Meanwhile, At Work

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Meanwhile, at Loudhailer the week is winding down. The long, long week. Wind has been ripping thru town for the entire week making it impossible to get any sleep. I know that may sound wild but when the wind is opening your doors for you it makes everything uneasy. In any case we are stocked up at work with Dr Pepper and Cocaine to get us by till 5pm.

Everyone says the cocaine tastes aweful. Apparently Dara bought it back oh say , 3 years ago. That’s how often we clean the fridge.

In related news we’ve been doing a lot of draining creative work coming up with brand names and illustrations for multiple clients. Mentally exhausting doesn’t begin to cover it. But it is a lot of fun. At 15 I could be found in the art room of the high school doodling on the white board in chuck ts and a t shirt. Ten years later I’m doodling on a white board in the same chuck t’s and a star trek tshirt in New Zealand and getting paid to do it. Funny how some things work out.

Scooters

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Le scooter i bought in october

 

So friends, by now most of you know that I have a scooter for getting around town. I bought the blue one back in october, painted it up a bit and gave it some love. New tyres, basket and a new battery later it’s doing heaps of good. It still looks a bit crummy and this past weekend I ran accross a deal I couldn’t pass up. See while my blue scooter runs it smokes. It has a busted headlight and the basket is from a bicycle. The nose is cracked and the electric start is sporadic at best. So I upgraded to the below:

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Vmoto Milan
Behold le New Scoot!

evan ‘helping’
The new scoot is much lighter which at first made me feel less stable but now I’m used to it. It turns a good deal sharper which is nice for getting around things since it’s longer also. Maneuverability is nice.
Also the keys are in a different position which is good so they don’t fall out (this one time on the blue scoot in traffic, it doesn’t turn off automatically but then you drive for a mile looking for your keys in the road) and it has a lock box. Sadly all the locks are broken (an issue with this model apparently) and I just took the one out of the back box entirely and use it the same way I used my basket. I’ll probably try to get it fixed in the next few weeks. The under the seat lock was jammed and I had to take the whole back end apart to fix it. Eventually it wound up at the mechanic (who was kind enough not to charge) to fix that issue. I baked him some brownies as a thank you.
I have to check the pressure on the break fluid this week for my rear break (which I pretty much only use to turn anyhow) as it doesn’t have enough strength to use the electric start. Right now I’m trying to hold the right hand break while reve the engine with the right hand while holding down the ignition switch with (you guessed it) the right hand.
Went and got insurance for this baby today too. Stupid cheap. About equal to what I spend on gas so that’s not too bad. The gas tank on this one is also about half the size so I have to fill up every week instead of every other week but that’s not a big deal. Ah well! all for now!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day to all!
For the holiday (which blessedly landed on Saturday) me and the Loudhailer ladies got gussied up and went out on the town for the first time together in ages. The weather was pretty much perfect in the low 70’s with no wind and lots of sun. That night several drinks were had, live music and dancing were enjoyed and a general good time was had by all 🙂
Shamrock St. , Palmerston North, New Zealand

 

Incidentally I also talked someone out of a shiny hat.
Le Shiny Hat

New Rig

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Well back in 2005 I saved up all summer and bought my first mac. Well incidentally the first computer I ever bought myself. It was a little white case macbook that had just enough juice in it to get me thru college because macs are kind of pricy but darn good at what they do. After years of abuse riding on bicycles, being slammed into unpadded book bags and left to overheat on my bed; my logic board in the macbook is failing. While it continues to chug on, it will no longer charge or run off of battery power which makes it next to useless as a lap top. Also with the increasing size of my working files, 350GB just isn’t cutting it anymore.
In anticipation of it’s imminent demise I have purchased a new rig which is an older, used mac mini complete with cd drive (the newer ones don’t have that) and a tv for my monitor. I already had a wireless mouse and I bought a blue tooth keyboard (this is a wired in the pic until the new one comes in the mail). At 500 gb and the same intel processor my old macbook has it’s not anything super flash or exciting to a geek but to me it’ll do just fine. I was able to purchase this exciting rig which I have dubbed ‘short round’ for my christmas holiday pay that I forgot I signed up for at exactly $802.  A few more flash cables and some accessories later and I’m closer to $900 for a total rig. 🙂
Exciting!

Alright 2012. I’m ready now

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I fell into 2012 feet first and full on. I danced in the new year with friends old and new before traveling to Mexico and then back to New Zealand. Once there I was met with a full on load of work as clients also scrambled to catch up with the new year and I tried to keep up with that and 1,000 other things that piled up. Today I had enough. I have too much crap in my life, so with that in mind it’s time to cull the herd. Last years goals went something like this:

And so the tally for this year begins as follows:

Goals for 2011:
– work on learning Spanish
– get over fear of syringes
– go spelunking
– be completely debt free
– learn basics of drums
– create more artwork
– learn more about html and css to the point I can build web pages properly
– visit another country (again) or better explore the south island of NZ

Just as important to me as what to do with this year is what NOT to do with this year since it consumes valuable time and resources that could be spent more productively.

Not-To-Do list 2011:
– World of Warcraft
– more than an hour of tv or one movie per day
– waste money on things vs experiences
– nothing

Most of this I failed at because halfway thru the year I made new goals as my interests changed and my experiences here grew. And so, here is the new list:

Goals for 2012:
– continue learning Spanish
– go spelunking (doing in april?)
– be completely debt free (minus student loan) and save money
– get website published
– eat and maintain a healthy lifestyle– visit another country (again) or better explore the south island of NZ (dec?)

Just as important to me as what to do with this year is what NOT to do with this year since it consumes valuable time and resources that could be spent more productively.

Not-To-Do list 2012:
– World of Warcraft
– more than an hour of tv or one movie per day
– waste money on things vs experiences
– nothing


My nothing list pretty much stays the same. Cut out the waste, enjoy the fruit. I also have to cut out other projects such as Kung Fu, art projects, some free lance and gaming. Do less to do more.

Only Tuesday

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It may be only Tuesday here but it feels like the week has already been full on. Some of it comes from a weekend of sleep depravation some because I had 5 ‘urgent’ ads given to me on monday that were also due on monday. In any case I survived but man what a long week already!

This weekend was some good fun as I went to Himatangi Beach with Rachel, Marc and Evan in the caravan. The beach has black sand that stretches out endlessly out of view in either direction of the shore line. There were cars parked along deeper close to the dunes and the ocean was filled with swimmers, kayakers, and small time surfers. There were a few lifeguards on duty to keep watch on the kids in the water while others built small sandcastles. There were dogs barking at waves and people going by on horses. Good times.