Weekend social 11/01/2013

Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, January 11th, 2013 - 51 comments
Categories: weekend social - Tags:

Christmas truce 1914Weekend social is for non political chat. What’s on for the weekend, gigs, film or book reviews, sports, or whatever.

No politics, no aggro, why can’t we all just get along?

51 comments on “Weekend social 11/01/2013 ”

  1. Ennui in Requiem 1

    Here in Wgtn the wind appears to have diminished from hurricane to gale force….maybe a little trouting is in order. The Ruamahanga has been very generous this season, lots of good well conditioned fish.

    The chickens have started being cruel to one another: my take is that they are discussing where supporters of Shearer sit in the pecking order. My jersey bennies produced only a small crop despite the loving attention given, again I feel David may be influential in this result.

    A runner bean appeared and was consumed raw yesterday, the first of many. Proof enough for me that there must be a deity.

    • tc 1.1

      The garlic this year was also a let down against previous years after much TLC was assigned, it seems if it’s a good year it’s a good year and vice versa.

      Beans on the way along with the Tom’s but unlike last summer I don’t think the rain gods will bless us with a bumper tom crop.

      • Ennui in Requiem 1.1.1

        Its the old rule with the toms, dont water much until they have set, then keep roots damp. I have a pile of dwarf toms in a plastic tunnel and they have gone mad, the outside ones are very variable. garlic, mine too, pretty crappy.

    • Rogue Trooper 1.2

      bean eating heaps of beans, runner and dwarf yellow, that we grew, along with cauli, brocoli, beetroot, cabbages (small ones)
      meanwhile, surveillance of the climate,
      http://rinf.com/alt-news/breaking-news/australia-is-the-canary-in-the-global-warming-coal-mine/19579/
      by The Rolling Stone at NewsNow
      oh, and courgettes

      • Ennui in Requiem 1.2.1

        Great year for courgettes and broad beans, yeah!!!!!! Bad year for koalas and eucalyptus.

        • Rogue Trooper 1.2.1.1

          had heaps of broad beans. been out pricing tech on a budget; think I’ll stay I-cafe for a while, being the Luddite I am. Defers (lots of synonyms) all the connectivity, firewall, speed, virus, location,tr%llin’ issues, the Unlimited rate is reasonable + it’s yet another social outlet. I’m not sure if watching the House is relevant, it’s just a farce most of the time and I started getting bored towards the end of the year.I still cannot believe how incoherent nearly all of the NAct members are, and some of the Opposition front bench. Memorable standouts;
          David Cunliffe
          David Clark
          Lianne Dalziel
          Charles Chauvel
          Damien O’Connor

          nearly all of the Greens, Hone, and Denis O’Rourke.
          (other than The Standard, where do we find the best written political commentary?)

          -Rogue

        • Populuxe1 1.2.1.2

          On the contrary, Eucalyptus thrives following bushfires – it’s part of their life cycle.

        • tc 1.2.1.3

          Yup and scaloppine , a real delight as can be eaten young or allowed to get like pumpkins and stored accordingly.

      • Yes R.T.been a bumper garden year here in Cambridge.Been eating potatoes since September . Eating bean and all salad .Had so many carrots we were in danger of turning orange. However tomatoes are a bit slow and there are not many bees around,but our dwarf fruit trees are loaded .

    • Anne 1.3

      The chickens have started being cruel to one another:

      Yes, my budgies are a bit scratchy at the moment. My most ardent admirer (a greeny-blue) won’t have anything to do with me any more. I think it might have something to do with the arrival of 4 new chicks – jeolousy?

      • Ennui in Requiem 1.3.1

        My number one hen is far too snooty to be associated with such a lowly creature as me…unless I have sunflower seeds, raspberries etc. Has me well trained.

  2. Sunday Morning on duty selling raffle tickets and collecting the last of asset petition. At
    LP stall in Victoria St Cambridge .
    Come and say hello and perhaps give us a hand.

  3. lprent 3

    Drat (a acronym for what I was really saying). My order for a SATA RAID tower for home still hasn’t arrived. I ordered the darn thing on the 30th. Took to the 7th for the payment to clear (frigging banks and their holidays). I was hoping it’d show up this week. But the order status still says “Awaiting Goods”.

    I guess that puts paid to removing the remaining hard disks form the workstation (it has solid state drives these days) and putting all of the slower high volume storage hanging off the quieter server. I’m wanting to actually be able to suspend the workstation with its noisy fans trying to cool a 6 core CPU. At present I can’t do it because the case I got for the server has no room for disk drives. The idea was to put them out in a easy access case – like this one….

    Oh well, I’ll find something to do this weekend….

    • fenderviper 3.1

      Thats a smart looking beer fridge Lynn!

      The link you included says logistics centre stock can take up to 5 days extra, so surely if it doesn’t arrive this arvo you will see it monday.

      • lprent 3.1.1

        … so surely if it doesn’t arrive this arvo you will see it monday

        That will be good. I’ll be able to pull my server workstation and server offline, flip the disks around, get the server to mount them, move the DLNA server and music servers to the server, redirect the TV and sound systems to their new data sources, change the required firewalls for backups and other access points, create NFS wrappers over them on the workstation, and test that everything works in my copious spare time during the working week……

        /sarc off… 🙂

        Problem is that I did all of the other work shifting my server from an old windows 2003 R2 system after it’s hardware died a few months ago. I got the right type of box for how I want the server to run when I did the emergency fix. Set it up as as a Linux server rathe rthan running windoze again. Stuffed the few remaining windows apps in a Virtualbox and deferred the move of the services that should be on the server but which were on the linux workstation until I had time to move them. The main thing was to move the disks off the workstation to the server.

        That time had arrived 12 days ago………. My free time is now gone. Oh well lets hope I still have next weekend free.

        But I did get a lot of DIY done during the vacation.

    • I just love tecky people, i used to be a dj for a community radio station,playing country
      music and the guy who started it all talked like you lprent, he also started the country
      radio station here in the south which is on 105.20 fm,still going and country wide now,
      i learned alot about the technology of radio thanks to him.
      Have a great weekend.

    • David H 3.3

      Aren’t the SSD’s rather small in size like 256 GB – 450GB and expensive something like 90c a GB? and at those specs, and cost, all i would use is one of them for is a boot disk. I do like the speed. But not the cost of SSD’s. I’m looking for some 1 or 2 terabyte SATA drives for a file/web server I am building. But being on a SB, (and yes I used to be a Painter) they will probably just stay a dream for now.

      • lprent 3.3.1

        Yep they are costly compared to a HDD. But the main purpose of my systems are to either write code or to run server services. And I’m not on a budget because this is how I make a living. Computers are the tools of my trade.

        I don’t need terabytes for anything except backup and video edits. And apart from the object code, most of my files are pretty static.

        It isn’t the $/GB that matters, it is $ for the type of GB you need that matters.

        So I have a server with a 120GB SSD (~$150) for the main system and web testing. It is a dual core, fast enough for the job and absolutely quiet – really important in a small apartment.

        On the workstation has an AMD with 6 cores and whines with fans when I start compiling or start playing games, but is quiet otherwise. I have a slow 60GB boot (~$80) for the operating system root. /home is fast SSD 128GB (~$180) for development code. The ~/dev/build where all of the generated and compiled code goes is a tmpfs in RAM (I have 16GB of RAM). Have to do a full recompile each time I boot the machine, but I’d do that anyway after pick up code form the offsite version control systems.

        I also have 2x2TB HDD’s (~$300) and 2x1TB HDD’s (~$300) in RAID 1 where backups, video edits, and anything that isn’t too important lives. Hard disks fail pretty regularly, really slow on reads compared to SSD’s, and are bloody noisy as well. What they are good at is storing large amounts of data pretty cheaply.

  4. karol 4

    I’ll be happy to go to work this weekend if this heat keeps up – they at least have air-conditioning. I’m finding the heat at home today a bit debilitating.

  5. Rogue Trooper 5

    test

  6. Jilly Bee 6

    Psyching myself up to go back to work on Monday – yuk. Not too sure what to make of my new boss and besides I’m of retirement age, so a decision needs to be considered.

    • If you have a freehold house then you will be able to live on the pension. So do it retire .Do a bit of voluntary work and make the most of your retirement. Get up,each morning and do what you want to , within reason. Your dead a bloody long time .If you have worked for a long while call it a day.
      My wife and I have enjoyed every day of retirement all on the pension.

      • Jilly Bee 6.1.1

        Hi Pink Postman – yes we have a freehold house, thank goodness and I have decided to retire, as you say we’re all dead a bloody long time and I want to be able to enjoy what time I have to the full and enjoy our grandchildren being able to stay with us – I can now convert my office back into a bedroom, having worked from home for several years. I have also been in KiwiSaver since it’s inception and have a few dollars to put away for a rainy day! I’ll be typing my resignation letter tomorrow! There’s plenty of voluntary work to be done in the area I live in.

  7. Visubversaviper 7

    I am back at work on Monday too. Only 2 more sleep-ins before that 6am alarm. I have 2 years to go to retirement but lots of people at my work well past that age so I too will have to decide when I want to go.

  8. weka 8

    Anyone tempted by the 11 incarnations of the Doctor?

  9. rosy 9

    The trouble with going away for the weekend when immune-compromised is that every bug in over-crowded enclosed spaces is waiting. For the nth time this winter I’ll be staying at home and recovering from a bleh cold.

    Still… it means more time for reading. I’ve started on the Denise Mina Garnethill trilogy that just saying recommended. It’s quite good really.

  10. Scintilla 10

    Got a massive load of plums ripening – but how do I beat the birds!!
    Dreaming of swarthy, spicy plum sauce and maybe more preserved in some sort of alcoholic beverage … with lashings of whipped cream on a chocolate torte. ..damn those birds.

    • tc 10.1

      Net the tree is your only real solution unless you’re a crack shot and have time on your hands.

    • just saying 10.2

      If you can’t net the whole tree it’s good to net at least a part or parts for yourselves. On the other hand, even if you can net all the fruit, it can be nice to leave a part open for the birds to enjoy 🙂

      I’m sharing my strawberries with the birds. If they get too voracious I’ll net some off.

      • Descendant Of Sssmith 10.2.1

        The good thing about plums is that if you have the freezer space you can pack em up in recipie sized lots and make up more plum sauce when needed.

        The good thing though about plum sauce is that it’s at it’s best a few years after making – dark black and thick and just delicious.

    • David H 10.3

      I HAD 2 cherry trees full of fruit, the operative word here is HAD. Bloody birds. If only firing a shot gun in town were legal.

      • Scintilla 10.3.1

        Ha! Some years ago, down the road from some winery in the Hawkes Bay, where I was working, lived a retired English military sorta guy who was a grape grower and one of our suppliers. His house and vineyard sat on a nice little delta between the main highway and a couple of rows of seaside homes – a fine old homestead, with a verandah out the front. Summertime, he’d sit out there on the verandah in an old easy chair and take pot shots at the birds!
        We could hear him up at the winery. He’d call in and tell us how well he was doing, too, totally on a mission to protect those grapes.

      • just saying 10.3.2

        I lost all my cherries too.
        Next year they are going under netting for sure. None for the birds – they got their share this year.

  11. Anne 11

    For all you non-techo types like me, the following is a must read…

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10858583

    You will recognise your own experiences immediately.

    • David H 11.1

      Sorry but if he loses 500 words, then he has turned off the Autosave And that is designed to save your work in case of a power outage. As for the cable like I said to him if all else fails, MOVE the Table Problem of the cord solved easily. That’s not tech, that’s just plain old common sense.

      • Anne 11.1.1

        David H, I think he was using a little bit of license to produce an amusing story with an element of reality about it. Sort of… laughing at himself.