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!

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How not to start your Sunday #52:

Being woken up around 0540 by my pager and spending until a bit after 8am at a fire call.

It took my poor brain a few minutes to wake up when the pagers went off but after fumbling the keys a couple of times I made it to station. If I hadn’t woken up fully by then firecom telling me it was K99 and had just gone to 2nd alarm helped immensely!! =/

Of course a 4am wakeup a friday or two ago wasn’t so great either, but that was just to a mail queue alert (spamming p***ks!). At least you don’t get “persons reported” in a mail queue! =P

By the end it had gone to 3rd alarm and no persons located.

So that was my morning of fun. What does one do on a Sunday after being up this early you might ask? Actually not a great deal, I’ve achieved nothing of much significance. I debated heading to McD’s to grab some hotcakes but given the time we got turned out I hadn’t grabbed my sunnies (silly me,what was I thinking) so driving in the early morning sun just wasn’t pleasant.

Enough rambling from me for now anyway.

Ciao.

The post 101 ways not to start off a nice ralaxing Sunday… appeared first on Random Insanity.

Just over a week prior, volunteer Fire Fighters from Napier station were told about it, and rapidly set to work fund raising and getting ready to participate. The weekend of the Mission Concert (weekend before the relay) was spent avoiding the rain on Saturday and seeking the shade on Sunday to do a sausage sizzle which went better than expected.

Flint

By the morning of the 7th, the hastily formed “Firewise Guys” headed down to Tareha Reserve in Taradale and setup camp. We had the big Fire Service marquee and the last minute delivery of the new Flint and Amber costumes.

Amber

The opening ceremony was around 12 noon, with cancer survivors doing the first lap closely followed by the numerous other teams that had turned out to support the cause. This was the start of 24 hours of non-stop walking, and of the music and bands to keep us entertained.

Initially we got bagged about looking strange in our assortment of Fire Service uniform, with everything from blues, to level one’s, two’s, BA and a couple in the oversized heads and red capes of Flint and Amber. This all changed during the afternoon when the rain moved in and started bucketing down. Everyone was getting soaked while Rodney and myself walked around the track in our level two’s like it was a perfectly fine day. Then the comments turned to compliments on being so well prepared and the like.

Sunset

The rain cleared after dumping down just enough to ensure that the track turned into one big mudslide (with no small amount of help from some of the kids in the area) and to short out the power to pretty much everything including the lighting towers. This meant that as dark started to fall they couldn’t fire the lights up making for some rather uncertain and questionable footing until they were repaired well into the evening.

In the mean time, a memorial ceremony was held including lighting of candles that were set to line the edges of the walking track. There was also a special performance by Yulia, a singer who was a big supporter of the Cancer Society and who performed for cancer sufferers from time to time.

The bands kicked off again and the walking continued. Some teams changed shifts, others just geared up for a long night.

The stretch heading towards midnight cooled off a lot and the laps seemed longer each time around, but heading towards midnight I started getting harassed by a bunch of girls (who one of the other guys had been hassled by earlier and had warned me about them!), but all in good humour. Shouts of “show us your hose” and similar statements flew each time past their camp. Who would believe this from a bunch of teachers!! =P  A few rounds after the banter began I joined on the track by a couple of lovely young ladies from their team, and arm in arm we passed by the camp just to stir even more.

The clowns from the CHB Circus also provided much amusement with whistles and horns everytime we walked past.

In the early hours of the morning after the music and the movies that were screened were over, some light music drifted on the wind and the mischief escalated. Theft of food condiments and drink driving of a wheelie bin were both in order, along with various other shenanigans that we shan’t go into.

As the sun started to rise and everyone started to turn up again we continued to plod along the well warn path. Stiff muscles struggled in the early morning chill and those that had managed to get some sleep were poked awake to take over the laps.

Pink Ladies - 08/03/2009 0818

With the sun and warmth came renewed energy and I grabbed the camera to go take a few shots of the various teams that were there. I also struggled over to the Village Kids and got a group pic of them; they were most obliging and full of smiles, and disturbingly awake given the hour!

As 11:30 rolled around all the teams piled onto the track for the final half hour, banners in tow. When 12 noon finally hit we all packed down towards the stage while the winners of raffles and most laps, fastest lap, best costumes etc were announced. The closing ceremony was finished off with the releasing of doves.

That just left packing up all our gear and clearing out!

By the time I got home I was absolutely stuffed. After no sleep I was tired and sore and soon after crashed out on the couch for a couple of hours. But being trashed aside, it was an awesome weekend and now we’re more aware of it we’ll be entering a team in again next year.

A big congrats to everyone who participated or sponsored or donated. It is a great cause. At the end of the weekend the raised funds totalled about $240,000.

And also cheers to the Pink Ladies for providing many laughs, much entertainment and for keeping us awake and motivated through the night.

And here ends my tired disjointed rambling, hopefully my memory isn’t too atrocious. More photos on facebook for those who are interested. =]

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