Technology

So, I bought a new computer. I don't know why I bothered. Technology is so far behind human evolution, it's sad. I think with as many geeks squirrelled away in musty cubicles, technology, especially computers, should be way ahead of where it is.

Take this new laptop. It's pretty nice. Thousand bucks, so it's not top of the line, but it works, which, i suppose was a good start. Then of course, because I don't have a PhD in computer geekery, I had to spend an hour on the phone to Xtra (who were very helpful, I must say, given their obviously limited resources) @configuring@ the broadband. And did you notice the @ symbol instead of the " symbol? That's because while my new laptop is very pretty and by and large works very fast and very well, the Shift 2 button, which on every other computer in the Western world is the @ symbol, is in fact the " symbol. Despite there being a @ picture above the 2. And when I push the Shift " button, I get a @. WTF?

Technology. Jeez.

So after my hour phone call with "Mark" from Manila (probably) and another 20 minute call to Xtra to learn that I had to reset the modem, I went to bed frustrated as hell. I had already spent 18 hours the night before waiting for the battery to fully charge before I could touch the machine. So another night passed with very little progress on the new computer.

Then the real fun begins. Transferring stuff and loading software. Good grief. Doesn't that sound pathetic. Transfer files - Word documents, pictures, favourites, email contacts and files. I'm not even going to think about the music. I'll just have to hope my MP3 player doesn't die, which given the state of technology, it probably will at some point. Soon.

Load the software for Digital Recorder, Mobile modem, Office 2003 because the demo 2007 on this machine will self-destruct after 25 opens, then I'll be liable for who knows how many more hundreds of dollars to upgrade. Then, probably the most important of my little gadgets, my PDA. Won't load. Not compatible with Vista. You're kidding me! What? OMG!

So Jackie gets all pro-active and gets a good deal on a new PDA. Software won't load and is probably not compatible with Vista.

This is exactly the reason I wanted a new laptop with XP on it, but of course there aren't many of them around any more. Fucking Bill Gates and his monopoly!

So now I am PDA-less - well, okay I have to sync my PDA with the home desktop and transfer with a flashdrive the files I'll be editing on the PDA. Small hassle I guess, but a hassle nonetheless. Until I can spring for a better new PDA, no doubt more several hundreds of dollars.

And I still can't fix the @ " mix-up on my keyboard. Oh, and the hash button is a £ sign and I cant find the hash button anywhere. So I hope in the next few years of using this computer I don't need the hash symbol.

Why can't computers be like the ones on Star Trek?

You sit down in front of it, tell it what to do, and it does it. "Computer, load everything from that computer onto this one, only make it better." And it's done a millisecond later. i guess in these antiquated times I would settle for having to plug a cord between the two computers, but even that's antiquated. How many cords do we need? Power cable, in two sections, with that big box thing that heats up; USB cables for Africa; sync and power cables for the PDA which is now useless; ethernet cable for modem (even though it's "wireless"), more power cables for each device and probably a few more USB cables (printer, camera, MP3 player).

Flashdrives are now like floppy disks were, and then CDs. They lay around and you never know whats on them because at least floppys and DCs had spaces on them to write what's on them.

Why in the 21st Century are things so antiquated?

And don't get me started on the Internet. It's just as antiquated and cumbersome as the technology it demands to use it. Is it pretty much used only for games and porn now? Oh, and blogging of course.

I don't know whay I bother.

What is it about Marian Keyes?

You know how you just adore some people? I don't normally gravitate towards "celebrities". I think being a "fan" is actually a little bit pathetic. It's okay to enjoy someone's music and even buy their CD, or to enjoy watching some actorr more than others, but to graduate to full "fan" status always struck me as a bit juvenile. I adore Geri Halliwell, but mostly I think it's because she used to be a gorgeous voluptuous red-head. But I think I also appreciated that she seemed more "real" than the others Spice Girls. And I don't care what anybody says, she's by far been the most successful in her own right of all the Spicies.

Anyway, I think there's something similar about Marian Keyes. Apart from the fact that she's an incredibly talented writer (envy), she just seems to be a bit "real". She's open about her difficult past, she's self-deprecating, which can be adorable when done in the right way. She's little and cute, and of course there's the whole Irish thing.

I think I have Irish in my past lives. Something about the Irish accent that touches my soul. That and the Southern Belle persona (but that's another blog).

I'm not a racist, but . . .

I love statements that start like that.

Nowadays it's a mortal sin to suggest in any way that Maori are anything but perfect citizens (the crime statistics notwithstanding). But it's come to the point that in everything there is not only a pro-Maori agenda, but there is a subtle anti-everything else undertone.

Case in point, and remember, it's only very subtle. These pics were taken recently at Te Papa. I read them, and stood for a while contemplating my reaction to it. If it were possible to offend me, I might have felt a little offended. Perhaps I'm being a little sensitive, but I don't think so.

According to the first set of numbers, Maori reduced the native forest cover by 45%. According to the second set of numbers Pakeha reduced the native forest cover from 55% to 25%, which if my maths is correct, is a reduction of 30%.

So if Maori reduced it by 45%, and Pakeha by 30%, how come the Pakeha reduction is labelled as "intensive forest clearance"?

To me, "intensive forest clearance" sounds very negative, as if Pakeha cam here and started ripping down forest like there was no tomorrow. But their ("our") efforts have been significantly less than the early Maori. And how much of the 30% ascribed to Pakeha actually includes the continuation of the Maori operations? It's fair to say Pakeha played no part in the pre-European 45%, but it's also fair to assume that some of the 30% post-European reduction can be attributed to Maori.

So why, in our national museum, does the Pakeha come off looking like they're the ones who have decimated the native forest in new Zealand?

Transient synovitis

Irritable hip. Now, I'll have to bite my tongue. I've had a very stressful day. I'm sympathetic to the shortcomings of the New Zealand health system, and by and large the people involved are good people under a lot of pressure.

However, that can't stop me from being very critical of it at a number of levels.

Our GP said Josh's sore leg was very likely "irritable hip." Irritable hip? Yes. Very common among three and four year olds. What? Common?

I've heard of whooping cough. Measles. Chicken pox. Croup. Hand, foot and mouth. Mumps. These things I've heard of and recognise as "common". Cold, flu, asthma. These are "common" things kids get. Irritable hip? What the hell is that?

Apparently it may be precipitated by a viral infection, but not necessarily (that's according to Wikipedia). It was confirmed today that the cause really is unknown.

How come, though, I've never heard of it. Has anyone?

And here's where I get really annoyed. Seven hours we were at the hospital. The first thing they decided was that it was necessary to put a line in the back of Josh's hand. Yeah, right. Like that was going to happen.

With him straddling me and his arms around my neck, and with FIVE ED staff working on him screaming and struggling for what must have been ten to fifteen minutes, they finally got the line in his hand and got it strapped up. So they could take blood, and if they needed to use it later. In an emergency maybe? Who knows? So with the trauma of that event still raw in all our minds, they thought it would be good to do an xray. Well, Josh definitely wasn't having that, so we flagged that idea. After an hour or so, he relented and as so often happens, actually enjoyed it. He thought the lead vests mummy and daddy had to wear were a hoot. Generally they do a good job of making the kids feel happy about being in a terribly frightening situation. Josh has never been near a hospital, never even been really sick, or hurt.

Three nurses and doctors, same set of questions, same answers. More waiting. Blood results are good. Nothing out of the ordinary - no infection. If he can walk on it, even a little, he can go home. Come back tomorrow to see the consultant.

By now, Josh has forgotten about his hip. The paracetemol and ibuprofen are wearing off and his main concern is the contraption in his hand. Leave it in just a little longer. One more blood test result to come back. Another thirty minutes, and if Josh can walk on his leg they can take the line out and we can go home. Josh is ready to run a marathon if it means getting that line out. He hobbles to the toilet, and along the corridor back to the room. Now can you take this thing out of my hand?

Did they use it? No. So what was the point of having it in there? With all the stress and trauma of putting it in, surely it would have been better to leave it. What sort of emergency is going to happen with a sore hip?

Anyway. While the x-ray was finally fun for him, and there seems to be no long term damage, except a dark bruise on the back of his hand, I'm reminded of something Doctor McCoy said on Star Trek. He commented on how barbaric the medical profession was in the 20th Century.

I agree.

I such situations I tend along the philosophical. After millions of years of evolution, the human body is still so frail (actually I think evolution is a bit of a crock)? After hundreds of years of research in medicine and practise, the best we can do is needles in hands and x-rays? Cutting people open? Incurable diseases? In the 21st Century? Good grief.

Another day at the hospital tomorrow.

Let the let downs begin

I was going to write something this morning at 6 as Obama was giving his inauguration speech. Now, twelve hours later anything I say will unfortunately just be parroting a lot of what has been said today.

The speech was highly anticipated, and completely under-delivered. There was no discernable thread running through it and holding it together, no central idea. There were only one or two memorable lines but because they were mixed in with so many cliches and long sentences replete with meaningless redundancies they were totally lost.

What happened to "Yes, we can." That was memorable. That had meaning. That was a hook that kept us in the speech. There were no such hooks today. I suspect most of the audience had glazed eyes after the first three minutes. They walked away with nothing. They were cheated.

I like Obama, but it will take more than his good oratory skills to save the world. First he needs to dump the 27 year old speech writer. He blew it today. Of course, Obama would have had a heavy hand in it so to some degree he blew it too.

Chief Justice Roberts should be considering his career options. Stumbling in the first sentence of the oath made for a bad start indeed. Even the smooth operator Obama took a while to recover.

I hate all the hype about Obama being black. He asked to be treated on his merit, not his skin colour. Yeah, right. Like that was going to happen.

His skin is black, but he's white through and through. He's not "African American". He was raised by his white mother and her white parents. A privileged upbringing. What does he know of the projects or discrimination? I don't think they had segregated drinking fountains at Harvard.

I think the winner fo the day was Rev. Joseph Lowery. He had the most memorable lines, and perhaps the greatest right to stand before that crowd and talk about change.

Cardigan?

Is fashion the most pointless exercise in human endeavour?

It's so easy to be cynical about so many things, and so often I just bite my tongue. But every now and then there comes a time when something so ridiculous screams out for criticism you just have to oblige.

The fashion industry is, as we know, not without its detractors. I hate the way hugely overweight designers look down their noses at any woman over 43 kilos or anyone wearing an item of clothing more than six hours old. Anybody who's seen The Devil Wears Prada can't help but hate the pretentious-cum-snooty-arrogance that underpins the whole business and despise anyone remotely involved with it. Who hasn't sniggered at the latest offerings from the catwalks and sweatshops of Paris et Milan?


So how can you not ROFL when, under the headline Cardigan Comeback, Vivienne Westwood would encourage a whole new generation of blokes to wear this little number?

It's a joke, right? Is she kidding? Cardigan? Can you imagine Colin Meads slipping that thing on to head out and milk the cows? Now that's something I'd like to see.

Hamilton is a dump too!

O Hamilton my Hamilton!

We went to the lake front playground, where some of my fondest memories are set. When we parked and got out, my heart broke. What a run down, soul destroying place. There are three playgrounds, now, all separate. One of them seemed to be the weekend project of some DIY hack. There were plywood panels bolted to parts of the climbing areas. The metal was worn and rusted, the rubber matting underneath was cracked and ripped.

The grass was long. The toilets smelled icky from fifty feet away. The rubbish bins were overflowing. There is what appears to be a construction site there, but it looks as if the contractors gave up and left three months ago.

The steam train is still there but gone is what felt like the longest slide in the world.

It has to be said that the clientelle has deteriorated considerably. Now, it feels like an unsafe place, with dirty little thugs skateboarding, spitting all over the place and seething with contempt for anyone who gets in their way. Perhaps their iwi now owns the land and we are nothing but intruders.

The drinking fountain was clogged up with rotting water.

The play equipment was tired and colourless. There is what looks like a thick plaited rope which is supposed to be a swing.

I could go on. I probably shouldn't.

I loved that place. I love the memories I have of it. I guess like so many other things those memories will have to remain as they are, isolated in time.

Silly me to think that my past could be revisited. I am rooted in my past, but as the things of my past disintegrate little pieces of me are chipped away, too, until perhaps I will become as desolate and meaningless as the once beautiful snippets of my previous existences.

Wellington is a dump!

Wellington is a dump! 460,000 people can be wrong. What a hole.

The streets are narrow and windy. They meander directionlessly through wild scrub and forest. They have paved mountain-goat tracks, slapped small roundabouts on them, and called them roads. People park on the side of the road. Their cars have side-swipe marks along the panels. The roads are so steep most gearboxes can't handle them. And did I mention how narrow they were?

The malls suck! Both of them. Actually, one more we didn't visit. Christchurch has five malls. All but one are wide open, spread out affairs with ample parking (well, mostly) and lots of shops. The malls in Wellington are crap. Mall developers in Wellington forgot that people drive cars to malls and need somewhere to leave their car while shopping. Hello!

Porirua. Scary. Talk about run down. Claustrophobic. It's heard to describe it withour breaking several race relations regulations. But it reminded me of growing up on The Block.

I remember thinking when I was younger that Wellington looked like a dump. I didn't visit this place until about 1995. That was an overnighter, and the lasting memory was a depressing place down town where we ate lunch.

I can't stand how you can be driving on the motorway, in the middle of Wellington, and be completely surrounded by bush, hills, and scrub with not a house or building in sight.

I can't believe what a depressing place this is. Our nation's capital! Whose brillaint idea was it to not only build a city in the hills, but to make it the capital?

Spies among us

If there isn't more of this going on behind the scenes already, then I think there should be. How naive would we be to think there are not spies among us all the time. Every major corporation should have paid informants in competition companies. The police should have contacts in every grass roots and international organisation - Greenpeace, Amnesty, PETA et al - that has ever raised its head above the surface.

I think the worst part of this debacle is that they guy got caught. He should have been more careful, and I think our tax dollars should be spent on clever people, not idiots.

And of course, the one who sprung this on us is not beyond reproach. Her timing does seem a little contrived.

Information is power, and I have no problem with the police spending resources keeping tabs on these activist groups, and who's sleeping with who in the organisation. They need to be fully aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the group.

Scary times

I grew up in the seventies. The overwhelming theme of that time, at least for me, was the crushing threat of a nuclear war. I had heard terrifying stories of WWII, so as we teetered on the brink of WWIII my subconscious convinced me it would be even more terrifying and dangerous and calamatous than WWII. Surely. Logically.

I imagined that at any given moment the bombs would start going off and the whole world, especially my localised, intimate one, would be plunged into a morass of plague, death, disease, famine, violence and struggle for existence. Every second of every day I was terrified WWIII would come to my doorstep.

I guess that shapes a child's psyche. I think in my case it instilled a deep sense of terror, which bled over into a number of aspects of my life. Coupled with some other personal circumstances, I grew up with a healthy fear of nearly everything.

Obviously, WWIII did not happen. It took many many years for me to wake up in the morning and not presume today was the day. Whether it was maturity, common sense or apathy, I don't know, but the fear of nuclear war had evaporated.

Of course, I am now much older and wiser and calmer. But I have of late felt twinges of that old fear I had as a child, that all encompassing terror that at any moment catastrophe is going to befall me. And the threat is no longer nuclear war, but the GFC. Every news cast on every channel, every hour, every day, the doom and gloom about the Global Financial Crisis is tapping into my childhood fears about the imminent nuclear holocaust. Now the fear, still completely self-centric, is just as personal. What if I lose my job? What if I am bankrupt? What if I am evicted? What if I have to live on the streets? What if I can't feed my children? What if get sick? What if I have to resort to delivering pamphlets to earn a bit of money?

It's funny what you bring with you from childhood.