Word

Life keeps on giving. The baby has managed a few firsts lately with teeth rocking through, a dose of the chicken pox, her first birthday, and going to other babies' first birthdays. Our social life has, if anything, improved through our connection with other people with babies. I feel decidedly middle-aged.

EQC (although they now seem to be calling themselves EQR) is on our door step again, threatening to do something to our house but being suitably vague about what that something will be. I fully expect to come home one day and find the house demolished, the property sold and a small lemonade stand where my garage used to be. We do, however have alternative accommodation and what is looking like a holiday just before it all happens. My breath is 'bated.

The 3D printer is proving to be great fun. The Makerbot Replicator 2, in all its glory often cranks out odd looking plastic that sometimes resembles some sort of thing. My computer desk is covered in strands of filament, completed and half completed prints, parts for gluing together and a number of failed experiments in an assortment of colours. It is fair to say my 3D modelling skills and my understanding of the physical world have improved considerably. One of the better purchases I have made in my life.

Yet again the I.T. company I work for has been sold to a larger company. At least cashflow has ceased to be a major issue ... or at least I no longer have to care about it which equates to the same thing in my world. That is the third time I have been sold. Let's see how this one works out.

Our daughter is now so 7 months and aging quickly ... which can only mean I am aging equally quickly. So be it. She is quite the fun little critter at the moment. A bit screamy at times but generally a great little girl. Eats like a trooper and appears to have her Mother's keen taste for sweet foods. I will likely never get a chance with cakes and biscuits again I guess.

Work has faded off a bit but we do have some Raspberry PIs to play with and a 3D printer on its way. I am dying for the 3D printer and have filled my days creating models and getting used to modelling solids. Need to test a few things but it should be great fun to research something physical for a change. My Raspberry PI has two OS options now: Raspbian for ... well, not really sure yet; and Raspbmc for all my media needs. Actually it was just an exercise of interest to see if I could get the thing running at all. Now I am starting to bend my mind to other projects that are limited only by my complete inability to do anything electronic without 'sploding the circuits. It could be a great learning opportunity or an expensive way to burn out electronic devices.

With C's father in hospital after a nasty motorbike accident we have had family staying. Makes for a full house but rather pleasant. Amelia is loving all the extra attention. Waiting game now to see how thing span out.

The garden is in limbo. I jinxed the fruit trees by walking out there and wondering if we were due for a nice spring and a good year of fruit. Two hours later and we have a massive thunderstorm and hail the size of golf balls ... well, smallish golf balls.

The house has been signed off by the council. We have had EQC people through with an eye to getting repairs done. All minor stuff so we're in pretty good shape all things considered.

So ... we're parents. Actually that happened back in January but it's taken some time to stop freaking out. That night, 26 January 2012 can only be described as full on. Woken at 4am to the comment "Something isn't right", by 4:30 we were at the hospital and at 7:29 our daughter came 6 weeks premature by emergency cesarean, pale, breech, not breathing and generally doing it all wrong. From there it gets real hazy. I remember ICU, nurses, doctors, a weird conversation with a doctor about motion cameras and smart phones, and generally feeling messed up ... and really hungry. 4 weeks later and we had her home. Now all is going well and we are not freaking out too often. I have started to listen to punk music again ... albeit at a lower volume.

The house is finished, pending a final inspection ... or another one at least. The last one was a bit picky. The garden has been left to its own devices, the garage is still standing (damn it) and the cat has been relegated to the lowest rung ... lower than the chooks it would seem.

Punk Rock Dad indeed.

We had a great holiday in Australia starting in Sydney, heading to Coolangatta on the Gold Coast and finally to Brisbane before heading home. Sydney was fantastic, lots of walking around, shopping, eating and generally having fun. The gold coast was great, 25 - 30 degrees most days and the apartment was brilliant. The relaxation began here. Excellent shop there called "That Shop" which saw a load of t-shirts and a great shirt coming home with me. Brisbane was confusing with a rental car and all those off-ramps. A great few days of heat, wandering around the CBD and a light show one evening. All-in-all exactly what we had planned and what we needed.

Back home for a few days and we headed down south to see parents, pick up the cat and finish up our holiday time ... and that's where things all went a bit bizarre. Had a night with my parents and then headed up to see C's parents. About 15 minutes down the road the car started firing steam in all directions and overheated. No biggie, Dad was called for some water on the assumption we could keep going. While waiting I checked email, noticed alerts from the motion camera in our lounge and saw a burglar wandering around our house.

I freaked out a bit.

Called the police who were unable to send a car around as it was Friday and they were too busy dealing with, what we have subsequently learned they call "shit vs shit" events. Called a friend to check on the place and see if it could be secured before we got home. He closed a window, gave us some bad news about a bit of mess, talked to the neighbours and headed off. We had filled the car with water, travelled 2 minutes down the road before the car had given up. Called for a tow back to my parents place, borrowed their little car and headed on a very long drive back home. Got home about 9:30pm to find the burglar had been back four times that day - we had great photos of him from all angles - and pretty much cleaned out all the bits that make life fun.

Called the police to say we had photo evidence they might want to look at and proceeded to not sleep. Sent the photos and stolen items list to pawn shops and generally kept busy until the birds began to chirp and the sun came up again. A nice constable came over, looked at the photos and was generally confident about an arrest.

... and then the pawn shop called. The guy had been in to try and sell some of our stuff.

... and then the police called. The pawn shop had tipped the guy off before they got his details and he had done a runner. They even showed him the photos so he would know how he had been busted. I'm sure none of it was malicious and merely incompetent.

We are getting very good at insurance claims this year. It is amazing how 3 weeks of holiday can be wiped out in a single weekend. I am sure we will look back on this one day and have a bit of a laugh. At the moment it ain't very funny.

I've been away from teaching and in web design for two years now. Time has flown. This year has been about earthquakes, learning about earthquake insurance, wanting to run away, learning about solar hot water systems and plumbers, getting building consent during earthquakes, booking a holiday, cancelling a holiday, booking a different holiday, learning HTML5, learning jQuery, removing Friends^TM from my Facebook account, unfollowing knobs on Twitter, snow, taping up quake induced cracks in the ceiling in the bedroom, learning about VoIP at home, endlessly configuring a network printer and generally gettting tired of endless teenage vampire and cooking shows.

We have a holiday to Australia coming up. It's been ages since we had a proper holiday. Looking forward to it.

It's been a big year so far. More to come I'm sure.

Thursday evening but with a regional 'quake remembrance' holiday tomorrow my brain has slipped into Friday mode. Still deciding how I feel about the idea of 'remembering' something that is still happening. Seems a bit odd but a holiday is much appreciated - assuming already struggling businesses can handle it.

We're pretty lucky really with power and water back on despite being in Avonside surrounded by pretty hard hit areas. A block either way and things start to look really rough and people are having a tough time. I find that quite hard to deal with. On the bright side, Christchurch is no longer to host any of the rugby world cup games. That seemed a bit of a "Well, duh!' decision and quite frankly I don't want a bunch of rugby knobs pounding away in my city ... unless they are trades-people willing to help clean up in between games.

Work has been weird. In our second temporary office in six months and slowly discovering all the things that have been lost in the quakes. It's the small things that get me. The personal items that were at work to keep me sane. I think of them as being trapped rather than lost. We have no idea if we'll be able to get them back and as always, NZ bureacracy is reigning supreme. Knobs in suits running around pretending to care and all singing from different hymn sheets. Can't believe them, can't kill them. I've learned two things from the recent disaster: 1) If nature wants me, it'll have me. I feel happy that this time I was kept in play despite being up six stories with flying filing cabinets, and 2) complex bureacracy has no place in my country. If you can't explain a situation or solution in 30 seconds it's probably unnecessarily complicated and I don't buy into that crap. Keep it simple or sod off.

Now, I'm off to feel a bit sorry for my city, feel a bit lucky and generally carry on enjoying my life. Have fun.

I'm feeling a bit disconnected from the World at the moment. Working in I.T. tends to do that to me. Sometimes things all feel a bit artificial and forced and the issues of the modern World all become a bit pathetic. I need to stop looking out the window and realising I will never get this day back.

Sometimes the big picture gets lost in the day-to-day. We planted two more fruit trees a few weekends ago. Both were double grafted so two more apple varieties and two pears. Our little orchard is looking quite respectable now so it's coming down to time, pruning, and probably a bit of luck and we should start to see a good range of fruit over the next few years.

I have recently become quite interested in wood work. Despite the best efforts of the NZ education system I have actually decided I enjoy making things out of wood and have been teaching myself the basics. Turns out the "Designer eye" is suited to the work even if the body isn't particularly practiced yet. I have made some shelves and am about to have a go at some cupboard doors made of recycled rimu. The Triton Mk3 workbench I got a month ago has simply changed the game and made up for a distinct lack of skill on my end. Ripping even lengths and widths is now possible and backed up with my built in patience the end result is pretty good. I'll never be a joiner but I'm having fun and doing something in the real world which makes for a nice change. I am really liking the way our house is coming together. I can see myself living here for a very long time and enjoying it.