Happy Easter everyone!
It's a lovely sunny day down here in Napier though I missed half of it, not getting out of bed until after lunch time will do that.

It's been a good couple of days, Wednesday night I went out to Tony's place for dinner. Thursday for Lunch Tony and I went to "Wok U Want!" which is this place where you get a bowl of meat and all the ingrediants you need to make a stir fry. You blend it all together how you want and then they cook it on this huge hotplate for you (it only takes a few minutes) then they give it back to you, read to eat. A very clever idea and quite well done.

Not much else exciting to tell you really, it's been a nice couple of relaxing days. Hopefully Easter bunny brings me a chocolate egg tomorrow!

Tim

Another great day today. I got to work on some really cool stuff which I like working on (Netscreen Firewalls!), good to have one "in production" to work on. It's much more fun to configure them when they're actually doing something useful, instead of sitting on a bench protecting your ADSL line.
I managed to get my car out today too, last night at 9pm they rang me to let me know they'd fixed the problem.

Driving around the port is interesting, you have to obey the "I'm bigger than you" rule. I was driving along and a huge forklift was coming towards me. Just before our paths crossed he pulled right in front of me into a side "street", making me crap my pants. I have no doubt at all he was probably laughing to himself thinking "this'll freak the little guy in the try-hard sports car!" Bastard. It...

Here I am in lovely sunny Napier! The drive down last night was pretty uneventful apart from terrible pouring rain just before I got into Taupo. It was so bad I nearly had to pull over, but instead I just putted along at 40km/h hoping I was on the road! I did pass a couple of cars that had pulled over though, no matter how fast the windscreen wipers were going you couldn't see more than about 10 metres in front.

I'm staying at the Masonic which isn't quite as flash as it's little blurb makes it out to be. My room is quite small and pokey but there is a nice lounge area that looks out over Marine Parade which is where I'm sitting as I type this. It's really lovely, there's a nice ocean breeze but it's not too cold and I can watch the world go by...

Last night for dinner I had a lovely clove flavoured burger from Burger Wisconsin. For breakfast this morning I had clove flavoured weetbix (washed down with a clove coffee) and then a bit later on some clove flavoured fruit salad. Lunch was a lot better, my hot lamb vindaloo only came with hints of clove.
You get the idea! I hate this thing in my mouth! I am grateful that it's taken the pain away and I am now finally getting better but I will be SO happy when I can get this horrid taste out of my mouth that's there 24/7. Dinner last night was the worst, I was starving but couldn't really eat my burger because every time I chewed I just got the clove flavour. Sarah's sick to death of hearing about it (and I can't blame her)

Heading down to Napier tomorrow for a week there...

Well my sore face has an explaination, it's not infected, it's as I thought it might be a lovely fun dry socket. The fix for this lovely complaint is to be to shove a bunch of this magic stuff into the gaping hole. All fine and dandy except for the fact that the magic stuff tastes like 5000 gritty acid covered cloves have been shoved in there. It's 4 hours since I was at the dentist and I can still taste the horrid stuff as if it were just applied, despite 3 drinks and food etc. I was also given a nice big needle/syringe thing to flush the horrid goop out in 4-5 days. Despite all that bitching I'm much happier, the dull aching pain is gone.

Nothing else to add!

Tim

We've just finished watching "Dragon's Den" again. It's such a interesting TV show, it's a "real life" type show but its not done terribly like most of them are. I always feel sorry for the people on the show pitching websites, they're all universally terrible. And while this product seems like a good idea, the guy's sales pitch was to get angry at the investors!

Going back to the dental surgeon tomorrow, I went to the Dr today about a sore on my tongue and while I was there I got her to look at my sore spot, she said it's probably infected and the surgeon really needs to check it out. I guess one sore bit out of four's not that bad, I can eat normal food again on the other side of my mouth.

I'm going down to Napier next week to do some work...

I have one hell of a face ache today, the hole left by the subborn tooth (the one that took him 4 pulls to get out) is really hurting. I'm hoping it'll go away by tomorrow and isn't "dry socket" which is something quite a few people get. Worst of all though is I have *terrible* breath! One of the major reasons I decided to get my choppers pulled out was because of that, it's so annoying to have gone through the hassle of having them out and it's worse! Hopefully it's only temporary, or I'll have to get my throat extracted too.

Bumped into Mark Turney in the Supermarket tonight. He's an old Sales person from TelstraClear, one who actually wasn't a moron. He always took the time to understand the technology he was trying to sell to people, without fail he'd take one of us (a technical...

Didn't do much with my weekend, just took it easy and looked after my sore face. There's no point posting before and after pictures because my face hasn't puffed up at all. It doesn't even really hurt much anymore, though the hole where the "Hard to get at" tooth was is giving me a bit of grief now and then.
Worse of all I seem to be coming down with the flu, the timing seems a little too werid to me so I might give the dentist guy a call tomorrow and ask him if I've just got the flu, or if I am in fact dying.

So yea, pretty boring weekend, lots of tasty soup that Sarah made and not much else!

Tim

Here I am back home after my chopper operation. It wasn't bad at all, they gave me this excellent drug and I just drifted off, happy as Larry. The dentist told me that I talked a lot during the operation, mostly about Oxalis that's in our garden here. I have no idea why I was babbling about that at all, I have always been known for my strange babblings when I'm only half conscious though.

My mouth hurts a little bit, but I think once the happy fun drugs wear off it's going to hurt quite a lot more. I've got some magic pills here though to help me out over the next couple of days.

That's all!

Tim

Here's the biggest story in New Zealand today. What about poor me!! I'm actually a bit nervous, finally yesterday I read all the bits of paper they've sent me explaining the procedure and the possible after effects etc. I'm glad I put of reading it!

Not much else to tell you, I'll post something back later on tonight to tell you how I got on.