Les Miserables

Hah I got round to this once again

Unfortunately for Les Tricolours and for world Rugby the Samsonic hair of Sebastien Chabal was not enough to stop the English Ruby from getting a spot in the Rugby world cup final. Beaten by a Johnny Wilinson kick 5 minutes from full time. I should feel sorry for them but I don't, now they know how it feels. Once again the English, who play appalling Rugby at any other time except for the world cup, are in the final.

Now in the best possible result for Rugby as a whole, tomorrow mornings other Semi will result in a win for Argentina against the 'Boks, then in the Final, the Pumas will push England all over Stade de France and get a basketball score against them. That would be justice. England rely so much on Johnny Wilkinson, but Jean Martin Fernandez is twice the player that Wilkinson is. Dare I say it, he is even better than the great Hugo Porta.

That's what my heart says..... unfortunately my head says the Springboks will be too strong for Argentina, I'm just not sure about the 'Boks against England at this tournament. Any other time I'd fall about laughing if anyone suggested that Poms would beat the Yarpies.

Actually the 'Boks gave me the Best Moment of the World cup so far... well sort of.... The moment was when the American Eagles Winger, Takudzwa Ngwenya, outsprinted, with power to burn, the much vaunted Brian Habana! Has anyone got this guy and handed him an offer for the Super 14....

Better yet sign him up for the Five Nations competition. What's that you say? It is my friends what would be the best Rugby competition in the world; Argentina, Canada, USA, Pacific Island Combined and Japan. One of the best things about the world is getting to watch some of these teams play. It was a Canada vs Japan game back in, I think '87, converted me to the concept of the world cup.

Think Safe

It always interests me the attitude we have to safety in the workplace. The thing I find amusing though is the hypocrisy that always raises it's ugly head.

A couple of fer-instances. Firstly driving south on the Auckland Motorway last week and there is an ACC company Car all decked out with the "Think Safe" logos and promo graphics all over it. Across the boot: "Only a fool breaks the two second rule"..... While following the car ahead by about two car lengths at a hundred klicks!!!

The other is to do with Corporate attitudes. These days I drive chip liners, a Mack to be precise. Bulk cartage is a game that has real tight margins, I'm actually amazed that anyone makes any money at it, given the cutthroat pricing, the constant attention of the CVIU and Regulators and Idiot Safety Rules.

The two major sites I deliver to are CHH Kinlieth and Norske Skog / Tasman in Kawerau. Now there is a major difference between the two sites when it comes to safety. At Kinleith it's ingrained into the culture. People think safe and look out for each other. While there are rules they are enforced only when necessary with a large dollop of common sense. Result a really excellent Safety record considering the hazardous nature of the workplace.

At Kawerau however the emphasis is on a regime of enforcing strict adherence to the rules while the Mill owners operate and continue to build more and more hazardous conditions. Our company has an average of four incident reports a month and yet Tasman says that it's not their fault and it's impossible to do anything about it!

If that's the case then their engineers are thick because I designed a new system in my head in a couple of hours on the way home.

Nope in this particular case it's all about cost cutting at the expense of the safety of the people on the lowest rung of the ladder: The Contractor's employees. More on this in the future and I'll see if I can collect some pics

Another wet day

And too wet to work, sometimes construction sux and I'd rather be out doing the maintenance work, at least the income is more regular. So looks like I'll get a chance to fix the gate... which in this pic looks as it should. With Meathead eyeing the gate up or more particularly the nice fresh juicy grass on the other side.

When I turned away...........

At least he did it while I was around so he didn't get to do a bolt up the road which is a favorite pasttime. I think he enjoys this because he gets to force me into doing exercise to bring him home. Unlike dogs, horses don't do the guilty look. He just had that - "Well the bloody thing should have been open. My function in life is to eat grass, the gate was stopping me from fulfilling that function, ergo the gate had to go!" - look on his face. No guilt at all.

The moral is Fence post vs 1 tonne of Horse = No Contest.

Looks like a hot wire on top of the gate is in order.

Big Boys Toys Department

It must be a sign of the encroaching of some new "Discovered-in-this-latest-Doctoral-thesis" age based syndrome that arrives past the half century where men go out and get the toys they couldn't have, but really wanted, in their teens. I haven't quite decided what mine will be yet.. a big V Twin Cruiser, (Not a Harley I hasten to add, I had one of those bloody things for a month or so in my dim dark past and they don't appear to have got any better. Nope something reliable, that doesn't leak oil and goes first kick everytime.) or maybe Beemer R80GS, always liked those. Or maybe a 66 Droptop Mustang, or a Gullwing Merc. At the fancful end of things Jeremy Clarkson got himself an EE Lightning fighter jet and stuck it on his front lawn. Not really my cup of tea, but a jet black Hughes 500G sitting on my front lawn, a working one of course, would definitely be cool. I suppose we all have those or similar little desires and guys like Tim Wallis and his P54 go out and get those sort of things.

However you can take things a little too far.... Like about 114 metres too far! which is just what Scottish Hearts Soccer club owner Vladimir Romanov has done. Obviously not one to be put off by minor logistical problems associated with a toy that weighs in at paltry 5000 tonnes, he bought a Julliett class Nuclear Sub!

I bet he didn't ask his wife first. You can imagine him arriving home from work:

"Hi, honey, I'm Hoooome... You won't believe the bargain I scored today and don't worry, the guy who's delivering it promised he wouldn't leave any marks on the lawn

The best Kiwi Breasts

It's official Angela Bloomfield has the best Kiwi Breasts... as voted by 1500 WOMEN! Now I'm sorry, but you can't use women to make such a huge aesthetic judgement. Some things are best left to us blokes.

God designed us this way. Your average bloke studies the phenomonon with a fervour that is bordering on obsessive. Women have to have expensive television campaigns to convince them to do what any redblooded bloke would do at the drop of a hat... or bra.. or wet t-shirt.

Incidentally, I just happen to agree with their findings, look at the picture who wouldn't agree...

Of course Niki Watson would get the nod for the most expensive and there would have be an award for "Best Face-Plunge Cleavage"... Kerry Woodham hands down.

TV addictions

I confess I'm also addicted to some TV programmes. What is surprising about this is that I'm starting to like some American TV. West Wing, I like that, fast paced dialogue and the characters are static only when necessary.

Having been in a bit of TV (Herc, Xena, Shorty St, City life, Street Legal and so on. The sort of stuff that just about every journeyman actor in NZ has done.) I know how directors and especially sound trogs hate dialogue delivered on the move. It's a bitch, the Boom Operator has to be right on his game and given that in a TV crew, the Boom Operator is often at or near the bottom of the food chain the chances are slim especially in NZ where we tend to be generalists rather than specialists.

On top of that you see the way they dodge through passage ways , corridors and doorways and in and out of offices all while the dialogue is going on. That means Carrycam or the Cameraman strapped into harness so he can carry a damped camera mount. This raises all sorts of other issues. Cameraman has to have his eye in the viewfinder while going backwards at the same pace as the actors are walking. Film cameras have notoriously shallow depth of field and so Cameraman has to maintain the exact distance between actor and lense. Behind him is Asst Cameraman rolling up cable while steering No1 backwards through the maze all the while avoiding the Boom operator also going backwards. If the head sound dude is a nice guy, then boom-guy's mike is plugged to a wireless transmitter at his waist, if not then he's rolling up cable as well.

It's all a recipe for chaos but if you can pull it off, which the West Wing crew seem to do week after week, it makes for great pacey drama. It's production values and it can't be beat as long as it's got good writing to go with it. Awesome. And disturbingly the Americans seem to be getting it right a lot.

As well as West Wing, add 24 and Huff. It makes making decisions about what to watch bloody hard. Friday night at 8:30 especially.

Mind you as soon as it seems the Americans seem to be catching up, Aunty Beeb or ITV or whoever in pommy land comes up with something like Rome. Ha! Cool.

Addictive personalities

I'm definitely an addictive personality type. Computer games were designed for Addictive personalities. Now I'm not a gamer so I don't have the hard core gaming plant. I have a machine that runs Win2k (The best product that MS ever stuck their sticker on) on a 1gig processor and 512 megs of ram with an old 64 meg Nvidia card. So I'm not your counterstrike/Quake3/Castle Wolfenstein type.... At least I didn't think so until a couple of years ago my son gave me a copy of Dungeon Seige. The result was disturbing.

I have a good mate who is a gamer, RPG's and all that and I used to chuckle into my beir-sticks when he would disappear offline for weeks on end after finding a new game. (With Jagged Alliance II it turned into months IIRC) Anyhoo suffice to say I laugh no more. The first taste of Dungeon Seige saw me disappearing to my Pooter room for hours on end and I swore that would never happen again.

Unfortunately, I discovered the expansion pack to DS and as you can tell from my recent blogging frequency, the addictive personality reared it's ugly head. I'm not sure what's more disappointing, the fact that I weakened or the fact that Game expansion packs are obviously like movie sequels, second time round sux.

Of course this has been made possible by the weather. The wettest July on record has translated into an equally soggy August. Everything is wet, you can't dig because there's nothing but mud underneath. You daren't wheelspin because the wheels will break through to the mud and the truck and trailer will start acting like Torvill and Dean on a very bad hair day.

Consequently I have done bugger all for weeks while Doddery and the maintenance boys are up to their eyeballs... in mud... what else?..... And what am I doing: Killing monsters and demons and saving the virtual world of course. Well up until a day or two ago that is... Then I packaged the game up and sent it to my son, Ha! revenge is sweet! ;).

Yesterday it was getting metal onto a track up to an airstrip so that the fertiliser trucks could get to the bin where the Topdressing planes load up. A truck and trailer got stuck up there requiring the bringing in of a 25 tonne Dozer to drag him out. An exercise which will cost the Cocky over a grand. As opposed to a couple of hundred bucks for a bit of maintenance.

Spreading metal on farm tracks is not for the fainthearted or inexperienced. The tracks are generally narrow, rough and usually slippery in this weather. My mate in another truck was spreading on an uphill section of the track, without warning, the load shifted to the back of the truck in a big lump facilitating what can only be described as a wheelie. Not particularly unusual on this sort of job, but the wrong actions at this point can have bad consequences. Slam on the brakes for instance at the wrong moment, or putting foot on clutch, can result in broken front axles as the front of twenty tonnes of truck come slamming down from two and a half metres up. Best move is just ease the throttle off and as the metal pours out the back; the front will gently drop back to the ground. Of course the truck is still travelling straight ahead at this point so you just have to hope that there are no corners in your immediate future. My mate was a relative newbie and this was the first time he'd had the front of the truck grasping at the sky but he handled it well... even if he did look a little bleached in the face afterwards.

The only real downside was that I didn't have a camera!

Bugger!

thin blue line 2

One of the many cable laying machines about the highways locally laying the fibre optic cable. This particular one I'm told is called a "plough" because it has a vibrating mole plough attachment on the back that feeds the cable down underground. This method is the fastest... Fast that is, relative to a racing snail. I am 1.34 kms from the end of our road (I know this because of our emergency number) and it took them three days to get from my front gate to the end. Shades of the Bullet train.

There are thrusting machines for pushing beneath obstacles: driveways culverts and such and "Chain Trenchers" for doing bits where the ground is too hard for the "Plough"

The thrusters bore through the ground horizontally and a plastic pipe is inserted in the resulting hole. When the "Plough" arrives at the obstacle the crew has to unroll the entire cable reel, push the end through the pipe then drive the "plough" to the other end of the pipe and wind all the cable back on the reel again... being very careful not to break it or kink it of course.

Makes watching grass grow seem spine tinglingly exciting and is possibly why the Guard Cones had a very bored look. They only look attentive right now because I pointed the camera at them. Sometimes I wonder, if their resemblence to the Daleks is just coincidence

A thin blue line

An interesting entry on Dodderys Blog that I have a story about. The blue fibre-optic cable in his pic also goes right past my front door. Mouth wateringly close for someone who is still a broadband free zone. Cable laying machines have been running all over the place. Of course when a gang turned up outside my front door, I had to inquire. It seems that the fibreoptic cable is being laid between Hamilton and Dunedin and all points in between. The people who are laying this is a company called FX. (this one I think) Now I don't where the backing is coming from but this is serious money and is in direct competition to telecom. Now considering the significance of this I can't recall hearing anything about it in the news media.

Unfortunately despite some rather undignified begging it sems it will be some months before it's up and running and then, their focus is initially going to be business clients so no cure for TFU's dialup.

Bugger

Five a.m.

And I struggle out of bed. Outside it's freezing. Last night I got things ready. Jeans and workshirt hang in the hot water cupboard beside the hot water cylinder, boots on top so everything is nice and warm when I throw it on, so at least that's a feel good thing.

Stir up the fire and throw some wood on to get the room a little warmer. Had a shower last night because it impossible in the morning, the cold water pipes are frozen. Only hot water to be had. That's OK, enough for a hot flannel over the face and a coffee. Make lunch, fill the thermos and out the door to the car.

The morning is filled with stars, 5:40 it's still dark. The sky is clear like crystal, it seems like there isn't a Star in the universe that you can't see. The grass is crisp and frozen and the air tingles your airways like sparkling ice water on your tongue.. The old Merc's V8 objects to being rudely awakened but it obligingly ferries me to the yard. The S-Line doesn't worry about icy early mornings and she grumbles to life with barely a flick of the key. Every morning the ritual is the same Oil - water - Hubmeter. Wander up and down kicking 22 tyres hoping against hope that nothing has gone down overnight. Nothing worse than changing a tyre first thing on a frosty morning. Lastly, Logbook to keep the Godsquad Happy.

Today the job is hauling softrock from our quarry to a Dairy farm for a new feed pad construction. The haul is going to take us past the Waipapa Dam on the Waikato river, then up into the hills and down towards the top-end of the King Country. The gotcha for the morning is the descent off the Arohena plateau down to Waipapa, the road is a steep, low gear descent and often icy when there is heavy frosts. 44 tonnes all up with a full load can get a little exciting if the traction disappears. Not too much of a hassle tho, three truck and trailers on the job today and about 90 years of combined driving experience, just requires a little extra care. The bonus today is that we have a loader driver, the job is fairly short haul, about an hour and a bit turn-around and the boss wants as much done before the weather turns again. John, the the guy who drives the 21 tonne digger makes his machine dance in a graceful ballet that belies the power that he controls. The teeth on the bucket tear at the rock, ripping it out of the quarry face before picking it up and depositing it gently in the truck and trailer. A beep on the digger's horn tells me that the requisite 26 tonnes of rock has been carefully distributed over the truck and trailer. The distribution is important, a badly loaded truck is an unstable and difficult to control beast, especially with the hoist up. A good driver takes extreme care over how the load is put on his truck, a good loader Operator makes life a dream. John is one of those Good Loader Operators

With the load on, the S-Line's work really starts. The road up out of the quarry is winding narrow metal and steep in places. Up till now I've used maybe 5 or 6 of the available 15 gears . On highway with a load I'll use ten. The five gears in the low box, often called deep-bottom-under, are usually only brought into play in difficult circumstance. We start off in 6th or 7th, the chassis twists, the nose rises, as the clutch bites and the 400 horses strain to pull 44 tonne out of the quarry. Climbing up to the main road will require 30 or more gear changes and the truck will only occasionally get over 30kph before I get to the seal. Once on the main road the run is fast, the initial part is gentle downhill before getting to the steep drop to the Waipapa Dam. We're doing a hundred K as we approach the top, we change down 4 gears using the Jacobs Engine brake to slow the truck fast as we come over the top and start rapidly descending through the first cuttuing. Sure enough the telltale glisten of ice on the road shows in the light of the just rising sun. Ease on the foot brakes, it's important to spread the braking over all the wheels while not allowing lockup especially of the steerers. For many years is was standard practice to disable the brakes on the front axles of trucks that travelled the desert road in winter. As long as your front wheels were still turning you still had steering.

The climb up from the Waikato river before turning off the seal toward Waitete is winding and slow and usually means a couple of cars stuck in behind the truck. Locals are no problem they just accept it like Aucklanders accept traffic jams, but often someone takes stupid risks to get past. After about half an hour and more climbing along another winding metal road you come up over the top of the Waitete block and the vista that is spread out before makes you realise why you love getting up at 5 am and getting out here. The sun has risen on a beautiful clearskied day. There is a dazzling white coating on everything. It's just gorgeous.

I reach into my bag to get my Digital Camera so I can put this stunning pic on my blog....and the bloody batteries are flat. Bugger!

Sometines Technology really bites!

They say a Picture is worth...

a thousand words.. While a picture can communicate, it is a rare picture that touches the soul like an artful turn of phrase. There are those wordsmiths who can craft a phrase that makes any picture a faded insignificant thing. .

Barista is one of those wordsmiths..

The Great Project Dilemma

It's a guy thing... Get a shed.. fill it with projects. I've come to the conclusion that "projects" require one to be a bit OCD. Certainly when you have a big shed it tends to fill with projects. Like the Imp which was going to be a pre '65 racer and the mini which was going to be a paddock racer and the Ladas which were going to be a team of Targa cars... just for a laugh... still might do that.

But when it comes to blokes sheds this one is up there for the prize of the best. Old Len was a true Gentleman and I like the fact that he got things to put in his shed, not just because they were old but because they were interesting..... a lot like Sir Len himself. Each thing in his collection had a story attached. I sort of think that if Sir Len were alive today he'd be a hell of a blogger, just blogging the story of his collection.

Every blokes dream... sort of.

I'm lucky, I live in the country on a small block, 2 Acres. Not a lot, but enough to feed ol' meathead and to have a shed. And it's a hell of a shed, 7000 sq ft give or take a foot or two. You can see one end of it in the pic on the right. What you can see is about a quarter of it. The house is down on the left and that's not a small house. Now a lot of blokes have come out, have taken one one look and gone gaga. Admittedly it's got a few toys: A 6 foot gap bed Lathe, couple of welders, gas plant and the like, all a bit like their owner; getting past their "use-by" date . Now there is one law that supercedes even that bastard Murphy and that is

"A mans junk shall expand to fill the available space."

Now if you had a business for a while that involved machinery, trucks and such, supplementary junk law "A" takes effect which says "Substitute 'fill' for 'overflow'". There are other supplementary laws involving Children along the lines of "They leave, their junk stays" but discussing the detail of those subsets would be getting way too complicated. Suffice to say that overflow was putting it mildly. I have however made progress. I've had two truckloads (about 8 tonnes) of scrap taken away already. More to go soon but the cars are the thing. Good grief how did I collect so many vehicles. If you happen to be looking for parts I can supply from:

2 Lada Classics 1500 5 speed versions
65 Mini 850 Complete with set of new tyres
68 Hillman Imp Body only motor and trans sold
86 Toyota Crown complete
81 Ford Cargo minus cab but with motor and 4 stage Allison trans
1 Hako Minisweeper
Plus heaps more, too many to list. And that's just the vehicles.

When I saw this place before we bought it I just fell in love. Now I'm having to clean it up. The scrap man loves me, but for me the flush has worn off somewhat.

So guys, be careful about wishing for that dream shed.... you might just get it. Right now I'd settle for a single room hut with a leanto on the banks of the Wanganui.....with just enough room for the canoe or two.

An icon passes

I read in tuesdays herald that production of the Hindustan Ambassador has stopped. Tragic..

I remember a comment the Manufacturers made to Jeremy Clarkson about why the Ambassador didn't have disc brakes. It was because a disc braked car would stop too quickly thus causing multiple pileups as less efficiently braked cars frantically tried to stop in the same distance.

I'm sure the question on everyones mind is: Where in gods name are we going to get our post vintage Morris Oxford parts now.

The annual June migration

Most of my work is done in rural districts. the Casa del TFU is in the middle of what is considered by many to be the richest dairying country possibly in the world. Dairy farmers financial years in NZ start on the 1st of June. So every year for a week either side of this date stupidity rules the roads as cockies try to get their stock from their old farm to the flash new place 20 k down the road in the cheapest possible manner.

One thing is a certainty stupidity breeds. Not only the drivers are stupid, the farmers try to be stupid too, just to exascerbate the situation. Problem is I've been around long enough and farmed in the right places to have seen, and worked with, Drovers moving real mobs. 2 or 3000 head sometimes. Drovers rarely held up traffic cos they spread their mobs out along the road side. Cockies these days try to keep them as bunched up as possible. Trying to get a truck and trailer through a mob when they travelling in the same direction as you is a bloody pain.

So advise to farmers for next year. Take a leaf out of the old drovers book. Borrow a couple of horses. They're easier to sit on all day than a bike and they travel at the same speed as a Cow. Don't drive the whole mob, just the old Girl that all the others follow. And be patient... it's much less stressful

Nine weeks smoke free

Nine weeks.

No smokes

Except for the occasional weakening

The weakening is good because it proves that I could be back to 30 a day in an instant. I stopped for two years back in 98 and had myself fooled that I could have the occasional smoke without it worrying me. Went to the 'States to stay with friends ... all smokers.... By the time I came home I was back to 25 Winnies a day.

Antismoking Crusaders are the pits. Self righteous prats to the last one. The evangelistic ex-smokers are no better, but they're not doing it out of some altruistic crusade for a better society, hell no it's purely selfish they're just preaching to themselves. It's their way of keeping on the wagon. If they spout the BS loud enough and long enough they brainwash themselves.

All the crap the ASH types sprout is so much nonsense. All their bloody ads on TV just remind me how much I want a smoke.

It's pure economics. My wallet is heavier to the tune of about 80 bucks a week or whatever a pack of 25 Winnies a day would cost. That's it, nothing else - full stop! If I could get my smokes for free, I'd smoke. If I won the Lotto tomorrow I'd start smoking again. But I don't want to ..... Why ? because when I gave up the last time after about 6 or eight months my sinuses opened up and I woke up one morning without a dry mouth.... now THAT rocked. But it's something that a nonsmoker would probably never understand.

Yay, weather has turned

The only problem with being able to sleep in on days when the weather is crap is the boredom.... you can tell by the number of posts. Meathead isn't the best for sparkling repartee and he has no knowledge of Rugby. However looks like there may be work tomorrow, which means stupidly long hours as we try to catch up the time lost for the weather. Oh well!

On the subject of sports, Liz Ellis, seriously staunch Aussie and meanest piece of work on a netball court (Non contact?.... Yea right! That's her on the left about to tackle our Irene) is quoted in the herald saying there is one thing that Kiwis are better at than the Aussies and that's giving Netball Television screen time.

Dang, someone should wake those Aussies up. This is up there with the best. Lots of Super fit, buffed chicks with long legs in short skirts indulging in a bit of full body contact. I mean come on ... Tem George is the hottest thing on TV at the moment.

It's got violence and passion and it looks good. I mean by comparison to Womens Basketball.... Why is it they all look like blokes with bumpy chests?

Wake up Oz TV, you don't know what you're missing

I have a horse

Not actually my horse, it belongs to a Pig hunter friend who grazes him on my block. Very useful, he keeps the grass down. That's him in the pic. I call him Meathead and although he's not mine, we're the best of buddies. I just put him out on the long acre (Grassy strip down the side of the road for the Townies) He likes the long acre because he can get up a good turn of speed. Burning up and down the long acre (much more fun than a square acre) is one of his three favorite pasttimes, the other two are rolling in the dirt which he has just finished doing and eating, which he is indulging in while doing his level best to ignore me pointing the digi at him. Something he wouldn't be doing if I had an apple or a carrot in hand.

If I was away working today, when I got home he would be hurtling up at full gallop to welcome me. If you think that a big dog rushing at you can be trepidatious, think about a goodly proportion of a tonne of horse. I'm glad he has good brakes.

He came trotting up to me when it was time to get moved out of the square acre and as soon as he was close enough he sneezed.

I think he may be getting a bit of a cold.

I needed a shower

Confession: I'm a bird lover

Especially our local native wild life.... By extension that means I hate cats and dogs. If you had ever seen what a predator does to a Kiwi, you'd understand why.

There is a subdivision, Five Jems, in the Western BOP where predator pets are banned. Wouldn't it be great if that spread all over the country.

Dial up blues

I hate Dialup, I hate telecoms excuses. EXCUSE ME Ms Gattung. The Box down the road will take a minidslam, a conklin or a GoLong. It's only a k away so I could have reasonable broadband speed. But No they refuse to put anything in because it would be "too expensive"...... And yet Teresa Gattung has the gall to say on TV that the other ISPs won't look after the rural customers with unbundling.... The irony of this statement is that she makes this profound statement as tho telecom IS looking after us. Well the news is, it couldn't get any worse.