Thought I better tell everyone what we did the first week in New Zealand.

Arrived lunchtime here on the Friday, met at airport by daughter S, SIL and grand-daughter E.  Two cars Mr T went with SIL and us girls stuck together.  Recognised lots on the road home, surprisingly not much has changed.

A barbeque was planned that night at the brother and sister-in-law's.  We headed over about 4.30 and found all the 'Van Meers' in attendance, nice to see them all again and also friends Brendan & Nicola with their young baby son (they would be leaving in the morning, Brendan for London for work  and Nicola for her Mum's in New Plymouth).  Wonderful meal of steak and sausages and lots of salad, potatoes and of course dessert.  Mr T felt the jet lag setting in and he retired at about 6.30pm I managed to stay awake until 9.30 by which time I was pretty bushed.

Morning Tea and scones in our house for everyone the next morning to say goodbye to N & B,  in the afternoon grandaughter E wanted to show me one of her favourite places........the Station Cafe in Rangiora,  and the attached garden centre.

Sunday:    Farmers Market in Oxford.  Bought some Manuka Honey, very different in price here from the UK.  About one quarter of the price, only paid $4, S bought Raspberry Jam and Marmalade.  Later in the afternoon we headed off for a food shop and to buy some Jasmine plants for SIL to put along the fence next to the drying area.  About 11 plants were bought, the perfume will be wonderful when the sun is shining and the clothes are drying.

Monday 10th November S had arranged to meet with her sister-in-law and visit a friend from Play Group.  She stayed locally and we had lovely coffee and scones in her garden whilst the kids played.  She lived in a beautiful chalet style house with very mature gardens.  She is undergoing chemotherapy at the moment and although she had her head covered it was pretty obvious she had lost her hair.  She is very strong and her little boy was lovely.  It was a very warm day with temperatures reaching 25.

Tuesday: Daughter's sister-in-law had an appointment for a glucose tolerance test and a Warrent of Fitness for her car in Rangiora so Mr T and I tagged along.  Had 2 hours browsing the shops and had 2 coffees one by ourselves and another when we accidentally bumped into P who had finished earlier than expected with the doctor.  Sister-in-law P was having a Tupperware Party tonight which I had not seen anything by them for a long while.  It was very interesting and I bought a Jelly Mould.

Wednesday:  We had a blitz of the house with vaccuming and dusting.  Cleaning all the hard floors too.  S had an appointment with the midwife and I headed off with her to meet Linda a very efficient and bubbly lady.  Once you choose your midwife in NZ they are the person you deal with all the time.  She was very pleasant and also good with Ella.  We went for grocery shopping after that and S had a phone call to say that another sister-in-law's father had died.  A nice old gentleman whom we had met last year.  Ended up with take away fish & chips for tea.

Thursday:  Mr T and I had Christine's car today and we went to New Brighton where we watched a sand artist and had coffee in the Salt on the Pier Cafe.  Still warm today but a colder wind blowing.

Friday:  Waikuku Beach today as this is a public holiday in NZ for the Canterbury Show.  Had afternoon coffee in the Brick Mill Cafe in Waikuku.   

Saturday:  Stef's birthday. Ashley Gorge for the day the temperature is 32 degrees.  three cars in convoy. Absolutely beautiful place, a must to take Robin & Avril to see.  Stunning scenery and wonderful river which is safe to bathe in.  Lots of children and youngsters having fun.  Sand at the river  bank too hot to walk on that is how hot it was.  Had a BBQ at ours that night with steak and sausage again.

Sunday 16th..... well you know all about that.  Busy day and lovely Leo now in our lives.

More to come.

Welcome to a Very Special Edition of LJ News.

Moving Day and What It Means for You

Moving What Where?

The long-awaited server move takes place this Tuesday, November 18, at 8:00 a.m. PST. We're moving the site from servers based in San Francisco to the servers in our new data center in Montana. A massive data move like this takes a lot of heavy lifting, and to haul all that data from San Francisco to Montana, we have to take the site down, starting at 8:00 a.m. PST on Tuesday morning. We don't think the move will take more than four hours, but there's always the possibility that it could take longer (the best laid plans and all).

What Does This Mean for You?

During the downtime, nothing on LJ will be available—no posting, no Friends page, no LJ mail, nada. When we bring the site back up, we're going to ease into it rather than open up a floodgate of traffic. Posting might not be immediately available or the site could be slow to load for a while.

New servers mean new IP addresses, so it's possible that LJ mail might not reach your email inbox because your email provider or client doesn't recognize the new IP addresses. We're working with email providers to whitelist the new IPs. There are a few things you can do on your end:

• Add these two IP addresses to your "allowed senders" list (or whitelist) and address book in your email client: 208.93.0.18 and 208.93.0.50. These are the new IPs for sending comments notifications and LJ mail to your email inbox.


• Add lj_notify@livejournal.com and webmaster@livejournal.com to your email address book.

lj_maintenance

Baby finally has a name, Leo.  Suits him and we are all pleased, a good strong name that cannot be shortened in any way.  He suits it, I think.  Just waiting now for mum and Leo to come home, she is being allowed home today, midwife very pleased and as there are lots of helpers she is quite pleased for her to come home.  Bit different to Scotland where they can't wait to send you packing.  Ideally she would have stayed the 2 nights as she already has a child at home, they like the mother to rest but as I am here and SIL is very a very hands-on Dad, they had no doubts she will gret plenty of rest.

He has changed since yesterday I think, not so puffy looking and he certainly knows his mother's voice,  following the sound, amazing how quick they learn.

Thanks to all our friends worldwide who wished the family well, S and her family appreciate your good wishes and kind thoughts. 





This photo is quite dark but it is the same pose as the one with Bailey.

2008 is not my year for reading books. I have the attention span of a two-year-old. I guess there has just been too much upheaval -- loosing my job, loosing my cats, moving away from a city I loved, a lot of good friends and the best social life I have ever had -- back to a country I did not really want to move to, no social life at all, a new job that takes some getting used to -- I just don't have the patience to sit through a book that is not fast-paced on every single page. I read a few pages and my mind starts to wander. I am sure I am missing out on some really good books, but I can't really be bothered to try any harder. So, without further ado, here at the latest two failures -- probably really good, but they bored me...

Heavy Weather by Bruce Sterling

From Amazon:
"Why hack computers when you can hack nature? Sterling's Storm Troupe lives in a post-greenhouse world ravaged by monster storms and finds itself hacking the ultimate storm: the F-6 tornado. No one in the Troupe, not even it's brilliant, driven leader, guesses the real nature of the F-6 or the shadowy forces unleashed in its twisting fury. Not until it is too late..."

Gave up or rather drifted off after slightly over 80 pages. Sounds good, just not keeping my attention.

Silly Gran forgot to say that it is a boy. 

A weekend in Auckland

Back on track after breaking the discipline and being a bit late with a couple

was spent watching cricket and registering books

still recovering from this, which now will do as my entry for that day

I got some mango moon recycled silk yarn on Tuesday, thinking I'd make a funky and fun cap for the guy. In the store, I thought the yarn had more red in it than it does. Oh well. If he doesn't like it, I do, and so has everyone who has seen it. (Granted, that's only two other people, but hey!). Anyhoo, the pix are from the phone and not that great. The true colors aren't exactly there in these pix, but close. It's all nubbily on the hat part and pointy on top. Fun!

New Baby has arrived,  Mum & Dad left for hospital at 7.05am and baby arrived 7.47am, that was close.  Lots of dark hair and weighed in at 9lbs 2oz, but no name decided yet.  More to follow and photos later,  both Mum and baby are very well.  Both Grans have been to visit and are still smiling,  we will visit again this afternoon.

Two little things I just did-- A Blue Bird that is slightly reminiscent of a penguin and then an Eye Ball (as in a ball with eyes) made from bits and pieces of some yarn I had and wanted to use up.



And finally, a tattoo that is going around. This is not my arm. The tattoo reads "Knit" one direction, and "Purl" the other.

Been two days in Hong Kong. A place of Manic Energy and yet strangely safe to wander around. This is so unlike Beijing, I am surprised it is the same country. The locals are very relaxed in this fast paced environment and this flows to the way they treat tourists. In Beijing, you are made to feel an alien as you stand out, and the beggars fly to you like rottng meat, but here we are just part of the scenery.

We have had a great time, I was told by my son to get him some PSP games. but for the life of me I cannot remeber which ones. I was supposed to get a list, but still, we got two. Things are not very cheap here with our dollar being so low :( and therefore it pays to have the Australian Prices in your head.

I did get a PDA thingy and some other toys but as for the summer skirts, no..Two days is just not enough time to shop and also see things.

We did the peak Tram twice, once at night to get the skyline. Amazing Tram, uses a cable to connect the two Trams together and they pull each other up and down. David will not doubt upload some pictures.

Have to go as this is a public computer and there is a time limit. Wi-Fi is everywhere here, even in the underground. COOL!

We're pulling the plug! And putting it back in a different location! Ok, that was bad.

Seriously though, our data center move -- from San Francisco to Montana -- is scheduled for THIS TUESDAY, November 18, 2008 at 16:00 UTC (this equates to 8AM Pacific timezone) and will last for 4 hours. Unfortunately it'll be total downtime for all our sites and services -- no posting, no reading, no email.

Another news announcement will be posted on Monday November 17, including links to updated FAQs that you'll want to check out before the move.

As always, status.livejournal.org will have any updates during the move so bookmark it and check it out for the latest news.

All of us at LiveJournal have been eagerly looking forward to this move and I want to thank you for your patience and understanding as we put the finishing touches on something that will allow us to bring you an even better product in the future.
Though for us in the Ops and Engineering teams, we'll be REALLY happy if, on Tuesday, everything just works the same way it did on Monday.  Heh.

bt

A while back, I was confronted by a dilemma with author I had read, and had liked (for that kind of thriller book.) He did something which appalled me, enough so so that I swore I would never buy another of his books again (which was not hard as I don't think I'd ever bought one before. My reads were from the library or given to me.) In fact, I went back and even made an entry in ALL my BookCrossing books saying that I have stopped reading this author as I find him morally reprehensible. Shame really, because I did like some of his works. I added, in my journal entry to each book, "Any future books registered to my BookCrossing shelf will be ones given to me to bookcross. I will not put a dime in his pocket ever again." If you're interested the author was Michael Crichton (and yes, I am aware he died last week, but it still doesn't change things for me) and the explanation of why I was upset with him is here.

Well, now, an author who is actually a favorite author of mine is making statements that I also find appalling. And frightening. And somewhat nutso. At least according to Brian Trent of the Independent Examiner. The full commentary is here. (And yes, I realize one of the links points to a 2004 article.)

Orson Scott Card, I am deeply disappointed in you.

wonderful lunch today. Barely able to make an entry. There may be some photographs on facebook in next day or so if anyone wants to see more.

and PS any one of you coming to South Australia who wants an amazing food and wine experience give me six months notice before you come and I'll take you