The Waitakere Redneck

Climate Change - the NEW Religion

2010-03-24T10:41:00.002+13:00

Stuff Scientology, ditch Destiny Church (it’s a cult anyway) and kick Kabbalah into touch; there’s a new religion in town called Climate Change.

Followers of this religion believe that the world is warming and unless something is done the planet is doomed - their Zealots are convinced man is to blame.

The Climate-changers, like most other religions, base their beliefs on faith - there is no definitive proof, although they do differ in one respect. Most religions base their belief on teachings and documents handed down over centuries; not so the Climate-changers, they ignore the fact that the planet has had 500 million years of climate and just focus on distorted data gleaned from the last few decades.

The prophets of Climate Change are scientists using false data and dodgy models to justify their existence and need for research grants. These prophets hoodwink gullible politicians (remember Al Gore anyone?) into believing what they say is gospel. The media then do what they do best which is to spread the unsubstantiated “facts” to the ignorant public.

Greenies by nature are just fuckwits and will follow any cause contrary to common sense. They also appear to have a dislike (apart from washing, skin and hair care) of mankind. As far as they are concerned WE caused Climate Change – bullshit!

Do not be sheep and blindly follow the ignorant. Do not listen to the greenies or politicians, if you are in school do not believe your teachers and certainly do not believe the media. Do some research on the subject and make up your own mind.

Have a look at Joanne Nova and her Skeptic's Handbook and the new Skeptic's Handbook II for common sense facts.

This is what the Redneck believes:

Climate Change has been occurring since the earth was born.
The planet does not need saving, it can look after itself – the same cannot be said for mankind however.
The planet has been hotter before and colder before.
The planet will be hotter in the future and colder in the future.
Global warming is not happening at the moment – the reverse is true.
There is Yin and Yang – there maybe droughts in Australia but it is flooding in Europe. The Arctic ice may be melting but the Antarctic ice is increasing.
There has been more carbon in the atmosphere before.
Global temperature records have been taken for only 150 years of 500 million.
Past climate models have proven to be inaccurate.
Weather cannot be accurately forecast for next week let alone for the next century.

Of course the Redneck could be completely wrong; God may be an old man with a long white beard (like Gandalf the white) sitting on a cloud, our cows could be the reincarnation of long departed relatives, one of our doves could be uncle Bob and the planet could be on course for man-made destruction. I just don’t believe it!

Earth Hour – What a Waste of Time!

2010-03-15T14:18:00.001+13:00

This morning, as every morning, the radio alarm clock jolted me into life with the on-air ramblings of Corbett, Jesse and Joe from More FM. I usually catch the end of the 6 am news bulletin then intermittently doze and wake until I finally crawl out of bed at 6:40 following the latest Hollywood gossip from Joe. This morning my slumber was broken by an advertisement for Earth Hour - suddenly adrenalin kicked in and I sat up saying “Not this bullshit again”!

Earth Hour is a greenie event organized by WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature, or depending on what country you are in, World Wildlife Fund). Annually on the last Saturday of March they want everyone to turn off lights and appliances for one hour between 8:30 and 9:30 pm to raise awareness of “Climate Change”. What a load of rubbish!

Their website makes this statement: “Earth Hour 2010 will continue to be a global call to action to every individual, every business and every community. A call to stand up, to show leadership and to be responsible for our future”. Again I say what a load of rubbish!

Turning off the lights is just a gimmick; it will make no difference except save a few cents in your power bill. It is just a publicity stunt for WWF and an excuse for the Sydney Morning Herald to print a few more column inches and ego trip (The Sydney Morning Herald conceived this daft event with WWF in 2007).

Greenie organizations like WWF and Greenpeace start with well intentioned ideas but wind up “shooting themselves in the foot” by making daft, exaggerated and sometimes untrue statements to bolster their cause and financial coffers.

Greenpeace started “saving whales” and now are just a bunch of publicity seeking vandals. WWF wanted to save the rainforests from destruction, a worthy cause which I support, but now have jumped onto the “Climate Change” bandwagon. Ironically WWF have been criticized for promoting Palm Oil as “sustainable” even though Palm Oil Plantations are established on cleared rainforests – WTF!

Coming back to Earth Hour – it’s pointless. It’s not as though the Space Station is going to beam back pictures of Earth when the lights go out. Just in case there are some space photos, I will be making my own protest to the futility of the event by turning on an outside security light for the hour. If there is a solitary light shining up from Auckland, it will show the residence of the only person in the area with a brain – the Waitakere Redneck.

Rust Never Sleeps

2010-03-14T17:40:00.002+13:00

Rust Never Sleeps is the name of an album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse - music legends from my youth, 1979 to be exact. It also should be one of life’s mottos like “shit happens” or “nothings certain but death and taxes”. Regardless of what you do, any painted steel object will eventually succumb to rust with it starting in some hidden corner, and by the time it is noticed the damage has been done.

Having a large property we require various vehicles and implements to enable its upkeep – all of which have to be stored outside which exposes them to Auckland’s humid, and I suspect due to the fact we are on a narrow part of the island, salt laden air. Gradually over the last 12 years or so this equipment has been slowly but surely rusting away.

The Suzuki Jeep - before things started falling off.

One of our first vehicles was a Suzuki 4WD Jeep which was required to transport us to and from the lower paddocks. The Jeep, which admittedly had rust to start, is now basically just a chassis on wheels. First the floor rusted out, then the roof rusted and fell off, then the doors fell off followed by the sides soon after. It is now on “borrowed time” as the whole front end is loose including the main cross member supporting the steering column – when that goes, look out!! Oh I almost forgot to mention, the brakes crapped out years ago!

The Suzuki Jeep today - still going...just!

Another vital vehicle is our Ford 4WD tractor. We bought this from a fellow “lifestyle block” owner about 10 years ago in a very rusty state - he had left it sitting unused in a paddock for a year or more. Once I got it home considerable time and expense was spent cleaning, de-rusting, priming and painting. I even fabricated a new bonnet. Well all this was a big waste of fucking time – it’s rusty again!

The Slasher - slowly succumbing to rust.

The slasher which clears gorse and “tops” the grass in the paddocks has rusted through. While out mowing bits drop onto the revolving blades then fly up and whack me on the back of the head – ouch! I have now tied up the loose metal away from the blades with fencing wire as a temporary remedy. I was going to rebuild the slasher once the barn was built but that has taken so long and it is still not finished – the sneaky rust has “beaten me to the punch”.

The latest victim to this metal cancer is the Pajero. As mentioned in a previous post we have finally got the thing running and were hopeful that it would pass a Warrant of Fitness – ha, ha, dream on! Apart from silly things like the sun visor not working properly, one of the two number plate bulbs not working, the reversing light bulb not working, the left CV joint boot requiring replacing , the “last nail in the coffin” was RUST!

The Pajero floor rusted through.

View from the underside.

Mrs Redneck (unlike me) loves the Pajero as it is handy for shopping and collecting hay so I decided to have a go at repairing the rust which was in the front floor on the passenger’s side. I did not hold out too much hope as I no longer have a gas welding set, only a big 3-phase arc welder (called a stick welder these days). I had plenty of steel sheet left over from the tractor bonnet repair and found a handful of small electrodes. After removing a piece of the floor, fashioning up a replacement piece and winding the welder to its lowest setting (40~60 amps) I commenced the task. Now I knew it would be hard – welding thin sheet with a stick welder and doing a good job is almost impossible, but what-the-hey, I had all weekend.

The roughly welded patch.

Upon removing the mudguard - surprise, suprise, more rust!

Too much bloody rust!!!

After the first couple of welds it became apparent that the rust had spread further than anticipated so my “patch” had to be extended further up the side of the vehicle. I then removed the mudguard and wheel to gain access to the underside of the repair in case any welding was required in that location. After brushing off the mud – low and behold, more rust, too much rust to be precise. I decided to “abandon ship” as I would be just wasting my time trying to repair holes in such an awkward position with my limited resources. The Pajero will just have to stay on the property and be the successor to the Suzuki Jeep.

We will probably “sneak down” to the local gas station for refuelling and may pop to the post box or even the library – so shush, don’t tell anybody!

China has the right idea – shoot them!

2010-03-08T16:50:00.003+13:00

China does not waste any time on low-life murderers and drug dealers – they just shoot them! After reading the latest exploits of Bailey Junior Kurariki I wish New Zealand would follow suit. This Maori brat is just a waste of space, constantly getting into trouble, only to be let off by our “soft-cock” Court system.

Kurariki was only 12 years old when he was convicted of the senseless manslaughter of pizza delivery man Michael Choy in 2002. He was jailed for just 7 years which is a crime in itself and on release he claimed to have “found God” – well, unless there is a “God of Arseholes”, that proved to be a load of shit!

Looks can be deceiving - this is a 12-year-old killer

Since his release he has been charged with assaulting a prison officer, assaulting his girlfriend, wilful damage and committing an indecent act. Also there have been two charges of indecent assault and four charges of breaching parole. He also spat on, and shoved photographers while leaving Court.

The latest charges of indecency occurred when he exposed himself and masturbated in front of two female NZ Herald reporters while he was being interviewed by them in the kitchen of his mother’s house – what a wanker! As a parting shot he is alleged to have groped the reporters before they managed to flee the house. All of this happened while Kurariki’s mother, who is ill from the effects of cancer treatment, was in another room.

I can’t for the life of me, see why anyone let alone two women, would want to be alone with this mongrel. Even more of mystery is why such a completely worthless excuse of a human being is allowed to continue with his behaviour.

A bullet does not cost much.

Beauty, Drugs and the Beast.

2010-02-24T17:00:00.003+13:00

What makes attractive young women fall for drug-dealing scumbags? Come to think of it why, time and time again, we see beautiful women on the arm of some ugly dropkick of a partner – what they have that us normal blokes do not have. Is it money, flash car, flash home, big penis – or all of the above?

In New Zealand the criteria appears to be Headhunters Gang affiliation, drugs and crime. I’m not sure whether a big “willy” has any clout – being a dickhead certainly does.

Millie and her boob-groping monkey.

First of all we had the sad case of pretty model Millie Elder. Millie appeared to have it all, good looks and a wealthy father who loved her. She stuffs this up by getting involved in drugs and hooks up with Connor Morris the son of a “patched” Headhunters Gang member. She has been in court so often for methamphetamine charges she may as well be on the end of a bungey cord. Every time her father steps in to help she basically craps on him and goes back to drugs – what a looser.

Anna Ngo.

Last week we had the case of model and former Auckland rugby cheerleader Anna Ngo being found guilty of supplying methamphetamine. She is 36 years old and now faces a long jail term with a maximum of life. In fact knowing the NZ Court system she will probably get a longer sentence than a murderer – certainly more than a violent rapist. And guess what - her current boyfriend is “patched” Headhunters gang member Joseph Hill.

If I was not married I would be straight down to the tattoo parlour for a few ugly Maori or Islander designs then I’ll just pop around to the local Headhunters lair and say: “Sign me up”!

On the road again…….the Pajero’s on the road again….

2010-02-23T09:53:00.006+13:00

Well not quite legally anyway, we still have to get a warrant of fitness and registration, but at least the bloody thing is running.

Shit it must be two years since the crapheap started making the clunking sound signalling impending doom for the engine – we took it off the road and let it sit ever since.

In my younger days I liked nothing better than to spend hours under the bonnet tinkering away or lying on my back wrestling with the transmission - oil and shit dripping into my face. Why throw money at girls when there was a Mini to do up. Now older, married and hopefully wiser I can’t be bothered with the frustration of being a D.I.Y mechanic – hey I may as well pay someone else to do it!
This is especially true for the Pajero as it is a frustrating filthy beast to work on. So what do we do, we call on our mad neighbour to do the job for us… well we bought it from him in the first place – it’s his baby.

I was sure one of the big-end bearings had gone but after wiggling the crankshaft pulley I deduced that it must have been the main bearing. The neighbour waltzed over and informed us that the crankshaft is broken – “Bullshit the engine is still running OK” I said. After giving it another good wiggle myself I tended to agree – it was too sloppy to be just a bearing.

Broken crank - just after the first big-end.

A period of time went by while the neighbour kept his eye out for a second-hand block at pick-a-part (local wrecker of choice). Eventually one was found and the day finally came for the old engine to come out. And buggar me, he was right; the crank had broken after the first big-end. I still can’t get over the fact that the bloody thing ran with such a mortal injury. The crank was replaced and after shelling out $1,000 or so for bearings, seals, gaskets, oil, hydraulic fluid plus a battery she was ready to go.

How did it run - beats me!

After a few test drives up and down the street Mrs Redneck noticed oil pissing out from the bottom of the engine and as our mad neighbour was nowhere to be seen, the heap of shit was parked up once again.

Christmas came and went and Mrs Redneck was anxious to get the Pajero on the road especially after spending so much on it. The neighbour was conspicuous by his absence so last weekend I relented and parked the beast on the back lawn while running the engine to try and see where the leak was coming from. There was no easy way to do it; I had to lie under the engine to locate the problem. It turned out to be a pipe connecting the oil pump – the bolt was tight but it was not sealing. After removal I could see that the oil seals were old so they were replaced – there were heaps of bits left over from the gasket set we purchased! And that was it – she is now running quieter and no more drips.

There was one other task I had to do and that was to fashion an external rear view mirror from parts at hand as Mrs Redneck refuses to drive without one. The previous mirror was bitten off and chewed up by one of our cows – I kid you not – they love plastic and the glass must give added texture. Eventually a mirror was constructed by screwing a smaller left-hand intact mirror inside the casing of the broken one. I bodged up a base to attach to the ball on the end of the original stalk and Bobs-your-uncle we have a working mirror.

The mirror-in-a-mirror.

Next stop a warrant of fitness – I wonder what we will be pulled up on. It had better not be expensive or involve me on by back under the thing or I may drive it over the nearest cliff!

Sweet 16, Never mind the kissing, I’m sailing around the world!

2010-02-21T16:58:00.007+13:00

Most 16 year old girls today probably have boyfriends, cruise the malls, spend hours on the phone and are constantly texting not so for Jessica Watson and Abby Sunderland – they are busy sailing nonstop around the world all alone except for the communication between them and their land based support crew thousands of miles away – oh and the thousands following their every move via their blogs and Facebook pages.

Jessica Watson

Abby Sunderland

Why on earth would the Redneck be interested in a couple of chicks in a boat anyway? Well that is a rather long story but basically I have been a “closet sailor” for many, many years.

When I was young, like 8 or so, my Grandfather lived in a pine clad valley near Upper Hutt called Pinehaven. I learnt that Francis Chichester who was a famous aviator and yachtsman of the time planted the trees prior to the Great Depression – that name stuck in my head and when a little older I read one of his books about circumnavigating the globe in his boat the Gipsy Moth IV.

Many years later New Zealand became involved in the Whitbread Round the World yacht race. It was 1981 and Peter Blake was skippering Ceramco while Digby Taylor skippered Outward Bound. Ceramco was leading until the mast fell down and they had to limp to their next stop under “jury rig” – it was a fascinating saga at the time - real man vs. the elements stuff! Both published a book of their exploits and I bought both of them. Peter Blake’s book was the best as it was set out like a diary so each day was documented with lots of photographs – there was never a dull moment.

In 1987 New Zealand participated in the Americas cup being sailed off Freemantle Australia. Our 12 metre yachts were fast and revolutionary - they were dubbed the “plastic fantastics”. The races were televised and exciting – I was glued to the TV at all hours! This Americas Cup campaign was the seed for New Zealand’s later and successful attempt to wrest the cup from the Americans.

Around this period I decided I was going to build my own yacht so I purchased plans for a Roberts 45’ and several boat building books, it became a life-long dream of mine. Oh the recklessness of youth!! Where was I going to build it? Where was the money to build it? After looking at a few sites it was put in “the too hard basket” – maybe in a few years….

In 1988 while working in Port Moresby the yachting bug hit again. The local watering hole was the Port Moresby Yacht Club and several of the expats owned a boat of some sort – the Aussies were fishing mad. One day the company’s sales manager came into my office with a photograph of a yacht for sale at Loloata Island – the owner was “going finish” (local term for employment contract completed) and wanted a quick sale. I had a look and was taken for a sail – oh heaven! Unfortunately reality soon set in as I could not get the finance. So it was back to my dreams (dreams are free they say).

I met Mrs Redneck and the rest is history. The ironic part of this story is I still have the plans, I now have the money, and I now have 13 acres of land on which to build it. Trouble is, apart from convincing Mrs Redneck to part with considerable $$$$ for the project I would be an old age pensioner by the time it would be built – it would have to remain a dream so we will spend our hard-earned money elsewhere.

So all I can do now is follow the exploits of the young Jessica and Abby – living their dream. Thank God for blogs, YouTube and Facebook – I don’t have to wait for their books to come out.

Blog Rises From The Dead

2010-02-20T17:11:00.000+13:00

Well it’s almost a year since my last post and in keeping with Easter I have decided to raise my blog from the dead. Why haven’t you blogged for so long I hear you say – well, in a nutshell, I couldn’t be fucked! Well strictly speaking that is not true, yes I was lazy, but I had other things to occupy myself with like Playstation 3 and Facebook. My gaming and social networking experiences will be covered in later posts.

What has happened in the last 12 months? I will catch up in future posts but in summary:

I’m still building the bloody barn.
The Pajero is only just running again.
My Nana (featured in a previous post) passed away – 100 years old, not a bad innings.
Purchased a Playstation 3 (slim) and a home theatre system.
Joined Facebook.
Still can’t do anything with our land – I’m bloody angry about that.
The neighbours (on either side) has pissed us off – big time!

I’ve checked to see if my blog links, likes and dislikes are still relevant and consequently made a few changes. The likes and dislikes are basically the same – Vanessa Hudgens is still hot (her photo graces my work computer as wallpaper). I made several changes to my links as I am interested in the bullshit called “global warming” or “climate change”. I have added links to Jessica Watson and Abby Sunderland, two 16yr old girls doing a solo circumnavigation of the world by yacht – I will do a post about this later.

That’s about it for this post – time to open another beer (it’s bloody hot).

Hey Microsoft Where's The Scanner Wizard?

2009-03-02T21:29:00.002+13:00

Don’t you just hate it when you sit down to do something you’ve done many times before only to find the feature is no longer available in a later version of the same Microsoft product?

Microsoft dicked-around with the perfectly good spreadsheet that was Excel 2003 and came up with the dreaded ribbon menu in Excel 2007. Ok, as it turned out, the ribbon menu is quite cool once you get the hang of it, what really pissed me off is all the little things I liked (and used often in my job) no longer worked. Recording macros to find the correct visual basic code syntax no longer worked, except for the most basic operations, which I could figure out anyway. Drawing shapes on the worksheet is now a nightmare. I always have to remember to save the workbook in the correct format so my clients with the older version can read. Grrrrrr!!

The latest niggle, and the reason for this post, is: “Microsoft what the fuck have you done with the printer and scanner wizard”?

I have some old black and white photographs of my late mother and father (not late, alive and kicking) taken during their younger days together with wedding pictures. Also included are wedding photographs of some of my close relatives. Unfortunately some bright-spark left them all in a box under a house for years and they are badly damaged by mould – some have been destroyed. I have taken it upon myself to restore what’s left, before they are lost forever. The idea is to scan them into the computer then get a photo-lab to print them so I can rearrange in an album for posterity.

I decided to do the scanning via my laptop as Vista has a better photo viewing program than XP (easier to enlarge & you can “grab” with the mouse to position on the screen). I hauled out the old Mustek from the redundant computer bits pile and plugged it in – no go, too old, no driver updates available, oh buggar! I threw it back on the pile and got the Brother “jack of all trades and master of none” (prints a page a week, scans ok, faxes – sends ok but again prints a page a week) from the office and plugged it in. The laptop then sprang into life searching for all the necessary drivers. Once it told me that the scanner was in fact kosher I grabbed the first photo, wiped off a layer of mould with a damp sponge, placed it in the scanner, clicked on the big Microsoft “start” button on the bottom left of the laptop screen and perused the menu structure for the “printer and scanner wizard”. Where has it gone? I ran into the office, fired up the computer (running XP), clicked “start” and sure enough there it was under “Accessories”. I got more exercise by running back into the house and re-checking the laptop start menu under “Accessories” – it was not there W.T.F!

A Google search confirmed that it is no longer there. You have to import the image through Windows “Photo Gallery” – tried it and it sucks! I found the scanner wizard component of this program by hunting through the Windows directory and placed a shortcut on the desktop – tried it and it sucks! The older version on XP is far more versatile – I won’t go into detail just believe me it is a million times more user friendly.

I will now take the photos to the office, scan into the PC running XP, save to a flash drive and finally load into the laptop where I can manipulate and touch-up to my heart’s desire!

Why do Microsoft, time and time again, screw with us!
Have they heard of “If it ‘aint broke don’t fix it”?
Have they heard of “Backward Compatibility”?
Can I charge them for wasting my time – or can they be fined for just being “fuckwits”.

Nana's 100th Birthday

2009-02-28T21:30:00.009+13:00

After the doom and gloom following the Environment Court decision it was great to have something to celebrate for a change – my nana turned 100 and we had a 6 day break in Wellington for the celebration.

Her birthday, on Wednesday the 18th of February, was to be celebrated with an official “afternoon tea” function held at the Cashmere Home Johnsonville, where she has resided for the past four years. On the following Saturday there was to be another “family only” celebration at the Rest Home for those that could not make it on the Wednesday – not everyone is self-employed and of course there are great-grandchildren at school to consider. Following this second “afternoon tea” nana was shouting the family to dinner at the Paikakariki Fishermans Table Restaurant. My Aunty Shirley offered to “put us up” for the duration so we decided to drive down on Tuesday and return on the following Sunday.

My Aunt lives in Paraparaumu which is less than an hour North of Wellington City and only a ½ hour or so from the Rest Home so it was perfect – the trip was regarded not so much as a holiday but a chance to catch up with relatives from my mother’s side of the family (whom I miss) and to celebrate the occasion. Any sightseeing was secondary.

I usually enjoy driving to Wellington and make good time – it wasn’t to be on this occasion due to bloody road works.
We left home at 6am without breakfast as I intended to stop at McDonalds Tokoroa for a pit stop and McMuffin. Well, our stomachs rumbled way before then; in fact we were hungry after an hour on the road so pulled into McDonalds Hamilton where we had our McMuffin’s, hash browns and their damn fine hot coffee.
The next stop was at a rest area on the side of the road running around the Western side of lake Taupo where we had coffee from our thermos and a couple of pieces of quiche to quieten our stomachs until lunchtime. I always take this road to Wellington, it may be long and boring but there is very little traffic and you can drive consistently fast – a good place to make up time.
Lunch consisted of greasy takeaways from an Asian Restaurant in Taihape. The fried, battered fish, sausage and potato fritters was devoured at another rest stop on the side of the road 15 minutes South of Taihape but not before being stuck in more bloody road works.
The rest of the trip was uneventful as time seems to pass quickly once you get beyond Hunterville; in fact once you reach Bulls you are good as there.

9 hours after leaving Auckland we were finally relaxing at Aunty Shirley’s place catching up with the news and familiarising ourselves with the names of my cousins and their offspring. We would be able to hitch a ride with her to the Cashmere Home and the Saturday dinner as she had purchased a brand-new Honda a couple of years ago – it’s a four door red something-or-other as opposed to our two door Honda Prelude.

Redneck congratulates nana on her 100th.

On Wednesday afternoon we arrived at the Cashmere Home where they had a singer performing all the old favourite songs to a group of residents in one of the lounges. We waited and listened outside – nana had not been wheeled in yet (everyone is pushed around on la-z-boys with wheels). The local Member of Parliament and leader of the United Future Party, Peter Dunne, turned up and waited with us for the guest of honour to arrive. I was very impressed with him turning up, unlike the papers, and could not get over how much younger he looks in real life – he is a year older than me and doesn’t look it. Maybe they get free facials in Parliament!

Not enough room for all the candles.

Nana was wheeled in to the lounge where we all took turns for a quick greeting prior to the festivities. She looked frail (understandable considering), but I think the nurses got carried away with decking her out in a lei, a flower behind her ear and the overly red lipstick. The sing-a-long continued for a while – nana even joined in for a couple of songs. Speeches were made and Peter Dunne presented her with birthday cards from the Queen, the Prime Minister, the Governor General, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Minister for Senior Citizens (that’s a new one on me – didn’t know we had one). Afternoon tea, cake, sandwiches and sausage rolls were then served.

The Hon. Peter Dunne presents the cards.

A funny thing happened – I think we pissed the Rest Home people off by partially hijacking their ceremony. They served nana and the residents in the lounge then told us “able bodied yobbo’s” to help ourselves to refreshments in the hallway – nobody budged an inch! We were reminded several times that “TEA AND REFRESHMENTS ARE IN THE HALLWAY”. Still nobody moved we were just too interested in talking to each other. All of a sudden a trolley-load of food gets shoved into our midst followed by a curt “HELP YOURSELF”! Guess what, nobody moved. In desperation the Rest Home staff started passing around food and even gave us all a glass of sparkling grape juice – hilarious!

Birthday card from Her Majesty The Queen.

I must say that the Home is very depressing due to the condition of their residents which appear to be stroke or alchizmers suffers. Nana is 100 and she was the liveliest one there so her biggest problem is finding someone to talk to – there is little mental stimulation. The nursing staff are usually too busy so she has to make do with word puzzle books which are photocopied to a larger size for her to read.

I will write about our time elsewhere in Wellington in another post as this one is getting rather long.

The Saturday afternoon celebration was held in a smaller private lounge in the Home where nana could see all the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren in one place. This side of the family are not great breeders as there were only 16 of us plus one friend and one “partner”. Maybe we don’t produce because we use up “earth time” by living extra long lives – I hope so.

Screwed by the Environment Court

2009-02-28T12:03:00.003+13:00

For us, Friday the 23rd of January 2009 will go down in history as “Black Friday” as the Environment Court screwed us in their decision on the Swanson Structure Plan. Judge Jackson and his minions “went down the green path” stomping on the rights of the poor rate-paying landowner in the process. I have awarded him top place in the left sidebar (titled “Who & What I Dislike”).

Some Environment Court decisions appear to be “personal” with the Judge’s views carrying considerable weight. I wonder how we would have fared if the original Judge sought was appointed (he presided over the “Peat Decision”) instead of being stuck with a Wally from the South Island.

The greenies and wankers from the Waitakere Protection Society have won their battle and I can picture them now emerging from their mud and cow dung huts high in the ranges, wearing their eco-friendly hemp clothes, banging on hollow logs and tambourines in ecstasy over the decision.

The decision was the absolute “worst case scenario” for us. In fact never in a million years did I think it would be so tough – I will endeavour to explain:

I thought that the Swanson Structure Plan went to the Court for a ruling on whether it goes ahead or not. I did not expect the Court to draw up a completely new plan. The SSP involved additional lots on 170-odd properties and the Council, following the “Absolum Report”, supported the plan with reduced lot numbers i.e. no one was going to miss out, but some properties had their lot allocation reduced. The case was further complicated by landowners who did not get an allocation under the SSP taking their requests separately to the Court.

It should have been a yes/no decision but with all the bullshit flying around, the court case has dithered for four frigging years – unbelievable!

We found out about the decision indirectly by email – there will be a total of 52 potential lots, less than half of the number supported by Council which is significantly less than the number sought by landowners. It appears that only the successful landowners get a copy of the report. The unlucky have to trundle around to the Council to view or pay them for a copy – we were a paying member of the group taking the case to court so I would have assumed that we are entitled to a copy. Oh well, never mind, think of the trees saved!

The thing that irks us the most is the fact that our neighbour was given an allocation even though he has an existing minor dwelling – he will be able to have a total of three dwellings on his property. When I read that any new dwelling on his property has to be hidden be topography not trees i.e. house hidden by hill, the “penny dropped” – the Judge did not want any new houses to be seen! A trip to Council and consequent viewing of the decision document confirmed this. We could not have an extra lot as it could be seen by golfers on a private golf club – give me strength! I wonder if the Judge plays there, oh no, that’s right, he’s a South Island wanker.

Our property was one of a few that had a detailed analysis submitted by a landscape architect which although acknowledged by the Judge it carried no weight. The most annoying comment he made was that he conceded that the ground was crap and may revert back to scrub which would not be a bad thing as this will encourage the re-growth of native vegetation. This translates to “I don’t give a fuck about the 13 years you have spent removing gorse, blackberry and fighting the spread of wild ginger and pennyroyal. I want 10 acres of your land to revert to bush and be untouched. You may however remain living in your little two bedroom barn-house by the road on the narrowest portion of the property”.

We are not property developers. All I wanted was to build our “dream home” and pool with a view and enjoy life and ultimately retirement. We are not allowed to do this so we will eventually move – preferably out of New Zealand or at least out of Waitakere as the place is beginning to disgust me.

The “lucky landowners” have a lot of work to do as they did not escape Judge Jackson’s decision lightly, here are some of his requirements:

Hide house by topography (no views allowed!).
14 Properties have to form a public walkway through their land by registered right of way.
Several properties have to plant an “urban fence” i.e. a 20 metre wide planting along their boundary.
Someone has to plant a 30 metre strip of native bush.
In some cases stock has to be removed.
If the dwelling cannot be built out of sight then the allocation is lost – you are then “compensated” by not having to plant as much – whoop-de-doo!!!

This whole saga is a farce and as I said before we have been screwed, screwed big time. The more I think about it the angrier I get – what a fucked-up country (world?) we live in, run by morons, pandering to an even moronic minority.
WE DO NOT OWN OUR PROPERTY, WE HAVE NO RIGHTS, WE ARE JUST PAYING THE COUNCIL FOR THE RIGHT TO BE CARETAKERS OF THE LAND.
THE SAYING “A MANS HOME IS HIS CASTLE “IS NOW REDUNDANT.

Regrassing The Bank

2009-02-06T15:20:00.006+13:00

After finally clearing away all the excavated clay and “fine-tuning” the slope with a spade it was time to replace the turf. Unfortunately due to a run of hot weather the saved grass was somewhat “worse for wear” and was more like yellow-brown fluffy rocks instead of pliable green grassy sections of turf.

I used as much as I could but probably lost about 30% due to the weather. Fortunately the grass is Kikuyu, which is very hardy, so the remaining should recover and green up OK. The “bald” patches will grow over in time as the stems spread along the ground. Also this species of grass is ideal for my bank as it will form a dense blanket which should stifle any chance of erosion.

The dry and steep un-grassed portion of the bank was very slippery which I discovered to my peril. Due to the heat, one day I decided to dispense with the usual gumboots and wear sandshoes – big mistake! One minute I was standing, the next instant I was sitting on my arse. It took a second to catch my breath and boy did my lower back hurt. That was it, no more work for a while.

Luckily the jolt on my arse did not do any major damage – just sore muscles which recovered after a few days. By this time the holidays were over and I was back at my desk job so the injury happened at the right time – I would have been pissed off if the fall occurred earlier.

Saturday 24th Jan:
The completed building platform with some grass on the bank.

Murdurous Black Bastards

2009-02-06T14:20:00.005+13:00

I know I’ve gone on before (previous post) about the violent nature of the Maori race but it’s out of control. Can’t something be done about it?

There has been a spate of killings lately probably all executed by Maori. I have no proof yet but one can put two and two together when the perpetrator is a gang member or you see their features on the evening news.

Thanks to the NZ Herald I finally saw the youth who, with a baseball bat, bashed to death and then sexually assaulted Karen Aim - sure enough he was a Maori. For those that don’t know, Karen was a 26 year old bubbly and popular tourist from Scotland whose life was cut short by this arsehole who, as it turns out, had previously bashed another girl - with a rock for good measure. The boy was only 15 years old at the time so this sort of brutality must be in the blood.

The Killer and Karen.

While I’m at it the Maori mongrels who murdered Nia Glassie were sentenced last week with two of them getting life – although being New Zealand this means they would probably be out in 18 years or so.

Nia and the evil family.

Israel vs Hamas

2009-02-06T13:42:00.000+13:00

Apart from Obama there was one other overseas news event that caught my attention during my January blogging hiatus and that was the Middle East conflict.

Now I would be the first to admit that I know buggar-all about Middle East politics but one thing is for sure if someone spent several weeks firing missiles at me I would eventually say: “Enough is enough”!

Basically, as I saw it, Palestinian militants smuggle weapons into Gaza via a network of tunnels and fire them into Israel where they indiscriminately kill and maim innocent civilians. After a few weeks Israel gets pissed off with this and retaliates by blasting shit out of the Palestinian tunnels and anything belonging to the militant group Hamas.

The world got in an uproar over the Israeli retaliation – well as far as I was concerned they were justified, although they probably could have ended things a bit quicker. As soon as “innocent” Palestinian civilians started dying the TV media got into full swing showing all the carnage – especially women and children. Israel was condemned for “indiscriminate” killing but where was the media during the earlier missile attacks on Israel? Also you must remember that Gaza is a small densely-populated strip of land so there cannot be any form of attack without harming innocents. I have read of Hamas strongholds being situated alongside schools, hospitals and the like – sounds like “human shields” to me.

The world saw demonstrations and the accompanying violence which is prevalent these days. Whatever happened to peaceful demonstrations? Rioting does nothing for your cause – you just look like ignorant rabble!

As I said earlier I’m no expert but it appears that most Governments support Israel with the Palestinians and Hamas being the “bad guys” so I tend to sympathise with Israel in this conflict. This “bad guy” image was further reinforced by Hamas firing more rockets during the ceasefire and the report in today’s newspaper of Hamas taking UN humanitarian aid by armed force – way to go Hamas! How do you expect the world to provide aid when you do this?

Battering The Slopes

2009-02-06T12:49:00.006+13:00

Now that the barn platform has been dug down to more or less the correct level it’s time to batter the slopes so I do not require a retaining wall. A good rule of thumb appears to be 2:1 (or is that 1:2 I’m not sure which way around it goes); basically for every unit vertically you go two units horizontally. As my cut height is up to one metre I will have to start the slope two metres from the edge – shit still a lot of digging is required!

I thought cutting the slopes would be easy, just set the grader blade on a sharp angle and away you go – WRONG! The offset from the tractor is not enough. This combined with the large amount of “play” in the grader blade / tractor connections caused the rear wheels to rub against the bank preventing the blade to get a decent “bite”.

Perseverance and sheer “bloody-mindedness” enabled me to demolish a small portion of the bank to form a ramp which I could then reverse up and drive back down slowly eating away along the bank as I went. Of course I made a mess and consequently lost sight of the original cut line – nothing is easy!

After a few days and countless trailer loads of clay the bank was sufficiently battered and ready for re-grassing. I was unable to maintain the 2:1 rule due to a layer of rock-hard black clay – the grader blade either bounces over it or digs in and rips out a large chunk forming a crater – best to leave it alone.

A check of the barn set out showed that the base of the batter had “eaten “into my platform by 100mm or so – no problem I’ll just move the barn over. Wait a minute Jim what about the existing drain and driveway! Oops I forgot that moving the barn over will reduce the width of the drive and it may also clash with and existing cesspit.

After some measuring and head scratching (enlarging my bald spot) I determined that there would be a 60mm clearance to the cesspit and that the drive would be wide enough – maybe not enough for my brother who usually manages to hit something when he reverses out.

Friday 9th Jan:
Battering the slopes.

Future Axe Murderer (You've Been Warned)!

2009-02-05T21:25:00.002+13:00

Last month there was a news item about a three year old boy who was attacked by a dog. I didn’t pay too much attention until the mother appeared on TV insisting that the dog be destroyed for attacking her “innocent little darling”. This woman was hideous; her face was pierced with a shitload of studs in places I’ve never seen pierced before. Her “innocent” child had a Mohawk haircut and stared with cold blue piercing eyes – a future axe murderer if I’ve ever seen one!

It turns out that this “bastard child” tormented the dog by pulling on its testicles and not for the first time. The dog’s owner volunteered it for destruction but animal control officers had two independent witnesses who reported seeing the brat entering the yard and harming the dog by deliberately squeezing its balls – of course the animal is going to retaliate, who wouldn’t (I cross my legs at the thought).

Further investigations also revealed that the evil “bastard child” had been involved in two previous incidents of alleged animal cruelty.

After seeing the mother and her response to the incident it is clear that she is an unfit parent and one day will suffer the consequences. Remember this prediction – the brat will one day be a serial killer or at the very least an axe murderer!

Be afraid.....be very afraid!

Busy, Busy, Busy

2009-02-05T20:55:00.000+13:00

Back to work after the holidays and boy have I been busy – everyone expected me to attend to their job in my first week back – what a pack of wankers – but that’s builders for you!
Shit it’s almost a month since my last post – “time flies when you are having fun” as they say. A lot has happened during this period both in the news and on the personal front so I will make an effort this weekend to “catch up” otherwise the blog will stagnate and I will get too lazy (as has happened many times in the past).
Let the ranting begin………………………..!

Yesterday Was Hot, Hot, Hot!

2009-01-09T21:10:00.005+13:00

On Wednesday I gave up my outdoor activities (digging out a building platform for the barn) at 3pm – it was just too bloody hot!

Yesterday I almost gave up at 10am – it was even hotter!
Mrs Redneck placed a thermometer on the grass at got a reading of 52°C which settled down to 45~48°C during the course of the day which makes me wonder why they take the “official” city temperature readings at Mangere Airport. As far as I’m aware the thermometer sits in a white, vented box in grassy area wafted by sea breezes. This is hardly an accurate reading for those who are not sitting in a white, wooden, ventilated box on the edge of a coastal airport – the official reading was 22°C but it was 40°C upstairs in our house for fucks sake!

To my credit I managed to do a full days digging under the hot sun, aided by frequent drink breaks. My holidays are running out so I must make full use of the clear weather to complete the “donkey work” on the barn site.

I would complaining even more if it was raining so I had better not tempt fate by moaning about the fine weather – just shut up and keep digging Jim!

Here's the proof!

Redneck Goes To The Beach

2009-01-05T22:08:00.002+13:00

Every year I say to Mrs Redneck “We’ll go to the beach during the holidays” – well for the last two bloody years, due to one thing or another (laziness?), this never happened so I was even more determined to follow through this year!

Our favourite beach is Bethells as it is nearby and there is usually surf running which is more fun than the quieter waters over the shore. Unfortunately due to the dangerous rips it is not exactly “family friendly” so the very young, very old and fat people should stay away. Just today, it appears that an up-in-coming young rugby league player has lost his life after being swept away – apparently he saved his brother from a rip, but as is often the case, paid for it with his own life. The body has not yet been located so some of the relatives hold out a forlorn hope that he will be found ok. I would like to know why anyone would be so stupid as to swim there “after hours” when the lifeguards are not on duty – you are just asking for trouble.

My brother and his three kids are over on holiday from Tasmania so the whole family took advantage of a beautiful day to visit Cheltenham beach on the North Shore. This is a placid “family friendly” beach overlooking Rangitoto Island and beside the historic North Head. The only dangerous thing here would be the wife catching you check out the young “bikini girls”.

After spending the last couple of weeks digging out a platform for our new barn the Redneck (and the missus) decided to join in for the days outing - besides after a couple of rainy days the ground needed to dry out anyway.

I finally managed a swim, went on a short hike and suffered a minor case of sunburn. I can check the swim off my list but must add a note to apply more sun block next time!

View of Rangitoto Island from the beach.
(Rangitoto is the largest of Aucklands 50 extinct volcanos).

Redneck watching his brother trying to take a photo of Mrs Redneck - with the lense cap on!
You can see why his nickname is dickhead.

View of Auckland city from North Head.

The small guns to "protect" Auckland from the "Japanese Invaders".

The Big Gun.

View of Cheltenham Beach from North Head.

Environment Court Decision Soon?

2009-01-03T14:43:00.001+13:00

I received a potential present in my in-box on Christmas morning from the Swanson Structure Plan Supporters Group. It was a copy of an email from one of the Case Managers at the Department of Justice (Environment Court) to say that the Judge should release a decision on the Structure Plan (and consequently whether we can subdivide our property) during the first two weeks of January. The SSPSG’s comment was “which year?” as we are getting used to, but extremely frustrated by, the bloody long time it has taken to make a decision. It must have been a particularly complicated case for the Court as they have given verdicts in other cases starting after ours.

It would be just my luck (good luck though) that I start building the barn then find out that we can subdivide – boy I’ll be busy then as we would have to start the subdivision “ball rolling” as soon as possible – before anyone changes their minds! In reality, if the Judge rules in our favour, I’m sure the greenies or those arseholes at the ARC will try and lodge some kind of appeal – they have plenty of money to waste (from the poor ratepayers in the case of the ARC) in the hope that we give up and go away.

Any subdivision could affect the barn as there is a limit on the building coverage for each site – I’ll have to keep an eye out for that!

Sea Shepherd - Eco Terrorists.

2009-01-02T10:59:00.002+13:00

I see that the Sea Shepherd boats are back playing dangerous games in the Southern Ocean in the guise of conservationism. They have been tracking a Japanese whaling fleet and are determined to force them, by fair means or foul, to stop their whale hunt.

I hate Sea Shepherd as they are just a bunch of cowboys/terrorists recklessly charging around the world’s oceans wasting money, endangering lives and wilfully destroying property in a futile gesture for conservationism. They will have fuck-all effect on whale population so they should just grow up and get back into “the real world”.

I know that the Japanese whale hunt for “scientific purposes” is just bullshit, but that’s life – you won’t be able to change centuries of eating habits by intimidation on the high seas.

Two things really irk me about Sea Shepherd:

Firstly they exist to protect marine wildlife but have claimed to have sunk ten whaling boats – how much marine life was poisoned through the resulting pollution, or did they do an “environmental cleanup” of the wrecks. The acid bombs they throw at whaling vessels are not exactly environmentally friendly as well. Do they regard all this as “collateral damage” – if so then they are just a bunch of terrorists!

The second thing that pisses me off is the naming of their latest ship, and main whaling trouble-maker, The Steve Irwin. I was a fan of Steve and I am sure he would be “rolling in his grave” over the antics undertaken by his namesake. Steve was a “wildlife warrior” not an “eco-terrorist”. Sea Shepherd named the ship in his honour as he was going tag along on one of their Southern Ocean sorties – I bet he wouldn’t have thrown any bombs.

Terri Irwin stupidly approved the naming of the ship in Steve’s honour – I wonder what his father thought of that. Maybe that is another reason why he wants nothing to do with the Wildlife Park he and Steve started – the whole thing has gotten too big and commercial.
Terri’s fucked it!

Happy New Year - Still Digging!

2009-01-02T09:44:00.003+13:00

Happy New Year everyone!

We did nothing special to mark the event so it was off to bed at the usual time – can’t be bothered staying up to midnight as one day is the same as another as far as I am concerned! Of course I was also knackered from digging and carting clay all day.

The excavation is moving ahead slowly since the last post as a couple of days was lost due to rain – unfortunately it is raining again today (I hope I don’t run out of holiday time). Despite the weather I managed to shift about eight trailer loads but it is a real struggle when the clay is wet as it sticks to the shovel rendering it useless – I have to scrape the clay off with a garden trowel in between “digs” – a slow and time wasting exercise!

The photos below were taken on New Year’s Day. I am starting to cut the base to a predetermined level – this is a rather slow process due to the variations in ground “hardness” – the grader blade digs in too deeply in the soft areas and hardly manages to penetrate the firmer sections. Once the cut is more or less level, say +/- 50mm I will start “battering” the sides to a slope of 1 in 2 – this avoids having a retaining wall and allows the cows to graze right up to the barn.

Thursday 1st Jan:
The progress so far.

Melbourne Street Art

2009-01-01T20:54:00.001+13:00

The following are photographs taken of “street art” we came across while on holiday in Melbourne during December 2006. I thought they were quirky and brilliant - we have nothing like it back home in Waitakere, or Auckland for that matter. Henderson has an old plough, a couple of winemakers, oxen and some expensive ugly plastic cubes paid for by us poor ratepayers!

I was going to do a write-up on our holiday at the time but unfortunately went through a lazy period and couldn’t be bothered blogging. I have just discovered these photos on Mrs Redneck’s hard drive so I will post for posterity.

There are no titles as I can’t remember the details except for the obvious “Cow-up-a-tree” and the green spirals outside the Telstra Dome – oh; there is also one “human art form” which I could not resist posting.

Excavation Progress

2008-12-27T21:35:00.004+13:00

It’s about time I did a progress update on the excavations for our new barn but first, Merry Christmas everyone, and for those Americans out there, Happy Holidays!

There is not too much to say except that it is a pretty boring process – scrape and make a mess with the grader blade, unhitch the blade, hitch-on the trailer, shovel in the clay and empty where required which is mostly in the vehicle ruts on the track down to the lower paddocks and in the race. I have offloaded several loads of hard clay behind the house to level out the ground to enable the tractor and trailer to drop off cut firewood nearer the back door for the winter months.

My brother dropped off one truckload and two trailer loads of broken concrete from his old driveway which we will add with clay to fill-in the deeper ruts on the track to the bottom paddocks.

The following series of photographs bring the blog up to date with the excavation progress:

Sunday 14th Dec:
Most of the grass is gone - excavation underway.

Fri 19th Dec:
Getting down to the yellow stickey clay.

Fri 19th Dec:
This is how deep I need to go!

Fri 19th Dec:
Loading trailer with Paul's rubble.

Fri 19th Dec:
Filling the ruts in the track to the lower paddocks.

Fri 26th Dec:
Another trailer-load bites the dust!

Fri 26th Dec:
Almost full.

Fri 26th Dec:
Almost to the required depth.

Fri 26th Dec:
Rain has slowed progress - clay very "gluggy".

Sat 27th Dec:
The cows have come to make an inspection.

Sat 27th Dec:
"Dont just stand there like a lazy redneck - there's room for some more"!

Sat 27th Dec:
Christmas treats after the inspection.

EzyDVD in Receivership

2008-12-24T16:15:00.002+13:00

Boy did I get a shock the other day when I received a newsletter from EzyDVD – they have gone into receivership. They are my preferred on-line DVD store so apart from feeling sorry for their 200 employees I was feeling rather sorry for myself!

They are regularly the cheapest option for purchasing DVD’s, despite losses due to the currency exchange between NZ$ and AU$ and the cost of postage you do however save on not having to pay the GST component. I can get cheaper DVD’s at the Warehouse, but only when they are on special. You can forget about NZ mail order – they are just too expensive. Occasionally I have purchased from the US through CD Universe but I have to be desperate to do so – and the item would have to be on special as well.

EzyDVD hope to trade out of their mess but quite frankly I do not hold out much hope in these troubled economic times which is also being compounded by the company losing $3 million over the last three years. If Australia is anything like NZ, appointing receivers spells the beginning of the end with liquidation soon to follow. I hope I am wrong as they have an excellent user-friendly site and I have enjoyed dealing with them since 2003.

Jimmy Choo - Boo Hoo Lets Sue!

2008-12-23T20:31:00.004+13:00

There is nothing I hate more than some “famous” company flexing their muscles and picking on some poor “little guy” business due to some kind of “perceived” similarity in the trading name. Harrods is one company that vigorously defends their ownership of the name – tough shit if your name is Harrod and you are in business, you can’t use your own moniker. If you try, Harrods lawyers would be down on you “like a ton of bricks” – believe me it’s happened a couple of times before here in little old New Zealand!

Jimmy Choo the pommie over-priced shoe manufacturer, made famous by the TV series Sex and the City, is the latest company to get “too big for their boots” (or Choos). According to the NZ Herald they have threatened to sue a NZ on-line gift seller Kookychoo.com due to a similarity in the name. They have insisted that Kookychoo drop their plans to trademark the name, change their name altogether, cease trading as Kookychoo and most ridiculously hand over all business cards and printed material bearing the name - give me a fucking break! What is, apart from the last four letters, the similarity between Jimmy Choo and Kookychoo? Kookychoo don’t even sell shoes, they sell bean bags and teddy bears. Are they going to issue lawsuits to every company in the world with a name ending in choo? Now let me see, say I’m Abzal Akmatchoo from Kazakhstan, and I have an on-line business called Abzalpoochoo.com selling organic goat shit is the “long arm of the Choo” going to find me and insist that I cease trading – I hope not, that would be ridiculous.

To be fair on Jimmy Choo, it is in fact their intellectual property lawyers (showing bugger-all in the way of intellect) A.J Park doing the dirty work. Maybe they have fuck-all on at the moment so have decided to rake in a few dollars by threatening a small enterprise run by a mother of seven on a little farm in Kaukapakapa. I hope the British shoe maker tells A.J Park to “pull their head in” and let Kookychoo continue in their little enterprise – they are no threat to the great Choo shoe empire.

I have a thought, maybe Looie (great name) James from Kookychoo should pop over to the office of A.J Park and throw some shoes at the wankers – put it on YouTube, it’ll be a hit!

Ploughing Up The Grass

2008-12-22T20:17:00.010+13:00

Thank god I’ve got a grader blade for my tractor and it can be adjusted to perform like a plough. Now I’m sure the makers did not design it for this purpose, due to the huge strain on the linkages, but oh well who cares – needs must!

Saturday 6th December:
The grader blade set on a sharp angle to "plough" the grass.

The blade came with the Japanese Ford 1900 tractor which we purchased off an Irishman – now that should have set the alarm bells ringing straight away. Both (tractor & blade, not the Irishman) had been sitting on his property unused for a year or more and were in need of some T.L.C. I spent quite a bit of time de-rusting and repainting the tractor and I also had to fabricate a new bonnet – the grader blade was a lost cause though as the main shaft was seized.

The blade is held together by a large steel shaft which runs vertically through the centre and is secured by a big nut at the bottom. The blade itself rotates around the shaft and is locked into position (grading angle) by a pin which is placed in one of a series of holes. Without the ability to rotate it was only good for the scrap merchant. Over a period of years I tried every method I could think of to free up the shaft. I regularly poured CRC over it, I bashed it with a big hammer (the hammer and violence of the bashing increased over time – a short time), I heated it with our gas cooker and as a last resort, I sadistically drilled holes in the fucking thing! There was a method in my madness – the holes were to allow the CRC to penetrate – yeah right, dream on!

At some stage we decided that the professionals should have a look so we carted the thing around to a local engineering shop. It sat there for months – they had no joy, until they sent it around to another engineer who had a BIGGER press. The shaft was finally extracted and a gigantic sum of money was also extracted from Mrs Redneck’s wallet – I didn’t hear the end of it for weeks!

I welded up the holes, replaced the linkage pins, put a lump of concrete on its head to coax it to dig into the rock-hard clay, made up some new pins for the three different sets of adjustment holes and proceeded to carve up the track to the lower paddocks.

Since that spurt of grading activity the thing has once again found itself left to sit in a corner of the paddock for another couple of years with nothing to do – until now that is (thank God it hasn’t seized up again, although it is a bit stiff). At last it can earn its keep and repay the debt hanging over its yellow head – Mrs Redneck will be pleased!

Saturday 6th December:
Removing the grass.

The first stage of the earthworks is to remove the grass together with some of the topsoil without too much damage. The grass clumps will then be taken, by trailer load, to an “area of restoration” in the lower paddock. Basically we have an area of shit ground, it stinks like shit when wet, it’s without grass, it’s full of reeds and the cows avoid the place “like the plague”.

Saturday 6th December:
Me on my little blue tractor making a mess.

The "Movie Version".

Friday Joke N° 47

2008-12-19T20:55:00.002+13:00

Thanks to Lesley.

Boy Ground Slopes Are Deceptive!

2008-12-17T21:08:00.012+13:00

I’ve determined the location for the new barn and have erected some temporary “batter boards” so I can get an idea of the amount of excavating required. Boy are ground slopes deceptive! There appears to be a fall of 1.2 metres over a length of 7 metres so it looks as though I will have a fair bit of digging to do.

Saturday 22nd Nov:
Setting out the "batter boards" on the high side.

Saturday 22nd Nov:
"Batter boards" on the low, driveway side
- look at the height!

We have decided not to spend the $80 or so an hour for a digger partly due to cost and partly due to the mess they create. We wish to recycle the grass, topsoil and clay by distributing it to other areas on the property which are only accessible by my tractor and trailer. If we hired a digger it would excavate the 45m3 and put it in one huge pile which I would then have to shovel by hand into our little trailer. While this process is going on the “clay mountain” would be compacting and getting harder and harder to shovel – I would wind up breaking it into large solid clumps which would be even more difficult to distribute over the land (there are enough lumps there already). I reckon the best way would be for me to use the grader blade on the tractor to scrape the ground down to the required level. Once a couple of trailer loads worth of earth has been accumulated I would then remove the blade, hitch up the trailer, shovel in the earth then distribute where required. Sounds like a plan!

Saturday 29th Nov:
Using the tractor hydraulics to
extract a long strainer / gate post.

Saturday 29th Nov:
A tightly wrapped "tie down" gets
enough grip to pull out the post.

Now that I’m ready to start the earthworks it’s time to remove the existing fence to allow easy access to the site formally known as “the pine paddock” – named after the large pine tree that has since been cut down (see here for post). It took a lot of hard work putting in the posts for this fence due to all the bloody pine roots getting in the way but removal was quick and relatively easy due to the power of the tractors hydraulics.

Saturday 29th Nov:
Fence gone, so now for the physical stuff
- let the excavations begin!

Kylie at Vector Arena

2008-12-15T21:53:00.004+13:00

A few months back I heard that Kylie was going to do a show in Auckland at the Vector Arena and the thought of actually going crossed my mind, unfortunately during the first 19 minutes of my thought process the fucking tickets sold out. Oh well decision made for me then! I had “kicked myself” the previous year for not going to the Pink and Gwen Stefani concerts which turned out to be brilliant shows – looks like I’ll just have to stick to my DVD’s.

Last Tuesday I awoke as usual to the morning dickheads on More FM where the glorified newsreader and poor loser, Hillary Barry, mentioned how much she enjoyed Kylie’s concert the previous evening. Over breakfast I checked the Herald review which was also positive, although some of the readers’ comments made me wonder if they were all seeing the same show. Mmmm looks like I have missed another good concert!

During that day my N° 1 client (who happens to be my brother) rang to say that he had two tickets for the second Kylie Show and if he got a couple more would Mrs Redneck and I like to come. What a silly question (second show, why didn’t I know about a second show, nobody told me). Of course I said yes but bearing in mind that the first show was a sell out I didn’t hold out much hope of him getting any more tickets. Mrs Redneck was eager to go – it was free after all!

We checked the internet and sure enough there were no seats available so I did not hold out much hope. Imagine my surprise when I found out that he was able to get the “gold class” seats – it’s who you know not what you know. I’ve never been to the new Vector Arena so I was excited just to see the place let alone Kylie!

There was a large queue outside which moved deceptively quick, a quick scan of the internet ticket bar code, a quick check of my sister in laws bag and we were inside – very slick. We made our way upstairs and wandered along the wide concourse, which wraps around the perimeter of the arena, in search of our “door”. The arena entry doors, together with toilets, are at regular intervals off the concourse while food and beverage is available, at exorbitant prices, from a bar opposite. The whole design enabled everyone to “flow” so you do not feel as though you are in a crowd. Mrs Redneck was particularly impressed with the number of toilets.

Our seat was part way along one of the long sides of the oval, slightly nearer the front and at the first floor concourse level. I almost got a sense of vertigo due to the height made even more noticeable as our seats were “additions” to the normal seating arrangement. Basically they had a temporary timber box with seats on top crammed in between the seats in front and a wall behind to the entry stairs for the row of “normal” seats above – hard to explain but when you walk along your calves are in line with the head of the people in front which gives the impression that we are perched on a ledge.

The arena was smaller than I had imagined but the sides were fucking high! No way would I want to be way up there in the top rows – you would require oxygen and a telescope, well I would anyway.

The concert was good but not brilliant. Kylie sang well and I was particularly impressed with "I believe in you" which I would have thought it would be hard to replicate live due to the “soaring vocals” but together with her excellent backing singers she nailed it. That song is a favourite so was my highlight. I felt that there were not enough dancers and they appeared to “go through the motions” but that may have been because of the smaller venue – overseas versions of the show may have had more oomph!

Talking of oomph I wonder who provides the sound equipment, Vector Arena or Kylie’s mob. I don’t mind loud music or thumping bass in a concert situation but I think there is no excuse for distortion. The man on the volume control, at times, seemed to crank it up just a bit too much for the equipment to handle. The large display screen on the stage provided plenty of stunning effects but the same could not be said for the pissy little “ large screens” each side up high showing just Kylies face – what about the legs, the arse, the dancers, the backing vocalists or the hot looking keyboard player!

Most of the songs were from her new album “Kylie X” which I am not familiar with. Some were good some were ordinary but there were a few of the “oldies” to keep me happy. All in all it was a good show and I came away with a smile on my face and was particularly pleased I was not driving as the traffic chaos caused by roadworks along Quay Street was a pain in the arse – oh well back into “the real world”.

Friday Joke N° 46

2008-12-12T17:29:00.002+13:00

A drunk walks out of a bar with a key in his hand and he is stumbling back and forth. A cop on the beat sees him and approaches:

“Can I help you Sir?”

“Yessh! Ssssomebody ssstole my carrr”, the man replies.

The cop asks: “Where was your car the last time you saw it?”

“It wasss on the end of thisshh key”, the man replies.

About that time the cop looks down and sees the man's wiener hanging out of his fly for all the world to see.

He asks the man: “Sir are you aware that you are exposing yourself?”

Momentarily confused, the drunk looks down at his crotch and without missing a beat, blurts out....

“Holy shit! My girlfriend's gone, too!!”

Thanks to Lesley.

Now For Some Planning!

2008-12-11T21:41:00.002+13:00

We made a visit to the dreaded Council to obtain the necessary forms to submit a request for a building permit – we will build our new barn legally (unlike the carport, double garage and garden shed). I was afraid that there would be some “unforeseen obstacles” due to the property being in the new Waitakere Heritage Area but that was unfounded as the structure is in keeping with current land use i.e. it’s not a brothel!

The forms will be a nightmare to fill out and I am not looking forward to that task. Fortunately the Council recommends a meeting with them just prior to lodgement so they can have a quick peruse of the documents to see that all is in order - I will use this opportunity to fill out any of the forms harder or confusing parts.

Pinecone sent me a copy of the building plans but they were unable to give all the engineers calculations just yet as there is a hold up their end. Apparently the engineer is “brilliant but a bit doddery” – well he better hurry up as it soon will be Christmas and bugger-all gets done during this period, in fact all the documentation should have been available prior to auction.

It turns out that our barn is their first kitset of the single story version hence the hold-up with the paperwork and the auction is also a first, not to mention the out of town sale. The whole thing is new to the Pinecone guys so I will “cut them some slack”, they seem to be nice guys after all, and I will just resign myself to being their “guinea pig”. I must point out that Mrs Redneck’s patience is not like mine and if things do not progress soon “the shit will probably start rapidly advancing towards the fan”.

One of the things I’ve been busy with in the meanwhile is running around measuring up all the existing structures for the “proposed site plan” which we have to lodge with the Council as part of the permit application. Luckily I have become fairly proficient in using a CAD program so the drawing part has been taken care of – the site measurements are another story. As our property is 13+ acres distances are large and finding exact locations of the various existing features is rather difficult without surveying equipment – a tape measure is somewhat limiting. I had a brilliant idea, why not contact the surveyor who measured our property several years ago (for possible subdivision – now held up in the Environment Court) and see if they had it on CAD, they could email it to me and I could then do a few minor modifications to update it thus saving heaps of my time – it would be more accurate and it had all the ground contour lines marked as well.

Unfortunately the Surveyor did not follow up on subsequent emails following their initial positive response so I did my best with what I had. One 30 metre tape was insufficient for setting out 90° lines so we made a trip to Mitre 10 Mega where I purchased a 50 metre tape. I was soon back there returning it as the bloody thing stretches – how the fuck can you accurately measure with a tape that stretches an extra 50mm over 12 metres! After enduring the sour-faced Indian woman at the returns counter we were referred to a more pleasant person who accepted the return without any hassle. After selecting the replacement we tested it for stretch by measuring down a couple of their isles – it was fine.

Time to start setting out the building site.

Barn Auction Won

2008-12-05T21:40:00.001+13:00

We won the Trade Me auction of the Pinecone Barn for the $15K reserve as there were no other bidders. All we had to do now was arrange payment and delivery which is where things came somewhat unstuck.

We were told that the payment terms were 50% now and the balance payable when we receive the kitset and the drawings. Well! Mrs Redneck did not like this at all $7,000 upfront with nothing to show for it was just too risky – we wouldn’t even have a copy of the plans to get the ball rolling with the Council. My dreams of building the barn were starting to fade away like the morning Waitakere mist!

Mrs Redneck sought advice from other rural property owners via a posting on the Lifestyle Block Forum. The replies were very negative so things were not looking good. I must point out that I take any advice from on-line forums with a grain of salt as you can get a lot of bullshit – it’s easy for some of these people to make off-hand comments rubbishing others and being over cautions. They do not have all the facts but still it was a useful barometer of public opinion.

I emailed Pinecone with my reasons for rejecting their terms. They then made a counter offer of 25% for the Plans, so we could get the Building Consent underway, and required us to make a personal guarantee to pay the balance on receipt of the kitset – this was more like it. Mrs Redneck still felt that 25% was still a bit too rich so we made another offer of $500 for the plans (which was a figure mentioned by them in an earlier conversation about buying direct) and the total remaining deposited into “Safe Trader” which would be available to them once we receive the goods. This way they could see that we had the money and weren’t a couple of “tyre kickers” and we in turn would be protected. For those that don’t know, “Safe Trader” is service run by “Trade Me” and is like a Trust Account so both the buyer and seller are protected against the rip-off merchants out there.

Pinecone were very happy with the payment option so it was “all systems go”. I arranged for the kitset to be collected through one of the trucking companies used by my brothers Reinforcing Steel Business.

Unfortunately we have had a few dramas with “Safe Trader” as has been set up for transactions up to $5000 only – a bit stupid really. A phone call sorted that out however, we key in an amount less than five grand and their “techi-gurus” fiddle the figures to suit. Another stupid thing is the seller is supposed to send the goods within five days or the system does a timeout; they must also enter a courier tracking number when they send the goods – “Safe Trader” keeps an eye on this and as soon as we sign for it the payment “wheels are set in motion”. We do however have five days to opt out of the deal if the goods are not “up to scratch”.

The whole "Safe Trader" thing is set up for little courier packages not fucking great barns that take more than five days to manufacture and don’t fit into a courier van! Oh, and what about those who collect their goods – it’s a good idea but a little more thought needs to go into the whole process. I must say however, they have been very helpful and a quick phone call is all that is required to iron out any wrinkles in their system.

Friday Joke N° 45

2008-12-05T20:26:00.003+13:00

A grade three teacher is giving a lesson on nutrition, and she decides to ask her students what they had for breakfast.
To add a spelling component, she asks the students to also spell their answers.
Susan puts up her hand and says she had an egg, “E-G-G”.

“Very good”, says the teacher.

Peter says he had toast. “T-O-A-S-T”.

“Excellent”.

Johnny has his hand up and the teacher reluctantly calls on him.
“I had fuck all”, he says, “F-U-C-K A-L-L”.

The teacher is mortified and scolds Johnny for his rude answer.
Later when the lesson turns to geography, she asks the students some rudimentary questions.
Susan correctly identifies the Capital of Canada Peter is able to tell her which ocean is off Canada’s east coast.
When it's Johnny's turn, the teacher remembers his rude answer from the nutrition lesson, and decides to give him a very difficult question.
“Johnny”, she asks, “Where is the Pakistani border?”

Johnny ponders the question and finally says, “The Pakistani boarder is in bed with my mother.
That's why I got fuck all for breakfast”.

Thanks to Lesley

Choosing the Barn

2008-12-04T21:38:00.003+13:00

A barn wasn’t our initial choice of new building; we seriously considered purchasing a couple of 10m2 office cum studio units from trade me with the idea being consent avoidance. Apparently buildings 10m2 or less do not require a building consent and you can have virtually as many as you like as long as they are separate from each other. I wasn’t completely sold on the idea and looked around on the net for an alternative – Mrs Redneck did the same.

We looked at all the usual buildings from the likes of Totalspan and Versatile plus a few variations on the “American Barn” which incidentally, I hate the look of – it may look fine on the plains of Kansas but not in the bush-clad Waitakeres. Most structures were either too expensive (and too “flash” for our needs) or were reasonably priced but crappy looking.

Mrs Redneck spotted a ½-round style barn for sale on Trade Me that appeared to “fit the bill”. It came as a kitset from Pinecone and when complete the building would be 6 metres wide by 9 metres long by 4.2 metres high. The “buy now” price was $16K and the starting bid/reserve was $15K which was quite reasonable – delivery could be a problem but we decided to cross that bridge when we came to it. Mrs. Redneck noticed their web address on one of the Trade Me photos so we investigated.

Pinecones single story and double story barns come in 3 metre “bays” with several different options for external cladding. Their website lists a breakdown of the various costs and by doing a few calculations we could see that the Trade Me Kitset was cheaper than buying direct.

I rang the guys at Pinecone with a few questions regarding delivery cost, cladding colour and foundation options. They were helpful although unsure as to the transport cost from Lower Hutt to Auckland – I think an approximate figure of $400 was mentioned. They were able to prepare drawings ready for consent and could, if required, get their engineer to design the foundation based on our site conditions – all we had to do was send them a “site plan”. Mrs Redneck wanted to know how much to obtain a set of drawings first, so we can prepare the site & obtain consent ourselves while waiting on the kitset to arrive – there could be months of site preparation time lost. The agreed figure was $500.

Mrs Redneck also tried to purchase direct at the $15K price but they were adamant that it would not be sold for any less than the “Buy Now” price of $16K – this puzzled us as the reserve was $1K less, all anyone had to do was bid and they would get the cheaper price. So this is what we decided to do.

We're Going to Build a Barn!

2008-12-01T20:38:00.003+13:00

Long time no blog!
Well at least I have an excuse this time as we are about to build a barn and I have been busy taking measurements to prepare our site plan for the dreaded building consent application. We can’t build our “dream home” on our 13+ acres of paradise so may as well build something!

Why a barn – well I’m glad you asked. Our two bedroom home is just too small, due to the design there is bugger-all storage space and we are a couple of hoarders. To be fair though, the term hoarding is probably a bit tough as it comes hand in hand with this type of property – farm machinery, vehicle parts, tools, fencing wire, posts, electric fence odds and ends, water containers, electrical parts, and that’s just me. Mrs Redneck, the chef, has all her cooking paraphernalia, preserves and not to mention all the garden equipment. Where the hell do we keep it all!

We do have a “workshop” building but half of that is used for the office, where I earn the $$$, and Mrs Redneck saves/invests the $$$. The other half is used as a workshop which more often than not is just a mess.

We decided to “flag” going to the gym and didn’t renew our membership as it was getting too expensive. The cost of petrol for the thirsty Prelude (the crappy Pajero is still out of action) was probably the “last nail in the coffin”. Don’t worry we are not going to turn into a couple of “lard-butts” as we have decided to set up a gym at home as we already have a Swiss ball and, by luck, just recently purchased bargain priced weights, dumbbell and barbell from Don Oliver. We were also looking at a reasonably priced weights machine from Trade Me. Hang on a minute – where do we put it all, shit!!

I will start a new tag called “Barn” and endeavour to post reports on the building progress.

Friday Joke N° 44

2008-11-28T20:28:00.002+13:00

Some Words of Wisdom:

Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
He who laughs last thinks slowest.
Those who live by the sword get shot by those who don't.
Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.
The 50-50-90 rule: Anytime you have a 50-50 chance of getting something right, there' a 90% probability you'll get it wrong.
The things that come to those who wait will be the things left by those who got there first.
Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will sit in a boat all day drinking beer.
The shin bone is a device for finding furniture in a dark room.
A fine is a tax for doing wrong. A tax is a fine for doing well.
When you go into court, you are putting yourself in the hands of 12 people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty.

Thanks to Dad

Friday Joke N° 43

2008-11-21T21:01:00.007+13:00

Here's a legal question............

Is this statutory rape?

Or just a monumental mistake!!

Thanks to Lesley.

Friday Joke N° 42

2008-11-14T17:04:00.002+13:00

An elderly man and woman, both in their 70's, walk into a sex therapist's office.
The doctor asks, "What can I do for you?"

The man says, "Will you watch us have sexual intercourse?"

The doctor raises both eyebrows, but he is so amazed that such an elderly couple is asking for sexual advice, that he agrees.

When the couple finishes, the doctor says, "There's absolutely nothing wrong with the way you have intercourse."
He thanks them for coming, wishes them good luck, charges them $50, and says good bye.

A week later the couple returns and asks the sex therapist to watch again.
The sex therapist is a bit puzzled, but agrees.

This happens several weeks in a row. The couple makes an appointment,
has intercourse with no problems, pays the doctor, then leaves.

Finally, after 3 months of this routine, the doctor says, "I'm sorry, but I have to ask.....Just what are you trying to find out?"

The man says, "We're not trying to find out anything.
She's married and we can't go to her house.
I'm married and we can't go to my house.
The Holiday Inn charges $98. The Hilton charges $139.
We do it here for $50, and I get $43 back from Medicare."

Thanks to Lesley

Hooray! Comrade Helen Has Been “Given the Boot”

2008-11-10T20:58:00.001+13:00

After nine painful years of being told what to do and how to do it by Comrade Helen Clarks Government, the people of New Zealand have finally said “enough is enough” and voted out the bitch. Okay that may be a bit harsh; she’s worked hard on behalf of the country and is a decent human being unlike some of her colleagues, Trevor Mallard springs to mind – he’s a real arsehole.

So finally National “gets a go at the helm” with a healthy majority (under MMP that is), only needing the Act party’s seats to enable them to form a Government. We now have a Prime Minister who was a currency trader and is now a self-made millionaire. Who better than John Key to guide us through the troubled economic times ahead.

It’s good to see the end of Winston Peters and the NZ First Party. He had the potential to be a real force in NZ politics but “dropped the ball” early on and wound up spending most of his time demanding “enquiries” or suing someone. During this last year he became convinced that the press were “out to get him”, consequently some press conferences were tense and farcical. Just prior to his election night “loosing speech” the prima donna had one last go at the press, talking to them as if they were dogs: “Get back, back, further back, back, go on, back”. What a fucking baby!
The most pathetic sight at Winston’s election night gathering was all the poor old codgers, one step away from the grave, holding back tears as their beloved hero was consigned to the political scrapheap.

The Greens tried to talk-up their disappointing results by cheering and going gaga over the two extra members elected – they were expecting 9% of the vote but only got 6% so big deal.
I had a chuckle seeing Jeanette Fitzsimons poor old husband “Worzel Gummidge”, doing his triennial duty by having to stand beside her up there on the stage, in the spotlight with a sheepish grin – the poor man had just been dragged away from his precious compost bins and worm farm.

Comrade Helen made a nice concession speech then promptly resigned – didn’t see that coming! What was the deal with all the young women lined up behind her on the stage? The TV commentary mentioned that they were nieces, shit are there no men in the Clark Clan? It’s little wonder that there are rumours regarding Comrade Helens sexual orientation – didn’t even see her husband, the hen pecked Peter until a later news bulletin showed him cowering at the end of the line. Had a laugh at poor Peters attempt at a congratulatory kiss for his wife – he managed to plant one but failed on the second as Helen turned away leaving him puckering away at nothing. Poor Peter get back in your box!

There were no strange sexual signals from the Prime Minister elect. He stood on the stage supported by his wife and two children – all very normal.

I’m looking forward to the new Government fulfilling Nationals promises which will make the country a better place to work and live in – it may even stem the tide of people fleeing to the “lucky country” Australia.
Us included… hmmm, I wonder?

Before I Forget…..Congratulations Barack Obama

2008-11-09T17:20:00.001+13:00

I originally started this blog to document life on our 13 acre piece of Auckland so the last thing I expected was to start commenting on the US elections – although I had already set a precedent in an earlier post (see it here). However this year was special as there was a high probability of history being made with the election of a young charismatic black man or the wife of a former, and arguably the most popular, President.

The whole election process, even though it’s complicated and drawn out, was quite fascinating – I learnt that an Electoral College is not a school! Also I like the idea of the people choosing the two contenders. I personally preferred Clinton (mainly due to experience and the “Bill factor”) over Obama so was disappointed with the final choice – hell what do I know I don’t live there!

McCain had a moment of brilliance with his inspired choice of a woman for a running mate. As things turned out he may have been just a little disappointed with his choice as Palin’s blunders started to mount-up. Still she injected some life into the whole campaign so wasn’t a total dead-loss and I wonder if there is hope for her yet.

Faced with a choice between the “smooth” Obama and the dithering geriatric McCain the result was almost a foregone conclusion helped somewhat by the black population getting up of their fat arses and voting.

Were my eyes playing tricks or did I see that fat bitch Oprah on the stage trying to bask in some of Obama’s glory. The last thing he needs is that over-hyped cow riding on his coat-tails.

With the world, and particularly American, finances in the shit what is the President elects first major task? It’s to find a dog for the White House of course!
America is waiting with bated breath, what breed will get the Presidential seal of approval, a poodle, a lapdog, a Labrador – gee I can't wait!

Woof Woof!

Friday Joke N° 41

2008-11-07T16:52:00.004+13:00

Following on from last week’s “Political Theme” here is another joke featuring our esteemed leader Comrade Helen.
Hopefully tomorrow, after the election, she will be ousted from power and at long last we will revert back to being a democracy.

Thanks to Lesley

Yet another Example of Arrogant Cyclists

2008-11-03T21:22:00.000+13:00

One of my pet hates is cyclists hogging the road causing danger to themselves and undue stress on us poor motorists. Now I am not talking about “Johnny” cycling to school but the gangs of Lycra-clad wankers riding en masse, often two or more abreast, on narrow rural roads. These turkeys are of the opinion that they have every right to be there. While this may be true to a point, the onus is on them to be considerate to other road users – occupying the only lane in a 100kph zone on a windy road is asking for trouble.

Yesterday my attention was grabbed by the following headline in the NZ Herald: “Cyclist pushed into truck” – hmm this sounded interesting.
It turns out that a competitor in some cycle event got “spooked” by an impatient driver and wound up being hit by a milk tanker. What intrigued me the most were the bullshit “eye witness” reports from some of the competitors who blamed the whole thing on the vehicle driver, who apparently ran out of room in his overtaking manoeuvre, and cut the cyclists off which caused the accident.

According to the police the vehicle had safely passed the cyclists and the injured biker made “an evasive action to avoid other cyclists, not the ute”. The Police Inspector then said “the cyclists were using the road as if they owned it and came around a blind corner and met a milk tanker”.

That last sentence says it all – typical bloody arrogant cyclists!

Click here for a previous post on these arseholes.

Laptop vs. Notebook

2008-11-02T21:21:00.001+13:00

While going through the exercise of considering which laptop to buy, I wondered: “What on earth is the difference between a laptop and a notebook computer?”
It seemed that the demarcation between the two has, over time, blurred somewhat. I call my laptop a laptop, my client’s computer guru calls it a notebook, several on-line retailers and indeed Asus themselves call it a notebook. Now just who is correct?

After consulting the net it seems that notebooks are generally:
Ultra light.
Have no internal DVD or CD player.
Use minimum graphics.
Have a 12” to 14” screen.
Are thin.
Have the smallest possible keyboard.
Consume little power.

Put simply, they are a simple machine used for business while away from the desk and as the name suggests are basically a notebook.

Laptop computers are more or less the opposite and are generally:
Much heavier.
Have an internal DVD or CD player.
Have reasonable graphics to allow gaming.
Have a 14” to 17” screen.
Bulkier.
Have a full keyboard and even numeric keypad.
Upgradable/Expandable.
Have a reasonable sound system.

Based on the above criteria my Asus is definitely a laptop as it is heavy and has all the “bells & whistles” including a 15.4” screen.
Some laptops are getting a bit too big to be called a laptop. The criteria, as mentioned in my previous post, for my laptop included a 17” screen. After the problems in sourcing one at the time, then finally seeing one, we decided against it. It’s just too bloody big, imagine trying to carry it around on holiday or use it on a plane - no thanks!

One thing I did discover that was interesting. Many of the manufacturers are calling their laptops notebooks because they just get too hot to put on your lap – you can cook your genitals!

A Tale of Two Laptops

2008-11-02T16:05:00.008+13:00

With the price of laptops going down and the price of the NZ Herald going up without any improvement in quality, we made the decision to forgo our newspaper subscription and with the money saved, purchase a laptop. I wind up reading the Herald on-line in my office during the day anyway – I would only miss the printed version while having my breakfast of porridge or toast & coffee so why not plonk a laptop in front of me and read on-line.

PB Technology were advertising Compaq Presario laptops at a reasonable price and “for a limited number” (in quote marks because this is usually bullshit) so we raced over and purchased one. This was our first ever laptop and boy what a revelation – it was love at first use! We found that once I had installed and configured a wireless access point we could do everything that our desktop models could do and more. To assign it to just reading the Herald was a major waste of resources. Mrs Redneck hogged the thing and just like a child you would hear me wail: “Have you finished yet, when can I have a turn?”

Our only problem came when we tried to install Vista Service Pack 1. No matter how many times I tried it would not download and install – I even tried to install a stand-alone version without success.
Obviously something had corrupted something so I decided to reformat the hard drive and start again. The laptop is sold with everything preinstalled and there is no program disks provided – a new concept for me being an old time, long time, desktop PC user. A quick look at the manual showed that all the “ex the store” programs reside on their own hard drive partition and it is a simple process to “reimage” the hard drive. After activating this process Vista SP 1 downloaded and installed without a hitch – all I had to do was reinstall our own software.

Some time ago I developed a Microsoft Excel add-in which is used as an aid in detailing reinforcing steel. This program is used by me and my client, a local reinforcing steel company. Programming Excel in vba has become a bit of a hobby of mine so my brain is constantly ticking away thinking of improvements, consequently from time to time the program is modified (which is what I was trying to do in the previous post). I rarely charge out my time for this so I’m owed a few favours. As one of the company’s staff members was already using my Excel 2007 version on a recently purchased laptop I hit on the idea, why not ask them to buy me a laptop as well?

They had recently purchased an Asus F7E laptop and Microsoft Office 2007 for $3,146 including GST. It was an Asus “package deal” which came with Vista Business, 3Gb Ram, bag and mouse. After consulting “Price Spy” I told them I could purchase the same for around $2,000 thus saving them a grand or so on the deal. They agreed.

That week I learned the truth about the computer and parts retailers that advertise on “Price Spy” – they hold no stock! The cheapest deal was from “Notebook City” so I rang to confirm that there was stock prior to making an on-line order. They had none available and said that they would ring back after checking with the supplier. To cut a long story short, they didn’t ring back and after several calls and days later no stock was forthcoming. All the other companies that advertised the same product on “Price Spy” were also out of stock – why the fuck did “Price Spy” have them listed on that day with a theoretical stock-holding then? I now regard the whole thing as a bit of a con. You have all these separate “tin-pot-outfits” working out of tiny premises ordering stock from the same supplier. When the supplier runs out everyone runs out. By this time the Asus F7E model was as rare as a Maori Rocket-Scientist. What to do?

A week had gone by and I wanted my bloody laptop. We started to look at other brands and a helpful salesman at “E-one” in Manukau City gave us a few options. Our usual supplier “PB Technology” over on the North Shore had nothing comparable and anyway, as usual, they took too long to respond by email. One of the stumbling blocks in putting together any computer package is software and in this case it was causing a real headache – it’s just too bloody expensive. Sometimes we could get a good price on the computer but not be able to get OEM software and conversely we get a good deal on software but they don’t have the computer. I’m getting too old for this!

The Asus M51SE.

One fine Wednesday Mrs Redneck, after trawling through “Price Spy”, found a comparable Asus package from “NFC Technology” in Newmarket. After a phone call to confirm stock and to check that they could supply MS Office 2007 at the right price, and to reconfirm that the package came with Vista Ultimate, which no one else managed to offer, we shot over to Newmarket “like a rat up a drainpipe”.

At NFC Tech, I was pleased to see that they were slightly larger than the usual “tin-pot-outfits”; Mrs Redneck noticed a sign beside the display model of the laptop we were purchasing quoting that the package came with Vista Home Premium not Ultimate. After a bit of a discussion it turns out that their website was incorrect so they immediately corrected the site but refused to honour their mistake and we just had to accept Vista Home Premium – there is no way I was returning home empty-handed.

As it turns out Vista Business would not have been the best version for my circumstances as I require more multimedia goodies than business security and other bullshit – I work from home after all.

Laptop, mouse & my mobile phone – my “feminine side” loved the matching laptop & phone!

This laptop is beautiful to look at and a joy to use. For a detailed review click here as they are much better at it than I could ever be, they also show some brilliant photographs (there are several pages so remember to click the “forward" link at the bottom of each page). My laptop is a later version then the one reviewed - it has a 1440x900 display and runs at 2.4 GHz. The reviewer also mentions that you may wish to remove all the stickers – well I like them as they add a bit of colour and is a handy reference to the machines specifications. If they start getting tatty I will attempt to peel them off though.
My only complaint is the loud DVD drive – it really clatters away when searching for files.

The laptop comes with numeric keypad and plenty of nice stickers.

Spec’s:
Asus M51SE
Intel Core 2 Duo T8300 2.4 GHz
3GB DDR2 SDRAM
15.4” WXGA 1440x900
DVD Drive
Card Reader
Fingerprint Security
1.3 Mega pixel swivel web cam
Fax/Modem/LAN/WLAN
Bluetooth
Wireless WiFi Link
Vista Home Premium
Bag & Mouse

Using Old Excel Colours in Excel 2007

2008-10-31T16:44:00.006+13:00

Excel 2007 can be a right bastard sometimes.

I posted my views on the program way back in June 2007 – the main issue being lack of backward-compatibility and not being able to record most macros as a shortcut to obtain vba code.

As I use the 2007 version and my major client uses 2003 I have to save all files in the old format to enable compatibility with their version. My workbooks contain reinforcing steel diagrams in the form of imported picture files (drawn in MS Paintbrush) which are sometimes replaced by non-standard shapes using Excels shape drawing feature. I have discovered, over time, that certain “Format Shape” commands in the 2007 version is not compatible with the 2003 version – an example being “Rotation” even though that feature can be used in the 2003 version.

When you try to save a workbook that contains something Microsoft deems incompatible in the earlier version a Compatibility Checker box pops up informing of a “minor loss of fidelity” with the number of occurrences. You then have the option of aborting so you can try and rectify the incompatibility or you could ignore and save the file anyway – but beware the saved file may not be in the format you intended.

I thought by now I had seen all the stupidity associated with Excel 2007, but alas I was wrong.
While working on revisions to a workbook template that was created in Excel 2003 I discovered that the colours used in the 2007 version were different. If I used any 2007 colours I would get the dreaded “minor loss of fidelity” box when the file was saved in 2003 format. The stupid thing is that Excel 2007 has 21 different colour themes with the ability of creating your own theme using an almost infinite range of colours so why the fuck couldn’t they create a theme called “Excel 2003 Colour”!

Screenshot showing “minor loss of fidelity” – the word “test” to the right of the box is in an incompatible colour with Excel 2003.

I did a Google-search to see if some bright spark had come up with an answer and found this brilliant Blog page from “funnybroad” which shows my problem in great detail (click here to go to her page).
Using copy/paste or “Format Painter” did not work for me due to the placement of coloured borders on the worksheet. Disgusted I gave up my template modifications deciding that it would have to wait until my client got around to upgrading to Excel 2007.

While trying to help Mrs Redneck modify her blogger template code the need arose for a colour picker to enable me to obtain hex values for some of her blog colours. After the usual Google-search I settled on Instant Eyedropper which was freeware (click here to go to their webpage).

This little program is brilliant as once loaded you just hold down the left mouse button and drag the cross-hairs over the screen until you reach the location of the colour to be read. A little box follows you around giving a continuous readout of the colour values which can written down or copied to the clipboard. You can select which colour number format is displayed (I used either hex or RGB), hang on a minute, it then dawned on me that I could probably use this to create an Excel 2003 colour theme.

Short video showing me obtaining the RGB numbers for the Excel 2003 colours using “Instant Eyedropper”. Note that I have enlarged the page to make colour picking easier. Unfortunately due to video file compression you probably will not be able to see the actual RGB numbers.

I loaded up the old worksheet and used zoom to enlarge the page so the characters in the colour to be copied were nice and large then I activated Instant Eyedropper. Once over the required spot I noted down the RGB number prior to moving to the next. Once all the numbers were obtained I then clicked on Excels “Page Layout” tab, moved across to the “Themes” menu item and clicked. A drop down list appeared listing all 21 “Colour Themes”. To make a custom one just click on “Create New Theme”, click on the colour you wish to alter, a colour palette pops up, choose “More Colours”, click on the “Custom” tab, enter the RGB numbers, click “OK”, give the theme a name and choose “Save” and that’s all there is to it - “Bobs-your-uncle!”

Friday Joke N° 40 - Comrade Helen Bites The Dust!

2008-10-31T10:51:00.002+13:00

After a week of ‘muckraking’ Comrade Helen our esteemed leader slips on some!

Smith, Small Hands, Showering, Shitting, Samoans & Stupid Turia

2008-10-29T15:15:00.002+13:00

Who wants to be a politician in this PC world – not me, one must either have thick skin or be a moron.
Last week there was a major furore over innocent comments made by Lockwood Smith which was further inflamed by the NZ Heralds usual ‘media beat-up’ (Comrade Helen Clark’s favourite cliché) and the usual overreaction by the stupid Maoris and Samoans. The more intelligent Asians did not take offence – in fact most of their comments to on-line forums agreed with Dr Smith.

Even John Key, bowing to media opinion, has told Dr Smith (who is Nationals longest serving MP) that he must forfeit the immigration portfolio in any future National Government and may have to ‘move on’ to provide room for ‘new blood’. Given Comrade Clarks comments regarding Key being a ‘greenhorn’ I would have thought it prudent for Key to hang on to his experienced ministers.

So what did Dr Lockwood Smith say that was so shocking?

After speaking to Marlborough winegrowers he said he wanted the ‘work scheme’ which allows Pacific Islanders to enter NZ for temporary jobs on the vineyards expanded to include Asians. He was quoted as saying: “There are some skills in the vineyard that some people are perhaps better at. For example, some of the pruning.... some of the Asian workers have been more productive ... because their hands are smaller.”
He also commented on the fact that employers are having to waste time training workers on the most basic tasks – quote: “Some of them are having to teach them things like how to use a toilet or shower”.

Dr Smith was only doing his job as an MP which was to listen to, and make public, the problems voiced by his constituents. He was relaying concerns not making wild statements of his own.

Let’s look at the comments rationally.
Some Asians are more productive because their hands are smaller. This is true, they can get in between the prickly vines a lot better than me – I’d pick fuck-all or be cut to shreds. I wished there was a handy Asian nearby to work on my Honda Prelude (see earlier posts). He did not say all Asians had small hands only some therefore there was no stereotyping or racism.

Some employers are having to teach the Islanders how to shower or use a toilet. What’s wrong with highlighting that? Remember these workers are brought over from some village on a Pacific Island so they probably crap in a hole in the ground and wash in a stream. Give them a toilet brush and they may try and do their hair with it. Show them a shower cubicle and they would look for the phone. Of course they need some form of training or orientating. Once again he did not say all Islanders only some.

The overreaction and comments regarding Dr Smiths comments has been quite bizarre – it must have something to do with impending election.
National MP Arthur Anae, a Samoan, called the party “Rednecks” (welcome to the club) and it was a ploy to get votes from the “white community”. He also went on to say: “It’s bloody insulting that he said that. Some people have been over here for 60 years”.
Listen you fuckwit the comment was about temporary workers flown over from some village to work for the first time in 21st century New Zealand not about people living here already. Of course they would know to use the toilet after 60 years!

Comrade Clark made this stupid statement: “If you were going to judge who was fit to pick fruit by the size of their hands, presumably you would never pick men, only women, because generally we have small hands.” Dr Smith said nothing of selecting workers by hand size, also by applying the same logic you have used in criticizing his statement to what you just have said you must be sexist and discriminating against men. Or are you really a man in disguise as your voice suggests?

To cap everything off, the moronic matron of the Maori Party, Tariana-no-brain-Turia said Dr Smith’s remarks had been “utterly racist”. This ‘takes the cake’ as it is from a party formed on racism and run by racists. Some of their supporters are activists, gang members and failed terrorists; most of their supporters are idiots. Imagine the uproar if I entered politics and started ‘The European Party’.
The Maoris need to accept that they arrived in this country by boat just like my ancestors.
The Maoris are not Aborigines.

Brutal Black Bastards

2008-10-26T16:58:00.004+13:00

Why are the darker skinned members of the human race so brutally violent? Are they a few steps back on the ‘evolutionally scale’ from the rest of us or what?

After 53 years on this planet I have seen and read news reports of African genocide brutally executed with crude instruments like machetes, or the South African ‘necklacings', or American blacks rioting, beating and looting. I’ve also spent 4 years in Papua New Guinea and have witnessed some of the violence there first hand.

Beautiful ‘clean and green’ New Zealand (well as it is portrayed for the tourists anyway) has its own black violent underbelly in the Maori population. This issue is seldom discussed for fear of being labelled a racist or a redneck in our overly PC society even though the statistics warrant comment. How often after the report of a killing, armed robbery, some other act of violence (which sometimes results in death) or vicious rape do you hear the news report state: “The offender is described as a Maori or Pacific Islander”.

Some ‘goody-goody’ simpletons try to come up with pathetic excuses for these criminals like poverty, unemployment or colonization by the Europeans a couple of hundred years ago. This just ‘does not wash’ with me, to cause unnecessary harm to another human being is wrong and anyone with a normal brain and conscience would realise that. Shit, I’ve been out of a job, I’ve had no money in my pocket, and did I go and beat someone up or join a violent gang of thugs – NO!

What has brought about this rant?
It’s the Maori races gutless penchant for viciously killing their poor defenceless children – Nia Glassie immediately comes to mind. Her case is before the court at the moment. Before I talk about that cowardly murder here is a list of recent high profile killings by Maori on their own kids:

Delcelia Witika, 2 yr old starved, beaten and burnt in 1991.
Jonelle Tarawera, 19 month old, shaken to death in 1998.
Tangaroa Matiu, 3 yr old beaten to death with a wooden fence pailing in 1999.
Liotta Leuta, 5 yr old beaten to death with a fanbelt & electrical cord in 2001.
Kahui twins (yes two of them), 3 month old beaten to death in 2006.
Ngatikaura Ngati, 3 yr old beaten to death in 2006.
Nia Glassie, 3 yr old tortured to death in 2007.

Nia’s murder was particularly cruel as, according to the Crown Prosecutor, her torture lasted for “days, weeks and probably even months”.
She was kicked in the head, attached to a clothesline and spun around until she fell off, placed into a tumble dryer which was then turned on, placed in the rubbish, left to stand outside part naked in the cold, ‘slam dunked’ on the ground and had various wrestling holds applied to her.
What kind of mongrels can do this to anyone let alone a child?

Maori are convicted for 46% of all violent offences but they are only 14% of the total population.
0.8% of the Maori population of 565,329 have been convicted for violent offences while only 0.15% of the remaining population of 3,462,618 have been convicted for violent offences.

What is the answer?
How about the death penalty – let’s get rid of some of this scum once and for all.

Source: NZ Herald, The Aucklander, Corrections Dept.

MMP = Minnows’ Manipulating Parliament

2008-10-26T12:25:00.000+13:00

It’s about time the current MMP (Mixed Member Proportional) method of electing our Government was scrapped as it results in ‘the tail wagging the dog’. Minor parties can get in not by attaining the 5% party vote threshold but solely on the strength of one person being elected via their electorate seat.

These ‘loose cannons’, Winston Houdini Peters being a prime example; can have a major influence on the make-up of Government which is often not what the country voted for in the first place.

In the ‘good old days’ of ‘First Past The Post’ elections disgruntled voters often moaned about the party with the most votes not getting in has they failed to win enough electorate seats. Well today is no different as we could have the case of National winning the most votes (therefore the people’s choice of Government) while Labour scurries around doing deals and making all sorts of promises with wankers like Peters, the Maoris and even more dangerously with the Green’s. Some of these parties just automatically go to Labour regardless – why be a fucking party then!

Hopefully the country will see sense closer to Election Day and National will get enough votes to go-it-alone. However, if National gets the most votes but Labour climbs into the big bed with some form of deal with The Greens, Maori, NZ First and Alliance I may have to ‘pack my bags’ and join the exodus.

Finally a note to ‘Comrade Helen’:
You said of John Key: “Why elect a novice to be in charge of the country?”
Well Helen, unlike you, John Key is not a dictator he is just the leader of an experienced party that has governed for 41 of the last 70 years. You elect a party not a person!

Radiator Finally Sorted – But What a Drama

2008-10-26T10:38:00.007+13:00

This is the third and last instalment of two previous posts. See part two here.

After finally obtaining the temperature sensor I was eager to get the car back on the road as we have been carless for a whole week. By now there is shopping to be done, library books to collect/return and gym sessions to attend – Mrs. Redneck thinks I am getting fat again!

The Honda Prelude is a very low car which prevents me from inserting the hydraulic jack under the front – I have to use the ‘scissor’ car jack to lift one side (under the door) first then slide the big jack under the front cross-member then pump-away. Once raised, I remove the small jack and place adjustable ‘axle stands’ under each door (at the reinforced jacking-points).

After draining the radiator and, with great difficulty, I removed the sensor. It was bloody tight and I was unable to use a decent spanner due to space constraints – a good old adjustable wrench (Crescent) finally did the trick.
Screwing in the new part was a ‘piece-of-cake’ but I spent a good 45 minutes struggling (and swearing) trying to attach the plug for the electrical connection. The plug was long and could only go on one way; there was no room for my hands so rotating the thing was a real pain. Also the attached wire always ‘sprung’ the plug it back to its previous position.

Just to prove that the old sensor was faulty I took it inside, attached my multimeter to its terminals, and then submersed it into boiling water. There was no change in resistance after a few minutes so the thing was definitely ‘stuffed’.

The radiator was refilled and the car started. After some time the fans still did not come on and as the radiator remained quite cool I assumed that it was not hot enough to activate the sensor.
I told Mrs. Redneck that we can go and do all the shopping so the car would get good and hot. I would stay in the vehicle and listen for the fan while she did the purchases. If the engine got too hot I could switch on the air-con which in turn activates the fans thus cooling the engine.

First stop the vegetable shop. The engine was at normal temperature and the fans did not come on. Second stop Westcity with the same result. Something was not quite right, so buggar-it I decided to accompany Mrs. Redneck shopping.

The third stop was to be the library at Westgate. The engine started to get hot along Lincoln Rd – I told Mrs. Redneck: “Don’t worry it will cool down when we are on the motorway due to the amount of air passing through the radiator”. Yeah right!

On the motorway Mrs. Redneck was very worried as the temperature gauge had moved into the red. I started racking my brain for the reason, then eureka! The thermostat must be faulty as well; the more I thought about it the more it made sense.
What was happening is this: The thermostat was stuck closed so the cooling water was trapped in the engine. As the radiator was effectively ‘shut off’ from the engine it never got hot enough to activate the sensor switch to turn on the fans. The longer you drove the hotter the engine got. Air flow through the radiator made no difference as the cooler water never got to the engine where it was needed.

We stopped at the library and left the fans going (via air-con switch) for a while to partially cool the engine then ‘hot-footed’ it back home.

Once safely back home I removed the thermostat, placed it in a pot of water on the stove and applied heat. I watched the thermostat closely as the water came to the boil – it did not open. This proved it, it was ‘stuffed’.

The car could safely be used without the thermostat (it would just take longer to warm up) so the following day we made our usual trip to the gym at Westgate and then popped around to Repco where I purchased a new thermostat, coolant additive and for good measure, a set of new spark plugs.

A couple of minutes after arriving back home the Prelude radiator fans burst into life –HORRAY!

The Prelude engine – job complete!

Storm Downs Macrocarpa

2008-10-25T15:21:00.006+13:00

Shortly after felling our pine tree (see last post) we had a storm which brought high winds leaving a trail of destruction throughout the country.

We were lucky that out mad neighbour had nothing better to do a few weekends earlier otherwise, who knows; maybe the rotten pine could have blown down and destroyed property or even caused injury.

Our other neighbour was not as lucky as two of his macrocarpa trees were blown over. They fell right across his driveway preventing access. Actually, he was rather lucky as it turns out because a few days earlier his wife gave birth; imagine if that happened on the night of the storm – home birth anybody?

Downed Macrocarpa Across Neighbours Drive

See The White Van – Lucky!

Macrocarpa Root-Ball (where are the big roots?)

Another Shot Of The Root-Ball (not much holding up such a tall tree!)

Dangerous Pine Finally Dropped

2008-10-25T09:45:00.020+13:00

The Pine in 1996 - In The "Prime Of Life".

The large forked-trunk pine tree in the front of our property died about 3 years ago. It was too expensive to bring in the ‘professionals’ for felling so we just ignored it. Every now and then pinecones and other small bits would drop to the ground providing us with a ready supply of dry kindling for the fire. High winds would send larger sections crashing to the ground giving you a shot of adrenalin while making the walk to the letterbox to check the mail.

The dead pine - notice the parked vehicles in 'the firing line'.

I was under the assumption that the tree would rot starting from the top (which is the thinnest) and would over time send these rotten sections falling to the ground which in turn would make the tree progressively smaller and smaller (also safer and safer).
Why spend money when nature could do the job for us?

The ‘old folks’ next door were paranoid about the tree and convinced themselves that the whole thing would fall on their house one day – it wasn’t that tall for God’s sake! Our other neighbour was protected by a line of high closely-spaced macrocarpa trees although once again the tree was not tall enough to reach the house – although it probably would demolish his shipping container and motor vehicles parked nearby.

One fine day our slightly ‘mad’ neighbour (he has been mentioned in several earlier posts) turned up with his mate to cut down the tree for firewood – we told him previously that he was welcome to the wood provided he cleaned up the mess and it costs us nothing.

After donning his climbing gear and undertaking some preliminary trimming of the lower branches (one of which fell on and broke the ladder he used to begin his climb) he ascertained that the tree was too rotten to climb up very far. Instead of slowly removing the trunk bit by bit starting from the top the whole thing would have to go in one piece. I gave him the ok – I could easily repair any fences damaged in the process.

The first trunk was relatively easy as it was leaning in the correct direction. He made a cut in good wood about 6 metres up and inserted wedges. About this time Mrs. Redneck arrived back home from her shopping trip and was informed of the ‘new plan’. She was concerned at the location of their vehicle as it could be in ‘the firing line’, but he was adamant the tree would fall in a different location.

The First Trunk Is Felled.

After some more sawing and the banging-in of more wedges the trunk came down with a loud crash and exploding timber – all the rotten branches disintegrated. Of course Mrs. Redneck was right, the tree did not fall exactly as expected and wound up removing the wing mirror from Mr. Mad’s vehicle. I was happy as the tree missed most of the fence.

Attaching Rope To Second Trunk.

Some Final Cutting (Mr. Mad Circled).

The second trunk was a bit more difficult as it had a reasonable lean towards the other neighbour. A rope was tied around its girth as far up as Mr. Mad was prepared to climb. The rope then was threaded through a pulley fastened to the neighbour’s tree and then attached to a winch on a 4WD parked further down their access track.

Long Rope (Start & End Circled) To 4WD Down Neighbours Track.

After tensioning the rope another cut was made and more wedges used. Once the trunk was almost severed the winch was brought into action. It took a lot of gear crunching and engine revving to try and bring the trunk past the vertical, in fact the knot started to unravel, just like the movies, and a call went out to the ‘winch man’ to desist. He either did not hear or did not care and with a huge amount of engine revving the trunk slowly moved straighter and straighter until gravity took hold and crash it was down.

The Second Trunk Is Felled.

I gave a little round of applause in relief – it was a close call! Once again there was little damage to the fences.

Redneck Goes To Inspect.

Here is a video of both trunks being felled. The second half is poor quality as the image was too dark to see and I had to use a free ‘video editor’ off the net to lighten. If you turn the sound up you can hear the engine struggling to power the winch.

Maori Mongrels Down Paraglider

2008-10-24T16:45:00.000+13:00

Last night on 3 News I could not believe my eyes when I saw footage of a group of Maori ‘losers’ on Mt Maunganui beating up a paraglider who had just landed nearby.

It turns out that these mongrels were 14-year-old teens who belong to a programme for troubled youth. They were threatening to throw rocks at the paraglider so he landed for safety where he was then set upon by punches and a ‘soccer kick’ to the face.

The man suffered a suspected broken nose and eye socket.

Mt Maunganui is a tourist spot so we can do without this sort of behaviour. The little bastards should be tried for attempted murder – if one rock had connected with the paragliders canopy it would have deflated sending the man to his death.

Why are Maori so violent?

Maybe it’s time for us to adopt China’s ‘one child policy’ for Maori then maybe their parents will be able to do their job and educate their offspring. At the moment arseholes are breeding arseholes.

Friday Joke N° 39

2008-10-24T15:07:00.003+13:00

A little boy goes to his dad and asks:

“What is Politics?”

Dad says:

“Well son, let me try to explain it this way: I am the head of the family, so call me The Prime Minister.”
“Your mother is the administrator of the money, so we call her the Government.”
“We are here to take care of your needs, so we will call you the People.”
“The nanny, we will consider her the Working Class.”
“Your baby brother, we will call him the Future.”
“Now think about that and see if it makes sense.”

So the little boy goes off to bed thinking about what Dad has said.

Later that night, he hears his baby brother crying, so he gets up to check on him.
He finds that the baby has severely soiled his nappy so the little boy goes to his parent's room and finds his mother asleep.

Not wanting to wake her, he goes to the nanny's room.
Finding the door locked, he peeks in the keyhole and sees his father in bed with the nanny.
He gives up and goes back to bed.
The next morning, the little boy says to his father:

“Dad, I think I understand the concept of politics now.“

The father says:

“Good, son, tell me in your own words what you think politics is all about.”

The little boy replies:

“The prime Minister is screwing the Working Class while the Government is sound asleep.”
“The People are being ignored and the Future is in deep shit!”

Thanks to Lesley

Obituary Of The Late Mr. Common Sense

2008-10-24T13:17:00.002+13:00

The Times obituary of the late Mr. Common Sense.

Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was, as his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as: knowing when to come in out of the rain; why the early bird gets the worm; Life isn't always fair; and, maybe it was my fault.

Common Sense lived by simple, sound financial policies (don't spend more than you earn) and reliable strategies (adults, not children, are in charge). His health began to deteriorate rapidly when well-intentioned but overbearing regulations were set in place.

Reports of a six-year-old boy charged with sexual harassment for kissing a classmate; teens suspended from school for using mouthwash after lunch; and a teacher fired for reprimanding an unruly student, only worsened his condition.

Common Sense lost ground when parents attacked teachers for doing the job that they themselves had failed to do in disciplining their unruly children. He declined even further when schools were required to get parental consent to administer sun lotion or an aspirin to a student; but could not inform parents when a student became pregnant and wanted to have an abortion.

Common Sense lost the will to live as the churches became businesses; and criminals received better treatment than their victims. He took a beating when you couldn't defend yourself from a burglar in your own home, and the burglar could sue you for assault.

Common Sense finally gave up the will to live, after a woman failed to realise that a steaming cup of coffee was hot. She spilled a little in her lap and, soon after, was promptly awarded a huge settlement.

Common Sense was preceded in death by his parents, Truth and Trust; his wife, Discretion; his daughter, Responsibility; and his son, Reason.

He is survived by four stepbrothers; I Know My Rights, I Want It Now, Someone Else Is To Blame, and I'm A Victim. Not many attended his funeral because so few realised he was gone.

Thanks to Dirk.

My Aquarius (the water carrier) Mug Has Sprung a Leak!

2008-10-24T12:51:00.003+13:00

A crack appeared in my Aquarius coffee mug causing a dribbling leak which soon developed into a steady stream that pissed all over me – I was not amused!

I’ve posted these photos as the location of the leak is amusing considering the mug artwork.

Sorry about the Redneck’s dirty fingernail but I was working on our Honda Prelude at the time.

Tate Too Stroppy For Who

2008-10-21T21:15:00.002+13:00

I am a great fan of Dr Who and have been enjoying the ‘modern’ version with David Tennant as the latest incarnation of the doctor. His female ‘sidekicks’ Martha Jones and Rose Tyler (played by Billie Piper) give the show a bit of extra glamour and excitement as they often get themselves into trouble and usually wind up ‘saving the day’. Rose provided the additional factor of ‘sexual tension’ as she fell in love with the doctor and one was left wondering ‘will they or won’t they’.

The first episode of the latest series was to feature another pint-sized sexy blond singer in the sidekick role, Kylie Minogue. As a Kylie fan I was looking forward to the show which, oddly enough, featured a spaceship replica of the Titanic – typical Dr Who!

Well guess what – I forgot to video the fucking episode. Doh!

I finally got into the ‘groove’ and remembered to record each week but my viewing was short lived. The doctors new companion is a real stroppy bitch, always knows best and opinionated ‘to boot’– you know the type! Well one day she argued once too often, enough was enough, I stopped watching.
At least the companions change fairly regularly so hopefully ‘the ban’ won’t last too long.

While reading a SFX, a science fiction magazine borrowed from the library I discovered that I was not alone in my dislike of this woman – there were also a few dub sods who actually enjoyed her character. The actress is Catherine Tate a very popular English comedian so I couldn’t resist and just had to ‘You Tube her’.

I have to admit she is funny and very talented especially with the different English accents not to mention her disguises – especially Gran and the gay man! I spent considerable time watching her clips many of which were good quality as they were posted by the BBC.

This clip from The Catherine Tate Show ‘cracks me up’ every time.

To read my earlier post on Dr Who – click here.

Radiator Still Not Fixed – Bloody NZ Couriers!

2008-10-20T21:04:00.005+13:00

This is the continuation of an earlier post. See it here.

My brother, as promised, collected the damaged radiator and dropped it off at Trevor Morris Radiators in Onehunga. I received a call from Lee, later that morning, informing me that they were able to get a replacement tank and the job should be done by lunchtime. Gee what fantastic service.

As promised, the repair was completed by early afternoon at a cost of $168 – not too expensive but it would have been even better if I wasn’t so careless in taking off the hose. Oh well, we live and learn.

The radiator was inserted back into the Prelude and the two fans were in the process of being fitted when my brother rang me on the mobile:
“Have you started to put the radiator back?”
“Yes I’ve almost finished”.
“Oh, buggar, I forgot to give you some rubber bits”.

The aforementioned ‘rubber bits’ were the radiator mounts which I should have fitted before installing the radiator – in my usual haste I did not notice that they were missing. Lee, using foresight, removed them and gave them to my brother in a plastic bag as they often fall off in transit and are easy to lose.

Out came the radiator again!

After installing the mounts, radiator, fans, hoses and filling with water it was time to run the engine. The owner’s manual instructs me to run the engine with the radiator cap off until it warms up – the fan should turn on and off a couple of times before replacing the cap.
Well the bloody fans did not turn on.

I ‘shorted’ out the wires connecting the water temperature sensor which located at the bottom of the radiator (and in a bloody awkward location), turned the ignition on and ‘hey-presto’ the fans roared into life. This proved that the fans and the control relay were working (and there are no blown fuses). My problem therefore must lie with the temperature sensor. I made enquiries with Repco and Partmaster but neither had any stock. A check on-line with Honda was more fruitful and I placed an order with their parts department - they were charging $44 including courier which, surprisingly, was $10 cheaper than the other suppliers.

After a couple of days, with no sign of the Courier, Mrs. Redneck began to get rather anxious so suggested that I ring Honda to see what the delay was. I said that I had received confirmation of the order so there should be no problem – if it wasn’t here by tomorrow then I’ll ring. Mrs. Redneck wasn’t prepared to wait so she said she’ll ring right away.

Mrs. Redneck marched into my office and with her best I-told-you-so voice said: “You would have been waiting forever for the part!”
Apparently, according to Honda, the courier package was received and signed for at 9:00 am that morning. Well we didn’t have it so where the hell did they drop it off? Honda faxed us a copy of the singed documentation from New Zealand Couriers and sure enough the squiggle was not my signature – the Courier driver had signed for it himself. This is an ongoing gripe of mine – bloody lazy couriers.

Mrs. Redneck wanted the car, shopping needed to be done, so suggested that we order a new part as the investigation into the lost package may take some time. As a ‘last resort’ I decided to take a walk down the road and look into the neighbours letterboxes just in case it was dropped off at the wrong house. Sure enough two doors down the useless courier left the package outside a neighbour’s back door. Arseholes!!

To continue reading this story click for part 3.

Wanker Of The Week - Helen Clark

2008-10-17T21:34:00.003+13:00

So the leader’s debate turned into a bit of a shouting match – what else is new? Thank God the minor parties were ‘shut out’ otherwise it would have degenerated into the usual ‘point-scoring fest’ – forget the debate, let’s all be smart-arses!

The Political minnows usually do quite well at these affairs, they have buggar-all to lose; Winston would be all smarmy laughing at his own jokes before he finishes telling them, Dunne would be Mr. Sensible-fence-sitter, Rodney would be a jolly buffoon, Jeanette would be in ‘cloud cuckoo land’, the Maoris would be blaming everyone else for their ‘perceived plight’ and Anderton would just stand there droning on like my old school principal.

Shit I don’t know why it is called a debate anyway!

Anyway I digress. This week’s ‘Wanker of the Week’ is Helen Clark, for saying that John Key “May shout at home but wouldn’t shout her down”. Is the bitch insinuating that Key shouts at his wife, his kids or the lawnmower for not starting! Oh, hang on, Key is a millionaire – he won’t have one of those (lawnmower I mean).

The last straw for me was how she behaved afterwards. Miffed at her poor rating in the ‘after the debate polls’ in the Herald and on TVNZ she let rip with the following quotes:

“The fact he (Key) didn't burst out crying on the set probably counted for him”.

"The fact he (Key) didn't collapse with a stress attack on the set probably gave him marks".

When pulled-up on her “shouting at home” comments she replied with: "What I meant was he was having a tantrum he was completely out of control trying to shout me down...”. Stop using ‘spin’ Helen.You said Key shouts at home, if you didn’t mean to say it well be a man then and apologise.

God I hate hearing her drone on in that bass-baritone condescending voice of hers – I can’t take another 3 years of this – “Beam me up Scotty!”

Friday Joke N° 38

2008-10-17T16:12:00.002+13:00

A couple of funny pictures from the net.

Wanker Of The Week – Shane Jones

2008-10-12T15:50:00.001+13:00

Soon we’ll be told how to wipe our arse - whether to scrunch or fold, start at the bottom or the top or indeed just how much paper to use.

Already, thanks to the Labour Government, we can’t discipline our kids with a smack, schools can’t discipline unruly pupils with the cane, students are told what to eat for lunch, we soon won’t be able to buy ‘normal’ light bulbs, our shower temperature is governed by a ‘tempering valve’ and they are trying to restrict DIY work on our own home. Never mind violent crime and gangs – that’s too hard!

Our beloved leader Aunty Helen and her parliamentary band of dimwits have decreed that we can no longer enjoy a decent shower. Her Building and Construction Minister Shane Jones has set rules on shower ‘allowable flow rates’ in new homes exceeding 150 sq m to a flow of 6 litres a minute. The average flow at the moment is about 13 litres a minute and plumbers have remarked that the new limit is “little more than a dribble”. There are also new rules on hot water cylinders which could inflate their price by another $500.

One of the few pleasures left in life is the sensation of a decent hot and high-pressure shower. The Redneck, in his youthful years, was known to shower sitting on a chair for added comfort. If my water pressure is reduced I, like many others, will either do some illegal modifications to the shower head or just stay in longer.

Shane Jones says that the restriction “reduces the possibility of blackouts and electricity shortages”. Why doesn’t the Government just put more energy into creating more energy instead of being ‘cheap and nasty’ (or lazy) by expecting an ever increasing population to use the same tired old infrastructure. How about considering nuclear power – it’s clean and efficient?

Soon we will be reduced to cooking and heating by an open fire, laundry would be done in a huge boiling cauldron (copper) and baths will be the order of the day. We will be kept fit by carrying buckets of hot water from the fire to the bath - bath time could be fun though, we could try sharing with someone.

The Government would get the last laugh however; they will charge an exorbitant carbon tax for the smoke from the fire. You just can’t win!

Plastic Radiator – How Cheap & Nasty Is That!

2008-10-10T20:51:00.015+13:00

The Redneck household is feeling rather vulnerable at the moment as we do not have any means of transport, of course I am not counting the tractor, or the motorised rusted chassis we call the Suzuki Jeep – can’t get the shopping with them. Yes we are ‘Westies’ but we haven’t sunk so low as to be ‘hillbillies’- not just yet anyway.

The Pajero has been out of action for three months with a stuffed main bearing and now our faithful Honda Prelude 4WS is off the road due to a chain reaction of events which often happens when trying some DIY auto repairs. I may not have been in this situation if I had taken my time and attacked the problem in a calm and meticulous way – easy said now in hindsight of course.

Yesterday when Mrs Redneck came back from her vegetable shopping expedition she remarked that the engine was making some strange noises. After ‘popping the bonnet’ it was obvious that the engine was overheating and the electric radiator cooling fan was not working – it was trying to however, I could hear the control relay clicking away. I prodded the fan with the nearest implement, which happened to be my ‘Swiss ball measuring stick’, just to make sure the blades could turn – they could so I decided to wait until the engine cooled before continuing.

I made the mistake of assuming that I need to remove the complete fan unit (should be a simple job – yeah right!) to check if it was working. In order to gain access and create some space, as things are as ‘tight as a fishes arse’, I decided to firstly remove the top radiator hose. After removing the spring clip the hose wouldn’t budge as it was firmly stuck to the radiator pipe – this is quite normal and the ‘seal’ can usually be broken by inserting a screwdriver between the hose and the pipe. Well it didn’t bloody work this time as the screwdriver broke away some of the pipe just before the hose came away with half of the pipe firmly stuck inside. My first reaction was “shit that pipe must have been badly corroded” but then a combination of horror and bewilderment set in as I discovered that the bloody thing was made of plastic. Bloody-Hell! The whole top of the radiator was plastic – I’ve never seen that before, must be getting old!

So now apart from a possibly, yet to be determined, faulty fan I now have a buggared radiator. This is beginning to sound expensive - Mrs Redneck will be pleased – NOT!
After checking the web and then ringing a radiator shop things were looking up. They may have stock of the offending part, although I was told that 1988 was probably the first year for plastic radiators – yeah, just my luck. My brother worked near the shop so I arranged for him to do the delivery, it was just a simple task for me to remove the radiator – hmmmmm did I say simple?

The ‘tight as’ engine bay with radiator & fans removed.

As I said before ‘it’s as tight as’ in there and my hands are not as small as, or as dexterous as (is there too many as’s in this sentence) the little Nippon’s who originally assembled the car. Extricating the radiator took all afternoon and the following morning due to the difficulty of removing one plug and one wire harness clip – unbelievable!

Air Con cooling fan. The top arrow indicates one of the annoying little wire harness clips while the bottom arrow indicates the now bent bracket which held the clip that required the attention of a hammer and screwdriver. The green thing is one half of the plug that took hours to separate.

Removal of the two electric fans (one for radiator cooling and one for the air-con) and finally the radiator itself was made by sheer bloody desperate perseverance. I spent, what seemed like hours, wiggling away at the power plug until it finally separated followed by some more hours working away at a small plastic clip in an inaccessible location. The clip was finally removed by ‘munting’ it (a Westie word) via a hammer, a long screwdriver and a pair of side-cutters.

Radiator & fans as a unit.

I hooked a spare battery up to each fan in turn and they appeared to work fine – boy they can generate some wind, almost as much as the Redneck after eating the missus’s curry!
Next job was to check the relays – I found three so checked them all by once again connecting the spare battery to the coil pins while checking the switching pins with my multimeter. They merrily clicked away causing the meter needle to swish back and forth indicating the opening and closing of the contacts – they were fine.

Two of the three relays that required cleaning with a white gungy plug alongside.

I was a bit worried at the state of the relay connecting plug and contacts as they appeared to be rather loose and covered with a wet white gunge which I immediately assumed to be wet corrosion. Everything was scrubbed as best as I can with a wire brush and flushed with soapy water. I squirted everything with Mrs Rednecks ‘cure-all’ i.e. CRC. I had a nagging doubt about the white gunge – could it be some form of waterproofing grease?

View of white gunge on one of the plugs.

After searching the net I discovered that there is such a thing as dielectric grease which protects electrical terminals from corrosion and also facilitates the easy removal of plugs. The standard colour of this grease appears to be tan, in fact I could not find any white coloured one so ‘the jury is out’ on just what it is. Maybe Honda has white grease – who knows?

After putting all the newly cleaned relays back in their correct positions I finally dawned on me that I could have done all this without removing the fans or touching (and consequently damaging) the radiator. As Homer would say - “doh”!

Broken plastic top pipe to radiator.

As mentioned earlier I arranged for my brother, who owns a business near the radiator shop, to collect the radiator that evening (one day later than originally planned). Hopefully the part is available and the thing can be returned by the weekend so the car can be on the road the following week.

To continue reading this story click for part 2.

Why Can’t We Build Here?

2008-10-10T13:20:00.008+13:00

Following on from my ‘Structure Plan’ post: (see it here)
These two photos graphically show just what pisses me off with the current Council rules regarding subdivision.

This is part of our 8 acres of bare unfertile paddocks which can only support two or three cows, hence the garage which is used as our hay barn. The great Auckland climate turns the clay ground rock-hard in summer and then into a puggy, smelly mush during the winter months. We have no choice but to purchase close to 100 bales of hay each year to ensure the animals wellbeing.The grass may look lush but beleive me it consists of rubbish with little nutritional value.

We are not allowed to build a house here, forget subdivision, we cannot even build an additional building on the same property unless it is a ‘minor dwelling’ which can be no bigger than 60m2 and no further than 6 metres from the main house.

Meanwhile ‘just across the way' a couple of flash houses are being built on the side of the hill.
It just makes me sick!

Friday Joke N° 37

2008-10-10T12:48:00.002+13:00

A large woman wearing a sleeveless sun dress walked into a pub in England. She raised her right arm revealing a huge, hairy armpit as she pointed to all the people sitting at the bar and asked, 'What man here will buy a lady a drink?

The bar went silent as the patrons tried to ignore her. But down at the end of the bar, a bleary-eyed drunk slammed his hand down on the counter and bellowed, 'Give the ballerina a drink!

The bartender poured the drink and the woman chugged it down. She turned to the patrons and again pointed around at all of them revealing the same hairy armpit and asked, 'What man here will buy a lady a drink?

Once again, the same little drunk slapped his money down on the bar and said, 'Give the ballerina another drink!'

The bartender approached the little drunk and said, 'I say, old chap, it's none of my business if you want to buy the lady a drink, but why do you keep calling her 'the ballerina’?'

The drunk replied, 'Any woman who can lift her leg that high has got to be a ballerina.'

Thanks to Lesley

Swanson Structure Plan

2008-10-06T21:28:00.005+13:00

As mentioned in numerous previous posts we have been patiently waiting for a decision from the Environment Court regarding the possible subdivision of our property. For us, the process has been ongoing since 2000; others have been involved prior to 1999. The decision will affect our future plans so we are at present ‘in limbo’ and I am loathed to do any improvements or even any maintenance on the property – much to Mrs. Rednecks disapproval as she is adamant that the Structure Plan will not go ahead.

The following is a sort of ‘time line’ showing key dates throughout the process from inception to where we are at today. The information, most of which comes from SSPSG, is not necessarily complete as over the years I have lost some files and have gone through a few computer upgrades.

To save unnecessary typing I have used the following abbreviations:

WCC = Waitakere City Council; SSP = Swanson Structure Plan; SP = Structure Plan; ARC = Auckland Regional Council; WRPS = Waitakere Ranges Protection Society; SSPSG = Swanson Structure Plan Supporters Group Inc.

What is a Structure Plan?
WCC’s definition is: “A structure plan is a tool available to the Council to manage the environmental effects arising from subdivision and development in the Foothills & Countryside Environments. Structure plans are found in the District Plan and apply to stream-based catchment areas”.
For more information see here.

Prior to 2000:
WCC starts preparation of SSP in response to submissions and initial funding for development of the SSP allocated.

2000:
Technical studies were undertaken to establish environmental constraints - SSP Landscape and Ecology study.

September 2000:
WCC did a mail out to 1700 households and held a public meeting. The meeting we attended was interesting in so far as the ‘eco bias’ put on it by the WCC representatives. Most of the discussion focused on the positives of the area such as bird life (Tui’s) and rural aspect. That was all very well but there was nothing about actually subdividing our property – it to me was all very ‘touchy-feely’.

February 2001:
WCC undertook site visits to 170 properties (including our own) within the catchment area.

August 2001:
Draft SSP posted to all Swanson residents.
We discovered that our property was only allocated one extra lot while our neighbour (on a poorer site) had two. During the WCC’s site visit we were asked “Where do you want to put your house?” This question inferred one and as a consequence we were not aware that any more was a possibility otherwise we may have asked for 10!
After querying this with WCC the inspection team revisited and after a few grumbles from the arrogant male member they agreed to allow one more lot.

December 2001:
Draft plan presented by staff to WCC Environmental Management Committee.
Staff recommendation to have Penihana Land (variation 89) separated from SSP (variation 88).

February 2002:
SSP variation 88 is published - SSP with variation 89 Penihana Land (medium density).

December 2002:
WCC decides to adopt SSP into the Proposed District Plan after approximately 6 years of community involvement and comprehensive consultation.

January 2003:
Decision Notice for variation 88 of the SSP is published. Map of plan (PDF) here.

February 2003:
19 references namely: ARC, WRPS, 14 individuals and 3 landowners seeking extra sites above the initial allocation are lodged with the Environment Court.
SSPSG becomes interested party in support of the plan.

April 2003:
Waitakere Ranges Protection Project launched.
SSP placed on hold whilst structure planning review is conducted, its purpose was 'to evaluate effectiveness/robustness of SP's'. Believe it or not, the review team’s recommendations actually included dropping the SSP.

September 2003:
SSPG requested a hearing date be set with the Environment Court.

October 2003:
Environment Court sets Judicial Conference.

December 2003:
Peer Review refuted the review team’s finding saying that they had not made a proper case and/or connected their study with their conclusion. WCC, using common sense, voted against dropping the SSP.

February 2004:
The Environment Court Judge allowed the WCC extra time to undertake further strategic studies to better defend the SSP against appeals.

May 2004:
Waitakere Ranges Protection Project renamed Waitakere Ranges and Foothills Protection Project after private property owners in the Foothills discovered their properties were within the project boundaries.

June 2004:
The Environment Court delivers the landmark ‘Peat decision' which rated a photo and report in the NZ Herald. The Court found in favour of our neighbours using the SSP as a background planning instrument. The Peats’ were awarded costs against WCC for denying resource consent under the proposed plan.

July 2004:
WCC agrees to progress through mediation.

October 2004:
Environment Court 2 day mediation starts but winds up early. After meeting for only ½ day the WCC and ARC wished to undertake even more studies.

November 2004:
Two new reports were presented to the WCC - Melean Absolum Landscape and Kingett Mitchell Ecology.
Melean Absolum visited only 13 properties within the SSP area to come up with a report which: Removed the development entitlement from 7 properties, reduced lot numbers from 15 properties (including our own) and 15 properties were reassessed as having "no development potential because of existing minor household units'.
Kingett Mitchell looked at restoration and enhancement across the SSP area for landscape and ecological purposes. They identified new planting at an approx cost of $37,000 per hectare or $4,802,600 total. The WCC determined that the cost be spread amongst the number of sub dividable lots (new lot numbers per M. Absolum = 114). A quick calculation puts this as an extra cost of over $42,000 per lot for those wishing to subdivide.

December 2004:
The second attempt of the 2 day mediation commences. The WCC presented the new reports and once again the meeting was cancelled after ½ day as the other parties had no prior time to consider the reports.

April 2005:
New reports accepted by WCC to use in mediation.

May 2005:
Third round of 2 day mediation commences. The new reports are not accepted by ARC or WRPS. Neither party wanted to continue mediation. Mediation collapsed.

June 2005:
Environment Court date set for 31 October 2005, for 2 weeks.
WCC elects to go to Court with revised version of the SSP even though it failed in mediation and was not the plan agreed to through the public consultation process. The ARC effectively changes sides, opposing the WCC and the SSP and joins the camp of the WRPS.

November 2005:
Environment Court hearing finally takes place over a period of three weeks.

June 2006:
An interim decision is published by the Court which was regarded as “plenty of interim and little decision”. It identified jurisdictional issues largely as a consequence of the seemingly continuously shifting stances of both the ARC and WCC.

August 2006:
The WCC loges with the Court their revised position via a 293 application.
The Court publishes their second Interim Decision with further complex issues needing clarification. A suggestion was made that the whole thing be dropped and we start again. WTF!

May 2007:
The Environment Court Judge and three Commissioners revisit some properties in the SSP area for further clarification.

March 2008:
A memorandum was published from the Court - "The Environment Court is working on the very complex substantive decision ....... progress has been delayed".
“Time is set aside in the second quarter of 2008 to finalise the decision and further property visits may be required.”

So here we are eight years later and older but none the wiser. It has been a great lesson in patience for some of us – hopefully the end one way or another is ‘just around the corner’.

I apologise if there are any factual errors contained in this post and welcome any corrections via comments to this blog. I will endeavour to verify any corrections received but this posting is just for my records (written while I still retain my sanity), it is not intended to be a ‘Wikipedia’ entry.

Forget Time Out – Cane ‘em

2008-10-05T13:37:00.001+13:00

One thing caught my eye this week which confirms my assertion that NZ has become too PC.
Teachers are proposing to set up ‘time-out’ rooms in high schools for disruptive students. They are fed up with being faced with verbal abuse, attacks in class, weapon possession and students high on drugs.

Time out is a load of rubbish! Surely they cannot honestly believe putting these disruptive arseholes in a separate room somewhere is going to rehabilitate them – it seems more like a case of “Out of sight out of mind”.
How about this for a novel idea – cane the bastards! This worked perfectly well for my generation.

Is it just me or has all the problems with violence, gangs, tagging and general anti-social behaviour of today’s youth coincided with the removal of corporal punishment from our schools and the general namby-pamby PC mindset promoted by our gutless Politicians. Legislation like the anti-smacking bill sets out to make a parent a criminal for disciplining an unruly child who then becomes even more unruly once they get to school.

Cane ‘em hard – pain is more of a deterrent than ‘killing time’.

Friday Joke N° 36 - "HELP! There's a Penis on the Loose"

2008-10-03T15:18:00.005+13:00

The latest series of Survivor gets interesting as Marcus’s ‘little one-eyed trouser snake’ came out of its lair to do some hunting. My only comment is that it was fortunate that Amanda Kimmel was not in front of him at the time as I am sure the snake would have put in more of an appearance!
See Amanda here.

GIF image from buzzfeed.

This ‘wardrobe malfunction’ is made all the more hilarious in light of the ridiculous lengths the program producers go to censor any exposed bits, sexy or otherwise, with the ‘fuzzy blob’.
Why oh why couldn’t they have slipped up on Amanda – or any of the girls for that matter. Oh well at least the female viewers got a little treat (emphasis on the little).

Picture from allieiswired.

Rap and Ugly Black Bastards

2008-10-02T21:43:00.002+13:00

The Redneck loves music and I pride myself with having a wide appreciation of musical styles. I actually ran a mobile disco in my youth and had to endure the awful ‘disco period’ with acts like The Bee Gees, The Commodores, Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, KC & the Sunshine Band and Barry White to name a few– in fact this was quite a shock to the system after playing good old 50’s Rock & Roll and 60’s pop numbers. Disco’s forced me to play a wide range of music as one week it would be a wedding, another week a 21st, then a Rock & Roll evening for a car club then horror of horrors playing disco down at the Marae.

Music grows on you (well it does for me anyway) and I came to enjoy some songs/artists that I at first loathed. Funnily enough I love hearing some of the 70’s disco numbers that used to give me a headache (not to mention the shits) up there on the stage. The same cannot be said for Rap or its latest incarnation Hip-Hop – mind you, early rap from the 80’s from artists like Run DMC, MC Hammer and Salt ‘n’ Pepa were quite good. The stuff I hate is crap from ugly black dudes who portray themselves hanging out of convertibles or marching down corridors gesticulating wildly with their hands and thrusting their stiff bling infested fingers about like a pack of arthritic epileptics.

I see that one of these ugly black bastards who has sunglasses welded to his head is coming to Auckland for a concert in December. I’m speaking of Kanye West who has taken time out from bashing photographers, throwing tantrums and incoherently ranting on his blog (oops, isn’t that what I do) to grace us with a visit. Don’t rush out and buy a ticket as he will probably join the current list of rap losers namely Timberland, Mary J Blige (I call her bilge), Nas and The Game who have recently cancelled concerts at the last minute.

Why can’t they all be like Kylie?
Sigh!!

Correct Swiss Ball Inflation

2008-10-02T17:00:00.007+13:00

When we purchased our new Swiss Ball (see previous post here) I searched the internet for instructions as to the correct method of inflation. There were snippets of information spread over a few sites but nothing comprehensive. This post is a summary of what I have learned – hopefully this will help prevent the untimely demise of other balls (although we maintain that there was a fault in the manufacture of our first Swiss Ball).

Choose the correct size ball for your height. I have listed below the optimum sizes based on average heights:
Under 5’8” (Under 172cm) = 55 cm ball.
5’9” – 6’2” (175cm – 188cm) = 65 cm ball.
Above 6’3” (190cm) = 75 cm ball.
If you are fat for your height, oops if you are larger than average you may have to go up a size.
Upon receipt of your ball carefully unwrap as it may be tightly packaged (ours was tightly bound in plastic then stuffed into a small courier bag).
Lay the ball out on the floor and let it reach room temperature (keep out of sunlight). Some sites say “smooth out the ball on the ground” – this is impossible due to its shape (it naturally curves up).
Make up a ‘measuring stick’ (see photo) to the specified size of the ball. Some sites say “place a mark on the wall at the specified height of the ball”. Well, if you want to draw on your wall then go ahead – I’d rather not!
Get a pump (air bed type is ideal) and fit a reducing adaptor to suit the inflation hole on the ball.
Remove plug and inflate ball to 70% of its specified size and quickly replace plug.
Leave ball 24 hours to recuperate from the shock.
Now the important part. Inflate the ball so that when you sit on it your lower and upper leg forms a 90 degree angle (see photo) i.e. your thigh should be parallel or slightly above parallel to the ground. While you are doing this, stop every now and again to double check with your ‘measuring stick’ or the mark on the wall – you must not exceed the specified diameter.
If you have back pain a firmer ball is recommended so you can inflate to suit your own comfort level (forget the 90° rule), just don’t exceed the diameter measurement.
Over time the ball will stretch and soften so inflate as required, but again watch the specified diameter.

The Rednecks far arse on the ball – not quite getting the required 90° angle but the ball has been inflated to suit myself and the vertically challenged (short-arse) Mrs Redneck.

Rednecks ‘measuring stick’ showing the specified diameter of 65cm. You can see that if the ball was inflated to this mark it would be way too firm. The actual inflation diameter for the 65cm ball was 56cm.

This is the Plug (I originally thought that it was a permanently fitted valve – see earlier post).

Our two options for pumping up the ball - both fitted with a ‘reducing adaptor’. On the left is the car tyre pump which plugs into the cigarette lighter and on the right is the air bed pump which is quite fast as it works on both the downward and upward strokes – good exercise as well.

Friday Joke N° 35

2008-09-26T16:50:00.002+12:00

A man in London walked into the produce section of his local Tesco's supermarket, and asked to buy half a head of lettuce.

The boy working in that department told him that they only sold whole heads of lettuce. The man was insistent that the boy ask his manager about the matter.

Walking into the back room, the boy said to the manager, "some old bastard wants to buy half a head of lettuce."

As he finished his sentence, he turned to find the man standing right behind him, so he quickly added, "and this gentleman kindly offered to buy the other half."

The manager approved the deal, and the man went on his way.. Later the manager said to the boy, "I was impressed with the way you got yourself out of that situation earlier."

"We like people who think on their feet here."
"Where are you from son?"

" New Zealand, sir," the boy replied.

"Well, why did you leave New Zealand?" the manager asked.

The boy said, "Sir, there's nothing but whores and rugby players there."

"Is that right?" replied the manager. "My wife is from New Zealand!"

"Really??" replied the boy. "Who'd she play for?"

Thanks to Lesley

Pop Goes The Swiss Ball! (Anti-Burst My Arse!)

2008-09-25T08:09:00.005+12:00

As part of our current fitness regime, to maintain “the body beautiful”, we decided to purchase a Swiss ball. Yes, we do go to the gym, but this can be ‘homework’. Mrs Redneck decided to obtain the ball on-line through the NZ auction site Trade Me and placed several bids over the course of a week or so. Every now and again I would hear her curse as her bid fails, until lo and behold a bid was successful – although she still grizzled over the high price of $4 plus $9.25 postage (shit they cost $40+ in the shop – what’s the problem woman!?).

After a few days one extremely tightly packed ‘Top Fit Anti-Burst’ ball arrived. It was in a little parcel without any instructions on inflation so I did a search, as you do, on the net. Apparently the ball must be at room temperature prior to blowing up to 70% of its final size of 65cm. The final inflation is to be done 24 hrs or so later. Right, so how do we inflate it? The ball had a small hard white plastic button with a hole in it which I just assumed was a valve (due to the hole), some balls are also fitted with a similar button but without a hole – a check at the gym showed that they were just a ‘stopper’ (wiggling it caused air to leak out). They had both types but foolishly I only tried one. I was adamant that ours was a valve as it would not come out of the ball.

Out came the little car cigarette lighter powered air compressor and ball pumping attachment – let the pumping begin! After a few seconds it was obvious that no air was getting in, in fact I managed to stall the compressor! Further examination of the ‘valve’ by shining a torch into the hole and poking it with various thin implements did not manage to ‘shine any light’, so to speak, on the situation although I was even more convinced that it was a valve by the look of it. So it was back to the net to search for more answers.

There was stuff-all information on the net regarding Swiss ball valves but after seeing some of the pumps it looked as though we required a longer attachment to the compressor – something that could reach down inside the hole and open the ‘valve’ while forcing in air.

Mrs Redneck posted a question to the Trade Me seller and we waited expectantly for an answer.

During the course of the day, while I was bored, I decided to have another meddle with the ball. I noticed that the ‘valve’ extended about 50mm into the interior of the ball (another reason I thought that it was a valve and not a plug) – while playing with this I happened to hold the interior end while pushing out and buggar-me it came out. It was a fucking plug after all!

I then easily pumped the ball up to 70% of the final size of 65cm and left it overnight. While the ball was ‘resting’ I made up a jig from timber to accurately determine the balls final size.

The following day it was ‘all hands to the pumps’ and the ball was fully inflated – it was tight and bouncy but it was 65cm as specified. I assumed that in time it would stretch and become softer. The ball was left to rest upstairs.

Later that day, while having a coffee, there was a loud bang. I looked puzzled and Mrs Redneck said “The Swiss ball”! Sure enough the ‘Anti-Burst’ had burst. Out came Mrs Rednecks camera and several shots were taken to accompany an email to the supplier – we wanted a replacement. Hopefully they would accept the photographic evidence as returning the damaged $4 goods would not be worth it once postage was added – we may as well just try and bid for another.

The supplier replied the next day with some advice on inflating the ball and said that a replacement was “in the mail”.

Apparently the ball is meant to be soft after inflation. When you sit on it your legs should form a 90° angle. The ball will stretch with age and will require more air over time. The 65cm probably will only be reached after several months of use although as far as I am concerned an ‘Anti-Burst’ 65cm ball should be able to be inflated to that size right away – if not then why don’t they call it a 50cm ball and be done with it?

Wanker Of The Week - Michael Cullen

2008-09-21T15:14:00.002+12:00

I’m spoilt for choice for this week’s award. Firstly Michael Cullen, who is the recipient for the reason outlined later and Helen Clark who said that 60 Kiwi troops would have died if John Key was in a position to commit troops to the U.S invasion of Iraq in 2003. Aunty Helen based this figure on a quick “on the back of an envelope calculation”. She took the total number of U.S deaths then produced a number by factoring it back on a per head of population basis. Well I must give her some credit, even though the number is wrong, I would have required a calculator!
The point that she overlooked is that we rarely contribute front line fighting troops – shit even Australia only lost two and one of those shot himself while cleaning his gun!
I’ve already poked fun at Clark this week so she escapes the award which now goes to her Finance Minister who is rapidly becoming a senile grumpy old man.

Michael Cullen this week “drew a rather long bow” when he said that John Key’s background in currency trading makes him the wrong man to lead the country given the present financial turmoil. He stupidly brought up the fact that Key worked for Merrill Lynch who are now being bought out in an emergency sale to prevent the companies collapse.
John Key worked for Merrill Lynch 8 years ago and I’m sure they were making plenty of money then. Taking Cullen’s “long bow” I could say that because Key left, the company and indeed the U.S economy was doomed.
John Key has just entered into the National Business Review’s annual Rich List for the first time. His wealth has been estimated at $50 million – he amassed this through skill and hard work – it wasn’t inherited. If only he could bring these skills to running the country – we all could be better off!

Geriatric Telecom

2008-09-19T15:42:00.001+12:00

Telecom used to virtually scoop the pool when it came to quality television advertisements for any of their services. We kiwis have fond memories of the early ‘Spot the Dog’ series which in turn was followed up with another quality offering, this time featuring various animals performing to 60’s pop hits – the Meerkats spring to mind.

My absolute favourite ad of this era would have to be the thought provoking and rather sad cycle of life as illustrated by a father and son enjoying the holidays, beginning shortly after the sons birth to the period following the old man’s death – the accompanying music was of course Cat Stevens ‘Father and Son’.

Click to watch the ‘Father and Son’ ad.

Once home computers and the internet became popular with broadband coming on stream Telecom must have changed their ad agency as they lost the plot and produced shit like the series featuring moron broadband technicians called (I think if memory serves me right)‘The Incredibles’ . They offered, and failed to deliver as it turned out, unlimited-speed broadband connections. Recently they reverted back to animals, although they were stuffed this time, in a very cheesy series of ads featuring some blond chick.

The very latest series of ads is driving me nuts as they feature some old geriatric coot prattling away about the internet – hardly the sort of thing to promote one of NZ’s largest companies. Shit it’s no wonder my Telecom shares keep falling in price, all the young cyber geeks are being freaked out and sign up elsewhere – old farts are so uncool! What is pissing me off even more is that I can’t even read the NZ Herald on line without the old bastard popping up to mumble away about the new -fangled internet. Yes, the Redneck is getting older, but I hope I don’t get so bloody decrepit and annoying – shoot me first!

Click to watch the ‘Geriatric Old Fart’ (I can’t bear to myself).

Friday Joke N° 34

2008-09-19T12:55:00.001+12:00

A guy sitting at a bar at Heathrow Terminal 3 noticed a really beautiful woman sitting next to him. He thought to himself:

“Wow, she's so gorgeous she must be a flight attendant. But which airline does she work for?”

Hoping to pick her up, he leaned towards her and uttered the Delta Airways slogan:

“Love to fly and it shows?”

She gave him a blank, confused stare and he immediately thought to himself:

“Damn, she doesn't work for Delta.”

A moment later, another slogan popped into his head. He leaned towards her again:

“Something special in the air?”

She gave him the same confused look. He mentally kicked himself, and scratched Singapore Airlines off the list. Next he tried the Thai Airways slogan:

“Smooth as Silk.”

This time the woman turned to him and said:

“WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT?”

The man smiled, then slumped back in his chair, and said:

“Ahhhhh, Air New Zealand !”

Thanks to Lesley

Mutton Dressed As Lamb?

2008-09-18T16:44:00.007+12:00

The silly season is once again upon us – no, not Christmas, it’s election time so we are being bombarded with bullshit from the politicians craving re-election. One of the by-products of this season is the sudden proliferation of billboards – some sporting snappy slogans while displaying the cheery mug shot of the hopeful parliamentarian, some are to the point (like “Vote Me”), some try to be clever (and often miss the point) and some are just an eyesore – they look as though they were designed and erected by their 5 year old.

Once again our esteemed leader Aunty Helen has tried to ‘pull the wool over the eyes’ of the more simple minded voters (mostly Labour & Maori) by providing ‘doctored’ photographs of herself. In fact, because so much paint was used in the airbrushing, her photo now resembles a watercolour portrait.
Listen Helen you are an old dragon, just accept the fact. Why bother going through this charade every election year?

On the left is our more familiar “Huckery Helen” while on the right is the new and improved “Hot Helen”.

Come to think of maybe Helen has something there – she keeps getting re-elected after all! Maybe the Redneck could gain something from a makeover – a movie role, a walk-on part in Shortland Street or even (ooh I’m getting excited now) a part in Outrageous Fortune as Pascelle’s sugar-daddy.

On the left is our more familiar “Haggard Redneck” while on the right is the new and improved “Hot Redneck”.

Aucklands Crappy Logo

2008-09-16T21:29:00.004+12:00

This morning, as my alarm radio woke me from my slumber, my ears pricked up at one particular news item – no not the financial crisis emerging in the US but the fact that an Auckland Council has spent $174,000 on a crappy logo. Wait a minute; didn’t they already spend $329,000 on a wavy blue one already?
My brain started to function by the time the next news bulletin came on and I discovered that this particular logo had something to do with the ARC (the second council we have to pay rates to) and was to be used to promote Auckland City for tourism, buggared if I can see how a logo can do that – why not spend the money on something that may actually attract tourists (a bigger “boobs on bikes” parade springs to mind).
While eating my morning porridge and browsing the NZ Herald on line I saw what the fuss was about – shit it looks stupid. My first impression was that it represented the ARC by showing them as a big A for arsehole looming forebodingly over Auckland. The red colour represents the anger that wells up inside when we have to pay them exorbitant rates for fuck-all and the frayed edges represent me tearing my hair out as I fight them over our property rights (they are instrumental in preventing us and 100 or so others from subdividing our “lifestyle blocks” even though our local Council originally approved the subdivision within the “Swanson Structure Plan”).
It turns out that I was wrong. The logo was instigated by the business arm of the ARC and only used $111,925 of our money. I think the red and frayed A is supposed to represent lava rising out of Rangitoto Island in Auckland’s harbour – I wouldn’t have thought reminding tourists that Auckland is surrounded by volcanoes is a particularly good idea, better stick to the arsehole connotation, being honest may draw a few more visitors.

I Appear To Be Back Again

2008-09-14T21:11:00.000+12:00

After a long absence it looks as though I am back blogging – I wonder how long it will last this time.
To make things easier for myself I have combined my other blog (Rednecks Rant) with this one and have altered the tags to suit.
As a result of the merge all comments (there was just a few anyway) were lost. I have also updated my favourite links and the things I dislike as shown in the sidebar.
Since I have a list of what I dislike it was then logical to add a list of things that I like.
I have a backlog of items to post so they will be added, as the mood takes me, between any current items posted therefore the blog will not be chronological for a while!

US Presidential Race

2008-01-15T12:08:00.001+13:00

The last thing I ever wanted to comment on in this blog was the US elections. We have enough political bullshit to deal with in our little corner of the world without bringing even more crap into the mix - and believe me America is full of it!

The headline “Clintons accused of racial comments” in Monday mornings Herald caught my eye and I wondered what sort of cock-up was made by Hillary in her campaign (is cock-up really the correct term for a woman’s mistake or should it be a fuck-up), or maybe Bill made the cock-up – whatever, it was hopefully something juicy to read with my breakfast of toast and coffee. Boy was I disappointed – it was just Bill stating the bleeding obvious.

And what did Bill allegedly say? It was that Obama’s bid to become the first black president (you should have said African-American Mr Clinton) as “the biggest fairy tale I’ve ever seen”. Well hello, Obama is a young greenhorn, shit he has only been a Senator for five minutes and now he thinks he can run the most powerful country in the world. I would have thought that Bill Clinton’s comment was perfectly true.

The American blacks, or should I say, African-Americans (their current name preference) have a major complex where the whole world is against them, they are so downtrodden, misunderstood bla, bla, bla... Their brain has evolved to interpret any comment about their kind, no matter how truthful or even constructive as an insult to “All the African-Americans of this country” and usually triggers a long ranting, almost incoherent spiel about how downtrodden, misunderstood bla, bla, and bla they are. Christ talking to them must be like walking on eggshells – we have a similar problem over here with some Maoris especially when mentioning crime, unemployment, dole, and prison population statistics.

Poor old Bill has to now run around kissing black arse (sorry, African-American arse) and kowtow to ranting black preachers to affect a little “damage control” for Hillary’s campaign.

Maybe Bill can solve all their problems with the black (yeah, yeah, A-f-r-i-c-a-n bloody A-m-e-r-i-c-a-n-s) and kiss Oprah’s big black arse, or better still, put her in a fucking big box and ship her back to Africa where she belongs – she is the main reason for Obama’s popularity.

God help America if their president is elected based on the ravings of a fat, big-mouthed, over-rated talk show host.

Christmas Tidy-Up

2008-01-02T16:45:00.005+13:00

Well, Christmas and New Year has come and gone and still I have not had anything resembling a holiday!

Prior to the break I assigned myself a few tasks which until now had been put off, and put off, and put off! Finally it was time for some action.

Task N°1 was to tidy up my workshop which in fact has taken me 1½ weeks to complete – so much for the other tasks – next Christmas maybe?

The workshop is in an ‘outbuilding’ of about 6 metres by 7 metres in size which I have divided down the middle – one half is my office and the other half is workshop. Some time ago I built a little room at the back of the workshop so I could create a storage area over the top – a sort of mezzanine floor. The storage area and room had become a mess so I decided to remove everything, build some workbenches along two sides and maintain a clear floor space to fit a car if required.

All the rubbish, tools, hoarded odds & ends, timber and wire was either thrown on the grass in front or neatly placed in the garage (the Prelude was ‘evicted’ and had to be parked on the driveway during this time). Once the benches and a few shelves had been built together with a slap of paint on the dividing wall everything of use was brought back in. The tools were hung on the wall, crap that I don’t need but can’t throw out was placed on a high shelf while crap that I am more likely to require was placed in plastic bins under the workbenches. The bins were categorized (and marked) as: “Plumbing, Automotive, Electrical, Building/Concreting, Painting/Decorating, Farm Fencing, Misc. Hardware, Wire”. All the petrol, oil, grease and greasy automotive tools used in repairing the Pajero were stored on an old shelf unit that I had put on castors.

As electronics and repairing appliances is a hobby (when I find the time) a separate work area was created for this purpose.

The following before and after photo’s show the transformation from a God Almighty mess to a nice workspace – I wonder how long it will last – Mrs Redneck doesn’t hold out much hope!

The opening beside the ladder is the doorway to the 'little room'. The wire & crap to the left of the ladder has been thrown down from the 'mezzanine'.

Shit what a mess!

Believe it or not there is a workbench somewhere under all this crap.

The dividing wall & window between the workshop & office.

Wow what a difference.

Some of my plastic storage bins are shown to the bottom left of the picture.

The 'Electrical Department'.

The 'Automotive Department'.

Tools are now neatly stored - for how long?

The Redneck, The Pajero, Repco And Some Bloody Bushes!

2007-12-23T16:47:00.001+13:00

Our Pajero is a real ‘crap-heap’ and I would like to push it over the edge of a cliff but unfortunately it is required for farm duties like collecting hay and towing the trailer. Mrs Redneck also likes to take it shopping - no, not to terrify other drivers but for economic reasons – it’s cheaper to run than the Honda Prelude (gotta watch that ‘Carbon Footprint’ – yeah right!).

As mentioned in a previous post it failed a WOF test and one of the things that had to be rectified was the worn suspension bushes to the rear leaf springs.
On Thursday, after my gym session at the Massey Leisure Centre, I called in to the Westgate branch of Repco to purchase the bushes only to find that there are several options. I hate buying car parts these days – you provide the make, model, year, engine type, chassis number and even then they cannot be sure of the exact part you require:

“What’s the eye size, 28mm, 30mm or 32mm?”
“I dunno!”
“What’s the internal hole size, 16mm, 18mm or 32mm?”
“I dunno!”
“What’s the spring width?”
“I dunno”.

This painful process is probably caused by all the Japanese imports and the many different versions of the same model they produce. In the ‘good old days’ of car part buying (for me circa 1985) if I wanted a part for my Mini I would just go to the dealer (in my case NZ Motor Corp) for that particular car and buy the exact part. Anyway back to the present:

The only way I could be sure of getting the right sized part was to remove the old ones and bring them in to Repco for comparison between the various bushes they have listed for my vehicle.

As I was not going to the gym on Friday the day was spent removing the bushes and dealing with another visit from the Filipino linesmen from Telecom who were digging up the ground behind my office in order to fix a faulty fax line.

On Saturday morning following another visit from the ‘three amigos’ I went off to the Central Park Drive branch of Repco to purchase the parts. The young fellow who initially served me must have been a ‘newbie’ as he did not appear to understand what I was after and also had trouble using the computer. Fortunately a woman took over who had brains and was able to multitask – she served me while rattling off answers to random queries as well as directing other staff members. I must be dealing with the Repco guru – good, she should be able to sort me out with the correct parts.

After measuring the old bushes with callipers and consulting ‘the bush manual’ she was able to provide me with the rear top & bottom (swinging shackle) bushes but had to ‘order in’ the front eye bushes from another branch: “Write your name and phone number here. The parts should arrive on Monday – we will ring you when they come in”.

On Sunday I tried to fit what bushes I had but had difficulty lining up the rear right hand shackle due to the way the vehicle was jacked up – it caused the spring to have a slight twist along its length. Taking the easy way out by jacking up one side at a time was not going to work so ‘in for a penny in for a pound’ – may as well do the job properly. I stole the jack from the Prelude, removed the other wheel on the Pajero, supported the whole rear end with my axle stands, used two hydraulic jacks as backup and placed a wind-up scissor jack under each side of the rear axle. Both springs were then disconnected and left awaiting the front bushes.

Now it’s Monday and finally I should be able to finish the repairs to the Pajero. Just after lunch I rang Repco as I know from vast experience NO ONE EVER RINGS when they say: “We’ll ring you when the parts arrive”:

“Has the Pajero bushes arrived yet for The Waitakere Redneck?”
“What’s the part number?”
“I dunno, wasn’t given one”.
“What’s the chassis number?”
“I dunno, my paper with all that information is in the house and I’m in the office – can’t you just look and see if anything has arrived for The Waitakere Redneck?”
“What’s the engine type?”
“I dunno. I wasn’t expecting to go through all this again.”
“When did you order the parts?”
“Saturday.”
“If the order was made Saturday then the parts are here”.

After our usual gym session we went ‘the long way home’ to collect the parts. We were served by a guy who looked more senior (as in position not age) than the rest:

“Hi, I’ve come to collect the bushes for The Waitakere redneck.”
“What’s the part number?”
“I dunno, wasn’t given one”.
“What’s the chassis number?”
“LOOK! You guys took my name and number – can’t you just check what’s come in and see if there is anything for me?”

Silence....

Some time was then spent consulting the computer, some documents and other staff:

“When did you order the parts?”
“Saturday.”
“It won’t be here then – the courier usually arrives around 4pm (it was now about 2:30pm).”
“I rang up and someone said if I ordered it on Saturday then they are here.”
“Yes they will be here today.”
“No!! I was told that they are here – I was not told that it would be after 4 pm.”

Silence....

“Why couldn’t the guy who took my enquiry just look and see if there was anything under my name – why isn’t my name put on the computer as a reference”.

Silence....

Mrs Redneck was glaring and I was tempted to let out a few ‘choice words’.
We left.

Once home and after a cup of coffee to help ‘chill out’ we decided to go back later, after confirming that the parts had in fact arrived on the afternoon courier, so I could finally complete the job Tuesday. To help console us over the ordeal of travelling to Repco twice in one afternoon, and as we were passing, we decided to treat ourselves to KFC for dinner. We collected the bushes and had a very enjoyable (and unhealthy) meal.

Disaster struck Tuesday. The fucking bushes were the wrong size – they were a sloppy fit and I reckoned they needed to be 2mm or so bigger.
As I had given up with Repco Central Park Drive I rang the Westgate branch and was able to short circuit most of the question / answer session by quoting the part number that did not fit and hey bingo they had stock of the correct larger size – why didn’t I go to them in the first place – lesson learnt!

I was around there ‘quicker than a rat up a drainpipe’ to collect the bushes.
The Pajero was finally repaired by lunchtime.

End of story?

No not quite, see my next post.

Baby Found PVC Gutter Hard To Swallow!

2007-12-19T16:05:00.001+13:00

We phoned the vet first thing on Monday as we were worried about the health of our cow Baby (one of the Spice Girls) following Saturdays drama and subsequent swelling of her face. There are two Veterinary practices that we use – one is basically a ‘one-man-band’ who is cheaper but hard to get when you want and the other is the opposite – a practice of several vets which is more expensive but always has someone available. The cheaper alternative however is no longer an option as he has closed down his practice and is rumoured to have ‘run off with another woman’ so we had to choose the more expensive service. Unfortunately we were unable to get our usual Vet as she had left the practice. We had to try someone new which is a bummer as there are some real ‘Wallys’ out there.

At first light Mrs Redneck went down to check on Baby as both of us, but particularly Mrs Redneck, had a restless sleep with all sorts of scenarios being run through in the mind. We half expected to find a bloated dead animal lying in the paddock on its back with its legs in the air!

Baby in the Redneck-Built Headbail.

Well she was not dead and the swelling had stabilized somewhat. The vet was organized for 9:30 am so all we had to do was get Baby in the corral which involved setting up a few temporary fences and barricades to direct her in the right direction and also to prevent her from double-backing on us. Cows have excellent memories when it comes to unpleasant things and nothing pleasant ever happens when they are put into the corral. She did not make too much fuss for a change and went in relatively quickly.

Grabbing the Tongue.

The vet arrived right on time and set about examining Baby’s mouth. We paid close attention to the procedure in case we have to do it ourselves sometime in the future. Keeping a cows mouth open involves grasping their tongue and pulling it out to the side – a cow will never close its mouth on its own tongue (quite logical really when you think of it). After 5 minutes or so the vet pulled a piece of broken PVC downpipe out of Baby’s mouth. It had got caught between the inside of her cheek and her teeth/gums – she could not get her mouth wide enough to dislodge it by herself using her tongue – I’m sure she wished she had hands like us humans.

Open Up!

The vet gave Baby an anti-inflammatory injection (and us a lesson in giving injections to the neck) to help with the swelling and that was that – all over in 15 minutes or so.
We were very impressed with our ‘new’ vet and we are of the opinion that females make better vets than males – more patient and caring (this has been our experience anyway).

Baby is now back with the other cows happily making up for lost time busily feeding her face.

Short video of vet removing piece of PVC from Baby's mouth.

The Herald Started My Day Off On The Wrong Foot!

2007-12-16T14:30:00.000+13:00

I had high hopes for the day but things soon turned to shit! It was a Saturday for Gods sake – a day off work, a chance to lie under the Pajero and replace the rear suspension bushes (needed doing as it did not pass WOF check), a chance maybe to squeeze in some internet surfing or blogging, a chance to see the cows blissfully grazing in the house paddock (actually we call it the shit paddock ‘cos that’s where the septic tank and soakage field is) or even a chance to partake of Mrs rednecks baking. Fat chance!

I was up at 6:45 or so and as usual ambled down to the gate to collect the morning paper (or should that be the daily paper as there is no evening rag – the NZ Herald is your only choice in Auckland) giving the cows a ‘good morning pat’ on the way there and one for good measure on the way back.

The Herald had chosen its ‘People of the year’ (even though the year has not ended yet – someone may do something fantastic in the next 2½ weeks – you never know) and right there on the front page there was a grinning photo of that bitch Louise Nicholas with the heading ‘Person of the Year’. Bugger me – it was enough to curdle my morning porridge!
That was bad enough but the Herald was up to its old tricks i.e. get its teeth into something, chew it to death, then plaster several sections of the paper with varying accounts of the same bloody story - instead of just featuring Louise Nicholas on the front page she also occupied the first two pages of the Review Section and was the subject of the Editorial. I think she is a liar or has ‘selective memory’ and I won’t waste any more of my time on her – you can read the Herald.

Pajero's rear suspension awaiting some new bushes.

After breakfast, and after managing to avoid reading most of the paper, it was time to tackle the dreaded Pajero. All the tools were laid out when my mobile rang:
“Meester Jeem, hello, hello, Meester Jeem its Telecom here can we come in?”
Shit! It was the three Filipino Linesmen from Telecom to complete their three day task of fixing my fax line – I could devote a whole post to those guys!

After they had been underway for a while our cows suddenly charged back into the paddock (Mrs Redneck had sent them down the track earlier to take care of the odd patch of grass). They were followed a few minutes later by Baby who is usually the first to arrive on the scene. This time she had a problem – her mouth was open, her eyes were bulging and her tongue was fully extended and flapping about wildly. Whatthefuck!! Mad cow disease, woody tongue or had she eaten some ‘magic mushrooms’? She was very distressed drooling everywhere and whipping her head around so it thumped against her chest. We assumed that she had literally ‘bitten off more than she can chew’ as she and the other cows love to eat bits of plastic, electric fence poly-wire, fence standards, garden hoses, rocks, wood – in fact anything except the untidy long grass that needs clearing. A day earlier she had removed a plastic “Warning Electric Fence” sign stapled (big galvanized ones) to the fence – is nothing sacred.

After a great deal of cajoling, swearing, running around in circles and temptation with a bowl of strawberries Baby was finally coaxed into the corral and then into the head bail so we could examine her more safely - well least the Filipinos got some entertainment!
We tried several methods, all failures, to hold her mouth open. But in the resulting wrestling matches with her bobbing head (the head bail is not that brilliant – it’s homemade after all) the obstruction appeared to clear and Baby settled down. We kept her under observation in the corral for an hour or so to be sure. Her burping and chewing the cud was confirmation that things were back to normal – phew!

The Pajero's 'arse hanging out'.

Now back to the Pajero:
The previous day I tried to purchase the required bushes from Westgate Repco but as usual there was more than one option – the bushes came in three different sizes so: “Which one do you want?” Typical! A job assigned to Friday will now have to be done on Saturday - which brings me back to today. I removed one set of bushes and we went off to the Central Park Drive branch of Repco where I was only able to get the rear bushes as the front ones were not in stock. A check on the computer showed that the Takanini branch had a set and after a confirming phone call this was ordered and should arrive on Monday. Bummer! A Friday job is now a Tuesday Job – just as well my Christmas break starts next week and I should be able to complete the job and get a WOF before everyone shuts down.

A check on Baby this morning (Sunday) revealed some major swelling around her jaw so we will have to get the vet in tomorrow.

Swelling on the left side of Babys face.

Swelling below Babys jaw.

Friday Joke N° 33

2007-12-14T13:29:00.000+13:00

Some more of - You Might Be A Redneck If . . .

. . . grass is growing in the floor boards of your car.
. . . the auto junkyard calls you to get spare parts.
. . . a woman says she’s game, so you shoot her.
. . . your wife has a beer belly and you find it attractive.
. . . your house plants aren’t in pots.
. . . you think the stock market has a fence around it.
. . . you wipe your feet before you walk out of your house.
. . . you buy a police scanner to keep up with your relatives.
. . . your house feels a bit lonely when winter comes and the last fly dies.
. . . your bring a bar of soap to a public pool.
. . . you play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and get four teeth kicked out.
. . . you refer to your dog as your youngest.

Dangerous Waratahs

2007-12-12T12:52:00.001+13:00

Old fallen Pine tree blocking access.

Time for some 'tractor pulling'.

The way is now clear.

The scrub cutter is still at Mr Mowers so I am unable to go through and tidy up the areas slashed in the last few weeks. There is no point getting the heavy machinery out again (except for a little 'tractor pulling' to clear an old pine log) as there are no large stands of gorse left, at least not in the open, what remains is dispersed amongst the native trees – can’t cut those down!

Gorse amongst the bush.

Old wire & waratah fence.

So my mission for the weekend was to remove some more of the old original farm fence which was constructed from steel waratahs (called steel star pickets outside of NZ), N° 8 wire and barbed wire. The job is made all the more difficult as scrub has smothered the old fence line and the waratahs have rusted through at the base causing the whole thing to fall over in parts. Over time some of the wires, and even waratahs, have become buried making the task that much harder.

Dangerous waratah stump.

Bottom of post rusted through.

Its strange how the waratahs deteriorate – it’s completely intact, with a bit of surface rust, above ground, doing nicely thank you below ground but completely corroded through just above ground level. These steel ‘stumps’ have corroded to a sharp point and I daresay bloody painful to walk on without sturdy footwear so I worry about the cows getting impaled. Finding these ‘stumps’ can be difficult as the remaining intact post can be some distance away from its original location. Once found I just get my trusty 32mm reinforcing bar ‘thumper’ and pound the ‘stump’ so it finishes 100mm or so below the ground. Trying to dig them out is a just too much hard work – believe me, in the ‘early days’ I tried – I’m older and wiser now.

My trusty 32mm reinforcing bar 'thumper'.

Amanda's Bum

2007-12-09T10:46:00.001+13:00

I enjoy watching ‘reality’ TV shows because of the interaction between ‘ordinary’ people under the pressure of winning a few bucks - it’s a real study in anthropology. My current favourites are The Amazing Race and Survivor.
Big Brother Australia was compulsive viewing but has been off for a few years due to ‘bad press’ and gutless television programmers – although now, to their credit, we do get to see Californication and Weeds. In fact if it wasn’t for the Catholic Churches ranting, and consequential free publicity for the show, I could have missed out in seeing Californication altogether – thanks you guys!

Survivor, to its credit, usually has at least one ‘hot chick’ to follow. Some have been infamous like Jerri Manthey (Survivor the Australian Outback) while others are ‘hotties’ like Amber Brkich (Survivor Outback, Survivor All Stars and now part of the Rob & Amber double-act). From time to time the contestants have ‘wardrobe malfunctions’ and as American Television is so sanitised studios like CBS have to employ a ‘fuzzy blob technician’ to prevent the poor viewing public from being unduly traumatized after seeing a ‘nipple slip’ or some guys ‘meat and two vege’. No wonder Jeff Probst is always grinning. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not a complete pervert, I understand that there has to be some modicum of decency – the sight of Richard Hatch’s wobbly white arse in Survivor 1, not to mention his ‘willy’ required the services of one, maybe even two, ‘fuzzy blob technicians’ as failure to do so would probably have caused thousands, if not the entire civilized world, to either ‘lose their lunch’ or roll about the floor in fits of laughter.

Over the last few years I have noticed that the ‘fuzzy blob technicians’ have gotten just a little power-hungry. They have started to blur innocent things like bum crack or large boobs (usually belonging to a black woman) that get a bit unruly. These fuzzy blobs chasing people all over the screen can get a bit distracting and usually result in an irate outburst similar to:

“Did ya see that….what the fucks wrong about that …..that’s just the top of his shorts, not even a bum crack!.....H-E-L-L-O!!!!”

Amanda Kimmel and her TMTTLM smile

The current ‘hottie’ in the latest series of Survivor (Survivor China) appears to be Amanda Kimmel, although she does suffer from the very American disease of TMTTLM (Too Many Teeth, Too Little Mouth). She wears some very ‘hot’ shorts and last week (episode eight) I pointed this fact out to Mrs Redneck (she is very broad-minded) but was unable to see for herself as lo and behold the ‘fuzzy blob technician’ decided to make an appearance and blurred out her bum (Amanda’s not Mrs Redneck’s!). Why the fuck did he do this? Was he bored with sitting through the last seven episodes with nothing to do? Is he trying to justify his existence and is after a pay rise – or is there something more sinister afoot? Has Amanda got a ‘deadly arse’ or are we just receiving the Muslim version of the show?

"Don't look now Amanda, but there is a blur behind you".

Confronted with so many questions I just had to consult Google, as you do, for some answers. Amanda is listed on the show as a ‘hiking guide’ but has in fact participated in a couple of beauty pageants so that explains why she is ‘a looker’. I must point out she looks a lot prettier in the jungle in her little shorts than as a beauty contestant – some girls are better without the makeup.

"Does this blur make my bum look big?"

I am not the only one troubled by the fuzzy blob following Amanda and after reading scottitude I discovered that in episode nine the ‘fuzzy blob technician’ has an uncharacteristic lapse, or he went out for a piss, and failed to do his job for a few frames. Scottitude has the screen caps to prove it.
As luck would have it episode nine screened here just this week so I made sure the video was set and managed to capture a few images for myself which I have added to this post for posterity.

Amanda's 'deadly' bum.

I still do not know the truth regarding Amanda’s bum. I have seen the un-blurred version and am still here. I have not turned into ‘a pillar of salt’, but time will tell as there a few more episodes to go.

Oh by the way I hope she wins.

"Cheers Amanda!"

What's Up With Mitre 10's Paint Dept?

2007-12-08T12:12:00.003+13:00

What’s with the Mitre 10 paint department? Do they go through special training to be arseholes? Let me explain…..

Test Pot N° 1:

Over the last few months Dulux, the paint company, have been running a promotion for free paint test pots. All you have to do is redeem a coupon found in Your Home and Garden Magazine at any decorating centre stocking Dulux products. For a short period Mitre 10 also had a ‘free test pot’ offer coupon in one of their ‘junk mail’ mail outs.
Our first attempt at obtaining a test pot was by redeeming Mitre 10’s own coupon at Mitre 10 Westgate. This turned out to be a real ordeal. Anyone would think we were attempting to cheat the paint department wanker out of his life savings – not 200ml or so of fucking paint that Dulux are probably reimbursing his company for anyway! After studying the coupon for some time, to make sure it was not a forgery, the following conversation with the “salesman” (hereafter called dickhead) ensued.

Dickhead: “What colour do you want?”
Mrs Redneck: “What colour have you got?”
Dickhead: “Pick a colour”.
Mrs Redneck: “Can I see some pots to choose?”

Already dickheads demeanour started to irritate me.

Dickhead: “All we have is what’s under the counter”.

Unfortunately this stock is not visible from the showroom and dickhead would not allow us to go to his side of the counter to choose – that would intrude on his domain!
I think I let out a quiet: “For fucks sake!” by then.

Mrs Redneck: “How about blue?”
Dickhead: “No”.
Mrs Redneck: “What about red?”
Dickhead:"No”.
Mrs Redneck: “Green?”
Dickhead: “All you can have is white”.
Me: “For fucks sake!”
Mrs Redneck: “White is not a colour, why would I want a test pot of white paint; I know what white looks like”.

Mrs Redneck had had enough and was about to leave.

Dickhead: “Wait a minute, I need to check something”.

He then tried to ring the boss, who was at a meeting so unavailable, he then rang Mitre 10 Mega in Lincoln Rd and got their interpretation of the “Rules and Conditions” for allowing the release of 200ml or so of his valuable merchandise.

Following his phone conversations, and with us itching to leave, dickhead than gave us a long-winded lecture about not being allowed to have paint that is made up from ‘deeper’ shades. From what I could gather white had to be the predominant base colour – but to confuse the issue there were exceptions.
The lecture was interrupted briefly as he directed us to a display of colour samples where we could select our desired shade – but not all were available.

The lecture then continued:

Dickhead: “Bla bla bla paint bla bla base bla bla tint bla bla…………..”
Mrs Redneck, pointing to a nice blue: “Can I have this colour?”
Dickdead: “I’VE NOT FINISHED! Bla bla bla paint bla bla base bla bla tint bla bla…………..”

After an eternity Dickheads rant finally finished. Mrs Redneck did have a couple of goes at interjecting but each time was cut down with an indignant: “Wait I’VE not finished!”

Following a protracted process of elimination we finally managed to choose the paint and ‘hot-footed it outta there’ swearing never to return.

What really gets me is the ignorance and rudeness of this salesman. If you are running a promotion you should know all about it. Why the fuck couldn’t he direct us, straight away, to the colour samples – it would have saved us ½ hour and eliminated the loss of potential repeat business. As it was Mitre 10’s own mail-out why could they not spell out the conditions more clearly, or at least know the conditions themselves – how the fuck is the customer supposed to know, we are not paint experts!

This story is not yet over.

Test Pot N° 2:

I, the Redneck, had a voucher to redeem. This time it was from the Dulux promotion in Your Home and Garden Magazine. Screw Mitre 10 Westgate, I decided to visit the good folk at Mitre 10 Mega on Lincoln Road. We are regular shoppers at this store and have always received professional and helpful service – mind you I have not purchased paint there before!

I wait at the paint counter and have the following conversation:

Red / Golden-haired dragon sales-bitch: “Yes!”
Redneck: “I have a voucher for a free test pot and I want ‘white-on-white’”.
Red / Golden-haired dragon sales-bitch: “We can’t make that up, go down there and get a pre-made pot”.
She points down the isle towards the rear of the store.
I obediently trot off, glancing side to side, looking for the elusive pots – when suddenly I hear:
Red / Golden-haired dragon sales-bitch: “NO, NO <>, oh for Pete’s sake, , not down there!!”
Redneck: “Uh!”
Red / Golden-haired dragon sales-bitch: “THEY ARE HERE, !!” (She must have such a stressful job).
She points to a little stand at the end of the counter, a couple of metres from where she was standing.
Red / Golden-haired dragon sales-bitch: “That’s all you can have”.
Redneck: “Can’t you make some up?”
I then got a much shorter lecture on the finer points of paint chemistry.
The stand was half full of dirty and dusty miniature test pots of only 100ml or so. I found the required ‘white-on-white’ and left grumbling.
The final hassle was passing through the checkout as the staff did not know how to process the freebie.

I would have expected better service than this – don’t they train staff these days to respect the customer. Why could the saleswoman not show me the display of pots instead of just waving in the general direction of the rear of the store then getting ‘shitty’ when I missed them – they were virtually under her nose the whole time for fucks sake!

Are Mitre 10 paint department staff natural arseholes or have some of them been sniffing the merchandise (or desperate for their next ‘fix’).

Friday Joke N° 32

2007-12-07T11:21:00.000+13:00

Christmas lights I'd like....

Thanks to Paul.

Slingshot Customer Service - NOT!!

2007-12-02T12:14:00.001+13:00

The following is a diary of our trials and tribulations in dealing with Slingshot over a problem with our Broadband connection.
We have been with Slingshot for two years, although thanks to Telecom, Broadband has been available for only the last 12 months or so.

Because the occasional loss of a Broadband connection the modem is on a timer so it turns off for a few hours in the early morning resulting in a “fresh” connection for the start of the working day.

Thurs:
No Broadband connection before 9 am.
Rebooted modem several times to get connection.
Broadband connection lost after 4 pm.

Fri:
Broadband connection back on due to modem reboot (thanks to timer).
Broadband connection lost after 4 pm.

Sat:
No Broadband connection so rang Slingshot to complain.
DSL light on modem on but PPP light off. Comes on intermittently. Did phone jack check – disconnected all phones & filters, went around with the modem to check PPP light.

Sun:
Broadband connection back on due to modem reboot (thanks to timer).
“Flaky connection”. Our Computer Guru says DSL on means that Telecom line OK and PPP off means fault with Slingshot or modem.
Rang Slingshot who said there is nothing wrong with their equipment and disagree with the Guru except for possibility of modem fault.
As I require Broadband for my business we decided to purchase a new modem which hopefully would solve the problem.
The more we analyzed the symptoms the more convinced we were that the modem was at fault.
The Guru warned us that some ISP’s do not provide service for modems other than their favoured brand.
Slingshot favour Dynalink so checked Dick Smith’s website price/availability. They appeared to only stock a single port Dynalink model so I decided to ring and see if they had a 4-port version. Conversation went like this:
“I’m after a Dynalink 4-port modem/router”.
“D-Link”.
“Dynalink”.
“D-Link”.
“No D-y-n-a-l-i-n-k”!
“We only stock D-Link”.
“OK I will have to try elsewhere”.
“D-Link is the same as Dynalink they are both modems”!
I then went on to explain that Slingshot may not provide service.
Rang Slingshot and placed an order for a new modem. They said we will receive it Mon pm or Tues am.

Mon:
Broadband connection lost after 4 pm.
Modem did not arrive.
After searching the internet I discovered that Dick Smith provides a “Broadband package” with connection to Slingshot using a D-Link modem. Fuck me!!

Tues:
Broadband connection back on due to modem reboot (thanks to timer).
Modem did not arrive in morning.
Went onto Dynalink’s website and discovered that there is a shortage of the model we are after, so depending on where we are, there may be a delay in supply.
Rang Slingshot and discovered that the order was only processed that morning and delivery may take a couple of days. We did not want to wait until Thursday, we ordered on Sunday for Gods sake!! After checking that I was not too late we cancelled the order.
Went to Dick Smith and finally purchased a D-Link modem.
Modem installed OK.
Lost Broadband connection after 4 pm. So the modem was not at fault after all.
Rang Slingshot and they said that they will get Telecom to do a line check. This would take 24hrs and the modem must be left on during this time. Told to ring the next evening for the results.

Wed:
No Broadband all day as we were not allowed to reboot the modem.
Courier arrived with modem that was cancelled the previous day!
Rang Slingshot and was told that Dynalink could not stop an order once received. Why did Slingshot not tell us this yesterday – could have saved us a trip to Dick Smith.
Slingshot will send us a courier pack for modem return / credit.
7pm rang for result of line check only to be told it had not been done yet been done so we will have to ring back tomorrow evening. Another 24 hrs without Broadband! Why can’t they communicate with us!

Thurs:
Mrs Redneck had had a gutsfull by now and reckoned that Slingshot was telling us loadofshit regarding the line test. She rang Slingshot in the morning only to be told that the test did not start at the time they told us and we do not need to ring them as thy will inform us of the results. BULLSHIT!
Mrs Redneck wisely ignored their advice and rang back at 1:00 pm and was told that an adjustment was made to the line noise and everything was fixed “End of story”. END OF STORY – MY ARSE!!
Lost Broadband connection after 4:00 pm.
Rang Slingshot 6:30 that evening and while waiting for an answer the Broadband connection was re-established. When we finally got through to the tech help we were told, and once again I quote: “Don’t bother ringing when there is no fault, call back when there is no connection”. What a helpful wanker!
Lost connection again that evening. Rang Slingshot and gave up waiting after 9:30 when Customer service told us that the help queue was so long they probably would not get to us by the 10:00 pm closing.

Fri:
Broadband connection back on due to modem reboot (thanks to timer).
Broadband connection lost after 4 pm.
Received Courier pack from Slingshot.

Sat:
Returned modem via local Post Shop.
“Flaky connection”.

Sun:
“Flaky connection”.

Mon:
Rang Slingshot about ongoing problems and was told that Telecom was doing a line check over the weekend. No one bothered to inform us, our modem had been reset a couple of times because of the timer – doesn’t this stuff up the test?

Tues:
Broadband appears to be working but at a slower speed.
Rang Slingshot and was told to run their speed check program, note down the results and ring them back.

Wed:
We were getting 2100kbps download and now we are on 1500kbps.
Rang Slingshot and found out that we are not on the “Unlimited Download” plan as assumed but are capped at 2000kbps. Our original plan was for 2000 kbps download with a 6GB data cap for $50 but shortly after signing up they changed the plan names without us realizing it. Whenever we went on line to check we assumed the latest $50 plan which was for unlimited download was the same as our original – WRONG!
We immediately requested a plan change and was fortunate that our billing period was about to end so we did not have to wait too long for the faster speed.

Thurs:
This week seems to be going OK except for slow speeds.

Fri:
Our Computer Guru came around to synchronise my Outlook program with my clients. While he was here I quizzed him on my troubles and wondered why ISP’s could not tell us what speed the phone line can handle before we sign up. He told me that some modems can do this – unfortunately D-Link does not have this facility but Dynalink does. We reconnected the old Dynalink modem and hey presto our line could handle 3900kbps download. I asked him which modem was the best and his reply was: “Well we sell Dynalink”!
After reading on-line about the pros & cons of switching the modem on and off and after further consultation with the Guru I decided to retain the old Dynalink modem and leave on permanently. The D-Link model can be a spare.
We were back to getting 2100kbps download.

Sat:
A check on our on-line account details with Slingshot shows that we are on the “Unlimited Download” plan but the speed is only 2100kbps – maybe this is all we could expect, but what about the 3900 kbps the modem told us?
If the speed is still slow come Monday we will have to ring Slingshot again.
Horray! - in the afternoon the download speed got up to 3100 kbps and the upload got to 130 kbps.

Sun:
A check on our on-line account details with Slingshot shows that we are being charged, apart from the usual “Internet Services” fee, an extra $109.90 for “Equipment” and an extra $99.00 for “Misc. Debits”.
It looks as though the arseholes are charging us for the returned modem and for something else for good measure.
I spoke to customer service and was told to ring back Tuesday.

Mon:
I checked the courier ‘Track & trace” and discovered that Dynalink received the modem the previous Monday am.

Tue:
Rang Slingshot customer service and told them the whole modem story. I was told that the credit department will be informed.

Thurs:
Another check with Slingshot re our account revealed that two modems were sent to us on two separate couriers. They have tracked down one and will credit but are unable to track the other. They will not be able to credit the second amount until the “track & trace” is sorted out.
We cancelled our auto payment via credit card and are only paying the correct amount via phone until the whole thing is sorted out.

This whole episode has been so unbelievably trying on our patience. Mrs Redneck (my Accounts Department.) refuses to speak to Slingshot ever again – it is now my job.

Why do we have to hang on the phone so long for Customer Service and why do we have to listen to that incredibly annoyingly chirpy recorded woman while we wait, and wait, and wait………….!

Why do we have to tell the same old story over and over when we ring – are our previous conversations not logged?

Why are we told every time to reboot the modem, check the jacks etc. etc – once again are our previous conversations not logged?

Why are we told that something is about to be done only to find out the next day that it has not been done?

Why can they not COMMUNICATE with us – they have our email address for Gods sake!

We are still with Slingshot but they are “on notice”.

Friday Joke N° 31

2007-11-30T08:41:00.000+13:00

You Might Be A Redneck If . . .
. . . that billboard that says, “Say No To Crack” reminds you to pull up your jeans.
. . . you go to your family reunions looking for a date.
. . . you think a Volvo is part of a woman’s anatomy.
. . . you’ve ever come home and found crime scene tape across your front porch.
. . . your child’s first words were, “Attention K-Mart shoppers!”.
. . . your idea of high-quality entertainment is a six-pack and a bug-zapper.
. . . you think the last words to The Star Spangled Banner are “Gentlemen, start your engines.”
. . . you vacuum the sheets instead of washing them.
. . . you’ve ever had to siphon gas from your lawn mower to put into your truck.
. . . you think paprika is a Third World country.
. . . your dog has ever brought home something that you cooked for dinner.
. . . you think a manicure is some kind of French doctor.
. . . you think a hard drive is driving more than one hour.
. . . the last time you saw your daddy outside, he was picking up trash, chained to three other guys.
. . . your sewage system consists of a pipe down a hillside.
. . . you think the theory of relativity has something to do with inbreeding.
. . . you think a hot tub is a stolen bathroom fixture.
. . . you think fast food is hitting a deer at 65 mph.
. . . you think a woman who is “out of your league” bowls on a different night.
. . . your bathroom deodorizer is a box of kitchen matches.
. . . you thing “megabytes” means a good day fishing.
. . . you think a lavatory is a breed of dog.
. . . you think safe sex means putting on the emergency brake.
. . . you see a sign that says “dip in road” and you stop to see what flavor it is.
. . . you think a canopy goes under the bed instead of over it.
. . . you think virgin wool comes from ugly sheep.

Thanks to T. S. Zuleger

Just because you can reverse in......!

2007-11-25T12:37:00.002+13:00

Now that the weather is fine, the gorse is flowering, the blackberry is spreading and the bloody neighbor’s pine trees are becoming a forest it’s the season to do some maintenance on our “Lifestyle Block”. We still do not know if we can subdivide so the small farming life must go on (the Environment Court has finished sitting so we are now waiting on a result).

After spending a few weekends working on the boundary lines cutting gorse, not to mention the two solid weekends of hard work cutting scrub on the railway side of the fence (which Transrail or whoever, refuse to maintain), my Solo scrub cutter decided enough is enough and died.

After dropping the machine off at Mr. Mower for repairs I decided to clear the large tracts of gorse on the bush boundary using “the big guns”, namely my trusty Ford 4WD tractor and slasher.

I had not used the tractor for some time and forgot one of the “golden rules” so suffered a case of Botchulism as a result (refer to Friday Joke N° 30 for definition). The forgotten rule was do not reverse blindly into scrub - quite often you can go in but not come out.

It’s funny how a tractor can reverse over an old slippery tree trunk but not drive back over it. The more you try going back, forward, back, forward, the more in the shit you get! This is exactly what happened to me as the photos below illustrate.

Reversed in.....can't come out! Look at all the bloody gorse!!

Clearing the obstruction - I'm glad I brought my trusty chain saw.

Heave-Ho! Won't be long now. Oh by the way, does my bum look big in these jeans?

Here is a short video of the Redneck and slasher in action.

Back Blogging

2007-11-24T16:30:00.000+13:00

No blog entries for four months, shit!

Boy-oh-boy does time fly when you are having fun – or at least preoccupied with new-found (and old/resurrected) hobbies! I will go into detail in later posts but to summarize: I learnt to use CAD, repaired my amplifier, started to copy my old vinyl LP’s to CD and helped Mrs. Redneck add music to her YouTube/Blog videos. Phew!!