of my comments on various random threads (They're selling my NUTS!)...

I'll be planting melons for next year.

Miscellaneous recent photos

Immigrants

Normal transmission is resumed

Broken cable. Which is good, we rescued the 50mb of taped shows & movies.

Learned heaps about the box from the techo too. Next time I reckon I could fix it myself.

Crap driving from the Spare Room

The first two are laugh out loud funny.

Spare Room » Blog Archive » And You Thought Auckland Drivers Were Bad

Jamaican R18 Hedonism resort - Google Search

Number 1!!

Woohoo - imagine all those All Blacks who have vistited SunnyO looking for the source of Kelleher's happiness (until it all fell apart).

Jamaican R18 Hedonism resort - Google Search

Goodness, Colin Meads would not approve.

"Arty" Rugby World Cup promo from Paris. Work safe. Unless you work with Colin Meads.

Hat tip to TracyMac at PA System for posting the link in a comment.

BDDP & Fils

And this too.

And Spare Room beat me to it by a day - here's their take & some amusing comments.

I don't understand this.

Does Paris Hilton deserve her inheritance? Turns out 79% of respondents to this Stuff poll think she doesn't.

I voted yes, but I was concerned slightly by the question - does anyone "deserve" an inheritance? Can they earn one?

What I don't understand is why anyone even wants a say? (I said "yes" :). Surely it's the decision of the guy leaving the money. And as she's a blood descendant, should he decide to leave her anything, then yes, I suppose she deserves it.

Anyone voting "no" must be doing it out of spite, surely?

Stuff.co.nz - Poll Results

Paris see, I'm on your side, should the tide of public opinion turn from here on in, that's 5% of whatever the old bugger bequeaths, right?

Oh hell, I'm not greedy, make it .005% I'm sure I can manage on that.

Third World Country - Us?

Get this - our MySky decoder refused to start up at around 6pm Sunday - atmospheric conditions. And it was hosing down so I thought it might be credible.

Next day - clear skies were posing atmospheric problems apparently. So I called Sky & reported it. I've had great service from them in the past. And I daresay I may get great service again this time, just not very fast service.

Silly me having a problem the very same week they're cutting over to a new satellite (and no way that could be related is there?). And all their technicians are busy.

But they may be able to send someone round to check next monday. Yes that's right, a week away from the very time I reported the fault.

Good news is that we won't be paying for the days we have no TV reception, bad news is that we have shaky free to air reception at best (and even shakier programming on those channels), and nothing we've set to record will be recorded.

So it's gonna be a lot of DVDs between now & next week. Perhaps I'll have me a Sherlock Holmesathon.

Jeremy Brett IS Sherlock Holmes

That's what it says on Volume 1 - Collectors' Edition of an otherwise untitled DVD Box Set.

5 stories, A Scandal in Bohemia, The Dancing Men, The Naval Treaty, The Solitary Cyclist, and - hang on tight folks - The Hound of the Baskervilles!! Yay!

Jeremy Brett - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

There are many movies & series that I think to myself - I'll snap that up if it ever appears on DVD! But I usually don't.

This time I did. Reading the wikipedia entry on Brett, who without any trace of irony or hype really WAS Sherlock Holmes, I am surprised to find that not all the stories were filmed before his death. I wonder which they didn't get to?

In the late 80s, I used to sit around a sharebrokers' boardroom table (while ostensibly waiting for backups of a computer system to finish) drinking wine, scarfing leftovers from the kitchen & chatting with a bunch of youths stuffing letters into envelopes - Brendon, Andrew, the lovely Sue Abernathy, and some other guy, watching Brett as Holmes on TV, while I lauded the series and its star to these ignorant folk.

I daresay I changed their lives.

To quote Fox Mulder

I know of only one man who's successfully faked his own death..... ELVISSSSS!!!

That said, this is a fascinating story. Although the sense of faking your own death in New Zealand & thinking you'll never run into someone you know does seem rather questionable. And it was.

The man who faked his own death - Stuff.co.nz

Big Grills Don't Fry

I'm working on my barbecue obsession (heh! Summer is COMING!!).

But in my defense, even Harry Belafonte had to leave a little grill in Kingston Town. And Frank Sinatra was very taken when the grill from Ipanema went wokking. Indeed, inspired!

Anyone else having problems posting?

New posts get published, but don't seem to appear on the site - until I republish several times.

How could you doubt a face like this?

I notice they leave such announcements till after lunchtime these days. Wonder why. "Gone by dinnertime" doesn't really have the same ring.

Minister faces sack after change to his story - Stuff.co.nz

Update (11.52am):

What would I know? He's gone...

For those who need to know

One of the most enjoyable books I've read in the last few years has been The Time Traveller's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger. It's a bit of a chick-lit novel, although it is funny & action packed. And I unashamedly recommend it.

Briefly, it's about Henry, a man with a genetic disorder that causes him to travel through time at random intervals. He doesn't know when he'll go, where he'll go, nor how long he'll stay.

When Henry is in his thirties, he meets Claire, who is six. Henry visits Claire often from the future & even tells her that they will be married.

When Henry is 28, he meets Claire for the first time (although she's known him nearly all her life), she is 21.

And so it goes. An older Henry from the future even has to step in for his younger self at his own wedding. No-one is impolite enough to ask why the groom is suddenly dishevelled, unshaven, and looking 10 years older than when he left the room.

Anyway, I mention this purely because a movie is in production. Claire will be played by the awesome Rachel McAdams, Henry will be the equally awesome Eric Bana.

I think their days are numbered

United Future? Hah! Yes!!

But I mean pitbull terriers.

I have some sympathy for the owner in this case, the dog was tied up (and presumably registered) and a little girl ignored her mother's instructions & tried to pat the dog. Which was not receptive to the attention.

Pitbull bites chunk out of little girl's lip - Stuff.co.nz

And as for the statement that "You don't see labradors running around constantly attacking people."... aren't labradors responsible for most of the dog attack statistics in NZ? (I have heard this, but I do not know if it is true). If it is, it's probably because there are more labradors than any other breed.

More than likely if this dog had been a labrador it wouldn't have been reported anyway.

But I do like the point made that responsibility for such events does not rest solely with the dog owners. People should not approach strange dogs (special dispensation for the Reserve Bank Governor - he can go for his life, I'll supply the pitbulls.)

Suckypoo.

I have a headache today. Vaguely nauseous too, and I'm tired. But I've been worse.

I think we'd finished our normal nightly quota of wine by the end of the first quarter during the netball last night.

SO of course, we kept going till the last grisly act of a grisly game was played. Too many mistakes.

Suckypoo!

Thank goodness for the All Blacks.

In other news, we've been watching a Canadian film called Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner. An all Inuit tale of love, betrayal, murder & revenge. It's set hundreds of years ago, so you can do worse that admire the workmanship of the snow glasses some of the characters sport.

The scenery is breathtaking, the details of Inuit life are fascinating, and the dogs really take a hammering (we haven't yet seen the end credits to see if any dogs were harmed in the making of this film, but I'm guessing they won't attempt that disclaimer. Nor a similar one for seals...)

I'm not sure, but I believe director Zacharias Kunuk's latest film, the Journals of Knud Rasmussen features in this years film festivals. Be worth seeing I imagine.

This may not be true, we're still here

Maybe they not only have to appear in the same "news" story, maybe they have to like, meet.

Posh says no to friendship with Paris -Stuff.co.nz

So I joined

Facebook. And I've got two friends already. And I've checked out all their hot friends too (Damian Christie wonders if there is a word for that - I think it is probably "sad".).

Facebook

What now?

Update:

Well it's all on now, seems Facebook has invited everyone in my contacts list, including the guy I roasted a while back for poor service.

Er... hi!

The knowledge.

OK, I think I have it all* worked out now.

The world will end when the two behemoths of current affairs stories collide. Yes. When a story involving both Posh AND Paris makes the front page, I suggest you duck & cover. Quickly.

LOLPosh: She's Alive! - Jezebel

* Yes, everything.

Meanwhile, is it just me? Or does Jezebel look like Addison from Grey's Anatomy?

Non-story of the day

WARNING! Loud shirts through the link may be disturbing to young or nervous viewers. Discretion is required.

Fer Feck's Sake, the ship was damaged in a storm! It's unfortunate but hardly avoidable, surely?

Couple high and dry after cruise scuttled -Stuff.co.nz

Maybe P&O got wind of the shirts they were planning to bring & engineered the whole thing...

Invitations

In just the last week, I've been invited to sign up to or join:

1. Linkedln
2. Pownce
3. Facebook

Hey, thanks for the thoughts everyone (and a special hat tip to Mike, who over the years has invited me to sign up to dozens of services of one sort or another. Probably none of which I have taken up)

Now a question - what are all these things? (I mean, I could look I suppose, but I have a history of looking & not seeing the point anyway, so 25 words or less on what these are & why I need them might help. I mean, I'm just not an early adopter of new gizmos, like some people I know.)

But if it means more txts, notifications, or emails...

The things you see

When you're out without your camera.



Look carefully at the first three pictures. When we caught sight of the beach that day, I said something like "Look how clear it is! I forgot the camera so I guess this'll be the day we can see clear through to Ruapehu.



Look carefully at the space between the two groups of walkers. The phone doesn't do it justice at all.



Click for a bigger image if that helps.

Scenes from SunnyO

The Pumphouse. Mrs Llew calls it the Boathouse for some reason.

The saddest Google search string EVER!

peter firth from double deckers email address - Google Search

You may remember Mr Firth from here.

Swiss Army Flash Memory Stick

Brilliant!

Victorinox Swiss Army - MultiTools - SwissMemory Laser 1GB

Then again...

It wasn't so bad after all! Mental note: only shop where the sales staff are hot & keep bending over so you can see down their top. Shopping as spectator sport.

Not that I looked of course!

But it was Rodd & Gunn, I tried on everything, including trousers. Everything looks quire different from out of the artificial light. Once I'd chosen I said:

"Do you mind if I wear the jacket out? I made some poor clothing choices this morning"

So, one moleskin jacket (poor moles, god knows how many I'm wearing right now), one pair of tan trousers to wear with them, and one pair of hush puppie shoes, which were ridiculously cheap, so who knows how long they'll last.

"Hush puppies? Lemme look - do they have animal tracks on the tread & a hidden compass?"

"What?" said the not at all hot, spotty youth from the shoe shop.

"Pah", I snorted, "things have gone really down hill with these shoes since I was 6 years old!"

"Um... yeah"

"Ok I'll take 'em, do you mind if I wear them out of here? I made some poor clothing choices this morning"

"Knock yourself out, animal track dude."

SunnyO: Hole in my shoe

Hole in my shoe

HOLE IN MY SHOE

I looked in the sky where an elephant's eye
Was looking at me from a bubblegum tree
And all that I knew was the hole in my shoe
Which was letting in water (letting in water)
(letting in water)

I walked through a field that just wasn't real
With one hundred tin soldiers which stood at my shoulder
And all that I knew was the hole in my shoe
Which was letting in water (letting in water)
(letting in water)

(Narration: I climbed on the back of a giant albatross
What flew through a crack in the cloud
To a place where happiness reigned all year round
And music played ever so loudly)

I started to fall and suddenly woke
And the dew on the grass had soaked through my coat
And all that I knew was the hole in my shoe
Which was letting in water (letting in water)
(letting in water)

Traffic - 1967
Neil -1984

Dude, who knew this song was so spaced out!??

Anyway, I relate. The time has come to get some new shoes because all of the existing ones (except for the completely waterproof Skellerup Hikers I bought last week) are letting in water.

Indeed, I checked the shoe stash last night - that's where I put all my slightly damaged shoes until I get desperate & take them to be repaired. Or if it was last night, I realise they're shot & chuck 'em.

Then in the morning, I carefully hop around all the puddles on my way to work.

But enough is enough! The Skellerup Hikers don't look too swish with a suit, so hard, cold cash will have to be bartered for something at least vaguely corporate.

And I need a new jacket too.

The issue is, I can't be arsed shopping, well not for clothes anyway, I can spend ages in hardware, barbecue & farming stores. Shoes & jackets do not excite me. Mind you, neither do cold, wet feet, so something is about to give!

HOLE IN MY SHOE

Oh, and apropos of nothing - I just noticed my title for this post said "Home in my shoe". Now corrected to save any confusion.

We interrupt...

Our self styled "No Paris Stories" embargo briefly, to bring you this, the lovely story of a woman who inherited Paris Hilton's discarded mobile phone number.

Calling Paris? Student inherits Hilton's number - Stuff.co.nz

Reminds me of friends, whose flat in Thorndon inherited the number from an old brothel...

Winter Harvest

Brilliant! We harvested 4 mature trees, all, apparently, the same cultivar. I mention this because you'd expect the same cultivars to produce similar amounts, but one tree yielded 25 kilos, while the one at the lowest end of the range gave up only 5.2 kg.

There's also quite some difference in the size of the nuts produced by each tree.

The total? 49.9kg.

Didn't quite crack 50, but these will hang in the drying room for 3 months now, losing more weight.

And we saw a live rabbit! I can report that even if I'd been standing there with a loaded shotgun, pointing at the exact spot the rabbit bolted from, I'd have missed.

And Borat brought our mower back. Well, he looks & sounds like Borat, although his real name is Sebastian. And I'm guessing he's Swiss. But he'll always be Borat to us now. And bonus, Borat has fixed the mower, so that it picks up the mown grass & leaves.

He checked out the derelict farm trike too, which has never worked. And he huffed & he puffed & in a burst of oily smoke, the trike came to life. Borat nearly went the other way, as he stumbled from the smoke filled stable.

He showed us how to use it, which is academic, because after he left three of us nearly threw our shoulders out trying to start it again. We've given up. I'll take it back to Borat & have him fix the electric ignition, sod these broken pull start devices.

Oh, and even in 3rd gear it goes about 5 kph. Woohoo, watch the bend!

Harvest time.

We're gearing up for the first nut harvest of the year.

I've mentioned it somewhere before, but we have some trees that drop their nuts (a phrase that causes much amusement for the teenagers in the family), and some that jealously hold onto them.

In addition, some trees are harvested around July, and some around October or November.

As far as I can make out, we have 4 trees ready to harvest & they're all droppers.

Oh, and they are biannual apparently, they have high & low years. This is a low year & so we're not expecting a huge crop. Which is fine, since we're new at this.

Funny, we've alerted the family & friends, and suddenly everyone is busy. "WTF? SInce when are you having surgery this weekend? Knee replacement? That shouldn't stop you!"

But what will happen is:

Large drop mats will be laid around the base of the tree (one tree at a time since it seems, nuts from different trees should not be mixed up). (And I digress at this stage to mention something that has just occurred to me - I have left the one & only orchard ladder that we owned at a property that was recently sold. Bugger.), then we send child labour up into the branches to bring down all the nuts which have not yet dropped.

Then, someone will drive (dodgy electric ignition allowing) a mower with a trailer attached to it into the orchard. We will fill the trailer with nuts, and then we will convey them to the dehusking machine.

There may be variations on that last step, if there are not enough nuts to warrant a trailer, child labour will carry the nuts in buckets to the dehusker.

The dehusker is a noisy & dirty machine, which looks like it was put together by a one armed chimpanzee with a mechanno set, but it does work.

The nuts, will then be dried in ovens for a couple of hours at a very low heat, bagged in mesh onion bags, and hung out to dry. I have no idea how long they need to hang after that.

Then we start on another tree & repeat.

Probably won't get to it this weekend (because I probably won't have them by then), but I'll be installing at some stage, a Gnome Village, probably in the orchard, but maybe not... something to surprise & delight any younger visitors we have.

Not that I encourage young visitors, but sometimes they do sneak past the hounds.

Er... why?

$10m in bid to keep Team NZ afloat - Stuff.co.nz

FFS - spend it on something useful, like a bypass through wellington or something.

God knows the last one was such a success.

Jump back around 5 years

The previous owners of SunnyO made a silly mistake in my opinion. They looked around their property, and noticing a half acre paddock with 7 mature macadamia trees in it, they thought, "Let's plant 50 or 60 more! Then we'll buy a husking machine, a cracking machine, several ovens, and we'll build a processing plant & drying room!" Brilliant, then we'll watch the money roll in because macadamias sell for $55 a kilo!"

First mistake - $55 per kilo. I dunno about that, all I know is, I can order a kilo over the web for $8.

Second mistake - if they'd turned around, they'd have noticed the mature avocado tree, which produces heroically all year around, and whose fruits merely need picking & packing.

I just cannot believe that they didn't think "Sod these nuts which are about as tough as cannonballs & require a huge capital investment, let's plant 50 of these avocado trees!"

Oh well.

Transformers - the movie.

I don't get it.

This begs the question...

Who will play Lindsay?

Lindsay to play Paris? - Stuff.co.nz

Anyway, on the pest front, the most interesting development was that rats managed to gnaw through the container, and ate all the rat poison.

World's longest single word domain name.

www.llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyll-llantysiliogogogoch.com

No, I can't pronounce it & see very little reason to learn. But hey, get along there & there're all sorts of interactive, fascinating things to do.

OK, I'm exaggerating.

And anyway, if it's a single word, what's that hyphen doing there?

Update:

It is possible to send emails from "yourname@Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwll-llantysiliogogogoch.com

What fun!

Further update:

Yes, if you got a plea from help from Elvis, stuck in Llan.. Lla... that place for the last 30 years... it was me.

But you know what really strikes me though, if this place is so neat, how come after you've visited the site & sent an email from elvis... it takes you to a page where you can book your holiday... in France!!

I'll take a punt then, that the site is funded by some local council:

"Hey, let's get a website for Llanf... but since its such a shithole, we'll use the site to peddle cheap hols in France. Brilliant!"

Woke up this morning

Got myself a gun...

Well not quite. I did go & look at guns today though, just airguns. I have wats & wabbits on my mind. I'm told that an airgun that exceeds 1000 feet per second is good enough to bowl a rabbit or a possum. There is a recommended brand called Gano, or something, cost around $500.

I was sorely tempted.

Then it occured to me that while I clearly have a pest problem, I have yet to actually see live rats & rabbits... which is probably a prerequisite for shooting them.

So I'll mull on it.

But on the other hand... does anyone know where you can buy decent crossbows?

Meanwhile, these shots were taken with my phone & do not do this morning justice at all, the sky was on fire.





And this one was taken a few weeks ago.

This deserves a wider audience!

Well... not that I'm providing it...

But hey there, it's local body election year & the bypass has just been implemented to delay traffic through & into the city (they didn't say that was the reason for it, but a city planner I met assures me I don't know what he knows & so I deduce from that that they did it on purpose. Wankers.) so why are the council luring cars into the city with cheap parking & putting up public transport fares all the while telling us we're becoming carbon neutral!??

WellUrban: How not to go carbon neutral

I have a question...

Watched the netball finals over the last few weeks, was very pleased to hear a new male commentator, didn't catch his name, but the point is, he knew the rules, the players, and seemed to be able to read how the play was going.

Then, for the final, Brendon Telfer was back.

What gives TV1? Does Telfer know where the bodies are buried? Because he knows jack shit about netball.

MPs to set strict rules on photos that poke fun at them - Stuff.co.nz

Please! That's Mr Retard to You.

Job website labels client 'retard' - Stuff.co.nz

There were rats, big as blooming cats

I know Alan will sympathise...

We have rats. At least I presume they're rats, haven't seen them yet, but I have seen their signs.

Actually, that's not true, Wilma found a dead rat last month. It was really big too!

Their sign (RatsRUS - no just joking), include hundreds of macadamia nuts with little holes gnawed in their shells, and gnawed apples, and avacadoes... and actually, I owe the birds an apology, I thought it was them pecking at the avacadoes. Now I think its the rats.

And in our "tack room", whatever that is (horsey people will know), which is traditionally where (before the drying room was built) nuts were left to dry, and where I had left 3 buckets of nuts, our practise run which I have kept separate from the commercial crop, there were nutshells all over the place, up high in recesses in the wall, down low in the very difficult to get corner behind the spa pool... the rats have been helping themselves!

And so I took those 3 buckets, and I dried the nuts in the ovens (over-dried them actually, I have probably ruined them, but anyway, they were the practise run), and hung them in an onion bag with last year's crop.

I also tripped down to Mitre 10 & bought a truckload of ratbait, some of it is stationed out in the orchard now, in a pet proof plastic thing, some of it is pushed into hard-to-get-at places in the tack room & stables.

War is declared on a big scale.

I suspect this will be an ongoing war & goodness knows what else in the way of pests will come to well, pester me. The carbaryl (wasp poison) in the shed may be a bit of a clue.

Oh, and explorers this weekend, found the legendary source of Lake SunnyO. Yes, about 18 inches down in the ground underneath the avacado tree is a T intersection in the white PVC piping that runs through much of our property, which has lost its tail. A plumber will have to be summoned.

BTW, somewhere I have photos, when I come across the camera again, in due course, I will upload them.

bicurious female librarian - Google Search

just leave your name in the comments, my procurer will be in touch.

bicurious female librarian - Google Search

Bwahaha! Excellent.

WellUrban: A subtle message

Note to the BBQ Factory

I do expect your junkmail to have more barbecues in it than spa pools.

Note to self: find a No Junkmail sign pronto.

SunnyO: Some Grills Will

Glancing at the Stars

Matariki Festival, Te Papa, 16 June - 1 July.

Glancing at the Stars | the wellingtonista

You Want Closure?

Spoilers for things that never happened (probably). I like the winning mashup - it explains the ginger cat.

Sopranos endings you can live with. - By Timothy Noah - Slate Magazine

Some Grills Will

Some Grills won't
Some Grills need a lot of loving &
Some Grills don't

Following up on the last story of home renovations (somewhere below), let me share another!

A couple of years ago, we decided to get a car deck built (the trials & tribulations start somewhere near the beginning of this blog, if I were any sort of host, I'd provide links. But who ever said I was any kind of host?). First there were the architects' drawings. Then there was the builder's quotation. Then there were the amended drawings, and more quotes.

Then, bulldozers came in & removed our front garden. Then there were the complications, and builders started on the virgin site some many months later. And many more after that the deck was nearly finished (it'll never be finished, but it's close enough).

Anyway, back at the beginning, when the garden was removed by bulldozer, I remembered at the last minute to save our letterbox. This sat on top of our gas meter for some time, until the deck & a new fence were built.

At this stage, the intention was to get a new letterbox. But you know how it is, the old one, looking like a delapidated birdhouse, sat tacked to our garden fence for more than a year. Once or twice I retrieved it from down the road, presumably having been taken by passing students. A couple of times the wind just blew it to pieces...

Then, recently, I bought a new one over the internet. It arrived in pieces, a slot, a mailbox to be installed into the fence, and some street numbers.

Because our existing letterbox now only consisted of a base, two sides and a No Junkmail sign, some urgency was placed on istalling the new one.

Complications arose when I discovered that my skillsaw was somewhere else. But resourceful as ever, I hand sawed a recess with a Swiss Army knife. It only took most of the day. But now we have a lovely & discreet, working letterbox!

But it doesn't have a No Junkmail sign. A situation I have frowned upon for the last month or so - but I haven't yet found the "right" sign.

Although yesterday, I paused for thought about the No Junkmail... you see they delivered a glossy brochure all about the new BBQ factory in Lower Hutt. And if there's one thing to get me all excited... it's the new season's barbecues.

I'll keep you posted.

Meanwhile - do catch this clip before it gets pulled (lame pun). It's priceless.

Spare Room » Blog Archive » Cheeky Darkie Pulled On Holmes

A Headline you probably won't see in the newspaper.

Good news is no news, as they say.

Dog aggression hits all-time low - New Zealand Dog News

Wheelchair man gets highway ride

Would have been a remarkable sight, no doubt.

BBC NEWS | Americas | Wheelchair man gets highway ride

Grey Day

What was with the Skyline last night?

There are two superior locations for restaurants in this city. One is the Band Rotunda at Oriental Bay, the other is the Skyline complex in Kelburn.

Yet for some reason there has never been a decent restaurant in either location.

However, the Skyline does get used for private parties now & then - July 4th for example, I predict that the cul de sac end of Upland Road will be packed to the gunwhales with limos & sports cars, many of which will sport diplomatic plates, on Independence Day next month. That's what happened last year, residents had to stop & ask chauffeurs to move forward a few metres so they could park in their own driveways. I passed through & idly suggested to one of the policement on diplomatic protection duty that he should get a booze bus in for later on. he told me that there was no point, since the chauffeurs were all gathered outside, smoking, but not drinking.

But last night... I was shambling up Salamanca Rd, when an SUV coming in the opposite direction stopped in the middle of the road & a lady with a mid european accent asked me if I knew where the Skyline was.

I gave her directions "U turn, straight ahead, turn right up past the University, turn right at the roundabout, at the top of the hill, turn right again & there you are."

What I should have said was, "Give me a lift & I'll show you", because what she did was: a U turn, and the "turn right" must have stuck because she turned right immediately into the Met Office & disappeared over the hill.

I caught up with her a few minutes later, just before she descended to the Treehouse & main gardens in Thorndon & went through the directions again.

And this time, just as I walked past the Skyline, she turned up. Gave me a cheery wave, and turned into the carpark which was the fullest I have ever seen it!

And there were limos, and chauffeurs again, and a BMW Roadster, license plate DC501 (I think, possibly 5501), parked across our driveway. No police this time though to have a bleat about useless diplomats to.

And I rang Mrs Llew & told her not to exercise her road rage option when she got home & couldn't park on our car deck, because the diplomats don't care! But as it happens, by the time she got there, it was gone.

And so... anybody know what was going on there? Oh, and if you're wondering what's so cool about the Skyline spot, all the photos of the harbour that get posted here are prety much taken from beside the place.

Random link - borderline disturbing photo from the fieldays.

Bachelor farmers strut their stuff - Stuff.co.nz

Nothing to do with Sinatra, nor Santa.

MiramarMike: Sanatravious - your word of the week

I'll be trying to use it every 10 monutes or so.

meanwhile - Is Tony dead? Whacked by a sinister restaurant patron? Best theory I've heard is that Jamie Sigler (Meadow) tripped over the power cord on her way in.

If this makes no sense... tante pis!

Blue Day

Earlier today...

Very early.

Crossblogging Again - Pruning With The Stars.

Pruning With The Stars! Sunday 17 June | the wellingtonista

Augie - Auer & Out

Probably just coincidence that the day after the death of Augie Auer, weatherman & global warming denier, is pretty much the coldest day so far this year.

Weatherman Augie Auer dies - Stuff.co.nz

Man's Inhumanity to Dog

Which if memory serves, is a phrase stolen from Charles Schulz.

Dog starved, hanged from tree in Manukau

Bastards.

What do they call the guys..

At the front of pipe bands? The guys who swing a long stick with something metal on top. Actually, they don't seem to contribute much. Maybe they own the rest of the band.

Anyway.

There're a shitload of kids marching past my window behind the aforementioned pipe band at the moment. They're dressed in fluoro orange & wearing matching orange dunce hats.

I surmise they're celebrating school patrols & promoting road safety...

...which is pretty ironic actually, given they're marching down the middle of Lambton Quay in the middle of a working day. Watch out for those buses!

And now, a carbon-neutral* gag:

Exactly one year ago today, Wim Binliner was an unknown 18 year old Swedish tennis player.

Today he's 19.

* 100% recycled from a Not the Nine O'Clock News calendar from decades ago.

Who in the world is Gilda Kirkpatrick?

Must be an Auckland thing.

The name "Gilda" evokes for me this 1946 Rita Hayworth/Glenn Ford classic film noir.

IDLE VICE: Trashion

So in 25 words or less, can any Aucklander tell me WTF* she is? And what on earth was Ian thinking?

*this has been a google-free post.

While we're on the subject

I guess if you're Sir Paul, you can persuade Natalie Portman to get jiggy in your video... and I don't suppose that was supposed to look like a lapdance... ewww...

Rock Town Hall - Minute-by-Minute Review of Paul McCartney's Memory Almost Full

WARNING!!

Um... conmsider yourself warned.

The Long & Winding Road

For reasons too silly to mention, I found myself embarking on a 2.5 hour round trip to SunnyO yesterday afternoon, to pick up a cat & bring him back to town.

There's nothing at all interesting in this, save I was planning to use the reflection time driving, to dream up some proverbs for NZBC. Sadly, the muse was absent.

Happily though, I had one of those wonderful bogun moments, having stopped briefly at New World Waikanae, having travelled thus far listening to Jim Mora & some boring guests, I was turning left back onto an oddly deserted State Highway One, when Jim, brightly announced "And here is Alice Cooper".

And it must be that I haven't heard No More Mr Nice Guy since the 1970s. Yet I remember every lyric (except the name of the preacher that punches him in the nose).

And I blasted North in my Euro Planet Muncher (TM) bellowing:

I used to be such a sweet, sweet thing.
Till they got ahold of me,
I open doors for little old ladies
I help 'em find a seat.
I got no friends 'cos they read the papers
They can't be seen
With me, and I'm feeling real shot down
And I'm, gettin' mean!

Honestly, Marilyn Manson is a wannabe.

But from the sublime to the ridiculous, just a little earlier, navigating the borderline chaos that is Centennary Highway, Mora was pleasant enough to treat us to Paul McCartney's new single, which (have you been reading Doonesbury recently?) was launched yesterday in every branch of Starbucks in the world. Non stop Macca. In fact, non stop very mediocre single song Macca.

This in itself is unremarkable, I'm sure Sir Paul has churned out many, many songs that are not destined for the greatness of some of his earlier work. The strange thing is that I heard this one.

What IS remarkable though, is that later last night, we chanced upon a biopic of John Lennon on Rialto. We missed the first few minutes so I have absolutely no idea who played the main roles, nor what the film was called. They looked kind of like the Beatles if you squinted. Although whoever played Astrid Kirchher looked JUST like Sheryl Lee, who played Astrid in Backbeat.

Well. Maybe not THAT remarkable. All I'm saying is it was poignant, seeing a dramatisation of the glory days, juxtaposed with a boring ditty released that very day. Wonder what Lennon would be doing if he was still around?

Oh, and the biopic played no actual Beatles music, not even when they got to the bit where they were making their own.

Maybe Michael Jackson would only give them the music rights if they let him play Astrid.

Anyway, after all that, skip the Rialto movie, watch Backbeat.

Men With Fire

What I love about all YouTube-like movies of people being stupid with fire, are the little touches, like the slow-mo replay of the very moment that the rubber meets the road, or more accurately, the flame meets the accelerant. That "You dumbass" moment that someone funnier than me coined, which is the moment that you realise that you're standing in the middle of high explosive, about to flick... the BIC.

Spare Room » Blog Archive » How To Make A Fireman Very Angry

I also love how, at the end, the very concerned mate approaches, one hand in pocket, the other clutching a pint. It must have looked like a close one.

:)

Hat tip to the Spare Room

Bwahaha!

Seems I got flayed somewhere for suggesting KD Lang resembles a young Robert de Niro.

Guys! Watch Salmonberries before you comment.

kennedyflairs k.d. page

RIP Simon Lindsay

AKA Dodderyoldfart at Rest Area 300m

I posted this earlier hoping you'd comment that reports of your demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Oswald Bastable's Ranting: RIP

But it is true.

Go well. We'll miss you terribly. Our thoughts are with your family & friends.

Can Peter Dunne Dance?

And would we want to see it anyway?

And it's all over for another year, the dreadful music, the dreadful jokes, the dreadful costumes, the dreadful celebs, the dreadful presenters & judges. Goneski.

And worse! Jason Gunn returns to the same timeslot in a couple of weeks. Without me though I'd have to predict.

And Suzanne took the honours. And it seems right. Megan might be a wonderful, natural dancer, but there is something slightly off putting about her. Will Suzanne get her new show & enough dosh to pay the creditors? Time will tell.

Highlight of last night was watching Laws, we gasped a couple of times as disaster loomed, but somehow, he managed not to scone Lauren's head on the floor. Well done. And I never thought I'd say anything like this - but the jive from Cole & Candy took our breath on a couple of occasions too.

All that's left is speculation about next year. Rumour has it that Jeremy Wells, Mark Sainsbury, Tom Scott and Don Brash were approached for the season just ended, I guess we can assume they won't change their minds next year.

We're running out of celebs actually, Nerida says she'll be back as a dancer next year, who will she be paired with?

I haven't investigated foreign Dancing with the Stars series, so I don't know what criteria are employed in choosing contestants there, but here they seem to be:

Sports persons
Shortland St actors
Retired politicians
Retired public service CEOs
TV presenters
DJs

Who does that leave us? Peter Dunne? Clark & Cullen probably won't meet the eligibility criteria until after the next election, but with luck, we can then add Winston to the list. Blumsky? He's a media whore, but is he well enough known outside of Welly?

Mikey Havoc? And/or his cute wife Claire? Simon & Ali? (Actually, I'd tune in to watch Alison Mau dance in her smalls).

Ooh. That reminds me... BRING ON THE DANCING REBECCA SINGH!!

Ahem... How about Judy Bailey then? I bet they asked her already. Damian Christie? (Mate, we'll put in a decent plug so you can have Hayley), Sean Plunket?

I don't know any Shortland Street actors, but it could be any of them.

Alright, I'm well & truly in waffletown now - I throw te forum open to suggestions. Who would you like to see on next year's Dancing With the Stars?

Anger at Labour's 'wandering eye'

This is hilarious, mere days after Gordon Copeland's bravado bid for obscurity, his former party leader, Peter Dunne is throwing a tanty because Labour is paying too much attention to the Greens. He's threatened to open negotiations with National. Except he's also thrown a tanty at National for wooing the Maori Party.

This from the guy who cut the Greens out of any coalition at the behest of the Outdoor Recreation Party, who have now abandoned United Future, so why should Dunne care anymore? Aside from his grandiose delusions of relevance.

Mr Dunne wants some recognition from Labour now of United Future's possible relevance after the next election.

Good luck with that Peter it depends on the votes, but I'm hoping that neither Labour, nor National have a bar of you.

Anger at Labour's 'wandering eye' - 29 May 2007 - NZ Herald: New Zealand National news

Hattip to David Farrar who said this of Dunne:

Peter's problem is that in political terms, he is an easy lay.

Now I don't mean this as a bad thing. Peter is a very good guy, who is always a safe and competent Minister, and he doesn't go troppo like Winston does. But it does mean both major parties do tend tio take him for granted

Well I think it's a bad thing & I can see no earthly reason why any party should agree some "deal" with United Future ahead of an election, whatever happens, at a snap of the fingers Dunne would roll over & expose his tummy (or shaft an ally), for anyone.

Time for Linux then?

Anyone else got one of these recently? Looks like such a hassle I am seriously considering going open source immediately. Wonder what happens if I ignore it?

Hi Llew

The purpose of this email is to follow up on the letter your organisation should have received from Microsoft notifying you of the Software Asset Management (SAM) review process.

OR:

I tried to contact you by phone today to follow up on the letter your organisation should have received from Microsoft notifying you of the Software Asset Management (SAM) review process. However, I was unable to make contact with you so have taken the liberty of sending you this email to outline the process.

Microsoft has engaged Accordo Group to carry out this activity on their behalf. Please note that Accordo Group is an independent consulting organisation. We do not sell software licenses and our role in this review is purely that of expert advisor on licensing matters.

The steps in the review process are as follows;

Process Steps

1. We ask you to complete the attached deployment summary (spreadsheet format) and return to us via email.

2. Once we receive your deployment summary we will analyse the Microsoft software in use against the licenses held and provide you with an Estimated Ownership Position. There may be areas that require further clarification;

3. When this is done, a finalised License Ownership Position (as of the date of the review) will be provided, detailing what you own and what we understand you are using, based on the information you have supplied. This final summary will detail over-licensing or any apparent variances that may need to be remedied;

4. Along with the final License Ownership Position summary you will also receive a Software Asset Management Tips guide.

In order to make the process as efficient as possible we would highlight the following:

1. You may wish to engage your IT Partner to assist you through (or even manage) the process on your behalf;

2. We recommend that you request from your IT partner/s a list of Microsoft licenses you have purchased via OEM (bundled with hardware) or FPP (boxed retail copies). Please note that records of licenses purchased under a Volume License Program (such as Open, Select or Enterprise) will be already available in the Microsoft records system;

3. Microsoft do make available a free software audit tool called MSIA that might be of assistance in establishing exactly what Microsoft software you have installed on each device. Details on this tool and the location to download it from can be found on the internet as follows: http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sam/msia.mspx;

4. If you have purchased Volume Licenses under a different company name or have acquired other organisations who may have purchased licenses, please try to have this information available. This will enable us to identify any licenses you own which have been purchased under alternative names.

The documents attached to this email:

• A generic copy of the letter originally sent to your organisation by Microsoft;

• A document that covers some of the frequently asked questions regarding the review process;

• A copy of your organisation’s Volume License Purchase Summary from the Microsoft licensing database;

• A deployment summary that we would appreciate your response to by 14 June 2007. If, for any reason, you are unable to meet this timeframe please contact us by return email.

What you can expect to get out of the review?

• Consolidation of all your licensing records into one concise report which can then be maintained and modified by your organisation in the future;

• Assistance with understanding licensing rules, and, in particular, how they relate to your own specific situation;

• Licensing expertise and advice available to you throughout the process, free of charge;

• Guidance regarding ongoing Software Asset Management.

Please do ask questions if you are not sure about the information you are being asked to provide, or if you have any queries whatsoever in regards to the SAM review process. Alternatively, should you wish to discuss this directly with Microsoft New Zealand’s Small Business Manager, please feel free to contact Jan Ferguson on Ph 09-3625885 or email jan.ferguson@microsoft.com.

Thank you for your assistance.

Kind Regards

An Emissary of the Prince of Darkness.

Sheepless in Otaki

Hurrah! I waved goodbye to 5 sheep yesterday. There were 6 last week, but the ancient girl died during the week. She & her lambs have looked suss since I got them, she's just been past her use by date I think, which is why the guy selling was so keen to get rid of them.

But anyway, I turned up at 10am to pen the the beasts before 10.30am, when a nice lady called Faye was coming to pick them up. Fantastically, Wilma & I had them sorted nearly straight away! And for the only time, Wilma was a help rather than a hindrance. For whatever reason, she went the right way, stopped when I yelled & after only two uncontrolled circuits of the paddock, we had all 5, even the bolshie boys, in my jury rigged "funnel", and on their way to the pen.

We rested then & half an hour later Faye arrived with a high sided trailer.

While getting them in the pen was a doddle, getting them on the trailer was not. Faye backed up to the gate, we bisected the pen to make it smaller, but nothing was going to tempt them to step up & through the gate. Otto spent most of his time blocking the gap.

Resigned to a struggle, I heaved Otto around & pushed the heavy brute up onto the platform. I wondered how long I had to get another before he got back off, but to my complete surprise, George dutifully climbed up onto the trailer to be with his old mate.

"Just like a sheep" Faye noted, as she swung one of the ewes up to join them. I grabbed the last two while she blocked them all in the trailer, she rolled the lot forward while I held corrugated iron up to stop the bolting. And it was done.

The boys are off to Levin apparently, the girls & the wether lamb are staying in Otaki.

Next weekend I'll dismantle all the temporary fencing & transport it to the orchard where it will go to keeping Wilma in.

One amusing thing we noted, the 1/4 acre section next door, from whence springs Zeus the pig, now & then, is now also home to a magnificent chestnut horse. I can only assume they're circus folk or something. Anyway, that's between them & their new neighbours & the animal control guy.

Which brings me to... my utter shame on Saturday, literally seconds after I'd given her a tummy rub out the back, Wilma was returned home from the front street by the local Animal Control Officer. I was stunned "But, but... she was just out the back with me!".

Luckily, the guy just happened to be passing when he caught Wilma just outside our front gate. There was a lot of traffic that day because of some field day at the race course, so the guy didn't even tell me off, just returned her with a smile. And then he asked me if next door's dogs always barked like that & I said not really, just sometimes, and off he went to tell their owner off instead.

Oh, and that prompted me to go see if the sheep guy from next door (not the 1/4 acre section - more like a 4 acre section) had fixed his fence so that his lot can't tour our place when they want.

And he had.

Have Simon & Ali got their State House yet?

Whatever happened to them after they were forced to sell their rundown house in an overpriced suburb?

Anyway, this isn't about them, this is how real people in rundown houses in overpriced suburbs do it.

Pictures would have helped, but I didn't take any.

Our house has the original 1915 bathroom I think. The basin looked like it was from a railway station, or boarding school. The taps did not match even. And the hot tap leaked badly (although, as we have this caliphont arrangement, it wasn't actually leaking hot water, the flow was too slow to trip the caliphont). The basin was badly cracked, but watertight.

Until several years later (Christmas last year) I decided to change the washer to stop the hot tap leaking. It didn't really budge, except I managed to crack the basin even further, so that it leaked onto the floor, and down to the kitchen.

Then, we tolerated that for months, until I had a really bright idea - waterproof the bottom of the basin with Gladwrap (tm). Fucking MacGuyver!

Two months later, we bought a new basin.

Rang our regular plumber - he was on holiday for a month.

Rang him a month later, and several weeks after that (yesterday) he turned up! Yay.

And for the first time in 5 or 6 years, we have a fully functioning bathroom with hot water at the basin, and no water on the floor! And it looks really cool.

And bonus, for some odd reqason, the plumber set our old basin up (sans plumbing) in our front garden, where the neighbours will surely be wondering WTF we're doing putting an ex-railway/boarding school basin in our front garden.

I think I might leave it there for a couple of years.

So progress, progress. One day, after the roof, painting & goodness knows what else, our place will not be a rundown house in an overpriced suburb, it'll just be a house in an overpriced suburb.

We have a winner

The sheep have been rehomed!

Well, more accurately, they will be rehomed this weekend. Sue, if you're reading this, I meet Faye on Sunday morning & we'll see if we can get those 6 suckers on a trailer & on their way to greener pastures.

I'm glad. I'm also a bit sad to see them go. The place will be lonely.

Then again, I can roll up all the portable fencing that I've used to screen sheep from valuable plants, and to fashion a clever "run" that aids me in penning them when they need it.

That fencing will make the new place 'dog proof" or "sheep proof" depending on whether the animal is coming or going.

Another 2nd hand story

From the same friend of a friend (foaf) as this one.

Possibly about the same fellow! Sounds like the type.

Anyway, a foaf was telling me about a mate of his who was known, in less enlightened days, to have a few too many drinks for the road before he embarked on any sort of trip.

One day, after a few too many, he hitched his boat & trailer up to the back of his car & took off for a weekend's fishing at Taupo.

It was a dreamtrip, no traffic problems, the boat towed like it was hardly there.

Because by the time he'd made his - what is it, 5 or 6 hours from Welly? - journey, and arrived at his destination, he discovered the boat was indeed, no longer on the trailer.

Perplexed, he started to back track, figuring it couldn't be too hard to find a large boat...

Turns out it had come off on State Highway 1, around the Tawa exit (about 10 minutes into his journey), and ended up in on the side of the road. I do not know how he got it back on the trailer when he found it. But I believe it was less than sea worthy.

Best Torch Ever!

Even better than the last Best Torch Ever!

Led Lenser David 15 LED Torch

This is the LED Lenser David 15 Tactical Light. It is smaller than last year's V2 Power Chip (the names just crack me up). It is not quite as bright as the V2, but pretty darned close considering that it is half the size. Oh, and it takes one AA battery. Just one. The V2 takes 3 very non-standard batteries (which are very cheap though).

The mega rubout at the end.

Some days in business are the pits. Clients call demanding instant and possibly unreasonable action, or to complain about something you have no influence over, creditors ring demanding money.

Some days staff tell you a funny story about how stupid some associates are, and neglect to mention that they waited 11 days before reading the email asking to be addressed with some urgency.

Some days you learn that some people who profess to be trusted partners have been ringing clients lambasting them for working with you, instead of them (actually this happens quite a lot & it amazes me that the trusted partners don't realise the client is going to mention it... good faith anyone?).

And then there are those days that remind you of nothing more than the last acts in all of the Godfather films. The mega rubout which in one fell swoop eliminates all foes, traitors, and lazy staff.

Without even trying!

And now you may kiss my ring.

As they say.

As told to me by someone who heard it from...

Funny, yet awful story told to me by someone who heard it from someone else (so it must be true).

Have you ever attended an open home & been tempted to take a huge dump in the pristine bathroom? I confess it's one of those idly amusing thoughts that crosses my mind at the time. I've never enquired, but I presume soiling the bathroom at an open home is frowned upon.

So there's this guy, who owns a block of land in the Wairarapa & he & his wife are considering building a bunch of kitset homes.

So they commenced touring the kitset home manufacturers & showhomes.

Last weekend, they visited some showhomes in the Carterton area. They had a good old poke around & were impressed. The wife engaged the salesman to talk business, the husband pardoned himself for a few minutes to check out the bathrooms.

In fact, he really needed to take a dump, not inspect the plumbing. So that is what he did.

He couldn't have been too experienced at show homes, because everyone knows the plumbing isn't connected. The toilets don't flush.

Mortified, when this became apparent, he closed the lid, closed the bathroom door, located his wife, made theatrical apologies about remembering that the oven was on at home, and fled.

Misleading Headlines - a continuing series.

Do these things get read before they go to print? Or does so much get edited out for space, that any relevance to the headline is removed?

Anyway, "China crocs "escaped twice" before eating child alive."

We can assume that somewhere in China, escaped & marauding crocodiles killed & ate a child right?

Nope. In fact, the boy & two others entered the crocodile enclosure & taunted the reptiles with sticks.

China crocs 'escaped twice' before eating child alive - Stuff.co.nz

stealing IS a crime, right?

Someone's been flogging Rebekka's photos!

MiramarMike: stealing IS a crime, right?
zLuckily, Mike is on the case.

Obscure player quits politics forever.

Copeland quitting United Future to form own party - Stuff.co.nz

Heh heh... that's my outcome prediction, not what the story says.

Fistfight mars Boston Pops concert

Heh heh... that's what I call entertainment!

Fistfight mars Boston Pops concert - New Zealand's source for oddstuff - strange, weird & bizarre news on Stuff.co.nz

Hope for Paris yet.

Paris Will Do Anything... Stuff.co.nz

Signs that the countryside isn't too far away

Beats mowing I suppose.

Meanwhile, in breaking news, sheep were found at SunnyO.

How odd is that? Well in this instance they weren't our sheep! I looked up after several hours of digging up hydrangeas (sp) and digging in roses... to see 10 little hoofed animals lining our drive in single file, all looking back at me.

When Wilma & I investigated more closely, 9 of them streamed smoothly back through the gap in the fence they came through. The other went the wrong way & took half an hour to reacquaint with his own paddock.

We'd noticed the sheep next door earlier, they're a new thing. I had already noted that the fence was a bit iffy, but whoever owns the sheep had fixed most of that.

I rang him yesterday & let him know that his sheep were exploring - I'm not as bothered about them as I was the pig, there is far less to eat at our place than the sheep have in their property, so they would have been being nosy. The owner will, I'm sure, fix the fence pronto & I have in fact, offered him 6 more... be cool if they moved next door.

In other sheep news, on Saturday mornin g I did the customary headcount, one sheep alone in a paddock with its head down in the corner, the other 5 in the forest. Wilma & I walked the boundaries, changed the water in the trough, and headed back to the house.

Hmm... that sheep still with the head down in the corner... so we swung by for a look.

And what she'd done, and I think she'd been there all night, but not much longer, is get her head through the fence & jammed stuck with wire holding her above & below the neck. Bloody lucky not to be strangled!

It took 10 minutes to free her, she'd kicked up a bit of mud trying to get out, but was none the worse for wear.

Someone told me years ago, that sheep can be defined as "bags of bones, looking for unusual ways to die". And sometimes I know what they mean. But good result this time.

Still looking for homes for them, but I have a few people considering taking them on.

Ashes of Star Trek's Scotty beam down, go missing

Hmm... I assumed his ashes were blasted into space forever! Just shows it pays not assume anything.

Ashes of Star Trek's Scotty beam down, go missing - Stuff.co.nz

Well, well, well.

I'll have to take & post some pictures at some stage soon, but SunnyO is bordered on two sides by a dry creek bed. Previous owners have diligently kept records of correspondence between various agencies & themselves, and through these records I have learned that the last time there was water in the creek was 1994.

Our drinking & washing water comes from a "bore", which I think is just another name for a well. It's quite clever really, the water is 12-15 feet down, we have a pipe with an electric motor sitting on top of it. We turn a tap, the motor pumps water at a very respectable pressure. It's been tested & is premium drinking water. Or, as we say in the business, "potable".

We also have a really big tank which collects rainwater from the roof of the stables. This water is for the plants.

And... there is another motor attached to that tank, which is controlled by a computer, which (if switched on) pumps collected rainwater, at a very respectable pressure, through a very sophisticated irrigation system that is woven around & throughout the property - nozzles rise from ground level like something out of Stingray. We don't need to use this system very often. In fact, the only two times I've tried to use it nothing has happened, or more accurately, very little has happened.

I decided I was doing something wrong.

Then last week, I tried it again. The water seemed to be going through, but no nozzles were magically rising from the ground.

Then a voice rang out from not too far away...

"Hey, we've got a lake!".

And goodness knows what happened, but water was bubbling up from a hole in the ground & forming a very expansive pond. SO I switched the magic system off. Tomorrow, I'll be digging around that hole in the ground & finding, if not fixing, the problem.

This whole bore thing though, has got me thinking. At first, we were really careful about the water we used. But then I realised that we can use as much as we want, aside from what goes down the drain, the water we use outside just immdiately returns to the water table.

So I'm gonna get myself a water feature, powered by a solar pump (only learned you can get these last week). I want something that's big enough for the dog to bathe in, with maybe water bubbling, if not gushing from above. A real well! With potable water! I'll site it in an arid patch where overflowing water will be useful.

No idea if this is feasible at this stage. I will keep you informed of progress.

Rollin' | the wellingtonista

Yahay! In a newspaper somewhere near you. On the same page as scurrilous gossip about Aja Rock & Hadyn Green*.

Rollin' | the wellingtonista

* or was it Tommy Lee?

Arnie laughs at Paris petition appeal

Saw the headline & thought "I can just picture that". I guess that's the thing about fame, especially fame like Arnie has - we've seen him laugh, I mean, really guffaw, in movies, and you can just imagine him tipping back his head & really letting rip with an Austrian chortle.

Arnie laughs at Paris petition appeal - Stuff.co.nz

However, within the article itself there is absolutely no mention of how Arnie responded, just a business-like comment from the press secretary that the petition will be treated like any other.

I dunno, I take from that than no decision has been made. No laughing so far then.

On a similar topic (misleading headlines, not socialites & terminators), did anyone see the Weekend Dompost article on swingers parties arecently?

the headline said something like "Chances are, there's a swingers party taking place every week in your street."

However, within the article, it transpired that only one swingers club in the whole wider wellington region had been identified, and that they held parties once a month in a street in Upper Hutt.

So. Chances are very slim that there is ever a swingers party in your street, let alone each week, chances are slightly higher if you live in Upper Hutt.

Sign the Subway Petition!!

Go on, you know you want to.

Subway New Zealand and Subway George Street Dunedin to show compassion and common sense in the case of Jackie Lang, and for them to formally request the Police not to prosecute her for the alleged misappropriation of a $2 soda which she shared with a friend, and to resolve her employment status in a manner satisfactory to both Subway and Ms Lang.

Sign the Subway Petition (David Farrar)

Scoop: True story of dog who captured the heart of a city

How odd - I only mentioned this story the other day, and now someone's published a book!

Scoop: True story of dog who captured the heart of a city

Bloggers Boycott Dunedin!

I don't do Subway, so any boycott would be pointless. However I do think some pointless gesture is warranted so I'm boycotting all of Dunedin from now on until they send me money. Or really cool gifts.

Aucklander at Large: Bloggers Boycott of Subway Restaurants

Unfair? Quite clearly. Who said life was fair?

Seems like a win win.

Exide may truck slag to Auckland - Stuff.co.nz

And see! Not one single wisecrack about rebecca loos!

More dog stuff!

Honestly, what sort of a moron fires an airgun at a guide dog?

Attacks a common threat to guide dogs

I must admit, wandering around the suburbs in sunglasses while attached to a golden labrador... does see me get some really considerate attention at times. I have considered carrying a white cane...

Wilma plays with a guide dog called Sasha now & then. I see Sasha all over the place, on the cable car, in town, with her owner. And occasionally she, Sasha & her family have run into Wilma & I, and I can confirm, that when the harness is off, a guide dog is just a dog.

And it's a pleasure to watch.

In other dog news, Martha's looking for a name for the latest addition to her family.

Crossblogging.

Yeah. I'm wearing a dress.

Anyway, click through & see if you can guess where the local heats for the NZ Rock, Paper, Scissors championship is being held.

"Just like a Star Trek convention... | the wellingtonista

Brave dog, misleading headline

We have a poster-dog for the latest round of panic over marauding dogs.

Dogs 'given P' to make them fiercer

Good on the little fellow.

Meanwhile, beyond speculation & hearsay... is there anything in that report to substantiate the claim that P is being given to dogs? Anything? Anyone...?

It'll be interesting to see what happens now - will there be a crackdown on menacing and/or unregistered dogs? Or will the official response be to send more dog rangers to Magpie Lawn to catch the vicious spoodles off their leads in a totally isolated & deserted area?