My apologies to IE users who haven't been able to see my blog lately.
I made some minor template changes the other day, and a typo in my markup kinda broke things.
PS: get a real browser!!
me = looking for job
I'd like a job either close enough to home to walk/ride, or otherwise in the city, where by train I might travel henceforth. I like the city. Messy smelly place with its weird/cool persons, with the buildings that I miss and the leaky carpark roof-square thing.
In other news, music is cool. There is some good-sounding stuff now. It's just a shame that everyone else thinks so too, and so it gets thrash-ed, therefore. The Arctic Monkeys, Gnarls Barkley, Fallout boy, et al.
Anyway, tis a-time for to be nap taking. Goodness and good night.
I feel as if I'm in a perpetual state of catching up.
Like my life has gone on without me, and I'm frantically trotting/stumbling along behind, trying to pick up as many pieces as I can without falling further behind.
Do you know what I mean?
It would be nice to be on top of things one day.
PS: Oh wow! and oh wow!. Believe it or not, these cars share the same 3 litre quad-cam V6 engine. They are both entirely legendary cars, both in New Zealand, and both for sale.
Wow! Two posts on the same day!
I'm really enjoying working for the council. I'm working in a building right on the town square, and being paid by the ratepayers - my friends and neighbours - to serve them; my local community.
I've spent some time in Switzerland and Germany, and many of the towns there are old, and built around a city square (rathausplatz), with the town hall (rathaus), including the government offices right on the sqaure. Usually the rathausplatz is the geographical centre of the town, with all the main streets leading away from it, and often a big cathedral very nearby.
This configuration evokes a sense of community, and I think this is largely missing from New Zealand culture.
Manukau Town Square is not the bustling centre of Manukau, it's just a little bit of open space tacked onto the side of a very large shopping mall.
With our sprawling suburbs and our lack of hesitation to drive more ten kilometres to get to a shopping mall, this sense of community has been lost.
Malls have become our centres, but centres of what? More often than not, they're not in our immediate community. Sure, malls are places where we can go to meet with friends and share meals, and otherwise socialise, but they've become detached from where we live, from where we work (unless you work in a mall).
Our actual local communities have lost many of their worthwhile stores and facilites and are now just streets of two-dollar shops, liquor-stores, and poker-machine parlours; hardly the vital core of a healthy community.
I hereby encourage myself and my readers to patronise the local non-chain-store shops closest to where we live, and see if we can't rekindle that sense of community if not in the hearts of others, then at least in our own hearts.
You never know, you might actually get to know your 'neighbour'.
I was talking with my father-in-law, who many of you know, and as those of you who know him would understand, he happens to send a good bit of email to Europe.
But lately he's been experiencing problems with his international email; some messages he has sent have not reached their intended recipient(s), nor have some emails sent to him from Europe arrived in his inbox.
So he called up xtra support to see if they could help. After being placed on hold and passed from one person to another (all part of their <sarcasm>wonderful</sarcasm> customer service), he reached a person who asked him which ISPs his recipients were with. Having disclosed this information, he was then told that those ISPs may in fact be blocking email from xtra, as it is known that some international ISPs have xtra on their spam blacklist!
So, not only do xtra charge exorbidant monopolistic prices for their sub-standard services, not only do they provide the poorest customer service of any ISP I have dealt with, but now it is apparent that they can't keep their network clean and are known internationally as a source of spam.
Delightful!
Good old Andrew has blogged some worthwhile commentary on xtra/Telcom/Teresa.
... no news!
I'm currently working at the council, helping them migrate to a new website platform, until at least the end of June.
I'm also starting into my first almost-proper piece of freelance work; there may be more to follow. If I get time, things might change over at twoseven.co.nz.
Michelle is holding up well, with our second child due early-to-mid August sometime.
Toby is doing great - he's starting to pick up all sorts of words, now.
How have you been?
