Everyone comes into your life for a reason. It may not always be the reason we thought or might have hoped, but there is a reason regardless. The best we can do is enjoy what we can and treasure that person while we can, as we never know when for some reason they will stop being a part of your life. Treasure today, treasure your friends, whether they fit in your life the way you wanted or not. Life’s too short to dwell on what might have been.

It’s been a busy few weeks.

Last weekend was 3 days with fire service doing first aid for the National Mountain Biking Champs at Eskdale. 2 days of downhill and the third cross country. Not too much carnage but lots of trekking up and down hills. It was fun but killed a weekend really well!

This week back to work, late nights, 19:30/20:30 and even 21:30 out of the office. It’s been nice and productive after hours when the distractions have gone. I suspect pretty soon the delivery boys for a number of the local places will not have to be told which door to come to… possibly not a good thing but oh well. We’ve got another developer on board which is great, not only in terms of work load but also to bounce ideas off, to look over code, to share our varying knowledge in the whole “two heads are better than one” style. He may be a junior developer but there’s definitely room for us both to learn stuff off each other, and it’s good having a second person trying to explain stuff to the non-coders! =P

A couple of weekends back was the wellington road trip and Homegrown. Wow what a blast. Homegrown was great, lots of great music, possibly a little more to drink than ideal but certainly not overboard lol. And an awesome time with good people; could have spent longer but all good things come to an end. =/

This weekend has been pretty quiet which has been nice too. Some work, some working on my own website, some time watching movies, and of course a good time with friends.

Progress on the website is good, functionality wise at least. I’m no designer, never claimed to be, and it’s showing… I have an idea of what I want to achieve with the look, but the current design just isn’t working I think. Might have to pull in some external advice. I’ve cut the content areas down for now, as much to concentrate on the bits I want most to get live (aka the photography galleries).

On top of all this, I’ve been looking into the WSO2 suite (http://wso2.org). It’s more than I can motivate my brain to explain at present, but lets just say it’s got potential application for something I’m interested in. For those who have too much time on your hands and a clue what SOA is, go have a read!

I’m sure that I’ve missed plenty of details, and the ones I’ve put in are nice and random and probably don’t make too much sense lol. But oh well, that’s a bit for now!

The insurance debacle…

Those who read my last post may recall the “fun” I had with a lady deciding her car should be part of mine. Well, after the lovely letter I sent into my insurance company (at their behest) detailing my side of the incident, I followed up a week or so later just to confirm they had it for a start, and to see if any progress had been made.

While on the phone, a nice guy dug through their shared email system in which my submission should have supposedly arrived (it hadn’t been logged on my file yet) and found it. Equally, no responses from the other party had been logged, but he said if I didn’t mind holding he’d call her insurance company and see if they had got it from her yet. So after about 15 minutes of being on hold he came back to me reporting that the other insurance company hadn’t got their clients version back yet but after reading my submission both my insurance and hers agreed that she was in the wrong and even before they got her side. So my excess was waved and I finally got my car repaired!

I didn’t ever really think that they would side with her but I was surprised that even her insurance decided she was in the wrong without her side! I must have made a compelling argument lol.

I did finally get a copy of her side when she submitted it and I can see how she may have managed to convince herself that I was at fault, but it was one of those stories that if you started asking questions about any of the points it would have unraveled nicely. At the end of the day the accident happened because of the way in which she introduced herself to the existing flow of traffic. ’nuff said. Cheers State!

Music…

Those of you who know me will know that I love my music! At the moment I’m listening to “The A Team” by Ed Sheeran. It’s a really sad song once you listen to the lyrics but damn catchy tune.

I also imported “A State of Trance Year Mix 2011″ from europe. Ordered around christmas and arrived shortly into January. Cost me all of about $35 including shipping for a 2 CD album and it’s been played over and over so I think it was a bargain and money well spent lol.

People…

I’ve met a few new and interesting people already this early in the year. Some more interesting than others, and some particularly who are helping encourage me to try new things and forced me to think about some things that I have avoided for quite some time. This is a good thing for the record (I think…). I’m told I’ve been smiling more recently too lol.

Between road trips and spa baths it’s been a lot of fun and relaxation with new friends; not entirely stress free but certainly enough to tip the balance back the right way.

There has of course been the sad farewell to someone who while wasn’t a blood relation certainly rated as family to me. Farewell Grandpa, I’d like to think we celebrate your life will lived. You are and will be missed by many.

Speaking of Road Trips…

Well last month saw a trip to Auckland and Hamilton for a weekend (one night in each) involving live music and possibly a little too much to drink. Definitly too much driving in a fairly short period of time but well worth it over all. Good to catch up with friends too.

This coming Friday sees another trip starting too. Off to Wellington with one of those new and interesting people for Homegrown. There’s actually a small group of us going so should be an awesome experience and again good to get out and do something different! Who know’s what will eventuate…

Work…

Well we all know that work is one of those things that just kinda has to happen, but lately I’m pleased to say there’s been some improvement after all the uncertainty and things are looking up. Certainly enjoying work a little more again. And it’s helped by us all having moved offices much closer to home and town (pretty much anywhere away from smelly Whakatu would have been an upgrade!).

They jury is still out on how things will go long term but things are showing more promise than they have in some time!

Website…

Another thing one or two people in the world may have noticed is that my main website is currently replaced by a holding page as I build its replacement. The old one was an experiment in CSS based design and the ability to have the same content displayed significantly differently through the use of alternate style sheets.

That was all well and good but it’s rather outdated now and with more of my photos going public with the website URL in the watermark it seems a good idea to revamp it into a more professional front. The new design is simplistic and clean.

While the basic bits are done I’m writing a new gallery engine to display some of my pics; a mix of open source JS based popups with a bit of maths to get some gallery thumbnail pages with some more iterating layout (if all goes to plan). It’s been slow going with lots of other stuff on as well but hopefully something new to go live not too far off!

Anyway, time to start on dinner (yummy pork roast) so maybe I might make it back to another update some time soon and fill in the many things I no doubt missed! =P

Friday the 22nd of July 2011 was a slow rainy day. As we do from time to time, some of us at work decided that being a rainy Friday, it made it a perfect candidate for fish’n'chips, so after doing the rounds for orders I placed a call to the shop and then headed into Clive to pick it all up. The rain had eased and was more of a drizzle now, so while still wet and not fun to stand in, visibility was pretty good for the short drive. After picking up the order I jumped in the car and headed for the office again.

Southbound just into the 100km stretch of SH2 I started to accelerate as I came onto the first small straight, and noticed a white car on the opposite side of the road, but pointing in the same direction I was with its nose nudged slightly to the oncoming lane. It looked like it was parked, except that it was too close to the road, especially as it was facing the wrong direction. And sure enough as I got closer it pulled across the oncoming lane and tried to pull into my lane… the only problem being that my car was occupying that space already! The white car hit mine, we got the cars off the road, inspected the damage, exchanged details etc, and as the cars were both still drivable, went our separate ways. While I felt pretty pissed off at it all, I was glad at least that she hadn’t tried to say it was my fault and hoped that things could just get repaired and back to normal.

Upon arrival back at the office, the rest of the team started on lunch, while I spent the better part of 20 minutes on the phone with my insurance company (State), relaying the information I had collected from the driver of the other vehicle, and giving a detailed description of what happened. This included the drivers comment that she had “misjudged” how close I was and that she had intended to move over to the southbound shoulder, wait for me to pass and then pull out behind me. Unfortunately while on the phone, the lady I was speaking to had tried the cell number without response so a quick effort to get her admission of responsibility wasn’t going to play nice, but State would continue to work on getting in touch with her. The lady also assured me that as I had Full cover plus hire car cover with them, that while my car was being repaired they could arrange a hire car. Great, wonderful, glad to know the dosh I fork out each week might actually pay off!

A short while after I got off the phone with the insurance company I took the car into one of their preferred repairer’s for assessment which included nothing more (and I mean NOTHING more) than a couple of photos of the damage; no questions, no further investigation to see if it was more than panel damage etc. But that’s fine, I figure they know what they are doing and I’m certainly no mechanic to question their process for such an initial assessment.

So everything should be good… In a perfect world at least.

My concern was raised the following Tuesday when mid morning I received a call on my cell asking to speak to … the driver of the other car! After a bit of back and forth, I established that they were returning a call she had made to them, and somehow the cell number had got mixed up by the return caller. I thought that while the mix up was a little concerning, at least they were getting to talk to her to get things moving along further. Silly me!

Tuesday afternoon, after hearing nothing I phoned the insurance company again to enquire about the status of my claim, only to be told that the driver of the other car was not admitting liability for the accident and that both she and I would receive in the post some paperwork asking us to give a written statement and a diagram. At this point I started to get a little more pissed off; I was driving a car that I couldn’t open the drivers door properly on, and that had developed a lovely little shake in the stearing that resulted in me deciding that I wasn’t willing to drive it to Wellington the coming weekend for fear it would crap out while in transit somewhere far from home!

So on the 1st of August the letter finally arrived and today (the 2nd) I filled it all out and emailed it to them this evening. The more I wrote, the more pissed off with it all I got. Excess aside, they still haven’t got my car fixed; what would happen if it wasn’t drivable? What if there is as yet unseen damage that is going to result in additional damage or failure, of the steering for example! I decided to put it all on here and vent my frustration to the world. I’ll also be asking some rather pointed questions about other aspects of my policy to the insurance company to see what they have to say, and ultimately will decide if I want to stay with them or if I want to change.

The following is the email I sent to them and the accompanying picture. For now I won’t put any identifiable details about the other party in here, but who knows, that may change depending on how irritated I get before this whole thing is over!

To whom it may concern,

The following statement and attached pictures are in reply to the letter dated 26^th July 2011 from <The name of their “Claims Consultant”> requesting further information in relation to claim <Claim Number>.

At approximately 12:30, Friday the 22nd of July I was travelling south bound from Clive returning to work in Whakatu. The weather was overcast and had been raining heavily, however there was only a light rain and good visibility at the time. As a matter of habit I had my headlights on to increase my visibility to others with the sporadic rain that had been coming.

When the accident occurred I had transitioned from the 70km/hr to the 100km/hr speed zone and started to increase my speed as I came into a straight section of road. As I entered the straight I noticed a white car on the opposite side of the road facing southbound (the wrong direction for the side the vehicle was on). Once I gotten closer that car began to move forward onto the road, crossing the oncoming lane and heading for my lane. I was forced to move left off the road and did so as much as I could without moving into the muddy siding and risking total loss of traction; I also applied the brakes and sounded the horn as I did so. The white car continued and impacted my drivers side front door and front panel; it also bent my wing mirror in.

After both vehicles had come to a stop, the white car was in the southbound lane and had pushed my car off the road even further. In order to avoid a further accident I moved my car left and forward to allow both cars to get off the road. The driver of the white car seemed very concerned and apologetic. We inspected the damage to both cars; I’d had difficulty opening the drivers side door on my car and notable bending had occurred on the impacted panels as well as damage to the front drivers side tyre. Her vehicle showed little noticeable damage however the bright white paint and overcast day made it hard to distinguish any minor deformities that had resulted in the accident.

At the scene, she apologised and explained that she had misjudged how close I was when she pulled out, and that her intention had been to pull her car across both lanes and onto the south bound shoulder, allowing my car to pass before pulling out behind me. It seemed clear from her comments that she acknowledged that it was her misjudgement that had resulted in her hitting my car and I took this as to an acknowledgement of liability.

Due to the apparent agreement on the cause and the fact no one was injured and that the damage appeared relatively minor (both cars were still drivable without significant risk) I opted not to ask Police to respond.

After exchanging details and inspecting my car to ensure it was not likely to do too much more damage driving the remaining few minutes to work, I returned to the office and called State to report the accident. Logs indicate this call was made at 12:42pm.

After loading the claim, I took the vehicle to Napier Collision Repair for an assessment, during which they took photos of the visible damage. Since then having had to drive my car in its current state I’ve also noticed that there is now a shake in the steering that I can only attribute to being shunted in the side by another vehicle. Access to the drivers compartment is still restricted also, due to being unable to properly open the drivers side door.

On the morning of Tuesday the 26th I received a call on my cellphone asking to speak to <the other driver>, which is the driver of the car that hit mine. There had obviously been some confusion as someone at State was apparently returning <her> call and had for some reason mixed my number up in the process. That afternoon after hearing nothing back and growing more concerned as to what other details may have gotten confused, I decided to follow up with State at which point I was told that <she> was not admitting liability and that although I had given a statement and description over the phone I would now be required to give one in writing along with a diagram.

The accompanying diagram shows the relative position and movement of the two vehicles both before impact and at the point of impact, with vehicle A representing my vehicle, and vehicle B representing the other vehicle. Both vehicles were pointing in a southbound direction with vehicle A approaching in motion along the southbound lane, and vehicle B beginning from a stopped position facing the wrong direction on the northbound shoulder. From here, vehicle B moves across the northbound lane and merges into the front right hand side of vehicle A (my car). At the time I was traveling somewhere under 100km/hr as I had only just entered the 100km/hr zone and following a brief period of acceleration had started to slow my speed (prior to reaching 100km/hr) as a result of recognition this hazard unfolding.

Please feel free to contact me if you wish to clarify any further details. I trust that this provides sufficient information to allow you to make an informed decision as to the liability for the accident allowing the claim to progress.

 

Kind Regards,

<me>

So what do you all think? Had the same trouble yourself? Feel free to name and shame (or complement if appropriate) your insurance company, as I’ll be shopping around again in the near future!

Fingers crossed, this will work though! And assuming it does, good night all. =]

As well as the usual updates to base code and tiding up of plugins, I’ve now hooked things up so that hopefully this will now bombard facebook with whatever I post as well, just to help the couple that tend to read things on here in the loop. =P

Finally got the new passport today (yes, a rather essential piece of the puzzle). Pitty it’s only valid for 5 years (my last one ran out in Jan 2009 but had had a 10 year life). Finalise tickets on tuesday.

It should be a great trip, with among other things some great photo opportunities to be had on a 2 week bus trip covering a pile of Aussie along the way. Not to mention the exciting/scary/confusing prospect of meeting what can be best described as meeting up with some long lost family.

But anyway, more to come… maybe. Lets see if this facebook plugin works or not!

7am flight to Auckland. Cab into center city, making it just in time for the 9am meeting. Quick coffee after the meeting then cab back to the airport and back to Napier. Stitting back at my desk by 3.

But anyway, I know no one really cares about such things. My real reason for dusting off the old blog was to post a couple of friggen halarious pic that I just found.

And another goodie…

Now, for all of you who have spent far too much time on the internet and delved into the world of chat rooms, have a laugh at OhMy!gle. It’s friggen gold!

Anyways, enough boredom for one night. Enjoy!

Other than that, damn it’s been a nice sunny weekend. It’s definitely got me in the summer mood. Shorts (much to the detriment of anyone without sunnies on =P ) and the house wide open. Won’t be long before we crank up the bbq I think. Not quite warm enough for the beach yet but I doubt that will be too far away either. And well the hay-fever has started to kick in but shit you can’t have everything good I guess. =P

Time to go get some sunshine and hope I don’t burn to a crisp! Here’s a bit of music with a good beat and some good lyrics:

And here’s a random pic for the day…

There's these moments - by MiCa...

The text for those who can’t read it is…

It’s difficult to ignore what’s
Really on the outside
When the inside
Is fighting this corpse so much.

With minutes left
And the last hour gone
The beginning hasn’t even
Ended yet…

Have a good one all!

The professor told his class one day. “Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. As homework tonight, one of you will write the first paragraph of a short story. You will then email your partner that paragraph and send another copy to me.

Your partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story and send it back, also sending another copy to me. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back-and-forth. Remember to re-read what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. There is to be absolutely no talking outside of the emails and anything you wish to say must be written in the email. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached.”

The following was actually turned in by two of his students, Rebecca and Gary.

—-

The Story:

(First paragraph by Rebecca)
At first, Laurie couldn’t decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favourite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the questions.

(Second paragraph by Gary)
Meanwhile, Advanced Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an airheaded asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. “A.S. Harris to Geostation 17,” he said into his transgalactic communicator. “Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far…” But before he could sign off a bluish beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship’s cargo bay. The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat across the cockpit.

(Rebecca)
He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for physically brutalising the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. “Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel,” Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored here. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth, when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspaper to read, no television to distract her form her sense of innocent wonder at the all the beautiful things around her. “Why must one lose one’s innocents to become a woman?” she wondered wistfully.

(Gary)
Little did she know, but she had less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anudrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peacenicks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace disarmament Treaty through the congress had left Earth a defenceless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anudrian ships were on  course for Earth, carrying enough fire-power to pulverise the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his tip-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor of the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion, which vaporised poor , stupid Laurie.

(Rebecca)
This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic semi-literate adolescent.

(Gary)
Yeah? Well, my writing partner is a self-centred tedious neurotic! whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium. “Oh shall I have chamomile tea? Or shall I have some other sort of F**KING TEA???! Oh no, WHAT AM I to do? I’m such an air headed bimbo who reads too many Danielle Steele novels!”

(Rebecca)
A**hole

(Gary)
Bitch

(Rebecca)
F**K YOU – YOU NEANDERTHAL!

(Gary)
Go drink some tea – whore.

(Teacher)
A+ ……. I really liked this one.

Battery: 0%

10pm. 527548 events logged by Snort since 7pm last night (the last database purge). The vast majority of those was during office hours today; not surprising given the general peak traffic time on the network. Snorby is holding up well although ruby seems to consume a lot of resources, and I managed to crash the server by using the email a report function (it tried to run an SQL query that was over 4.8 MILLION characters long – 2 hours at max system resources and it finally tipped over). Other than that all is looking good.

Pretty shattered after staying up until after midnight toying with sensor rules, bed time soon. But thought I’d share some humour to help get you all through Friday.

A Short Story

And a little motivation…

Motivation

Just remember…

Effort

So have a fun Friday one and all. Roll on caterday!!!

Time Portal to Caterday