I've got my Big Wednesday Ticket, tonight's going to be the night people! I have my bonus tickets from last week too. The prize this week is a house, a porsche and 2 million. Dad can have the porsche, I'll buy Mum a new car of her choice too. I'll keep the rest. Oh and I might buy Sarah a car cleaning kit. So she can clean my new Ferrari!!

I've been learning to play a few more songs on my guitar, nothing too complex because I'm still too shite, but songs that are catchy and give me good practise at strumming. I'm still at this point where I can't quite sing and play in time together. Well you can argue I can't play in time (and there's not even an argument in my singing ability) but I'm getting close. At this rate, by the time I'm 40 I'll have...

I found a great new game to play with Oscar yesterday. You put Oscar on top of the computer desk and put bottle caps up there with him. He gets really mad and picks up the bottle tops and throws them off the desk. Pick them up and put them back in front of him. He loves it, though he pretends to be very angry.

Friday night Sarah and the girls went into town to dance the night away. I went and picked them up about 3am, then Sarah got up at 9am and took them to the Bus stop so they could catch the bus down to Napier to stay with Sarah's parents for a few days. We didn't do much with our Saturday, just took it easy and watched a couple of movies that night.

Sunday we went to Kathmandu because they're having a big Easter sale. The...

We've got visitors saying with us at the moment, Sarah's cousin Ruth from the U.K. and her friend Leah. They've been travelling around the world for the last 7 months and they're spending a few days with us before they head on down to Napier to see Sarah's parents.

I cooked dinner for us all last night (Lamb Roast) but it wasn't too good. The meat was nice, but the potato's weren't cooked enough, the carrots were dry and the brocolli had nearly caught on fire. Oh well. It was still edible which was a good thing and really all I care about is the tasty, tasty meat so I was a happy camper.

After dinner we took the girls up the Sky Tower (a visit to Auckland wouldn't be complete without going up it) and I managed to not freak out too badly. I think the fact it was...

Hello, it's nearly 3am and here I am sitting out at my customers site! I got a call about 1:40 saying their network was down and sure enough, when I got here it was in a pretty bad state. Hardware problems, all appears to be fixed with a hardware swap-out and restart. I'm sitting here sipping on hot chocolate waiting for them to finish their testing so we can know that it's all 100% good for start to business tomorrow morning.
It's like the good ol' days at TelstraClear!

I don't really have much else to say, I'm still sleepy and the only thing that happened between now and the story I posted yesterday is work. So I think I'll end this lovely happy story here, hopefully I can go home fairly shortly.

Tim

Hi everyone, hope you all had a good St Patrick's day and a good weekend. I went into town Friday night for a few beers with some of the guys from WorldExchange and Matt, who used to work with me at TelstraClear but now works for Vodafone. We didn't end up going to an Irish bar, they were all really really packed out with huge queues to get in. We found a nice quiet bar instead, though by the time I left it was packed too.

Saturday I went out to the SPCA, bit of a crazy day. I walked this one dog and I thought that it probably shouldn't be up in the adoption area, it was still very uninterested in being walked, wanting only to chase after the other dogs. I put it back in its cage, but after it was fed it attacked another dog in the...

Sarah fought the law... and she won! She got a packing ticket a few weeks back, for failing to display a 'pay n display'. On her scooter. Hello, moronic parking warden people! Where the hell do you put a pay and display sticker on your scooter where:
a) It's not going to be ripped off or
b) taken by someone looking for a free ticket?

She wrote them a nice letter explaining this fact and asking what the Auckland City Council's policy was on scooters and 'pay n display' parking, they wrote back today with a "after careful consideration of the facts" letter, but no policy on where you're meant to put your ticket if you buy one. Probably shoved in the steering column, which is where she found the parking ticket!

She's feeling a lot better today, though she's still got a nasty cough. I've been feel a...

We had a little visitor in the garden last night. I noticed him when I went to put the rubbish out, a cat went running out of the front yard, obviously it'd been hassling this poor little guy. When I went back out to check on him 10 minutes he was in the garden snuffling around so he seemed OK. I saved one from getting squashed a few week back, I nearly ran over him myself so I swung the car around and, with the help of another motorist we got him off the road. We had to use the foot mat from the other person's car to pick him up, they're impossible to grab with bare hands.

Sarah's been home sick yesterday and today, she's got a bad case of the flu. I have been taking her food and drinks etc, I think she'll be OK soon. I...

We went out for breakfast this morning and then to our favourite place to shop, The Warehouse. The Warehouse for those that don't know is this huge chain in New Zealand that's a bit like Chickenfeed, but ever so slightly more upmarket. There's less grannies fighting over the last set of blue rinse, that's really all that makes it stand apart. Everyone bitches too about how The Warehouse is shutting down all the small players which is true, but what people seem to forget is that if they didn't shop there, The Warehouse would go out of business. Anyway on the way back we saw a sign right near our house that said "Art On The Beach" pointing towards the little beach area. So we dropped off our new Warehouse goods and walked up.

It was really interesting, I wish we'd taken the camera. The beach isn't really a beach...